Episode Details

On to this week’s guest, Lynne Tham. She was nervous to come on the show which is not uncommon. Public speaking by some surveys ranks higher on the lists of fears above death it self….

Lynne’s kids including my friend Simon told her to just do it and she did!

I’ll post Lynne’s full bio on our website, www.truthaboutrealestateinvesting.ca. It’s a wonderful Canadian success story of a teenager immigrating to Canada, falling in love with the greatest country in the world.  Started a family, stayed at home to raise the kids, picked up a side hustle in multi-level marketing, excelled, became a single parent, became a Realtor, had a wake up call at age 55 that she needed a retirement plan. Invested in real estate, de-invested in real estate and now a pretty successful stock hacker.

I know we have several full time professional, uber successful real estate investors like Ryan Carr and coming up next Leslie and Jamie Collard and their 160 units but for the investor who wants to take it easy and be a bit more passive…. Well it worked out for Lynne.

Full bio:

Proud mom of two successful adults (Simon and Melanie) who form our family real estate team (we do between 40 - 50 deals per year as a team).  I'm a constant advocate for personal growth in my own life and determined to create my own financial future goals of being able to live, travel and work from anywhere in the world. 

My own story - came to Canada by myself as an 18 year old, without knowing anyone, from the UK, to be a nanny, in 1978.  It was supposed to be a one to two year work stay.   Fell in love with the country, got married at 21 and became a Canadian citizen.  Being a stay at home mom I was recruited to sell Tupperware in the '90's and this was beginning of personal growth for me.  I realized that I was a sales person and loved motivating myself and other people to reach goals.  I was with them for 10 years and ended up owning a distributorship with them in the Toronto area.  

After becoming a single parent in the 90's, I had a five year stint in the car business, being a business manager and selling cars, but long hours and very little personal satisfaction, motivated me to take my real estate license.  I became an agent in 2006 with the desire of being able to have the ability to increase my income and have the flexibility to travel to see my kids, who were both now living in the U.S. (Melanie on a gymnastics scholarship at Iowa State University and Simon modelling in NYC).   After building my business for six years it was a welcome addition to have my Mel join me in the business after she graduated univeristy and then Simon, two years later.  Both of my kids did not have real estate as a career goal but they kind of fell into it after realizing that it was a great way to earn good money and also be able to pursue other passions (not to mention my daughter's teaching degree did little to generate an actual job in teaching and Simon realized that modelling looks don't last forever - but as his mom, I would disagree :) and he's still modelling now)

Five years ago, at age 55, I was staring at my future and realizing that I needed more of a retirement plan - at that time, my net worth was basically the equity in my Mississauga townhouse (at the time, worth around 775k, and I had a mortgage of $300k on it) and I had $200k in RRSP's and that was it.  When I looked into what the Canadian pension was, if I waited until 65 to draw it, it was a wake up call.   This started my journey into how to build a consistent income of at least $10k a month within the next five years. I had met with an investment guy from a reputable company, regarding what to do with my RRSP's, who told me he could generate me a guaranteed 8 - 10% annually with their various investments.  It sounded a lot better than the