Welcome to Invest in Yourself, the Digital Entrepreneur Podcast. Join the podcast mogul Phil Better as he interviews successful entrepreneurs that make their living in the digital world. Now let's join your host, Phil Better, and your special guest today on invest in yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast.

Hello, and welcome back to another exciting episode of invest in yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. I am your host Phil Bedding, the podcast mogul, and I am thrilled to introduce our distinguished guest today. They are not only a seasoned real estate professional, they are a trailblazer with over 31 years of experience in the industry. As the chairman and founder of Smart Real Estate Coaching, our guest is at the helm of a 4 time best selling authorship of Forbes Business Council membership and a 3 Times Inc 5 1,000 honoree for fastest growing company. He's on a mission to transform w two employees into creating financial, in creating creative into creative financing real estate investors and his track record speaks volume with over a $100,000,000 in transactions completed. As if that's not impressive enough, he is also wearing the hat of host of the globally ranked top 0.5% podcast smart real estate coach podcast. Get ready to delve into the world of real estate transformation and creative financing with our expert guest because this is an episode you don't wanna miss. So without further ado with me hyping up our guest, please welcome Chris Prefontaine.

Chris, thank you so much for being here.

Hey, Phil. Thanks for having me. You know, you're doing the intro and I'm thinking the show is investing yourself and your last name is Better. How could you get that's just perfect.

I know. It it's it was a like when I was dropped from the skies. They're like, yeah. This is good. This guy is gonna be making a show about investing in even dawned on me till 2 seconds ago. And I also like to make people feel better. But hey. Look at that.

Chris, I'm very happy to have you here. I was able to talk with your, your father, I believe, yeah, your father earlier, or, yeah, on the on the podcast. I'm really excited to talk with you. So let's start with it. What's up? What is it about the world of entrepreneurship that you love? The world of entrepreneurship.

The word freedom comes to mind. Mhmm. And it probably comes to mind, Phil, because it like, we did a survey of our of our wicked smart community, and that the reason that just dinged me right away when you said is that came up over and over and over again, sort of a surprise to us. Like, that was the number one thing people wanted. I'm like, bingo. That's what entrepreneurship business have to be real estate, of course. So that's what comes to mind for me.

We can dig deeper, but freedom is most definitely, top of mind. And what was it about real estate that drew you in? Why was real estate what drew you in?

I can tell you what keeps me there now, and I think it was probably the same that drew me in. That was, 2 things. 1 is the variety of different niches inside of the real estate umbrella. Let's call it the real estate industry. There are so many different things to do. That can be a curse and a blessing. It could be a curse for someone who goes from shiny object to shiny object. But in my case, I I did and still, advocate to work on a niche and mash through the daylights out of it.

Like, I'm talking 3 to 7 years and then go, okay. What can I stack on now to that? And the other piece that's that that is interesting then and now, why I'm still here after 33 years in the business, is it's never the same when I when I use the word verati. Never ever the same. We get deals from students on a weekly basis. We we do deals with them in the trenches. And on occasion, still, almost weekly, I'll go, well, that's different, and work through it. That's cool. So now I as soon as I'm bored from all that, then I won't be here anymore.

So it it I can't see that happening in real estate. That's what keeps me going as it got

me in. I love it. Speaking of real estate, well, obviously, Speaking of the deals that you do and how they sometimes completely be like, wow. That's completely new to me. Yeah. What was it like doing your first deal in real estate?

Bit of a high because the the the the the visual just came to mind when you asked the what what was it like. It was a property on a golf course, a house with some extra land, and I had luckily grew up with a father who was in the welding business, but he dabbled in land. And I knew kinda how to how to subdivide. And then I had a partner that knew the same. So it was a bit of a high because I I got to see his stuff come to fruition. And I'm talking, I was probably, gosh, 25 or 6 at the time. I was still working at my father's welding supply business, but I was down on the side. And that was my first deal.