About Spirepoint The #1 Risk For Investors And The Economy Read Article My Weekend With The Dragons at the Fast Track Super Conference in Edmonton Read Article 7 More Lessons From The CRE Investor Forum Read Article Search Improving Your Finances, Cash Flow & Wealth Paul Blacquière If you want to learn how to… Improve your finances Create more cash flow, and Build long-term wealth You’ve come to the right place! My name is Paul Blacquière, founder of Spirepoint, and I want to welcome you to the next step in your Financial Education. Spirepoint is a community where new and experienced investors, business owners and industry professionals come to get ideas, learn new skills and improve their finances, investments and businesses. If you like what you see, you can subscribe to the Spirepoint newsletter and get cash flow and wealth-building tips, free educational webinars, and more – direct to your email inbox. And if you keep reading below, I’ll share a bit about me and my story, as well as how this website called Spirepoint got started and what it offers you… What Do The Rich Do? Since I was very young, I always had a fascination with making money. From collecting coins and stamps to running a lemonade stand to even writing a book report on money (including attached coins!) – I tried many different things. In my early 20s, I decided to get more serious about it and research how people become wealthy and what they invest in. After reading many magazines, books and courses, I discovered the wealthy focus on 3 main areas: Businesses Paper Assets (stocks, options, bonds, etc.) and Real Estate Sometimes they built wealth using a business, and stored it long-term in real estate. Other times they built wealth in real estate, and stored it long-term in paper assets. But almost always they focused on a combination of these 3 things. My $2000 Discovery I found many different books and courses to learn how each of the 3 areas worked. But before jumping in, I realized I first needed to get my personal finances in shape. If I was going to invest in real estate or trade stocks, I would need capital! I was in college at the time, and one night I was watching TV and I saw an infomercial for a free seminar in my area on improving your finances, investing and starting a business. It was exactly what I needed. I attended the event and they were selling a home study program at the end of the night. I didn’t have the money (I was a broke student!) so I drove home and somehow convinced my mom to give me the money. Now the pressure was on… I HAD to show some results! After reviewing the course, I discovered some areas where my mom could save money on her taxes and maybe get a tax refund. After filing an adjustment for her tax returns, she received a check for over $2000. I was hooked! (and so was my mom) I read everything I could on real estate, stocks, options, futures, taxes, business and more. Stock Market Profits? My next step was to invest in mutual funds. I was going to be RICH! Guaranteed money right? Wrong. I still didn’t have a lot of money, so I convinced my mom to let me invest her retirement funds (pretty easy to convince her after I saved her $2k in taxes). During the first year, the fund went up over 30%. Wow! I was a genius! The next year, the fund lost all those gains. Okay, maybe I wasn’t a genius. I realized if I was going to invest, I needed to get educated about the stock market and some sort of plan. Buying and ‘praying’ for any investment to go up is just gambling. I repeated that lesson a few times with stocks and other mutual funds until it finally sunk in… Have a PLAN. Buying A House, Renting To Roommates After college, I found a good job and I had a goal of buying my own home. I needed a down payment, so I saved up my salary for an entire year (thanks to my parents letting me live for free at home) I knew I wanted to try real estate investing, and I figured buying a home and renting out rooms to roommates would give me some ‘practice’… Dealing with tenants Collecting rents Managing expenses, etc. This worked very well, especially when combined with everything I learned about saving taxes. I also learned a LOT about dealing with people (the most important thing in real estate)… As well as why you should never rent rooms only to guys, and never only to girls – always have a mix of both 🙂 Finally(!) Rental Properties Fast forward quite a few years, and I still hadn’t taken any real ‘action’ to buy investment real estate. Then I saw an opportunity and joined a hands-on real estate investing course that took all the knowledge I had accumulated, and showed me how to apply it to my local market. The course also gave me access to key real estate professionals I needed for my team, and I also learned how to evaluate and purchase positive cash flow properties. Over the next few years, I began building my portfolio with small rentals – duplexes, triplexes, etc. Eventually I ran out of cash and equity in my properties, so I had to look for capital. Finding The Money I attended a local real estate investment club to network with other investors, find team members, and (most importantly) find investor/money partners. But I found it limiting to only be able to attract local investors – I wanted people from across the country. At that point, I decided to expand my reach and so I setup a website (Spirepoint) to attract investors. My model was simple… Offer free investing education through an email newsletter Tell people about my deals And people would invest with me It worked! I was able to find more investors and expand my portfolio into flips and bigger deals like apartment buildings. This allowed me to gain more experience with other aspects of real estate, like… Managing renovations Joint ventures Using people’s retirement funds to finance my deals And investing in private mortgages I was even voted President of the local real estate investment club! A Business Opportunity (and More) But a funny thing happened… The more I taught people about investing, the more questions they asked. I found it difficult to answer them in a short email or just a 10-minute conversation, so I decided to hold a small class teaching people what I knew. The feedback I received from the initial courses was so good, I realized there was an opportunity… So I decided to offer a full 3 month training program. That’s when things took off and I began offering multiple training sessions throughout the year. My goal of starting a business had finally been achieved! But the best part was I met my future wife in that first 3 month training program I held 🙂 Cash Flow from Stocks Around this time, I started investing in the stock market with a different perspective and a new goal for my investments – I wanted to create CASH FLOW. I saw how powerful cash flow could be with rental real estate, and I wanted to achieve it with stocks as well. I found multiple techniques to do it, including certain types of trading with stock options… But I was pretty busy with real estate and my new business, so I finally settled on one method that took very little time. My plan worked and the investments paid me very well – month after month, year after year – and they continue to pay me to this day. Business Evolved – Taking Things Online After a few years of holding live real estate investing events, I began receiving requests from people to come and hold live trainings in their city. While I did experiment with that for a short time, I didn’t want to travel that much for business. So I decided to leverage myself and my training by converting the live training programs into an online format. That way, anyone, anywhere could learn without added expenses of hotels and travel. That’s basically how Spirepoint evolved into what it is today – from a simple website trying to attract investors for my deals into a full-fledged financial education platform. Online Businesses, Bitcoin and More Since Spirepoint transitioned to an online platform, I’ve continued to expand the free content and training programs by leveraging my network of industry experts. And these experts introduced me to new opportunities to create cash flow and wealth in ways I never even imagined. For example I discovered new ways to make money with Spirepoint, my existing training business, including: Joint venturing with other partners (multiple ways) Additional business models (extra add-on revenue) Software technology to increase profits And more Another example In late 2017 I heard about Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies (yes, I was late to the party) While Bitcoin crashed in early 2018 and everyone jumped ship, I kept learning more about it and experimenting with investments. The more I learned, the more I discovered other ways to profit from this brand new asset class (not just ‘Buy and Pray’ like I did with stocks in my early 20s). I found I could even create CASH FLOW with crypto! How cool is that?! Next Steps Today, I’m still learning about new ways to create cash flow and wealth in business and investing. And I’d like to share some of my best knowledge with you right now. Just scroll down to the bottom of this page and enter your best email address in the box to get my free video case study on how I used 1 simple piece of paper to prove over $27,000 in down payment funds to buy rental properties. As a subscriber, you’ll also receive regular Cash Flow and Wealth Building email tips, announcements about free educational webinars, and more. 2 more important things I almost forgot to mention… 1) Spirepoint is a 100% independent publisher – no advertiser controls the thoughts and opinions expressed in any of the content you’ll find 2) Spirepoint does NOT sell investments – the focus is financial education, not selling investments (please don’t ask) Bottom line: I always do my best to provide you great education and training, no matter where you’re at in your financial journey. Helping you… Improve your finances Create more cash flow and Build long-term wealth That’s my promise to you. Paul Blacquiere Founder, Spirepoint Wealth P.S. – Enter your email address in the box below to start receiving some of my best cash flow and wealth creation tips direct to your inbox. Financial education to help you... Improve your finances Create more cash flow, and Build long-term wealth CATEGORIES Investing Mortgages Money Tenants CONTACT 300 Earl Grey Drive, Suite 430, Ottawa, Ontario, K2T 1C1, Canada 613-860-8008 Open a support ticket SOCIAL Terms & Conditions Privacy Policy Return Policy About Contact Log In Copyright © 2004-2021 Spirepoint Publishing. All rights reserved.