How a Fired Firefighter Built a Real Estate Business Across Canada | Cole Murphy

Cole Murphy (00:00)

If you were to take away all my connections right now. I could just go build them back today. really, I could call a couple of realtors, tell them what I’m about, they’ll want to work with me, call a couple of lawyers, they’ll do my business because they’re gonna get paid to. there’s not many things in my business that rely on relationships. And of course, they’re good to have. I have a group of three guys who I talk to about wholesaling and flips, and we mastermind, every day. And they’re they are my close friends now. But you could take that away and I would be definitely very sad.

But it would not affect my business. It would affect nothing besides me probably being sad that my best friends and business partners are gone.

Quentin Edmonds (01:07)

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I am excited to be here today. I have another fantastic guest.

And man, listen, when I ask him some of his strengths, he’s like, listen, I can buy deals without seeing them. That’s one of my strengths. And so this gentleman has built a big network. He’s an investor, he does flips, he does wholesales, and he’s looking to get into development. And so I’m so excited because we’re going to peek through the experience and the lens of Mr. Cole Murphy. Mr. Cole, how are you doing today, sir?

Cole Murphy (01:40)

doing awesome. I appreciate you guys for having me on the podcast here today.

Quentin Edmonds (01:44)

Absolutely, man. I appreciate you being here. You’re gonna hear me say this may at least one more time, maybe two more times. I believe time is our most precious commodity. So I sincerely thank you for giving us some of your time. I really do. I value it. And so thank you so much. I’m really the type I love to dive right in. So I would love for you to tell the people what’s your main focus these days.

If you don’t mind, give us a little origin story, how you got into the spaces that you’re in. And man, tell them where you from, man. People love to know where people are geographically. So I would love for you to tell people where you’re from. So Mr. Cole, sir, you have the floor, my friend.

Cole Murphy (02:20)

Awesome. Thank you. I’m from Toronto, Canada. actually an hour side of Toronto, but Canada, born and raised. that’s the home country, and I’m currently here now. And I just guess I’m gonna jump into my origin story. It’s a bit of a crazy one. the beginning of my career, I wanted to be a firefighter. So I went to fire school. I had no idea about real estate. I wasn’t much of an entrepreneur. I had a couple

failed businesses. I was mowing lawns. I did some concrete driveway ceiling, but nothing really took off and I wasn’t a very entrepreneurial person. And then I got a job at a manufacturing plant as a firefighter and I was left with a ton of time on my hands. So about ten hours a day where there would never be a fire. So I’d be caught sitting in a room on my computer just watching movies. And then I’m like, okay, how awesome would it be for me to make money while on the shift? ‘Cause I’m

sitting here anyway, so might as well make my time worth it. So I ended up stumbling on real estate wholesaling back in January of 2025. And that’s when my life took a turn. I’m like, okay, I really want to just dive into this. I didn’t think it would get to the point where it’s at now where I’m actually buying flipping houses and running a full-on company. I just wanted to make some extra money on the side. So I wanted to close a couple deals, see what I could do. So I just dove right into it. started a website, made some business cards.

Really just tapped into that. And then, a year and a half later, almost two years, I worked for myself, got people working for me, buying houses. I’ve done about three or four flips this year. just absolutely crazy how quick things can change. And all from opening the laptop while working as a firefighter. And I ended up getting fired. Forgot I left that part out. got fired in May because I was doing wholesaling on the job too much. They were like, hey.

you gotta stop. you gotta do your job, do your little inspections, walk around. when there was a fire, I wasn’t on my computer wholesaling. Let’s just put that out there. There was never a fire in the entire time I was working there. We would just go around and do safety checks. It was really for insurance. the safety checks were me walking around taking a photo of a barcode. it was a stupid job. But I ended up getting fired in May. And by that time I ended up closing my first wholesale deal for about fifteen thousand dollars.

got the bug. So when I got fired, I was like, Okay, I’m full porting this. I’m not gonna get a job ever again in my entire life. I’m gonna work wholesaling. I’m gonna make it happen. and it works. So that’s where I am now.

Quentin Edmonds (04:30)

thank you, bro. And I appreciate the clarification. listen, it weren’t fires going on. I was working, but you was putting out some metaphorical fires, right? You had some

Cole Murphy (04:37)

yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (04:38)

that you had to put out, So no, man. Cole, thank you, man. Thank you, sir, for

taking us through journey. man, I love stories. So I thank you for telling. And it’s funny, I see things in pictures as you talking. I’m picturing things and just laughing right along just with your storytelling, man. So thank you, man. Thank you for letting us in on your journey. And so Cole, I love it. You was a firefighter, but this wholesale and this real estate thing obviously had a hold of

It had a hold of you. It was calling your name. And so I always say this, Cole. Destiny has no wasted moments. nothing’s random. Everything is working itself out some type of way. We’re learning from our lessons. We’re learning from the failures. We’re learning sometimes from having to leave a job. We’re just learning from the whole journey, right? So, Cole, I would love to know on your journey.

What has the journey revealed to you about yourself? Has it revealed discipline? Has it revealed made you humble? Has it increased innovation? what does this journey reveal to you about yourself, sir?

Cole Murphy (05:41)

I think it’s definitely revealed, it’s opened my mind to when I think about my goals before I would had set such big limitations on what I could accomplish and what I was meant to do, but now I got a goal of making a hundred mil, right? that’s my lifelong goal now. And if you were to tell me that before I got into wholesaling, I’d be like, ha, funny. that’s crazy. you might not even be able to make a mil. But now it’s like, okay, I know.

for a fact, that will happen, which is a crazy thing that is very crucial to have as a person, even just going through life in general, just having goals and genuinely believing they will happen. It’s you could call it delusion, but even if it is delusion, being delusional on those type of things are great. I’ve also learned, throughout the whole process that I’m a quick thinker and

I don’t take time when something needs to get done and I see an opportunity, I pounce on it. I don’t think twice. And that goes to show when I see a deal in a another province that I’ve never even been to and I have no connections with, no realtors, no contractors to do work for me, in terms of a flip. Yeah. I pounce on that because I can identify that it’s an opportunity. And I don’t second guess myself. And that’s a huge strength of mine that I’ve noticed. I’m very

quick to it. And that’s something that’s you need to have, especially in this line of business. Opportunities come and go very fast. And if you don’t have that, quick ability to pounce on it, you’re gonna lose deals and it’s gonna screw you over in the end. So that’s definitely something I’ve realized that I’m good with. I have a lot of confidence, self confidence going into things. I might doubt myself sometimes, but I’ll never say it out loud and I’ll always make sure I’ll do my due diligence and I’m ready to go. And that might only take 10 minutes to do, but I will stand by my decision till the end.

Quentin Edmonds (07:54)

Man, I love hearing that you’re quick at making decisions. I love that because everybody doesn’t possess that. you probably heard the phrase analysis by paralysis, right? Some people they sit, they analyze, they look at it from different angles, but never pull the trigger. So hearing that, you pull the trigger, that’s good. And I’m glad you’re giving that to the audience. So I’m gonna ask it this way, because obviously.

I don’t think you pull triggers being reckless. There’s obviously some thought behind it. I would even imagine that maybe you might even have systems or operations behind why you can run so fast and make a decision. So I would love to know, Cole, what is one maybe one operational thing you’ve put into place, let’s say the last maybe one or two years that has really helped you define your success and define the way you do things.

Cole Murphy (08:39)

yeah. So main operation thing for when I pull the trigger, it’s mainly just numbers. if I do my numbers on a property or a deal or anything, if my numbers look good and I’ve ran them a couple of times and I’ve looked for any possible way that this could go wrong, I always get the numbers out. that’s the number one thing I do. Once the numbers are dialed, I know that it’s a deal, I’m gonna make money on it. and if I don’t, I’m gonna learn. I have yet to learn.

on a deal that I haven’t made money on. But it’s really just the numbers. have your numbers right, believe in your numbers. and a big thing I’ve noticed over the years is when you’re trying to do a real estate deal, sometimes when you don’t have much on your plate or the business has not been booming and you see a deal come in, you could almost tell yourself that’s a better deal than it is. you could see things and try and ignore them just because if you include that in your underwriting process, it will

make it look like a worse deal than it is. So just being honest with yourself and really thinking of it from a standpoint of you’re an investor trying to buy a deal. Because some wholesale deals I’ll underwrite them and sell to other people, of course, because that’s what wholesaling is. So it’s very easy for a wholesaler to look at a deal and make it look better in their mind and make it look better on paper and ignore all the bad things about that property. And I do that wholesaling now and for flipping out because of course when I’m flipping out

I want to know everything about the property. I want to know the negatives, the worst case scenarios. So doing that while I’m wholesaling is also amazing because I’m now thinking from the investors and the buyer standpoint. So when they see the deal, I’ve already thought for them. So there’s not gonna be any flawed numbers, nothing like that. So you always want to just dial in the numbers. And I would say that is the biggest thing. there’s not many things I can really think of that are legit processes. There’s a couple funny ones. So when I buy a house where I

Get a house on contract that I’m planning on flipping, I always get a realtor to go through, whether that’s a realtor that I’ve worked with in the past. Usually it’s a new realtor because I do flips all across Canada, right? So I had one in Saskatoon late recently. Saskatoon is in Saskatchewan. I had a realtor go through the property. So I always get a realtor to take a tour through the property before I go firm on it. The realtor took a tour, and every time I have a realtor tour one of my flips before I go firm on it, I always wait and see their, I wait for the reaction. So if their reaction isn’t

You got this for what price? that’s it. How did you get it that low? If they don’t give me that reaction, I’m in my head, I’m like, okay, is this not that good of a deal? why aren’t you because that’s what I aim for. that’s my expectation with all these deals that I get, at a very good discount. if the realtor’s not saying that’s crazy, then I might have done something wrong. But then again, just go back, look at the numbers. Maybe the realtor had a bad day. But that’s a funny thing. I do actually look for every time I do a flip. I’m waiting to see the realtor’s response and getting their input.

Quentin Edmonds (11:49)

I love that you got that expectation. you want them to know,

How did you get this? you almost looking for this almost built. I love that, man. I absolutely love that. I really do. And it just shows me just the confidence in what you do. But then also you ran the place so much you almost expect, this is what everybody else said. You gonna say this? this is what you’re gonna say. you’re gonna be impressed. So I love that. Let’s me know, you’re very confident of what you do. Cole, what’s next, man? What’s the next real goal? What are you looking to solve at scale next, man?

Cole Murphy (12:17)

scaling the wholesale company is number one because that’s something that is always gonna make money no matter what. let’s say I stop flipping, the wholesale money, the wholesaling the deals that are consistently coming through month over month, that’s what’s gonna, keep the business alive. And I do plan on scaling the flipping business, of course. I don’t wanna get into, running my own construction team. So there is a limitation.

But the fact that I do it virtual and everyone who works for me doing the flips, the contractors, realtors, they’re doing it virtually. I don’t actually have to have a contractor team. So scaling the flips would be second. I would say number one would be wholesaling because that’s something that takes low capital. there is no risk besides the marketing spend if I don’t get a deal for that month. And my plan with that is implement the AI.

I have a bunch of AI that is actively going into my business. So that’s AI phone callers, people that’s AIs, I call them people. They are almost people.

Quentin Edmonds (13:08)

Yep.

Cole Murphy (13:09)

Yeah, AIs. So AIs that send out my deals to my investor list when I get them. The whole process is being automated, which allows me to spend more money on marketing, but still work the same amount of hours, if not less. Because if I have AI in place, I 2X my ad spend.

And get two times more of the leads, I’m not gonna see that because I have AI working for me and that’s gonna be filtering out all the bad leads, all the crap leads, and just putting hot leads on my plate for me to then close. And with that system, I’m planning on doing that for the next six months or so until I’ve decide. I’m not sure how long it’s gonna take before I decide I wanna exit the business and replace myself. as you know, I’m the main person making offers, main acquisitions, I’m managing everything. So when I wanna replace myself, all I gotta do is hire someone.

train them to be me and then I’m out. And then from there, like you said before, might go into developments. Not really sure the avenue. Might focus on flipping, more full time and more get really hands-on with it and do some cool things, whether that’s, a multifamily flip, bigger projects is definitely what the focus is moving forward. Once I eliminate myself from the business and delegate everything to where it’s a smooth operating machine and all I have to do is oversee it and manage it.

Quentin Edmonds (14:16)

love it, man. I love everything I’m hearing. so Cole, I always ask everyone that comes on, I want to get their unique perspective on this topic next, right? So I want to get your unique perspective because we process differently, everybody has different ways that they function. So I want to get your unique perspective on the word relationship. Relationship within business, building healthy relationships.

Again, you what’s your unique perspective on relationship building specifically in the area that you’re an expert in?

Cole Murphy (14:49)

Yeah. So this might be a hot take because ever since I started, yes, I have relationships, yes, I value my relationships. But for the people who say, relationships that’s everything, your net worth is your network. You want it so I completely disagree with that. at least in my business. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m at

if you were to take away all my connections right now.

I could just go build them back today. really, I could call a couple of realtors, tell them what I’m about, they’ll want to work with me, call a couple of lawyers, they’ll do my business because they’re gonna get paid to. there’s not many things in my business that rely on relationships. And of course, they’re good to have. I have a group of three guys who I talk to about wholesaling and flips, and we mastermind, every day. And they’re they are my close friends now. But you could take that away and I would be definitely very sad.

But it would not affect my business. It would affect nothing besides me probably being sad that my best friends and business partners are gone.

I would say relationships, very important. They’re not key to the business though.

Quentin Edmonds (15:47)

Yeah. Again, man, thank you for your unique perspective. I love that. and I love your perspective and the way you brought it in. because it’s someone out there that identifies with that perspective. And so I appreciate it, man. I appreciate your authenticity, brother. Cole, is there anything else that you want to talk about yourself or your business? And this is all, we’re gonna tell people how to get in contact with you, but I just want to make sure.

That if there was a message or something on your mind I just want to open the floor up that if it’s something like that, you could land it. So I’m just that’s why I’m asking.

Cole Murphy (16:17)

Yeah, for sure. Well, I’m filled with inspirational quotes, especially from my come up, my grind to get to where I’m at. I just always wanna tell the audience and whoever I’m speaking to, I say this on my Instagram all the time, you either win or you learn, right? That’s a huge quote I go by. there’s no such thing as losing, in business and everything. if you lost technically we’re not gonna say lost, but if something goes wrong, there’s clearly something you’re gonna learn from that because it wouldn’t have gone wrong if you

knew what to do in the first place. So having that mindset, I’ve lost fifty thousand dollars on a wholesale deal because I didn’t do proper due diligence. And instead of letting that ruin my month, my year, it maybe ruined an hour of my day. But then I took out what I did wrong. So I learned and what I did wrong was, something in my underwriting that I needed to correct. So you either win or you learn. I just want to put that out there. Keep trying, keep grinding. That’s all I gotta say.

Quentin Edmonds (17:06)

Man. Appreciate you, bro. I’m full of quotes too. One of my favorite ones that I say is failure is fertilizer. We all gonna fail at something, but it’s just fertilizer. And if you allow yourself to plant yourself in that failure, when I say plant it, get the nutrients from it, get learn the lesson from it. It will turn around and produce something, a harvest for you.

It may be fruit, it may be plush greenery, it may be trees, but that failure is just fertilizer. So I stand with you, my brother. listen, man, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you, sir?

Cole Murphy (17:43)

I got an Instagram account and I am on TikTok, but mainly the Instagram is where I do all my DM answering and collaborating with others. REbycole which stands for Real Estate by Cole Fun fact everyone calls me reby ’cause it’s REby They all call me reby I go by it now ’cause it’s just gotten to the point where

it’s kinda funny and I’ll go with it, but Real Estate by Cole is my Instagram. I got YouTube Real Estate by Cole and I also do coaching, so shoot me a DM and I can break it down for you and we can hopefully work together.

Quentin Edmonds (18:12)

Yeah. Man, Cole, appreciate you, sir. Want to say three things to you sincerely, man. One, again, thank you for your time. Time is our most precious commodity. So thank you, sir. Secondly, man, thank you for the gift of what I call the gift of your integrity, the gift of your authenticity. I even say the gift of your vulnerability, right? Because I believe when we tell our stories, we are scattering seed. We’re throwing seed out there that people can actually take that seed and plant it in their life.

Plant it in their business, Plant into their mindset. And so I believe you casted some seed today, man, with your story. And I believe that I can yield the harvest. So thank you, man, for coming on, planting seeds or casting seeds, right? And lastly, thank you for your mindset, man. Cole, thank you for the way you think, man, and bringing that mindset to this platform. I appreciate you coming on today, sir.

Cole Murphy (19:00)

Yeah. I appreciate coming out. And yeah, the mindset’s a huge one. without the mindset, you’re going nowhere in business. The mindset is the most important thing that you could possibly build up. It’s huge. So appreciate coming out and taking the time to ask you these questions here.

Quentin Edmonds (19:14)

Man, so well said. So listen, y’all heard Mr. Cole. His information is in the show notes. So please get in contact with him. Hit the links. The links are there. But definitely make sure you are subscribed here because I promise you we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people, just like Cole Murphy. So, sir, I say thank you again. And everyone else, listen, y’all have a fantastic day.