Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: You are listening to the Realestatepodcast cA, brought to you by JNC Toronto Real Estate Group.
All right, welcome back, everybody, to the Realestatepodcast cA, your source for all things real estate, or as we like to call it, real estate for the masses. I'm John Paulson. We also have Cheryl Mickel and Nicole Norton, the trio who make up the JNC Toronto real estate group. Today we're carving out a little time on what is a beautiful Saturday morning in what is turning out to be a pretty busy spring market. Good morning, ladies. How you doing?
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Good morning, John.
[00:00:40] Speaker C: Good morning, John.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: I feel like a teacher.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: I know. I feel like I'm the coconut door or something.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Good morning, Mr. Paulson. So what do we got cooking so far this spring, ladies?
[00:00:50] Speaker C: We have a views and opinions thing to read.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: Okay, why don't we do that? Let's do the disclaimer and then we'll get right into it.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities that we represent.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Fantastic. As usual, Nicole, you're getting better and better every time we do it.
[00:01:08] Speaker C: What do we have cooking for the spring?
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Yes, tell us, Cheryl.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: Barbecue. It's like twelve degrees outside right now.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: I know. Chicken wings. Hard to believe.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: It's like a Super bowl weekend and it's double digit weather, which is fantastic and it's kind of cool. A lot of people will wait to list their homes later until it's sunny and the flowers are coming out. But spring market starts a lot earlier, usually end of January. And we got multiple listings. We're getting prepped right now, so. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:01:33] Speaker C: Spring market starts a lot earlier in Toronto as we know it, or the GTA, because we don't know if spring market starts early.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:01:40] Speaker C: Kansas City?
[00:01:41] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Every year in Toronto since the inception of Nicole, the real estate agent, January has always been.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like that. Buyers get a know the last week of January. There's hardly anything on the market either. So that just makes it even more busy if you're working with buyers. Multiple offers are back, but we're not going to get too deep into the complexities of the spring real estate market here in Toronto. What we have done is we have carved out a little bit of time this Saturday morning to do our 9th podcast. And today we thought we would mix it up a little bit. Today's episode is five questions to get to know JNC Toronto real estate group.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Feel like this is like a dating thing.
Like a speed dating.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: Speed dating. Five questions.
[00:02:21] Speaker C: Which way do I need to swipe to not choose you two?
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Too late. You've already chosen.
So today is going to be a little bit real estate, a little personal. And by the end of the podcast, we hope that you'll have gotten to know us just a little bit more in depth, because we like to get deep sometimes. Actually, we're not all that deep with each other, but we hope it's pretty shallow, our relationship.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: No, look at the two of us. They're like, well, not when you're around. I guess when you leave is when we sit there and lament over leave.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: When I'm out painting and fixing things at a listing, the girls are having deep conversations.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: It's true. Sometimes John will come home to us. He'll be like, what do you guys. Ooh, Kate, never mind.
Gonna go inside of the washroom.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: So we hope know doesn't get too weird today. We actually hope it actually know a little weirdness is good.
[00:03:10] Speaker C: I'm weird.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: All right, so, Cheryl, we had a little pre production meeting yesterday, and we were talking about five questions that we thought would be good to get to know us. A little bit of real estate I have here that people already know a little bit about us. So why don't you talk about right here?
[00:03:26] Speaker C: Right. Well, many of you know, either from this podcast or from knowing us personally or my instagram, that John and I used to work on cruise ships, which is super cool.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a conversation, right?
[00:03:39] Speaker B: Is it super cool?
[00:03:41] Speaker C: Is it?
And that Nicole used to sell horses.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Which is super cool. That is like, standard fun fact, right? You can whip it out at a party and everyone's, well, I don't know.
[00:03:53] Speaker C: If you know, it's a random fun fact until you keep getting that reaction. You're like, oh, I guess that is a random.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: And other people repeated about you, they're like, this is Cheryl. She used to work on a cruise ship. You're like, I'm so much more.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: There is more depth to us than that, right?
[00:04:07] Speaker C: Can I talk about when I first found out that Nicole sold horses?
[00:04:11] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:04:12] Speaker C: We were both at our desk typing, and she said something about horses, and I was like, onion. Because she's like an onion. I'm like, I keep learning all these layers about you that I would never expect just from knowing Nicole Norton, the real estate agent.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Well, let's hope that today, listeners and viewers, you're going to peel back a few onion layers for both Nicole, John, and Cheryl. Both or all three of us?
[00:04:34] Speaker B: For both of us.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: Cheryl and I are one of the same. Exactly.
We're going to get started and go straight into this with our first question. And how are we going to do this? It's going to be simple. It's going to be the same question. We're going to roundtable it. Okay, so, but we're going to start.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Comment on other people.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Absolutely. There is a conversation. We have five questions. I figured it out. If we each answer and give about three minutes per answer with some banter, hopefully we'll keep this to under an hour.
[00:04:59] Speaker C: Are you timing.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Interesting?
[00:05:03] Speaker B: But not too interesting.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: So I think this is a good question to get us all started out with. Nicole, what brought you to real estate?
[00:05:10] Speaker B: So that's a great question. It is a bit vague though, too, like what brought me in my soul to be interested to real estate or what physically happened in.
[00:05:19] Speaker C: Can you combine the two and make it a three minute answer?
[00:05:22] Speaker A: Yeah, we only have time for.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: You already use 30 seconds, so you better hurry up.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: We got time for two layers of onion.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: What brought you to real estate? Well, when my horse business, which is very interesting, died a long, slow death. Horses died, the business died. I decided I wanted to get into something else. Have we already told these stories on planet?
[00:05:43] Speaker C: I don't think so, no. It's fun fact Fridays.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: Okay, sorry. So I decided, what do I want to do? What do I want to do? I spent two years doing weird stuff, managing random companies, blah, blah, blah. And then I decided I really want to help people. So I went back and did premed and I failed, actually. I did so well, I got 90% on all my premed exams and all my applications. I was so proud of myself. And the entrance exams that year to actually get into med school was 98%. I was like, I tried so hard and I wasn't even close. So not that. So then I got a job working for an old mentor of mine who was a realtor, and I was still looking for something I could do to really help people and started working in tandem with her and her team. And I was like, wow, she helps a lot of people. This may not be med school, but this is a really cool way to.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: Help people make a difference.
[00:06:37] Speaker C: I mean, med school would have helped for the psychiatrist part of it.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: That's kind of how you wandered your way into the real estate.
[00:06:49] Speaker C: So wanting to help people and helping somebody while you were trying to figure out what you were doing, who was already in real estate, opened up a door for you.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: I like it.
[00:07:00] Speaker C: John, what's your answer?
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Well, this is interesting, because we may have some similar answer.
[00:07:06] Speaker C: I put answer. Same as John.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Same as John.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: I can tell you, as you already know, Cheryl and I worked on cruise ships. I did it for years. I was a lifer. Started when I was very young and trying to work. I know, but it was fun. I worked 20 hours a week. It was a very, I don't want to say illustrious job. It was one of the better jobs on the ship. So it was hard for me to launch from that. There was really nowhere to go either. Being an art auctioneer on ships is probably trans. No, you can't become head of anything, really. And there's no retirement package or plan or anything like that. So when I met Cheryl quite a few years ago, I was already in the midst of that career. Cheryl had worked on ships as well, so I convinced her to come with me to work on ships. And then we started to come up with an exit plan. Now, a few of our colleagues that had also sold art on ships had pulled the chute and were able to escape the cruise ship lifestyle, going from art auctioneers, moving back to Canada, and actually all around the world. There's a few in South Africa now that have done this and got into real estate. And I think that our job selling art on cruise ships, the skills that we had there translate quite nicely into being a realtor with regards to it, is sales. It's about building relationships. It's about lead generation customer service. So Cheryl and I got off. It was a plan, a life by design. We saved up a little. We went straight into real estate, for the most part, full time.
And here we are, like, seven, eight years later, after we got off ships with a thriving real estate business.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: So you saw other people doing real estate and thought, I could do that, too.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: Yeah. It's not one of those, like, oh, I like houses. I want to be an agent, too. Hey, I do like houses, but also.
[00:08:48] Speaker C: Don'T knock those people.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: No, of course not. Well, we hear a lot of people.
[00:08:51] Speaker B: That want to get into you don't know what you're starting, when you start it. So whatever brings you here isn't necessarily what keeps you here.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:58] Speaker C: And John made the comment that other people, other art directors and art auctioneers had made that change from ships to land doing real estate. And you looked at me when you asked that question like, that was my answer as well. That was not my answer. That is not my answer because I didn't care that anyone else got off ships and did real estate. I was not actually that interested in doing real estate. John convinced me to go back to ships and then had to convince me to do real estate with him. But what we've learned along the way, and what I knew already as well to begin with, is that the skills are transferable, as he talked about. And I think that we didn't realize how many of the skills we had from ships transferred to real estate. We thought my organization and my management background, your auctioneer and sales would be it, but actually, like, open houses are the same as gallery hours and things like that. Right.
Also, I thought since we're so used to working together as a team and on ships, like, you are working together as a team.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Yeah, we're stuck in 100 sqft kind of idea.
[00:10:00] Speaker C: Yeah, we worked together, we ate together, we went out and poured together. You learn each other's skills, where your strengths and weaknesses are. So we knew also starting in real estate together, that we knew how to prop each other up, how to help each other move forward.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: And that's nice.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And we haven't killed each other yet. So a lot of people have asked us, what is it like working with your partner in life and also being partners in business? And we've made it work. Communication is key.
[00:10:24] Speaker C: We always say on a scale of one to ten, how much do you like working with your partner?
[00:10:28] Speaker A: 15 and a half out of ten.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: That's a great answer.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: There it is. Right and straight in.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: No hesitation.
[00:10:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
I was going to be honest today.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: 15 out of ten. Some days, maybe two out of ten. I don't know.
[00:10:41] Speaker C: I'd say ten out of ten all the time. Even when it's bad, because we had that experience on ships, even the hard times, we can get it through.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:10:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: That's great.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: Well, there's our story. Yeah.
[00:10:53] Speaker C: And I think he's annoying. Don't get me wrong, I worked with.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: My spouse, like my partner, and I couldn't do it. I would never do it again. Just based on that experience. It was really difficult.
[00:11:04] Speaker C: We hear that all the time.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:05] Speaker C: I could never work with my partner. I'm like, I can't imagine not working with my partner. It gives us so much to discuss. And when we're not at work and we are constantly bouncing ideas off of. And what do you always say? That we can experience the no.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: Celebrate the victories and commiserate together. So it's not all wins, but we.
[00:11:27] Speaker C: Understand each other, what we're going through in our job. Someone comes home from work doesn't say, oh, this happened in the office. This person's like boring.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: That is an important piece. That is an important piece. It's hard to understand how soul crushing and exhilarating it can be because there's.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: A lot of highs and a lot of lows. And I think that for realtors out there who have a spouse that does another job that might be more nine to five, that can put a strain on the relationship because the hours are all over the place.
[00:11:53] Speaker C: Agreed.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: And they may not totally understand what goes into being an agent and being a psychologist for your clients and being crushed and all the stress that can come with more difficult transactions and clients. But yeah, it's nice that Cheryl and I can, and Nicole too, because all three of us can marry our other spouse.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: I do.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: In a non creepy way.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: Someone told me the other day, actually, some people gossip that you guys have some creepy thing. And I was like, really? No one's ever mentioned that to me. It was someone not from our brokerage. It was external to our brokerage from the other side of. Was it another realtor? Yes, it was.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: Oh, interesting.
[00:12:36] Speaker C: Will you tell me after the podcast?
[00:12:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I will.
But I will tell you. I forgot to tell you that I'm interested to know.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: Too.
[00:12:42] Speaker C: Funny.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: All right, so that brings us around to. Sorry, do you have something to add? Show.
[00:12:45] Speaker C: Is our nine minutes up?
[00:12:47] Speaker A: Yeah, it's gone.
[00:12:48] Speaker C: Next. Go on, next.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: So our next question is, what is something that may surprise people to know about you?
[00:12:54] Speaker B: I'd like you to go first, John.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: This time I'm going first. Okay.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: Because I want to be surprised.
[00:13:02] Speaker C: Is it going to surprise her or is it something we already know?
[00:13:05] Speaker A: She already kind of knows, but she may learn a little bit more about that. Okay, so there's an infamous story in rock and roll circles about Van Halen, and it is specifically Van Halen. I looked it up this morning. Cheryl, you may have.
And there's a story about a demand in their rider. Now, a rider is requirements for basically everything that the band would want in their dressing room. And for their.
[00:13:29] Speaker C: I want four Diet Coke, exactly 15 cokes.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: Only Cokes, not Pepsi, especially within catering. And this demand was that they have five pounds of M and Ms. I don't know where the five pounds part came in. It's actually a big bowl of M and Ms with no brown ones. No exception.
[00:13:45] Speaker C: And this is the urban legend or myth.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Yeah, this was the urban myth. It's been going around in rock and roll circles because the brown ones taste brown no, and there is a reason to this, but I can tell you firsthand that this is 100% true, because.
[00:14:00] Speaker C: How do you know?
[00:14:00] Speaker A: I was going to say, because I was the one that picked out all the brown eminems.
[00:14:05] Speaker C: You were in Van Halen?
[00:14:07] Speaker A: Well, no, I was not in van. Of course, it would not be a band member that's doing that. It actually had to do with the catering company. So, yeah, my summer jobs when I was much younger, and this was through a family friend, actually, my dad's second wife. Her kids owned a catering company that catered all the rock shows that came through Toronto at the grandstand, at the CNE. And so in 83, 84 and 85 parts of the summer, I was working backstage at rock shows. And as part of the catering team, I would have to supply all of the snacks and everything like that into the green room and in their trailer and everything like that. And so, sure enough, part of their rider, and I've seen it said bowl of M and M's, no brown ones, no exceptions. Now, the reason they did this is to make sure that people would actually read the rider in. Not to be jerky, not to just go through it. They wanted to make sure that people read each and every line and that nothing would get missed. So I ate a lot of brown eminems.
It was a pretty wild experience because I was like 1011 and twelve and ten, 1112 working backstage at rock shows. Pretty interesting times, let's put it that way.
[00:15:13] Speaker C: I believe that someone is going to call some sort of lawyer.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: Labor laws.
Exactly. It was the 80s.
So, yeah, that might surprise some people that know that I worked backstage at rock shows.
[00:15:26] Speaker C: What cavities do you have?
[00:15:28] Speaker A: Well, I've had my share, let's put it that way.
[00:15:30] Speaker C: Do you think it's from the brown.
[00:15:31] Speaker A: M MS. That could have been what started it all.
[00:15:33] Speaker C: Did you eat any non brown M.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: MS. Of course I did.
[00:15:36] Speaker C: Do they taste different than the red M M?
[00:15:38] Speaker B: Eating different? Like, I have so many brown ones to eat. This is essentially my job. I'll have a Green also.
[00:15:43] Speaker C: Yeah, but just to see if it tastes different, wouldn't a child's mind be like, why they don't like this?
[00:15:49] Speaker B: So did it taste different?
[00:15:50] Speaker A: I think it's more of a psychological thing. No one likes the brown ones. I went for the red one.
[00:15:55] Speaker C: Red is everyone's favorite.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: I mean, to me, brown is chocolate colored. So it's like a chocolate chocolate.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: Well, there you go.
[00:16:01] Speaker C: But red is like, maybe it's cherry chocolate.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: Cherry coke.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: Does that sound delicious, though.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: So that's it.
Let me ask you then, Cheryl. What is something that may surprise people to know about you?
[00:16:15] Speaker C: You guys already have heard this answer before.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: I was excited to learn something new.
[00:16:20] Speaker C: I wish I could think of something new. But, you guys, I'm very vocal about who I am and I'm very reflective, so I'm always being like, wonder if I think about this. So you guys know everything about me. Not everything enough, I would hope, do.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: I'm a really big Depeche mode fan.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: No way. No idea.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: I really like concerts.
[00:16:41] Speaker C: No. Something that I don't even think you two knew until I told you is that I am an introvert.
I don't think for somebody to meet me, they'd know how much anxiety I get being in front of people or that I have to plug in to get my energy because I come off like I'm just as excitable as the two of you.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't want to say fake it till you make it, but she is kind of faking the not faking it. She'll push on through. Yes.
[00:17:06] Speaker C: That's a challenge. And I'm uncomfortable, but I do it anyways because I like the end result of being around people and talking to people. It's scary for me to jump in every time. Every time. Which is so crazy to me, even after so many years that I still feel that way.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: People think that Cheryl's so outgoing and bubbly and vivacious, and she is.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: I like vivacious, but she likes to.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: Call herself an introverted. No, an extroverted introvert.
[00:17:30] Speaker C: You actually called me that a long.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: Time ago, and I was sense that checks out.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: Whereas we get energy from people. Cheryl's like, I've given my energy to the people. Now I need to go into.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: Yeah, she needs to come back and put herself into a hyperbaric chamber and just recharge like.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Vader.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: Why don't you ask Nicole?
[00:17:54] Speaker C: Why don't you ask me, dear Nicole, what is something that may surprise people to know about you?
Are you going to tell us something we don't know?
[00:18:03] Speaker B: I don't know. Same thing. I mean, who knows the most about me is probably you, right?
And I struggled with them because there was a lot of things, and I was like, I could do like a serious one because we're not that serious that often. But then, no, I didn't go with a really serious one. So something that may surprise people. So part a is that when I was 15, I thought I going was to say 50 when I was 50 in the future.
DeLorean. And what I did was, when I was 15, I got a fake id, which many people do whatever. Right?
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: People want to do that.
[00:18:38] Speaker C: Of course I do that.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: We all did.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: But the reason I got a fake id was so that I could get a full time job selling insurance with Scotiabank.
Obviously, they wouldn't have hired me if they knew I was 15, went to.
[00:18:53] Speaker C: Wherever he went to get a job.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: Did they not have a social insurance number?
[00:18:58] Speaker C: It was the 80s.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: It was the. Don't think they needed people. And I still went to high school. It's not like I dropped out of school. I went to high school during the day.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: So in a hole, right?
[00:19:10] Speaker B: And then at night, from like three to nine every night. And I was so young. I was thinking about this last night as I thought about it. I was so young that I would take the streetcar home. I was still living with my parents, obviously. My mom didn't even think I was old enough to walk from the streetcar stop four blocks up in high park to our house. She would walk to the streetcar stop to walk me home. In my business, not really. She knew I was at work, but she didn't realize I had a full time job selling insurance for the bank.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: Here I am, like Cheryl. And, like, even Cheryl's fake id for bars and stuff. Like, yeah. And here's Nicole. I need to sell insurance.
[00:19:45] Speaker C: That is so in line with our old lady Nicole.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: It really is.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: Everyone's like, didn't people notice? I was like, no, why would they have noticed? Like, I sounded like wearing glasses and a mustache.
Yes. I didn't know that. No, that was a good story. That's a good one.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: So Nicole and John both had working too young to be able to do these jobs.
[00:20:09] Speaker C: Did you see the look she gave me when I said that it was the 80s.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: She was like, no, it is not the 80s.
[00:20:14] Speaker C: It was the.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Not that old Cheryl. Yes.
[00:20:18] Speaker A: Cool. That was a good one. Yeah. That's something that Cheryl and I had no idea about.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: You also, part c is my name is Nicole and I'm a recovered workaholic that continued on and on and on.
[00:20:29] Speaker C: Put workaholic on one of my answers.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm a recovered workaholic.
[00:20:34] Speaker C: That's why you're my work wife.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Work wife. Sister wife.
Getting very interesting. We said it was going to get a little weird, folks.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: Here you go.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: All right, let's keep it moving along.
I'm going to ask you this, Cheryl.
[00:20:53] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: What is your favorite neighborhood?
[00:20:56] Speaker C: Super loaded question.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: This is a hardest one.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: I know.
[00:21:00] Speaker C: When we did this on fun fact Fridays, you two took a second to think, and you said a neighborhood like you had no problem saying something after you gave it a thought.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: I changed.
[00:21:09] Speaker C: I'm hoping that you guys have different.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: I changed too. Okay, cool.
[00:21:12] Speaker C: But I answered, and it's the same this time that I really struggle with this. And I don't know if either. Well, you've definitely been in front of me. When someone asks me, a client about a neighborhood, I get so excited. Like, I'm looking at these places in Regent park, I'm looking at these places in Ronsdale, I'm looking at these places in Riverside. I get so excited about telling everybody about that one neighborhood they're interested in.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: I can't believe you started with Regent park, by the way. Regent park is probably not her favorite.
[00:21:34] Speaker C: No, and I did it because it's not my favorite because I wanted to. Also, just basically, now you got me off topic.
I love every central Toronto neighborhood. There's some that I love more than others, but I get super excited about all of them, and I love them all for different reasons. Like, if it's restaurants or walkability or parks and each one has something a little bit different. I lived in bluer West Village for a long time, and I love blue west village. I love walking around Trinity Bellwoods in little Italy. That's sort of like where you always get the most eye candy, the most restaurants. We love Queen Street east and Riverside because we know a lot of the owners and the.
I don't. I almost feel like they're all my favorites and I can just have to rank them to see which one's my least favorite. Regent Park.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: Region park. And it's a great little.
[00:22:23] Speaker C: No, I still like Regent park. But I say to you that I feel like Regent park is a suburb.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: It feels like a suburb in the.
[00:22:29] Speaker C: Middle of the city because it's circle K and Popeyes and there's no mom and pop.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: Raba.
[00:22:34] Speaker C: Yeah, well, Lebo. And it's great. The athletic center and all. That's great. But for the walkability, you don't get the cool mom and pop restaurants and stuff like that.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: And that's kind of our true.
[00:22:43] Speaker C: It feels like if you like the convenience of all these chains and franchises, it's all there.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: So have you recused yourself from that question?
[00:22:52] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: All right, so Cheryl can't answer. That's fair enough.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: What did you answer last time? Do you remember?
[00:22:59] Speaker C: I did the same thing.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: What Cheryl is referring to is she did a series for the past few years. It's been a while since she's done it, called fun Fact Friday.
[00:23:07] Speaker C: I only did it for a couple of months.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: It was great, though. Really well received. Yeah, a couple of years ago. We'll see if we can bring that back.
[00:23:13] Speaker C: But it was a lot of work because I pre planned all the questions for weeks and then I'd have to go around and film all you guys with the answers. But I couldn't let you all know what the other when we have their jobs. And then I had to when we had our. And put it on our Insta stories and, yeah, it was great. I loved it too, but it was just, it was busy and it stressed me out.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: Yeah. And actually this podcast episode idea I think was born from that. And it was Cheryl that came up with we wanted to do something a little bit lighter. And so thank you, Cheryl, for that.
[00:23:43] Speaker C: When I asked our instastory followers, I said, what do you want to see more of? Do you want to see more properties? You want to have more educational? And lots of people said all of the above, but so many people mentioned fun fact Fridays. So I think that we all know if you're a forward facing person at any, like, people want to get to know you and they want to know the person behind the.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: Yeah, cool. Nicole, favorite neighborhood.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: I decided I really want to get it down to like two or three.
I'm going to go do High park. What's old is new again. I grew up there.
[00:24:20] Speaker C: You're feeling nostalgic, I guess.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: Yeah. But everything is there. Like, you have the park to walk the dogs. You have Roncesville's for everything. Like, everything you need is there.
[00:24:29] Speaker C: Ronsie is a different neighbor, but it's.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: Adjacent, so you could walk there.
[00:24:32] Speaker C: So it's a junction.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: I remember as a kid living there, the public transportation was a little bit of, like, not so great.
Especially the closer you get to the lake. Yeah, there was one bus that went up and down parkside. You'd have to stand there forever or walk in the freezing cold in a wind tunnel. I know. So public transitment.
[00:24:51] Speaker C: But you have the subway, which is great. And I think all the neighborhoods along the bluer subway are great because you have real ease of moving around the city access.
[00:24:58] Speaker B: Right. I also love the beach.
[00:25:00] Speaker C: Yes. Oh, that's what you said last time.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: Yeah. I really do love it.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: Similar vibes. East side and west side, I guess, right?
[00:25:07] Speaker B: Yeah. But there's the beach.
[00:25:09] Speaker C: Cottagey.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: It's cottagey. It's very hard to commute in and out of our profession. We drive all over the city and the GTA constantly and it makes no sense.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: Feels like a little town.
[00:25:20] Speaker C: Within Toronto, it does feel like a little town. It's a bit of a bubble.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: It's great. It's great if you could stay in that town, but if your job requires you to go to the other towns.
[00:25:28] Speaker C: Around town, because Queen street and Kingston are the only ways in and out. They're both one lane, really. And Queen has actually does Kingston as.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: Well, has a streetcar and parking during non peak times, so it is tough. Yeah. But the people that are in the beach usually will stay in the beach.
[00:25:46] Speaker C: Yeah, they love it. And people in high Park a lot of times will stay in the park.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: All right.
[00:25:50] Speaker C: As an aside, in high park, they.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Just stay in the park.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: Do you call it the beach or the beaches?
[00:25:56] Speaker B: I call it the beach. Okay.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Because for our listeners out there, that's a big bonus.
Which one is it?
[00:26:04] Speaker C: If you look it up on Google Maps, it says the beaches.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: It could be both. There's been a lot back and forth anyway.
[00:26:11] Speaker C: And it's not like old school, new school. There's some old school that call it.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: Either or, some new schools that call it either or. If I were going to a different beach, I would name the beach. If I say the beach, that's what I mean. Where are you going? I'm going to Wasega Beach. I wouldn't just say like the beach to me. That's the beach. All the other beaches have a name in front of the word the beach.
[00:26:28] Speaker C: But the area is more than one. So the beaches, the neighborhood, I should say. You're talking about going to the beach. Do you go to the beach when you're at the beach?
[00:26:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's why I like the beach.
[00:26:38] Speaker C: All right, what's your favorite neighborhood?
[00:26:40] Speaker A: Yeah, we got sidetracked a little. Sorry about that.
[00:26:42] Speaker C: Nine minutes.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: Sorry. We don't care.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: That's fine. I'll be quick. When we were coming up with, I guess, copy for our website as well, picking our favorite neighborhoods, I'd initially said Trinity, bellwoods and Riverside. I'm changing it.
[00:26:57] Speaker C: Both of you?
[00:26:58] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:26:59] Speaker C: To Regent park, of course.
[00:27:01] Speaker A: No, Rexdale. Just kidding. I know.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: I actually like Rex. The racetrack is there, right?
[00:27:06] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:27:06] Speaker C: I grew up.
That's something not a lot of people knew about.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: Every single neighborhood in this city has redeeming qualities. And no neighborhood is perfect either. But for me, little Italy it is. Cheryl and I have had long, hard thinks about which areas we think we could live in if it wasn't for Leslieville. Right?
We all love Leslieville. Absolutely. We all live nearby here in Leslieville. You're in Liverdale. Yeah. You're in Liverdale. We're in Liverdale.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: Liverdale.
[00:27:40] Speaker C: They should have called it Liverdale.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: Absolutely. So, literally, I, for a time, lived on Queen Street West. Queen west.
[00:27:49] Speaker C: I've never known that about you. I know he mentions it every time we.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: I was a queen west guy, but I love the houses there. I love the fact that it is a neighborhood that's nestled in between so many other neighborhoods. And for Cheryl and I, we're big walkers. Walkability is huge. It's one of the things that is not my favorite about the pocket of Leslieville that we live in right now. It's about a 1015 minutes walk to anything other than our little strip at Coxwell and Gerard and Little India, which there's some great shops. But if we were to be, and when we may move towards that side, just the fact that you could walk up to Koreatown, you can walk over to Roncie, you can walk east over to Kensington Market, King West, Queen west. Those are all the neighborhoods just surround it, let alone little do west as well, let alone Little Italy itself. And there's so many fantastic restaurants, a lot of mom and pop shops. And so for that reason, that is my newest favorite neighborhood, according to John January. Sorry. February 2024.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: True. We should do a check in, like, every year.
[00:28:51] Speaker C: Yeah, because I think that this will give you guys a chance to do what I do need in the mall.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: True.
[00:28:59] Speaker C: Because you said it's a close walk to this and a close walk to that. I'm like, it's right beside little Portugal. You didn't even mention Little Portugal.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: Osington.
[00:29:06] Speaker C: Oh, the Osington strip.
[00:29:07] Speaker A: Fantastic. There's just so much that you thought.
[00:29:10] Speaker C: You'D say Parkdale for sure.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. You could walk to Parkdale from there. Oh, you thought I would say Parkdale as my favorite neighborhood? Because I did live in Parkdale for a while as well.
[00:29:16] Speaker C: You did.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: And it's changed. It really has changed from when I lived there about 1015 years ago. Anywho, so let's move on to our next question. How are we doing for time here? We're doing pretty good. Next question is favorite restaurant. And I'm going to back it over to you, Nicole. What's your favorite restaurant?
[00:29:32] Speaker B: So I went wide on this. These were all hard questions. They sound generic, but they're not. So I went big. What's my favorite restaurant ever?
And I looked it up last night. It's closed actually, but I'm still going down. Yeah, that's funny.
It's in LA and it's called Bazaar. It was the Jose Andreas restaurant. It was the first Jose Andreas restaurant I ever went to in the SLS hotel. They've closed it now.
[00:30:00] Speaker C: Is it because Jose Andreas is busy feeding the world?
[00:30:03] Speaker B: No, I think Covid. I think during COVID they closed because now he's opened two new restaurants.
[00:30:08] Speaker C: But also during COVID he was busy feeding the world.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: It was the best meal I've ever had in my life. It's the best experience I've ever had in my life, eating wise. And therefore, he is my favorite chef since eating at that restaurant. I used to travel around, going to all his restaurants.
[00:30:24] Speaker C: Recently you were a groupie?
[00:30:25] Speaker B: I was recently in Vegas. I went to that bizarre meet with my friend when we went to Vegas. And that was also a really good restaurant for both meat and non meat. They made this, like, crazy tomato carpaccio thing.
[00:30:37] Speaker C: I was going to ask if it was because it was the food, was it the experience? Was it who you're with? Because I think all of those things can change what you feel about a restaurant. Could even be like, one server was great or one server was terrible. That take away from all the other things that you're experiencing. Right. But you'd say the overall everything.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: Overall everything cool food experience. And they gave me this olive. It was called a liquid olive, and it was in a spoon and it just looked like this, like, Flaccid thing. And you ate it. And it was the skin of an olive with all this olive juice in it. And I'll never forget I ate it. And the person I was with was like, oh, God, was it disgusting? And I was like, it was the best thing I've ever had in my life. Why? And they were like, you should see your face right now. It looks.
It's blowing my mind. It was so good.
[00:31:20] Speaker C: Can you pick a Toronto restaurant?
[00:31:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:21] Speaker C: Just name it for good measure.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: So given that I thought you might ask that, I really had to think and always changes. Right now I'm going to say my favorite Toronto restaurant is a restaurant called La Swan. It's a french restaurant.
[00:31:33] Speaker C: French? Oh, yeah. You like french?
[00:31:35] Speaker B: I do like french, but they have like, the best steak tartar. I went there once after a different dinner because the first dinner wasn't big enough with tula that time we were walking, she's like, do you want to go for a second dinner? We just popped into this place, it's like a diner. It's on Queen. Queen West.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: Queen west. Okay.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:55] Speaker C: We learned something new about Nicole. She eats second dinners.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: Honestly, it's fun. Now we're getting too old to like, let's eat and go to the club. Let's eat a dinner and then walk and eat club.
[00:32:08] Speaker C: Is it two small dinners? Two full dinners?
[00:32:10] Speaker B: You can only do it if first dinner is small.
[00:32:12] Speaker C: Okay. So like, first dinner is appetizers.
[00:32:15] Speaker B: Really kind? It kind of was. Are you here for dinner?
[00:32:17] Speaker C: Nope, just appetizers.
[00:32:18] Speaker B: Have second dinner.
Delicious.
[00:32:22] Speaker C: John, what is your favorite?
[00:32:24] Speaker A: This is. I thought you'd both choose kind of fancy ones. And I didn't know that there was going to be like my favorite restaurant in the world. So now you got me thinking.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:33] Speaker C: I know.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: So I'm going to start with, it's funny. My favorite thing to eat is tacos. Absolutely. So I was not going to say my favorite restaurant. Full experience. Cheryl and I were really fortunate to. Somebody could not make their reservations at aloe and Cheryl and I went there and that was a phenomenal experience. And there's another restaurant that I really wanted to try. I'm not going to name it, but we went recently. I wanted to love it so much and I didn't necessarily because the service wasn't as great as I wanted it to be.
[00:33:00] Speaker C: Still, it was great as it was.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: But I'm going to choose something cheap and cheerful. And it's actually a restaurant that is closed as well. They've moved, actually.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: And that is tacos 101.
Tacos 101. And it's their original location, which was 101 Dundas street east, now a condo. It's now a condo. Yeah. So that's at the corner of church and Dundas. And I've always loved street tacos. Done a lot of traveling on cruise ships, especially over in Mexico. I could eat street tacos until they go out of style. And they were affordable there. They were delicious corn tortillas. Just amazing. And we have since been to their new location, which is in Kensington on Baldwin. And it's still great, but it's just not quite as good. So tacos 101 tacos.
[00:33:44] Speaker C: There were so.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: They're so good. So favorite restaurant. There you go.
I was going to say you can never go wrong with, say, tironis, which is something that we.
I know Turoni. Well, there's multiple of them.
[00:33:55] Speaker B: You can never go wrong with Hroni. Yeah.
[00:33:59] Speaker A: I thought it was like tacos 101. It's like, oh, you learn tacos. Tacos 101. But it was actually because that was the address 101.
[00:34:06] Speaker C: Did you really think that?
[00:34:07] Speaker A: I did. Stupid me.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: I thought the same thing. We're just like, tacos 101. Like, this is where you start in your taco experience of life.
[00:34:13] Speaker C: It was a very small place that didn't really fit people either. Like, everyone was sort of coming out the door to order. It was really tiny, so it felt like mexican street meat.
[00:34:22] Speaker A: And because you got me thinking about restaurants anywhere in the world. We just got back recently from a trip for my 50th birthday, and we went to a place in Barcelona called.
[00:34:31] Speaker C: You're 50.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: I know, I'm old. We went to a place in Barcelona called El Nacional, and it was phenomenal. We didn't have, like, a full meal experience, but we did go up to the oyster bar, and they have, like, five different sections, five different little mini restaurants in this beautifully designed, old, pavilion like building. It was like a market, but not like Ria. It's a much totally different experience. And we got there right when it opened, and there was already people lined up. So if you ever get the chance to go check out El Naccia now, the experience is just absolutely phenomenal. And I'd have to probably name that as my favorite restaurant right now in the world.
[00:35:07] Speaker C: I would say that I've never had oysters that delicious in my life. And no toppings here. You have to have the horseradish or something like that.
I've thought about it so good.
I wish we'd had a discussion that we were naming outside of Toronto restaurants. I could have been here all day. I could have done podcasts on restaurants.
[00:35:29] Speaker B: What did you choose, Cheryl?
What is your favorite restaurant?
[00:35:34] Speaker C: Well, I assumed, Nicole, that that was a Toronto question. And I put actually been having the notes.
[00:35:40] Speaker B: Best of Toronto. Anyway, sorry I didn't have these.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: Yeah, because that's right. I'm going to shout out an amazing account on instagram. Yeah.
[00:35:46] Speaker C: So we know that you're a foodie, and we know that you just eat all the food. I'd say I'm somewhere in between. I love to try every restaurant. And this started when I was in university, and I would get an hour iweekly, and I would circle all the restaurants that I want to try. So I started this long list of places to go before I die. Before a bucket list was, like, an actual thing.
[00:36:08] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:36:09] Speaker C: And I still have this list, and there's still places on it that we're trying to check off. And there's so many places that have closed down that I didn't get a chance to go 990.
So I'm constantly like, ooh, I want to try that. Ooh, I want to try that. If I had to narrow it down to one favorite, like overall experience or where I'm eating and saying the whole time, I couldn't think of something because.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: You could change it next year, next year's podcast when we do this.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: But the object here is to name something.
[00:36:34] Speaker C: But I always love pizza. I am not as big a Toronte fan as you two. I am more of a pizzeria libretto fan.
[00:36:40] Speaker A: Right.
[00:36:40] Speaker C: And usually there's two. And they're great factions because they're both napolitan style pizza, just slightly different. You're allowed to actually pick different toppings at pizzeria?
[00:36:49] Speaker A: Yeah, they're pretty strict. They're the pizza Nazis over at Turoni.
[00:36:53] Speaker C: Porto Bravo.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: Puerto Bravo. I thought about mentioning Puerto Bravo as a taco place just down the street from us, kind of at the bottom of Ashdale on Gerard. It's Bib Gourmand, recognized by the folks at Michelin.
[00:37:07] Speaker C: And to your point, like, aloe is a Michelin starred restaurant. It gets named number one restaurant in Toronto all the time. I wouldn't necessarily say that it was up there as one of my favorites.
[00:37:16] Speaker A: It was a great experience.
[00:37:17] Speaker C: It was a great experience. The food was delicious. Not to take away from the fact that it deserves to be definitely where it is, but you're trying to think of something that blew your socks off for whatever reason. Maybe it's experience, maybe it's the person you're with. Whatnot. I also put Gus tacos every time.
[00:37:31] Speaker A: There'S a place for lease here in the east end. I'm like, is that going to be a duck? Gus tacos? Because they don't have an east end location and it's affordable. It's always good.
[00:37:40] Speaker B: I've never been.
[00:37:41] Speaker C: That's part of the reason why you need to go. It's affordable.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: $5 a taco. The fish tacos are fantastic. Yeah.
[00:37:49] Speaker C: You're not with food, though, really, let's be honest. So Cheryl's named a couple canoe for views.
[00:37:54] Speaker A: We had one of our first big dates there.
[00:37:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:56] Speaker C: And I've been many times, and I don't like to go to the same restaurant over and over again. There's very few that I choose to go to more than once. But canoe I've been to multiple times and always have a great meal experience.
Unless it's really cloudy and you can't see anything.
[00:38:10] Speaker A: Yeah, it's the experience in a lot of cases. Right. And your experience can change with the menu. It can change with your servers. It can change with the views and the weather.
[00:38:20] Speaker C: But now I want to name, like, a worldwide one.
[00:38:23] Speaker A: Pick one.
[00:38:23] Speaker C: I don't know, like, anything in Italy, probably like that walnut pasta and Genoa, like when we were on working on cruise ships, I remember saying every single time I took a bite of that, like, there probably is. How about the bar that we went to?
[00:38:36] Speaker A: Yeah. With the squid sandwiches. Squid sandwiches. So good.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: Oh, squid sandwiches. That's friggin delicious.
[00:38:43] Speaker A: You would have loved this crispy, salty umami. It was so good. Anyway, this is not a food podcast, but let me actually shout out, because if you're interested in knowing what some of the best industry people and chefs and people in the hospitality and trends are in Toronto, on instagram, go to finest. They've got a chef series called Best of Toronto. They're content creators, and it's fantastic. It speaks to some of the leading chefs in Toronto what their favorite go to places are for. Favorite pizza, favorite restaurant, favorite burger, you name it, head on over there. They've got some phenomenal content.
[00:39:16] Speaker C: And 2023, that was gathering the most restaurants that were like, they'd ask all these different chefs questions and which were the most common answers.
[00:39:25] Speaker A: Best of 2023. Yeah. So they've got pizzeria Badalis always gets.
[00:39:30] Speaker C: Mentioned at Dover Court.
[00:39:32] Speaker A: Yeah. And for burgers, burger drops, which I love. Cheryl's not a huge fan of their sauce, but I think they're.
[00:39:38] Speaker C: But I like a good smashburger. We could do favorite smashburger, favorite taco, favorite.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: Let's wrap this up so we can eat.
[00:39:45] Speaker C: Next question.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: So next is our final question, and I'm going to ask Nicole, go back to where they started. Nicole, can you tell us what's your favorite part of being a realtor?
[00:39:57] Speaker B: I've said this every time you've asked me. This is a hard question.
[00:40:00] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:40:01] Speaker B: My favorite part is working so closely with people, making new best friends every three months and spending so much time with them and their life and being an integral part of their life and where that's going.
[00:40:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:18] Speaker C: If you're making new ones or do you get rid of old ones and then.
[00:40:20] Speaker B: No, you have room for a lot more best friends. That's right. I keep in touch with almost everybody. Everybody that wants to doesn't mean everyone wants to be my best friend.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:30] Speaker C: Some people are like Nicole Norton.
[00:40:35] Speaker B: I think that's the best part, really, that we just get to work so closely with people, and it's always new.
[00:40:40] Speaker A: It's, I think as an agent, most agents are people, persons people people. Most. Some aren't. We've met a few of those. Some people do preconstruction, things like that.
[00:40:50] Speaker C: And also the odd person who's really into parts of the transaction.
[00:40:54] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:40:55] Speaker C: Right. Like, maybe they're really into design or they're really into numbers or.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Investor people.
[00:41:00] Speaker A: You're a people.
[00:41:01] Speaker B: I'm a people people.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: Cheryl, what's your favorite part of the job?
[00:41:05] Speaker C: I put helping people as well, but also the job is different every day, which makes it a little bit less mundane than something that's the same all the time. And we've discussed this at length before that I've discovered while doing this job, because we're self employed. So you do every aspect of the job that I really like stats and numbers. And I didn't realize that I had such a. And now that I look back, I don't know how I didn't realize it, but that I really like that portion of the job. And then I like helping people with it, like sharing the information I'm gathering in my brain and I'm making sense of it, and I'm sharing it to help our buyers and sellers make great life decisions. And I love being a part of that. It really does. It fills your soul when you help somebody, whether it's like a small lease or the first home or whatever it might be.
[00:41:53] Speaker A: That's great. Nice.
[00:41:55] Speaker B: I also put them.
[00:41:56] Speaker C: A workaholic she is.
[00:41:57] Speaker A: Cheryl needs more work life balance. We're working on that. She often does, like, for a full week, 1618 hours. Days from the moment she gets up till the moment she gets to sleep.
[00:42:07] Speaker C: 60 hours a week, something like that.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: I'm bad at math.
[00:42:09] Speaker C: Every time he goes, we work 60 hours a week.
[00:42:11] Speaker A: Cheryl's like more 80. Yeah, it's a bunch. So in my answer to this question, we don't care. Okay, thanks.
[00:42:20] Speaker B: I also like you have like, a floor plan here underneath.
[00:42:22] Speaker A: Yeah, that's really cute. That's for renovation that we're doing or helping out. Sorry.
[00:42:27] Speaker B: But anyway, is that your favorite part of the job, that floor plan?
[00:42:31] Speaker A: No, I'm saying as well that every day is different. So I love how it's not the same thing. You called it mundane, Cheryl. It's the furthest thing from mundane, especially, I think, for me, because I do a lot more of the facilitating of the dirty work. But it really does run the gamut. This week, for example, we've got multiple listings coming out, so I've painted a quick feature wall. It was quicker for me to paint one feature wall than it would be for me to have our painters come in, quote, facilitate getting them in and out. I'm like, I can do this in an hour.
And I had done painting much younger days with my friend Hammy, who owns a painting company, courthamptonpainting.com. Give you a shout out there.
So there's that. We've got another listing coming out in the junction that is formerly tenanted. It was our client's home, and then she had tenants in and they were really rough on it. So I've been doing some patching and drywalling just before our painters can get in. But then there's also the fact that I owned a production company with my dad. And all the things that we're doing right here, this is essentially marketing for our real estate business. And after this, today we're heading out to shoot a lifestyle video in which Cheryl's going to star as the owner of a condo that we have right down by the lake.
[00:43:46] Speaker C: So many condos.
[00:43:47] Speaker A: So there's that. There's the design aspect. I'm a big learner. I love to learn how to use tech and how it comes into play with regards to real estate is something that really fascinates me. So every single day is different then going out on showings, meeting with our clients, doing cmas, seeing different houses across the entire city. So it's an all encompassing kind of thing. There's no two days that are like, no two clients are like, no two transactions are like, we see it all the time. So that's what gets me really excited about what I do. And I love it. I absolutely love it.
[00:44:19] Speaker C: We should have done. What's your least favorite job?
[00:44:24] Speaker A: No, obviously, you take the good with the bad. Nothing is going to be all sunshine and rainbows when it comes to it. And we do have challenges, especially with a more challenging market that we've had this last year or so. Things are turning around. We had some difficult listings, and just wanting to do the best for our clients is sometimes tough. Like, I go to bed some nights with anxiety, not being able to sleep because I'm worried about what's going to happen with the listing that we have and their outcomes.
[00:44:49] Speaker B: In February?
[00:44:50] Speaker A: No, that was in the summer, actually.
[00:44:51] Speaker B: Yeah, usually it's like by the end.
[00:44:53] Speaker C: Of the spring market, but even February, like, you worry because you see that the anxiety your clients are carrying and you want to take that for them, so you go to bed with it.
I'd say that this is the worst part about. And maybe this is any self employed. I've become cynical about some people because you see not just what happens to us, but you see it happening to other people or how people treat each other and how little respect.
[00:45:17] Speaker A: Courtesy.
[00:45:17] Speaker C: Courtesy. That. And it could be realtor to realtor. It could be realtor to client, could be client to client, client to lawyer, like, whatever it might be. And sometimes it just makes my heart go.
[00:45:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:28] Speaker C: And I know that I am more cynical as a 49 and a half year old than I was as 42 year old.
[00:45:36] Speaker A: You try not to let it get you down.
[00:45:39] Speaker C: I know I have a positive outlook on life.
[00:45:41] Speaker A: I think we all do.
[00:45:42] Speaker C: We're all quite positive. If I had to say one of the hardest things is when those things happen, because those are the things that get me down.
[00:45:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:49] Speaker C: That humans aren't nice to each other.
[00:45:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And that, I think, could happen with almost any job. But we do see it a lot here.
[00:45:55] Speaker C: I don't think it's specific to real estate. I think it's just because we deal so much with different people and because it is different every day and it's a different person today and tomorrow.
I won't get into it.
[00:46:06] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:46:06] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:46:08] Speaker A: Let's wrap it up. And I'm going to throw something weird here.
[00:46:11] Speaker C: Did you want to answer something negative?
[00:46:12] Speaker A: Yeah, no more negative. Fintra paperwork. She hates the paperwork. Okay. I can say the same.
[00:46:19] Speaker B: Who does the paperwork in this family?
Well, I was going to.
[00:46:23] Speaker A: There are a couple of other questions because I did have a big, long list. I went to a website. It's like 60 questions to get to know people.
[00:46:29] Speaker B: I saw you looking at. It was so cute.
[00:46:31] Speaker A: It's like, if there was one food you could eat for the rest of your life, what would it be? What are your pet peeves? How about your favorite tv show? Do you listen to any podcasts? So we could do a round robin, a rapid fire, one more question each. Do you want to try that?
[00:46:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:43] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:46:44] Speaker B: Do you know questions?
[00:46:45] Speaker A: No. Like, pull it out of your head.
[00:46:46] Speaker B: I have to do it just for one of us. What's your favorite color?
[00:46:50] Speaker A: That's an easy one.
[00:46:51] Speaker B: I'm sorry. I wanted a short answer.
[00:46:53] Speaker A: Look at photos of Cheryl when she was 15. Black with red lipstick. Oh.
[00:46:57] Speaker C: How many times?
[00:46:58] Speaker B: Black isn't a color.
Hail navy. What's your favorite hemisphere?
[00:47:05] Speaker C: Northern July.
[00:47:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:08] Speaker B: Your favorite writing utensil.
[00:47:10] Speaker A: I thought we were going to do one pencil.
[00:47:11] Speaker B: I'm sorry, I'm on a roll.
[00:47:13] Speaker C: It's just Nicole and I back away, cleaning product.
[00:47:17] Speaker B: Oh, that's a good one.
[00:47:21] Speaker A: I guess we'll wrap it up then. Thanks for the rapid fire of questions, Nicole.
[00:47:26] Speaker B: You're welcome.
[00:47:27] Speaker A: So we hope that you learned a little bit about us that you didn't know before. Got to go a little bit deeper into who are John, Nicole, and Cheryl. And hopefully it didn't get too weird. I thought it was kind of fun. I can't believe that you had a fake id to get a job selling insurance, Nicole. That's very Nicole of you.
[00:47:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:45] Speaker A: And anything to add, Cheryl or Nicole, before I wrap things up? Talking about support local, my favorite thing.
[00:47:53] Speaker C: About this job is working with you jerks.
[00:47:55] Speaker A: Oh, yes.
[00:47:56] Speaker B: Me too. Me too.
[00:47:58] Speaker A: It's great that we have the camaraderie. It makes it a lot less lonely job because it can be lonely for single realtors out there.
[00:48:03] Speaker C: This is why people think it's weird, because we say stuff like this in our podcast. We all huddle and hug after.
[00:48:09] Speaker B: Well, it's a very stressful job, and we have each other, so I don't think it's weird.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: Find someone out there that looks at you like the way Cheryl and Nicole are looking at me right now.
[00:48:20] Speaker C: With fear?
[00:48:21] Speaker A: Yeah, with fear. Trepidation.
All right, so we like to wrap up every one of our podcasts with support local. And I had been doing support local businesses, but I wanted to mix it up a little bit and talk about supporting a local organization called the Red Door Family Shelter. And one of our clients, Benny, had actually done a lot of photography for them in the past. I was asked to shoot some video, right pre Covid for them and some property that they were getting ready. It never ended up getting used because Covid happened. But they're doing a lot of amazing things here in the community and in Toronto. Their offices are on Carla, but the Red Door family shelter, since 1982, has provided emergency shelter and support for women and children affected by domestic abuse. Families experience a housing crisis and refugee claimants with nowhere else to turn and reading up a little bit about on them. Within approximately four to six months, most families are reestablished back into the community. Some families might just stay overnight, some may stay for over six months or a year, but it is case by case basis, and they do some great work. And if you like to donate to them, if you wanted to go to Reddoorshelter, CA donate, you can learn more, and you can support families in need in your community. It's a great way to finish things up. You bet. Because in the real estate world, we know that there's a housing crisis. There's not enough housing for people, let alone people that are in difficult situations. So they're doing some great work over there. All right, so that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining us, as always. You can find out more about us by following us on our socials at JNC Toronto group. You can also go to therealestatepodcast, CA for links to socials. You can access us on all podcast streaming platforms. And for the best possible experience, you can head over to our YouTube page which is linked from that website so you can see us in action recording in our office here in Leslieville, Toronto, Canada. Thank you so much for watching and listening, folks, and we will see you again soon.
[00:50:15] Speaker B: Bye bye.
[00:50:19] Speaker A: You have been listening to therealestatepodcast, CA. Visit our website for more episodes those and follow us on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube at JNC Toronto Group.