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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:06] SPEAKER_01: Hi everyone, I'm Phil Blissbinder and CEO of Canada's podcast and I'm coming to you today from Toronto.
[00:12] SPEAKER_01: And today we're going to meet Hansen Zhang, who is one of the owners of Three Bridges Group,
[00:17] SPEAKER_01: a real estate development company. As a Chinese immigrant who moved to Canada 14 years ago,
[00:23] SPEAKER_01: Hansen is captivated by nature's beauty and the Canadian people's warmth.
[00:29] SPEAKER_01: However, when he traveled with his parents around the USA before they came,
[00:36] SPEAKER_01: they also went to Niagara Falls and Vancouver and decided to settle in Canada.
[00:44] SPEAKER_01: And the awe-inspiring Niagara Falls left a lasting impression on his family during that tour.
[00:51] SPEAKER_01: So in 2008, they immigrated here.
[00:55] SPEAKER_01: And now, as Three Bridges, one of their big projects is to build a stunning, mega-mixed-use complex
[01:02] SPEAKER_01: in front of Niagara Falls that matches the natural wonders beauty.
[01:08] SPEAKER_01: So let's have an interesting conversation and find out a bit more about Hansen.
[01:14] SPEAKER_01: So Hansen, welcome to Canada's podcast.
[01:17] SPEAKER_01: I know you're in Vancouver, but you're also operating in Ontario, really across Canada in terms of development.
[01:27] SPEAKER_01: But before we get kind of further into the conversation, why don't you tell everyone a little bit about more about you, what you do, how you got here.
[01:37] SPEAKER_01: And I'm also interested in the generational family business of real estate development that you kind of operate inside.
[01:50] SPEAKER_01: So tell us a little bit, give us a few minutes on that.
[01:55] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's a pleasure to meet you, Philip, and I'm hearing when Cooper, so first time doing a podcast.
[02:04] SPEAKER_04: Thank you a lot for the minor introduction.
[02:09] SPEAKER_04: So basically, my background is real estate, where my grandfather was started as a real estate developer.
[02:16] SPEAKER_04: My father is doing real estate development.
[02:19] SPEAKER_04: And after we came to Canada, we decided to immigrate to Canada in 2009.
[02:26] SPEAKER_04: And we officially became Canadian 2010.
[02:31] SPEAKER_04: And afterwards, we're thinking, what should we do in Canada?
[02:36] SPEAKER_04: Going to a different country, everything is starting from the ground zero.
[02:41] SPEAKER_04: And later on, we started to invest in real estate development and having the first development here, completing Vancouver Burnaby.
[02:51] SPEAKER_04: And then we're working on our second project, pretty new company.
[02:58] SPEAKER_01: Okay.
[03:00] SPEAKER_01: I mean, what kind of development is just to get its interest?
[03:03] SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, just telling everyone about a couple of the projects that you're, that you're kind of progressing, if you like, because, you know, it's interesting to find that out.
[03:19] SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was, I mean, before we got on, it was interesting to hear the story about how your parents had gone to the US thinking about immigrating there, then they stopped in Niagara Falls and Vancouver and ended up coming to Canada.
[03:36] SPEAKER_01: That was really, wow.
[03:38] SPEAKER_01: Okay. But you've got another Niagara Falls connection, I know.
[03:44] SPEAKER_04: Yes, that was a very interesting story because back in 2000s and 2010s, that's where a lot of the mainland Chinese are looking for alternative residents.
[03:56] SPEAKER_04: And very popular places, USA, a lot of people moved to US.
[04:01] SPEAKER_04: And so as my parents, they wanted to move to US.
[04:04] SPEAKER_04: In the beginning, I was back in middle school and my parents said, okay, we're looking to move to USA and they took a tour organized by tour guide, a very long tour, one month tour, those of the major cities of the USA.
[04:21] SPEAKER_04: And there's two Canadian stop during that trip.
[04:25] SPEAKER_04: One is Niagara Falls. It's just across the border from US and they went to see the famous waterfall.
[04:31] SPEAKER_04: And another one is Vancouver, where I am.
[04:35] SPEAKER_04: They were amazed by the beauty of Canada and how friendly the people are and how nice the environment, the nature we have.
[04:46] SPEAKER_04: So they came back and basically they told us, they told me that, okay, we're no longer moving to USA, we chose Canada as a country, we want to be staying in Vancouver.
[04:59] SPEAKER_04: And because they saw this better option and here we go in 2010, we came to Canada and it's been 14 years.
[05:10] SPEAKER_00: Canada's podcast is your gateway to success in the world of entrepreneurship.
[05:15] SPEAKER_00: Start listening today. Canada's podcast.com subscribe now.
[05:20] SPEAKER_01: They're 14 years, so in that 14 years, obviously, there's an education and moving into the business.
[05:32] SPEAKER_01: Tell us about, you know, you talked about one project. Tell us a little bit about other stuff.
[05:39] SPEAKER_01: It must be specific than Niagara Falls project. I think everyone's always, you know, the falls are one of the seven wonders.
[05:49] SPEAKER_01: So we're always interested to know about that kind of thing.
[05:52] SPEAKER_04: Yes, so after we moved to Canada, basically my dad left all his business. He used to work in construction business.
[06:05] SPEAKER_04: And he's also a partner with my grandfather on the real estate development. But after we moved here, he's looking at what should we do in Canada.
[06:13] SPEAKER_04: And our backbone is real estate and grew up seeing a lot of construction sites.
[06:20] SPEAKER_04: Then we, we in 2014 and 15 and my father and a few of his friends, you know, it's similar story to the friends and families around the similar time.
[06:33] SPEAKER_04: There were a lot of immigrants who came to Vancouver and we got together.
[06:36] SPEAKER_04: Basically, okay, let's start a business in Canada as a foreigner. We want to, you know, contribute to the Canadian society and economy.
[06:48] SPEAKER_04: How do we do that? Then we start investment.
[06:52] SPEAKER_04: So the really the first real estate project we started and now it's completed. It's a project by Metro Town station here in Burnaby.
[07:05] SPEAKER_04: Metro Town is a very large shopping mall. And during that time, there hasn't been lots of residential buildings. Now you go to Metro Town. You see that looks like a downtown.
[07:14] SPEAKER_04: So, but our first project is a two kind of minion building.
[07:22] SPEAKER_04: 141 stories and 128 stories of 490 units homes.
[07:30] SPEAKER_04: And it's called Goldhouse.
[07:33] SPEAKER_04: Goldhouse project and that's our first project. Now you go to Metro Town station and you can see the few shining gold building.
[07:40] SPEAKER_04: That's our first project. And we're working our second project based in Niagara Falls.
[07:49] SPEAKER_01: What's the project in Niagara Falls?
[07:52] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so Niagara Falls is an interesting story because that was one of the first cities my parents visited.
[08:00] SPEAKER_04: But since we moved to Canada, there's so many friends and relatives when they came to visit us.
[08:07] SPEAKER_04: They said, okay, take us to the Niagara Falls because back in China, when we were elementary school, we studied about the biggest waterfall, the Niagara Falls.
[08:17] SPEAKER_04: It's very famous destination.
[08:19] SPEAKER_04: So we couldn't count how many times we have to fly 4.5 hours from Vancouver and taking the relatives, my grandparents and my uncles.
[08:30] SPEAKER_04: This is so many friends and families with two kind of Niagara Falls.
[08:35] SPEAKER_04: And we noticed there's a tremendous potential in this city where every time we take friends and relatives, we really want to visit Niagara Falls.
[08:47] SPEAKER_04: We go there excited, taking pictures. But we've noticed after they're taking pictures, they have not much places to visit.
[08:56] SPEAKER_04: Where the hotels and the attractions and the restaurants are pretty outdated as the biggest tourist attraction in Canada.
[09:04] SPEAKER_04: We always thought this city has a lot of potential.
[09:08] SPEAKER_04: And then the opportunity came across in 2018 where there's a land has a really good view of the nature wonder.
[09:20] SPEAKER_04: And it's probably the last site that hasn't built anything on it.
[09:24] SPEAKER_04: And it's crossed from the convention center next to the Marriott.
[09:27] SPEAKER_04: And we took a step.
[09:31] SPEAKER_04: So we talked to our partners and investors and we thought everybody agreed.
[09:38] SPEAKER_04: Everybody loved it.
[09:39] SPEAKER_04: And so we went up and purchased the site and it's been five years now.
[09:44] SPEAKER_01: Cool.
[09:45] SPEAKER_01: You know.
[09:47] SPEAKER_01: Let's go back to the entrepreneurship side of it.
[09:50] SPEAKER_01: That's a cool project.
[09:52] SPEAKER_01: I mean, I live close to Niagara Falls.
[09:56] SPEAKER_01: So I'm interested to see where it's going.
[10:02] SPEAKER_01: Coming from, you know, with the family coming from a new new country.
[10:08] SPEAKER_01: What advice would you give an entrepreneur that's coming into Canada and wants to start a business here?
[10:18] SPEAKER_01: It's not the same.
[10:20] SPEAKER_01: I've done it, but it's not the same.
[10:22] SPEAKER_01: You know, you're learning to adjust to a different society kind of thing.
[10:30] SPEAKER_01: What advice would you give somebody that's in that similar position?
[10:36] SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
[10:36] SPEAKER_04: So the biggest advice, I think, which my father is doing really well is to follow the Canadian rules.
[10:43] SPEAKER_04: Because whatever we do, maybe similar in nature real estate.
[10:47] SPEAKER_04: But when you do business in any other countries starting from the ground up,
[10:54] SPEAKER_04: it's like where we're starting a startup.
[10:56] SPEAKER_04: Because, you know, when you go to another country, you have a different set of rules, including the business rules.
[11:03] SPEAKER_04: That's everything we do.
[11:06] SPEAKER_04: We have to follow the guidelines and follow the local laws and follow everything we're doing since in the Canadian way.
[11:12] SPEAKER_04: Which we do see a lot of peers.
[11:16] SPEAKER_04: When they are not doing very well on this side, they're getting to troubles.
[11:21] SPEAKER_04: And the biggest advice for us, for the immigrants or newcomers to another country is to follow the local rules and the laws.
[11:32] SPEAKER_03: Interesting. That's a good one.
[11:37] SPEAKER_01: You know, what advice would you give an entrepreneur that's going to start a new business?
[11:47] SPEAKER_01: I mean, forget the generational side, forget the immigrant side of it.
[11:53] SPEAKER_01: You've also started a new business.
[11:56] SPEAKER_01: What advice would you give someone that, you know, at that point, basically?
[12:03] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, although it's a family business, but it is, we're starting up from ground zero.
[12:09] SPEAKER_04: So basically, you know, I'm not there to get give the position to get advice to to to the new entrepreneur.
[12:18] SPEAKER_04: But what we do is everything we do, we have to have a really good reason why we're doing it beside on, you know, making profit and making money.
[12:27] SPEAKER_04: And we believe if we are doing the right thing, and even though we don't get to the finish line or somehow, but it's a journey that's worth taking.
[12:39] SPEAKER_01: Okay.
[12:40] SPEAKER_01: And in terms of advice, you know, what's the best piece of advice the viewer received that, you know, when it comes to business, it might be from a grandfather, might bring your father, whatever.
[12:55] SPEAKER_01: The that you received that you kind of have there as, you know, as sort of something that is always there, you know, you, you, you, you sort of keep it in your back pocket kind of thing.
[13:11] SPEAKER_04: Yeah. So the best advice I got from my grandfather is love what you do.
[13:18] SPEAKER_04: It's not to what you love, but love what you do, which is a very interesting because my grandfather is in his 80s and he goes construction site every morning, eight o'clock, you know, long day to Friday and even on the new year Chinese New Year, he's still, he loved to go there.
[13:35] SPEAKER_04: He never retired and he, he told me really on, you know, love what you do. If you love what you do, you will be good at what you do. And then if you do what you love, that might not end up, you know, everyone has some passion beside what you can do.
[13:52] SPEAKER_04: I like that. Yeah, try to love what you do. And it is, you know, you will figure out ways to try to maximize the potentials trying to use things right.
[14:22] SPEAKER_04: Yes. So the biggest challenge will be, you know, as a newcomer here, even though we have a set of track recording experience back in our own countries, but coming here, nobody will recognize that track recording other countries, we're really starting new.
[14:41] SPEAKER_04: And what we're doing is quite different from, you know, other developers, because we've noticed that when we were doing a project, very, very clean, the city center in the Burnaby, it's really supported financially with the banks, because they love things that's secured and then, you know, they're conservative in a way that when you do a project, if there's another project that can be compared and if you do a similar one, they will support you.
[15:09] SPEAKER_04: But if you want to do something that's innovative, for example, going to out of the city, going to somewhere far away, and do something to isn't related because everybody loves a condo project here, where you sell the pre sells and then the bank give you construction loans, but when you we're going to the Niagara, we say, okay, they don't have any new hotels in 20 years.
[15:34] SPEAKER_04: Let's start a new hotel, let's start on tourist attraction to give the tourists something to do, but this is something really innovative in the banks perspective, and they don't like this type of financing.
[15:52] SPEAKER_04: That's why when you go to Toronto, when you go to Vancouver, you see everything they are building its condos, we have too much condos, and that's so simply because the bank like to finance condos, we have so much developers here, so much condo project, but if you want to do something like entertainment, restaurant, you want to do something.
[16:13] SPEAKER_04: They supported.
[16:18] SPEAKER_01: Based on pricing, I'm not sure the vacuum today.
[16:23] SPEAKER_01: Anyway, let's do it.
[16:28] SPEAKER_01: In terms of your business, what do you think your biggest challenge in your future as an entrepreneur is going to be?
[16:46] SPEAKER_01: The world has changed in the last five years.
[16:54] SPEAKER_01: What do you think you're talking about the banks and things like that? What do you see as your biggest challenge in the future?
[17:05] SPEAKER_04: There's a lot of real estate developers in Canada, and I do see that right now everybody is facing challenges because market has changed, and a lot of people are suffering, especially people in real estate space.
[17:17] SPEAKER_04: I do think it's time to transform and transition to a new business model when challenges appear, and you have to transition yourself into doing something that may work in the future, so that may take some type of innovation.
[17:37] SPEAKER_04: I would say the biggest challenge is for any real estate developer right now is to innovate their model, the current model, which is being used for the last 20 years.
[17:48] SPEAKER_04: They will acquire the site, build a presentation center, sell the condos, and the bank will give you the financing.
[17:54] SPEAKER_04: Nobody is really buying or investing in pre-sales condominium units.
[18:01] SPEAKER_04: They have been building a lot of them in the past 10 years. There's a lot of buildings, so there's a lot of options for the buyers to choose from, the ones that already built.
[18:12] SPEAKER_04: When this model is not working, you try to think of what other models that you can transition yourself from.
[18:20] SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's some really good insights actually, and so I'm really enjoying it.
[18:26] SPEAKER_01: But coming closer to the end, so I have two or three fun questions at the end that I like to do.
[18:34] SPEAKER_01: First one is, are you a morning or a night person?
[18:38] SPEAKER_04: Yep, I'm a morning person. I love to wake up early and add you seeing it in the morning in the evening. I couldn't do anything. I just wanted to relax.
[18:47] SPEAKER_01: And if you have to pick one word to describe Newhamston is, what would it be and why would you choose it?
[18:59] SPEAKER_03: I'm a manifest.
[19:04] SPEAKER_04: Because, you know, I'm not okay, say, okay, so I grew up seeing a lot of construction. So real estate is a boring business to me.
[19:15] SPEAKER_04: And I like to always be creative on seeing whatever things I do trying to take it to another level, try to innovate.
[19:25] SPEAKER_04: And so, manifest will be a right word because it's really transformed your imagination into a reality.
[19:33] SPEAKER_04: And that takes a lot of creativity and takes a lot of actions. And so I will say, my journey is a manifest journey.
[19:41] SPEAKER_04: And also our business, if it works, it is a manifest journey because it is something that no one has been done in the last 20 years.
[19:50] SPEAKER_03: Interesting. I'm much keeping you up at night.
[19:54] SPEAKER_04: Well, you know, I'm excited about what type of work I will put up tomorrow. And I will always think what type of actions I will take and who I'm going to meet.
[20:09] SPEAKER_04: And what's what's a new ideas, what's a new, you know, meetings and anything about what I do for the next day, that's what keep on me up at the night.
[20:21] SPEAKER_01: Okay.
[20:23] SPEAKER_01: And so it has been great meeting you really, really enjoyed it. Really kind of interesting session.
[20:31] SPEAKER_01: Yes.
[20:32] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. And I hope you enjoyed your first podcast. Thanks for coming on Canada's podcast.
[20:39] SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
