Building a $70M Empire in 4 Years: Insights from Shane Unruh

Building a $70M Empire in 4 Years: Insights from Shane Unruh

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 154 of the business development podcast. And on today's episode, we are interviewing Shane Unruh, founder and CEO of XS Asset Management and fellow podcaster of the scaling up podcast. Stick with us. You are not going to want to miss this episode.

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1. Let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 154 of the business development podcast. Today, we have an absolutely amazing expert guest for you. I am very pleased to announce that today we bring you Shane Unruh. Shane is a dynamic force in the real estate industry, renowned for his insatiable appetite for knowledge and unwavering commitment to growth.

From the onset of his journey, Shane immersed himself in deepening his understanding and expanding his network, devouring books and articles to refine his expertise. Recognizing the power of shared experiences, he founded the Scaling Up podcast, a platform dedicated to fostering dialogue and insight among Canadian business owners, real estate professionals, and entrepreneurs.

Through candid conversations and market analysis, Shane empowers others to navigate the complexities of industry while propelling his own trajectory forward to continued success. With an unyielding dedication to continuous learning and a passion for sharing insights, Shane has become a driving force of innovation and collaboration in the real estate community.

His leadership and vision have propelled XS asset management to remarkable heights. Owning and operating nearly 70 million dollars in multi family assets through his podcast and industry engagement, Shane cultivates a culture of knowledge sharing and mutual growth, leaving an indelible mark on the landscape of the Canadian real estate market.

As he continues to inspire and inform, Shane Unruh stands as a beacon of opportunity and transformation in the ever evolving world of real estate. Shane, it's an honor to have you on the show today.

Shane Unruh: Well, thanks for having me on. I don't know if I can live up to that intro, but I will try.

Kelly Kennedy: Unreal. I am so pumped to get into chatting with you.

Like that type of growth in four years is just unbelievable. And it's a great story and we're going to get into it later on. But before we start this show, who is Shane Unruh?

Shane Unruh: Yeah. So again, thanks for having me on. Hopefully people appreciate how much work you do to get to 154 episodes is that's, that's a lot of work.

And hopefully people appreciate that. That's awesome. Yeah, I started, I had a little bit different upbringing than most people. I was born and raised in Northern Manitoba. I was in a Mennonite community. Yeah. So it's, it was, it's kind of funny. It was a lot different. There's no TV, no radio. They had their own school system.

So I'm the first one in my family to actually go past grade nine. And just a fun little side note. My kid decided, I have three kids and one of them this week decided they were going to go to college. a whole day without technology, kind of how I grew up. And as a parent, that was actually a lot tougher trying to keep them occupied.

You don't realize how often you sit them in front of the TV or the tablet. So yeah, it was, I grew up there, you know, hunted, trapped, did stuff like that, kind of my whole life.Went on to high school, got into business. We farmed my whole life, and my first real business was I owned and operated a gym.

So we built that, that was in, again, back in Manitoba, and we ran that for about six years, and we sold it. It was, it was kind of luck, I mean, we went down to a, a conference in the States, we had a plan to move anyways. And, and we went down and the speaker was talking about, you know, if you're not in a place where you're growing and you can, you can expand, you need to move.

So we, we kind of put the wheels in motion, went home, sold the gym, sold our house. And it turned out that was, that was the week that COVID came in. So we kind of lucked out there. I guess I'll back up a little bit. When we owned the gym, we had already got started in real estate. We, we bought a mobile home park.

That was kind of our first step into real estate. And then we bought a second park. And that was we, we learned pretty quickly. It's hard to scale that business. There isn't enough of them around in Canada anymore. So we were looking for something else and we, we were looking towards transitioning into multifamily.

So that's in, that's in 2020 when we decided to sell the gym, we made the move full time into multifamily.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Wow. Like why real estate though? What was it like? Most people would start a gym and they wouldn't be thinking, okay, well, I'm going to buy a mobile home park, right? Like, what is the link there?

What was it that made you set your sights to essentially property?

Shane Unruh: Yeah, so for me, I'm, I, I'm the happiest when we're really busy and when we're growing. And with the gym, it was a great business. It was a passion at the time. It was something I had always loved. But we, as soon as we got it, it was a smaller community.

And as soon as we got it to a level where I knew, you know, we were never going to be able to double it, right? We had. Had a lot of the market already. It, you know, I kind of got, I'm not complacent, but I was looking for the next thing and then again, I don't know if it's fate or, or God or, you know, what causes that, but I read, read an article in Forbes and it was called mobile home park millionaires and it was on all the benefits of, you know, investing in mobile home parks opposed to other assets and it just happened that the park in our town went up for sale.

So I kinda, I got the numbers on it. It seemed ridiculously high price at the time and I got the numbers and, you know, looking through it, I'm like. In my head, I was like, this is a passive income and it was going to make about as much as the gym. So I thought that was a great deal turned, you know, found out really quickly, it wasn't passive at all.

And it took a lot of time, but that's how we got our first step in.

Kelly Kennedy: Me and you are both fairly young. I'm 35. How old are you, Shane? 33. Okay, like amazing. First off, just blows my mind. But like, I imagine that raising capital to buy a mobile home park is probably pretty challenging. Can we talk a little bit about how you were able to raise that capital to make that purchase?

Shane Unruh: Yeah, so initially, we, we didn't raise capital until we moved out here and started. So that was, I mean, we got financing from the bank, the owner of that we did, we were able to do like some creative financing there. There was a house he subdivided off and capped and we were able to do some, like, almost like a VTB with him.

And we had some equity from the gym that we could pull out and use as well. So we didn't raise any capital or we didn't start our fund until years later.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Wow. Okay, so you were able to secure. At least enough from the sale of the gym to be able to kind of move in and make that, make that purchase of the mobile home park.

Shane Unruh: Yeah, no, we just pulled equity. We didn't sell the gym. Actually, we owned them at this. I skipped through the story a little fast there probably, but we own the gym for six years. We bought about year fours when we bought the trailer park. But yeah, it was just the way it worked out, the financing we could get, and then with the owner help, like, he was able to do a VTB and, and help us out, and we had some cash from the gym, and we farmed as well up until that point.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow, wow. I want to, I want to spend some time on how you grew up, dude. Yeah. We've never had a Mennonite. I don't think that I've ever really spent much time with anybody in that type of community. Up here we Hutterite colonies as well in Alberta. But can we spend a little bit of time on what your childhood was like?

Like, I don't think many people understand what growing up Mennonite means.

Shane Unruh: Yeah, and, and there's, that's one thing too, where there's a whole bunch of different kinds. So there's, there's Mennonites that do have all the same stuff to TV, radio, everything. It is slightly different than, than let's say Hutterites.

You don't live in a colony. It is still, you're in your own community kind of thing. So you all, you know, go to the same church. You have, the school system is kind of the big one. You, you know, you have your own school system. It's separate from the public school system and, and it does only go to grade nine.

Yeah. I think it's great. I mean, growing up you don't, I didn't know any different. Right. So, sure. It, it, I, I liked it. It was a lot of good takeaways though. Like I think it teaches you a lot of good things and it's cool to see 'cause you, you know, everyone who's ever went through their, you know, only did get a grade nine education.

And now when I go back, like all my extended family is still, still there and they're all, you know, they all run big farms and or, or companies or businesses and it's, you know. I would say very high work ethic there, like it's, you start working when you're in grade, you know, when you get out of grade nine.

That's the reason the reason that you, they, they do stop there for me too. I mean, I was, I went on to high school, my parents had split up. So we had, we had left the church and I went on to high school. I wanted to play football. That was kind of my thing. And pretty quickly realized, I mean, the level of education there was a lot higher.

I was doing pretty much the same work in grade nine that I ended up doing in grade 12 anyways. So it's not like they're uneducated by any means. And just the whole structure of it. I mean, I, I have my opinions on that in the school system now, but, you know, it, it's gotten very loose, I think, on things.

So it was much more structured and, and you were there to be educated. And I think that's kind of going away a little bit today, but

Kelly Kennedy: yeah, yeah, well, and that's it. It's like, who really knows what the standard of education that we get is because we don't make that choice, right? Like, who knows? Maybe we are getting like a grade seven or grade eight level education in the grand scheme of the world.

How do you know, unless you were in education yourself? We just don't know. We really do accept a lot in Canada with regards to our education system. And we put a lot of trust in people to make sure that it's done right.

Shane Unruh: Yeah, a hundred percent. And even like where I send my kids to school, it's a, it's a new school and they're, they're big on that.

It's, it's, it's focused on education and that's what they want to focus on. And they're finding that where kids, you know, come from the public school and they're about two years behind where they should be in. Yeah. But it'll come around. I'm sure it'll, it'll get sorted out.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. When you were talking about growing up, like hunting and trapping, I my aunt and uncle growing up had a big farm just outside of Dapp, Alberta.

And so as a kid, I remember going there in the summer and spending, you know, like full week, two weeks with my aunt and uncle and like, we would go out and, you know, we'd shoot targets and we'd go dirt biking in the back and quadding. And they had like, I think around 500 or 600 acres of farm field that we could go and do that in.

Man, what a great way to grow up. Like I, I remember really loving that. I kind of had that mixed blend. I grew up on an acreage as a kid, moved to the city when I was a teenager. And then, like I said, as a teenager, kind of spent time with my aunt and uncle out on their farm and really enjoyed that experience and kind of moved into the future.

You know, I don't hunt much anymore, but I used to hunt quite a bit. And yeah, it's just, I could see how that. It's a tough lifestyle. It's a very tough lifestyle growing up on a farm.

Shane Unruh: Yeah, I get it. It's, I think most kids would like it. I was kind of that way when we moved here. I was like, Oh, now my kids get to experience living in the city.

And now I'm almost at the point where I'm like, I'd probably move outside the city just so they can experience it. But for me, that's what I loved. I hunted every single day. I had a trapline and I had a whole business model planned out where that was going to be my career. I was going to get, you know, have them all over the province.

And, you know, that was, That was the plan for a while. Yeah, you, you went a long way in a different direction, dude. I don't think there's a lot of very successful trappers out there that you'd find today.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh man. Yeah. Well, at one time it worked well for the Hudson Bay Company.

Okay. Okay. So. So, but the reason that I kind of touched on that specifically is I think that growing up like that, like you said, you're 33, but you've accomplished a ton. And my opinion on that is it's because you grew up with amazing work ethic and a support system probably unlike what a typical person has available to them.

Can we chat a little bit about how, how, you know, growing up Mennonite has influenced who you became as a business person?

Shane Unruh: Yeah. I'd say, I guess on the moral side, I mean that, you know, there's, there's things where you see in business sometimes today, and it just, I would think it's just common that everyone does things a certain way or treats people a certain way, and it isn't, isn't always but the work ethic is a big one and that, I mean, you can get people that are hardworking or lazy from any upbringing, but for me, that's the one thing where I've always, always had.

And I, I just, I try to stress that to all my employees and everyone's like, you, you can never for sure in today's world, if you can, if you have work ethic, there's nothing that can really stop you. You know, like if you can outwork somebody and that's the way I look at it, kind of getting into any business.

I'm like, I'm not going to be the biggest today or the best at something, but I know that nobody's going to outwork me over, over five years or over 10 years, you know, you're going to be able to put in the work. And there was lots of times we, you know, we, we ran the gym and the trailer parks and where you're putting in way more work than you're getting paid for, for, for years and years of time.

And yeah, I think that's, that's probably the, the biggest one.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I think it's really, really hard to out hustle. Like a good work ethic, right? Like, I think that is it. And just frankly, determination. Right? Like, I hate losing. I just hate losing. I talk about it all the time. I just hate losing.

I really do. And it's funny because I've met with so many mentors and founders of like startups and stuff. They're like, oh, Kelly, you just gotta, you just gotta fail quick and fail fast. And I'm like, but failing sucks. Like, I don't care whether you fail fast or not. Failing sucks. And in my mind, can be incredibly traumatic.

I don't think that there's a lot of business owners, in my opinion, who fail badly and then are just ready to jump back on that horse, right? But I think the difference, and I'm not saying that everybody cannot fail, like I'm not, I'm not saying that every business can make it. That's just the truth. Not every business can make it.

But I think that hard work and work ethic. can be the difference between making it and not making it. What's your opinion on that?

Shane Unruh: Yeah. A hundred percent. I think the thing you'd add in there is a clear vision of where you're going. Like you can, I mean, you can work really hard in a coal mine your entire life and you're not going to, or, or some, you know, like somewhere where it's just a mundane task and not get anywhere.

You need to be working towards something. For me, that's always been the biggest thing is we have, you know, we have a plan where we're going, we make it very clear where that is and, and you're working towards that. And I think that it makes it easier to put in all the hard work because if you're, if you're putting in all the hard work and you're not seeing that result right away, you know, if you have a big enough target that it's going to be worth it.

I think is what, what makes it easier for some people, right? If the target's just slightly above where you are, you know, it's not, what, why would I put in all the extra work to just be 10 percent ahead of where I am today, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, like in your opinion, you really need that big audacious goal that you're working towards because at least if you miss, you still hit the stars, right?

Shane Unruh: Yeah. And I mean, I'm, I'm, that's, Changed my life. Like we, we, you know, I was in a, when we were harvesting one year, I remember we had just bought our first house, me and my wife and we had renovated it. And I seen that now it's worth a little bit more money. And I had drawn on a piece of paper, a 10 year plan where we were going to do that once a year for 10 years.

And then we would keep one or two. So we'd have, by the end of it, we'd have 10 rental properties. And I'm like, man, that's, For us at the time, I'm like, that's 10, 000 a month coming in. That's going to be crazy. And, and then I read, I'm a big, I like Grant Cardone and we, I'd read the 10 X rule and you know, he talks about, you can read that book and take different things from it, but the big takeaway is you set the goal big enough and work your way back.

Right. So. If the goal for 10 years was getting 10 units, I probably would have got there, right? Or maybe got close, but if the goal was going to be 100 units or a thousand units, I had to do it differently, right? If I wanted to set a 10 year goal at a thousand units, I couldn't buy single family homes. I couldn't even buy 10 unit buildings, right?

So when you set that big goal and then, and then you just look at it and say, well, how can you, you work your way back from the goal? Change my life. And that's the way I do everything now still is we set, we set it. And I say, how can, you know, in order to get there in three years or five years or 10 years, what do we need to do?

Because I can't keep doing what I'm doing now. And if the target's just 10 percent more meh.

Kelly Kennedy: It's just, it's not, it's not big enough to inspire you.

Shane Unruh: Or anybody else. And that's the thing. It's like your employees won't be inspired, your investors, your people who are selling to you won't be inspired, right?

So you need it to be big enough and realistic and you need a plan of how to get there. You can't just go out and say I want 200 billion dollars in assets and not, you know, have a path to get there.

Kelly Kennedy: Totally, totally. And like, You know, I mean, for the people who are listening right now, who are not quite understanding the scale of what XS does, Shane has turned this company into a 70 million company in four years.

He is 33. What's your excuse? And I really mean this, dude. And I want to spend some time with you today because I think that your mindset and the strategies that you use have been a huge contributor to your success. And so, I'm wanting people to walk away with this with some strategies. And so, I would love it if you would maybe spend some time on what that goal setting process was like, and then how essentially those achievements came to be.

Shane Unruh: I don't think we'd even bought the trailer park yet. And I went down to a business conference in the States. And this was the first time really, like I was in a small, you know, the whole entire town was a couple thousand people. Like it was pretty small. So the level of success that I had seen was, was, you know, it wasn't really there.

And YouTube wasn't as big at the time. You couldn't really get access to people. And I went down to this conference and there was multiple people that spoke that were, you know, billionaires or close to it. And I kind of had this realization, like I had always thought, well, there's something special about these people or they got, you know, just like everyone else.

It's like, maybe they got something given to them or they're, they're, you know, really educated or, or whatever. And just, it was a three day thing. And just, Story after story, it was, you know, most of the people had a way worse upbringing than I did, or started, you know, at a way lower point or and, and he kind of got the sense that like, none of these people are, seem smarter than me, you know, like not that much smarter.

So if they can do it, why can't I? And, and that really changed my mindset. I just thought, you know, it did give me kind of that belief where you got to see those people and there was nothing special. They didn't get any handouts. Right. And so that kind of changed. my perspective on, on I guess allowing myself to set those bigger goals or, or believing in them.

Right.

Kelly Kennedy: What does your goal setting process look like? Can you walk us through it?

Shane Unruh: For me, it's always the three year one. I think a three year goal is really important because it's like, it's far enough out there that you're not expecting it to come in a year, but you have to work hard. You know, you have to work with it.

When you set a 10 year goal, like that's what gets me excited. I set a 10 year goal. I'm like, that's, That's what gets me out of bed every morning at five, right? But for the next person, it's not as exciting because now you're, you're a year in and it's pretty far away, right? Most goals, it, it's a, it's a pretty flat line until the last couple and it kind of goes up, right?I think if you, you set enough smaller goals and then the things that need to go with You know, you can't just say I want this dollar amount or whatever the thing is. You need to also put in there like what will get me there, right? So I mean for you with the podcast, you're probably setting. I need to do two podcasts a week.

I need to meet 20 people to get those two guests. I need to talk to this many advertisers. And just be, you're going to know that 90 percent of those emails are going to fail, but you have to put in the steps to get to the goal. I think is what a lot of people maybe miss. It's very easy to make a vision board and you're going to put a Rolex and a Lamborghini and a house and a family or whatever these things are, but it's like, what does it take to get there?

Well, you're probably going to have to make this many sales. I'm going to need to make this many calls.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I agree completely. And you're perfectly right. And I would also say that in my experience, the further that I've gone down this road, the more success that this show has had, the easier it has been to achieve the next thing.

Like, and I don't know, I don't know how you feel about this, but I think the hardest most businesses have to hustle and work is in that first 30%. of who they're going to become. There's something that happens, and I don't know whether you mean, you mean I believe in God, I know you do too, but you know, whether you believe in the universe or whatever, I do kind of feel like when you put that intention out there to do something, it makes you work for it pretty hard at first.

But once you show that you're dedicated to that, and you want to achieve it, It's crazy to me how things have come together for me in ways that I could have never imagined through people that I'd never met before who just came into my life and were like, we love what you're doing and we want to support it.

And you know what I mean? You don't even see it coming. It's like, once you're going down a path, Sometimes the things just fall into place and it's amazing.

Shane Unruh: Yeah. And I mean, people, you know, it's kind of like the, the law of attraction or whatever, you know, it, it can get taken out of context for sure, but there's something to it.

Right. And it's also what you talked about when you start getting those little, when you're stacking wins like that, you get more confident and you're maybe more likely to get the next thing. Right. So me and my wife just finished that. It was like, it's like a mental, Toughness challenge, but it's 75 days and the big thing, nothing that you do in there is super hard on its own.

But every single day you have to complete these five things, right? And there's days where you end at midnight and you know, you start it way early in the morning and there's that you don't have the time to do it. But it's every day you're crossing five things off that list. And then you, you kind of get that confidence.

Like, well, I know I already did those five things and it's just checking off wins. And I think it's the same in a business. It's hard to. Have a lot of confidence when it's your first thing you've ever done. Yeah. And, and maybe it's not even going well. Most businesses, you're not going to just crush it.

You know, like I know our business that people say, Oh, you started three years ago, but we were, we've done stuff for 10, we did other stuff for 10 years, you know, like, So it's, it's not like it came overnight and, and we're not even close to where we want to be. So it's a, it's a long road yet. And I think the time is, yeah, it just, it's stacking up those little wins and builds the confidence and you get the next one and you meet more people and it does compound for sure.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, it really, really does. And like I said, I think there is something to just getting started and I'm always trying to like inspire people on this show to just take that jump because I know I spent a lot of time before I took the leap and started my business. I think I was planning it for about two years before essentially COVID hit and gave me that forced opportunity where it was like, okay, like I need to do something.

I literally incorporated capital business development on my birthday. What else is super cool is my son was born on my birthday. So I got two pretty amazing things that happened on my birthday in my life, which has been pretty cool. But yeah, like I needed that push to kind of get it started, but I'll tell you what, like once I started capital, got my first few clients.

I remember looking in my mirror and just saying like, why the heck? Why didn't you do this sooner? And you know what? I was afraid, dude. I was really afraid to take that jump. And you know, I mean, I am not afraid to say that entrepreneurship in the beginning can be an incredibly scary process. It might be one of the scariest things aside from maybe being a parent that you are ever going to go through in your life.

But You know what? I think you'll find that if you just take that jump, whether it be to launch that podcast, start that YouTube channel, start that business, you are going to be successful because you'll be driven to do it. You'll be driven to make that achievement. Can we talk a little bit about that?

Shane, about the first time that you started, was it your gym? Like, I guess you were farming too, but was it your gym that was your first business?

Shane Unruh: Yeah, that was the first, you know, real business. And again, you, you, you know, you talked about the business and the kids. I think it's very similar where there's never the right time, right?

Like to have a kid, everyone's like, I'll wait till I'm here or here. And it's the same with the business or anything you do. Yeah, that's, so the gym was the first, the first business. And that was one too, like neither me or my wife. Either of our families really had run any kind of business where there was retail and anything, so we just jumped in and thinking back now you know, taking that risk then or when we moved here, like we sold absolutely everything and there wasn't a backup plan, right?

And it gets harder to do that as you get farther along, I think. But yeah, the gym was definitely the first one. Like, had that not worked, we were stuck with a huge building in a small town and, and, and, you know, out a lot of money and it would have set us back years and years. But that also drove me to.

You make it work then, like we spent, I was there 7 days a week, 12 hours a day for I don't know how long, right, when it opened, and we physically built, I mean once the shell was up, we did almost all the work, you know, ourselves, so we were there every day for the entire build process, getting it built, and because we didn't have a backup plan, it had to work, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, and I do think that on some level, That is what makes so many people successful, right? Like when that's the option, it's that or like incredible financial failure. That's a pretty good motivator.

Shane Unruh: Yeah. And it goes both. I always think, you know, if you don't have the backup plan, you'll, you'll go that much harder, but for the majority of people, and I was no different, it's like, I always had in the back of my head, I'm like, if this fails, right?

Like you, you're always scared to take that risk, but it's like, the reality is if, if you're, if you're working at a regular job and you want to take You know, take that risk and go into a business. Where's the real risk? Like there's some financial risk, which is going to stick around for five to seven years if it goes bad, but you can go back and get a job.

Like how much different is your life going to be if the business doesn't work, right? And I think that's where people overestimate. It's, it's the embarrassment and maybe the social aspect of it. And I had someone tell me the other day, you know, it gets, because I was listening to someone much more successful than I was talking to him.

And someone had asked him how he got to where he was. He started in his garage and he runs this huge company. And he said, you know, He said, you have to go all in on yourself a couple of times in your life. And he said, we did that multiple times, right? Paying payroll on credit cards and getting it done.

And I think, you know, yeah, I do think that's an important thing. Go going all in and, and not yeah, not having that backup plan, but, oh, this is where I was going with that. That someone had explained it to me. Cause I was thinking to myself when he said that, I'm like, if I had to do it now, like, would I really put all the chips on the table and, and go for broke?

to, to, to take to the next level. Right. And I was talking to, I have a business coach and he, he explained it. He said, it's kind of like gambling. If you go into a blackjack table and you put a hundred dollars down it's not hard to risk that, put it all on black, right. Or, or blackjack, whatever, not blackjack roulette.

You put it all on black, but now you stack it up. Let's say you win a couple of times in a row. Now you have 10, 000. It gets a lot harder to push that back onto the table. Right. Yeah. Even though you walked in there with a hundred dollars, you're walking out a hundred dollars less. It feels like a lot more.

And, and I think in business it gets harder to go all in multiple times because you're, you, you do. If, if I, if you were to go to zero today, now you lose that social, you know, you have a different friend circle. You probably have, you know, different things that a better lifestyle and so you're going back farther.

But people starting out, you don't have a, that that risk isn't really there for most people. Right? Yeah. If it goes bad, you.

Kelly Kennedy: You know what? You're the first person to put that into context in that way. And I think that that's incredibly, incredibly valuable. Like, it's like, you're right in the beginning, the stakes are pretty low.

So why not? Why not? You're right. The longer you go down a path, the more you have to lose, the harder it is to make those tough choices. And I see that in a lot of big businesses. You know, you look at a small business and they can make a decision quickly. They can pivot quickly. They can do all these things.

When you get to a business that's 50 million, a hundred million, 200 million. It takes a long time to make decisions because they have to analyze the whole thing and make sure that that decision isn't going to have a whole bunch of negative repercussions. There is something incredibly powerful about being new and that should inspire a lot of people to just take that jump.

Shane Unruh: Yeah. And it's, when you start out, it's intimidating even now, like, you know, for real estate terms, we're, we're relatively small, right? So we're, we'll, we'll bid up against guys that have, you know, a hundred times what we have and. And it always is like, ah, that's scary. You know, it's like, ah, we have no chance or whatever, but there's, you have massive advantages.

Those people have to go through boards. They're not making the same decision. They're looking at a stock price or a, you know, And you have an advantage being small and, and, and nothing to lose. And you can make quick decisions. Most people starting a business, you have very low overhead because it's just you doing it.

So you have a lot of advantages starting out and being small, but people look at them as disadvantages. But I mean, the not having anything to lose and, and being able to move quick can go a long ways, right? You can make different, make your own decisions and, and there's lots of advantages to starting out for sure.

Kelly Kennedy: Totally, totally. You know, one of the things I wanted to spend some time with you on was. You know, can you tell us a little bit about what your daily rituals look like? Like, you know, I mean, for me, when I get up in the morning, I typically have a things to do today list. And I always prioritize say my top five things.

I think five is pretty reasonable. It's most people can handle five things in a day, but you know, I'm sure just like me, your calendar is probably right packed full most of the time with tasks that you need to do. How were you able, you know, we talked about three year goals. We talked about 10 year goals.

But it's really that consistency day over day over day that makes you successful over time. Can you tell me a little bit about what a day of Shane Unruh looks like?

Shane Unruh: Yeah. And I'll say this too. I, you know, I listen to a lot of people and, and I listen to lots of podcasts and stuff. I think one thing that gets just, just, misinterpreted out there is someone will come on, you know, who has a 10 billion a company and he'll say his daily routine and maybe it's, you know, sleeping in and he does yoga and he does all these things.

And then the person starting out thinks, well, I need to take that time and do it. There's a huge, huge difference. They're like, yeah,

You know, I was just, yeah, on a panel with someone and he was going on about all the stuff he did. I'm like, man, you're not at the place to do that, right? And, and I'm the same way.

Yeah, I have the routines. I try to get to the gym by 5. 30. That's every day. I don't, I don't miss. That's my thing. And it's like, to me, that's holding myself accountable. I have to be there. And then I can get home in time to see my kids off to school. That's like a, a big thing. So I, and I have three little kids, I have three kids under six, right?

So I, I my life still isn't, I don't have an exact routine of things that we do, but, and it depends on the day we meet. We run the asset management side, but the property property management as well. So we meet with the property management team at least once a week as a team. But yeah, usually it's go to the gym, get up me and my wife.

She's a huge part of the company. I mean, we've started the company together. All of the company. So we work together. So usually it's working from home. As far as having like set daily things, my job is so, so different. Like we just closed on an acquisition. So for a month leading up to that, it's all stuff to do with the acquisition, right?

It's lawyer stuff and you're doing appraisals and all of that. Totally. But yeah, I, I, for me, it's always, The physical stuff I try to read every day and, and those are the two things I try to get in every day that are musts, I guess. And then the rest of it's work and that I'm not one who, who has to have balance in my life as far as I'm going to be done after eight hours or whatever, right?

I look at it. I always say balance comes with time. So it's like maybe for, for 10 years, I probably worked. You know, way more. We, for years and years, we never took weekends off. We, like me and my wife, when we first started the real estate, we renovated all the units ourselves. So it was like, we were there seven days a week.

Our kids were sat in the playpen in the unit with us and our Great Dane, most of the time. And it was like, that was our life. And we, we, we didn't have the rest of it. Right. And now we have more time to do stuff, but it's like, that comes and goes. There's going to be times when we're massively scaling or we're, we're doing something else, moving to a new market.

And I'm perfectly fine with going back to the you're gonna be 60 hours a week again, right? So I think balance comes with time. It's if you look at it over your lifestyle. Am I going to have more time when I'm 40 than most people? Yeah, yeah. Am I gonna have less time in my 20s? 100 percent I did, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah. And you know what? That's been one of like the big realizations that I've had running this show. And it's like I've had at this point, you know, like this is my 50. I don't know. This actually is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of my 70th Interview somewhere in there, but like we've released about 58 guest episodes at this point.

And just like a unifying, a unifying thing is that work life balance is total BS, right? Like no, you're right. It's like I talked to people that have been incredibly successful. They're like, yeah, now I work for four hours a day and it's amazing. But I suffered for 10 years to get here, right? Like there's no.

There's no quick path and like the longer that I do this, the more I recognize that work life balance is It's BS, especially in the world of entrepreneurs. Like, I just think that it's really hard to achieve great things and have perfect balance in your life. I think that there are times when you have to focus on the business.

And I think that there are times that you have to focus on your family and yourself and make sure that at least your family and yourself are getting time too. I think that's where we And I know I have struggled with that. I've struggled with that immensely because growing my own business, growing this podcast, it's like two full time jobs, plus being a parent, plus being a partner, add on two more full time jobs, right?

And I'm just doing the best to make sure that I'm delivering as good as possible on all, but damn, it's hard.

Shane Unruh: Yeah, but, but I always look at it different than most people too. You know, I, owning the gym, you'd get the excuse all the time, like, I'll come, but when my kids are older, I'll do this. You can look at it.

Your life isn't separate, your work isn't separate from your, your family or your life. It's like the life you're building, your kids are going to be part of it. And what's better for your kids than seeing you be successful, right? It's, and it, the work part, yeah, you can never skip it. It's the same as the gym.

You can't, there's nothing you can do to skip getting under that bar and putting in thousands of reps over time, right? It's the same as a business. You have to do it. And yeah, I think you being an example and showing your kids hard work, showing them what success can be, showing them, you know, fitness, all those things.

That's, that's just as important as if you went home every day at 4 30 and hung out with them. You know, like, not that you can't be with your kids, I'm with them all the time, but like, you can be a part of their life and be that example of, of hard work and all those things. And in the future, I think that, that goes a lot farther.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. How have you been able, like, I think one of the problems that I've struggled with, and I know a lot of people that I've talked to you have struggled with, is I find that I'm like, my, my, my wheels are always turning, right? I'm thinking, how do I make this show better? How do we take this thing to the next level?

What can we do better at capital? How can we help our clients better? How can we do more coaching? Right? Like my mind is always on what's next. How can we improve this thing? And I really, really struggle. to like turn it off. I would say like the first time that I was really able to just turn it off and probably the last six months we snuck off to Kananaskis, beautiful, beautiful mountains.

And I, I honestly just like left my phone. That was the secret. The secret was to not have any connection for me to the outside world, to my work world, just for a little bit, just for a few days. And I was able to reset and I didn't realize at that time, man, how badly I needed it. Like I didn't realize how close to the wall I was.

And I think. A lot of entrepreneurs are walking that ledge right there on the wall. How have you been able to just disengage? You know, you're a super high performance, you've achieved so much, you have a lot of responsibility. How were you able to disengage from that and just be present with your family?

Shane Unruh: Yeah, I don't, I don't know if it ever turns off. I mean, I, you know, I really like it as far as I always just try to, yeah, if you're, you know, If you're spending the time with your kids, you know, like my oldest is six. He wants to spend 20, 30 minutes playing something, but he, you know, and he wants my full attention during that time.

Right. And so we try to do that. I'm very, family is so important to me. So we're always doing stuff together. But as far as turning out, my brain is always thinking business. I just, I love everything about it. If I could sit and talk to someone about any subject in the world, it's going to be real estate.

And I would do that all day, every day. I just, I love everything about it. I love. Building it. I love scaling it. I love building the life around it, but to me, that's what I mean. I don't try to separate the two. I don't try to separate my family and my business because like I said, my kids, like all the pictures we have of the first, however many years they were there, they stayed at the gym with me.

They stayed, they came to the trailer park with us and renovated stuff. They came when we were here and they've just always been around it and they love it. And like, it makes me super proud when my kid wrote what he wants to do. And he grows up, it's, it's real estate investor, right? I'm sure he doesn't even know what that is.

One day. But, but, you know, I think that just you, you build a life, you don't necessarily build a business and your family's off to the side, or you don't spend all your time with the family and the businesses on the side. To me, I built, I'm building a life, a life. It's total, it's everything. So, but I know what you mean about clicking off, like you know, you try not to answer the calls and, but that.

Comes and goes in spurts too, like for me in my business, there's times when I have to answer the phone at any time of the day, and there's times when I won't get a call for a couple days, right? So.

Kelly Kennedy: No, it is tough. It is tough. And you know, I'm always trying to figure out like, what is the right balance?

How are you able to like disengage? Because I know like we've struggled with that, like conversations where Shelby's like, Kelly, like, I need you just to turn off and be present in this moment. And it's like, my God, I'm trying.

I don't know, dude, I don't know. I think I think we all suffer from that as entrepreneurs because I think you're right. We love it. We love it. We love business. We wouldn't do it. Right. And the further you go down this path, the more there is, the more, the more is on your plate, right? Whether you're, whether your podcast is taken off or whether your business is taken off or maybe all those things are taken off and you're trying to figure out, okay, how do I get a little bit of time back just for Kelly?

I'm always looking for the secret. What's the secret?

Shane Unruh: I don't know if there's a secret. I think the biggest thing I would try to do is not ever allow stuff to bother me when I'm with my family. Like if something bad happens, I'm not going to sit there at supper and, or my kids are going to be home and I'm not going to be grumpy with them.

Like that, that, that's the part I would separate. It's like cause most stuff in business, it's going to work itself out longterm. And it's, it's really not that bad. I always, what I've done from when I first started the business, I always go to the. You know, if something happens, I always go, what's the worst case, right?

Like realistically, if this goes absolutely worst case, same as setting the goal, you just work your way back. If this happens, what's the worst case? How bad is that really? Right. Not that bad. And then you, you kind of get over the stress part of it. Yeah. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, let's take this into real estate. I like, let's talk real estate.

If we love talking that what is multifamily real estate?

Shane Unruh: Yeah. So for us, it's, it's, it's, it's, I mean, essentially apartment buildings, townhome complexes.We learned pretty quickly when we first, when we had the trailer park, we had bought two small properties in Edmonton and they were just small eight units and pretty quickly realized, and this is part of setting the bigger goal too, but smaller properties, in my opinion, very hard to make that business model work.

It's hard to make it work if you only have a few. And it's a lot harder when you have a lot of them because you can't manage them properly. None of the economies of scale are there. So if you want a four unit and one person moves out, you're 25 percent vacant, right? The upside's never really there compared to on the bigger side.

So we knew right away we wanted to kind of get into bigger properties. So that's what we do now. Multifamily, I just, you know, like I said, we'd tried the trailer parks and we've looked at other stuff. I don't think I'll go any other route. It's. It's as close to like a utility as it comes. People have to have it, right?

Middle class, multifamily. There's almost no time in history where there's not a need for that, right? There's not a need for luxury houses or really high end apartments. Low end stuff, in good times, people can move up. But that middle of the road, workforce housing. It's there's always been a need for that.

It's so that's kind of what we're in right now.

Kelly Kennedy: Totally, totally. And how many, how many facilities do you have right now? Like townhomes, apartment buildings?That's 374 right now. Like doors, not, not. Either way. Holy crap. That's a lot of, that's a lot of building, dude.

Shane Unruh: Yeah. Yeah, we just took over two days ago.

We took over our newest one. It was, so it was 94 townhomes last project.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Okay. So one of the things that I wanted to chat with you about is talk to me about why you made the choice to go that way and what that first purchase was like for you.

Shane Unruh: Yeah, just honestly for me, a lot of it was scale. It's like, like same reason I didn't pursue the gym, opening more gyms or the trailer parks, multifamily, you know, you can, you can go up as high as you want in that.

So you look at a company like Starwood capital, they have. I think 285, 000 units, right? So it's, there's, there's not a lot of cap on it. And, and I know you gave me that nice intro, but I look at, there's a guy in Texas, S2 capital, he's 33 and he's went through 42, 000 units, right? So like the scale is there if you want to get it right.

And that's what always appealed to me. And, and there's. The system is kind of set up, you know, you, the best that you can get in the world is for multifamily. It's, it's, there's so many upsides to it, right? It's, it's very stable. The, the first acquisition I guess I'll talk about before we got into what the fund we have today, we had those two small properties and that essentially was the, the, the, Horrible story where like everything that could have went wrong did.

We bought this property, it had a subsidy program in that doesn't exist anymore, but they essentially would cover vacancy, they would, so the whole building was full, you had no risk of vacancy, the rents were above market, it was like the perfect scenario. And when we took over, the government canceled that program.

So right away that went out the window. We had like, I think four of the eight tenants die in the first three weeks. First 16 months with the boiler go the water tanks go and just everything that could have went wrong Did you know on the first property? And I guess we were dumb enough to buy to buy the second one and keep going after that But that would have been an example of had we not had the gym and the trailer parks at that time You know, we would have been in a pretty bad spot, right?

Was there a point where you're like, I I don't think like maybe we made a bad decision here You know if the goal had been to buy two 20 units. Yeah, you would have been like man this because I'll never forget when we took it over as a very small just a lady and her husband own this building and She handed the keys over and she just said you're gonna wish all these tenants stop breathing Like she's like you'll just you'll hate them so bad and I just remember thinking like man, why would you ever say that?

Right. Yeah, and But then I kind of got it. I'm like, if this was the, if they had owned that building 40 years, it was their only property and I'm like, the juice was never worth the squeeze. You're dealing with all these, all these problems and all these people. And, and the upside just isn't there on a small property.

Right. For us, the goal was always bigger. So it's like, yeah, I'll put up with it. I'll eat all this crap for, for years, because I know that when you have 10, 000 units, this will make no difference. You won't even remember these stories, right? Or what happened here. And it also is like, in hindsight, not at all in the moment, but in hindsight, it's like, A hundred times would have rather had to go that way than have just, if you had knocked that one out of the park, you would have had kind of, you know, got this complex and ego and be like, Oh, this is, this is easy.

And then you would have got bigger and bigger. And then if it happened, you know, you got the bad one down the road, that would have been a lot worse than kind of starting bad and working your way out of it.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure, sure. Like, I imagine one of the very important parts about what you do is making sure that the tenants that you get are high quality tenants.

Was that a lesson that you've had to learn along the way?

Shane Unruh: Oh, 100%. And that was the problem with those small buildings. When we bought them, they were full of people, you know, either on subsidy or whatever the case was, we had no say of who they were. Some of the groups that were putting the tenants in there weren't good.

And like now we're, it's completely different. And even for us, it always takes, you know, six months to a year for us to turn a lot of the tenants and get our own tenants in there. But yeah, now we have a screening process. The buildings that we've owned for a few years, they're just, they're awesome to manage, right?

Like we're very active management. So. Once you get your own tenants in there and you know what to look for and how to screen properly and what the red flags are. Yeah, that's, that's everything in the business.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Cause I think there's a lot of people who are like, yeah, like I'd love to get into real estate.

You know, small scale or large scale, but I think like, They get afraid because they don't know what they don't know. And I imagine for you, that was a very similar thing. It's right. Like owning a gym was very different than owning a trailer park or now owning apartment buildings and condos. You know, what was, what was the learning curve to becoming successful in that, in that new line of business?

Shane Unruh: Yeah. Like I, we went down and did a business program down in the States not long ago. And he talked about that. He said, there's, there's things, you know, And he showed a graph, a pie chart and maybe 30 percent was things you know and 30 percent was things you don't know. And then the rest of the chart was things you don't know you don't know.

And I think that's kind of how business is. There's things you're like, Oh, I don't know how to do this and don't do this. The majority of the things you just had never even thought of. Right. And as you scale, those will come and you wouldn't have needed to know them at the beginning. But yeah, it was just, again, it was just kind of hands on.

You just learned as you went and you put in the time and you did things that probably took 10 times as long as they should have because you didn't know any better. Yeah. But at the beginning, it was just, you know, even the trailer park we took over, everything was, there was not one single system there.

So we were manually collecting rent. It was checks or cash. We were reading the water manually. So it just, you know, a totally different model than we have today, but you just learn those things along the way. You don't need to know everything at the beginning, right? People will spend years and years and, and.

All this money on courses and stuff to do real estate. Most of that stuff for one, you don't, your brokers and lawyers will help you through the process when you buy it. And, and, you know, you'll figure it out if you have any common sense.

Kelly Kennedy: Totally, totally. One of the things that I've really noticed in business is that you can make all the plans in the world, right?

Like you can make a 10 year plan. You can make a five year plan. But sometimes things just happen. Sometimes opportunities just present themselves. And it's like what I'm kind of learning is that success in business is more reliant on saying yes to a great opportunity when it presents itself than it necessarily is at meeting that goal you had set for 10 years.

Because what I've noticed is that business changes so quickly, so fast, And opportunities come completely out of left field that sometimes planning for the future. I don't know if it's really planning for the future as much as it is being in a place to say yes to a great opportunity when it comes your way.

Shane Unruh: Yeah, I think it's that and it's kind of just it's staying power in a business or in real estate. Like, you know, who would have thought three years ago everyone was predicting zero interest rates. Like I literally heard them talking of negative interest rates when I started. And, you know, now no one would have thought.

This happened or, or the pandemic, you know, so all these things can, yeah, you'll never plan for them. I think it's just time you look at the people who are successful. Andy Frisella talks about this a lot. He said, you go to the five year room, you get into a five year room of business. If it's podcasting, like, look at you, how many years in, are you wait till you're five years in, right?

That room of people who actually stuck with it five years. Not going to be huge, right? And, and fairly successful. You get into the 10 year room. Anyone who's in there has thousands of episodes. They're, they're super successful. You get into like, all you have to do is get in that 20 year room. It's hard to find someone who's been in a business 20 years that isn't.

You know, at least an authority in there probably has a lot of scale. Right. And it's the same with real estate. Like we got in, we were very single focus on multifamily. As soon as we got into it, I've seen so many people, even in a couple of years that I've been in the city, like, well, you know, there'll be flippers, then there'll be wholesalers, and then they're into this, now they're into buy and hold.

And as soon as the market changes, they just kind of change and they do the next hot thing. But now nobody look, goes to them and thinks, Oh, they're the guy for whatever the thing is, right? You need to. Be in my opinion, you plan it and then you just, you stick with it, right? You can, you can pivot and change a little bit, but if you, if you just stay with it long enough, I think you'll outlast a lot of people.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, totally. There's something to be said about just. sticking in it, no matter what it is you do, you're right. It's time. Time in my mind is really what creates success. It's not quitting. It's like, you know, I mean, as business owners, we face things all the time. We're like, shit, we should just quit this because it's so damn hard.

But the reality is, if you just stick it out, you know, whether it's a podcast, whether it's your business, like a bad month, a bad three months, whatever it is, it will end. It will end, right? And that's what I've learned. I think, I think over time in this podcast, there's been plenty of times of this show, dude, where I was like, what am I doing?

Why do I keep coming back to this week over week? Like we're not making any money from it. Like it's just so damn hard. And then something great would happen. And it just happened because I didn't quit. And so I really take that into everything because I genuinely think the key to success is simply not quitting.

Shane Unruh: Yeah, 100%. I think, was it Michael Jordan said, you know, I never lost the game, I just ran out of time. And that's, I always tell people with real estate they ask how can I, how we base our investment, or when you're bidding, what you're looking at. And I always say, we're not, Quick in and out money like we're we're eight to ten year holds on everything, right?

So I and I related to to landing an airplane It's like if the pilot dies and I'm in there and I have to land that plane if we have a super skinny narrow runway That's maybe you know, really short. We're probably dead right? I'm probably not getting it down I'm sorry if they pull up into you know somewhere and it's like hey, we have a two mile long runway It's, you know, a mile wide and we're going to walk you through it.

Probably there's a chance we make it right. Or a pretty good chance they can, they can land that plane. And that's kind of how real estate is. If I'm trying to guess out six months or, or one year, I really, I have no idea what's going to happen. Nobody does. And it's risky and it's hard to land that perfectly.

If you have 10 years, right. 10 years where we're paying down the mortgage, 10 years where we're just getting small incremental rent increases, we're managing it properly. Inflation's eating away the debt. Inflation. Pumping the asset value up. Yeah, I'm pretty sure in 10 years I would be shocked if I buy a building today and it's worth less in 10 years when the value of the dollar is going To be worth 30 it is today, right?

And even if it did we paid the debt down for 10 years now, we've collected rents for 10 years So I think it's just time is the thing in the equation. It sucks to do it. No one wants to put in the time I think the best analogy for this Is is if you get a recipe you can get the best right? Martha Stewart can give you her her secret recipe to bake the best cake in the world, right?

And you follow everything exactly. And then the last thing is it says, put it in the oven at 300 for two hours. And you decide, no, I'm, you know, I'm really hungry right now. I'm going to throw it at 600 for 10 minutes. You know, you're going to just get a burnt piece of soggy crap at the end. And, and that's what a lot of people do.

I think it's like, they want to play business. They want to look. They, they want the end result, but they want it now. And you got to put time in the equation. Oh, it's time and hard work. Totally. And I don't think you can beat it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And I would say that pretty much almost everything in business takes longer than you think.

Take what you guesstimate and probably add like six months, a year, five years, whatever. But it's good. going to take longer than what you think. I know we made, we've made all sorts of projections for the show and it's like, yeah, it's, it definitely takes longer.

Shane, take me into scaling up, right? Like the reality is you have scaled up like no tomorrow. You could have coasted, you could have bought that first building and just said, we are just going to sit on this, ride this out. But no, No, you bought another building, and another building, and another building.

What is scaling up really?

And, and how do you do it effectively?

Shane Unruh: Yeah, so I think it starts with the, the vision like we talked about, you set that long term goal, and you work your way back. But a big part of that is, isn't just, You know, what do I need to buy to get there? It's also like, what process do you need, right?

So what systems do you need in place to get to the next level? And are those, what are those systems going to have to be changed when you get to level five? Because the reality is even us today, the company we have today, it can't look the same at a billion in assets, right? We have to change all these things.

So we're doing that now. And some of the stuff, if you're very confident, you're growing, I think you put that stuff in early. So like right now, for example, we're putting in an investor portal. Right? We don't probably need it. We don't have that many investors and we could wait another couple years to put that in.

But we're like, we know we need to have it. It looks professional, it gives transparency to the investors. We want to have that today. So you start working your way back from the main goal, like I talked about, and I think that's just as important on on this on the Systems and the process side. And luckily for me, like I said, I have, I'm not a system guy.

I like the vision and the planning and my wife likes, or if she's good at, at, at the actual implementation of everything, but I think, yeah, I have a clear vision and be able to articulate it to people because that's where, like, I love all of my, everybody who works for my company. Very aligned, they all know where we're going, they all, their life plan is inside of the company, and I think if you can't get that across to people, we're like, hey, here's your path to growth, here's the company's, here's yours, I think, you know, you can, you can keep good people, they want to work, and if you can't articulate the The plan and explain to them how we're going to get there and how every everyone fits inside of that.

It's kind of hard because it's just like, Hey, here's our goal. Go do it. And you know what incentive is there for employees or for anyone helping you out, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Totally. Totally. What does like, obviously for you now at this level, I imagine that business development for you is probably a lot more on the investor side. Is that fair?

Shane Unruh: Like me personally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's on the investment side and the investor side is where I spend most of my time and then we're, but for us it's very tied together that we built the property management company only to manage our own property and only as an add on to our fund, because the way that.

Most companies work as you hire a third party. Their goal is to make as much money on the property management company as they can. And the fund's goal is to make as much money for the fund. And they kind of buttheads on like where money's being spent for us. It's like we're building this out only as a huge asset to, to the side.

So I spend a lot of time property management. It's a very archaic industry, doesn't change, doesn't innovate it. I don't think it's done correctly in a lot of things. area. So that's where we do. I spend a lot of time just, we come up with new ideas and like ways it can be done. And because I think that's a huge benefit to the fund, but yeah, there's it's finding capital, raising capital, you know, structuring the deals, finding the deals all is where I spend a lot of my time.

Kelly Kennedy: Totally, totally. And you've obviously had some incredibly great success achieving this and finding investment. Can you tell me a little bit about What a good value proposition or, or sorry, can you tell me a little bit about how you craft a great value proposition

Shane Unruh: to the investor?

Kelly Kennedy: To the investor.

Shane Unruh: Yeah, well, I think I'm, I'm kind of blessed where it's like, it's an asset class that a lot of people, it's very easy to understand and, and a lot of people want to be in it.

So most people can, can look at it and say, yeah, does it make sense that we're, you know, our population is growing by a million people and we're building 200, 000 houses. Okay. You know, is that sustainable? Our rent's going to go up you can see that you can explain very simply easily to someone how you invest in it in a Physical asset that's going to go up with inflation and the debt is getting eaten away by inflation Right.

So if we take a dollar today and we repay it to the bank in 10 years, we're repaying them with a third, you know, a 70 cent dollar, let's say, so you can explain all those, it's just an asset class. That's it's easy. It's sexy. People like real estate for sure. I'm big assets and the way we run, it's like, you know, if our investors, they can drive by, we take good care of our properties, they're always clean, maintained they're nice building.

So they can drive by and see that XS sign. And they're a part owner in that, right. That feels good. Opposed to like the same investor could have maybe bought it. A duplex or a four unit on their own, right? So this way they can go by, they can, no one's going to ask you what exact percent of that building you own, right?

So it's a, there's a lot, there's tax benefits to it. The investment can kind of sell itself, right? Yeah. For us, it's more on like, we're the operators, we're the ones that are going to go in and most people like the idea of real estate. They understand it. They don't want to deal with the tenants and the termites and all the stuff that comes with it.

So it's like, that's our job. We want to be the absolute best at finding the deals. Purchasing the deal. We want to have the best debt and then we want to be the operators. We want to be the best operators. That's what we want to be known for. And I don't think, you know, that's where the competition thins out a lot.

A lot of people can put money together and go buy a deal. Are they going to have that deal in 10 years? It's going to run smoothly, you know? So that's where we want to separate ourselves. It's like, you know, on the operator side.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah.

Like it's all about the process and procedures. That's what people are really buying with most companies.

It's not the company. It's these amazing processes and procedures that they've crafted that allow that thing to run like a well oiled machine. That is the true value of almost any company. And so essentially what you're saying is, instead of having to outsource this to a company who, as far as they're concerned, they're about making money, we're going to find a way to craft that in house, be able to keep that, that well oiled machine running smoothly at the lowest cost possible while still providing you the best asset possible.

Shane Unruh: Yeah. And like for me, I'm, I'm the biggest investor in our fund, you know, and I put money into every deal. So that goes a long way too. It's like, we're not, We're not just people who are raising money and buying deals. We're, we're investing alongside everyone. And yeah, and then we just, you know, you want to find out what the person's looking for.

We'll have people reach out that are thinking, you know, that want it to be a two year, three year deal. That's not what we do. We're not quick money in and out. We're not doing flips and we put long term debt on day one. So people have to understand what it is. They'll, you know, they get it or they don't, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Totally. Totally. And, you know, obviously there's people who are looking at, at the current market and saying like, oh shit, interest rates are going up. Like, you know, whether Bank of Canada is going to bring it down or not, who knows? There's a lot of fear, I think, with purchasing a property today. Can you speak to that for a minute?

Shane Unruh: Yeah. I think one thing that happens in real estate is, real estate is a blanket term. So if I say a real estate investor, I might be a guy who flips homes in, Red Deer. I might be a guy who owns industrial in Texas, right? But it's just a blanket term. And you'll read, Oh, office, you know, an office building is worth half of what it was, right?

You have to look a little bit more macro, look at the actual industry. So that's what I said about multifamily. It's, it's somewhere people need to live. So you, depending how you look at it, if interest rates go up, that means home ownership's going down essentially, right? We're building less houses now because interest rates are up.

Less people can afford to buy them, but we have massive immigration. So you can look at the. The bigger picture. And it's like, what's happening in the market, right? What could happen that rents would come down and stuff could happen. But the rate that our population is growing, we haven't increased buildings since 1970.

We built more back then we had, you know, 25 million people that all these things are happening. Construction people are retiring quicker than they ever have. What could happen that all of a sudden we just have massive supply come online, right? And as far as the interest rates, yeah, it sucks. It's harder to buy it.

But the way I look at it, we just, you know, we bought something for 20 million and we got about a 4. 6 interest rate. If interest rates were 2. 5, I probably would have paid 24 for that building. Because at this, what we buy is It's just, it's essentially based on what you can finance. The seller goes to the same person I do.

I go and say, what can I get for this? He goes and says, what can I sell this? What's the most someone can get for this. Right. And, and that's kind of how the market works. So as soon as interest rates come down, so it's like, yeah. Do I like buying at an all time high interest rate kind of, because that means that if they go down, we're just getting massive free appreciation.

Totally. Because if it goes down to 2% in 10 years, or maybe it doesn't, but if you can make it work today, and I guess you look at the risk, then at 1.8% when we were buying initially, the risk is yeah, in 10 years, that comes up at five. That sucks. Right. If you're buying at five, is there a chance in 10 years it's, you know, 10 percent interest, a lot less chance than it's 3%, right?

So you kind of mitigate that risk. We also buy inside of a fund to kind of mitigate that. So if we're by, if we bought some properties three years ago and some today and some in two years, all the debts not coming due at the same time, right? We take some five, some 10 year. So it's coming up. Over time. So we're going to catch some high, we're going to catch some low, but that's also on the way out then.

So you're blending that out. You're not all, if you're invested in one single deal, that there can be a lot of pain there. Sure. But at 2 percent interest and it's up in five years and it's four and, you know, or, or the, the amortizations change, you know, all these things can happen when it's spread out.

You're just a lot safer. You have years. of debt coming up at different times and, you know, you can look at what markets do. They're not generally down for, for five years, right? So you can balance, you can weigh out a lot of that risk when you buy kind of what the structure we do.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.

There's a lot less risk essentially in your diverse portfolio than there would be had you just owned one building.

Shane Unruh: Yeah, 100%.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. And if people are listening right now and they want to invest with you, are you open to that?

Shane Unruh: Yeah, we can only work with accredited investors. So that's, that's one hurdle, I guess.

But yeah, otherwise, that's what we do. We raise capital, we bring investors in, and I mean, we find the properties, manage them, and send checks out every month, so.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Shane, that takes us to the end of our show today. It was an absolute pleasure having you. If people are listening and they want to connect with you, what's the best way to do that?

Shane Unruh: Yeah, I'm on pretty much everywhere. I'm the most active on Instagram, if that's like, If it's social media that they're wanting to, to connect on, you can DM me. It's going to be me there. You can reach out, you know, email me if it's more of an investment thing you want to ask about. I do have the podcast.

It's scaling up. You can check that out, but those would be the easiest ways.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Amazing. Shane, congratulations on your success. I wish you the best of luck in your future. And thank you so much for joining us today until next time. This has been the business development podcast, and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020, his passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.