Utilizing the Power of "Brand" to Help Others & Raise Millions.....from ONE EMAIL w/ David Pere

David per what's up. What's up man, buddy. What's

she doing? How are you, dude? It's good, man. We just closed a refi today, closed the sale of a flip yesterday and got finally got approval, I think, to close on a wholesale next week that we've had literally under contract for almost four months because of probate paperwork being messed up with the county. It's always nice when you get those little wins. You're like, I just gave up on this prop, the title company I went and signed today is oh yeah, we're closing this property on Hayworth next week. And I was like, Hayworth. He's yeah, the one I was like, oh, I forgot about that. Forgot about it. I just assumed it wasn't ever gonna happen. Like sweet.

So yeah. Little pleasant surprise, man. I'm excited to have you on today, man, because you offer a very unique perspective and now you've built a platform around this perspective so that others can feel seen, heard, known, and appreciated. And wherever you can find somewhere where you are a niche, but then you can create a niche around. That's massive and that's where we win. So I really wanna start with your story, your backstory, and talk about how you enlisted, how you went through your military service and how you made this transition to where you are today and the birth of this brand. I think we should start there and then we can just see where this goes, man.

Let it rip. That sounds good to me, brother. Talk to me goose. . So I joined let's see. So born in Northern California, parents moved to Arkansas, grew up in a super religious like missionary marriage conference household with a great idea for what a family was. Not a whole lot of money, but and very sheltered. And I was homeschooled. I went to public school one semester, ran into a recruiter while I was there. Didn't know what I wanted to do after school. Didn't like school had no money for school. And the Marine Corps was like I talked to all the branches, but the Marine Corps was like, you can go overseas and we'll pay for it. I'm like, Ooh, that sounds awesome. Travel yeah. I'm in travel,

hacking,

travel and adventure. Like they, so that when you join, when I was a recruiter too now they literally, they have 12 tags. They call 'em benefit tags and they have things like. Courage confidence, personal development, finance travel and adventure is literally one of those. So they set you down and they're like here, pick the top three that are important to you so that I know what to talk to you about. Whatever. And the first one I pick is travel and adventure. And the guy's like we got you covered Yeah joined. I did logistics. I was a transportation guy, drove trucks spent two years in Japan, combat deployment to Afghanistan. Two years in San Diego, tried out for special forces, blew out my knee. The Marine Corps sent me on recruiting duty. While in recruiting duty, I bought my first house. Got totally hooked on real estate, then got stationed in Hawaii, kept buying real estate where I was a recruiter in Missouri, cuz Hawaii was expensive and then got stationed in California. And and while. On the way to California and in California realized that time in the Marine Corps was awesome, but it's the more you get promoted, the more of a desk job you have and the less we're at war, the less anything exciting is going on. So wasn't as fulfilling as it once was. When I first joined the first four years, I saw, I don't know, 13 countries combat all the things and then the last. Nine years. I was active duty. I didn't leave the country. And so I was like, okay this is not as cool as it was. And by the way, I've achieved financial freedom. So I'm gonna go do this thing.

You're gonna go do the travel without the bullets.

Yeah, man. Finally leaving. So the first time I'm gonna leave the country in 10 years, probably. Wow. Is two months. We're going two months in a day, going to Machu Pichu for two weeks. Gonna go do the five day hike and. I'm excited, dude. It's good.

Life's good. That's so awesome, man. So I know we obviously have the VA loan available. To active duty and then military so 0% down. , is there anything else besides that just 0% down for your conventional home or

dude, the VA loan is super misunderstood, but it is straight up the best mortgage product in the world. There's the only thing I've heard rumors of that might be similar. Similar is. The doctors I guess doctors have a version like it, which is interesting when you think about it, that somebody who makes $300,000 a year needs a zero down offer, but Hey who am I to judge? But the VA yes, so zero down. No IP, no PMI. The interest rate thresholds are different. So like on a FHA or conventional loan, if you drop below seven 40, there'll be a price adjustment on the loan. And if you drop below six 80, there's another one. And if you drop below six 40, there's another one. So if you're. 800 credit score. You're gonna have a better interest rate than someone with a 700 credit score. The VA loan only has one price adjustment and it's at six 40. So you could have a 6 41 score and get the exact same interest rate as someone with an eight 20. Yeah, so it's super cool. So that's why the VA loan usually has or often has lower interest rates cuz they just don't adjust. There's no credit score requirement. There's no DTI requirements. So you can go over 50%. I've seen 73%. And a lot of lenders have overlays, so like obviously most lenders aren't gonna lend to you with under a 600 credit score, but I've seen a five 60 there's no limit on your first use anymore. So I saw a guy in California buy a 1.9 million dollar duplex on Venice beach, zero down. And the crazy thing about that loan, he bought 30 year fixed at 2.75, and with zero money down, we did the math. He had a lower payment than if an investor had come in, put 25% down and had a 5% rate because of the amortization being longer, the rate being lower. Like it, it's crazy to think that this dude bought a 2 million duplex and he is got a lower rate than if someone had dropped a half a million cash on the down payment. Like it's. Yeah. So there's a lot of downsides, like there's a funding fee, but it's cheaper than I P PMI and the opportunity cost of putting 20% down it's $11 a month for every a hundred thousand. You borrow, so it's oh man. Yeah. It's deal breaker. Yeah. Yeah. People seem to run around screaming about that and I'm always like, have you done the math? Cuz it's, it's 2.3% amortized for 30 years. So it's, whatever So it's dude, it's incredible. And you can buy four plexes in house hack with it. And I know guys, who've done that in almost every state over the last few years. And the misconceptions with it are usually like the inspection process is harder or appraisals or, but most of it's, most of that's all bogus, usually. What I tell people is this, if your agent or your lender is telling you that putting in an offer with the VA loan makes you less competitive for buying a house. You need a new agent and lender? That's it? I have friends who were doing it. I have a buddy who closed a, not even kidding 14 days. in the heat of San Diego's craziness last year, 14 days closed a $950,000 VA loan. Like you find. So just about the lender who can, yeah. You find me a conventional lender who will, and he was guaranteeing 17 day closes the lender. So find me a conventional lender who will guarantee you a 17 day close on a residential, not gonna happen.

Woo. So you've got this product, right? You've got this product and then you, your brand is for military to millionaire. Where does this go wrong? Why do people not take advantage of this? Yeah, because I wanna be able to apply this in the beginning for people listening. We're gonna apply a little bit of military specific jargon and military specific advice here in the beginning, but use this as a framework and a reference for your own journey, but where do you see it going wrong by aren't much of military millionaires.

Yeah. We're working on it, right? So there's. It's a lot of just misconceptions, man. It's for the longest time people weren't promoting the TSP, which is our thrift savings plan our 401k and so they weren't contributing and they were leaving the money in the G fund, which is basically just bonds. So they were getting almost no growth. The way that's structured. Now, it goes into a life cycle fund automatically. There's a matching contribution. So a lot more people are taking advantage of that, which is great. Cuz it's the lowest fees you're gonna find on index funds. There's a 5% match, which is guaranteed money, free money. That's a super cool platform, but then there's just, yeah, there's just such a weird you know what I think it my, this is not like statistical my thought process. The way that I was when I was 18, was. Why would I care about saving for retirement? I'm going to Afghanistan in a year. I might not make it past 30, so I'm gonna blow all my money on a Harley and tattoos and alcohol and women and whatever. And life's great. And and that was fun and I was way wrong. I'm past 30 and still here. And man, if I look back I'm like, dude, if I had even just saved like $250 a. I would be in such a better position right now. When I bought that first house, I had a negative net worth and I'd been in the military for seven years, so a lot of service members, for some reason, they just, they join and they're like, I can buy an awesome car. And then now they have no finances. Cause you, when you join the military, you. You basically start at like level one financial freedom. Like you, your job is set it's secure and you can completely and totally live off that. And you could, your food's paid for your housing's paid for your, you could literally invest a hundred percent of your paycheck and still be able to make it to work. So people just don't do it. They don't know.

I get, I understand. So first off, even talking about an 18 year old in general, that's already enough right there. Yeah. you're like, okay, this guy yeah. So what's the, so what's your mission with this brand and we'll get into branding and then we'll, that's what we'll bring it back into the civilian world here, because it's amazing what you're doing and it's amazing how you've created this and we'll get into the benefits of this for you as well. But talk to a little bit about the creation of the brand and like where, how you're planning to help and how you have.

Yeah. So the creation of the brand is it was by accident and from another go bro, interestingly enough. So when I was stationed out in Hawaii, I long story short I met Brandon Turner when he was in the process of trying to move to Oahu. And I was trying to help him find a house. He ended up on Maui but at one point he even had his car parked in my garage for four months. Like I was really trying to like, Hey, let me provide some value to this guy. So whatever, and. He came over for dinner one night and we were sitting there and I was like, Hey, I got a question for you. I've had this idea of writing a book. I have a journal from when I was deployed to Afghanistan and a mission log and they correlate. So you can literally see Hey, on this day, Dave drove over a spicy road bump and on, and this is how Dave felt after he blew the truck up, spice spicy road bump yeah, that's my new phrase. But it's interesting to look back and be like, wow, I like that's. I didn't remember how I felt. And so I thought, man, there's a lot of Navy seals out there with all these. Look at me, we killed bin Laden books, but there's nobody with like a. Hey, this is what normal dudes did in Afghanistan. Like this is all the dumb crap that we did on missions that we shouldn't have, or look at me overdosing on caffeine and, having a panic attack and just stupid stuff. And so I was like, I'd love to write this book is like a memoir, whatever, but nobody knows who I am. It would never get read. What do you think I should do to start that process? He's like, why don't you just start a blog? And maybe people learn how, who you are, but also you'll get better at writing. Huh. Great advice. What should I blog about? It's I don't know, military or real estate. There's not a whole lot of service members doing it. There's a lot of service members out there who could. And so that was, that was literally. That conversation was in January by February, there was a YouTube, a blog, a Facebook group and whatever. And the whole thing was me just documenting what I was learning like, oh, I learned about this thing. Let me put a blog post out. And then somewhere within nine months to a year it started to get picked up and people started to start asking questions that were more like. Oh, look at what Dave's learning and more of what would you do in this situation or how would you, and so it slowly started to pivot more towards learning specific things, to answer questions for other service members and doing a lot of research. And then like a year after that. So like a year and a half, two years in, it just went gangbusters. It was like I remember like one day there was like a week we were averaging like a hundred new people in the Facebook group a week. And then one day I woke up and it was like 200 in the same day. And I was like, and then that continued. And it went from like 6,000 people in the group to like 45, 40 6,000 in one year. And I was like, Ooh, oh, this is cool. And it just kept rolling, man. It was like everything. We're the largest military real estate investing platform out there. If you look across all socials, there's one other group in the space that has me beat by a little bit on Facebook. But if you, Instagram, TikTok, like not even close once you factor everything else in, and it's crazy, cuz it's I, I put out a stupid TikTok. That's just like you wanna learn about the VA loan? Then follow me idiots. And I get 70,000 people who comment on it and I'm like, oh Lee crap,

this is weird. Oh my God. Yeah. I'm trying to crack that to coder right now. I'm like, okay, because what it is you keep shooting your shot, right? You keep shooting your shot until you find that one piece of content that people really love. And you just milk that piece of content short it's different directions,

the shorter and more concise. You can make it. Yeah. The better man. It's crazy. Like all of my, like really good videos or really like viral videos have been like 15 seconds. So

talk through. Talk through that process, that creative process in the beginning of creating the brand and when it wasn't that lucrative and when things weren't going gangbusters and, you're of talking into the void. What kept you going through that?

Oh yeah. Yeah. So full, full disclosure the first two years. I might have made a little bit of money here or there, but I don't think my first month out of the red was until like two and a half years down the road. And I was paying for, camera equipment, and I was paying for website crap and whatever. And I don't think I made a penny for the first year. And then I started making a little bit of money here and there from like ad revenue and stuff, but it was never enough to cover anything. It wasn't until two and a half years down the road that I finally saw green on a month. Preaching to

the choir. Because I'm like, where's all my money going because I'm like not really saving. And then all of a sudden I realize, I look at my balance sheet and I'm like, cuz people don't really see, like when you're really passionate about something, like it's all you think about. This action academy is all I think about. Yep. So while I'm gonna travel and everything, like that's fantastic. And that's the, that's my life that I've chosen to live and that I've designed around it, but also I'm thinking, how can I produce content while I'm doing that for action academy? And so I can help other people, so other people can do all this stuff. And so it's every single month is just cuz I don't have revenue, it's I'm not doing paid books, courses, anything it's just red, thousands, and thousands of dollars. So that's why I asked that question, man. So it's cool. I'm excited to see cuz even podcasts, you have a podcast of your own, right?

Yeah, I'm still in the red on that one. Podcasts

are rough, man. They're really tough to get to, to get off the ground. Which platform did you see the most traction on the fastest? I think I already probably know the answer to that one.

It was Instagram. Yeah, but it is now TikTok by far yep. There it is. yeah. It's and I wasn't AAC believer and it's funny cuz I didn't take it seriously at all. And the one video. The first video I ever had that got over a hundred thousand views was. I don't know. I don't know how much you're on TikTok, but there was a video like nine months ago, eight months ago, there was like the, it was a video with Ryan Reynolds and will Ferrell singing this like song together song. Yeah. Yeah. So I just took the audio from that and like literally stood in a mirror. In a hotel at FinCon in Austin and mouthed the words while like pointing at random things that talked about real estate and it got three or 400,000 views. And I gained like 30,000 followers overnight or 25 or something. And I I was like, oh my God, this is it. Check's so basic. And

then, and it's always the stupidest video. Like the one where I'm, I'll put all this effort into a video and then it'll be that one video where I just stand in front of a tweet that I put, and then it'll get like 10,000, 10,000 views. It's ridiculous.

It's actually, it makes sense, especially if the tweet is longer, if it's a really short video, so let's say you do like a seven second clip with just some music and you're just showing this tweet or whatever what's happening is most people don't pause it. To read. They just let it go. So all toes is this guy just walked through your video six times. They don't know why they don't know that it's because the guy's trying to read this long ass tweet you threw up. So if it's intriguing enough that people are reading, but the video's lapping TikTok sees it as wow, this content must be awesome. Let's push it to everybody. It's weird.

I lo I love it, man. And we'll land the plan about why this is important, but before we do that any tips that you can give to people that are in the middle of growing a personal brand, because I'm sure you've probably noticed the same gap that I have where we're in go buns, that we see all these people. And I know a lot of you guys are listening right now. Hyper successful, super, killing it, like financial independence, like hundreds of thousands of dollars coming in passively. No online presence. Yeah. And it's everything that they're doing, like this is all lubricant, right? Everything that they're doing could be done bigger and easier with a platform. So can you give some advice about people that are starting up their own platform, their own personal brand on. Things that maybe a couple things that you can think of that really helped move the needle forward.

Yeah. The first thing I would say is to drive your point home. If somebody put a gun to my head today and said, Hey, you either need to ditch all of your real estate at cost. So you don't profit on it today or turn off your entire brand. I would lose all my real estate. Like I would keep the brand over the real estate because wow. Real estate's great. And real, estate's what got me, my financial freedom, but real estate only scales so much. And the platform allows you to scale in a lot of different directions at the same time. Like the opportunities are crazy and it gets weird because some of the stuff like it's not a ton of money always, but like a prime example, I got paid two grand last month for two 32nd TikTok videos for a. It took me less than an hour, so it's like, what? Yeah. So it's okay. Two grand in the grand scheme of things is not a huge amount of money. I could flip a house and I could make 15 times that 20 times that, but not in one hour. That's the kick and not one hour.

Two 32nd. That's a minute dog. yeah,

Yeah. I Some editing and set up and drafting out the word maybe 30 minutes to an hour, but like in an air conditioned office at the time of day that I chose lounging in my recliner going. Yeah. We'll say that. Ooh. Yeah. Oh, we'll cut this. Yeah. Hey, does this work? Yeah, that works. Oh, cool. Thanks. And then they send you money and you're like, wow. So the it, but more, more than that, when you start talking about. Networking and everything. With the brand, like there are only so many people you can get out there and meet if you're trying to network, but with the brand, people find you and you get to a point where you have to set up like boundaries to like, Hey, I'd love to talk to all of you, but I can't. So here's a couple things to get through before you talk to me and your conversations just. Evolve to be more and more valuable. But what I would say to someone who's in that process, I would say that the jab, right hook, like the Gary V mentality, Gary Vanerchuk yeah. Yeah. Just provide as much value as humanly possible. Don't worry about the sales pitch. That'll come, you'll have the opportunities to make money, but if you're trying to get to where you're at that point a great example of this and somebody who's one of my favorite followers right now is and he's blowing up quick. Is Alex hormo, Alex homo. Yeah, dude. He starts his podcast. And the first thing he says is basically I made a shitload of money. I don't need any of y'alls. I got nothing to sell you. So I'm just here to talk and it's like a 15 minute video and they're so valuable, and he just, his content's extremely valuable. There's no sales pitch. He's not asking you for anything. He's he's just genuine. And he is ex he'll be grant Cardone level, platform size at no time. He is just blowing up everywhere. And that's why, cause he focused on the value and people love it.

It was funny because he posted that he posted a TikTok with him and grant Cardone where he does that. Hey, I paid $30,000 for 30 minute phone call, grant Cardone. So you don't have to. Here's what I learned. And he said that him and grant both pulled out their phones and he was asking grant advice and he said what do I need to do to make my platform exactly like yours? And then he said, okay, how many times did you post today? How many talks did you do? How many Instagram posts, how many tweets did you do? And then he like showed his phone and it was like 10 X that, and he was like, it's the quantity? It's it's the Everyone's oh, I wanna put out quality content and yeah, you can for sure. But it's it's all about for me what I've learned so far in this game, cuz now I'm call it eight months deep in this game. Now it's creating one really solid piece of content long form content, like one of these podcasts and then chopping it up and distributing it into your flywheel. Yep. So it's like you will have this long forum. Piece of content and then you could chop it up into 20 reels, like probably 50 tos. Yep. And it's evergreen. It's gonna keep going. And then you take the top tos and you make 'em tweets and then you can make 'em post and it's all over the place. And that's one piece of content.

Yeah. So yeah, it's, and it goes back to what we were just talking about with TikTok. I even made a video the other day and I was like, TikTok, you guys are weird. I'll make a. Ten second video that says, follow me, you idiots, or you won't learn this. And it goes viral or I'll make a three minute video detailing, like exactly step by step, how to use a VA loan. And nobody cares. And it's like the video that's Hey, look at me. If you wanna make money, do this dance. That one goes viral. And the one that says, Hey, here's how to actually do it. And so you don't know what content's gonna take off. So the quality's important. But if you do one quality piece and you don't do anything else, the odds of that going viral are so much less than if you just throw 10 at the wall. One of them's gonna stick, even if it's not high

quality. And I had a limiting belief behind that when I was doing it, cuz I was like, oh, this is stupid as hell. This is not worth my time. But then I reframed how I thought about things and I said, okay. I'm providing massive, like detailed levels of value in my podcast and through my newsletter. And so it's my mission to be able to package this. You gotta give the people what they want. If I can do a stupid little fricking to that's 10 seconds of my time, and I feel stupid making it, but somebody that's 21 years old looks at that TikTok and they're like, ha, that's funny. Let me click on his profile. And then he goes on my profile and then he sees the podcast starts listening to the podcast. And then all of a sudden his last change, cuz he can hit financial independence now. Yep. That was worth it. If it one person. Absolutely. Now you're applying scale to this. Talk about I wanna get into networking with you because this marries right into what we're talking about. Talk about the couple emails you sent and what was the result?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. We were talking beforehand. It was staggering is what it was, about a year and a half ago, I tried to raise for a syndication and I didn't really know what I was doing with raising money, but I had a little bit of success more, more than I thought I would. And then beginning of this year I helped raise some money for a go grow for one of his syndications and it went, I was a GP and it actually went fairly well, but what really blew me away with the platform. Was those were great. That was cool. Like I raised some money for deals that I was a partner on, it was cool. The moment I got more serious about flipping some houses, which I scaled back a little bit just cause I don't wanna do full guts right now. Cause I don't really know what the market's gonna do in the next year. So I'm doing sure lipsticks and lower risk, cosmetic. Yeah. Yeah. But I was taking down some big ones and what really drove home the power of. Really all of this was when I went to raise the first one was like $85,000. And I was like, man, I really I'd love it. If I could do this with private money, what would be like a normal rate? Let me offer like one point 10% interest and see what happens. And I sent an email to my list and I had three people respond within 15 minutes. I'll take it. And I was like, Hey, what? Like in, in 15 minutes. And by the end of that 24 hour period, it was. Seven or eight people that were like, yeah, we're interested. I was like, okay, that's cool. So then I got another one under contract, a couple weeks later and very similar results. And then there was a month, like that was probably October. And then in January we landed six deals under contract. We wholesale three and kept three. The three that we kept, the total raise was like three 80 for the purchase and the rent. So I'm on all of these. It's a hundred percent. Someone's paying the purchase in the renovation budget. I'm $0 in, unless we go over budget. If we go over budget, I'm paying all of that. And then the refi pays everything out. I get to pull a little cash or we hold it right. Solid Burr. So it was like 380 grand. And I sent all three deals out on one email and had. All three of 'em funded by private money by the end of the day. And I was like, Ooh, this is cool. And so in a matter of four months with, I think a total of four emails, maybe five, we raised close to $700,000 for deals that we were doing on our own. Some were friends that I didn't know had money and some were people I'd never met before, who just followed along. Uh, And one of those guys. Put like $200,000 into a syndication, lent me another a hundred and is partnering with me on some other deals right now. Another guy funded four of the deals over the he's funded four deals for me over the last nine months. And now he dropped a hundred grand into a campsite that we're closing on next week that I did, I brought zero money to the table. Buddy of mine was like, I got this awesome deal and I need money. I called him and they. They partnered and they were like, we'll give you 10% for hooking us up. Thanks. And so I'm in a $400,000 campsite deal in Missouri for 10% equity with no money involved. And all I did was bring the partners together, get the LLC formed and bring the lender like introdu at three introductions. Here's a private lender. Here's my personal commercial portfolio lender. And here's my LLC setup guy. Made those introductions and poof money out of thin air. So that's, what's been crazy for me is like, there's all kinds of ways to profit off the brand. And it made more than six figures last year. And it was awesome. But the raising money being that easy was just mind blowing

dude. And that's it. It's awesome to hear because this is like another reason why I do this. So I do this to provide value to people, but it's now. There are times, right where you're in the middle of your journey. And obviously with this podcast, like I'm interviewing four or five of y'all a week. That's how busy I am. And if I'm not interviewing four or five multimillion or entrepreneurs a week, I'm a guest on other podcasts. So I'm on a mic. I'm on a microphone, eight to 10 hours throughout the week fight just straight talking. And there are times where I've been like, man, I'm not pursuing another rental right now. I'm not pursuing a deal right now. I'm not pursuing this. I'm not pursuing that. What my friends are and what the guests are and everyone is, and this is my sole focus right now. And then I pick my head up and I realize two years, five years down the road. Because I'm not making money from this. I just do this for free for all of you. And because I love you and I wanna help everyone. And, but that will reciprocate later down the road, man. So that's very cool to hear it, man. And you're one of the ones that's doing it man. You've got your heart in the right place and you're really passionate about your brand. So I appreciate it really like that.

Yeah. So I to really drive it home, I guess the question is, do you think grant card owns the best syndicator in the world? There's probably other people who are just as good as he is, if not better, right? Yeah. For, but

he the best technical perspective.

Yeah. But he's the best known. Yeah. He's, that's why and that, and he's a douche and he's. Yeah. And he's the one who says that too. He's the one who's like best known will always beat best. So you could be the best product out there, but if nobody knows who you are, then it doesn't matter. And that's, it's, there, I guarantee you, there are better syndicators than grant. Oh, yeah, I can.

I dont know that there's money. I know probably a lot of them personally.

Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know if there's better money raisers than grant.

So let's hit a little bit on networking. Cuz we're both in GoBundance let's hit a bit on networking and then we can close out with where you're at right now and your portfolio and where you're trying to go and what, how you're trying to reposition. So maybe 10 minutes and 10 minutes

easy. Yeah, I dunno. What do you wanna, what do you wanna talk about network?

I don't know, man. Do you like people. People like you . dave: I hope so. Cuz if you're familiar with the disc profile, I'm way too high of an I for people to not like me. Yeah. I'm high. I'm high ID, but it's rough. So what so now you joined go bonnets $10,000 a year. So what made you make that leap finally to doing something to where you're paying money to be in a group and I'm sure you're in probably other groups like that as well. What made you make that transition or what have you seen from. Yeah.

I, I had known about GoBundance for probably four years and I just didn't meet the requirements to join. Although I, could have said I did because I was close enough that it would've been easy, but I. For some reason, it's funny cuz I joined and then I was like, man, nobody would've cared. But before I joined, I was like those military values. I was like, I gotta Ooh, that one's not quite, eh, and so I was like super rough on myself with net worth. Now I'm like, oh, nobody really cares. As long as you're like somewhat accurate with what you're documenting and you know what you're talking about and if you're

doing stuff like

yeah. And so I'd wanted to join forever. So as soon as I was eligible too I joined and it. Dude it, it embodies like everything I believe about networking and growth and everything else. It's look, if you wanna get good at something, just go find the people who are already doing it. And they've already been there and they've already done it and just get next to them. And if you wanna get next to the ones who are really good, you pay to be in their circle because you have to, yeah, they're too busy to do, if it's it's this weird conundrum where like everyone I've ever run into, who's hung out with billionaire. Has I think in almost every case, their thought has been, that said billionaire was a jerk. Like it, no matter who the billionaire was, like almost every billionaire I've ever heard of somebody running across. That's the thought that comes across and it hits on, hit on me. Not too long ago, cuz somebody I know was talking about meeting Johnny Morris, who's the founder of bass pro shops. And he lives in town. He's worth like four or $5 billion, maybe six. I don't know. And they were like, I met him at this thing and he was just, he was such a jerk. He was so like short and it was just like, and I'm like what did you bring to the table? This dude makes a million dollars an hour. Maybe. I don't know, at least a million dollars a day, but probably a million dollars an hour. Who knows, right? Yeah. So if he's making a million dollars a day, that means that every hour he's alive is worth, 40, $50,000 is your five minute conversation about. Whatever worth $50,000, because if it's not, then yeah, he I'm sure he is gonna come off as a jerk, cuz you're just not interesting. And that's rough to say, but like somebody who's doing who's that far along in life, they didn't get that far along in life. By letting everybody distract them, they were very focused. And so if you want to get into their circle and actually learn from them, you either need to bring something very valuable to them, solve a problem they have, or be willing. Pay and make it worth their time to stop what they're doing, which is infinitely valuable and turn and say, oh yeah, okay. We'll give you this advice. So unless you have a really solid introduction from a really warm connection to them, you're not gonna get their time. It's just, they have set up safeguards to guard their time. And it's not that they're a jerk or whatever. It's just, I'm at this point now where I'm starting to realize, like I didn't set very good boundaries and I'm letting. Day after day that I'm like, oh man, I spent so much time on zoom. I didn't get anything done. Yep. That doesn't help anything. So I'm helping less people by taking those phone calls, which is it's a weird idea, but it's true. Like I haven't started writing my next book because I've been so busy with phone calls at crap and like,

yeah. And also it's just like now, even to where I'm at, like it's, Hey, let's connect. About what. Exactly. What do you want to connect on? Yeah. So what I'll do is I'll like I'll drive down in the message a couple of times. And if they're able to answer after driving a couple of times down into the message oh, I need help with podcasts. I'm happy to help. What do you need help with? Specifically, like what areas do you need help with? And then if they keep going, I'm like, okay, cool. Have you done this, and checked out this resource? Yes. Okay, cool. Yeah. Let's hop on a quick call. Yeah. And Matt Matt Aon Mattie a, that was on this show. He he's got another one where he will push out like a month. He'll be like, yeah, I'll talk to you. He'll push it out a month. and then he'll say follow up with me in a month and I'll talk with you. And then he is like 90% of people just dip out at that point. Yeah. But not me. because I've been messaging him since before GoBundance so I've been on it every single month. I was like, all right, Matt let's chat now. He was on the podcast, man. So man networking is. And then even you've got the ed millets and all these people. So I know the country clubs get like a bad rep, but even like the ed millets, I was listening to him on a show and he's now he's wanting to join, a country club, a specific one, because of the people that are in it. He's these are people like the higher you get. You're either gonna have to find a way to provide massive value or you're gonna have to pay a massive paycheck. So pay to play, seek to serve. I'm always gonna quote that Geno Barbaro, man. I love that dude. Geno's the Geno's awesome. Yeah, he's on the show too, so genuine. Oh yeah, they freaking rock, but let's finish up this last 10 minutes. What I guess, do a broad overview of where your portfolio is right now and what you're doing and how you're positioning right now. Cause you said you're being a bit cautious with how everything's going and for people listening, this is Friday, June 17th. So we just had another rate hike and I believe we're going up another 75 basis points. Yeah. Correct. So what do you, what are you doing with your portfolio? What's your game plan? Tentatively moving forward.

Yeah. I guess current portfolio about a hundred units under personal. Management. So either a hundred percent, 50% or 33% ownership, another 800 and something that I'm a GP on. Super small percentage that I pretty much never count my unit count cuz whatever, but I've done 16. No, just did another one 17 transactions this year with a few under contract pending. I. Eight of those are wholesale two wholesales, so just purchased, cleaned and listed. And then the rest are either flips or burs. And so where I'm at right now, I've got three under renovation and two of them were originally gonna be burs. And one flip I'm gonna list all three of them, cuz realized. Like my cash. Position's not as good as I'd like it to be. And I still have some personal debt, so some not good debt, because I've been in, in growth mode. So I've been like, yeah I'll put that on the credit card so I can invest this in here and whatever, which is fine. But right now, what I'm gonna do is I told myself until I have. Additional 50,000 sitting in cash reserves and all of the bad debt is gone. I'm not gonna hold another property. So I'm gonna sure. Just sell 'em all pay off all the bad debt, which on its own will remove probably a thousand, $1,500 a month and, obligated payments or whatever. And I'm in, I'm actually gonna do what I swore I would never do. And I'm gonna pay off my cars even though their interest rate so low that it doesn't really make sense, but I just I'm like, okay, if I can just clear everything, but mortgage. Then my living expenses are like nothing. Sure. So then if something goes wrong in the market, I can just, I don't need much to live anymore, so I can just pump everything into mortgage payments. And then if I have that 50 grand extra in reserves, then that 50 will be either for opportunities or. Mortgage payments or, who knows what's gonna happen? Sure. I'm not really worried about the real estate market. I'm sure there'll be a slow and I'm sure there'll be a dip, but I'm not anticipating a massive crash, at least not where I invest in the Midwest. We're still, I don't think there will be. Yeah. We're still so far below the median home price nationwide. So I'm not super worried about it, but I just want to make sure I have a little bit better cash position because if nothing else. It'll allow me to buy some opportunities if it does go south. Or I'll throw it in an index fund when it drops another 20 points and say, Hey, that would be great in a few years. so

who knows? And I and this is exactly what the fed is trying to do, right? The Fed's literally just like for people, listen in, they raised at 75 basis points. Like I listen to his speech. The reason that they're doing it is because they want to slow demand down to give supply a chance to catch. Yep. That's it. If you wanna say all the complicated jargon, you put it down, that's what they're trying to do so that, Hey, it's working. People are like, oh, how am I supposed to afford a house? But that's the point? Like they're slowing things down. And then, so that the prices will naturally come down a bit, at least or stabilize, and then people will be able to enter the market a little bit better. So wrap it up, brother. What can people find you.

Pretty much any platform, if you Google military millionaire or from military to millionaire you'll find my GLI mug pop up. SEO king . I don't know about that, but just a very unique niche,

Dave per on only fans.

Ooh. Yeah. The feet picks. They they are actually the only reason I'm financially free,

all right. Awesome. So for military to millionaire everywhere, man Dude. Thank thanks for being you, man. Thanks for doing you. This is, this has been fantastic. It's been a master class on branding on why to brand, how to brand. It's just been awesome, man. So appreciate you coming on brother. I appreciate

you. And I'm glad we made this work in the midst of our crazy schedules and you being outta state and it's been good.

Yeah, this one's over from Tennessee. I don't think that's as sexy for y'all to, for me to lead the show with, but I'm in Tennessee, everyone. it? The exotic world. Give it whiskey in some, give it a month and you'll be oh yeah yeah, two, three week, two, three weeks. Yeah. And then we're rocking and rolling brother live from Greece. Yeah, that'll be a cool one. But anyways, brother, I appreciate you. Thank you for coming on and. Ladies and gentlemen, this has Ben, Brian and Dave per with the action academy podcast signing off.