Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You are listening to the wealth without Bay street podcast, a canadian guide to building dependable wealth. Join your hosts, Richard Canfield and Jason Lowe as they unlock the secrets to creating financial peace of mind in an uncertain world. Discover the strategies and mindsets to a financial future that you can bank on.
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What exactly is the wild world of private lending and why should Canadians know more about it? And how do we go about finding out? Exactly how do you get involved in this thing called private lending? Well, we're joined today by Steve Curlio, who is the founder of Magnum Mortgage Corp. Based out of Sherwood Park, Alberta. He's got a very interesting story, being around the real estate business for many, many years, going all the way back to his first house that he purchased at 18 with a $50 check that he had to borrow the money just to get the deal done. And moving forward to joining Remax. In early 1983, he went from a position of not having any listings to three years later selling 365 homes just in one year.
Moving forward from 1983 to 1989, he sold over 1000 properties in the Edmonton region. And really just incredible. So in the early 90s, he actually retired from that active sales work with a portfolio of over 157 rental properties and moved on to the world of private lending. And so we're here to hear a little bit about his story, his entrepreneurial journey, and to get a little bit more clear on how this whole private lending in the real estate space really, really works. So thanks for being with us today, Steve.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: Wonderful, Richard, delighted to be here.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Well, I would love to start this journey a little bit by walking us through maybe that first property at 18 and how that transpired to get you into the real estate business in the early eighty s and then eventually you leaving the real estate business and getting into this private lending space. So let's go back a little ways and bring people up to what encouraged you at a young age to get into real estate.
[00:02:28] Speaker C: Well, that's a really interesting question. As I mentioned to you, I left school early. It wasn't a good fit for me and being on my own and alone.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: The one thing that bothered me was.
[00:02:45] Speaker C: The lack of capital. I didn't have any money, so I.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: Had to work, find jobs and try.
[00:02:52] Speaker C: And figure out a way to earn money.
In my very early days, my father was a realtor and so I heard the lingo, the vocabulary of a real estate salesman early in my life, although I didn't know anything about it.
One evening, an opportunity came up to buy a piece of real estate. Was an old house, but it was on three pieces of land, three separate lots. Then I could see an opportunity where others just didn't. They ignored it. The house was not in good condition. So, like you say, richard, yes, I did write him a check for $50. There was not $50 in my bank account. I went to a businessman in town the first thing next morning, and he said, well, I will lend you $50, but on one condition, that I become a 50 50 partner with you. My first introduction to a partnership arrangement, that is, one where the man who.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: Has the capital is the king and.
[00:03:56] Speaker C: The others do the work.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: So I picked up scraps of material.
[00:04:00] Speaker C: Here and there and rebuilt the house. And in a short while, we sold it for more than double what we.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Had paid for it.
[00:04:09] Speaker C: Well, in those days, that was several years earnings for me.
And so that trigged my imagination to the world of real estate.
I carried on with that idea of buying and flipping real estate for about ten years. I was married at 19. My wife and I then bought homes, fixed them up, flipped them, and in.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: My stopped and took a look.
[00:04:44] Speaker C: And I think this is where kind of the story begins, is I really stopped and took a look at my bank account.
So we had flipped properties.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: We'd made money on everyone, sometimes quite a lot of money.
[00:04:56] Speaker C: But, you know, at the end of the journey, my bank account did not.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Reflect that I had not much more.
[00:05:05] Speaker C: Than what I started with. And I said, there's something wrong with this picture. Maybe there's something wrong with my entire plan.
And we did something unusual. We stopped everything and took a weekend and really started thinking about our life.
And we started doing something that they.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Don'T teach you in school, and that is daydream.
[00:05:28] Speaker C: It's very hard to daydream. You may think it's easy, but it's harder than it sounds. One of the things that creeps in is shy. You're a bit shy to daydream. You don't want to dream too big. And the other big problem that comes.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: In is how am I going to possibly create this daydream I'm thinking about?
[00:05:52] Speaker C: Well, that's not the question. The real question is the what. What is it that you want? What is it that you're going to daydream about?
[00:06:00] Speaker B: And once we broke through that, that.
[00:06:03] Speaker C: Shyness, we really started to talk about daydreaming.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: What would our life look like when we were older.
[00:06:13] Speaker C: And we started to look at, well, what kind of house.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Would we live in?
[00:06:19] Speaker C: Would we own the house? Would we want to have a.
To.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: What kind of car would we drive? And would we drive it?
[00:06:28] Speaker C: Or would we like to have a chauffeur?
And should the house be in one location? And Joni was great for this, my wife Joni, because she said, I want to live in the four seasons. And I thought, why would you want.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: To live in a said, no, no, the four seasons of the world, the.
[00:06:45] Speaker C: Spring season, the summer season, the fall, the winter season. Well, you see, we started to embellish these ideas that were really foreign to us.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Then we began to really focus in on what could our dreams look like?
[00:07:07] Speaker C: And I discovered through this process that I had been really focusing on the creation of wealth.
And to my mind, wealth was to be a millionaire, have a million dollars.
Well, in reality, I didn't know anybody that had a million dollars in their bank account.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: Right?
[00:07:28] Speaker C: So why was I trying to accumulate something that no one else around me that I know of has? And I'm just a normal working person, much like your audience. We're just normal people.
We started looking at something else.
What's more important than the creation of wealth is the creation of financial independence.
Those are two different things.
We didn't realize it at the time, but I can give you an example of what the two might be. For those that want to grasp the.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Idea for a moat, if you owned a piece of land, let's say, looking.
[00:08:11] Speaker C: Down on a lake, and you think that one day that might be of value.
So you bought this piece of land and it went up in value, and it was worth a million dollars.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: So now you'd say you're a millionaire, but are you financially independent?
[00:08:29] Speaker C: No, you are not. You're a millionaire. But you have to look after the.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: Weeds, you have to pay the taxes.
[00:08:37] Speaker C: You have to mend the fences, you have to do something with this.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Like, you have to sell it, hopefully.
[00:08:48] Speaker C: At the right time to get the.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Value out of it. Whereas on the other hand, if you examine financial independence, well, what exactly is that?
[00:09:00] Speaker C: So we developed a definition of financial independence that I'd love to share with you.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: Please do.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: It took a weekend, but we talked.
[00:09:11] Speaker C: About it and developed this definition.
If we had a source of income large enough to buy anything that we.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Wanted to buy, and we got to.
[00:09:24] Speaker C: Pick our own number to that source of income. Now, I'm not talking about Lear jets I'm just talking about if we wanted to drop everything and jump on a.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: Plane and go to Africa, we could absolutely do it.
[00:09:37] Speaker C: So if we had this source of income, we could buy anything we want.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: To buy, and this income would come to us month after month.
It would come to us without the.
[00:09:52] Speaker C: Necessity of us having to work for it.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: But we'd be financially independent.
We adopted that.
[00:10:04] Speaker C: We found we couldn't pick any holes in that definition. That was perfect. You've got a source of income comes every month, which means you can spend.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: Every dollar, because next month is coming in again, and it comes for as long as we live and we don't.
[00:10:21] Speaker C: Have to work for it.
Well, we said, isn't that wonderful? I love that. That's better than that piece of land.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: Looking out down on a lake. So we said, let's do that.
[00:10:34] Speaker C: Next question was, how are we going to accomplish that? Now, that's a bit of a story.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: On its own, but there's an answer.
[00:10:43] Speaker C: To that and a rather simple answer.
However, let me move along to the other story regarding Magnum, and we can go back to this if you wish.
I'm sorry.
[00:10:59] Speaker D: No, I was just going to add, this is so great. Our listeners are going to thoroughly enjoy this.
Thank you for bringing us along on your journey up to this point. Very enlightening.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: There's nothing like a real journey and a real story that people can connect and get a hold of. And so that's one of the reasons why we wanted to have you on the program, Steve, because you're just telling what's true and your own aspect of how you've been able to move through time in different areas. And the fact that you and your wife had the presence to actually get clear about what it is that you wanted is a starting block for many people. And if you haven't done that journey and you haven't done it with your spouse, I would take heed of Steve's words and book that weekend. Get started.
[00:11:43] Speaker C: Well, thank you, Richard. And maybe I should just step back for a moment, because we did talk about my world in real estate.
I can tell you that Joni and I were so inspired with this idea and how we were to create this financial independence theme occurred to us simply this way. I had an uncle on a farm who had a small airplane, and every winter could go to Phoenix. Not with his airplane. His airplane was a summertime. It was a tiny little thing, but.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: He'D fly around the winter, he'd go.
[00:12:19] Speaker C: To Phoenix for a couple of weeks. None of the other farmers in the area or anyone in my family could do that.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: So I asked uncle, how is it.
[00:12:29] Speaker C: That you have no more land than anyone else, but can afford these little luxuries? Well, he said, I'll tell you, I.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: Bought a little house in town, seven, 8 miles away, and I rent it out, and I have a stream of.
[00:12:45] Speaker C: Income that comes in. And eventually I paid off the mortgage from the rental income. And now that money comes into me every month.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Well, the light bulbs went on for me when I joined Remax, and you.
[00:13:02] Speaker C: Talked about my achievement in sales.
I was so inspired that that was my calling card.
I had invited people to think about their life and the future. Not right now, today, but the future. Think ahead.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: And I'd invite them to my home and they'd come one by one with their wives.
[00:13:25] Speaker C: Always it's important to have the teamwork there.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: And I'd say, here's your magic wand.
[00:13:33] Speaker C: We're going to dream a little tonight. And everyone would. I'd walk them through this idea and they could see their life quite clearly. Some needed one or two properties if values would go up to $1,000 a month rental. If they had two properties, they got $2,000 a month.
Well, in those days, I'm talking back in the nice income stream.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: Well, I started telling more and more.
[00:14:05] Speaker C: People, and pretty soon my house was far too small and I had to rent a hotel room because 200 people would come out once a month for free just to hear me share my story. They became my clients and they bought between two and three to 20 or more homes.
And there was my clientele.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: Now, look.
[00:14:26] Speaker C: And along the way, I was fulfilling my own portfolio.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: Whatever they didn't buy or couldn't afford.
[00:14:34] Speaker C: To, or it didn't work out, I bought.
I was accumulating property whenever and however I could along that journey.
In my earlier days, I had was talked into investing in an RSP, and the securities company said, look, here's a 10% growth model, and over this many years, here's what it's going to grow to.
Well, I did not have a lot of money, but I had a little bit, and Joni had a little bit we put into an RSP. As the years went by, I popped in to see how we were making out and discovered, was shocked to discover that I had less than what I had put in.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: So the mountain wave graph of lies that they show you didn't come to fruition.
[00:15:23] Speaker C: Not even close. In fact, I had lost all of.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: The years of savings and I had.
[00:15:29] Speaker C: Less and I said, how is this possible? Well, they said, first of all, they did not say, I'm sorry. They did not say, whoops. They just said, the pool of money. We put your funds into some high risk, some middle on all of this stuff, and something happened in some foreign country and the thing fell apart and I lost my money.
So they said, well, I said, well, what are we going to do about this? Well, he said, just leave it there. Eventually we'll catch up and you'll be back where you started.
Well, that was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard. I mean, that's illogical.
You just do the same thing over and over and over again and hope for a better outcome. We all know that's lunacy so widely. I said to myself, that is not going to work. I have to do something different. So I started searching around.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: I even went to the banks and.
[00:16:26] Speaker C: Said, is there something I can do with my RRSP?
[00:16:30] Speaker B: They said, like what?
[00:16:31] Speaker C: I said, well, could I put in a mortgage? They said, oh, no one told me it was illegal.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: I couldn't do it.
Well, I kept searching.
I did run across a banker that.
[00:16:46] Speaker C: Represented a trust company, Canadian Western trust and the Canadian Western bank.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:52] Speaker C: The manager said, steve, look, we have a trust company in Vancouver, Canadian Western trust. You can cash out whatever is remaining in your RRSP.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: And put it in.
[00:17:07] Speaker C: A self administered RRSP. It's still government registered, but now you can self administer your own savings.
You can decide where you're going to put it. And mortgages are one of the things that the government will allow you to invest in first, 2nd, even third mortgages.
Well, this was wonderful news for me. I immediately called my broker and said, cash everything out. And he argued with me and he said, you're going to pay a little bit of a penalty. And I said, I don't care, I.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: Don'T care, just do it.
[00:17:44] Speaker C: I transferred it over, signed a self administered documents. Soon I was lending out my own small amount of money at 14% interest.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: For a one year term to people.
[00:17:57] Speaker C: That needed money for that short gap.
They were building something. They needed a little extra finish before they could get a mortgage on that house, because the bank won't lend you money if it's a half built property. Odds and ends like that was coming to me soon. All my money was invested, Joni's money was invested. Then my family came and said, what are you doing? We've had the same problem with our sps. So I told them. They said, is that allowed?
[00:18:27] Speaker B: Said, it is.
They said, would you do it for me?
[00:18:33] Speaker C: I said, well, yes, I could.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: So I thought, well, okay, this is.
[00:18:39] Speaker C: Getting a little spread out. So at that point, I went to.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: School, I got my mortgage broker's license, I became a mortgage broker.
And soon I had lots of people.
[00:18:54] Speaker C: Coming to me with their RRSPs, which I would direct them to Canadian Western Trust, which we still do today.
And as things grew in 2003, in January, we incorporated magnum mortgage and Realty.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: Corp.
As a specialist in private lending only. That is what we do. We're a fully licensed mortgage brokerage, but what we specialize in is taking funds.
[00:19:25] Speaker C: RRSP funds, TFSA funds, saved up cash.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Corporate money that's not being used, and.
[00:19:34] Speaker C: Marrying those amounts of money to appropriate mortgages that we underwrite.
So our staff of five reviews, probably 15 applications a day, all from licensed.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: Mortgage brokers in Alberta.
[00:19:53] Speaker C: We review them, we underwrite them, we discard the illogical ones, but the ones that are very logical, safe and make sense.
We then contact an individual who has money in his account that will match the requirements of what they're wanting to borrow, and we give them the details.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: He gets the appraisal, he gets a.
[00:20:17] Speaker C: Credit bureau, he gets his earnings. We check it thoroughly, we do a brand new appraisal on everyone, and we know the values.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: We explain it to him.
[00:20:30] Speaker C: He says, I'll fund that.
So Magnum looks after instructing our lawyers to register that lender on title. He's now a private banker.
Register him on title. Once all of that's complete, lawyer will ask him to bring in a certified check.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: They pay it to the borrower, and.
[00:20:53] Speaker C: He is now the holder of an instrument registered against the title of a house as security.
Magnum then looks after the collection of the rents every month, doing the financial calculations day by day, the discharge of the mortgage. And we put the money back in the lender's bank account. And he's saying, this is terrific. Let me do it. Find me another mortgage. This is wonderful.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: So he becomes a passive lender, but.
[00:21:25] Speaker C: He becomes a banker. And he's working in the real estate.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: Field at a very, very good interest rate.
[00:21:32] Speaker C: And the key is that he knows where his money is. He can drive to that address and actually look at the house.
They can see the occupant is mowing the grass and painting the fence, and it's looking good. It's much better than the RRSP investor that I had years earlier. And I didn't have a clue where my money was. And nobody said sorry when it was gone.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: Head over to lendwithmagnum.com that's lendwithmagnum.com, to get connected with the right person on their team to learn more about private lending options available to Canadians coast to coast.
[00:22:10] Speaker D: Yeah. It reminds me of what we hear so often and is so true, is that if you look at it from the borrower's vantage point, every debt payment you're making is someone else's passive income.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:22:30] Speaker D: This speaks to it beautifully in the realm of private lending.
[00:22:37] Speaker C: So the wild west, as Richard started a few minutes ago, what was the wild west many years ago, 20 plus years ago, is now a very formalized method of financing.
[00:22:53] Speaker B: Today, banks are getting very rigid, as you know.
[00:22:58] Speaker C: They are not flexible.
And so good people are turned away. I mean, really good people are turned away with strong credit ratings and credit bureau scores. They're being turned away, and they look to private lenders.
Give you a very good example of a transaction we did not very long.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Ago, if you don't mind.
[00:23:23] Speaker C: I can do that.
My dentist came to me one day and said, steve, I'm building a house, my retirement home, and it's a beautiful home, and I own three quarter sections of land, and I'm building my house on this land, and I can't get a mortgage on it because I'm in the building stage. So bank won't finance it. And he said, I run out of credit card space, and I've used up the surplus capital in my business, and I'm just finishing off. I need another $125,000 to finish it. And as soon as I'm finished, I'll get a loan from the bank. They've already approved me to pay you back.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: And so we connected that borrower with.
[00:24:16] Speaker C: An individual that had $125,000 of surplus cash. He earned 14% interest.
My dentist friend then completed the home with the carpeting and the baseboards and finished it all off. And it was in a matter of months, eight or nine or ten months or so, the house was completely finished. He mortgaged the house, paid out his loan. And that is a perfect example of where private lending comes into play.
We secured the $100,000 with three quarters of land and probably a $1.2 million house with a first mortgage for $100,000.
That was a safe investment, and it paid 14% interest, and he was delighted to have it.
[00:25:04] Speaker D: It's terrific.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: You solved the problem. The problem of the lender wanting to put money to work and the problem.
[00:25:10] Speaker D: Of the borrower in the middle of.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: The hot seat who just needed an interim gap of capital to get to the next stage so that he could finance it with a traditional lender. And being aware of some of the deals and having seen some of the appraisals and the deal sheets that you guys put together, it's a really nice package. You can get all the information as a lender, someone who's looking at making that investment, to be able to determine, is this a deal that I want to do? And what, you can see the payment stream, you can understand the fee that Magnum takes for putting it all together, which you deserve to get paid for. Putting on an amazing program and helping facilitate these transactions. Everything is very transparent, above board. You can see the property, you understand the borrower, the reason for the loan. All that is captured in the deal.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: Sheets that you guys put together.
[00:26:07] Speaker C: That is absolutely right, Richard. And a couple of important things.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: For example, there are no fees to.
[00:26:15] Speaker C: The lender, or let's call him an investor. It might be a bad term because he's not investing in Magnum, but he is going to invest in the borrower. There are no fees for him to work with us. The borrower pays all our fees.
[00:26:33] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:33] Speaker C: So he's getting full value for his money. It's not depreciated in any way. And the second important thing is, in the early wild west days, people may.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: Have lent to the or nearly the.
[00:26:53] Speaker C: Full maximum value of the house.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: Today, we don't do anything near that we are in.
[00:27:02] Speaker C: If it's a piece of land outside of our major communities, we may be 50% loan to value. That means on a $500,000 acreage, we may lend a maximum of $250,000. So you can see that if the borrower ran into a difficult time, there's lots of equity in that property to allow him to sell it and pay off his debts and still have some money left for himself.
[00:27:35] Speaker D: Yeah, that's excellent. And if you think about the other side of the coin, too, where if a person wanted to engage in private lending and they didn't have a team of who's like you do, with all the capabilities and some experience with deals that go great and a really good process in place when a deal is not going so well, and how to try to revive that, how to try to mitigate a worst case scenario, then working with a team like yours represents an advantage to the lender because they don't have to go and figure out how to do all those how's on their own. They just want to multiply their capital. And so if you can think of an example like where a deal maybe started to go off the rails or needed to be revived. What sort of reassurances can a potential lender have in working with a team like yours?
[00:28:36] Speaker C: Well, first of all, we pay very particular attention not to get into trouble in the first place, so we really analyze the files when they come in. That means we check all of the data that's provided to us. We pull titles to make sure that the legal description is correct. They even own the property. Many times we visit the property ourselves to have a look at it.
But there are unforeseen events that happen to all of us throughout our lifetime. Sometimes the borrower does run into a difficult time.
We found it.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: So beneficial to call them up and speak with them, a.
[00:29:22] Speaker C: Person to a person having a talk.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: What happened?
[00:29:26] Speaker C: What's going on?
[00:29:27] Speaker B: How are you making out?
[00:29:29] Speaker C: Most of the time, they're terrified because they've missed the payment and they're afraid of the bank coming down.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: We don't operate like that.
[00:29:40] Speaker C: We talk with them, we try and resolve it. We sometimes counsel them if we see that there's no hope. We counsel them to get a realtor, put his house on the market, pay off his debts.
And our foreclosure rate is very small.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: Probably in the 1% rate.
[00:30:05] Speaker C: So of every 100 files, we might have one that will go right into a foreclosure process.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: Now, many are resolved by just working with them.
[00:30:20] Speaker C: Two or three late payments can get caught up and they're frightened. They're worried they may have lost their job. Maybe a fire came, burnt their house down. I mean, there's lots of fires going on. All kinds of things happen to people, good people.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: It's not their fault.
[00:30:40] Speaker C: If we just work with them and not be harsh with them and work their way through, many of these things get resolved. And here's a very good part.
The process of foreclosure is very clear in the law. So you're not wondering what's going to happen next. It's really well made out. We give the borrower an opportunity, if there's equity in the house, to put it on the market and sell it, take his profits.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: If he refuses to do that, the.
[00:31:09] Speaker C: Courts will step in and put it on the market for him. That means that the lender is really protected.
And in the case, the last one I remember, it went right through to the courts awarding the lender the property.
He sold the property and let's say that took maybe a twelve month period to go through. All the legal progress but at the end of that twelve months, he recovered.
[00:31:37] Speaker B: His original investment, all the interest that.
[00:31:40] Speaker C: He'D earned, all the accrued interest, while we're going through the foreclosure. And I think he picked up an extra $35,000 on the sale after commission.
So that's the sense of security that makes us feel really good in what we're doing.
[00:31:59] Speaker D: Excellent.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: Yeah, excellent.
[00:32:02] Speaker D: Because when you lend capital, I mean, there isn't any conventional lender that can proclaim a 0% foreclosure rate or a 0% default rate. So you're playing in the same process of lending, and there's an expectation that there's going to be a ratio of performing loans, non performing loans, imminent foreclosure. That's part of the business. And I think the key advantage to the lender, the way that you just described your process, the lender is not the who that has to do all of that follow up and nurturing and mitigation.
That's where your team steps in and says, hey, we're going to work toward a resolution here, and the lender is just not even part of that conversation.
[00:32:54] Speaker C: Absolutely correct, Jason.
That's absolutely true.
We represent the lender, not the borrower.
And so we do everything in our power to secure his principal, plus all of his interest. And if it means driving to the home and picking up a check once a month, we'll do that. It's rarely necessary. Most people are very honorable. Then, of course, we'll always leave equity in the property to go to account for those things. But even if we take the property back, we'll look after it, we'll check it, it'll be insured, the fire insurance is in place in his name. We inspect it, we make sure the utilities are on, we look after it, and we get the realtor involved, and he controls it all. I mean, this is done with his blessing. We discuss all these matters with him, but he doesn't have to take it to work and fret about it.
[00:33:53] Speaker B: He doesn't have to get up in.
[00:33:54] Speaker C: The morning and read the paper and wonder if his money's going up today or down today, or what happened in Russia and Ukraine, and there's the bottom falling out of the american. He doesn't have to worry. He just has to drive down the street and watch, know, have a barbecue in the backyard of a house that he has a mortgage on.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: Very comforting.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: And this circles back to that daydreaming conversation that you had with your wife and this idea of a recurring monthly income stream. And so you went from this environment of being a very successful realtor, hosting these seminars, creating tons of value for people with this long term rental cash flow model, owning a large number, a large portfolio of rental units yourself, to getting fed up with your own bank and an investment guy at a bank who wasn't doing a very good job, to taking the control back, which is a big theme of our podcast and our clients is we're all about bringing the control back at the you and me level, where it's wherever possible in your financial life, and now facilitating those lending transactions on your own, to taking it on with friends and family and building. And I think you said Magnum was formed in 2003. So congratulations on 20 years, by the way, in this boutique private lending space. I mean, truly fantastic. It's been roughly five or so years since I learned about your firm. And just to share a quick story, having had some experience at private lending myself, I learned earlier on, when I was about 1819 years old, that you could do private lending in RSP capital. I've done a number of those deals on my own. Of course, I don't play a part or a role in the registered plan system anymore because I'm not a big fan of the government sponsored plans personally. But I learned about that. I went through those experiences and I myself, actually, being someone who I thought was a knowledgeable person, I had a little bit of the arrival syndrome when I was a licensed realtor in Edmonton. And I had a deal actually go sideways during the last market downturn in Edmonton. And if it wasn't for the fact I was able to communicate company that owned that property at the time, I was able to get the listing to recover some of my capital that way. And I was able to do some things to figure out the process. It could have went very sideways for me. So that experience is what led me to seek out an organization. I said, there's got to be someone who has an end to end solution for this. The private lending is great. I would like to continue that. I know others who are interested in that, but there's got to be a way or someone who looks after the deals that go sideways, someone who facilitates that process. And that's actually how I stumbled across your firm at that time.
[00:36:50] Speaker C: Well, and I'm glad you found us, and we're very glad that we found you, Richard. It's been delightful working with you. And Mark Berry, our office manager, speaks highly. And if you called in and talked to Christine Banks, she would introduce you to the workings of the company. We have people call us from across Canada with funds. Now we're only licensed to deal in.
[00:37:16] Speaker B: Real estate in Alberta.
[00:37:17] Speaker C: I don't know anything about Saskatchewan. I don't want to know anything about British Columbia. We know Alberta and we know values. In Alberta, we stay in.
But, but people's money can be sent from anywhere.
[00:37:35] Speaker B: If they have excess capital or they're.
[00:37:39] Speaker C: Not getting full value and they want to take control of their lives and.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: Be their own banker, this might be.
[00:37:44] Speaker C: One avenue that they could look at.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: And say, I should have a small.
[00:37:49] Speaker C: Portfolio of private mortgages in my holdings.
Our mortgages are only two years long in length. What we are is we fill in.
[00:38:00] Speaker B: On that short term.
[00:38:02] Speaker C: We fill in what my dentist needed.
We fill in where, gosh, a man working very hard in the oil fields and he's working long, long hours and he hasn't paid his income tax for a couple of years. He's filed, but he hasn't paid and he owes money. Well, now he goes to the bank for a loan to buy a house. He can't get a loan because he hasn't paid his income tax. Well, that's exactly where we come in. He'll come to us and say, I need $60,000.
[00:38:32] Speaker B: Great.
[00:38:33] Speaker C: We register a charge against his house.
[00:38:37] Speaker B: We find a lender with 60, we look after the income tax, or five.
[00:38:43] Speaker C: Months later, he qualifies just fine with the bank. Reduces the interest rate from twelve or 13% to the bank's maybe four and a half to 5%, which is great for him. We're in and we're out and there's an insatiable amount of requests.
[00:39:01] Speaker B: It's like borrowers, like old people.
[00:39:04] Speaker C: You just never run out of them. There's always old people, isn't there?
That is really good. I can say that because I'm an old people.
[00:39:17] Speaker D: And we'll include links, of course, for folks to visit your website.
And your website is very robust. There's a lot of great information there that really is great about describing your services, not only as it relates to the borrower who's looking for an option, but also for folks like us who've got ready access capital that we want to put to work and we want to multiply.
The website appears to me to be a treasure trove of great resources. And so we'll include a link to the website for our listeners to visit.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: Head over to lendwithmagnum.com. That's lendwithmagnum.com to get connected with the right person on their team to learn more about private lending options available to Canadians coast to coast.
[00:40:07] Speaker D: We're also putting together within our ascendant financial business, we are creating a passive income mastermind group that will be exclusive to our client community. And so we will definitely be inviting you to share with our passive income mastermind community more of what you already communicated with us here today. And we're going to provide those types of capital multiplication opportunities to existing clients who have ready access capital. They're looking for high caliber opportunities and they want their money to grow and they want to take the least amount of risk to achieve that growth.
[00:40:49] Speaker C: I'd love to participate in that.
I really would.
The journey that I've taken is my journey.
And today my cash flow stream is far beyond what we dreamed about, Joni and I, when we were 30 years old. I mean, the Lord just blesses those that have an idea of what they want. Somehow he just makes it happen.
And I'd love to share this story because that's the way it is.
[00:41:30] Speaker D: Having, I guess, giving credit to one of our mentors. Richard knows who I'm talking about, Dan Sullivan, founder of strategic coach. And he says that you should always be building a future that's bigger than your past. Yes, and I agree with that wholeheartedly. But the human brain doesn't address generalities. The human brain doesn't know what to do with general statements like, in the future, I want to be wealthier. In the future I want to have more passive income. It sounds like the process that you went through with your wonderful wife. You were both very specific about what you wanted to make real and the human brain, because it's incapable of really doing anything extraordinary. The human brain knows how to address specifics and knows what to get to work on making real. So if you're programming your brain with very clear instructions three years from today, I want my passive income to exceed my current level of expenses. My current level of expenses are 10,000 a month. I want my passive income to be a minimum of twelve. That's very specific. The human brain knows how to get to work on making that real and casting that vision and that vision of a bigger future is something that our clients really resonate so well with, because that's how we show up. We're leading by example, we're showing them this is what we're doing. And so when we implement this process of becoming your own banker, the the the the the the the the the the, the infinite banking concept, opportunities like this of high caliber track you down.
[00:43:16] Speaker C: Well, it's so wonderful what you're doing, because to do it by yourself is quite difficult. Your conscious mind will argue with you. It'll argue with you saying, I'd love to have it, but it'll say, you don't deserve it.
[00:43:31] Speaker B: Right?
[00:43:32] Speaker C: How are you going to do that? Or it's going to say, you're fluid to dream that way. However, as you point out, focused attention, your subconscious mind never argues and it never stops working. And it never stops working. And to have a group is a very powerful thing, because as individuals, as humans, we all go through this non deserving nonsense. That's not true. It just wants to know, what do you want? And I love what you're saying. You put a group together of like minded people, then they're looking just for an opportunity that's about as safe as you can get. There's nothing guaranteed ever, right? Over all of my lifetime, there wasn't anything safer than investing in a piece of real estate. And I know that man goes to work every month and one third of his salary at least comes back. To me, holding a mortgage is a wonderful thing.
[00:44:36] Speaker A: That's an interesting statement. I like that. I want our viewers to really hone in on that. Just picture and imagine for a moment.
[00:44:42] Speaker D: Close your eyes and imagine what if.
[00:44:45] Speaker A: You could get one third of someone else's income rolling back to you as a cash flow while doing a good deed, while helping them out in some way?
Because that one third of that income is going to go to someone else's bank anyway. So if it's going to go to someone's bank, it might as well be. You.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: Got it.
[00:45:07] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:45:08] Speaker D: That's terrific.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: All rich. Love it.
[00:45:11] Speaker D: Well.
[00:45:13] Speaker A: We'Re so thankful for you coordinating being with us here today and sharing your journey and your story and what it is that you do to help not only borrowers fill the gap when needed, but facilitating the meeting of appropriate lenders with those borrowers. You really are the perfect middleman in that scenario. And a question that we want to always ask our guests is, although you didn't show up on our call today with a red cape, you do have a very nice sport coat and a very nice red handkerchief in there. What we would love to know is, in the work that you do, how you're showing up in the marketplace, you really are showing up to a hero for people. A hero for the investors who are lending capital and creating a great passive income and doing it, and really a hero for the people who need this access to capital because they can't get it in the regular market and you're providing that alternate banking system that allows them to tap into the capital they need. It's often in a desperate situation. So our question really for you is, who do you most want to be a hero to?
[00:46:23] Speaker C: You know, normal working man.
[00:46:26] Speaker B: That's what I have been, is a.
[00:46:29] Speaker C: Normal working man my whole life. And those of us that work hard and have accumulated wealth, and there are many, many that now they're older, they don't want to lose that wealth because they don't have the years behind them to catch up. They want a safe place to put it. That's who we're talking to. If they've accumulated two or $300,000 or more, and some of our depositors, some of our investor pool hold in their bank accounts in the millions of dollars and they're looking for a safe place to put it, that's who I'm talking to.
[00:47:06] Speaker B: Amazing.
[00:47:07] Speaker D: Wonderful.
[00:47:07] Speaker A: Fantastic.
[00:47:08] Speaker D: Steve, thank you so much. Been such a pleasure to have this conversation. We're definitely going to continue it. And for all of our viewers on the YouTube channel, you will have seen a playlist show up and it's pointing you to the next video in that list that we would recommend so that you can continue your journey of learning, continue your journey of growth. And this whole topic of private lending is one that we're going to continue to expand on. Thanks to all the requests that are coming in from our existing clients wanting to discover and to learn more about this incredible element and process of growing and amplifying your wealth. And so, thank you so much for tuning in. Make the rest of your week outstanding. And gentlemen, this was a real pleasure.
[00:47:50] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:47:50] Speaker C: Jason. Thank you, Richard. This is a delight for me.
[00:47:56] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the wealth without Base street podcast where your wealth matters. Be sure to check out our social media channels. For more great content, hit subscribe on your favorite podcast player and be sure to rate the show. We definitely appreciate it. And don't forget to share this episode with someone you care about. Join us on the next episode where we continue to uncover the financial tools, strategies, and the mindset that maximize your wealth.
