Jasmine Daya on Buying Three Downtown Toronto Nightclubs During a Pandemic

What happens when a Toronto personal injury lawyer whose South Asian parents emigrated from Nairobi to Canada in 1974 and sent her to private schools on high expectations grows up getting into trouble as a teenager so the expectations shift to her brother, watches law shows on television and decides she can see herself in a courtroom, And then a second nightclub. And then a third. In this episode of the Trustcast Show, Zane Myers speaks with Jasmine Daya — founding principal of Jasmine Daya & Company in Toronto, co-founder and COO of Geraci LLP in Irvine, California, author of Law Girl's Bump in the Road and the JD in the Kitchen cookbook series, serial entrepreneur, real estate investor, Jasmine explains how buying Pravda Vodka Bar — an iconic Toronto establishment known for its walk-in vodka freezer with over eighty varieties from around the world, aerialists flying from the ceiling, and drummers standing on bars — led to nightclub number two, then a conversation where her agent said there is a third one coming up for sale, and then a text to her mother with the monkey-covering-eyes emoji. She walks through how she got Smart Serve certified over a weekend and hopped behind the bar on a Friday night because she had only two bartenders when the venue needed three and could not stand watching people with money and no one to pour drinks, why her son started calling it the Adam Sandler look every Sunday in sweats and Uggs when she had been in heels at the bar all night and heels at the firm all day, and why flipping the second and third was always the plan even if the exhaustion was not. She also explains how meeting Anthony Geraci — the founder of Geraci LLP and the American Association of Private Lenders — brought her to Orange County, what stunned her most about American real estate closings (no lawyer, just escrow) They also discuss the Mitigate platform that builds insurance review directly into private loan documents so that a lender is not left foreclosing on a pile of ash after a property burns, the Regulate platform designed to untangle the patchwork of state-by-state licensing requirements that means a California private lending license does nothing for you in the next state, why she still takes children's personal injury files even though the contingency math does not reward it because it makes her feel good and she does not have to answer to a partnership anymore, the cross-border private lenders association bringing Canadian and American lenders together Jasmine Daya is the founding principal of Jasmine Daya & Company in Toronto, the co-founder and COO of Geraci LLP in Irvine, California, a graduate of Queen's University Faculty of Law and Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, a holder of a negotiation certificate from Harvard Law School, a digital marketing and analytics certificate from MIT Sloan, and the author of Law Girl's Bump in the Road, the JD in the Kitchen cookbook series, and the forthcoming Private Lender's Legal Handbook. Connect with Jasmine Daya: Toronto / Personal Injury / Private Lending Canada: jdlawyers.ca Geraci LLP — California / US Private Lending: geracillp.com Email (Toronto): [email protected] / [email protected] Email (Geraci): [email protected] Phone (Toronto): 416-967-9100 Jasmine Daya & Company — 2 St. Clair Ave. W., Toronto, Ontario M4V 1L5 00:00 Introduction to Jasmine Daya 00:14 Building one of Toronto's top personal injury firms and running three downtown nightclubs simultaneously 00:26 What lawyer buys a nightclub during a pandemic? This one. And here is exactly why. 01:03 Six months of court closures, clean closets, caught-up taxes, and then the real estate market did not crash 01:40 Pravda Vodka Bar — a walk-in freezer, 80-plus vodkas, aerialists from the ceiling, and drummers on the bars 03:03 Nightclub two, and then the agent lists the better one second on purpose so she buys both 04:12 What happened to the clubs — and the Adam Sandler Sunday morning sweatpants problem 06:28 Three clubs, a 60-person firm, three kids, and a full real estate portfolio — simultaneously 07:01 Switching from days to nights and back, and why Sunday was the one sacred day 08:05 Moving to California was not about the fires — she met Anthony Geraci 08:34 Learning private lending law in the US and immediately finding a gap nobody was covering 09:30 Wait — real estate closings in California do not require a lawyer? What? 10:22 Who is reviewing the insurance policy when a wildfire burns the collateral down? 11:00 Standing in front of 500 private lenders in Las Vegas asking why nobody is talking about this #JasmineDaya #GeraciLLP #JasmineDayaAndCompany #TrustcastShow #PrivateLendingLaw #TorontoPersonalInjuryLawyer #PravdaVodkaBar #PrivateLenderCanada #CrossBorderPrivateLending #LawGirlsGuide