BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 696: How to Plan for (and CRUSH) Your 2023 Goals
Episode Date: December 4, 2022It’s 2023 goal-setting time! For some investors, setting goals is a coveted experience where they get to center themselves and plan for the coming year. For others, setting goals can seem stressful ...as there are too many shiny objects always around to chase. This type of dichotomy exists even among the most experienced investors, as you’ll see in this episode. David Greene, everyone’s favorite investor, agent, broker, and mentor, systematically sets his goals, while Rob “Robuilt” Abasolo, the internet’s short-term rental oracle, does things a bit differently. In this episode, you’ll get a peek behind the scenes at how two very successful investors set goals in two very different ways. But this isn’t just about real estate investing and building wealth. David and Rob both touch on the personal goals they’ve set out for themselves and how they organically intertwine with the lofty investing goals they’ve set for 2023. David and Rob both want to grow their wealth substantially in 2023. But this doesn’t mean that they’re just hungry for doors. You’ll hear a crucial tip on how top real estate investors focus more on revenue than on unit count and how mistakenly chasing more properties could put you in a stressed-out situation without much to show for it! If you’re ready to tackle some of your biggest goals yet, tune in to this episode, and bring a planner while you’re at it! In This Episode We Cover: How to crush your 2023 goals by revamping and reviewing your 2022 plans Constantly updating your MINS (most important next steps) to hit goals even faster The struggles of outsourcing and hiring and why you MUST do it to grow The “more doors” trap that investors often find themselves falling into Building your vision for the next year and basing your goals on an end-result Content creation, building your brand, and becoming a bigger figure in the real estate space And So Much More! Links from the Show Find an Investor-Friendly Real Estate Agent BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Merch Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Learn About Real Estate, The Housing Market, and Money Management with The BiggerPockets Podcasts Get More Deals Done with The BiggerPockets Investing Tools Find a BiggerPockets Real Estate Meetup in Your Area David's BiggerPockets Profile David's Instagram David’s YouTube Channel Rob's YouTube Rob's Instagram Rob's TikTok Rob's Twitter Rob's BiggerPockets Profile Hear Our 2022 Goal Setting Episode Landlord Tax Loopholes That’ll Help You Pay ZERO Taxes in 2022 3 Simple Steps to Set Achievable (Yet Ambitious!) Real Estate Goals Invest with David Greene Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-696 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Check out our sponsor page! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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This is the Bigger Pockets Podcast show 696.
That's not talked about often, but it's important to note picking your goals is sometimes even harder than hitting them.
I remember the first time that I, when I was new and go buttons, the first time I heard someone say, well, what do you want your life to look like?
It's like, well, better than it is now.
Yeah, what does that look like to you?
And that was hard.
I don't know.
I don't know what I want my life to look like.
I just know I don't want to work 20-hour shifts as a cop and I'm always tired and cranky and miserable.
I don't want to have to do that.
And I was very good at saying what I didn't want.
It's more important to come up with what you do want.
What's going on, everyone?
This is David Green, your host of the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast.
You're today with my co-host, Rob Abasolo, with a special episode for you.
Today, Rob and I pull back the curtain and show you how the sausage is made.
In today's show, we are going to get into our goals.
Rob and I review both our 22 goals as well as our 2023 goals.
We share how we did.
in 2022 and what our goals are for 2023. But more importantly, we show you how you can prepare your
own goals. Now, setting goals sounds simple, and it probably is simple, but it's not easy. If you've
ever tried to do this, it's much more difficult than you might think. And we do our best to give
you some very practical advice based on our own experience for how we fight through the fog of not
being sure what goals we want, as well some tactical advice for how you can follow the steps that
we take to set your own goals. Rob, first off, welcome. And second,
Hello. What do you think about today's show? It's good. It's a really good deep dive just on how different
we are, but in a really cool way. You know, I think you're a very astute businessman. And I am a creative
that doesn't know what I'm doing and I'm figuring it out along the way. But we both have fun
crushing it. And it's really cool to see, honestly, just like hearing you talk about your goals,
I'm like, man, that's very inspirational. A, that you're that organized. But B, that you're that
you did it all. I'm like, good. I need to do that. I'm in. So I would definitely recommend for
everyone watching at home. Listen all the way through. Definitely get to David's part. At the very
least, fast forward to David's part because it's really cool to see David in his element.
I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit. Basically, if we are musicians, I would sit down
with a pen and paper and write out my entire verse and you would be like, I'm freestyle and just
give me a beat. And you would just spit something incredibly amazing that's bigger and better
than anybody thought. So I guess the point here is it doesn't matter how you think. It just matters
that you set goals down and different people are going to do it differently. If we want to help you
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On that note is today's quick tip.
My advice here is to make goals, but give grace for yourself, it's okay if your goals
pivot.
It's okay if your goals pivot.
It's okay if they change.
It's okay if you start on one path and then you sort.
switch a little bit and you make a different direction. Also, not every goal has to be the same.
Rob brings up some fantastic insight where he shares. He has small, medium, and large goals.
We have big vision type goals that are large. We have medium-sized goals. And then you have
small goals like what's your most important next step? What can you do right now to start building
momentum in the direction that you want your life to go? There is a systematic approach to this that
does make sense and will help improve your life if you use it. We're happy to bring
with you today. Rob, before we get started, anything you'd like to leave our audience with?
Nope. This, no. I don't know. You always do this to me. I was like, maybe I'll riff for a second,
but no, I'm excited for them to hear the chaotic, organized mess that is you and I. The freestyle
rapper didn't want a riff. Okay, fine. Let's get into the show. Welcome everybody to our goal setting
episode. If you've been following this podcast on episode 552, we sat down and we talked about the goals that we
wanted for 2022. Well, in today's episode, we are going to cover how well we did with hitting those
goals, what challenges we faced, how we pivoted, and then what our goals are going to be for
23. Now, the goal of this episode, you see what I did there, Rob? I did see that, yeah. I'm picking
up what you're putting down, David. Okay, you're getting better and better with these quips,
the quipy quaff. Hey, I'm smelling, I'm smelling what you're stepping in. There you go. The goal of today's
episode is to help you prepare for 2023 because you don't want to wait until January 1st when
you're drunk at a New Year's Eve party trying to figure out, oh, shoot, what is my New Year's
going to be? I suppose this is happening on December 31st for all of those detail-oriented people,
the detailed debby's. But you know what I mean? You want to get ahead of this now and start
preparing for 2023 so you can set yourself up to achieve those goals because success does not just
happen. It doesn't happen by chance. It happens by choice. You got to make a choice to change some
things in order to hit the goals that you want. So for those of you that talk about it,
well, don't worry about this episode. But for those of you that want to be about it,
you definitely want to follow along with what we're talking about. Rob, overall, how did your
2022, has it been going? Honestly, it has been a scramble in the best way possible.
So this is like an omelet that came out wonderful, like a great scramble? Yeah, it's like,
oh my gosh, like the vegetables that I chose, I didn't know if it was going to work. I didn't know
that the carrots were going to be a good addition to the omelet. This is true. I actually do like carrots
in my omelet. Fun fact. I don't know. And then at the end of it, I took a bite of said omelet.
I dipped it into some ketchup. No, I'm just kidding. That's a bad call. Don't do that. But I ate the
omel. I was like, this worked out. This worked out. That's an interesting analogy right there.
So why don't we start with you? I will ask you about what goals you set. You can let me know what they
were and then we'll dive into how they worked out. Sound good? Sure. Let's do it. Okay. So give me a list
of what your goals were for 2022.
Okay, so I wanted to double my portfolio
and I wanted to exponentially
increase the amount of subscribers I got on YouTube.
I think it was more so just my platform in general.
And then I wanted to start a couple of companies
and then I wanted to double my income.
Okay, good.
So let's start with your first goal.
Did you double your portfolio?
I more than doubled it.
Yeah, I went from the 15 Airbnbs and we bought a motel and then a few other Airbnbs as well.
And then you and I bought the luxury property in Scottsdale.
So, I mean, all in all, I'd say I probably walked away from 2022 with like, I want to say like 25 new properties, 25 new doors, I suppose.
Okay. Now, I forgot to ask you this before we got into hitting your goals. How did you come up with what these goals were going to be? How did you plan this?
Um, you know, this is a, this is more complicated than like, I wish I could just be like,
oh, I sat down and I wrote it on a, uh, on a piece of paper. And for me, like my, my whole life,
my monot, like my goals have been set around monetization of myself, like how much money I was
making. And I kind of crushed that in 2021 and then in 2022 as well. And that sort of started
to understand that monetization and money coming in is obviously a great thing and I hit the goal,
but it was very unfulfilling.
but what's more fulfilling for me is like, I don't know, coming up with like big goals that I can
hit, I suppose. And like, I don't know, challenging myself and getting to be more creative and out
of the box. And so I think moving forward now, even as I start to format what I want for like
2023, all of my goals aren't really monetary goals at all. They're all just like, all right,
what's cool, crazy stuff I can do that's going to make me happy? Yeah, that's not talked about often,
but it's important to note picking your goals is sometimes even harder than hitting them.
I remember the first time that I, when I was new and go buttons, the first time I heard someone
say, well, what do you want your life to look like?
It's like, well, better than it is now.
And yeah, what does that look like to you?
And that was hard.
I don't know.
I don't know what I want my life to look like.
I just know I don't want to work 20-hour shifts as a cop and I'm always tired and cranky
and miserable.
I don't want to have to do that.
And I was very good at saying what I didn't want.
It's more important to come up with what you do want, right?
Like this shows up in many aspects of my life.
I see it in business where I'll say to somebody, hey, I want us to be able to do this business for the one brokerage.
And so, and they'll come back and say, here's all the reasons it won't work.
Here's all the reasons we can't.
Like, okay, what would have to change so that it would?
And then you see them hit that wall.
Like, I don't know.
I don't think like what would have to change so that it could.
I just know that it can't.
And you really, it's a skill of training your brain to see the way to achieve something as opposed to what is.
to achieve. And coming up with my goals was very difficult. Was it a similar experience for you?
Oh my God. It's so hard. It's very difficult for me. David, if I'm being very honest with you,
you know, I don't, it's really hard for me to set goals because I've hit them all. I say this
as humbly as possible, but all of the things that I've set out to do, I've done. And so it's
actually kind of hard. It's very perplexing to do that when you, you're, you're,
so focused on the one thing and then you do it and then if you're focused on several things and
you actually are able to accomplish your dreams one at a time, then I've been like this whole year
for me. It's like, now what? I don't know. I don't know. I've done it. So that's why I've really
been challenging myself to put into play sort of some medium goals and then some like very
lofty goals because now I need something really big to work towards. And so we'll get into that
here in a second. But yeah, I think it's like you, you really have to categorize like the small,
medium big goals and really think of your small goals as things as you can hit maybe every week or
every month. Your medium goals are something that you can hit every year. And then your big goals are
sort of like your five-year plan. Does that make sense? Oh, totally. You remind me of that meme where
the guy goes to talk to the girl and he asked her out and she says yes. And she says, what do you want to do?
And he says, I don't know. I didn't think I'd get this far. Yeah, that's me. Sometimes
you're just in that position in life. I think we all are where we know what we don't want,
but we're not exactly sure what we do. And it actually takes some effort and some discipline
and some trial and error, if we're being honest, about figure out what do you want your life
to look like? It's very easy. In fact, most of the time, if I ask that question of someone else
just like it was asked of me, they don't tell me what they want. I get a list of what I don't
want. But that doesn't always help you, right? You got to figure out what you're trying to get to,
which is the short-term goals are typically escape my pain. How do I get out of this situation, right?
That will typically for me be, I need a higher person to do this part of the job because I don't want to do that.
But what do I want the company to look like?
What do I want my schedule every day to look like?
There's certain entrepreneurs that have hit this level where they're very, very detailed about exactly how they want their life to look.
And you only get there through setting goals.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's funny that you say that for you.
One of your small goals is how do I get out of this now and like, who can I hire?
Because for me, my big goals are who can I hire because it's so hard for me to relinquish control.
creatively, especially to other people. And so it's a big thing to work up towards, even though
the way you frame it is, it's actually something that should be a small goal that gets me out of
this. So I'm actually starting to flip-flop now. To be that way, I'm making a couple of hires now.
And that to me, every time I make a hire, like the stress of the financial aspect of it goes away
the moment I hire them. Because I'm like, oh, I don't want to spend the money. And then I hire
then I'm like, oh my goodness, what have I been doing? Yeah, and hopefully your revelation in that
area is the same thing that our listeners get. That's why we're making this episode because you don't
realize how bad things are until you actually slow down and listen. One of the piece of advice
I'd give as people are trying to figure out their goals and they have a hard time is start with what's
causing you pain. That's your don't want. I don't want to work 20 hours a day. Okay, why are you working
20 hours a day? Because I'm doing ABC, D, E, and F. Okay, I want to keep A, B, C, and F. I'm okay to
let go of D&E, but I need to hire someone to do it. Now we've got a want. My want is to hire someone
and we can work backwards from there with actually coming out with a strategy and actions you can
take to hire somebody. Would you agree? That's a pretty good overall approach to get started.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. Okay, so this is where we're going to start. What's causing you
pain? And instead of just being a baby that cries and says, it hurts. It's, I don't like it. I don't want this.
Turn your don't want into a want. And then you have a plan that you can take, which will have individual
steps that will start. And then it's okay if your goals pivot, they do all the time. Okay, I'll set out
with my goals for 2023. And then by June, May, July, I'm like, I don't really care about that anymore.
I have this opportunity. It's okay to take something out and add something else in. Did that happen to you in
2022? Yeah, so I am not the most detail-oriented and organized person. And so I'm a very free-flowing,
I don't know, visionary, creative guy. And so I think my biggest problem that I've been
overcoming as of recently is actually just writing down things. I have all these thoughts floating
in the ether. And so I didn't really know what I was working towards. I have all these things like,
oh, I'll get to that. Oh, I'll get to this. Oh, I'll get to that. And yesterday, I just told myself,
I was like, you know what? I'm going to go get sushi. I'm going to go to sushi bar. I'm going to take my
remarkable tablet right here. And I'm just going to write down everything that I have on the back burner
and actually write like a tangible, I don't know, like a tangible action step for each one.
And as I started to do that, a lot of the things that I wrote down kind of seemed silly
when comparing them to some of the bigger visions that I have.
So there is definitely a lot of reorganizing and restructuring of what I really want.
And going back to the hiring thing, I've realized that, yeah, they all require me
and because I'm so bad at hiring people until I get over that thing, I can't really move forward
with any of these goals. Yeah, this is why I say all the time that the enemy of business success
is typically like personal growth. I'm bad at hiring. I don't know anyone that isn't bad at hiring,
to be fair. And the only way we get out of this pain is we have to improve as a person,
which is why personal growth always pops up in podcasts like this. And we have to call it mindset,
but it's the same issue. So that's amazing advice. The therapeutic and
energy of taking what's in your head, trying to convert at a motion of feeling, a frustration,
a hope into a word, putting it on a document and then letting it grow in detail from there.
Is that typically how it works out for you?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And then honestly, just writing it down like that, some of these things, I was like,
oh, my God, this is so easy.
All I have to do is this one thing.
And then the project moves forward.
For example, it's kind of a long story.
But, you know, I was building that tiny house village in Tennessee.
A lot of other projects took priority over that one.
We were permitting a 60-unit glamping resort in Arizona right now.
And so we sort of took our focus off of it.
But there was just one sort of snag with the septic tank issue permit, the environmental permit in our Tennessee property.
All I had to do is make a phone call.
And so literally I made a phone call today to the contractor that, you know, it might be running that build.
I think he's going to.
And he's like, oh, I'll just go down to the,
to the city today and I'll talk to him about it. And guess what? He did it. And then we got off the phone
with him today. My business partner, Clint was like, bro, is this happening? Like, is it, was it really
that easy? And I was like, yes, we hit pause on this project for almost a year because of a
septic tank permit that could have been solved with a visit to the to the office. My soul is screaming
inside because you're so right. I don't know how, how important it is for people to understand this.
Like this happens, we have a short-term rental that we've been waiting four months, four months of
to be making payments and getting nowhere.
As someone on my team was like, we have to go through this process.
We have to hired architect.
They have to draw this out.
We have to smit the plan to the city.
We have to wait for the city to get back to us.
Like, it took forever to get the architect to draw it up.
Then I had to pay an architect to do this.
And I'm just going by with the team member telling me needs to happen.
All right.
Long story short, I have one phone call with the contractor.
They go, oh, no, you don't actually have to do that.
We could just start the thing.
even think we need permits for some of this stuff. And if we do, they'll just come and tell us we need
permits. And I was like, you're kidding me. You're telling me that four months have gone by and they didn't
need to. And he says, yeah, I thought that's what you wanted. Why did you think that? Well, your team member
asked me, what should we do? And I said, hey, we should do this? And no one asked the question of,
do we need to, right? So many of your struggles are not as big as you think. It's a phone call.
It's a person. It's a tiny little thing that if you put in place and writing down what your struggles
are, brings clarity to what could be done. So remember Rob to ask me when it comes to writing a book
what that process is like for me because it's very similar to what you just described for your goals.
Dude, genuinely, there's a project right now that I'm trying to get off the ground, like a
development project. There's actually two things in Joshua Tree. One of them, I just have to
fill out a spreadsheet, but I have not done that because it would take about an hour to tabulate.
And I'm just freak out about giving out that hour. And then the other thing is I,
We have one small permitting thing.
I just have to call the city of San Bernardino and tell them.
And then I have to wait on the phone for 30 minutes and then talk to them for 30.
And I don't want to do it.
And if I just did it, then this project would be built like a month faster.
Same thing with all of our Scottsdale expenses.
Hey, by the way, I am making progress on that.
No, you take the time.
Don't worry about this.
Yeah.
That is a long spreadsheet that I'm just like, oh, it gives me anxiety just thinking about, like,
adding everything up.
I know that there are calculators and everything.
So when you write it down, though, it really is like, okay, tally up Scottsdale expenses,
what's the to do here, add up expenses.
And then when I look at that, I'm like, I'm so dumb.
I could just, I could really just figure this out in an hour.
Or if you had a team member that was capable that you could say, hey, do this for me,
it would get done.
But then it comes back down to finding the right people, finding somebody you have confidence in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that kind of feeds into one of the other, I guess, I guess one of the goals that I didn't
mentioned, David, was to actually hire people. So I did make progress on this front. One of the big
things for me is I just wanted to make my life easier. And something felt wrong. I was just like,
why am I so spread thin? Why is everything very difficult for me? And actually, I went to get coffee at six
in the morning, which I've literally never done before, but it was the only time my schedule would sync
with Brian Davila. We had him on the show a couple months ago. And he was just like, you need a
hire COO. He's like, I think this is time for you. And then I was like, yeah, I was like,
it's expensive. He's like, yeah. But if you look at the, like the monetary aspect of it today,
you're missing the monetization of it one year from now, basically. And so we got up from coffee.
And he's like, I think this was a seven figure conversation. Let me know in a year. And then I was like,
okay. And so I set out and I hired a COO. And I mean, again, it was expensive. But as soon as I did it,
there was that relief of like, oh, oh, I don't have to worry about logistics.
anymore. And you know what? So you're happy with the hire then. Oh my God. So happy. He's great.
That's a big piece of it is being good, happy with the person that you hired. Okay. So that's a major
milestone that you hit with a big, big, big, big, big. You also bought perhaps the biggest.
Well, you also bought way more property than you were planning on. How did that work come out to be?
It turned out to be good and, uh, this is a bittersweet. Okay. I'm always grateful for the expansion
of my portfolio is good and bad. Good in that I did it. Bad and that. I was just like, okay,
I could have done more, I think, now in retrospect.
And so it really gives way for what 2023 is going to be.
I doubled the portfolio this year.
I would like to probably, if I can, triple it, maybe quadruple it in the next in 2020.
Is that going to be one of your goals?
Yes.
So I will say it basically showed me that I was capable of a lot more than I thought.
I underestimated myself.
And then when I did it, I was like, oh, okay, actually, that wasn't that bad.
and now I'm here, and I'm like, oh, I wish I would have done more.
It kind of comes down to that saying that Brandon used to quote that it's attributed to Abraham
Lincoln that if I have six hours to cut down a tree, I'd spend the first five sharpening my axe,
right? Your goals seem incredibly difficult to accomplish until you put them on paper
and then say, okay, if I want to do X, I need to take these steps to get to X, and then you get
four steps of Y, and then you're like, oh, that's actually an hour for each step or a day,
for each step and I could be at X, which would be huge and it would allow me to double whatever
I'm doing. That's why we're having this episode. It's often much loftier in your mind than what it
would be if you got down to doing it, right? Yeah, and I guess I guess to wrap up that analogy,
I think my axe was a lot sharper than I thought. Yeah. And we spend too much time sharpening
and that's sort of that analysis paralysis, right? Where I was there, you know, consistently every
day sharpening that axe and then came game time. I was like, whipsch. And I was like, oh, dang.
That tree came down way faster than you thought. And you're like, oh, I could have chopped down a bigger
tree. And now I was out of time to go and do it again. I mean, we're still closing a couple of deals
by the end of the year. But, you know, at the end of the day, I was just like, dang it. Like,
I had, I could have, I should have swung faster. Yeah. And I'm confident this applies to more.
It's not, I don't hear this and think, well, of course, David and Rob have a sharp axe,
but I don't know how to invest in real estate. Yeah, you do. You can go house hack if you want.
You can go buy a primary residence with 3.5% down and just spend your time working with an agent to find one that has 280Us or a duplex that has an ADU in the backyard or you could even go like look to buy an RV and put it in the backyard and rent that out to somebody else out.
There's a lot of small steps that could be taken on this journey.
And you take them and you get there quicker than you think and you're three months into the year.
You're like, okay, I already bought the house.
Now what do I do?
You got nine months left to figure out how to expand.
When it's written down, it's much more simple than when it's all in your head and it feels.
intimidating and confusing. Yes, 100%. So part of your challenge was like, how do I come up with my
goals? You wrestled with that. Part of your challenge was finding a COO and that sounds like that relieved a
lot. What other challenges did you encounter in your 22 goals? So this one is the current challenge
right now. And it's, I have figured out that I, I want to triple, maybe even quadruple my portfolio
in 2023. After writing it out, thinking this through ruminating on it for the last.
last couple months. Now, I know that that is my goal. And so instead of slowly kind of pacing myself
towards it now and sprinting. So I actually, you know, I said I wanted to start a couple of companies.
One of those companies is going to be Rob-built Capital, which is going to be my fundraising arm.
Remember when I said, I wanted to put a really lofty goal out there. My lofty goal is I want to
raise 100 million bucks in the next five years. That's my target. 20 million a year seems really
achievable. I think it gets, you know, every year will probably be more and more and more.
But for now, that's what I tell myself every day, 100 million in the next five years.
And I want to, you know, continue scaling up my property or my property portfolios.
So what I, what I've sort of encountered was my big hurdle was I had a guy that he's really
great, quoted me on how to structure the fund and how to do everything that came out to like
20 grand or something. Honestly, nominal for the work that he's going to do. But it just held me up
for too long because it's not that I didn't have it, but I was just like, oh, I don't have the mental
capacity to spend 20 grand on that and 20 grand on lawyers. And I don't want to think about it right now.
But after writing it out and thinking through it, I'm like, okay, that's what I decided. Literally after I went to
sushi, I emailed them, I'm like, I'm ready to go. Let's build this fund out. And so we are going to be
meeting here in the next week or two and putting together all the architecture to officially launch in
2023, which will also come with staffing up and building that team as well. But I've already got a lot
are those people in place.
Very lofty.
What makes a goal that size feel achievable to you?
That it's, no, that's not, see, that's the thing is I'm actually trying to create goals
that feel impossible because, which I don't know.
It's like I want it to feel like I can't ever get there so that I have something to work
towards because all these other goals that I set felt impossible.
And then I hit them all.
And I was like, well, shoot, I don't think I was thinking impossible enough.
So I'm really trying to put a crazy number out there, a scary number, so that it gives me,
David, at least like a year or two until I get to runway to hopefully I don't hit it faster than I think.
But I genuinely, I'm like, okay, that's scary enough to where I think it buys me time to figure out like other goals that I might want.
Okay, cool. So one of the ways that we approach making progress on a goal is acronym that Brandon came up with called MINS,
which stands for most important next step. So when it comes to, I'll let you pick a goal,
Tell me, what is your most important next step for whichever goal you want to use as an example?
Okay.
I want to get 50 units in the next three months.
Okay, cool.
So what would be your most important next step towards that goal?
Honestly, ask my audience to send me deals.
That's, and it can be that simple.
That's exactly right.
And then do you have a person on your team that sort of analyzes those deals and brings the best,
juiciest ones to you?
I do.
Yeah, I do.
So typically, and this kind of happens on a smaller scale.
I just haven't asked for it on this larger scale.
but yeah, they'll send me a deal usually on Instagram or via email or via bigger pockets.
And then I send that over to my C.O. Clint. And then he'll go and run the numbers. And then he'll
then go and talk with the investors and kind of talk through all the financials.
And if you didn't have a Clint, your most important next step would be find a Clint.
Find a Clint. Yeah, that's right. There you go. And you know what? Even Clint's starting to get,
you know, pretty spread thin because the operation is like booming right now. So it's like now we're
we're working towards not just a COO, but kind of an analysis under that to help us underwrite these
a lot faster.
To take that off a Clint's plate, right?
Exactly.
Yeah, there we go.
Okay.
Anything else you'd like to share about your goals for 2023?
Let's see.
I'm looking to, I have put into place two hires that I needed.
This was actually going to be 2023, but after writing it out, I was just like, no, it's time.
So I interviewed someone and I hired someone last week.
to be my content writer.
And basically, we're going to, we're going to copyright together a lot of the,
the material on my different platforms and everything.
And then I'm hiring, I just, I haven't announced it yet, but I'm hiring a social media
manager too to help me manage, spoiler alert, my social media.
And by doing those two things, I will now get infinitely more time towards, which will go
into next year's goal of 2023 of doubling my platform.
Wow, man.
That is pretty impressive.
This is my first time hearing about this, Rob.
I got to say, you seem unstoppable right now.
Oh, you know, don't fall for the calm, Rob, you see here.
He's getting crushed inside.
No, I'm just kidding.
No, it feels good.
It feels good to have been in this situation for the last year in a good way where I'm like,
okay, I'm figuring things out.
What do I need?
What do I want?
And then now that I've sort of figured it out, I'm like, oh, man, this feels good.
The outlook is so cool now because now I'm like, I can stop worrying about the day-to-day
frustrations and start focusing on the tomorrow, not just the day to day, but hey, these people
can help run my companies. And then now I can start leading from a much larger standpoint.
So I don't mean to get too lofty here, but I'm just like, I feel good. You should. You deserve to
man. That's awesome. And I like that you're just highlighting that the majority of the work is
figuring out the vision. Where do I want to go? What do I want this to look like? When you have that,
the rest of it kind of falls into place if you take the action. But if you don't have a vision,
you're just going to feel like you're always in a kind of like a foggy headed state where you're
not sure what you should be doing. And often that's associated with negative emotions like guilt,
shame. You want to hide. You don't want to talk about stuff because you're not sure what direction
you want your life to look like. But once you've got it, man, it becomes very simple.
Yeah. I think I figured it out too, by the way, or partially figured it out. Side note here,
which is, you know, I said, look, money, it's something that I chased. I've made more than I thought I would
make and that that that that box is checked cool great and then I was like well shoot now like I thought
that was going to be the end all be on it wasn't and so my big thing for 2022 was like well what is it
like what what is that thing that's that you know I'm a relatively happy person so I always like to
caveat that don't listen to this and be like whoa he's not happy no no I am but I'm like oh it didn't
come from that it came from this other stuff and so I think one of the things I realize is I was chasing
doors a lot and obviously that's a part of building the portfolio. But what really makes me happy,
like I was trying to trace back like my happiest time in the past couple years. And it's when I launched
my YouTube channel. I was building tiny homes a lot more. I was doing more glamping. I was doing a lot
more creative stays. And I kind of moved away from that because of just the way things went, right?
And so I just realized I'm like, well, shoot, if that was what was making me happy, I think I just need
to lean into that. And so when I'm launching Rob Built Capital, my goal for that fund is not to
be your typical apartment syndication per se. It's actually meant to be more of a unique stay fund
where I'm going to be investing in RV parks and turning them into like upscale glamping resorts
or taking campgrounds and instead of renting out a space for $20 a night, I want to put a really
premium $200 tent on there and create a super unique stay. And so that gets me so I'm like, oh, I have not
been this excited in a long time. So I'm now going to be just really putting a lot of time and effort into
things like tree houses and domes and like really cool structures like that for 2023. And now that
I figured it out, I'm like, oh, it really is a weight lifted off my shoulders. Awesome, man. Well,
make sure you lift it off very slowly because we don't want you hurting your back again.
Oh, well, hey, I worked out for the first time on Monday, uh, since I threw out my back. And it felt
good. And then I went and then I went back today. And I'm like, man, I'm so glad I'm back in the
groove. So honestly, a big tip for a lot of people's workout. You never really, uh, realize the
clarity that you're going to get from working out.
Because honestly, at the end of it, I was like, oh, feels good.
All right.
So last question here.
What about personal goals as opposed to business goals for 2023?
Yes, this is a big one.
This is a big talking point between my wife and I.
I think she's slowly coming, she's getting on board with it.
But I want to travel more.
I want to travel internationally more specifically.
And it's just really tough with kids.
We got a one and a half year old and a two and a half year old.
Not good ages for kids on a plane.
Every time we go, it's absolute.
craziness. And so pitching her on like a 10-hour flight to Copenhagen hasn't been going over
super, super well. But for 2022, I just want to travel. That's like my big one. I don't care. It doesn't
have to be across the park. It can be in Mexico. It can be in Canada. Yeah, you and I might be
traveling to Mexico in a couple weeks here. Trying to put that together now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We need a chat about that today. Hey, not on the pod, David. Don't tell everybody our secrets.
You don't want him to travel there to find us. I don't want to get kidnapped in Mexico.
Now I'm excited. Yeah, that should be cool. But yeah, traveling more is a big one for me.
You know, before my wife and I had kids, we told ourselves, we were starting to think about it. I was like,
you know what? I've never traveled. And I think we should go to 10 countries before we have kids. And she was
like, let's do it. And so we did. We traveled to Japan, to Denmark, to Sweden, to the UK.
We went to a lot of places in a year's time. And it was really great. And those were some of the
happiest times in my life. So I just want to go back around the world. All right. That sounds amazing.
Thanks for sharing that.
For sure.
Okay, so let's turn it around on you here for a second.
You just heard my ramblings.
Hopefully some of it made sense.
But what were some of your goals for 2022?
Mine are actually much more systemized.
So the way that I typically work out my goals is I take more or less each of the business endeavors I have going on.
Combine that with my investing, I make like a headline for it on a Google document.
And then I write down, these are the goals that I want for each company.
and then I save that as a tab open on my browser.
And a couple times a week, I just check it and see like,
how are we doing as far as marching towards that?
And I often will see, ooh, I fell behind there.
That becomes an email,
a text, a conversation with a leader to say like,
hey, we wanted to hire five more agents.
What are we doing?
Oh, I wasn't thinking about that.
I was thinking about this.
Okay, let's put this back on the radar.
You're sort of constantly moving to all these spinning plates
and like trying to spin them.
And like you said, my biggest struggle is always hiring.
Like there's there's so many people in the world that want to be a part of your company or your enterprise because of how they see it would benefit them.
There's not a lot of people that say, I really want to come and contribute to what you're trying to do.
And if I contribute well, I know that I will be financially compensated as well.
So it's just, I think this is every business owner's struggle.
I think this is every person's struggle.
It's not unique to business.
Like it's if you're in the dating world, it's not hard to find a person who says, well, what does this person have to offer me?
There's not a lot of people that are going around saying,
want to find a person that I can really serve. But that's what you need. You need two people that are
serving in business and relationships and whatever if you want to be successful. So if you like,
I can just start with like each category and go through and read off what the goals are.
Wow. We should have started with you first so that people could stay hooked because everyone's gone
at this point. No, I don't want, I wouldn't want to make you feel bad by having this very systemized
process. And you're like, well, you know, I like get a napkin at a restaurant. And I wake up at 6 a.m.
one time in the year. It's a remarkable tablet, by the way, it's not a napkin. It feels like a napkin
when you write on it, but it's a, it's a pad. I've heard of these remarkable. I'm actually thinking
about getting that as a gift for a couple people for Christmas this year. It's a good gift.
So my first one has to do with vision. Okay, this is this stuff that's very big picture that I know
in general, I want to move in a direction. And my vision has been the same the last three years.
I don't always have clarity with how I'm going to achieve it, but I know what I want. The vision I
have is to create an ecosystem that everybody who wants to invest in real estate can come to one place
that gets everything they need. They need an agent. They need a loan officer. They need insurance.
They need a contractor. They need an appraisal. They need education. They need knowledge.
Whatever. They can come to one of my companies and be connected to all of it. Now, that sounds
very simple. Actually, executing that's very difficult. So the first thing I have on my vision.
Now, this is, I guess these would be 2022 goals that were going over. This is what I had for last year.
was I wanted to buy a commercial building that would be like a one-stop shop model.
So literally a physical location where my real estate team would have offices,
my loan company would have offices, my insurance company would have offices.
Everyone could be there together.
And then I could get everyone together in one like auditorium type of a setting where I could
teach everybody at one time and then have a marketing system that would work for everyone.
So like maybe some form of sales force that we could get connecting everyone together.
One hiring division that would be filling it up.
That's still what I'm building towards. I did not buy that building. And part of that is because I'm not sure if I wanted it in a physical location because we're now operating in so many different states and areas. It's very difficult to get everybody in one place. So I think I'll probably have one physical location for leadership. I don't know if it's going to be for every employee.
Obviously, you started taking steps towards that. Was there a moment where you're that where you made that decision where you're like, eh, I'm good. I want to keep it sort of remote. It was everything that I looked at. I could see this isn't going to work. Like I wanted a.
by a church building, but they were too expensive in the Bay Area. Then I was looking in Los Angeles,
and it was the same problem. Then I was like, okay, well, we're going to, let's move to the south and
let's put a building there. And then a lot of the people were, I don't want to move. I like where I am.
So like, it was just, there was every single opportunity that came my way, I could see there was
something that would stop it from working. So we've just stuck with the remote thing for now.
Another vision I have is to have at least two companies that make six figures a month in profit.
So right now, that's the one brokerage in the David Green team. So working to maintain that, like,
the profit that comes out of those companies is in the six-figure range.
Another is to stay in Gary Keller's top 100, meaning that I'm one of the top 100 agents or teams
in Keller Williams.
And then my last one from Vision is to maintain bigger pockets as the world's best
real estate podcast.
So as the face of bigger pockets, it's very important that nobody catches us, passes us up.
Side note, this is why we love a review from you on wherever it is that you listen to your
podcast, because if you stop leaving those and other people are leaving,
even them for the podcast they like, we will get passed up.
Yeah, yeah, but let me just click in on that real fast.
I will say, if you like seeing us on the charts, like we're always number three or number
four, I'm sure we've been number one several times.
That is very dependent on your five-star reviews, and it genuinely means a lot to us.
We read those things and we take them to heart.
If you have feedback, send us a message on Instagram or on bigger pockets.
We'll read it.
But we would really appreciate the five-star reviews.
It genuinely helps us with the podcast algorithms out there, getting served up to new audiences.
Thank you for that, Rob.
Very important.
All right, I will go through each company here and then I'll pause and let you see what questions you have.
So the first is the David Green team.
Four goals for that.
The first is to hit $250 million in gross sales volume.
So the accumulated total of every house we sell needs to be at $250 million or more.
I would like to maintain four strong.
Oh, sorry, we're at 2023 now.
four strong sales leaders.
So those are agents on the team that sort of over that get leads handed to them as
opposed to just generating their own.
And they oversee showing assistance to help them with their job.
I would like to add five new agents to the Northern California location.
There's going to be a few more because I switched to 2023 off of 2022.
I would like to add two expansion teams.
So this would be agents in different markets that we can refer buyers to.
Typically there's a market where I'm buying a lot of houses.
so I'm looking to add an agent in the Smoky Mountains,
as well as one in either Blue Ridge, Georgia,
or South Florida, or Scottsdale.
Those are all areas that I believe in.
I'm buying property there.
So I'd like to have a David Green Team agent
that I can refer people to.
I would like to launch the DGT program
that's actually called launch.
So when we have new agents come join our team,
we now have like a video library of trainings
that helped new agents get started
and acclimated to our system
and then release the David Green Team University
DGTU coaching.
program that will help real estate agents to sell more houses. And that will kind of be tied in with
the series of books that I wrote for bigger pockets to help agents with selling homes.
Cool. Okay. So my first question is you said that you wanted to reach $250 million in closed
sales. Why that number, is that an achievable number? Is that something that's like, are you guys
on the cusp of that? Tell me, tell me why he chose that number. It's sort of the number that with the
group we have. If everyone gets maybe 80% of their potential, that's about where we land.
Okay. Okay. And then you said that you wanted to, man, so what I've realized that I've already learned,
I've already learned so much from you, David. Your goals have goals. That's what it sounds like. You keep
clicking in and it's like, bo bo bo bo bo, bo, bo, bo, bo, I want to me to this. And I want four sales managers,
and then I want these markets. And then I want these agents in market. So what's the, I guess,
with your four sales managers or your four team leaders, are those all going to be in one office?
Or do you want those spread across the country? So this is a great.
question here. And it is true what you just said about my goals. My brain tends to work that way.
I see the big picture and then I like click in and like, you know, those enhance, enhance the
footage. Like it just keeps zooming in on the individual details. And that's how I come up with
these. I would like those sales leaders to be a strong core in California. And because the idea is
once I have a strong core, when I add expansion agents, they have a mentor they can learn from.
You have to, it's like you're trying to build a culture, which is very difficult because that depends
on people and you've got to get people that are bought in. I can't accomplish the goal of adding
expansion agents if I don't have a core of agents that are already established in this system that can
teach the new people. Kind of like you can't draft rookies if you don't have veterans for them
to learn from. Okay, cool. And so far are you tracking with, I mean, have you been hitting a lot of
those goals for 2022 or, I know those were kind of a blend, but where did you net out for 2022?
22, I landed right around where my goals were. So the goals for 2022 with that company was 250 million
and gross sales. I wanted four strong buyers agents, what I have. I wanted to hire a C.O,
which I did. Kyle was promoted to CIO and he's been doing well. And I wanted to end with a team
leader for the Brentwood location, which is kind of our hub. And Kyle has taken that over and he's
about to promote our first agent to be that. So all the DGT goals for 2022 were hit. Amazing. Congratulations.
That's awesome, dude. Thank you. And I should also highlight that's not like massive growth mode, right?
I'm more wanting to maintain what I'm doing and have a healthy growth as opposed to blow it up
because you can't blow everything up at the same time.
You've got to let something go if you want to focus on other stuff.
So my method tends to be put all my energy into this thing, get it really big, hire someone
to maintain it, move on to the next thing in life that I want to grow.
Yeah, yeah, I could take a page out of your book.
That's, you know, there's that phrase that I hear very often, which is you overestimate what you can do in a day,
but underestimate what you can do in a year.
And that kind of sounds like what you're talking about,
which is like you just want steady growth over the year.
You recognize that you can get a lot done,
but don't go too crazy with it.
That's kind of how I am.
I'm like, yeah, okay, I need to, this is what I'm saying,
the small, medium, big goals,
which is sort of what your goals of your goals of your goals.
That's what I need to be better at.
So it's nice to actually hear your systems because I'm like,
all right, if I just write these out even more,
then jotting them on this remarkable.
Use my affiliate link, by the way.
No, I'm just kidding. But yeah, writing them out seems to be your system here works.
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So moving into the real estate side of things, I know we talked about your commercial building,
but you also, I have to imagine you had some real estate goals too because you kind of closed on
what most people will close in on a lifetime. You did in a year. So can you talk about your real estate
goals? Yeah, so I can skip down to real estate here. So the totals were the one brokerage,
marketing goals, book goals, insurance company goals, investment properties, taxes, and personal
goals. That's like basically what my list is made up of. For real estate itself, 2023 goals are to
continue to raise money for multifamily, single family, commercial properties, find operators
to partner with and buy a minimum of four new properties to add to my portfolio. Now, I will most
likely blow that goal out of the water, but that's a minimum. Like, I've got to buy at least four
properties. Just for the year of 2023? For 2023, yeah. Now, in 2022, my goals for investment
properties were to, actually very similar, fine operators as a partner with, which I've been doing
with Andrew Cushman. We bought an apartment together in Fort Walton Beach. We're going to be doing more
of that. People can go to invest with Davidgreen.com and they can let me borrow money that I will
then pay them a return on as I go invest, so I'll continue to do it. But I wanted to buy a minimum of four
properties in 2022, and I probably bought more like 16, maybe a little bit more than that.
I bought a whole bunch of them here at the end, so my numbers aren't. I'd have to look at my spreadsheet
that tracks those to see where we are. But like you, I blew that one out of the water.
So why don't we, I'm just going to redo your goal here because I think if you hit the goal,
your next goal has to be bigger. So I'm going to make you at least, at least double your goal for
2023. But if you bought 16 this year, then I think you should set a goal for 16 and a half,
17 properties for 2023. Here's the problem with messing with buying how many properties I want
to buy. It's kind of like Dave Meyer setting a goal for how many sandwiches he wants.
to eat. That is a tempting thing for me to do anyway. I don't have to put focus on that goal to hit it.
Dave love sandwiches. He's going to eat as many as he can, right? I love buying real estate.
It's really freaking fun. Wait, hold on. Sorry, Dave, Dave Meyer, the data deli? Yes, that's it.
That's where the data deli comes from. Like, deli is, he love sandwiches. Oh, really? Oh, I thought
he was just, I thought it came from like, he's like, if you went to a deli that was like all computers
and data. He's playing on that. Nice. Okay. Well, you were halfway there. Probably,
Okay, good, good.
So that isn't a difficult goal for me to achieve.
What I find is like I go buy 16 properties at one time and now I have this log jam of trying to do rehabs, talk to contractors, order furniture, find people that can manage them and then I get screwed up, right?
So by focusing on how many properties I buy, I could buy 100 of them, but everything else would fall apart.
I have to intentionally put my focus on business goals because it's not as fun, but business is what helps me build the reserve.
so I can go buy 20 properties at one time.
And as I'm waiting for these things to get up and running,
I can handle the cost, like I said, of all these properties that are four or five months
in and I still am not generating any revenue yet.
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
That makes sense.
All right.
So, okay.
Okay.
Cool.
I'll give you a shortcut.
When it comes to investing, here's how, here's the best way to go about it.
I talked to my CPA.
I say, it looks like going to make X amount of money this year.
They run some numbers and they say, you're going to need to buy X amount of real estate
for the depreciation to cover what you bought.
and that's how I determine my investing goal.
Now that could be four properties, that could be 20.
Yeah, I see.
I see.
Okay.
Yeah, I'm in that same boat.
And when I say I want to double or triple my portfolio,
this is actually something that you got to me on,
which is like I'm not looking to double or triple it with single family acquisitions
anymore.
I am looking to just double it with number of doors, but creative doors.
Like I said, like the glamping or RV parks or anything like that,
just from a scalability standpoint.
And that is actually a big thing that will be pivotal for me.
I just sort of realized when you kind of hammered that in my brain, I was like, okay,
the way to scaling is I can't focus on single family acquisitions anymore.
I have to sort of buy them in bulk, if you will.
And that has actually informed a big part of my 2023 strategy.
So kudos to you.
That's why you got to be careful with how you set your goal.
Because if you say I want to add 100 doors, she'll go buy 100 bad properties to hit the goal.
Yeah.
Right.
It's like, I don't like with fitness, I don't believe in setting a goal for how many steps you're going to take in a day.
because steps is not really a great form of exercise.
It allows you to check a box and say I hit my goal.
But those people are not going to lose weight because they're taking steps.
As opposed to, I'm going to go to the gym and work out really hard for at least 15 minutes.
You'll probably burn way more calories and it will help you.
So sometimes we unintentionally set goals that are not going to help us achieve the life that we want just to get the feeling of I made progress.
Yeah, okay.
So that's a good way to put it.
So if I say I want to, let's say I say I want to triple.
So I'm at 35 doors right now.
tripling would roughly be 100 or so. I'm not looking to buy 100 properties. I'm actually
looking to buy two or three properties that get me 100 extra doors. Or maybe say, say the total
volume of the real estate I own is 15 million. I want to triple that to 45 million. Now,
what's the most efficient, productive, effective real estate I could buy to get to 45 million
instead of focusing on the doors, which is a very easy metric to hit? Sure. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah.
So what you described is exactly right. Like, I'm going to buy three properties,
but they need to get me to 45 millioners.
Yeah, exactly.
So I guess that term would more be like AUM, right?
Assets under management.
Yeah, something along those lines.
Or I want to build X amount of equity or I want to add this much cash flow to my portfolio,
which now forces you to look at the quality of the product, not just the quantity.
That's good.
See, yeah, that's good.
That's all about framing.
So right now, okay.
So then I guess I want to quintuple my assets under management.
Thanks for putting it that way.
Now here's what's cool because if one of your goals is to pay no taxes and this goal over here,
the quintuples, it helps you to pay no taxes.
Now you've hit two goals with the same action.
And you're synergistically increasing your wealth building.
Yeah, the goal start compounding.
And by the way, if you want to learn more about taxes, we actually did an episode with Matt
Bon Trager.
He's a, he's the true book CPA.
He's my CPA.
He saved me six figures in taxes.
That episode is $6.89.
Go check that out.
It was, I think your mind is going to be melted after you listen to it.
Wonderful.
Okay.
The next category I have here is the one brokerage.
The goals were to close 600 loans, hire $200 loans, higher $20.
25 loan officers hit 250 million in gross volume, hire 10 new processors, and get to nationwide
service. We achieved all of those except for nationwide service. We're about halfway there,
and in 2023, we should be licensed in all 50 states. My goal is for 2023 with that company
are to move our model to a processor pool as opposed to a processor working under an individual
loan officer, hit 350 million in gross volume, develop 10 solid realtor, realtor,
referral partners that will send us business and hire 25 more loan officers. So if someone's out there
listening and they're a loan officer and they're looking for a new broker to hang their license with,
I got to hire a minimum of 25 people for that company. And if I hit that goal, all the rest of
them will probably be hit as a consequence of that one goal. Okay. Very cool. All of that is crazy.
You closed 600 loans and you hire 25 loan officers. Is that what you said? No, last year I hired, I already had
about 10. I hired 10 more in 2022 and we closed a little bit over 600 or on pace to close a little bit
over that. Good for you, man. That is, that's top tier, man. You, it sounds like you crush it on all your
goals on all your highly organized, highly systemized goals that now I'm like, oh, shoot. Yeah. So one of the
things I've learned about when you're, it'd be easy to say close two billion, right? I set a big goal,
but here's what I don't like about that. I would then go hire 100 bad loan officers to hit that goal.
customer experience would be terrible. I wouldn't be able to manage the 100 people. The company might hit
its goal, but the profit would be very low and the reputation would be bad. It's more, I look at it like,
like, I want to hire five new agents for the David Green team. Why not 50? Because frankly,
I don't think my new COO can handle hiring 50 agents when he's only done the job for six months.
Now let's say he does it for two years, two and a half years. He's probably at a skill level that can
handle hiring 50 and that's when I would make that goal really, really big. So it's not like linear growth. You
kind of have to time, like, what are the resources I have and how, how much time do I need to give
this quarterback to develop before I throw them in the game and have really high expectations
on them. So I don't want to make it sound like I'm saying set small goals. It's set goals that
you can hit that would cause you to stretch. But those numbers, if you, if we're still here in
three or four or five years, you should be seeing me say, I want to hire 10 expansion agents.
I want to hire 20 expanding. Each of these companies should get progressively larger goals as
we go. Yeah, I always tell people to scale accordingly. Like when you're getting to short-term rentals,
for example, don't go out and buy 15 short-term rentals. Well, I'm not, don't worry, David,
I'm not dogging you. Give me a second. Unless you can handle that, unless you've worked your way,
unless you've earned your right of passage of real estate. And like you, you went out and you bought
15 short-term rentals this year because you have a storied pass of being a successful real
estate. Investor, you've scaled accordingly. You were able to do that in a way that 99% of people
could not do. Even then, I didn't do that. It hasn't worked out as well as I'd hope. So I had a person
in place that was going to help me get these short term rentals going. They had another job.
They were going to quit that job and come work for me. They changed their mind. They didn't want to.
Now I'm stuck. I've got all these rentals and it's moving so slow, moving them along because I lost
the employee that was going to be helping getting them ready. So if we're just being transparent,
In general, I'm losing about $80,000 a month over real estate that I am waiting to get set up and cash flowing.
If you can afford to lose $80,000 a month, it's not a terrible idea to buy 15 homes.
But it's definitely not ideal.
Okay.
If I could have, I would have gone in there and I would have bought two at a time instead of 15 or 16 at a time.
Yeah, but I mean, think about this works on so many levels, though, because if it happened to anyone else,
they would have thrown in the towel like so long.
They're mind of being melted.
You're the best in the business.
So at least you can sit down and say, all right, here's the fire.
I see a fire extinguisher over there.
It's up a mountain.
I got to figure out how to get up that mountain or someone's got to hire someone to help me get
up that mountain and get that fire extinguisher, right?
Sorry, my David Green analogies aren't quite as good as the, like, as the David
Green.
But all to say, you have also, you also have systems in place, you have reserves in place.
You know how to handle taking an $80,000 loss until they're all running.
and then all of a sudden, great, guess what?
In 10 years, you're going to look like a genius because you got all these short-term rentals.
And that's, so you mentioned a couple good points there.
Taking the big picture approach when you're setting your goals is huge.
It looks like a loss.
It feels like a loss.
It's terrible right now in 10 years.
I won't even remember this.
I'll be like, oh, yeah, I remember back when I did that if I see, listen to this podcast.
I won't know.
Second, by focusing on these other goals I have, like the business goals, there's enough
money coming in from other businesses that can float that loss that I'm describing.
Then I also have reserves.
There's layers of protection here.
I call this concept portfolio architecture.
It's easy to look at every individual house as it's like its own thing, but it actually
fits within a larger organism.
Your portfolio itself is the organism, not the house.
So I try to set things up to where, okay, these are my cash-loving assets that don't really
grow in value very much.
These are my assets that grow in equity very quickly that are supported by cash-loving
assets.
These are assets that kick off a lot of cash-loat that can afford to float me for the six
months while I do this really big rehab, but I lose money.
But then after the rehab, when I burn, I get all my capital back out.
I didn't lose anything and boom, there's a flesh of capital to go add new assets and new ways.
And so as you stick with real estate and you continue to buy homes, you start to get flexibility, right?
It's like a football team where our tight end just went out.
Well, we'll just run a different offense.
We can still, our running backs in good shape.
Our quarterback's fine.
We can utilize this wide receiver.
You're not like your whole enterprise falls apart because you had one injury to your team.
That's the goal of what we're trying to get you there.
And house hacking is the best way for people to get started.
But it's not to just look at one individual home.
That's where all your anxiety comes from because if you have a bad month, you're like,
ah, I'm a bad investor.
I should just quit.
Yep.
100%.
You got to look at the bird's eye view level, if you will.
So thanks for pointing that out.
Marketing goals.
I'm getting a new website made.
So I have David Green24.com, which is better than the old one, but we're redesigning that again.
I would like to develop more engagement through a website we use called Circle that my mastermind
members have access to.
So I want to be engaging with them more through that.
I would like my YouTube channel that just hit 10,000 subscribers.
So in this room, I'm the little baby in the room.
And Rob is the big babysitter that's crushing me there.
So I just finally hit 10,000.
Just let me have one.
Yeah, you're definitely Godzilla in that realm.
And I am the Geico insurance lizard.
Wait, you hit 10,000.
I just hit 10,000, like yesterday or something, right?
So the goal for 23, yeah, thank you.
The goal for 23 is it gets a 25,000.
So I'm definitely like, that's a goal.
you could help me with or other people by subscribing or just giving me advice about what works
for my personality on YouTube. And then what has been working and I'll continue to do is weekly YouTube
lives. So pretty much every Friday night, I'm on there for about two hours, sharing information
about the economy, sharing what I'm investing and answering people's questions. Okay. Well, if every
person listening to this goes and subscribes to David Green's David Green real estate on
YouTube, we will quint up, we will, you will be a much larger star than I. So everybody goes
to subscribe to David right now. Yeah. So if you do that, then you get to come onto the YouTube
and ask me whatever questions you want and I'll help you with your goals and we'll create this
wonderful symbiotic relationship. My goals for 2023 regarding books is just to write one book,
which is I've already started it. So that should be accomplished in 2023 and then to write an e-book.
So that would be a book that I'm thinking about something along the lines of building a financial
fortress because as we see like when the economy changes, which it has very suddenly, the way that
you have built your wealth is very important. When everything's going great, I built wealth
through crypto, I built wealth through NFTs, I built wealth through whatever like new cool hack
everybody's talking about, infinite banking or whatever looks great. The minute that you see things
shift, man, how many people lost all of their money because they built a treehouse. They didn't build a
fortress. So I'm thinking about writing an e-book that focuses on ways of building wealth that
will stand the test of time that maybe take longer to build, but you've got like Helms Deep,
the fortress and Lord of the Rings that's been there for hundreds and hundreds of years and
won't be taken down. Very cool. Yeah, that's, I need to prick your brain about that because I too
am writing, I'm possibly writing a book. I can't speak too much about it. I can't,
I can't write, I can't speak too much about it, but I need to understand how you do it because
Yeah, I can help you with that.
Writing a book, so it's like we're talking about goal setting books are even easier.
So happy to help you there.
The next company is an insurance company that I wanted to start in 2022.
We just got licensed like two days ago.
So we're probably going to have that thing up and running by 2023.
So I want to hire a couple insurance agents.
I want to buy a couple books of business to sort of get the business started.
And I want to incorporate a marketing plan that will include the insurance company with the other businesses I have.
That's my goals for that company.
Okay, cool.
Cool. And so have you, you've laid out the goals, have you taken, you said it might be launching in 20203. So does that mean that you have actually started taking small goals to get there?
Yeah. So those small goals look like get licensed in the states we have to be. Find the, and I don't know what you call them, maybe like just your partner that's going to get you connected with all the carriers for different insurance. It's highly regulated. It's like trying to run in sand trying to get this thing. Anyone who's insurance understands what I'm talking about. We're working on branding.
And names, like so it takes forever just to get the up andy up regulators to say, yes, you can use this
name for your insurance company.
Once we have the name picked out, we can work on the branding.
Once we have the branding, we can work on the service.
When you have the service, you can work on the marketing.
You have the marketing.
You can work on actually tracking the revenue.
So that is, it's just a slow process.
And that's why I'm saying, once it's up and running, I'm probably just going to invest some
money into buying a book of business so that I can get existing revenue going.
I can use that revenue to then hire the new insurance agents I need to help sell.
And then you've got a legit company that can actually make progress earning income.
Nice, nice.
Okay, cool.
So you have that.
We have wire framed out an insurance company.
We are way more in the beginning stages than that.
So that's tough, man.
That's cool.
I have a lot of respect for you that you're able to really, you're so good at business
development.
And that's such a good skill to have because then that means when you have an idea for
a company, you basically know,
how to attack, you know, launching it.
It's actually a program I'm thinking about putting together in
2023 would be something that would teach people how to start a business.
It doesn't have to be a huge freaking like Fortune 500 company.
But you want to start a construction company or a pool cleaning company or a landscaping company
or an insurance or a loan up, whatever it is, how you take a skill of doing a thing
and convert that into a business that you hire a couple people, those components.
Because I've done it enough times now that I've started to recognize the patterns
and how it works. Very similar to buying real estate long distance, you start to recognize patterns
and the pieces that you need, which became that book. Yeah, and you're good at it. So that makes sense.
Sign me up. Thank you for your compliments, because I don't ever feel good. I feel like I suck
every single day, and it's very frustrating. So this is a bit therapeutic for me, Robbie.
No, to everyone listening at home, you're like, you're everyone's hero. So, and you're,
you're my hero, David. Thank you for that. I should probably make growing a cloth be one of my goals.
It would be funny if we did that together. Who is it? Somebody sent you.
a picture of us. They molded our basically faces into one, which was awesome. Do you remember who
that was? Can we give him a shout out? Okay, yeah, I looked it up. His name is Edward Morden.
And I'll try to time it to where when this podcast goes live, I'll post it on my on my Instagram
and you can repost it. It's really good. Good looking out, Edward. That was a very funny picture.
All right. My last set of goals are personal goals. And those are I'd like to do quarterly paid speaking
engagement. So I need somebody who has experienced booking speakers to speak at different events.
I want to be doing like I'd love it if ideally I wouldn't spoke some more every month, but
I don't have the infrastructure in place to get a person that would book me at those events.
I would like to hire an employee for property management.
That's a huge one, like looking for a full-time person that their job is to work for me
and manage my short term rentals in different states.
But having a very hard time.
I appreciate Rob.
You sent us over a couple of people.
Just everybody is sort of like, well, I thought we were going to start a business together
or I don't want a full-time job.
I do it on my own.
Like finding that person who says, oh, no.
I know how short-term rentals work and I want to make a hundred grand a year.
Managing these for somebody else has just been tricky.
But I know once I have that person, I can really scale how many short-term rentals I buy.
Oh, that's right.
Man, host campers, they provide, my friend.
We'll get you set up.
If you're a host camper, let us know if you're looking for a full-time job.
Other personal goals are to work out three times a week to do BJJ,
Brazilian Jitsu twice a week, minimum, and to build at least one additional recording studio
like this one, because what I'd love is to have another place I can
stay at during the winter months when California is cold and not that much fun, that I can travel
to somewhere warm without having to record for my laptop. Because like I said, my vision goal
is to continue BiggerPockets being the best real estate podcasts in the world. So you can't be having
subpar performances every time you travel. Well, hey, on that note, Bigger Pockets just had this in
October. We had the most downloads ever as a podcast. So I think we are the best real estate podcast.
But we got to work to maintain that, right? Once you get a six pack, it doesn't stay there.
got to keep working. So if I want to be able to travel and I want the show to be good, I got to
invest money in finding a property and building a studio in one of the rooms of that property. So that's
another one of my personal goals. Sure. That's it. That's it. We did it. Man.
I'm going to pitch to us. Hey, can we redo my part? I'm going to go right down everything like David
did. But this is, honestly, it's good because it's like, I think it shows two different mindsets,
or not two different minds, but two different minds. Like, we're very different people,
we're both kind of going towards the same thing.
So it's why I always like.
No, I see a world where our paths probably intersect years into the future where your skills
and my skills come together and many of our goals will probably align because we have two different
approaches, but they're very complimentary, right?
You've got this big vision that you want to see that isn't necessarily within the ecosystem
of helping clients, but putting conferences together, the programs that you're running,
continuing to grow your followers.
You're much better at that.
Like I barely hit 10,000 on my YouTube channel.
That's not something I'm good at.
I'm definitely probably, definitely probably is a dumb thing to say.
I don't know why I just did that.
But I think you know what I mean?
When it comes to the details of how you take what the goal is and you break it into
manageable, actual steps that you can take.
So I think you and I like that this is one of the reasons I like working with you, Rob,
is we have different approaches, but the same value system and a complementary synergy
between the two of us.
So that's another reason why you want to share your goals with other people, because
you come across other human beings that can help you with them,
that you can also help. You know, that's genuinely, that's probably going to be a, that's a,
I wish we had more time to talk about it, but that's so important, dude. Like a year ago,
I went and spoke at Cody Sanchez's conference. It was called Uncon. And I, I probably said this on
the podcast. I was in the green room with all the speakers and they were all millionaires and
billionaires and way more successful and smarter than me. And I was just like, oh my God,
and I felt like I leveled up several times just talking to people. And so you definitely want to find
people who are very different, very contrarian to you that are better, smarter, rich,
wealthier, because you can learn, you can evolve so many times. I feel like just since you and I
have met and become friends, I've evolved 10 times this year. I'm a completely different person
than I was whenever I met you. And it's just because I've really actively worked to surround
myself with people that have really cool, interesting ideas and really cool executions of those
ideas. Well, thank you for that, Rob. I appreciate that. I appreciate that.
the support there. Well, if people want to find out more about you and all your cool businesses
and your insane business development, where can people learn about you? Please look me up on social
media at David Green 24. I think TikTok, I'm official David Green 24, but everywhere else I'm
David Green 24. And YouTube just came out with handles and I was able to get the David Green 24
handle before some jerk got it and tried to sell it to me. So I'm very happy. I don't know exactly
how they work. I'll probably have to have Rob walk me through it, like because I'm an old man who doesn't
know how technology is, but right now it's a YouTube.com slash David Green real estate. But if you look up
the YouTube handle, it's David Green 24. Awesome, man. Have you looked into the handle thing yet? Yeah,
yeah. I locked up raw built. Thank you. Ad a baby. All right. One win for the people that aren't
out there grabbing other people stuff and trying to sell it to us. I know, because someone tried to sell me
rawbilt.com for 18 grand one time. And I was like, no. And now I'm kind of like, dang it.
They're basically like terrorists that are just like holding your own stuff hostage. They're technological
extortionists. Yeah, they steal the keys of your house and they make you buy it from them to get back in.
But hey, here's the good news. I was able to lock up Raw Built on YouTube. So if you want to find me on
YouTube, go to Rob Built. If you want to find me on Instagram, Robbilt, and then TikTok, you can find me
at Robbiltow. But nowhere else. Don't follow Robill Toe on Instagram with Robert's pictures because those are fake.
That's true. Yep. They are. Yeah. I heard Elon is trying to switch Twitter so that the blue check mark
is something you pay like $8 a month and it's much easier to get. It would be one to
if every other social media platform adopted that same method and they verified the majority of people
that were on there. I'd even pay like 10,000 bucks. I'd pay a lot of money so that people could know
you're actually talking to David, not some rip off of David. So really crossing my fingers that that model
changes. Yeah, same. I was like eight bucks. It's almost too easy, but I think I'm good with it. I'm happy
that it's obtainable now. Yeah. Maybe they can make like a purple checkmark that's more money if people's
Ego needs to be stroked. But the idea is we just don't want our followers getting taken advantage of
by people pretending to be us. Yeah. All right. Thank you for that, Rob. I appreciated you sharing
your goals. You've absolutely crushed the goals you had in the past. So way to go there. And
thank you for sharing the struggle with the audience. Any last words for we get you out of here?
No, I'm really excited for 2023. And you know what? 2022? I still got two months, man. I got a lot of
goals on my mind that I'm like, I'm going to do this just because I like a good sprint.
Right out, man. Well, thank you very much. We'll get you out of here. This is David Green for Rob,
leveling up faster than a Pokemon Abasolo. Sorry.
Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all
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