About Rich Spence

 Who I am now is less relevant than who I was when I put the ideas of this course into action.

I was 27, about to get married, and running a software company that made zero dollars, and an annual declared income of about $8,000/year. I had huge ambitions to become a successful entrepreneur underdog who took on any business and made it very profitable. I’m an entrepreneur. It’s in my blood. It is the only thing I ever wanted to be. When I met my wife, I had a website development company, and she worked in finance for Tim Hortons. 

We have European backgrounds (I’m half Sicilian, and she is Ukrainian) and the best way to describe our personalities is, let’s say, passionate. When we fell in love and wanted to spend all our time together, we bought our first home. 

My software company afforded me very little. We lived in Hamilton, Ontario and by Canadian government standards, I was living below the poverty line. No bank wanted to give me money to buy a home; However, our family was going to need a home. So, our first home was a duplex in central Hamilton using our RRSPs as the down payment, and even with my father as a guarantor on the loan, we barely qualified.

It drove my wife Kathy crazy on having to live with renters, and on some days it drove me nuts too.  However, buying a duplex was one of the smartest things we ever did and it gave me a taste of earning passive income through renting. We rented our home for two years, which helped pay for our monthly bills and helped us pay for our wedding. 

Why I wrote this book. 

This entire journey started with the birth of my beautiful baby girl. My star dust, my tortellini, the soul who taught me how enormous love can be and the reason my protective father's instinct kicked into overdrive.

When my daughter was born, I felt an overwhelming urge to protect and grow my family. I don’t know why; it just kicked into overdrive. On April 12, 2004, I was a husband, father, entrepreneur, with zero investments, a house on the wrong side of the tracks, and had a baby girl who needed my protection today and in 30 years. I took my life, myself, and my responsibilities a little more seriously. I picked up the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It would have been the third time I have read it. However, this time I studied it. There is a lot to this book and I have since read it another half dozen times. 

In the version I have, there is one final module (or extra appendix) that outlines how you can get someone else to pay for your child’s university education by buying a rental property. It was the right story at the right time. It was in line with my purpose in life. And so started my journey into real estate investing and purchasing my first rental property.

No one taught me how to do this. I fumbled. I made mistakes. I lost money and even worse I lost time that I won’t get back. I am writing this book for anyone who desires owning a rental property, but doesn’t know the steps to get there. Here are the steps that worked for me.

As I sit here, I am six weeks away from my daughter’s 17th birthday and 18 months away from her going away to university (insert crying emoji). Sitting in my bank account is enough money to get her through a four-year degree, away from home. My wife and I did all of that for my son and daughter by following the principles of this book.