Mastering Work-Life Balance & Smart Investing: Steps to Success with Calvin Hexter & Zorya Belanger
Calvin: Hello, good morning. I’m here with Zorya Belanger, and I’m excited to talk to you about your investing journey. You have a very interesting story, and I’m really excited to dive into it, because you’re not just an investor that has seen success over the years, and obviously had its challenges, learned from your challenges, but you’ve grown quite considerably to a very, you’ve probably done more than what most people are ever going to be able to do, but also, very most importantly, you’re in a position where a lot of people want to get to, and you also have a family as well, and that’s tough to balance. Can you tell everybody how you got started in real estate investing, and maybe some of the things that have contributed to where you are today, and keeping that balance, or what seems like good balance?
Zorya: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. So our real estate journey, my husband and I, we started in, I’d say 2010, when we bought our first condo. We knew nothing about really buying. We made a lot of mistakes, but we also learned a lot from that. And then three years later, I’m also a former engineer, so is my husband. We were both working full-time, and I felt like that was an easier way to get started. We didn’t have kids yet.
If you’re starting when you have kids, it is a little trickier, because you’re so much busier, but we were both working full-time, and we knew that we wanted something different, not just working at our jobs for the next 40 years. So that’s when we actually started to look around to see if there’s actually people who invest in real estate in Edmonton, and found a great educational platform that we actually learned a little bit from. We learned a lot from them, and that’s when we really got started in 2013. But yeah, after basically a weekend event, we had the confidence to, we were able to get our team together and put two properties under contract within a month. And that’s how it kind of got started. And for the next four years, we focused on joint ventures, and then things turned and had our first baby, and that’s when things really actually, I say it gets sometimes harder with kids, but for us, it was easier, because I could just step away from my job. I was just focused on my baby and real estate, and that’s been really things that took off.
And we went from like five doors at the time to getting, like starting getting into multifamily, and got a sixplex, and then another sixplex, another sixplex, and another eightplex. And now we’re at 177 doors that I’m managing. And yeah, it is a balance. And I don’t think I could do that if I wasn’t doing it full time now. So after Matt leave with my first child, I never went back to my job, and I just focused on real estate. And that’s one of the things that’s helped me, because it would be harder if I had a job. And also having the support from my husband, Patrick, that’s been huge as well.
Calvin: Amazing, amazing. Zorya, what is one rule that you’ve created for yourself that you stood by from the very beginning that has allowed you to maintain this balance in life?
Zorya: Well, I think coming from being an engineer, I do want to get educated first before jumping into it. And so that’s one thing. And as I mentioned earlier, so what really like helped through that whole journey was having the proper support and the right education before getting into a certain like strategy in real estate. So whether that was joint ventures, or multifamily, like I’ve had several mentors along the road that have helped me get to where I am. It would not be as possible, just doing it on my own. You can learn a lot from books too. That’s a great way to start. But sometimes you just got to learn from the people who’ve done it before.
Calvin: Amazing advice. I love it. Fantastic. Awesome. I love it.
