Define Your Why In Life With Matt Buschman
Thanks For tuning in today. I have a really exciting and special guest for you today. His name is Matt Horshkinen. He's a self taught serial entrepreneur, and he's the cofounder of the Synergy Real Estate Group with his partner PJ Lucente under the Keller Williams Lifestyle Realty brand. He's also the president of Bouchente Development.
Scott Dillingham:With his endless drive for success, Matt continues to open up doors of opportunities for himself and his family. So Matt, welcome.
Matt Buschman:Scott, how are you?
Scott Dillingham:I'm great. How are you today?
Matt Buschman:Good, man. Good.
Scott Dillingham:Awesome. No. I'm really excited to to have you on. And I think we'll start, like, when it all started. So where did you grow up?
Matt Buschman:It's actually funny because when you asked me to be on the show months ago, you had asked me about, we're gonna start this with your life story. And at that time, I never actually really thought about that. You sit back and reflect on how do you get to where you're at, and it's mind boggling actually the steps to get there. Grew up in Leamington, Ontario. Extremely hardworking family.
Matt Buschman:I think that's really where I get a lot of my work ethics from is my mom and my dad. I went to a school called St. Louis. There, I think, for me, grades 5 through 8 were extremely important. Okay.
Matt Buschman:We had a a teacher and coach that I think to this day, really positively affected so many people in our generation. When you think back to we had practices before school, practices during lunch, practices after school. You don't see that today. But we what we were thinking was everything that you're creating for an individual. So the self discipline, the work ethic, all that stuff is when we look back today, I'm like, that was a major item for me.
Matt Buschman:From there, we went to I went to Cardinal Carter High School, continued to play sports awards here and there across the board. But at that point, it's interesting because I felt like I I wouldn't say got lost, but it was just you had to make decisions. Yep. What's the rest of your life gonna look like? And going through high school, you come across subjects and grades and so on and so forth.
Matt Buschman:But I had a hard time really honing in on what made sense for me. I was an entrepreneur, just didn't know it. You know, what I wanted to know, they didn't teach in school. And that was an interesting next step. So there was a coop program.
Matt Buschman:At the time, my dad was 1. He an entrepreneur. He was a floor installer and into renovations. And I said, you know what? I'll go work for him as part of the coop program.
Scott Dillingham:Yeah. That's exactly what I did with my father. I started working with him doing carpentry and construction. Yep.
Matt Buschman:It was a couple of things. A, I got to be with my dad, which I thought was cool. 2, was it got you exposed to the new build world. In in the back of my mind, I really did want to become a something in the real estate. I wasn't sure what existed.
Matt Buschman:I didn't know what options were there. So it's neat. So we would go in and do new build projects and you got to see from ground up what these things and what that process would look like. And right there, it was sold. But at the same time, I said to myself, my god, my dad works extremely hard.
Matt Buschman:So I made a promise to myself that I was gonna try to change the course of the family. Yep. And from there, kind of decisions were made. Right? I decided to get into real estate.
Matt Buschman:I asked my parents for a $47,000 loan. I was in high school still, and I wanted to buy my first flip. So So back in the day, you scrolled through MLS and it was dinosaurs back then. But I had a concept and idea I wanted to do, so I bought my first first house on the west end and convinced my parents you could move in it till tomorrow. All we gotta do is change your painting floors.
Matt Buschman:So I take my dad through the house and I lose him at one point. He goes into the bathroom. All of a sudden, he hear this massive crackling sound. But it was my dad, he fell through the floor into a crawl space. Long story short, that house which was supposed to be a month of a flip, ended up taking a year and a half.
Matt Buschman:And to this day, I don't know if we bonded more than anything or if it was more through your first. But it was a great experience in some regards. But it got you exposed to the real estate world. You were now in it. Right?
Matt Buschman:Yeah. Sold it to this date. It's probably one of the more unique flips I've seen in the market. I've actually seen it sell twice after that, which is neat. At that point in time, still working for my dad.
Matt Buschman:But one day in the van, he says, mom said they're hiring at Lifestyle Family Fitness on Manning. It was interesting because at the time through high school, I I that's where I was introduced to the gym. That was my passion. I would work out 2 times a 2 hours a day or 2 times a day, and before and after work or after sports for school. And that was huge.
Matt Buschman:That was just a major thing for me. Again, bringing in that grade 5 through 8 experience of practice work. So I said, why not? And at the time, I didn't know if he was saying I don't wanna work with you anymore.
Scott Dillingham:He might have been. Doesn't wanna fall through the floor again.
Matt Buschman:You're a little too dangerous for my health. Or go do what you really wanna do, like, I'm okay type of thing. I went for the interview and lo and behold got the job. And for me, that was really a game changer. That was a time in my life where I didn't know I was going into it with 2 things.
Matt Buschman:I love the industry, but I still have this passion for real estate. I didn't know what that path looked like. The first day of the job, I remember one of my coworkers saying that the bare minimum you're gonna meet people in this industry. Again, didn't know what that meant. Right.
Matt Buschman:To this day, I missed the job. It was great working with clients. I love working with people. Love helping people in any way. But during that time, again, I was in real estate.
Matt Buschman:So I'm like, okay, How do I take this to the next level? Lo and behold, the owner of the gym to this day is actually one of the largest commercial developers that I didn't know at the time, but I saw what he was doing. He was doing plaza. He slowly built up Manning Road and he got into a bunch of other developments in Walker which was just great to see. And again, I said to myself, I did not know this was a thing.
Matt Buschman:I did not know that was something that you could actually do. I didn't know how that worked. So I said, let's downscale that and what can we do? So I put a plan together, and at the same time, I was training a gentleman, super, super nice family, that end up becoming my future partner in what is now known as Bouhanty Development.
Scott Dillingham:Okay.
Matt Buschman:I presented him with my plan. It was a construction of 3 three fourplexes in the part of a city that nobody want to necessarily build, let alone live. And we had to rent 36 of these things out. Risky, yes. But the cool part was that the game plan and and our mindset I thought made sense.
Matt Buschman:The demand was there. We just we had to sell it. We sold out. We rented them all out. The first literally the first three months during what it takes to lease these things.
Matt Buschman:And by the way, once you're done, you gotta manage these things. To what takes to lease these things. And by the way, once you're done, you gotta manage these things. So now you gotta build that back end platform of what that looks like. The unfortunate part of 2,000 that was in 2005 is when Vishanti was created.
Matt Buschman:2,007, 8, 9, the industry wasn't so good. Yep. My partner in the industry he was in was automated related and I was put in a bad position. Completely understand it's his position but he basically said, Matt, you gotta buy me out or we have to do something here. And I had no money.
Matt Buschman:We just started these things. Again, I go back to parents. We need a loan for x y z. Because we have to buy a partner and I believe and this is where I wanna take the company and this is where I know we can do things and so on and so forth. And I'll give you an example of how interesting the situation was.
Matt Buschman:Sure. At that time I left the gym, was working for my partner on other ventures, Had just built a custom house. Had very little to no money. And he comes to the table and says here's what we have to do. On top of that as an example, I would do the our own snow and grass.
Matt Buschman:In the winter time, it got so bad during this time that I didn't have a dollar to my name to pay for water. So you sit there and say, okay, your son asked you for x amount of dollars. He's not producing anything. Why would we do that? Long story short, they did.
Matt Buschman:Yeah. And after that, it got fun.
Scott Dillingham:Oh, that's awesome. That's great. No. That's what family is there for. My mom and dad, they would support me through anything and everything.
Scott Dillingham:So that's great to see that they're there for you. When while you're developing a property, let's say, was there something that's like, a major issue that you kept repetitively seeing, or is every property different for someone who's looking to build or develop?
Matt Buschman:To this day, I've built a lot of multi res buildings. We've gone through over 900 tenants. It's been interesting. And it's you think by this point in time, you have it licked. You know, but every property is completely different.
Matt Buschman:My biggest thing is I've always I was always big on max use. Okay. So if you looked at a circumstance, what's the max use of this property? Work the numbers backwards. Right?
Matt Buschman:In your mind, what you're doing is you're also creating a gut feeling of problems. Going through from start, is it gonna be infrastructure problems? What are the load bearing? What all these things come to right? Yep.
Matt Buschman:Once you've done that, your gut and I've always been firm on my gut makes a lot of of my decisions because naturally your body's gathering all this information. Yeah. And it's gonna give you a feeling of go or no go. I think one of the biggest hurdles for me, going that through that process was you didn't really know a lot of people to get the jobs done. Like, you were just a young kid.
Scott Dillingham:I think it's still that way.
Matt Buschman:To some degree, it's I
Scott Dillingham:find people.
Matt Buschman:Unfortunately, now I think we have a solid team. Some people going come and go just because of industry related type of thing. But I have to tell you, anybody starting out, that by far, you have to have a team behind you. You have to have people that will show up to the job. You have to have people that do it to the level you need be done.
Matt Buschman:That was huge.
Scott Dillingham:No. That's and that that's incredible. Matt, I'm really curious. So you've had a lot of things that you've done in your life and it sounds amazing, and you're gonna get into more. But I'm curious about how you got your real estate license.
Matt Buschman:Yeah. It's funny because, again, going through the gym year and and where you're working with my dad and even back to my teenage years, I've always wanted to get into real estate. Again, I didn't know if it was from the development, from sales, I did both. And oddly enough, a game changer moment again was that position of my partner saying we have to do something here. Again, just built custom home.
Matt Buschman:So I said, listen, beautiful house. Maybe this is my opportunity to finally commit to getting my license, selling the home, and moving forward. Ultimately, that's what I did at the time. By the way, I met my future wife while working at the gym and her friend, husband owned one of the brokerages here in Windsor, the Valente family. And I think they're a fantastic group.
Matt Buschman:I highly recommend them any given day. I was there from 2,000 7 right through to 2018, I believe. And it was interesting because during that time of going through that process, you're literally turning the page into something brand new. Although while juggling the development stuff, I didn't have an admin. I didn't have a secretary.
Matt Buschman:I didn't have any of this stuff. So you're all in type of guy. So anyways, the real estate item took off really well. I believe the 1st year I was rookie of the year at Valente. Kept on growing from there.
Matt Buschman:But I'm just huge on learning. I needed more. And I'm a firm believer that anybody wants to be successful, you have to have that naturally. Yep. If you're forcing yourself to, oh, that's not that's just not something that's gonna end it in a good scenario for you.
Matt Buschman:So I just naturally love to learn. So during that time I said what's next? Why not buy a gym?
Scott Dillingham:Why not?
Matt Buschman:Let's make it a little bit a little bit messy. Long story short while I was there, an opportunity came to buy a fitness studio which we did. We transformed that into pure fitness at the time. My wife was funny because I have a picture of my wife the day 1 we're going through some renovations. We did a big upscale renovation, and she was pregnant with our first child, Jackson.
Matt Buschman:And I have a picture of her assembling her desk, and she looks like she's ready to pop at that point in time. So we started that adventure like that. Yeah. A couple of years later, we sold it actually with our I think it was our 3rd child had just been born. And at that point in time, we made a decision to say, okay.
Matt Buschman:What do we pick? We had real estate going on, gym going on. Ashanti Development was Yeah. Continue to build buildings. So we sold that and, I think she did a phenomenal job with that gym, but that in itself was a great experience too.
Matt Buschman:Okay. The gym environment going back to your roots of passion was interesting because if that's what we wanted to do. But it was also a life lesson in the sense that just because you're passionate in something, doesn't mean it's gonna be successful. And there's that's something a lot of people in in any entrepreneur I think can actually respect at every given day. But we did we ended up selling because of families first.
Matt Buschman:We're just huge with that mentality and we move forward. In that time, I was still facing some development challenges in the area that I was building. They decided to put make a CIP designated area. And what that meant was you couldn't plant the tree without having to go to council. I have a big fear of public speaking.
Matt Buschman:So for me to go in front of council was like a massive ordeal. Lo and behold, I had to do that 4 or 5 times. I won every case continue to build, which again, just make you stronger. And at this point in time, we now have, like I mentioned, a 110 tenant base, I think over all self designed and self built buildings. I was very fortunate last year to finally make the decision of hiring a full time VP to run that because my passion is equally as good for real estate sales.
Matt Buschman:Again, going back to that, it allowed me to really transition hardcore back into that market. With Valente in 2018, there was a company called Keller Williams that came to the table. Again, Valente, that family was fantastic. The operation over there was phenomenal. The building in my opinion is one of the best in the city.
Matt Buschman:Location is fantastic. Keller Williams at the time just really offered that team growth environment, which is a new topic for Windsor. In fact, they brought tech to the topic. They just brought things that Windsor didn't really have an option for at that point in time. To this day, I still see a lot of flavor in different brokerages.
Matt Buschman:They're now gearing a lot of their marketing towards some of the things that Keller Williams brought to the table, which I think is fantastic. A lot of individual agents are really gearing the way they do business into that kind of mentality, which I thought was fantastic. But with the team environment allowed us to really think about that. PJ Valente was, I think a coworker at the time there and we were friends as well. And I think there's a unique opportunity for us to do something which, we set out to to do.
Matt Buschman:And we we created Synergy Real Estate Group. Now the premise of this wasn't the PJ and Matt team. Yep. It wasn't our names out there. It was the creation of something where if we were gonna create a team, everybody coming to the table brought their own set of skills.
Matt Buschman:And together as one, it was a pretty powerful entity. I think the company has brought a lot of unique things to the table to think about. We've learned, I think, an immense amount of exposure on numerous topics. It allows us to travel. We've been to New Orleans for family, family day functions with the company and so on and so forth.
Matt Buschman:And it really exposes you to again, another level of real estate. Now you're talking insider reprograms. You're talking international developments. You're talking just a whole another world of real estate. Yeah.
Matt Buschman:So that was interesting. As of today, we have a team of 6. Okay. I thoroughly believe we have one of the best teams out there. They each one of them bring their own skill sets.
Matt Buschman:Each one of them is highly driven. We're slowly working towards, I think, stepping out of a sales role to some degree and really growing that part of the team because there's just so much out there that we can do.
Scott Dillingham:Yep. So you're mentioning you're looking to grow, so you're looking to get additional team members?
Matt Buschman:We're always looking to grow. One of my mentalities though is always it's a word called kaizen. And kaizen for me is it's always that what I call the fail stop. So if I'm ever going too fast in something, I bring this word up and it forces me to slow down and then go that pace. We're huge on expansion, but it doesn't have to be overnight.
Matt Buschman:And it's gotta be the right fit for both sides. So if an individual comes into the office and they've we've heard a lot of great things about you or we're interested to join a team. What do you have to offer? It's gotta go both ways. Right?
Matt Buschman:So it's gotta be a natural fit for both sides. We know we can bring to the table, but some people are shocked actually of what the industry actually takes to be successful and what For sure. We have to do in the whole 9 years. Yeah.
Scott Dillingham:You know, it's definitely different. So when you look at advertising and marketing 10, 20 years ago, and then you look at it now, it's drastically different. The the needs are totally different.
Matt Buschman:100%. Everything's social media driven. Everybody's put it's funny because in our team going back to, my strengths might be my partner's weakness and vice versa. I'll be the first to admit I'm not a social media guy. I I'm sure I'd people take care of that for me.
Matt Buschman:I don't know what they're saying. The listings go out and all that stuff, but I'm not as I'm that young old fashioned guy. I'm huge on the conversation at the kitchen table.
Scott Dillingham:Okay.
Matt Buschman:Because that's really where my strengths come out. And you can't portray that through a message on social. So when you're backed by trust and experience, in my conversations, it's not about sales ever. In fact, I probably express dialogue to clients more often to make sure they don't make a decision and to make a decision. And it's really the conversation of that kitchen table that's so important.
Matt Buschman:Because that client at the end of the day, I'm hoping, in records proven that we're doing okay because of it, I think, is that they're more apt to relate to you Yep. Because you're coming from the right place.
Scott Dillingham:I love it. No, it's true. Trust makes the strongest relationship. So if you're going to someone's kitchen table and they trust you, it's a much stronger relationship. Now I do have one other question for you before we head off for the day.
Scott Dillingham:You could say what the number one tip you can give someone to be successful or a trial and tribulation that you've overcome, or you could share some advice on that. What would that be to someone listening today?
Matt Buschman:It's funny because I've been listening to your podcast, and I think a couple of them had really hit the nail on the head of just do it. I think Nike had a great slogan when he said that. So I would offer 2 things. Number 1, just do it but with a splash of education and risk assessment. Because some people could say, I'm gonna go diving.
Matt Buschman:I'm gonna go biking because they've watched so many shows or read so many articles and I'm gonna go do it. I had a splash of education. My biggest thing though I offer everybody is recognize your strengths and supplement your weaknesses. And really think about that because you're not gonna be nobody's fully balanced. So if your weaknesses, you know what, I'm a little short on money or I need lending, find that individual that's gonna be part of that.
Scott Dillingham:Okay.
Matt Buschman:That's so huge as part of that team effort. If your strength is you have so much energy, I'm a go getter, I have vision, great. You've identified that. Your job now is to mold them together and create your next steps.
Scott Dillingham:Yep. And
Matt Buschman:the big one is the big why. Why do you wanna do this? At one time, my motivations were potentially money, but I'll tell you right now, we have a $12,000,000,000 portfolio and net asset of almost 9,000,000. And it doesn't really excite me. What excites me is the opportunities that now opens up and what we can do.
Matt Buschman:You're always raising the bar now. So at some point in time, your motivations will change, but I would clearly ask everybody to define your why. What is the why factors to why you might be thinking about getting into real estate or getting into investing in real estate?
Scott Dillingham:Yep. No, I love it. And for those of you listening in that, you're like, I don't know what my strengths are. There's this book, it's called strengths finder 2.0. Buy it, it's on Amazon, I think it's $20.
Scott Dillingham:So in it, it outlines and describes what the different various strengths are, and then it's got testing. And you can find out what you're good at. So ideally, what the book is saying is if you do something that's within your strengths, you're actually gonna be happier overall. Because a lot of people, they're doing things just to do it. But if you do something you're really good at and you love, obviously you're going to be happier.
Scott Dillingham:So that's a good book to get out there and purchase. And then one more thing, Matt. So if somebody's looking to reach out to you or they're looking to join a strong real estate team, how would they reach out to you or contact you?
Matt Buschman:Yeah, absolutely. If that's something you're considering, you can reach out, back to the office, 519-566 7 788. My direct cell phone, 519-999-9907. Either one will do that. Happy to set a consult with you, and we take people through a process.
Matt Buschman:Well, there's literally a we have a literally a test that is created and it spits out some answers. It's interesting what it tells you about yourself.
Scott Dillingham:Yeah. Just like the Streaks Finder. It's the same type of thing. It's incredible. So that's awesome.
Scott Dillingham:But yeah. So then give Matt, office or his cell a call if you're looking to join a strong team and have your strengths be brought forward and used every day. And thanks for listening, and I hope you have a great day. And thanks for coming, Matt. Appreciate it, Scott.
Scott Dillingham:No problem. Take care.