Deal structuring more than deal finding. That’s the key. Structuring is way more important than just deal finding. Everybody can find deal. Structuring, I want to say is a little bit of an art or at least persistence. Oh, here we go again. Don’t get discouraged by call it the failure. The failure is something didn’t work out as planned. It took two months to rent it out another month. Someone can consider it as a failure. It’s not a failure. It’s part of ownership. The beginner success is getting through crossing that bridge over and buying your rent first rental. That is a success. The second success is that after a year of ownership, you see that the devil is not so devil as you may think. Yes, you’ve encountered issues, encountered problems, but all of a sudden you see it’s manageable.

Welcome to the Real Estate Masters Podcast, where we bring you the top real estate investors in the country. If you also want to be in the top 1%, you are in the right place. Listening to podcasts like this is exactly what helped me to scale my real estate investing business to seven figures, flip over a thousand houses and more importantly, step out of daily operations of my business over a decade ago so I could start and grow other businesses. So get ready to learn from the best and start building a business that works for you and not the other way around. Enjoy.

What’s going on guys, Danny? Thank you so much for coming on. I know you’ve been in the business for a long time. 22 years. If there was one thing that you could attribute to your success in the real estate space for that long, what would that one thing be?

Man, hey, nice. Thank you for having me and right on the start. Amazing. Gladly. It’s a tough one. It’s a tough one, but I think that persistence or continuing, that is the main thing that I think that is super important that I see people, I don’t want to say give up, but they’ll let the situate. Real estate has a lot of moving parts. When you have a lot of moving parts, sometimes it actually takes for the real estate itself to manifest successfully. Like you can invest and it looks, okay, it was a nice deal. I have so many of those deals that I’ve done. I’m like, they’re okay, but after seven years, oh my God, it blows up. But I really need to be patient during those seven years. Not necessarily that it was bad for seven years, but it wasn’t performing its most or its abilities. And after five years, seven years, all of a sudden it kind of doubles in value all of a sudden, not all of a sudden, right? And rent goes up and all of a sudden this property that was a little bit challenging now becomes amazing. And I think that if you are persistence on not giving up, that helps. And if you are persistent in the sense that I see so many people, they buy one, maybe a second one and they kind of end maybe three instead of buying multiple properties and accumulating them. And so many times I hear from my own clients that I help them buy real estate, I should have bought more. I should have bought earlier. That’s so many times. It’s almost like, ah, here we go again. So why don’t buy more and sooner if you know others are saying it already, right?

Yeah, for sure. What brought you to real estate in the first place?

So I was in kind of the rat race. I was a young engineer in tech. I didn’t like what … It wasn’t bad, but I was bored. I was bored. My job wasn’t bad at all. Actually, there was a lot of perks, but I wasn’t challenging enough for me. And then I also started asking myself at the age of 24, 25, is this it? This is what’s going on. I’m going to work for the next 15, 20 years working hard and long hours because I know myself being this way. And in 15, 20 years, I’ll have one condo with a mortgage, maybe two. If I look at my parents, my cousins, my older cousins, parents, friends, that was the picture. I didn’t like that at all. I have no idea back then how to, even today, how to get rich quick kind of a methodology. That’s a special skill I think. Some people have it or get lucky. And I told myself, if I don’t know how to get rich quickly, I’m switching over and going after the, let me try and get rich slowly. So I don’t end up in 15, 20 years later or more with on piece of property with a mortgage or maybe if I’m lucky, two pieces of properties with a mortgage and it has very minimal financial impact on my life. So that’s kind of what really drove me to do something. And after taking some playing around, let’s just say for a year or two, maybe a year with stocks investing and options and not being very happy with the results, I kind of started shifting more towards experimenting or trying to see how one rental property would work and I fell in

Love. I love it. I love it. And then for the people listening, what does your business look like today?

So the business today, or my business, generally speaking, is primarily helping besides my own investment, helping others buy long-term rental properties, residential in multiple US metros. I’ve been doing this for many, many years, help many clients buy many properties and I still do that. But over the years, what I’ve tried to do more and more is to refine that niche. Nowadays more in the past two years, how do we get more into somewhat creative financing scenarios, something we didn’t do before, do more, do midterm rentals and Airbnbs a little bit, or a combination we call a hybrid of those combinations and not just long-term rentals, really trying to go after houses that have more equity. So it’s more of the same, but just trying to find more ways to milk rent or get more rent or get more equity or both out of the same scenario. So it’s exactly the same what I was doing for 20 years ago, just I call it with a twist, with a little twist, not crazy twist. I like boring real estate, nice houses in nice suburb cities, not good schools. I am not attracted to the lower end cash cow, old house in a tough neighborhood. That’s not my thing. But even within those, I call it the most boring type of real estate, there are ways how we can get a little bit more out of a certain deal. And I’ve bought many properties over the years at market value or around market value. And I’ll tell you a little secret, I want to say all of them, if I can say all of them, most of them, but probably all of them did very well because time was on our end or buying it at the right time. But just buying good house at market value, that’s an excellent proposition to begin with. If we can squeeze a litle bit more, maybe a little bit below market value, maybe a little bit more cash flow, maybe it needs a little bit more work like dated, not even a full gut rehab flipping, not even looking for that. I’m just making a very good starting point, a better one just by tweaking it a little bit, even tiny tweaks. You

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Why do you think so many investors don’t hold as many properties in the beginning? I feel like I’ve heard the same thing you hear. It’s, “I wish I bought more sooner, faster.” Why do you think it takes so long? And maybe it’s as simple as it sounds, but why do you think people will overlook that so much in the beginning?

When you deal with houses and tenants and you have issues, I promise you, you will have issues, right? Issues does not mean catastrophe one after another. It just means vacancy and maybe some eviction and maybe repair, not maybe those things will happen. And then if you work with the property manager, that’s another entity that has its own kind of wants and needs and whatever. And people are very focused, very, very focused on the little stuff and not seeing the big picture. And I want to maybe share with you a short story of one of my clients who bought, sorry, he was at the Bay Area firefighter. He bought 12 properties, this is before, I think even before the crash of 2008, maybe two, three years he bought 12 properties and he was calling 12 properties, 12 tenants, multiple property managers and he would call, I don’t want to say every week, but I would say twice a month and he would bitch and complain and upset about this and about an all correct, accurate situation. He was not just being difficult, but he was getting every little thing out of proportion, right? They told me it would cost 250 and it ended up 300. Oh my God, everything was crazy. But part of what we do is we support, we help, we help navigate those situations so we don’t just help them buy, but we help them support after the fact. And then so 12 houses, 12 tenants, 12, that generate calls, right? And that was going on probably for maybe a year or two or three and I was there and then one day quiet, quiet the guy kind of disappears and a very nice guy with all those difficultness. He was a very nice guy. And then I am giving a talk in San Diego, I want to say 10 years ago, maybe five years, seven years later and he shows up at my talk and he’s now in San Diego and he looks at me and I identify him immediately. says, “Do you remember me? ” I said, “Absolutely.” I remember his name, how can you not? Someone like this. And he said, “I got to tell you something, Danny, do you remember?” I used to call on every little thing back then and I’m like, “Yes, I do. ” And he says, “Well, I got to tell you something.” One day I woke up, I said, “This is part of owning real estate. This is the nature of the beast. I don’t have to love it, but it’s part of it. And if I’m focused on every little thing that can fail, I will be stressed out. ” And he was every day, every week with something else. The day that I kind of said, “Okay, let’s look at a big picture and not necessarily love those issues, but accept it as part of owning real estate and focus on the big picture and not be sucked into the, it’s take another week to rent the house or they told me they’re going to build it tomorrow and they took them two days to get there.” And those things will happen constantly, but whoever is focused on that will suffer. When you see the big picture and you see what real estate does to you and you may not see it immediately, but after maybe a year or two or three, like, okay, what has happened here in the past three years? Wow, even a small wow, people are like, “Okay, I get it again.” So he just grew up to that point and I have to admit, I really tried to get him to that point myself. I told him that repeatedly, but he was not ready to hear that. So that was not a surprise, but he was actually appreciative when we met in San Diego. And he actually thanked me for not throwing him out for being very … He said I was very obnoxious. That’s his words.

Where are you finding most of your properties when you’re buying, you said in multiple markets, how are you finding these properties to acquire?

Yeah. So I use local agents, vetted, trusted local agent with very long relationship. I have an agent. Most of the agents I work with are years of relationship in many, many properties and I have my own staff of analysts that also, and I do myself. So we look for in different places, but I will tell you, I would say most of our properties are on this place called, probably you’ve never heard of it. It’s called MLS and Marketplace and on market and there’s a lot on market and sometimes I think the real thing about finding property is not how to locate. Everybody can go on Zillow, Redfin, local MLS, find a property. It’s all about what you are seeing and how we can structure the deal a little bit differently. So it’s starting as a good one. Okay, now can I offer some sort of a financing, maybe be a little bit more aggressive with pricing, maybe engageency, maybe the seller wants to rent it back for short period or long period, all those little things that if we can turn it and make it as a benefit to the seller, not always we know what’s the pain point of the sellers, but if we find or try to navigate it or offer and be very engaging in the conversation, that’s where we’re able to turn it from, “Oh, here’s a property listed for sale that makes sense to, wow, now it’s a great deal.”

Yeah, for sure.

Deal structuring more than deal finding. That’s the key. Structuring is way more important than just deal finding. Everybody can find deal. Structuring, I want to say is a little bit of an art or at least persistence. Oh, here we go again.

Yeah. What separates top investors from everyone else in your experience? It’s

The same thing that I say. It’s keep going, keep doing. Don’t get discouraged by the … I call it the failure. The failure is something didn’t work out as planned. It took two months to rent it out another month. That’s someone who can consider it as a failure. It’s not a failure. It’s part of ownership. A few years ago, I gave a lecture here. I’m in Orange County. I gave a lecture, local lecture, and a lady came in and she was actually very honest and truthful. She said, “We were really burnt. We bought multiple properties and the crash of 2008, that was a few years after.” But she said, “The crash really burnt us and we lost and foreclosure.” And she was like, “I’m hesitated now to go back. I’m playing with the idea.” And I told her, “Listen, you are very privileged because you have been through a rough patch, way more than just a simple rough patch. Go back and use that. That is a benefit from you to correct your mistakes or the things that you done incorrectly and improve for the future. You can leverage that bad mistake moving forward, but you got to do that in order to advance and not say, Hey, I got hit and I’m out of the game. No, I got hit more than most of my investors, if not more than all of them. I’ve done many flips and then not many of them were successful. A bunch of them were far from it. I lost a lot of money. I got foreclosed houses during the crash of 2008. I have had constant issues with one of the houses with bad contractors. I’ve had it all. I’ve lost a lot of money. Every time it’s going back saying, okay, how am I avoiding this mistake that I just been through so it doesn’t happen again? And continue, continue, continue.

Yeah. When it comes to the word success, everyone’s got their own definition,

Their

Own way of measuring it and striving for it. How do you define the word success? How do you measure it and how do you strive for it every day?

So I think success is exactly what you said. Everybody will have a different definition, but I usually start with telling people the first stage of … Success is phases. I think the beginner success is getting through crossing that bridge over and buying your first rental. That is a success. The second success is that after a year of ownership, you see that the devil is not so devil as you may think. Yes, you’ve encountered issues, encountered problems, but all of a sudden you see it’s manageable. And then I actually start talking about more refined financial goals in order to achieve them cash flow-wise, equity-wise, long-term, short-term, all of those. And that’s where we actually break it down to everybody’s specific financial goal. But I found that when I work with investors, it’s very hard to talk to someone about multiple properties or financial goals or doing some creative deals financing or otherwise when they only can see, can I buy a good property and will it rent? They’re very stuck there and there is a period they need to go through in order to trust the system to see that it’s working. It’s not enough to buy. It’s about leasing. It’s not enough to just list it. You need to see that when their situations are coming up, it’s manageable and then to start collecting rent not for one or two months, but consistently comes in with all the issues. So that takes easily six months if everything moves quickly. And only then at that point someone says, “Okay, I think it’s working. I don’t know if it’s working. I think it’s working.” The first major milestone investors usually have, I call it the magical milestone. It’s the two year, the magical milestone, because I’ve seen it many, many times. The magical milestone is the two year, almost to the day when a person or a couple has one or two properties that they’ve had for about two years and they are able to see that it’s been two years of consistency, two years of issues, but they dealt with it, maybe two years of issues and they saw that when they needed help, we were actually there to tell them, as we promise, we were actually there to also deliver, maybe see some increase in value, maybe not a lot, but even a little bit. It was like, “Huh, so there’s increase in value. I see some cash flow. I’ve dealt with issues. Even Danny and Simply Do It, we’re there to support us.” Okay, that’s where the magical milestone is like they have an aha moment, I need more of that. They can really relate to how much the real estate did in their favor worked for them for the past two years and they actually then do the math and say, when I actually think about it, I did spend, over those two years, I probably spent an hour, let’s call it two hours a month on every property for the past 24 months, maybe two hours a month on average. And then they do the math. Well, I’ve accumulated this wealth and I only spent this much time, this much time and this much wealth. It’s almost like a no-brainer, but they have to get to that point. It’s never quick. I can tell them that they’re not going to buy it. They have to get there, feel it through their nervous system and they’re like, “Aha, we get it. ” And that’s an amazing milestone.

Of course, of course. I know you’ve been in the space for a long time, so I’m sure a lot of people, you are their mentor. Who has been the biggest influence or biggest mentor for you in this space?

That’s a tough one. I’ve looked over the years for someone that I can lean on. I’ve had a mentor many, many years ago for a year or two, but he was more on the business side. I will tell you that I came to two conclusions to respond to your excellent question. The first answer, I don’t have anyone specific. The more where I was able to find that, let’s call it support system is mentally I look at some people that I know well and I ask myself, what would they do here? And I do the opposite. I call it the negative role model. What I think someone would’ve done in a certain point, someone that I know and I’m like, okay, I think this is what he would’ve done. I go the other way. So I call it the negative. I think in life it’s really important to have not just a role model, but I call it a negative role model. The second thing that it’s really beneficial two years ago, I joined the local small business owner group. We meet once a month. There’s about 12-ish of us with more of a group leader, but the leader is more to make sure we are getting together and the conversation progresses. He’s not mentoring. He’s super nice guy. And it’s the same group once a month for about three and a half hours. We had it yesterday and the group is this. It’s very simple. I call it the shadow, my shadow board. You come in and you are expected to do two things. Bring your pain point, whatever their pain point, right? Share with the group because it’s the same people. There’s intimacy. We know each other, we know each other’s business. Share what’s your pain point right now. It can be as little as employee giving me a hard time. It can be something about my fees, about marketing, about sales, about operations, about HR. We’ve had everything and bring it up and we’ll put it on the board and everybody in the group starts asking questions to help refine what’s going on. And then once we’re done with the question, suggestions. Here’s what you should do. Here’s what you can do. That has been unbelievably powerful from people that have only mutual interest come and share and I’m expected to do the same. So I’m as a group member, someone else brings a pain point. I ask questions, I contribute to the conversation, you’re expected to contribute and benefit equally. It’s a very, very simple code, right? No sales, different businesses categories. I don’t have anybody in real estate there, really other businesses than mine, but the point is this is what we do. So every time I feel lonely at the top, so to speak, from the business and I can bring real estate related items as well. I bring it in. Those guys immediately, “Hey, did you think about this one? What about this? ” Or just by surfacing those things and getting asked those questions, that really helps refine whatever going on. The proces itself is helping to refinement. That has been super beneficial.

I’m sure hearing from other entrepreneurs in different areas, they’ll have different mindsets so they’ll have stuff that you would never think of that could work really well. So I’m sure that would be really … Is that EOS or is that a different group that you’re going through?

It’s a different group. It’s called SCORE SCORE. They’re more of a nonprofit backed by the small business administration somehow. So even the cost is very symbolic in a way and include lunch, but I was very skeptic. I thought maybe it’s cheap. I couldn’t care about the lunch, but maybe it is so valuable. I am talking to my peers in the business and the relationship that it’s been established over time, you can see it’s all about, “Hey, we are here for you now and what can we do to help you? ” And the same way, “I’m here for you now, what can I help you? ” And then usually when the session is done, we each go each way, we meet a month later, we do some updates and all over again. And it just works simple and works. Very powerful.

Yeah, I love it. If someone’s interested in learning more about what you’re doing or maybe someone’s interested in investing with you, where can they go to reach out to you? Where can they go to find you? If someone wants to reach out, where can they go?

Yeah. So I have an ultra persona online. It’s called Simply Do It. You can see it right here, I think. It’s just simply do it. That’s my company name, that’s my web identity. Anybody that writes Simply Do It Real Estate or Simply Do It Danny, you will get to our website, YouTube. I’m very good with putting information out there, but not exactly in a traditional podcast kind of interview kind of way like we’re doing, which I love. I’m more like, “Hey, let me tell you about the situation or let me teach you and let me educate you. ” I hope it comes across. I share a lot with what’s going on in real estate with what we’ve learned so people can just listen to the information out there and they can definitely reach out by looking up Simply Do It, landing on our Facebook page or our website and get in touch with us. Easy. Simply do it.

Awesome. Awesome. Danny, thank you so much for taking the time. Everyone, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time. Thank

You so much.