Ep. 34 with Janci Templeman with Walker Wakefield

Barb McGrath 0:02
You are listening to a CJ tr podcast.

Barb McGrath 0:09
Welcome to The Secret Life of entrepreneurs on 91.3 FM CJ tr, Regina community radio. Stay tuned to meet today’s guest and hear their story of what makes them tick. What drives them to succeed and their role in growing a thriving business community. The Secret Life of entrepreneurs chronicles the success and secrets of locally owned businesses and owners listening live as we discuss their secrets and learn how they are making a positive impact in their community. You’re listening to your host, Barb McGrath, business leader, entrepreneur, and founder of the get Founder. Let’s get started. Well, if you’re on the prairies, today, you’re looking at some white stuff on the ground, what the heck, it’s only the 30th of October, I guess we can’t complain. It’s actually been a fairly nice fall. So speaking of fall, we’re gonna fall into a whole new topic today. Before we introduce your guests, I do want to encourage you to stay tuned in right until the very end of our episode Janci is going to share her contact details at the end. And I think you’re going to be very interested in what she’s got to say during the show today. So please do stay tuned in here everything that she’s got to stay got to say and then look her up on Facebook and Instagram. She’s got some great DIY videos that she shares. So our guest today is Janci Templeman, she’s the president of Walker Wakefield here in Regina, a real estate investment firm. That’s turning, um, maybe properties that wouldn’t be people’s first choice into some beautiful family homes. So if you haven’t seen her Facebook and Instagram, you need to check it out because it was a little bit of a drool fest for me as I went through and looked at all of the the projects that she’s done, and the before and after pictures. I was like, wow. Anyway, without further ado, jancy Welcome. Well, thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. Tell me a little bit about yourself and of course about your business.

Janci Templeman 2:26
Well, my name is Janci Templeman, I grew up on a farm just outside Kalonzo, Saskatchewan. Saskatoon. Okay, I moved here in 2005 after traveling the world and living in New Zealand, actually. And then I met my husband and I’ve been living here for the last 15 years.

Barb McGrath 2:43
Oh, wow. So you’ve been here for a long time. Okay, so polanyi like huge hockey town. Did you play hockey? I did not actually know.

Janci Templeman 2:49
Did you have brothers or anybody? Brother younger brother that played hockey. Yeah. And pretty much everybody that I

Barb McGrath 2:54
Exactly. I think it’s actually a community rule. If you live in clumsy you have to play hockey and we’re getting a punishment, man.

Janci Templeman 3:01
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Barb McGrath 3:04
That’s small town Saskatchewan. Okay, so tell me a little bit Walker Wakefield real estate investment. Tell me a little bit about what you do. And how did you get into something like that?

Janci Templeman 3:14
So I actually started in the fitness industry. I was certified personal trainer and group fitness instructor. And I had a personal training client that would work out with me three to five days a week. And I just thought, Oh, man, this lady lives a baller lifestyle. Yeah. And how could she afford to work out with somebody that often, she had the best schedule. And so she would talk about real estate all the time. And, and she would just leave these little nuggets. I don’t think she had any intentions of trying to pull me in or anything. It was just like, this is what I do. And she’s she mentioned once. So how are you going to retire on a fitness wage? And I said, I have no idea. And actually, that got me a little bit scared. She said, Well, what happens if you get sick? And I said, Well, I work, I don’t make any money. And so she’s like, well, maybe that’s something you need to think about. So there was a little Rich Dad education banner on the side of my Facebook page one day each Monday, and I clicked on it once a little intro, and she actually showed up there to network. And she said, I didn’t know you were interested in this. Oh, I said, well, you talk about all the time. And so she said, Well, this is how I got started. So Okay, there we went. And we started taking the education through there. I had no intentions of flipping houses. Um, mine was just going to be by rent and hold. And I quickly realized that you don’t make a ton of money like I’m living. I’m gonna live off the cash flow. Well, like the furnace goes down or you need to call a plumber or anything like that. Yes. And that money’s just your margins are gone.

Barb McGrath 4:46
Yeah, definitely. Yes. We have a tenant and you have to do repairs after they leave. Exactly. Yeah.

So margins are gone.

Janci Templeman 4:52
We always want to have a nice cushion in the accounting case for those those things so we ended up going into business with my Parents, they were gracious enough to absolutely go on education with us. And we started a company and we got a couple of Biron hold properties. Okay. The first one we had was up by Northgate mall. It was in 2011 when the refinery was getting their expansion and vacancy was like 00.

Barb McGrath 5:20
Yeah, minus zero.

Janci Templeman 5:21
Yeah. And it was a guy for my husband’s work. He was the executor of the estate. He didn’t. He didn’t know what to do with the property. He was, he was in a motorcycle accident, he couldn’t physically clean out the house, and it’s out there for probably six months. Hey, man, you just kept saying, Well, what do you what do you guys think? What do you guys think?

Barb McGrath 5:41
And by then you had the company formed already?

Janci Templeman 5:44
Are you we were in the process thinking of Okay, so I’d never analyzed the deal yet. I don’t even know what houses cost. And we got to this property, and it was a dump loan, in addition, and it was sinking and he was a hoarder. And we just yeah. He He said, Well, what do you what do you think? What do you think so after it what felt like forever? I said, Here’s, how about 60 grand? Because I really didn’t really want it because he’s such bad shape. I said, Okay, I’ll take it back to the family. And we’ll see how it goes. So we, we get a call the next day, and you said, Yeah, we’ll take it. So we got a hell of a sudden, you’re off to a start for 60,000 in 2011. Wow. So, um, it was kind of like, Oh, crap.

Barb McGrath 6:30
Yeah, exactly. It becomes fortuitous, right. If you hadn’t made the decision that you were going to do this, then fate was sort of making that decision for you that here you go.

Janci Templeman 6:39
Exactly. So we renovated it in a month. I was massage therapist at the time, too. I had a client that was on my table, and I said, Oh, yeah, I think I’m gonna buy a rental property. And he said, I’ll move in. So I did pre rented actually, before I even had possession of the home

Barb McGrath 6:56
Because rentals were difficult.

Janci Templeman 6:58
Yeah. Wow. And the guy didn’t clean it out in time. So I said, well knock 2500 bucks off, and we’ll clean it up. So I actually got it for 57 five. So then we renovated it. And next time you need to buy a car

Barb McGrath 7:11
Call her. She’s like the master negotiator.

Janci Templeman 7:14
It’s and that’s definitely a learned skill. I’ve read lots of books and did some trainings on that, too. But um, so yeah, once we got the 10 in there, we went to the bank, put a mortgage on it, paid everybody back, pulled all the money out, and then got into the next one. And then so right now we have seven doors.

Barb McGrath 7:35
And and by doors you mean rental property, right, because there’s

Janci Templeman 7:38
A duplex and triplex and we talk about doors. And are they all in Regina, they are all in Regina. Yep. And I property manager of all of them at the moment. So I got to a point where I couldn’t qualify for any more mortgages, being self employed. I was still in the fitness industry teaching probably 10 classes a week. And not making a ton, but right. I need to start making some more money. So exactly when flipping just started happening started to happen. Yeah. Okay.

Barb McGrath 8:10
So, um, in order, when I think about flipping houses, I mean, you’ve got to have some skills, whether it’s painting or you know, cutting baseboards and tell me about that. Like, how did all that come to get it? No, believe it or not, like I I’m pretty comfortable in that space. We built a house and, but a lot of people aren’t so right. So tell me about that.

Janci Templeman 8:30
I did, like industrial arts growing up there. And I was the one that made mom a table and I made her son whether

Barb McGrath 8:38
There is no no curtains coming home from home back. Hey,

Janci Templeman 8:41
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Lots of wood projects. So. And I really hadn’t touched that since high school. So on the first flip that we did, we did all the work ourselves. We hired out plumbers and electricians, obviously. But it was lots of late nights, lots of weekends. My husband and I worked for five months on that project after other hours. Okay. We didn’t have kids by this time. We did not have kids yet. Okay, so this would have been probably life 2013 or 14. Yeah. And we sold that one we did pretty good. And then other real estate coach came through town, and he said, Yeah, good job, guys that like you did great. But it’s not a scalable business. Like if you want to start doing this right scale, especially if you want to start a family, there’s no way that you can do this. He’s like, you just created another job for you. Well done. And

I was like, Oh, actually a really good point. He said, figure it out. Think of all the hours that you put in every week, and how much profit you made between the two of you and all the other people that helped out right and he said, Look, you you got a nice full time job salary. And I was like, Yeah, you’re completely right. So I dumped that money into more education and Okay, and that’s 14 or 15 flips ago in the last For years, and I’ve had two kids in that time,

Barb McGrath 10:03
Wow. So on average, we’ll just say four flips a year plus two kids. Okay, so you’re gonna keep up the pace both on the flip side and the kids. Kids are done. And yeah, there you go, Brenda now, you know,

Janci Templeman 10:14
I think she already knew that. But the I’m starting to get a little bit quicker now. I think there was some years that it was only one or two per year and then some that I did more because right on my son was older, and I was pregnant, I could kind of tackle the go to Lowe’s go to Home Depot, but now the two little ones. I’ve been a better delegator, I project manage better. I have a really great team that I work with lots of electricians, lots of plumbers. So if one can’t come, I have a backup.

Like I just have a great crew. Yeah, guys that I work with

Barb McGrath 10:48
Know people that you can count on. Absolutely. Which you know, even as a consumer, sometimes when you’re working with contractors, it can be really tough to find somebody that you count on. Right. So being able to build a business around that, too. I mean, that’s equally difficult.

Janci Templeman 11:01
Right? Yeah. And it didn’t happen overnight. No, like, I’ve been in real estate now for seven years, which seems crazy, right? In the flipping space for four, four or five. And I would say the last two years is been where my crew of guys is just really come through for me. And, and we work really good as a team.

Barb McGrath 11:22
Yes. And everybody knows everybody. You understand roles and responsibilities very well. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit of experience working together goes a long way. If you’ve got 20 years of industry experience, working with different people, everyone approaches, you know, problems a little bit differently. Yeah, right. Okay. So I’m like, What does a normal day look like for you? Because now there’s a couple of kids in the mix. You’ve got contractors on the go. And just from our conversation, when you got here to the station today, like one or two projects on the go at any point in time. So how are you balancing all of those?

Janci Templeman 11:55
It’s a struggle, okay. The kids are still at home with me,

Barb McGrath 11:59
I pay, they’re both under five still,

Janci Templeman 12:01
Yes. And they are not in daycare, I tried over the summer, it didn’t work as well, I had them in two days a week. And then I had a girl coming to the house, which was awesome. She’s just in high school. So yeah. But now, I just try and I have in laws that are here that are great, that will watch the kids and stuff when I need.

But a lot of times are dragged around with me.

Barb McGrath 12:26
They’re gonna grow up on construction sites, it’s gonna be absolutely inherent for them to understand this process.

Janci Templeman 12:32
And and it actually is a really great icebreaker. I kind of use it as a negotiation tactic as well. Because things with kids being around things settle. You can’t get as emotional and loud and, and aggressive.

Barb McGrath 12:46
And it moves things more quickly. Yeah. When when you’ve got a kid who needs to get home, you know, to eat or they’re upset? That’s pizza conversation up in lots of cases. Yeah, yeah. been there done that.

Janci Templeman 12:57
And the kids that are the guys that I have, they all have young kids now too. So we’re all kind of in that same age demographic, and we’ve had barbecues and stuff where they come over, and the kids will play and stuff like that. So they know when the kids are on site. It’s there on a first name basis, my kids know all the guys names and are excited to be on site to go see them. Right, which is, which is great. So

Barb McGrath 13:21
Yeah. So going back to the comment you made earlier, not being scalable. So what makes the business scalable? Now, what’s different from before.

Janci Templeman 13:31
So what we do is we get investors involved, and we don’t put mortgages on them anymore, because we have so many rentals. And our because I’ve been self employed for so long. The banks won’t really give us any more mortgages, right? We have to go and buy these houses cash, okay, so we pull investor money together and buy the houses cash, renovate them, and then and then sell them. And that’s one way that we can get it scaled. I wasn’t able to do that on my own. I couldn’t I couldn’t qualify for any mortgages. So I have to bring more people in and and everybody benefits doing it that way. Yeah. Not just just us. So that’s how we’ve been able to scale. We’ve had some investors with us since the beginning. And they’ve really done well and, and they it just kind of keeps snowballing and now we’re getting to the point we’re bringing, I’m I’m getting more houses, I can tackle two, possibly three. We’re finishing up one right now, but we’ll be done the next two weeks, we get possession of another one on Monday, and maybe in the next month or two if we can close on another one. And then just keep that ball rolling so that everybody just kind of keeps their money in and and they’re making money as well as we are so

Barb McGrath 14:48
So do you still do some of the physical work yourself or is it all contractors now?

Janci Templeman 14:52
I would say 98% is all contractors. I do some DIY stuff, because I really enjoy it. I know Some real estate, people will say, you should be off the tools don’t do anything, but I really enjoy it. And it’s the more the design aspect of it. I made some really cool barn doors.

Barb McGrath 15:10
You have to check out our Instagram for that. So she made these barn doors with time lapse photography. Yeah, so I throw your Instagram out in Janci, the GC.

Janci Templeman 15:19
So if you want to go and look, I made this really cool geometric piece of art. That’s going to be going up in the next one. So you’ll see pictures of that. And that will be up on this nice feature wall in two weeks. So I’m excited about that. And and I’ve just followed other people on Instagram, and somebody said, Oh, you must be on Pinterest all day and and on on the HGTV. And I’m like, I just don’t have the time.

Barb McGrath 15:45
He’s gonna say where you find the time? I just had you said you did?

Janci Templeman 15:50
Yeah. So I just see snippets. And I’m like, oh, that would be really cool to do that. And, and then I’ll follow them along and just kind of go step by step and try and figure it out backwards. And I’m now starting to get my own tools. So I’m really excited about the only thing is I’m running out of storage because we have staging stuff in our houses and our own house. So we’re kind of busting at the seams at the moment. I bet so

Barb McGrath 16:13
So tell me a little bit about how an investor would find you. So if somebody is listening today and thinking, that sounds like something I’d like to learn more about, what do they do?

Janci Templeman 16:22
Sure, they can reach out to me on my Facebook page, Walker, Wakefield hay, or Jesse the GC on Instagram, I also have a YouTube channel as well. It’s just jancy Templeman, but there’s a lot of before and after videos of the flip. So I’ll do a walk through and pretty much show you how much of a dump it is. And then at the end, what we’ve done. So and and for a potential buyer, if they’re interested, they can see what it looked like previously. Okay, I will always have an open house and inviting everybody not just it’s not a realtor open house. It’s my own open house. So we bring investors bring all my trades in so that people can meet the people that did all the work.

Barb McGrath 17:04
Exactly. They got it to this final state. Yeah.

Janci Templeman 17:06
And then and it builds up their businesses as well. And because they do great work, I wouldn’t be hiring them if they didn’t. And I want to showcase their stuff, too, because I can’t keep them busy all the time.

Barb McGrath 17:15
100% yet, right, exactly. Um, but they are.

Janci Templeman 17:20
It’s kind of a mutual respect thing. Now, if I have something they kind of prioritize your work a little bit because there’s consistent work.

Barb McGrath 17:25
Right. Right. And so any business owner, I think is going to approach consistent work versus, you know, something that’s kind of, you know, a spattering here and a spattering there. So, yeah, I think that’s fairly common. It doesn’t matter the industry, right. Okay. And what about on the home side? How do you find the properties in the first place,

Janci Templeman 17:49
Some of them are on MLS, and there’s a couple realtors that I deal with. And they’ve they know the kind of houses that I’m looking for. They’re not afraid to put lowball offers out there, because they know I’m going to close. Right, and this one, it was a two week possession. So there’s not very many people that can pay cash for a property in two weeks. So I know this one was a bank repo, so the bank was really comfortable with taking that offer, after it’s been sitting for right a few months. We’ve also found properties off Kijiji or just driving around and seeing Oh, that house looks like there’s been let go. And you just leave a letter in the mailbox. And sometimes they call sometimes they don’t exactly some has been word of mouth. Hey, somebody said, Oh, grandma died at this house and the family doesn’t know what to do. And they’re just really overwhelmed. And I’ve had that conversation. That was how our first one happened. And they just didn’t know where to where to start. So that’s, that’s pretty much the the main ways that we’ve gotten houses and

Barb McGrath 19:01
Main ways that you’ve gotten houses. So do you focus on certain areas of the community where and I’ll just pick on arnheim? I don’t know if you have properties out there or not. But you know, arnheim was a real up and coming area, maybe it still is. So something comes up, you keep a close eye on it. Or like Tell me when you see a property how do you do that quick assessment that says yes, this would be good return on our investment.

Janci Templeman 19:27
We are looking for houses for after repair value between 250,000 and 300,000 because that’s where the bulk of the buyers are right that first time homebuyer demographic. So they want to be in an established area. That is all brand new because a lot of people don’t want to do any work. And we we find that our houses don’t sit very long. It’s usually definitely before average days on market for the vagina area. Some of the quickest ones are 345 days. Okay, this last one was a little bit longer, I think it was five weeks. But still, that was faster than a lot of the other houses in the area. We sell a lot in Rosemont, right in Norman view, this one is in Churchill Downs, but it’s in the nice North pocket. So I’m buying, for example, the last two houses I bought were 110,000. And people are floored that I can get them for that price rate. But nobody else is really looking for those sorts of houses. And a lot of times they have structural problems, right. And nobody wants to tackle those. So I have an engineer that I work with, and we’ve done lots on properties. Yeah, he he’s able to even over the phone, kind of give me a rundown on Okay, this is what you’re going to need, so that I could I know what to expect in my renovation budget. Okay, the the last two have had some structural issues, but we brace them get the engineer’s report. And then when somebody is buying them, then they know that it’s we’ve done the right things at the right permits everything like that. Right. You don’t want to cut corners and and, and not do upstanding work.

Barb McGrath 21:10
Yeah, exactly. Because that word of mouth would spread so quickly. Right, right. Absolutely. You know, and it’s interesting to me, because you being able to flip a home quickly, is, even if even if you and I were doing the exact same thing. So I’m buying it personally, and I can get it for the same price somehow, the outcome won’t be the same, because you’re going to be able to get there so much more quickly than I can.

Janci Templeman 21:35
Right. Right.

Barb McGrath 21:36
So no, that’s quite interesting to me.

Okay, so you’ve got another project coming up. So tell us a little bit about that project? What does it look like? How do you put the vision together for for how that final product will? Look?

Janci Templeman 21:50
It’s funny say that, because the first thing that came to mind was, what does it smell like? Because it smells bad. It smells really bad. I don’t know what was in there. The laminate is swollen, like it’s an inch or too thick and some spots. So I don’t know, if there was just potted plants that were leaking, it didn’t look like that. I don’t think any rental property, I think somebody had just kind of let it go. The basement, the back wall is needing to be braced. It it, it has some water in the basement. It just smells bad. And and really the basement probably was let go. So maybe if it was an elderly person, they weren’t in the basement to kind of monitor what’s going on,

Barb McGrath 22:34
Or they didn’t know what to do. Or if they noticed it. What to do is a completely separate question or be able to afford

Janci Templeman 22:42
How to fix it because that bracing a back wall. It’s not It’s not cheap. No. And this is needing a pony wall now, so hey, what’s a pony wall, we’re gonna have to cut the concrete out right in front of the wall, we’re gonna have to dig down and there’s going to be channels, see channels that go into the dirt and up to the ceiling into the rafters of the floor joists. Okay, then you concrete that all in. And then you have to build forms and pour concrete and build another wall in front. Whoa, wow, that the wall does not come in anymore.

Barb McGrath 23:17
Yes. And see, that’s why the average consumer would be scared of a property like that. Because that’s a whole bucket of knowledge that the average person doesn’t have.

Janci Templeman 23:25
And in the beginning, I probably wouldn’t have touched a project like this because I was just unfamiliar with how that all works. But right for getting this house at the price I did, I was able to put it in the budget, and it will be fine. We’ll get the stamp of approval. The other walls around are not that bad. It’s just this one. I think on one other project, I had to do a pony wall that was a house, house and Cathedral. It was just really old. And I don’t know if I’d want to tackle a house that’s over 100 years old again, just because there’s so much that could go wrong,

Barb McGrath 24:00
I suppose. Yes. Gen Z, we only have a couple of minutes left. So I want to ask you two questions. One, please give everybody your contact information. But to like, tell me about the project that you’re most proud of?

Janci Templeman 24:13
I would say it was the last one that we did. Okay, I did. I think my bathroom was Pinterest worthy, and awesome. And I built these shelves. And I kind of took some different ideas from different pictures that I’d seen and used piping like like natural gas pipe, wind, and then put that with a rustic wood. I have some tricks that I’ve been able to make pine wood look aged and treated different ways. I did black taps and whites everywhere.

Barb McGrath 24:58
Oh black floor so you’ve got a real design flaw. To not just build flair, but a real design flair as well, right? And

Janci Templeman 25:04
I think you that’s one difference that I’ve seen with other flippers. They’re male, and they’re not thinking of that design element. And they’re not staging it or anything like that. And one of my real estate coaches says you are trying to sell feelings. You have to walk in there. And the female actually will be the one that has the the final say a lot of the times salutely. So your kitchens and your bathrooms, they have a nice little sample. Yeah, those simple little details of staging certain things in certain areas. That makes a huge difference. Yeah, so that’s how we, I’m able to sell them a little bit easier, I think.

Barb McGrath 25:43
Very cool.

Janci Templeman 25:44
Okay, and let’s get those contact details in there. So you can go to Walker Wakefield on Facebook, and Janci the GC on Instagram and Janci Templeman, if you want as well as my personal page and Janci Templeman for my youtube channel as well.

Barb McGrath 26:00
Okay, reach out. That sounds awesome. Well, thank you so much for all of that today. That was I found that very interesting. And I’m curious to go and find your Instagram and Facebook channels now. Awesome. And I you know, I really I give jancy a lot of credit, because real estate in a market the way we are right now, many people would shy away from it. So congratulations to you. Thanks. All right. I will be back here on November 13, with Jill Fulton from transformational leadership. And she’s going to talk about her story in terms of what she’s done to build a new project here in Regina called quanto talks. So she’s going to talk a little bit about that project. If you would like to be a guest on the show. You can email me at barb@googlegirl.ca or reach out on Facebook and Instagram at Above the Fold Canada. Just a reminder, you can even submit questions in advance of the live show. And I always try and work them into the conversation with our guests. So I’m your host, Barb McGrath, local business owner and Google girl. Remember, you are charged for your success. Don’t keep it a secret. Bye for now.