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WSO Podcast | E150: Side Hustles and Curiosity Lead to Heavy Networking and Success

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In this episode, Omar shares his winding path trying to find his way forward. Coming from a family of entrepreneurs, he didn't feel pressure to get a traditional job coming out of school and had experimented with side hustles throughout his time at the University of Toronto. Listen to hear about his networking hack when he was working in dead-end Asset Management and Equity research jobs, why he moved to Calgary and later to upstate New York with no job lined up and what changed to allow him to start to build significant wealth in Texas.

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WSO Podcast (Episode 150) Transcript:

 

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:06] Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis. Your host and chief monkey, and this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me! As I talked to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into

Different career paths and life in general. Let's get to it. In this episode, Omar shares his winding path, trying to find his way forward. Coming from a family of entrepreneurs, you didn't feel pressure to get a traditional job coming out of school and had experimented with side hustles throughout his time at the University of Toronto. Listen to hear about his networking hack when he was working in a dead end asset management and equity

Research jobs, why he moved to Calgary and later at upstate New York with no job lined up. And what changed to allow him to start to build significant wealth in Texas? Enjoy. All right, Omar, thanks so much for joining the Wall Street Voices podcast.

Omar: [00:01:04] Hey, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to an interesting conversation, for sure.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:08] So if you could just start by giving the listeners a short summary of your bio, that'd be great.

Omar: [00:01:12] Sure. So look, I a lot of the things that we're going to talk about are predominantly going to come back to the fact that I grew up in an environment. My family is very entrepreneurial, like a fourth or fifth generation entrepreneur So and I

Grew up very comfortable. So and I was lucky enough to be internationally. Also, I'm from Pakistan, but my family is very global. We travel a lot. So I was always exposed to not only a lot of people, but a lot of people at very high places doing very interesting things, right? So framing that in mind, I graduated in 2008. I, to be honest with you from

The University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada, I initially my Plan wasn't necessarily to even stay in Canada after I graduated from it, probably go back to Pakistan or Dubai And kind of either work Within my family's business, take it out on my own business, basically figure myself out, get my shit together and then start going through the next Journey, whatever it is, right? But what happened is I was dating a girl at that time and in a fit of youthful exuberance. This is right around the time when my parents were coming from my grad a graduation ceremony, I decided, OK, you know what? I'm probably going to stay around in Canada, and 2008 wasn't necessarily the best time to be making those pivots. So basically, what happens is I have an interview with anybody because the plan was to never stick around. I had gone to all the recruiting parties, so, you know, all that stuff. But I never interviewed. I never recruited on any of that stuff. And at the last moment, I'm deciding. And on Top of that, we're kind of heading into A very dicey time in the economy. But again, youthful exuberance, it always Helps, doesn't hurt, I think, or At least help me. So what happened is, you know, I go through The summers and had a good time Because my family was visiting Canada as we kind of went around all that jazz band around September ish, I was like, OK, let me kind of get serious with my Life, whatever that Means. And OK, maybe I should look for a job, and all that stuff ended up breaking up with the girl, funnily enough, in October. So that's my grand plan. A senior of mine, actually from college, is a Good friend of mine. He hooked me up with the job in the Royal Bank of Canada that was in portfolio management. That was a good exposure to me, basically unlearning what I didn't want to do, basically. So that was a good start. But all around this time, you have to realize at the side. Even during school, I had a lot of side hustles going on right side gigs, businesses this and that, and we can get into it And those are always More fascinating to me, maybe because of my family, all of that sort of stuff. And they were actually pretty lucrative. So on a dollar basis, they were doing pretty OK, right? So I did that RBC thing for about a year or Whatever time,Then. Mackenzie Asset Management is a big Canadian asset manager that Got about one hundred Billion two hundred billion. I don't know what they have now. So they I was talking to somebody over drinks because I kept networking around, right? And this was a networking with the intention of getting a job because I really wasn't really attuned that way at that time. This was networking that any time, for instance, I'd read the newspaper And people used To publish newspapers back in the day, and I hear about any entrepreneur doing something really interesting in the city of Toronto. I would find a way to Reach out to them. And hey, you know, I heard You sold your landscaping company for $50 million. That's pretty cool. You want to tell me what you did and weirdly enough, a lot of people, because you know, people want to talk and they're nice. They were great golf and they meet people for coffee. And this wasn't I was trying to pitch myself. This was just out of sheer curiosity. Ok, so I'll go over to Mackenzie again. This was I just needed a job to bid me a good amount of money, but I didn't really have to work too much. So then I could do all my side gigs. I could do all of that sort of stuff.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:47] You're working like 40 hours a week at this. It's Mackenzie. Just four hours, Mackenzie. Yeah, no, it's a Mackenzie. Yeah, yeah, no.

Omar: [00:04:56] One. It's forty five to fifty hours of official work. I think I work like two hours a week, right?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:03] Just be very clear, you're like, you are at Mackenzie Asset Management Mackenzie Financial, but you were working like, let's be honest, like an hour a day max or whatever at best. So you were on the side, what were you doing like? What were these salaries? So I didn't do it because, you know, I think you've you've been an entrepreneur basically your whole since since graduating, it sounds like,

Omar: [00:05:21] Yeah, but it wasn't. You didn't have to understand. It's really weird now that I talk to people and people say, Oh, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur because I had wanted to do X, Y and Z and. In my mind, at least it was never framed that way, because in my mind, what was framed Was I have a couple Of passions in life. One of the passions is obviously to meet people. I'm just a very curious type person, you know? Anytime somebody does something cool and I don't really I don't want any money from them. I just am interested in learning about what people do, right? Number one number two, I love reading books, right? And there's a pretty funny incident in equity research I'm going to tell you about. So I always wanted to have enough time, even when I was partying in school, and I always like to take out times where, OK, I don't want to talk to anybody. I just want to spend three or four hours just reading A book and do whatever And this isn't a book on something specific, just random books by even sleazy tabloids. They all count, right? So for me, the whole deal was quality of time and return on on my time. Like, am I like, do I have enough free time to do things that I want? And am I meeting interesting people? Those were the only two big things in my life at that moment and to a certain degree, even right now. And can I leave the same quality of life that I was used to living growing up? Right.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:29] So and let's let's start before we're going into all that like, yeah, it's it sounds like a good philosophy, but did you have that coming right out of undergrad? It seems like it's a pretty wise philosophy to have coming so young at 22, where your parents similar to like that did they? Did they were they kind of in a family business? Was it like a multi generation? You said. So like, it's always been like that in your family?

Omar: [00:06:51] Look. Yes and no, because when my grandfather died, this was a few years before I was married, actually 10 or 15 years we had because there was no formal estate planning, right? He died young. It's like fifty five or something. Okay? Eventually, what happened is my dad's side of the family. All the all the sons and the daughter were young when he died. I mean, youngish, right? Yeah. But later on, for instance, when they grew up and you know, when they have kids, we had a lot of estate planning and inheritance issues, siblings fighting with each other, all of that stuff. Oh okay, I'm from a family perspective. What I had seen was that for us, we in a way we kind of taken the next step, but not really in certain areas in the Sense that the business had become more of A way for us, to our family to have assets that were then providing for the lifestyle of the various family members. So it wasn't necessarily, hey,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:38] Here's a business mind sharing like what? What level of assets are we talking about here? Is this like, you Know, 50 million? Or is it like, Oh, we're talking

Omar: [00:07:45] About, look, I think we're talking about 50 to 75, maybe $80 million. Yeah, he's

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:49] That's across how many people are.

Omar: [00:07:50] That's each person that's maybe like four people. Ok, but still a

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:54] Lot of money.

Omar: [00:07:55] But you also have to realize the cost of living in Pakistan is much cheaper than the cost of living in the U.S..

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:59] Right, right. So what type can you share? What type of business that you're facing?

Omar: [00:08:02] Yeah, I can tell you initially. So initially Before my Grandfather, this is all Land ownership, Right? And that's how you Drive a good portion of your money. But then in his particular case, he went into commercial real estate. He had basically this is electronics, wholesale and all of that. This is you got to realize this Is when color TVs were The new thing. You know, you had a color TV and you were like the big dog, right? Not just in, by the way, in Pakistan, by the way, even in the U.S. because what was funny was when I moved to Canada, I realized when you know, when you're when I'm meeting people from so many different backgrounds and oh shit, I had video games And techThat people living in Canada and the U.S. had the same year. Yeah, right. So I was like, so it's kind of blessed that way. It wasn't necessarily because of me or anything I did. I was Very blessed with, Yeah, yeah, of

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:52] Course you come. You come from a family with so but tell me a little bit about like coming from that is there oftentimes you see like you hear the hear the story of like multi generation entrepreneurs and businesses Fail because the kids Get spoiled rotten and then there. And then they did

Omar: [00:09:07] The case in our fast because what happened is my grandfather died early. All the brothers, after a little while, started fighting with each other, so there was no time for kids to get spoiled. I wish I was born.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:16] Yeah, so there was no spoiling. Tell me, why was the fighting? Why did the fighting prevent inheritance? But there are still a lot of money to go around even.

Omar: [00:09:24] But this is what I've actually I've now that I'm in this business commercial real estate, I'm actually seeing this a lot more and it's very funny when I see it with other people in other cultures, I'm like, Oh yeah, this is exactly what what's probably going to happen, right? Yeah. Look, man, what happened is Obviously I'm the next generation, So I'm obviously not privy to all the conversations. Right, right. I think what happens is that people have misunderstandings. One person might think that they have the dominant parents or they might want to move harder on that right. Different people are at different stages in life, right? So I'm sure you know it takes two to tango, right? I'm sure there's no one person at fault. But you know, when these things start unraveling, they start unraveling pretty quickly. There's no there's no middle ground. There is no stages because one person might want more. He does this. Then everybody else feels aggrieved. Then everybody starts. It becomes a free for all after everyone. Right? Yeah. So it's that sort of thing. I mean, now I joke with my father now that they're in their old age, now they all want to be close together. And I'm like, Dude, like, what the fuck you're like?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:26] Hated each other for 15 years. And now they're like, Bro, you

Omar: [00:10:29] Can't do this for like, twenty five years and then just be like. All right, let's let's go before we die, let's just hang out. So look, so I don't know whether it was a philosophy or life or anything, because the other thing was that, look, I had seen a lot of my friends older than me. Obviously, a lot of people I knew who were in Investment banking and doing very well for themselves, by the way, in consulting like the McKinsey and BCG and all of that Stuff. And to be very honest with you. At that stage in life where you have to do those things, you know, you get recruited out of school and all. Honestly, man, I be. I didn't have my shit together, b I did not want to have my shit together and see I did not even feel that they it was the right fit for me at that moment in time, especially from a quality of time point of view. Because look, a lot of people that I kept talking, a lot of my mentors socially and otherwise. Also, they would always keep telling me, Look, your youth is never going to come back to you. I mean, you read a lot of books and all the philosophers keep saying the same damn thing over and over again. You know, beauty is wasted on the young, right? Something like that And it was. While there wasn't any grand plan, I very quickly realized that look for me to compete with somebody, say who was being recruited into a bulge bracket bank, a top tier, a bulge bracket bank that requires a level of commitment that requires a level of hard work and that requires a level of sacrifice that at that stage in life, for sure, I was not going to do.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:53] Well, you said you were doing all these side hustles where you're not working hard on those or were they just where they just quick wins?

Omar: [00:11:58] Oh no. Those side hustles were interesting because I was actually interested in the process.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:03] Tell me, OK, so tell me your most successful.

Omar: [00:12:05] I'll give you this. So. So you don't want the new iPhones? Get the first iPhone came out. Right. So when the first, at least in Canada, this is what happened. They locked it with the carrier. So if you if you get to Rogers, Rogers is the big one in Canada, right? So if Rogers is the one selling you the phone, you have to get Rogers. There's just no other way. And then obviously what Rogers do is they would hose you on the plane, right? And they do this and they do that because they can get away with it. So a really good buddy of mine, he dropped out in like the second year in computer science from the University of Toronto. He were I don't know how the hell this guy figured this out, but he could. He could unlock the phone in less than an hour. So he and he are like, I'm not even joking with you. He had like a farm of these computers in his like whatever apartment and he had, like six of them, a computer made like 10 of these. And he was just unlocking them and he was unlocking them for like 500 bucks and forty five. And I was like, You've got to be shitting me, right? And what he'd also do is so he had this going on. Then what he's done is he's he quit school on the Second year and he Is basically networked his way into these small and medium sized companies to act as an I.t. consultant, Whatever CPA or whatever the hell you call themselves. And that was basically another way for him to basically make two or three hundred thousand dollars a year and group travel on some companies dime. Because look, you've got to realize most small businesses aren't Google. So most entrepreneurs who are 60, they think the computer might as well be like a Ping with three heads speaking in Greek. Right. So he will do whatever the hell he will do, and those guys would think, Oh my God, this guy's a freaking genius. And he was flying, being flown out to like Barbados, Bahamas, and I was like, Man, I'm in the wrong freaking business, man. What the hell am I doing

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:46] With my life? Yeah, why didn't I take computer science? Is that?

Omar: [00:13:49] No, no. I was. No, no, my dad. That was really hard for me to do. I was not even past the first year. I was thinking, why don't I have that lifestyle? So he's a really good friend of mine. So him and I started basically, and it was really him, and I was just his person because he was never around Toronto. So anytime you know, he's buying an Asset, he's selling a Business or something like that because he and I knew each other for a long time. He's like, hey, man, why don't I just give you the power of attorney? And these are like a couple of hundred thousand at a time, right? So you have to be with somebody you can trust. Right? And why don't you do this for me? And I was like a third or fourth year of college, or maybe I graduated. I'm forgetting like, sure, why not? And he's like, Also, you're going to meet some really interesting people. So look, to give you an idea. There was a conference in Toronto at that time just to give you an idea of how these things, these things used to get created on USBs. You know, now we have Facebook where you get like customer profiles and all of that. If you're a marketer, you can get all of that. Well, you know, we're back in the day. You would have us and hard drives created for marketing companies. So what they would do is they would run, say, ads or whatever it is physical mail in a region like Toronto or Ottawa or GTA. They'd compile all of that information and then they would sell it to digital marketers who say, we're some random guy because all these resources weren't available and you'd be selling hard drives for like twenty thousand dollars. Right? I guess it has. It has a list of say, you know, anywhere from a thousand to 20000. It was like twenty fifty eight hundred thousand contacts. I just can't

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:17] Get data on

Omar: [00:15:19] Not related to these contacts

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:20] Purchased. And who?

Omar: [00:15:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do understand. Now again, this is something that I had no exposure to, obviously, because he did and was like, well, let's start doing that. And the other gig was that one of my College Profs?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:33] I wasn't sure how much you guys made in like that one side hustle.

Omar: [00:15:37] I didn't. I'd probably make like, I don't know, two or three hundred two hundred grand. Maybe I blew all it all on stupid things. He he made a lot of money. I don't even know how much money.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:45] So was he like the majority owner of that business? And you were just helping him?

Omar: [00:15:48] I wasn't the owner. I was just there for the right man. He wasn't even a sound person. I wasn't just a guy who trusted. And he's a good. He's still a good Friend of mine, right? And he's like, here you go. I mean, you help me out. Here you go.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:00] And that's great. So tell me a little bit about what you blew the money on. That's a lot of money for stupid

Omar: [00:16:06] Stuff going to Montreal, a Lot going to parties, a lot buying a lot of books. Weirdly, I read all of them and then I donated them and just stupid things

Like, you know, going out to really nice restaurants, all that sort of stuff. Now, obviously, I saved some of it, but I think I blew it all on stupid investments also like penny stocks and whatever biotechnology shit. Ok, no idea. I mean, I was okay.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:29] Hey, you're young. Okay, so dumb as a rock, right?

Omar: [00:16:32] Yeah. So you're young. The other gig was this was a really good gig, and one guy birthed me and I learned a really good lesson. The other gig basically was that one of my profs he was I was playing tennis with him once he's in my marketing Prof. And we were just talking. We were just hanging out. And he said, you know, there's a lot of guys In business school right from school That they're post-grad students. They need a lot of data. And basically, you need to get this data from the library because it's on microfiche and it's all laid out. So one how you photocopy that data, then you input it into excel because, you know, whatever, then you give it to these guys and then they do whatever fancy stuff they do on top of it, right? Right. And so he's like, Man, it's really killing a lot of my students because now they're doing their PhDs or whatever, and now they've got to go do this stupid Thing, right? It's not really value out if you think about it. Right? Right? And I was like, oh, that's pretty neat. So how much do they do they get paid for this year? Like, yeah, we give them like a10, whatever, ten thousand Twelve thousand grand for whatever six months or, I don't know, spend four or six months died. So I did the math. I was like, OK, this guy goes to the library for three or four hours a day, which is kind of dumb. You shouldn't be doing that. And he's got 10 or 12 grand. Then he's building out to himself or like something like 15 bucks an hour. Right, right. Well, how about I bill him at 14 bucks an hour and I can get a whole bunch of people that live in my rez? These are the girls that I knew and the guys that I knew, and I could make them have them do this for like nine bucks an hour. What do you think about that? And he's like, Yeah, But you have to be reliable any any. And I was So I did that for like a few years. But this one guy, once I made a big mistake, this one guy, I'm not going to say his name. He basically took a lot of work. He was doing all right and then he completely did not drop the ball on these two big projects. And that's why our business kind of went sideways for a little while. Yeah. So I learned a big lesson in life that way. But yeah, that was pretty sweet because for doing no work at all, I was making five 10 bucks an hour and oh my god, I felt like I'm not in the world because the biggest thing was I was not Doing any work. Yeah, it was forwarding an email. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is the greatest productivity hack on the planet.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:44] I think there's a lot of people who kind of outsource their own work. That's definitely a trend that's been picking up.

Omar: [00:18:51] But you realize this was also at a very localized level. So this was

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:54] Still, yeah, it wasn't like massive.

Omar: [00:18:57] This was also like 2005, 2006. You understand there's no Upwork’s here. None of that shit is happening, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So basically, OK, so I'm kind of doing these kind of things, but not really going anywhere in life, right? But kind of whatever Learning and meeting people. And one day, my dad isn't much to give advice. You know, he's a pretty chill guy. And I was just saying, you Know, I think I need to get my shit together, get a real job and get all those experiences, you know, professional experience. And I'm applying for some jobs. And my dad told me this a few times also, and it never stuck in my head because I was like, you’re old, doesn't really make sense. I don't know. You don't need to know anything, right? And he said, Look, man, all the jobs that are really good or the ones you want to do, which will actually give you meaningful experiences, at least in the finance business, sort of. Either they're not advertised or you're not going to get them because you don't know anyone. So you better start figuring out who to know And how to get into, like, you know, an advertised job. Because yeah. And to be honest with you, man, look, if I had gone back to Pakistan or Dubai, that's the kind of job I would be getting anyway, because it's not like people Were going to hire me purely based On my intellect. Right? Because they were not hired. That's right. So I was like, OK, you don't know anything, but at least it stuck with me. And at that time, one of my bosses I he had, he moved to Calgary. Calgary was in the middle of an oil boom and he'd gone to Toronto over some whatever, like Thanksgiving or something. And I met him for a drink and he's like, Man, Calgary was really booming. It's a really entrepreneurial place. You would be great there. It's all oil and gas, but still whatever. Right? Because I was saying, you know, I think I need to get my shit together, right? So basically, I decided I think this was October. I decided, right. Screw it, January. I'm just going to move to Calgary. I'm going to pack my bags and move to Calgary. I got nothing to lose. Right?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:45] So you're leaving this asset management place where you were, you weren't really working anyways. You're doing what you're just doing side hustles. And during that two years where you just partying, mostly in Toronto?

Omar: [00:20:56] No, I was meeting a lot of people. I was meeting a lot, but I was also meeting a lot of very interesting people. You know what's really funny? I met so many interesting guys when I was partying because a lot of these guys happened to be either entrepreneurs or traders or in some capacity. People are doing this because, look, be honest. These are the only Guys who can afford going out to party on a Tuesday night,

Right? People with real job and responsibilities do not go partying on a Tuesday night. They're OK it doesn't happen that way.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:26] You're in Calgary. So okay, so you

Omar: [00:21:28] Was in Toronto and

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:29] You're in trouble. Yeah, you bet. You met all these interesting people. But this is kind of how you found the idea of going to Calgary to no.

Omar: [00:21:35] In a way, because my boss had gone to Calgary to introduce me to a couple of his friends and they were all older guys and they were like, Look, you're young. This is the only time where you can afford like turning on a dime and doing these things right. And I kind of took it to heart. And frankly, I think the best thing that I ever did was never buy a house, right? So there was nothing like holding me back as such. Yeah, right? So I was like, All right, screw it. So I went to Calgary January 9th or 10 twenty twelve. I landed in the middle of a frickin blizzard. Right? And what I'd done before that is that I am, by the way, during this time, I had given like my first two CFA level exam or whatever it was, right? And the reason again, stupid reason to do the CFA was because. Couple of the people that I knew in my school or my graduating class that I knew were doing The CFA and they actually had Real careers, right? They were doing it for a career reason and I met them one Day and they were studying for it. And I was like, Well, this seems like a respectable thing to do. So I guess I should tell you that's all I signed up for the CFA. So I've got it done that the two levels or I think one level I move To Calgary. But before that, what I did, the smart thing that I did because now my dad's advice was ringing in my ears. So what I did is I Made a list of all the people

in Calgary, in the Calgary CFA society. It was like three or four hundred people, which was not a lot. I literally put it down on a spreadsheet, got all of their information, emails, whatever from the internet or from the CFA member directory. And I literally like went crazy like emailing following up with like 300 people. So within one month of landing in Calgary, I had something like 100 hundred informational interviews done. And what was really funny was by, like the 50th one. I had a really raging bad coffee habit because I've never had a coffee habit and everybody's nice that the one of the coffee, right? So that and no dual was weirdly happened was because Calgary is kind of a big, small city. Yeah, I like my 30th or 40th meeting. I was like up on all the gossip of work was going on in corporate Calgary. So I would need some guys say from Nixon or in Cana or an imperial oil. And they would say something, and I'd have a pretty Intelligent sort of,

Oh yeah, you know, well, Nixon's kind of doing that. It's like, what do you guys think about that? I mean, I have no idea what the hell that means. I just overheard a conversation.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:54] Yeah, you would. You had already done 30 or 40 interviews, informational interviews. You knew everything about the small, the big, small.

Omar: [00:24:00] So people, people started knocking out. A few people start thinking, Holy shit, how does this guy know this stuff? I mean, I wasn't going to tell him, Dude, I have no idea. I don't even know what this means. It's a hole in the ground. I don't know.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:10] So you're  there. But tell me about the job you took to go there that you didn't have a job, but you'd landed.

Omar: [00:24:15] No, no, no, no. It's true that I don't have a job. Man, what was that?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:17] You just went to Calgary because you said, Hey, why not?

Omar: [00:24:20] Yeah, because the other deal was, look, in the U.S., Americans, I don't think realized how blessed Americans are, that there are enough cities number one in the U.S. with enough shit going on that you don't have like two options, right? It's either this or that. And bam, you're done right? Most countries, you have got one or two options. That's it, right? In terms of cities and jobs in the U.S., there are so many cities where you can go do so many different things that I, U.S. people don't really realize this. But in Canada, Corporate Canada was really Toronto, Calgary because Calgary was booming at the time. Vancouver, I didn't really want to go because it was a bit too relaxed for me, right? And Montreal is all French, so I was going to speak French. I was going to learn French. A lot of close to it. I'm just not going to learn it in three months, right? Right, right. So really was Calgary. Yeah, right. So it's Toronto, Calgary,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:09] That's Vancouver is relaxed. What do you mean by that?

Omar: [00:25:12] No one, not a lot of industry happens in Vancouver like the car, kind of like big swing corporate industries were happening at that time in Vancouver is very rapid and relaxed, and Vancouver is now kind of got a little groovy thing going on, but

do a lot of like It just wasn't. Ok, OK, so you're

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:29] You're going to Calgary. You said, I'm

Omar: [00:25:30] Going to Calgary. So yeah, I

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:32] Just want to get your goal here and these informational interviews, you're like, I just want to eventually get a job. Yes. But the other goal also was that I told myself, Look, I've done the hard yards. I've actually moved from Toronto. So now I don't just want to get a job. I want I want to figure out what I want to do by talking to enough intelligent people. So I don't

Omar: [00:25:51] Just lurch from one job to another job to another. No freaking gameplan.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:56] Right? So at what point? How many informational interviews did you have to do before you kind of had a sense of what you wanted?

Omar: [00:26:02] Oh, so what? Oh, that was pretty cool. That was like five because I

eventually, eventually most of the people I started to happen to be so pissed off and they all happen to work in investment bank. Investment banking or trading, they all seem to be so pissed off with their lives, they're making a lot of money. Don't get me wrong, yeah, but this just seemed to be so pissed off.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:26] They're angry. Well, like in what sense

Omar: [00:26:27] They're angry, but you know, like, tired all the time. They were very engaging and smart people. Don't get me wrong. Very engaging and smart people bitter.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:35] A little bit bitter.

Omar: [00:26:36] A little bit jaded. A little bit bitter. And this was during. Also, you got to realize this is why oil is like a hundred and ten dollars a barrel.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:42] Things should be good.

Omar: [00:26:43] Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, they're all partying. They're all drinking. They're supposedly from the outside there. It looks like it's a pretty good gig, right? Yeah. But when you start talking to them, especially the second third, because I would follow up like a maniac with all the people that I like, right? Yeah, it turned out that it was just no time left for them to do whatever the hell they wanted to do in their lives.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:02] Right, right. You said no, I b you said no to.

Omar: [00:27:06] Oh, that's even better. So what are the Canadian bulge bracket banks? What happened is interesting informational interview with the guy in Banker's Hall in Calgary, and they had an office above and within Five minutes is like, Do you just come up, talk to my manager, right? And I was like, OK, is this an injury? He's like, no, no, no, it's not on your feet. And it was an injury. So I go up, I talk to the guy he whatever, 15, 20, 30 minutes the he never said, All right, we'll talk to you about it.

I'll go back, OK? I go back home right around that time. Cenovus is a big oil and gas producer. They had a very interesting rule that was corporate planning M&A. A lot of things rolled into one because the guy who was my boss had a big swing big say at that time, so he could get a lot of interesting mandates under one rule. Right? Really wanted that. So what happened is I interviewed for that role, somebody else I had actually informational interview with. She liked me enough that she called up Leo, my boss, and said, Look, I don't give a shit. You've got to hire this guy because that woman and Leo, my boss knew each other from back in the day. Like, yeah, like, I don't give a shit. You have to hire this Guy, right? And God bless her for saying that And she helped. Why did she?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:12] Why does she like you so much? See, I don't know. Were you dating her on the side? Be honest.

Omar: [00:28:15] No, I wish, man, I wish. But I could tell you, I don't know. And you know what? I didn't even know for the first two years because what happened once is two and a half years later, after I got hired, we were walking in the lobby of their new building and I was going to the Starbucks and Krista, who happened to be Leo's whatever next colleague. She was walking by and I said hello. And Leo also Said Hello, and she said, hey, you know, She goes her way and we go our way. And Leo said, you know what's funny? We should go say thank you to her more. She's the one who got you hired. This was two and a half years later. Ok. She never thought about it. Nothing of the sort ever happened. I still don't know. Ok. I'm very grateful for it, right? Interesting. What's funny is this record bank gives me a call a week later and the managing director say, Look, I know you're interviewing to know with, and I never told you this guy anything about this. This is kind of creepy, dude. Like, what's going on? So, yeah, whatever. And he's like, Well, I would have given you a role. But I think after talking to

You and talking to Leo, I think that role is better for you. That's no. And I was like, OK, this is a polite way of telling me to f off, right? I was like, OK, you know, I'm really appreciative or whatever, and it's just all of us, all I liked anyways. And it Turns out the day I joined, Two days later, I see that guy from the bank as one of my boss's colleagues because he had come over to No. Uh huh.. So he was just super weird. So it was I was very lucky that I was in a very small group, but that my boss had a big say, right?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:50] Ok, but tell me, is it a boutique is sell side or you guys

Omar: [00:29:54] Know it's by site. It's complete firm. It's an oil and Gas producer refiner. Ok? Upstream and downstream, basically.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:01] So buy side oil and gas all

Omar: [00:30:03] The way up, up, up and down, straight up and downstream. They just don't do the middle screen. They don't have pipelines, but up and downstream they explode and refine, right? Got it, OK? So at that time, one hundred and ten dollars, one hundred thirty dollars oil, every person in Calgary thinks their shit doesn't stink and they walk on water for real. Like, I'm not joking with you. You laugh. I have actually gone out randomly walking during Stampede, which is a big event in summers, and I've had complete random strangers. And when oil was one hundred and thirty dollars, be like on the road, like it's a bar is opening up on a patio. They are having whatever drinks. They're like, Hey, man, are you go like, Hey man, because everybody's kind of tipsy. Yeah, they just bought you two around the drinks. I'm not even joking with you. This is literally what's Happened to

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:45] I. A really happy and partying in Calgary for because

Omar: [00:30:47] Oil is one hundred and thirty dollars a better man. You just all you have to do is show up. You don't even have to use your brain. And in fact, if you use your brain, you might screw it up, right? So, so I'm here. So Leo has a big say now. Leo's downfall was that Leo didn't have Leo wasn't very political, so he was like, He's like one of the best, sharpest People I know. He just wasn't political for that kind of put him aside. But Leo had a big say. So now what's happening is I get into M&A stuff that Cenovus is doing. I had to do basically corporate planning stuff with the C and the CFO level with the CFO, right? Cfo picks up a call. Hey, man, what's going on? Tell me this right? So it's long range plan, short range plan. We were doing debt and equity issuances. This was right around the time when oil prices Started going down. The CFO, I'm not even joking with you, picks up a phone call calls Leo. Leo is doing some work. Leo literally said, Hey IRA, Why do you still talk to work? I'm not joking with you, the CFO off like a pretty big freakin major company. It's coming

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:41] Off. How big was this company in those?

Omar: [00:31:43] I think it was like 20, $30 billion. Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:45] So he's talking to you like and you have almost no background in

Omar: [00:31:49] Like and he's talking to me and this is like two years me and my job, just like, Okay, well, what do you think? You know, we we issued like a billion dollars in equity and I'm like, Uh-Huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. Uh-huh. And he's like, Well, what do you think? I'm like, dude, like, what the fuck do you mean? Then what do I

Do, right? But what did

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:10] You say in those conversations?

Omar: [00:32:11] The thing was, look, I mean, I said what I had to say because look, I had built the budget with like two core group of people. Leo Cantante was my senior, very influential person in my life and myself, so I knew the company's operations gold like in the back of my hand, Ok, where acid, which I said, we have To let go, which assets we're not letting go because of political issues and blah blah blah blah blah. Right. So I was like, Look, I think we should do this, we Should do this. But I'm going to be honest with you. It's not my role to comment On these things. This is just my opinion.

And so, you know, you go, figure it out, and I'm sure it wasn't like he was listening to me just being a polite person.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:43] Well, he wanted to hear different opinion.

Omar: [00:32:45] I mean, up until that gives me a lot of really good experiences right now. When I'm here, I think, OK, in all of us, by the way, is a great company, but it's.

It's an ex ground Corporation, it's ground floor, it's a Canadian thing, it's a sound corporation is the crown of the U.K. and then they eventually become a private company. It's still a very it's very political, right? Things are very political and you have a lot of attention. So anyways, great pay, great experience. I learn so much because I learn how to basically figure out something from the ground up from a white piece of paper, right? Did that sort of stuff right? So an equity and did a lot of

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:23] Examination must have been tough. I mean, you never had any oil and gas.

Omar: [00:33:26] No. You know, you'd be very surprised, man, if you're like quick on your feet. I mean, yeah, you have to learn a lot pretty quickly.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:32] This first few months where you just like, how were you like getting up to speed on the modeling and the financial? I mean, I guess you were in accounting and finance majors that helped a little bit.

Omar: [00:33:39] Yeah. But the modeling thing was so I think I kind of overlooked this the modeling thing because I was so curious. And obviously my modeling skills improved a lot like I'm talking night and day difference, but the fundamental building blocks of Modeling, like how do you do the accounting, all the three financial Statements? I think what didn't Happen is that because I was so curious about all these people that are going into Toronto and everybody sells a landscaping business or

Whatever. Right. So what I would do just out of sheer curiosity is that I ever just kind of whatever gets like some whatever, like the three paragraphs In a newspaper. And I just kind of build my, OK, well, what do I think this guy would have done? And I kind of built out a little one sheet, whatever, like it's really elementary sort of model. When I look at it now, I'd be like, This is stupid.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:18] But you were doing you were already playing around in Excel thinking about stuff.

Omar: [00:34:22] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, just thinking, Well, you know what, if I push this lever, what would I do if I was in this guy's position one day? Just daydreaming?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:28] What were your interested in business? All right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Numbers and understanding financials. So it wasn't like a big leap for you to suddenly be, you know, thinking about oil And gas business.

Omar: [00:34:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And to be honest, at the level, I wasn't going to be the one guy who's going to go drill a hole In the ground, right? So I just have to take basically economic data afterwards, like what's netback? What's the pricing, what our what is our transportation costs? What's our next bag? How much volume are we expected to? It's all volume and price man. At the end of the day, no matter what industry you're in, it's volume and price and then mix basically, right? All sorts of the three building components and expenses are all I don't care what company are in. Figuring out expenses isn't that hard. I'm going to be honest, but its revenue is really tough, right? So obviously, I can learn a lot. I had great mentors, so that kind of help me. I had on a resume. I had a good enough resume of sorts. And then another bag, they had some sort of equity research opportunity open up, and I knew their headquarters was in Toronto because all the big five Canadian Banks headquartered in Toronto. So I called up some of my friends there and one of my really good friends. She knew the head of HR for that part or that right? And so she she had met him, some in from women's and information, women in finance and bank or something like that, right? Yeah. So she introduced me to the guy. I don't know what the hell he saw in me because he's like, All right, we're you're late by a week, but you sound kind of nice on the phone. Why don't you just send your resume in? I was like, OK, that's kind of nice. You don't want to know about me. It's like, No, you seem kind of good. I was like, OK, whatever I'm done, I have to shut up the salesman, right? So they guarded me in for an interview. I think the first, the first thing they like most, must have said no to them because they extended me an offer. I don't know what the hell they did that.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:11] Well, tell me why you'd go from like a buy side kind of interesting role. Oil and gas in Calgary to equity research. Position number one.

Omar: [00:36:19] That was the dumbest mistake of my life. Number one, the stupidest freaking thing I've ever done in my entire life.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:25] I looked at it and I said, That's interesting. That's different, you know?

Omar: [00:36:28] That was, oh, that was dumb from a personality fit point of view, from a professional point of view skills. And I'm not talking, Hey, are you the greatest equity? And no, I'm talking from a modeling, from a dissecting the business skills point of view that about a year, eight month stint was very good, but from a personal point of view was like the dumbest freaking thing. Why? Why? Because it was, too. I think the reason was number one, I was bored. No, due for some weird reason, I was thinking, OK, I just need to have some bank. Nicer, yeah, bigger. Some name on my resume. I don't know what that was going to do. I had no idea. I just thought, Okay, cool, people do this. Maybe I should go do this dumb speaking decision on my life. Also, the problem was that particular office was a smaller office amongst many big offices, so it didn't have any political sway. I only found this out later. B, it had so much turnover. I mean, people were going, going, going, going, going. That's why they just kept. They just gave you the

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:25] Offer right away.

Omar: [00:37:26] I think probably they gave you the offer. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because again, I'm very upfront with you. It was not 100 percent. It was not because of my supreme intellect.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:34] Right? So it just seems it's Calgary. It was still Calgary, still a tiny office. So they're probably having trouble getting good people there. You know, you'd

Omar: [00:37:42] Be very surprised they would have seen because oil and gas is a specialized body of work, so works right.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:48] But were you doing equity research in oil gas out there? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But maybe people, maybe the people that wanted to be out there and like. Wanted to be on the buy side, like, where are you?

Omar: [00:37:55] Maybe, maybe now, maybe you're 100 percent right. I think the other issue also was from a personality point of view. Yeah, I am a big believer of sorts in the efficient market theory, right? So for me, because I was I was an associate with an analyst who was covering like the super majors like Exxon, Imperial Shell's, all of that sort of stuff. I'm like, Man, there is no freakin way we are ever going to find something here, like, what am I going to do that the other five million people in the world are going to find, right? So all it basically became was being a monkey and just inputting everything as soon as like the 10Ks or cubes are released. And I'm like, OK, well, this is kind of dumb, like, it's Kind of stupid. It's nothing interesting.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:32] So like I said, can you tell me about the pay? Was it a pay increase, a pay cut like

Omar: [00:38:36] I think the B was? It wasn't much of a difference in pay. To be honest, the difference in

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:41] Work and so can you just let's let's talk about pay because I

Omar: [00:38:44] Think I was making like around one hundred and forty two hundred and fifty, maybe one hundred sixty eight was right. I don't know somewhere in that range. You got to realize I was doing very interesting work, so I would have worked for half the money there. Yeah, it was very engaging and interesting because no two days were like.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:59] Was it mostly just base or a little bit of bonus? Well, it

Omar: [00:39:02] Was. It was most of it. It was based on, I think 20

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:05] Percent bonus was like one. Twenty one hundred twenty thousand.

Omar: [00:39:08] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, some some industry guy. Ok, that's pretty good

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:11] For just

Omar: [00:39:11] No. And the bonus part sucks because in Canada, I think if you're above, I don't know, seventy five dollars or something, your bonus gets taxed at 50 percent. So yeah, you get a bonus, but you don't really get anything.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:20] So they. So that means like a lot of the banks, they just pay super high base instead, so they don't get.

Omar: [00:39:24] Yeah, yeah, I guess so. I mean, also, I think American banks pay a lot more than Canadian banks, I think.

Patrick (CEO of WSO):: [00:39:31] Okay, so you're you're into this equity research role. It's twenty fifteen. You don't you're there for less than a year. Tell me what you realize quickly that you're just inputting

Omar: [00:39:40] Within the first three days, I realized, but I was a stubborn S.O.B., right? I was like, OK, I'm going to hang out for the one year mark. Number one, it doesn't look good to just kind of swing for the fences, like within a week number two there, I should stick around. I think the other big impetuous was that I was getting married at the time with my wife and she was a physician in the U.S. and we had talked. I had talked to somebody really senior in Alberta health care on a public policy basis to see what would happen if she came to the Canada from The U.S.. And initially, he's like, Well, yeah, she's right about done with the residency. She might have to give some exam and she can come in and I was like, OK, well, you know, whatever. So she's coming in. We want some level of stability, income wise, whatever, right? But then right around the time, about a month after I go to this bulge bracket banks equity Research, they had some sort Of change in policy, or maybe not. And maybe I was just misled. So what they told me, the guy told me, look, she had to do all her residency again. In Canada, the residency is in three. It's four Years, so no one she Was right about done with her third year, and now she's got to do four More years. Plus the Baby's less. Yeah, and that's if You're lucky, if you get it Right. I was like, OK, screw that. I'm not going to subject to that level of torture. This is bullshit. And plus I'm moving to like Frickin. Potentially to the U.S. I'm not moving to Zimbabwe, right? So it can't be that bad right now.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:00] What's the say? Yes, as you start looking. So you were married in that year that you were?

Omar: [00:41:04] Yeah, I got married in the year. And look, the other deal was the guy. And maybe this was a personality issue. My boss was a and he had this problem. At least other people have told me this. He had no social graces whatsoever. Yeah, his lack of manners were legendary, right? So and yeah, so I don't want to go there.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:23] So I just that's why the turnover was so high there.

Omar: [00:41:25] But yeah, but so I eventually thought like, I was like, Look, man, I don't think this is a good personality. He's like, Well, don't you want to stick around and do much? You get your bonus. I was like, Dude, I think you need the money

More than I do. Why don't you keep it? You know, I'm just I'm just giving you my resignation.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:40] I gave a resignation before you even finished, before you even had anything.

Omar: [00:41:45] Before I finish the year, I was like, Screw this man. Yeah, I'm not going to Get abused in a job In a place. I'm not going to live in a job I hate with a guy who's an asshole. Yeah, fuck that life is too. Life's too short for this because you know what? This is why I was telling you the Leo guy is telling you it's no list. I'm not even joking with you. I'm not the only one who said this. I would take a bullet for that guy. Yeah, good because he would go to the end of the Book privately if you Screwed up.

He will chew you out. But publicly, he will Take your side. He would never screw you over. He would never talk behind your back. So people were willing to take a bullet for Leo.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:42:16] That's awesome. Right. So good leader. Yeah, yeah.

Omar: [00:42:18] Now she's a good leader. So anyways, what happens is I move to

No Offense. If anybody from upstate New York, the armpit of the United States, Syracuse, New York,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:42:28] Isn't that New Jersey? Then people call

Omar: [00:42:30] Dude, dude, dude, I've been to New Jersey. Ok? You have not been to Upstate New York. That's OK. No fancy people who are listening from Oxford.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:42:38] You went to I went to Williams College, which is pretty close to there, and I know

Omar: [00:42:42] How close is it?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:42:44] I drove to Albany a few times.

Omar: [00:42:46] That's just freakin depressing because I was in Syracuse. Holy Moly. What if that was a town that I found was just living on its glory days? That's it. And the glory days happened 40 years ago.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:42:56] Right? And they just never get why there? Why go? Why, you know,

Omar: [00:42:59] Because my wife is doing a residency there.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:02] You had nothing lined up. What were you doing in the side? So you travel there, you quit. You're sick. I'm like,

Omar: [00:43:06] I was like, I'm quite sure to do this and I'm newly married. So first of all, I'm going to go hang out with like the five hours in the day my wife has because she's working a really, you know, this residency is slavery, essentially, but at least you know this way, at least because we didn't go on a honeymoon because both of our jobs were so. So at least, you know, this way we'll we'll have some bonding at the start of our marriage and all of that sort of stuff, right? So because we didn't go on our honeymoon, can't

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:27] Cook for her all that good stuff.

Omar: [00:43:28] Oh, dude, I love cooking, right? I also love eating. But I mean, and she sucks at cooking. So that was a great match, right? So, so basically, I moved to Syracuse, so I go there obviously very quickly because I'm really I got bored out of my mind because there's only so many books you can read in isolation before you want some person to talk to, right? So I go there, I did the exact same thing that I did when I moved to Calgary. First of all, I picked. I wanted to move to Texas because I can't afford California. I love California. I can't afford it. And Florida was too weird for me. So Texas,

It is because I was not going to move to the America, the Canada of America. I was not going to move anywhere north. I had to go somewhere warm, nice. And that's it. That was like,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:10] Was your wife on board with that going, Oh yeah,

Omar: [00:44:13] Of course. Who the hell else would know? Who else would not be on board with nicer weather? It's after you've survived upstate New York.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:19] Yeah. Okay, fair. So you're you're saying, OK, we're going to go to it. Was it just

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:22] Texas in general? Are you

Omar: [00:44:23] Texas? Because I married or not? And I think the other deal with this is really stupid. I've grown up watching a lot of those westerners with cowboys and stuff, and obviously not everybody in Texas is going to have a gun strapped to their whatever thigh. But I just like the whole attitude of like the Marlboro Man and, you know, I don't even smoke, but the Marlboro Man and rugged individual. I know it's kind of OK.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:42] So, so anyway, so you're you're sort of looking for for roles. I same also I a year you only had a year up in

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:49] Syracuse because your wife was

Omar:  [00:44:50] Finishing. Oh, I had about six months in because she was in her third year, right? Yeah. So what I did is I made a list of all the recruiters and all the recruiters, predominantly because you've got to realize I'm new to the U.S. I don't have U.s. experience and I'm not in the market and I'm random guys calling you from Syracuse looking for a job. You'd be like, Yeah, whatever, buddy. When you show up, we're talking about, right? So for the first two months, whatever, I started smiling and dialing or calling, right? Hey, man, I'm here. I following up with the people following up because all I wanted was one opening to get whatever job. I don't care. I'll just move and I'll and I don't say I didn't even care between Houston and Dallas. I was like, because I hadn't been to both places, I really didn't care. Right, whatever. It's the same thing. You look at

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:34] Austin at all.

Omar:  [00:45:35] No, you don't want. That's weird. I didn't look at Austin. That might have been a stupid part of my

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:40] Career doing it. So. So you're looking so you're looking at any jobs, you're talking to people who have job

Omar: [00:45:45] Openings for any job, at least like 80 to 100 grand.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:48] Yeah, eighty two hundred grand. Like, I'm sort of related to business.

Omar: [00:45:51] Not a whole lot. In related to business where I had to have some level of like a generalized business overview, right? It's not like a hyper just product management. No, screw that I wasn't going to do that right? And also a job which was in a big enough company because after having worked in corporate Canada, I realized big companies means big bureaucracy, which means nothing ever gets done. I'm probably going to work one hour a day while I go look for an entrepreneurial thing to do. Right? So you

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:46:17] Knew kind of what you're looking for was kind of a place where you could you could use your brain, get by, do get the work done quickly, but also continue to do your look for your own work on

Omar: [00:46:27] The side. Because again, I think a change of environment is very easy makes you at least me, think about stuff and I'm thinking, OK, look, I'm in the U.S. This is the land of capitalism and my whole entire. If I had this, the back of my head that I want to do some level of entrepreneurial thing, I'm also thirty thirty one, so I don't want to be like forty five and trying to do this thing because then you just have a lot of things in your life. You got kids, you got mortgages, college funds, all of that. So we're at a stage in life early in our marriage. So God forbid, I crash and burn, right? Well, look, I would have crashed and burned. I would have learned my lesson and then I'd shut up and just go, do my job, put my head down and be middle class for the rest of my life and then not complain about it, right? I won't be 60 and be bitter about this. Right. So that's the reason why I took an espionage role in health care. Great experience, but didn't really have to do a lot of work. And apparently my modeling skills, I think, were in the top one percent of people there. So and everybody uses the freaking mouse, which frickin drives me up the wall, right? So I was like, Right, all right. I'm done.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:29] You're telling these people didn't come from investment banking. They didn't know how to use the keyboard.

Omar: [00:47:32] And I was like, the first day I go in and my boss is using the mouse and he's doing pay special formatting. And I was like, Okay, look, I know I'm new here, probably going to get fired. Can I just do this for you, please? And literally going to scratch my nails off, please, can I just do this? And then he just gave me that work, and he was really happy because he doesn't have to do anything. Yeah. I'm just going to say something that I shouldn't say.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:54] Please just give me this. Give it to me. Yeah, I'll do to you in five minutes.

Omar: [00:47:58] Right? So for that, but again, I when I interviewed in Houston, interviewed in Dallas, Dallas just happened to me. At least it looked visually nicer, which is not saying for a lot, right? And it seemed like a nice, clean city. The people are all the people I met at least, but very friendly in Houston, in Dallas. So we just moved to Dallas. Right? So now I'm there. Now I do this job for the first six eight months, and my wife also moved on after a couple of months because she finished your residency. She moves down. We kind of get settled, and now I've got to look At whatever Thing I got to do on the side, but really started doing Something. Luckily for me at the time, the same buddy of mine From Toronto who was running all these iPhones and things like that and family is actually very well-to-do. So they were having. And, you know, the fathers and

] Their uncles, they're all wanted. They were much better And they were wanting to bask the assets to the next generation in a tax efficient manner. So but they were young enough, they were like sixty. So they're like, OK, now our kids are like twenty five thirty. We should start thinking about the future. And what had happened is is dad does a lot of business, and one of the businesses dad did was costume jewelry, which apparently is a really big business. I didn't even know about it. So he had come to Houston on some creative conference in like the mid and Houston was in a massive slump. So he met a couple of guys that he used to do business with. And they were from Houston, so and they're like, Hey, you should think about investing here. Property prices are really down. And if you know, Asian and brown people, we love real estate, gold and real estate another, right? You just can't get enough of it, right? So he goes and over the next whatever, 10, 15 years, he acquired something like forty five, fifty eighty million dollars worth of retail and office space and whatever. And to be honest with you, not he probably hasn't even excelled in his old life.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:49:41] Let me just say what he hasn't what he has

Omar: [00:49:42] Not opened excel in his entire life. There is no models being built. There is no you understand he's a really sharp smart guy so you can smell an opportunity. But you got to realize this isn't like private equity firm. They're just a bunch of rich guys, right, who have some other businesses to invest in in the right type.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:49:59] Commercial real estate, residential. What?

Omar: [00:50:01] No. It's primarily retail strip centers, all that sort of stuff and some offices. But these are like suburban offices. They're like one story big offices. These are like high rises, right? I mean, they just accumulated. And I think what had happened is they got it at the right time. They didn't take any of their money out. When they refinance, they would just keep buying more and more and more and more and more. Right. And then I guess if you feel rich enough and you keep buying more and more, you become pretty freakin rich pretty quickly. Right? So what now they had to do was basically kind of sell a portion and do whatever gives some money to the girls who were his sisters and him. He wanted to keep some of the property. So I kind of helped him and I go in and he gave me a call. He's like, Look, I'm going to Houston, why don't you join me? We're good friends. So I kind of went with him, kind of helped them through some of that process, right? Because I was he's more entrepreneurial and smarter than me in terms of sniffing out an opportunity.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:51] But he's not. He's not looking and he's not.

Omar: [00:50:53] Yeah. So when you talk to banks and community bankers and you see some projections and they're like, Oh, I got like twenty five million cash in the bank, what projections you want? Right? But they still have to show it and all of that stuff, right? So I kind of help them through it in the process of doing it. My family is involved in commercial real estate, right? So I already knew the tax benefits and the depreciation benefits and all of that stuff. Yeah, right. I knew about it, right? But it's one thing To know about something, and there's one Thing to see it like, see it happening In front of

Your eyes, right? Somebody is worth like whatever eighty million dollars and or ninety million, and they haven't paid a dime in taxes for the past twenty five years. Yeah. You know, one thing that no one thing to see.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:51:31] Right, right.

Omar: [00:51:32] And I'm like, Oh shit, are you kidding me? This is like the no wonder America is the greatest country in the. Man, I really watched like America is the greatest country in the world, so I was like, OK, what do I got to do now? So I go back. I started talking, I started going on some online forums, bigger pockets and all. Don't go there. It's really for people who have no financial launch, right? And I started just coding more networking around not Dallas, by the way, is really big in this. I'm very lucky in that regard. If you go most other

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:01] Places big into real estate, right?

Omar: [00:52:03] Like, yeah, Dallas is not just real estate. Dallas is also people meeting and meetup clubs to do real estate deals together. And it's just understood. Hey, that's just the way you do things. You can have two doctors who can't even add two Numbers together, but now they're partnering up with somebody, and it's very accepting. It's not weird, like when I try to explain it to my friends in Toronto, in New York, they're like, You don't even know the guy to help with that guy or. Yeah, well, because you know, I met him for coffee. Like, why else would he not give me 500 grand? Right? Yeah. So Dallas was just being in the right place at the right time. Residential happened to be something that I could easily sell because look, if I have to explain an office building and how these things turn off. First of all, I have to go freak and learn that Trick myself, which Then I have to explain it to people, right? And if you ever want, if you ever get into a situation where you're explaining everything from scratch, you're not going to win that competition ever. At least I wasn't.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:54] So you went to residential first you started. So this is your year.

Omar: [00:52:56] No, no, no. So this is all.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:58] This is your own business now. This is yeah, this is my business.

Omar: [00:53:01] But initially I partnered with some people, right? And I wasn't going to do houses because everybody boasts about getting $200 cash. And when I was like, Man, I can't even go in for a nice steak dinner with my wife, what the hell am I going to do with 200 bucks, right? So I knew commercial was a week that I never wanted to buy a house. I did not get enough money in the world for me to go buy one house at a time. So I immediately was looking at one hundred and twenty two hundred and fifty unit type properties. Multifamily, they're not the nicest one, they're probably working class. That's potentially what I could afford And I could I could conceivably so raising money for them. And the other weird thing I know

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:53:33] Buildings that are a million couple of million,

Omar: [00:53:36] No buildings, at least eight to $15 million and $15 minimum, right? Yeah. So but the other thing which I found out very quickly when I was talking to people, it's really weird that a lot of people tend to think I live in an apartment. They equate that with, I know everything about apartments, but so in their mind, it's it's familiarity, right? It's familiarity with the thing. So selling them on the concept isn't very hard. Whereas if I had say a much better opportunity in office, there's a retail or mixed use or industrial. Yeah, I don't think anybody would have given me a dime, at least not me. They would have given me a dime. And you also have to understand I was also raising money 50 to 100 grand a month, raising my five million dollars at the time, right? Yeah. So I partnered up with a couple of guys who were already doing their own project. I raised a few hundred thousand for each of their deals just to kind of get started, have that kind of cachet built up and very quickly realized now they've done spectacularly well. But very quickly realized that, OK, these guys aren't really bad, financially sophisticated. In fact, they're not financially sophisticated. But what they've got really going for them is to these guys are amazing marketers. They don't really know how to market. And that was a skill I didn't know.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:54:44] But they had the connections. They had enough connections to enough money and connections.

Omar: [00:54:48] It was just sheer marketing over social media, which you have a big enough bullhorn. You'd be surprised at how many idiots are willing to give you money, man.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:54:55] Yeah, but even but aren't, aren't those people willing to give money or like smaller, like twenty thousand ten thousand?

Omar: [00:55:01] A lot of the dude I'm raising money like these guys are raising money 50 to 100 million at a time, and they were not raising it from sophisticated pools of peopleYou what? And by the way,they're not the only people. Yeah, right? They're just like a billion bucks.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:55:13] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So you're you're kind of thinking, well, they they got the marketing, but they don't have the financial savvy. I can get better deals, potentially better returns, potentially.

Omar: [00:55:21] But the other deal also was that I eventually had to do my own thing, right? So that was a good. I'm very grateful to them. So I now basically started doing my own deal. Now I think this is what held me back and part of it also, I guess, because I'm coming from a somewhat of a business valuation point of view. I always tend to look at downside of what happens there, like the Armageddon happens and this happened. And then all these guys were like, All right, this looks good. Bam. Here's like snake eyes. Let's buy it. Let's do it. So they've done a lot better than I had. Yeah, because infinitely better than I have,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:55:56] Just because they don't really they're not really looking at this downside case. But but in the downturn in 2008, 2009, financial crisis, that might be good.

Omar: [00:56:04] I'll tell you this is. It still holds me back. Right, I'm still gun shy because not just 2008, 2009, I didn't have any money to lose in 2008, 2009. That's why I didn't lose any right. My family is also gone through the ups and downs the cycle. So I've kind of seen that maybe that's what puts me,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:56:22] Makes me scared a little bit. How many deals have you done in the four years?

Omar: [00:56:24] I've done about six deals. I think about one hundred and twenty million give or take. Yeah, right.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:56:29] So and so how much? How much of that do you? So four days, if you purchase 130 million, that's you must have done a couple of different

Omar: [00:56:35] Five or six deals five six six. Now the Senate is going to close on January 20.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:56:39] So I mean, there's got to be a couple of big deals in there. Yeah, I've been on 20. So like, how did you raise the money for those you found a couple?

Omar: [00:56:46] Oh dude, dude, my money and network around, I begged, borrowed, did whatever I had to do. I also have partners. You have to understand I'm not a one man show, just to be very clear, no matter

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:56:56] How many partners.

Omar: [00:56:57] Well, that depends because we all have our own company. So depending on the project, we can just come together as it.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:57:02] So if there's a big enough, big enough deal to be had you, you have

Omar: [00:57:06] Enough, we'll figure it out. But you also want to work with a core group of people. I always like to work with a cool group of people because I don't want to be holding hands on the right and answering down questions, which might also, by the way, hold me back because people put everybody in their dog together and then they have a lot of patients that I don't. Right? So but the good thing about it is learning the marketing angle of things, right? Because they're running. The financial evaluation was not at all hard, right? The marketing angle in which I'm still learning. And the other deal also is that now it's exposed me because look, you've got to realize that somebody is giving me one hundred fifty grand a year, right? On average, they're probably making five hundred grand, six hundred grand. So these are high achievers and they don't feel whatever doctors, lawyers, private equity guys, right? So what's now happening is as a result of doing a few deals, I have investors who are anyways in very interesting word. So as an example, I am now in the next. I mentioned in the process of hiring, signing a partnership agreement with a very experienced operator like the QSR, a fast food operator. Because one of my really big investors, I don't know what I think. He just liked me as young. Whatever he liked me, he was a very senior executive, private equity executive in these QSR space fast food franchise space in the Southeast. He's done fantastic for himself. Yeah, and he's like, Well, you should look into our business. I think a guy like you, you need to get in early in this business. You're young, you need to get in early. I was like, Are you sure or whatever? Like, No, he's like, No, no, you need to look into this business. And he kind of held my hand right and I'm very blessed with that. So I looked into that business school. The cash margins are insane, number one and number two. What happens is because the ability to scale out is pretty easy. Now the problem becomes you either have mom and Pops who are putting money out of their own pocket or you've got like Private equity groups that are like 15 million. And there's not a lot of people in between because the problem is the mom and pops, they're still busy running their own business that they never have focused on raising equity, right? The 40 50 million dollar guy? Well, he's not going to talk to some guy and take like a hundred grand he needs like a two million dollar check, at least. Yeah, so something like that, right? So for me, I have the ability to go raise money. So now when I go talk to an operator, I can say, Look, I'll raise it three million dollars, no problem. And you focus on doing your job and the right done. And so I do not. I never wanted to deal with that. I mean, I just wanted to do operations. So now I'm signing a deal with this pretty senior executive and we're going to launch it in this year because what the point I'm trying to make

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:59:26] Is, what are you doing QSR? What do you mean? What do you what kind of deal is it?

Omar: [00:59:29] So this is basically we're going to develop our own fast food. We're a franchisee. We're going to be a franchise. The French, I can tell you the name, It's Wingstop, right, is to sign a deal with them and basically because they have such a good business model, right? We can then develop it out in the Atlantic and the southeast region because they're under penetrated. So I have a very good operating team now that it's taken me a year to develop the operating team right and get everybody on board and sign and all that stuff because these are people who are making like 300 grand a year, right? They're not just going to leave. Right? So you don't give them find the right balance of equity and compensation and all of that sort of stuff.

But the thing is that once you do one thing and you get used to like, say, raising money for one vertical people trust you enough because you have a good reputation that you can move to a new vertical and you're not starting from scratch, right? Right. So that that was always in mind, but it

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:00:20] Was real estate. Now you're kind of doing like franchisee,

Omar: [01:00:23] You know, but there's eventually going to be a real estate component to this because eventually we can buy the underlying retail real estate, and there's a lot of things you can do to make the numbers look even better.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:00:33] Yeah, that makes sense.

Omar: [01:00:34] So that kind of gives you the long ass winded story about me not looking to do stuff or trying to find my way. It's really

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:00:43] Interesting. I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned. I think one of the most interesting things that you did throughout your path that I think I want to make sure that the listeners think about. And we see this pattern kind of throughout a lot of the guests is your focus on just talking to people as many people as

Possible when you get to a new place

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:01:02] In like just almost like a maniac. It to a new place and just speaking with like like you said, but

Omar: [01:01:08] I also enjoy it. It's not like a chore for me, right? I don't think you enjoy

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:01:11] It, but then it opens up doors for you. It always opens. It's always opens up doors. And so the people who are still skeptical of networking. You know, I challenge them to listen to the hundred and fifty episodes that we've done. One hundred fifty plus, this one fifty one

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:01:23] To listen. And what's the patterns that you're seeing in almost every single guest? The pattern is networking. The pattern is talking to people.

The pattern is curiosity being passionate and trying to find what you love and I think

Omar here is a great example of just somebody who's Hustler on the side. He's trying to figure things out, but he loves talking to People and it puts him at a huge advantage to being successful. Long run so. Omar, thanks so much for sharing your story, tell me more about it and any other final words of wisdom before we call it. I think it was an interesting.

Omar: [01:01:54] I want to say wisdom, man. I mean, I'm still learning finding my way.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:01:57] Any final words And we'll call it any final words?

Omar: [01:01:59] Look, I don't know. I think you should just have the ability to go talk with people at various social income levels because you'd be a different education levels. I had that exposure growing up, right? So Talk with somebody is a portfolio manager managing five million dollars, somebody who's a janitor, right? You need to

have that, but you also have to have a reasonable level of curiosity in the world around you because if you don't look, you can do a job. I just I just didn't want to be 45 or 50. And then just be kind of ambling through life and just kind of semi annoyed all the time, right? I just didn't want that. And maybe I look, by the way, maybe this means that I might have missed out on a lot of economic like money wise things that if I had studied hard or worked harder earlier on, maybe I get up. Maybe I get a really nice investment banking job and make like $400000 or whatever, but. I don't think I would have the same level of internal pleasure in life, pleasure life's like,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:02:56] Do you feel like you've missed out on something so like income wise? What do you what do you think you've grossed like? Like what would your salary or what have you taken taken?

Omar: [01:03:05] I can tell you this that I missed all of my money back into my business, but I can tell you this my income is probably around the same that when I was in equity research income wise, but my network is like easily about five million.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:03:17] Yeah. So like, you're not a lot. If you're not taking lot, you're not you're not taking a lot of cash out.

Omar: [01:03:22] No, no. Everything is reinvesting.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:03:24] You're basically taking like your money, you're basically saving or you're spending

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:03:29] Like fifty thousand a year or something like that.

Omar: [01:03:31] Earning every single penny is invested. My wife, I

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:03:35] Have had to own a home now.

Omar: [01:03:37] All right, dude. I own like we had to have forcefully. We had to buy a home. But the house is worth like one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Love it. Come on. That's like a pretty cheap hole in the ground. You can't get cheaper than that. I was going to live in and out.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:03:50] What about family? What's next for you?

Omar: [01:03:52] You're going to have I have two sons. So what is three years old? One is nine months old. All right. Okay. So I also wanted to have the time to spend with my kids because I know this for a fact that my parents attended all my major life events and I had lots of kids in my Class whose fathers And mothers going to end their life events. And I don't want to give.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:04:12] Yeah. Yeah, I think that's one of the things I love about running Wall Street is it's like I can Take in the middle of the day And go have lunch With my kids.

Omar:  [01:04:19] Yeah, so that's another big thing. Yeah, yeah. It's a lifestyle thing is what

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:04:23] I'm trying to. Is that is. Yeah. Well, listen, Omar, thanks so much for sharing your story. And it was it was a fascinating at a different one. I loved it.

Omar: [01:04:31] All right. Well, thank you for having me. I'm happy to assist and help in any way. So if you need anything, please let me know.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:04:35] Thanks, Pat, and thanks to you, my listeners at Wall Street Oasis. If you have any suggestions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send them my way. Patrick at Wall Street Oasis and till next time.

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