Welcome back to the “Inspired to Invest” real estate podcast. For today, we have Zac Willm joining us.
To tune into the episode, click here for video or here for audio.
Have you ever wondered how a young real estate investor navigates the challenges of the industry while still managing to travel the world?
Meet Zac Willms, a successful realtor and real estate investor who joins us to share his inspiring journey, tips, and advice that could potentially help you kickstart your own real estate investing adventure.
Listen in as Zac delves into his story of getting started in real estate at a young age, the impact of a real estate seminar on his approach, and the importance of building a strong network of support.
Discover the valuable insights he’s gained from years of experience in various investment strategies, overcoming obstacles, and the significance of having the right professionals on your team.
Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from Zac’s inspiring journey and his expert advice for both new and seasoned investors.
To connect with Zac, find him here on Instagram or on Facebook under his name.
Thank you to our sponsors Honeybee Development Group & Synergy Mastermind for bringing you this episode!
To learn more about them:
✨ @honeybee.development & @alejandra.honeybee on Instagram or online.
✨ @synergymastermind on social or online.
Are you a full-time real estate investor with an inspiring story to share? To be considered, apply here.
Interested in learning more about real estate investing, check out all of these great articles.
Tune back in on Wed., Jul. 5 for Episode Four with Alejandra Moreno, co-founder of Honeybee Group who builds beauty where there is none, both in life and as a land developer!
And remember! “When you invest in yourself, the sky’s the limit” 🚀
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1
00:01
Welcome to the “Inspired To Invest” podcast, where we’re sharing stories from real estate investors and how investing has changed their lives.
This episode of “Inspired To Invest” has been brought to you by Honeybee Development Group and Synergy Mastermind.
Hi everybody, welcome to “Inspired To Invest”.
00:23
We have an amazing guest today named Zac Willms. He’s a full-time realtor and real estate investor and he started investing at a very young age and he’s literally tried just about every single real estate investing strategy out there. So if you’ve got questions, I’m sure he’s going to be the one to answer them for you. And, fun fact, he spent nine months of last year traveling the world while still operating his business at home. And if you’re looking for a fun vacation destination, he has a huge portfolio of short-term rentals and even a campground in Tobermory. So welcome, Zac. Thank you so much for being on the show today and, obviously, for our audience. Thanks for tuning in Now. obviously, I’ve shared a little bit about your background, but maybe we can tell or you can tell us a little bit more about yourself in your own words.
Speaker 2
01:11
For sure. Well, Serena, thanks obviously for having me here, Super excited for this conversation. You did a good summary of my bio, I would say I guess you could start it back just where it all started with real estate. Right, I was in the real estate, I was in the paramedic world, I was trying to get hired right Really in the medical space, didn’t know too much about real estate And it all kind of started off with my friends all going off to college, starting to rent out those bedrooms. I went up there to visit them and quickly put some math together, figuring that everybody was paying $500 per room for these houses that honestly weren’t that nice. And when the landlord’s coming to pick up the checks and he’s driving a brand new car looking all fancy, I’m like there’s got to be something that they didn’t teach me in school.
Speaker 1
01:52
Here I’m kind of missing.
Speaker 2
01:54
Yeah, I’m like there’s got to be something missing here. I don’t know, why did they not teach me this in school, is my first thought. I’m like, how did these landlords get all this money? How do you get the properties? And then obviously the brain just starts to get going. But that was kind of what kickstarted me to get into real estate right from the beginning.
Speaker 1
02:09
Yeah, that was actually one of my questions was what was that catalyst? So obviously you saw these circumstances and stuff like that. So how did you go then from identifying this seems really lucrative to actually taking the pledge and getting started?
Speaker 2
02:22
Yeah, honestly, it was probably. You know, if somebody told me they wanted to get into real estate now, i would probably give them much different advice than what I did. I really just started on realtorca. I just went back home I lived in Hamilton at the time So I just searched around McMaster thinking that obviously students want to live close. I found some listings and I just started cold calling realtors. I just called them up and said, hey, i’m young but I want to buy a house and I want to rent it out to students. And I think I think I must have called like 10 or 15 different realtors and only one person got back to me. He was the person that ended up selling me my first house, that one guy. He called me back and said I own actually a couple of student rentals So he’s like I can help you out. I’m like perfect The done deal. He was kind of my first mentor, my first coach, showed me around, helped me get into my first property, and it was right after that that I obviously got pushed into more of the educational world.
03:14
And again shout out to my mom. I’ve given her a couple of shout outs in the past. She’s inspired. On the radio, heard that Scott McGilivray was coming to town, heard that I could go to a two free hour seminar on real estate on a Saturday morning and she signed me up. She gave me no choice. She’s like you’re going, it’s two free hours on a Saturday And you got to hear what he has to say.
03:33
And yeah, the rest of history. Since then, I was drinking the Kool-Aid and never looked back.
Speaker 1
03:37
How many years ago was that?
Speaker 2
03:39
That would have been in late 2016.
Speaker 1
03:42
Okay, yeah, i mean obviously Scott McGillivray. It sounds like him and his partner. They got their start with student rentals as well, right Cause, same thing like they’re spending that money and they actually ended up using their student loans, if I remember correctly, to invest in their first rental property and, you know, just kind of corner the market out in. I think it was Guelph, so it’s pretty amazing.
Speaker 2
04:01
Exactly, exactly. I was sitting there thinking I’m like, well, they started with student rentals. I bought a student rental. I’m like this is just, must be, the right thing for me to do. It was meant to be Right, it was meant to be, and they taught me a lot in those first two hours. I’ll give them that. So did you dive?
Speaker 1
04:14
into it full time right then, or did it take you a little bit of time to kind of? you know, obviously it takes time to build up a portfolio, but can you talk a little bit more about you? know where exactly you were at Like? were you done school? Like, were you still working? Like, did you end up going through to be the paramedic to kind of support your life while you’re building?
Speaker 2
04:31
Yeah, I was. So when I went to Keyspire the very first time I was still in school to be a paramedic, I was just about graduating early in the following year.
04:40
And after I graduated I had sold that first property that I bought, realized that it wasn’t that good of an investment property after all, thanks to what I learned and to buying a duplex with the profits that I had from there. Then it was this weird, you know, kind of pivotal point in my life where I’m like I’m graduated, i’m interviewing to be a paramedic, but my heart and everything about what I love it’s just getting dragged towards real estate. I find myself watching YouTube videos at night, reading books on real estate and less and less and less studying for my paramedic exams. So it was that moment where it’s like you need to study for the exams to actually get hired. But everything in my body was telling me, like, just go down this real estate pathway, like see what this is all about and maybe not pursue that as hard.
05:25
And it was my realtor at the time that said Zac, you’re young, you know I was in my early, early 20s. She’s like, why don’t you think of going and getting your real estate license? Like, maybe leave the paramedic role behind, it’ll always be there, you’ve graduated, you got your diploma. But maybe just see what real estate’s all about, because she could see my passion was in it I was looking at numbers, i was sending in properties all the time And she was really the one that kind of opened up my world to being a real estate agent. And then after that I was full time right, full time real estate investing, full time real estate agent And I had a property management business when I first started.
Speaker 1
05:57
So yeah, anything and everything with real estate. Most people obviously don’t just jump right into it at that point. But I think sometimes you just don’t know what you don’t know And it takes that one person just to kind of shed perspective on you know what’s out there and like how you can really get started. So yeah, that’s amazing, i didn’t actually know all of that. With the paramedic stuff And I’m sure with COVID, i’m probably glad that you dodged that bullet.
Speaker 2
06:18
Fantastic, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1
06:20
I think that obviously wasn’t the greatest time to be in emergency responder. I guess you could say that. So I guess when you look now, you’ve obviously been investing for seven or eight years. What would you say has been your greatest success to date? What made that so great for you?
Speaker 2
06:34
The greatest success? It’s always a good question, right? I just think the greatest success is, honestly, just never giving up. right, it sounds cheesy but it really is, cause there’s so many issues that come up in real estate, there’s so many challenges and different things you’ve got to overcome. I think the greatest success is just continually pushing forward and always waking up every single day and pushing that needle just slightly split forward, looking for new properties, doing all those small, boring tasks every day that end up leading to these really good results.
07:03
Right, like that’s why I can sit here today and say that I have built a good size portfolio because of all those small, boring little things that we did every single day. And, honestly, just a continual education. Right Like going out there always, always perfecting the craft, always meeting new people and networking and hearing different ideas. Right, i joke about it in the bio where I say I’ve basically tried everything. Right, it’s like we always say real estate’s like the buffet and I tried a little bit of everything to see, like, do I like this, do I like this better? And really just got a good scope of what all the different types of investing really looks like.
Speaker 1
07:35
Yeah, so you mentioned that. obviously you’re trying to identify what you like the most. So what would that be? out of everything?
Speaker 2
07:41
I’d say now it’s really the short-term rental space, the hospitality space. My passion really is real estate and then second is travel. So I found the hospitality short-term rental is this perfect merge of the two things I love the most, where I can actually host people and give them really good experiences. And I get messages on Airbnb where people are coming up to my campground and they’re coming up for their anniversary right Or different things are there honeymoon or something And it’s just like it’s the best feeling.
Speaker 1
08:08
Yeah, and those are always the things that people remember, right. So you kind of know that you’re having that impact on people’s lives and this, like you know, deeply personal level, whether it’s travel or real estate, when you’re dealing with people’s homes and their financial futures and stuff like that right Now. Obviously, a lot of times people you know say people outside of the investing community oftentimes say you know, real estate is so risky and there’s a lot of, you know a lot of people have a lot of fear, especially with the interest rates rising and you know the instability just out there right now. What would you say is probably your biggest lesson that you’ve had and what was your biggest takeaway from that?
Speaker 2
08:46
The biggest lesson is you have to have really good people in your circle and really good team, right? And the reason why I say that is it’s kind of tied to some challenges that I’ve had, where I told you before, challenges are gonna come up, right, and if you’re by yourself and there’s nobody that you have to support you, it’s gonna be super difficult to go through those challenges and you’re really not gonna know what to do and it might get you discouraged. It might end up leaving the real estate business. So I think one of the most important lessons is really just take your time. Find your people that you can trust, that you can pick up the phone and call and ask them how to go through. Certain things Could be coaches, realtors, lawyers, accountants, right, you know, it just kind of makes up that entire power team that we like to talk about. I’d say that’s the most important lesson for people to do Don’t go at it alone, right? Partnerships are a great thing. Lawyers are great everybody. You need them to help you really succeed in this business.
Speaker 1
09:36
Yeah, and obviously they always say your network is your net worth. So I think, just trying to learn from other people. Like I think you know, in my experience I’d rather learn from other people’s mistakes than make my own, and ideally, you want to work with people that can get you where you want to go faster right, so you can lean on the experiences of other people. But with that in mind, we’re just gonna take a really short break for a word from our sponsors
Introducing Honeybee Development Group.
Speaker 4
09:59
Hi everyone, my name is.
Speaker 3
10:01
Alejandra and I’m Mimi, and together Alejandra and I lead Honeybee Development Group, where we deliver exceptional results for properties and projects in the development sector.
Speaker 4
10:13
So as co-owner of Honeybee Development Group. I’m here to inspire you. I’m here to give you all the words of encouragement to say, yes, you can do it and start today. Don’t wait until tomorrow.
Speaker 3
10:25
Build a strong support system and a network around you. Real estate is not a one-person game. it takes a lot of minds to collaborate, So have the right accountants, lawyers, the network of support that can help you and answer your questions so you don’t make some very expensive mistakes.
Speaker 4
10:43
Every real estate investor started somewhere, so please visit our website Honeybee Developmentcom, and then let’s see where the universe is gonna take you. Just give that first step.
Speaker 1
10:57
Thanks again for following along with this episode of Inspired to Invest. In addition to real estate investing and running my own brand experience agency for 18 years, i also published a book called The Accidental Entrepreneur in October of 2021. This is my story and it chronicles how I turned tragedy into triumph to embrace my destiny in entrepreneurship. If you’re interested in picking up a copy, you can find the link at https://serenaholmesrealtor.com and you can also find my link tree with all of the retailers in the details below. Thanks again for your support.
Speaker 3
11:35
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Speaker 2
11:39
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Speaker 4
11:44
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Speaker 3
11:52
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Speaker 2
11:57
For more information and to secure one of our remaining spots for Synergy Mastermind, apply now at synergymastermindca.
Speaker 1
12:12
Thanks everybody, welcome back again. We have Zac Williams here and he’s talking to us about his breadth of experience when it comes to real estate investing, and before the break we were talking about lessons. So, with the lessons in mind, what would you say you would define as the biggest obstacle and the biggest hurdle that you really had to overcome? I mean, you can share like a little bit of a story just so you can shed light on on that for other people that maybe haven’t been there yet.
Speaker 2
12:37
Yeah, i’d definitely say it starts off with just being young, right, being young in the industry, going out to these different networking events and being, you know, substantially younger than the average person there and having to overcome the challenge of age. really, right, people are looking at you saying I’m laughing because I resonate with that.
Speaker 1
12:53
I had my own business at 23, so we actually used the term account manager instead of, you know, ceo or director or whatever it was for years because we thought no one would take us seriously. So I understand exactly where you’re coming from.
Speaker 2
13:07
It’s tough, right. There’s a lot of different challenges. Even talking to lawyers, or when I was very young calling realtors before I was a realtor, they didn’t obviously take me seriously. Tenants didn’t want to take me seriously, right? so I quickly learned that I’m no longer the landlord, i’m just a property manager.
Speaker 1
13:22
Yeah, that made it a lot easier. Yeah, exactly, i’m just hired by the landlord right?
Speaker 2
13:26
I’m not actually the landlord. That made it a lot easier of a relationship with tenants. So I would say that was probably the biggest obstacle overall is really just navigating through this industry that is mostly dominated by older people and very mature people, and being in your early 20s trying to come across as mature, not a kid who’s coming into the space, who’s really passionate about it as well. That’s the biggest obstacle and the biggest way to overcome it is just confidence. Yeah, you just have to be confident when you go into those rooms or when you have those conversations with tenants. Education is key because if you have the education, you can talk about things confidently and you know that just pushes out to everybody else where they see you talking about it and they’re like okay, he actually knows what he’s talking about, he’s not just flying off the seat of his pants. You know there actually is good education behind it.
Speaker 1
14:15
Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. Now, that being said, what do you think is the best advice that you’ve ever been given as a real estate investor?
Speaker 2
14:23
As a real estate investor, i think it goes back to your network as your net worth, right? I think that really is especially, you know, when you’re younger in the business like you really do have to surround yourself with other people in your network that are doing bigger, better things, that can kind of shine the light onto these different ways of doing business and help you just scale and grow faster, right, yeah, if you keep trying to do it yourself or just by YouTube or other things social media it’s like you’re not going to be able to go to that.
Speaker 1
14:52
Yeah, the.
Speaker 2
14:53
University of YouTube is great. Trust me, i’m a huge, huge advocate of it. Yeah, but you do got to get out there and get in person. Go to those investor meetups, meet people, have good conversations, develop deep relationships. Yeah, That’s obviously by far one of the most important lessons that anybody’s ever talking.
Speaker 1
15:08
Yeah, No, that makes perfect sense. Now, obviously, you’ve had, you know, a lot of experience at this point. What’s next for you?
Speaker 2
15:17
It’s always such a good question. I think what’s next for me is just continuing to add my travel and real estate interests together. So the most recent purchase for myself has been down in Tulum, mexico. That is the perfect mesh in my mind of what I love to do the most, which is hot climates, beautiful weather, beautiful cities and real estate all together. So that was my first international purchase And that’s something that I want to continue doing, but also as well here in Ontario. The glamping side of the business, the shorts from rental space hosting beautiful experiences like this It’s all just perfectly aligned with where I love to take my business next. Right, the duplexes were fun, the flips are fun, the birds are fun, but I just think about what I actually enjoy the most and it’s definitely in this hospitality. Short term rental space, yeah.
Speaker 1
16:04
No, that’s awesome, And I’m sure it feels that much more fulfilling, right, because it’s not just, you know, collecting the rep checks anymore. It’s these really unique experiences, exactly. I guess, one question I heard recently that I thought was kind of interesting And you know it made me kind of think. you know what does this look like for me? But the question was what’s your freedom number? So when you think about growing your portfolio, when you think like you’ve made it like, what would that number look like?
Speaker 2
16:29
Yeah, it’s tough Because I think about two different numbers. Right, i think about like what’s the portfolio, or like the total net value, and I think about what am I making on a monthly basis? Yeah, because to me it’s like the financial freedom comes from the monthly revenue coming in Absolutely Yeah, right. And the whole portfolio value is great. But you know, in real estate a lot of people are equity rich but they’re cash poor, yeah Right.
Speaker 1
16:50
And.
Speaker 2
16:50
I see that all the time And to me that’s not financial freedom. So to me, kind of that number in my mind is somewhere around $20,000 a month, passively, that’s without me working. That’s if I’m on a beach or if I’m at my office, from in Mexico, from in Canada, no matter where I am, that’s what I’m making, that’s my financial freedom, my financial freedom number.
Speaker 1
17:09
Yeah.
Speaker 2
17:09
Right. The portfolio value is well. It’s so hard to put numbers on that because you could have a thousand units out east or a thousand units on Ontario And it’s completely different in terms of what the actual value of that is.
Speaker 1
17:20
Yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah, i find it really interesting because I heard some numbers. You know, even when we had Beatty Brandon on for one of our expert calls, it’s a billion dollars And it’s just like this unfathomable number. But obviously once you gain traction, you start going. It’s like you know what 10 million could become 50, could become 100. And you know, at that point it becomes more about your legacy and building that generational wealth rather than just the lifestyle Right? So I think so interesting how it kind of unfolds. Yeah, now, when you think back to your earlier, earlier life, kind of life before real estate, if you could talk to your younger self, what would you tell him?
Speaker 2
17:59
Yeah, if I could talk to my younger self, i would say, yeah, i would say dream big, hold on for the ride. It’s going to be crazy, but it’s going to be really, really beneficial. But I’d say dream big. Whatever goals you’re writing, 10x them, shout out to Grant Cardone. But just go bigger with your goals.
18:18
I don’t want to trademark that, just go bigger with your goals, because I’m like everything I wrote down literally came true. All those goals that you wrote down when you first started. they do come true. So if I could just go back, I would just make my goals even bigger, Because I’m like if I would have dreamed bigger, maybe my goals would have came true. Maybe I was thinking small back then.
Speaker 1
18:35
Yeah, i saw a speaker recently and he’s like write your goals down and then he’s like double them and then take that again and quadruple it and just like seeing how big it is He goes. then you go back to your original goal and it feels so small, right. So it’s interesting just when you have that kind of perspective. Obviously you’ve done so well with just everything, like in such a short span of time and just given your age and your persistence and stuff like that. Do you have any favorite quotes that really motivate you?
Speaker 2
19:02
I would say there’s probably two. The first one is Gary V. He always talks about this and he’s always just talks about enjoy the ride or enjoy the process. Right, he paraphrases it differently, but I just love that idea because we get so busy in real estate. being an agent and investor, there’s always things happening, but it’s always just about to meet now and join the process. Whatever I’m doing, whether it’s just going to meet contractors or whether I’m meeting up with a partner, it’s like let’s make this the most enjoyable outcome as possible. Right, let’s have a good time while we’re doing it. Sure, things are going to get stressful at times, but if we can think in the back of our minds, how do we make this enjoyable? To me, it just makes life so much more fun. Right, makes you have more energy when you wake up and makes you enjoy the whole process. right, makes you enjoy coming on calls like this and just be grateful for what we’ve done so far.
Speaker 1
19:48
Yeah, no, that’s awesome. I think it’s the one that wants to get in touch, or maybe they want to stay at one of your short-term rentals. How can people get ahold of you and find you online?
Speaker 2
19:57
Yeah, i’d say, for me personally, instagram’s the easiest. This is send me a direct message there @zacwillm or follow us on our campground page @GrottoGetaway. You can check us out there. We always post all the different things that we’re doing and usually we have some discounts for people that follow us on Instagram.
Speaker 1
20:15
Awesome And we’ll share that in the comments below. Thanks so much for being here today and sharing all of your experiences. I think it’s important for anyone out there just to see that it doesn’t necessarily take anyone super special or really affluent or that has a lot of money to get started, but I think just getting started can literally change your life and change the life of everyone around you. So, for anyone tuning in, thank you so much for being here with us on the “Inspire to Invest” podcast.
Speaker 2
20:40
Thanks, Serena.
Speaker 1
20:42
Thank you again to our sponsors, Honeybee Development Group and Synergy Mastermind, for bringing you this episode of the “Inspired to Invest: podcast.
The views represented on this podcast are for general information only and does not constitute investment or other professional advice or an offering of securities. The host and guest featured on Inspire to Invest make no representations as to the performance of any particular investment. Should you decide to make an investment, you are responsible for conducting your own review and analysis. It is recommended that you obtain independent legal, accounting and tax advice from licensed professionals.