"My real estate investing journey was ignited a decade ago when I was tired of channel-surfing on the radio driving to and from work. I came across an audiobook called “How Come That Idiot’s Rich and I’m Not?” by Robert Shemin. This book piqued my interest so much so that I devoured almost all of the real estate investing books my library had to offer. I even made my husband listen to Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” to get him on board with my vision for our future.

“A search for Canadian content led me to Rock Star and to my first investment property purchase.”

Michelle and Derek started investing using the Rock Star rent-to-own strategy.

From there, they purchased two great duplexes and a year later purchased a third, this time converting it into a triplex for extra monthly revenue. They didn’t stick to one strategy. They continued to learn and grow and did what was right for them personally and for their end goals.

“After that, I discovered that student rentals could give me more cash flow, so I bought one of those. We could not have done this without the help of our coach at Rock Star, who is absolutely amazing. She has always been there for us answering my endless stream of questions!”

These Rock Stars didn’t discount the amazing network of investors around them. They have formed a couple of joint venture partnerships on different properties that benefited all parties!

“More recently, I embarked on a new real estate investing strategy, deciding to go cottage shopping. We are nature lovers and have always planned to retire to a cottage up north and head somewhere warm in the winters. Since we figured lakefront cottage prices wouldn’t likely get any cheaper in the coming years, we took the plunge and finally bought an investment property that we could enjoy! After only two road trips to cottage country, we found our dream home…a four-season cottage on 4 acres on a tiny, peaceful lake.

“A nice thing about real estate investing is that it allowed us to stop plowing our earnings into retirement savings in the form of RRSPs. Instead, we can enjoy our T4 income, traveling anywhere we want to go, while our real estate portfolio grows over time with our tenants paying down our mortgages, our cash flow paying down our HELOC that we use for down payments and a nice amount of appreciation over time that allows us to pull money out by refinancing to grow our portfolio some more. I have to say that we are finally starting to experience the snowball effect that Tom and Nick talk about.

“Including our primary residence, the cottage became our 10^th property. I consider it to be the cherry on top of our real estate sundae and as of right now, I don’t have a need to buy more but you never know.”

1. You can do more in one year than you think. This year, I made a list on which I am trying to write 100 new things I did or experiences I had that will differentiate this year from all other years. Some examples include buying a cottage, going on a podcast, visiting new places and restaurants.
2. Figure out one thing to do each day or week that can get you closer to your goals. You’ll be surprised at how much you can accomplish in a week, month or year.
3. If you’re worried about starting on the path of real estate investing, I recommend you just make an appointment to go house-hunting, put in an offer on a cash-flowing property when you find a good one, and then you will figure the rest out one step at a time. Know that whatever comes up, you can rely on your coach for advice and you will deal with it and be stronger as a result.