Mike Peters: 00:21

Welcome to the wisdom lifestyle money show. Today, I am very pleased to have as a guest Ben Julius, the owner, operator of Lionheart Developments. Ben has a very interesting story that I think regardless of where you're at in your real estate investing quest, you're gonna, be able to relate to his story at various stages. I'm gonna start by Ben gave me a bit little bit of history. At one time, Ben was a college basketball coach before entering into real estate investing, and he brought some of the principles of being a coach in college basketball or any other sport to his practice of real estate investing.

Mike Peters: 01:05

So Ben, can you give me a little bit of background on how you became a basketball coach and what you brought from basketball to, what you do now.

Ben Julius: 01:14

Sure. I mean, it's not a typical journey for somebody in Canada. That's for sure. But my father was a athletic director and a women's basketball coach at, at Lakehead University. And I grew up in a gym, and I grew up watching him.

Ben Julius: 01:27

I grew up seeing the impact he had on his athletes, and it was something very special for my brothers and I to kinda witness. And I, you know, like any other young boy, I want to be like my father. And so I followed his footsteps and started my coaching journey after I went to school. In fact, when I stopped playing, I was assistant coach with my father at Laurier University. Yeah.

Ben Julius: 01:50

Yeah. For a couple of years, I I actually had to apply for the job, and I I rode on a shoe just trying to get my foot in the door. I put it on his desk one night, and he came in the office in the morning. And, so began my coaching career from that point on. And, you know, our whole life was based off of accountability and discipline, and we really took that.

Ben Julius: 02:10

I took that into my coaching career, and I've really transferred that into my real estate investing careers. Unfortunately, in Canada, they don't really pay coaches Yeah. The way that they should be paid. And I was really tired of having the future, my future involved in 18 year, 18 to 22 year old people's hands. And and, you know, and it wasn't like it was 20 years ago when my dad was coaching when, you know, you can get after some kids and say what you needed to say.

Ben Julius: 02:38

And Yeah. In today's world, it it's a it's a little bit different. So we made the trends. There was some stuff happened, and and I just wasn't wasn't happy with the direction of the institution I was at and moved from Alberta back to Ontario and met my wife. And then a year later, we got into real estate.

Ben Julius: 02:54

And a short 6 years after that, we have a mass amount of projects owned and operated under man under management, roughly about 250,000,000. So it's an interesting time. And throughout that journey, it's, you know, I flat out tell you, it hasn't been easy. It's been ups and downs and struggles with relationship and family and all those in betweens. And you just kinda had to stay true to your core principles, which were always built on discipline and accountability through our coaching my coaching career, which we brought forward to real estate and, you know, wake up every day, the sun is shining or, I mean, sometimes shining.

Ben Julius: 03:32

Right? But Right. You you attack every day with a to do list, and and the next day is the same, and the next day after that's the same. And you gotta be accountable to your tasks at hand, and you gotta be disciplined to get out of bed and do them. And Yeah.

Mike Peters: 03:46

Okay. So in regards to, your trip to Ontario or your return to Ontario, basically, you've left a paying job That's right. And you're moving back here probably with a U Haul behind the car, and you're starting over, basically. Is that is that and then why did you select real estate rather than get a job, you know, in the market that you currently live in?

Ben Julius: 04:11

Yeah. So it it wasn't as linear as that. So what happened is I had parted ways with the administration, and I sold everything I had. And I didn't have a lot out there. I sold my bed, my TV, you know, all these things.

Ben Julius: 04:23

And I got on a I packed all my clothes in a hockey bag, as a type of a Canadian would do, and got on a plane and came home, and I was actually homeless. And if it wasn't for my parents taking me in and allowing me to get back on my feet, I would I don't know what I would have done. And, you know, my mom, God bless her soul, she would do this for all any of her boys. She said, come home. We got you.

Ben Julius: 04:48

Yeah. You can, you know, we'll help you get back on your feet. So that's what I did. And I did a couple of sales jobs in between before I got into real estate and I was never happy. I met my wife and I'm really not sure.

Ben Julius: 05:02

I bug her about this all the time. I'm really not sure what she saw in me because I was probably at my lowest point, and she literally grew flowers in the darkest parts of my soul. And as a result, start my my world starts to open up again. And we do it together. We were engaged at the time, and and we were kinda driving along, and we heard somebody on the radio come out and says we went to an information session in which led to a 3 day boot camp style course, which led to a real estate group that we ended up joining.

Ben Julius: 05:36

But it was the only thing that kinda gave me some purpose besides coaching. It was the only thing that really gave me some passion was real estate next to to coaching. So I was always searching for something, and I found it. And I think I mainly found it because it was something I could build. And very much like a team, it was always, you know, puzzle piece of players together, and we were quite successful.

Ben Julius: 05:59

I took 3 different programs to the national rankings, the top 15 rankings in the country by my philosophy of it's not about the best players, it's about the right players. And I think I transferred that into my real estate venture when it wasn't about the best properties, but the right properties for us and the right property for allowing me to grow and get my hands dirty, and I really enjoyed building things, and I think my whole building career started with a wine rack for my wife. It went from a wine rack to a coffee table, to a kitchen table, to a, like, turning over a unit. And then it was like, oh, I could do these things. I learned throughout this process and very much like coaching is one of the things we did in in basketball was we relied heavily on film.

Ben Julius: 06:46

We would film a game and we'd go back and I'd see the mistakes that I made as a coach, and we would I would have no problem pointing out the mistakes that my players made to you know, they don't like that very often, but you had to do it. And so we we did that in real estate. And what that allowed me to do is reflect on what worked well, reflect on what didn't work well, and reflect on where we want. And those reflections were able to kinda give us a path of where we wanted to go. And, you know, we quickly realized that, you know, being a landlord might not be the whole thing it's all crapped up to be for us.

Ben Julius: 07:21

So we're like, okay. So we know the value in holding real estate. We know the value that, you know, real estate can your specific property can become a bank for years years. We learned the power of leverage on that regard. And what it really truly happened was we wanted to get to a 100 doors as quickly as we can so we can, you know, create a property management company to manage that.

Ben Julius: 07:45

So I wasn't doing the day to day management. And as that happened, we ended up getting into development organically because we picked up properties that we were able to convert to multiple units where, you know, we were stuck on the fours and the fives where then the next stage was, k. We can do this. We can do 13, and then we can do 30. And now all of a sudden, we have 50 doors like that, and then it was like, oh, this opportunity came up.

Ben Julius: 08:10

This is a 2 parcels over from the the property we were gonna do a 13 and 19 conversion, and it was vacant land. And so I talked to my architect. You can do 50 units here. I was like, okay. Let's do it.

Ben Julius: 08:22

People, we had the funding in place. We had the, you know, we had everything in place. And then it was like, why don't you get the 2 in between, and now you can do a 100? So we're like, smart move. So we did that, and that's kinda how we got into development organically.

Ben Julius: 08:37

And so what we did is we sold off our other small low line fruit properties during the height, and we were able to kind of move forward with, the development side. Mistakes that we made really was kinda sprinkling in a short term rental or a flip or doing these different things where, you know, I really encourage people in real estate to to pick 1 niche and become a master at it. You know, if you wanna flip houses, go flip. Have a goal of flip 5 to 10 in a year, and then build that. Right?

Ben Julius: 09:10

You wanna do duplexes? You be the master of duplexes. You wanna do triplexes? Be the master of triplexes. It took me a while to figure out what I really wanted what I was good at, what I really wanted to do, and and it was development.

Ben Julius: 09:23

So now we've created a development company where we have 3 major developments undergo. We have about 3 other ones in the pipeline, and it's been really difficult, but advantageous at the same time.

Mike Peters: 09:34

Yeah. So this has all been in 7 years from what I gather, right? I believe, 2017. But let's go back to, where it started that, that radio broadcast that

Ben Julius: 09:45

you heard.

Mike Peters: 09:46

Now let's if pretend I am just beginning the value of a coach, the value of, you know, for the person that's sitting on the fence, did you recommend that they, you know, totally have a coach assist them in terms of helping them define whether they wanna be the master of triplexes as a starter, or, they wanna do, laneway suites, you know, convert single family homes into, you know, 3, 3 plexes basically. So that, that initial coach that you aligned yourself with, where'd you start? You start with a, conversion of a single family to a duplex, or how did that start? And where did the money come since, you know, you're just beginning?

Ben Julius: 10:29

Right.

Mike Peters: 10:29

Where'd the money come to do that?

Ben Julius: 10:31

So where it all started was we, my wife and I, I always knew the value of real estate. Being in involved in institutions, you can see how much these kids are paying for rent. You can see Mhmm. You see the value of whole like, I right. I always knew I wanted to get into real estate, just never knew how I could because we didn't come from a family that was did that.

Ben Julius: 10:51

I know my mom ran a hospital, which was fantastic. My father was an athletic director and a teacher. They're the proverbial, you know, pension get a pension job, do these things, which is fantastic. I don't begrudge anybody for that, but I always wanted something more. So getting into real estate, my wife and I, we bought our first home, and we got lucky.

Ben Julius: 11:11

We bought it in 2016, and it was really her because I couldn't bring very much to the table except for the Braun and, you know, a little bit of a little bit of capital costs, not a lot, but she, it was really her. So we did that and we converted our top, we had a 2 and a half story place in Hamilton. We converted the top to an Airbnb that we rented out to a couple of students that were working in the hospitals and, you know, doing programs at Mohawk or or Mac, like mature students. So it was good. But my first true purchase was a turnkey duplex.

Ben Julius: 11:48

And I do the proverbial, you know, turnkey in parentheses because nothing's ever turnkey. When you buy something, you're always gonna have to go in and you're gonna do stuff. We ended up redoing the whole top unit of that, but that and coincidentally so after we joined this group, we knew we realized that we had equity because the appreciation of our house happened so quickly, but we couldn't access that. Right? We joined this group, and through this group, we met several people that were able to lend on our home and give us, you know, use their RSP and their lira money at this at that time just to create a basically a second mortgage on our house without a mortgage broker.

Ben Julius: 12:30

You can't do that anymore, but at that time you could. So they did that. She and she gave us 86 or $85,000 which we purchased 2 2 properties, 1 property and renovated another property. And then we combined those and took out equity on both those and did it again and again and again. But that was done on a napkin at an event the night before the event started.

Ben Julius: 12:55

But it was the power of the group that allowed us to kind of create that connection and and use other people's money at that point. And what I mean by that is you join these groups, and there's a little bit of at the time, the the the bill was to join a group was hefty. So there was a little bit of comfort in people saying that this person is for real. They did this. They did these things to join this group, so they're you know, they may not screw up.

Ben Julius: 13:21

Got that. They have and they have the education behind them. They have the coaching behind them to guide them through these processes. You know, you can go and I tell this to people all the time is you can learn from as many people as you want. You can have a, you know, a group think and do these things, but unless you do it, you're not gonna get good at it.

Ben Julius: 13:39

Right? That's why we talk about in athletics, we talk about, you know, practices like repetition. We never threw a new play out there in the middle of a game because if I did that, I knew it wasn't gonna work. We repped it. We practiced it.

Ben Julius: 13:52

We did these different things. And it's no different in real estate. You have to work on these deals. You have to work on you know, I think before our first deal with our coach, we went through probably 10 to 15 deals and numbers working and do these different things. And that's where the value really came was learning to realize that you're you are you may be the dumbest person in the room, and that's okay.

Ben Julius: 14:15

Because at some point, you're gonna be the smartest person in the room. And when you get to the smartest person, you go join another group that you become the dumbest person. And that's Right. Kind of how our mentality, my mentality has always been, and and it's always been like that with coaching. I would get with, you know, what I like to call gray hair coaches who've been around, been around the block, and I just sit there, and I just listen to them.

Ben Julius: 14:36

And I took mental notes, and then when I was gone, I'd go write stuff down. Yeah. And with real estate, it was the same thing.

Mike Peters: 14:44

Now you you mentioned coaching often, and and I think that I have heard that you may be like, how can you do this? First of all, with everything that you have going on, but it seems to me that you wanna transfer some of that knowledge and that you have, started a coaching or consulting to assist people in getting into real estate. Is that a passion? Is that something that you wanna that you are doing or you've Yeah. You've set something up?

Ben Julius: 15:09

So we're in the process of of setting up a couple of things. And people always ask, like you said, how do you have time for this? And I and I can tell you that you make time. So one of the things that's missing him, I got so much intrinsic value and so much intrinsic motivation from coaching when I was, you know, coaching basketball. And watching these kids grow from when they came in my doors to when they left, it was such a a unbelievable feeling that has been missing in my business.

Ben Julius: 15:37

It's been missing in my life. In fact, one of my my employees is is one of my former players. Right? Because I'm helping him grow through this process, but there's so much value there. And selfishly, it gives me more more motivation to keep moving in my business.

Ben Julius: 15:52

You know, we've kind of compiled a some coursework, and it's really based off accountability and discipline because, hey, anybody can be motivated. You can hear motivational talk on TikTok, on Instagram, or whatever it is, and you can go to a conference. And, like, you go to a conference and you got energy. You're buzzing for 3 or 4 days afterwards. What happens on day 10th when, you know, you haven't seen the sunshine in 30 days in Ontario, and you don't wanna get out of bed?

Ben Julius: 16:23

That's discipline. Right? The discipline is what gets you going, and and that's what we wanna give people. And sometimes, like, I had unbelievable players saying 2 candidates for players a year. 1 played in the one went on to play in the Olympics, and he was the guy that was sometimes needed to kick in the butt.

Ben Julius: 16:42

Right? Get him going. Once you've got him going, he was nonstop. Right? And there were some other players that I didn't need to get going.

Ben Julius: 16:49

Right? They had their own discipline and motivation. But sometimes when you're being held accountable by somebody

Mike Peters: 16:55

Mhmm.

Ben Julius: 16:56

You get that much further and that much more success. And that's kind of what we're trying to create here at Lionheart Development, a subsidiary group of Lionheart, right, the way of the lion. Like, you're like, Matt, our name is Lionheart for a reason because we're strong, we're courageous, we're independent, but we also need that group to kinda get us going.

Mike Peters: 17:14

You know, I I do a lot of coaching in in terms of trying to assist people that are new to commercial real estate. And I hear in the background, you know, I'll do a a Zoom or even just a a phone call. And, you know, the mother's got the baby crying in her arms. Like, these people, you know, they're just getting started. They know that they wanna leave a legacy for that child that she's got in their arms, and somehow they find the time between their 9 to 5 jobs to do this.

Mike Peters: 17:44

And, you know, without the coach, it's just it's in their blood, kinda like it was in your blood. And so I do recommend to those people who may be listening in, you know, it's you don't necessarily have to go this alone. You know, the less you know, from every mistake you make, it it's you learn from it, but by aligning yourself with, somebody who's done it, a mentor. That's right. When I've had mentors in my life that, you know, have helped helped me a lot.

Mike Peters: 18:13

Okay. So let's move on a little bit from, you know, the motivation and, you know, where you're at in or, you know, the different stages over the 7 years. How the heck do you go from a single door to a 100 doors in 5 years?

Ben Julius: 18:29

So, again, we talk about discipline. Right? And I think if you don't have it, you start to stray. And, you know, we I learned really quickly that my wife is probably the main reason why we have this and why our company is where it is right now. We do weekly meetings, and she kinda keeps me on track because I'm a dreamer.

Ben Julius: 18:50

Like, I I think big. I got I think down the road. Now when I was coaching, we always had our goal was championship every year. So that was already built in for us. So now we have to build our own goals.

Ben Julius: 19:00

But how do you get to those goals? And it's you know, you have to one day at a time. It's like you the you go minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, so on and so forth. You know, take your task at hand, break it down, break down your day, break down your week, and you just you attack it. You execute it.

Ben Julius: 19:21

So, like, we do right now, we do 3 3 specific things, and it's we're full, like, figure out where you wanna go, figure out how you're gonna get there, and then you execute it. So there's 3 stages. Right? So what we do is, you know, we do that. So we know where we wanna go.

Ben Julius: 19:37

My wife helps me plan on how we're gonna get there because every day is different. And we have 2 big dogs, and we have a 1 and a half year old and a 3 and a half year old. So our time is like like 9 o'clock at night hits, and we're like, yeah, we get to talk and hang out. It's nope. We're going to bed.

Ben Julius: 19:54

You know? And it's really you have to be disciplined to stay to your stay your course and figure out what needs to be checked off of your list on that day. So I look back on our journey, and I don't even know it just happened because we attacked every day the same way. What needs to get done today to get us to tomorrow? And that's the reality of it, step by step, day by day.

Ben Julius: 20:24

Mhmm. Did we get Now. Better today so that we can attack tomorrow the same way?

Mike Peters: 20:29

Yeah. Now, being a commercial mortgage, expert, I often come across that most of my lenders wanna see a level of experience, right, before you can move to the next level. It's kinda like, you know, your resume. Right. So how do you move from a duplex to man that, you know, what's your management experience in a 6 plex or do you hire a management company to do it.

Mike Peters: 20:55

And then even, you know, I have a lot of people call me that want to build, they want to build a 6 plex. Well, lenders are saying, what experience do you have in building a 6 plex? Yes. I see you have 3 duplexes. You got a couple of triplexes.

Mike Peters: 21:10

Now you want to go to a 6 plex. You know, what experience as a builder do you have, or

Ben Julius: 21:15

like, you

Mike Peters: 21:16

know, property manager that besides these smaller properties. So experience is critical from a lender's perspective.

Ben Julius: 21:22

Absolutely. I mean, listen. You it's that age old saying that you're not qualified for this position because you don't have enough experience. Give me the position so I can get experience. So

Mike Peters: 21:33

count down

Ben Julius: 21:34

the line. That's right. So it's a catch 22. So what we did, and, you know, we manage, obviously, I personally manage smaller properties. Right?

Ben Julius: 21:42

Smaller builds, smaller conversions. There's no way in hell that I would try to manage a 100 unit plus building. So I don't pour the concrete. I went out and I found class a construction management. Right?

Ben Julius: 21:59

So we partner with a company called Wilkinson Construction, and they've done over a 100 mid rise buildings in the past 40 years. So now I could take that to my lenders and say, here, I'm not listen. This isn't my idea. This is and it's really truly not your idea either. It's really your architect's idea who you who who you hire as an architect, who puts together the whole design and the plan.

Ben Julius: 22:22

You can see what you want there, but they bring your kind of vision to life. And then you have your urban planner. So we went and hired class a people like KNYMH. They're a award winning firm out of Burlington. Our planners are AJ Clark.

Ben Julius: 22:36

They do the majority of things in Hamilton's. You know, we've done these things. We've hired these people. We've partnered with the right people to do that, and I would encourage anybody who says, I wanna build a try or I wanna build a flat out triplex or a purpose built 5plex or a 6plex. Hire a team, a contracting team, a construction management team who have completed multiple projects.

Ben Julius: 23:02

Now and you may not have the best lending at that point because it's still you're still considered your first one. Now I want you to get 2 to 3 of them. Now you're picking your lenders. And I think That's For us, we're working with a couple lenders right now who see the growth potential in our company, and they're trying to get on board at the ground level because I've told them that I don't change my team very often. My I build my championship level team like I'm building my athlete my basketball team.

Ben Julius: 23:34

And we were very successful in those ways because they fit the puzzle pieces all fit together. So when I find a lender that works with us, a construction management team that works with us, architect that works with us, a planning team that works with us, I don't deviate from that very often.

Mike Peters: 23:51

Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like the team that Detroit Lions built.

Ben Julius: 23:54

That's right. And you know what? I know you've

Mike Peters: 23:56

I've been a I don't

Ben Julius: 23:57

I've been a Lions fan since Barry Sanders. It's probably a little bit less time than you, but having this coach come on board, it's really it's really cool to see because my brother coaches professional sport. I worked in professional sport. And people say, oh, you can't mode you can't coach professional sport. These guys, they have egos and stuff like that.

Ben Julius: 24:19

That's not true. Just look at the Detroit Lions. Right? They work their butts off, and they embody this city of Detroit, and they and the bills are kinda the same way. They embody this whole area, this whole climate, this whole this whole market, you know.

Ben Julius: 24:34

So we relate so many things back to athletics and back to coaching that revolve around it, and it's you build your team with a championship goal in mind. And if you don't do that, you're gonna fail.

Mike Peters: 24:47

You know, I've had numerous potential clients. They they don't actually become clients. They've inherited some property, you know, on the fringe of a metropolitan area that is, zone, some in some instances, zones, some not, but you can see the potential. Let's say it's sitting right there at a at an intersection that's one day going to be a major intersection. And they're sitting on this property and I'm telling them, you know, oh, I wanna put a, you know, a mixed use commercial, you know, with a couple of restaurants and, dry cleaner and 6 stories of, luxury condos.

Mike Peters: 25:24

How do I go about it? Like, I said, you gotta build a team. I mean, you know, your, your parents sat on that property as your legacy. You gotta spend some money and it's not cheap, but, you know, though, to understand for a newbie, I come from municipal government, having worked for local development commission, you know, and I help many companies grow and I help developers, you know, create industrial, build the suits, and etcetera, etcetera, and they have experience. And then I find now in the mortgage business, I've got the new the person new to this, and there seems to be a reluctance to spend the money to build the team.

Mike Peters: 26:03

And I'm I'm just

Ben Julius: 26:04

That's crazy.

Mike Peters: 26:05

It's crazy. Yeah. It's just absolutely crazy. Okay. So let's talk about a couple of the pretty cool projects you've got going on.

Mike Peters: 26:12

Now before we go there, is there a reason that it it seems to me that these projects are concentrated in an area that where you live and you're likely gonna expand out of that area as you grow where the market dictates you to go?

Ben Julius: 26:27

Yeah. I I mean, I've I think I'm fortunate from for living in an area that is one of the hottest one of the best markets in Canada in terms of growth, and that's Hamilton. You know, we're right we're very close to the GTA. We have a major population growth happening here, major job growth happening here, great industries coming in here. You know, if you've watched the Netflix series or Prime Amazon series on on TV in the last 2 years, most likely, it was one at least one of the episodes was one of the shows was filmed in Hamilton.

Ben Julius: 26:58

You know? This Jack Reacher is a major show on prime whole season Yeah. Whole season 2 was filmed in Hamilton. And I did not know that. In bits and pieces in in Toronto, but Hamilton and surrounding area.

Ben Julius: 27:10

So we have a ton of industry. People used to refer to Hamilton as the steel city. It's now the health science city. We have multiple health sciences that employ a mass amount of of people and population. And so I'm fortunate to live in a great area.

Ben Julius: 27:24

I also like being able to go see my properties, touch them, you know, be, you know, be around in in the area. But I know the market. And I think when you're starting out, I think it's in development or in commercial, whatever in the, you know, that might be. You need to know your constituents, which is your, obviously, the people in the area, but you need to know your market, and you need to know areas like pockets of the city. And and I think it's important.

Ben Julius: 27:53

So we 2 of our projects, one is on the go train that goes right downtown Toronto in a fantastic area. Like, literally, you can hit a use your putter if you're a golfer and putt into the onto the tracks. The other one is right on the LRT, you know, a block out of down the downtown core, the new LRT that's coming in Hamilton. So we have strategically picked our properties in unbelievable locations. But we were able to do that because I know the area.

Ben Julius: 28:19

So I think that's important. And, you know, as you talked about earlier about building your team up, I can tell you that I'll take you through a bit of the process. It's first thing you do is you have to have a planner, right, that you know what you can actually do there with the zoning. Right? Whether you have to rezone or or do different things, reentitle it.

Ben Julius: 28:38

Yeah. Like, you have to have a planner that you can and it's gonna cost you about $25100 to get that first assessment done. Right? It's gonna take 2 to 3 weeks to get it done. Then you have to have an architect that can say that can bring, alright.

Ben Julius: 28:51

I want 6 stories here. Right? Okay. So I go to my architect. Give me a high level of what this is gonna look like.

Ben Julius: 28:58

Now you have a concept of your idea, then you have to go get a survey. That's your first thing that you need to do, and that's gonna take 6 to 8 weeks, sometimes 10 right now to get back. So all in all, you're spending about 10 to 15 grand in just due diligence right off the hop before you actually have a whole concept going on. So when people say, like you said, oh, I wanna do this and this, that's great, but you gotta have some money to do. And I got off a call right before you and I jumped on here, and it was an individual left an opportunity to develop because the other 2 partners didn't wanna spend the money in the due diligence period.

Ben Julius: 29:32

And it's Yep. Okay. That's a red flag. I'm out. Right?

Ben Julius: 29:35

Like, you gotta come you gotta and I tell people this. If you don't have $300,000 to get the property under contract and do your due diligence in a timely manner, then then don't don't look at development. Right? You have to have that. That's kind of the process.

Ben Julius: 29:51

Yeah. So I love Hamilton. I think it's a great area. I think the city of Hamilton is trying to bring an NHL team here from what I hear. I'm I'm hoping that happens.

Ben Julius: 29:58

So they're doing a $1,000,000,000 renovation of our arena. There's mass amounts of waterfront redevelopment happening here. And listen, people can't afford to live in Toronto, and we are the next best city. We have a great food scene here. You know, My belly will tell you that there's a really good food scene.

Mike Peters: 30:17

Yeah. Sounds like you're great. You should be ambassador for because I'm similar from for the city of Windsor. You know? I just love the city of Windsor and its attributes.

Mike Peters: 30:27

You know, the message message has to get out. You know? Toronto is the center of the universe, but in terms of real estate right now, it's not a place you really wanna be looking too hard at. No. I'm trying to get condos refinanced, you know, for a faster center on.

Mike Peters: 30:41

Yeah. Good luck. So, yeah, I I encourage, encourage my clients to stay local initially till you get to a certain stage. Now if you have the team behind you, you know, an an opportunity popped up in Winnipeg, for example, you know, you can rely on that team. You know?

Ben Julius: 30:58

It's funny to say that because I've had an opportunity in in Calgary that popped up, and I have I lived in Calgary for a bit, so I have some connections out there. It's still to do a major project somewhere that you gotta think about flight time zone time because, yes, a lot can be done over Zoom, but you're still gonna have to go out there to meetings. And I'm a big face to face guy, so I wanna meet everybody I'm bringing on my team. I wanna make sure I meet them and we have lunch, and I can talk to them. And we would go this way because I think it's so important that and your team has to have symmetries together.

Ben Julius: 31:34

So for example, my architect, when we talk about projects, it's like who do you work best with in this situation? These 3 companies, I got good relations with them. Alright. Let's go. Let's do that.

Ben Julius: 31:45

Right? So if you're gonna expand into another market, you gotta make sure that your team can handle that and do that, or you have a separate team built out there as well.

Mike Peters: 31:56

Okay. This has this has been great. You know, right from the beginning of a move with a hockey bag to over 200,000,000 in property. It's just a wonderful story. And so I encourage, you know, as you launch your coaching business, that some of these listeners, reach out to you because, you're a wealth of knowledge.

Mike Peters: 32:17

And I can just feel the passion or right through, you know, just that lying by

Ben Julius: 32:21

just, I appreciate that.

Mike Peters: 32:25

I'm a Wolf. I get, I'm the lone Wolf kind of thing. I shouldn't be, and I should be building a team.

Ben Julius: 32:30

It's funny because I I 2 animals I've always had an affinity with growing up was the wolf and the lion. Right? I mean, well, when I was coaching, it was always about wolf pack. Right? Like, we're a group.

Ben Julius: 32:41

We're a pack. We will are we're only strongest, our weakest, all that fun stuff. And I couldn't really grasp a development company that that had the Wolf involved in it and whatnot. But and then the lion was always, like, personal for me. He was like, okay.

Ben Julius: 32:56

We're gonna be the head of the the head of the the team. We're gonna be the lion. We're gonna we're gonna go out there. We're gonna do that thing. So it was, you know, a great opportunity to build my brand as Lionheart.

Ben Julius: 33:07

And, plus, I don't mind the 1991 van Dam movie Street Fighter Lionheart. So that was a a staple of my brothers and I movies. So we kinda affinity with that as well. So that was pretty cool.

Mike Peters: 33:20

Yeah. I wish you luck as you continue on your journey, especially with the, the projects that you have at various stages in Hamilton at strategic locations. And I hope that, you know, some of our listeners reach out. So if you wanna share your contact information

Ben Julius: 33:34

Yeah, absolutely. The best way to get a hold of me is probably on on Instagram, and that's at coach Ben Julius. Just follow me on Instagram and send me a direct message, and we can start chatting from there. That's just the easiest way I think for people or on Facebook. Ben Julius on Facebook and LinkedIn, also Ben Julius.

Ben Julius: 33:53

Those are 3 great ways to get in contact with me. They all go to my phone just like text messages. So, our website is www.lionheart development.co. All my information is on there as well.

Mike Peters: 34:06

Okay, great. Thank you, Ben. I very appreciate your time and I know that our listeners do as well. All the best. And if, at any point in time you, need a commercial, I know the lenders are lining up behind you because of your success, but if I can be of assistance, please reach out.

Ben Julius: 34:21

Definitely. Thanks for having me, Mike.

Mike Peters: 34:23

You're welcome. Bye for now.