FinPod

Meeyeon (00:11)
Hi everyone. And welcome to another episode of CFI's Member Spotlight podcast. Today I am joined by Francis Faucher and I am so excited to have him here. Francis, welcome. And where do you join us from?

Francis Faucher (00:25)
i'm joining from much for right now not much snow but it's not today so they call

Meeyeon (00:31)
It's cold everywhere, it's cold where I am. But to everyone joining us, sometimes we have people from other all sorts of different parts of the world. So it might be morning, evening, noon, super cold, super hot. But today, on this cold fine day, I am so excited to speak with you because I'm always going, I'm always hunting around on LinkedIn and other various social platforms that we're on.

Francis Faucher (00:33)
Yeah.

Meeyeon (00:55)
to connect with people, to share stories of everyone that is a part of CFI. I've always liked to call this the most accessible coffee chat in the world. And I say it again and again, but not everyone lives in a major metropolitan city. So everyone that is a member of CFI, everyone kind of knows, okay, you I'm taking these courses. There's all sorts of people across the world that are taking this.

Francis Faucher (01:07)
Hahaha

Meeyeon (01:23)
And I wonder what they're doing, where they are in their careers, whether they are, you know, like 20 years in looking for a career change or doing a master's or an undergraduate program, but want to kind of get to know what other people are up to because for me, I don't know about you, but I love learning from those around me as much as like from myself. And so I think that you have a really unique story. Yeah.

Francis Faucher (01:41)
of course.

One thing I'll say just before we move on, I think that

being curious is like one of the biggest asset you can have in life. Curious about someone's path, history, curious about other stuff, what other people are doing, that is really helpful and it's really big asset you can have, especially in finance. Yeah.

Meeyeon (01:53)
Exactly.

Yeah,

and I just find that this is such a grand statement, and it might sound cheesy, but life is just all about learning. And regardless of whatever you're doing, whether it could seem like the smallest thing, it's just kind of like every day you wake up and you do a little different things here and there. And whether it's your colleague or your dog or the person that you kind of bump into at the grocery store.

Francis Faucher (02:12)
It is.

Yeah.

Meeyeon (02:31)
There's all sorts of little things that people are always continuously working on and improving on. so, yeah. But I wanted to ask you, because I think you have a really interesting and unique career path about how you got started in your career in finance and whether the biggest question is always like the one I like to start off with is, did you always have a passion for this? Did you discover it when you were young? Did you go to school for it? Or, yeah, just how did you get started?

Francis Faucher (02:47)
Yeah.

Hahaha

I wanted to be a doctor, so that's how it started. But honestly, when I was in high school, I don't really come from a family where we talk about business, investments, and all stuff like that. What we talked about was more go to school, have good grades, go to university, get a good job, and work until you're 65. Basically the usual path, right? So.

I wasn't aware of finance and business and stuff like that. So I wanted to be a doctor because when you ask someone what you want to do later, sometimes they go on internet and say, what's the highest paying job? You see doctor, okay, that's what I want to do later. It's really not a good reason. It was a radiologist basically. There you go. But it's really...

Meeyeon (03:37)
So you want it to be a surgeon, want it to be a neurosurgeon.

to be a lawyer and then I was like okay I don't want to it. No, I don't want to cut that.

Francis Faucher (03:48)
It's really not for good reasons. It's not the way you should approach life and base life decisions. anyways, so basically in college I went into the science path, basically what we call in French, science dans l'atheur, is where if you want to go, you have physics, have chemistry courses and stuff like that. But I met someone who,

well, my girlfriend at the time, her father was a businessman. He had a high school degree and that's it. He started a business, grew it for like 20, 25 years, had a successful exit. So I realized that there was like more to just like work your whole life and that's it. So I got really interested into business and he was also investing in the stock market. So I got interested also in the stock market.

So then I decided, okay, I want to create a business and someone really gave me a good suggestion. You should go be a CPA or whatever the name that was called at the time, because you need to learn accounting, financial statements and all this stuff. So what I decided to, yeah.

Meeyeon (04:59)
That's so interesting that you got your first exposure

through your then girlfriend's father. That's such a fortuitous way to get exposed to it.

Francis Faucher (05:04)
Yeah.

And I don't know if you know the, if you read the book, rich dad, poor dad. Okay. My father is an engineer. worked his whole life for the government. So I really had like these two profiles. well, like, I mean, he, he's the poor guy. He's not poor. He has a good pension. He's retired and like,

Meeyeon (05:12)
Yep. Yeah, yeah. I have a copy of that on my bookshelf.

Is he the poor dad?

But like the mindset

Francis Faucher (05:28)
Yeah, exactly in the sense that he's not taking that much risk. So of course, when I wanted to start a business, like go to school first, get your degree and then we'll see after, you know, but he he's always my family has already always been supportive in what I was doing. So I thank them for that. But yeah, so I got I looked at what schools were.

available because don't forget I wasn't the science path at the time. I was not in the administration path or business path but by chance the science profile I had

could fit the prerequisite for HEC Montreal, HEC Montreal, which is a good business school in Montreal. So I went there and what I love about HEC is that there's a core curriculum where you learn about marketing, management, accounting, finance, IT operations and all this stuff, and then you specialize.

one thing that is most important, I think it's to never stop learning, especially in finance because the market is changing so much. And whether you learn from a university or via CFI or YouTube or a book, you need to keep learning because the market, like there's AI.

Right now, think about it, five years ago, people talking about AI, they're crazy and it's never gonna exist. It's like in the movies and that's it. Now, if you don't use chat GPT, well, people are ahead of you. the market is changing and there's stuff like that that you need to get ahead of the curve if you can.

Meeyeon (07:02)
to be like

a first adopter. Yeah.

Francis Faucher (07:04)
Trying to

trying to But yeah, basically just to close the big bubble. I'm trying to make I went to I should say One of the most important thing I decided to do is a lot of networking and by networking a lot I met people. Yeah, my parents are in real estate. My parents are in private equity. They're invest in private companies Hold on you can I knew you could invest in the stock market, but I didn't know you could invest in private companies You know, I don't come from a background like a finance

background or business background. So for me it was completely new. So the thing that I think was

The big aha moment for me is talking to people. When I say it's important to talk to people to understand their history, their background, is because there's always something you don't know. And if it was not for that person who told me, I had a business, I invest in the stock market, like, I didn't know that existed. So don't be afraid to talk to people. You never know what could come out of it. So yeah, in a nutshell, basically I finished my

my university and then I go to work to a bank, scale, like jump up the ladder and retired in 2019 to work on my passions and which is stock market, real estate, private companies investment and I own my consulting and advisory firm, specialized in real estate.

not just real estate but private equity and corporate finance as well.

Meeyeon (08:44)
And so we have a big,

like I want to talk about the first job you had out of HEC Was it an undergraduate degree? Okay. And so then after HEC and then after going to a bank, tell me what that first job was like and take me through like what it was in terms of, know, was it what you expected it was? Was it the job that you wanted? And how long did you do it? What kind of like life lessons maybe did you take away from there?

Francis Faucher (08:49)
Yup.

Yeah, it is. It was.

Yeah.

Meeyeon (09:13)
How did you springboard to the next one? Because between the first job and where you are today, I feel like there's a lot to share in between.

Francis Faucher (09:20)
a lot, definitely. So for me, as soon as I started HEC I wanted to have a foot in a bank. So about, I think it was one or two sessions.

in the, HEC I wanted to work in the bank for the summer, right? So the way, the reason why I it's always important to network is that you never know if you know someone that could know someone that could help you out, right? So I knew someone that was working in one of the good banks here in Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, or RBC, and I've asked them, can you just open the door? Just one introduction. I just want to, like,

Introduced me to let's say your boss. I just want to have a 30 minutes meeting. That's it. That's all I want So I went ahead I had that meeting and I got the job like he dating it was a back-office job nothing client face it was And that's pretty important because it was a back-office. It was commercial credit that

Basically, there's a commercial banker that senses application to the credit department The credit department approves or didn't decline the the application and then it comes to me if it was approved and then I just Process that's it. I like do the credit that was approved

But since I loved finance, because you might understand that I'm passionate about finance and I love breathe eat finance all time, all day. I was always reading the application and it was funny because.

There was always the same guy that was always approved first shot and there was the other guy that was always decline denied the first shot and then Work back and back and forth and then got approved and it was always the same type of client It was not much difference, but it was the difference in the application the same ratios not much difference But it was the application that was different like the first one was really tight on his like the five C's of credit and like

All his application was perfect. The other guy, was messy, was not that good, was not that extensive. So that's the reason why it was denied. So it showed a little bit the commercial banking and like the CBCA, you know you have a designation that is CBCA. And one of the thing is that how you create a good application and later on.

Meeyeon (11:44)
Yeah.

Francis Faucher (11:50)
I took that course and like, yeah, yeah, I remember in the past, like this would have been useful for the other guy that was always declined.

I knew I wanted to be a financial planner for the bank. So basically I started like the networking and by the end of my last year, I sort of had a job for an account manager in a bank, in a branch at RBC Steel.

So I started, I finished at HEC I think it was 2014, and by the end of 2014 I had a job at RBC as an account manager. But I wanted to scale, I wanted to be a financial planner, not as soon as I could, but...

Yeah, I knew there was courses I needed to do, so I got on them. I enrolled in the course, and two weeks later, I scheduled the exam and focused on that. it took me about one year later, I got a promotion as a senior account manager, so in 2015-ish, and I finished all my courses, because you need to, in Quebec, it's called the IQPF, I think, is still the case.

But you need to get a license to be a financial planner so I needed to do all ten courses and then do that big course and that exam and by the end of 2016 December 2016 I was passing my exam and I needed to pass that exam because I already got already had a job offer to be a financial planner

Meeyeon (13:05)
Mm-hmm.

Francis Faucher (13:23)
So I passed the exam and everything worked out. Thank God. But yeah, in 2014, I became a financial planner. And up until like 2019, I worked at RBC as a financial planner.

Meeyeon (13:38)
And like something I want to touch on is, so you say that you had, developed this great interest in finance and that's what you knew your passion was. But did you also, would you also say, and this kind of like will precipitate the next kind of chapter that of your life, but would you say you were always kind of entrepreneurial? Maybe at a young, really? Because I think when someone says they want to go into financial planning, that means that you want to deal with people. And like, that means that you want to deal with people at...

Francis Faucher (13:55)
Not at all. Not at

Meeyeon (14:06)
like a retail level, you don't know who's going to walk in the door. And for me, that is something I could never handle. So like I stayed in investments and in in capital markets because I could not handle that.

Francis Faucher (14:09)
Yeah. Yeah.

No, I would say that I was good with people, right? I don't have a problem. Like talking to you on a podcast right now, it's not a stressful moment. It's not hard for me to talk with people. I actually enjoy it. But being an entrepreneur, I didn't know it existed at the time. So it was not really an option for me. But.

Being, I would say, a salesman, it's not being a salesman, but being a salesman, it's not hard for me. But I think that in business, being a good salesman is really important, especially if you have shareholders, if you have stakeholders like bankers as well. I don't wanna say you're selling a product as a CEO, that's not what I'm saying. It's more like, how could I say? You need to be confident in your numbers. If you say things, you need to be confident about what you're saying.

Hesitate, yeah, we're doing okay, we're doing good. No, I'm not sure. You need to be confident about what you're telling people because even if, let's say, you got a shareholder meeting on a public company, people nowadays, you have a transcript of what was said. You can take the transcript, put it in chat GPT, analyze that transcript. Yeah, there was hesitant on this and that. It could be a negative.

Point that you show to people so I was not an entrepreneur, but I Learned about the entrepreneurial world, but I've always been I don't want to say good with people but comfortable with talking with people Thank you

Meeyeon (15:59)
think you're very good with people just like based off even this alone. But as like

a financial planner, did you ever have that task of, okay, like you start with the bank and by this time after you finished your training, your licensing, all this stuff, we need you to build a book of clients that has like a net worth of X. Like that's a big pressure. And that's like, that's almost like, that is essentially building your business, right? Like the book of business.

Francis Faucher (16:15)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

It is, definitely.

Definitely. I would say that as soon as I entered SSA, I became an entrepreneur and I had an entrepreneur mindset for sure. And as a financial planner, you start with like a base salary at first, but then you switch to a hundred percent commission. So talking about the entrepreneurial side, you eat, you're either good or bad. And what I would say is that at first I was pretty, pretty good, but at the end,

Meeyeon (16:39)
Yeah.

stressful.

Francis Faucher (16:55)
I was not that pretty good and I'm gonna explain why I've been trading the market since I'm like the past 12 years I've been investing in real estate for the past 10 years

So when I was a financial planner, at first I was focusing a lot of that, but by the end of it, I was trading the market, like I was trading at the pre-market and I was trading the opening, and then I went to work at like 10:30, 11 o'clock. I was able to do that because I was 100 % commissioned, so I can come at work whenever I wanted. And...

I was more focused on my trading and my real estate investment. So, and I was making more money doing this than I was doing in as a financial planner. So at one point it just didn't make sense for me to stay. And I was like, I decided to quit. could have continued. was not. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And for me it was.

Meeyeon (17:51)
Yeah, that inflection point where you're like, is, this is, that's time for the switch.

Francis Faucher (18:00)
Like you need to be an entrepreneur to do this type of things. If you're not, if you don't have that mentality, you're saying you're more a capital market structure. You're not that entrepreneurial. Don't do what I did because having a pension, having insurance, having this, you don't have necessarily that when you're an entrepreneur, right? So.

Meeyeon (18:19)
Yeah, how you can go to the dentist? It's

so expensive.

Francis Faucher (18:22)
Yeah, exactly. You realize some stuff. Dentists and stuff like that are expensive. But that being said, it gave me the freedom to work on these projects. And at the same time, I've built my consulting and advisory. I'm teaching financial engineering applied to real estate via one of my business. I invest in real estate in the US, in Canada.

I've launched funds in the US. We're launching a VC fund now in Quebec. It's incredible. So many things you can do when you have... You're the master of your own time. When you get back your time, it's totally different ballgame, I would say.

Meeyeon (19:08)
So one thing I think our listeners would love to hear, because I always hear, and some people are very bold, and they all say, in X years time, I want to have my own company. I want to be a CEO. But theoretically, anyone can incorporate and become a CEO. Like, could become a CEO tomorrow. It doesn't mean I'm a successful one. But the thing is, you've been doing this for several years. So clearly, you're successful. this is your bread and butter. This is how you're making a living.

Francis Faucher (19:26)
Exactly.

Meeyeon (19:37)
I would love to hear like, how did you start? Like after you quit your job at Royal and you are all of a sudden without any of the benefits that you would gain from being with a steady employer, like how did you start? Like what is step number one to starting your own business? And like, what were the most stressful points, exciting points to get to where you are today?

Francis Faucher (19:53)
Yeah.

Yeah, I'd say that like I said, I've been trading for like the past 12 years. Of course, at first I lost tons and tons of money. Like when you trade, you read a book or you took a course, you think you're gonna be an awesome trader and you're just a retail trader and the smart money like just takes your money out of like in a week or two and then you put more and you put more and more and you think that because you put more, you're gonna win, right? No.

You're losing again and again. took me years before I understood some stuff and risk management and all this type of things.

Meeyeon (20:39)
Do you have a niche? Like, do

you have a special asset class or anything that you're focused in? Is it real estate?

Francis Faucher (20:43)
Mostly stocks.

I don't I I tried bonds. I what well stocks and options. I've tried futures I've tried bonds It is I don't personally like it. I've tried Forex. I didn't like it I've always coming. I'm always coming back to stocks and stocks and options on

Meeyeon (20:51)
Features is a dangerous market to be playing in.

But even with equities,

are you interested, like, do you mainly invest in like industrials? Like, for example, like my family is a big in commodities.

Francis Faucher (21:08)
It depends. Yeah.

Yeah, basically it depends on the timeframe I'm trying to trade. Let's say I'm day trading, of course it's going to be low float stocks with a lot of volatility and that are in play today. So they have a news on it, a catalyst basically. But what I'm also doing is that I build long short portfolios, That are, I'm trying to be market neutral, better neutral. And I have a mix of long and short. Basically I'm trying to be long mid caps depending on like I'm starting with a

a top-down approach where I'm trying to be macro looking at indicators and if the indicator says the market is gonna be bullish, I'm gonna be long cyclical and be short defensive. If the indicator is telling me, if my view is bearish, I'm gonna be more long defensive and short cyclicals, right? And I'm long always mid caps. I'm not.

like small cap or large cap and I'm short always large caps I don't touch mega caps and that's this is just because of the volatility it brings

Small caps are too volatile. They're not like there's no there's not much analyst on these type of stocks So you don't have a lot of information necessarily But when you start being a mid cap between three and ten billion, let's say three and fifteen billions there's more analysts on the stocks and my shorts usually are large caps that Were either bigger large cap or even mega caps that are on the trending down right now for quite a while they lost and it's a 30% from where they were before and you

you

see them still going down. So this is type of trade that I'm doing, but the horizon for this type of trades are like from one to three months, right? So I wanna move for this type, for this stock in a one to three months. I don't do much long-term investments. That's just a personal preference. I prefer to have it parked in private companies or real estate as well. I do real estate project, development project.

Value-wide projects as well. I've touched pretty much all type of assets or at least analyze all type of asset industrial commercial name it month mixed-use hotels anyways So yeah, that's a little bit the type of stocks I'm investing and I'm also an option straighter Like on a weekly basis, I'm trying to generate some income out of the SPX or the NASDAQ and stuff like that. Yeah

Meeyeon (23:49)
And so, yeah, we can get back to, so like after you left Royal, what is step one? What is step one? Like that looks like nobody knows.

Francis Faucher (23:49)
I don't know where I was going with all that.

Right, right, okay, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got you.

At first, before I left Royal, I wanted to make sure I had a decent income coming in, right? So I was able to live out of the income from Royal. And I got that from my real estate projects. I got that from my trading. And at that point, I was a teacher in financial engineering as well, all from my companies, right? So.

You want to make sure you have sufficient money on the side and you're able to whatever, be able to live six months out of income with no income at all. Like, because as you said, anybody can start a business. Anybody can be a trader. Go ahead and trade the market. Doesn't mean you're going to be successful. Doesn't mean because you start a business, you're an entrepreneur, right? But doesn't mean you're going to have success. But for me, I think if you want to allow yourself a little bit of time, make sure you have

some money on this side. Or if you're young, you just got out of university, do it. You don't have any responsibility. You live with your parents, do it. It's time. It's the time to make mistakes. It doesn't mean that because you're 50 years old, you don't want to do this. It doesn't mean that. What I'm saying is that it's less stressful. You can live with lower means. If you don't make that much money, that's fine. Don't go ahead and buy a Ferrari day one.

Don't do that. Make sure you have money on this side or you don't have financial obligations. That's for sure and Give yourself some time

try to find something you're passionate about. I'm passionate about football and finance. I'm not gonna go play football, right? I'm not gonna go play football. It doesn't make sense for me to go play football, but I'm passionate about finance. We can talk about finance for hours. I know we have a time frame that we need to respect, so I'm gonna stop there, but find something you're passionate about and...

Nobody can speak more about that subject than you in the sense that you want to talk about finance for hours until five o'clock in the morning I'm in because I love that so much find something you're passionate about and start a business with that because trust me at some times Let's say I was investing in a real estate project. I was low I was

How do I say, in terms of net worth, was asset rich and cash poor.

And on paper, was not super rich. I was rich on paper, but I was cash poor. And I was like, what's the solution? Am I gonna go bankrupt? Like it's stressful. Having a business is stressful because there's no paycheck that are coming in, right? So that was one of the lowest point where I was like, okay, I did a mistake by over leveraging everything being that low on cash. And that's when I realized, okay, you need to

change something. another thing about being an entrepreneur is that it's okay to fail. I failed so many times and it's fine. It's okay. Bad project, bad investment, losing money, it's fine. But you need to understand, you need to learn from this, from these mistakes because

Having like trade the market for 12 years, you learn stuff, you're a fool if you repeat these mistakes. Like how many times have I lost money because out of like fear of missing out? The stock was going up, going up, going up. I'm in, then it goes down. I mean, come on. So you learn from these type of mistakes. So yeah, never again I was low, low, low on cash because you learn from these type of things. Yeah.

Meeyeon (27:47)
And a lot

of it probably came from your experience as a financial planner as well, right? You probably got a lot of exposure to, and like it probably prepared you really well for your next chapter.

Francis Faucher (27:52)
Definitely.

I did, but sometimes I just didn't listen to the advice that I was giving to client. just said, no, I'm okay. I'm going to be fine. No, I need to follow the right guidance that I gave to my clients in the past.

because it's the way to do and if you go outside of, I don't wanna say these rules because they're not rules. You can do whatever you want but you gotta be careful when you bend these rules and you go outside of these rules and stuff like that because they're there for a reason, right?

Meeyeon (28:34)
So tell us a little bit about your business today and what you do day to day, what keeps you busy.

Francis Faucher (28:39)
Yeah, basically of course, let's say I'm a fractional CFO for a business. There's many things that I do, right? Of course, the...

Like in the pre-market I look at the market. I'm less of a day trader now I'd say I'm a more hands-off trader But I look at the market definitely at 3 30 every day I look at the market. I mean Eastern time so like 32 minute 30 minutes before the end of the Trading day do I need to make adjustment? So I have options plays That I look if I need to do adjustment on it either if the market

went really up or it went really down like as an example on Monday there was adjustment that needed to be done because the market changed a lot overnight over the weekend so you still need to be active around these type of things in terms of real estate of course you need to follow your projects you need to analyze the type of deals that I receive I'm the one who of course takes care of all the underwriting of every projects

That's one thing as well. Sometimes no real estate projects goes exactly according to what you plan. So you need to like plan for these types of things. What else to do? Of course, with my consulting and advisory, I have mandates for being a fractional CFO. So of course, preparing for let's say FP&A and budgeting & forecasting.

I also do some, depending on the time, but sometimes business valuations. By the way, I'm currently doing my CBV designation. I'm not a business CBV yet. I'm doing the exam. So of course I'm studying as well. And that's something I want to say as well. I'm always trying to reserve some time for reading, but well, learning in general.

I always want to learn more, so either for the stock market, either for business. And of course, right now we're launching a VC fund, so I have meeting with lawyers, our financial compliance team, so make sure everything goes in the right place. So yeah, there's a lot of stuff to do, but I love it. I would not change anything.

Meeyeon (31:04)
Do you have a business partner that you work

with?

Francis Faucher (31:07)
Depending on what I on the consulting side know but of course in the funds I have partners in real estate I have partners as well and a stock market. I don't have any partners But real estate the thing is that hey, I'm not like what I say that I'm asset rich I'm not that rich I'm not at a point like I don't need anyone yet. That's not what I wanted to say and So I need partners financial partners. I need partners as well for

for

the network is one of my partners, Sebastian, is he lives in Florida. He's from Montreal, well, from Quebec, and he moved to Florida, I think, two years ago. And we have projects in Florida, right? So he's the one that is over there on a day-to-day basis. And if there's a need to have a meeting, jump on the call, no problem, I'm gonna be there for sure. And...

Meeyeon (32:00)
How did

you meet these people?

Francis Faucher (32:02)
Network, I keep on repeating myself, but networking is one of the most important thing if you're, if you start a business or you're in finance. Like the first job I had at Royal Bank was because of someone I knew. The reason why I invest in,

Meeyeon (32:05)
Mm-hmm.

Francis Faucher (32:22)
The reason why I ran from wanting to be a doctor to being in business was because of someone I knew. The reason why I'm in real estate, stock market, private equity is because of someone I knew that gave me an idea. So the way I meet these type of partners is...

I know you, you know me, I know someone who could be interested in what you're doing. Some of the fractional CFO mandate I had was someone I knew, I know someone who could help your business. Here's the number. Just like I always say, just open a door. Don't sell me, you don't need to sell me. Don't do the job of selling me, I'm gonna do it myself. Just introduce me, just.

make me jump on a call for 30 minutes, 15 minutes, give me five minutes, but not more than that. And that's just the way I meet my partners. Like as an example, one of my partners, Sebastian, is someone ...

Okay, I had a networking event. I talked to a guy. He's he was a lawyer. And I was in real estate. So we just like had a conversation at that time. And at one point, we just went on a launch and like, yeah, I invested for it. So yeah, I know a guy who went from Montreal, well, Quebec, and he moved to Florida. You need to talk with this guy. Perfect. Schedule the meeting. Perfect. So we had a call.

It went well so and then we talked further further and further and that's the way We developed that relationship and then this guy was also involved in Private let's say venture cap partnership with other guys So yeah, you you launch a fund In the u.s. We were looking for launching a fund in Quebec. It's gonna be a venture cap where all specialists and startups and then

like investment and everything, but we never launch a fund

Can you help out? They only have questions for now. Perfect. Ask the question, no problem. We will go for a coffee and then I help with no intent of being a partner. I just love helping people with their questions. So basically they asked me a ton and ton and ton of questions, make me meet the other partners. And at one point they asked me, do you want to be a partner? I'm gonna like dilute myself. I'm gonna give you the shares. And do you want to be a partner?

Well, yeah, of course I'd love to. So I think that networking like gives you so many opportunities, honestly. Yeah.

Meeyeon (35:02)
Yeah, like

the big takeaway, think a lot of conversations like it is like the most important thing is being genuine and sincere, honest with your intentions and always being open to being wrong and learning and just continuing that growth. But I would love to hear in all of the time that you have been working. So between Royal Bigger Financial Planner, you probably see a lot of crazy things here and there.

Francis Faucher (35:11)
Yeah

Yeah.

Meeyeon (35:32)
when you become your own business owner, there's so many amazing people that you meet. But for probably like every like one or two amazing people that you meet, you probably meet like a couple of folks where like, yeah, like I don't think we should ever enter into a business relationship. I'd love to wrap up the podcast by understanding if you could look back at your career. What are some...

Francis Faucher (35:47)
Definitely.

Meeyeon (35:57)
What are some pieces of advice that you would give yourself based on all the ups and downs that you've had?

Francis Faucher (36:05)
Invest in GameStop and Bitcoin when it does. I'm I'm Honestly speaking is Do more due diligence on the partners you're choosing to do business with Because I was the type of person that yeah, I got all excited and I was trust I was trusting everybody right, but not everybody has good intentions Necessarily. Okay, it's not everybody

Meeyeon (36:33)
First thing is you go on

the government website, go to the provincial legislator and see if there's any outstanding lawsuits.

Francis Faucher (36:38)
Exactly that but even then You might not see everything it's just How how could I say how does the pay the person acts? Acts in like in front of everybody within on the personal side in front in front of the public and everything

What does people are saying about that person because your reputation and your relationship is really something Ryan Miller is like As someone that I I've talked about and he's always talking about reputation and relationships, right? It's something that you need to be Aware of if you have a good reputation of or a good relationship with someone and

Some people always act with a facade. They're not genuine. They try to appear a really good person, but they're not. I was a lot, I was trusting too much. was being naive, I would say. I wasn't doing a due diligence. I was excited in doing a business and there's a difference, sorry, there's a difference between,

doing let's say a real estate project on a deal by deal basis in the sense that we create a business, your business comes in, my business comes in, we do the project, we finish the project, and then we go our separate ways. That's a deal by deal project. But when you create a business and everybody is now an owner of that business and then we're gonna buy multiple projects via this business, that's different because

Whatever you distribute the profit, let's say. Now what are we doing with the money? If you have your own business, not an issue, you do whatever you want with your business, right? I do whatever I want with my business. But if you have a common business, that's when some frictions might happen because if you're a low on cashflow it's not the time to spend on superficial stuff.

And I'd say, like the question is what would be the advice is do some due diligence. If you want to start a business is do some due diligence on the person you're working with for sure. And like don't be afraid to network. Like don't be afraid to ask questions. The worst thing you can, like if you ask a good question or if you ask for a meeting, the worst answer you're going to have is no, I'm not available. I'm sorry. Right. But if you don't ask that question, you'll automatically get a no. Right.

So don't be afraid to ask question. Don't be afraid like me out when you talk to me on net LinkedIn You talk to me. Are you like open to doing and it like a podcast? Of course, I'm open but if you didn't take the chance to ask me of I would never have said yes, right? So don't be afraid to go network. Everybody's shy at some point, right? No, nobody's like super excited to go networking necessarily. Nobody's are

necessarily comfortable so you're not the only one don't be afraid networking you can get so much out of it I would say that would be my advice don't be afraid to do some networking to talk with people and yeah that's pretty much it

Meeyeon (39:53)
Yeah, because to a degree,

there's like, I've always said, you know, it's kind of like when someone first starts a job, especially first out of university, people say there's no bad questions, okay, there's no bad questions, especially when you're new. And then after a while, like, yeah, there's some pretty bad questions if you don't know the answers to in a couple months. But generally, I would say, like, if someone is just very curious and wanting to learn and just, you know, smart about things, there's no such thing as bad questions. There are bad answers. And so like,

Francis Faucher (40:20)
Yeah.

Meeyeon (40:21)
The biggest thing is that, you know, as, I get older, the thing is you become more comfortable with yourself. You become more comfortable with putting yourself out there, learning from others, learning to be wrong and being comfortable with that. And that's one of the biggest, I think, contributors to anyone's pers like personal success, whether it's on the business side of things and your personal side of things is just when you are open to learning, genuinely curious and just.

Francis Faucher (40:34)
Right.

Exactly.

Meeyeon (40:51)
able to learn from mistakes because to be a business owner, everyone has to make mistakes. Jeff Bezos, he didn't start Amazon on the first go and it's like all of sudden this rock star success, he's probably had a bajillion failures, right? But the point is that he's actually learned from each and every one of those. As long as a mistake means something, then it's a good thing that it happened.

Francis Faucher (40:59)
you

Not at all. Exactly.

You need to learn from these mistakes, of course. And you mentioned something, don't be afraid of being wrong. It's okay, it's fine. Don't be all like big ego and say, no, I'm never wrong. Don't worry, I'm always wrong. It's okay, I wanna learn, it's fine. Sometimes you don't wanna be wrong on really important things. But yeah, don't be afraid of being wrong. It's totally fine. Ask questions, be curious. Being curious is like one of the most biggest assets you can have.

Meeyeon (41:42)
And one of the places where if you're not okay learning that you can be wrong is the place that'll punish you the most is in markets. Like, you'll get punished.

Francis Faucher (41:50)
wow. yeah.

my god. Like is it John Keynes who said the market can be irrational longer than you can stay solvent? I think it's John Keynes. I think whatever someone said the market can be irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

Meeyeon (42:03)
I think it is a Maynard Keen stick. That is one, yeah.

far longer

than you could handle.

Francis Faucher (42:14)
Long way longer it

like I've learned that a ton of time and finally I I'm learning it right now and That's fine. You need to understand it But how many times I've entered a play because of the the FOMO of fear of being wrong fear of loss fear of whatever So don't be afraid of being wrong it's part of the game that's fine. That's fine. Yeah

Meeyeon (42:41)
gosh.

I always say this, but honestly, like every single time that I get an opportunity to do these member spotlights, I absolutely love them because I feel like I always leave the conversation one friend richer and I always learn something from someone. And so...

Francis Faucher (42:57)
Of course. If ever you come visit

your friend in Montreal, let me know.

Meeyeon (43:02)
I will, but you know what? Right now I have a

16 month old toddler and holy smokes. He is shaving years off my life. I'm so stressed. But I will actually be in Montreal at some point because my friend decided to live there permanently. She's coming in March because she has a five year old daughter. And then like, I want to say her son is three months now, but I will definitely be in Quebec at some point. And then that'd be so wonderful to meet you in person.

Francis Faucher (43:06)
Bring him or her, no problem.

Awesome.

Definitely. we're going to teach, I don't know if it's a board girl, but we're going to teach your baby about finance, real estate. We're going to start really young. No problem. No issue there. Definitely. Likewise.

Meeyeon (43:39)
that was so fun. Well, it has been an absolute pleasure having you. think this,

I've loved this podcast. I think that everyone's gonna have so much to learn from it and I myself have. So without further ado, we're gonna sign off for now everyone, but we will see you in our next episode of Member Spotlight.

Francis Faucher (43:47)
Likewise.

Thank you guys, it was a pleasure. Thanks Meeyeon, I appreciate it.