REAL TIME Podcast

For months, Canadians have had their elbows up, showing their commitment to choosing local, supporting homegrown business, and reinforcing the value of national unity. This renewed sense of economic patriotism has shaped our consumer habits and helped redefine what it means to be resilient during times of change.

Arlene Dickinson, a businesswoman, investor, author, and television personality on CBC’s Dragons’ Den, is outspoken about her support of Canada during the current political climate. She joins this episode of REAL TIME to share what patriotism means to her, how it affects the economy, and how we can continue to strengthen Canada as a country and business partner.

Transcript

Arlene Dickinson: Do I think we can do it? Yes. Do I think it's going to be hard? Yes. Do I think we're going to have to sacrifice? Yes. Do I think it's going to be worth it? A thousand percent yes.

Shaun Majumder: Elbows up, Canada. Yes, I know. We've heard a lot of that in the last year, and for a good reason, right? We're feeling this new mojo. Canada has got a new pair of slacks, red corduroys. We've got our cowboy boots by day and Birkenstocks at night. We're feeling it right now, and I love that. There is a bit of a movement happening, and it feels good. Today on the show, I'm being joined by none other than powerhouse Arlene Dickinson. Yes, you may know her from Dragons' Den. You may know her from the business community.

She is an absolute powerhouse, and she is one of the most proudest Canadians I've ever met. I'm so honored. She's on today. She's going to be talking about what patriotism means to her, how it affects the economy, and how to stay nimble as a business person in this ever-changing market. I am so honored. We both share very similar values about how much we love our country and the way forward. Let's get started today. Please welcome Arlene Dickinson. I am so excited. Arlene, look what I did. Look what I got. I didn't get it. My wife got it. Let me see if you can see it. Look at this.

Arlene: Nice. I like it.

Shaun: Value Village. Sweet deal. Listen, I don't know about you, but currently it feels like Canada got some mojo that I've not felt in my personal life, having lived away for the last 20 years, but obviously staying closely connected to Canada. There just seems to be this new thing happening in Canada. Do you feel it too? I'm so excited about souvenir shops I went in. I spent two grand US when I came back to Canada. I don't know. I'm feeling this new mojo for Canada.

Arlene: Yes. I think Canadians are finally feeling a lot in the shadow of any other nation and feeling much more confident. Although I think there's also a lot of fear out there and a lot of concern, and a lot of uncertainty. With uncertainty comes a lot of trepidation. I do feel like there's a renewed patriotism, which I really appreciate and is much needed. Our country deserves patriotism.

Shaun: Well, it's weird because for years, no matter how proud a Canadian I was, when I was starting my career here in Canada, I couldn't ever quite put my finger on what it meant to be Canadian. There was always the living in the shadow of our big brother to the South, so it was always in relation to that. Even our money was in relation to that. Now it feels like it's almost like we've hit our teenage years and we're all of a sudden fiercely independent, and we don't want to talk about it. Like, "Just leave us alone. We're fine on our own." This feeling that's happening in Canada, which I think is a good start, because I think we ought to remind ourselves we're a young country, right?

Arlene: Yes. I always said that we came to Canada, we're immigrants to the country, came when I was three years old. Why did we come to Canada? We came to Canada because it was a place where you could have a lot of ambition and be rewarded for that ambition if you worked hard. It was a place that welcomed you to do everything you could do to be able to be successful. That promise of Canada when we immigrated many years ago is what I think about when I think about what I want to hold onto in Canada, which is not the flag and the anthem.

Sure, they're great symbols of patriotism. To me, it's more about what the promise of the country is. The promise of the country for me is that I can be successful here if I work hard. I can find a way to take care of myself and my family. I also, if I am struggling, know that I'm going to be taken care of by my country.

That social capital view, which is capitalism with a heart, a democracy that cares about its citizens, a small nation in terms of numbers of people, but a huge nation in terms of geography, yet we still have all of the infrastructure and the needs that we should require in terms of being able to live a good life. Now we're going to put more money into infrastructure, and we're going to put more money into defense, and we're going to think harder about making sure we can stand on our own two feet. We absolutely can.

Shaun: When we talk about patriotism, when I think about from where I've just left to where I am now, the interesting difference is it feels to me that Canada-- we're not identifying ourselves as what we are not, but there seems to be a value system. That's what I'm hearing you talk about. It's more about a value versus I'm wearing a mask, which is this is my identity. It's more about the internal value system of Canada that is not as easily put on a bumper sticker. Do you know what I mean?

Arlene: I do. We've had to learn how to collaborate and connect with regional differences that exist in our nation. We've had to learn how to collaborate and work together with linguistic challenges, like different languages, not just French, English, but many languages from all around the world. We've had to learn how to accept a global view because we are compromised of a global view. That acceptance of different cultures and different understandings, yet all grounded in the same belief of what the promise of the nation is, I think that's what Canada represents. That gets me excited because I do think you're right.

It's not a slogan, although slogans like "elbows up" really helped, I think, to get people really more committed to buying Canadian and thinking Canadian and being proud of being Canadian. It's more about just protecting the things that we all are in Canada because of. That's a very important aspect of why I think this nation needs to stand tall because I think people around the world look at us to go, "I want that safety, I want that freedom, I want that peace, I want that natural beauty, I want that opportunity." There's so much that Canada can offer, and it makes me very proud.

Shaun: When we think about that idea of standing tall, standing tall and owning, that takes some time to have that self-confidence. When I think about being a dad now, and I want my girls to feel confident, I want them to feel strong and honour who they are. For many years as a comedian, I mean, we've spent so much of our lives being self-deprecating, which is a great way to be. I think culturally, it shows that we are humble, but all of a sudden, it's changed a little. We don't say we're the greatest country on earth because for whatever reason. I do believe now the tide has turned a little. What does it mean to you when you talk about standing taller? What does that actually mean without it being kind of egotistical and braggadocious?

Arlene: When I think about standing tall or standing up for our nation, I think about what did I do today to make our country better? We all care about legacy. We all care about leaving behind more than we take. That can happen in conversations like this, where you're talking to people and you're being unafraid to share your pride and your love for your country, because sometimes that was always seen as a little bit, not hokey, but really, we don't talk about that here.

Now, I think, I sign off all of my posts on social media with a heart and the flag because I do love Canada. I'm going to say I love Canada. I'm not going to be afraid to talk about it. Standing up is not being afraid to create a job, not being afraid to help a neighbour, not being afraid to take pride in what we have versus continually looking for what's wrong with what we have, because there's always going to be things that are not great.

Shaun: Yes. I think in any relationship or any self-realization, it's okay to observe where we can improve on. I think what people get so focused on and be critical of is that's who we are, as opposed to, "Hey, look, this country, again, is a young country, relatively speaking, and we are coming into our own now." That does excite me, and that's why I moved back. That's why I came back here now, to raise a family in this beautiful, beautiful place. There's nowhere else I'd rather be. That's, to me, what standing tall is. What was your take on the whole "elbows up" movement? That's the last time I saw you. We were there. It felt great, to be honest, at the time. Elbows up as a slang, as a thing, as a slogan. What was your feeling of that?

Arlene: First of all, I love that for Canada that you're back, and I love that for you that you're back. I think it's great for our nation to have creators and talented actors and comedians like you who are prepared to go on world stages and be proud to wear our flag. I think about Mike Myers and wearing the flag on SNL. I think about the moments where you can really demonstrate your pride on a global stage need to happen more and more.

Having said that, elbows up for me, I took a lot of slack from my friends around that. They thought it was like it's just a stupid slogan, and what does it mean? I kept saying to them, "You don't understand that people need something to rally around." Churchill, all the great leaders in the world have had some good ways to have people feel that no matter how hard things they're going to get, we're going to do this together. This was such a Canadian line, elbows up.

We all understood what it meant right away. We all understood that if we were in a corner or somebody was coming into our space, we were going to go elbows up. That's different than gloves off. I said that to everybody, like, "Listen, this is just us defending and being proud and standing for what we believe in. There's something really good about that, and there's nothing wrong with that." Like you at that event, I felt such enormous pride. It was so peaceful.

It was so joyous. You could feel the crowd's energy and enthusiasm for everybody who sang, spoke, entertained. It was wonderful. I think Peter and the organizers really understood how to capture a moment and help galvanize it into a movement. From a moment to a movement requires slogans and effort, and continuous pushing for an agenda that matters. My biggest fear is that Canadians-- we can get complacent quickly again. Do I really need to buy Canadian? The answer is, yes. You do.

Shaun: Yes, exactly. I find that whether it's a slogan or something that some people may find hokey or it's just a statement. I feel the cynicism obviously doesn't serve the greater good. People generally have that knee-jerk reaction. It's easy to do that, but even other people who slagged me for that same thing, I was like, "Call it what you will." It's not even about the combination of letters that made elbows up. It's about what was happening underneath, and we felt it. I think the nation felt it. I still, when I do my live shows, people are still screaming that out.

I think it's a great thing, regardless of the cynicism, and we can't let the cynicism poison it. You were talking about buy Canadian, you were talking about that. I think that was something that-- Can you actually explain to me how much of an impact that actually had? From a business perspective, when you were looking at numbers, when you're looking at economic impact, did it really work? Did it have an impact? What does it mean for the future?

Arlene: It did have an impact. First of all, you had buyers in retail chains who were purposely looking for Canadian-made goods. That in and of itself is a big business decision to make. That in and of itself helps businesses that are local become available and accessible to Canadians because they will be on shelf where they're not always on shelf across the country. It had a big business influence there. By making Canadian goods more visible, whether it's saying that you were made in Canada, produced in Canada, you actually helped grow businesses because those businesses then had revenue that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

I invested the agri food space. You actually elevated the fact that the food we're eating is safe, it's traceable for the most part. It's not always on a package, but you know if it's coming from your local area, where you know how it's made and who's making it, and what. You know that Health Canada and the regulatory environment we have is ensuring that there's no preservatives or additives or chemicals in there that are dangerous for us. There's things like that that make Canadian food safer, better, and healthier for you. That's part of it.

Shaun: When we talk about business, I mean, obviously, Arlene Dickinson, Dragon's Den, business, money, finances. We think about what does that mean for Canada as a whole, what the future of Canada is. I think I was reading somewhere, you described yourself as a heartless capitalist. No, wait now, capitalist with a heart. Very different. No, but very different.

Shaun: No, no, no, I'm kidding, of course. Tell me about that. How do you define a capitalist with a heart? Why do you need that with a heart?

Arlene: The first time I ever said those words, I think, was on Strombo's Show. I was being interviewed by him, and he was talking about capitalism. We were talking about some of the other dragons on the show. I said, "The difference is that I really believe in capitalism with a heart." What I mean by that is, what I said earlier, you can have ambition and strive to make money and to create jobs and to build something of value that's useful in the world and be rewarded for that.

At the same time, you can make sure that whatever you build is respecting the environment, is good for your neighbour, is helping your community, is paying fairly. The reason you have to give that descriptor is capitalism on whole is really regarded as a very evil endeavor that harms people. I don't think that is at all always true in any sense of the word, but there are large capitalists and people who make billions and trillions who are probably much more inclined to be about the money than they are about the good.

Shaun: That's a human issue, though, not necessarily a systematic issue.

Arlene: Well, it's both. You build a system to match your desires. You build your business to reflect your values. If your values are you don't care about people or your values are that you just want to make the most money you can possibly make, you build a system that rewards that. It is systemic because you're actually creating it. I posted about this the other day, Shaun. I was thinking about what is it we strive for.

When I think about Canada, this is a nation, as I said, that can let you be ambitious and take care of your neighbour, but it's also a country where you can be who you are and you can actually succeed at what you want to succeed at. You do understand that you're going to be able to survive whatever the challenges are. I think that's all great, but then you think about our nation and all the resources we have. It's wonderful that I can be all I want to be, and I can strive for what I want, and we've got social constructs that help people who are undervalued or underserved.

Then on top of that, we're sitting in some of the best land in the world. We have the best resources, the best minerals. We have 20% of the world's fresh water supply. We have enormous natural energy around us. That means that we can feed ourselves, clothe ourselves, shelter ourselves, and still be successful. There are many nations in this world that cannot do that. I'll give you an example. Singapore. Singapore is a fantastic country. Have you been there?

Shaun: I have. Off the charts.

Arlene: It's beautiful. It's safe. There's a lot of oversight on all of those things, but it's fantastic. 90% of their food is imported. They can't produce their own food because they don't have the physical land and the resources. Yet, it's one of the most successful nations in the world because it understood how to unleash human resources and how to trade its human resources effectively around the world. We have everything. What do we need? You want a house? We could build you one just based on our lumber, our steel, our resources here. That's what we need to focus on. I think that's what the government's trying to do right now.

Shaun: Yes. I remember, going back to what you were talking about, about financial success, that takes hard work. You're a living example of that where you came from-- I don't want to say nothing, but you came from very little, and boom, because of Canada, you were able to build. I think that there seems to be a sense in Canada, and you had spoken about this on another podcast I heard, where you're talking about the tall poppy syndrome. Now, tell me a bit about that and how Canada is a little bit, I wouldn't say guilty of it, but we have that thing that I feel like when we change that, it's going to help us grow as a country.

Arlene: Yes. We did come from nothing. We came to Canada with $50, literally, and we were living below the poverty line for a long time. Food was something that we couldn't get every week. We got it when we could afford it. Like new clothes, we went to whether Salvation Army or secondhand stores. We did all that. It was a tough life, but it is the life that I hold onto in my head now that I've had some success. I remember that little girl. I remember growing up, and when we could get groceries, feeling super excited about the fact that we had food on our table.

Shaun: Now, what city? I'm sorry, can you remind me? Paint the picture of your neighborhood. Where were you? What was outside your front door?

Arlene: We came to Canada. We went to Edmonton originally. We were in Edmonton for a few years. Then we moved to Calgary. Outside my front door, we were in rental properties for a few years. My dad finally got a job where he bought his first home. We bought our first home-- real estate's actually an important conversation we should have. We bought my father bought his first home in a neighborhood called Varsity Acres. Varsity Acres was the farthest community north in Calgary at the time.

Those of you who are listening who are from Calgary, you'll understand that now, probably it's considered inner city, almost, but back then it was way out. We paid $12,000 for that home. It was built by New West Homes. My dad was paying $120 a month for that place. Why do I remember that? I was young when he bought it. I was maybe six and a half, seven years old. He drilled into me how wonderful it was to live in a country where he could have a job and he could afford a mortgage that was going to put a roof over his kids' heads.

He wanted us to know that it was a sacrifice. For him to pay that $120 a month was not easy. It was very difficult for him. Yet, he did it because he cared about shelter, and he knew that Canada could help us get there. We always lived across from schools because my dad was an educator. I think he thought I'd get smarter if I lived across from a school. I don't know. I always lived across from a school. We grew up just understanding the value of a dollar and of hard work.

Shaun: I think in Canada, we do need to celebrate success. I think success can come in many forms as well. It doesn't have to be, "I've got a Lamborghini." No, success means taking chances, staying within Canada, sharing whatever your business that you're creating, helping out the larger community. Let's talk a bit about that right now. I want to get into the business side of things because businesses are hurting right now across the country, all over the world, in many ways, in North America. It's such a quick-changing landscape. How can these businesses/individuals who are driving these businesses, what do you think the key is to being resilient through this stormy time?

Arlene: Because I think persistence and resilience are trademark characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, I think to be resilient and persistent, you have to have hope and a vision for your future that you really believe in. I think right now what Canadians need to really believe in is a future that is democratic, free, and offers opportunity to all of its citizens. To believe in that, you have to suspend disbelief about things that could make you cynical, or the noise market that we hear on social media, or the things that people will say about how it's not possible.

Entrepreneurs hear it's not possible all the time. We hear constantly that you can't do it. If it was such a good idea, why hasn't somebody done it before? We hear all of those things, and yet we have this Teflon will to say, "I can't not do it. I have to do it. It's part of who I am." When I think about resilience for Canadians, I would tell Canadians to hold on to what you love about this country and believe that it can be more and better, and stronger, and that we have to believe in a future for it that is truly ours.

If you can do that, you will drive towards that. If you can say it out loud that you love this country and you believe in this country, and you can get past any government noise or noise about specific leaders you do or don't like, or specific policies you do or don't like, because you're always going to have those, if you can get past that and think about a future that you want to claim that you are part of and that you are proud of, you have to be resilient, and that means you have to believe. Belief and resilience are hand-in-hand for me.

Shaun: Almost like the rapidly changing-- What is the word? The game board is almost changing so fast with technology. Is Canada positioned, in your mind, to be able to keep up with that change? Are we economically able to keep up and, in fact, lead?

Arlene: The sure answer is yes, and also depends on what we want. If we want to hold on to the things we value, then absolutely we can, and we should. Canada can be a world leader in many respects. I think it's already a respected world leader when it comes to our values and our nation's goals and who we are and what we have, but if we believe that what we've got is second fiddle or not good enough, and it won't be.

Again, we're back to believing that we can build something great, and it already is great. I don't know about you, but I remember when we've lost retailers, I don't know, go down the list, Eaton's, Woolworth's, Canadian Airlines-- 

Shaun: Yes, Canada 3,000.

Arlene: It wasn't until we lost them that we went, "I really like that. I wish that we hadn't lost them." The reason is because we didn't support them. We didn't cheerlead them. We didn't hold them up as examples of greatness. We were so busy saying, "Why don't we have Target up here? We should have that because that's better." It really wasn't any better. We had something that was great to begin with. Do I think we can do it? Yes. Do I think it's going to be hard? Yes. Do I think we're going to have to sacrifice? Yes. Do I think it's going to be worth it? A thousand percent yes.

Shaun: Yes. It sounds like long game. We have to remain resilient and keep the belief there. Isn't it a thing in business? Spreadsheets don't care about belief. I keep hearing about these businesses or these young entrepreneurs who are coming up through the system. I'm just making something up, but imagine a kid coming out of Waterloo who has that special mathematical thing that's going to rewire how we use energy, and they get scooped up. They're gone to Boston. Now they're in the United States because of the salary. How do we ebb that flow to other markets from some of our greatest thinkers? I go back to thinking about the Avro Arrow.

Arlene: The DeLorean. That wasn't Canadian.

Shaun: No, I think the Avro Arrow was that terrible story of all of our aerospace engineers, and then they started NASA, and they were all Canadian.

Arlene: Look what happened

Shaun: Exactly.

Arlene: There's this saying in business that culture eats strategy for lunch. It actually does matter the belief you have. It is human nature to want to hold onto something and to fight for what you believe in, and to work hard for what you care about. You might be able to get a job doing something that's disenfranchising for you but pays really well. How happy are you going to be in that job? You’re not going to be happy, but you can make money.

Again, it depends on who you are as a human, but I think belief is actually very, very important. I think people like to understate it because they can't hold onto it. They can't grasp it. They can look at a spreadsheet, and they can calculate on the spreadsheet, and they can go, "Oh, the numbers don't work." But when the right person comes in and looks at those numbers and says, "You know what, I believe we can turn this around if we do these things and we hold onto what we're going to try and build." Suddenly, everybody goes, "I'm in. I'm going to support that."

Shaun: What are the biggest moves you think Canada can make in the next 10 years to really affirm our independence? Yes, we'll just start there because I also want to talk about the leadership of the country, not politically, but the business leaders and how it ties back to, especially in real estate?

Arlene: I think the biggest moves we can make is to invest in ourselves. The best advice my father ever gave me was to put any dollars I had into myself. In other words, to invest in my opportunities to be an entrepreneur and to put my dollars behind myself, whatever I had, and my time and my resources, not just my money. I think we can invest in ourselves aggressively. I think we can count and believe in the opportunity here by championing entrepreneurs and small businesses and by supporting them.

Something we can do, we can buy Canadian, we can encourage Canadian, we can invest in Canadian, we can believe in Canadian. Then the other thing is we can walk through those trade doors that are being opened. To your point on industry and what's happening, there's been opportunity to trade around the world for many years, for decades, through other prime ministers, through multiple prime ministers. You know what? They opened the doors to that trade by creating relationships and agreements. It didn't happen.

Industry didn't walk through those doors because it was so much easier to just go and do business in the States. How could I go to Europe or Asia? That's a long way away. That seems harder. I'm going to just go right to the neighbor to the south. There was a complacency that came with that, that industry owns. Again, we can believe in government all we want, and government did play a role and continues to play a role, and there's things that government needs to do.

Industry also plays a very big role, and that's a mindset at the top. That's somebody saying, when we have to procure an app to make sure our HR is working well, let's get a Canadian app. When we have to buy office supplies, let's buy from a Canadian company. Yes, that might cost you a little bit more, but in the long run, the value you're creating is huge, huge, huge. That's where you have to sacrifice a bit more. Maybe it's going to hurt your margins a bit, maybe it is, but what's worth it in the end?

Shaun: I think that's amazing, and we definitely have to start moving in that direction. I have these blind spots. There's so much that I don't know about what goes on the inside. When I think about the tech industry, industry in general, whether it's lumber or auto or tech, or even REALTORS®, what are the things that they can be doing to really amp it up to keep everything Canadian and propel us forward?

Arlene: It gets back to what we were talking about earlier, Shaun, which is you have to believe it yourself as a leader if you want your organization to believe it. If you believe it yourself, then you have to make sure that you put processes and guardrails in place to ensure that your organization supports that belief. That means making choices on where you're going to procure from. Ensuring that you think first about how you can help your country first versus another nation's business.

Thinking about what you really want and what's important to you. Too many leaders are governed by quarterly reports because quarterly reports add up to public market. Value. The problem is that those quarterly reports can be short-term incentives to create certain behaviors that are actually helping your country. Really, it's a mindset. It is a belief. It is a value system. It's all of those things that we all don't really want to talk about because that seems like woo-woo over here, where a balance sheet seems so factual and straightforward.

I am telling you, business is emotional. Business is human-driven. People do business with people, not with names of companies. They do business ultimately with people that they like. When you talk, especially in a service industry type of business, or brands they understand the values of, and you're seeing more and more of that. I would say make sure you understand what your values are. Make sure you are reflecting those in the systems you set up in your companies and what you tell your companies, employees you believe in. Stop being driven by only one thing, which is the metric of dollars, and start thinking about what you want to leave in this country.

Shaun: Just so we can wrap it up here, maybe we can just talk a little bit about what your feeling is about the Canadian housing market. I don't know if that's something that you know a ton about or if you're invested in that much. What's your feeling, seeing as we are the Canadian Real Estate Association podcast? Talk to me a little bit about that, about what your top three or four things you think needs to happen to, I guess, get us out of this real estate crisis, the housing crisis, as people have proclaimed we are in.

Arlene: I think the notion of building affordable housing is not something that we should go, "Oh, the government shouldn't be in that business." I think actually what needs to happen is the government needs to enable independent businesses and entrepreneurial businesses to succeed in the housing sector. I think that's the goal of it. First of all, I have invested my whole life. I'm the generation where I was lucky enough that when I bought a home, I was able to sell it again and make money on it.

I've been able to do that many times in my life. I've had multiple properties. I've done that because there was always value being realized in the real estate that I was buying. In an effort for that to happen, because Canadians-- that was our nest egg. It was own a home and then eventually it'll be worth more. That's how I'll retire. My home is going to be worth more. In doing that, we created  this really difficult divide between could you afford to get into the housing market in the first place because the prices just kept going up and up and up.

I have a place in Vancouver, it's just so expensive. It's just mind-boggling to me. I think we've got to get to a place where you can have a nice home and you can do it on a decent salary, and you don't feel excluded from an opportunity to put shelter over your head. It's Mavlovian, right? Food, shelter, water. We need to be able to give those things to Canadians. I'm hopeful that building homes that are more affordable is going to help that. I think we also, in Canada, we've had so much land, and it was all buy the bigger, the biggest home you can, and you'll have property.

In Europe, they live in much smaller homes, they're very happy, they walk where they need to go. There's a lot of things that we could do differently to try and encourage people to be able to get into home ownership. I think we have to stop believing that our future lies in home ownership rather than saying our health and happiness lies in having a roof over our heads. When I say future wealth, I think, Shaun, your home could be worth more over time, and it should increase in value for sure, but it can't get so that it's unaffordable for the average Canadian.

Shaun: That's what I think about with younger people who are even contemplating the idea of purchasing a home. It's so difficult for them right now, and the renter market is even skyrocketing. Yes, I think it feels like some big changes need to happen to ease that. Then once we get through that, perhaps there's going to be more opportunity. Gosh, I like talking to you, Arlene.

Arlene: I greatly appreciate how you have stood up for our country and how vocal you are about respecting and supporting and encouraging people to be proudly Canadian. I really do. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Thank you, because we need more.

Shaun: You're speaking the same language. The things that I'm hearing come out of you, which perhaps other people may not really-- they might be surprised to hear this idea of belief, the idea of value. All of those things, they're idealistic. They're not capitalistic, if you will. It's not all about the bottom line. It's about the underlying energy and what it means to be "Canadian" because with that word comes a lot of things. I still think there's so much more value in that. It's about the humanity of it all. That's what Canada is striving to do. Of course, how can I not put that forward? Together, we are putting that message out, and I'm so happy to hear that coming out of you as well.

Arlene: Some nations are all about doing well as a person. This nation is all about doing well as a country. That doesn't preclude doing well as a person in addition to that. Thank you for that, thank you for.

Shaun: Unapologetic. That's what we need to continue to be. The naysayers, the people are like, "Elbows up." It's like, "Yes, okay, bye." We're going to continue the elbows up thing. This is the reason why. Come over here, Eslyn. You want to say hi to my friend, Arlene? Come over. I want to say hi. This is the future right here, Arlene. Come over. Eslyn, this is my daughter, Eslyn Willow.

Arlene: Eslyn, hi. How are you? Have you got a sucker? That looks really good. A lollipop?

Shaun: It's a lollipop. A Canadian-made, sugar-free lollipop.

Arlene: Wow. I love your hair. Are you in grade 12? Did I get that right? What grade are you?

Shaun: What grade are you in, Eslyn? What grade are you in?

Eslyn Willow: Pre-primary.

Arlene: Pre-primary. Do you like going to school?

Eslyn: Yes.

Arlene: School is so important. You probably are super smart.

Eslyn: Yes.

Arlene: Are you going to do something in Canada? Will you start a business one day?

Eslyn: Yes.

Arlene: Yes, cool.

Shaun: The future's looking good for you, right, Eslyn? Do you love Canada?

Eslyn: Yes.

Shaun: Go Canada, go.

Eslyn: Daddy, I went to Canada with you. I went to Canada with you.

Shaun: You did, yes.

Eslyn: And mommy, and Mattis.

Shaun: Mattis Maple Majumder. That's her name, Mattis Maple.

Arlene: I love that.

Shaun: I named her because of Canada, Mattis Maple.

Arlene: I love that.

Shaun: All right, Arlene, I think that's a great way to end our chat. Don't you, Eslyn? Yes. Thank you, Arlene. I love you.

Arlene: Eslyn, I love you too. Bye-bye.

Shaun: Come on now. How awesome was that conversation with the amazing Arlene Dickinson? I learned things about her I didn't know before. At first glance, when you think about, oh, she's a dragon on Dragon's Den, everything is about the bottom line. My biggest takeaway is that from her perspective, the two are hand in hand, values and belief about what you are, not about what you are not. Those are the energies that can drive us forward as a nation. It's always been there, but hearing Arlene speak about it so eloquently was inspiring, and I'm so stoked.

If you weren't stoked, then maybe you need to get stoked. Thanks so much for joining us today. I feel more proud to be Canadian than ever after that conversation. Of course, if you liked today's episode, please tell us by giving us a rating and a review, like, subscribe on whatever platform you digest your podcasts. Of course, REAL TIME is brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association, CREA. Production is courtesy of Alphabet® Creative. Thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Shaun Majumder, and we'll see you next time on REAL TIME.

The way we build homes hasn’t changed much in decades—and that’s an issue. Gaetan Royer, CEO of Massive Canada, joins this episode of the REAL TIME podcast to explain how new technologies, such as prefab modular housing, can help address  Canada’s housing crisis by improving the efficiency of home building.

From how it saves builders and homebuyers money, to the benefits to the environment, communities, and jobs, host Shaun Majumder gets the low-down on everything prefab housing.

Transcript

Shaun Majumder: Duh. This just sounds like such an obvious thing to do to increase the efficiency.

Gaetan Royer: One thing is not going to solve the housing crisis. There's a lot of things that need to happen.

Shaun: The housing crisis is probably one of the more pressing issues in our country today, and everybody's looking for solutions. How fast can we build? How many do we need to build? What are the barriers in the way? I think one of the things that I've been hearing a lot about has been this modular housing, modular homes, prefab homes. I don't know much about it.

Today, I am really excited to talk to a gentleman named Gaetan Royer. He is the CEO of Massive Canada Building Systems. He knows a lot about this. He's been in the industry for 40 years doing construction, everything from being an architect to an urban planner. Now, his sole focus is to get prefab and modular housing in the main lane. It will hopefully solve a lot of our problems. Let's find out.

Gaetan, thank you so much for joining us here on REAL TIME. Gaetan Royer, listen, Massive Canada is the name of your company. I love that name, by the way. Tell me a little bit about how you got started. When was that moment where you said, "Okay, this is the way we have to go"? Tell me a bit about Massive Canada's mission.

Gaetan: Yes. Thank you for hosting this. This is an awesome opportunity. I really appreciate it. I've been in construction for all my life, for years. Every time that I come out of a building that's under construction, resolving an issue that's been taking place, I always shake my head, thinking there's got to be a better way to build. Three years ago, I was invited to join a group that was looking at innovating construction materials and decided to grow this from just dealing with construction materials to dealing with how we build, going back to first principles and understanding the problem of how low the productivity is on a typical construction site.

We still, to this day, build things by hand, piece by piece. On a large project, a six-story building, there's millions of pieces that are brought individually and assembled by tradespersons. Sometimes they get in the way of each other, and sometimes there's delays. It takes two and a half to three years to build a typical building. Three years ago, to answer your question directly, I set out to design a better way to build as opposed to just dealing with construction material and solving individual problems. Let's go back to see if we can find better ways to build.

Shaun: It sounds like issues that you saw personally from working in construction for 40 years, inefficiencies, disconnected systems, it sounds like, where you thought productivity is so slow. I feel like when we think about construction, it's just become the way it is. We've taken it for granted, it feels like. It's like, well, it just takes that long. You're saying what Massive is doing is looking at those very systems and saying, "No, no, no. We've been taking it for granted for too long. We can take it up a notch and do things differently." Is that a fair assessment?

Gaetan: Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a housing crisis that's afflicting Canada and many other countries. A lot of it has to do with population growth and immigration, but an enormous amount of the housing crisis is a result of us not building fast enough. It's a huge market. When there's a lack of supply of housing, that creates huge market opportunities, and there should be a rush to build fast. Somehow, we can't finish a building under two, two and a half years. In our system, we set out to complete a six-story building under one year, under 12 months, and this is our goal, and we're going to get there.

Shaun: Let's get into this in even more detail. I want to get in because I'm not a builder. I've dealt with builders, but I've never understood what is that process from drawings to finished product. What are the ways that people have been doing it up until the last few years in terms of taking this different modular prefab approach? What is the standard way, how subcontractors-- Talk to me about numbers of people that are working on-site, how they all communicate, how they work in terms of timelines, et cetera. What was the old way?

Gaetan: The old way is the trades, the various subcontractors, and there's going to be anywhere from 30 to 40 subcontractors on a typical job, especially larger jobs like the kinds of buildings we need, the six-story apartment buildings with rental and affordable housing. All these folks are going to be coming in and working one after the other. They are going to be doing the framing by hand, and then the various trades follow each other. There's not a whole lot of communication because they don't work in the building at the same time.

The electrician put power for a ventilation fan at the wrong place for some reason, and the person installing the ventilation fan says, ''Well, I can't do this because the plug is on the wrong side of the beam. I would have to cut the beam.'' That triggers a whole series of delays. That triggers the fact that now we have to work for the structural engineer to authorize cutting into a beam. Those things take an awful lot of time, and it's organized chaos. I feel so much respect for the typical general contractor managing that chaos every day.

Shaun: Right. You have a general contractor who's been hired to take the entire job, and they hire subcontractors, and the subcontractors are individuals or small companies that have their own businesses in whatever trade that specific group of people are. Is that correct?

Gaetan: That's correct. Yes. There's a layer of contracts, multiple layers, in a very fragmented industry.

Shaun: Just from a 10,000, 20,000-foot view of that, I can see that being incredibly chaotic, especially if the communication isn't absolutely clear and it's all funneling through one. I would think that it's like, ''Oh, no, here are the drawings. Do it exactly like this.'' 

Gaetan: Well, those drawings are incredibly complex, and there's complexities that have been added over the years. There's now building envelope consultants that design exactly how a building is going to perform in terms of energy conservation. Right there, there's multiple layers of insulation and vapor barrier and rain screen, air spaces. All of these tend to have created multiple additional subcontractors who specialize in those various things. What we do, the solution that we bring is to do all of this inside of a factory where people are working side by side on workstations.

It's the part of the building that moves on an assembly line, and we get the various steps added up. If there's an issue that presents itself, the two people are going to be working side by side. They just talk to each other and resolve the problem. If there's a detail that requires structural engineer to be involved, that person is upstairs, so they don't have to wait a week for that person to come to the site. It's an incredible increase in efficiency when you move a large part of the construction off-site.

Shaun: This sounds to me like, pardon the very high intelligent academic language, but, duh, this just sounds like such an obvious thing to do to increase the efficiency. This sounds like something that should have happened a long time ago, but moving forward on the positive side, this can really ramp up productivity in our nation.

Gaetan: Absolutely. To explain in a bit more detail what we bring to the table here is, I talked about going back to first principles. We looked at a typical condo apartment. You walk into a condo apartment and what is expensive, what is complicated and difficult to build? There's a plumbing wall between the bedroom and the kitchen, and there's ventilation, there's a hot water system, there's an electrical panel. We take all of these things and we put them in one box that we call it condo core. It has about 80% of the value of the entire apartment inside that box.

Now, just figure the wall between the bedroom and the living room in a typical apartment. That takes the trades an hour to build. It's a wall with nothing in it. There's a couple of outlets at the bottom of the wall. There's maybe a switch by the door. Otherwise, it's just a blank wall between two rooms. All of these we bring to this site, prefabricated, but they're all flat-packed. The floors and the walls are just flat-packed on a truck and they're craned into place, attached to that condo core, that big box that I talked about.

That box is what's so expensive to build on site because you've got all these trades that are involved and following each other to build all of this, crouching on their knees under the sink and climbing on ladders to install the lights in the ceiling. We do this in a factory with all the tools at people's hands. We do a lot of pre-assembly as well. It's a different way to-- completely different from what's been done before.

Shaun: Getan, at CREA, a big part of CREA's mandate is to support community. Community building is huge. I would imagine that prefab and modular housing can also help to create communities.

Gaetan: Yes, absolutely. We have an exciting project that's shaping up right now. I'd like to share our approach to that. This is a nonprofit project, a group that wants to deliver 500 homes. When we were talking about how to do that, there's a component of this, which is going to be, we're going to provide homes that are going to be prefabricated on site, assembled. Persons with disabilities, persons with some seniors are going to move in. That's going to be one segment. There's another segment that's targeting people who are employable but don't have skills, people who are hard to house and they need to get assistance in terms of support for the addictions, support for a variety of things.

That nonprofit is basically providing those services and planning for them. What we offer to them is to provide some job skills at the same time. Let's have our condo core units. Which is going to be the kitchen, the bathroom, and all those elements. It would be very difficult for us to train people to do. There would be safety issues and so on. That part would be delivered to the site. Then the rest of the walls, they can build them themselves. What that does-- this is still in theory, but I have a vision that this is exactly what these folks, the nonprofit, are envisaging is going to happen, is we're going to give them some job skills.

We're going to give them the ability to answer the question, "Have you done some work lately?" "Yes, I built my own home and within, I learned these particular skills in the process." They're going to live in an environment where they have a sense of ownership. You really care for something you've created yourself, right?

Shaun: Absolutely.

Gaetan: They're going to be looking after their home. They're going to have pride of what they've accomplished. They're going to have a place to go and have a shower in the morning before going to an interview. As part of all the community support that is going to be provided to these 500 families that are going to live in this community, there's going to be this additional thing, which is we're helping these folks advance their job skills. Helping them to create a sense of community. All these people are going to be not working individually on their home. They're going to be working in tandem with others, building their village.

I think those are the kinds of initiatives that, as a company, I want to support just on a human basis. What we're providing, the modular unit that we're providing, is facilitating that. It's really exciting to look at the construction industry as a way to create better communities.

Shaun: Absolutely. It gives them a sense of purpose and then a timeline seeing from the beginning to then at the end. Nothing feels better than seeing something come to completion, and then to say, "This is mine," that's outstanding. What a beautiful, beautiful initiative. When I think about-- I think we want to get into this a little more later, but the idea of these modular prefab housing, there would obviously be the assumption in my mind that, "Oh, you're very limited to what you can do because you've got your factory that is just churning out these cookie-cutter walls that you've got it down to a system."

A lot of people think prefab is tiny homes, and that's all you can really do. Is there any truth to that? What are some big misconceptions about the type of spaces that you guys can prefab?

Gaetan: There's quite a bit of prefab that's tiny homes, or mobile homes, or smaller homes. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that transporting a bedroom is transporting a huge box full of air. We don't do that. We don't want to transport a lot of air. What we transport is this compact condo core, which is all the complex stuff. The equivalent to that is like going to IKEA. You buy shelving. You're not going to buy it all completely built because that would take you five trucks.

Shaun: I wish. Gaetan, have you wrestled with IKEA furniture? Man, it can ruin marriages.

Gaetan: Absolutely. I'm with you on this one. What I'm saying is that it's relatively simple for most people who are willing to read the instructions to assemble a cabinet. You don't want to transport all this air, but you would not tackle the task of building your own IKEA fridge. You buy a fridge. It's a big box full of air, but it's so complicated. Our condo core is like a fridge. It's very complex. The rest of the walls, they're like flat-pack cabinets. Once you understand that, then our condo cores stack up like LEGO's, up to 12 stories high. Attaching the walls and the floor panels to that, it happens very, very quickly. We're talking weeks instead of years.

Shaun: If I imagine this new flow and this new chain of events that ends up revealing to the world this beautiful building, if the subcontractors are in the factory on the assembly line taking care of all that stuff, before you were saying on site in the traditional way, there's 30 to 40 subcontractors. Once this box that is compressed with no air in it arrives on site, who then picks it up from there and how does the building get put together? What is their classification? If they're not subcontractors, how does that process work? Who are these people then that tick, tick, tick, put it together?

Gaetan: There's a BCIT in BC, the BC Institute of Technology, NAIT, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. I'm not sure in Ontario if there's people who are being trained, but there's programs, the same as we're training electricians in technical colleges, there's programs to train people to assemble the kinds of prefabricated systems we're bringing to a construction site. There's people who are specialized in doing that. What we're not seeing in our project is an army of subcontractors because the electricity, everything has already been built into our system.

Shaun: The individuals who are onsite, they receive the boxes. What kind of number are you looking at comparatively to the 30 to 40? How many are there to put it all together? How many people does that usually take if we're taking the equal amount that would be representative of 30 to 40 subcontractors for maybe what? Is that like a six-story building, or how would that translate?

Gaetan: For a six-story building, we had an independent report done. What they concluded is we would have, instead of 30 to 40, it would be about a dozen trades involved. Instead of two and a half years, it would be less than a year for construction. The cost, even though we're a for-profit company, we're going to do this to make money, our cost is going to be 20% lower than any builder who uses the least expensive construction method. The independent report compared our system to stick frame, just the standard wood framing building for a six-story building.

Shaun: You're not cutting corners with what you're using to build things with. It sounds like the place that you're making up for in terms of cost is just efficiency.

Gaetan: Yes, it's efficiency. We're going to be providing a better quality product. We are using different materials. Instead of wood frame, we're going to be using mass timber, which is-- this is mass timber, cross-laminated timber.

Shaun: Tell me about mass timber. I don't know anything about mass timber. Is it just cut logs?

Gaetan: Mass timber can be large-sized logs, but it tends to be engineered wood. Wood is very strong, but it has some flaws as well. Wood, there's knots, there may be cracks. Engineered wood is wood that is going to be selected for its strength and its quality. Then it's assembled together by gluing pieces, like glue-laminated beams, or gluing layers that are going to be going in different directions, perpendicular to each other. One piece of wood like this, and the next one perpendicular to it. That's cross-laminated timber panels.

Shaun: Gaetan, talk to me a bit about the benefits of prefab housing. There's so many. In terms of, number one, environmentally, is this a better way to build? Is it easier on the environment? Talk to me how that trickles down to general economic growth in either a community or across the nation. Obviously, we touched on speed. Then how it can really impact the very thing that most people are talking about right now in this country, which is the housing crisis.

Gaetan: Yes. Let's start with that, the housing crisis. The human impact of this housing crisis is very real. There are seniors becoming homeless, young families that are finding it extremely difficult to put food on the table because shelter is so expensive. We have to do our part to contribute to that, to speed up access to housing and to lower the cost of housing.

Our system, and for all the modular builders who are using engineered wood, it's a far less wasteful way to use wood. The amount of construction waste in our landfills is north of 30%. Around the world, it's somewhere between 30% and 34% in most jurisdictions. Metro Vancouver, 32% of the landfills, 32% of what's collected is ending up as construction waste. In a manufacturing plant, you're going to have much better control of the inputs. The various pieces that are coming in, you utilize 100% of what you bring to the plant. Then, because it's a controlled environment, you can deal with the recycling.

Any leftover, all the sawdust is being collected and reused because it can be packaged and collected on a worksite, it just blows in the wind. We also want to make sure that when we talk about labor, I think in terms of where the economy is going, one of the issues that we're facing in construction is a labor shortage. There's fewer skilled labor than we need. That drives the prices up, of course, when something is in short supply. It is a world where, for young people, it's very difficult to make a living. They end up working on a job, and then the subcontractor that they work for does not get the next bid, so they're laid off for a few weeks or a month.

They're jobs that are not as secure as a manufacturing job where you offer permanent work, benefits. For young people working in the rain, in the snow, in the hot weather conditions on worksite, roofing in August is not pleasant. To start working in a manufacturing plant is a very attractive proposition, especially if it's going to be a permanent job that allows them to have a wage they can show to the bank and get access to homeownership at one point.

Shaun: It sounds like when you have a young person who's coming up, they're going into trade school, they're learning skills, and then the dream job would be to do exactly what you suggest, which is permanent, full-time work with benefits. You're doing all the things that you would do on the site, but in a controlled environment with more guaranteed work over a longer period of time. Less inconsistency, less uncertainty. That sounds incredibly attractive.

Now, I guess prefab has been around for a long time, but what you're suggesting in terms of how it can impact the productivity of Canada, when I hear productivity, that goes to the national economy as well. All that we're trying to do as a nation to protect ourselves from all the vulnerabilities around tariffs and whatnot, we want to be a stronger country. It sounds like prefab and housing can be a pathway towards that strengthening of our nation. Not just about, "Oh, we're going to build more houses," but it trickles down. Is that fair to say?

Gaetan: From a business perspective, we're looking at-- as I indicated earlier, there's an enormous amount of demand for housing. Our company has got a short-term target of 2,500 housing units per year. Eventually, with our second plant, it's going to be 20,000 units per year. That's a big number, but it would be only 10% of today's market, which is we build about 220,000, 225,000 homes a year in Canada. The target to get ahead of this housing crisis, we have to increase that capacity to 500,000 per year.

Let's imagine a world where we've been totally successful. There's a lot more modular house builders that are producing homes, and we get ahead of this housing crisis. Let's look at the exports. We have clients today in Mexico where we haven't delivered yet, but we're going to be delivering housing to Mexico. When we're done building Canada, we're going to turn to the rest of the world. We have connections in Australia, and we're nurturing these connections with the view that at one point, we're going to be exporting either the technology or exporting houses to those countries.

Shaun: That's amazing. If we can just dig down a little bit into the financials of things, how does prefab and modular, how does it help homeowners save money?

Gaetan: We're looking at-- there's a lot of communities where fourplexes are allowed now on single-family homes. The law has changed in BC by the province to allow that. I know in Ontario, there's a number of single-family areas that are now allowing fourplexes. Families that want to take advantage of that to basically build additional housing in the backyard or to replace their single-family home with a larger triplex or fourplex, we offer a product that's going to be facilitating that.

Again, it's going to be the same thing. Instead of the homeowner having to deal with an army of subcontractors, they're going to get utilities and foundations built. After that, we just come in and deliver a home and assemble it on that property. We're going to deliver the services in 3D boxes, the condo core. Then the rest of the walls are going to be taken off a truck, craned into place, and attached. Within a couple of months instead of a year and a half or two years, people are going to have access to that housing unit to put it on market for rentals or for grandma to move in.

I'll give you a number or a couple of numbers that are coming from that independent report I talked about. This is a professional cost consulting company. They looked at our drawings for an actual project in Gibsons and compared it to traditional construction. The savings for the construction was $9 million on a six-story building. That makes a whole lot of difference. This is a rental building. We're going to be able to rent those units for less than our competitors. You talked about time is money. When you talk about time, if you buy a piece of land, there's holding costs, insurance.

Insurance on vacant land is very expensive. There's taxes, and then there's interest that you pay. For that project, they established that amount, the savings, at $3 million just because we're going to be much quicker to build. Those are significant numbers, and they make the difference between a developer today. There's projects that get canceled because they don't pencil in. The performers are not working out. It makes a difference between go and no-go for certain projects. $9 million plus $3 million is $12 million. That's extremely big numbers. As I said, these are not my numbers. They're independent cost consultants.

Shaun: My follow-up question to that was going to be what's in it for builders. There it is, right? Major savings from a time perspective. Developers get to have their units on the market sooner. I've been hearing these stories lately online and listening to the radio, listening to other podcasts about housing and how there is this-- You've got all these foreign countries maybe coming in and buying up all these units, or they want to develop something. They presale a lot of these units. Then by the time it gets three to five years down the road and the people are going to move in, but life has changed so much, it's hard to navigate the costs of those things. I see that being upside positive. for everybody across the board.

Gaetan: Yes. It's not all rosy. There's one flaw in this whole pattern which the lenders, the financing industry has to catch up to, which is the fact that if you do something off-site, you buy modular to build a building, the lenders, the people, the banks, and CMHC will not provide funding until the material is bolted down onsite. If you--

Shaun: Oh, wait. Stop right there. Stop right there, Gaetan. I'm just trying to follow. You're saying I'm a purchaser. I'm a home buyer. Let's say we'll use the fourplex as an example. I need to get a mortgage on that fourplex, but you're saying they won't activate that money until it's actually bolted onto the site?

Gaetan: That's correct. We are people in the industry. My company was part of a letter that was written by about 200 signatories from the construction industry saying we need change. We need the finance world to catch up to modular and to understand how this works because that homeowner who's trying to build a fourplex, they have a certain amount of money that they would roll over. They spend $100,000. They get $100,000 back from the bank. The next $100,000, they get it from the bank. It allows them to get funding and finance as the building is going up.

If it's modular, they're going to have to pay 40% of the entire house as a deposit for the company to start buying all the materials and putting the labor to assemble this, and it comes in one big lump. Instead of $100,000, now it's $1 million that they have to finance themselves. That's why there has to be some changes. The real estate industry, which has an interest in advancing those kinds of investments by their clients, basically, those units, some of them are going to be for sale. The real estate industry has really got to advocate for changes to be adopted by all these lenders to facilitate the construction, the use of modular.

Shaun: Paint that picture. What is the change that needs to happen? Could it turbocharge these things happening much faster? What is that change look like?

Gaetan: I think it's a combination of advocacy, educating people in understanding how this works. The industry itself, the modular industry, has to create some track record to show, "Yes, when we get the deposit, we're going to deliver on that," and companies are going to gain that credibility with lenders, hopefully, but it's a combination of changes that need to take place. CMHC, the Canadian Mortgage Housing Corporation, has to lead the charge and change the rules in that regard.

Shaun: There are some restrictions to how things can get financed. That sounds like legislatively or regulatory changes could happen that would help a great deal. Is that right?

Gaetan: Yes. Certainly, it should be part of the changes that are going to be the-- One thing is not going to solve the housing crisis. There's a lot of things that need to happen. Modular is going to help, but modular financing, how it's financed to allow lending for things that are not on-site yet that are being built off-site, lending money for that is an important change.

Shaun: It feels like, obviously, our government has to be a part of that supportive system. I know that you had spoken in front of the House of Commons regarding the advancement of these building technologies. Tell me a little bit about that. What was that like, and did you feel it was well-received?

Gaetan: I think it was extremely well-received. That experience was enlightening. Those committees are-- all the different parties are listening. It was an engaging conversation. I did promote modular and did promote some aspects of the things that need to change. We certainly saw that reflected. There's a real consensus about support that's required for accelerating the pace of construction, bringing more technology in construction, and changing the way we build housing.

Shaun: Massive is not the only shop in town. There's other leaders that are trying to push this forward. I feel like Massive is obviously the best. There's nobody better. I'm just saying it's got to be one of those things where, across the entire industry, it has to get traction. Because when I think of prefab homes and modular homes, there's a bit of a stigmatization with it. It's like small houses all look the same, all boring. There might be that perception of potential home buyers. How can that misconception be dealt with? How do you deal with that in terms of its image of what it is, prefab homes, what they are?

Gaetan: Yes. When I talk to folks, sometimes they bring back some of these stigma, these issues. It's not going to look all the same inside. It's not going to look all the same outside. On the inside, we don't finish the floor, and the flooring is done onsite. We don't finish that in the factory. That's going to allow us to have a seamless floor, seamless ceiling, so that everything is looking normal. There's not going to be pieces that look like it's two halves of the building. Similarly, outside, we're not going to be doing our siding. We're installing the siding, the last step on the exterior. We're doing this onsite.

That means instead of having something that looks like boxes side by side, the siding is going to be basically providing a seamless facade. We're giving architects the full flexibility of using whatever material they wish on the outside of the building. Similarly, the architects and interior decorators can select different materials for the cabinet doors, the type of taps. All of these things are flexible and will lead to consumer, basically, taste. A rental building is going to have sturdier, perhaps more durable materials utilized, and maybe less expensive countertops. If we do a condo or luxury condo, then they can have marble countertops. We have some flexibility.

Where we save money is in the hard things, which is the plumbing wall. Those are going to be all the same. We've designed once, and we're going to make thousands of those plumbing walls. That's where we're going to save a great deal of money.

Shaun: I think that's what people want. It sounds like in this model moving forward, you want to still be able to customize. You want to give the colors and the touches and the fabrics and the countertops and the looks of certain things. That can all be done with this model, but it's the stuff that I do not want to see. I was just in Newfoundland and my little house that's 120 years old. Every summer, I go home and guess what? The pipes are burst. Half of the pipes are copper. The rest are PEX. I'm trying to think. Now, this is the one time where behind a wall, I had to go in and I had to bust down a little cabinet area and get in there and I had to replace the copper with the PEX, but none of it was insulated. I didn't know where anything was. What you're saying is with this system that you have moving forward, you know exactly what's there and it's all done properly. That's stuff I don't want to deal with. I can see this being massive savings, massive flexibility, so much opportunity here.

Gaetan: Yes. I told you, I've been in construction for a long time. On a six-story building, there's one day at one point where the owner turns on the water and then they start praying.

Shaun: Oh, yes, exactly. Exactly.

Gaetan: Then there's-- our units are going to be, before they leave the factory, the water system is capped and then put under pressure. Similarly, the sanitary, all the system is capped, ready to be connected on site to the other units, but that's tested under pressure. We know that when the tap is turned on at the building, it's not going to leak. Similarly, we test our electrical system and so on. I think those kinds of quality assurance matters are really important and they're going to make a difference.

Shaun: Oh my gosh. It makes so much sense. Duh, again. Before I let you go, Gaetan, this is such an amazing conversation today. I think it's incredibly enlightening to see what the potential can be. It's not only potential, but it's actually happening right now. What are the things that has to happen? Tell me the things that need to happen for this to really go to the next gear. What are the things that are in the way? What are the barriers? What needs to happen for us to really take this to the next level?

Gaetan: I think every member of the industry and certainly the Canadian Real Estate Association is playing a role in this with this podcast. The construction industry is 13% of the economy. It's a huge part of our economy. Modular is one important solution. There's other technology that's being considered. I think the industry needs to be part of informing themselves and informing the people who are making these individual decisions what's going to happen in all these initiatives to streamline project approvals by municipalities and then to open up the possibility of building triplexes and fourplex.

This is going to lead to a whole bunch of individual decisions where the couple sits at the dining room table and they look at the options of what to do. Do we sell the house? Do we put the laneway home in the back? They need to be informed, those folks, to look at more options. I think the real estate industry is doing exactly what it should do, which is to learn about more options and then inform consumers of what they should be looking at.

Obviously, I want modular to be one of those things that is widely known, and the utilization of mass timber. We were talking in my shop yesterday about tilt-up mass timber. There's a building that's gone up. Tilt-up mass timber is those large panels that are going to be put to create the building. That would replace tilt-up concrete, which has been used for many years. Each panel of tilt-up concrete takes a week to basically form, pour, and then lift up and let it cure and so on. There's a building where all the panels were CLT and they were built in a week. Same time to build the entire building as it takes to build one tilt-up concrete panel.

Shaun: Wow.

Gaetan: That blew me away when I learned those numbers. I think those are the kinds of efficiencies that if we utilize the newest technology for engineered wood, we're going to save money, we're going to help save the environment, we're going to utilize something that has absorbed carbon out of the air instead of consuming carbon, and we're going to end up with equipping ourselves with the ability to compete with the rest of the world to be the best in the world in terms of delivering housing.

Shaun: Yes, Gaetan, that gets me so stoked. I'm so excited about that. That's amazing, but we got to deliver. I think the time is now, and I can see why Macleans picked you to be on the Power List of 2024. Congratulations on that, by the way, and what an honor it is to talk to you and to hear all about what you do now and what the future for Canada looks like in terms of modular. I think we got to keep spreading the word, and it just makes absolute sense. It's just common sense. It just makes sense.

You can't really be divided about how the best way is if it means that it's going to be cheaper, better for the environment, it's going to happen faster, and it's going to activate our economy to such a level that it puts us in the forefront in the world. Thank you so much for taking the time today, Gaetan. What a pleasure.

Gaetan: Thank you, Shaun. It was a great conversation. You bring so much energy to these interviews. I recommend your podcast to everybody I know.

Shaun: Oh, awesome. Well, thank you so much. Good luck with everything. Where are you headed today? What's next on your agenda just today?

Gaetan: Next is we're meeting with the trade commissioner from the Canadian embassy in Beijing, China. We're procuring a lot of materials that are not manufactured in Canada that are manufactured in China, so there's a lot of trade exchange that's taking place.

Shaun: Got you. Well, good luck. Good luck, and thank you again, Gaetan. All the best. Great meeting you.

Gaetan: Thank you so much, Shaun. Bye-bye.

Shaun: The housing crisis is not going to be solved by one simple thing. However, after today's conversation, prefab and modular housing could definitely go a long way. I had no idea. When you really nail it down, when you start talking about the amount of time it's going to save, the amount of money it's going to save, the environment, the waste, all of it, it just seems like, duh. Thanks so much to Gaetan Royer for his amazing inspiration, and I wish him all the best. Other companies who are doing it as well, keep it going.

Guys, if you enjoyed today's episode, please go like, subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts. The podcast today is brought to you by Canadian Real Estate Association, CREA. Production brought to you by Alphabet® Creative. My name is Shaun Majumder. Thanks for joining us on REAL TIME. We'll see you next time on REAL TIME.

REALTORS® often operate with a high-performance mindset, much like professional athletes. It’s a powerful tool in business, but it can also be a slippery slope to burnout. Psychotherapist Jhanelle Peters, former mental health clinician for the Toronto Raptors, joins REAL TIME to explore the pressures of entrepreneurial careers like real estate. Listen in to learn about the gradual building of burnout and how to spot it early, the importance of reframing “work-life balance,” how integrating joy and recovery into your daily routine fuels both your career and your well-being.

Transcript

Jhanelle Peters: Before you say yes to anything, make sure you are not saying no to yourself. I'll say it again. Before you say yes to anything, make sure you are not saying no to yourself.

Shaun Majumder: Okay, so here's the thing. You know, for the amount of time I've been doing this amazing podcast, the one thing that I've always felt kindred with is the kind of work that all of you do, and how it aligns with a lot of what I do as a creative person. But I'm self-employed. I'm always out there trying to generate leads. I'm always out there trying to boost the brand, try to keep the promo going. Trying to book jobs. Trying to close deals. I mean, it is a never-ending process of keeping things going. I mean, it's really, really intense. And, you know, I would ask all of you, when was the last time you took a break? What was the last time you felt like, “Okay, I'm super relaxed”.

It's very difficult. But, you know, it's so important to explore ideas about how we can find a balance, right? And not just work-life balance. We hear about that a lot, we're going to talk a bit about that today on the podcast. But, not allowing all of this pressure to affect our mental health, which in the end becomes a detriment to the work you're all trying to do. And that's why I'm so excited today to talk to Jhanelle Peters, Registered Psychotherapist. I'm not going to lie, this one is as much for me as it is for you. But, she's amazing and we're so excited to have her on REAL TIME. She's the Clinical Director of Jhanelle Peters Psychotherapy, and she was also the mental health clinician for the championship-winning Toronto Raptors.

So, I'm going to try to convince her to become a mental health clinician for the Toronto Maple Leafs. We'll see, I know that's not going to hit well with everybody out there watching, but either way, we'll see if we can get her to help them out. You're going to love this conversation. Let's get into it with Jhanelle Peters, Registered Psychotherapist, to talk about how to avoid burnout.

Shaun: Jhanelle, this is so good. I love that you're here today on REAL TIME. I am so excited. Your energy, it feels right today, it feels positive, it feels great. Where are you located right now as we speak?

Jhanelle: Right now, I am in Florida. We're in Miami.

Shaun: Nice. And how is it? Like, we're in - you know, as we record this, we're in the middle of summer, must be very hot.

Jhanelle: Oh, it's still summer. It is all forces of summer still be beaming down at you, 34 degrees of it, okay.

Shaun: Right, right. That is hot. That is very hot.

Jhanelle: How about you?

Shaun: I'm in Nova Scotia, where it has been blazing hot with no rain all summer long. And, so I'm feeling good, like we're coming up to a shoulder season now, It’s going to be nice. But, you know, it's pretty easy to feel happy and joy when the sun is out. I'm just seeing now, you know, having just moved my entire family from sunny California, where literally every day, a little tiny robot comes out of the lab and flicks to switch and the exact same weather happens every single day.

Jhanelle: I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought that when I was there. Like, it’s “Do I need to check the weather anymore? No. It's VR. It's all VR. It's not real.”

Shaun: And so we're getting into some dark times, like a winter in Nova Scotia is going to be a challenge of mental health, which is something you specialize in.

Shaun: Tell me a bit about yourself. Jhanelle Peters. Who are you? What do you do?

Jhanelle: I am a Registered Psychotherapist. What does that mean? It means I'm somebody that you can sit and talk to, to uncover things, to understand things, and to feel better about life altogether. And I've been really lucky to take all of those things and work with various high performing individuals, including my role and title as the Mental Health Commissioner for the Toronto Raptors, which was a great experience.

But now I get to spread that energy and work to everywhere else, as I have a practice in Toronto, called Jhanelle Peters Psychotherapy.

Shaun: Jhanelle Peters Psychotherapy. That sounds amazing. And so anybody can go. I mean, obviously.

Jhanelle: Yeah, anybody.

Shaun: Right, right. You're probably super busy.

Jhanelle: So, I mean, you know, I'm busy, but I'll make room for anybody that you send a referral for, Shaun, if they say that you referred them, I'll make room.

Shaun: Well, look, I know today we're supposed to be talking about only real estate and all that, but I'm going to be one of your clients. So we're going to start because I'm very high performing as well. Sorry. I don't know, I started laughing when I said that.

But either way, I am, very, you know, I'm an independent person. I am constantly on the move, I am hustling all the time, I am self-employed, I am always looking for new opportunities, I'm trying to do the work in the background to prepare myself. I'm aware that my industry is filled with all these different kinds of arms that I need to develop skills in, in order to excel.

But I also have a family. I have my personal life. You know, so a lot of it can be consuming. And so, by saying all this stuff, I think that a lot of REALTORS®, a lot of real estate agents out there have a very similar kind of approach to how they're trying to, you know, they're not like on a team like the Raptors, where I've been hired to play for the Raptors. And, you know, I'm just going to play my position, but we're all going to work together as a team. Being a self-employed, entrepreneurial actor-comedian, it's very similar to the REALTOR® world. So, you know, I've felt burnt out in my life. You know, that's something that you probably specialize in. What do I need to know?

Jhanelle: Well, you need to know that you check, check, check, check, check almost every box, what a high performing person experiences, and why burnout might surface for them. And I think a lot of people are probably like, “Okay, Shaun, like, I get you, I do that and I do this, and I do that”. Like, they're counting all the things that you said. And they're like, “Well, how do I know that I'm burnt out, right?”

Like, I think that's the question that most people would say because they're like, “Well, I'm used to doing a lot of things. That's just part of what my job looks like, and it's my personality to do”. Exactly, right. Yeah, I always want to be the best at things, and I'm used to stretching my arm 75 different positions. But, does it hurt? Are you tired of doing it? Do you wish you didn't have to do it all the time? And these are some of the questions you might start thinking about when it comes to burnout. Because really, what that is, it's a prolonged amount of stress on your body that almost feels like it has nowhere to go. And so a lot of people hold it and go, “I just gotta do what I gotta do”. That's just what this looks like.

Shaun: Yeah. Head down. Keep going. Don't let the feeling of shut down get in the way of moving forward. Like, I feel like there's a bit of that that happens, especially when you're under the gun, right? There's so much stress and so much, so much expectation. Self-expectation.

Jhanelle: Yeah.

Shaun: You know, what do you see across the board when you're thinking about high performance athletes, entrepreneurs, C-suite executives? And now we're talking about REALTORS®? Is there a commonality? Is there just a human thing that happens or are they specific to each?

Jhanelle: No. You are so right when you say, is there a common thread for sure. I think these are the types of individuals who feel like in order for me to get to the highest peak in my career, or in order for me to get to the end point and be celebrated beyond measure, I don't get a break.
I'm not allowed to stop because the minute I stop, somebody else can come in. The minute I stop, you know, there's not enough gas in the tank. What if somebody blows past me? What if I don't do as well as I'm supposed to if I take a break? And I think a lot of people have that in common.

But, one of the things that I've learned in working with athletes that I think everybody can take from is, they don't do anything by themselves. And so, yes, they may work individually to work on their bodies and things of that nature. But they have a nutritionist, they have a dietician, they have somebody that focuses on their body. They have somebody that focuses on their mental state.

And I say this to not say, spend all your money on all those things, but who do you have reminding you about, like the basics, like you were talking about, like resting and eating properly and taking that time out so that you can get to the end and not feel burnt out. Like who is helping you? What is helping you?

Shaun: Right. Like I have a whole team around me when like for my slow pitch, beer league, like I have a stylist, I have a nutritionist to basically gets me beer and pretzels. And I have a person who comes and just tells me how awesome I am all the time. But you know, that only cost me, like, 60 bucks.

Jhanelle: Yeah, but we got to the university for your dietitian, and you got, you know, Planet Fitness. You got- I call it the number 11. Your two legs?

Shaun: Right.

Jhanelle: Take them outside and go walking, right? Like, that’s your fitness piece. So yeah, there's so many things that you can do to kind of help yourself. Not to feel that burnout feeling that we'll probably dive deeper into.

Shaun: Right, right. So when it comes to burnout, what exactly is burnout? Because I think that's a big thing. You hear it all the time. People throw it around as a term. You know, it's like, “Oh, dude, I'm so I feel so burnt out or I'm totally burnt”. But what exactly– is there an actual medical term?

Jhanelle: There's a definition, but it's actually.. So, let me just give you the best way to describe it. The best way to describe burnout is, I like to say it's what happens when you avoid being human for too long.

Shaun: What do you mean?

Jhanelle: So, like, think about it. All the things that you just said, you're like, well, I have to like, you know, if I'm in real estate, I'm making sure that I'm helping people's closings. I have to make sure that I market myself. I have to make sure that I'm taking the time to gather a clientele, do all these things, call, go make visits, do open houses. I have all of these expectations on myself, and I can't stop because if I stop, something's going to fall apart. I'm not going to get the deal closed. So you burn yourself at this pace that is really, really fast. And it's almost like leaving a computer on. Right? And so you're like, “I can't shut it off. It's got to keep going”. But you ever see how your computer pops up and goes like, “Hey, time for a software update. Time to shut me down. I need you to restart me in order for it to work”. And as human beings, I know I do it, I go, we'll do it later. I have stuff to do and we kind of exit out like “Install tonight, install later”, and sometimes we never get it done. And so I say burnout is what happens when you avoid being human for too long because you are not a robot. You are not a computer. You need to restart, reboot. You need to rest and fuel yourself with a lot of things that I'm going to share with you, because you are a human being that needs rest. You don't earn rest, you deserve it. In order to keep going. So burnout is what happens when you avoid being human for too long, because even your laptop has to shut down.

Shaun: Right. Exactly. And then that's just in the workspace. I mean- when you were talking about it, “I need to keep going, I need to keep going or someone else is going to come in and, you know, get that opportunity”... But you also have a family. You also have a partner. You also have to maintain, you know, you hear this term work-life balance a lot.

And I remember, you know, someone saying that to me. It's like, you know, I'm trying to maintain my work life balance. Is that an achievable goal or is that something that, you know, gets thrown around too much? Like, what's your take on, how do people find balance?

Jhanelle: Well, the thing is, I like to shift that a little bit because I feel like trying to find balance, like to think of, like almost like a seesaw, teeter-totter is what it’s called- when the kids kind of sit on the one and you're like, balance this out, right? Or a scale. We don't have the same amount of hours to sleep, to move our body, to eat, to spend time with family, or to work. We don't have eight hours to give to all of those. It's not physically possible and time doesn't allow for it.

So balance, when we think of the equilibrium of things, doesn't really sound like it's going to work. But what I like to say is: integration. How about we try a work-life integration, which means that you're taking things that you know that you will need in order for you to get to the end and not feel burnt out and feed them into your day, feed them into your week, feed them into your month.

Shaun: So give me some examples.

Jhanelle: So like for me, I find that one of the things that bring me a little bit of joy is in the morning I will make a parfait, and I'm really extra with it. So I found the nicest mug little bowl thing to put it in, I get like the nice granola that I want, and I actually go over the top and I'll put, like, little edible flowers and stuff on top of it. And someone’s like, “Well, why do you do all of that”? And I said, “Well, because this gives me a moment for my shelf, because I know if I don't do it, I'll tell you a person that will go through the day and I'll be like, wait a minute, did I eat? Did I have lunch? I completely forgot about that”. But if I give myself this moment to be like, I'm integrating at least my health and my nutrition into my day right here for five minutes. That's way better than me not giving myself anything and then being like, oh wait, I got to go balance it out. I didn't eat four meals, right?

I'm going to integrate at least something to say, “Hey, check that off for myself. At least that was in there for out throughout the day”. So work-life integration means putting certain things in these different areas that are really essential for us as human beings, which are wellness, are, to your ears, a wellness, which are nutrition, movement.

Mindfulness, like any type of mindfulness that you can think of for yourself, whether that's just sitting down for a moment to breathe, connection, all of those things, integrate them into your day, and that's better than trying to find overall balance.

Shaun: Yeah, mindfulness. We've been seeing that a lot lately as well. You know there's mindfulness. But to somebody who's like, you know, an electrician from Saskatchewan who, you know – and no no slamming on electricians – but I'm just seeing it as somebody who's like, “Mindfulness, What the heck is mindfulness?” But mindfulness is not something that is so far out there. It's just even, you know, taking a moment to just be quiet, to calm, to not have the insane chaos be-

Jhanelle: Can I tell you something, Shaun? It's not even just being quiet. Because I think some people think that's the only way to feel mindful or relaxed is like, oh, it just must mean I have to, lsit in this position and pose and, like, crawl my feet into this weird form that I can't get out of.

No, mindfulness can mean sitting in the car. How many of you just kind of sit in the car and make sure that you turn on the music that you like as you're driving, right? How many times have you just listened to a song and you can still find your way home without any type of directions, because you're just kind of- as much as you like to say, your mind's at a relaxed state. You know the directions to get home while you're singing the song. That's mindfulness, right? Curating your favourite playlist, reading a book, talking to a certain person can also make you feel at a relaxed way to feel like you're being in a mindfulness state. So there's so many ways to uncover that, that you can connect with.

Shaun: And I think movement is a big one, obviously. And I think, though some people take movement, as you know, when we talk about fitness and exercise, there's extreme, but there's also been these studies recently where it's like “Throughout your day, if you do nothing else other than, for example, do ten squats standing where you are, when you have a moment, do ten and then be done”.

That goes so far. Even going, just walking, it has such a positive impact on the brain.

Jhanelle: Yeah. Especially if you're going to add the elements of nature to it and you walk outside, it makes you- So that is like mindfulness times physical activity. You're multiplying them, you're putting them together, and you're giving your body and your mind something tenfold that can really help relieve burnout. Right?

Shaun: Right. And obviously nutrition, nutrition has a huge impact on how we feel.

Jhanelle: Correct. It does. So the good and the bad if we-

Shaun: Yeah, exactly. So what you're saying, if I'm hearing you correctly, what you're saying is, you know, the expectation of having work-life perfectly balanced is an unrealistic kind of expectation.

Jhanelle: Yeah. I think you can allow yourself to integrate the things that make you feel great. Let's do it this way, Shaun.

Shaun: Yeah?

Jhanelle: When's the last time you went on vacation?

Shaun: Oh, goodness, vacation. It was probably last year. What you call an actual vacation.

Jhanelle: Yeah. Okay. What makes something an actual vacation? Like, what do you enjoy the most about it? What do you get to do on vacation that you don't do anywhere else?

Shaun: Well, get a hotel. You know, stay in a stay in someone else's building with nice, freshly made beds. That's fine to order. Pick up a phone and have someone just say, “Bring me my food”, and then someone brings me their food, and then I sign, so, you know, so they get that-

Yeah. See new things. I have that excuse of newness, which is like, it's a bit exploratory. Some of those things. Yeah.

Jhanelle: Okay. So, let me tell you what I would tell you if you were a client. So, you know, you're going on vacation and you just mentioned nicely fresh linens.

Shaun: Right.

Jhanelle: A meal that you didn't have to prepare and being able to see new things, those are the things that make you feel almost like recharged while you're on vacation that you enjoy.

So, you know, you leave vacation, you come back home, you're like, “Oh, great. There goes all of the things. This doesn't feel as relaxing anymore. I'm back into my setting”, right?

Shaun: Yeah.

Jhanelle: So integration would be like, well, we can't. We all know we can't live a balanced lifestyle of vacation and work, right? Can't be like, “All right, worked for three days, vacation for three days”, right?

Can't do that. We’ve got to integrate what felt good on vacation into our everyday life so we don't feel burnt out. You can't keep waiting for the holidays to be like, oh, recharge and then burnout actually. So. Right. Bring in. Do I need to put like some? Do I need to make sure that I have nice linens? Right?

Do I need to launder my linens a bit more? So I feel that feeling when they get made up on the bed. Do I need to say like, “Hey, I can't cook every single day because that drains me and has me feeling burnt out with my workload”. Of all the things that you mentioned, the beginning, maybe Fridays is a day that I order in and that makes me feel better.

Maybe it's making sure that I take a different walk on a path, or go see a different show or different side of town because I need to explore something visually and get stimulated that way. That's what integration looks like in order for you not to feel burnt out.

Shaun: And it doesn't take a lot. It really doesn’t. It sounds like doing those little things can go a long way and releasing the stress, you know, finding that balance and even even when you talk about the work life thing, family life meets work life, I think doing those things with your partner, for example, in a small little bite-sized way, as a plus every because we put so much pressure on ourselves, especially when we are ramped up and I've got this project that I'm focused on or I'm close to closing this sale is like, you know, that becomes the all and everything for that period of time.

And I feel like it's okay to want to finish that. And follow through on that. But yeah, but, you know, that's when you need to find somehow like, how can you do that and still feel joyful after it's all said and done?

Jhanelle: Well, you make a really good point. It's recognizing the season that you're in. If your season as the head down season for you in real estate and it's like, well, you know, I am going to have long nights, I am going to have tons of emails to answer, which means I might have to offload some things off of my plate so that I don't feel exhausted doing what I know I need to do. So does that look like like I said, you know, ordering in certain meals, having some of them prepped if you have the ability and the privilege to do so, right? Leaning on the people that are within your community and your home and your family to be like, “it's busy season, you know what that means? This person takes on this, this person takes on this so that everybody can still feel like they're not falling apart”. Right? We're integrating what we need in order to get that thing done for that season. You're right. You don't have to do everything on your own by yourself. And that's why I say tap back to that athlete mindset. There's somebody to help do things for that athlete to perform amazingly well.

Why? They're not the only person on that court. There's a bunch of people around them that are supporting them to play at their best. Who are you? Allow them to support you to play at your best so that you're not burnt out?

Shaun: Yeah, I mean, that's that's, you know, I would say that that comparison is really hard for people who have no one. You know, there's a lot of people out there that really are just on their own. They feel like they're on their own. What do you say to those people who really, when it comes to finding a just a self balance? It's not even like a work life balance. But when you don't have that support, you know, what are some things to do other than some of that integration stuff?

Because we can wake up in the morning and feel cranky, and then it's hard to get out of that headspace.

Jhanelle: I think, allow yourself to have different, different modes. And so, like, if I wake up and I may be at, let's say I'm not at a 10, I’m at a six, right? I'm not expecting what I do at a six to be as equal to what I do as a 10.

So what does six look like for me? Yeah, sometimes you have to sit in that space to be like, a six means answering the urgent emails, making sure I get something to eat so I don't feel groggy and down and, you know, going up for a walk. That's what six looks like. That's all I can manage at this point, but maybe I'm at a 10. I can work the extra hours, I can have just maybe some coffee for the day because that's okay because I feel good, and, you know, that's all right on that mode. But I think sometimes you have to gauge where you're at and work within that capacity versus thinking every day move at the pace of a 10 when you're maybe sitting at a two, that's what causes you to feel exhausted.

So having that system built in for yourself to really acknowledge where you're at, if you work within the level of the six, you might wake up and feel at an eight because you haven't exhausted yourself to a point that's like, not even realistic, right?

Shaun: Yeah. I find when things are the most stressful for me, when I'm feeling a little spun, it's because I don't have control sometimes of my circumstances, you know, how do how much does that play into the mind of somebody, like a REALTOR® when that when things are spiralling- you know, there's market conditions.

How do you deal with that when you know you don't have control? Is it about gaining control, about controlling, or is it just about learning to manage?

Jhanelle: You know, you've definitely heard it before. It's the thing where you're going to hear control what you can, but you're like, how? How do I do that when I feel like all these other things are part of what allows my life to sustain itself?

So how do I deal with that? Well, you deal with the fact that, okay, what is it that I still can do within this season that might help me, you know, market myself to another set of potential clients? What can I do that's going to allow me to feel like, okay, how do I save at least something out of here?

What you're going to really focus on is when you talk about what you can control, how are those elements that are actually on your plate going to help you get to the finish line? So what we often do is we look at all the other things, we're like, “Oh, but that was on the plan for the finish line. And that was like-”

If you keep looking at things that don't actually exist that are not within your realm, I want you to realize you're not moving. You can't move the things that are not within your control, so you literally end up in a stagnant spot, and that's what feels like you're behind. And that's why you feel like you're not getting anywhere.

But if you look at the stuff that are on your plate that are in your control, as small as they might be, they might only be two things. I promise you, those two things can give you at least a step or two, versus the six things over here that aren't going anywhere.

Shaun: Yeah, that is so helpful. That's so helpful. Staying focused on the little things that you can control and do what you can. Now, you keep mentioning seasons. Tell me what you mean by seasons because I know what seasons are now, especially having moved to Nova Scotia. And there's a season comment that I'm not going to be so excited about. But, go ahead. Tell me about the seasons. Are you talking about, what do you mean by that?

Jhanelle: I think it's important for us to realize that not every season is going to be as bright and blooming and bushy as summer, you know what I mean? Like we're thinking here. Let's use a plant analogy. You have the season where you're planting. You're actually like tending the ground and you're putting the seeds in and there's nothing much there but work.

Right? It's like, okay, what do I have to get, what's the soil look like? How I put it, that's the season that usually is pretty heavy lifting. It's going to come with a lot of thinking and processing, a lot of work, and you know that it's going to be busy. So planting season is usually the busy season. If you acknowledge that you have a busy season, this is why I say this to high performing people. I'm not telling you not to work, right? I'm not saying “Avoid burnout by not working”. Recognize what your seasons look like. So the planting season heavy lifting, then you have maybe you're you're tending season. You're making sure you water things, you take care of it and it's a little bit lighter, but you're putting in the work to watch and see what happens.

Well, when the growth season comes around, that's the season where I almost feel like you get to look at what you've blossomed or what's bloomed and you get to relax a little bit, right? Because you're like, “All of my hard work has paid off”, but I also need to know that growth season doesn't last forever. We all know plants fade and they die.

And they go into a rest period until they could go back through and start going through the tending and get in bloom. What don't do as human beings as we see the growth and we're like, “Oh, look at that. I'm doing well. I got to keep going. I got to go at the same speed. Don't rest.” But you need the rest period. Because what happens is when a plant sits and it rests, it actually recharges underneath, underneath the ground. It's getting roots, it’s holding onto the soil. It's picking up nutrients. That rest season is essential for it to go through that cycle all over again. I always ask people, “When is the last time that you stopped after your growth, after you looked forward to getting to that point and embracing it? When have you stopped to embrace it? Rest so that you can keep going again?” Most people don't do that. They burn themselves out and then there's nothing left, right?

Shaun: And in real estate, there's obviously different seasons. I think. I mean, you know, there's talk of the winter season, dead of winter. Not a lot of people are out there hustling and buying houses.

So what would you say to agents who may be going, “Well, what should I be doing in that downtime to, you know, what season would that be and what you know, how can I manage-”

Jhanelle: What does that look like, building up your clientele, maybe posting a few things and informing people of what's happening on the market? Maybe you don't need to be as on and out there, so you could take a little bit more of that vacation, spend more time with the people or things or places that make you feel like you're kind of getting back to your roots, planting that soil again so that when it is time to tend and do the work and be busy again, you're solid, right? Like, that's what that looks like. And so I think it's really important for you to recognize when you have that downtime. How can I use it to my advantage? Because when busy season comes, you don't take a break. For me as a therapist, busy season’s fall. It's after everybody's gone playing outside, done all the things that they have to do.

So in summer, I'm taking my break because come fal,l I need to be recharged and ready. So that's where I'm reminding you of how great, you know, the seasons are changing. And when the leaves are falling, that's a new time for you to recognize what you can fall into and start new patterns. That's how I start prepping my clients and my clients to be like, “I'm here when the season starts”.

You would do the same thing in real estate. How do you prep them during your down season for when things are going to pick up?

Shaun: So when we talk about burnout, you know, I feel like there's always this impression, and I think I've felt that before where it feels like it comes out of nowhere. But it's not an overnight thing. It's not a blink, and all of a sudden I'm burnt out. Like, what are- how can people recognize when it's happening well in advance so they never let it to get to that point?

Jhanelle: So what a lot of people don't know, Shaun, is that there are several stages of burnout. You're right. It doesn't just happen, right? And so the first stage is what's called subtle dissatisfaction. And in that stage it's where you're sitting there and you're like, you know, “This is just my busy season. This is what it's supposed to look like”. And everybody goes through this in real estate. So you know what's popping up. So you might feel it, maybe in your gut you might feel the tension in your shoulders. You might feel it. Maybe you're getting headaches. Your body usually gives you a sign and some type of signal that something is not balanced. And one of our areas of wellness, something's off. Then it goes to, what's called subconscious disregard. And so this is where you go, “You know what, that stomachache is getting a little tight”, right?
And it's like, “Okay, I think I'm just exhausted. I think I just need to take a break. I just need to maybe sleep a little bit more. I'll be fine”.

Does it change anything? And then all of a sudden, the headache starts turning into almost like a migraine-type thing. And this is where you start moving into another section that's called subconscious numbing, right?

Shaun: Self conscious numbing.

Jhanelle: So what you start to do is, “You know what? I'm just going to go watch a little bit of my favourite TV show on Netflix with a glass of wine, some popcorn, that will take away this headache”. But it pops up again the next day. Right. And so this is where your body starts yelling at you a little bit louder. And it's like, “Shaun, do you not hear me? Like, I gave you a pimple over here. I gave you some GI issues, a full-blown migraine, and you're still going”. And then it goes into the last stage, which I think is what everybody thinks burnout is right away, which is the full blown trauma aspect of it. But, the numbing and the full blown trauma almost happen at the same time, where your body goes, “You’re not listening to me, I'm going to have to shut you down”. And that's where you get sick. That's where you get fully exhausted. And it's almost like you have no control over what your body has been warning you to do. So those are the different stages of burnout, and I feel like it's so important to know, because you might be burnt out at the very first one.

That still counts as burnout.

Shaun: Yeah. Subtle dissatisfaction. I totally can relate to that. Where it just is, there's just a feeling. It's subtly dissatisfying. It's so true. It's like exactly this. So you recognize that. But when you recognize that, it's not like you're going to just pull up and stop. But what is the key? Like, should there be action taken at these points, or is it just okay to recognize it?

Jhanelle: Recognizing it as the first part, you're right.

Shaun: Right.

Jhanelle: But the action piece cannot be missed. And you nailed that part. So when you recognize that it's happening, you need to ask yourself, “Well, what do I what am I noticing? What is happening?” And I will say, go back to those areas of wellness that we talked about. Am I missing something? And when it comes to my nutrition, am I missing something and movement? Am I missing something? Is it social connection? Am I missing something in that area of mindfulness? What might be missing or off balance for me that it's causing me to feel what I am feeling?

And right there, the first step I always tell people, finding the source. You might have to go through a few things and find what is the source, and then identify what is an immediate change that I can do. Even if it's the smallest thing, to start removing some of that. So the one change that I know when I was going through this, because I've been through this process before, even though I know better, and I realize what happened to me is the feeling of urgency like that always- and I'm pretty sure in real estate people would feel that too, right? Like, you open your email and it's like, “Oh my goodness, I have to respond to this right away”. And that feeling and sense of urgency, that's how I started my day all the time. So imagine my cortisol levels every day opening my phone to like, crisis mode, right?

Shaun: Right.

Jhanelle: I think it's important for you to find the source. That was my source. I started myself startled and alert, so I had to change it. And that was me taking my phone and plugging it in somewhere else. That's what I mean, like an immediate change. And even if for five minutes in my day I got up, I could stare out the window, just lay in my bed for a second before I walked to the bathroom and grab my phone. I gave myself some type of integration, some type of calmer state to start my day, before I got started.

Shaun: Now, you had mentioned those four phases that can happen over a relatively long period of time to get to burn out. But what are some tangible signs that someone might be experiencing? Like what are some- give me your top three to five signs that you're starting to go down the burnout road.

Jhanelle: Okay, the first one is low energy. And I don't mean the kind, Shaun, that you're just like, “Oh, I'm just tired”. Like, I met you slept eight hours and you are still exhausted. Like, that type of low energy is a real prominent sign of burnout because it's more than just the physical aspect. That's a lot of maybe either emotional burnout or cognitive burnout. Like that mental space. You're not resetting in one of those areas, and your whole body is trying to tell you that. So that's the first one.

Shaun: Yeah.

Jhanelle: I think the other one would be some type of mental distance. So it just feels like everything that, you know, you're good at doing, you know, that you can do this effortlessly.
It doesn't really take a lot, you just don't want to do it. You don’t want to be around people. You don't want to actually do your work. It's just like, I can almost do just the bare minimum. And it goes to the third one. You have reduced efficiency. So it's almost like, “I could do the bare minimum just to get by to collect the paycheck.
I really notice that I don't love this whole aspect of life right now, and I don't know why”. And a lot of it has no reasoning behind it. It feels like it has no reasoning behind it. So those would be the three that I'd say are the key ones.

Shaun: Yeah. You know, joy and joy is sometimes like, how would you define joy? How would you define joy?

Jhanelle: I think it's that feeling that has you full for an extended period of time. It's like a sense of happiness, and it's more than a sense of happiness. I think it's a sense of joy. Right? It's a feeling that has you full longer than just, like, a chocolate bar or a bag of chips, like, I think, you know what I mean?

Like, that can make me happy. I had Starbucks this morning that made me happy. But joy is what you feel like. For example, for myself, I celebrated my daughter's first birthday the other day. That is a feeling that I'm still kind of on a high from. Right? Like that is joyful for me, because what I did to create that and have those, those months with this little angel, right? So to me, joy is an extended feeling. Think of your Starbucks long lasting, if that's the best way of explaining it.

Shaun: Yeah. So joy versus numbing like that. You know, because some people will say, like, “ I am so happy, I am so happy”. But are you? Like, you know what?

Jhanelle: The thing is, it’s like hard. It is hard. It's hard as adults to actually find joy. And I'll tell you, I think it's so hard and why burnout sits longer for us than I think it should is because as adults, we go back to all the things that we have to fit on our plate. And remember, when you're a kid, how joy is just almost innate.

Like, you look at a little kid and they're just laughing at nothing, almost, right?

Shaun: Like either joy, it's either joy is the default or it's deathly afraid, like it's that pure fear of everything is going to like, you know, a butterfly that was a little not-so-nice looking landed. And you're, now you're going to die first and then, but otherwise two seconds later, it's pure joy. That's what I want to have. I want it all the time.

Jhanelle: We all want it all the time. But I think the thing is, we have to remind ourselves that it's built into us. So, like, nobody teaches a kid how to feel joy, they laugh at a cardboard box. Nobody tells a kid how to do that. But what happens is adults as we go, there's no time to find joy and play with boxes. “I gotta book clients. I gotta market myself. I got to, you know, I got to close these deals. I got to have the open houses.” So you remove everything else and you like, “I only have room on my plate for work. I only have room on my plac e for maintenance”. And we don't make space for joy as adults. And so I think what's really essential is go back to find what makes you happy, what allows a feeling to last a little bit longer. And it might be very different than it used to as a kid, but go back and start from what you enjoyed as a child. I tried the swing the other day. I used to love swings.
I realized, no, it I don't like them anymore. It's too high. It's a little bit scary, but I really did like looking at the view. Right. And so I was yeah, I think maybe if I go sit at a higher peak and just enjoy something stationary, that might feel good for me. So take the time to explore as adults, because we don't do it enough. We only worry about the work. And in order for you to keep going, you need those moments of joy and rest to revive yourself. Like, truthfully, your body physiologically needs it.

Shaun: So. So when you say rest, because rest is one that I think that if you're a high performing individual and you know you got to get stuff done, you know, some people almost wear it as a badge of honour. They're like, “I don't need to rest. I'm go, go, go. I'm full pedal to the metal”. But can that be counterintuitive as well? Like, tell me of the importance of rest. Is rest important? Do we need to rest?

Jhanelle: You literally spoke like a true high performing individual right there because you're like, “I mean, if I slow down, that's not productive. Why would you want me to do something like that? My drive and who I am is to keep going”.

Let me tell you what happens if you do not rest. So if you do not stop, what you stop your brain from doing is you stop it from going into what's called default mode. And in default mode, your brain actually does so much more things, and it is so productive because it actually takes the time to download everything that you've kind of captured for the day. It takes attempts to store information, it makes connections. It helps build creativity. It creates neural pathways for you. You might have absorbed something new, and during default mode when you're actually resting, your brain goes, “Oh, that's connected to this. You know what, Shaun? That might actually go really good with this. So don't forget to put that to that”.

That's what you're allowing it to do. You're allowing it to release toxins. You're allowing it to bring a new fluid. If you don't give your brain that time to rest, it can't do any of those things. And so when we say we feel mentally fatigued or fogged, it's because there's a buildup of toxins. There's no space to download, there's no space for connection, there's no space for creativity because you didn't allow your brain to go into default mode.

Another piece to add to that is, you know how they talk about if you were to look – at I'm going use a baby again because I have one around me all the time – you ever look at a baby when their eyes are almost open and you can see it like when they're sleeping and it's like, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink. And it's going into their sleeping and it's darting all over the place?

Shaun: Yeah.

Jhanelle: So we know that as REM sleep, that's probably a really good indicator that somebody is in their deepest form of sleep. But REM sleep only counts for like 17% of your sleep as a person. And what it does during that time, why you're seeing it go like that, it's that download that I was talking about, it’s that default mode. When you're in that deep state of rest, it almost goes 10 times faster in making the connections, making the download, sparking the creativity. All of that is what your brain is doing. Releasing the toxins. So rest is essential. We all have the rings, the phones, the apps, but the watches, if you read it, it will tell you, “Hey, you didn't get any REM sleep today or you didn't do this much”.

You can feel fully rested physically, but is your mind going to have the same type of cognitive space, an ability that it's supposed to have if you don't do that?

Shaun: Right.

Jhanelle: You can't focus properly without it.

Shaun: No, no. And I think that's the thing, you know, but I also don't think you want it to come to a time where you know, you're doing something, whether it's physical or you know, you have a full like break and you're like, “Okay, I think, I think I need to rest”.

It's like, no, you don't want to get to that breaking point. You want to recognize it and space out the rest. And then each time you get up to go, it's almost like if we go back to the basketball analogy, it's like, you know, you're rotating in and out of the game. You sit, you sit for a few minutes, then you get back on. If you just went from the beginning of the game all the way to the end, and didn't take any rest, you would become so terrible. And you are, you know, you know. Nobody can go that long without going, “Reset. Reset”.

Jhanelle: And that's why it's built into sports. That's why there's half time. That's why there's breaks. That's why there's whistles. It's there because it's intentionally meant to rest. How many times have you watched a game where somebody intentionally fouls? Or does something so they can get a timeout or request a timeout so we can rest? We're tired and we know that we need to recharge. So if the highest of high performing people that we admire understand the value of breaks in order for them to keep going so they don't feel burnt out, why do we feel like we're going to get any further without them?

Shaun: Yeah. What are the top three to five excuses that high performing people use to not rest?

Jhanelle: Oh, time is definitely the first one, right? Like, “I don't have time to rest. There's no way I can fit that in”. And I was like, “I bet you can”. The same way we're going to sit there and say, “Well, I don't have time to go to the bathroom right now”, we only can hold the pee for so long. You're eventually gonna have to go, right?

Shaun: Yeah.

Jhanelle: Because it is literally a builtin mechanism that your body needs to release that. The same way your body needs to rest, it needs to pause, it needs to sleep. And we know what happens if you hold your pee for too long, right? I promise you, you will find out what happens if you don't rest in sleep, if you haven't found out already.

Shaun: Yeah, yeah. So time is what time is number one. Okay.

Jhanelle: The second one is, “Well, if I rest, who's going to do it? There's nobody else to do it but me. Like I have to do this” right? And I always say to these individuals as well, “If you don't stop your body will force you to stop. And then who is going to do it?”

Shaun: Yeah. So would you say that's a delegation issue from a team perspective? But like delegating to others to say, “Hey, listen, I need to rest. You can take it. You know, it's not going to kill me to have someone else do X, Y and Z task”.

Jhanelle: Yeah, it could be delegation. It could be just reminding yourself you need that break in order for you to keep going. When you think about being in real estate, we think of almost the fact that you wear many hats, right?

Even if you're part of a brokerage, you're kind of wearing multiple hats. And what you do, you're almost like, you're the media person. You're the person that stands with the client. So, like, you're doing all of these things if you don't take the time to rest and have that break, well, who's going to show up to do all the things that you're saying that you have to balance the many hats that you have to wear?

It's almost a necessity, right? And then I would say the last one is the guilt that comes from it. A lot of people feel like, “Well, if I take a step back, I'm going to feel really guilty about this. And I'm supposed to be able to do all these things. That's what this job comes with”.

And I was like, “Yeah, but when you keep going, doesn’t that make you feel anxious? Doesn’t that make you feel stressed?” All of these are signs of burnout. Things that come with that fatigue, frustration, low moods. Are all of those things going to help you book the clients? Are all those things and help you show up online properly? Are those things going to help you curate the perfect open house? No. Right? So stop feeling guilty for taking what is a necessity. Go ahead and do that so that you can keep showing up the way that you want to show up for other people.

Shaun: It's so funny because it is. It's counterintuitive, like you want so badly to plow ahead, to keep going. But that's only going to hurt you if you don't have the discipline to take a moment and rest. I love that. It's so important. Now, talking about-

Jhanelle: I was going to ask you a question. Can I ask you a question?

Shaun: Of course, of course, I'm here. You're my therapist. Ask away.

Jhanelle: Okay, well, you mentioned to me that you're, like, sitting in this entrepreneurial space that a lot of these real estate agents are, like, “I can resonate with this”.

Shaun:Yes.

Jhanelle: I want to ask you how, like, what percentage of entrepreneurs do you think experienced burnout? Like, what do you think that number is?

Shaun: 100. I’m gonna say, I say 100%.

Jhanelle: Okay.

Shaun: If you're a pure entrepreneur, I would say 100% experienced it at some point in time because everybody is all they feel like, “It's all on my shoulders, I've got it going because nobody else-” You can delegate, and if you don't have a good team around you, you know, until you learn to have a good team. Then at some point in your time in your life, I would bet that, entrepreneurs have felt burnout.

Jhanelle: Okay, I'm going to give you a little wow factor then, because studies actually show that it's only 20%. And let me tell you why.

Shaun: But it’s 100% of those 20%.

Jhanelle: There you go. But let me tell you why that number came in. And I found it so interesting, because they said that people in the entrepreneurial space, they understand that feeling that creep up to burnout more than anybody else, and they understand it because they wear so many hats and they go, “Oh, snap, I can't let myself get to that full blown trauma that Jhanelle was talking about or that anxious feeling, because if I do that, this whole business is shut down. I am the business”. And so because of that, they actually crawl back out at a faster pace. They don't let it go all the way to that point. They have a little bit more.

Shaun: Yes, yes.

Jhanelle: And so it's not somebody going, “Well, you need to do this for me”. It's like, “Well, I need to do this for me, and how would I be able to do that?” They get to create their networks a bit more. So you get to pick who are the people that you want in a reflection of your space. What does that look like? And their drive is more self-induced. It's a self-driven aspiration versus maybe working for someone else.

So they say that these are some of the factors as to why entrepreneurs only experience 20% of burnout, but it's still a big number. I'm not going to shy away from it, because if we talk about 160,000 real estate agents, that's 40,000 people that might be listening to this, that are experiencing that. That's a lot, right?

Shaun: You know, I wonder how much of it is personality as well. You know, we've met a lot of amazing people on this podcast. And I remember learning about one agent who was really in their own little bubble for many years. They, you know, they jumped into real estate later in life. They were very shy. They were very withdrawn. And then, you know, they were very nervous about jumping into real estate.

And then when they jumped into real estate, they realized like, “Oh, no, this is unlocking certain things in my personality, and I'm going to open up a little more and become engaged more with the community”. Put that kind of like, wind in their sails. But then when they start having to deal with social media, they realize, “Uh-oh, that's not my jam, and I don't know how I'm going to manage it. And they started getting down on themselves because they're seeing all these other people who are hustling and, you know, “Sale, sale, sale, oh, look at me, I'm awesome. Bah bah bah bah bah”. How would you advise somebody, about, you know, managing the social media world because it's so important in real estate these days, but it also can have a very toxic effect on the human brain.

Jhanelle: It is such a fun place and scary place to be in at the same time, social media, and I think the reason for that, what you're explaining is the fact that I always want to remind people everybody's life can look amazing if we only take 30 seconds of it. Right, like, that's what you have to remember. We don't post our most vulnerable and challenging moments online. You're posting the best of the best. You're posting the biggest sale. The nice car, that's what they're putting on there. Right. So it's almost to remind you what social media is capturing. I think once you go back to that foundation, you'll be like, “Okay, yeah, if I picked all my best things to post, my page would look pretty cool, right?”

And then the other part of that, too, is to remind yourself the comparison piece is not going to get you where you need to go if you keep staring in somebody else's lane, I promise you you're going to miss what's meant for you in yours. And so it's really important that if you're going to be online, if you're going to have to try to find that confidence to show up in that space, put people on your feeds and in your algorithm that are supportive into what you want to have for inspiration, and not something that's going to make you feel like defeat and very negative in your feelings. So create your social media to what works for you, right?

Shaun: Right. And that's going to go a long way in fueling inspiration for yourself as well.

Jhanelle: Yeah, 100%.

Shaun: Yeah. Because I mean, because social media and the internet in general is not a bad thing. It's just I think we as human beings, regardless of social media, or not, like in high school in the 60s and 70s, it was still the same thing. Your social media was literally in the cafeteria, and so-and-so is now dating so-and-so, and you thought you were dating so-and-so. They were going to come to prom with you. And they're not now because they're dating- But I'm like, “I'm a bad person”, but really, I'm not just they weren’t right for me so, it is really a mental thing where it's like learning to manage all of that input, to choose the positive. So it just speak to me a bit about that because that is a thing I keep hearing a lot about online is this idea of, you know, choosing, you know, having a positive mindset.

Jhanelle: Yeah. You know, there are people who are really good at sitting in that positive space. And I think we need those individuals around us that could just always be like, “You know, don't forget to look at it from this narrative” or, “This is how I see life”. I know I'm inspired. People who can sit in the positive space all the time. Right? Like, I think that's such a skill to unlock. But I'm also very realistic in the fact that not everybody can sit there. So if the negative side is over here. The positive side is over here. Not everybody can just go, “Sure, I'm going to look at this from a positive mindset”. It's okay. Right? What some people might want to sit in is more of the neutral space to be like, “You know what? Being online is hard. I've never done this before. Showing up as this real estate agent that knows how to do all of these things. I'm a bit new to this, so maybe I need to give myself some time and grace in order to get more familiar with it, so I feel like maybe some of the people that I'm admiring online”. To me, that's more of a neutral space than somebody going to positive. Like, “I'm going to be amazing at this and this is going to be great, and I know I can do it”.

Shaun: Yeah, yeah, I'm reading that book. The, what was it? The laws of attraction, The Secret. After that, everybody jumped on board The Secret and it was like, “Now, if you just close your eyes and see $1 million, it's going to happen”. And now everybody's talking about manifesting. And I think that's a really good thing, too. But. But I always have a problem with that because it's such it's setting yourself up. Maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like if you manifest just by thinking of something, and it doesn't happen, then are you left feeling less then and, you know, a bit resentful towards the world versus, again, doing the things you can control by putting the energy in and then celebrating the small wins, the small victories, really celebrating the little victories as opposed to saying, “I want to manifest X, Y and Z”? But I guess if you can't see it, don't really know if it’s going to happen. It's a challenging one. I'm on the fence about-

Jhanelle: It is a challenging one. But you know what's cool about manifesting? Like, you're right. Like, yeah, you can put stuff in there and start taking your psyche and your subconscious to a place to be like, “Hey, let's keep thinking about this, so it sits at the forefront”. What most people don't do is keep flipping the book of manifestation and realize that there's a chapter in there that's about action.

Shaun: Action.

Jhanelle: You can manifest everything you want, but if you don't do some type of action, that million dollars is not dropping from the sky, Shaun. As much as I wish it could, I've checked it's not falling down right.

Shaun: It's not happening now.

Jhanelle: I've gonna have to add some action behind it.

Shaun: So yeah, I think it's action, you know, but I and I also, you know, there was another doctor I saw who was talking about how you wake up in the morning and you start the day by literally saying the words, “Today is going to be a great day”.

I know this is like it's not it's not making a claim like, you know, you're not going to have some bumps in the road on the day. But if you start the day by saying, “Today is going to be a great day”, your brain doesn't realize that there's a whole world out there in that moment. It just goes, “Oh, okay, it's going to be a great day because you said it out loud”.

So therefore I'm going to start going down that, you know, “Today is a great day” pathway. And you know that-

Jhanelle: And it's going to think of things that are a great day.

Shaun: That's right. The brain is the original algorithm. The OG algorithm. Like the more you give it, the more it's going to feed you things that, you know, both the positive and the negative, right?

Jhanelle: Yeah. It's true. Whatever you put at the forefront of it. So what you try to focus, you ever want to go in the market to, like, buy a new car and you start thinking of the car and you realize you start seeing that car everywhere? It's not that there's more of that car that's popped up all of a sudden, right? It's that you've told your brain, focus on this car because I like it, I want to know the specs I want to see. And so now your brain starts focusing on that. So what you put at the forefront is what your brain is going to do. So when we're talking about burnout and we're kind of sitting in that space, allow yourself to put at the forefront some of the things that I've talked about, like the integration, making sure I sit with those areas of wellness.

If you prioritize those things at the forefront, your brain is going to start remembering them and be like, we kind of need to do this for us to feel a bit better, right?

Shaun: You know, we've been talking a lot about individuals. You have a good history with teams. And so when I think about, you know, if I'm in a brokerage and I'm the leader and I start seeing people around me probably who are, you know, perhaps experiencing burnout, but they don't know it, what are some things that you would tell leaders, how to identify it in others, and then what to do about it?

Jhanelle: The biggest thing to tell leaders is most high performing people that we're talking to in this space are not going to tell you that they're burnt out because they probably don't recognize it. So what you can do is ask people what is on their plate that they might need to take off in order to feel lighter.
What can I actually help you with? And saying it from that mindset versus like, “Is this too much for you? Is that too hard for you to do?” because a high performing person is gonna be like-

Shaun: “No, it's not. I can do it. There's no way I can do it.”

Jhanelle: “I can do whatever I want, right? You can do it.”

Shaun: “Too much for me… too much.”

Jhanelle: So if you frame things in that sense, it allows them to be like, “Actually, can we look at this plate? Because it is kind of heavy because I'm holding up with two feet, seven arms and my head.”

Shaun: Yeah. Yeah.

Jhanelle: Right. “So what can I put down?” I would say that and then also mimic what you want other people to experience. Are you creating space for people to rest? Are you allowing for actual breaks in their environment for them to take those pauses that they that they deserve and that they need?

Shaun: Yeah, great. That's good. And do you feel that like team leaders? Well, let me ask you this. What makes a great leader?

Jhanelle: What makes a great leader? That is a great question. I would say somebody who is open to active listening. I think a lot of leaders think that it's like just downloading all the time, but you can't be a great leader if you don't know what everybody else underneath you needs, because that's what you're supposed to kind of take and flip back downwards. And so I would say active listening makes a great leader and somebody who is actually sitting with a lot more empathy than, I think, the average person. I think you have to be willing to stand in people's shoes. You have to be willing not to silver line people’s situations and really understand them so that you can support them and so that your team can feel supported and your organization feels supported. That's what it really is about, because those two things mean that you pay attention to the individual, and not just the person wearing the badge or the jersey holding a position.

Shaun: Right. So we've covered a lot of ground. We've talked a lot about, you know, managing, giving yourselves tools to manage burnout. What would you say would be the most important insights to kind of share with everybody about, you know, managing their own self-care? What would be the most important pieces you would say to them in terms of avoiding burnout?

Jhanelle: Okay. And for talking to high performers, right? Because I think that's who's in the space. I would say, let me give you a little tip. My tip would be before you say yes to anything, make sure you are not saying no to yourself.

Shaun: Ah.

Jhanelle: I'll say it again. Before you say yes to anything, make sure you are not saying no to yourself.
Because I think we always do is we go, “Yes, yes, yes. Give me all the things I could do. I'm amazing”. And then I say no to the break that I wanted. This time I spent my family, that vacation I had planned. And then I get resentful and I go through the stages of burnout that we're talking about. So, that pause to see if you're saying no to yourself first might be really helpful. Use that as your tip. If you don't listen to anything else, use that.

Shaun: Ah, mic drop. I love that, Jhanelle. Jhanelle Peters, Registered Psychotherapist, awesome person, positive.

Jhanelle: Thanks.

Shaun: I love it. This has been so good and I am so thankful to have spent this time with you. And I know I'm going to take this way, and I'm going to go right now, and I'm going to bathe in yogurt and eat a parfait out of a bathtub.

Jhanelle: Are you going to put some flowers on top of it, Shaun?

Shaun: Yeah, I'm going to, but I gotta figure out a way to get, like, to be in the yogurt and then get out of the yogurt to find the like, if I reach out of the tub and reach for flowers and yogurt is going to get on the floor, my dogs may eat it. And it probably-

Jhanelle: It sounds like you're about to make everybody happy.

Shaun: I got to rethink this human parfait thing, but I'll get to it. But either way, I'm going to go work on this right now. Jhanelle Peters, thank you so much for spending time with me. REAL TIME. Good luck with everything in Miami and with your practice.

Jhanelle: Appreciate it.

Shaun: Are you currently with specific teams that we can-

Jhanelle: Not at the moment, I was doing the mat leave thing, so we'll see. We'll see.

Shaun: Yeah. You got a baby. Congratulations.

Jhanelle: Thank you, thank you. No, thank you for having me. Thank you for such an amazing conversation. And honestly, your vulnerability too, to make sure that we all understood what we're feeling. So I appreciate it. Right?

Shaun: Right. Well, thank you so much and good luck with everything. And what is your baby's name?

Jhanelle: Navy, the colour.

Shaun: Happy birthday, belated Navy. That's amazing. What was her birthday? When was her birthday?

Jhanelle: August 24th. 
Shaun: Shut up. That's Mattis's, my daughter's. Shut your mouth. Shut it! Oh my gosh. Hold on. I got to show you. This was the other day, but she turned six. August 24th. Oh, yeah. There it is. Look at that cake. There it is. You see it?

Jhanelle: Oh. That's nice. Did you bake it? It's like, you know-

Shaun: I didn’t do that. I would make a Betty Crocker three-tiered chocolate boom brick. I would do a chocolate brick.

Jhanelle: I love it, I love it.

Shaun: Oh, happy birthday, Navy. That's so cool. Well, thank you so much. We'll see you again.

Jhanelle: Talk to you later. Bye.

Shaun: Thank you, Jhanelle. What a great conversation. Man. You know, like I said off the top, a lot of this was for me as much as it is for you. Because, you know, avoiding burnout is something that I think we all need to strive for, not just professionally, but also personally. Because if we can learn the tools and apply some of the tools that Jhanelle shared with us today, it's only going to make us better, both professionally and personally. We're going to be available for the ones that we love and for our own selves as well.

So thank you, Jhanelle for sharing these amazing insights and how we can identify, prevent, and treat professional burnout without compromising success. If you liked today's episode, I know you did,it was a really good one, make sure you give us a like and a rating on your favourite podcast platform. This episode is brought to you by Canadian Real Estate Association, CREA, and production courtesy of Alphabet® Creative.

I really hope you had a good one. Thanks for joining us today on REAL TIME. I'm Shaun Majumder, and we’ll see you next time on REAL TIME®.

The beautiful thing about real estate is there are many avenues to success and even more  ways to approach it. Bringing over skills from other industries can be a major benefit for people making a career transition into becoming a REALTOR®.

Just ask Ryan Elliott and Katharina Lenz, two REALTORS® who have experienced the professional and personal benefits of making the switch from previous careers into real estate. They share the motivation behind their move, the skills they were able to transfer into their new careers, and why the decision is one they’re proud of today.

Transcript

Shaun Majumder: You didn't realize how much blood, sweat, and tears you had to put into it.

Ryan Elliott: I had no idea.

Katharina Lenz: I've been always interested in homes, how homes are built.

Ryan: Put your hard hat on, Ronnie.

Shaun: Hard hat, Ronnie. I told you.

Shaun: Everyone's path to becoming a REALTOR® is unique. It's different. There is no one way to becoming a REALTOR®, but for those who choose to become a REALTOR®, they bring with them so many different skill sets, so many different experiences. To make that transition from the old life to the new life is amazing to see. Today, we're so excited to talk to two REALTORS® who left their old life behind and are now thriving in what they do as productive REALTORS®. They're here to tell us their story. I'm so excited to have on the show Ryan Elliott and Katharina Lenz. Welcome to REAL TIME.

You found your calling, guys. You are now REALTORS® and have been for a little bit, but you've not always been REALTORS®, and here we are. This is so exciting to talk about. You guys have not been REALTORS® your whole lives, then you jumped into this career a little bit later. As a lot of us do, we find new paths and new journeys. I'm really curious about why you guys chose becoming a REALTOR® as your next path in life. Also, tell me a bit about who you are, where you come from, and what it was that drew you to wanting to become a REALTOR®.

Let's start with Katharina. Sorry if I put on the accent because-

Katharina: Oh, that's perfect.

Shaun: -I just love the name. Katharina.

Katharina: That's perfect.

Shaun: I love it.

Katharina: My name is Katharina. Originally from Colombia, but been in Canada for 10 years. Moved to New Brunswick four years ago and decided to pursue the real estate career. I've always worked in homes. Also, I was a cabinetmaker and I was an interior designer before. It's a three-year apprenticeship in Germany, which I did before coming to Canada.

Shaun: Where did you come to in Canada?

Katharina: I started out in Calgary, but then moved to Victoria, BC. That's where I studied interior design and worked for a little while there. Until COVID hit, and then the house prices, of course, so I decided to move over to the Atlantic, just across Canada, drive for two weeks.

Shaun: Wait, you said you drive for two weeks?

Katharina: Yes. I have a bulldog.

Shaun: How long ago was this?

Katharina: Four years ago. It was during the pandemic. It was a fun drive.

Shaun: Yes, I bet. I've been there. I did that myself. Then you came to New Brunswick, of all places. Amazing province. Tell me about that transition.

Katharina: When I arrived here, I decided to pursue the real estate career. Obviously, it was pandemic, so it was a very hard transition, but I felt like I wanted to help families settle. For me, coming here alone, trying to get into the system, find any connections, it was really hard, so I wanted to be that person for the families here. They could have that one point where they could find support and help to settle down.

Shaun: That's interesting. You had your own experience to draw from. Was it an easy transition for you to get settled in New Brunswick?

Katharina: It was mostly, I think, hard because of the pandemic, so it was hard to actually go out and socialize. Once everything started opening up, it was a little bit more easier to actually connect with people. You could see the urge of people wanting to connect in person, wanting to meet up, wanting to talk, and finally come back to a normal life.

Shaun: What was it about real estate specifically that drew you to wanting to become a REALTOR®?

Katharina: I wanted to go into real estate when I was in BC. Since I decided to move, it didn't make sense to pursue it there because in every province, it's different. I've been always interested in homes, how homes are built, how families actually make a house a home. That's what drew me to start real estate.

Shaun: Did you find a lot of like-minded people when you got to New Brunswick?

Katharina: Actually, a few. Yes. My REALTOR®, which I used when I bought my property here, I started out with her. I joined her team. That helped me a little bit to start with the connections and actually start getting settled here.

Shaun: That's such a great Canadian story, too. It sounds like a Tim Hortons commercial, I’m not gonna lie to you. Girl leaves Colombia, goes to Germany, little woodworker, gets her skillset, goes to Victoria, starts becoming an interior designer, pandemic hits. Give me a double-double, and then she ends up in New Brunswick and becomes a REALTOR®. That's amazing. It sounds exactly like a perfect commercial. Now, Ryan Elliott, on the other hand, he was already out here. Ryan, I'm going to use the accent of your people to say your name. Ryan. Ryan. He's from Newfoundland.

Ryan: Exactly that. I've had family members, they just call me Ryan. I'm originally from the Northern Peninsula of the province, actually, in Bear Cove, if you know where that is.

Shaun: I do.

Ryan: Then moved to Mount Pearl. I always say that's where I made my mistakes. Grew up in Mount Pearl, and now I live in St. John's. Prior to that, I worked occupational health and safety.

Shaun: What does one do in occupational health and safety? I hear those terms all the time, but I never quite understood what an occupational health and safety worker does. Tell us about that.

Ryan: With that role, you are responsible for, I guess, managing a work site for safety, health parameters, environment as well. Just the overall management for the workers to make sure that they get home safe at the end of the day. I did that for 10 years.

Shaun: Would you be kind of like, "Steve, glasses. Steve, I told you about the glasses."

Ryan: It was exactly like that. Exactly like that.

Shaun: Oh, Steve, too.

Ryan: Put your hard hat on, Ronnie.

Shaun: Hard hat, Ronnie. I told you. Oh, very good. You were in a bit of an authoritative kind of place, but what were the skills that you had to do during that time? Were you in an office? Were you on the site a lot, dealing with people? How was that?

Ryan: From, I guess, to the end of that career, I started out in a work site. First was offshore. From there, I went to Western Canada, worked in the oil sands, and that was all site work. A little bit of office administration as well. Then from there, I came back to the province, worked with our utility company here. Again, that was, I guess, an equal share between site and office. You play that management role, so you're always dealing with people, you're always communicating, and also, how to have those hard conversations is really important.

Shaun: Like, "Steve, put on your helmet." You did 10 years of that. Katharina, you did multiple things, and then the pandemic hit. It sounds like the pandemic was somewhat of a motivator for change. I mean, it was for millions of people across the planet. Did that have something to do with this new realization that maybe becoming a REALTOR® is something that you would like to pursue? What were the things that triggered? What was the draw to becoming a REALTOR®, Ryan?

Ryan: For me, for the position that I was in at the time, it was 8:00 to 4:00. My daughter was two years old, and she was going to bed at 6:00. I was like, I got nothing else to do. I'm a little bored with my time. I went and picked up, at the time, two flips. One was a new build, one was an older home. When they were just about complete, I called my agent at the time and said, "Hey, I got these two projects. They're almost complete and ready for sale." He came back and said, "Well, I'm in Florida. I'm no longer an agent there." I could do this myself. I went and got my license, and right out of the gate in 2020, I did have two new listings. That helped.

Shaun: Did you have any inkling before of wanting to become a REALTOR®?

Ryan: It was always something on my mind. Again, where I worked away was something that I really couldn't do and fulfill. I think a lot of that comes back to ignorance at the time, because you look at it and you think, "Okay. Well, you're just showing houses, your phone's going to ring," but that's not the case at all. Now that I'm in this and I'm looking at all the hats that I have to wear, it's like, "Oh, wow. You can't have this job."

Shaun: No. I want to come back to expectations in a little bit, but I'm really fascinated, honestly, about what it was that drew you to it, and then why four years later or five years later, you guys are now thriving, you're still doing it. Katharina, you had mentioned something that was really interesting. I assume that in Victoria, you were obviously very social, and you were drawing people together, and you were throwing big parties. I assume you were very social back in Victoria, so that when you came to New Brunswick, you just wanted to continue that. Is that safe to say?

Katharina: No, I wasn't at all. I was an introvert.

Shaun: Really?

Katharina: Yes. I didn't have a lot of friends. I just went to work and then went back home, and that was it for me.

Shaun: That's in Victoria?

Katharina: Yes.

Shaun: That doesn't sound like somebody who would be like, "I need to get out and be a REALTOR® and sell, sell, sell and buy, buy, buy."

Katharina: No, nothing at all. That was one of the hardest parts, I guess, to get out of my shell and try to explore that part. That helped me a lot here with that feeling of actually wanting to help families and that urge of how I felt during the pandemic, being here alone, not having my family. Wanting to help those families build something for them, that helped me to actually get out and start pursuing that.

Shaun: Katharina, I find that so interesting, this idea of bringing families together, making sure that they feel-- are you referring to new Canadians? Are you talking about people who already live there? Both? Where specifically did you feel you brought value in your community? What town is it you're in, by the way?

Katharina: I'm in Moncton. Moncton, New Brunswick.

Shaun: Moncton. Love Moncton.

Katharina: Here, basically, my main clientele is Latin people because I can connect with them mostly because of the language, obviously. I come from Colombia. I know how the process is. There's no REALTORS® there. You could just basically knock on the door and be like, "I want to buy the house." "Okay. Here it is," kind of thing. For them to learn the process here--

Shaun: Wait. I want to hear that story again. Buying a house there, what's the transaction like?

Katharina: You don't have any REALTORS®.

Shaun: What happens?

Katharina: If you hear from a neighbor that someone is selling, you basically go and knock on the door, go and look at the house. If you like it, you make the bank transaction, get the papers, and that's it.

Shaun: Then you just do it that way, right?

Katharina: Yes.

Shaun: That's incredible. Wow. So highly regulated.

Katharina: Yes. Totally.

Shaun: Do you find you're almost that matriarchal, like, "I'll take care of you."

Katharina: Yes. It feels like I'm the connector basically for everyone. Almost every Latino here, they know me. They know that I do community events, just to get the families together to help settle them and everything. I'm that connector when people arrive. Obviously, they start trusting me, and they go through the purchase or sale of their home.

Shaun: Do you feel like, because of now becoming a REALTOR®, you have opened up more? Tell me about that.

Katharina: Oh, my goodness. Yes. I'm a social butterfly now. I'm barely home.

Shaun: Are you happy?

Katharina: Yes, I am. Yes.

Shaun: I love it. I love it. Now, Ryan, what would you say was the aha moment that finally said, "I've got to take the leap." Was it just that exchange that you had where you were like, "Hey, you know what? I could probably do this myself. I come from a world where I had to manage a lot. My brain works that way." What were the aha moments that said, "Oh, yes, let's do this."

Ryan: For me, a lot of it comes down to the connection that I have with people and the dynamics that we have in our day. No day is ever the same, no client is the same. I really enjoy that piece.

Shaun: It's certainly not boring.

Ryan: No, not at all. I'm high energy, so I'm like, "Go, go, go." I thrive on that piece. I got two kids now, so you don't have a flexible schedule. You're able to work with your schedule. My wife helps a lot and she's able to back me so that if I have a viewing in the weekend, then I might have a Tuesday afternoon that I'll take with the kids.

Shaun: What would you say, Katharina, your career as a REALTOR® offers you that your previous careers do not?

Katharina: Like Ryan said, the flexibility to actually have your own schedule and pursue other things at the same time. That's the biggest problem.

Shaun: Are you still involved in using your other skill sets in terms of whether it be cabinet making or interior design?

Katharina: Cabinet making, I do mostly as a hobby now, but I still work on some design jobs back from Victoria. I do all the drawings and everything from here. I'm starting to get settled with that here as well. A lot of my clients are coming back to me now, knowing that I have that background to help them with their homes.

Shaun: How sweet. That's a beautiful pipeline you've got right there where you're like, "Hey, let me sell you this home." Then they buy it. Then you're like, "Hey, this room could use some work."

Katharina: Yes, one-stop shop.

Shaun: That's amazing. Oh, my gosh. I love it. Ryan, what about that? In terms of the skills that you had that you were using back then, what do you say is the highest volume of things that you find yourself utilizing those skills, going from that old job into this new career?

Ryan: One big piece that I take from that would be the communication, the organization. One thing that was really important in the safety field was standard operating procedures. We would use that for-- if a worker had to work on a piece of equipment, then we would have an outlined itemized checklist on how to do that safely. Now, with real estate, and I've really enjoyed building a team the last year, we're able to take any document now and create a standard operating procedure for any new agents or administrative staff to onboard a new client, whether it's a buyer, or a seller, or how we want to market our properties.

It really helps with the streamlining and organization. Not just listing a property, but more so launching it, and really giving that client experience.

Shaun: Wow. You hit the ground running, really. That was just an automatic plug and play, almost for the organizational piece, the operations. That's stuff that my brain just does not do, so kudos to you for having that skillset. Did you have to learn that? From the previous to now, which one is more exciting for you?

Ryan: I really like this piece. It's something that I didn't really know or strive to do when I got into business, but I like building a team and having good people around you, and creating a good environment. When I got into business, no, I didn't know what I was doing. It was COVID, and nobody could talk to anybody at that time. We didn't know how to handle it.

Shaun: You both started. Did you guys realize, you guys started when everything in the world-- It was the apocalypse. You started during the apocalypse. You said, "Oh, I need a change." That must have made you extra resilient to be able to jump into something like that at that time. Do you feel it helped or slowed you down a little bit?

Katharina: I think for myself, it slowed me down a little bit, because I just moved here. I didn't know anyone. To start out to get all the connections and networking and everything was really hard because of COVID. I think it slowed me down a little bit.

Shaun: How about you, Ryan? In terms of the COVID piece, did that slow you down, did that accelerate, did that give you opportunity?

Ryan: I think it helped me greatly, because at the time, I was still 50-50 with my old job, and now becoming a REALTOR®, and working from home, and having a little bit of flexibility allowed me to plug the hours for calling friends and saying, "Hey, I'm a real estate agent now." Calling my aunt and uncle and saying, "I don't know if any of your friends are looking to sell, but I'm a real estate agent now." I think without that work-from-home time, or without that flexibility, I don't really feel I would have been able to hit the ground running.

Shaun: That makes sense. Same thing with being a parent.

Ryan: Very much.

Shaun: In a big way, right? Being forced to be home and being forced to be there, which is a great thing, but I'm sure that some people who have jobs and lives that take them away from the home, that's always something that you may look back on and go, "Oh, I wish I had that time back." Thanks to COVID, as a dad myself, I feel like that was really beneficial. Looking back now, what was your expectation going in, and how have they either come up short or they've exceeded your expectations? How does it look now versus what you thought it was going to be? What were some surprises?

Katharina: Surprises? Oh, my goodness. Probably, the biggest is social media, because being an introvert, I wasn't on any social media. I wasn't on it. I didn't want to know anything about it, but now, I actually had to put out myself in front of the camera and do all of this. That was the biggest for me.

Shaun: Was it a challenge?

Katharina: Oh, my goodness, yes. My mentor at that time, it took her over a year telling me every day, "Kat. You'll have to get in front of the camera. You'll have to get in front of the camera."

Shaun: I think Ryan and I both would look at you and say, "Oh, there's no indication that it was challenging for you. You're amazing on camera, and it's great." I love that red.

Katharina: Thank you.

Shaun: Powerful. Very powerful. Going back to that a little bit, you obviously personally didn't have a lot of social media, so when you were told that it's probably in your best interest to generate business by increasing your social media presence, was it more about personal social media or was it just strictly about the business then, and that was what propelled you to having more presence online?

Katharina: It was mostly business, but I wanted to be myself. I wanted to be natural. I didn't want to be a fake person. People assume when they see a REALTOR®, "Oh, you're like selling sunset. Just opening doors and that's it. Looking pretty and having a nice car, and that's it." I wanted to be myself, so I actually show a lot of personal stuff on my social media, and that's what people like about me.

Shaun: That's great. That's great. Were you advised to do that, or was that just your own personal choice? You felt it was important, a part of your value system?

Katharina: I think it would be best to show how you actually are, because if you show yourself different on social media and then the person you're actually working with after in person, they realize you're not that person that you are on social media, then it goes sideways.

Shaun: Yes. That's right, because there's a lot of people watching this now, perhaps who are thinking, "Maybe I want to jump into real estate. Maybe I want to become a REALTOR®." That's a good tip. That's a hot tip from Katharina right there. Be yourself.

Katharina: Yes.

Shaun: Right?

Katharina: Always.

Shaun: Ryan, I guess for you, what was the biggest surprise in terms of your expectation before, what it was going to be like, and then what the reality of it all actually was?

Ryan: Yes, absolutely. From the outside, I looked at it and said, "Okay, well, all these agents around town, their phone is just going to ring and they're just sitting around waiting, doing what they want, and business is going to come." Couldn't be more wrong. As soon as I got into this and I started recognizing the time and the hats that you have to wear and the social media piece, and now you got to go to YouTube and make an 18-minute-long video about how to move to Paradise.

That's the sort of stuff that you don't think about when you're looking at just selling houses, but it all plays a part in being that local authority that comes back to the personal brand, that people watch and say, "Well, I want to work with Shaun. I want to work with Katharina. I want to work with Ryan." That's something that I was ignorant to.

Shaun: Right. You didn't realize how much blood, sweat, and tears you had to put into it.

Ryan: Had no idea. No idea.

Shaun: Wow. Just for people watching, Ryan wasn't being silly or cheeky when he said move to Paradise. Expect there's an actual town. I don't think people realize there's a place called Paradise in Newfoundland. You weren't just being like, "Newfoundland is the best place to live. It's basically paradise." No, there's a town called Paradise, and it's terrible, by the way. It's not. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It's a great little place. It's beautiful. That's amazing. Your expectation, you had to catch up. You had to be like, "Oh, snap. This is a lot more."

Specifically, you said the social media piece was something, the time you had to spend with regards to what else on the ground, boots on the ground. What were the other skills that you didn't realize you had to activate?

Ryan: Transaction management is one that plays a part within the whole organizational skills. Communication is a big piece, but it's that lead generation. You're constantly thinking of social posts. You're constantly thinking of daily mailers. You're constantly thinking of ways to give back to the community. When I got into this, actually, I got a real estate coach. One thing that helped me greatly was I was able to remove that trial-and-error piece. Luckily, I did get paired with a fantastic coach from the Tom Ferry coaching system, and his name was Doug Hannan.

He had family here, so he knew the market here. He knew where Newfoundland was, for one, which Shaun, you can relate. If you tell people you're from Newfoundland, they're like, "Where's that, though?"

Shaun: "Oh, I've been to Halifax. I know Newfoundland. I've been to Halifax." Oh.

Ryan: I've been to Halifax. I found that that helped me greatly with kind of hit the ground running and just knowing what to do and how to play and put all these puzzle pieces together.

Shaun: Did Doug-- was the name Doug?

Ryan: Doug, yes.

Shaun: Was he a REALTOR® in Newfoundland as well?

Ryan: He had family in Newfoundland. He was in Toronto, actually. He's from Toronto, but he was a REALTOR® there. He ran a brokerage. He is a 30-year season vet. His administrator was from Bell Island, and he used to travel here regularly, so that helped a lot when he was coaching and guiding me.

Shaun: That's interesting because having somebody to coach you who knows Newfoundland real estate, that's a blessing, knows the geography, knows the place. Katharina, in terms of having an expectation of what Moncton was like, specifically talk about that market because going from Victoria, the West to the East is so drastically different. How long did it take you to get a real sense of what Moncton specifically was like? You service Moncton proper?

Katharina: Yes, right in the Moncton area.

Shaun: What was that like, because Ryan knew what his hometown was like, but you had to come into a brand-new market.

Katharina: Yes. It was really hard, and it's still hard to connect here with the locals. I hear that from all of the families that I serve as well, that it's really hard to connect with all the families because it's such a small town still. They're really tied together. They know everyone. I live a little bit outside of Moncton, half an hour out in Salisbury. I started door-knocking there. I just wanted to give it a try, and everyone would say, "Well, yes, my kid went with this REALTOR® to school, so we know her," and that was like every second door. They knew this REALTOR®, so I'm like, "Yes, I don't have any chance." It was really hard.

Shaun: If you're in Moncton, she's the go-to. If you're in Paradise--

Katharina: It's Ryan.

Shaun: Ryan doesn't live there, but St. John's, go to Ryan. I love this because so many people have been through so many transitions. People aren't necessarily wake up and they say, "This is exactly what I'm going to do and this is the career that I'm going to have." That challenge of transitioning from an old career, and probably, you did very well, right, Ryan? You're working out West, you're a Newfoundlander working in Fort Mac. I mean, come on, buddy, that is good money out there, and it's just handed to you. You're working obviously, but then you come home, now you've got to do it yourself. Has it unlocked the entrepreneurial spirit in you?

Ryan: Very much. I went to school for four years, and then I went West. I went through that phase of being away from my family to make the big dollar. Then, when I got into this, and you said it, it unlocks that entrepreneurial spirit. It creates that business fire where you look at the opportunities and you say, "Okay. Well, these connections that I'm having daily, what else can I do with this?" Whether that's looking into maybe investing into a development as a subdivision or just going down the road of building houses. Definitely, every day, it's always something new, where you're like, "Okay. Well, through real estate, what else can I build on?" There are so many opportunities there.

Shaun: It's not just about buying and selling. It sounds like, especially Katharina, what you've done, you've tapped into community, which I think is really powerful, too. Tell me about your involvement in the community now. Outside of MLS listings and buying and selling, how have you now immersed yourself in the community? You're adding not only just your expertise now as a REALTOR®, but you're also helping grow and cultivate connections in a community. Tell me a bit about that. What are your skill sets outside of real estate-

Katharina: Oh, goodness.

Shaun: -that you now bring.

Katharina: I volunteer for some of the newcomer associations here. I host community events for my Latin people. I have a Colombian dance group, which we participate in events.

Shaun: What's that music specific-

Katharina: Cumbia.

Shaun: -to Colombia? Cumbia. Oh, my gosh. Ryan, do you know Cumbia?

Ryan: No.

Shaun: It's like a Newfoundland jig with a lot more hips. Look up Cumbia. It's the best. Wait, you said host community events. What would that be? What does that look like?

Katharina: I do everything, to be honest. I do Latin parties. I throw community events for families, where the kids can go and do something. I collaborate with a lot of associations as well that do Zumba classes, kids painting stuff, a lot of different things for the community, so that they can actually settle and find their connections.

Shaun: Oh, yes. Now, again, I do want to touch on that one more time. If you have any specific stories of-- Tell me a bit about a family that you helped, who came from wherever in Latin America. Is there a Canadian story there where they've come from away, they're there now in New Brunswick, they don't know exactly what the next steps are. Is there anybody specifically that you recall really watching how much of an influence you had? Not to take about you, but you're not just helping people locally buy houses. You also have that layer of helping people transition from wherever they come from into Canada, and then find a place to live in Moncton.

Katharina: Let's see. There was one family, a couple, two kids, helped them buy the house. They just starting settle--

Shaun: Where were they from?

Katharina: Colombia.

Shaun: They came specifically from Colombia?

Katharina: Yes. I helped them settle and everything. Her and her daughter were really into dance. They're now in my Colombian dance group. Her daughter become basically almost like my little sister. That's really close to me. I saw how they evolved from being here alone to what they've grown to. They started their own business now and everything.

Shaun: Oh, tell me more about that. What was the business?

Katharina: They're doing decoration for events.

Shaun: Oh, cool. Party design.

Katharina: Yes. The balloon stuff, the arches, the weddings, all of that. I can refer them to a lot of events that I host as well. We help each other.

Shaun: That's great. You helped them find a home?

Katharina: Yes.

Shaun: They found a house and they moved in. How long ago was this?

Katharina: That was almost a year ago.

Shaun: Awesome. How are they doing?

Katharina: They're awesome. They love it.

Shaun: They're happy. They love it.

Katharina: Yes. Her mom is visiting here now. They're happy, enjoying it.

Shaun: That's awesome. What about you, Ryan? Specifically, what was your first actual sell or buy? What was your first kind of you're like, "I did it. I can actually do this."

Ryan: I think I had one there a couple of years ago where it was a first-time buyer. She was older. It was a little bit later in life for her. The market here has been very busy. It's been very active, so it's very tough to get somebody under contract, and it takes a lot of offers, really. When we--

Shaun: Now, when you say it was busy, it's active, explain what that looks like in St. John's. Are you talking St. John's specifically?

Ryan: Yes. St. John's proper right now for this exact story, for all of the area, really. Right now, we have lower inventory than we've ever had, and we likely have more demand than we've ever had. When you're writing on a offer on a house, it's going to take either a very strong offer to persuade the seller, or it's going to take a few offers before you find the right one where you're comfortable enough to offer what it's going to take to get that property. This one, this particular client, we probably wrote about 10 offers, and we had to get really creative when we finally got her under contract.

When it happened, it was still such a feel-good moment because I lost my-- I'm not going to say much of this, but I lost my mother a couple of years ago. Then, just the connection I had with this woman, you could tell that she was such a good mom. That was awesome.

Shaun: That's amazing. Oh, my gosh. That's such an interesting thing. We usually think of people who are, "I'm going to buy a house." A young couple, a young professional, first house, but this is somebody who is a mom. Had how many kids?

Ryan: She had two kids. She was almost 70 when she bought her first house.

Shaun: Amazing. What a feeling.

Ryan: Yes, it was absolutely incredible.

Shaun: Wow.

Ryan: Just to get that across the finish line.

Shaun: Obviously, young family comes from Colombia, they get integrated into Moncton, have a business. The other end of the spectrum with this lady, a mom, who you had a special connection with, and buys her first house later in life. Was it her dream to own a house?

Ryan: It was. She wanted to do this before it was too late-

Shaun: Wow.

Ryan: -so that she had something to leave her kids.

Shaun: Oh, that is gorgeous. It's very satisfying. It's very gratifying. What you guys do is more than just buy and sell, it sounds like. I think that's important for people who are watching, who are thinking about it, or if there's REALTORS® who are watching, that they can obviously attest to this very thing. Those are great stories, guys. I love that so much. Here we are. We're at the end of our chat, but before we go, I'd like each of you to tell me where you see yourself, what you'd like to see yourself doing in five years from now. What is your future as a person who helps people find homes and an agent in Newfoundland, where do you guys see yourselves? What would be the ultimate dream for you both? Katharina?

Katharina: For me, I'd love to grow my team to be able to serve my community a little bit better. Getting better in French as well. I started French classes now, so I'm trying to grow my community and not only serve Latin people.

Shaun: Le formidable.

Katharina: Oui, oui. That's all I have for now, but yes, that's mostly it. I want to grow my team, that I can serve my community better for sure.

Shaun: How's that going? How do you go about building that team? Is it because you need more people from Latin America to become REALTORS®, to become home finders?

Katharina: Yes. I have a few either past clients or friends that are interested in getting into real estate now, some are getting into it. I have a few agents that want to change brokerage right now, so I'm getting them into-- Which are not Canadian either. It's getting a multicultural team together to help all the newcomers settle.

Shaun: Oh, sweet. Love it. Love it. What about you, Ryan?

Ryan: Yes. Very much similar. Definitely continue to build out, grow a team so that we can help service more, but I also want to get more involved with the community, specifically within the sporting world. Sponsor more teams, sponsor more events.

Shaun: Oh, I see.

Ryan: Sponsor more gear. If it's needed for hockey or baseball, anything like that.

Shaun: You have a personal passion for local recreation and sport.

Ryan: Big time. I grew up playing hockey here in Mount Pearl. I got a 4-year-old son now that's starting to get into it. I'm just thriving on that, and I'd like to be able to do more.

Shaun: Oh, that's awesome. Support your community.

Ryan: Big time.

Shaun: Great. Guys, this has been amazing to hear your stories as REALTORS®. This is REAL TIME. We talk to REALTORS®. It's the podcast for REALTORS®, but I feel like hearing your story is so insightful because we think, "Oh, how do people become REALTORS®? What's that like? What's their before life? What's their new life?" Thank you so much for sharing your stories. It's been insightful for me as well. If you're ever in Halifax and you want to have a ball hockey game, Ryan, once you come and sponsor it. Then afterwards, we'll go and eat delicious Latin food at the Kinsmen Club after.

Shaun: I'm just spitballing here, guys. I'm just spitballing, bringing it all together.

Ryan: Yes, that's a good idea.

Katharina: Yes, I'm in.

Shaun: Who's in?

Katharina: I'm in.

Ryan: I'm in.

Katharina: You got me on food.

Shaun: Yes. Yum, yum, yum. Ryan, look up Cumbia. You're going to see-

Ryan: Cumbia.

Shaun: -buddy. The best music ever. Thank you, both. Thank you, both. Good luck with everything, and we'll see you again. I'm sure.

Katharina: Thank you so much.

Ryan: Thank you.

Shaun: Bye, guys. What a great chat. I love that. Thanks to Ryan and Katharina for telling us their stories. It was so amazing to see. Bringing their life skills, bringing everything that they love about their communities, and now forging a path of their own. It's changing not only their own lives, but the people around them. What a great chat. Guys, thank you so much for joining me today. If you like this episode, make sure you get out there, find your favorite podcast platform. Give us a like, give us a review, share with everybody you know. REAL TIME is brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association. Production courtesy of Alphabet Creative. Thanks so much, guys. We'll see you next time on REAL TIME.

Real estate is an inherently human-forward business. The value of personal connections and community will never go away. But the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) gives REALTORS® tools to grow their business and save time in some areas so they can invest in others. 

Sean Provencher, a REALTOR®, founder of Endgame Coaching, and supporter of incorporating AI into everyday business, joins this episode of the REAL TIME podcast to share his experience on how AI has helped his business thrive, strategies he uses, and how REALTORS® can embrace this emerging technology in a responsible way. 

Transcript

Sean Provencher: Okay, so if there's two things you take away from this conversation today, the first one is you should give it a try, and the second one is, don't trust what it gives you back until you double check.

Shaun Majumder: Dude, you don't talk to first dates like this, do you? Is this how you engage–

Sean: Hey, everybody. I am so excited about today's conversation because today we're talking about something that is everywhere right now. It's all around us. It blows through us. It is, of course, the force from Star– No? That's not what we're talking about? Oh, AI. Yes, AI. Sorry. AI, guys.

Today we are going to talk about the incredibly dynamic world of AI and understanding the tools that are coming on the market so fast. It's almost dizzying how fast these new tools are being made available to REALTORS®. We're going to un-dizzify today. That's what we're going to do. That's the correct term, I looked it up on ChatGPT, un-dizzify the whole experience when it comes to AI.

Today we're talking to Sean Provencher. He is a veteran REALTOR®, and he's the founder of Endgame Coaching, but he has been using AI on his day-to-day real estate business, and he's found a really good niche. He's self-described as not an expert in AI, but he's somebody who's he's been using it so much. He brings a lot of great knowledge, a lot of great tips to help you, the REALTOR®, understand these tools and how best to use them.

Shaun: I'm just jamming out. It seems like I'm listening to music on my headphones, but really I'm not. I'm actually getting ready to have a chat with Sean.

Sean: That's your pregame?

Shaun: This is my pregame. What is your pregame music? Do you have pregame music? What have you been listening to?

Sean: No, I don't. Honestly, usually I just chill out. My experience has been, I do best if I don't think at all right before stuff. If I had an exam to take, I'd study like crazy the day before. I might flip through my notes two hours in advance, but then after that, I'm just-

Shaun: Absorb.

Sean: Yes, just chill. Be like, "No, I got this." I found that if I try to cram right before something, it doesn't help.

Shaun: That is actually a great method, I think, for all things. As an actor, I have to memorize scripts. You stress so much about getting the lines right or getting whatever it is you're going to do right that it takes you out of being able just to be present and listen and be in the moment. I agree. This was not pregame music. I have no pregame music. If it was, it would be Enya and I would allow the soft soothing tones of Enya to wash over me to get me into my fire breathing into my belly to get us relaxed, because that's a human thing.

Sean, we're not here to talk about human things today, are we? We're here to talk about something so amazing and everybody needs to know about this technology that's happening that I don't think anybody's heard of yet. You and I are going to be the first people, I think, on planet Earth to talk about something called AI. Why don't you tell everybody who's watching and listening what this acronym-- Is that right? Is it acronym? No.

Sean: Yes, I'd say so.

Shaun: What those thingies are? What those two letters together, A.I., stand for? Because nobody's heard of it yet.

Sean: Today, Sean, we're going to talk about artificial intelligence.

Shaun: First, I've heard of it. It's amazing.

Sean: It's a brand new thing. This is a brand new thing. I think it might end up being a big deal.

Shaun: I think it's not.

Sean: Possible.

Shaun: I think it's passed. I don't think it's going to do much. I think it's a hot trend and it'll be gone in a week or two.

Sean: Go back to normal, folks. Nothing to see here.

Shaun: Back to normal. No, of course, AI, and we're talking real estate and we're talking AI, bringing those two together, like peanut butter and chocolate. You have a really good idea about AI.

Now, I don't think you claim to be an expert. However, you are very, very, very much involved. Why don't you tell us a little bit about, for example, how you got started with Endgame Coaching and how that's now evolved to where it is today?

Sean: I'll give you my quick rundown. Despite this youthful look, I've actually been in real estate close to two decades now, right around 17 years, something like that. I ran a big team in Toronto. I've traded consistently through this whole time. I moved to Victoria a few years ago, and when I moved out here, as opposed to jumping straight back into the saddle in a new location, I actually spent a few years doing coaching. It's something that I've done on and off throughout my career, just helping real estate agents try to figure out how to either get started or move from-- you're in momentum, now you want to start figuring out how to hire an assistant, build a team, that kind of stuff. I love helping people. In coaching, you get to have a longer life cycle with every client. You really get to see things grow and develop. I love doing it.

Shaun: Would agents say, "Hey, look, I'm just starting out, I need to know best practices? You and I are going to do one on one for a while? How would that happen? Would you just then work with them individually for a long time, or does it expand into their team? How would that coaching work?

Sean: Great question. Usually with new agents in coaching, I would do them in groups. They all need the same thing. We'd help them get a business plan set up. Honestly, a lot of the time, Sean, it's like, "Hey, what do I say? I'm going to see someone, they're talking about listing their house. I have no clue. What's the arc of a meeting going to look like? What are the things I need to cover? How do I price it?" I did that mostly in group stuff.

Then my favorite is helping people who are $300,000, $400,000, $500,000, $600,000 in commissions. They're doing really well, and they're overworked, and they're burning out, and they don't have any experience with, team building and leadership, and I'll help them write a business plan to step back from some of their responsibilities, bring in other people and help those people find opportunity, and they all grow together. That was my coaching business.

Shaun: Awesome. That was Endgame. Are you still doing that as an individual?

Sean: Less now. No, I've started trading again, I found that I got a little zoomed out. Now I'm trading in Victoria, BC, it's beautiful out here. Then, naturally, when I started trading, again, I started receiving all these agent-to-agent referrals, because, I've showed you how to do the business. I'm out here and helping people. If you have someone in need, you can trust that I do a good job.

I received a lot of agent-to-agent referrals, piqued my interest. I started focusing on agent-to-agent referrals. That's actually growing into this new project of mine called Boomerang Realty Network. Really neat. We've got a vetted group of agents across Canada, we're about to start growing into the United States. The whole idea is one agent, any move everywhere. No matter where someone is, no matter where they're going, we've got someone that's vetted, tried and trusted that you can be put in touch with.

For us, it solves two problems. I can send people anywhere, and trust that they're going to be in good hands. Every time I add another 10 people to the list, I have another 10 referral partners that I'm that to them. It's growing that pillar in my business as well. It's been really fun.

Shaun: Boomerang sounds like an amazing network. Can anybody just join? Is there a website I can go if I'm an agent and be like, "I'm joining Boomerang," pay a fee, boom, I'm in?

Sean: We're really picky, because the whole idea is that I don't want to bring people in who aren't going to do an outstanding job. We vet people. It's a yes and no. If someone wants to join, I'd love to talk to them. We do have a bit of a process that we go through, we have certain expectations, and we need someone to have at least a certain amount of momentum in the business and a certain amount of experience in the business, because we accept rock stars only.

Shaun: I love it. Oh, that's so good. What I'm hearing so far in our conversation, there's a whole lot of focus on human interaction like the importance when you started talking about, coaching, "What are you going to say? What are you literally going to say when you meet another person face to face?" The networking, how that is all human to human, referrals. Tell me more about the importance, by the way, of networking, on that level when it comes to real estate.

Sean: There's a bunch of reasons that I think REALTORS® naturally gravitate towards this. First of all, if you look at REALTORS®, we all enter this business because we have a bit of a servant's heart. We're entrepreneurial, we want to be around people, we want to be helping people. We have this natural craving for being part of something. Usually that centers around our community. That's why so many times you see REALTORS® who create these amazing charitable efforts and stuff like that, or lead groups in their local communities.

In real estate, I think people also really want to have the opportunity to connect with other people who know what the day-to-day of the business looks like. You've got real big highs and real dark lows from time to time when things are challenging. REALTORS®, and myself in particular, have really enjoyed having the opportunity to connect with one another. That's certainly been my experience in real estate. I think just finding ways to be part of something that's bigger than just yourself and the business is something that really keeps the energy that people need to push through this business.

Shaun: Yes, connection is really, really important, I think. I don't just mean connections in the business sense, just being a human, a part of a tribe is really, really important. It sounds like what you've created with Boomerang, like-minded, very motivated, high achievers all coming together to help each other out across North America.

Sean: Yes, absolutely. It's something you'll find that REALTORS® don't put a lot of energy into it early in the business because they're just so excited and they're just running around trying stuff. Then as they become more rooted in the business, that's why so many of them turn towards things like coaching or joining networks or flying out of town to go to masterminds and learn. It betters yourself, it lets you get better service to your clients, and it feeds something that I think we all need in this business, which is to have the feeling that you got people who have your back.

Shaun: Right. Now, this leads us to the idea of AI and artificial intelligence, which is not human to human at all. However, it is sweeping the nation, as you might say.

Sean: The world.

Shaun: The world. Now, tell me about when you started using AI tools in your business. Tell me about your experience with AI. Did you help create AI? What level are you at? Tell me about your story and your journey with using AI tools.

Sean: You alluded to this, and I'm just going to dig into it right out the gate, I love talking about AI. It's something that I jumped on the bandwagon with early. I'll just put a full disclaimer out there. If you are an expert on this stuff, you're better than me. I am not the person who's going to stand here and say, "I'm the one who knows the most about AI and real estate." The reason I love talking about it is because of that. I think there's a lot of people who are scared to try using it.

I am just a regular person who has found all kinds of opportunities to do better and do things faster, just through using it. My first forays into AI were just, like many people, I heard about this thing called ChatGPT. I opened it up, and I started using it for really basic stuff. "Can you write me a listing description for this property?" I've got a weird email I'm trying to phrase, or I'm putting together a pamphlet, and I would just type stuff in, and I became pretty impressed with it really quickly.

I've just, since then, tried to find all these things that I wasn't sure if it could do, and I just would ask it. "Hey, can you help me with this?" "What's this thing?" "Have you seen this?" It's incredible, some of the stuff that I've found it helpful with.

Shaun: Those are some of the first early days uses of AI in real estate?

Sean: Yes. I think, Sean, most people who explore it probably do try and start that way. If you haven't used it yet, because it's surprising, there's a lot of people who just haven't checked it out, they figure, "Oh, whatever, I'm not a very techie person," the whole point of it is that it's easy to use. If you're trying to figure out what to do first, just open one of the applications. ChatGPT is by far the namesake of AI. Just open it up and ask it stuff. Have a conversation with it. See what it's capable of. You'll be amazed how simple it is to get it to do what you want.

Shaun: I can't imagine any human who hasn't dabbled yet. Am I just like you where as soon as this technology came out, I was immediately intrigued and wanted to start tinkering with it? In the world of real estate, what are some other practical uses of AI for someone who's never used it yet?

Sean: We'll bang out the obvious ones first. Lots of agents are using it for listing descriptions. It's read probably a billion different listing descriptions now. It has an idea of what the flow of a listing description that someone, as a consumer, would be comfortable reading, right?

Shaun: Right.

Sean: Beyond that, I think if you're writing a marketing piece, you have something that you want to put out in front of a whole bunch of people, you're going to blast your database, you're going to put it on social media, you can either just say, "Hey, here's what I'm doing. Can you craft this for me?" Personally, I really like to put a lot of energy in early. I'll start out by giving it a lot of context on what I'm doing, so, "Hey, I'm hosting a party for my- my clients. Here's the date and time, here's the theme, here's what I'm thinking, and here's what I want it to look like." We'll talk more about prompts later.

If you've already written the invite, you can put that in and you can have it rephrase it. I do this all the time where I'll write an email and be like, "That's pretty good but I feel like it's a little bit clunky." You can drop that in, and it'll just polish it for you. That kind of stuff is really easy to do. I'm talking so far about AI being used as a language model. That's the original old school use of just putting in text and receiving text back.

There's AI for all kinds of different use cases. There's AI to generate videos, there's AI to generate images and stuff like that. We'll talk more about that later. Sticking with just text based, you'll be amazed at some of the stuff that you can do. You might have, for example, a string of text messages that you have with someone who's being a little bit challenging. Maybe they're not seeing your perspective, or you're trying to negotiate and your two clients don't see eye to eye. You can screen grab your text messages, drop them in, ask it to reflect on the two people and how they're communicating and give you ideas on how to move the conversation to a resolution.

It's amazing what it can do. It'll psychoanalyze the person on the other side of a text thread and give you really helpful advice on what's going on in their head.

Shaun: This is a tool that you would use not only when you think about being efficient and being time saving, and saving yourself some time. It also sounds like as a human being to use AI in those finicky moments of being a person dealing with other people, that it's almost like it's an assistant or a coach, like you were, or somebody to bounce ideas off of. There's no personal connection. That sounds like something that would be incredibly valuable to not only REALTORS®, but to human beings in general. Sean, how is real estate uniquely positioned in this incredibly dynamic world where AI feels like it's everywhere now, like electricity?

Sean: The thing that I love about real estate is that so much of our role in our business and also in our communities is about bringing value to people around us. It's about that human to human connection. It's about trust. With AI, there's a lot of stuff in our day to day that it's going to do a great job of taking care of for us. When I look at that, what I think smart agents are going to do is they're going to allow AI to take things off their plate, and they're going to reinvest that time into the human to human connection.

Instead of saying, "Oh, I'll kick my feet up and I'm going to let the computer do my job for me," they're going to take the stuff that's less impactful, maybe it's important, but it's not the thing that their clients need them to be there for them at the highest level, so writing the marketing blurb, composing the newsletter, whatever those things are that you use it for, and they're going to reinvest that time in serving their community, getting close with people.

If you look at AI, it's really great at analytical tasks, at brainstorming things. It's really great at repetitive tasks and things like that. Those aren't the things that make us the best REALTOR®. The thing that makes us the best REALTOR® are those moments of empathy. It's the moments that you spend with someone really building trust and building a relationship where they think about you, and they're like, "That is a person who I want to guide me through this."

You think about AI, and it's going to take part in all kinds of our lives as a society. I like to compare it to a surgeon. If you were going in for surgery, and they said, "Hey, we've got all these robotics, we've got all these computers, we've got AI models that are going to be analyzing every move we make to make sure that we protect you and we serve you at the highest level and that we don't cut the wrong tube, because we've got so many different things watching this and helping us perform this at the highest level," I'd be cool with that, I'd be great with that. Yes, make the smallest incision you can and take care of what you need to take care of and get out of there.

However, I wouldn't be comfortable with having AI explain the procedure to me. I wouldn't feel comfortable having it answer my questions. I would want to have that human to human connection where I had someone who I felt like I could trust and I could be open with emotionally and an interpersonal relationship with to beam that bedside candor that I would need to plan it.

I think real estate's the same way. It's one of the biggest transactions that someone's going to take in their life. I don't think they'll ever trust the whole thing to an online website or portal. I think they're always going to crave that interpersonal relationship because that's what we bring to the table.

Shaun: It's also the human management. Let's say you are listing your house and you think it deserves X, Y, and Z pricing, and then all of a sudden the market shuts down, something happens, there's a fire nearby. All of a sudden you're not going to get the price you have. Statistically, the chatbot is going to tell you, "Yes, this is exactly what you should be getting," but that does not help the stress and anxiety and the human emotional rollercoaster that we go through as clients. That's, I think, another example of how important it is to have that human to human connection.

Sean: Absolutely. It's that trust thing. It's having a person there who you trust that you've built rapport with that can be empathetic, we can sense their emotions, we can read between the lines, we have maybe some history with that person, hopefully, that we can know about their backstory, know about their family. That's something that is unique to an interpersonal relationship. Again, I think if we're smart, we use AI for all the repetitive stuff that we don't want to do anyways, and we reinvest that energy in the place where we have the most impact and where people want us the most.

Shaun: How has AI started to become more prevalent in real estate?

Sean: If you look at AI, it's still a baby. That's the crazy thing. It's got all these incredible abilities and it's still in the very early stages of its development. Right now we have a huge use of AI on the internet. Again, I reference that author I really like, Kai-Fu Lee. He walks through the stages they expect it to go through. The AI of the internet is what we all think of. It's word prompts telling you how to finish a sentence as ChatGPT, stuff like that.

The second stage they expect to move into is AI of business where they take those tools and they start to expand on them for specific use cases and specific industries. Then, the third stage would be more of an immersive AI. You think about putting on glasses and it alters your environment a little bit. They don't know if we'll ever get there, but eventually they're wondering if we'll create AI that can actually think for itself. We're still a baby.

Right now we've seen a lot of use where we started talking about. Agents are using it to create listing descriptions and marketing kits. One thing that I really like to use it as is a brainstorming tool, "Hey, I'm planning a video shoot. Can you help me write a script?" or, "I want to have a series of events on my social media. Can you help me plan a bunch of client things that I can put together?"

What we're seeing really exciting stuff developing in now is where it's actually doing more of the work for you. We're seeing a lot of it being geared towards specific industries. Again, medical, "All right, go to the doctor now." They record the conversation and make AI notes after the conversation.

A couple of things that I've really enjoyed using are visual content creation tools. You can enter something as simple as a prompt. it could be two or three sentences, or it could be a much longer prompt, and it'll take that and create a, basically, graphic design and content for you. I've done booklets as lead magnets. The one that I worked on was a downsizing booklet. I do a lot of work with seniors communities, and I work with the people who run the facilities to help them as a referral source when their clients, who are moving in, need to sell their home.

I created about a 16-page book that talks about the process of moving from your home, listing your home on MLS, what to expect, how the negotiations take place, how long it all takes, what you should do first to get started, the different kinds of facilities they can move into, and what to look for and what to expect living there. I created a 16-page book and it took me a few hours. I put a lot of work into it because I had a lot of experience that I wanted to use as context for the content of the book.

On this one site I've been playing with recently, gamma.app, G-A-M-M-A dot A-P-P, you can literally just give it a sentence and it'll create you a five-page website. You could literally just log in and say, "Make me a five-page website. Go research the podcast, learn as much as you can about the host and their guests and what they talk about and create me a five-page website about it." It will just go do all the research. It'll type up all the content. It'll come up with what it thinks the most valuable pages would be, following the typical experience that people have online, about us, contact, episode lists, meet our hosts, and all that kind of stuff. It does a really good job.

Shaun: It's amazing. That's amazing.

Sean: There's all kinds of stuff. I had another one I tinkered with. I was doing a talk on AI, and I wanted to give a disclaimer about why people should proof their work. I thought it'd be fun if I read the disclaimer in a video, but I used an app that takes video of you saying whatever you want, and then creates an avatar, and you give it a script. I had this video I created of me saying, it was basically a disclaimer, "Use it at your own risk, make sure that you proof read it. It can make mistakes, so double-check things."

I sat in front of the camera, and I just talked about nothing for five minutes. It needed to sample me. I talked about my kid's birthday party or something that was coming up, just saying words. Then afterwards, I typed in a script, which was the disclaimer, "Use at your own risk, AI is powerful, it's really fun, but proof-check, it can make mistakes," and then it created this video of me. Sean, the video fooled my wife and my dad. I'm not even kidding.

Shaun: I don't know if that's, "Your relationship with your wife and dad needs some thinking about," or, "Wow, AI."

Sean: There's all kinds of stuff like this, though. Again, I only know that the tip of the iceberg, but we're seeing more and more on a weekly and monthly basis. It's just going to accelerate, because as things continue to develop, it's training itself, it's writing new code faster. What we're going to see over the next few years, it's going to become challenging to keep up with in every aspect of life, and especially as a business owner.

Shaun: With real estate, we already established how important human connection is, but with these tools that REALTORS® can use to integrate into their business, I would imagine it would just accelerate efficiency, free up time so that you can do regular human things, not feel so burnt out, be present, feeling good about yourself and your other relationships, because I would imagine people get burnt out pretty easy doing what REALTORS® do.

Sean: People ask me all the time, "Hey, I'm getting into real estate. I don't love social media. Do I have to be a social media influencer to sell real estate?" It's like, "No, not at all." You look online, and if you go on social media, yes, you're going to see the people who put a lot of energy and effort into being influential on social media because they're going to show up because they're the ones on social media. For every one of those, there's just as many agents who do a great job and are posting on TikTok and Facebook every three hours.

You can find ways to run a successful real estate business however you want. I think AI is an amazing tool because if you get good at it, it lets you-- again, like you were saying, you can increase your face time with your clients, or if you're already doing great, you put in eight hours of client meetings, the last thing any of us want to come home and do is come home and create a marketing piece or write an appraisal letter or something like that.

I like to think of it like, my goal is to take the most important money generation tasks that I do with my time every single day, that's client meetings, negotiations, generating leads, taking care of my database, all of that stuff, I want to take those things, I want to spend as much of a percentage of my time as possible doing those things, and I want to shrink down all the rest. When I come home from eight hours in the car and I'm burnt out, I can chill with my family, I can exercise. I'm not worried all the time that I have projects I'm falling behind on.

If we can just make that our mindset, we'll still give amazing client service, we'll still be a big part of our community, we'll do that network thing that we started talking about, and we'll enjoy the business more, because that's what we came here to do. We didn't come here to do the administrative side of this business, but it adds up.

Shaun: Oh, I want to just backtrack for a second, because we keep using the word "prompt". For those people out there who have no idea what that means, can you explain exactly what a prompt is?

Sean: Thank you. This wasn't a thing until a couple of years ago. If you look online, this is now an entire industry. Basically, the way that you engage AI to do something for you, almost unanimously at this point, is by prompting it. Our prompt can be anything from a sentence, "Make me a social media post about how excited I am that I just sold this house," or it could be really, really long and elaborate, but essentially that's it. The prompt is just your command telling the AI what you'd like it to give you.

Fun story. Right now, this is actually an exploding industry job. It's a new job that's appeared with AI, where there's thousands of people, tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of people working right now as prompt engineers. I don't know how you get into it. Essentially, what they've gotten really good at is structuring the command that they give the AI in a way that gives it all the context it needs to give a really good result, really clear instructions on what you want, and don't want, and outlining how you want it delivered.

Shaun: We make a lot of assumptions when we talk to somebody. If we go to a store, and we want assistance about this hot tub I'm thinking about buying, I'm going to go in and say, "Hey, I'm looking for a hot tub. It's me and my family. What do you got?" Now you say that to AI, you're probably not going to get the answer you're hoping to find. When you have a human, they can decipher a little more on the fly. Why is it so important to really get dialed in with prompts to really accelerate your real estate business?

Sean: The way to look at a prompt is the better the prompt, the better the output. If I say, "Write me a blog about real estate in Victoria, BC," the blog could be about what it finds online saying the best neighborhoods are, it could be about the home types, it might give you a market report, it might create a blog about anything, really. That's such a broad prompt.

If instead I said, "Write me a blog post as a real estate professional. I serve the Victoria, BC marketplace, and I want to talk about the type of housing that we have, current market conditions, and best steps for someone to take when choosing an agent. Please research online, and pull the most recent market reports from our board. Go to REALTOR.ca and look at all the current inventory and provide a summary of price ranges and different housing types depending on someone's budget, and then provide an outline for what someone should look at when they're creating their plans to start shopping for a REALTOR®.

I'd like your response to be between 700 and 1,000 words. I'd like you to use simple language that anyone would be able to read at about a three or four grade level without being childish in any way. I'd like your response to be direct and straightforward and professional, but make it playful and fun without decreasing how people would perceive me as a professional. By the way, make sure that it's easy to read. Don't use anything that would stop it from being evergreen and use best practices for search engine optimization." If you give it that, you'll get a beautiful blog post.

Shaun: Dude, you don't talk to first dates like this, do you? Is this how you engage speed dating?

Sean: Me and my wife, it's like I said, we've got a weird relationship. You can tell the difference between me and AI on video. I don't know why. 

Shaun: Oh, I love it. You talk about specificity right there. That's amazing.

Sean: We talk about specificity. I've done a lot of this, because I use it daily. If you're just getting started, one of my favorite things to do is-- Again, I'm a ChatGPT user. There's about a half a dozen of them now. I'm sure they're all great. I haven't taken the time to go in deep because I've got mine set up. However, usually when I'm doing something, I will simply just turn on-- They've got a chat mic button. I'll just speak to it for about three to five minutes, "Oh, I want to create this invite. I'm hosting a party. There's going to be pickles and cheese, and we're going to be in my backyard. You can come by for a burger between 2:00 and 3:00. We're going to do a piñata because, whatever, kids are going to be there." It'll give you what it thinks you want. If you give it a good prompt, usually you're going to be 80%, 90% of the way there.

Then from there, what I like to do is I'll give it some revisions, "Hey, that was great. By the way, I forgot to give you the date and time. Here's the date and time and they can register on Eventbrite using this link." You give it that and it'll spit something back. Then you'll say, "Hey, well, that was great, but you mentioned the piñata at the front. What I'm really excited about is the pickles and cheese. Put the pickles and cheese up top, move the piñata down and tell them that that's going to be at 3:00 PM if they just want to come by for that." It'll just keep reiterating until it gives you something that is almost perfect. At a certain point, you pull the chute, you take it out, you clean it up on your own.

Shaun: You were talking about the process. I remember hearing something about, you have a general rule of the percentage of time you spend on certain parts of this. Can you explain that?

Sean: I've got this rule. I call it 10-80-10. I can't take credit for it. I pulled it from a leadership book. I can't remember the name, but I was like, "This makes total sense." I'm going to be working on something and this might be something I'm working on with AI. If you're hiring someone to do a job for you, same rules apply, try this out, or if you have an assistant, it's a beautiful way to make something yourself without doing 80% of the work.

Here's how we do it. The first 10% is going to be me. I'm going to be doing the prompt. I'm going to be giving the directions. I'm going to be giving the layout. I'm going to tell it the sections I want in the book or whatever. The next 80% is going to be AI. It's going to go and create all that stuff for me. Then I'm going to loop back in at the last 10%, and there's two main things I'm going to do. First of all, I'm going to fact-check. AI is known to hallucinate, so all it can do is research what we have on the internet and provide you with its best guess. It makes mistakes all the time still. You make it yours. You're going to add your personality back in.

Shaun: Take me through a practical use case for a REALTOR® that might create something using that role. What are some common day-to-day things that REALTORS® could be using very specifically, using this model? What are their tasks that they could be doing?

Sean: Okay. I'll give you one that most REALTORS®, 97% of REALTORS®, struggle with. What the heck do I put on my social media? By the way, I'm not huge on social media. We just hired a company. They're really helping us out. When it comes to trying to plan social media, I draw a blank. You're like, "Oh, I should post something every day." You wake up and you're like, "Crap. What am I going to post?"

What I would tell someone to do is just open up the record setting on ChatGPT or whatever your flavor of choice is for a language model AI tool, and then tell it what you're doing. "Hey, I'm a real estate agent. Here's the area that I serve. Here's how you spell my name, by the way. I enjoy Instagram and Facebook, but I don't post enough. I'm trying to come up with a plan to create engaging content.

I want at least 80% of the content to be about me and my life. I'm really into running. I'm an active runner and I really enjoy my new hot tub that I just got. I'm going to post about running and hot tubs and cooking and my dog. 80% of stuff, I want to be about that, and then 20% of it, I want to be about real estate. Can you help me out by researching what other influential REALTORS® post about their real estate business and provide me with two or three main types of posts that I can cycle between that'll create a bit of a theme? I'd like you to outline the whole thing on a monthly calendar.

Then also just because I'm not that creative, can you give me five to 10 different ideas for personal posts that I could get into a rhythm with that are somewhat repetitive, that would help me stay on top of that side so that it doesn't get dominated by real estate? All of this, I'd like you to deliver to me in such and such a format." Let's make it a checklist, let's put it on a calendar. Whatever you want to do. "Then, once you're done, I'd like you to actually write the posts."

Then the last 10%, what I'm probably going to do is I'm going to make it make all that stuff. I'm like, "You put too much of dog and hot tub, and I also want you to include some exploring the city stuff. Can we mix some of that in?" You get your new result. A lot of people would be like, "Okay, I got to try to do this now."

You can just have it do the next step too. You say, "Well, great. I love that recent version that you created. Now I want you to take that, and I'd like you to work it into a series of posts. I want you to actually make image suggestions, what images I'm going to go out and take pictures of, and video suggestions. I want you to suggest reels, and I want you to write the title and the body of every post. Please use best practices for SEO. Please go and write this all in a way that is in keeping with my style. Oh, and by the way, don't use too many emojis. For the love of God, let's tone that back a little bit." Poof, you get your entire month of content.

Shaun: Wow. That's a dream. How long do you think this takes to do something like that?

Sean: If you were to do this, like the prompt you just heard me do it, you could literally just screen capture that and drop it in. It would work. Then you'll probably spend 20 minutes going back and forth on the monthly calendar. Once you get the calendar that you like, you'll ask it to give you the actual results. You provide it with exactly what format you want that put in.

From there, it'll provide you with a whole pile of stuff. You'll probably spend more time reading it than correcting it, I'd say. All told, you could do an entire month of social media planning, including the written copy, in an hour to an hour-and-a-half, and then you just need to go out and take some pictures while you're on the road.

Shaun: You're talking about social media being used as a combination, sales tool, brand building. If I'm an individual REALTOR®, I want to make sure that who I am is being put out there, not what an AI may think I am. How do REALTORS® use AI and still maintain their original voice?

Sean: There's a few parts to this. We already talked about taking over for the last 10%. That is critical. That last 10%, you can still be doing prompts. You don't have to go and edit out all the emojis. Just say, "Take out all the emojis." I don't do that when I post.

Shaun: You say that, yes.

Sean: Then it'll give you the exact-- It's really quick at picking up what you want. The cool thing is, and this is why everyone should start as soon as they can, the more that you use each individual tool-- so I'm well-cooked into ChatGPT at this point. I don't even really want to go exploring because it knows Sean really well. It knows my hobbies because I ask it. I don't just use it for work. If I'm trying to figure out a recipe to cook at home, I'll ask it to give me some ideas. It knows what my interests are because I use it for all kinds of stuff.

Also, by the way, it has a really good idea of how I talk because when I prompt it, I'm literally just talking to it. I'll leave an eight-minute or a 10-minute voice note thing to my AI, and then it'll take that. It knows exactly how I communicate. The sooner you start using it, the more that you use it and the longer that you use it, like time on task over time, the more of that that you put into AI, the more it is going to be able to communicate like you. Then you're just a prompt away from being-- like at this point, I just say, "Please, use my normal direct and friendly tone," and it composes things that are very, very good. I'm just going in, I'm touching things up, I'm changing the dates, and I'm off to the races.

Shaun: What it sounds like and what I'm hearing you say is the more you use it, the more it mimics you, learns your patterns, learns your tone, learns your style. Is that right? Then, when you are asking it to write something in your voice, it will know. It's not guessing anymore, correct?

Sean: Yes. I still touch it up. It's not nailing it. One other thing that I started doing as well that's really helpful is after you get something out, you edit it to make it the way you would say it or the way that you like it. This is an extra step. Most people don't do this because it just takes a little bit of extra time, but, man, if you do this, it makes a huge difference.

Give it what you ended up with, as opposed to just going away, and it's like, "Well, I don't know if that was good or bad. Is Sean mad at me because he left?" Instead, what I do is I give it back the edited version. Be like, "Hey, you did a great job. Here's the edited version I ended up posting. Save this for future reference so you get a better idea of what I'm looking for."

Shaun: It sounds like when people are using AI, REALTORS® or not, the AI learns about the person and then, not so much becomes that person, but learns of how they act like you would with any relationship. Is that exactly what you're saying? Is that across the board? Is that all AIs, they generally do that?

Sean: Yes and no. Basically, all that is going to happen is it's going to start to use everything that you've done or said to it in the past as part of its context, but not everywhere. Google now has AI search results. If I go to the library and I'm using a computer I've never used and I type in a question, it might try to give me an AI answer. It's not going to have any context from my previous conversations. Same thing with-- there's probably 10,000 different AI apps that you could use now. I can't say across the board that all of them are going to get to know you.

I would say a good rule of thumb is there's probably a chance that it's saving some context. If you created a login and you saved your email and your password or whatever, you keep logging back in when you do stuff, there's a good chance it's starting to learn, but not guaranteed. I know for the ones that I use, they seem to get a lot better with time. Particularly, I do 90% of my work in ChatGPT. Again, it's simple. I've been using it a long time, and it's definitely come a long way in creating responses that are a lot closer to what I want, or I sound like, on its first try.

Shaun: It does sound like in the end, when it gives you whatever it gives you, be sure to go back, verify, edit, and don't depend on just, "Oh no, it'll get my voice out of the gates," right?

Sean: If there's two things you take away from this conversation today, the first one is you should give it a try. The second one is, don't trust what it gives you back until you double-check.

Shaun: Yes. Talk to me about this method of prompting called RISEN.

Sean: This is cool. You notice I had that long example I gave you of a prompt. I was doing my best. I think I did a pretty good job of following this. It's within prompt engineering. There's all kinds of different formats you can use for prompts. RISEN is one that I find delivers the best results for most use cases in real estate. It stands for R is role, I is info, S is steps, E is end result, and N is narrowing.

The role. Take the role of a real estate agent. "My name is Sean Provencher. I serve Victoria, BC." Info is the context. "I'm writing a blog post about Victoria, BC, and I want to include one, two, three. Here's what I'm talking about. By the way, it's really important to me that this is evergreen, so don't reference current market statistics," and stuff like that. I'll give it all of the context I can in the info steps.

Shaun: Info.

Sean: That's info. R, I, S stands for steps. This is where I'm going to give it some homework. I'm going to say, "Okay, what I want you to do is I want you to go and reference the Victoria Real Estate Board. I want you to look at all the different neighborhoods. I want you to get an idea of what's trending in terms of where people are moving their favorite neighborhoods. You can also look at some statistics if it helps, but again, I don't want you to reference live statistics. You can make generalities instead." I'll give it all kinds of steps.

Then end result is what I want it to produce. "I want you to write me the blog post between 750 and 1,000 words. I'd like to use such and such a style of language, my usual direct tone." Then N, so R-I-S-E-N. N stands for narrowing. That's where you tell it what you don't want. "Don't be too opinionated," or, "Don't pull any punches." You can go any direction you want, but tell it what not to do. I always throw in, "Don't use too many emojis. You can use one or two here or there, but I don't want this to be an emoji next to each check mark. That's not how humans do stuff."

Shaun: Is that common practice with AI? Do you find it just knee-jerks to emojis? Is there emoji ethics? 

Sean: Its emoji game is next level. Most people have a couple in their most recent emojis that they'll default to, like check mark, check mark, check mark, or like thumbs up or heart emoji, but it's got the entire library. If you write a checklist or make sure you talk to someone, open a phone, and then, we're going to talk about a house. Go grab a little house. It's like-

Shaun: Makes it a little too--

Sean: -it's too much. The other thing that I find it did a lot in the beginning until I trained it out of it was it would use really salesy language or way too professional. You were really stiff. You just got to tell it what tone and style you want, and you telling it what you don't want is every bit as important as telling you what you do want.

Shaun: We hear about ChatGPT a lot. You said that there's other models. Explain a bit about all the different models to people who maybe aren't familiar with that idea, and how are they trained? As quickly as we can, but talk about that.

Sean: Most AI that people think of right now is a language model. What it does is you give it a query or a question, it references all the available information on the internet in a split second, it guesses what you want, and then it provides an answer for you. That's the majority of what we've being talking about today. Now, they've taken that intellectual thought and they've used it-- they repurpose and repackage it to create other tools like the video stuff, the graphic design stuff that I was talking about, but it's still got the same underpinning.

ChatGPT, if you want to go exploring before you commit to one, there's Claude, there's Grok, and there's Gemini. Each of them are owned by different companies. The interesting thing is they're all going to reference the internet, but then these creepy companies have been listening in on us and watching us and collecting information on individuals for years. This is just a part of life in today's age.

Shaun: Yes.

Sean: Each of them has a different data set. Google has a massive data set, but they were second to the punch, whereas ChatGPT was the first out the gate. They still had a really good stronghold. I think first mover's advantage combined with the fact that just so many people are using it, it's growing its knowledge base through that as well. They still do a really good job. I haven't explored Grok or Claude really, but I hear they're great, too.

I talked a little bit about Gamma. That's the web design-- you can do web pages, you can do slide decks, you can do marketing pieces, like if you want to create a document or something like that, it does the graphic design for you. It's all just from a prompt. You can create the prompt and then put it in, and then it'll just do all the work. Another really neat one is Notebook.Lm. It's another language model tool, but this one, instead of referencing all of the internet, you can provide source material. If you wanted to research a 1,000-page book, this one can be really useful. You can put in the entire book and then start asking questions about the book.

In BC, for some reason, real estate agents, we do a lot of reviewing of condo documentation, so budgets, bylaws, meeting history, and stuff like that. Something like this can be useful for that. I've found that I've made mistakes in the past. You always want to cross-reference and check everything before you answer anyone's questions based on it. If you need to put in-- like condo documents will typically be 60, 80 documents, detailing meeting minutes, and then there'll be a 90-page depreciation report.

I'll drop that in, and I'll just say, "Hey, are there any lawsuits going on? What are the pet rules? Can you go through the meeting minutes and see if there's any issues of contention between property owners inside the condo court?"

Shaun: This is with Notebook?

Sean: Notebook, yes.

Shaun: Specifically.

Sean: That one's really neat.

Shaun: That's cool.

Sean: Then get this one. This one, these sneaky devils, they've taken it, and you can put source material in, and then it'll create a podcast where they talk about it.

Shaun: What?

Sean: Don't be scared, Shaun. We're still okay for a little bit. Yes. You'll have these two fun characters. I can put in these condo documents. I just click the podcast button, adjust it to be 11 minutes long, because that's how much time I have in the car, and they'll talk about the Condo Corporation while I'm driving to my next meeting.

Shaun: Which model is that? What is it called?

Sean: Notebook.LM. I'm telling you.

Shaun: Oh, so that's Notebook.LM. Oh my God.

Sean: Yes. You drop your stuff in, and they'll talk about it.

Shaun: Are they all free?

Sean: That's a great question. If you have a business account with Google, Notebook is currently free. ChatGPT, you can go pretty far for free. I ended up paying-- I'm on the junior subscription. It's $20 a month. What I was able to do is you can create, they call them custom GPTs. It's basically where you fine-tune and save an instruction set. For example, I've been doing a lot of appraisals recently. I'm running appraisal advertisements, and people call up, "Hey, I've got this property or starting to think about X, Y, Z." I'll go, and I'll give them an opinion. I wanted to deliver a really nice narrative product. I've designed this custom GPT that I'll drop in my voice note, because I hate typing.

Shaun: Voice notes are amazing, by the way. I fully support the voice notes.

Sean: Chef's kiss. I'll drop in my voice note, the subject properties, one, two, three main streets, a three-bedroom, two-story home with three bathrooms, and it's modern finishes. I think it's worth between this and this, and here's what the comparisons look like. Then I'll just grab a bunch of MLS sheets. I'll print a PDF or export a PDF, a bunch of MLS sheets that are the comps I want to use.

I'll drop those in, and I've taught it to create, basically, a table chart showing the best comps for the property, where it details the square footage, the sold price, the time on market, whatever I tell it to. Then it'll write up this beautiful report. Usually, they come out about two pages. I've saved all the instructions for that. I'll make a three-minute voice note, and it'll create this appraisal. I'll send it back through. That's $20 a month to have access to creating those per ChatGPT.

Shaun: Oh, so you can't do that with the free version?

Sean: You can save your prompt, and you can just enter the same prompt every time. I'm able to have a bunch of pre-programmed tools that I use. Then, also, the other thing that it lets you do is you can load examples in. I've given it two or three examples of appraisals I really liked, saying mimic this in your output, and it's $20 a month. I'm using it every single day. It also responds quicker. You get a higher status for requests. If you're requesting images, it'll spit them out quicker.

When it comes to some apps, there's no free version. Gamma, that's the web design/graphic design one. You absolutely have to pay $8 a month. That it's $8 a month. If you're creating a bunch of websites or pamphlets, it's incredibly affordable compared to other options. I talked about the video creation one, HeyGen. That one was pretty cool. That's where I did my video disclaimer that fooled my wife and my dad of me.

Shaun: It's amazing.

Sean: I think I gave it $20. That one's interesting that you pay for credits because it takes a lot of processing power to create the video. Depending on how long of a video or how many videos you make, you buy credits that allow you to do a certain amount.

Shaun: Right. That's amazing. I think for REALTORS®, obviously, you will come to a point where you're using these tools after exploring them for a long time, where you'll realize, oh-- You're going to get nudged one way or the other to be like, "Oh, I need more prompts. I need more volume. I need to be able to do more." Then you'll pick your model after dancing with a bunch of them.

Sean: Yes. Frankly, if you're just trying to figure out what to do first, just start with one of the language models. ChatGPT is the most popular. You can go with Claude, you could go with Grok, you could go with Gemini. Those are the big four. Any of them will do a great job. Just start chatting with it, ask it questions. Just brainstorm something, "Hey, here's one I'm trying to work on. Can you help?" You'll be amazed what it starts to spit out.

Shaun: Is there a risk of REALTORS® or anybody, but specifically we're talking about REALTORS®, of getting to that place where, oh my gosh, we can rely on AI just a little too much? What are the risks there when it comes to using it? Because it's pretty amazing when you start using it. You're like, "Oh, I don't have to do anything anymore. I'm just going to let--" and just give it over to AI, and just sit back and watch the dollars roll in.

Sean: Yes. I think, to me, what we should be using AI for is to enhance our ability to be a human connector. Don't focus on taking yourself completely out. Focus on using it to take out the busy work so you can enhance what you do with your clients. Then the other risk is, it still makes a lot of mistakes. I was writing a YouTube video about interest rate changes and how it was affecting our market. This was like two, three months ago. I said, "Hey, just go online, check the Bank of Canada rate. I want to detail, when did they start going back down, and what were all the key dates that we had rate drops." Pretty straightforward.

Bold face, it starts telling me that rates have only gone up. Like, "Rates have been going up, blah, blah, blah. They keep going up. They keep going up." I said, "No, I want to talk about when they started coming back down. I know they went up, but that was a little while ago. Tell me when they came down." No. It was just absolutely set in this idea that rates were going up. I don't know what was going on.

At one point, I had to be like, "Okay. Dear GPT. Today's date is X, Y, Z. Rates have been going down for like six or eight months now. I want you to go back and look specifically at six or eight months ago and tell me when they started coming down. Give me the timeline." Then it's like, "Oh, I'm so sorry." It still makes a lot of mistakes, and that's a huge risk. The last thing it'll say is that--

Shaun: You should never leave it to AI.

Sean: No, never. No, never. Then I also think there's a certain things that you shouldn't ask it to do. Don't have it negotiate. Don't have it being your legal assistant. If you're not sure if you should leave something to AI, ask yourself, "If this goes bad and you've got to explain yourself to a judge, are you going to feel smart?" Because if you don't think you're going to feel smart, don't do it. Do it yourself. You've got your broker manager, your broker record. Reach out to them if you're unsure. Have them talk you through it. Let's be smart about where we put it.

Shaun: Right. Don't just trust. Trust and verify. Verify, verify, verify. Do your homework, and never just leave it to AI. I guess that's what you're talking about when it comes to sensitive information. I'm not a legal mind by any means, and I've signed contracts. Contracts can be tangly, and I'm not going to read through every word. You use contracts all the time and amendments to contracts. Tell me about that. Can AI help in that way, or should you avoid that altogether?

Sean: Sometimes I'll put something in and say, "Hey, did I miss anything?" I'm doing a seller extension to closing, or we're going to assume the tenants, or we're not going to assume the tenants, some of that stuff. If I have to custom-craft a clause, I might put it in after I've written it and say, "Hey, is there anything I should add?" Then after that, I'm going to do what I would normally do, and we should all do anyways, I'm going to send it off to my broker manager. They're there for a reason, and I'm going to have them give it the final proof.

You can use it to check if you missed anything. You can use it to refine things, just like if you're writing an email. Again, the buck stops with you and the people above you who are responsible are your broker manager. If you're unsure of something, we're all in this together, we're all here to help, use the help you have of your hands.

Shaun: We're dealing a lot with data, a lot of information. How can REALTORS® protect clients' data using AI, or in the event of using AI? Because that sounds like something that would be risky.

Sean: Yes. I can tell you that I've never put any of my clients' information into AI. I think that's probably the best place to start, because it learns from everything you feed it. I'm sure somewhere in the fine print, when I signed up, they've got that Bible-sized book that you signed, "I agree to all your terms and service." It's 1,000, 2,000 words, probably. No one reads this stuff. At least I don't. I should have asked it to read it for me.

Shaun: That's a good use of AI right there.

Sean: I'm sure that they have all kinds of rights with the stuff that you talk to it about. What I always do, if I'm looking at my recycling bin next to my desk, I have a rule. If it has a name or a number on it, I shred it. I think we should probably use that same rule with our client's information for AI.

Shaun: Makes sense. Simple way to protect it, just don't use it. Wow, this is such a fascinating conversation. We could talk about this forever. I'm always left with that feeling of human connection will rise above it all. What's your feeling about that again as we close up this conversation? How important is human connection when it comes to real estate, and again, just reiterate that whole thing? Do you see human connection going away in any way, shape, or form?

Sean: It's so funny. I think not just in real estate, but as a community, as a civilization, if you look at the past number of years, it got a little funky, that we had COVID, and we're all like, "Oh, I can't be around anyone." I think a lot of us came out of that with a whole bunch of new tools in our toolkit. We're here meeting virtually. This is now a normal part of life. At the same time, because of that, I think a lot of us now are getting less human-to-human, I could touch your hand right now, interaction. I think it's streamlined things in a lot of ways. I think a lot of us are yearning for that sense of community, that sense of personal, emotional, relational connectivity that we get.

I don't think real estate's any different. I think that is the part of our role in people's lives that will be the most valuable, like spend your energy building, nurturing, loving on your community. Then the time that you have with your clients, focus on really listening to them and advising them, and use your human-to-human experience to help them make better decisions for themselves. That's where we're going to come out of this whole thing, able to provide such a next level of service compared to what we've done in the past.

We've been burdened with all this stuff that we will, as it continues to progress, have less and less responsibility for. Again, what we shouldn't do is try to automate everything and treat all our clients like we're a robot because there are robots who are better at being robots than humans are. Let's lean in where we belong.

Shaun: I love that. I think that's so important. A really great comparison to, not really a comparison, but someone was commenting on the evolution of AI, and everybody has that thought of where AI will go. AI, we have to always remember in real estate, in all industries, it's mimicking. It's not becoming. Who knows where it's going to go? The fact that AI is, what I call, dry brain versus a wet brain-- we have wet brains, we have emotions, or messy, we don't get things right. We're not perfect. We're not aiming to be perfect. I think we're all going to be safe on that front.

It's that stuff that it can never take away, which is that human connection. When it comes to AI, what would you say are-- where AI is headed in the future? What are some exciting uses of AI in real estate, as surprising things that we may see in the future of it all?

Sean: There's a really great book on this. I've been looking for an excuse to mention it. It's by Kai-Fu Lee, and it is called AI 2041, I believe is the name. I can send you a copy. I'll drop it in the show notes. It's a really neat book. It was written by Kai-Fu Lee, who is one of the world's predominant thought leaders on this. Then, what he did is he teamed up with a fictional writer. He came up with 10 example scenarios of what AI should be doing. He wrote it in 2021. Yes, 2041, that was 20 years after he wrote it.

The concept of the book is here's 10 short story narratives, giving you an idea of what our lives might actually look like in 20 years. Then he follows up and actually provides contextual technological backing to lke, "Here's why this is going to happen because we're actually developing this which is going to lead to this." Really cool book. You don't have to be an AI person to enjoy it. It's really fun. It's an easy read.

I think where we're going to see AI continue to get better and better in the short term is going to be in analysis research and just generating content and ideas. When we look at things like, for example, pricing a property, there's-- a friend of mine worked at a company that was developing AI. It was a Toronto startup, and they had a real foothold in Calgary. In Calgary, their AI model was finalizing sales at an average of 3% from what they thought it would sell for. The AI was within 3% of the final sale price. There's no REALTOR® on earth, and if they are, they've only sold one property, and they got lucky.

There's no REALTOR® on earth who has 97% pricing accuracy. It's really hard to know exactly what something's going to go for. They got within 3%. This was years ago, and it's getting better and better. I think as AI continues to get better, there's going to be more and more resources and tools to help us better serve our clients, just in terms of research and stuff like that. Obviously, right now, it's already doing great with content creation, marketing, planning, business planning, any planning and research and being a collaborative brainstorming partner. That is something that it does a great job of.

What'll be really interesting is we talk a little bit about the phases of AI. Right now we're in the AI of the internet and the AI of business. The next one is the perception AI. That's where they start to develop tools that help us by changing the way that we perceive our environment. Think about Google glasses. I know they were funky, and they didn't really take off, but that was the first iteration. Things that you could use. I'm walking into a home, and I'm either looking around with something that I'm wearing on my head, or I'm pointing my phone around even, and it's reading the environment around me and providing extra context to what I might be seeing in the home.

It might be virtual staging. It might be pointing things out, "Hey, there's galvanized piping in the ceiling. You're down in the basement right now. By the way, that's efflorescence, that's knob and tube wiring." There's all kinds of things that AI could help us suss out about a property that we might not pick up on if we were inexperienced. I think to the consumer, that could be something that's really useful.

Then you take that concept of a more immersive experience with technology, whether it creeps you out or not. There are a lot of different use cases that you could imagine being really neat beyond just the obvious, like visual cues and stuff like that. I'm really excited to see how it expands in that area to help us with the actual practical side of viewing and exploring properties and learning about neighborhoods.

Shaun: Yes, that's incredible. Finally, Sean, as a coach, you're back with your individual agent. They brought you in, they've come back, and they said, "Hey, you helped me in those early days, but now I'm being told that this AI thing is taking over the world. What are the top three things that I need to do right now to get ahead of the game and then stay ahead of the game when it comes to AI and using those tools for my business?"

Sean: The coaches love to talk about mindset. The first thing that I would do is I'd address why they up till now had a mindset that they weren't going to explore this. Usually, you're going to find that it just has to do with the fact that people think it's more complex and hard. You think about early computers, you try to get your printer working, you had to find a floppy disk and get the right driver, and then understand all this weird stuff. People, if they got hurt early in their technology journey, they can find it hard to be open to trying new things, and they get into avoiding it. I'd address the mindset.

The next thing that I would say is, it doesn't even have to be real estate-related. Just get on it and start using it to do little things that you might enjoy in your life. You want to develop a cocktail recipe, you want to write a workout plan. I was tracking my macros for a while. I'd built a little command set to help attract my macros. I'd tell it what I ate and say, "You've got this much protein so far, you've got this many carbohydrates." There's all kinds of fun, goofy things that you could do to have it help you in your day-to-day. Just start out by having some fun. Then look at one area in your business that you don't enjoy doing the homework on and try giving it some homework.

Beyond that, start asking it what else it can do, because that's the other thing that's so cool. It's at the point now it's training itself, and it's better at training people how to use it than they are at knowing what it can do. Just start asking it, "Hey, I'm trying to figure out this. Can you help me put together an outline? Can you help me create a video? Can you help me lay out a marketing brochure?" You might get something back that's amazing. It might not be amazing, but just you're exploring. I think that's the most important part of getting started. Just have fun, explore, and change your mindset. It's not hard.

Shaun: Change your mindset and always love your AI because, Sean, I got to reveal something to you. I know this might come as a shock. This is not the real Shaun Majumder. Shaun Majumder is actually playing with his kids right now. This is just AI-generated, and I'm a chatbot. Look at the future. Look at how great it's going to be. Buddy, this has been amazing. I love it. I love it, I love it, I love it. I'm sure REALTORS® who are watching this right now have taken so much from this conversation. A huge thanks to you, man. What can I say, but good luck and keep giving. Where can people follow you and find you?

Sean: You can find me on any social platform. sean, S-E-A-N, .p.victoria. That's the easiest. Whichever one you're on, you'll find me there.

Shaun: What a silly way to spell it. Anyway--

Sean: I know, it's terrible. It's less letters, though. No use, no end. Straightforward.

Shaun: Sean, thanks so much for chatting, man. Thanks so much for joining us in REAL TIME.

Sean: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Shaun: All right. Be well. Thanks, Sean, spelled with an E-A. What a conversation. That was incredible. My takeaways from this conversation are that despite AI being so prevalent in life, everything we do, it is going to create lots of opportunity for REALTORS® to be able to use the tool to be able to reinvest the time that they would normally spend on tedious tasks, and reinvest it back into their businesses. Who knows? Maybe even reinvest it back in to spend the time with their kids. One thing for sure, the human connection is something that will never, ever go away. The importance of human connection will always be there in real estate.

Thanks again, Sean. That was a great conversation. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I know I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. If you enjoyed it, please go and subscribe and like and write us a review on your favorite podcast platforms. REAL TIME is brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association, CREA. Production courtesy of Alphabet® Creative. My name is Shaun Majumder. Thank you so much for joining us on REAL TIME.

Sean: Yes.

Producer: We do see that bounce, though, Sean, your video--

Shaun: I know, I know, I know. I'm literally on a tiny, little plant table.

Sean: It's a milk crate and a wish.

Shaun: Oh, yes.

Don’t expect Krista Gionet to micromanage. That’s not going to happen. The CEO of the Windsor-Essex County Association of REALTORS®, and this year's recipient of CREA’s Association Executive Network (AEN) Award of Excellence, prides herself on putting people in positions to succeed. 

Join host Shaun Majumder in conversation with Krista, where she shares what makes a good leader, the role of associations in their respective communities, and why she’s adamant about being a voice for REALTORS®. 

The 2025 AEN Award of Excellence is sponsored by REAL TIME.

Transcript

Shaun Majumder: You're like the Connor McDavid of REALTORS®.

Krista Gionet: The cell phones were like this, and the servers were the size of my office.

Shaun: When I say "micromanaging," you say?

Krista: No, not going to happen.

Shaun: Leadership, it's an important part of every organization. In your industry, in the real estate industry, association executives are very important in bringing people together, working together, connecting with their members. Today, I am so excited because we have a very, very special leader, Krista Gionet. She is the CEO of the Windsor-Essex County Association of REALTORS®. She's been doing it for 36 years. She's aiming to do it for another 15 years. She is a boss.

Krista is the 2025 recipient of the AEN Award of Excellence award. It's amazing. It's so great. In speaking with her, you're going to meet somebody who is driven, passionate about the industry, passionate about her members, passionate about her community. She is unapologetically proud. I think that's something that is so important in a great leader. Today, Krista and I, we talk about leadership.

We talk about the journey. We talk about the changes in the industry. We talk about how she sees it moving forward. We're really excited. I think you're going to love this conversation. Krista Gionet, she is with us here on REAL TIME. I hope you enjoy. Krista Gionet, welcome to REAL TIME. This is very exciting. I'm so excited to talk to you today because we talk a lot in podcasts all over the world about leadership, about leaders. You, listen, I'm talking to 2025 AEN Award of Excellence winner. I'm humbled.

Krista: So am I. So am I.

Shaun: How do you feel? Tell me about this honour and what it means to you, and how does it fit into all the great accomplishments that you've had over the years?

Krista: I think it's huge. Having been in this industry for 36 years this year, I think I'm being recognized by my peers, who are some amazing people. I was very humbled and very emotional. It was very exciting to receive.

Shaun: Awesome, so you have to forgive me. I'm a little ignorant in the world of associations versus individual REALTORS®. Tell me a little bit about the association that you work with and that you're an executive of, and also educate me a little bit on the general Canadian world of all the different associations. You don't have to tell me about all of them, but associations is something that I find very interesting and how really important they are when it comes to the industry.

Krista: Yes, Windsor-Essex, our association, has 1,700 members. I have eight staff. We provide services to our members, whether it be education, technology training, keynote speakers. We have a board of directors. We have several couple of hundred volunteers on committees who all provide input to set us in the direction we want to go.

Shaun: The members are all REALTORS®?

Krista: Correct.

Shaun: You're there to support everything that they're doing?

Krista: Yes, we try to provide all the services that they need for their day-to-day business.

Shaun: Right, right. Obviously, your peers have seen you as one of the greatest leaders in the history of the world of associations. Tell me about that. What does that mean to you as an executive? Actually, tell me a little bit about your trajectory, how you got to where you are now.

Krista: I actually started in the MLS department. I was there for one year, and then I moved up into the confidential secretary to the EO at that time. I became the assistant for 10 years. I basically had came out of high school, so getting the job was a little bit more difficult. I ended up getting my CAE designation through the Canadian Society of Executives. Then I took the Canadian Real Estate Association, CREA, course and then I got the job.

Shaun: Right out of high school.

Krista: Right out of high school. Well, 11 years later.

Shaun: You're like the Connor McDavid of REALTORS®.

Krista: Something like that.

Shaun: In terms of coming right out of high school, you mentioned that, is that something that is not your normal path?

Krista: No, not a normal path. Normally, people have human resources. They have various college or university courses before they enter into something like that. I had the will for it.

Shaun: When you say "the will," tell me a bit about that. From an early on, part of what you saw as your own personal vision, tell me a little bit about how you saw yourself and what trajectory you wanted to go on.

Krista: I think I found it very intriguing. I actually love what REALTORS® do. On a day-to-day basis, finding people homes is one thing, but from the association perspective, seeing how much they give to their communities, how much they volunteer. That is what I think drives me. It's the passion about how much they do for the communities. I really believe that they're ambassadors of their communities. I don't think that the general public know this as much.

Shaun: No. From your perspective, in terms of those early days when you came out of high school, that says something about your personality. I don't know you. We've never really met before other than our briefing call. It sounds like you're a very determined and very assertive person. Is that a fair–

Krista: That's a fair statement, yes. I am a big advocator in getting things done. I see a vision and I make it happen. Then I guess seeing what I could become versus where I was was something I really wanted.

Shaun: Right, and it sounds like coming up through those ranks, nobody's handing you anything.

Krista: No, I had to work hard. Actually, I have a unionized staff. Back in the '90s, they did go on strike. I thought it was an opportunity for myself to prove myself. I think I worked 90 hours a week during that nine-week period. It was recognized, so that was nice.

Shaun: That's awesome. One of the things, and I was reading through the briefing notes, a lot of your peers. I know this is probably hard for you to talk about, but your peers have identified you as somebody who is such a great leader, somebody who leads by example, somebody who is very assertive and very clear in your path. Have you always been this way? Is that something that you've always had inside of you in everything that you did? Do you look at yourself that way or are you just that way?

Krista: I do look at myself as lead by example. When it comes to my employees, I feel like, you start from the top. You set an example that they see, so they want to become the same way, and give back as much as you do.

Shaun: Yes, how would you just say, if you were describing what makes a good leader?

Krista: Every person is different. I believe that for my own self, I empower my employees to do their jobs. I pick them uniquely for the jobs that I know would work for them. Not everybody works the same way. Everybody works at different paces. Everybody's good at something and exceptional at other things. I basically take a look at our team and see who's got the potential to do what, and then give them the tools to do it and support them.

Shaun: When I say "micromanaging," you say?

Krista: No, not going to happen.

Krista: Not on my watch, not going to happen. I feel there's no need for that.

Shaun: Right. What do you see as the response, because there's probably people that come into the association who've had to deal with that, in other associations, or just even in their jobs generally? What's the reaction when they meet you and they feel empowered?

Krista: Well, I can tell you for a fact, all of my staff have the utmost respect for me as I do for them. I think that they appreciate it. They appreciate that I don't micromanage. I know that they have a job to do. If they need support, I'm here. I have an open-door policy, so they can come to me at any time. I think you have to give people a chance to show you what their skills and assets are, and then let them run with it.

Shaun: As an association executive, tell me about what the metrics are in your mind that say, "Hey, we, Windsor-Essex, we're kicking butt here," or, "We need to pull some other levers here. There's things we can improve on." How do you view an association, and what makes it tick?

Krista: Obviously, every association has a strategic plan. We did a three-year plan, which we'll be doing again at the end of this year. I think that you're led by your plan. For us, we always try and think outside of the box, and depending on what's happening within our community, and what we can do to better our community through our REALTORS®. That's one thing that we do pay attention to.

Shaun: Bettering the community, generally speaking, are there specifics when you talk about bettering the community that you guys have identified in your three-year plan?

Krista: Yes. In our last plan, we wanted to promote the use of a local REALTORS®, obviously, so we had a five-year campaign going on right now on social media and advertising that is promoting the REALTORS®. It's called We Bring You Home. We have that available for our members to use on their own social media sites. Advocacy is another huge one. Three years ago, we really said that we wanted to do a lot with advocacy, which we have been doing for the past three years. I had a meeting just a couple of days ago. We're talking about some big plans with respect to what we're going to look at for 2025 and 2026. It's like some really big thinking-outside-of-the-box ideas, and I hope they pan out.

Shaun: Can you share a little more about what those ideas are?

Krista: One of the items is working with the towns to discuss development charges and possibility of getting a piece of land and using the prefab homes as an example for affordable living, so we're going to try and work with some different organizations to see if we can make that come to fruition.

Shaun: Taking a piece of land, is this with local developers, so the association worked directly with the construction-

Krista: A developer.

Shaun: -developer people to say, "Hey, listen, we want to work together here and promote this new model"? Is that safe to say?

Krista: Right. Yes, so the government, obviously, right now is saying that prefab homes are going to get them built faster, built stronger, and stuff like that. It's the thought of, what does affordability look like? From there, where do we go, right? Obviously, a lot of areas have $800 million, these big homes coming up, but where are these smaller prefab homes that everybody's talking about? Can we make this become a reality to show that there can be affordable homes?

Shaun: What's your feeling about that? Do you think that is a good way forward?

Krista: I think it's great. I think it's great if we can make it happen. We've got a lot of great REALTORS® volunteers. They're dedicated to the mission. Hopefully, we make it happen.

Shaun: What else? Affordability, obviously, is a huge one, and thinking about Windsor-Essex as far as– My sister lives in Kingsville, and so I've been down there quite a bit. There's a lot of land, but what's available? Is there a lot of space to develop these new models?

Krista: There is a lot of land. There is a lot of space as well. Even in Windsor, we lobbied the city council on several issues with respect to vacant properties that the city owns. They are releasing some of those for sale now, which can build more homes in those areas that are just sitting vacant. I look around. We've talked about this at our committees. There are so many schools that are vacant. That could create a lot of homes for people.

Shaun: Right. Did you say schools that are vacant?

Krista: Yes.

Shaun: Wow.

Krista: We had a couple of schools closed over the last couple of years and they're vacant. They're just sitting there vacant. I think we keep pushing for the city and the towns to release these properties so that something can come of them.

Shaun: When it comes to the association and its relationship to municipalities, what kind of ongoing conversation are you having with them, and how important is that relationship?

Krista: I would say, at least 10 times a year, we've had roundtables with the mayor. We've had presentations at the county, presentations at the city. I think it's very important to have that rapport with them. We held a civic luncheon in 2023, where we had 250 people come out. We had all of the mayors and the council come. We did some studies for them and addressed a few points with them, and then we developed a five-point plan, provided it to them. They've actually come up and dealt with some of the issues that we've suggested.

Shaun: That's awesome, so they are listening.

Krista: They are. Yes, they are.

Shaun: They probably want it too, right?

Krista: I can't imagine any location across Canada that wouldn't want to make their area better, more affordable, and to deal with all the issues that are going on, the homeless. There are just so many issues that every area is experiencing. We're just trying to do our part.

Shaun: That sounds amazing because it's something that I personally am not aware of. Even before starting this, working on this podcast, when I think of a REALTORS®, I think they're an individual who their goal is to buy and sell homes, yes, to work with the community, but I don't think the public is really aware at how much of a broader impact REALTORS® do have. Can you speak a little bit about that, and also about the value of the individual REALTORS® and what they offer their community?

Krista: Well, to be honest, all across Canada, all REALTORS® are ambassadors of their own communities. They really are. They contribute so much to the community that, like you said, the general public does not know. At the end of the day, I look at our association. Every year, we give and donate to various charities, programs. We have a room at the hospice. Some of our REALTORS® donated the property for the hospice.

We have our rooms at the hospitals. We have equipment we purchased for the hospitals. This is all done by revenue-generated events that REALTORS® come to participate. Then on top of that, our members, they all do their own thing. Some support WE Care for Kids. Some support Transition to Betterness. The REALTORS® are constantly giving back to the communities. They're ambassadors of their own areas.

Shaun: Yes, it sounds like you think it's a given. I guess, unconsciously, if I'm a REALTORS®, I want nothing but the best for my community. It makes every bit of sense in the world for them to do everything they can to support the community.

Krista: They're doing it from their own pure hearts. This has nothing to do with selling a property. It isn't about that. It's about the people and who they are. Our area has been known for constantly giving, and our REALTORS®, but they don't toot their own horns. They don't let people know what they're doing because they're doing it from their heart. They're not doing it to get the recognition. Yet, in my humble opinion, I believe that they should and do deserve the recognition. The stories should be told.

Shaun: Where do you think REALTORS® specifically can do more to boost their own across the board? Is it a Canadian thing, or is it just genuinely being selfless leads you to this place like, "I don't need credit. I'm doing this for the love of the game"?

Krista: A prime example, we are a border city. They are our allies. I know that there's a big controversy right now, but I don't look at it like that. They are our allies.

Shaun: 100%.

Krista: When Flint had a damaged water, we rallied. We shipped water over to them because that's what you do. If you have a pure heart and a good heart, that's what you do. Our REALTORS® didn't think twice. When stuff happens across Canada, we support. It's what our REALTORS® do. They should be proud to be Canadian because we do have big hearts. They just don't let the world know as much as they are doing.

It's funny. When I started in this industry, there was a lot of full-time REALTORS®. That's what they did. This is back in the '80s, so it makes sense, right? When I started, I thought to myself, "Wow, these people spend money before they even know they're going to make money." That's mind-blowing. They're doing advertising. They're taking people in their cars, gas money. The extent that they go to before they even know they're going to get a paycheck, it's amazing.

Shaun: Yes, that's the heart of a real entrepreneur right there.

Krista: How many people are going to work for free until they know whether they're going to get a paycheque? Not a lot.

Shaun: Not a lot, not a lot. You got to believe in it for sure.

Krista: Then still give back to their community.

Shaun: Yes.

Krista: That's huge.

Shaun: For all the REALTORS® watching this, guys, not only a pat on your own back, but you're hearing it from an executive, and did I mention 2025 AEN Award of Excellence winner? So good, and there's a reason why. Again, when you talk about this, I think you are leading by example. I'm hoping REALTORS® out there are watching this and going, "Yes, you know what? We do need to give ourselves a little more credit. We do need to prop ourselves up, if not, even just within the community." I'm sure there are other awards too, but it's not just about one award. I think it's a culture thing, don't you?

Krista: It's a culture thing, 100%. That's why I say REALTORS® across Canada, because I've met some fabulous people over the years. They're all the same. They all have the same heart. They all have the same mindset. I hope they toot their horn too.

Shaun: Oh, for sure. For sure.

Krista: I'm going to continue to do it on their behalf.

Shaun: You got to do it.

Krista: That's it. As I should.

Shaun: She's going for 2026. She's going to win 2026 AEN Award of Excellence. Oh, I do love it. Now, wait, how many years have you been doing this?

Krista: This year, September, it will be 36 years.

Shaun: 36 years?

Krista: 36.

Shaun: Did you start when you were eight?

Krista: Not quite.

Shaun: What? Amazing. When you started back in the day, what are some of the biggest changes you've noticed in the industry over the years, like in 36 years?

Krista: Oh, good Lord.

Shaun: I know there's been lots, but–

Krista: A ton, yes, a ton. We were DOS-based, put it that way. There was no internet. Think about that, right? The cell phones were like this. The servers were the size of my office, and it's crazy. It has evolved so much.

Shaun: Right.

Krista: Rightfully so. There's so much different legislation now. FinTrack didn't exist. It's just evolved immensely since I started.

Shaun: For the better, for the worse, what do you think?

Krista: For the better. I think for the better. Progress is good. Things have to change. You can't be afraid of change.

Shaun: Technology is creeping in everywhere.

Krista: Everywhere.

Shaun: It always has. Now, do you see the future of the real estate industry with the advent of AI? Do you feel like that's going to change a lot of things within the industry from your association's perspective?

Krista: I don't know if it'll change the industry per se, but it is a tool that members can definitely benefit from. I see it in the future. I see it. It's here now. People are using Copilot. They're using ChatGPT. We're not just talking about writing up descriptions for your listings. There's so much more that they can do with it. I do see that it will be something that will be implemented into our own systems.

Shaun: Are you encouraging your members to participate and learn?

Krista: For sure. Any kind of learning is good. It doesn't matter what technology it is. The more you grow, the better you are.

Shaun: Have you been ongoing with your education as do you– is that something you have to do to keep up with your certifications, or is that just something that you do because that makes you a much better leader?

Krista: I do it because it's in my contract, and I love it. At the end of the day, there are things that are mandatory. There are mandatory trainings that you have to do. There are seminars you have to take. There's legal that you have to have every year to make sure that you're ahead of the curve for what's coming and stuff like that. Yes, continued growth and education is number one.

Shaun: There's things you have to take, but are there things that you're like, "Ooh, I can't wait to learn more about X, Y, and Z? Tell me about that.

Krista: Yes, so technology. The Inman conference, I attend every year. I attend it because I love it.

Shaun: What's that? Tell me about that.

Krista: It's a technology conference. They always introduce new products that are out there or technologies that are out there. Those are things that I enjoy and love.

Shaun: Can you give me some examples? As a total layperson, maybe even some REALTORS® are not aware of.

Krista: Well, some of the software is like Copilot. When you go there, if you've never used it before, you just learn that this is another ChatGPT, if you will, that does even more. It's things like that.

Shaun: What would be a practical use of that?

Krista: I think all of these tools and the AI tools are think smarter, work harder, opposite. I think that's key because it's a very busy industry. Realtors aren't nine-to-five. I think it's beneficial for them to utilize these tools to save time and money on their end.

Shaun: I would imagine now because, currently, it seems to be all about the data. It's all about data. I know REALTORS® are all about data and listings and comps and interest rates and pricing and all of these trends, the real estate market. Not only that, but the dollar, oil, price of oil, all of it is connected.

Krista: All of it.

Shaun: To have that at your fingertips is probably an amazing thing. There's probably people who are not jumping on board either. There's probably traditionalists who are like, "No, no, no, I'm keeping the big phone." What do you say to those people?

Krista: No. Yes, I know. Again, they're all members. We had, back in the day, produced MLS catalogs. We had our own print shop to produce these catalogs. We had our own MLS catalog, then we had our own sales catalog. You would be surprised when we got rid of that process because it was available electronically. We still had hundreds of REALTORS® who chose to have those booklets still. We continued because it's a service they want to pay for, so we let them pay for it. Then it windowed itself out years ago. You have to look at everybody.

Like I said, even with my employees, not everybody learns the same way. Not everybody does things at the same pace. You have to be conscious of every type of REALTORS® that you're working with, right? We have some REALTORS® who come in. They might've taken training four times because they're just not grasping it. That's okay. Then we have REALTORS® that don't even come in because they pick up technology like nothing. You have to always look at each individual person. There's a lot of different styles out there.

Shaun: I think that, bottom line, it's really about relationships in the end, human relationships. Regardless of AI and regardless of all the rest, it's really about relationships. What do you think is your top five or top three characteristics of being in good relationships as a corporate leader, as a leader within the association at large when it comes to doing business in real estate?

Krista: I think trust, respect, personality, fairness. I think those are some of my top.

Shaun: How does one earn trust?

Krista: By proving yourself. We all, I'm sure, have come into people that have not been trustworthy in your lives, but it's a lesson learned, right? I believe in giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. I would never judge a book by its cover at all. Like I said, you have to understand that every person is different. Every REALTORS® is different. Every employee is different. You have to bear that in mind.

Shaun: Yes, for sure. I think integrity seems to be one of those things.

Krista: Huge.

Shaun: Because integrity builds trust and-

Krista: Honesty.

Shaun: -honesty comes with integrity. I have a feeling your sniff test is pretty quick. You're like, "Yes, no, yes, no," right?

Krista: I tend to stand off a bit. Yes, I do have that detector a little bit. It's like, "You got to prove yourself to me before I'm trusting you." Yes, I do have that.

Shaun: Right, you're a boss. You're a boss. I say that as a big old compliment. I think it's important that we recognize that and not apologize for it either.

Krista: Yes.

Shaun: I was surrounded by strong women growing up in Newfoundland. They had no qualms about it. This is, "What you see is what you get, and I'm not going to be fake." How important is that in your line of work when you look at your own compass and dealing with probably a wide spectrum of people?

Krista: I'm the same. I'm from the same cloth. What you get is what you get. I'm not going to be phony. I'm not going to be anything but who I am. I cannot. It's funny when I took over the position, I actually made that statement to the board of directors when I got hired. I am who I am. I'm going to tell it like it is. I'm going to be blunt. If I think we're making a bad decision, I'm going to let you know my thoughts. You guys roll with it where you want to go. I think trust and transparency is the key.

Shaun: How do people react to that?

Krista: Great. It's 36 years. I'm still here.

Shaun: Yes, I think it's awesome. I think it's awesome. That's obviously why you are the 2025 Award of Excellence winner. When you think about the association and when we talk about boards supporting REALTORS®, is there anything you think that boards can be doing differently at all, or do you feel like things are working the right way? What are the things that boards can improve upon?

Krista: I don't know. I'm sure there's lots that we can improve upon. For this survey or for this next strat plan, we're going to be doing a survey out to the members to try and hear what's working for them, what's not working for them. Where can we improve? Are there any programs that we're running that you're not utilizing? Things like that. You have to talk to your stakeholders. You have to know what works and what doesn't for them in order to proceed and move forward, and make change.

Shaun: If I'm a REALTORS® and I have something that I want changed, is that an open-door thing, or is there any kind of power struggle there at all? Again, this is for me, not really understanding or living inside of this. How is that relationship generally? How is that?

Krista: There is a saying that people say, "Well, if only 1% or 10% of the membership asked for this, there's no sense in looking at it." I don't believe in that because that's just that 10% idea. I try and bring anything that the members give to me. I try and address it at our meetings to see if anything comes of it. Sometimes people can have some amazing ideas out there that you're not even thinking about at your board table, right? Why wouldn't you listen to your stakeholders? You want to know what they want. You want to know what works for them. You want to give them the best service and quality that they deserve, right?

Shaun: Right, yes.

Krista: They're working hard out there. It's not an easy industry. They're busting their butts out there. It depends on the year like we're going through right now with the tariffs and recessions. There are so many things that you have to look at, what's happening in the economy, what's happening in the community, and what can we do better for them? It's something that we're constantly looking at. If we had a crystal ball and could figure it all out, we'd all be set for life, but that's not reality. You have to listen. Listening is key.

Shaun: Listening is key. Now, you had mentioned programs. Tell me about programs and how the association has had to adapt over the years.

Krista: I'll give you an example. During COVID, we only had in-person training. That's all we had. We offer to our members, and they all came in for new member orientations, for technology, and so forth. When COVID hit, we had to adapt and make it all electronic so that the members could still get orientated, get trained. Now, we offer both because some people like to do it electronically, and some people want to be in person. They want their hands-on. We had to adapt with that. There's various programs that we do. We have a scholarship program for our bursary scholarship for our members, kids, and stuff like that. That's something we used to budget for. Now, we raise the money for it, so the members aren't paying for it. Do you know what I mean?

Shaun: Yes.

Krista: It didn't make sense to me for the members to be paying for their– "Okay, give us your dues. This part goes to this."

Shaun: On top of that.

Krista: Yes, so we try and look at things that we can make self-funded. We have a gala that we do every year, which is where we raise a lot of our funds that go to the community. That's supported by our brokerages and that's supported by our members. There's usually 1,000 people that come out to it. It's phenomenal. Again, that's all programs that help the community.

Shaun: Right. You had mentioned too a while back. Not in today's conversation. I heard you say something about when you guys were creating this opportunity for retirees in your area.

Krista: Yes.

Shaun: Speak about that a little bit.

Krista: Yes, so I think it's about 10 years now, maybe eight. We were in a recession. We reached out to the Chamber of Commerce. We reached out to the homebuilders. Our group decided that we need to do something. We were in a recession. We felt we had to do something. We formed a not-for-profit organization. It was called We Are Key. It basically promoted the 100-mile peninsula of water we have in Windsor and Essex County. We had a board of directors. We had some non-REALTORS® on this board.

We basically went and marketed the GTA area, Vancouver, the West Coast. It basically was to bring retirees here. When we started, we had some naysayers that were like, "Why do we want people to come here and just come here to not have any money and pass away," kind of thing. It's a reality. It was a reality. Those were conversations and fill up our hospitals. That is not what transpired. We actually did multiple trade shows in Toronto. We ended up having some ambassadors that moved from Etobicoke or Don Valley.

One in particular, she moved to Boblo Island. She said she ended up being an ambassador for us. She would speak and say, "I was able to retire 10 years earlier. I don't have the stress anymore, the traffic." It was a very, very, very well-laid-out plan. We had that board for 10 years, and then it just started happening naturally. We disbanded the not-for-profit organization. That was a huge undertaking. Our members contributed hundreds of thousands to that.

Shaun: It's amazing. That checks so many boxes when it comes to community building. There is the promotion of your area, obviously, and also challenging members and the entire association to be like, "Let's think way outside the box. Let's think differently about how we do business in this whole situation." Clearly, there's a reason why you are where you are. It's infectious, your passion and your drive, and how you see it. How do you keep motivated? How does one keep motivated in this industry? Specifically, how do you keep motivated?

Krista: I absolutely love what I do. I absolutely love our community. I love serving our REALTORS®. I love providing excellent service to them. That's what I strive for. That's what my team strives for. I don't think there's any more than that. I just have a passion for it. I love what I do.

Shaun: Yes, it feeds you.

Krista: It does. I want to be here another 15 years, and people think I'm crazy.

Shaun: Right.

Krista: Imagine that, being here for 50 years.

Shaun: I can. I can imagine it. You're 26 years old. I get it, obviously.

Shaun: You got a lot of life left in you.

Krista: I got a lot. God willing, I do.

Shaun: That's amazing. One of the things that I think is important in all of this as well, we talked about relationships. We talked about leadership in general. You also touched on new government. There's always new governments. You've been at it long enough now where there's new administrations coming in, new policies coming in. How important is the relationship between government and, obviously, the association? What kind of things do you do to improve that relationship, regardless of political strife? It's not even about that. It's about just advocacy in general.

Krista: Obviously, you have to have that rapport with your own local MPPs, MPs, as well as federally and provincially lobbying. It's so important. It's important to the consumer. A lot of the REALTORS® that volunteer, there's usually 500 people, REALTORS®, and EOs, CEOs at our PAC Days. They're there lobbying on behalf of the consumer. Make no mistake about it. The government sometimes comes up with ideas, but doesn't really think them through.

Then we have to lobby to say, "This is not going to work and this is why," or, "We could do this better." When you lobby with the government, you've got to think of these volunteers, volunteer REALTORS®, hundreds of them. You're not lobbying for one year. Sometimes it takes seven to 10 years for something to get past that you've been working on. That's a huge contribution on behalf of the public that REALTORS® do. They don't see that.

Shaun: No, not aware, not as aware as they probably should be, but that's what these conversations are about, right?

Krista: Yes. Yes, absolutely.

Shaun: Getting it out there. Well, listen, Krista, I'm so impressed and so thankful to have met you and talked to you, not just in the industry, but as a person. I think it's amazing. It's inspiring. When you say you want to be at this for another 15 years, you'll make it to 50 years in the industry, what are you most excited about, about the future of the industry?

Krista: I'm excited and nervous. It's a twofold, right?

Shaun: Sure.

Krista: Nobody knows what's ever going to get thrown at you. Like I said, government makes changes all the time. I just hope that whatever comes the next decade, I hope that it's beneficial to our REALTORS® family. I hope it's beneficial to the community. If it's not, then we work hard to make sure it does.

Shaun: Yes, and is there something you're excited about?

Krista: I'm excited to see where the industry goes in general. Like I said, it's always changing. Change is not always bad. Change can be great.

Shaun: Sure.

Krista: It's just all in how we embrace it and how we put it out to our members.

Shaun: I'm hearing versatile.

Krista: Versatile.

Shaun: I'm hearing you being versatile. It's so funny. I was doing the New Year's Eve special, the Y2K year. Remember that?

Krista: Yes.

Shaun: Do you remember that?

Krista: Yes.

Shaun: The turn of the century was happening first in North America in St. John's, Newfoundland, where I was. I was hosting from the waterfront in St. John's, Newfoundland. I was the first person. It was going to go global to me. We were getting ready to count it down. People were like, "10, 9, 8, 7," and then there was a stop. It was like, "What? What happened?"

Oh, they were off by two minutes. I was like, "Wait a minute. Isn't this the most important countdown of the year?" Then my producer said, and this is where I'm going with this, but he said, "Shaun, buddy, excellence through flexibility is what I say." I'm like, "There it is. There it is right there." That sounds a lot like what you're talking about. Excellence through flexibility, being versatile.

Krista: That's an awesome comment.

Shaun: It's great. I love that. Krista, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation.

Krista: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Shaun: Congratulations.

Krista: Thank you.

Shaun: Krista Gionet, a boss, a boss, and I love that. A true leader. That conversation was so enlightening for me. I took a lot from that. One of the insights for me was how important that relationship between the associations and the boards are with the REALTORS® on the ground. I think another takeaway is, REALTORS®, you got to start big-upping yourselves, not just for your sales and for the balance sheet. I'm talking for all that you do as community leaders. I think that's such an amazing thing that maybe you don't get enough credit for.

That's why we're here. We're having these conversations with great leaders like Krista Gionet. She is so deserving of this year's AEN Award of Excellence. This year's award is sponsored by REAL TIME, which I love. Guys, if you enjoyed today's conversation, I know you did, please get out there. Share it. Spread it. You can find it on all your favorite podcast platforms. REAL TIME is brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association, CREA, and production brought to you by Alphabet® Creative. Thanks for joining me today on REAL TIME. My name is Shaun Majumder, and we'll see you next time on REAL TIME.

Shaun: That would–

Daughter: It’s not out there.

Shaun: What's that?

Daughter: The dolls are not out there.

Shaun: No, they're right there. They're right here on the table, so take those back to Mama.

Daughter: No, I'm not going anywhere.

Krista: She told you.

Shaun: She's the boss baby. I don't mind the boss baby.

Home inspections might be optional, but the peace of mind they can bring by saving both buyers and sellers from unexpected expenses and headaches down the line makes them worth doing. As REALTORS®, you know there are times when inspections might slow the process or seem less-than-necessary at first glance, so, it’s important to know what red flags to look for and be able to advise your clients about bringing in an inspector. 

On the latest episode of the REAL TIME podcast, certified home inspector Victoria Ballantine joins host Shaun Majumder to reinforce the value of a home inspection not only when you’re buying or selling, but even before you list a home. Why? Well, you’ll have to listen to find out. 

Learn more about Victoria Ballantine and her home inspection process at AllegiantInspections.ca.

Transcript

Shaun Majumder: When I say unfinished basements, how do you react?

Victoria Ballantine: I find some of the worst things on new builds. Water is the enemy.

Shaun: Water is the enemy.

Shaun: Home inspections are a crucial part of the buying and selling process. They can reveal hidden issues with the home. They could save money. They ensure safety, which gives buyers and sellers that extra peace of mind. REALTORS®, it's important to really understand what these inspections cover so that they can guide their clients through this complicated process.

Today, we're being joined by the one and only Victoria Ballantine. When I say one and only, I mean it because she is the one and only female home inspector in all of BC's Lower Mainland. She’s got 25 years of construction experience. Today, she's going to talk to us about the process, the ins and outs of home inspections, some of her wild discoveries, and how to work well with an inspector through this crazy process. I think you're going to really like it. It's so much fun. Let's get to it. This is great. Victoria, welcome to REAL TIME. How are you doing?

Victoria: Excellent. Thank you for having me.

Shaun: This is so cool. Now, listen, being the only female home inspector in all of Lower Mainland BC, it sounds like you should have a trophy, a plaque. You should have a statue. Is this kind of a big deal? Are there no other female home inspectors?

Victoria: If you want to take a ferry for quite a fair ride over to Vancouver Island, there are some excellent female home inspectors there. If you want to go way far away into wine country, there's also some awesome women up there. Everywhere else down here in this corner of the planet, I am the only one. I've been saying that I deserve statues, but so far, no one–

Shaun: I think so.

Victoria: At least I get a Victoria Day long weekend.

Shaun: Exactly. Dedicated just to you.

Victoria: Just me.

Shaun: I love that. No, I think that's amazing, because when you think about home inspectors, I've seen a lot of them, and none of them are like you. I always wonder, what does it take to become a home inspector? You've got 25 years of experience in the construction industry, which is an amazing accomplishment there. To go from just working in construction to becoming a home inspector, what does that take in Canada?

Victoria: It's different depending where you live. BC and Alberta are the only two provinces where a license is required to call yourself a home inspector. We are licensed under Consumer Protection BC. We have to uphold certain standards, including the amounts of insurance for errors and omissions that we carry. We have standards that we have to adhere to for report writing.

Basically, it comes down to about a year and a half of training that we have to take, which includes 50 to 100 hours of field training and then courses in absolutely every part of a home that you could imagine, which I thought I would know more about having owned and operated a construction company for residential homes for years. Then you realize that you sub a lot of stuff out. I had to learn everything about electrical, plumbing, roofing, foundations, exterior cladding. You name it. I had to learn it.

Shaun: Right. Before, when you were running your company, tell me about that transition. What were your priorities when you were running this company? Then how has that shifted to becoming an actual inspector?

Victoria: We were, I don't want to say, perfectionists, but those were the standards that we aimed for.

Shaun: That's good.

Victoria: Yes, it's impossible to achieve, but you always want to do your best. I always like to explain to people that there's building code and then there's best practices. Building code is the bare minimum you're allowed to get away with, and best practices are best practices. There's better ways of doing things that will make your value better. It'll last longer. It'll look nicer.

Shaun: That's going above and beyond.

Victoria: Yes, and that's what we did. Now that I'm a home inspector, that's also what I adhere to: going above and beyond.

Shaun: It sounds like you come with that built-in set of values, that certain level of expertise that you put upon yourself. Are all inspectors like that, or do you think that that is something that you bring uniquely to what you do now?

Victoria: I highly doubt that every inspector is like that, and I'm sure I'm not the only person that is like that. It's a personality thing. I am a firm believer in "Don't bother. No half-assing. If you're going to go in, you do your best and try your hardest at everything.” That's how I run my business.

Shaun: Right. That's amazing. When I heard all of the things that you had to learn, I'm sure you were great at administrative, and you understood broadly about construction and home-building, and all the permitting and all the rest. Of all those skills now that you had to learn and now that you're an inspector, what were your favorite, what were your most challenging to digest and understand, and where do you like to put yourself? Are you an expert in any one of those things?

Victoria: I am not an expert in any one of those things. I like to explain that I am like a GP, your doctor. You're going to go to your doctor for broad-stroke things. They're going to say, "Yes, that's something wrong with you, but you need a specialist." That's what I will do, too. I will come in and say, "Oh, boy, this electrical panel is a mess. This shouldn't be this way. This shouldn't be that way. You absolutely need to speak to an electrician about how to move forward with this."

Shaun: As a general practitioner, are there some of the skills that you really enjoy just as a person, as Victoria, like digging into and wanting to learn more about? I know generally you have to know everything, but where are your favorites?

Victoria: This is going to sound odd, but I would say people management skills are my favorite. I really love working with my clients. I love learning. I don't appreciate school as much. The value of learning, I absolutely love, learning new and interesting things. I just try and keep on top of what's happening, like things that maybe other inspectors don't know.

It's not as much a fact as me keeping in contact with insurance brokers and finding out what's coming down the pipe for insurance companies, being able to tell my client things like that. "They might not cover you in the near future for this. This is what I've heard. It shouldn't affect what you're doing right this second, but just know it might affect you in the future."

Shaun: Victoria, when you're talking about people management, human beings, they're very hard to manage. Who are you talking about? Are you talking about clients? Are you talking about builders? Tell me more about that, like which people?

Victoria: In my past, I have been the manager for my son's hockey team for many years. Quite frankly, managing the parents was much harder than managing the team itself.

Shaun: Hockey parents, yes, they can be a bit much.

Victoria: Yes, especially when it's a house. I actually love helping my clients, making them feel really comfortable, making them know that somebody's in their corner, no matter when. I will answer questions before I do the inspection. I will answer questions during the inspection. I will answer questions a year after. Years after the inspections, I'm there.

Shaun: Even after?

Victoria: Oh, yes, absolutely.

Shaun: How so?

Victoria: If somebody wants to call me up 10 years from now and say, "Listen, that house that you inspected, I don't know if you remember, had this, and now this is happening," I'm happy to walk them through any questions that they might need answered to figure out what to do about it. If it's a completely different house, I'm still happy to answer questions.

If they've got a water stain on your ceiling, I can help them figure out, "Could it be coming from a bathroom upstairs? Could it be coming from the roof?" by just asking the right questions so that they are able to figure out who they need to call. Do they need to call a plumber? Do they need to call a roofer? I always tell people that I am happy to answer questions from my couch till the cows come home. The second I have to leave to go to site, that's when I charge you.

Shaun: Right. You mentioned about managing your son's hockey team. You have a son. You're a mama bear. It sounds very much like the instincts of a mama bear with everything you do, because you're taking care of everybody that you come in contact with.

Victoria: It is. It really is. I also love inspiring people. I just want to make people feel really good about what they're doing.

Shaun: I love that. Oh my gosh, that warms my heart. At REAL TIME, we want to warm people's heart on REAL TIME as well. That's so great to know that that is a home inspector, because I've had home inspectors and examples of things where I walked away. Look, it's a very tense situation sometimes. You have an inspector. Either they're walking through a house that you're about to buy. You're like, "Oh, what are they going to find?"

I just sold my house in LA, and we didn't do any kind of pre-inspection before we listed, which, looking back now, is probably a mistake. They were walking through, and they found stuff that I could not have even imagined, and it's quite something. The fact that what you bring is this idea of caring and compassion to the whole process, that sounds like an amazing thing. Good on you.

Victoria: Thank you.

Shaun: In terms of the inspector's relationship with REALTORS®, what do inspectors bring to REALTORS®? What value do inspectors bring to REALTORS® and buyers, and sellers? Specifically, let's start with REALTORS®.

Victoria: Well, we are definitely a buffer, so they can actually not be the person that's on the hook if something goes terribly wrong. Number two, we are the people there that have the answers to all of these questions about the home that a REALTOR® might not have or know, but needs to know for their client's best interest. When you mentioned earlier about the pre-listing inspection, I do those for REALTORS® as well, who pay me themselves to come and look at a home before they put it on the market so that they are fully educated on what is going on with the house so that when other inspectors show up on behalf of clients who might be purchasing the house, they're not going to find any surprises and have to renegotiate price and stuff like that.

If they already know that the house needs a new roof or there's a crack in the foundation, they can price it accordingly. They can tell potential buyers, "Listen, this is the lay of the land. I'm aware. The price is according. Take it or leave it."

Shaun: Would you say it's in a REALTOR®'s best interest to go that extra mile, pay for that pre-inspection, or is that usually on the buyer or seller?

Victoria: Honestly, it really depends on the state of the market. When it is crazy here in Vancouver and people are throwing multiple, like 13 offers at a home and putting more money than it's being asked for, there's really no point in doing an inspection beforehand because it's not going to affect anything at all. When the market is normal and stabilized, then it's very beneficial. I actually worked for a REALTOR® who I found a leak, and I discovered it was going through all three levels of the home.

Shaun: Ooh, water.

Victoria: They had made arrangements to have it fixed, but they were already aware that the ceiling in the bottom bathroom was completely waterlogged, and you can see it's stained. They made that known to the potential buyers. The potential buyers had a home inspector come in, who ended up punching a hole through the entire roof or ceiling.

Shaun: Did it just gush out? Was there water up there standing?

Victoria: No, because it had already been stopped-

Shaun: Oh, I see.

Victoria: -but they hadn't fixed the drywall yet.

Shaun: Right.

Victoria: That inspector ended up being on the hook because it was already a latent defect that had been established and mentioned, and he didn't take undue care in dealing with it. My REALTOR® was off the hook, having to redrywall.

Shaun: Oh, that's good. When you talk about water, talk about drywall, when you're looking at a house, you're walking through, take me through a checklist of some of the things that you look for. Are they in any particular order, or how do you operate that way? What are the items you're looking for?

Victoria: Well, most inspectors that I know have a system. I always start on the outside of the house. I always go one way around the house and then go the other way around the house, because sometimes you miss things that are at different angles.

Shaun: Yes. What are you looking for? What are you looking for? What's the thing you're looking for on the outside of the house?

Victoria: Well, in here, the Wet Coast, I am looking for water damage, pretty much exclusively, or potential things that could allow water ingress to happen. There are so many of them, and most of them are quite easy to fix for a few bucks and prevent a huge catastrophe of expenses. I love to point all of these little things out that you're going to find on pretty much any home, whether it's new or a hundred years old.

Then, of course, I'm looking for existing damage, any water stains, especially on stucco. We had the whole leaky condo crisis out here in the '80s because all the developers started building in the California style of stucco and no overhangs. That was a disaster because there was different codes back then. We didn't have to have a rainscreen. Now we are required to have water be able to escape if it does get back behind the exterior cladding of a house. That makes a huge difference. I'm looking at all different eras of housing and looking for problems like that, up to the roof. I look at that.

Shaun: Are you climbing up on the roof, or are you droning it nowadays?

Victoria: My insurance doesn't cover drones, actually, ironically enough, but no, I go on the roof. There's exceptions. If it's a really steep pitch, I'm not going to go on it. If it's three stories in the air, I'm also not going to go on it. I will do whatever I can to get as close to it as possible. I have binoculars. I will look down on roofs from upper stories. There's lots of ways of going around it. For me, the very last place I go is generally the attic, and that is the best place, in my opinion, to see what's going on with the roof because you can see any water that's coming in there.

Shaun: It's all about water. We need it, but we don't love it in houses.

Victoria: No. No. Water is the enemy.

Shaun: Water is the enemy. That's awesome. You're looking at the roof. You're looking at outside, water damage, potential Band-Aids. How do you control your emotions when you're walking around the house, and you look down and you see somebody who, obviously, they were like, "Dude, we got to finish this build. Let's just patch it up with X, Y, and Z and get out of here." How many times do you see that?

Victoria: I see it a lot, actually, especially on new builds. There's a product called Dimple Mat, and it goes on the exterior of foundations. It prevents water pressure from building up against the concrete foundation. Concrete's porous. It absorbs water, albeit more slowly than other products. This is one of the ways of preventing that from happening. However, it is supposed to be buried. You're not allowed to see it because the building product manufacturers, none of them that I know of, allow for it to be exposed to UV for longer than six months.

Some of them are shorter. That includes the time it's sitting on site waiting to be installed. It just degrades really, really quickly, and it cracks. Then you have something that's going to hold water against your foundation when it funnels down into there. I see that all the time. I've actually been on site arguing with a builder about it, who's trying to tell my clients that, "No, no, the city of Vancouver told me I had to have this exposed." I'm like, "Sorry, brother, but I just built a house several years ago, like three blocks from here, and I can tell you they did not require me to do that."

Shaun: Right. Wow, that must be challenging, especially when you're in front of the client. Do you generally pull the builder aside? You have to, I guess, right?

Victoria: I don't. I don't pull them aside. I'm one of those people that will state my point and not explicitly argue the fact after that. You can take it or leave it. "This is what I have to say on it." Then I will speak to my clients later when they're not around. In that case, I actually went and researched these building products, that specific one, because you can see the name on it, and sent them like, "Here's what they have to say about this."

Shaun: Well, that's great.

Victoria: Which is above and beyond what I need to do as a home inspector, but they need to know this.

Shaun: You're a mama bird. You're a mama bird. You got to do this. I love it. Then take me inside. What are you doing inside? Talk to me through the inside of the house.

Victoria: I would also like to state on the outside that, especially here, where we have a lot of slopes and hills, the way that the landscaping directs water towards or away the house is very, very important. I'm always commenting on that also.

Shaun: Nice.

Victoria: Inside the house, I tend to walk in the front door and go counterclockwise to all of the rooms on that level, one at a time. I check all the electrical. I should say I don't do any invasive testing, so I'm not opening up any walls. I do open up panels if they're not painted shut. Electrical panels, I do open if they're painted shut. I have an X-ACTO knife for that. Yes, I check all exposed plumbing.

Technically, I tell people that I don't do appliances because I don't want to be on the hook for a Wolf range that's thousands and thousands of dollars, and I'm only charging a few hundred to do an inspection. I do check sort of for appliances. I make sure that all the water appliances are not leaking. I make sure that everything turns on and off and functions properly. I do run the dishwasher, and I run the washing machine and dryer just to make sure that's all good. I run every faucet that you could possibly find in a home. I check all of the outlets. I have a little special tool that I can stick inside each receptacle and make sure it's wired correctly.

Shaun: That's cool. Yes, no, it sounds pretty extensive and par for the course. In terms of when you're going through with a client, some of this stuff can be very complicated and confusing. "Yes, we need a TR73 over here. You're missing some sump pumps that need some extra XR7s." You know what I mean? I'm like, "Oh, that doesn't sound good. Is that something I should worry about?" How technical are you with these conversations? Tell me how you communicate with your clients about that.

Victoria: Industry jargon is an absolute no-no. You never want to come across as talking down to people. There's no point in telling them something they don't understand. I really try and give my clients information in a way that is easy to understand and not condescending. There's no mansplaining from me. I want my clients to feel really comfortable and ask questions. So many clients feel like they're not going to ask a question because they feel like it's a stupid question, and they don't want to feel stupid. Nobody does. There is no stupid questions. I really want my clients to feel that. There's no stupid questions except the questions you don't ask. That's what I'm here for. I'm here to answer questions.

Shaun: That's great.

Victoria: That's actually a running theme on my Google Reviews is how great I was at explaining things. The example that I often use is GFCIs. GFCIs are Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters. They are the little receptacles that you find very often in your bathroom that have the button that you can push to test and reset. When I say, "Your kitchen needs GFCIs," people will look at me like, "What?"

I always ask, "Okay, so your kitchen here needs a GFCI. Do you know what a GFCI is?" 99% of the time, they're like, "No," and I'll explain, "Okay, so do you have this in your bathroom of your house where you currently live?" They all say, "Yes." I say, "Okay, that's a ground fault circuit interrupter. What it does is if it is required anywhere close to within about six feet of a water source, what it does is if you happen to be in contact with anything wet while you're holding an appliance and using it, if there's a short in the appliance and you don't have this protection in place, you will become electrocuted, and you could possibly die.

If you do have these protections in there, it will sense that surge and instantly shut down. You will have a new hairdo and you will hurt for a moment, but you will be completely fine otherwise." Putting that element of comedy in there makes people feel more comfortable, and yet at the same time, now they 100% understand what I'm saying.

Shaun: Right. That's how you explain it to them. You use humor. It breaks down barriers. I know this from making a living in doing this. It does work. I think that's really, really great, especially in those, it's high-stress situations. "What's wrong with my house?" or "What's wrong with this house I'm about to buy?" In terms of you working with REALTORS®, this is the portion of the podcast that I like to call misconceptions about inspections. What are some big misconceptions about inspections that either REALTORS® have or even the buyers and sellers?

Victoria: I don't think REALTORS®– I'm not sure about the rest of Canada, where it might be very different, the scope of what you get from each inspector. Here, I think they're very educated. They know exactly what to expect. There's no surprises there.

Shaun: Got you.

Victoria: Clients very often don't have any idea what to expect. I have a very, very thorough contract that I give to them that explains, in detail, every exact thing that I do or don't do. People don't generally read it.

Shaun: Yes, I was going to say it's a great thing to read. "Yes, I'm going to spend some time with this contract while my two kids are burning toast and flipping and painting the wall that shouldn't be painted. Let me just take some time to read some legal jargon." How do you manage those expectations?

Victoria: A lot of the time, when people are shopping for inspectors, that's when they ask questions about what I do or don't do. I have to make it very clear that I do not do invasive testing. I am not going to be cutting a hole in your wall to see if there's mold behind it. I don't do mold testing. I don't do asbestos testing. I do everything else around it. I will point out things that could possibly contain asbestos or are evidence of possible mold problems, or could cause possible mold problems.

I will tell you what to do about that. I will tell you how to prevent it from happening in the future. I will send you to a specialist because you have to be licensed now to do mold testing and to do asbestos testing.

Shaun: Right. It sounds like your approach of saying straight up front, "I'm a general practitioner," do you use that as the introduction to things? Because I think that would be very helpful for me anyways. If I heard that right out of the gates, then I know my expectation of what this whole process is going to be like.

Victoria: Yes, that's very true. I really have to explain to people like, "I know a lot about everything; I don't know everything about anything."

Shaun: Right. Yes, I think that's fair. It is nice to have that inspector come in for that first pass, generally speaking. Talk to me about "When do inspections take place in relation to offers closing?" When do inspections take place? Is there some limited time frame that they have to take place in?

Victoria: It really depends. I do inspections for people before they put offers in, just so they can go in subject-free. I do inspections for people after they put offers in. I do inspections for people before they list a house. I do inspections for people that have lived in a house for years and would just like to know what's going on with their house. I do inspections for people that are doing occupancy walkthroughs for their new builds or condos. Yes, I do the same inspection all the time. It's just called something else whenever I do it. It's the time that changes the name, not the actual inspection itself.

Shaun: Yes. You have your "This is what we do. This is the inspection. When and for what purpose is the difference between the two?

Victoria: Exactly?

Shaun: Okay, so then tell me about– you mentioned new construction. I would imagine that you don't really need too much of an inspection for new construction. Is that a misconception of inspections?

Victoria: Thank you for asking, Shaun. That is a huge misconception.

Shaun: Really?

Victoria: Huge, yes. I find some of the worst things on new builds. Very often, it could be a less-than-reputable builder, but very often, it just comes down to the fact that there's huge trade shortages here right now. There's not enough people to do the work. Very often, someone that doesn't know what they're doing entirely and isn't the best at their job comes in and does things. I find less-than-optimal work frequently.

Shaun: I see. Do you think that's because of strictly that, "Oh, these guys are unskilled or girls," or is it also a thing of just shifting standards and changing technologies, et cetera?

Victoria: I think it's a little bit of everything, but I did read an article a while back that was talking about how the trades industry is really suffering all across the gamut of different trades because you've had these older gentlemen, and I will say gentlemen because they were all older gentlemen, who were passing their knowledge down to the people underneath them as they were training them.

The whole baby boomer generation is retiring and getting out of business. That has collapsed the number of people with this knowledge down to a lower level of fewer people that know this knowledge. Fewer people are able to send this knowledge off to fewer people. It's just going downwards.

Shaun: Sure. In terms of the standards that people are using now, as builders go, have you felt–

Victoria: The standards have gone up because of code.

Shaun: The standards have gone up. Right.

Victoria: Yes, but that doesn't mean that the work doing them has gone up.

Shaun: I see.

Victoria: Everybody's overworked, too, including municipal inspectors.

Shaun: Right. You are one of how many, would you say, in the Lower Mainland, speaking of overworked, et cetera?

Victoria: How many inspectors there are?

Shaun: Yes, I was curious about in your immediate, in your district, in your region, how many inspectors are there?

Victoria: There's hundreds. I honestly don't know, but I do know that I just heard the other day there was 400 and something in the province. I would have to guess that the majority of them are in the Lower Mainland.

Shaun: Yes. Being in a place like Urban Vancouver and area, I would imagine there's a higher density, but you, as a person, do you think that that is the best place to be? Are there more opportunities as an inspector in suburban and even rural areas? This is just like a side question that I'm curious about.

Victoria: I would say that there's no chance I'm moving anywhere else. I love it here. I feel like I could go somewhere else in Canada and probably do really well. In rural areas, there's fewer. There's also a whole different set of things to deal with that I am not prepared to deal with. For example, septic fields. I don't touch septic fields.

Shaun: Why not?

Victoria: I have no need to, really.

Shaun: It's the best.

Victoria: I don't come across them very often. Once you go out far enough into farmland, you will find them on a regular basis. If you go over to Vancouver Island, you will find them on a regular basis. It's just not something that I need to know. I focus on things I do need to know.

Shaun: Right. Talk to me a bit about warranties, because I know that's something with CMHC, two, five, and 10-year warranties. What do and how do inspectors help identify those things that need to stay in place for the warranty to–

Victoria: The two, five, 10 warranty is two years on materials, five years on building envelope, and 10 years on structure. Your builder is required to fix things. When I come in, initially, I will present my report to my clients, and they will have a list of things on a new build that they can send off to their developer and a checklist for him. "Here, you need to address these things."

It's also a really great idea to have an inspection done before the anniversary dates come, so before the two-year mark, before the five-year mark, and before the 10-year mark, so that if there is anything that you want to make a claim, you have the opportunity to do that. You don't want to find out something the day after the warranty expires, and you're completely unable to do anything about it. Inspections aren't expensive. It's worth every penny to have somebody come in and do this.

Shaun: For example, what would be something that maybe you'd find in a new construction that can void the warranty?

Victoria: Well, nothing's going to void the warranty, but if it's a building envelope thing, that encompasses the roof, it encompasses the windows, the doors, the exterior, anything going into the house. Being as water is the enemy, you want to find out if there's any leakage or anything that has been installed incorrectly that is causing leakage or anything of that manner. Having somebody come in and check that for you is a no-brainer, in my mind.

Shaun: A rusty electric panel?

Victoria: Yes, it was a new build that I found an electrical issue with the rusty panel. It was in a brand-new, beautiful condo that was a high-rise. It was right on one of the mid-floors, and there was no power to one of the bedrooms. When I opened up the electrical panel, I found out why. Because it had switched off, out of safety reasons, because there was a leak coming from somewhere into the electrical panel.

It was all rusty. It's amazing that only that one circuit breaker had actually tripped. The problem with this is that my clients had already purchased this. It was pre-bought before it was built. They just wanted me to come in and do an inspection. I did and found this. Because the water's in there, damaging the electrical panel, they cannot live there until it's fixed.

You cannot fix it until you figure out the source of the leak. It could be plumbing from the floor above. It could be from any floor above. It could be from the roof coming down, just from gravity. It's a big deal because having to figure that out could take a while.

Shaun: Yes, and is that on the developer to find these answers?

Victoria: Yes, it would be on the developer. Unfortunately for my clients, it's on the developer, but they're just required to fix it. There's no time frame.

Shaun: I see. That can be really frustrating for a buyer.

Victoria: Yes.

Shaun: Oh, wow, man, that's something there. I don't know how I'd handle that. The key is that you found it. That's really, really great.

Victoria: I did. I wouldn't want them to have been living there and all of a sudden have this happen to them. It's very dangerous.

Shaun: I'm about to sell my house, and I know I've got some issues, but are DIY fixes probably going to cut it?

Victoria: It depends what it is. If you want to patch a hole in your own drywall, be my guest. It might not look pretty, but it's not going to be a safety concern.

Shaun: Right.

Victoria: If it's electrical or plumbing, chances are that you are not going to be covered under insurance if anything happens.

Shaun: Right.

Victoria: That's actually one of the things that I look for a lot because there's a lot of people, not so many anymore, but there have been in the past, people that consider themselves handy, and they will do electrical fixes or all kinds of things that are safety concerns that they might not even be aware of or tenants, tenants especially. If you're a landlord and you have tenants, tenants seem to very often not want their rent raised for some crazy reason.

They will, very often, fix things themselves so that they're not bothering the landlord. The landlord might not even be aware that this person has done some electrical thing that's going to burn down the house and void insurance. It's good to have me come in for that kind of thing, too.

Shaun: Humans are quirky birds.

Victoria: We are.

Shaun: Victoria, tell me also, what are some other things that are like hidden things that you tend to look for?

Victoria: Well, I wouldn't say hidden things, but there's a bunch of things that I try to educate my clients on and REALTORS® on that they can look for before they pay me to come in. These are things like, this is the most common thing that I'm finding now, full electrical panels. It's not a safety concern, but very pre-'90s buildings were built before our obsession with electronics.

Anything built before then likely isn't going to be able to carry the load. How many of us have lived in pre-'90s homes and had multiple power bars plugged into electrical outlets? Newer ones will have far more electrical outlets on far more breakers in a panel.

Shaun: Sorry. When you say a full electrical panel, tell me about that. What do you mean by a full electrical panel?

Victoria: Full electrical panel means that there is no more empty slots for breakers in the panel. It is chock-a-block full. You cannot add anything more, which means that if you want to put in an EV charger, which is very, very common here in BC, if you want to put in a suite or put in the GFCIs that I spoke about, or AFCIs, which are arc fault interrupters, they're also safety things, you are not going to be able to do that.

Shaun: Do they need to bring a whole added service, like going from a 200 amp or bringing in a 200 amp, or bringing in a–

Victoria: What I would do in this case is I would pull my general practitioner card and say, "You need an electrician to look at that and see what their advice is." Because you might be able to just put in a bigger panel that has more space in it, but you might also need to upgrade to a larger amp, a 200 amp. It depends on what the load is. That's something an electrician can come in and test for.

That's something that you can look at and see yourself without having to open up the actual panel cover yourself. If you're shopping for a home and you're doing a walkthrough, ask where the electrical panel is. Go look at it.

Shaun: Have a look at it.

Victoria: See if it's full.

Shaun: Now, is that something that you would share with your REALTORS®? Is that something REALTORS® should also inform their clients about?

Victoria: Definitely.

Shaun: Yes. It sounds like, too, that would be more in older homes that you might come across this. Tell me about some other things that you may come across or that a buyer or seller should look into before even bringing in an inspector. Especially on the older home side, what things are you seeing now? Because technologies are changing, codes are changing, but there have been houses that have been around for hundreds of years.

Victoria: Yes. If any client has worked with me before, they will get these things learned, and they will know to look for them before they even have to call me for inspection. One of them is, if there's a suite in it, check with the municipality and make sure it's a legal suite. Make sure that any work that has been done to an older home, upgrades have been permitted and closed. Anyone can pull a permit. You need an inspector to sign off on it in order for it to be a closed permit.

That's something you can do for free. Also, depending on when it was, checking for polybutylene piping. That is the very first generation of plastic piping that was put into homes. It was done because the price of copper went through the roof in the '70s. They invented plastic piping, which was a godsend because not only was it cheaper to manufacture, it was also cheaper to install because you didn't have to do and solder an elbow at every single place you wanted to bend the pipe.

You could just bend the pipe to a certain extent, so it's so much faster to install. Then they discovered that it had major problems with corroding from the inside out and leaking. It became one of the largest class action lawsuits in the history of the United States. Being that the United States is so litigious, that was actually saying something. Insurance companies don't want to cover you if you have this. It has a very unique look.

It's difficult to find because most places around here, everything is behind the walls, but there are certain places that you can poke your nose into to have a look for it. I always teach my REALTORS® and my clients where to look for that.

Shaun: What's the difference between PVC and polybutylene?

Victoria: PVC is hard, white plastic. That's the plastic that you very often see for drainage around the exterior, your perimeter drainage. It's hard and white, usually, sometimes black. Polybutylene is gray and has blue writing on it most of the time, and is softer. It's not rigid.

Shaun: I see. Good to know. These are good little details. When I say unfinished basements, how do you react?

Victoria: I love unfinished basements. They're my favorite.

Shaun: Why?

Victoria: Because I can actually see everything.

Shaun: Ah, yes, right.

Victoria: Piping's exposed. Electrical's exposed, foundation's exposed, all of these things that are usually hidden from view. I very often have to write in as a limitation to cover my ass in my reports, "I could not see the foundation." This is how much, generally, I put in. "I could only see 95% of the foundation." I can't be held responsible for anything hidden behind that beautiful, drywall of the lovely basement suite.

Shaun: Right. Tell me about pigtailing. My producer told me about pigtailing. This is generally a family-level podcast. What's pigtailing?

Victoria: Pigtailing, we'll go back to the '70s when copper prices went through the roof. It was so expensive to use copper wiring that everybody changed to aluminum wiring because it was far less inexpensive. Aluminum wiring was great for two seconds until they realized that it actually expands and contracts at a much higher rate than copper does, which means it moves more, which means that every connection where it is joined to a wall switch or an outlet, or a light in your ceiling or in the electrical panel, there's many, many joints of wiring, and all of them would expand and contract and just loosen, and then they're loose.

Then you have arcing, which is an electrical fire concern. Insurance companies do not want you to have this in your house. Most of them will flat out refuse to cover you if you have aluminum wiring, and that, I should say, single-strand aluminum wiring.

Shaun: Right, I knew that.

Victoria: That is where there's one wire.

Shaun: I knew that.

Victoria: Because once you get up to a higher gauge of wire that takes more power, like the service that comes into your house, that is multi-strand, and that can be copper or aluminum. If it's either, it's completely fine. There's no issues at all with the multi-strand because it is not connected to each other in the same way.

Shaun: I see.

Victoria: Just to be clear. People, don't panic if you have aluminum wiring in your home. It's only if you have single-strand aluminum wiring, which is the one wire.

Shaun: Where does the pigtailing come in?

Victoria: Insurance companies would refuse to cover people unless they completely rewired their entire home.

Shaun: Oh, come on.

Victoria: Which is outrageously expensive.

Shaun: Not doing it.

Victoria: There was a go-between where everybody made everybody happy, for a while. Some insurance companies don't even want to cover you for this anymore, but most of them will. What it is is you just have an electrician come in, and they will attach a tiny piece of copper wiring to the ends of every single piece of aluminum wiring and then have that attached to your receptacle, your switch. They're joined together, twisted, and then they have a little plastic mirette cap on top, and it's fine.

Shaun: Pigtail.

Victoria: They base that on pricing of how many you have.

Shaun: Got you.

Shaun: It is a lot cheaper than rewiring your home.

Shaun: Way cheaper.

Victoria: Unless you have an unfinished basement, in which case that makes rewiring anything much, much easier. Also makes re-plumbing for polybutylene piping much, much easier.

Shaun: Right. I remember my house in Newfoundland. I went there and the hot water tank. Talk to me about hot water tanks. Mine was expired.

Victoria: I actually had a hot water tank that went after five months and one day. Then I thought, "Well, that's weird. Why isn't it covered under warranty?" Then I found out, when I became a home inspector, they really don't last for very long. It also depends where you live, how long it lasts. Here in the Lower Mainland, we have amazing water. It's full of minerals. It's really great for our health, but it's not great for our piping.

Copper doesn't last as long here as it lasts everywhere else. It's also not great for our hot water tanks. They only last between eight to 12 years on average here. That's the life expectancy. Insurance companies generally don't want to cover you for damage caused if it is over 10 years old. That's something that's very important to know for my clients. How old is the hot water tank? The seller will always say, "Oh, it's new."

Shaun: "It's fine."

Victoria: We just replaced it eight years ago. That's all perception. What one person considers new is not what insurance companies consider new.

Shaun: Yes, and I had an HVAC system that when we moved in 10 years ago, the inspector was like, "This is on the end of its life." It took us all the way through to the time we sold it. Yes, we gave them credit for that one because she was making some noise by the end of it. She was wheezing. She had bad emphysema. She had some kind of ailment for sure.

Victoria: Very often, you can see that there's issues with it. I'm going to be telling my client, "Okay, this is 10 years old. It's reached its average life expectancy. Your insurance company might have issues with it, but there's no rust. There's no leaking. It looks in good shape." The signs that you often see on a hot water tank that's not happy is not there.

Shaun: Right. What are the consequences if you miss any of these?

Victoria: I'm terrified of missing things because you can be sued, which is another reason why I'm a great buffer in between REALTORS® and homeowners. I have insurance. I've never had to use it, thankfully. Not just for me personally, business-wise, I would be mortified if a client came back to me and was like, "Yes, we found this huge thing that you missed." All my business is word of mouth, so that would just kill me.

Shaun: All it takes is one, right?

Victoria: It's going to end up costing them lots and lots of money, and that's what I'm here for: to prevent them from having to spend lots and lots of money. My passion is educating my clients on little fixes that can improve so they don't have to pay thousands of dollars. If I was to miss something significant, I would lose sleep over that, for sure.

Shaun: A good inspection really serves a lot of purposes, right? It serves protecting the client. There's safety. There's saving money. Am I missing anything?

Victoria: No, I'd say that's one of the things that makes me stand out as an inspector, is that it is my passion to educate my clients on small fixes now, prevent expensive emergencies later. People are less and less handy nowadays. They know less and less about how a home works or how to fix things. My reports, I come in and I make sure they know, "Listen, I am going to find these same things pretty much on any home that you ask me to inspect, so don't panic.

"It doesn't mean it's a bad home. This is your go-to list of how to maintain this house without it being really expensive. Houses are so expensive. Home ownership is outrageous, especially here, and you can't afford this $50,000 surprise. Here's a $25 fix to help prevent that," and that's what I love doing is helping my clients understand these things.

Shaun: What would you say is the one thing or important message that you would have for REALTORS® across Canada right now who are watching? What is the one thing from inspector to REALTOR®, what would you like to say to them right now?

Victoria: Please get new builds inspected.

Shaun: Right, are people skipping new builds' inspections?

Victoria: Yes, they are, because it's a new build, and much is people are trusting. We all think the world's going to hell, but generally, deep down, we're all trusting, and if it's a new build, you just assume, "Okay, well, it's been inspected by the municipal inspectors. It's new. There shouldn't be anything wrong with it," and often there is.

Shaun: Victoria, this has been so incredibly insightful, not just for me as a buyer and seller, but I think for REALTORS® as well. This is going to be very insightful to hear, and I think we need to start a GoFundMe to get your statue built in the Lower Mainland. Huge, big, strong Victoria statue, not in Victoria, on the Lower Mainland. What do you think?

Victoria: I am all over it. You go for it. It's one of the most worthy causes out there, for sure.

Shaun: I think so. I think so, and then I'll hire an inspector to make sure it's going to stay up forever. Thank you so much, Victoria. This has been such a great conversation.

Victoria: Thank you so much for having me. I loved it.

Shaun: All the best. Huge thank you to Victoria for her awesome knowledge and her cool stories. My takeaway from this whole conversation is that home inspectors are not just about finding things wrong with a house; as it turns out, they're a powerful tool to protect clients in this crazy buying and selling experience. It's really, really great to hear from Victoria, so a big thank you again to Victoria. That was awesome.

Guys, if you liked today's episode, be sure to go to your favorite podcast platform, like, subscribe, share this with as many people as you can. Of course, it's brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association, CREA, and produced by Alphabet® Creative. My name is Shaun Majumder. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I know I did. We'll see you next time on REAL TIME.

Victoria: Shaun, you've got to have your mug handy.

Shaun: Oh, dude, they didn't send me one. I got to go get one.

Victoria: What?

Shaun: I want one with my face on it.

Victoria: What?

Shaun: I want my face now that I'm the host. I want to have REAL TIME.

Victoria: I want one with your face on it. You've a good face.

Shaun: It's got to go be super cheesy. It's got to go be.

The demand for greener homes and communities is growing in Canada, but there are still a lot of questions about how we can embrace sustainability in real estate at the personal, professional, and industrial levels. 

Mark Holland, principal at Westplan Consulting Group and a professor at Vancouver Island University, shares insights on how REALTORS® can become leaders in real estate’s green future, the impacts of climate change within our communities, sustainable home building practices, and sustainable innovations on the horizon. 

Want to learn more? CREA’S Canadian Certified Green Representative (CCGR) certification is now available for REALTORS®.

Transcript

Mark Holland: This is a good program. This will withstand the common-sense test.

Shaun Majumder: Hey, Mark, do you want to buy a tube TV?

Shaun: At this point, it's nearly impossible to ignore climate change and its effects on our lives. We all have a responsibility to minimize our footprint where we can, but it's increasingly important to protect your home for safety, for comfort, and your wallet. For REALTORS®, a big part of that is really and truly understanding sustainable housing and environmentally conscious building practices, and then being able to explain the importance of these things to your client. On today's show, we're being joined by Mark Holland, principal at Westplan Consulting Group. He's a professor at Vancouver Island University and a LEED-accredited professional.

Today, I'm going to be asking him a ton of questions about green building and sustainability, and how it affects all of our communities. As a bonus, we're going to be throwing in a couple of extra questions from REALTORS® just like you. It's a great episode. I can't wait to get started. Why wait? Mark, wow. Mark, it's a real pleasure to meet you. I'm really excited to talk to you today. I noticed you have some beautiful Indigenous arts in the background there on your wall. I decided, in honour of you and where you are right now on the West Coast, what do you think of my shirt? 

Mark: I love your shirt, Shaun. It's a real honour to be here with you and, yes, to be coming from the West Coast. We're really fortunate.

It's an interesting history here on the West Coast. We have some of the highest density of First Nations in the entire country. Almost half of the First Nations of the country are out here because food supplies historically were so dense and so rich. There was a very rich culture that developed. My house is full of art like your T-shirt and mask, et cetera. It's a real privilege to be able to live out here. I'm living in the lands of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples, the Esquimalt, the Songhees, and the W̱SÁNEĆ here as I come to you in this discussion.

Shaun: I think it's totally apropos. Today, we are talking about sustainable design, sustainable real estate. It's so interesting because everybody wants it. They're not quite sure what it is. The technology is always changing. People always want it. Then, sometimes it can be controversial about why. Do we need green spaces? Do we need green tech? Do we need green-- I'm excited to talk to you today about it. Tell me a bit about, first of all, your background, and also give us the broad strokes about what is sustainable design when we're talking about real estate, individual homes, et cetera.

Mark: Yes, thanks, Shaun. It's a very interesting field. I've had the privilege of being part of it for a few decades. My career started in my education at the University of BC, where I had the privilege to study under William Rees, who was one of the authors of the idea of the ecological footprint and the impact that we all have in our lifestyles globally. I had the privilege of getting involved as a planner in the City of Vancouver very early in my career, as we worked on what many folks here in Canada have visited as the Olympic Village there, which was ultimately deemed by the U.S. Green Building Council to be, the greenest neighborhood in the world at the time when we got it created.

It's been a really interesting path to be part of this conversation coming from a time, I would say, maybe in the early '80s, Shaun, when nobody was paying a lot of attention to this. Greenpeace started in the '70s, and there was some discussion about environment, but what we began to understand was we need to have the environment, our social needs, and our economic needs all considered simultaneously. You can't ignore one of them. You have to look at all of them, because by ignoring one of them, they ultimately begin to fall apart.

Shaun: At that time, would you say that was a huge paradigm shift away from what it previously was in terms of thinking about profits, cheap designs, cheap builds, sourcing materials? Did that spread fast, or was that a hard uphill climb?

Mark: The report from 1987 that the United Nations did, called Our Common Future, pulled together a leading group of world economists, politicians, and scientists, and they said, "Can we keep doing this? What happens if we just keep doing what we've been doing as our population hits seven billion, eight billion, et cetera?" Interestingly, while the environmental movement has claimed the sustainability discussion, it was business people, it was economists that came back, and they were the ones that said, "We need sustainable development. We have to develop, but we need to do it in a way that uses less energy, produces less waste, uses less water, keeps our soils healthy, and things like that."

That was the big movement. You're absolutely right, Shaun, this was a paradigm shift. In about 10 years, between 1887 and 1997, it pretty much took the world by storm. It was fascinating to see all the universities begin to shift, engineering rethinking things, big movement in green buildings, landscape architects revisiting how we were doing our cities, so many different things. We now begun to think differently about them. Most generations of professionals since the late '90s have been taught a different way.

A lot of folks are now looking at it. The thing is that it takes a long time to change buildings. They last 50 to 100 years. Cities last thousands of years. The evolution takes time, but there has been a very, very big change. I think that's what's really exciting to see in the program here that we're talking about today is that the entire real estate industry is now stepping forward to embed that discussion in every thought and every discussion and decision that we have around the homes in which we live.

Shaun: Mark, I'm here now in Nova Scotia. Two or three days ago, it was 10 degrees and I was out running through some grass. Then I woke up this morning, about a foot of snow on the ground. When we talk about climate change and it's having such a massive impact all over the world, this is Nova Scotia, this happens regularly anyways. However, when we think about climate change and the potential hazards, how does all of this affect real estate overall? How is the design world working to handle all this?

Mark: It's a great question, Shaun, because climate change at the beginning of the sustainability discussion was under debate. We still see some debates, but most people don't take them seriously because the science is now many, many decades of patterns to show what's happening. Weather is becoming more unpredictable. With it, is actually some pretty significant impacts on real estate. We're seeing quite a few different areas of response. There's two ways we look at climate change and our communities or our buildings. The first one is maybe the older approach, which we would call it mitigation, which is trying to reduce our climate change emissions so that things don't get much horribly worse over long periods of time.

We're having some very, very good successes in some areas on that one because it essentially means we need to use less energy. We're seeing technology step in to really help us use less energy on many things. Some of the things that we're seeing, making buildings more efficient. We've been talking about this for a long time, but they continue to advance in our ability to do this. That's one of the first things that we're seeing in the climate change response, is use less energy, saves you money as well. That thereby reduces the amount of emissions that we're producing.

The other side, which is increasingly becoming more important, Shaun, in our discussions, is to respond to the changes that are already happening and are inevitable in climate because there's so many of us producing so many emissions for so long that we have changed the chemical makeup of the climate. It is heating a bit more. We do get some greater storms. We get changes in precipitation, flooding, and things like that. What we're seeing in real estate is looking at how we design buildings to withstand major wind storms. Now, living in Nova Scotia, you know all about wind. You guys know wind very, very well.

Here in the West Coast, we get storms, but nothing like the relentless blowing coming off the Atlantic. There's a reason why the Pacific Ocean is called the Pacific. It's a little more peaceful out here. We have big eaves. We get rain all the time. We have big eaves, but we don't get the same storms. Whereas if you built homes in Nova Scotia, historically, like we do here, it'd rip the roof off on any given weekend. We're seeing buildings being much more wind-resistant today. The idea of what we call hurricane clips. These are, like you built a building, you'll know when you put the rafters up against the top of the wall on the top plate. We used to just put them in there and toenail and a couple of nails.

Now we're actually taking steel bands, and we're attaching them together and that creates just a few more screws and a steel band that'll hold that roof from getting ripped off in a much higher storm. Far, far better. That is nothing but good things from that. There's one example. I would say maybe the biggest one we're seeing everywhere is attention to floodplains. Climate change increases the amount of water in the atmosphere. The warm air absorbs more water, and also more is just evaporating off the oceans and is filtering in the air.

We get much bigger storms and then much bigger flooding. Insurance companies are increasingly now getting a bit grumpy about insuring buildings that are in floodplains because you never know when the whole thing is going to come underwater and you're back in there pulling all the drywall off and fixing everything and putting it all back together again. That's expensive. We're seeing municipalities, cities, and insurance companies getting pretty grumpy about developing on floodplains, and where we do have buildings there, and entire cities are. Here on the West Coast, we have Richmond, BC, which is essentially below sea level on any given moment.

Lots of attention to how dykes, pumping, investing in these things in order to make sure that we're not putting our communities at risk. We're seeing new development permit areas around cities where there's a city and a big developed area, and the wind blows across it into a mountain range, or where there's forests. In that interface, because there's lots of sparks and energy and fires going on in communities, if it jumps into the wild area and you get a wind, then you get these huge wildfires that move into the forested areas around there.

We're seeing a lot more attention to wildfire-resistant homes. There's a number of guidelines that people can follow around that. Maybe the other way is renewable energy. We're also seeing folks look at-- Certainly, if you go to Hawaii, you'll see solar cells on just most of the roofs. Many of the roofs have PV arrays because energy is very expensive in Hawaii, and it's sunny all the time. Wherever that combination occurs, we're starting to see a lot of people very interested in getting solar on their buildings.

Shaun: When I'm thinking about all the new builds, obviously, they're being infused with a lot of this new technology. What are some very specific elements in a new build REALTORS® can identify for their clients that can be like, "Hey, this is very thoughtful, what you're getting with this home, X, Y, and Z," whether it be the smart home, the new smart home set up? Is it how people are wiring the buildings now? Are they having a big impact, considering this new climate change reality that we're in? What are some of those elements that REALTORS® can point to for their clients?

Mark: The things that we see the most often, Shaun, that a REALTOR® and a home buyer can look at starts with insulation. Insulation is one of those-- particularly in the attic. Some homes don't have attics, but many do. Depending on the age of that home. I remember one I bought had no insulation in it at all. Okay, we've got a lot. We can make some quick progress here. Sometimes there's four to six inches. An ideal insulation that is easy for a homeowner to put in or a contractor to put in costs very little is to upgrade your insulation in your attic to R50. That's about 12 inches. Batts of insulation often come in six inches. That's just two layers up there. That's the thickness.

We use the word R-value because it's called resistance. You don't want heat to move from one area to another area. You want to keep them separate. That's R-value. Yes, the first thing that a REALTOR® and a potential home buyer can look at is what's insulation there. Now it's easy to fix. It's not a reason to not buy the place, but that would be the first one. The second one is windows. Our windows used to be single-pane. In the '70s, we had lots of single-pane windows. Today, obviously double-paned is the default. Then there's better double-paned windows and ENERGY STAR rating for those.

In fact, we're starting to see some buildings now based on the slowly reducing cost of triple-pane windows. What that does is it creates a vacuum between the two panes or the three panes. It takes a lot more energy to get the energy to get the heat across that gap. There's not much in there to transfer the energy. Better windows. Interestingly, windows are a good payback system for REALTORS®. Investing in a new set of windows for a building, you can get your money back from that. Not only with better energy efficiency, but people like nice windows

Shaun: We're talking about insulation. When I hear insulation, I just think heating your house, keeping your house warm. Growing up in Newfoundland, you got to go have insulation in your house because if you don't, you're going to freeze in the winter. Windows, same thing. It's more about keeping the wind out and the elements out. You're saying there's a more active-- it sounds like it's a little more active in its function. Tell me a bit about that.

Mark: One of the things in terms of heat and windows is it keeps the heat in so long as the air isn't turning over. The other key thing that we look for is a good sense of sealant, making sure that the place is well sealed because when the wind blows, and like we noted, in Nova Scotia where you are, the wind's blowing, it puts a bunch of pressure on one side of the building. Interestingly, it's like a airplane wing. As the air goes over the building, it creates a vacuum at the other end. You not only are pushing, but you're sucking. You can literally move all the air in a home out of that home very, very quickly if it's not actually well sealed.

What we'll see in renovations is what we call a blower door test, where they'll actually bring a big fan and they'll put it in the door and they will try and suck the air out and they'll see how well it performs. Then they can go around with you and point out, "Okay, you need to seal this and seal that." Funny story, I bought a big old heritage house and we did a blower door test on it before we put in all the new windows and did the upgrades.

We blew insulation in everywhere. He started it and he said, "Okay, something's open." We walked around the whole place. Nothing was open. Everything was tight. He said, "You basically have the equivalent of two full-size doors wide open to the outside. That's how leaky your house is." Yes, we spent the next several years fixing that and sealing it up. We got it to almost a base new home level by the end of it.

Shaun: It sounds like when you're talking about energy efficiency, that is not an efficient house. Then that translates, if I'm a buyer or I'm a REALTOR®, I think to myself, "Cost of just operating the house is going to go way up," right?

Mark: Absolutely. In some cases, REALTORS® will include an ENERGY STAR rating of a home if they know what that is. You'll see that in some new homes where the builder or the developer has actually said, "Hey, we've gone above and beyond on this. Not only should that make you feel good that you're not using lots of energy and creating emissions, but you're actually going to pay less. Every month, you will pay less than your neighbors will be paying for heating and or cooling in the summertime."

Shaun: I think that's what so many people are feeling right now, generally speaking, is "How can I save money?" It's funny, you put a little bit of money in to save a lot of money on the back end. You mentioned heat pumps. We had a program in Newfoundland of my little tiny house. I own a house there, 120 years old. It was dragged up on the ice back in the day, used to be in a small little-- Not very well insulated, but we always used a furnace, an old school furnace in the basement.

They had a rebate program, and we got the heat pump. It's a small house, but it does amazing. It's very efficient, costs so much less. It seems like this is a very high-value item to have now in your home. Tell me about heat pumps and how they're going to transform a lot of the energy systems in houses.

Mark: Heat pumps are a great story, Shaun, because you know what? We have had heat pumps for over a century. We just don't call them heat pumps. You know what we call them? Refrigerators. Folks have had refrigerators in their homes forever. That's all a refrigerator is, is it takes the heat out of what's in the box and it just goes to the coils in the back and it just goes into the room. Somewhere along the line, about 25 years ago, 30 years ago, we went, "Hey, we could do this at a much bigger scale." Thus, the industry of heat pumps was born.

If you want a story of how you can be more comfortable, save a lot of money, and save the world at the same time, heat pumps is right there at the top of that parade because they put a little bit of money into them, but you're going to make all that money back in the savings. Not only that, you don't have to put in air conditioners because a good hot summer in Nova Scotia or here or anywhere in North America, you get a good heat wave there. You're not sleeping very well. The whole place is just baking. These things will cool your house just as easily as they will heat them. Heat pumps are a fantastic move.

The incentives that you experienced, many provinces have those incentives in place, and the federal government has had some as well, because they just save so much energy, and it costs so much less for a government to give you an incentive to get a heat pump than it does for them to then have to work with their utilities to put up a new dam, start a new gas-fired power plant, or generate more energy.

It's way cheaper to save energy than to generate more energy. We're seeing a lot of really exciting incentives for homeowners, and I think today a lot of REALTORS® appropriately are up to speed on that. It's a really great way to-- It adds value to your house. If someone knows they're coming into a heat pump field house, they know they're going to pay less, and they know they can have a nice cool, they're going to sleep well in the summertime. That is a true win-win-win.

Shaun: Absolutely. Old school, it was either wood furnaces in Newfoundland, where I was raised, or now oil furnaces, they're still a thing. It's good to hear we're moving in that direction. Now, you mentioned about certain classifications that buildings get. I remember hearing about LEED-certified buildings. I was so, "Wow, this is a LEED--" You walk up to a building and you see LEED Gold, and you're like, "Oh, this is incredible."

I had no idea what it meant, and I had no idea how to decipher what makes this a LEED-certified home. How do REALTORS® look at these certifications and be able to decipher what that actually means? How can REALTORS® decipher this information and say, "This is what it means," practically for their clients? If you're a LEED-certified home, what are the things that translate? How does that translate?

Mark: It's a great question because with a certification program comes credibility and an accountable promise level of performance. We have seen over the last 25 years the rise in, we call them eco-certifications, for pretty much everything in our lives in different ways. My firm and my team have built some of these. They're very interesting. They allow you to take what is a very complex thing, like a building that's got all these different factors we're looking at, and reduce it, add them all up, and give you an answer.

This is good, Goldilocks, small, medium, large. This is low, medium, high. They've been really successful, certainly in the early years of us trying to make this much more normal. LEED was one of the ones that was definitely the highest profile, I would say, in the last 20 years. I was part of the team that helped bring it to Canada because it's an American program and we Canadized it over a little while, which was great.

Shaun: What does it stand for?

Mark: It stands for Leadership and Energy and Environmental Design, L-E-E-D. It's a formal program done by the U.S. Green Building Council and the Canadian Green Building Council. One of the things that is interesting for REALTORS® is REALTORS® that are selling multifamily homes, they're much more likely to engage the conversation around LEED. If you're in a city like Vancouver, all new residential condos, the big high-rises, they all have to be not just LEED-certified, they got to be LEED Gold. There's only one higher level. In fact, today, many of them achieve that LEED Platinum level, because the whole market has changed and has embraced that.

If you're looking at a single-family home or a townhouse, there is a program within LEED, but it hasn't been taken up very much. You're unlikely, a REALTOR® that's out there working at the ground-oriented level of housing, are unlikely to run into too many LEED homes, but they will run into another one. This is called Built Green. This was a program that also came out of the US, came out of Colorado, and then Alberta stepped up to adopt it. Then it came from Alberta to the rest of Canada. We see it most actively in play with the Canadian Construction Association.

As I used to tell my students, I said, "Between the cowboy boots in Alberta and Colorado, they kicked all the flaky stuff out of this one. This is a good program. This will withstand the common-sense test." Built Green is a good one for newer buildings and single-family homes, duplexes, townhouses. We see a pretty good uptake all across Canada of the Built Green program. It's not expensive to implement. It makes common sense, and it gets down to the nitty gritty of the kinds of things we're talking about. How well-sealed is this building? How good is the insulation? How good are the windows? What venting system does it have? Et cetera.

They also look at some health factors around the materials that are used, and do they like off-gas, volatile organic compounds, and things. I really like the Built Green system because it's really clear. You can also get certifications for some of the individual things in a building. ENERGY STAR is the highest profile eco-certification for windows and sometimes appliances, and a few things like that. The ENERGY STAR logo, and below it, you'll often see a little slider bar. It'll tell you where in the performance level this appliance meets.

If you want to go buy an $800 dishwasher, that's very advanced, it's going to be quiet, and that little bar is going to be way up in the edge. You're going to use less water, and you're going to use less energy for that one. If we buy a really old, cheap one for the landlord special, they're going to be down there. It's going to be using more and more, but you get to decide how much money do you want to spend for what level of performance. ENERGY STAR is a really good one. FSC is another one. This is the Forest Stewardship Council, and they classify the sources of wood as are they from sustainable forests and recycled wood, or not.

FSC, we've seen a huge growth in FSC in the last 20 years, which is very exciting because they're focusing on making sure our forests are there for the next generation. There's a few more advanced ones that have come up. In some of my slides, Shaun, I'll have an entire slide just full of all the little eco certifications. It's a quite a booming industry, but the bigger ones in realty, the latest two that have come out in the last decade, I would say are Passive House and Net Zero Homes.

This is really pushing back on the climate change agenda where we're trying to use less energy, and thereby produce less emissions. Passive House is a program that came out of Europe and has been embraced by a whole stream of developers and builders in North America. Essentially, it means that your house is going to use very, very little energy. The Net Zero next version of that means maybe with some solar cells or a few other things, you may actually produce as much energy as you use at the end of the year.

Shaun: Can you sell that back to the grid? Is that thing now? Depends on the province, I guess.

Mark: Yes. Many of them now essentially use, we call it net metering. You'll use energy sometimes, and then you'll be able to sell back at a future time. We're seeing that system grow quite significantly, including being able to tie your hybrid car into it. You can literally plug your car into your house now in the more innovative green homes. Say it's six o'clock at night when kids are on their computer doing work. You're cooking dinner. You're watching TV for the next three hours. Part of your TV may be powered by your electric car, but then, come 10:30 at night, everybody's tired and they all head off to bed. Now your car recharges off the grid. At the end of the day, you're paying the least amount for energy you possibly could pay over a 24-hour period.

Shaun: This is amazing. This needs to happen a lot more all over the country. My question about that though, is how well-versed in all of these classifications do REALTORS® have to be? Because I would imagine there are some that are more legit than others. If you're in America, which is the wild wild west of, it's like, "I am green certified." What does that mean?

It's a really challenging landscape to navigate, I can imagine. I feel like Canada is probably a little more regulated and a little better at making sure that anybody who claims something actually is something. Is that something that you see in Canada? They're very tight about that? I'm just thinking in terms of what a REALTOR® has to go through to understand all of these certifications.

Mark: Yes, Shaun, you've hit on one of the key words in this field, which emerged a few years into it, called greenwashing. This idea that you do a little bit of something green, and then you declare your whole house, your whole project, your development, your product, all to be, "Hey, it's all sustainable." Today, I think folks are a lot more cynical and educated on-- They might appreciate you saying, "Yes, I'm a little more energy efficient," or "I've got some low-flow fixtures in here that use a little less water or something." I think what we're seeing for any home buyer, home builder, seller, or REALTOR®, they're clear about what specifically are we talking about here because there's many things to consider.

Greenwashing can lose you a lot of credibility, even for the good things you're doing, really, really quickly. We're all increasingly careful about not saying, "Well, the building is sustainable." What we'll say is, "We put low-flow fixtures in it. We have high-efficiency LED lighting. It has a heat pump, so it's going to use less energy and produce less emissions, and you'll be more comfortable." If our landscape still has lots of water-hungry lawn and a bunch of other things, we just don't talk about those, or we'll be honest about that and say, "We haven't put in drought-tolerant landscaping or things like that." Because it's desirable, people feel the urge to want to inflate the greenness of things. It's really not a good idea because someone's going to catch you out instantly on that, and then now you've lost all your credibility. Greenwashing is something for REALTORS® when they're listing a home, highlight what's good about it, but don't go on to say more than that. Stay honest about it because that's the way to go.

Shaun: I love that. I'm just learning about this program now, but it's an incredible program that is available to REALTORS® in Canada, brought to you by CREA. It is the Canadian Certified Green Representative certification, which I think is absolutely amazing. I would encourage everybody to go out and take that course and get that certification because then you really do know exactly what everything is and the direction that we're headed. I think it's a good move for REALTORS®.

Mark: I would completely agree, Shaun. I have had the privilege of looking through the CREA program. I was super impressed. As I said, I've been in this space for 30 years, 35 years, and I was really impressed with what I saw as I went through the materials that they show. They talk about all the different rating systems, they talk about all the things that you can do and should look for in a home. They get into the much more complicated issues of embodied energy, embodied carbon, the energy and carbon, and the maybe toxic materials used just in making the products in our homes, and the materials that we make our homes up from.

Someone who's gone through CREA is going to understand what they need to know to make an educated decision, not only on whether to buy a home or what they're walking into, but how to go about thinking about upgrades they may want to do, renovations that they may want to do, and also what to avoid and where the problems can be. I think it is a real big gift that the real estate association has done this because we have tens of thousands of REALTORS® out there, and when we make a home decision, we're financing that decision with a mortgage for long periods of time.

What that means is that savings and things like energy efficiency, you can actually receive the paybacks from those and doing investments, fix up your kitchen and your bathrooms, raises the value, doing the same thing as energy costs keep going up and carbon pricing keeps moving around, but it's not going away. It may disappear into the producers from the consumers, but it is not going to go away. These are all really smart decisions. That program, I was super impressed at how fast and how understandable it was to explain things that when I took them, you had to be in graduate school studying from a professor to understand what was being talked about.

Shaun: That's great. Yes. The more knowledge, the better. I think REALTORS®, get out there, take that course immediately. Now, speaking of REALTORS®, I'm really excited because we have some REALTORS® who have some very specific questions to you. We've been talking generally about a lot of broad strokes, ideas, sustainable building, and all these programs. Let's start with our very first question from a REALTOR® right now. Let's take a listen and get your thoughts on the other side.

Phil Moore: I'm Phil Moore from Vancouver. I'd like to know a little bit more about green space. How important is it, and how do we move the needle?

Mark: It's a great question, Phil. Green space is a really critical piece of our communities. It's interesting because as we've been pursuing sustainable communities, we've been trying to use up less of the planet to house ourselves, just go and bulldoze the next forest, sprawl out with the next subdivision. We've been trying to make things a little more compact. The challenge with that is it's a zero-sum game.

There's either trees and green space or there's housing and other community elements. The more of us that live here in the same space, interestingly, the more green space we need for things. It's a very, very good question. Phil, if you're from Vancouver, you know how that challenge has played itself out in that city because we just keep adding more people into the Vancouver area, and there's no more land.

This has become a very big area. In Vancouver, at one point, they spent 10 years of their park acquisition budget to acquire half a block downtown, so there was a big enough park for everybody to use and have their dogs come out and their kids use. It's a very big issue. Some of the reasons why this is so important, Phil, and it's great that you raised it, is the first thing from a climate point of view and a comfortable point of view is what we call the urban heat island effect.

Now, this hits us in Canada maybe a little less than the US in many cities, but when we get rid of all the forest and we put in lots of concrete and buildings, the sun just beats down all summer long, and it gets really, really hot. That's not comfortable for us, and in fact, actually, a lot of people die prematurely from just overheating, so we have to start air conditioning things. Whereas a forest, an area with more vegetation, can be 25-30% cooler just because of the vegetation. It's absorbing the heat, it's providing shade, et cetera. Larger trees are really key to that one.

In the US right now, 6% of their entire energy consumption is just going to air-conditioned homes in the summertime. That's how much energy is used. Things that we can do, if we can try and plant more trees, street trees, trees anywhere you can, that's great, it provides shade, but any vegetation is better. We're seeing a couple of other components to this to a more healthy and sustainable community. Green space helps your kids grow up healthier and smarter. There's a whole bunch of studies that have been done about the relationship to green space and kids.

Now, for those of us who are older and grew up in environments that had a lot more open space, we chuckle at that. If you think back to when you were a kid, you got out, you played in the mud, you found an earthworm, you messed around with the bugs, and you did what you did as a kid, what's actually happening, apart from the fun of play, is you're actually learning about the natural world.

There are studies that are done that looked at a thing we now call the nature deficit syndrome, which is children that don't grow up around green space end up not caring about other species on the planet near as much later in life. The long-term community and societal objective is we need green space for our kids to get out because they need to meet nature. They need to come to understand that they're part of a much bigger world.

As many of us increasingly live in multifamily homes because of the cost of housing, we lose our back yard and our front yard. If you lived and grew up or lived in a single-family home, "Hey, I got my backyard," let the dog out, go out and play, have the barbecue, go do some gardening. If you live in a townhouse, maybe you have a postage stamp one. If you live in a condo, you don't have anything. The public green space, the use of a park, what a city park is is now much, much more exciting and interesting because it's got to be the backyard for hundreds, even thousands of people, which if you think about it is fun if we do it right, because it becomes a backyard party.

It becomes a place where you can have a group barbecue. It becomes a place where all the kids play, where all the dogs run around. It's not been the way we've been thinking about green space, but as we try and use less of the planet, both to supply us with what I need, including our housing, this becomes an increasingly greater attention span or an area of focus for us. One of the interesting observations about this is that it can cost a lot of money to buy a new park space as we grow in, but most cities own a third of their city. It's called streets. Almost 30% of any community is streets, maybe more in some cases.

Many of those streets have almost no cars on them much of the day. You go to a quiet residential neighborhood in the middle of the day and there's nothing. There's nobody on the street. There's nobody on the sidewalk. It's just a big piece of asphalt sitting there. What we're seeing now is parks departments and engineering departments getting together and starting to look at how we can think about these streets. Can we narrow them a bit? Can we take away a little bit of parking? Can we mix parking and trees? Can we get a linear-- We're calling them essentially greenways or linear parks.

They're actually how many of us want to use a park anyway. We'd like to go out of our house, take the dog, go for a walk, let the dog do its business, go down to the corner store, go pick up our kids from school, whatever it is, if we're in the neighborhood. This idea of linear parks is now moving increasingly into our thinking around how we get green space into our cities without having to buy up residential land and unhouse people in order to get a big piece of lawn that may be empty much of the time. It's a very exciting time right now in how we bring green space forward into our cities, as more of us have to live in the same space.

Shaun: I would imagine that green space is such a valuable part of when you're trying to sell a home or buy a home. It is for me. There's rural, there's living in the woods, but then there's-- In a city like Los Angeles, where I have lived for the last 20 years, we were so great, Griffith Park was right behind us. There's upsides and downsides. Obviously, you saw with the fires. The upside of being able to walk into nature from my house immediately and be surrounded by coyotes, squirrels, animals, life, and green far outweighs the risk of the fire in that moment, because it could happen anytime. Anyway, I think that's a great question from Phil. Okay, let's check out our next question.

Jen Aunger-Ritchie: Hi, I'm Jen Aunger-Ritchie. I come from Smith Falls, Ontario. My question is around technology. As a older-ish millennial, I'm wondering about what type of role technology plays when developing community or urban planning, as such? How are we looking to the future and bringing that future into the planning now?

Mark: It really is a great question. It's particularly an interesting one for the millennial generation. An older generation like myself, which is just one generation older, I went through school before there were even computers in some cases. I didn't get my first computer until I was deep into university. It's a very interesting one. During the lifetime of the millennials, we went from the very first cell phones that first came into existence, a long time before smartphones were there, to where we are now, where everything is wired. This is a really interesting question. The trajectory of that evolution is not slowing down.

I think the answer to a few of ways that certainly I'm seeing in our practice and in projects we're involved in, the first one was 5G bandwidth. This was all the rage a few years ago. Now we don't talk about it too much, but it's actually a very interesting piece of infrastructure that is now being fed in quietly across all cities in Canada. Very interesting one, where we've got essentially a tiered sandwich structure of Wi-Fi repeaters that then work their way up into a fiber optic and satellite web that then start connecting everything in the world. What that does is that enables things.

We're seeing a lot more investment in that, particularly for smaller rural communities, as folks do want to work from home and First Nations communities that need to be able to access education and other systems from home, particularly as a lot of our infrastructure, our appliances, and everything are increasingly wired. It's very helpful to have that coverage. I think the next thing we're all seeing in that regard is the smart homes, smart cars, and smart objects. We call it the Internet of Everything.

Most of us are increasingly aware, and there's just a huge industry of feeding us smart doors, smart safety mechanisms, cameras, thermostats, alarms, et cetera. It's a great way to allow us to manage our homes and our lives, both for convenience, but also for energy efficiency, also for increased safety. It's a really great movement, and we're just going to keep seeing more and more of that as we go.

Shaun: Mark, if I could just ask you a question on that very thing. When you talk about this connectivity now that is not just at one home but entire communities, are there ways of looking at the entire communities from a technological perspective? If you have a home that's certified, are there entire communities now, because of this connectivity through 5G and whatnot, that they can monitor and say, "Oh, the energy use on this corner up by that river is being used a little more than this area down here where it's more concentrated, there's more homes and buildings that are--"? Are they looking at using this technology as a more holistic way of designing entire communities as well?

Mark: They are, Shaun. It's been around for a little while. It hasn't taken a lot of root, increasingly where you'll find it as part of every new project. The main reason is privacy. How much energy each person is using tends to fall under certain legal privacy concerns. Who can have access to that has been an issue. The thing you just described is what we call a smart grid. We do see them in certain areas where particularly a mixed-use community that maybe one developer has done, and maybe they own a lot of the buildings and lease them out, is that they can put in place a smart grid that's tracking where things are being used and where they're not.

One of the more advanced systems that we see in some communities is it's a thermal grid. A smart grid, we would think of as power and where people are using more electricity or not. The thermal grid is even more exciting because if we put in a medium temperature water line that connects every building in a neighborhood, then when I need a lot of energy for something I'm doing, but you're not there, then I'm pulling energy out of it. Other times, I'm trying to cool something.

This is the great balance between, say, an office building and a residential building. Residential buildings need heating, office buildings, because of computers, servers, people, lights, and everything, they tend to be cooling themselves. You'll actually see office buildings in the middle of winter in Canada busy belching out all kinds of heat because they've just got so much body heat and equipment heat in there they have to cool. We're seeing those two kinds of grids. They're complex, because of privacy, because of ownership, and because of utilities requirements, it takes a little bit of work to put all that together. We're seeing some of those.

A few of the others that are maybe a little more unseen but are fascinating to watch come into the housing environment is the digitization of the building design and construction process. Most architects now are working on a system we call BIM or building information systems. They're all using AutoCAD or other similar programs. These are increasingly getting now linked into the entire construction process.

What you draw, the computer is automatically calculating how many materials are going to be used of different types, they're already beginning to draw out construction drawings based on your initial schematic design, they're checking for code compliance, et cetera, et cetera. We're seeing a really interesting-- AI is only going to drive this forward really, really fast.

Jen has hit on a really interesting question here. We are just on the cusp of an increasingly rapidly moving field here, and it's really exciting to see how it can make things more energy efficient and make them more financially viable.

Shaun: Amazing. Amazing. See, Jen, you didn't know you were opening up that box. My issue, though, is I would not want to be on that smart grid because I still have one of those old tube TVs, the big ones. You have to walk over and turn the channel. I have 12 channels. Okay, here we go. Ready?

Neda Beaulac: I'm Neda Beaulac. I'm from London, Ontario. My question is: how do we incentivize people to buy and maintain green or sustainable homes, how to educate them on how to maintain their homes, and what is in it for them?

Mark: Shaun, Neda's question is the $64 million question. It's such a great question you raised, Neda. Where we need to go with this is a slow and steady rethinking of our financing system. Neda's on to this. This is a financial question. We've structured how we build our cities, build our homes, quality of life, and businesses around a simple throughput mechanism of we just pull resources and energy out of the planet, we run it through as fast as we can, and we dump the waste out the other side. We're now looking for ways to, two things, close that loop so that that's more expensive than doing it right and not causing those problems. The other one is the financing of these.

Because we're doing what we're doing now because it's the cheapest way, we have to make it now more expensive and make other ways less expensive. In the end, especially in real estate, so much of everything comes down to financing. This is really where we need to go. That's going to be a combination of some government guidance and regulations and working with the financing sector, for businesses, for real estate, for pretty much everything, to essentially change the financial equation so that it is cheaper and better to be green than to not be green.

For instance, let me give you an example. Shaun, if I come to you and I'm a solar utility and I say, "Shaun, I'd like to rent your roof." You're going to look at me strange going, "Okay. For what? A birthday party or a sign? What are we doing here?" "No. I want to put a bunch of solar panels on your roof. I'm going to pay you every month for the rental of that real estate. I'm going to sell you some of that energy cheaper than you would otherwise buy from the power company where you live, et cetera. I'm going to net meter the rest of it out." You're going to go, "Well, that's a win-win." Now I've got a utility.

We're fairly new to this. This is interesting to see some of our politicians today and the world financing industry beginning to get on board. The insurance industry is driving some of this because they're having to pay the outcome costs of climate change. They're really interested in changing some of these things. We're starting to see a real interest in the financing industry. We're starting to see new funds emerge and models of how we can finance more sustainable cities, buildings, and infrastructure in a different way because they have better outcomes.

In the end, a lot of them actually save money in the long term. Just like your mortgage, we just spread the costs out over a long period of time. In this case, then, the positives actually offset those costs. This is a new field that we're all beginning to look at, but anybody who can find a way to innovate and make that work, potentially could get very, very successful.

Shaun: I do want to follow up because I think Neda was talking also very specifically about a REALTOR® to client to get them to buy into this movement. What are ways that the client can see the opportunities that motivate them? It's got to be by dollars and cents. I think it has to be by dollars, no? How can they be incentivized? Is it bragging rights that I have a greenhouse, or does it actually affect my pocketbook?

Mark: There's a small number of people who are prepared to do bragging rights. I think what matters there and the answer to that really good follow-up question, Shaun, is it's one of the key roles of luxury homes. For folks who have extra money and can afford a luxury home, they're not just trying to get that extra bedroom for their kids and just make it work financially, they have the opportunity to really push the boundaries out on this.

What's interesting actually, is that if you're not just trying to make ends meet and you look at financing a different way, you look at it as an investment, this is where all the conversation changes on many of these green innovations. I'm going to put $10,000 into solar cells. Yes, I'm going to get $10,000 back in seven years. If I look at that as an annualized return on investment, I'm making 50. What am I making? 12%, 15% return on investment because I'm going to get my $10,000 back in seven years.

Now that's not bad. That's beaten the market almost any year in history of the stock market. For the higher-end homes, the investments in efficiency, energy supply, and a lot of these other sustainability things, they actually pencil out in a very, very reasonable way. It's not necessarily the way, we need other incentives. We need to literally, "Our society values these. It's for our kids." We need to provide incentives for folks at the entry level, the rental homes, et cetera.

As soon as we move into more expensive areas, REALTORS® can talk about this with their clients from a return on investment point of view, which actually pencils out a lot better than many other investments that we might have our, "You know energy is not going to get cheaper. This is your house, and you know it's all there. If you're planning to stick around for seven years, not only you're going to get it all paid back, that's called a pretty good investment in your money."

Shaun: That's great. I think that's super clear. I think Neda can take that to her client and say, "Hey, what he said." Next question. Have a listen.

Sam Wyatt: Hi, I'm Sam Wyatt from Vancouver. My question is: how can we get traditional builders into this newer technology where they're building in micro factories with robotic systems to build homes faster and cheaper? How do we actually get them into the transition?

Shaun: Sam is touching on something here, Mark. It's a great question because the world is changing.

Mark: What we have now literally dates back hundreds, even thousands of years in the training programs for carpenters, tradespeople, and masons, et cetera. Our whole building industry is based on a lot of institutions, practices, training programs, schools, building codes, bylaws, particularly municipal bylaws, local city bylaws, zoning, and things like that. Unions, there's many layers to the transition. The technology is advancing, I'd say a lot faster. This is what Sam can see. He can see, "Hey guys, we've got some really great stuff happening here. How do we get it into the mainstream?"

It's going to happen. It's inevitable. There's far too many advantages for this not to happen. It's just basically a process of innovation, developers, builders, REALTORS®, taking the innovative step to take a risk on let's build this one in a more modular and efficient way, let's get that in there, and people look at it and go, "Hey, that actually looks pretty good." One of the biggest leaps in this thinking happened about 15 years ago when Glide homes came out and everyone started to think differently about them. This is a really interesting way to go.

There's a lot of benefits to these. They may not be that much less expensive to produce. You still require wood, insulation, cladding, lighting, wiring, plumbing. The core materials are a little different. They generally are better built, Shaun, because they tend to be built in a big warehouse, at least all the panels are. It's climate-controlled. They're not getting all wet. It tends to be better. You know what building in Nova Scotia in the wintertime is like. That's a dicey project. That's the same for all across Canada. There's a lot of benefits to this. We're going to see a lot more of it.

The other thing is in construction timing, because you can order that building and have it built very quickly in pieces. The construction delays of on-site building can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to a large project in costs, because every extra day that you have to do that, you're paying interest on the land, you're paying interest on all the loans, because almost 100% of construction is financed with debt. Any delay is a lot of money. It's just going to take a while for all of those regulatory, trades, and financing pieces to get in step with what we're producing here.

Shaun: Do you think that these traditional builders they have to start investing in the technology? Do they have to rethink their business model? If I'm a Beverly builder, I own a company, I've been doing it this way my whole life, and now all of a sudden, this modular world is happening so fast around me, how would these individual smaller companies be able to keep up? They obviously need to innovate and find a way.

Mark: It's a great question, Shaun, and we're going to see it play out slightly differently, depending on what kind of home they're building. We're used to thinking that a builder is going to go on site with a hammer, nails, saws, and they're going to build it. We may well end up with builders that are essentially like the folks you pay to put together your Ikea furniture, where you can literally buy a whole series of panelized from a company that just produces these kinds of panels, you just basically plug them in. You've now broken apart the construction process into smaller pieces.

This is still new days. We're waiting to see how this emerges, but there's far too much upside for this not to begin to take note. Sam's question is a great one, and it's an exciting new chapter we're all going to watch unfold. I call it progressive capitalism. Some things will succeed, some won't, but we're moving in the right direction.

Shaun: Yes. Look, obviously, REALTORS® are really interested in gaining more knowledge about green building and sustainable practices. Again, we have to talk about the way you do that is by signing up for CREA's new Canadian Certified Green Representative Certification and learn a whole lot more about that. I think we're almost there, Mark. This has been such an incredible conversation. I think REALTORS® are going to take a lot away from it.

In terms of the future, what are the most scientifically exciting things that we can wrap up our conversation with to talk about the future of sustainable design, sustainable building, and the future cities, towns, and houses for Canada and beyond?

Mark: We've talked about a number of them here as we've gone, Shaun, and it's a rapidly evolving field. I think we're going to see the technology of smart, intelligent management, tracking, assessment processes, et cetera, continue to advance. That's going to show up for your average REALTOR® in quite a many different, diverse ways between the products that are available, the expectations of the buyers. It's very quick.

The thing about a home and garden channel, you get a bunch of home TV out there, you get a lot of social media. What the buyer wants can advance really, really quickly, frequently faster than in real estate. It takes us quite a while to respond because it's pretty complicated and expensive. I think we're going to see the buyer starting to really pull us all forward to be more efficient, to be more environmentally friendly.

If you've got someone who's grown up with the question of climate change and sustainability, Greta Thunberg around them since they were a child, they keep looking at us because where they're starting from, maybe you and I have spent decades working our way to get there. That's where they're starting from. They're like, "Well, we need to do better. Why can't we do better?" In 10 years, they're the buyer. I think the exciting thing is the evolution of values and the response to the future that the next generation of buyers is going to pull us forward very definitely.

We've talked about modular 3D printing prefabrication. This work is already being done. It's just a matter of getting traction here. For instance, Central Canada, where in Ontario and further east, they've got lots of steel construction for buildings, even just within Canada. Here in BC, we've got almost nobody who supplies it. We bump out at about six stories on our buildings because you need to get to steel to go beyond that one, or concrete, and concrete's the most expensive. We don't generally build in concrete unless it's a very expensive building, until we're up at 16 to 20 stories. We go from 6 to 16.

Steel is a beautiful mid-sized. It's the scale of Paris, Vienna, and all the European cities, but we just don't have any suppliers out here, and we're in the same country. This evolution of technology, methodology, and prefab, we're going to see. It's not that we have to invent something new; we just take what's already the best practice in certain areas and get it spread much further than that.

Mass timber is going to be one of the most exciting ones. Right now it's pretty expensive, but this one combines ecology and digital world, so you have to design the building to a very high level of digital accuracy, Shaun, down to where every wire goes. The design of the building literally pre-drills the hole for every wire and pipe in the whole building, and then that entire digital package is sent to a plant and they create wood panels, posts, beams, floors, ceilings, and they basically flat pack it and send it to your job site and you literally put it together like an Ikea machine, you bolt the building together. It's already pre-drilled, pre-done, you just run the wires, run the plumbing.

These buildings go up really quickly. They're made from wood, which we have lots of in Canada, and it is beautiful to live in these buildings. They are these big, beautiful beams, and this natural wood everywhere, this warm-- It's just amazing like that. That's one of the ones that I'm watching. The only reason, Shaun, why it's not happening everywhere all the time is simply economies of scale.

This is a new innovation that's come into our market in the last 10 years. They're literally building 16, 20-story towers out of this in Europe and the U.S. now. As we can build that industry here in Canada, then REALTORS® will be having these conversations about some of the most advanced, exciting, comfortable, and really cool technology. It's coming. It's a big wave that's coming.

Shaun: I love it.

Mark: What I think is great about the CREA program and this progressive thinking that the real estate association is taking is it's preparing all of its members. It's preparing all of the folks who are at the table when we make the most important decision of our lives in terms of where we're going to live, where we're going to raise our family, where we're going to retire, what building are we going to be in, and it's making us think about the future.

Historically, we've thought about the present and maybe just around the corner. This alone is going to be, I think, a very exciting real pull forward for all of Canada to begin moving in continually to become far more sustainable in how we build our communities and our homes.

Shaun: Mark, we've talked so much about all the amazing technologies that are now coming in to the system. Some of them, the smart home stuff, just talking to your lights to say, "Can you please dim yourself?" These kinds of things, "Turn down the thermostat." What were some of the things back in 30, 40 years ago that people were having that same thought about back then that now are ubiquitous?

Mark: It's such a great question, Shaun, because it can feel sometimes like we're trying to climb Mount Everest to make these changes. Because they happen slowly, as we've talked about on a number of points here, it feels depressing and tired. When you answer the question you've talked about, there's a lot of hope in this. We can actually make some big changes. Then you look back at what we've done. Solar panels, solar panels used to be freaky 1970s, very inefficient, great, big, huge, luggy things that were hard to get a hold of. You had to have a big battery pack in your basement. It was all plugged in order to make this thing work. Now, solar is everywhere.

The signs along the sidewalk or along the highway they're all solar-powered. Folks have got solar on their RVs. We've got solar on our houses. The price of solar is just continuing to fall. The price of energy is going up. The business model is starting to make this work. Almost all homes in Canada now, because of the building code, have to be solar-ready. They have to have conduits in the wall from the electrical panel up to the eaves. You don't have to be ripping out drywall and tearing your house apart in order to put on a solar panel in the future. You just fish the wire down the conduit and stick it on the roof. These are simple changes that are now basically setting us up to a whole new world of solar.

Heat pumps. We talked about refrigerators. Never thought about the fact that we could heat or cool our whole house that way. They're now everybody. Everybody's got them. Most new homes that I'm working on, even the condos, most of them are all heat pump driven. Low-flow toilets. That's another one. I remember when I was the manager of the sustainability office at the City of Vancouver getting a call at about 5:30 one night by a panicked architect who was trying to get a LEED certification for this new hospital building they were doing in Vancouver.

There was one supplier, think about this, Shaun, one supplier in the world that supplied a low-flow dual flush toilet. The bowl was the wrong dimension, so it violated our codes. They couldn't put it in. We were going to end up with these big water pegs in this huge building because of that. They eventually found a way past it. Today, $100. Go down to Costco, nice two-piece, low flow. A low-flow toilet, you can get, put in, it looks nice. It's all fashionable. Those old toilets, five gallons of water every time you flush them. These ones, less than a liter. Massive changes.

LED lighting. Remember the first LED lights to come in? We went through CFLs. They were weird and cold and tried a bunch of different things. Then LED came out. They were weird, worse, green, and whatever else. Today, they look just like-- In fact, you can hardly buy a regular bulb anymore. The LED lights use 80% less energy. When you think about the targets for energy reduction and emissions reduction, we're trying to target 80% less by 2050. We did it in a couple of years with LED lighting for that piece of the budget of the energy budget.

FSC sustainable wood, almost impossible to find 20 years ago, everywhere now. You can get it off the shelf at Home Depot. We're seeing such a huge change in so many things when the market is there, when technology comes on board, when the governments change the regulations to support it. That's why you hear some optimism in my voice, is just over my career, I've seen so many things go from where we'd be literally at tables going, "How can we do this? Where's the waste heat? Where's the waste energy? How can we plug them in? Maybe we could do that." Then here we are. They've completely replaced everything that was on the shelves in the common store and changed the whole building code.

Keep your hope up, keep going at this because we're going to be successful in the end.

Shaun: I don't know how much it costs to cryogenically freeze your brain and then reanimate you in 30 or 40 years, but we may need to do that because you're a brilliant man and we need you in the future.

Mark: Likewise, Shaun, we need you frozen as well because we've got to laugh. Laughing is what gets us through all this.

Shaun: Oh yes.

What a great conversation, Mark. I've learned so much. Personally, I think our REALTORS® they have a lot to take away from this and a lot to chew on. Of course, every single REALTOR® is going to go out there and take the certification course because you will have another arrow in your quiver when you're talking to your clients. Mark Holland, man. Thank you so much. This has been a great chat. I wish you well and keep up the good work.

Mark: Thanks so much, Shaun. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. It's a great program.

Shaun: Wow. You can see how Mark is such a great professor. I could listen to that guy talk for hours. In fact, I did today, and that's why this is one of the longest episodes we've ever done, but for good reason. It was just so reassuring to hear from Mark that the future of building design is heading in a sustainable and green direction, and it has to be. For REALTORS®, truly knowing what your client wants and understanding how sustainable housing affects your business is a key to being a leader in the industry.

I got to tell you, after hearing Mark talk about it, he saw it himself, everybody out there who's a REALTOR® right now needs to go out and get their Canadian Certified Green Representative Certificate right now. You heard Mark say, it's truly a world-class program. Make sure you go out there and get that so you can be ahead of the game on all fronts. What a great episode. If you liked today's episode, make sure you go to your favorite podcast platform, give us a review, give us a like, share it with your friends. Make sure you do that.

Today's episode and every episode is brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association. The production is brought to you by Alphabet® Creative. I'm Shaun Majumder. Thanks for joining me on the podcast. This has been REAL TIME. We'll see you next time on REAL TIME.

We all have a responsibility to-- to turn off our phones. Ron, I'm doing my podcast. I'll call you after.

Ron: Okay. Sorry. I love you.

Shaun: I hate you.

Ron: Bye.

Shaun: Okay, here we go. He's great. He's my bromance.

The brand you build as a REALTOR® is what sets you apart, it’s also helpful to demonstrate your value to both clients and peers. So how do you build a brand that exudes authenticity? 

On this episode of the REAL TIME podcast, three members of the REALTOR® community, Greg Hamre, Tony Joe, and Angie Vazquez, share how their unique brand lays a solid foundation for their professional reputation. 

Transcript

Tony Joe: Brand is what people think of when your name is mentioned.

Angie Vazquez: Oh, you're the REALTOR® with the bulldog.

Shaun Majumder: I have been in Carrie Fisher's bathtub.

Shaun: What's your brand? You know, that thing that everybody knows you for? The thing that defines you and how you operate, at least from an outsider's perspective. For REALTORS®, having a strong, distinct personal brand can not only help you stand out from the crowd and make a good first impression, but it can also help you build your reputation. Today, we're speaking with three REALTORS® who really know how to own their brand and use it to build professional relationships.

I am so excited, guys. This is my third episode. Every single week, I am learning something new about your amazing industry. Today, we're not talking to an analyst. We're not talking to somebody who has an opinion about things. We're talking to the actual REALTORS®, the soldiers on the ground, getting it done every single day. I'm so excited to talk to you guys. Today we're focusing on brand. This idea around brand. From my perspective, when I think about brand, I think of a company's brand. In your case, you guys, not only are you dealing with a company that perhaps you work for, but you're talking about your own personal brand.

I want to start the conversation today by, why don't you guys tell me what you guys think brand means to you as a REALTOR®? Let me know, how do you define brand. Greg, maybe I'll start with you.

Greg Hamre: Our brand is our name, Hamre. Our tagline is we know a lot of us who use both of those brands. That shows trust, commitment, longevity. We have three generations in the Ottawa real estate market, so we have legs here. We have multiple generations of clients. It also means we nurtured the client. We give free advice every day and try to promote our city as well as the lifestyle that Ottawa has to offer. We think it's a great place to live, and we love moving people in and out of our city. We love when they return.

Shaun: When you say multiple generations, what do you mean?

Greg: Well, my mother, Shirley Hamre, was an all-star REALTOR® for many years, starting in the '80s. When I joined the company, she was--

Shaun: Tough time to start.

Greg: It was, but she was very much an entrepreneur, one of the top females in Canada. I'm very proud of her. She founded our business. My brother became my business partner in the early 2000s. Both my son and daughter are REALTORS® as well and champions, as well as the rest of the agents on my team.

Shaun: Oh, that's amazing. Your mom-- Look, when you were looking up to your mom back in the day when you were just a teenager, were you thinking, "This is what I'm going to do?" Was she like, a South Asian dad who was like, "You're going to become a doctor"? 

Greg: No.

Shaun: You know what I mean?

Greg: Yes.

Shaun: How did that work?

Greg: To me, it was very much a retail job, and I wanted to get out and expand and be more national. Then when I came back in-- I started 25 years ago. I came into the city of Ottawa and understood that there's a relocation part of this business. That's picking people up at the airport, showing them our city, finding the right missing piece of the puzzle to make sure that when they relocate here, they're in the neighborhood that suits their lifestyle, their recreation needs, their work needs, their transportation needs, and their family school base.

To me, I never wanted somebody to make a mistake or move here and say, "This is not the city for me. I'm not happy with my house," or "I'm not happy with my neighborhood. I got forced into it because we were short on time." That never happens. We spend a lot of time before they arrive, on the phone. Today it's with video so we're coaching them, we're understanding them, we're asking a lot of questions. We know the family dynamics. We get really, really deep in the family's needs, their style, what their motivation is.

Yesterday I was speaking to someone from PEI. Earlier in the week we were talking to someone from Vancouver. They got hung up by the snowstorm last week so they couldn't come in, but we're still working with them. A lot of those people – and I just have people leaving today from those, heading back to Nova Scotia – we're so deep with them. They absolutely, in a lot of cases, didn't have to arrive here to look at the house. They wanted to and we wanted them to, but we knew exactly what their needs were, what their style of lifestyle was, what meant something to them, and what the perfect place for them to call home would be, in a lot of cases, before they arrived.

Shaun: What I'm hearing is that as a brand, for your company's brand, for your team's brand, it sounds like you really, really invest in the needs of the client. Is that how you would encapsulate the brand of your particular team? When you think about brand – because I know you have a branding background, right? – how does branding as an individual REALTOR® differ from, say, when you're trying to build a brand for an upstart company?

Greg: In our case-- and again, a lot of our business is repeat and referral, and referral with other agents across the country, and around the globe, quite frankly. I've done deals, interacted with Tony in Victoria before. We've had the trust from each other to know that the customer that we're dealing with is very important. I would only put them in the hands of somebody on the other end that I know could give them the same style of representation that I could.

Shaun: Love it. How about you, Angie? How do you define brand? What does brand mean to you?

Angie: Brand is your story. I think it's your life story. Listening right now to Greg, I want to move to Ottawa now. It's just amazing the way you're very passionate. I can relate because we're like a tourism guide of our city. I am in Squamish, and it's a very nice community, only 24,000 people. It has been easier to be outstanding because I think-- With the billboards and the bus shelters, I feel like a celebrity in town. Walking, everybody recognizes you, so I like the feeling of the small town as well.

The brand is my story. For many years, when I started real estate, I felt insecure about my accent, if they can understand, and particularly this is challenging. Going to interviews, et cetera, I was like, "Oh my God. Am I saying this correctly?" I think at the end of the day, people, it's what is different about my brand. My person and my accent, it's part of the whole brand. I think at the end of the day it has been an asset instead of a liability.

Shaun: When you talk about story, you talk about narrative and your own story, are you talking about the personal journey that you've been on? How much of that do you actually share with your clients, and how much of that actually helps build value for you and your business?

Angie: That's very deep, because of course we are a public person. Everything we do at the end of the day in the negotiation and in a small community, of course it's more noticeable. I started working at London Drugs 14 years ago when I moved to Canada 16 years ago, and I started to be a part of the community. Of course, being at London Drugs, it was like a shell. I got exposed to meeting people in the community, and I feel that they feel very proud of me that now I'm a very successful REALTOR® in town. I'm one of the top producers here, and it's like, "Oh my God, I remember when you were at London Drugs."

As a single mom raising two kids in the community and sponsoring now events for the firefighter gala, or going to the Helping Hands, it's nice to give back to the community. Sometimes I feel more like a community promoter, more than a REALTOR® or a salesperson. My background is computer engineering. I had the opportunity to share this story through social media, and people engaged with me and support everything we're doing, and that's the way we talk to the community as well.

Greg: Be proud of yourself. I think, as REALTORS®, we're all trying to stand out with our brands. Your voice stands out, and it's really recognizable.

Angie: Can you understand what I'm saying? 

Greg: Absolutely.

Shaun: Oh yes, for sure. Tony, how about you? What does brand mean to you?

Tony: It means what both Greg and Angie have said, absolutely. In addition to that, what I feel is brand is what people think of when your name is mentioned. When somebody says Greg, what does that represent? I think it is within us as real estate professionals to make sure that we build in the background over many years, not a persona, but a personality where people know what they're going to get. Right?

When somebody, a client, is at work and is talking about wanting to buy or sell something, what the brand is is when their colleague says, "Oh my goodness. You have to talk to Angie," or "Greg's the guy." That is the brand. One of the things, Shaun, that you asked a moment ago was about-- or something that has come up was companies versus REALTORS® and branding. Let's face it. As real estate agents, we don't have the budget that major companies have to spend on marketing. A lot of what the brand is for us is the time that we have invested within the community. As Angie said, people get to know who we are and what it is we do.

The other thing for me is a brand is-- it's like a pledge. It's like a pledge. It's a promise of what you're going to get. I think the hardest thing for a consumer is trying to go through advertisements or the internet or websites and trying to figure out who is the person I'm going to pick for my real estate needs. It's hard for them to know-- It is harder, I think, than we appreciate, where people look online and go, "I don't know if this is a good person," or, "Is this going to be the right fit?" To have a brand where you are that person, you're the guy, you're the gal, that to me is a brand.

The other thing too is somebody with a marketing budget who spends money on ads or bus benches, we all have our different ways of marketing. The problem, I think, is that there's always somebody else with a bigger budget, and they can go and get a bigger bus bench or a bigger billboard or whatever. When you have a brand that is recognizable and people know what it is you get, you can't be dethroned. Somebody is not going to suddenly become the celebrity, like Angie said. That doesn't happen overnight. It's a pretty significant investment. I think investing in the community so that people know who you are and what your brand is, it can't be taken away. Right?

Greg: To Tony, that part-- We've known each other for years. Got to meet Angie this week and it's been great, but it takes time to get that trust in somebody, right? It takes time. Right now I'm looking for an agent in Sherbrooke, Quebec. I've reached out to all my agents that I have relationships with, in Sherbrooke, Quebec that are like us, or like me, and said, "Who would you trust in Sherbrooke, Quebec?" Because I wouldn't just go on the internet and find a referral agent, ever. Unless I know that they're trusted and they're trusted by my peers, I'm still haven't found the agent yet.

Shaun: That's interesting because, Greg, when you're thinking about it from your perspective, you're on the inside. You have other peers that you've worked with that they all know the kind of language to speak and how to refer somebody to you from the inside. If I'm a buyer or a seller, I don't have a network of people. I think what we're dealing with is we're going through listings, like who are these people, their bus benches, their ads online. There's a vibe there. There's social media.

I can't imagine what it was like for your mom back in the day. She was literally pounding out pulp and paper to make papyrus leaflets, going door to door and handing them out. Now you have so many different options to share who you are.

Greg: To that point too, you can build your brand so much quicker than you could before. The cost of print, the cost of getting your kids to go door to door with flyers and that, it still works. Not a bad thing, but with social media today and the availability of telling your story, being empathetic, as a REALTOR®, as a young REALTOR® new in the business, you can build your brand a lot quicker than you could 25, 30 years ago.

Tony: I think it's really important-- We're talking about Greg's mom or REALTORS® from previous generations. What they did is what we still need to do, which is to face-to-face with people, and to actually engage with them. We have to make good on our promise. To have a brand which is, "Oh, he or she is a great REALTOR®," we have to make good on that promise, but the face-to-face I think is crucial. All of these tools and marketing that Greg was just mentioning here, absolutely. Things can happen quicker, but the face-to-face is still the thing.

Shaun: Yes. You still have to pay off, right? You still have to have that vibe and that connection with people. Angie, you talk about you're in a smaller-- I wouldn't say small. I'm from a town of 350 people. When you say that you're in a tiny town of 22,000 people-- I think relatively speaking, when you're talking about developing your brand in a small town like that, like face to face, you've already had a history with some of the people in the community. Now, how do you take that personal relationship that you already have with the community and then bring it to your professional life?

Angie: Totally, it's more reinventing yourself. They say that only 50% of the marketing works, but nobody knows what 50%. I think in the beginning what most of us did is I did it all, like door knocking and pamphlets, brochures. Now I try to focus all the efforts on social media, but I also did something very clever because I was in the radio here and there's only one radio station from Vancouver to Whistler to check traffic. Then I always was recording like, "Thank you for the community," and in Christmas, like Feliz Navidad in Spanish. One day I was going to Home Depot and somebody were like, "Oh, your voice. I heard you on the radio." It's outstanding being on there.

That campaign was very successful. It's trial and error. I had a campaign. One day I was in a photo shoot, and I was taking care of a bulldog. Grabbing to help the photographer because the sellers were away. Then the photographer took a photo and I put her in a bus shelter. I received more than 50 texts. "Did you get a dog? Did you get a dog?" I discovered that it's a great way to connect with the community when you do a campaign. Then I tried the same campaign for cat people. I was like, I'll do a campaign with a cat. The campaign with a cat was not successful like the one with the dog.

Again, some stuff that we do it's a hit, and some stuff it doesn't work, right? Again, you have to do it all at the end of the day.

Shaun: I see. You're playing pet politics. You're doing cat people versus dog people. That can be very divisive in the country we live in today.

Angie: I hear you because I know the dog people won. That campaign, it was just dog people. 50 texts, and about the dog. I was like, "Guys, it's not about the dog. It's about me. It's about real estate." Nobody cared. It's like, "Oh, you're the REALTOR® with the bulldog." People, they start connecting and they can relate. It's very interesting. It's also about reinventing yourself. Nine years ago, I started with Instagram and nobody knew about Instagram, or a lot of REALTORS® they didn't use Facebook. Now it's TikTok. You have to always be reinventing yourself.

I have the privilege as well to have now a family business. I feel like Italian, El Padrino, because now my son is the next generation. He's 22. He got two years ago his real estate license. I have to say that I forced him. I cannot say that it was organic because he was working in construction, and he was taking a gap year. Now as a REALTOR® and the campaign with us, when I was endorsing him as a REALTOR®, oh my God, it was so successful because he's very aspirational. I think everybody of us as parents, we always want our kids to join the business, right? I think it was also a lot of people, "Congratulations. I wish my son wanted to work with me. I wish my daughter wanted--" It has been a very--

Again, it's not planned. It wasn't a plan to be a marketing campaign, but it ended up being a branding and marketing campaign. It's organic.

Shaun: Angie, how old is your son?

Angie: 22.

Shaun: He's dialed into the social media.

Angie: Oh my God. I couldn't do it without him. Yes, it's very, very nice.

Shaun: That's awesome. It's funny because when we talk about the whole social media branding thing, it seems like-- You see online there's different individuals. There are those people who are "influencers", and they peddle products, but who are they as a person? You never really get to know that.

Tony, I'm just curious your thoughts on that. You've lived a few years. Now when you think about that, the social media side of things versus the face-to-face stuff, talk a little bit more about that and how important it is to really be sure that you're there and you're present. It's not just about how many posts can you do, but what's behind them.

Tony: I started in this business 34 years ago, and things have changed. Yes, folks, there was a time when there was no internet. There was no email. We had to physically, pen and paper, write contracts and run them over to people's houses at midnight and run across town. That's the way things were. There was always advertising. There was print advertising. It was always easy enough to portray yourself maybe as something you're not. I think this is one of the drawbacks to social media today, is it is very easy, especially in the days of HGTV.

All of these selling fancy home TV shows and things like that where there's this specific glamour that people attach to the real estate industry which, let's face it, is not really there. That's TV, right? To be able to post on social media a persona that is not what the people get when they meet you. I had mentioned before you still need to make good on your promise. It's a reminder about the fact that in the background, we still need to be good at what we do. We still need to be skilled at negotiation, at marketing, at dealing with customers. It's a lot of counseling. We counsel people through a very stressful time.

The biggest failing really would be when somebody is delivered to you on your lap based on advertising or a promise and it's incongruent with what they get. Really it is crucially important to be in the background good at what you do.

Shaun: It sounds like authenticity is an important value.

Greg: Yes, you can't sell. The worst thing you can do is sell. The second worst thing you can do is go dark, meaning you're not out there. You have to be consistent. You have to educate, inform, and give away free knowledge about the market. Don't worry about the selling part. Just be empathetic about who you are, what you know about the industry, what's happening in the industry. Everybody wants to know. There's television shows, channels called HDTV, I believe. I've never watched it. People love to know what's going on in real estate. We need to be that voice in our communities.

When you're telling people, "Here's what's happening. Here's how the tariffs are going to affect us. Here's how the weather will affect us. Here's how lower interest rates will affect us," and allowing them to make the decision, is this the time for them or maybe it isn't? Giving them the confidence that you know. You are the news, and you know what's happening in the marketplace. This takes years and years and years.

We started doing video online in '08, '09, so it's not new to us. We were out there. When people understand our voice, understand the color of our eyes, our mannerism, they know that already from watching video on social media. We have to be there constantly so that we don't get bumped away. Everybody knows five REALTORS®. How do you be the one that they call? How are you the one that they go, "That's the one I have the confidence in. They know what's going on, and they're the ones that can take my sale or purchase of my home across the finish line"? It's so important.

Shaun: Greg, as a potential buyer in the Ottawa market, I'm scouring the internet, and then I come across something that you and your team have put out there. Why should I choose you guys? Because there's so much out there. What are you thinking about in those terms? Because it's all just voice and people trying to sell me something. From my perspective, it's so hard to differentiate. What are the things that you guys do at your team to differentiate?

Greg: That's a great question, Shaun. The average buyer takes 368 days to make their purchase decision. It isn't overnight. We have to build relationships with them. We know the name of their dogs, their cats, their kids, what schools their kids go to. We know what their favorite restaurants are. We get to know what their lifestyle is. Do they go to the gym in the morning or the afternoon? Are they into running or would they prefer to bike? Do they take public transit or everybody in the family has a car and that's why they can't live downtown, they need space? We need to know what their situation is.

Now, it's great that some people come in and buy in five days on a relocation trip. That's wonderful, but we've built a lot of time and trust with that family a long time before they arrived. When it's a local person, they're moving laterally, maybe they're moving up or downsizing, it takes a long time. I've done three listings already this year that we've been working with those couples on selling their homes – most of them were a year, the other two were a year and a half – where we had the summer photos already, so we could do that when the snowbanks for six.

There was a lot of nurturing, trust-building, and confidence. This isn't a sales situation like any other sales business, and I don't like the word. It's a relationship business, there's a trust, and we're so involved in their lives. There isn't another sales career that actually fits the mold like real estate does, and I love it.

Shaun: Angie, you were talking about-- I remember I heard a story about how personal it can get, and for some reason, a specific group were gravitating to you specifically. Talk a little bit about that. How your personal brand plays into your professional persona.

Angie: Totally. It's very interesting because I got a call from a beautiful client and she was like, "Hey, Angie. Somebody recommended you because I'm divorcing. They said, 'If you're divorcing, Angie is the one who's going to help you out.'" I'm like, "Oh my God, how come?" I always ask, "Who do I have to thank?" because I send a gift card if somebody recommends me. She was like, "We were in a therapy group, and everybody were like, 'Oh, Angie. No, totally Angie.'" It was the whole group. It was very flattering, but at the end of the day, I think because I have been through divorce as well, I can relate, and I can help in that difficult time.

They say that there are three difficult times in everybody's life. That is when somebody dies, when you move houses, or when you divorce, right? We have the opportunity to help somebody through these stages in life. Greg was mentioning yesterday as well, right? I have sold houses. I started 13 years ago, but I sold a house to a very young couple that they were relocating from Vancouver to Squamish, because we are in the middle of Whistler and Vancouver. It's a very nice community, 30% less per square foot. Young couples want to live here because of the lifestyle.

Then they had a baby. They bought a condo, had a baby. I moved them to a townhome. After the townhome, they had another baby, to a detaching family home. Unfortunately, they are divorcing and now they need two townhomes or a condo and a townhome. Backwards, right? 13 years that I was in the process of having family and having more kids and going to school, and now separating. You get involved emotionally as well with them, because I were like, "Oh my God, not you guys," but it's part of life and it's part of what we do.

Shaun: How do you protect your own mental health in those situations?

Angie: Oh my God, Shaun. That's a very good question because sometimes you're drained. I was sharing a story yesterday as well. I went to a presentation center, the 10:30 appointment, with one of my friends and clients that is divorcing, the 12:30 appointment with another one, and the 3:00 PM. You hear all the stories as well. I came home and I was exhausted, at the end of the day, but here with nature and walking in the forest or swimming in a lake. You're totally right. You need also to recharge because the expectation, and my own expectation, is that I have to be always on the top of my game, and not only for my clients as well, because after all, we are life coaches of our kids.

For me, that my son works in the company, it ups my game because I cannot be-- I have to be on the top of my game to inspire my family first and then the community, if I can, in a way. Everybody wants to share a success story. Tony, as well, you mentioned about authenticity. You cannot be like somebody else. People will know. If you do it for the sale or for the money, forget about it. This is a service. REALTORS® being-- it's like you're a therapist, you're like a psychologist, you're a coach, yes, and you're the best friend. Yes, I see it that way.

Shaun: Tony, I guess that is what you mean by Monday to Monday. It's not just, "Hey, I'm meeting with this client today. We're going to focus on this hour. I'm going to go over numbers. We're going to look at what's available, what's not available," and then you go away from it and you're like, "Okay, I'm done with that session." It sounds like it doesn't work like that.

Tony: I think what we're discussing is the difference between having a relational business with a consumer and a transactional one. Unlike regular retail settings where you sell a stereo and bang, that's it and you never see the consumer again, this is a very intimate transaction. As Angie says, we get to know everything about consumers, to the point where we have to pledge confidentiality, right? With that trust that we hold in people, there is that pledge of protecting them and serving them, and all that.

Greg had mentioned the timeline and the cycle it takes for a consumer to go through. It got me thinking. In today's day and age, REALTORS® partake in online lead generation where they pay money to get leads to have introductions made, which is fine. This is a new way of marketing today. Agents forget about the fact that usually when people sign up, the consumer is very early in their cycle. They're not five days from buying or a month from buying. They are a year from buying or 18 months from buying. That's the reason why REALTORS® often complain about the fact that oh, these leads are crappy, they're junk. They're not a good lead.

It's not that they're not a good lead. It's just that they're not a now lead. They're not a now lead. They require nurturing, they require incubation, and the people who succeed at these are ones who are good at regular follow-up and establishing a relationship. It almost seems like this is the message for this particular session today, is the relationship. Having a brand that establishes a relationship with a consumer, because it is it is a deep relationship. It's not transactional, right?

Shaun: What I'm hearing from all of this, which is really, really interesting, it sounds like-- When we hear the word brand, brand is very surfacy, it's out there, but in this business, it's probably-- What is the split? What is the split between advertising and getting your "superficial" brand out there? What percentage is it that versus what percentage is the-deep-in-the-trenches authentic relationship-building? I know they go hand in hand, but it sounds like it's much more about the relationship than it is about the superficial.

Tony: I will say this. We study it across the country, and we have a look-- I'm involved in a real estate coaching company and I teach. I'm an instructor for our regulator and I have the pleasure of getting to know all these people across the country, like Greg could clear across Canada, right? What we have noticed is there's a lot of agents who do very well. Who do really, really well, but you never see them because they don't advertise in the tradition. You don't see them on the bus benches. You don't see them on the billboards or things like that because they focus on the relationships with people.

In some respects, maybe they don't need to produce as much to pay for that advertising because their advertising is much more face-to-face. Again, I think it's something that sometimes agents forget about. It's not just all about the splash. The thing about our business is it's built in a way that agents can promote and advertise, which is great. You think about the financial services, like financial advisors. They have compliance, and it prevents them from actually advertising or doing social media. We have this gift that we can do that, but sometimes it's the superpower that maybe is not used correctly because, again, we advertise a persona that maybe we're not in alignment with.

Greg: When you talk about that, Tony, I think that's very interesting. I think you're talking about when people have hashtags or tags that are over-promising the customer. When you go back to your style, and I think it's Angie style, as well is building community within your community, and you're building trust. You may be on a billboard. You may be on the back of a bus. You may be on a practice jersey at the rink supporting kids. You may be promoting the Children's Hospital, the work at the Children's Hospital. You may be using your voice to promote the Snowsuit Fund that we do here in Ottawa as well, another one of our avenues.

That kind of promotion of being involved in the community, you know what? We get it. We want our community to be a wonderful community. It's all a part of the lifestyle of living here. That's why Ottawa is such a great place to be because people are so into caring for one another throughout the community, plus we have recreation. Plus, all that stuff goes alongside, and that just builds on your brand, builds on your community advertising, keeps your voice out there, and reminds people that, again, everybody has five REALTORS® they could choose. How do they choose you?

Angie: The word-of-mouth of the referral business as well. At the end of the day, everybody now with a budget. It's true that with social media, everybody has. Even smaller companies can compete with big companies and can go viral. It's a phenomenon what is happening right now with the social media, avenues open to everybody with a smaller budget. At the end of the day, I think seniority and being an expert in your town. The average age in Squamish is only 38 years old, so I had to very be conscious about how to-- They don't grab newspapers. They don't read magazines. They go on social media.

They're always in social media, so that's the only way that I can communicate with them. It's not to reach them as a lead, it's communicating, engaging that they know that I'm all there and demographic. Again, that I can understand their needs because they're here for the lifestyle. It's a disadvantage in a way that I don't ski or mountain bike, et cetera, because my competitive sport is real estate. I do risk in a very high level. A lot of people, they get their clients biking, so they will think it's a disadvantage that I'm not out there biking because I'm working. I'm working for them. I think I play, so I don't know. It's just perspective at the end of the day.

Tony: I love that.

Shaun: Now, I'm curious about-- well, because I hear a lot about community. I'm hearing community is so important. How has your REALTOR® brand led to new connections that perhaps are outside of your workspace?

Tony: I love this conversation. I often chat with other agents about merging your interests and your passions with business and finding things that you enjoy doing, because you're going to do it anyways, and how often, when you do it often enough or you're seen often enough, the consequence becomes doing business. For me, for instance, I'm a car guy. I love cars. I am deeply in the local car community. We organize a big event here in Oak Bay. Oak Bay Collector Car Festival has been going for 25 years. We close off five city blocks in a little village here called the Oak Bay Village. We get 350 cars out, 30,000 people come out for the day. I just love doing that, and my participation there is as an organizer.

Now, this has nothing immediate to do with real estate, but you think about it, guys. It takes planning. It takes countless committee meetings. You're sitting with people who you didn't know before, and you have a sort of common interest. When people start getting to know you, they start getting to know who you are and what you represent. Then suddenly you get the phone calls from people saying, "Hey, I got to sell. I got to buy," or, "I have a friend or family member who wants to sell or buy." Just getting back to this conversation of relationships, that's how you build the relationship.

The other thing too Angie had mentioned, so important for us to donate and to contribute within the community. It is easy to write a check. Again, I do believe that we should be supporting organizations, but sometimes the gift of your time and your skills and your connections-- See, consumers think that REALTORS® are connectors. Let's make good on that promise, which is the reason why I always feel that we as REALTORS® should be doing more with the service organizations, with the Rotary, the Kiwanis, all of those groups.

It saddens me when I speak to agents in communities and find out that there's no REALTORS® in these groups, and there should be. There should be because if our motto is to serve, we should be serving the community. Givers gain, giving starts the receiving process, and that's what the community service is all about.

Shaun: I can say just imagining myself in that situation, immediately there's a feeling of trust in the way where if I'm having a conversation with, let's say, you, Tone, about a car, it really is disarming. I'm fully open and vulnerable to hearing your story. There's no, "Okay, what is this?" I'm not feeling you out for anything, I'm just fully listening. I imagine by being involved in the community in other ways than simply being a REALTOR® out trying to promote your business, that really can bridge and really connect.

Greg, do you have examples like that in your life and in your team's life about bringing what are your superpowers, if you will, that are outside of the REALTOR® game?

Greg: My superpower is enthusiasm. It's funny you say that because we had a team meeting yesterday and everyone had to list their superpower. We were thinking in the same way. My kids played sports growing up. My daughter was a swimmer and my son played competitive hockey at the highest level possible. We just went around the rinks. I never missed a game, and I always made sure I had time for that, blocked that time off. 11% of my business came from the hockey rink. Not just from the team that he was on, right across the city. Then he went on internationally, but that was a big part of it.

When that void left, a very good mentor of mine out of Boston, Anthony Lamacchia, said, "Greg, you have to get involved in the real estate boards." I got involved with our local real estate board. I got involved with CREA, and I'm part of the ambassadors for RE/MAX corporate across Canada as well for their marketing department. That to me helped me elevate my game. I started meeting other REALTORS® that had like-type experiences, and I've always been involved nationally with referral type of events. When I started to study the foundation of our businesses and the causes that REALTORS® do, all the community work, that really helped me refocus because I wasn't in the rinks anymore. I wasn't at the pools. I was like, "Okay, what do I do next?" I think Tony's had some big roles in his own board and has been president. That is to me, gives back a lot to me. I just like meeting people that have the same vision of making sure our industry is as professional as possible, that we generate professional REALTORS®, and that it's understood. That's from the federal, down to the municipal, down to our community, through our boards. I'm really enjoying that part. It's re-energized me to be focused.

Angie: Coaching other agents as well, right?

Greg: Absolutely. I get to coach eight different agents. Our team is nine. I coach eight different agents every morning at 8:30 and that's regenerated me as well.

Angie: One hundred percent.

Shaun: Guys, when you talk about your personal brand and your brand as a professional, there's got to be some crossover there. How does that personal brand and the professional brand work together when working with other REALTORS®, for example? Tony.

Tony: Because we've been talking about how important your brand is and how consumers know what it is they're getting when they meet you face-to-face, it is just as important in the real estate community. What do other REALTORS® think of you? What do they know of you? When you are working together, what's their experience going to be? Let's face it, sometimes people have a bad brand. Sometimes REALTORS® like, "Oh my goodness, I don't want to deal with that guy or gal because the last transaction was a nightmare." It behooves us to maintain a brand that we work well with others. We play well with others in the sandbox.

Shaun: Are there rules in the sandbox? Are there etiquette? Tell me a bit about that, Greg.

Greg: There's definite etiquette, and that's almost your secret sauce. What I mean by that is if you have etiquette and I coach my team on it being etiquette, part of that is communication. Part of that is trust. Let's say you're in a situation where there's three offers, there's five offers, maybe this is just two, and you're going with, which REALTOR®-- both the offers are very similar. Having that trust from the other agent that they can say to their customer, I know this agent from the Henry team in Ottawa can take this across the finish line. Everybody wants their customer to have a wonderful experience, whether they're representing the buyer or seller.

There are certain agents that could take across the finish line, and you have that trust that it'll happen. You want that to happen. You don't want at the last minute it falls through because somebody wasn't able to deal with the lawyers, someone who wasn't able to deal with the home inspectors. Nobody coached that person along the way. Then you're just left holding the bag. Now the house isn't sold, you're back on the market. Who can get you across the finish line? It all comes down to communication. It all comes down to understanding etiquette as a professional REALTOR®. Those that do succeed and go a little farther than--

Tony: By the way, I believe that this is not a domain that is only for the 25 or 30-year REALTORS®. I have worked with some fantastic newer agents who have imparted that sense of confidence, where I've been able to say, "You know what? He or she has only been in for two or three years, but I've dealt with them, and holy cow, they can make it across the finish line."

Greg: I like the way you talk about that, Tony, because as a veteran agent, I've been in the market 25 years, I like helping other agents. I don't want them to make a mistake in front of their clients. The interest will be of my client first, but I will coach that other agent to make sure that they realize that this is what etiquette is. One of the biggest things for me was when you have a multiple offers.

I remember in COVID, we'd have 15 or 12, and before the end of the night, I called every agent that brought me an offer to thank them for bringing me an offer. I didn't text them. I called them, said, "I'm sorry, they work with another offer. It's such a pleasure to have the opportunity to work with you. Thank you. Can't wait to do another offer with you in the future.

Angie: Wow.

Greg: Keep the door open."

Shaun: What's an example of what not to do in that situation, Angie?

Angie: Well, one of my rules is that if I'm going to a listing presentation competing, usually it's three agents, two or three agents. I always ask the family that is interviewing me, I don't want to know who I am competing against. I don't want my decision to be, oh my God. I just want to go authentic with my listing presentation and tell them what I can do for them. Of course, I love winning.

Most of the time I get the listing, but I just don't want to say, "Oh I'm competing against this person or another person." Something very important as well in this regard is when things go wrong, the amount of times I have paid for TVs, for Sonos system, for repair like refrigerators, that's also huge in the industry.

That when something goes wrong, that you have as well, the budget and the will to fix it. With no questions asked because it's part of your reputation and your branding as a REALTOR®. In the future, they are going to remember, "Oh my God, I remember the REALTOR®." Then when the TV was taken or when the window coverings were taken, she brought the TV to us, right?

Shaun: Is there something that REALTORS® do on the regular that is really frowned upon? I'm just curious because I know we're focusing on the positives, and we are flush with positive with this group for sure. I think if I'm a REALTOR® and I'm watching, I'm like, if I knew what not to do, and-- because there might be blind spots. What are those things that people may be unaware of that they're doing that they could learn from this conversation and say, "Okay, I will never go down that road."

Tony: Don't let your ego get in the way.

Shaun: How do you mean?

R: Again, they watch it on TV.

Angie: It's not a power position.

Tony: It's not a power position. Agents sometimes will try to exert some form of power or an ego trip that isn't there. They're writing checks that they can't cash. We must always remember that we are looking after the best interest of our client. Sometimes agents get in the way because they have to win or they feel like they have to win, and they're not letting their clients get what they want. We can see that every once in a while. Let's not forget who we work for. Who is the client? We're in service of the client.

The other thing too, by the way, Greg's 25 years in, I'm 34 years, Angie's 13 years. One of the things that we have as agents who have been around for a bit now, there is a responsibility that we help newer agents. We inspire them so that they go, "Oh my goodness, I just did a deal with Angie. She was fantastic. I want to be like her." or "I will never forget my dealings with Greg because he made me feel comfortable and helped me get the deal through." We have a responsibility as experienced agents to impart that on others.

Greg: You'll get so many more deals if you leave the other REALTOR® with a positive experience. No matter what their ego is, kill them with kindness, feed them communication. That makes you step up, and it'll last. That'll come back and grow for you.

Shaun: It's great lessons as a human being, too.

Tony: Yes.

Angie: Totally, and when an agent, like new agent, has a $3 million sale or like a-- I always call them as well. "Congratulations, that's huge." I'm happy for them. It's nice.

Tony: I am certain Greg's heard this and probably Angie as well, because I have too, when an agent calls and says, "Wow, I saw it was your listing and I'm so happy to be working with you."

Angie: Oh, that's the best, yes.

Tony: Right?

Angie: Totally.

Greg: They know that you'll pick up the phone. It works the other way, too, that Tony's going to. There's two listings on the street, they're both the same model, but they'll go to yours because they know you're going to answer the phone, they know you'll work the deal. You'll know that the customer will get to the finish line. That's so important.

Shaun: Angie, did I hear you cook?

Angie: I cook Mexican food, and I have won people over meals. I wanted to share that my big event every year I sponsor a salsa dance festival. We had 200 people dancing at the pavilion last year. It's about providing a happy experience as well. It's just the emotions and the people being happy dancing salsa, bachata, merengue. I dance as a hobby with the champion, with Dancing with the Stars, with Gerald Koch. I learned how to dance salsa in Canada, believe it or not. I get on. Totally.

Shaun: That's so funny. That does say a lot about Canadian culture, though. We are a great country.

Angie: Totally, totally. I sponsor that event. Again, it's not like a sales event. It's a salsa experience, and people they are so grateful. They go and want to talk to me and say thank you just for the experience. I never was like, "Oh, if you need me, like if you are selling or buying, call me." I don't even think about it. I think there is a misperception about REALTORS® are a salesperson and we're always like trying to sell. I think it's opposite at the end of the day.

Greg: Just be yourself. Just be yourself. Speak your own language. You'll attract your own audience.

Angie: Totally.

Tony: Angie, things like that. When REALTORS® put on events, it is not about the selling yourself. What you've really done is it's a gift to the community because-

Angie: Totally. Be happy.

Tony: -without your support, without you putting it on, it may not or probably will not have happened. Again, another great example of what we as real estate people can do in our own communities.

Shaun: That's amazing. That is inspiring across the board, especially thinking about-- I come from a small community. My town is 350 people originally, that's where I was raised. Community events are so important. It's not about, "Okay, we're going there to mingle, to do drum up business." It's truly just to be a human being connected with the tribe and connecting. I love that.

Tony: People get that. The community gets that. When they see that enough, and they see that as, yes, and then they get to know you and who you are. That's when the time comes for them to buy or sell, they can't think of anyone else but Angie. Right?

Shaun: Right. Right. There's a magnetism there. Especially, I understand, because I love Mexican food, Angie. I love Mexican food.

Angie: The happiness. I'll cook for you whenever you visit in Squamish.

Shaun: Yes. Yes.

Greg: Put me on the list.

Angie: Yes. Absolutely. Invite you to the event.

Greg: We said earlier though, you can't go dark. You have to be out there in your community. You have to be visible. Whether it's going to a hockey rink or a soccer match, or maybe it's the triathlon or the run through your community, make sure you're visible in your community. It's so easy that we give all our energy all day long, and you just want to come through the door at night, drop your briefcase at the front door, and go, "I don't want to talk to anyone for the rest of the day."

You got to regenerate. You got to be there for your family when you come through the door. I'm all about leaving my briefcase at the front door, spend some time with your family, be where your feet are, but make sure you're out there supporting your community in every way possible.

Tony: You got me thinking of an agent that I mentored for a short time because he was struggling. It's amazing because we determined that he spent his entire day in his home office on the computer, doing work-related things, but he was never out. Like you said, you can't go dark. It is very difficult to meet people and build lasting relationships if you are not out there and face to face shaking hands or whatever, fist bumping nowadays, whatever it is we do. You need to be out there, and you need to be seen.

I get the fact that some people, personality-wise, maybe they're not the types that go to black tie galas or whatnot, but you still need to be out there and perhaps finding groups of people that you are more comfortable with. I chatted with another REALTOR® a little while ago. He's one of these Dungeons and Dragons game guys and everything. I said, "Find your friends." It's a community, right?

Angie: Totally.

Tony: There's communities all over.

Greg: Yes.

Shaun: Speaking to that, I don't know if you guys heard, but a few years ago, there was this global pandemic that happened all over the world that was such a monumental shift in all of what you're talking about in terms of like the whole thing was to go dark. You've got to go dark. You're not allowed outside. How did that impact the REALTOR® game? Then how has it changed over the last five to 10 years? The idea of branding and was that event something that realigned with a new way of doing things at all? Talk a little bit about that. Yes. Greg?

Greg: We've been doing listing videos since 09. We were already doing virtual. When it got dark like that, when people cocooned, they actually went on their computers. We stole market share. We became the voice. We were out there. Here's how we're going to guide you through this. Here's how people are cocooning. I believe that's going to happen right now with these tariffs. I believe people are going to cocoon again and create the walls around their fortress and invest in their homes or invest in their lifestyle or say, "I'm not waiting for anything else."

They'll invest in their homes literally. I think we're going to come out of this. It'll be another bit of a spike in the market. What's going to happen here is when that happens, if you're not out in your community, be the voice in your community. If you can't go and meet 20 people a day, or you can't make 20 phone calls a day, make a video on what about the real estate market that goes out and reaches thousands of people in the first 24 hours.

That's another relatively inexpensive way to get your voice out there and be part of the community when you can't be face-to-face or belly-to-belly with them. There's nothing better than being face-to-face. I think that's the most valuable, but make sure you're out there at least on social media.

Shaun: Angie, how have you seen it change over the last 10 years?

Angie: For me, it was a blessing. When it was like a pandemic Squamish. I doubled my productivity in pandemic because we were a bedroom community. Squamish before 51% of the population of the working force commuted, 21% to Whistler, 30% to Vancouver. When they found that they can work from home, everybody wanted to cash out on their investments, like in Vancouver or their homes in Vancouver, and move to Squamish because they can get a bigger house, because we're 25, 30% less price per square foot.

They moved to bigger places that they can have. The thing that they asked me the most during pandemic was a house with an office for him and an office for her. They needed a three to four-bedroom places. Instead of living in a condo in Cole Harbour in downtown Vancouver, they moved to Squamish. I remember we sold 2020, 63 houses, and I cannot say we were not prepared because we're always prepared, but it took us by surprise that everybody wanted to move here. The challenge to do the virtual showings.

What I did, I had a building, I was selling 15 condos, and then I remember I got reprimanding, like, "You cannot do like open houses, et cetera." Then I was like, "It's a virtual open house." I went to the building, stay at the door with the mask, and open all the doors so then people can get themselves in. You had to be creative. It was a good thing for Squamish because before we were a bedroom community, and now we're like a destination, people like to live here.

Greg: This is going to be another tough time. There's no doubt about it. That's the elephant in the room right now. There's an economic uncertainty here. This is where we really shine. This is where the true agents really shine-

Angie: With experiences.

Greg: Experience. I love how you say you doubled. I'm not trying to compare numbers, but our whole team got tripled first quarter because we tripled our business during COVID. We didn't stick in our pajamas every day. We got out there, we were out there. Everybody had to show up in our own team meeting every morning at 8:30, dressed for success, shower-ready. Being there and staying in the focus, we were essential in COVID.

We were ruled essential. People needed us to buy and sell homes. People still needed a roof over their head, and the agents that understood that and really jumped on that. The easiest way to do it was through social media and through video. Then like Angie said, do virtual tours of the home. People still needed to buy homes, and we were there for them.

Shaun: I quadruple whatever, guys. I am so full. I quadruple than vax. I am so full of vax. It's unbelievable. If you guys need any, let me know. That's amazing. Now, Tony, you've been around forever. You started by sending carrier pigeons with leaflets or whatever, smoke signals, back in the day.

Tony: Pretty well.

Shaun: How has it changed over the years for you? What have been the biggest differences between when you started and today?

Tony: Talking about the pandemic, that was a point in time, and I know for many it hurt and it was difficult. When I got in the business, fax machines were a big deal. We were running over to people's houses and getting them to sign thermal paper. Remember the paper turns black over time, and it got to the point where REALTORS® they were confused. They're like, "This can't be legal, this can't be legitimate." That was technology making its way in. Piggybacking on what Greg said.

The interesting thing is whether it's COVID or whether it's tariffs or whatever it is, it's interesting because as an industry, the real estate industry, we are actually really well positioned to adapt and adapt quickly to the needs of consumers. That can't be said of other industries, unfortunately. We know that because tons of people lost their jobs. As an industry, that is something that if we have done what we're supposed to be doing, we're talking about branding, we're talking about community.

When the economy goes kind of sideways or people start getting concerned, it's the people who are entrenched. It's the REALTORS® who are entrenched in the community, the ones who have already invested in their local community where the dividends come out. Just like Angie and Greg, we were massively busy at that time, and it's because people went to professionals that they knew and trust. That, again, is where the importance of branding comes in, because then people know what they get.

Angie: In COVID, I did a campaign because there was some stages that we couldn't even leave the neighborhood. I went and bought coloring books and crayons and drop off to the neighbors' because the kids were at home with no activities. It was so nice, like the feedback from the neighbors, "Oh my God, my kids have been coloring for hours." Giving the parents a little bit of a break. In those moments of emergencies, when you have to as well, like be creative and shine and think about others, how can you support the situation?

Shaun: I love that. You're just a natural mamacita, you're just like, I have to take care of my family.

Angie: My people.

Shaun: I love that so much. We've covered a lot of topics, we've covered a lot of ground. There's so many things from your own personal experiences and some great personal stories, by the way, of actual real-life things. For REALTORS® who are watching this right now, looking to develop a brand, looking to start or restart or rethink, I want to go through each of you. Tell me what would be the thing that you would say to these REALTORS® who are really trying to develop that brand?

Angie: I always recommend that they work with somebody, that they find a mentor or a coach. When I started, I started with Maggi Thornhill, that is like a tycoon real estate in Whistler, and she's very well known. She sells over $300 million every year. I had the privilege to work with her, but she's very busy. I really recommend teams.

If you're new in the business, have somebody to pave the way. For me as an ESL, it was very tough in the beginning to read contracts, to understand the complexity of the subjects, how to protect clients. It only comes with experience and repetition. Also, if you have somebody mentoring you, that's huge.

Shaun: Yes. Tell me about that, Angie. Actually, I'm curious about your very first week. Your first year essentially, tell me about that and what it was like. You didn't have a mentor, you had nobody to help you, you're ESL, you're a relatively new Canadian. I don't know how long you were in Canada at that time-

Angie: Yes, three years.

Shaun: -but talk a bit about that.

Angie: First, when I went to UBC to get my real estate license, the first time I wrote the exam, I failed. I didn't pass the exam because I couldn't read fast enough. It's encouraging because a lot of agents are like, "Oh my God, the exam is difficult." I was like, "Imagine in a different language, it's more difficult." I got a very proud 53. It's perseverance. I joined the business because I wanted to have flexibility to pick up my kids at school, and I wanted to manage my own schedule.

Little did I know that it was seven days a week. The first three years I didn't make any money in real estate. I had a part-time job. I had another job and I supported myself with international students. I have nine international students. Don't think a lot of people see me, and they were like, "Oh my God, you got into real estate in the perfect timing." I was like, "No, I didn't." They see the success story and they don't see the struggle.

The first time I hosted an open house in Whistler for Maggi Thornhill, I was so excited. I printed everything, and I was rushing there. My daughter was three, my son was eight, so the nanny was late. I forgot the signs. I forgot everything. I just went with myself. Then I called Maggi. I was like, "Maggi, I forgot everything." She was like, "Don't worry, darling." She went and put the signs and brought me a latte. Oh my God. Ask me how many times I forgot anything.

I learned the lesson. The first three years were like very, very tough. I started to be more successful when I left my part-time job at London Drugs, and they were like, "This is it. I'm going to do this full time." That was I will say when I started to be successful or selling because having a part-time job and the students, if you don't do this full time, it's going to be a struggle.

Shaun: Looking back, would you do anything different?

Angie: I will have worked with somebody in a team before, being somebody's assistant maybe. Maybe you need to have certain cushion of money in order to start real estate if this is your only source of income, because don't expect that the first year or the first six months you're going to make any money.

Shaun: Right. Greg, how about you?

Greg: It's a long-term game.

Angie: Totally.

Greg: I hired a coach, John Chaplick. I mastermind with him every Monday night, and I have a personal call with him every Wednesday morning. It was a game-changer for me. I hired him going in when we hit COVID and I was like, "Uh-oh, this is different." Having a mentor like that, having someone that coaches, a lifestyle coach and a real estate coach just to bounce things off of. It allows me to coach my team. Every morning at 8:30 we do a coach huddle every morning, five days a week.

I've also reached out to those agents that have been in the business a while. When you get the opportunity to mentor, to give back to younger people or newer people in the business, it is so rewarding. I know that Tony's a coach as well. You learn more from that. It's just like going to a presentation at a convention and being up on stage. Trust me, you get more than the audience does out of it. When you give back to people getting in this business to make sure they avoid some of the mistakes you made.

I have a number of agents that are younger that have been in the business for less than five years, but have 10 years' worth of knowledge because I've coached them through it. Here's how you avoid the mistake. Here's how you make the customer experience a wonderful customer experience. Here's how you put the customer first. Here's how you use empathy. Here's how to avoid being a salesperson.

All that stuff that took years as we talked, as Angie said, if you don't have somebody to get you over those initial hurdles, it's really tough to get going. When you've been in the business and you start giving back to others, it's even more rewarding and it's more beneficial to your own business. You get better. I think that's part of being somebody that's a veteran in the business. We have to make sure that everybody else has a professional framework and a professional comes across as a professional that our industry needs them to.

Shaun: I love that. That's very wise to think in that way. Actually, I said to my kid, I learned this saying years ago, and I tried it out on my five-year-old because I was trying to share with her that she needs to teach her little sister how to do stuff. I said, "Because Mattis, to teach is to learn twice." She looked at me and she threw pudding in my lap. I don't know if that will sink in, but I think this idea of to teach is to learn twice is amazing.

Now, that's how advice you give people when they're first starting out. Tony, when we talk about developing your brand as a new REALTOR® or as a REALTOR® who's maybe rethinking their own brand, what would be the most important thing that you think they should focus on?

Tony: Well, first of all, I agree with both Greg and Angie. It’s easy for me to say, I am a coach. I coach for Richard Robbins International out of Toronto. I have for 15 years, and I have seen people develop. As Greg said, it's being able to take the struggles and the pains that a seasoned agent learned over 10 years and help REALTORS® do that in three. To condense those things, that's what coaching is all about. To be a coach, absolutely. You're learning twice, 100%. It keeps us accountable as well too, because what we are helping coaching members with are things that we too need to be practicing as well.

Back to your question, Shaun, about what somebody new should be doing. I think it is crucial to build your tribe. To have people around you, because the problem about this business is it's lonely. It's a lonely business. We are in silos. We are always alone. REALTORS® are always feeling like there's no support. Let's face it guys, it's not rocket science. There are thousands of people who have done this before you, who have struggled or have had slow months or who haven't seen a paycheck for six months, but they have found ways.

The key, as Greg has said, is to tap into people who have done it and say, "What can I do? What are the things I have to do?" Be open to learning. That's the key as well. There's people who say, "I want to get into coaching. I want to learn." When the coach says, "Consider this, this, this, and this," they go, "Well, I can't do that. Oh no." If they're close to learning, they're not going to advance.

Greg: Be coachable.

Tony: Be coachable, Greg. Getting back to finding your tribe, because we've talked about this, we talked about merging your passions. Is it sports? Is it church? Is it school? What are the things-- It's funny, the show producer here, Mike, when we were setting up yesterday, he said to me, he goes, "You've got stuff in the background that's going to be on screen. Are you sure you want that?" For anyone who's seen it, I've got all this sci-fi paraphernalia. I have signed a Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill stuff. I'm a huge sci-fi nerd. I am not ashamed to admit it I am a sci--

Shaun: Tony, can I interrupt you?

Tony: Yes.

Shaun: I have been in Carrie Fisher's bathtub. I'm not even joking. I'm not even joking.

Greg: Just got a visual.

Shaun: I've been there and she wasn't home. It was so wild. I was working on a tv show in California, and then I was working with the Farrelly brothers. This one of the guys that was working on that show was good friends with Carrie Fisher and we ended up shooting a little thing in her house. I was in her house.

Greg: So cool.

Shaun: She actually had action figures of the original A New Hope, Princess Leia's. Ah, so I just had to share that. See, now let's buy and sell a house together. See, that's how that works.

Tony: That's just the thing is to find people who share the same-- I'm involved in groups, both REALTOR® groups and also-- one of my dear friends is a fellow who owns a paraphernalia-- I was going to say paraphernalia, sci-fi paraphernalia shop in Victoria. He's got a toy museum, the Canadian Toy Museum. It's been a fantastic relationship. He asked me about real estate things every once in a while, but that's not the reason why we hang out. It's because we have shared interests.

Again, to have your own specific groups and to be proud of them and to also work within it, build your tribe. It could be professionals, it could be your trusted lawyer, your trusted accountant, your business networking groups. You need people to survive. It sort of goes back to what we said earlier. We still need to be good at what we do, we still need to have a reputation, people still need to want to deal with us. It is important that on a daily basis we perform these tasks with a level of skill such that our reputation precedes us.

Shaun: Yes. Your brand reputation obviously interchanges with your personal reputation. That's the other thing too. I can imagine if you're in a community, like there's not a lot of room for outside-the-box messing up, if I may say that. You guys have to be-- that's a lot of pressure, isn't it, guys? Greg, you're in the Ottawa community, everybody knows you there. How much do you have to be aware of that, too, your social side?

Greg: Always, always. I went to the hockey rink at 6:00 AM in the morning with a suit, because if I didn't, and I was in my sweats, people were like, "Is real estate not good?" No, a lot of my business came from there. I dressed up like this when I went at six o'clock in the morning. What I would say to new agents is you have to be visible, but you also have to communicate. It's great to communicate on social media. It's part of it. It's great to communicate by email and text, but pick up the phone. Pick up the phone. When you get an email or you get a text, it's an invite to call them.

That picking up the phone and having that one-on-one relationship is almost as good as sitting in front of them in a coffee shop or at their kitchen table. You need to be in front of them. Don't be afraid to call them, stay communicating with them. Make sure they understand how deep you are in their relationship and how important they are to you. When that sign is out front and your sign is up front and their friends and neighbors are asking, "Oh, you went with-- that's a team I would have gotten with," and they're quite proud of it. They feel like they have a relationship with you, and they do. It's deep.

Tony: By the way, it is not just when you are helping them buy or sell. We have to remind our clients, and as agents also have to abide by the fact that we are their trusted agents for longer than they're just buying or selling real estate.

Greg: You nailed it.

Angie: Also your glass has to be full. It's not only coaching and real estate. I took a five-day course with Tony Robbins that changed my life as well. It's also having a lot to give. The more like activities or hobbies and-- the more you grow, the more you have to give. It's not only real estate. it's like we're an integral part of the community.

Shaun: Guys, what an amazing conversation this has been. I really hope REALTORS® who are watching this are taking away from Mount Olympus here. We have some of the best and the best and the best. I have learned so much today. I'm hearing authenticity. I'm hearing community. I'm hearing all of these incredible things that I'm sure REALTORS® who are watching this are going to take away and put in their toolkit. Guys, thanks so much for joining me on REAL TIME.

Angie: Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Tony: Thanks for having us.

Greg: Thank you, Shaun. You're great.

Shaun: Go Canada, go. Go Canada, go. I guess that old saying is true, your reputation precedes you. If your brand is a reflection of your reputation and vice versa, then making sure your brand is true to you is key. Authenticity will get you very, very far.

Thanks so much for joining us today. As always, if you like today's episode, make sure you give us a review or a like or a smash or whatever you do. Give us a good review on your preferred podcast platform. Today's episode, REAL TIME, is brought to you by The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), production courtesy of Alphabet® Creative. I'm Shaun Majumder. Thanks so much, and we'll see you next time on REAL TIME.

I'm just saying, as a Star Trek fan, you're going to love it. It was a great episode.

Greg: your ears and stuff?

Shaun: No. That's Vulcan. Who is this guy? Who is this guy?

Angie: Break them up.

Tony: I can't speak for him. I can't speak for him.

Greg: It was in Hockey Night in Canada, I can't help it.

Capitalizing on your niche can be the key to moving your business forward—just ask April Brown and Sarah Sklash, founders of The June Motel in Prince Edward County. What started as a side hustle between best friends has now turned into a Netflix sensation and multi-property endeavor. 

On this episode of the REAL TIME podcast, April and Sarah share how honing in on their unique offering is what really made The June Motel into what it is today. Plus, hear their take on why focusing on a niche audience can actually make things easier when it comes to marketing your business. 

Transcript

Shaun Majumder: You feel that leaning into that niche market has really paid off?

April Brown: We were sold out that first summer. We were featured in Vogue. It was a wild ride that first year.

Sarah Sklash: It's bad when you need a sign, which meant people were gutting fish in it.

Shaun: There's a real magic that comes with honing in on what makes you stand out. Not many people know that better than April Brown and Sarah Sklash, the two best friends behind the iconic June Motels, and Netflix's renovation show Motel Makeover. April and Sarah joined me today to talk about their journey to finding June, who may or may not be a real person, and how embracing uniqueness really helped them find their niche and help to create the successful business they have today. Wow. April, Sarah, this is so exciting. Thank you so much for joining me today. How are you doing?

April: Good.

Sarah: Yes.

Shaun: Love it.

Sarah: Happy to be here.

Shaun: I love it. Listen, this story is so inspirational, it's amazing. I want to start at the beginning. I can only assume that obviously you two went to some mountain town in Switzerland and trained to be world-class hoteliers before you started on this journey. Is that correct? Is that a fact-based assumption?

April: Honestly could not be further from the truth. 

Shaun: Let's start at the very beginning. How did The June Motel come to be?

April: Sarah and I, we've been friends for 20 years now, maybe a little bit more than 20 years. It was 2016 and we were both working separate 9:00 to 5:00 jobs in Toronto. I was working for a PRM marketing agency, Sarah was working for the Ontario government, and we both really dreamed of doing something different with our lives and our career. We were looking for something that would bring a bit more meaning and purpose to our lives at that point. We got together one day. It was the beginning of the year. We cracked open a bottle of wine. We're like, "This is the year we're going to make some changes." We probably brainstormed 50 different side hustles, honestly.

They weren't even like, "We're going to quit our job and become a motelier." At this point, we were like, "We're just looking for a weekend thing." There's this little area outside of Toronto that's called Prince Edward County. It's an up-and-coming, or at the moment, at the time in 2016, it was an up-and-coming region with wineries and breweries, cool restaurants. We had been going out there with our girlfriends, drinking wine, seeing it evolve, seeing the opportunity, and we were like, "Oh, wouldn't it be cool to do something out there?" Actually, one of the ideas that we had come up with in that brainstorm was this idea of hosting a weekend wine camp for adults.

Shaun: Camp. Oh, I like that idea. You guys would be the head counselors.

Sarah: Of course.

April: Of course. Drinking all the wine.

Shaun: Right.

April: We were just looking for a place to host it. Sarah knew that there was this motel that was for sale outside of Picton, and said, "Oh, maybe we would take over for the weekend, and make it cute, and host everybody there." We start thinking through this idea. It was honestly minutes into this brainstorm that we looked at each other and we were both like, "We should just buy that motel."

Shaun: Wow. When that light bulb goes off, I assume at that point, you're probably two or three bottles deep?

April: At least a bottle. Let's assume at least a bottle.

Shaun: Just to get to say, "We should buy that instead of just going and hosting a girl's weekend," that's a huge leap. That's epic, but why not? That sounds exactly in line with your personalities and what you were feeling at that time. That's a huge leap.

April: It was a massive leap. I want to say we had that conversation in January, and a couple of months later, we're literally putting an offer in on this motel. Couple of months after that, we are quitting our jobs, packing our bags, moving to this town of 4,000 people, and actually living at the motel.

Shaun: Wow. Do you remember what the name of the motel was before it became The June Motel?

April: Yes. It was called the Sportsmen Motel and it was a popular stay for fishermen and hunters. To paint the picture, it was musty blue carpets, those old floral quilts on the bed, and the only art in the room is this laminated sign that says no gutting fish in room.

Shaun: I think that's a quality rule. I think you should not gut fish.

Shaun: I live by that in my house.

April: Me too.

Sarah: It's bad when you need a sign, which meant people were gutting fish in it.

Shaun: Yes. Right. "Frank, I've told you, every season we've talked about this. You've ruined the table every year now, please. You know what, Helen? Let's get a sign. Let's paint a sign, put it in each room." Wow.

April: Exactly.

Shaun: How much of it did you just look at online and fall in love with at first? How much of it was going there to see it? At what point did you say, "This has got to be the property that we have to purchase?"

April: I think we went there with some conviction that this was going to be it. I think we joke when we look back on it now we saw past a lot of things. The floors were sloped, the place was extremely run down, but we had such a strong vision at that point that we showed up and we were like, "This could be amazing. This is it. We need to do this." I think it was that vision and that conviction that we had for the idea that I think just propelled us to see past the sloped floors and the imperfections of this place, and see past what it was and see what it could be.

Shaun: Take me through the idea because if you're sitting there, you obviously have gone through a big list of side hustles, and then you honed in on this idea. Was this an inspired idea from that conversation and you just worked it out as you were having these brainstorming sessions, or was it something that was always in your back pocket and you thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if we could find something to do?" What was the idea, per se, Sarah? What were you guys honing in on?

Sarah: I think we knew Prince Edward County was a place that we knew people were going to want to be. I had purchased a cottage out there, I think, two years before we started looking at this place. There was more and more talk of Prince Edward County, and yet there weren't that many places to stay. The Drake Devonshire was opening up around the same time, but they were only 10 rooms. The other options were dingy roadside motels or old-school B&Bs.

We saw that there was this motel and we thought, "It can be a blank slate. It can be whatever we really want it to be." Really put ourselves in our own shoes and the shoes of our friends and said, "If we were going out to wine country for the weekend, what is it that we would want to have?" Kept going back to that as we thought, "How do we take this dingy roadside motel and make it into a it destination for people to travel to?"

Shaun: Now all of a sudden, as you're going through this process, you have to think, what is that it in the it destination? It sounds like you were using your own wants and desires to be the guiding force, correct?

Sarah: Yes. We like to call ourselves moteliers. We weren't the first moteliers, but I think we were the first in Canada. We were looking people were doing this in Miami and Texas. We were finding some good inspiration out there. We knew others had been able to take these dingy roadside motels and turn them into something cool. I think the other thing was back to April and I having no experience in hospitality before this, it really gave us fresh eyes as we looked at the entire experience and so went step by step.

One example of that is hotel check-in processes. Everywhere you go, some are starting to get better, but overall, they suck. They're slow. They're boring. They're often impersonal and they take a weird amount of time. This is back in 2016 and we're like, "You know what would make this better?" The very first thing that we did was do is like, "Hey, are you checking in? Would you like a glass of welcome rosé?"

Right away, that makes the checking process significantly more fun and sticks out, and gives us a chance to really warmly welcome guests to The June. That was just one example, but we kept going piece after piece of this experience and what we could do to make it not just a place to stay, but be an experience and a home base for people when they're traveling in wine country.

Shaun: That is that feeling when you show up anywhere and they say, "Here's your welcome drink." I'm like, "Can I charge this to my room?" "No, no. This is on us." That's so nice.

Sarah: It's so nice.

Shaun: That was something that obviously you would wanted in your own experience wherever you guys went. When you pictured the girls going away, Prince Edward County, just for a weekend, how much of those ideas played into and then certainly clashed a little, probably, with the motel when you went there, and you're like, "Oh, can we even make that dream a reality?"? April, how much of that was a challenge to bring together in the ideas process?

April: I think, again, like Sarah said, we really saw that motel as a blank slate. There was nothing we were really attached to. We could wallpaper with funky palm wallpaper. We could put the neon signs up. We had this strong vision and we had this blank slate that we could apply it to, but it was pretty hilarious. I think we had such a strong vision, but we had engaged so many family and friends in helping us to create The June and the first motel in Prince Edward County. It was like we were home stretch, we're a couple of months away from opening, and we had that last big decision to make, which is, what color do you paint the doors?

We had a really strong vision for a perfect shade of millennial pink, almost like it was a little sun faded like it had always been there. Again, we drew such inspiration from places like Miami and California and we knew what we were trying to create. When we asked all of our family and friends what color or what shade of pink they liked best, every single one of them was absolutely horrified that we were going to paint those doors pink.

Somebody even said, "You don't expect the fishermen to come if the doors are pink. No fishermen are going to stay at a motel with pink doors." It was in that moment that we realized they don't really understand what we're creating here. They're supportive, they're showing up, but they don't really understand our vision. It's our job to stay true to that and stick to it, and so we painted those doors pink. Honestly, it was one of the most iconic elements of The June .

Shaun: Oh, that's so awesome. You had, like salmon, going upstream, heading towards the old Sportsman's Lodge to be gutted in a room. You guys were going upstream and you had lots of resistance out of the gates. Let's just take a step back for a second because government worker, publicist, a big idea. This can't be cheap. You guys are starting out-- obviously. it's 2016 markets. Is it cool to ask, we're talking to REALTORS® here, what was the price point of this building to get started and how did you manage to pull that off?

Sarah: 2016, Prince Edward County, times were different, and I think motels too. We were, again, on the early side, so not everyone was seeing these places the way we were. Our friends were out there buying houses in Toronto in the $1 million range. That's the same thing that we were looking at motels in Prince Edward County. We also joke, if our budget had been higher, we probably would have looked at historic inns or waterfront resorts, but motels were in the price range where we could figure out how to pull the financing together.

Getting into the numbers a little bit there, so we bought just right around a million. We got great advice from our lawyer to try and get them the sellers to do a vendor take-back mortgage. Banks were a little iffy on this boutique motelier or motel idea. Instead of getting a traditional bank loan, we were able to have the vendors have about a 50% mortgage on the property, which was great.

Budget's tight, this is our first time doing it. We had a renovation budget of $250,000, which that's to renovate 16 rooms, a lobby, the exterior, landscaping, indoor-outdoor lobby bar. To this day, $250,000, crazy what we managed to do with that, but it did mean April and I were rolling up our sleeves and inviting friends and family out on weekends saying, "Come to wine country and bring stuff to wallpaper and lay flooring."

Shaun: Right. Was that discouraging at first, or were you guys like, "We are leaning into this."? Could you see how satisfying that was going to be, or was it just like, "Oh my God, why am I doing this ourselves?" Other people get crews. How much of it was satisfying, how much of it was terrifying, or all of the above?

Sarah: Again, we didn't maybe make this clear, but April and I ran the Sportsman Motel for a season.

Shaun: Oh, as the Sportsman Motel?

Sarah: As the Sportsman Motel.

Shaun: Hey.

Sarah: We were checking in the fishermen. Oh, yes.

Sarah: This was living our Schitt's Creek era.

Shaun: Oh, wow.

Sarah: Yes, but midway through that season, we knew that's not what the envision was. Midway through the summer, we tore out one of the rooms and DIYed the renovation to one room and we called it the prototype room, which was an amazing exercise and something we still do to this day, was see the transformation, get a sense what's working, what's not. Right off the bat, got that little bit of inspiration. We still say that year of renovating was so fun. We were superhuman. I don't know how we did it, and to this day have never been able to do it quite at that level of involvement again. We really created that place. Every aspect of it, April and I touched and designed and installed. It was pretty amazing.

April: I think we also only remember the positive highlights. That's what sticks with you, but there were some dark days of it's the middle of winter and you're going back into that room to lay some more flooring,-

April: -you're covered in glue everywhere. It was a lot.

Shaun: You are still friends.

April: Yes.

Shaun: That to me sounds like a miracle unto itself. What were, if you don't mind sharing, some of the creative differences that you were able to find alignment on? Tell me a bit about that process because that had to have been a challenge as well.

Sarah: Let's fast forward maybe for that because it's been almost eight years, I think, since we did that. We've opened in Beaver Valley. I'm sure we'll hopefully chat about that a bit.

Shaun: Oh, for sure.

Sarah: April and I think it's good. I think it's great to have a business partner that you challenge one another, that you don't always see eye to eye on everything. April and I, it tends to be the little things that we will strongly disagree with one another on. Our latest project, it was what side of the bed the garbage cans were going to go on. Was it going to be the first thing when you walk in the room, are you going to see the garbage cans? Are you going to hide it on the other side of the bed?

Shaun: Take me through that process.

Shaun: How does one decide? Did you test it out? Did you flip a coin? How did that work out?

Sarah: The way that April and I tend to make these decisions is we'll go back and forth a whole bunch of times each of us making our point and arguing on why it's one or the other. In the end, there's always one of us that cares a little bit more about this decision than the other. In this case, April seemed to care more, although I've brought it up 100 times since, so maybe I do care. I think it's we both have a lot of trust in one another. We were willing to compromise every now and then on something, but I think The June is as great as it is because we're always bringing our own perspectives to it.

Shaun: Yes. I think that sounds like what comes from that design challenge is nothing but good because you guys are testing it, pressing it, and making sure. Then once it comes out the other side, it's going to be better for everybody. Let me ask, which side did it end up on?

Sarah: It's hidden. You walk in the door and you may never know that there's a garbage can there.

April: Also, not an eyesore.

Shaun: Right.

Sarah: Shouldn't have gone for the really expensive garbage can, should we have?

Shaun: I love that. June Motel. How did this name come about? How is June? What is June? Is it the month? I can assume it's a summer vibe, June Motel. Tell me about how the name came to be.

April: We get asked this question so much that I honestly wish there was some great-grandma June that I could tell you about. Not the case. June is a made-up fictional character.

Shaun: Character?

April: Character. We loved the name June because it was a retro-feminine name, but it also had that start-of-summer feel. When we came up with the name, we really developed a whole personality around who June is. She lives for summer, she loves a girl's getaway, she's a little bit old school, she's bold and free-spirited, and she's always chilling with a bottle of rosé for days like today because she believes in living the good life.

She's become a bit of our North Star. Every time we have a difficult business decision to make, a design decision to make, or we're even just thinking about where's that next property, we always stop, we ask ourselves, what would June do? I think because we have gotten to know her so well over the years, she really does keep us on track and keep us focused and doing what we do.

Shaun: Wow. This is such a beautiful picture, I can see. Here's a question. Who would play June in the made-for-TV movie about this fictional character? Who would you want to see play June in the movie about the birth of this amazing idea?

April: That's such a tough question because I think she's got a lot of different elements to her personality. It's tough to come up with one person. This is maybe more back when we created June in the beginning. She had a much more hippie, free-spirited vibe to her. I think she's evolved from there. Somebody I always pictured was Kate Hudson in Almost Famous. I think that visual has certainly stuck with us. She's fun, she's free-spirited, she's into wellness and yoga, and all of those things. She's grown up with us.

Shaun: Right, and she's your North Star.

April: Yes.

Shaun: Talk more about this North Star idea. Having that particular vision and a personified vision, how has that characterization of this brand helped in other ideas that you might have as you move forward?

April: I'll give you an example. First of all, we created The June in Prince Edward County. We went through this whole process of who June is. Then when we found that second property in Sauble Beach, we knew we didn't want to create exactly what we had created in Prince Edward County, but who is June in Sauble Beach? I think that whole exercise of who June is and really knowing her and thinking now about a new destination really helped us to evolve her a little bit. It was now like, "June has this cool beach house. What does that look like? What's the design aesthetic? How do we stay true to who June is but evolve her in a new location, in a new experience, and identity there?"

Shaun: Sauble is a different vibe than the Prince Edward County vibe?

April: Yes. We like to say that there's very similar characteristics. June is very feminine. She's bold. She's free-spirited. She loves patterns and wallpaper and those things, but how it shows up is a little bit different at each property. In Prince Edward County, it's the palm print wallpaper. In Sauble Beach, it's this sun-faded wave wallpaper.

Shaun: That's in this style and design. One thing it sounds like you guys have done a really great job at doing is finding a niche target audience. Talk to me a bit about that. Talk to me a bit about staying true to that niche market. Who is your niche market?

April: It started as girls' getaways. It started as Sarah and I saying, "Hey, we're going to Prince Edward County with our girlfriends. What would we want?" We really leaned into that girls' getaway message, all of our photography with pictures of girls on wine trips at the motel. It also evolved from there. I think for us in the early days, it being all about us, designing this experience around us and what our girlfriends would want gave us such a clear picture of who that audience was. We could really visualize it. I think step one is just gaining that clarity.

It informs so much. It's like, what are the visuals that you see on social media? For us, it was a lifestyle photo shoot with a bunch of girls sipping wine in our lobby bar. Really bringing that story and that niche audience to life so that when she's scrolling Instagram, she sees that photo. She can see herself in that environment and she connects instantly with that. It's also all the copy, all the messaging, your newsletters. I think when you're speaking to a smaller, more niche audience, it's much easier to develop copy and messaging that is speaking directly at that person or to that person rather than having to be vague and be for everybody.

Beaver Valley is very couples-focused, but what we've realized, we've been at this for nine years, is the girls that were coming to The June in Prince Edward County were celebrating their bachelorette parties. They went and they got married and they have a husband now. Maybe they have kids five years later, and so really being able to grow the brand with her and focus on her as the buyer. She is the one that's making the travel decision. She's deciding to stay at The June, whether it's with her girlfriends, her partner, or her whole family.

Shaun: Right. There was no fear of exclusion there, I guess. It was more just staying true to your vision. Right, Sarah?

Sarah: Yes. I think we like to say that we are for anyone, but we're not for everyone. The audience that actually comes to stay at The June can look all very different and we are going to welcome them as warmly as we can and make sure that they have the best time. I think there's times where we've leaned into understanding who our core target is and what their needs are.

One example of that is we're really tech-forward. It's text message concierge and sometimes we're texting you your room code. It is that tech-savvy experience. As a business, we need to make some of those decisions and really lean in in some cases. I think it's okay to really lean into a niche. One of the things we also know is women make-- it's somewhere between 70% and 90% of travel decisions out there on behalf of whoever they happen to be traveling with. Again, creating this brand that really speaks primarily to her has really resonated and brought all sorts of people to The June.

Shaun: You feel that leaning into that niche market has really paid off?

April: I would accredit that to certainly a ton of our traction in those first couple of years. I think people saw us on Instagram, they saw the pink doors, they saw the photos that these girls were taking with the neon sign behind us and all of that. That started to create that word of mouth and brand recognition and really helped us sell rooms.

Shaun: Yes, that's amazing. Especially when you find success, when you guys start growing, expanding, ready to take over the world, it's good to hear that The June Motel and what you choose specifically was wired inside of you is to say, "No, you know what? We're going to stay true to our own voice to be an original voice and not some broad, generalized version of that. Have you ever had an Atom boys hockey tournament come through town and stay at The June Motel? I would imagine there needs to be room for these fellas too.

Sarah: Not yet. I think last year I was saying eight-year-old boys come and they love The June so much. They have a great time. We've got campfire s'mores, we've got lawn games. It's a paradise. Parents are having a great time too and motels are really well set up. Again, we've leaned into one target market, but it does still mean the people who enjoy the experience is really still pretty broad and we're going to make the most of every person's stay.

Shaun: It sounds like you're definitely hitting the market that I would need to have now. I used to be very, "I want to find these cool, young couples, me and my wife," and now with kids is like, "I need to have a bit of that vibe where I feel like I'm still that young party guy. At the same time, the kids have got to be able to go and do something fun as well." It sounds like you're hitting-

April: All the way.

Shaun: -all of that as well. Do you feel that there's some-- I wouldn't say resistance, but there is some expectation amongst investors? Do you have investors now? Are there other people that you have to please, that you have to make sure that they're happy with what's going on? How much are you still able to be like, "No, this is what we're doing one hundo. You can't shake us."

Sarah: One of the things we've been able to do and chosen to do is to grow without taking on investors outside of a small group of family that supported us along the way who really believe in what we're doing. As we continue to look to grow, we are looking for investors that understand what it is we're doing and believe in it. It's also proven it's successful as well. 

Shaun: Yes. Boss. That's all I will say is boss. I love it. It's inspiring. It's amazing and probably really challenging in the world we live in now to stay true to that voice. Kudos to you guys for doing that. It's amazing. Talk to me about the future of June. You guys went from starting in Prince Edward County. Take me through the journey from starting there, then to Sauble. Now you have some future endeavors happening, and there was a Netflix show in there as well.

Shaun: Talk to me a bit about that.

April: There was. We opened The June Prince Edward County in 2017. I would say it was about a month or six weeks after opening that we really saw immediate traction. We were sold out that first summer. We were featured in Vogue. It was a wild ride that first year. We knew that there was such an opportunity. We needed more rooms for the demand that we had. Then on the flip side, we also loved the process of finding that diamond in a rough motel, re-imagining the entire experience of staying there. That was really what lit us up. I think we realized that when the renovation was done and it was just day-to-day operations, we were like, "Now what? We got to go buy another one."

We spent about a year and a half looking at destinations across Ontario and Quebec. We eventually came across this really charming little motel in the town of Sauble Beach. We knew the proximity to Bruce Peninsula, that there was a ton of opportunity in this whole region and that so many people were going there. There was no boutique motel accommodation and we could really fill that gap. As we were actually going through the process of buying this place, a friend of a friend, a friend of actually our graphic designer, was looking to create a show about a motel renovation.

She takes us out for a drink. She's like, "I have this great idea. You guys need to go buy another motel so that we can make a TV show." We're like, "We're actually already buying another motel in Sauble Beach." It was just these two projects really coming together at the same time. We went ahead, we purchased the motel. It was about six months later that we found out that Netflix wanted to make the show. Everything started. A couple of months after that, we were filming, we were renovating, and this is right before COVID hits.

Shaun: Oh, wow.

April: It's a whole disaster.

Shaun: A disaster you mean when COVID hit?

April: Yes.

Shaun: I assume this is all in the show.

April: It's all in the show. We had a completely demoed motel. Everything was taken apart. We were really just getting into the renovation at that point, and so there was no going back. Everything was gutted. Nothing was put back together. Construction had to come to a halt. Filming had to come to a halt. We're just sitting on this motel for months seeing our bank accounts drain, giving back deposits at our other motel in Prince Edward County because we had a full calendar of bookings that we couldn't open, we couldn't operate.

It was extremely scary time for us, but it has a happy ending. Construction resumed, filming resumed. Materials were impossible to get and we managed it all. The show is like a race to the finish line. I think it's five days before we're opening and we're still building the pool deck. It's not a lie. It was reality. It was a lot of tears.

Shaun: Nothing was invented. No producer was like,-

April: No.

Shaun: -"You know what would be a good conflict here?" It's, no, this was all as raw and reality TV as possible.

Sarah: Yes. I think early days, they were trying to find the conflict. We're getting along, things are going well, and then the pandemic, just TV gold.

Shaun: Yes. Right. We'll go back to what that hotel was when you bought it. What was it? Was that also a Sportsman's Motel? How did you land on that particular property?

April: It was partly the destination and we knew that there was opportunity in the destination. It was also the property itself, it was bigger. It was 24 rooms. It had a pool and a restaurant that had never operated in 10 years. It had this separate building that would eventually become the lobby bar. It was a step up in what we were looking for and it had a lot of mid-century motel charm. We saw the potential in it and we were excited to have a pool finally at the motel.

Shaun: How's that business doing now?

April: Great. Sauble Beach is killing it. It's super seasonal, so we open from May to October every year. We are mostly sold out there, every day of the week, all summer long. It's a really crazy intense period at that motel.

Shaun: Describe Sauble Beach before June Sauble and describe it after. By bringing that vibe into that strip, it wasn't always that. That vibe you said did not exist there, correct?

April: No, not from a hotel perspective. When we went there the first time, we did meet a few other people that were doing really cool things, which is always a really good sign, I think, when you're going into a new market. There was the wellness refinery and they were creating healthy smoothie bowls and avocado toast. It was a very cool, trendy little café, restaurant.

Then there was also a double-decker taco bus that was also super cool. Both female, young entrepreneurs doing just interesting things there. We, I think, saw those as a really positive sign that there was opportunity and that this place was evolving, and that our guests would have other things in this area that would be exciting and fit what they were looking for.

Shaun: Did you guys ever go to Sauble Beach when you guys were younger?

April: No.

Sarah: Neither of us. The first time we went was to see this property.

Shaun: Oh, wow. Anybody who knows Ontario, whether you're in high school or college or cottage country people, but Sauble is so unique. Wasaga Beach was so unique. They all had their own little Midland, that area in Ontario. They all had their own little thing. Wasaga had its own vibe. Wasaga, it feels very bro. I think it still is pretty bro. Sauble didn't have that energy.

April: Sauble's much more family-friendly, a little bit quieter. There's really no nightlife, to be honest. Everything is very chill after sunset. It's such a special place. We're three minutes to the beach. Everybody walks down to the beach to see sunset every night. It's really stunning. It's 11 kilometers of gorgeous sandy beach.

Shaun: Yes, it's beautiful. Tell me then now about your next property.

Sarah: Sure. After Sauble Beach, April and I just got the itch again to find a property. I think we're fast-forwarding, so this is 2021 that we're really in our first season in Sauble Beach. Things have changed by then. Everything's gotten a lot more expensive, and so we've really had to be a bit more patient to find the right property, the right price. What we're looking for wasn't really coming up, but then there was this one place. I've got the REALTOR® app. I have my saved searches.

There was this one that I looked at, had put aside because it was only eight rooms. One day I was going back through what I had liked and saved, and there's this eight-room lodge in Beaver Valley, which is 20 minutes outside of Collingwood. It was right on Beaver River. It was a minute away from Heart's Tavern, which was one of Canada's best new restaurants, I think, in 2022. It felt like a place that was worthwhile checking out. When we visited, we found it very, very charming.

Shaun: Only eight rooms.

Sarah: Only eight rooms.

Shaun: Right, which is different from your 24 leap. You went from 16, 24, and now you're entertaining an 8-room.

Sarah: Yes. It meant we had to really think about, is this the right fit? There's a couple of reasons why we liked this idea of a smaller property. One was that we kept having groups that wanted to have exclusive access to the motel. With 16 rooms or 24 rooms, we were just a little bit too big to be able to accommodate that. With these eight rooms, a bachelorette could come in, they could take over the whole property, a corporate retreat, a wedding. We had been getting a lot of requests. I think that was something that, after the pandemic, was really desirable for people to just find these spaces to come together.

It's also a place where it's really like you're in nature, which I think was also something that people were craving. With Beaver Valley, so this was-- what year is it now? This would have been, I think, 2023 that we purchased it. I had to get creative. We've gone contactless there. Airbnb, a lot of people got pretty comfortable with being texted a code, and so we're like, "We don't need someone to just wait around all day to welcome guests. We can just find this interesting balance between an Airbnb and one of our motels. If you want to come for just a night and get just one room, we can accommodate that. If you want to take over the whole property, then we can also do that."

It's been a really interesting exercise. We opened about a year ago now and we're really excited. I didn't mention it's close to Collingwood. In Ontario, that's some of the best skiing that we have, and so we're pretty close to that. We finally have our first year-round property, which is exciting.

Sarah: Oh, that's awesome.

April: A really special place. Professionally, it was also a really great experience for April and I as we've grown. The first motel fully designed by us, fully renovated by us. This one, we've grown over the years and got the chance to work with Ashley Montgomery designs as an interior designer, worked with a great general contractor and his team. April, I, still end up doing a little bit of heavy lifting all the time, but it was a really great way to see how we can grow and work with great people.

Shaun: That's amazing. Going from a couple of friends sitting around drinking some wine to now being incredibly successful business people, do you take time and reflect on that very often, or are you just in the tornado all the time?

April: I feel like these podcast interviews, and we do some speaking gigs, it's always fun to think about our story and our journey. I feel like those are moments where we actually got a chance to reflect on those early days and relive some of those memories. Other than that, we're always thinking, "What's next? What's next?"

Shaun: That's awesome. That's so good. Is there something next? What is next? Is that next a part of The June? Is it all June? Is the brand June for every property?

April: Yes. It's The June Motel. We shorten it, so it's like The June Prince Edward County, The June Sauble Beach, The June Beaver Valley. We think that we've created something really special there. There's a lot of brand awareness that we've built. We have the Netflix show. It feels right to continue to leverage the name and the brand that we've built. It's something we're excited about. They will continue to be June Motels for as long as we think that has potential.

Shaun: I do love the personification once again. You've got the young, sassy, we're going to have a girl's weekend. Then June ends up marrying, having kids, goes to the Sauble. She obviously has a terrible breakup with her husband and then wants to just be alone. "I don't want to talk to anybody. I want a contact list. I want to hide out in Beaver Valley and go skidooing, become a survivalist." Wherever June ends up, I would like to see what's next. 

By the way, just for the record to all the REALTORS® watching, they did not hire me to do any of their publicity because I am terrible, but I like having fun with this character. I love June. In terms of what's next, will it just present itself, do you think, when you see it you know it, or do you have a vision plan now, it's like, "We are ready to take over the world. June is ready to take over the world."?

Sarah: I think somewhere in the middle. We know we want to keep growing. We are always looking out for that next property. We're two people that want some work-life balance as well. I think our new plan is goal is to keep growing, but we want to wait. Finding the right property is so important for us. You just can't rush. There's not always the right place at the right time, and price and cost of everything. We're ready, but we're really just waiting for everything to align perfectly for that next one.

Shaun: Your story is so relatable to a lot of REALTORS® out there, obviously, whether the REALTORS® are dealing with individual families looking for their first single-family home or an idea around a business idea. What advice would you have for REALTORS® about finding that niche market?

April: I think it's similar to what we've been talking about. It's hone in on what makes you different and lean into that. Not trying to be for everybody, but what is it that you bring to the table that's special, that's different, and own that.

Shaun: Sarah?

Sarah: I think what April said. I think that personification, sometimes even stepping away from who you are, but I think that exercise has worked really well for us. Maybe it's this alter ego character that can help you really think about who your business is representing.

Shaun: Awesome. Where can everybody find all of your assets? Not just the hotels, but in terms of socials and all of that. Tell us about that because I want to right now go follow all of them myself.

April: They're all under one social. It's @TheJuneMotel on Instagram and it's thejunemotel.com.

Sarah: Come book your stay. Come visit.

April: Yes.

Shaun: Oh, yes. I want to hit all of them too. I'll pay for my wife. I'll let her go to Prince Edward County. We've been in Prince Edward County. I've done standup in Prince Edward County. I love it so much. There's a surf scene in Prince Edward County too.

Sarah: Yes.

Shaun: I didn't even know that. It's incredible. Man, it's such a unique area. Then, of course, Sauble Beach as well, it's just so cool. I want to be gifting trips and going myself to all these amazing places. Thank you, guys. This has been so inspirational and exciting. It's so good to hear original stories, original ideas by two amazing boss ladies. It's awesome. I have two daughters and I'm going to share your story with them as soon as I can. They're three and five, so they may-

Sarah: Thank you so much.

Shaun: -not quite get the whole wine thing. but they'll get it. Mommy's aligned. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining us on REAL TIME. This has been a great chat.

April: Thank you for having us. This was awesome.

Shaun: Awesome, guys. June Motels. The thing that makes you special, that's the thing that people will connect with. Once you find that quality, that offering, that experience, that's going to help you build a community that really, really resonates. Now, you may not get your own Netflix show out of it, but it'll always connect you with the right people, and that's never a bad thing.

If you like today's episode, make sure you head on over to your favorite podcast platform, like and subscribe, rate us and review. We really do appreciate it. REAL TIME is brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association, CREA, and production courtesy of Alphabet® Creative. Thanks so much for joining me today. I'm Shaun Majumder. We'll see you next time on REAL TIME.

Sarah: Right before this, I stuck a ball in the fringe because it's Friday.

Shaun: Love it. That cost you nothing, so that's good.

Sarah: Yes.