BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 494: The Five F-Words Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Master

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

There’s a new three-peat on the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast, and no, it’s not Michael Jordan. Danny Johnson, the founder of Forefront CRM, is back with us on today’s episode to talk about the five F-words of real estate investing. Before you jump to conclusions, this is a family-friendly show, the F-words we’re talking about are fear, fundamentals, focus, funnel, and follow up. Many investors find too few deals, too few motivated sellers, or too few ways to find financing. This is all being said while other investors are closing deals, finding motivated sellers, and getting the financing they need to pursue even more deals. What separates the two from each other? Often, it comes down to the simplest things. Are you trying to be too creative or are you mastering the fundamentals? Do you know your metrics down to a tee so you can improve upon them? How is your funnel being filled and where are your leads coming through? If leads come through, are you following up or letting them fade away? And lastly, are you pushing past your fear to do any of the above things? If you feel like you’re stuck, without much of a handle on your real estate business, feel free to try Danny's Forefront CRM! In This Episode We Cover: How to create time freedom in a business largely depends on your efforts Tracking how your team performs their work and continuously improving Pushing past fear and not allowing laziness to stop your dreams  Understanding the fundamentals and performing them as well as possible Tracking and reviewing metrics consistently  Knowing the costs to fill your funnel and seeing every phone call as a potential deal Following up with customers (without being too salesy or pushy) And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Calculators BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Podcast 018 : Flipping, Marketing, and Wholesaling with Danny Johnson BiggerPockets Podcast 144: Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone and Kicking Butt at Real Estate with Danny Johnson Trello Pipedrive ForefrontCRM Brandon's Instagram David's Instagram Check the full show notes here: https://biggerpockets.com/show494 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 494. Fear doesn't really go away, right? A lot of times it's not that the fear goes away and you don't have the fear anymore. You still have the fear. But it's that you get braver. And so it's this whole idea of with looking at what it is, right? Being aware of it first and foremost, accepting it, and then deciding to voluntarily look at it, deal with it, and work through it. It's like a call to adventure.

You're listening to Bigger Pockets 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. What's going on, everyone?

It's Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. David Green. What's up, David Green? How you doing? You did that intro very nice. Josh would have been proud. I thank you for that. was going to say David F word green. And then I realized nobody would get what that meant.

They will if they listen to the show. They will. So today we're talking about the F word, but not the F word you're thinking about. We've got five powerful F words that are going to help you do two, three, five, ten times more real estate deals and work way less. And the reason I know this is because I totally did this in my own life. Like these five things changed my life. And I'm really glad kind of the framework we were going to lay out for you today with somebody who's one of the best in the business. One of the people I've been following for over a decade online now.

His name is Danny Johnson. He was on episode number 18 of the Bigger Pockets podcast over eight years ago. And then episode 144. So it's been a number of years since he's been on. But you're going to hear his story of how, I guess, a little bit of how he got into real estate, why real estate, what's he's done. But then more importantly, we're going to tap into some of the wisdom that he's gained after doing, I don't know, hundreds of deals over his life.

I'm being one of the best lead gen guys. What are the things that separate people who just crush it in their real estate business from everyone else? And he's going to go through five words that happened to all start with the word F, or letter F, and that's kind of today's show. And so I think you're really like that. I think it's going to be one of those, like, shows you look back on and be like, wow, that made a monumental change, a shift in the way I run my life and my business.

And I think you're going to appreciate it. So all that and more to come in just a moment. But first, that sounded a moment. It's a British accent. Like, all that moment in just a moment, everyone. Doll, just stick around for we sport. Just going to be right by. First, we're going to get to today's quick tip.

Pick tip. Today's quick tip is, I can't do it. Today's quick tip. Very simple. If you are not tracking your lead funnel in a CRM, I know a lot of words that we're going to unpack those today. I want to encourage you within 24 hours from right now to sign up for a CRM.

Danny's got one. It's called Forefront, but there's probably 100 of them out there. You could even use the spreadsheet, though I don't recommend it. A CRM is a, what's the stand for a customer relationship? Customer relationship manager. Here's an F word. The CRM will perform. provide a framework for which you can understand your database and your daily tasks.

Yeah, exactly. That's what you're going to learn about today. So let's get into today's show with Danny Johnson from Forefront CRM. And hey, if you're watching this on YouTube, don't forget to click that little thumbs up button, subscribe to our channel, all that good stuff for more real estate investing content just like this. Let's get to the show. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance.

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heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need. Mr. Danny Johnson, welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast, man. Free Peter, how you doing? Pretty good. Thanks, Brandon. Appreciate you guys having me back on. Yeah, so it's been a little while since you've been on. You were on episode number 18, which is like a long, almost 500 episodes ago.

Yeah, like 400 years ago. And you're on episode 144, which was still like five years ago. So it's been a little while since you've been on the show. People can go back to listen to those, of course, episode 144 or episode number 18. but why don't we just give them a recap? Who are you? What the heck do you do? Yeah, the first show, I think I was... And how'd you get into this thing? Pre-puberty in the first one. So that one's an interesting show, but... Okay, I think so. Yeah. Well, number 18, I got to think. That was kind of like Forrest Gump getting

stocking Apple. You had no idea what this was going to turn into. All right, so, yeah. I'll do that crap show. Yeah. Anyway, I love this show. Pettie Stock interview on Bigger Pockets. What do you know? So quick recap, I guess so, you know, started 2003 software developer. My dad started flipping houses working with someone that he used to do rehabs for when I was a kid. So cleaning up demos and stuff like that, I got into super early on as a kid. But when I was in college, he started actually doing some flipping and saw how much fun he was having with that. So decided to do that part-time and did that three years part-time until they fired me from my job. I think because they got wind that I was so heavily into real estate and all about real estate and all that kind of good stuff.

ended up doing the business with my ex-wife and I for eight or nine years. It was just us running the show wearing all the hats, trying to have more and more success by doing more of the same stuff, just ourselves, which was like burnout. Growing a business, you know, true business, right? Starting to really treat it like a true business and not just a hobby. And hiring some people, that giving me a lot more freedom to do more software development for real estate investors while we had the flipping going.

And tie all that back into today where I'm picking up rental properties and not really doing a whole lot of flipping. Interesting. And you are one of those guys that I think are one of the best when it comes to lead generation, when it comes to the business side of a real estate business. What I mean by that is most people that I know just look at real estate like a hobby. Like they're just like, oh, I'm going to buy a property because it happened to come across my desk. You've just been very proactive over the years.

I mean, even you've owned companies that have done this. You have a CRM. And I don't know if CRM is too small a word for what you've got. Like you've got all this stuff designed to like help an investor become a, business owner and not just a person. So I thought maybe we kind of focused on that today. Specifically, when we started talking this morning right before we hit the record button, you got a little vulgar and you mentioned a few F words, quite a few of them in a row. And yeah, so we're, no, we're going to go through those F words, I think today, the ones that

you kind of laid out, because these, we'll call them the five F words of real estate success, these really, if like you can master these five things, why don't we let you, I guess, Why, we just start with the first one. What do you got for us on the first F word? Fear, fear, fear. That's a really big one. You know, you had mentioned, you know, running the business and having, building a business, but really fear kept me locked into doing everything myself for the first eight to nine years.

And, you know, fear, you have to overcome fear to even get into the business and start taking the risk to do real estate investing. But really beyond that, then I was kind of stuck again because I wasn't, and I didn't even see all that until like much later in hindsight, right? So the fear of all kinds of things, I mean, I don't have a business background. I didn't know how to run a business. And so the fear of even bringing on somebody as a part of the team scared the hell out of me. And it was like one of those things of the responsibility. If we bring on people, we're responsible for them. We're responsible for their families, right? And we've got to have the business consistent enough to be able to support

them and support them in a way that they love working with us and feel like they're being compensated well and all that kind of stuff. And so it's interesting, too, because in the back of my mind, I justified that by saying, well, if we bring some people on, then we can't take a vacation for two months like every real estate investor is supposed to do their first year, right? And have that complete freedom of lifestyle and all that kind of stuff, because we'd have to keep this going to keep somebody there. And so it was like this weird justification happening. It was like, if we bring on somebody or bring on a team, we can't do that. Well, guess what? We never could anyway. way because we had to do everything.

Try to take a week off and then we get a phone call right before left and I'd be like, shoot, like, what am I going to do? I've got to go and see this house. Like I've got nowhere, nobody to send to it. So this whole thing where we go through this fear of and then justify things to stay in our comfort zone. And I've got a really good story. Actually, it just happened on Friday, just like three days ago.

Yeah, please. All right. I thought you hated stories. That's why I was going to make sure that was cool. I love stories, man. Love them. All right. So, okay, I work out at a small,

gym down the street from my house. Great place. Sometimes I say it's like Joe's gym on Dodgeball, but it's not. It's much cooler than that. Yeah, it's a small community. You know, there's nobody in there just like, I pick things up and put them down. Or none of that's kind of stuff going on. No, no bro stuff going on. So it's a really cool place. So anyway, I was stretching after the class. We had just done like a group workout, sort of like a boot camp thing, sort of like prospect or something. But afterwards, I'm stretching. And it's just me and him, me and the owner of the gym, which is the coach. And he was talking about struggling with growing the gym. And so we were talking about that. And he kept talking about this big generalization

of society as a whole not wanting to work out and how hard it is to get people to want to eat right and to work out. And that's why he can't grow his gym. And I'm like, whoa, well, you don't need to get all of society into your gym, right? You like, why you keep going to that? Like who, like what is your vision for the gym first of all, right? And you actually, Brandon, like you had told me about vivid vision. I think it's a beautiful book. I wrote out my vivid vision after we talked about it. Every single weekend, two times I'll read through it. And just like things are already like popping up already within the first year like stuff on that division. So it's really cool. But it's like, where are you going in the gym with this gym? And then like how much money do you

need? Right? Because he was saying, I just don't want to have to go donate plasma to pay my rent, you know, and stuff like that to supplement this. And so let's start there. Like how much do you need for this and then go from there? And then look at your customer, right? You're talking about people that are overweight eating candy bars and donuts and stuff like that, you don't have to convince those people to come and work out. Forget that, right? There's enough people out there just like me that was working out in our garage. I was working out my garage for years and years, right? And then you can tell me about this, you know, like I didn't realize I had a problem, right? Then I was working out alone and I was like finding it hard to motivate myself and stuff like that. And so if you can find enough

people close to the gym that work out alone, they're already working out. All you got to do is inform them of how cool it would be to come work out with other people. You would get almost like one-on-one coaching because it's not that many people in there. And then, you know, that's not that hard of a cell, right? So he's getting real excited. And I could see like light bulbs going off, right? He's like, oh, yeah, this is something I can take action on. But then just boom, his face got like straight again. And he was starting to talk about the generalities, like the big generalizations of society. And just like going right back into his comfort zone. And I didn't push it. I just said, okay, well, that's cool. you know, yeah, I mean, it's something considered something you might want to do. And when I left,

I was thinking about, that's sort of a mirror for me. I'm going through the same thing with promotion and stuff like that. I struggle with that. And I was thinking, what is the lesson here? Like, I saw exactly with him, because I can't see it within myself as easy I could see it with him. But I could see, got excited. You know, he had like some steps he could take, right? And then what caused the shutdown and the back to safety stuff where he started playing those tapes over again in his head or out loud, right, of saying, I can't do this because of this. this and this. What would I do? Because that is me also, right, for certain things. What could I do if I was in his shoes just then and that happened to me? Does that make sense? Like if he,

if I'm sitting there and I'm saying, I've got to do motivated cell marketing. And I did some direct mail campaign. I dropped $500,000 or $1,000 in this campaign. Nothing but five or six calls with people saying, you're the worst scum of the earth. Stop sending me letters, all that kind of stuff. And then somebody comes and tells me, well, you've got to try a probate list or something. And then I'm, I'm, like, getting excited because they're talking to me about what they do with the probate list. And then all of a sudden, it's like, boom, I'm just like, no. I've had this experience before. It was, like, throwing money into a black hole.

I don't want to do that again. And direct mail doesn't work. Like, things have changed. Too competitive. All this kind of stuff comes up. What do we do? And as I thought about that, I was thinking, well, the first thing to do, because I've done a lot of self-improvement stuff, too, for the last couple years. The first thing to do is to accept that I feel that way, that I'm scared, right?

that I've just like I've had these experiences. I'm afraid. I don't know what to do. And if I can accept that, I can be okay with it. Right? And that way I can move into what is the next thing to do. Because if I don't accept that, I'm going to shame myself. Like even if I'm aware of my fear, but I don't accept it,

then I'm just kind of trying to push that away. And my whole energy is all about shoving that away, not wanting to feel that, right? Staying in that safe zone. So if I can accept it, I can do things with it. And then I can look at, okay, that was a good idea. I know I'm afraid, but I need to do something. So instead of looking at all the different things I need to do to do that probate campaign,

let me just figure out what is the next step? What is the next step for me to take and just take it? Right? And if I start going, oh, but if I do this, you know, maybe it's better to do this. Or if I do that, if I put a live stamp on it versus paying something, if I do handwritten addressing or have it printed out, you start playing those games. No, just choose one and just freaking do it. Right.

Like, yeah, one might work a little bit better than the other, but you not doing anything is not getting anything done at all. Let's dump in this a little bit and dive in. First of all, I've noticed that too, a lot of people, I've noticed that myself, but I've noticed other people where, yeah, the tendency is to get overwhelmed with the big picture. Like they, oh, like people don't want to work out or COVID just made it really difficult. Or the market's too competitive to find deals.

You know, that fear, it gives us a pass, right? I say this a lot, but like nobody wants to be the victim in their own story. Or sorry, nobody wants to be the villain in their own story. And so instead of being the hero, they play the victim, right? There's like three characters in any story, right? The villain, the villain, the villain. And so nobody wants to be that villain. They don't want to say it's their fault.

They're not succeeding. It's not their fault. They're not finding real estate deals or growing their gym. So instead, they start playing the kind of that victim of like, oh, I can't do it. It's just too hard. I'm just a product of my environment around me and it's stopping me. The one thing I always, like when I start to get into that mode, kind of the victim mode there, I start thinking, is anybody else doing this?

Like, is anybody else right now growing a gym at this point in human civilization where people aren't wanting to work out as much? I think we all know the answer. Well, of course they are. There's lots of growing gyms. Okay, so that just eliminates that entire excuse of, oh, it's not possible because of some overarching like generalization. Like, or I can't, there are no good real estate deals in my market.

Really? You live in, you know, San Antonio. or Houston or Seattle. Like, there's nobody invested in real estate out of millions of people who live there. Like, well, yeah, I mean, there might be some people, but they got all these things that I don't have.

Like what? The ability to write a letter? They really answer their phone. Like, and when you really break this stuff down, there's nothing different about people who are exceeding versus not. Except for some people just take action and they just go and do stuff. Like you said, just take the smallest bit of action and move forward.

And it's going to, going to lead you out of that place of victimness. of I'm afraid. And so you take that risk. I'm going to just do something. I'm going to be the hero in my own story. David, what do you think? I really like your point about there's three pieces in every story and that we would ideally

like to play the hero, but it's our fear that stops us. So if you don't want to be the villain and you're afraid to be the hero, you will default to victim. Yeah. People don't set out saying, I want to be a victim today. That is the downhill road that you take if you don't accomplish your fears or unless you're some kind of anarchist that just wants to be a villain or something like that. So,

I think what every movie ever made. There's really those only three character types. Like the people always, the victim's getting, you know, like think of Avengers, right? Or any Marvel movie, any superhero.

There's a hero. There's a villain. And then everyone else is just like at the mercy of what's going on in the story. There is no silent observers. So that's the problem with being the victim is they're dependent on the hero for the hero to do their job. And if no one steps up to be the hero or you don't have a hero that cares about your victimness, you're helpless. And so you just stay stuck.

And the other thing is I started thinking about in my own life, there's been many times where I, was wishing something would change. I really felt the emotion that I wish I was in a different situation. It was discontentment or something that was very strong. But then when I thought about what I needed to do to get out of it, I'm like, I'm not going to do that. Right. And I know I'm not the only human being that's like, oh, I really don't like when I look down in the shower and I see my gut or whatever, but I'm not going to wake up early and go running tomorrow. That's a struggle every single human being has. And what I think most people here is just suck it up and do it. And that just doesn't

matter, right? Like, I think a lot of the time when I say is I wish it would be better. I would like for it to be better, but I don't want it to be better. If I wanted it to be better, I would be doing something. So I'm really curious to hear like some of Danny's insight as to how you've sort of seen which people are turning that key that makes the lock open. Yeah. And I think it's one of those things of, you know, you hear the thing about getting out of your own way. Most of the time we need to get out of our own way. Like we're causing all of that. And I heard something recently, where I read it, I forget, but it was talking about how many times we can take a situation and say, because this is happening, I can't do this other thing, when they have nothing

whatsoever to do with each other, right? Like, I went to a divorce a year and a half ago. There's even times now where, like, something is hard and I can find myself saying because of that or how that went down, I have, I can't do this other thing. It's like it has nothing to do with it. It's completely separate. So it's like this wanting to lump all this crap. It gets you out of being the villain. That's why we do that. No, it gets you out of being the victim, but it also, you give your right to become the hero. And that's why you live in that victim thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brings that full circle. So he had something he was talking about fear. And I really, really absolutely love this. And he was talking about fear and how in the clinical studies or whatever, the literature, that fear doesn't really go away, right? A lot of times it's not that the fear goes away and you don't have the fear anymore. You still have the fear. But it's that you get braver.

And so it's this whole idea of with looking at what it is, right? being aware of it first and foremost accepting it and then deciding to voluntarily look at it, deal with it, and work through it. It's like a call to adventure, right? It's like this is something you're voluntarily doing versus the opposite. And a lot of us don't see that it really is a choice. If we don't choose to look at it voluntarily, we are choosing whether we want to or not involuntarily to live in that fear, to shrink, to play small, to do all of that. So what are some examples that you've seen, Danny, when it comes specifically to real estate investing where people are afraid to do something and then they get over that fear, they get out of their own way, they start doing it. They realize it wasn't as hard as they thought.

Yeah, I think it's to do with getting into it in the first place and doing the marketing and making the offers. But I see it more so. And something that's a little bit near to me was growing a team, like even a small team. Because doing everything myself was just not sustainable, not fun, was not the lifestyle that I thought I was going to have. by doing that. So some of that fear and bringing on the team and then finding like, whoa, why did I? I wish I hadn't waited so long to do this because, yeah, I mean, you go through another set of problems, but they're bigger problems that actually gets you further along and help you to grow. Yeah, you know, that whole, the fear of building a team. Like, I had that

for years. I mean, I never wanted to hire anything. But not, I mean, part of it's the money, right? We're afraid of spending all that money on somebody. And if they don't perform, what are you going to do? And so it's like, oh, man, I mean, the salary is $80,000 a year. geez, which by the way, it doesn't have to be that. But like, you know, how am I going to cover 80,000 a year? But then when you really break that down, you start thinking about that fear logically, you're like, well, in reality, it's not 80,000 a year. It's like, 6,000 a month, right?

Or 7,000 a month. I'm like, okay, so if they didn't perform after a month or two and I had to shut things down, well, now it's only really like a $15,000 risk, right? And, again, you, secondly, you don't have to hire if necessarily full time. Like, my very first hire was my mother-in-law at $200 a month to answer phone calls. because I just did not like when I thought what feels heavy what feels light in my life the heaviest thing I can possibly imagine is talking to a tenant I don't know why I just I hate it hate it hate it hated it followed closely by talking to contractors and so like I outsourced those two things really largely in my life because I just I wasn't having fun doing them but that enabled me to then go out and do the things that I did like doing like lead generation and podcasting and all that like the stuff that makes a whole lot more financial and moral or not moral what's the word emotional sense to me to do and so anyway the just the Yeah, a couple of thoughts. One is it's not usually as bad as that you think. And then even if you like, one thing I love about Tim Ferriss in the four hour work week, he talks about like that kind of

worst case scenario analysis, I think is what he calls it or maybe that's what I call it. But it's like, what really could happen here. You hire someone, this happens, this happens, this happens, this happens. Kind of follow that down to like the craziest, like what could happen. And it usually ends up with like you're living under a bridge and you have to rebuild, which isn't that far away from where you are right now anyway. And so really like the upside is tremendous in terms of let more free time, huge greater wealth, the ability to give back, make a difference in this world. The downside is, oh, I might be set back six months or a year or two. And so it's like that asymmetric bet, which when I think about in those ways, I'm like, well, it's really not that big of a risk. I can reduce my risk of hiring

and the fear of hiring by thinking logically about the situation and maybe starting smaller. And then again, worst case scenario, it's not actually as bad as maybe we fear. Right. And how do you actually learn something too because when we all use the excuse, I'm going to say we all, I know for me, and I'm sure for most people, like a big thing that I use as an excuse to buy myself time and not make a decision, not take action is learn more about it. I'm going to go learn more about it because that's safe, easy and I need to know all this stuff. And that's not going to do anything, right? That's not going to do a single thing for you. You need to learn the next step to go ahead and take that step and then continue on. The interesting thing with growing the team, too, is.

is that another one of those fears is there big enough pie for them to get a piece of, right? Is this going to put me in a situation where financially I can't support that? And I don't know how many people I've talked to that have hired and found that their pie got so big after they hired. Like they grew the pie bigger than the piece they got. And then you get a bigger piece of the pie, actually. So it's actually the opposite ends of having. But how will you ever know that? You can hear stories from both sides.

You can hear stories for people saying they did it. And stories from people that say that it, you know, their overhead got so big, they made less money than when it was just them, right? You choose which one you want to do and then have the experience yourself. And hey, isn't that the whole thing, right? We're all having experiences. Right, if you try to imagine exactly how it's going to go for you, good luck, you're going to stay safe, just learn stuff. Yeah, that's a really good point. You know, when I was building open door capital, there was a point where I wasn't sure if I wanted to give equity, do I want to bring in partners? Do I want to bring in employees? Do I give the employees equity in the deals? And, The greedy part of my mind says, yeah, no, you can do this all yourself, Brandon, do it yourself, do it yourself, do yourself, and don't give away equity. But I'm like, that doesn't work. Like, that hasn't been working very long. It's just over, when I'm doing everything, it stressed me out. So then instead, I changed the question in my head to if I gave away half my company, could I do twice as many deals? And I think the resounding answer is yes, of course I could.

And so just something else for people think is even when building the team, it could be partners. It could be JVs. Like, if you have no money right now, you're sitting there with no money and you're all afraid of, well, what if I'm, you know, don't know what I'm doing. I don't any money. I can't do this thing. I'm afraid because of, you know, if I lose a little bit of money I have, find a partner.

Can you do twice as much if you had to split at 50-50 with somebody who was more experienced or at least kept you on the right path? Almost always the answer is yes. So, yeah, there's a lot of answers to this fear issue, but it still plagues a lot of people. I'm glad you said that about the partner thing too because I had one in the software side of things and it didn't work out and it's kept me from, like I had that experience. And so, like, thinking that that's the experience I'll have again if I do that.

but hearing that it's making it like I just can sense that I know I need to do it. Like I think a partner would help it. But anyway, yeah, it's good to get those insights and trust. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance. But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of these smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow. As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal wear and tear can increase the likelihood of claims.

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This conference is not like other real estate conferences. This one is built exclusively for the LP or limited partner. So if you want to network with other LPs out there and improve your investing skill set, then go to passivepockets.com slash summit and use a coupon code podcast to save you $50 off your registration. Yeah, that fear thing, such an important topic. I know maybe if you're listening to it's going, well, that's not really tangible advice. Tell me what to do next guys. So let's go to one maybe a little more tangible. And that's your second F word of the day, a little bit longer F word. What do you got for us? Fundamentals, which is really several words. You put the fun and fundamentals.

Fun and Mentals. It's kind of weird. Yeah, tell us about it. Okay, fundamentals, right? So there's so many options. We can analysis paralysis, all that kind of good stuff. Too many directions that can be gone in. So what happens there, right?

So we spin out because we don't know which direction to charge off into. And if we choose too many directions, how are we going to charge off and get very far, right? We're zigzagged, running back going, oh, crap, and this and that and the other thing. And so it's the fundamentals of the business, right? Like figuring out, for me, what I'm doing, what makes sense for where I am. And that's including if you're already an investor, you're already doing deals and doing things.

What's the next step, right? Have you even looked at that? And what makes the most sense for you, your business, your family, your lifestyle? And then choosing to become the expert in that area because that's, and just like Brandon said earlier, finding the person that just done that and doing what you can to be near them as much as you can. And I think especially with marketing, you see it so much, the temptation to see the next big thing that people are talking about like 100 years ago.

it was direct mail 50 years ago was direct mail like TV whatever and then for real estate investors mostly like direct mail then internet internet bandit signs you know paper click stuff and then you know Facebook and if you find yourself every single month learning about and trying or you know maybe not even trying to do those different things you got to consider what you're actually doing because that's that's really a waste of time it's really just figuring out which one to three you want to do and then do them until you've given them enough time, maybe four or six months, to see what's actually working. And I think foreshadowed me a little bit in how you do that, right, with metrics, but we'll talk about that in a coming F word,

which I didn't give away yet. But it's the fundamentals. And the people that I know that running the biggest real estate investment businesses that are the most profitable, that have the lifestyles that a lot of us are trying to get are just the best at the foot. They're not doing anything crazy, technical that they're like keeping a secret. Yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of people want to say, oh, it's a secret. You've not just not shared your secret. No. The secret is I just did it. And I kept doing it and I measure it and then I tweak it. I talked to this guy the other day who mentioned, I mean, they're doing, I think 20 flips a month right now down in L.A. Like 20, 25 flips a month. They're selling. Like, they're buying and selling on average 20, 25

flip. I mean, they got to be one of the biggest flippers in Southern California, if not in the U.S. in general. And I'm talking to this guy. And I'm like, so, I mean, like, what's that look like, what is that? What are you doing? He's like, well, we, we send about $100,000. a month in direct mail. We answer the phones. And then we talk to people. We go look at their properties. And then we make them an offer based on the number that we've analyzed that would work

for us. And we get rejected most of the time. And then sometimes we just buy the property. And then that just pretty much works out to about 20 to 25 a month. And like, it's the exact same answer as if I just asked them, how did you get your first deal last week? Like it's like the fundamentals don't change. What's different though, was that those, like the guys that are doing lots of deals and

that have done it and been around for a while, they just recognize that the fundamentals exist. They don't get caught up in all the little weird things. They just like get good at something and they just really, really crush it. Now, they're not saying they don't do multiple marketing aspects. They might try other things. They're always trying to improve and get better. But at the end of the day, they just, they stick to their fundamentals. I would add that when people are trying new things and they're tweaking stuff, they're usually tweaking some form of a fundamental. They're not fundamentally changing what they're doing. They're just trying to see, hey, this is really important. how can we maybe do it better?

And I don't know what it is about the human brain that self-sabotages us, but how many times have you guys been in a position where things were going great? It was going super good. And you started thinking, man, I got to do, I got to like try some fancy new, like, you know, the fight's going great. And I want to throw a crazy cool punch just to let everyone see how good I'm doing. Or, you know, examples like that. I just, you get bored with what works.

And then you start looking for things that don't work and trying to make them work because it just isn't exciting. Yeah. Do you watch that UFC fight the other night where the guy, I don't even know his name. He, like, did the back flip because he wanted to have a cool finish. So he, like, stands about the guy. Does this backflip over him trying to land on him to like, anyway, it did nothing.

It could have been really cool. It did nothing. He probably would have been way better just laying down on the ground to hold the guy down. But no, he just had to do the backflip because he was bored and he wanted to show off. It was so cool. But it reminds me of what you're saying, David. Well, sometimes those backflips end up tweaking our ankle and we land wrong. And then we screwed up what was working for a really long time.

So when you're new, like anytime I've been new at anything. I always, they teach you the fundamentals as the first thing. So you assume that means, well, this is the least important thing. And that's why they're showing the newbies. No, the reason, like, the better you get at it, the more you realize the fundamentals are what the pros really focus on all the time. If you look at the top jiu-jitsu people, the top UFC fighters, the top, I remember when the Cubs finally won the World Series. They asked them, what did you do different. He's like, we went back to getting better at fundamentals. We practiced bunting, stealing bases, like that, just regular boring stuff. And we did that better than what everybody else did. Yeah. And real estate should always feel boring. That's another thing I would say. This is supposed to be boring. It is a get rich, slow game. You make good decisions and then you wait a really long time before you start getting paid for those good decisions. Did you guys agree with that? Well, I got into it to have fun. So shoot. No, but I do agree completely. You can have fun doing boring stuff. At least as far as like when the money starts coming in, it's usually after you built a system and after you've owned real estate for a time, the employer. that you hire that do best on your team. It takes a while before they actually get to the point where they're contributing. But you should have fun during that journey. And this is where we were talking about earlier about hiring a team. This is one of the main reasons to hire a team is because like, we've said this before on the show here, but like the reason anybody has a job is because some entrepreneur somewhere didn't want to do that thing anymore. And most likely the thing that

you are doing at your job is one of the fundamentals that they know they should be doing and they're not doing. So in other words, like I know the things I should be doing in my real estate business. I should be getting leads. I should be talking to brokers. I should be analyzing deals. I should be raising money. But I get bored of all that stuff. So the beauty is you just hire people to do all your fundamentals for you for the most part. And now it's back fun again. Because now I get, the fun for me is getting to watch my team do their fundamentals and then find ways to help them keep on their fundamentals and keep growing. And so my fun now is watching them grow and that just changes continually. And so there's another aspect of team growing. It's not

so much for growth and scale, but just simply I would not be able to do that. this if it weren't for having a team because I just know my personality just gets bored too easy. Danny, do you feel the same way? Oh, absolutely. And really, I think that that can be so fulfilling too, right? You know, that part of helping, I mean, become the leader and then the goal should be to help the others on your team become leaders themselves, right? And then how much impact do you have in the world within their family, within their communities, within their lives? And yeah, that's a beautiful thing. I think the fundamentals for even, you know, a newer investor or investor that's, you know, generating leads and doing deals themselves. I know that it could be something where I'm saying,

okay, well, I've got the fundamentals, but I'm still not having that much success. So what's the difference then, right? Like you have this belief that you are doing the fundamentals well, but you're still kind of struggling with being consistent and, you know, you're struggling with the whole building the team thing. But is there a piece in between? Because I think that there is a little bit of a piece in between there too, which leads us to the next F. We're ready for that, which is to focus, to focus, right, to focus on the metrics. And kind of finagled that one, right, to get the F. But how do you focus?

Like, where do you focus, I guess is the thing, right? So where do you focus? And the metrics are what help you to do that. So if you're saying, well, I'm doing the things. I know the fundamentals and I'm doing that, but I'm not getting the success that I want. Are you focused? And how do you know where to focus in your business?

Because if we're going on gut feeling, it's going to take us all over the place. And especially this thing of, because I know, so well, it's going throughout the day and doing what I feel like doing is not a good way to operate. Absolutely not a good way to operate. And so when you measure your business, you measure the pieces, you know what needs to be focused on. And a lot of times if we're not doing that, there's a telltale sign is the whole chasing and different marketing things because the whole idea is I just need more leads and then I'll have more deals.

Right. But if you measure your business, you're going to see those different pieces. So when we're talking about metrics, when you say the word metrics, like let's break that down for people who are wondering, like, I have no idea what you mean. What is a metric? How do you know what a metric is? I'm a new investor. What kind of metric should I have? Sure. Usually people talk about KPI's, which are key performance indicators. And the whole idea here is, I think Mark Evans asked me a question. If I only had five minutes in a week to get information from my team about how well my business was doing and have a real, like real good idea of how it's doing, you only got

five minutes. So I can't tell you stories or tell you all this and that. They have to give you numbers, right? So they give you these numbers that show you how well your business is doing. And you look at those numbers and then you can see, especially when you see trends, like if you see that, you know, we look at them week over week. And so you can see a trend happening before it gets to the point where it's a problem, right? So you can adjust that piece of your business. The perfect example of that, you ask which ones, right? So the obvious one are leads that come in. Of those leads, how many of those are actually qualified leads where somebody's actually saying, make me an offer on my house, right? Not somebody saying take me off the list.

that kind of stuff. Of those, how many appointments were set, right? Appointments typically set if there's enough, like the balance of what's owed is low enough for me, because I keep it simple, I just want to buy something with equity. I don't do a bunch of creative stuff. So how many appointments were set, how many offers were made, and then how many contracts, how many were put under contract, how many were closed? If I'm looking at all those numbers, if I'm seeing that we typically get 20 leads in a week and we get 15 appointments or let's do 10 so 20 and 10 and the next week we get 20 but we only had four and the next week we got 20 more but we only had two what exactly is happening here is it the lead source or is it something going on with the lead intake right something and we actually

had this happen in the past where something not so obvious right not a jump from 20 to like or 10 down to four to two but something pretty obvious where we started looking at to it and the lead intake started making assumptions about how motivated people were and not setting appointments just because they thought they were not motivated. Well, one thing that the metrics does, why this is such a powerful concept, even if you're a new investor, is because it helps you diagnose where the problem is at in your business. There's always a problem. There's always an area that we could leverage better. So, an example, like you just said, like you were getting 10 out of 20 and now you're getting 5 out of 20 or whatever and then 2 out of 20. You can look backwards, okay,

where's the problem lie? Oh, it's in that person who's answering the first. phone. Let's work on that part of the system and let's get that back up again. Secondly, you're able to make some goals. So like goals for lead measures. Lead measures, of course, it's like the metrics you track that lead to the results you want. So the weight on the scale is a leg measure.

Lag, leg, lag. David, do you say lag or leg? Danny, what do you got to say? I like everyone that is not in Minnesota or the Pacific Northwest as a lag. The leg, the leg measure. And then the lead measure would be like the amount of crunches you did, the amount of calories you ate, right? So things you put in.

So anyway, so for example, like at Open Door Capital, originally we were, like, I think it was last fall, we set a goal to submit 30, I think it was 30 offers in the quarter. And then the next quarter, it was like, no, we're going to do 50 offers. And then the next quarter was no, we're going to do 75. And so we track, and I'm Danny, I know you do the same thing. And I know pretty much every top real estate investor in the world that I know does the same very basic model. They're tracking those numbers and they're saying, hey, where are our percentage is improving? Where are they declining? And then let's set some goals here. And the reason I say this applies to even a new investor is because how many times have you all, have you both heard somebody say, oh, I can't find any deals right now?

It's really simple to walk them backwards through some metrics. Okay, well, how many offers did you make last week? Oh, well, I didn't make any. Okay, let's go one higher than that. How many deals did do you analyze to figure out the exact number you could make an offer on? I didn't analyze any. Well, okay, let's go back up even higher. How many leads came in in your business last week that you could then analyze. Well, I talked to a real estate agent once. Okay, so now we can identify the problem because now we've looked at their metrics and we say, okay, your issue is right now, you're not getting enough leads. Now, if you're getting a lot of leads and you're like, well, I didn't have any time to analyze. Well, now we've got a different problem to solve. And if it's like, well, we're analyzing a lot,

we just keep making offers and they keep getting rejected. I mean, 20 offers and every single one got rejected. Okay, well, maybe we need a better lead source or maybe we need to improve the way you make an offer. So what metrics do when you focus on the metrics is they help you establish goals for lead measures and they help you diagnose problems, right? Anything else you'd want to add to that? Either of you, too? Well, I think it's something that's motivational, right? Because it's looking at where you're headed and how close you're getting. Because, again, when you're going by feel, like you're just doing things and then if you don't have enough deals, you're just doing more marketing. You're going on feel. You don't get the boost of seeing that the numbers are improving,

right? It might not be enough to feel good about it, but you see that they're improving, which provides momentum, which provides excitement, which keeps you going past that point that most people quit. And this can happen midway in the business, the beginning of the business, everywhere in the business, right? You know, there's a quote out there from Hal Elrod. I think it was in the Miracle Morning for salespeople, but, because he's got a lot of Miracle Morning books. But the quote was, every result that you desire is preceded by a process needed to produce the result. And it said, when you define your process and commit to it for an extended period of time, the results take care of themselves. And I love that because

it's like you could, like you said, it's good for motivation because you can go put a picture on your wall of your vision board of like you want to have a fancy house and a cool car and a Lamborghini and all that and a six pack and you know money and it doesn't matter like something leads to that success should never be a surprise so when you really just sit back like what are those things i got to do in fact danny you're the one that actually very first told me this back i think it was on episode either 18 or 144 you mentioned i'm pretty sure it was you anyway you mentioned how you were afraid to answer the phone like when people would call but then you worked backwards right and you're like well, every phone call is worth whatever, $200 to me or something like that.

Do you remember saying that? Well, I threw the phone to my wife because I was too... I remember you throwing the phone to your wife, yeah. But I don't know that I worked back as to what it was worth. I thought that was you. Either way, whether it was you or not, somebody made that point, and it was such a valid strong point. Look, if I get 100 phone calls and then 10 of those end up being like a serious enough to make an offer on, and one of those works out, and that one deal, I make $20,000 on it.

We'll just take the $20,000 divided by $100. and what's that, $200? Like, that means every phone call I get is $200. So when the phone rings, and I'm afraid to answer it, just remember, like, by answering this phone, that's $200 in my pocket someday. Or even just if I don't answer the phone, it's that, that deal that's a $40,000 wholesale. Yeah.

And that's. Yeah. It only takes missing one. And it always tends to be the home run one that you miss. I know. I did, there's a, I've told the story before, but I'll say it again. And it's like there was a property I drove by every week for months and months, almost a year. And I never got it.

I never decided to like do the fundamentals, knock on the door, send them a letter, figure out their phone number, call them. Like any of the fundamental stuff that's really pretty basic. I just kept driving by this house going, I should call that person. I should figure that's a nasty house and a great location. Anyway, and then a buddy of mine out here, Zasha bought it. It has like a quarter million dollars of equity in it. She just big bird it.

And I'm like, I could have easily, easily done that. But I didn't. I missed out because I didn't do the same. simple fundamental process. I didn't focus on the like the few things that I should be doing instead I was too busy, I don't know, doing something else, which is why these all kind of tie in. Like once you overcome the fear and you know the fundamentals, then focus on them. Like focus on those metrics, those key performance indicators that lead you to the result that you want. And then what comes after that? I know we got a couple more F words to get to today.

So we got those three. What comes next? The next one is funnel. My favorite word in the word. Yeah, this ties into metrics too because, you know, I want to say this really. quick because you can look at metrics. I like to look at them week over week. You know, and so you see those trends, right? You see what's happening. But you also need to look at dialing in your marketing by looking at your return on investment. How do you do that? If you look at it week over week alone, you're seeing we got 20 leads this week, 22 the next, 34 the next, and I got so many appointments.

But sometimes the appointments from the leads three weeks ago don't get set or result in an appointment until three weeks later. So you don't get a good idea of how the marketing is producing, right? Because that's so important. So you also have to look at the funnel side of it, where you look at of the leads that came in from this campaign, what happened? What is the story over time from that campaign? So there's two, and that's why I call it a funnel. I like to look at it as a funnel to be able to see what is my cost per lead, qualified lead, what's my cost per appointment, what's my cost per contract? And you can see that. And it's kind of amazing once you start looking at that across several campaigns to see what I thought was

kicking butt really was a dud compared to this other thing that maybe doesn't generate a lot of leads but kills it on the profit produced per deal or something. Right. So be able to see that and then make very logical decisions based on reality, based on numbers and not gut feeling or anything else to see, wow, if I just do a little bit more of this, you know, you start to build your machine to be a little bit more consistent and even somewhat predictable, right? Like weather's not completely predictable, but they're getting pretty darn good at it. And I think that this can happen with the marketing and stuff like that too. Yeah, that's a really good point.

Again, we're taking it down to your making it boring in a sense. You're removing as many of the surprises and, oh my God, like, this is this crazy new, cool thing. And I think you mentioned something earlier. I was really good. You said, I want to make it fun. I think that might be the key to sustain success in business is to make it boring and have fun while you've made it boring. Maybe boring is not the best word. Predictable,

repeatable, just not the excitement of something new all the time, but to have fun while you're doing it so you don't get bored with what works. I know, like, I'll give you an example. My real estate agent business took off four years ago. I sat down and looked at all the stuff I had done from five years ago. And I said, where did all my closed deals come from? And I noticed 25% of them came from open houses. All the rest of them came from sphere of people that I already knew. And I said, okay, I'm going to hold open houses on the weekend and I'm going to talk to all the people that I know more frequently. And I more than doubled the next year. And then every year I pretty more than doubled this last year I tripled. And it was really boring. It was just, okay, this is the

stuff that works. What I've noticed is you become vulnerable when you try to get away from fundamentals to be successful. That's where these companies come and they want to sell realtors leads or sell them some fancy data algorithm program that will tell me which houses are most likely to have a seller sell. And I have to go now a relationship with a stranger because they're more likely mathematically to sell that type of thing. And like that's how gurus prey on investors. It's not, hey, get live beneath your means, save up some money, buy a property, learn the fundamentals by another one in a year or two. It's right now you can have what you want with this fancy cool flipping system. It's just $75,000 and we will teach you this. Like the more you stray from fundamentals, the more vulnerable you start to get where people can

now sell you some snake oil. Yeah, I mean, there's so many real estate products out there. It's like, and I get the question a lot. What about this one thing? you just click one button and they'll sudden motivate a leads right to your inbox. I'm like, maybe, but if it's one button, then everybody's going to press that button. And then the leads are worthless. Like, in other words, like, people are like, hey, what's this thing I hear about like pushups? They can give you stronger arms. Yeah, there's like this company now will actually, they will do the pushups for you. They'll sit in their office and they'll do like a thousand pushups a day while you're watching TV. Yes, pushups work. They work. But like if some other person's doing the pushups for you,

you're probably not getting the deals. Now, there are like things that can help you do better pushups. And this is where Danny, like, I really like Forefront, like your CRM, right? It's a way to track the fundamentals. Like, that's the kind of tools that people need. And you know, I have bigger pockets. We have the calculators, right? Like, those are tools that people can use, but they're not taking the place of the work that a real estate investor needs to do.

They just simply make it a little bit easier, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And that's the thing. You get tools to make the fundamentals easier so that, you know, in the case of, you know, having forefront or any other system that does this is where you have the management of your leads and deals, but they pull those KPI for you, so you're not having to measure them. And it provides you different ways to be able to view that data as well that you can't do if you're using a spreadsheet.

Because the thing that used to drive me nuts in the meetings that we would have every single week, looking at the KPI, looking at our metrics, we would see a number that looked off. Or that was like, there's a question here. Now I've got to go back and figure out which properties leads make up that number and then dig through each of those. It's like, I wish there was a way to click on that number and see what made up that number, right? What are the properties involved in that number? And then you see it. So that's all built into there. But yeah, you get tools.

But I'm kind of kicking myself, though, because you guys are talking about, like, creating that system that does this whiz bang, pal, to give you all the best deals and all that kind of stuff. And I actually did that, but I didn't sell it to anybody. Back when I first got started, I was like, how can I get an edge? I can write a program that looks at assessed values from the county, compare that to all listed properties, and use this fancy algorithm to pull out the ones that are the best deals. Did it work? Incredible. Push button.

It did work. But the problem was it was basically like it was like going into the MLS and just sorting by price. Yeah. Like that's all you had to do. It just pulled up the cheapest L dump of us, which is anyway. That's funny. But I could have packaged that, right? Push button.

It's interesting. No. You could have packaged that and sold that and made a lot of money. But it wouldn't be right. Yeah. So, all right. So we got the idea of overcoming fear. We talked about the fundamentals, really mastering them, and then focusing on those fundamentals,

focusing on the metrics that are going to get you there. Put it inside of a funnel so you know what's happening. Track that funnel, whether it's through a CRM like yours or somebody else's, track those numbers meticulously. And then finally, what's the last F word that we're going to talk about today? Yeah, there's several points in which follow-up is really key. like, you know, live answering phones, all that kind of stuff. If you can't get a hold of them right away, you've got to do everything in your power to get in touch with them and talk to them.

First, that's a given. The bigger bulk, though, where more deals are had is in the follow-up after making an offer. And so, you know, most of the time, we're not able to go to the house, make an offer and put it under contract. The person's simply not motivated enough to accept that offer right then and there. So follow-up is needed. And I hear it a million times a day almost, like the fortune's in the follow-up, right? Everybody knows it, but hardly anybody's doing it. And of the people that are doing it, who's doing it consistently?

And really, why? Like, why is it that people, they know it, but they don't do it? And actually, I had recently with our customers, we had a group of them on a Zoom call, and I said, who's using the automated follow-up? It was like half were, half weren't. And so I didn't even have to say anything. The ones that were, we're getting onto the ones that weren't saying, why the hell are you guys not doing this?

Like, you're missing out on deals. And it was perfect because we were able to then find out why are you not doing it? So we asked, why, why aren't people doing it? Why aren't you doing the follow-up? Why are you not using follow-up? And what it boiled down to was believing that it was being too salesy or pushy, that they're pissing people off. So it's coming from this perspective of pestering people to sell their house versus perspective of staying in front of them for when time it makes them motivated enough to move forward, keeping the conversation alive so that when circumstances change and they do change. Yes, some people sell their property, whatever.

There's a big group that don't. When circumstances change, that tenant that they have tells them that they should rot in hell or, you know, whatever, all kinds of crazy stuff. That day, they're thinking, you know, Danny's been texting me. Like, he still wants this property. I'm done. I'm ready. Who am I going to call? They're not going to start calling your competition again, most likely. You've been communicating with them when nobody else was. They're going to call you. That's how it works. I think there's also an assumption that the seller is being pestered in every scenario where that's just simply not the case. Think about maybe like a stereotypical example could be an absent father. You're not in your kid's life.

They have these walls put up because they were hurt by that. And then father shows up when they're a teenager or something and they're like, hey, I'm here. I'm your dad. And the kids sort of standoffish. Does the kid want to hear the father say, you know what? I didn't want to pester you. So I just left and I just didn't ever reach out again. You kind of got to expect that that person has some things to work through.

and they're probably feeling, man, I'm really glad you're here, but I don't trust you enough to just open up and say, okay, I need to see, do you care enough to keep coming back? Now, that's not a great example because real estate's obviously not the same as that, but it does illustrate that many times we think we're bugging someone and they're actually wanting us to follow up. They're waiting to see, you know, you said you care about my situation, you can help me. I've been burned. That's how I got in the situation. I mean, I literally know people that lost their house because they gave money to a pyramid scheme where the person they trusted said, give us your money will make you more. and they gave six months of their mortgage payment thinking they were going to have this big payoff, and it never came. They lost their house. That's why they reached out to me to buy it. When someone's been through that, they've been through getting ripped off through lines of credit or a business partner or something so that they might be in financial trouble and losing their home. They want to know they can trust you. And trust is built through repetitious consistency. You just keep coming back and offering that. And so that's sort of the advice I would offer to the person who says, I don't want to bug them. They might be just like stepping back to see if you meant what

you said. Are you a person of your word? Are you guys? going to call back two weeks from now? Or are you just someone like everyone else that just wants to get something from me? And if it's not easy, you're not interested. I think that's the number one reason. That's the reason behind most of the other reasons given. I don't have time. It's too time consuming. It's too hard to keep track of. I think really at the end of the day, those are comfort questions to be okay with the fact that you just have these beliefs around what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Really good stuff, man. So let's review real quick. You want to give us a quick rundown of the five F words again, just a quick review.

view and then we'll start moving towards the close of the show. Let me on the spot. I don't even remember. I know. Fear. Fear fundamentals focus on the metrics. Stay on top of your funnel and follow up and be consistent with your follow up. Yeah.

I really believe that if people followed these F words and improved upon all of them, this is how you treat your business. These are five like fundamental ways to treat your business like a business. This is like E-Mith 101 or work the system or like this. This is like stop doing everything yourself. Master these five things. You will make way more money. You'll buy two, three, five, ten times many deals.

You'll work way less. I mean, I literally went from, you know, running everything in my entire business and buying a couple properties a year to buying, I think we bought 2,000 units in the past year. And I did nothing but these five things. I feel like that's just what we did. And I overcame the fear of hiring people. We really drilled down on the fundamentals and the metrics. Our funnel is crazy and very meticulously tracked.

And then we are really good. the follow-up. I mean, with brokers, with agents, with sellers, with everybody. And when you just do that, you work way less and you have way more fun doing it. And you get to really perfect the systems that way. So I appreciate you coming on, Danny, to talk about this. But we're not quite done yet. Where do you see yourself headed in your real estate business in the future? I mean, obviously you have the forefront CRM, what is that forefront CRM.com? Like, you have that. But like, your own personal real estate investing. What are you trying to do? You said you're getting into rentals, not doing as much flipping anymore. Is that where you're headed? What's your future

look like? Correct. Yeah. So long term, you know, like I said, a year and a half ago, divorce and splitting up assets and things, looking at where most of the wealth was. And it just, oh, man, just rentals and the notes that were created, wishing more of the wholesale deals and the flips that I had done in the past had been kept as rental properties. And so that's really the goal now for me and doing that. So it's just, you know, and as they come, so keeping it to where it is somewhat of a hobby again, which brings the fun into it. But it's done in a way also that's measured, right, that tracks these metrics, even if it's a small operation, having those to know how well things are going and, you know, just stay on top of it.

And I like that David brought in that idea of the fun, right? So this whole 5-5, right, 5F framework, there's another F. The 5F framework is a framework is kind of like a roadmap right of things to do, but there is the piece of the fun in there that needs to be had. And I think when you've got the framework, then things are measured and you kind of know where things are going, which frees you up to be able to be creative, right, and to have fun in your business because you know it's under wraps and you're not like scattered in this big fuzzy mess of stuff going on that you don't have a grasp of, right? You don't have a 30,000 foot view of. Yeah, really good point, man. Well, with that said, I want to head this thing over to the last segment of the show. It's time for our famous for this. This is

the part of the show. We ask the same four questions to every guest every week. Do you have a current and or long-time favorite real estate investing book. Well, obviously, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. But as far as Real Estate Investing, yeah, I'm going to say Rich Dad Poor Dad. I mean, it's just the number one. It's the No No. Yeah. Number one.

What about your favorite business book? Business book would be a book that I'm rereading right now. And if you don't have this book, you have to get it. Sell Out Amazon, Straight Line Leadership. I never read it. Straight Line Leadership. You'll be talking about it after you. That sounds exactly like something.

I'd expect a software developer to say, for some reason, straight-fying leadership. It is. It's good. All right. What about some of your hobbies? Hobbies. I'm a private pilot, so I like the tool around in the air. My v.6, two-seater fun, a little airplane.

And I got a 77 BMW motorcycle that I turned into sort of like a cafe racer kind of looking little motorcycles. Really cool. Kids, playing and being with my kids. and I guess I don't know what else. That's pretty much it. Last question. What do you think separates successful real estate investors? Sounds like I'm coming up with the top of my head right now.

I never asked this question before, but I just popped in my head. What do you think separate successful real estate investors? You've ruggled your way through that one, Brandon. Oh, God, I have a question. What should I say right now? I don't know what to do with my hands. Here, I'm making this up right now. What does successful real estate investors do that those who don't hear you phrase it?

What do you think it is that separates successful real estate investors from all those who give up, fail, or never get started? That's not my 450th time asking that question. It's like you forgot out of your shoe. All right. What do people do? What sets them apart? What sets them apart? I think what sets them apart is mainly just the persistence, right?

It's the, you know, looking like we've talked about, you know, it's the understanding that you're trying to do this thing. And the next step is this. And I'm going to do it. and I'm going, right? I'm going to make mistakes. I'll have setbacks, but I'm going to keep going, and I'm going to push through

and not give up on it. And I think that's what separates those that succeed from those that don't. I agree. I love it. Well, thank you for coming on today. Appreciate it, and I'll let David Green

ask the final question. David. Last question. I know you've written a book. Where can people find out more about you in that book? Phoebehaus exposed. You can find that on Amazon, actually.

And yeah, were you saying, where can people find out more about you if they want to follow up? Okay, yeah. If you want to follow up with me, It's important, as we've mentioned. Right. So I'm on Instagram at Danny Johnson, S.A.

That's because I'm in San Antonio, at Danny Johnson, S.A. And also have accounts for Forefront CRM. So if you want to find that in social media, if you want to contact me directly, you can do so at Danny at ForefrontCRM.com. Cool. And real quick, for those who didn't get it earlier, what is Forefront CRM? I'd like to give my buddy the chance to plug their companies because yours is a cool one. Yay.

All right. Forefront CRM is the system that we've been working. on for quite a while and really dialing in. What it does is keeps the leads, active leads that you're working at the forefront in your pipeline, which is like a visual. It's like a digital whiteboard. You know how most investors have the whiteboard with the properties and where they're at. So if you use Trello or pipe drive or something like that, it's built specifically for real estate investors and you got that visual look of where everything is. So what you're working is at the forefront. If you put something into automated follow up, it goes off of there into the background

so that you can keep up with what you're working on while that happens in the background. If the seller follows up, if they respond to one of your follow-ups, your automated follow-ups, then it comes back into the pipeline for you to work on again. So it's just that keeps all that going in a very simple way. Do more deals. Do more deals. I love it, man. Well, thank you so much for joining us.

It's been fantastic. I love chatting with you. You know, you know, I get to chat every few months. And I always walk away feeling like a better guy and a smarter person because you're a good guy and a very smart guy. So thank you. Brandon. All right. And I'm going to send the shirt to you, by the way. Oh, yeah. Please. We never have been brought that up, but Danny's wearing the best-looking shirt I've ever seen. If you're watching it on YouTube right now. Yeah. Oh, wow. That is a picture of me with

face tattoos. I don't know why I have face tattoos, but I like it. Is that like Post Malone, Brandon? Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. That's post. Yeah, Post-Brandon. It's pretty great. Post-brandt. Anyway, thank you. David Green, get us out of here. All right. Well, thank you, DJ. He is Danny Johnson S.A. Brandon is Beardy Brandon and I am David Green 24. Please follow us on social media as well as Bigger Pockets. This has been a blast, Danny. Thank you very much for your three-peat performance. This is David Green for Brandon. Tie in My Shoe Turner. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. Simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the height, You're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online.

Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calico content, and editing. is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset,

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