Key takeaways:

– What makes the difference is being involved in real estate
– It’s better to be last.
– Buy for cash flow.
– Animating your portfolio.
– Providing more services to your tenants.
– There is no such thing as a work free business.

About Bruce Firestone:

http://www.brucemfirestone.com/

Bruce M Firestone is best known as an entrepreneur and founder of NHL hockey team, the Ottawa Senators, their home arena, Canadian Tire Centre, and the Ottawa Senators Foundation, a children’s charity, as well as author, professor, coach, consultant, real estate developer and broker, and urban guru. Prof Bruce is an effective keynote speaker for organizations with a positive focus on creating opportunity for their stakeholder group. Firestone advises counties, towns and cities as well as economic development agencies on how to develop live-work-play-learn communities based on the principal that is nothing is sustainable unless it is also economically sustainable too.

In May of 2006, Dr Firestone joined University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management as its first Entrepreneur-in-Residence. He later taught at U of O’s Faculty of Engineering. He previously taught or studied at McGill University (Bachelor of Civil Engineering), Laval University, Harvard University, University of Western Ontario, University of New South Wales (Master of Engineering-Science, Traffic and Transportation), Australian National University (PhD in Urban Economics), and Carleton University as well as the University of Ottawa, in subject areas that include real estate development, entrepreneurship, product management, business models, architecture, engineering, finance, urban planning, urban design, traffic and transportation planning, and development economics.

Firestone was a founding director for and patron of the Ottawa Art Gallery, vice-chair of CIRA (Canadian Internet Registry Authority), first publisher of Ottawa Business News (now Ottawa Business Journal) and founding executive director of a Canadian registered not-for-profit organization, which focused on educating and mentoring entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and artpreneurs in Canada and around the world.

Prof Bruce has launched or helped launch more than 300 startups in fields including tech, real estate, design, art, entertainment and services. He advises clients on business modeling, self-financing, smart marketing, social media, differentiated value, strategic selling and business development, market channel development, harnessing the Internet and mobile web, urban design, real estate development, finance, retirement strategy, design economics, product management, sponsorship, fundraising and development economics as well as issues related to entrepreneurial organizations including not-for-profits, NGOs and charities.
Currently, Firestone writes for three blogs and one newspaper—EQJournal.org (about entrepreneurship), DramatisPersonae.org (about artpreneurship and urban issues), profbruce.tumblr.com (about life), and Ottawa Business Journal, obj.ca (about people and success).

Dr Firestone has been an operations research engineer, real estate developer, hockey executive, professor of architecture, engineering, business and entrepreneurship, real estate broker (with Century 21 Explorer Realty Inc), writer, researcher, consultant, columnist and novelist. He is a peerless husband and father of five great kids and two fine grandsons.