00:00
Dave Allred
The higher the emotion, the lower the intelligence. Raised over $50 million or so personally, and I’ve never once lost a single dollar of investor capital. I just want to have as much freedom I can possibly have my life to be doing what I want to be doing with the people I want to be doing it with, when I want to be doing it. I was 30 years old. How many years am I willing to commit to achieving true financial freedom? I said, okay, I’m gonna give myself 10 years. My goal became 40 by 40. So 40 rental properties by age 40. And I just got hyper focused on that man. Like my, all my passwords, my screensaver on my phone. Hit that goal when I was 36 years old.

00:33
Brad Weimert
What’s the framework that you use?

00:35
Dave Allred
How do you execute three things? One is.

00:41
Brad Weimert
Congrats on getting beyond a million. What got you here won’t always get you there. This is a podcast for entrepreneurs who want to reach beyond their seven figure business and scale to eight, nine and even ten figures. I’m Brad Weimert and as the founder of Easy Pay Direct, I have had the privilege to work with more than 30,000 businesses, allowing me to see the data behind what some of the most successful companies on the planet are doing differently. Join me each week as I dig in with experts in sales, marketing, operations, technology and wealth building and you’ll learn some of the specific tools, tactics and strategies that are working today in those multi million 8, 9 and 10 figure businesses. Life can get exciting beyond a million. Dave Allred, I am so glad you’re in town, man. It’s always good to see you.

01:24
Brad Weimert
Thanks for coming.

01:25
Dave Allred
So excited to be here, man. Let’s go.

01:27
Brad Weimert
Yeah. So you’re in town for Justin Donald’s lifestyle investor event? Yes, mutual friend. Great friend. Been on the show a couple times. I’ve wanted to talk to you. I’ve talked to you about a bunch of this a lot. But you have a very similar background to me in that you spent a lot of time knocking on doors. So you had 15 years of just door knocking. You ended up building a sales team with that company of a shitload of reps on you in offices and a shitload of states that you were covering. First million by 26, moved into real estate, a thousand doors, single family homes by 40 and now you have Axia partners where you’ve got 150 million that you’re managing and a bunch of investors.

02:09
Brad Weimert
So you’ve got a wide, a wild gap from like fully responsible direct sales to leveraging other people’s money. And much bigger real estate projects. I want to talk about all of it. Let me start with if you’re just getting into real estate, it sounds like you did single family homes. If you’re just getting into real estate, is it better to learn the single family home approach or to invest in somebody else’s project?

02:32
Dave Allred
Hey, that’s a great question. So what I would say on that is it really depends on what your outcome is. I think way too many times guys, they approach investments with just, you know, more a short sighted approach to it, where it’s more about fomo, it’s more about just what they’re excited about, right? It’s about a short term need. And what’s really served me well is getting crystal clear on what the outco is like, what’s the end goal of what you really want to accomplish, right? Whether that’s financial freedom from passive income, whether that’s tax mitigation, whether that’s equity appreciation, capital preservation, whatever that is.

03:04
Dave Allred
And then you reverse engineer that decision based on what’s in alignment with what you really want to achieve at the end of the day, for me personally, you know, I started out, I bought four town homes, short sale, bankruptcy situation, bought them for $100,000 each. And then about a year later, two years later they depreciated about $200,000 each. And so I then 1031 exchange, which is basically when you sell property and you just, you know, you transfer into another like kind property and there’s no tax issue there. And so I sold those four townhomes, kind of parlayed that into four plexes with no cash out of pocket, right. So that equity was a down payment. Two years later those had appreciated by about another quarter million dollars. So I sold each fourplex 1031 exchange into a total of 12 new fourplexes.

03:52
Dave Allred
So I was actually able to go from 4 units to 48 units with no cash out of pocket at all, just that equity. Right. Just keep kicking that down the road, keep parlaying that. And so that was really fun, man. And so I ended up eventually owning, I think it was 28 different fourplexes all across the western United States. And I really love the fourplex model. But then I, you know, one of my personal goals is I always want to do bigger deals than yesterday. And so from there it was a 20 plex and a 60 plex and you know, 237 units and Kansas, I just continue to keep going bigger and bigger on, on that. And so my you know, but if I started all over again, people ask all the time, okay, what would you do differently?

04:28
Dave Allred
I would actually not do any single family homes or town homes and just think bigger, go bigger. You know, the economy of scale with commercial, multifamily. So, you know, bigger units.

04:38
Brad Weimert
Apartment buildings.

04:39
Dave Allred
Yeah, apartment complexes, even fourplexes. You know, I think that’s a great place to get started. But in my opinion, you know, a single family home or a townhome, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense. I think most people just get into that space because they lack confidence or competence in how they. How they want to approach it. But if I. If I start all over again, I’ll just go. I just want to think bigger and go bigger out the gate versus kind of just stick my toes in the water.

05:04
Brad Weimert
I was talking to dk, who is a former NFL athlete, and Justin Donald last night, and he. They were talking about how deals get presented to. Specifically, they were talking about NFL athletes and deals get presented to them. And in the absence of other deals, they’re just assessing the one thing that was presented to them. And you open that by being. By saying, functionally, people are opportunistic, and they just sort of take what’s in front of them and try to figure it out. And if you’re strategic in your approach, you can make choices based on a different criteria of like, actually what you’re trying to get out of it. And I think on the front end, most people, when they get into real estate investment, are just trying to figure some shit out and make some money, right.

05:48
Brad Weimert
And they’re not really clear on any other criteria.

05:52
Dave Allred
You know, also one thing on that is I love this thought that the higher the emotion, the lower the intelligence. And so a lot of times people make investment decisions based on emotion, what they’re excited about. Right? But ultimately it’s not. That’s not the right way of doing it, man. It should be data driven. It should be, again, intentional based on what you’re really trying to accomplish. Reverse engineer into it. You know, for me personally, I get probably half a dozen deals sent to me on a daily basis. People know I have, you know, I’m a sponsor and I, you know, I love. I love deals. I’m kind of a deal junkie, honestly. So I’ve created this 12 investment criteria, and it’s 12 things are really important to me.

06:26
Dave Allred
So, Brad, you send me a deal, literally in the first minute, I can be like, okay, that’s a hard pass, or, all right, let’s spend Some more time looking into this further, but those 12 criteria are just lessons learned over the years. And, you know, one last thing I’d share, too, is I actually keep track of a spreadsheet of every single deal I’ve ever invested in, how much money went into it, what the ROI was, and then I put lessons learned next to it. And so I can go back on over 200 deals, have gone full cycle and say, okay, you know, great job, by having gotten a, you know, a personal guarantee or having an attorney pay for this or doing my due diligence or if I lost money on it, hey, I should have done this better.

07:02
Dave Allred
I should have, you know, had an attorney review the contract. I should have done this. Should have done this. And so for me, that really helps become a more sophisticated investor. And we all have blind spots, right? So it helps me to identify what those are, and I can improve on that in the future.

07:15
Brad Weimert
So what I heard was, this is how I like to say it. Your feelings have a structure and follow your structure.

07:21
Dave Allred
Yeah, exactly. Love it.

07:23
Brad Weimert
Yeah.

07:23
Dave Allred
I think it’s a good summary right there.

07:25
Brad Weimert
Well, I really. There’s a. I. I really like this idea of your feelings because when. When people say things like, how do you feel about that? Very often, you know, present Brad conflicts with past Brad, and when past Brad sets a goal, present Brad has different feelings. Feelings about what he should be doing in a given moment. Right. But future Brad is going to be happiest with past Brad’s plan being followed through on.

07:54
Dave Allred
That’s interesting, man. I’ve never. I’ve actually never thought of it that way. That’s. I love that one thing. I. The only thing I would maybe kind of kick back on that is I think that the immediate decision, you know, the current Brad, the current Dave today shouldn’t be a lot of motion. But were thinking about that. That. That end game, like, what you really want to create in your life, right. That in that situation, I think it’s really important to get emotional and get excited about. Like, for me, I’m a core motivator for Dave Allred is freedom. Like, I just want to have as much freedom I can possibly have my life to be doing what I want to be doing with the people I want to be doing it with, when I want to be doing it. Right.

08:29
Dave Allred
Just a ton of freedom and that. And for me, that really fires me up, man. It gives me passion. It gets me. I’m very passionate about it. And so that. Identifying that motivator and really leaning into it and Thinking about in the future how, you know, passive income and real estate and everything I’m trying to build in my career right now in my life, how that’s going to serve me with more freedom later on in my life.

08:49
Brad Weimert
Yeah, that.

08:49
Dave Allred
That actually gets me fired up, man. So I think emotion’s great when it’s looking down the road.

08:53
Brad Weimert
Yeah.

08:54
Dave Allred
But then you reverse engineer that more based on your habits. Right. And what you’re actually going to be doing on a daily basis without the emotion.

09:01
Brad Weimert
Yeah, I like that. It’s an important distinction. I, it would not be the first, second or third time somebody has called me a robot, but I think that on the front end, when you’re sort of building a vision and deciding what you want to do, what you want your life to be like, what, how you want to spend your time, or what kind of investment you want to be in, there’s lots of room for emotion and feeling. But when it gets to execution, there you go. Very. Or assessment of like deal criteria, but specifically execution, emotion gets in the way of taking the steps that you should be taking. And specifically when you talk about discipline and just maintaining the path. And so people do that.

09:38
Brad Weimert
And I think what I heard you said, say relative to deal investment is people do that all the time. When a friend is excited about a deal or a community, you know, is excited about a deal and they’re all moving with it, and that’s exactly the time to stop, mute your emotions and put your pragmatic, logical cap on and say, does it meet these criteria?

10:02
Dave Allred
So true. You know, I’ve. I’m really proud of my track record investing. I think I have. I mean, it’s a little less than, you know, out of 200 something deals have gone full cycle, less than 10 times have I lost money. And when I look back and reflect on that, six of those were all because I just jumped into. Because the rest of my peer group were doing it or as part of a mastermind or whatever else. And so I call it tethered due diligence. I was like, okay, well, these guys are smart. You know, this guy’s a great investor. He’s doing it. And so then I skipped over my personal investment criterion and I just felt good about it because my buddies were doing it, had a little bit of FOMO probably, and I just, yeah, everybody’s doing it.

10:38
Dave Allred
So I jumped into it. Right. And so I skipped some of those, the process. And yeah, lessons learned, man. Like, that’s. That. Those are my worst Investments. Not to mention it’s always food and beverage. I don’t know why restaurants, man. Like I got to stay in my lane with real estate because every time I kind of venture out of that, whether that’s, you know, some crypto, you know, IPOs, or. Anyway, I can go on the list, but we’ll look another day.

11:00
Brad Weimert
In simplest terms, restaurants and bars. Well, I’ll just stick with restaurants. In simplest terms, restaurants are the worst investments ever. They have expiring goods, they’re heavy on low paid people, and they are reliant on reputation and trends. Like is it a trendy restaurant or not? Those are horrible things to have in your investments, right? If you can eliminate expiring goods, great. You could eliminate a shitload of people that aren’t paid very well. Great. And if you can eliminate this like, is it popular or not in the moment thing, you’re going to be way ahead of the game.

11:34
Dave Allred
I agree, man. Warren Buffett says it at the very best, right? He’s got two rules for investing. Rule number one, don’t lose your money. Rule number two, don’t forget rule number one. Right? And so, and that’s why I love real estate so much. You know, real estate’s one of those things. It’s a hard asset, it creates real value, it’s consistent cash flow. It’s got great tax benefits. You know, one thing I love to share all the time is, you know, there’s really five. I’ve been, I’ve done real estate for about 20, over 20 years now. And what I love about real estate, Brad, is there’s really five wealth drivers in real estate. So one is cash flow, which is my favorite, that consistent mailbox money. And that’s really the dry powder to create financial freedom.

12:13
Dave Allred
And to me, financial freedom means you have enough reoccurring passive income to where you have to trade your time for money, right? You’ve got your cost of living covered. And so cash flow number one, the number two wealth driver of real estate is appreciation. So naturally it’s appreciating with time. Number three is depreciation, which is the tax benefits, which are incredible. I mean, that’s one of the most overlooked parts of real estate is you can mitigate so much of your tax liability through real estate and depreciation. Number four is principal pay down. So every single month, your tenants are basically paying you rent and that’s paying down your principal on your mortgage, and that’s creating real wealth. And then number five is leverage.

12:49
Dave Allred
The ability to, you know, for every $1 I put in, I’m taking, you know, two, three, four dollars from a lender and then just maximizing my returns through leverage. So those five different components have been really powerful. The more I’ve understood that over the last 20 years. And I got to say, also, like, what I love about real estate, man, is I’ve raised over, I don’t know, $50 million or so personally. And, and I’ve never once lost a single dollar of investor capital in any real estate deal I’ve ever done in the last, I mean, since I got started about, again 20 years ago. And so, I mean, there’s no way I could say that if I was doing food and beverage, you know, a lot of other crypto, whatever else. Right. And I love a lot of other investments.

13:26
Dave Allred
But real estate for me is, that’s why I love it. It’s called asymmetrical risk return. Yeah, right. It’s how do you mitigate the downside risk but still create a really strong yield?

13:34
Brad Weimert
Yeah, no, I love that. As you know, I think I’m heavy in real estate. Big fan. I want to talk about, I don’t spend a lot of time talking about sort of the transition of early business stages into current day on this show in particular. But your transition is particularly interesting to me because I also grew up in aggressive sales. So you were working in door to door sales forever. I want to talk about that a little bit and kind of how you got into it and talk about the transition. But first and foremost, what were you selling? How’d you get into it? Why were you doing it in the first place?

14:09
Dave Allred
Yeah, so I grew up in a very low income home, you know, broken home, very dysfunctional. It’s a whole story there. Ran away when I was 17. My little brother ran away, moved in with me, got emancipated. And so it’s just me, my brother, just, you know, not trying to thrive, but just survive, man. Just, just grinding every day, living off of ramen noodles and fast food and working graveyard shifts. And this house we lived in, man, it was like the most dilapidated house. The roof’s falling in there. Anyway, it’s a whole story there too. But. So I’m going to college and there’s a recruiting booth set up to go knock doors.

14:44
Brad Weimert
Why were you going to college? So like, you moved out, did you? And we’re similar age, so college was sort of pushed on me or on, I think our generation in general. Did you feel a need to go to college because you, like you said, you were trying to get by. You got out at 17, lived in a shithole house.

14:59
Dave Allred
Yeah. So here’s the honest answer, man. I. Nobody in my family had gone to college. There’s no expectation there at all. And frankly, I couldn’t really afford it. But I had this burning desire, man, as a kid going through all this, you know, this trauma, this situation, that I was going to do whatever it took to change the game and reset the standard. And I had no idea what that looked like, but I was going to be the one to just. I knew I was better than the situation that I was in, and I was going to do whatever it took to make sure that happened. You know, Jerry Rice has one of my favorite quotes. I actually had a bunch of posters up in my bedroom, had some Lamborghinis. I had a. I think it was a Baywatch, like Pamela Anderson poster, right?

15:39
Dave Allred
And then Cindy Crawford, some of your older listeners, right? Little mole on the, you know, of course, you know, Cindy Crawford, man. And then my favorite athlete was Jerry Rice and had a poster of him. And, you know, at the bottom it has one of his quotes, which is, I will do today what others won’t, so that tomorrow I can have the life that others can’t. And that really just kind of stuck with me, man. I was like, okay, I’m gonna do whatever it takes to break out of this. And, you know, Ed Mylett, you know, love his take on this. And it’s like there’s always the one in every few generations, there’s the one person that comes along and they reset the standard for everything. They change the game in terms of impact, success, happiness, just legacy, right?

16:19
Dave Allred
And so that’s really resonated with me. I’ve kind of committed to being the one for my family, to change everything for my kids, my posterity. And so, you know, to me, college made sense. It was like, okay, I’m going to break out of this. This rut that I’m in right now. And so I jumped into it and, you know, I even left on a two year service mission to Peru, went out to Peru for two years. Because, you know, frankly, it was. It was all my friends were, you know, getting into knocking up their girlfriends, getting into drugs, like just. Just a downward trajectory. And I just knew that was going to be really hard to go and do some of these things, but I felt like it was going to serve me in the long. In the long run.

16:54
Dave Allred
And so I just jumped into it, man. Now what’s interesting. I’ve got four kids now today, and it’s like, you know, do I really want to encourage them to go to college? And that’s a whole nother and that’s a big topic. But yeah, you know, frankly speaking, I feel like I learned way more going out and knocking doors and having a 15 year leadership career, right? Managing 121 sales teams in 41 states, thousands of salespeople. I mean, that’s where the rubber meets the road, right? It’s real world. You’re out there cold contacting, knocking on a door, trying to get in the house, sell contract, get a same day installation. That’s a lot of work. I mean, that’s a hard way to make a dollar.

17:27
Brad Weimert
Well, so that’s the question. Now that you’ve made a shitload of money. It had nothing to do with your college education. You now have four girls. Are you going to encourage them to.

17:36
Dave Allred
Go to college if they want to specialize in, you know, be a lawyer and an engineer or whatever else? Absolutely. Right. Otherwise I don’t see there being a lot of value in it nowadays. I really don’t, man. What I am instead of that, what I am doing, Brad, is all four of my children. It’s three girls, one boy. They, they all own real estate with me. So they’ll invest, you know, every year.

17:59
Brad Weimert
Oh, shit. Do they? How’d you structure that?

18:01
Dave Allred
So it’s a JV joint venture and they can bring in whatever the amount of capital that they have. And then I pay them, you know, the cash flow on it, call it 10 to 15% cash on cash. And then the equity’s appreciating in the deal as well. But it’s just a simple kind of a side letter JV agreement with each one of them.

18:18
Brad Weimert
And so for clarity, your girls are young.

18:20
Dave Allred
Yeah. 10, 13, 16, and 19.

18:24
Brad Weimert
Oh, Jesus. You have a 19 year old?

18:26
Dave Allred
Yeah, bro, I know, man. Is that crazy?

18:27
Brad Weimert
It’s always crazy to me when my friends have like adult kids. Nothing in 19 year olds, really.

18:32
Dave Allred
Bro. Bro, no, it still, it trips me out, man. Still. I got an adult out in the world right now.

18:37
Brad Weimert
I’m gonna have a bunch offended 19 year olds now because I said they’re not adults. I thought I was an adult when I was 18. Yeah, I don’t even. I’m, I barely feel like an adult now. Now I feel like I’m adulting pretty hard. But like, I think when I was 35, I still didn’t feel like an adult, dude.

18:50
Dave Allred
I still feel like, I don’t feel like I’m adult. I don’t feel like I should have an adult in the world, man. It really does, it kind of trips me up. But, but so every Sunday, the first Sunday of each month, we sit down, we measure their passive income and they’re all super competitive. It’s like on a little scoreboard on how everybody’s doing on their passive income right now. So that’s been really fun. And then additionally last year I challenged all four of my kids to start their own businesses. And so all four of them as entrepreneurs lost their own businesses. My little girl, she’s 10, she started a tree, a freeze dried candy business and she’s crushing it. Knocking doors, goes out and just sells little bags of candy.

19:23
Dave Allred
My son started a vending machine business, so multiple locations around Utah and he wants to scale that. My older girls, they started a consignment business and a couple different malls. They scaled their third location last month. And so, but I gotta say, man, as a dad, like, nothing more badass than seeing your kids be entrepreneurs, learn. And just that progression that comes from being a, you know, a business person, it’s been really fun for me.

19:47
Brad Weimert
Sorry, I thought you had four girls. You have three girls and a boy.

19:50
Dave Allred
Yeah.

19:50
Brad Weimert
How do you, how do you think about that from a family structure perspective? How do you carve out time to do that? What’s the framework that you use? How do you think about encouraging them to start businesses, to invest in real estate?

20:04
Dave Allred
How do you execute three things? One is you got to make it fun and like, and they say I’m so passionate about passive income and real estate that I think they just kind of pick up on that to begin with. But we talk about it a lot, man. We play, you know, like Robert Kiyosaki has a board game called Cash Flow Teach. It’s kind of Monopoly, but it’s all about, you know, rental properties and passive income. But just talking a lot about it, kind of gamifying it when they’re younger. And that’s really important. So it’s not too serious. But. And then the second thing I would say is what I did was I have an amazing executive assistant and so I actually tied her KPIs for the year.

20:39
Dave Allred
Her bonus to helping my children take all four of those business to being cash flow positive. So that was pretty cool. The third one is, I call it the 108010 principle. So I’ll help out with the first 10% of helping put together a business plan, whatever else, the next 80%, kind of heavy lifting, it’s on them, or if they want to help, have my assistant help them out with that. Then the last 10% I’ll jump back in and help out with just kind of, you know, making sure everything’s polished and looks really good. So the 1080, 10 principle has been a great way from a time management perspective because I’ve got my own businesses, right. I’ve got a lot of different things going on, so I don’t have time to jump in the minutia of these little businesses.

21:13
Dave Allred
And so that’s been a really powerful way of doing it. And then the last one is just really recognizing a man and just giving a lot of, I mean, just I’m so proud of him. Right. And so talking about that and now they’re actually like collaborating where the vending machines are going to put, you know, my 10 year old’s candy in the vending machine and then my girls in their consignment businesses in the mall, they’re now putting the candy in there too. So there’s like this cross pollination between the different businesses. So anyway, man, super proud of them. It’s been fun.

21:40
Brad Weimert
Do you, do you specifically carve out time in your family time to talk about the businesses? Does it feel more organic at this point? Is it like dinner talk or weekend talk or do you have workshops?

21:51
Dave Allred
Like every Sunday we sit down for 15 minutes with each one of them. So it’s a one hour commitment every Sunday. Just kind of get a recap on what they need help with, what they’re excited about. But then also I created the Allred Family Foundation. I want to teach them to give back and that, you know, living is giving and the more you give, the more you live. And. And so we created the family foundation. So each one of my four kids are on the board of directors and they choose whatever charity they want to support. And then 10% of whatever they earn goes into the family foundation is paid out to these different charitable organizations. So it’s been kind of fun.

22:24
Brad Weimert
Yeah, dude, that’s awesome. I love that. Okay, so the roots of this were knocking on doors.

22:30
Dave Allred
Yeah.

22:30
Brad Weimert
How’d you find?

22:32
Dave Allred
We want a tangent there.

22:32
Brad Weimert
That’s great, man. I think, dude, I think the architecting the entrepreneurship journey for your kids is phenomenally important because without it, I think today it’s much more popularized to go down the path of doing your own thing, whether it’s being a solopreneur or actually an entrepreneur. It’s just a much more not only accepted but known path than it was when were growing up. But for us, we got into. Were you commission only direct sales? Yeah, 100 commission only sales. Knocking on doors. Eat what you kill. Was there. Most people are afraid to do that. Most parents detour their kids from doing that because almost everybody fails at it. Yeah. Would you trade that experience for anything?

23:19
Dave Allred
No, no. It changed my life, man. It was, it was so formative for me. So I went out to Chicago and I knew it was going to be hard. Like I 100% knew it was going to be challenging, but went out to Chicago, which is like the exact opposite of where I grew up in Utah. Right. It’s like small little town. And also I’m in Chicago and did 80, 85% of our team quit by the end of, by the middle of the summertime. One of my roommates actually got shot. Somebody sniped him in the leg with a.22 caliber. Just knocking, you know. So at that point then everybody quit. Besides, there are four of us.

23:52
Brad Weimert
Hold on, hold on. So you knocked on a door or he knocked on a door and somebody shot him?

23:56
Dave Allred
Well, supposedly he said something to kind of pissed off a homeowner. Then he’s walking away, walk down the street. And so they took a small caliber rifle and shot him in the left calf. And so it’s Chicago, man. It’s a pretty crazy time. So, yeah, so I thought about quitting and frankly I thought about quitting every day. I mean, probably every hour. It was such a hard, challenging job. But I stuck through and I finished really strong. I ended up making $31,000, which to this day was the most life changing money I’ve ever made. It’s more than my parents ever made. It was more than I had like limiting belief systems, right. And I thought that was a lot. The next year I came back as a sales manager, made $157,000, which broke all these limiting beliefs, right.

24:43
Dave Allred
Like if you asked me as a kid, like if I played all my cards right and, and everything worked out perfectly, I’d be like, best case scenario, maybe I can make $100,000 in a year. Right. And so it’s kind of how I grew up and you know, the environment that I was in. And so making that was incredible, man. I came back the over a quarter million and then next year over a half million and then over a million and it started to grow this and parlay it and so, but I look back in hindsight, if I would have quit, like almost everybody did, it would have completely changed the trajectory of my life. And so I’m so grateful for having the foresight to be able to stay there.

25:17
Dave Allred
And I think what really helped me, Brad, was I realized, hey, this is really challenging. But, you know, when you do hard things, that’s where personal growth comes from. I knew I was going to become better. And it’s all those soft skills too. It’s the communication, it’s the. It’s the mental fortitude, it’s the psychology. It’s those all these little soft skills that you learned along the way. They really, you know, even today running a real estate firm, a lot of those same skill sets are very relevant to what I do today.

25:42
Brad Weimert
I feel the same way about Vector Marketing and Cutco. Like it was the foundation of not only business in my life, but basically everything in my life because it taught me how to effectively communicate with people. It taught me ownership of my outcomes, taught me how to schedule, taught me why relationships were of value. I mean, everything. It was a huge foundational thing for me.

26:04
Dave Allred
Leadership. Leadership, I’d say, is probably the most valuable.

26:07
Brad Weimert
Well, you’re in management, so you learned leadership through that process. Right? And I learned some version of leadership as being a. Like a top salesperson, but it’s very different than going through the management path. Right. So like Justin Donald went down the management path in Vector, in Cutco. And so that was a big thing for him. For me, I had to fall on my fucking face quite a bit to be any, you know, any sort of mediocre manager in the first place. And now I’m navigating through that. But. But yeah, definitely. So you got that from direct sales. How did that move into real estate? At what point?

26:40
Brad Weimert
Because I think that these moments are really important not only for sort of the W2 community, you know, the employee community that’s trying to move to the next thing, but I think it’s also really important for business owners that are looking at the next thing, whether it’s an investment or it’s the next venture. How did you look at the jump into diving into real estate?

27:00
Dave Allred
Yeah, that’s a great question. So I think it’s my. Very valuable for your listeners. For me personally, like, I never enjoyed knocking doors. It was always a means to an end. And so for me it was. And this is really what separated me from most of my peer group was I was aggressively taking that active income that I was making from Commissions and deploying that into passive income real estate. And I started doing that early on. I went to my CPA after that first. Sorry. That second year made 157,000, and I went to my CPA. I’m like, hey, what are all your wealthy clients doing to help mitigate taxes? Right? And because I feel like I was wealthy. And he’s like, well, they’re either buying businesses or buying real estate. I was like, okay, real estate sounds cool.

27:43
Dave Allred
I know nothing about it, but I’m going to become a student of the game of real estate. And so I just started soaking it all in, man. Getting proximity to guys that were doing it and trying to learn as much as I can. Read all the books on it. What’d you read? Rich dad, Poor dad, you know, Robert Kiyosaki is one of the best ones. The real estate bible was good. There was Joe Fairless, the apartments, the best ever apartment syndication book was big because eventually I started to raise money from other people and help, you know, bring them in, my friends, my family, whatnot into it. But kind of slowing down the story a little bit, though. So he’s like, real estate. So I go, okay, cool. And so I just started aggressively putting money into that.

28:23
Dave Allred
And most guys are buying, you know, new trucks, waverunners, new boats, new rims, like depreciating assets. And so I started getting this cash flow going, and I just kind of fell in love with this journey of just creating as much possible cash flow as possible. And I’ll never forget this. I sat down on a Sunday one time, and I was like, okay, I’ve been talking about passive income for a long time, financial freedom. But I want to actually commit to creating true financial freedom. So I spent four hours on a spreadsheet, and I came up with what I call the financial freedom equation. And it’s really simple. Share. So you basically just quantify what is your total cost of living. So all in car payments, gas, insurance, housing, whatever else. Right. So let’s, as an example, say it’s $200,000.

29:03
Dave Allred
The next line item on the spreadsheet is, well, how much passive income do I have right now? Let’s say you have 50,000 coming in from a townhome or some dividend stocks or whatever else. The next line item is, what’s the gap? So in that situation, it’s $150,000. And the next line item is, well, how many years am I willing to commit to achieving true financial freedom? And for me, I was 30 years old. I said, okay, I’m gonna give myself 10 years. And so then as a real estate guy, I’m like, okay, well how many rental properties do I need to have to be able to create that $200,000 of passive income? And the answer was 40 rental properties. And so my goal became 40 by 40. So 40 rental properties by age 40. And I just got hyper focused on that, man.

29:40
Dave Allred
Like my, all my passwords, you know, it was all 40 by 40. My screensaver on my phone, 40×40. And I just got super focused on them. And every Sunday I sit down and measure that and there’s real power in having something in writing like that. They say you’re 42% more likely to hit a goal if it’s in writing. But being able to go back and see those incremental improvements and the accountability was really powerful for me. Hit that goal when I was 36 years old.

30:02
Brad Weimert
Let me highlight that. So you said a couple things that I think are dope, which are you made your passwords things related to your goals. You had it on your screensaver, you put it around. And I think that the, one of the easiest ways to fall out of focus and lose track of where you’re at is just by not seeing it. And one of the easiest things you can do to stay in focus is make sure you see your fucking goals everywhere. And it seems cliche and it seems silly, but like any little area of your life where you can draw your goal back into focus, even if it’s for a second, will snap you back into grid in some capacity.

30:36
Dave Allred
A hundred percent.

30:37
Brad Weimert
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31:08
Dave Allred
I actually create something called lifestyle design and it’s my own personal template with 10 different areas in my life that I want to be great at and live with no regret, purpose and impact. So, you know, it’s my finances, my health, my family, businesses, experiences, spiritual relationships. And so these 10 different areas all in writing, very clearly defined on what today I’ve already, what a life well lived with no regrets. Looks like. And that’s been great, man. It’s kind of like a North Star for me in writing. And. And it’s a. It’s. It an evolving document where I’m always going back and changing it and adjusting as I personally grow. But that’s been awesome, man. I even made a youth version. It’s available on my website as well as a free download. But all my kids went through that this last year.

31:51
Dave Allred
And so they have in writing, 10 areas of their life, how they want to make a difference and how they want to live their life. So. Pretty. Pretty. I think it’s pretty badass, man, to go through that level of detail. But in writing, where you go back and reference up, I love that also.

32:05
Brad Weimert
I know that I hear that and some people hear that and they’re like, fuck, I’ve got so many things going on that seems like a pain in the ass, you know, like, okay, I’ll sit down and do the exercise. And some people sit down and do the exercise, then never fucking look at it again.

32:17
Dave Allred
Yeah.

32:18
Brad Weimert
And so part of that is that life is busy and there are a million things to do. And if that feels like work, how do you fit it in? And I can tell that you’re excited and passionate about it. And I know that I’ve done tons of things like that. And one of the reasons I just highlighted the importance of adding those little goals all over your life is because it feels effortless. Once you put those things in place, you just see the goals all over the place. So my question is relative to being hyper focused on a goal and saying, hey, I’m driving towards 40 by 40 or whatever your new goals are now, because now you’re an old man. Jokes. But older than 40, you’re hyper focused on a goal.

32:57
Brad Weimert
Where do you find time to play and where does play fit into the picture?

33:00
Dave Allred
You know, what’s funny is I was just going to go into that. I think that adventure is really important to me. Right. So I mentioned freedom is like a core motivator for me. But I think it’s also really important that you get a lot of adventure in there. Right. So it’s more. I mean, that’s what life’s all about. It’s about the experience, you know, if you ask me, like on my deathbed, when I look back at my life, because I’ve thought a lot about, you know, what’s important, like the purpose. In North Star, it really comes down to three things that are most important to Dave already. So it’s relationships, experiences, and memories. You know, my, I lost my mom about five years ago completely unexpectedly. It was a, a really hard, it was a whole other story, but.

33:38
Dave Allred
And then my dad has Parkinson’s disease about 10 years in, which is chronic and degenerative. And you know, it’s really, it’s been really hard. And so it makes me think a lot about, okay, what’s, you know, what do I want my life legacy to be and how can I create more impact right now and make sure I’m living in alignment with what’s truly important to me personally? And so that, that’s really kind of what’s made me focus so much on this specific topic. But you know, adventure, man. I’m a professional adventurer at heart. I, you know, I’ve been to 65 plus countries, you know, Mount Everest expedition, running with the bulls. I mean, just a long list of things. I think it’s really important that we’re always sprinkling in adventure along the way.

34:21
Dave Allred
I mean, that’s what really, you know, it not only keeps you feeling alive, but I think that it’s also, I mean, this is my personal experience. It’s about calculated risk business, you know, aggressive growth business is about calculated risk. So if I’m, you know, BASE jumping or skydiving or, you know, summiting a mountain or running with the bulls, you know, two years ago, like, that is very much calculated risk. And for me, that makes me feel alive, man, and it makes me feel it makes me look at risk differently and be okay with it and actually embrace it as long as it’s calculated. And so that’s kind of how I approach that. But yeah, man, I, I think it’s important. You know, one of the things in those, in that lifestyle design, the number 10 tab is actual, it’s experiences.

35:08
Dave Allred
And so I keep a running bucket list of all the cool shit I want to do. And my goal is to make sure I get at least two big things off that bucket list every single year.

35:17
Brad Weimert
Okay, got it. So I struggle with the notion of knowing that when I have a big goal, all time that I’m not spending towards that big goal could be pulling me further away from the big goal. Right. I have this thing in my head of is this getting me closer to or further away from the goal? So if you have a large goal that you’re working towards, 40 properties by 40 and you carve out a week or a weekend to do some adventure, how do you feel like, how do you feel like that ties into the goal, or do you feel like it’s just part of living a big life? Do you feel like it takes away from the goal?

35:58
Dave Allred
You know, I think that it kind of depends on the phase you’re at in life. You know, like, for me, when I was, you know, in my earlier, you know, 20s and 30s, it was just like, just grinding, doing whatever it takes. I got to break out of this, and I’ve got to go and pay the price. And, you know, I always say that the price of greatness is imbalance, right? You’ve got to be willing to have imbalance. But. But there’s also seasonality to that where sometimes you got to go launch a new business, you know, start a new sales team, a new venture, whatever that looks like a new family relationship, whatever. And so you’re going to be kind of all in on that one thing.

36:33
Dave Allred
But then you want to make sure that you then zoom out a little bit, and then you reinvest more into, you know, your personal health or spiritual or your finances. Right. So it’s more of a macro perspective, but I think there’s definitely these different periods and seasons where it’s. It, it. You should be imbalanced. You should be able to go all in on it, because that’s what it takes to actually be great at what you’re. What, what you want to do. And so that’s the first part of that answer. But I really do think that it’s. It’s more of a holistic, you know, truly winning is more of a holistic perspective, a360 perspective.

37:06
Dave Allred
Like, we all know people that are great health, you know, great fitness, but then, like, their finances are right, or they are very enlightened and spiritual, but they have no business experience whatsoever. Right? So really it’s. It’s about all 10 of those different categories coming together. And to me, that’s where you really get fulfillment and you really feel like you’re. You’re living your best version of. Of. Of yourself. Right? So that’s kind of my. My, my quick answer on that one. I would say that as you progress, though, what’s worked for me is what I learned a lot more recently is, well, there’s two things, actually. Sorry. So I hit that 40 by 40 goal when I was 36, and then instead of being comfortable, I’m like, okay, that’s cool. Now I can retire.

37:47
Dave Allred
It was all right, let’s reset that goal to a thousand doors by age 40. So I’m like, okay, I figured out a few things. I’ve got some knowledge here. I’ve got some confidence. So then I hit that goal when I was 40, and I was like, okay, well, what’s next? And it was, well, let’s go launch a real estate firm where we can go create value at that scale for thousands of investors and really make a dent in the universe. And so, like, for me, it’s always about progression. It’s always about that next level. It’s always about how do I find the best version of Dave Allred. And for me, I get a lot of energy from creation and from pushing myself and really just exploring what my potential really is and how much impact I can make. That’s very.

38:25
Dave Allred
Maybe that’s very unique to me, but that’s where I get my energy from. I feel the most alive when I’m really building. And frankly, when I’m a little uncomfortable, like, one of my goals in my life is always actually be a little bit uncomfortable. I feel like, you know, either growing or you’re. You’re dying. It’s just like in nature, everything’s either going up or down, right? There’s no such thing as coasting or stagnate. Stagnation. In fact, that really scares me. Like, the whole idea of retiring, to me sounds like the worst. The worst thing. Like, I don’t want anything to do with that.

38:55
Dave Allred
But what I am doing, Brad, now, is I’m trying to create more, More balance at this point in my life where I can actually prioritize my family, my kids, the things adventure, these bucket list items, and what’s worked for me a lot more recently has really been focusing on buying back my time. So I’ve taken about 25 different things in my life and delegated those and outsourced those. And that’s been awesome, man. Because now I can really prioritize just two things. My family and Axio Partners, my real estate firm. Anything and everything that I can delegate, I’ve been pushing that out as aggressively as I possibly can. I gotta give credit to Dan Martell, you know, his book Buy Back the Time. I know you’re good friends with him as well.

39:35
Dave Allred
And were hanging out in Kabul last year, and then we did the bald face, actually. Yeah, all three of us are up there hitting bald face every year. A few months ago, that was amazing.

39:44
Brad Weimert
I know. We actually ran into in the Salt Lake airport randomly.

39:48
Dave Allred
That’s right.

39:48
Brad Weimert
And you were like, oh, what are you doing here? And I was like, are you doing here? And you’re like, oh, I’m. I’m Going to this ski trip and blah, blah. And I was like, yeah, Martel’s. And you were like, yeah. And you’re like wait, are you going too? And I was like, yeah.

40:01
Dave Allred
Like you’re like yeah, I’ve been going every year for the last decade.

40:04
Brad Weimert
Yeah, yeah, no, great. So, so Dan Martell wrote a book called Buy Back youk Time. Great book. Dan’s. I mean a super impressive character. But so when you talk about buying back your time, this is a driver for you to be able to focus on other areas of your life that are important to you. And the, when we look at sort of alignment of goals, you mentioned adventure being one, you mentioned family being another. How much of an impact did Dan’s book have on this process and what are the things that you wanted to get off your plate immediately?

40:36
Dave Allred
I mean first and foremost was hiring an amazing executive assistant. I had one, but basically upgraded and that’s been, it’s moved the needle a ton. You know, I outsourced our yard maintenance, hired an estate manager, handyman, house cleaners in home, kids sports coaching. So instead of having to drive my wife drive them somewhere else, they come to us. Nutritionalist in home, phlebotomist to do like blood work draws every quarter for us. I’m kind of a, a closet biohacker.

41:10
Brad Weimert
Yeah.

41:10
Dave Allred
You know, I’ve been into that space for a couple years now. I actually love it. A chef or at least pre made meals that are delivered to your home for you. Concierge doctor service. That’s been really awesome where you literally never have to go to a doctor’s office. They, they come to you and you know, if you need a refill or prescription or whatever else, it’s just, it’s just done for you. A text message in home fitness training, a mobile DEXA scan comes to our, you know, our home once a quarter. An in home gym equipment in home massages. That’s been awesome. A travel coordinator. So instead of having to try to figure out your own vacations, they help you out with that as well. You know, mobile car detailing, all that kind of stuff.

41:48
Dave Allred
But AI then like a premium subscription to AI, that’s been a big, you know, saves a lot of time as well for me. And again, the executive system’s been amazing. So when I share that list, a lot of people be like that sounds very expensive. Right. And I mean, I guess it is, but Dan Martell talks about this concept of your average earning per hour. Right. So whatever that is, let’s say you make $100 an hour, and you divide that by four. So $25. Anything and everything that you can delegate for $25 an hour, you should do that, like 100% just delegate it. And what that does, it allows you to focus on your highest and best use of your time, which is usually where your highest earning potential is. Right.

42:27
Dave Allred
And so even though it’s going to cost you to delegate all this stuff, you’re actually, you should be making even more because you now are focusing on where you actually have your best earning opportunity.

42:37
Brad Weimert
Yeah, I love that. And so I’ll expand on that. First and foremost, you did quick math there. Quick math for anybody to figure this out. And not exact, but quick math is whatever you make per year, divide it by 2000 hours, and you get to your hourly rate. That’s easy math for not exact, but easy math. From there, the rationale that Dan gives is anything that is 25% of your hourly rate that you’re worth, you should be having other people do for you. That’s hard anyway, for some people to wrap their head around. And their lifestyle isn’t always set up to do that. I try to live that way in general. But the other thing that you said is you. You rattled off this list of just a ton of things.

43:16
Brad Weimert
The other really important realization is a lot of those things, there are varying ways to do it. So you talk about like a nutritionist. One path there is to hire a nutritionist. Another is just to invest a small amount of time to, or to invest in a person that creates a nutrition plan for you. Right. And then there’s a difference between a private chef or prepaid meal services. And prepaid meal services can be incredibly affordable. Right. But some of this is just investing the time on the front end or thinking through it on the front end to decide what you should take off your plate, what you shouldn’t. Is there a less expensive way or not? But if you never focused on it in the first place because you have this delusion that it’s out of reach, you certainly aren’t going to get there.

44:01
Dave Allred
100% agree with that man. And that’s why it’s taken me two years to get to this point. Is it’s more just like the mindset of asking yourself that question, you know, is, can I delegate this? Should I delegate it? And I would add one asterisk. Kind of a filter that I use is this question of does it give me energy? And if something gives me energy and I actually enjoy doing it, then maybe I don’t want to delegate that, even if I’m not making more money from doing that. Right. But I actually enjoy it. I get energy, I get, you know, purpose from it. And I’m gonna hold on to that one.

44:32
Brad Weimert
Yeah, I love that. The other one that I like to hold on to is am I going to learn from it in a way that will serve me later? And there are lots of things that I know long term I don’t want to be doing, or even maybe short term I don’t want to be doing, but I need to have the fundamental understanding of how to do it so that I have a good enough grip to apply it in other areas of my life later or delegate it effectively or whatever that pertains specifically in business. Like if you try to delegate out all things in business and you have no grip on sales, marketing, operations, technology, taxation is another one. If you don’t have any grip on those things, you don’t know who to trust and who not to trust.

45:06
Brad Weimert
So there’s some things that, like doing the exercise for a period of time gives you competence. Right. At least enough to be able to play the game.

45:14
Dave Allred
10, 10,000 hours concept. Right?

45:16
Brad Weimert
Well, that’s a whole other level.

45:18
Dave Allred
Right.

45:18
Brad Weimert
If you want to be the best at it. Yeah.

45:20
Dave Allred
Mastery.

45:21
Brad Weimert
Yeah. I love, I love those things in general for everybody, whether you’re like a W2 employee, you’re a solopreneur, you’re a entrepreneur, you’re an entrepreneur, you have a giant company. Those are that great framework for everybody. Let’s talk about the leveraged side of real estate. So you spent all this time learning single family homes and multif family, right. In small, multifamily fourplexes is what you started with or you mentioned in the beginning. You also mentioned that your general approach is to always learn, scale up, learn something new, do something bigger. The contrary approach, which I’ve seen people do incredibly well with, is keep doing the same boring over and over and over and just amass wealth that way. And you’re shaking your head when I said that because you’re like, I don’t want to do that.

46:08
Dave Allred
So short for that now.

46:10
Brad Weimert
Well, there you go. So that’s your answer, is life’s too short. I want to learn and grow and do something different. So you have the variety itch there. Why did you move into leveraged real estate? And what I mean by that is, why did you decide that you wanted to raise a fund and use other people’s money to invest in Real estate and keep less for yourself versus doing it independently and owning it all yourself.

46:30
Dave Allred
That’s a great question. Nobody’s ever asked me that before. A few reasons. Number one is one of my personal, you know, my mission statement is I want to create direct value for at least 10 million people and help at least a thousand other people become financially free through real estate. It’s just a, you know, a purpose statement. Actually made that at Tony Robbins Day with Destiny, you know, six days just going really deep on what’s important to you. And that was part of my mission statement. So I just realized I can create impact and value for a lot of people at scale with a fund structure versus my own personal deals or even syndications. Syndications is where you basically raise capital for just one deal and usually bringing in 10 to 20 people into the deal.

47:13
Dave Allred
Whereas on a fund, I can bring in hundreds and hundreds of investors in every single fund offering. And so that was a big part of it is just the skill. Number two is, you know, I mean, just honestly speaking, you know, I have limited resource, my own personal capital. And so if I’m always going to go buy out, buy more commercial real estate, I mean, you just, you run out of personal capital, right? So if I can use opm, other people’s money and do that much larger scale and create value for them, like, that’s where it really gets fun because you can go and do again. One of my mantras is always do bigger deals than yesterday. So I always want to be doing bigger deals.

47:48
Dave Allred
And it’s not just because of the profitability, but it’s also I’m going to be around other guys that are doing big deals. I’m going to have more personal development. I’m going to have more proximity to these guys that are actually really making a difference, moving the needle. And frankly, it’s where you get a little uncomfortable, right? Like a lot of times it’s like taking a big bite off of something and like, I don’t even know how I’m going to chew on it. I’m going to take the bite first. I’m going to chew on it. Example of that is my partners and I, we brought a topgolf into Utah county. And I’ll be honest, man, like that, I mean, that was like a five, your process. I always joke, this gray hair coming in, it’s from this topgolf deal.

48:22
Dave Allred
But, but it was actually incredible, man. It’s like it’s in our backyard and it’s, it’s a legacy. You Know, play and, but it was a big, big project. I, I, I actually didn’t really know exactly how were going to do it. I just, I, it felt right, it felt like it was in alignment and I knew I was going to get a lot of personal development and growth from that process. And so but now like, I feel so much more confident to be able to go and do a project of that scale. And so that’s a big part of it. Going back to your question, like, why did I, you know, why do a fund versus this?

48:53
Dave Allred
The other part of it is it’s really nice to be able to go into a competitive bid on an asset and be like, hey, we’re actually fully capitalized. We have proof of funds. We’re ready to close quickly. We closed on a few multifamily deals recently where we came in, we were well, well below the top offers. But because were well capitalizing, closed quickly, we still secured the deal. So which is great for investors. Another reason is the fact that a.

49:19
Brad Weimert
Lot of, let me double click on that for anybody that doesn’t do real estate all day, which is the parallel here is like if you go to buy a single family home, you’re trying to buy your home and five other people are trying to buy it also, it’s not necessarily the person that has the highest offer on that home. It’s, it’s all these other things. And the big one is if you can pay cash and you can close really quickly, that’s a more solid offer than the person that offers more. But it’s going to have to go get financing, the financing may fall through and then the person selling it doesn’t necessarily get to sell it.

49:50
Brad Weimert
So you go to a big multifamily deal and your fund, when you say fully capitalized, you just have a shitload of money sitting there and you’re just ready to buy it. And so you have much better leverage in those situations for negotiation.

50:00
Dave Allred
Nailed it. Exactly right. And then looking forward. So we’re actually launching a new fund, it’s called the AXI Distressed Opportunity Fund this week. And so this fund is going after distressed, like financially distressed multifamily, as well as destination RV parks. And so when it’s a distressed multifamily deal, meaning that like the bank’s taking over, it’s a short sale, you know, the current owner is underwater with their financing, we can come in and those are usually a really quick closing period. We don’t have 90 to 120 days. You got to close faster on that one. So being fully capitalized just allows us to be even more opportunistic and more aggressive in those acquisitions.

50:37
Brad Weimert
I love that. Well, look, I know that you’ve got to get to the airport, so I appreciate you carving out time, man. We’ll talk more, hopefully in the future on the show. We certainly will hang out more in the future. In the meantime, where do you want to point people?

50:51
Dave Allred
Pretty active on social media. So just Dave Allred, anyone? Any of the socials? I’m probably most active on Instagram. Our website is Axia Partners. Axia Partners. But yeah, man. I mean, just anywhere on the social. Socials.

51:07
Brad Weimert
Love it. Dave. Until next time, man.

51:09
Dave Allred
Thanks, Brad. Appreciate you.

51:11
Brad Weimert
That’s a wrap for today’s episode. Please subscribe and most importantly, leave us a review. It takes like 30 seconds and it makes such a big impact. It helps other people find us. Also, you might not know this. You can watch over 100 episodes of Beyond a Million with guests like Grant Cardone, Wes Watson, and neil [email protected].