How Delegation Helped Build a 500-Unit Real Estate Portfolio with Ghislain Larochelle

Ghislain Larochelle (00:00)
⁓ Real estate has changed my life, okay? I’m ⁓ financially free and I just want to tell people it’s possible. What you have to do is to take an action. If you sit on your couch and you do nothing, you watch Netflix, you watch the TV, that’s not the way you will improve your life. So do

something, ⁓ listen podcasts, read books, ⁓ what else can you do? ⁓ Go to take a training,

Q Edmonds (02:11)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I am excited to be here today. And listen, I’m gonna say something. I’m let y’all know now I’m joking. Cause I don’t want my joke to land wrong. But this gentleman here, he sits on his hand and does nothing all day long. you see him smiling because once we get into the stuff that he does, y’all can be like, wait a minute, what?

And so I had to say I was joking because I didn’t want the joke to land wrong, but this gentleman is proficient. You hear me? He’s proficient. And I can list, I mean, I have list, I’ve list everything that he told me, but I’m going let him, you know, I’m going let him talk about what it is that he does because he does what he did very, very well. And so, listen, he teaches people, he’s an investor. I mean, again, an extensive

resume just the things that he gave me. And listen, he wasn’t trying to brag. He was just stating, hey, I asked what he does. He was like, okay, this is what I do. And so I’m so excited for us to get to learn from the experience of Mr. Ghislain Larochelle. How did I do, sir?

Ghislain Larochelle (03:27)
Yeah,

yes sir!

Q Edmonds (03:30)
Awesome, awesome.

My friend, how are you doing today,

Ghislain Larochelle (03:34)
Very good.

Thank you for inviting me to your podcast.

Q Edmonds (03:38)
man, I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you for your time. You know, I don’t, I don’t take it lightly that you chose to give us your time, right? So thank you for your time. Thank you for being here. And listen, I am the type sir. I like to dive right in, right? So I would love for you to tell the people what’s your main focus these days. If you don’t mind, give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got into this space that you’re in. And then man, tell them what part of the world you’re in because that may be surprising to them as well. So.

Ghislain Larochelle (04:02)
Yep. Yep.

Q Edmonds (04:07)
Sir, you have the floor, my friend.

Ghislain Larochelle (04:09)
Yeah, I’m an electrical engineer. So I went to the big businesses, the big companies to work as an electrical engineer. And one day after about 20 years, I decided I had enough. I had enough. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. My father was an entrepreneur and he had free time. I had no time. I was working from six to…

seven, eight every day, six days a week. And I decided, no, that’s it. That’s it, that’s it, that’s all. I want to build my business. I work so hard for somebody else, I want to build it. So I already had a real estate investment when I decided that in 2008. And I decided that I would start a coaching school about real estate.

Presently, I remember I started with one guy, one guy in front of me in a restaurant teaching how to make an offer. It was so funny because I have done a few but not 10,000 offers when I was teaching. But presently I have 1,300 people that I teach every day or every week.

So it’s now a big company that we are. The name of the company is emo facile.ca. We are in Montreal in Quebec, Canada. And this is one part of my life to teach to, that’s one of my passion. The other passion is real estate. So I put boots on my underground.

I love to buy buildings. have presently close to 500 units of doors, I would say. And I have done 93 flips, 72 condo conversion, 500 land development parcel that I have done. I have built 48 cottages with partners and

I have built big multi-units building also at the same time. And I’m still buying. Even at my age, I’m still buying because I love that.

Q Edmonds (07:26)
Thank you for taking us through the journey. And I’m going to give you a brief summary because I want to make a point and ask you a question. So I started out as an electrical engineer. After 20 years, she was like, look, I had enough. And so you always wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Ghislain Larochelle (07:37)
Yes.

Q Edmonds (07:42)
because you was working literally like six to seven days a week. And so you got into real estate, you you was tired of working for others, building for others until 2008, got into the real estate space, really wanted to teach. And you started off with one guy and that one guy grew to 1300 people that you teach. And teaching is just a part of what you do, boots on the ground, 500 units.

Let me get my writing, 93 flips, 72 condo convergence, 500 land developments, and more and more and more. And so I love it. Thank you, man. Thank you for taking us through the journey. I often say this on a podcast, destiny has no wasted moments. Destiny has no wasted moments. Meaning if we trace long enough, the pattern will see just the momentum building to the people that we are now.

Ghislain Larochelle (08:25)
Wow.

Q Edmonds (08:36)
We’ll borrow from the failures, we’ll borrow from the success, and they literally build the mindsets that we have today. So I would love to know, sir, throughout the journey, throughout the moments, what have the journey, the moments taught you about yourself? Have they taught you discipline, resilience, had to change the way you kind of, you know, innovate? Like what has the moments taught you about yourself,

Ghislain Larochelle (09:00)
had a coach one day who told me, Ghislain, if you want to do more, it’s not by working more. It’s by working more intelligently. And he said, we’ll do an exercise together. Okay. What can you delegate that? Let’s say I’m worth 50, a hundred dollars an hour. The number doesn’t, we don’t care about the number, but what can you delegate to somebody

that you’ll pay maybe 20, $30 an hour and we’ll save you money to do something else. And this happened in 2012. The coach told me that I hired my first employee at that time and she helped me for everything. And now I’m still delegating a lot, delegating a lot.

on the family side too. I have people who come ⁓ into my house. So this changed the life because you’re good at something, but sometimes you’re not so good at some other thing. And I don’t want to learn how to ⁓ calculate, let’s say with the accounting part of the business. I’m not good at that. So I hire somebody that is good at that.

So I would say the first thing my coach told me is delegate. And the second thing is discipline. If you have, let’s say presently, I have a list of ⁓ two weeks ago, I made a list of about a hundred items I have to do for my house. I’m presently selling my house and clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, one after the other one. Every day we have to do five things on the list.

So discipline because you have a deadline that you have to respect. So it’s the same thing for real estate because the challenge with real estate is there is no deadline. You want to buy a building, okay, I can buy it this month, next year, in five or six years. When you have a deadline, you have to fix yourself a deadline.

Q Edmonds (11:43)
Hmm.

Ghislain Larochelle (11:57)
and you’ll make more if you have a deadline, even if it’s a fake deadline.

Q Edmonds (12:03)
Yeah,

yeah. Oh man, I love it. I love, so, you know, a guest that was on, they said you have to delegate to elevate. If you really want to elevate in your efficiency, you have to delegate. That’s one thing as a visionary leader of the business is that you have to empower people to do things that can take things off your plate. So I love that. But I definitely love the word discipline. I mean, even you just say, even if it’s a fake.

Ghislain Larochelle (12:14)
Yes.

Q Edmonds (12:32)
Deadline right but what you’re doing you’re training your brain to say hey This is the structure that we are going to follow and if you train your brain your brain tells your body what to do So if you train your brain to do that it will literally go after the deadline or the structure that you put out there And so I absolutely love that. I absolutely love the longest journey You’ve learned ⁓ delegate and discipline. I think that’s absolutely

Ghislain Larochelle (12:58)
It’s like in school.

It’s like in school. When you have an exam, some people, what they will do, they will prepare it one month, two months in advance. Or you do like my daughter, ⁓ two days in advance. So she rush, rush, rush, rush, rush. And she will make the exam with a bit more stress than if you prepare it a lot in advance.

Q Edmonds (13:15)
Yeah.

Yeah,

absolutely.

Ghislain Larochelle (13:26)
It’s same for business.

Q Edmonds (13:29)
Yes,

absolutely. Well, speaking of business, that’s getting into some of your business structure. So I’m going ask you two questions that I would love for you to answer. One, what are some strategies that you know have really helped you with your business? And then what’s next for the business? What are the next business goals? What are you looking to solve a scale next? So strategy and goals. Talk to me a little bit about that when it comes to your business.

Ghislain Larochelle (13:54)
The strategy, I would say, a lot of people want to start alone into the real estate business. The challenge with that, let’s say you refinance your home, you take the money, the equity from there, you buy your first building. But the second one, what do you do? You wait five, 10, 15 years to refinance. It takes a long time.

So the strategy that have worked for me is to use a syndication process. So I bring my students, I bring friends, I bring people around me into the process of syndication. Just to explain what it is, is you bring people that have money into a deal and you’re the operator of the deal and

what you do, you do all of the things you have to do to buy a real estate deal. And the other people, they learn from themselves. They are there to watch you. They are there to receive all the paperwork at the end of the month. So this strategy is amazing.

you have to sell something. You have to sell, you have to be, not to sell something, I would say you,

You have to be able to be sellable. Let’s say I have my knowledge. I can sell. ⁓ I have money. Okay, I can go into the deal and bring something. If you don’t have a deal and if you don’t have money, if you don’t have knowledge, often it’s a lot more difficult to be able to bring people into a deal. Let’s say it’s five friends.

It’s okay. You bring, ⁓ you bring the, you all together to buy a deal. So that’s the first strategy that helped me a lot. The, and the businesses, what do, how do I see the businesses in the future for myself is to keep doing what I had a success with, sensation. And let me tell you when you bring people that have no knowledge.

And that finally they get money out of it every month. They get money when we refinance. It makes a big difference into the life of these people because sometimes they have challenges with the bills at the end of the month. But if you have money, if you are able, even if you are able to get them to financial freedom, it makes a big, big, big difference.

And this is very gratifying.

Q Edmonds (17:32)
Yeah.

I love it, man. I love it. I love it. Thank you for that well thought out answer. Now I am going to absolutely love asking you this question because I think since we started talking, you have mentioned ⁓ other people. have mentioned like serving, you know, you didn’t necessarily say this, like serving people, the gratification to get. You’ve mentioned partnerships. You’ve mentioned bringing other people in that strong and maybe something you’re not as strong at.

So I’m going to love asking you this, sir. When you hear the word relationship, what comes to mind to you? When you hear that word relationship, what comes to mind for you,

Ghislain Larochelle (18:16)
Only one word, passion. Passion, I love to be with people. I love to teach. I love to help other people. ⁓ I have a cottage, rental cottage. What I do every year, I give one, two, three weeks free to students, to ⁓ people, to students that doesn’t have a chance to go to a cottage close to a lake.

So there is people that take care of these people that they didn’t have the life I had the luck to have. And so I help people. It’s so gratifying to see the child from 10 to 14 years old. And I pay the bus, I pay everything for them. So we bring them from the school to my college and it makes a big difference. I can tell you that.

Q Edmonds (19:13)
Yeah.

Ghislain Larochelle (19:15)
Relationship

is very important for me.

Q Edmonds (19:18)
Thank you, I knew I was gonna love hearing that answer from you. One of the words that I synthesized from relationship as well is the word community. And it sounds like that’s what you’re building is a community. And I always say community is common unity. It’s people that they do different things, but they do it with the common unity, the common goal in mind. And it sounds like you’re building a robust community that people can thrive in. And so I love it. I knew I was gonna absolutely love hearing that from you.

So, you know, I normally, I’ve never asked anybody this, but I feel like I want to ask you this. Do you feel like you’re just getting started? I mean, you’ve done a lot, but it seems to me that maybe you still like feel like there’s still more to do. Am I picking up on that or how does that land with you?

Ghislain Larochelle (19:53)
Okay.

I have done a lot. I have done a lot for myself, for my family, but I always think we can do more for the social, the people around us. So I’m presently member of administration of, how do you call that in English, to help poor people. yeah, to poor people.

Q Edmonds (20:33)
Yes, yes, yeah.

Ghislain Larochelle (20:37)
And I’m there and that’s what I will do. I get free time, but everything I told you before, I have ⁓ not done that in one year. It took 20 years to do that, okay? So I have a bit of free time now and I’m giving to others. And yes, there is always something to do, always, always something to do to help other people.

Q Edmonds (20:49)
Yeah, right. Yes, sir. Yeah.

Yeah.

So I’m glad you mentioned the building of 20 years. Like this has been a process because I say this all the time. I believe at the foundation of any sustainable business is servitude. I feel like if you serve people well, your business will be sustained and it will continue to grow and it will be around for years to come. And so I’m glad 20 years there’s been a building process, also but in that thread of that building is

Ghislain Larochelle (21:09)
Yes, exactly.

Q Edmonds (21:33)
helping people, serving people, making sure that you take care of the community and just not yourself. And I think you’re living proof that at the foundation of any sustainable business, I believe is servitude. I really do. Yeah. Listen, is there any other words of inspiration, education, motivation that you would like to leave? I don’t know. Maybe you might’ve came in with a message on your mind that you wanted to make sure our viewers kind of got. I kind of want to open up space that you can land that message if it’s something like.

Ghislain Larochelle (21:44)
Yes.

⁓ Real estate has changed my life, okay? I’m ⁓ financially free and I just want to tell people it’s possible. What you have to do is to take an action. If you sit on your couch and you do nothing, you watch Netflix, you watch the TV, that’s not the way you will improve your life. So do

something, ⁓ listen podcasts, read books, ⁓ what else can you do? ⁓ Go to take a training,

⁓ go to take a coach, a coach will be there to help you because a coach has done a lot of things before you. He has coaches, a lot of people too and a coach is like in sport. You want to be good in one specific sport?

You will hire a coach, but it is exactly the same thing in real estate. If you want to be really good in real estate and go faster too, and have, and have, and you will have more confidence, hire a coach and they will help you. And it could be somebody, you know, it could be a professional coach, go with your, they always say that.

the five people that are around you, you will get there. If you have bad people around you, you’ll get there. If you have good people, you’ll get there too. So that’s what I wanted to say. And real estate changed my life and it can change yours too, but don’t do it alone.

Q Edmonds (23:49)
Sir, Mr. Ghislain thank you, man, sir. Listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you,

Ghislain Larochelle (24:01)
It’s very easy. have a website and it’s immofacile.ca immofacile.ca and it’s very easy to find me. I’m all over the place. This morning I had the new, I was in the newspaper. I’m on TV. I’m on Facebook, TikTok. I’m everywhere. If you take type my name, you’ll find me. I’m sure.

Q Edmonds (24:18)
Come on.

Yeah,

yeah. appreciate it. And listen, y’all, it’s still stuff he leaving out. I can’t tell his story for you, but he didn’t tell me so much more. I’m telling you, this gentleman is really, he does a lot. His life is full. And I’m so glad you came to share with us today. I want to say three things to you, One, thank you for your time. You know, I said this at the beginning. I’ll say it again. I think time is our most precious commodity.

I think we should be able to decide what we do with our time. And so the fact that you decided to give us your time today, I find that very valuable. So thank you so much for your time. ⁓ Secondly, sir, thank you for your story, for your narrative. I believe stories have a way of planting seeds in people. We may not see the growth right off the bat, or we may never see the growth really, but it doesn’t mean that the seed didn’t take root. And it doesn’t mean that maybe two years from now, five years from now.

Ghislain Larochelle (25:08)
You’re welcome.

Q Edmonds (25:26)
that that seed will start to grow. So sir, thank you for the gift of your authenticity, the gift of your integrity and telling your story because I believe you planted seeds. Lastly, thank you for your mindset. Thank you for the way you think, sir, and bringing that mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you coming on today,

Ghislain Larochelle (25:45)
Thank you for your time to current end.

Q Edmonds (25:46)
Absolutely.

So listen, y’all heard Mr. Ghislain. Listen, his information is in the show notes. So please get in contact with him, reach out to him, but definitely make sure you’re subscribed here because I promise you we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Ghislain So sir, I say thank you again. And everyone else, listen, y’all have a fantastic day.