Diaries of a Lodge Owner

First I want to thank-you guys for sticking with me; I really appreciate it and hope that you are finding enjoyment in it.  Welcome to week 8! 

Enter Brian Dykstra……….. 

Brian up until then was just a name, one of those goofy head shot real estate pictures on the internet.  Mike felt that with his knowledge of the business, he was best suited to construct and put me into contact with the right people I needed to finance the deal.  So I did what Mike said I gave Brian a call.  He sounded like a very genuine guy and we connected right off the bat, in our first couple of conversations we covered his past and life experiences.  I realized that he knew Chaudiere well and actually sold it to Jerry when he bought it from Tony.  When I felt comfortable with him and his expertise, we started talking numbers and how a deal of this magnitude gets put together.  It was all new to me I had never bought a lodge and up until this point my house was the biggest acquisition for Mel and I to date and that was only in the neighborhood of 190k.  I am not from money, Mom and Dad gave us four kids everything we needed, taught us well and always supported us, but never in a million years until now, had the idea of me securing and spending this kind of money even crossed my mind!   

Now please don’t be offended if I am vague on the numbers, for me I really don’t care who knows how much I have invested and the chance that my family and I have taken to have a shot at my dream.  Not many people actually get a chance to position themselves to chase a dream, I have and I really have my wife to thank as well as my parents.  There are other people involved and out of respect for them I am going to do the best that I can to give you an accurate picture of the systematic process that we went through in acquiring Chaudiere without divulging any numbers.

First I must say that Brian was great through the whole process and assured me that he would be there for me as a resource long after the deal was done, and it would not have happened if not for him, and on that note we begin.  Mel and I had a sum of money in the bank that we had taken out of the equity of our house; as well I had cashed all of my RRSP’s, luckily before the stock market crashed.  We did this because at the time we had verbally agreed to purchase a 100ac parcel of land that was very close to my parent’s farm.  Our intention was to build our dream home there.  Unfortunately the guy that we were dealing with was quite a bit offside and backed out of the deal at the last minute, leaving Mel and I holding this pile of cash and a broken dream.  As you can imagine I was irate, I had paid the taxes on the RRSP’s and was now paying interest on this money sitting in the bank doing nothing for us, but that’s another story all together.  But in time that money became our starting point in the Chaudiere deal, I knew that I needed a partner and realized that I also needed to go to a mortgage broker.  But first things first, the lodge was being offered for sale as a corporation and owning a corporation of my own I knew that I really had to investigate that carefully. 

As I moved through that process I really learned a lot about corporations, even though I already owned one, EAP Enterprises I found that there is a ton of stuff involved with them.  All I want to say after spending literally weeks of Mikes and My time, bumming as much free accounting advice as I could, it became crystal clear to me that I needed an asset deal, something clear and concise.  And as fast as I asked for it, it was done.  There was a bottom line offer from the other side, clear as day for all interested parties in the world to see and I was not ready to move, I didn’t have my financing in place not even close.  I had been focused on one aspect of the process and when I come up for air realized that I needed an investor to make the deal happen and I didn’t have one in place.  

In passing I had mentioned to a family friend a few weeks prior that I was serious about buying a lodge and at the time he seemed interested.  Well now I really needed to feel out just how interested he was.  After several meetings with him and going over the books and the numbers provided, we decided that he needed to see Chaudiere after all you need to see what you are investing in.  But with him being a very successful business man already, and the schedule to go with it, we couldn’t find a time when we were both free.  He then had to leave the country and was not going to be back for three weeks, he had not even seen the place and was in no shape to commit (understandably so). And my concern was that I had just cleared the water (the corporation situation) for all of the other piranha’s to attack what I felt was my amazing opportunity.  

Brian and I stayed in touch and just before my potential investor returned home I got a heart breaking call from him.  He explained that a conditional offer had just been accepted on Chaudiere. I felt my heart break, I had worked so hard on this deal and I felt it was the path in life.  He tried to tell me not to worry, that it was a conditional offer and sometimes deals of this size don’t work out, but I didn’t want to hear it, not in that moment, not at all. 

My potential investor made it back into the country and I had not been in touch with Brian. I was so turned off with what had transpired that I didn’t want to even talk about it, but I called him anyway. Things had not yet firmed up on the deal so there was still a flicker of hope.  I managed to re-focus and motivate myself I setup a site visit with Brian and my potential investor.  We left Shelburne on a cold fall day with my bass boat in tow.  I was really excited to see the place again, and for the first time after hours spent on the phone I met Brian, the man behind the voice.  I have got to admit he didn’t look like his on line picture, he is a mountain of a man and not what I was expecting at all, but we hugged and everything was good.  We all got on to my bass boat and away we went.  When we got to the Island everything was closed down for the winter so it was hard to really get a good picture of Chaudiere. But when we left there was optimism with my potential investor and I remember vividly feeling that I knew that I was going to be coming back, it’s hard to explain but it felt good, almost like déjà vu, even with all that was going on with the other offer, this place felt like home and that was another cementing moment in this journey…………….. 

Written by:

Steve Niedzwiecki

Chaudiere Lodge. 

Find a new installment every Monday evening. 

Ontario Fishing Lodge