Thanks for tuning in today. I really wanted to get this show started with a bit about me, how I grew up, where I came from, and what led me to get to where I am today. It was actually a mistake that led me to where I am today, but it was the best mistake ever. So I'll touch on that. I grew up and was born in Lewiston, Maine.
Scott Dillingham:I was actually born in the same hospital that Stephen King when he had his really bad car accident. It was in the same hospital that I was born at. A cool background there, but I lived in The States until I was four or five. And at that time, my mom and dad, they, they separated. So she remarried.
Scott Dillingham:So my new stepfather, he he was like a broadcaster. He did like wrestling events and he would always narrate and speak on TV for different things. So Tom Joy of the Windsor Raceway, they sponsored our family to come here and they wanted my stepdad to work as an announcer for the raceway. So that's how we got started. So they sponsored us very nice family.
Scott Dillingham:They've passed away now, but we're here because of them. So when we grew up, it wasn't always easy. My mom and my new stepdad, they ended up splitting up. There was things that happened and so they were no longer together. So my mom worked multiple jobs to give us food, give us shelter and she was always gone.
Scott Dillingham:So we always had babysitters watching us and I was a little troubled child. So the babysitters, they wouldn't last long. All the times we got a new one this week or a new one next week. And were like those kids on TV where the parents are calling all the babysitters and no one wants to watch them like Dennis the Menace where nobody wanted to watch Dennis and the neighbors did. So that's what happened with us.
Scott Dillingham:Right? Nobody wanted to watch us. I don't think I was bad criminally or on purpose. I didn't necessarily hurt people. I just, I was kind of lost.
Scott Dillingham:My whole family was in Maine. I left them and then my mom got separated and she's always working. So I was by myself and I got bored and to entertain I would do bad things, nothing too crazy. I was there. Anyways with the babysitters you don't get direction from a babysitter like you a parent, right?
Scott Dillingham:You, they watch TV, they're on the phone with their boyfriend or girlfriend. They're preoccupied. So I got to get out there and just roam the world and explore things. And I quickly discovered I I loved exploring. And at that age too, I discovered that I liked being my own boss and doing my own thing.
Scott Dillingham:I didn't like being told what to do. I always had a problem with authority, not in a super negative way. I just always saw the world as what can I do with it? Not how can somebody tell me what to do in it? So I would explore things.
Scott Dillingham:We had a quarry in Amherstburg. We explored that and we milled made tree forts, me and my friends. And it was a lot of fun, but it it was a lot of time by herself because we we missed our parents. Again, my mom always working, my dad living in another country. So it was a bit of a struggle.
Scott Dillingham:So when I was in school, was getting bad grades. I was told from the teachers that I remember my grade seven teacher telling me that I was not worth the skin I was in. He said that of me and a friend of mine actually. And little things like that, it bothered me, but not too much. Like I knew that he was wrong.
Scott Dillingham:I knew he was really wrong. You shouldn't be telling that to anybody anyways. He said it to me and I knew he was wrong and I had to do something about it. But at the time I wasn't ready to do something about it. I ended up failing grade six, not from lack of intelligence at all, just from lack of doing my work.
Scott Dillingham:I would get homework, I'd get assignments, but my mom was gone working and the babysitter was not, she was not going to help me do my homework. It didn't get done. So I just got, I failed from not applying myself, but I'm actually, when I look back, I'm thankful I failed because the crowd I grew up with in that younger grade was amazing. I made so many good friends. We played sports and it was just lots of memories that stay with you to the end of times.
Scott Dillingham:So I'm really grateful for being held back and working with that new or being around new kids. So then we get to high school. So same thing, high school. Now you have more workload, but I didn't apply myself. And I would do like silly little things like the one time I brought an air horn into class and I let it go off.
Scott Dillingham:And obviously that got me suspended and we had a substitute teacher and we were in the courtyard and it was a really windy day and I was bored in class. I ripped up all these little pieces of paper and the teacher was writing something on the board and in our classroom, the screen was broken. So I threw it all these papers in the courtyard and it looked like a big giant, like snowstorm. Like it was, they were everywhere and the wind was blowing around and stupid little things like that I would do just to get a good laugh. And so anyways, I kept getting suspended for all of these little things like that over and over again.
Scott Dillingham:So the principal at the time, he told me, he said, you know what? You've missed, you've got spending quite a few times. You've missed your reports. You haven't done your schoolwork. He's like, I'm going to suspend you to the end of the school year and then you can come in and you can write your final exam and then be done.
Scott Dillingham:So this is grade 12. So I'm great. I get a vacation and then I can come and do my exams and I'm done school. Cause I really didn't like school. I found that I needed to be doing, not that I didn't like school, but I didn't like being forced to take classes that I didn't wanna do.
Scott Dillingham:Back to my story when I said like I discovered at a young age where I like to be my own boss and do my own thing. It was the same thing with my learning. I liked to learn, but I wanted to learn things that I thought were going to be valuable to me or that I had an interest in. And I just felt school was not that it for me. I always had the entrepreneurial mindset from when I was six or seven.
Scott Dillingham:I just always wanted a business. I always wanted to do something like that. So anyways, back to the school story. So I go in the last day there to write my exams and the principal, he's outside waiting for me. And I go up, I'm trying to walk by him because he's the last person I want to see.
Scott Dillingham:And he's you know what, Scott? I looked through the attendance, and with your last suspension because it was about three weeks, he suspended me until the end of school. He said with a three week suspension in the previous ones, you've missed too much school, so you're expelled. You can't even finish your exams because you're no longer a student. And I was actually quite upset at the time because I feel like he knew that.
Scott Dillingham:Like, he did that on purpose. He didn't want me to be in school. And that was his sort of slimy way of getting me kicked out of school. Cause all the things I was doing, it wasn't super bad, but it was annoying to him. I'm sure it was silly, things, but that was his way of kicking me out.
Scott Dillingham:So I was upset, but I took that as a learning point. And I quickly discovered that you can't really trust people, even people of authority, because I had trusted that I'd be able to go back into school and do it. But really, discovered he set me up. So I was kicked out of school. At that young age, I discovered quickly that you can't always trust people.
Scott Dillingham:Not to say people can't be trusted, you just have to be careful with trust. Now we have to take a quick break, but when we come back, I'm gonna show you what I did, how I learned, how I developed, and how I grew and got past all my childhood issues, trials, tribulations, all that stuff. Alright. Welcome back. So I got kicked out of high school and then I'm looking at my life and I'm like, what am I going to do?
Scott Dillingham:I have friends that are doctors or want to be doctors, veterinarians, teachers, and I'm kicked out of high school. What am I going to do? So right away I got into sales because with sales it was my own business because I could write my own paycheck based on my effort and it worked. It worked really well. I worked at Sears.
Scott Dillingham:It was like a dealer store which sold all appliances, tractors, beds, TVs, all that stuff. So I sold that. I was there for a couple of years and then I got a job in Windsor at a call center selling high speed internet, TV services, that type of thing. And I quickly became one of the top sales reps there And then I had this crazy idea that I was going to apply for jobs all across Canada. I didn't care where I got a job, but I just wanted something new.
Scott Dillingham:I wanted to apply and I was just gonna go wherever it was and move on. So I met my wife and then I somehow I convinced her to come with me in such a brand new relationship. She agreed and we moved. The job was in Sarnia, so it was only two hours away, which was great. So I got the job there.
Scott Dillingham:It was at Future Shop and quickly did exceptionally well there. They invited me to whenever they opened up a new store, I got to go and help sell out those things. Whenever they did the home shows in Toronto, they invited me on behalf of Future Shop to go and sell their appliances there. Quickly. Every sales job I ever had, I was always the top.
Scott Dillingham:I even won awards there with the most improved store and the best appliance sales department. So then with that extra money and the extra savings coming in, I started reading a book called Rich Dad Poor Dad, which gave me the idea of investing in real estate. I got creative and I signed up for a couple of their courses. They had some courses in Canada. $10 for a wholesaling course and a rent to own course.
Scott Dillingham:So I went and I did those courses and in the wholesaling course, ultimately you find a property that's at or below market value and you present it to investors and they buy it and you make a little bit of money and you didn't have to do much. You just find the property and get paid. So I started off my investing doing that. So I met this guy out of Toronto, and he said, listen, Scott. You find me the place, and I'll buy it, and I'll share the profits with you, which is even better than an assignment fee.
Scott Dillingham:If I find the home and I assign it to someone else, they pay you a fee. So he's willing to split the profits with me, which is even better. So I felt like I struck gold. He tells me find the house, put in a cash offer, give it to him, and he'll buy it. So I'm like, okay.
Scott Dillingham:So I found this house. It was on Ross Avenue in Sarnia and I get the firm offer. It's fully accepted. I presented to him. He's gone.
Scott Dillingham:Crickets. He won't reply to me anymore. Nothing. So I'm sweating bullets because I put in a firm offer on this house. I'm a young guy, right?
Scott Dillingham:I wasn't even pre approved for a mortgage. I didn't even have great credit at the time. I was just building things up. So I went to the bank and actually I was surprised, but I was able to get approved for the mortgage. So that was the mistake that changed my life because I was not anticipating buying this property on my own.
Scott Dillingham:I only got it because this guy said that he would buy it. So anyways, overnight we were forced to turn into real estate investors. The home needed everything. It had a gravity furnace, knob and tube wiring, holes in the roof, it had plaster mortar and it was damaged everywhere. It really needed everything.
Scott Dillingham:Like we had to do flooring, bathroom. The weirdest thing was the kitchen cupboards were brand new. That was the only thing in the house that was brand new. Everything else needed to be done. So it was a great project for us because not only was it our first accidental investment, but we needed to do everything.
Scott Dillingham:So thereafter, all the future investing that we did, we were not worried about how the property looked or what happened. So long story short, I ended up doing really well with future shop that they wanted me to transfer to Windsor. So we got pregnant as well at around the same time. So we moved to Windsor and once we moved to Windsor we had to buy a home to move into and we got a duplex. So we started then growing our real estate investment portfolio.
Scott Dillingham:We kept the home in Sarnia and we grew. So we got up to eight residential properties. I believe it was 12 units combined. And at the time I was working for a major bank doing mortgages. So there I quickly got to be number two in the country.
Scott Dillingham:So I took that skill and the knowledge and the understanding of doing mortgages and I started my own company because that was my goal ever since I was little. I always had to have my own company and working at the bank was great, but there was a lot of restrictions. They wouldn't allow me to do some of the creative things I needed to do to grow my business. They also, it was hard to get approvals for clients. Whereas a brokerage now, we have access to banks, but we have all the other lenders as well.
Scott Dillingham:So the clients have so many more options now. So anyways, started Lendcity. So that was the first entry into commercial lending or sorry, commercial invest. We've got that going on now. We've got a large team supporting us.
Scott Dillingham:We do a lot of marketing and things like that. Along the way too, with what I learned at the bank was I got to see the bank required that every investor supply their assets. So if you own three or more rentals, had to show them that you had a 100,000 of liquid funds, which was assets, really, assets or savings. So by being at the bank, I got to quickly see what investments clients owned, what ones worked good, what ones were bad. I got to learn the strategies and the tricks that investors were doing to grow their portfolio and make more money.
Scott Dillingham:And I took the best of that and I applied it to my own investing portfolio. So this is outside of real estate. I purchased stocks and I'm gonna have episodes about this, but I discovered there was a way that you can purchase stocks direct through many of the companies without a trading fee. And you even get a discount on the stock when it's a dividend that gets reinvested. So I'll show you how to get discounts on stocks when you buy direct through the companies.
Scott Dillingham:There's many different products and platforms that I used to grow my net worth really quickly with really low fees that were much better than what the bank products could offer. Now I'm not a financial advisor, I'm just going to share from experience, but I will be bringing my financial advisor friends on to talk to you about what they do to help grow their clients' portfolios. But also I believe in personal development. So this whole time I've been reading books, Think and Grow Rich, Dare to Lead. There's all kinds of different books that I've read that have helped me to grow and develop into who I am.
Scott Dillingham:Better productivity, better sleeping, all of these things we're going to be diving into. When I interview experts in these fields, we're also going to have people that you can meet that had a similar story to me, but different that grew up, how to plan, developed and accomplished their goals. So we're gonna have a slew of people on here, but I wanted you to know where I came from. Everybody was counting on me to fail. I learned.
Scott Dillingham:I saw people grow and develop. I wanted it. I moved forward with it and everything that I've ever wanted or everything that I've ever wanted to accomplish, I've done. So now my goal is to be the biggest online mortgage brokerage in Canada, and we're gonna be. We are local here in Windsor, but we cover all of Canada through our partners.
Scott Dillingham:And so that is our very next goal and what we're working towards, but we're here to help you grow. Make sure you tune in to next week's show because we're gonna be diving into leverage, what it is, what it means to you to leverage, and how most wealthy people got to where they are by leveraging. So we're gonna show you how to take the risk out of leveraging and use what I like to call calculated leverage. And that's gonna be the foundation of the show going forward. And once you learn those ins and outs, it's really not tricky and it's really not really risky.
Scott Dillingham:It's incredible how much risk gets taken out of the equation when you use calculated leverage. So we'll discuss that more on the next