Harnessing Market Instability One Job at a Time

By Brian McGuckian

I remember it vividly. I was in my Grade 9 French class surrounded by old and new friends when my French teacher responded, after I couldn?t answer a question, with ?Duuuh?.You?ll never be more than a ditch digger!?

Yeah, I was humiliated and pissed off. Who wouldn?t be?

Four years later, I had graduated and started a skilled trade as a carpenter while continuing to dabble in various enterprises.

Halfway through my apprenticeship, I took a year off to live and work in London, England. While living there I took a holiday to a little Spanish island off the coast of Africa called Ibiza. I met a lovely English girl called Maria. Maria lived in South London, and I was living in North London, so it was an easy commute when we returned to London.

Life was exciting, I was in love and living and working in one of the most happening cities in the world, yet my instincts told me that the best was yet to come. Eventually, I returned to Toronto, and Maria soon followed me to work as a nanny. I continued with my trade while trying to get my side business with my brother Damian up and running.

It was T-Shirt company based on a design I originally saw in London. It was called 3 DT?s and involved a latex mold protruding out of a T-Shirt. There was even one created to duplicate the scene in the movie Alien where the alien burst out of the astronaut’s chest. That design, along with half a dozen others, was very successful with thousands of sales across Canada but by the end of the year, and with summer coming to a close, the sales dropped and we decided to pull out as we didn?t see it continuing the next year.

My next venture involved supplying labour to builders when help was needed. The builder just called for workers and I supplied them. It worked well because I took care of all the paperwork and all the builder had to do was call with the amount of labour needed and I took care of the rest. I learned an incredible lesson about the wonderful world of cash flow. After paying all of my staff, I was averaging $800 per day in cash flow. I was on top of the world until the market slowed a few short months later and yet another business dried up.

It was during this downturn another opportunity presented itself. I picked Marie up at the train station from her work and told her that I had spent our deposit for a house on a 59 Corvette. She cried all the way home while I tried to assure her I knew what I was doing. Thank God I got it shipped to the UK and sold it for more than double the money. We were able to do one more deal before the currency market made this business unviable and I was left me once again looking for something that could withstand the ups and downs of a fluctuating economy.

A friend of ours told us about the Stash app and how much success he has been having with his investments so we dabbled in stocks and mutual funds and always thought that we aware in a losing game. We weren’t great at investing and probably should have used a better platform to invest with. Etoro is meant to be a good platform, perhaps we should have read the etoro review and used that platform to invest.

After buying our first home in Aurora, we kept busy with our full time jobs, and then we were blessed with two sons. Our lives were full! After investing in stocks here and there and riding the stock market, we had made a few mistakes, and were tired of the ups and downs that the stock market was giving us. If it was this day in age, we would have looked into somethink like this questrade review considering we were only just getting into trading options.

I did not give up. I wanted something to work well and be sustainable for more than a few years, and not be dependent on trends, the market, exchange rates or stock price fluctuations! There had to be something we could run with and trust. Whilst Swing trading alerts might be deemed helpful, we needed an array of resources.

This is when I came across REIN and . This was the turning point!

I was more determined than ever after reading Don?s book Real Estate Investing in Canada: Creating Wealth with the ACRE System. This system has been tried and tested in Canada, and better yet, Don was also a Canadian. If done properly, the ACRE System could weather any economic downturns and currency fluctuations that my other ventures had succumbed to.

The true deciding factor was when Maria said that she believed in what I was doing and was 100% dedicated to make this work. She had seen house and rental prices in England go through the roof and knew that in the right areas there was a profit to be made in Canada.

Our life was changed in so many positive ways, not only with the cash flow we have achieved, but also with the people we have met in REIN, relationships formed and what we have learned on this fabulous journey! We have purchased over $4 million worth of cash flowing properties in Canada, the US (Florida), as well as some ongoing real estate developments. None of which could have been attainable without the help of the wonderful REIN community.

Our journey was by no means easy and it?s certainly not over. In the early days we dealt with unrelenting repairs, unruly tenants and so called professional trades not to mention all of the naysayers who said we were in for a rude awakening because they had heard how unforgiving real estate could be.

I?m sure lots of people would have given up but perseverance is the key!

My proudest achievement is very important to me and is directly tied to the words of my French teacher. Yes, Mrs. C, I could be a darn good ditch digger but I can now afford to pay someone to do it for me.

Brian McGuckian has lived in Richmond Hill (Toronto) since emigrating from the UK at the age of 7. He has been married for 27yrs and has two boys with his wife Maria who is also from the UK. He has been an active real estate investor for over 8 years and now enjoys the luxury of traveling on a regular basis.

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