Making $200k a Month After Being on the Verge of Bankruptcy

Brandon:
This is The BiggerPockets Podcast, show 480.

Dan:
I ended up like $400,000 in debt and I didn’t earn anything that year. We were selling stuff out of our house. I liquidated my 401(k). I was selling rental properties. We were on the brink of bankruptcy.

Speaker 3:
You’re listening to BiggerPockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you’re here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you’re in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com, your home for real estate investing online.

Brandon:
What’s going on, everyone? It’s Brandon Turner, host of The BiggerPockets Podcast, here with my cohost, Mr. David In My Guard Greene. What’s up, man? How you doing?

David:
Very nicely done. Sneaky as well.

Brandon:
Thank you. That’s my favorite spot. I want you in my guard when we’re rolling jiu jitsu. Is that weird? I don’t know. I feel like I can triangle you all from there. People have no idea what we’re talking about right now, but-

David:
No, you triangle everybody from there. I’ve told people it’s like wrestling Dhalsim from Street Fighter II. Your legs just go so long.

Brandon:
I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. Well, we’re back for another show today and this show is just fire. Just amazing, both actual step-by-step instruction on how to get off-market deals, but also you’re going to hear just a very powerful story from our guest today. His name is Dan Brault, and Dan is a real estate investor. Been in it for what, about five years, and has gone through, did really well. Had some really hard times. You’re going to hear about that. I mean, he was $400,000 in debt at one point, lost a bunch of stuff. It was crazy. On the brink of bankruptcy, and then has emerged out the other side and runs a very successful real estate business right now. They focus primarily or entirely on off-market. They’ve got some really clever ways to get deals, stuff that we don’t hear a lot on this show. You’re going to hear about that and more, coming up shortly. But first, let’s get to today’s quick tip.

David:
Quick tip. Today’s quick tip is don’t neglect the power of a coach. Look, when we talk about what a coach is, it’s really somebody who has done what you are doing before you, has learned a lot of the things you’re trying to figure out on your own, and has taken the time to analyze those things and come up with a system to help you learn them faster. Coaches are not just for athletes. Coaches are for everyone. A coach can shorten your learning curve, and that means help you make money a lot faster and a lot quicker than you would if you did it on your own. So in many areas of life, your spiritual life, your fitness, your wealth building, whatever it is that you’re passionate about and you care about, look to see how you can get some coaches in your world.

Brandon:
David, what are your thoughts on… I agree 100% and I utilize this. But how do you avoid the get rich quick guru who says, “I’m going to make you rich overnight. Pay me $40,000.” Is that what you’re talking about? Could it be what you’re talking about? How do you view that?

David:
That’s not a coach. That is a person who’s trying to say, “I will help you accomplish what you want and help you avoid the journey to get there.” That is what gurus capitalize on. They say, “If you buy my system, if you pay your money, if you buy these courses, you won’t have to learn how to build a business. You can just have a business.” They make you believe that you are buying a business from there from that $40,000, but you’re not. They’re still just going to give you the information that you have to go then actually enact. Now, the best coaches walk you through the journey that you’re trying to do and help you perform better.
First off, the expense of the coaching is one big way that you can know that this is not legit. Now some coaches, like Tony Robbins, I think he charges $1 million a year. If you’re able to afford that, it makes sense for you to go hire Tony Robbins as your coach. But Tony Robbins isn’t going to tell you that he’s going to make… you’re going to make $10 million just because you spent that $1 million. You’re the one that still go has to do it. That’s one of the litmus tests that I have, is when someone tells me, “Hey, if you buy this program, you can get this thing.” If they’re selling me the thing, I know it’s not true. I’d be better off to spend that $40,000 to go buy the house than it would be to buy the product.

Brandon:
That’s really good, man. Yeah, I totally agree. I use coaches in a number of areas of my life. But yeah, I mean, Tiger Woods has a coach, so why don’t you? All right, very cool. Good quick tip. All right, with that said, I think we’re ready to jump into today’s episode. Again, our guest today is Dan Brault, real estate off-market extraordinaire. Did I use that word right, extraordinaire? Extraordinary? Is that a word, extraordinaire? I feel like it is.

David:
Yes, it absolutely is.

Brandon:
Okay, good. All right. Good, I used it correctly. I can speak English good.

David:
It was very popular in the 1700s, so you’re bringing it back.

Brandon:
I’m bringing sexy back. All right, here we go. Our interview with Dan Brault starts now. All right, Dan, welcome to The BiggerPockets Podcast, man. Good to have you here.

Dan:
Thanks for having me, guys.

Brandon:
Yeah. Now, I don’t want to judge here, but you don’t appear to be like 50 or 60 years old, so you’re a younger dude. How old are you?

Dan:
31 years old.

Brandon:
31 years old. How long ago did you get into real estate investing?

Dan:
I’ve been in real estate for five years.

Brandon:
Okay. I’m going to go through the whole story here in a second, but I’m curious. What’s your current … I want to start at the end and then we’re going to work backwards. Current portfolio, or not portfolios, but just deal flow. What do you do? What’s your thing today? What’s kind of the success, carrot will dangle, to make people listen to the whole episode on how you got there?

Dan:
Yeah. Right now, I am focused 100% on wholesaling. Last month, we actually had our best month ever. We did 12 transactions, and that’s at an average of $15,500 per deal. For us, that was super exciting.

Brandon:
Now we’ve got to back into how you got there. Why don’t we start with the first question I always ask people, which is now not the first question. How did you get started with real estate investing?

Dan:
Yeah. Even as a little kid, I remember being interested in real estate. I remember driving by houses and buildings and things, and wondering who owned them and pointing out the ones that I’d want to own. As I got older, I did different sales jobs and I was in the medical device industry, the medical device sales industry. Looking into different investing options, didn’t really like what I saw for investing in stocks and all that. So, I stumbled upon real estate investing. I liked the control that it offered. All the benefits for the depreciation, all the different write-offs, the cash flow now, the buildup of the value over time. The control was a big thing for me. While I was working full-time, I started buying some rentals, started doing some flips, and then it sort of just snowballed from there.

Brandon:
Let’s go back to… did you start with rentals or did you start with flips? What was the very first deal?

Dan:
My first one that I ever bought was a duplex in the inner city.

Brandon:
Okay. What city is this?

Dan:
Rochester, New York.

Brandon:
That’s right. Okay, so Rochester, inner city, duplex. Did you house hack that or did you just buy it as a straight rental?

Dan:
Just bought it. It was off the MLS. The numbers looked great, so it looked super attractive. And that is one of the dangers of these inner city properties.

Brandon:
Yes.

Dan:
Is that the numbers look great. When you get into it, the reality is very different because the tenants are usually not that great.

Brandon:
There’s a lot of people who hear these things like, “You can buy a house for $50,000 or $30,000 or $100,000?” They’re living in California or Hawaii or whatever and they’re like, “How the heck do you do that?” You’re saying it’s not always… the tenant quality is not there, right? What else is to be aware of with those cheaper properties?

Dan:
There’s no pride of, I guess if you want to call it rentership or ownership, but they just don’t take care of the place as well. For me, it just wasn’t worth it, so I ended up selling it after about a year and a half.

David:
Did you lose any money on that or did you actually make something?

Dan:
I made money. I mean, if you look at the straight numbers, if you factor in my time, then no.

David:
Do you regret doing that deal?

Dan:
I don’t regret it because I did learn a lot. I probably learned more about what I didn’t want to do, so I think that’s just as valuable.

David:
I was working on some bonus content for the multifamily book that we’re launching here shortly. I was writing this article on how to skip the small deals and go right into the big deals. I made this comment in there about the dangers of doing that is that you just don’t know what you don’t know, and you don’t know what you don’t like. I was thinking about when I got into the mobile home parks, I didn’t know that I didn’t like septic tanks. I would not have known that unless I bought something with a septic tank, or almost bought something with a septic tank and gone through that. It’s one of those difficult kind of chicken or the egg problems, or catch-22s I guess, where you don’t know what you don’t like until you get in there. But you don’t want to make a mistake anyways. Do you have any advice for people who are worried about that? They’re like, “Well, I don’t know what I don’t know, so I don’t want to make that mistake.” What do you tell people in that kind of paralyzed by fear because of that?

Dan:
Yeah, so what I did when I first got started, when I was trying to learn about real estate and get into it, is I interviewed as many investors as I could. I asked them those same questions. What are you glad you did? What are you doing now? What would you do over again? If you were starting out, what would you do differently knowing what you know now? Through that, I did learn. You still make mistakes. It’s going to happen no matter what. You can plan as much as possible. You can plan for months and years and you’re still going to make mistakes. I think knowing that going in, you can make the perfect strategy and the perfect plan. No matter what you do, there are still going to be things that are unexpected. Still things that you don’t like. You do your research, but at some point, you’ve just got to take the leap of faith.

David:
Yes, that’s a great point. I think a lot of analysis paralysis is rooted in avoiding mistakes that experienced people know you literally can’t. You go to a buffet and you’ve never eaten any of the food. How do I know which one I should eat? Which one is going to taste good or bad? You can’t know. Here’s another layer of complexity. Certain food may taste good to you that tastes bad to someone else and vice versa. There are people that invest in inner city real estate that crush it, that really understand the dynamic of what they’re looking for in tenants, how to set that relationship up, how to get the most out of it.
They get a lot of benefits that someone might not get avoiding section eight. Joe [Osemwise 00:10:47], kind of the section eight guy we always refer to that we interviewed, he put together an incredible system to just absolutely destroy it in those markets, but that’s a food he likes. That’s a skillset that he’s got that was different than what you had, Dan. Yeah, that’s a great point. It didn’t work out like you thought that it would. Somebody else might make that work out a lot better, but you had to go through that to figure out what you did want to do. That being said, what did you sort of transition into after those first bad experiences?

Dan:
After that I decided one, I wasn’t going to purchase on market properties anymore. I was going to find the deals myself and I wanted to deal with properties where they would stay longer and take better care of them.

Brandon:
Can you real quick explain? Just for those who maybe are unaware with the distinction, on market, off market. What’s the difference and why did you decide to go off market?

Dan:
Yeah, so on market is anything that’s on the MLS. The multiple listening services. Anything listed by a realtor or a real estate agent. The typical, you have the for sale signs out in the front yard. That’s anything that’s on market. Anything off market is anything other than that. That’s how we find all of our deals now. It’s primarily direct to seller. Whether they are trying to sell their house for sale by owner, they might have a sign out in the front of the yard, but it’s for sale by owner, or some people will put an ad out on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. Nowadays, we contact the sellers directly or they might see one of our ads and call us. With that, generally you can get better pricing and probably a whole lot less competition as well. For us, that made the most sense.

Brandon:
It’s powerful, yeah. I like to say on market deals like the MLS, if a real estate agent is listing it, the problem is everybody is there. There’s so many people, especially when we’re talking small deals. When we’re talking single family duplex, triplex, fourplex, but especially the single family. The difficulty with the MLS is that you’re competing against emotion. You’re not competing against logic or investments. If I’m buying a large apartment complex let’s say, or I’ve just got a sell storage deal locked up. If I’m buying that, I’m competing against guys like David Greene here. Or again, you. An experienced investor who is in it for the profit, in it for the return. We’re competing on level ground. But you buy a house on market and you’re competing against Bob and Jane who have their 2.1 cute kids. All they care about is a cute front porch, so they’re going to pay $100,000 over asking because they really want that property for their cute kids. So yeah, off market just gets around that, around the emotion. Or at least hopefully.

David:
Yes, Brandon. There is a lot more competition when you’re looking on the MLS. There’s also going to be other people who are more emotional and they’re not investment minded that you’re competing with, which is why many people want to go off market to sort of avoid the crowds. But there’s downsides to that too. You’re not going to be getting council. You don’t have a fiduciary looking at this for you. A lot of the information that you want on that property, you’re going to have to get on your own. Dan, can you share what some of the challenges were when you moved on to finding deals that were almost exclusively off market?

Dan:
Yeah. With off market, there is… once you get it down, it can be great. But starting off, a lot of people can really struggle. A lot of people just to start off don’t even know where to find them. How are you even going to locate these properties? That was my first question. I bought properties from a wholesaler a few deals in. I asked him, where did they even find these properties? They wouldn’t tell me. That’s number one. Where do you even find them? Then once you learn about all these different options for where you can find them, then it’s, well which one do you pick? Then you can get into analysis paralysis.
There’s so many options. There are so many different ways you can actually contact them that which one do you go with? Then on top of that, there’s so many uncertainties because a lot of these off market deals, they might have title issues. They might have judgements or leans, or they’re in foreclosure, or there’s something going on that led them to be in a distress situation where going on market doesn’t make sense or it’s not a good option. There’s usually a lot more factors at play.

Brandon:
Could you maybe lay out for those listening who are trying to decide between off market and on market. What kind of person should not even bother with off market, and what kind of person should not even bother with on market? Should people do both? I guess that’s a multi-level question there, but why should people choose one or the other?

Dan:
If you’re looking for a ready to go turn key property, on market is probably going to be the way to go. If you’re looking for a personal home that’s also going to be the way to go, is on market. If you’re looking for a great deal where you can find a low market value and there’s way less competition, and you’re okay with doing a bit more work to get the deal, then off market might be a better fit for you. But know that it will be more work because there aren’t real estate agents involved. That’s one of the benefits of going on market, is that you have the real estate agent doing a lot of that work for you. When you’re off market, you do it yourself.

Brandon:
That’s really good. Yeah, I like to think on market is really good I think for new investors just trying to get started. Trying to get on base, trying to get in the game, trying to figure things out. Get yourself an agent. Have David Greene here help you buy a property. That’s great, but when you’re like, “Okay, now I’m ready to get serious about this. Now I’m ready to get some home runs. I just want to knock it out of the park.” That’s when I think those people can go on off market. Where you’re going to struggle is if you’re trying to go off market, but you’re not willing to do that work or you’re not prepared to do the hard… the actual talking with the seller and figuring out the title issues, and talking with… it’s a mess. Would you agree with that, David Greene? I’m going to ask you this as an agent. I know you don’t like people going off market. You want them to work with you, but how do you feel about that?

David:
I guess what I don’t like is people going off market and then emailing me, calling me, and texting me saying, “Hey, how do I fix this problem with the deal?” Because that’s what everyone is going to do. That Dan understands this at a high level. He’s taking responsibility for working through the problems. When you say, “I want to go off market, but I also don’t know how to go off market.” Now that doesn’t work for anybody. I think part of the problem, and there’s a lot of reasons about the difficulties with going off market.
When you go through an agent, first off, you’re going to learn a lot more. If they’re a good agent, they’re going to teach you. You’re more likely to actually land a deal, which at a certain point in your career can make a lot more sense. For someone in my position, it might make more sense to go off market because I can conceivably get a better deal, but that’s because I know how to get it. In the very beginning, it might be eight years before I can get an off market deal and I didn’t learn anything, so that would hurt. The other piece would be when you’re looking at off market deals, you’re literally building an entire business that’s trying to rival what the MLS does for agents. You’re trying to fill up a pipeline of possible houses and learn how to negotiate and put all the pieces together that has already happened in the real estate industry, where they have this pipeline of deals called the MLS.
If you’re committed to doing what Dan did, hell yeah. You should get into that and look for off market deals. But Dan had to solve problem after problem after problem after problem to build the world that he’s in. That costs a lot of money too. Let’s make no bones about it. We always hear people complain about wholesaler fees. Well, if you had to go do the job of the wholesaler, you’d probably spend a lot more money than that wholesale fee to land that same deal that you can go get from them because you’re inefficient. There’s definitely pieces of this that people tend to overlook and only focus on the benefit, which is there’s less competition.

Brandon:
Let’s talk off market for a little bit, some of the different strategies. You mentioned that one of the downsides is there’s so many options to choose from. There are, there’s tons of them. I think one of the books I wrote, How to Invest in Real Estate, I have a chapter called 27 Ways to Find Real Estate Deals. I didn’t even probably hit them all. I’m sure there’s a lot more that you do that I don’t even do. What are some of the more popular ones, off market strategies, if you can just kind of list them? And let’s talk about the ones that you like the best right now.

Dan:
Some of the most popular ones that people probably know about, you can look on Craigslist and you can see if someone is posting their house. Or driving for dollars is a really popular one where you can be just driving around when you’re doing your errands, or you can go specifically to look for houses. You just look for houses that look like they’re in disrepair. Maybe the grass is overgrown. They need new paint, they need a new roof. There’s a lot of things you can look for. You can do direct mail, you can do Facebook ads. You can do bandit signs is a really popular one for newer wholesalers. A lot of people will do joint venture agreements where you’re actively trying to work with other wholesalers. There’s 100 different ways you can find off market properties. Right now, our primary methods number one is TV ads. Which is my favorite by far, it’s phenomenal.

Brandon:
Yeah, let’s talk about this. I don’t know, I think we’ve maybe had three people in the history of the BiggerPockets Podcast doing TV ads. I mean, I’ve never done it. It feels overwhelming. It feels like a lot of work. How do you even go about doing a TV ad? Who do you call for that and what’s your ad like?

Dan:
Yeah, I’m going to give a huge shout out to Darin Damme of Bullseye Branding. He does it all. This guy is an absolute rockstar. He will just set you up and make sure you’re doing all the right stuff. They give you the scripts. They do all the production. They do the ad buys for you. If they didn’t do all that, there’s no way I would have gotten into TV because there’s so many decisions that have to be made about what you’re purchasing, when you’re purchasing it, when it’s airing, all those decisions. I mean, it’s a full-time job. I’m happy to pay their service fee for them to do all that stuff for us because they’re taking the data from all their investors all around the country, seeing what works the best, and then making decisions in my market to give me the best return on investment. It’s not cheap, but the return is phenomenal.

Brandon:
Yeah. I love how you answered that. I’m like, “How do you do it?” And you’re like, “No, who is going to do it?” It’s the who not how principle. I love that you’re… I’m going to find an expert, because you can spend the next five years getting good at TV yourself. Figuring out how to do the ad buy, how to negotiate with the networks, how to do this, how to do that. Forget it. Find somebody who has already got that figured out. Shave years of hard work off and just get the best information. That’s about the best answer you can give there. What’s your TV commercial like? Is it you on it? Do you have somebody else on it? What’s that like?

Dan:
Yeah, it is me. That actually makes a huge difference because I do still run a lot of appointments. We do mostly in person appointments. It is interestingly sort of like a local celebrity factor. When I walk in the house and they’re like, “Oh, you’re the guy on TV.” It’s really interesting that I know I’ve talked with guys in other markets about this where they’re the one on TV. They’ll have other acquisition reps on their team going to appointments and they track the numbers. When they go on the appointments, the person who is on TV, they get better deals because it’s just this instant credibility. You see someone on TV, you automatically associate them to someone who is more credible and professional. It just gives me a leg up on the competition from the first step in the house.

Brandon:
Why would a seller, in today’s market which is crazy. I feel like everyone knows the real estate market is nuts. Even if you’re not in real estate, you know that it’s crazy. Why would they call a number on a TV commercial to sell their home instead of just calling up a real estate agent?

Dan:
The people that sell to us, and it’s not most people. Selling to a cash buyer off market is not a good fit for most people. That’s where I think people go wrong, is that they try to chase all these leads. They try to sell to or they try to buy from everybody. That’s where they end up just spinning their wheels with so many people. The people that actually are a good fit for a cash buyer like us are people that have problems. I always say that the price is a reflection of the problem. These people, they either have a house they just can’t afford anymore. They want nothing to do with it. It’s too much work. It’s overwhelming. They’re worried about it, they’re anxious. There’s something personal going on where they just don’t want to deal with it, or especially with COVID going on, maybe they just don’t want people walking through their house. They don’t want to do an open house.
They don’t want to do showings. They don’t want to get ready because they’re embarrassed. I go into a lot of hoarder houses. They don’t want people coming in their house. They don’t want to show it. They just want a quick, clean, easy transaction where they don’t have to worry about anything. Everything is done for them and they can leave the house as is. Those are the types of people that it does make sense for.

David:
That’s a really good point. I notice a lot of the newer people that are trying to get into off market deals will ask questions like, “Hey, how do I convince the seller why they should take my offer? How do I make them realize they need a cash buyer?” Dan, you’re hitting the point. Well, that’s the wrong person for you. You’re barking up the wrong tree.

Dan:
Yeah, 100%. I think it’s never… honestly, literally every single appointment I go on, I ask them, “Why not just put it on the market? Because you will get more for it.” Then what they do is then they tell me all of the reasons why they don’t want to list it on the market.

David:
I love it.

Dan:
Every time when we bring someone new into our company, I say, “Look, this is not a good fit for most sellers. It’s a good fit for maybe like 5% of the sellers.” That’s why most sellers list their house on the MLS with a real estate agent, because that’s what makes the most sense. Because the money is the biggest issue for them. They don’t have another big problem that they need to deal with. It’s the money. For these people, the money is usually not the primary component. Going off market to deal with their problem first is their biggest concern. That’s why it makes the most sense.

David:
That is such good advice. You’re looking for problems. If problems don’t exist, you’re just not going to get what you want because they’ll just go list it on MLS. I would think that the reason most people don’t say, “Why don’t you list it on the MLS?” Is they’re afraid if they introduce that as a possibility then the person will say, “Oh, I didn’t think of that. I should go list it with a realtor.” But at this point, it’s safe to assume most people know they can put their house on the market with a realtor and get all those competitive nature we were just talking about. I think that your way is right on. Ask them first. Now you put yourself in a position where they are trying to defend to you why they should sell their house directly to you. They’re giving you all the reasons why it makes more sense of them and they’re hearing themselves say that as they talk.

Brandon:
A psychological trick there. I like that a lot. Let’s talk a little bit more about this off market stuff. TV ads are awesome. Are you doing anything with radio at all, or just TV?

Dan:
We’re not doing radio yet. That’s going to be probably in the next six months or so. Not doing that yet, but we are doing also handwritten direct mail, which has been also very successful.

Brandon:
Now, is this actual handwritten, like you hire people to do it? Or is it a machine that makes it look handwritten? Or is it one of those holds a pen kind of handwritten? What kind of handwritten are we talking?

Dan:
Yeah. Actually 100% real people handwriting letters. Full letters, address on the envelope, everything handwritten. We get those out for 55 cents a piece.

David:
Is that in house, or is that you hiring a company to do that?

Dan:
Yeah, so that’s actually a system that I created about a year and a half ago because I didn’t really love the results I got with post cards. I had tried all these different methods of how to create handwritten. I tried writing them myself. I tried hiring people locally. I tried making a template and making copies, and just writing in the address. None of them really got the result I wanted to. After a whole lot of trial and error, I was able to find a method where we’re able to get them out at a great price. The response rate and open rate on handwritten just blows everything else out of the water because it seems like it’s a personal letter, like maybe someone you know, or maybe it’s a check. It’s something that they want to open, so we get way more calls from those than any other type of mailage we ever sent.

Brandon:
That’s very cool. Now, let’s talk about the system for managing the calls that come in. Off market, you’re sending lots of letters. You’re getting the TV calls coming in. Who answers your phone? What do they put it into? Do they have some kind of CRM? Where does it go from there?

Dan:
Yeah, so we use Left Main REI Salesforce for our CRM, which if you guys don’t, anyone who hasn’t heard of that, oh my gosh. Stephanie Betters.

Brandon:
Left Main?

Dan:
Left Main. I hope that thousands of people register because of this, because Stephanie is an amazing human being. Her CRM is incredible. I mean, when we switched to that, the level of reporting and the level of just visibility on all components of our business just quadrupled. It’s made a huge difference for us in terms of business decisions. Everything goes directly into… we have a phone app, so we use call tracking metrics for our phone system. The tracking numbers will register directly into the CRM. It will give us the lead source because it’s linked to the tracking number. It’ll say what TV number they called or what letter number they called so we can track everything. We have a couple people answering our phones, so they go through our standard script. They work on disqualifying people, not qualifying people.

Brandon:
Explain that.

Dan:
They work to disqualify the people to make sure that, again, we’re not trying to sell to everybody, or I guess buy. We’re not trying to buy from everybody because most people are not a good fit. We go through a series of disqualifying questions, and then after that if it does make sense to move forward, then we would set the appointment for one of our acquisition reps to go out.

Brandon:
That’s very cool. How many people in total in your company right now?

Dan:
Right now, there’s eight of us.

Brandon:
Okay.

David:
Eight people and you’re killing it. You said 13 last month? What was it?

Dan:
We did 12 last month, and we are tracking to some pretty significant growth. We’re super excited.

David:
Let’s go back to your story a little bit. You’ve been in it for five-ish years now. Has it been just a continual upswing, like every year is just better than the last? You laugh, so I’m assuming not. What does your story look like?

Dan:
Anyone who thinks success is a straight line is ready for a rude awakening. I mean, it was going well for a few years. I did some burbs. Those went really well on some nice single family suburban homes. Had some great tenants, great cashflow, all that. Super happy. Started doing wholesaling a little bit. Really, I only wholesaled the stuff that we didn’t want to flip or keep. I actually didn’t really like wholesaling that much. I always found it kind of awkward. I didn’t like the process. I didn’t feel like it was a good experience for my buyers or the seller because I didn’t have a good system for it. I was doing a little bit of that.
I started getting into bigger stuff. Being very ambitious, I wanted to do bigger and bigger stuff. I decided to pretty much simultaneously start a development company and take on a historic luxury flip. The historic part was, one, a major mistake. I went through six months of meetings with the town board just to get it approved. Then we had to rebuild the entire building. Went way, way over budget. Way over time. It turned out beautifully, but in the process of going way over budget and way over time, admittedly being way over my head on that project. Between that and having a construction company that was being mismanaged, and I admittedly put too much faith into the guy running the crews and doing the estimates and doing all that. That company, we were mid-build on a lake house. The company just ran out of money.
This was not like a spec house. This was for a client that had paid us to build their house. We just ran out of money. I had to layoff seven guys, surrender this big machinery. Through all that, through that time period, this all took like a year to do. The most stressful year of my life. I was barely sleeping. I was going to the doctor. I developed an ulcer. At the end of this, I ended up like $400,000 in debt and I didn’t earn anything that year. We were selling stuff out of our house. I liquidated my 401(k). I was selling rental properties. We were on the brink of bankruptcy. I met with a bankruptcy attorney. It got pretty dark there for a little bit.

David:
What mistakes led to that? I mean, historic, a big issue there. You mentioned putting too much faith into the guy running the construction team, but what else can we pull out of that time so other people can say, “Hey, I’m not going to get into that position?”

Dan:
I tried to do too much too soon is number one. I also was a bad delegator. I was not a good leader in those two companies. I was trying to maintain the ultimate control and it cost me, because I forced micromanaging. Because I wouldn’t let go of control. With that, that’s why I was working nonstop constantly. Then it led to turnover. It led to me with this other, with this guy who was running the crews. He was on the job sites. He was like an hour and a half away. I couldn’t manage him, so I sort of just let that go too much.
It was really poor, poor leadership on my part. That’s something I’ve been working really hard to correct. But trying to do too much too soon with something that I honestly didn’t know enough about. I took on this massive project that we had to completely rebuild the house. I didn’t have a construction background and I didn’t have the right people around me either. That was probably the biggest mistake, is that I was trying to do it all myself without the right people around me. I don’t have to tell you guys, but you know that the most successful people are surrounded by a lot of other successful people. They have coaches and they have mentors. They lean on the strengths of others. That’s something that if I had done better, I think those two projects would have turned out very differently.

David:
Such powerful lessons in there because man, everything you said, from doing too much stuff to not managing correctly and not being the right leader you needed to be. I mean, we’ve all been there. I feel like that’s just my story over and over and over. The idea of focusing on few but better. Focusing on the systems and the management and the leadership skills, not doing everything yourself. Those are million dollar lessons that I think you’re just pouring on to our audience. I appreciate that, man. I know it’s hard to go through that stuff, but it sounds like you came out the other end. You’re killing it right now. What lessons did you take? Maybe not what lessons, but how did you get from that to where you are today? Walk us through that transition.

Dan:
Yeah, so as you can imagine, after that I sort of said, “You know what? I’m done with real estate. This doesn’t work. It’s not worth it. I’m not putting my family through this.” Because at that point, during this whole thing, a week before that historic property closed, we had our daughter. That whole time, I had a newborn, an infant, and a new marriage. I said, “You know what? I need to just provide some stability for my family. I need to get away from this.” My risk profile, as you can imagine, dropped dramatically.
I decided to go back into the medical device industry. That actually started going really well. They created this new position for me. I was doing stuff all over the East Coast. It was going really well and then COVID hit, and everything just shut down. I said, “Well, I’m not going to do nothing. I can’t just do nothing.” Even though they were still paying me. I said, “Well, I’ve seen other people do real estate really successfully. I don’t want to flip again, at least not right now. I need something that I can generate some quick cash.” I said, “Well, wholesaling always had great margins for me, but I didn’t really like the process that much.”
I decided that at that point, I was going to dive headfirst into wholesaling, but go about it in a completely different way where I would be learning from people who were doing it at a high level, or I could get a system down and follow these processes where we could do a really great job. And just follow it, follow the footsteps of people who have already done it. We learned from some really great people and implemented those systems. Combined that with my sales and marketing background and my background in personal development. Once I learned those things and implemented them, I loved wholesaling. For a while, I was just doing it by myself. Got a few virtual assistants helping out, started hiring. It hasn’t been that long. In the past year, we’ve went from maybe doing like two to three a month to now consistently eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. Super, super grateful. Super excited. Really, really happy with where things are going, where we’re at. I want to be able to help people along the way because so many people have helped me get to where I am now.

David:
Do you mind if I ask you a couple questions on the numbers of where your business is right now?

Dan:
Absolutely.

David:
Just so people can get a better understanding of what it looks like?

Dan:
Yeah.

David:
In order to close 12 deals, how many sellers do you have to negotiate with?

Dan:
Right now, our closing ratio is about 34%. That means on 34% of the offers that we make, we turn those into a deal. Now, some of those, we’ve recently, and this is another thing I’m super excited about that any wholesaler, if they’re not doing this, they need to get onboard with this. David, I actually think you’ll like this because it has to do with real estate agents. I recently formed a strategic partnership with a real estate brokerage here in town. Out of that, it’s been a huge boost for our business. Basically what we did was form a partnership with them where we send them listing referrals. I do have my real estate license, so I can get a commission on those.
They send us any deals that don’t make sense for the market. We also give them first right of refusal on our deals. That opened up a couple things. One, they are actively… we have this whole team of people actively working to sell our deals for us. Two, it also opens up a lot of owner occupant buyers who pay more for properties. Especially in today’s market where it is so ridiculously competitive that these owner occupant buyers, I mean, they’re going to see 20, 30 houses and making offers that are $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 over asking, and still not getting the houses. We’re able to offer them an option where there’s no competition outside of the brokerage. These agents are happy because they don’t have to show 30 houses. The buyers are happy because they don’t have to make offers on 30 houses. We’re happy because it’s doubled our average fee. We’re able to leverage that in a huge way, so that’s been huge. We’re getting a mix of wholesale deals and some listing referrals as well out of that 35%.

David:
Okay, so that’s right around 36 offers give or take that you’re making. How many deals do you have to analyze before you get to the point where you know these are the 36 we want to offer on?

Dan:
Our goals are to have, out of all the leads that come in, is to have 70% of those to convert to what we call an opportunity. Which is they do want to sell their house. They actually have a house to sell and their price expectations aren’t ridiculous. They’re not looking for market value or above market value. Then our goal from there is that 90% of those opportunities turn into an appointment. Then it’s out of that 90% that 30%, 34% of those will turn into a deal for us.

David:
Then you’ve got all of these deals that are coming in that you’re looking to see if they’re an opportunity. Then you have to figure out how many pieces of mail, or how many conversations, or how many things do I have to do to get somebody to come in and say, “Hey, I might want to sell my house to you?” What I’m really trying to track back is, what’s an understanding of what your overhead is right now? So that people that are listening that think, oh, I can do that. I just need to go talk to people all the time. So that they understand why… how much pressure is on you to actually convert these into deals.

Dan:
Yeah, so let me say this. That a wholesaling operation can be run by just talking to as many people as you possibly can. But you cannot scale it doing that. If you want to run a business where you’re not doing everything, then you need to start looking into other ways to find deals. If you just want to be a one man show, absolutely do that all day long and you have a very high paying job. But if you want a business, then you need to do different stuff. Right now on a monthly basis, our marketing spend is $15,500.

David:
What about the staff? Do you pay them per deal? Are they on a commission structure?

Dan:
We have our head of operations. He’s on salary plus a percentage of profits. We have sales reps, some of whom are on a salary plus commission. Others are just straight commission. Then we have virtual assistants that are just an hourly rate. On average, I mean, we’re going to be spending over $20,000 a month. Probably more like $25,000 a month just to meet our monthly expenses.

David:
So, that’s $25,000 a month regardless of what happens. Then on top of that, you’ve got sort of the cost of good sold or the cost of doing business where in order to lock it up, you’re paying certain people commissions out of those deals or you’re sweetening the spot for someone to want to move forward with that, however that is. That’s really what I wanted to highlight, is this is a great business that you’re running. But it doesn’t come without some pressure. There’s still pressure on you. That $25,000 a month, if you don’t flip a house or you don’t wholesale a deal, that’s gone. You’ve got all these people that are depending on you for their job, and you’re their source of income. I can totally understand why you felt all that pressure when things are going down, but kudos to you for going forward with it. I just don’t want to give the impression that this is, oh, I just have to send letters and then talk to sellers and I’ll put it in a contract. There’s a lot of moving pieces involved in this business that you’ve successfully been able to make all fit.

Dan:
That’s why I think there are so many wholesalers out there that do like one to four deals a quarter. They do one or two man shows. They sort of do it on the side. You can do that. You can make a great living doing it, but you’re never going to have a business doing that. The ones that do wholesaling at a really high level have taken it from a job to a business. In order to do that, you need to heavily invest in your business. Coaches, phone systems, CRMs, training. We’re part of coaching groups, masterminds. That stuff is almost a requirement to get to that next level. If you’re not constantly improving, someone else is and they’re going to eat your lunch.

Brandon:
This is why we talk about mindset here on the podcast. We did a whole Sunday episode just because this is not necessarily… anybody can read a book. You can read Traction and figure out how to run a business system, or you could read a book on leadership by John Maxwell, but it’s not the information we lack. It’s this mindset that once you start thinking that way, I bet you Dan, you could jump into any other industry. You could go right now into Cutco knife sales. You’d probably dominate that industry.
You’d be in the top probably 2% of all Cutco people in the world. You could make a home daycare center. Make a daycare center for little kids, and you would probably be in the top 1% of all daycare centers in the world. David Greene, I’d say the same thing with you. It doesn’t matter as much. Now, you might not stick with it because you don’t care about it, but that’s a whole other thing. Once you have that mindset of success, and this is one of the biggest things I’ve picked up being a part of different masterminds over the years like Abundance, or like the JDC Mindset Academy I’m part of now with Jason Drees. This stuff, it’s just the way you think about the world and about problems affects every area of your life. When you start thinking bigger like, how would I do a dozen deals a month? That thinking comes from hanging around with other people who are thinking that way. Do you agree?

Dan:
100%. I think that success in business is maybe 20% strategy and tactics and 80% mindset.

Brandon:
Totally agree. When people are like, “I don’t want to spend any money on a mastermind or performance coach. None of that. I’d rather just do that on my own.” I’m like, “All right, that’s fine. You’re just missing out on probably the most important aspect, which is just surrounding yourself with higher level thinking.”

Dan:
Yeah. I think there’s a reason that a lot of these high level masterminds are $20,000, $30,000, $40,000. It’s because they provide so much more value than that. But it’s also a barrier to entry for the people that don’t have that mindset, the people that don’t have that belief. If it was like $1000, you’d get every Joe Shmo joining. They don’t have that same level of mindset. When you go to these things, you’re surrounded by people that are obsessed with growth and giving and growing. It’s just the environment alone, the connections you make alone outside of the content you learn, that can almost be worth it if not way more than worth it.

Brandon:
That’s a good point about the barrier, the higher price. I know David, you have a group of people that you meet with, kind of a mastermind. I’m going to likely launch something this summer of my own just to get around those people in my own kind of tribe. I’m worried about that. I want to make it $12, everybody gets in. But then yeah, like you said, you get every single person who wants to get in. I’m not saying if you have no money, you have no place at the table. But people who have money, they just think differently. People who have had success in other industries, whatever, they’re already at that mindset. That’s what big influencers want to surround themselves with too. They don’t want to just have the $12 person.

David:
Well, this is the irony of life, okay? The person who is really, really fit understands a workout needs to be hard, okay? Do you remember during maybe the ’90s, the trend was the ab roller and the thigh master? It was basically be at home and don’t put effort into this, and we can get you results for easy.

Brandon:
Just put these sensors on your stomach and they’ll make your muscles twitch, and you’ll have a six pack.

David:
And just lay there and watch TV, and you’ll just end up with a six pack. Yes, that’s exactly what. But when Crossfit came out, it was horrible, but you saw the results that Crossfit people were getting. You couldn’t really deny it. It really shattered that idea that you can get fit without it being hard. The irony in life is that the people that are the most fit expect it to be hard. They don’t need you to convince them, “I can help you do it easy.” The people who want easy fitness will never, ever get it. They will run away from literally what it takes in order to get stronger or to get fitter. Success and business works like that too.
The people like Dan and Brandon that say, “I am welcoming the challenges and the problems I have to solve. Being a business owner means I will have a nonstop stream of challenges that are always coming at me. What I’m going to share is what I learn to solve those problems. Things like delegation and leadership and systems.” These are all words that we throw around that are just principles that help us solve problems. That’s why you guys are successful in business, is you are good with solving problems. Then that creates opportunity for other people in your company. The better problems they can solve and the more of them they can solve, the more they can get paid because the more value they bring. In business, value is solving problems.
The people that are on the sidelines saying, “I want to get into real estate, but what if this happens or what if that happens?” What they’re actually saying is, I don’t want to have to solve a problem. I don’t want to be responsible. That means you’re never going to get in the game. There isn’t any way to get in the game that isn’t solving a problem. That’s the leap of faith everyone has to take. If you’re sitting there saying, “I don’t want to pay for coaching,” and “What if the toilet breaks?” The what ifs that stop you from getting in. The what ifs are not the problem. It’s that your focusing on them and you have this subconscious belief that they shouldn’t be there, that you’ll do it when they’re not there, which makes you the ab roller person. You’re just never going to get fit with that mentality.

Brandon:
I want to take this in one last direction before we head towards the close. You mentioned that you were not a great leader. That was one of the problems that happened back when you lost a lot. Now you’ve got a team again. You’ve got these eight people that are in your company and you obviously are doing much better now. I’m wondering, what have you learned works for leadership? What are you doing differently now in regards to leadership that maybe you weren’t doing before?

Dan:
I made it a mission to become a better leader. One of the ways I’ve done that recently is I hired a leadership coach. I tell them, I share everything with them. I tell them my goals. I tell them my struggles. Any book they tell me to read, I read it. If anyone who wants to become a better leader, read the book Multipliers. It is phenomenal. That’s one I am going to put on my read every year list. For me, I don’t know. Are you guys familiar with these different personality profile tests? There’s DISC, predictive index, all that stuff. In my business, we use predictive index. There’s one that’s one of the drives is dominance. It’s your drive to assert your own personal touch and have your thumb on everything, and have a say in everything, and have control.
My profile for that is literally off the charts over the top. I want to control everything. I want to have a say in everything. It’s super, super easy for me to just direct and dictate and say, “Nope, we’re going to do this. We’re going to do this.” And just tell everyone what we’re going to do. That is super easy and natural for me to do. What I’ve needed to do, and I still work on every single day, is foster a more collaborative environment. Because I tell my team this every single week, that I cannot do this without them. It’s the same thing moving forward. I won’t be able to create the best company possible without them not just what they’re doing day to day, but their minds as well.
If I’m trying to personally solve all the issues with only my mind, we’re not going to have the best ideas. We’re not going to think of every scenario. We’re not going to be able to fully evaluate everything. Creating a culture where we’re having this dialogue, and we’re solving issues by brainstorming together. That has made a phenomenal difference because not only does it get people to speak up and provide their ideas. We get a lot from that. But then when an ultimate decision is reached, they have even more buy in into it, because they at least feel like their voice was heard and that they took part in the process of making that decision and setting that direction. That has made a massive difference, as well as one other thing, which is being crystal clear and communicating to our team what the ultimate vision of the company is, why we’re doing what we’re doing, and the values that drive us every single day.

Brandon:
That’s so good. That’s one of those, we’re going to want to listen to the last two minutes again. Because this stuff matters. It just changes how you approach every situation, but especially real estate investing. Very cool, man. My last question before we get into the famous four. Where do you see your company headed in the future? What do you see the next two, three, or five years of your business looking like? More wholesaling or are you going to get into something else?

Dan:
Absolutely we’re growing this wholesaling business. My goal, and we are on pace for this goal, is that by the end of the fourth quarter this year, is to be doing 24 deals a month. We’re going to be expanding to the three cities up here in Western New York. We’re already in Rochester. We’re going to be expanding to Buffalo and Syracuse. Then we’ll be expanding to multiple states as well. I plan on making this a very large wholesaling operation. I know we can do it. I can see it. We have the right people and the momentum to do it. I’m super excited about that.
Outside of that, I’m going to be launching our letter writing company, Letter Bandits. That’s coming real soon. That’s the handwritten letter company where we’re going to be doing two things. One is offering a course on, here’s exactly how to do step by step everything that I do in my business to set up that same letter writing system. Then for other people who don’t want it, they want a more hands off approach, then I actually have a service. We’re pretty much a mail house where we’ll do all that for them. That’s coming soon. Then launching into the education space so we can give back that value that I receive and me and my team receive every single day.
Then for me, I’m really excited about getting into the commercial space. I’m super interested in self storage, so really want to get big into that. From there, I mean, my ultimate vision for my life is to directly impact the lives of one billion people. That’s probably going to take my entire life. It’s probably going to result in me creating a whole lot of companies and working with a lot of people, but I can’t imagine a better way to spend my life than trying to literally change the world.

Brandon:
That’s an awesome vision, man. I appreciate you sharing it. Well, let’s head over to the next and last segment of the show. It’s time for our (singing) Famous four. I felt kind of alone on that. David, are you leaving me hanging on that or are you on mute? Man, I felt alone.

David:
Yeah, sorry.

Brandon:
Like I was naked in the woods. The famous four is the part of the show where we ask the same four questions every week to every guest. We’re going to throw them at you right now. I don’t know why I said naked in the woods. I don’t know what that means.

David:
If you were naked in the woods, I’d probably want to laeve you alone to be honest with you.

Brandon:
That’s what it felt like. Question number one. Dan, what do you think is your real estate investing book? I almost combined the last question with the first. What is your favorite, either all time or current favorite, real estate investing book?

Dan:
One of my favorite, The Millionaire Real Estate Investor. That one and then The Art of Wholesaling Real Estate is another good one.

Brandon:
Awesome.

David:
What is one of your favorite business books?

Dan:
I’m going to give you two, one for each of you. The multipliers one is… I know I mentioned it earlier, but I cannot recommend it anymore highly.

David:
Yeah, I just bought it while you said that. I was like, “All right, I’m getting it.”

Dan:
So good. That was introduced to me by another coach of mine, Gary Harper of Sharper Business Solutions. Phenomenal guy, phenomenal business leader. Then another book that you had mentioned earlier, Brandon, Traction. I think for people that are trying to figure out, how do I turn this into an actual business? What do I need to do every week, every day, every quarter, every year to gain that momentum and make sure that we’re constantly making progress so that I can take this from a job to a business? That’s where most people struggle, I think, is because most people that… most real estate entrepreneurs do not have a business background. Probably a lot of them didn’t even go to college or they didn’t go to college for business. This stuff, everything in real estate is learnable. So is running a business. There’s Scaling Up, The Rockefeller Habits, all those books. They have a lot in common, but Traction is one of a great series of books that is super valuable for anyone looking to make that next step into a real business.

Brandon:
Does your company also run the EOS management system from Traction?

Dan:
Absolutely.

Brandon:
Yeah. I feel like when I implemented EOS, I went from about 20 hours a week of meetings at open door capital down to about four, maybe three. It’s just a dramatic cut down. The BiggerPockets organization runs on it as well. It’s been awesome.

Dan:
Yeah. There’s less meetings, but the meetings are better.

Brandon:
Better, much better. Yeah, because I’m not managing the team anymore. The system manages the team. They hold themselves accountable because it’s the system. I get to lay out the vision. I get to lay out the direction. I get to oversee the big things, make sure we’re buying the right stuff. But it’s all about the high impact decisions and the high impact conversations that we’re having now. Awesome, love to hear other people doing that.

David:
Less, but better.

Brandon:
Hi, Dave.

David:
That’s how I like to think about my commentary in this podcast. All right, Dan. Next question. What are some of your hobbies?

Dan:
I love working out. I love hanging out with my family. I have a beautiful wife with two little kids. As much time as I can spend with them, I do. Honestly, I love building my businesses. It drives me. It gets me going because I know why I’m doing it, and so I don’t mind putting in that time and energy because I see that bigger purpose. I love building businesses.

David:
What other businesses do you have? Do you have any other than this wholesaling business?

Dan:
Yeah, so we’re actively building that Letter Bandit for the handwritten letters. We’re in the process of building that. Then I have an e-coaching business where I coach people on sales training, and also just wholesaling in general.

David:
You’re on your way to becoming Brandon Turner, who is not a business man.

Brandon:
Business man.

David:
He’s a business man.

Brandon:
There you go. I’ve got to work on the beard though, I don’t know.

David:
You’ve got to work on it.

Brandon:
And probably like a foot taller.

David:
How tall are you?

Brandon:
5’6″.

David:
Yeah, a foot taller.

Brandon:
Yeah. All right, 11 inches. 11 inches, but who’s counting? Last question of the day. If you and David Greene were wrestling, who is going to win?

Dan:
Oh, gosh. Well, coming out of the show, he’s telling me how he just interviewed one of the Gracie brothers, so probably him.

Brandon:
All right, real question.

David:
Something you should know about Brandon, Dan, is that he is a massive instigator even though he doesn’t look like one.

Brandon:
What?

David:
He’s always doing stuff like that. “Yeah, hey, go up to that person and tell them they’re fat. See what they do.” He’ll always be trying to put you in these positions where he can sit back and watch you beat yourself up with a drink in his hand for a monkey pod with a little umbrella in it. You’re like the guy in the Hunger Games who orchestrated the fights. Who was that?

Brandon:
Snow, is that what the name is? President Snow.

David:
Yeah, that’s you.

Brandon:
Yeah, I’ll be him. What’s the other guy? Anyway, all right, real question. What do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from all those who give up, fail, or never get started?

Dan:
I would say it’s funny that question. Those who fail, every successful person has failed and continues to fail constantly. I think the ones that succeed are the ones that realize that success, I think this is a Tony Robbins saying, success isn’t final and failure isn’t fatal. Just knowing that as you grow, you’re going to encounter bigger problems. That is almost the benefit because when you can solve bigger problems, you get a bigger result. It’s that and it’s just the mindset.
It all comes down to the mindset of working to constantly get a little bit better each and every day and not trying to do it yourself, and surrounding yourself with great people and learning from great people who have done it before. And not trying to reinvent the wheel. I’ll add one other thing, which is focus, because I think that’s where so many people go wrong. They see all these shiny objects and they want to do something new every single week. They never really master any one thing. They learn a little bit about a lot of things and they never really fully dive into one thing. They never achieve that level of success that you see that these people who are super specialized achieved.

Brandon:
Last question of the day. Where can people find out more about you?

Dan:
Instagram @ActionDanBrault is a great place to connect with me. Seriously, if you guys want to talk, if you guys have questions, if you need help with something, I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again. I get so much help every single day, every single week. I just want to give back. I want to see people win. If I can help in any way, please reach out. I want to help.

Brandon:
Well, I appreciate you. I appreciate you coming on the show, sharing your stuff, and yeah. Can’t wait to see where you head in the future.

Dan:
Super grateful to be here. Thank you so much.

David:
All right, thank you very much, Dan. This is David Greene for Brandon Hunger Games Turner signing off.

Brandon:
All right, now with our interview with Dan Brault, that was awesome. That was awesome. I love talking strategy, like off market stuff, on market stuff. How to be a better leader. Lessons from his struggle where he lost a lot. That stuff is so powerful. I just kept finding myself nodding over and over and over. What about you?

David:
I was impressed that he shared the $400,000 he lost. You don’t hear a lot of guests that come on the podcasts and want to air their dirty laundry like that. That does happen a lot more often than people think. There’s something called I think survivor bias where we tend to only hear the stories when we listen to stuff of people that did well. There’s not a podcast that people go on and tell everybody that they sucked, and they lost a bunch of money. When you listen to a podcast, you tend to only hear about people who did well.

Brandon:
We’re going to launch that next week. The Smaller Pockets Podcast. It’s going to be really great.

David:
That’s really funny. The Holes In My Pockets Podcast.

Brandon:
I love it.

David:
You mentioned something at the end there, Brandon, that I haven’t heard you say. You said that you’re going to be starting some form of a group coaching, or did I get that wrong?

Brandon:
Not necessarily. I guess that’s why group coaching. It’s kind of a performance coaching kind of mastermind. I don’t have the official title for it yet. It’s still maybe a month or two or three out. Anyway, I am going to be launching something. I will announce it on my own personal newsletter, which is called Behind the Beard. It’s a text message newsletter. They can go [inaudible 01:08:24]

David:
What’s the passion behind why you’re doing this? What’s your motivation?

Brandon:
I’ll definitely give more as this gets closer. But I will say I found massive benefits in both having a community of people who are thinking differently, and in performance coaching, and in live events. Getting together in person with people. Those three things, I’m like, “How do I combine that into one group?” I don’t know. People always want access to me. It’s hard to give because I spend most of my time with my family or working on the podcast. I thought this would be a way to get people more access to me. That’s kind of the deal. I know you have a group as well. I’m kind of just jealous that you get to hangout with cool people and I don’t, so I’m going to make it happen.

David:
How do people get signed up for the Behind the Beard text?

Brandon:
Wow, look at you letting me plug right here. This is great. Behindthebeard.com.

David:
That’s a good URL for that.

Brandon:
I actually don’t know if that URL works. It might be just BeardyBrandon.com. I don’t know. Either one will get you there.

David:
Try Behind the Beard. If it doesn’t work, go to Beardy Brandon and click Behind the Beard yourself. You should get a graphic on the page with a big beard that just goes over the front of it, and they have to click on it, and it pulls the beard aside. Then they get to see all the cool stuff behind it. That’s the first time I’ve ever given you an idea and said, “Now you have to go execute it.” It’s always the opposite.

Brandon:
Well, thank you. We do have a new logo for Behind the Beard. I kind of designed it poorly, then I had a real designer make it look good. It’s like the bottom of my beard with the words behind the beard. It’s part of the face. Anyway, you can check it out. You’ve got to be a part of the newsletter though. The text letter, sorry.

David:
I think it would be hilarious if you shaved your beard and you had Bigger Pockets tattooed on your adam’s apple, and nobody hand any idea.

Brandon:
This whole time, that’s why it’s there.

David:
The logo, yes.

Brandon:
Yep. It’s like the old logo, the old logo man. It’s outdated. That’s why I grew the beard because [crosstalk 01:10:08] Bigger Pockets changed their logo. I’m like, “Oh no.”

David:
Like when you get your ex’s name tattooed on you and then you’re not together anymore.

Brandon:
Yeah. I’m like, “Why did it change? It was a good logo before.”

David:
Yeah.

Brandon:
Anyway, that’s exactly why I grew the beard. It was around the same time that the logo was changed. Anyway, David, everything good in your world?

David:
Other than the fact that there’s not a lot of inventory to sell. It’s a little bit tough right now. The market just keeps getting hotter and hotter, but yeah. That’s a pretty good problem to have. Everything is really good. I’m stoked to go out to Hawaii in a couple weeks and hangout with you again and get some more exercise in.

Brandon:
Yeah, we’re going to do some wrestling. It’s going to be a great time.

David:
People are like, “What’s wrong with these guys?”

Brandon:
A lot, a lot. With that said, David, why don’t you get us out of this show? This has been fun. Do the outro.

David:
All right. You got it, man. This is David Greene for Brandon Hunger Games Turner signing off.

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