The story
Entrepreneurship and project creation have always been an integral part of my life. As far back as I can remember, I have always had a lot of fun giving life to the inspirations that make me vibrate, and my business sense has naturally developed through my experiences.
I have the privilege of growing up in a family of entrepreneurs. When I was two years old, my parents bought the Fabelta Aluminum company, and so they became my first role models. Growing up, I had a front row seat to watch this business grow and become a family project, as I am associated with it today, along with my brother, and my parents.
As a teenager, I had a lot of ideas during my classes, so I would draw houses, boats or any other form of inspiration that made me excited. I was also involved in a lot of side projects during my school years. I was part of an investment club with a few students from my class, I was the sports president, and I also took courses in business start-ups. I had a deep desire to create projects, and the first concrete experience was Miraxe Inc. in collaboration with my best friend Maxime, a landscaping company.
This first official experience allowed us to learn several aspects of entrepreneurship, including starting a business, managing it and expanding it, until it was sold ten years later.
During these years, I continued my studies in business administration, in addition to integrating the family business and thus, learning the different facets of business management. I was slowly beginning to realize all the possibilities that were opening up in front of me. I also developed a passion for architecture and real estate, a passion that I shared with my partner Maxime, and which led us to our first acquisition. It was a house belonging to one of our landscape maintenance clients.
This project was my first reference, at the age of 18, to initiate my real estate career and learn, step by step, the parameters of renovating a house until its sale. This experience was the first in a series of upgrades of buildings for resale, which led us, more recently, to the acquisition and management of rental properties.
As I became an investor and entrepreneur, I attended several conferences on the subject, read several books and received all kinds of teachings that led me to focus on growth objectives. This quest to get more and more return on investment had no end, and was taking me further and further away from the initial pleasure I felt when creating projects. Investment and business management had become a matter of numbers, and everything else was secondary. Performance expectations were very much present in me and around me. My perception of success was financial success, which I calculated from the mind, and the amount was never high enough.
The inspirations that really made me vibrate were always present, but they were becoming rarer and rarer, because if they were not profitable enough, they were not considered. I then slowly associated these inspirations with the fact that they were not viable, until I put them aside completely. And a belief was born: if I do a project I love, it will certainly not be viable, so better to make as much money as possible now, in order to put off these inspirations for later, when I will be rich enough to realize them… And then I would roll up my sleeves and put even more pressure on myself, in order to generate an even greater return.
This quest for financial independence was outside of me, as my freedom had become conditional on my financial success, and my financial success was dependent on my efforts to generate returns. So the feeling of freedom had also become a goal to achieve! Yet, real freedom was always, and still is, available inside me…
THE PAUSE
This never-ending quest finally came to an end the day I realized that no external resource, neither money nor a high-return project could bring me this coveted freedom, nor even nourish me from within. And that’s when I chose to reconnect with who I was, what I was passionate about, what made me vibrate, and to explore the projects that really inspired me rather than those I thought I had to do to succeed.
As life goes on, I met people during this period who helped me reconnect to the essence of my projects, which allowed me to have much more clarity within myself and to understand why certain ideas that were dear to my heart seemed impossible to achieve. I understood that these inspirations were not unattainable, only that the fears I carried and the limits (among others financial) that I imposed on myself, slowed down their expansion. These mentors invited me to peel back the layers of protection that had built up over the years, in order to expand the possibilities, if only by one degree.
I accepted the invitation, which allowed me to realize that the projects I felt like undertaking could be vibrant AND viable. Nothing and no one was forcing me, except myself, to have to choose between the two. That all it takes is the courage to go deeper, and slow down a bit, a process that brought up all sorts of fears and beliefs that were buried deep inside me, that were forming those very layers of protection. Even if it was just about “missing out” on opportunities, for example. But the more the process progressed, the more I reconnected with the lightness I had when I was young, and the pleasure of undertaking and creating, which had completely dissipated over the years. So I chose to dive in.
The tools of the creation cycle
What guides me today in the creation and realization of projects is the creation cycle tool that I discovered during a mentorship on entrepreneurship. For many years, it was my head, my logical and mathematical reasoning that had taken control of many of my decisions, and I had completely disconnected myself from my heart, believing that it was the only way to succeed. I was someone who did a lot of serial projects, and I had come to wonder why there was so much distortion between the projects I imagined, and the end result. The tools of the creative cycle allowed me to have several answers to my questions.
I am now aware that each project has its own natural cycle of creation, and that entrepreneurship, as well as real estate investment, have taken on a whole new meaning in my life. Today, it is through the heart that my projects are born, and it is also the heart that guides my inspired actions. The mind assists me in bringing clarity to the return on investment, which is an integral part of the expansion of any project. The lightness is much more present, and the pleasure is also back through all that I undertake, which allows me to share it with others and thus, to let it expand too!
