227: Dan Brisse: From Pro Snowboarder to $500M in Real Estate

Dan Brisse won back-to-back X Games gold medals as one of the most dangerous urban snowboarders on the planet—jumping off parking garages, rooftops, and rails for a living. But while he was at the peak of his career, he was watching his heroes lose their homes, their wives, and their minds.

So he did something different. He started investing.

In this episode, Dan breaks down how he went from living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to co-founding Granite Towers—a real estate company that manages nearly $500M across 3,300+ apartment units. We get into how he protects downside in every deal, why multifamily real estate quietly compounds wealth, and what his exact investing criteria looks like today.

We also get into hiring on core values, why urgency is a red flag in any investment, and the one piece of advice he’s giving his 13-year-old son about building wealth.

Mic Drop Moments

• “Protect the downside and over-prepare.” – Dan Brisse

• “Passive income is the most powerful income.” – Dan Brisse

• “I saw my tax bill go to zero, and it only made sense to go bigger because the bigger the deal I bought, the bigger the passive income stream.” – Dan Brisse

• “I would say this skill right here of being an attractive firm and attracting A players is the separator.” – Dan Brisse

• “When the why is big, the how is easy.” – Dan Brisse

• 1:58 From Gold Medals to $500M AUM
• 2:13 The Snowboard Lesson That Saves Him Millions
• 4:09 His Mental Checklist Before a Crazy Jump
• 5:53 How Risk in Sports Translates to Real Estate
• 10:04 Why Most Pro Athletes Go Broke
• 13:57 Why Losing Is the Best Motivator
• 16:43 The Passive Income Mindset Shift
• 20:01 From Duplex to Real Estate Empire
• 24:44 Lessons in Real Estate Investing
• 36:20 Understanding Cap Rates & NOI
• 43:15 Criteria for Evaluating Real Estate Deals
• 51:32 Analyzing Real Estate Submarkets
• 56:04 What to Look for in a General Partner
• 01:01:24 How to Attract A-Players
• 01:07:47 Business With a Purpose
• 01:10:27 The #1 Habit Every Pro Athlete Needs
• 1:11:57 Advice to New Entrepreneurs
• 1:12:56 Would He Do It All Over Again?

Brad Weimert: Two-time X Games gold medalist in real snow and kind of a gangster pioneer of urban snowboarding. You also built Granite Towers into almost 500 million AUM with 3,300 units. You’ve got a killer podcast called Keeping It Real Estate, and you’ve got a book that I’m going to dig into, Four Steps of Successful Passive Investing. Dan Brisse, welcome to Beyond A Million.

Dan Brisse: Hey, thanks for having me, Brad. I’m excited to be here.

Brad Weimert: Dude, I love it. So, first starters, you’ve done some crazy sh*t on a snowboard. More adrenaline, stomping your first 70-foot gap from roof to roof, or seeing your first $10 million in equity hit your bank account.

Dan Brisse: Oh, man, that’s a good question. It’s a very different experience. I would say the gap from roof to roof was massive adrenaline right out of the gate and a pretty quick realization. The 10 million was a slower realization, and so it wasn’t quite as exciting. I’d say probably more adrenaline jumping from roof to roof.

Brad Weimert: I can only imagine. In one sentence, how did you mentally pivot from pro athlete to almost 500 million assets under management?

Dan Brisse: Gosh, in one sentence, grit, clarity, and a willingness to evolve and change.

Brad Weimert: What snowboarding lesson has saved you the most money in real estate?

Dan Brisse: Protect the downside and over-prepare.

Brad Weimert: Damn. So, let me back out and give some context here. The stuff that you’ve done, I’ve now watched a bunch of your videos from the past, and I met you a few months ago, snowboarding with Dan Martell and folks in Baldface, which is an annual trip, but we’re riding all day, and you’re just hanging out doing the thing. And I had no idea what your background was. At the end of the day, I find out that you had recently shattered your ankle, had multiple screws in it, and you had been riding switch all day, which is ridiculous, and nobody knew, and you’re just gliding along, unbeknownst to the group. I want to know kind of what the mental checklist is when you’re going into a ridiculous, scary proposition, snowboarding.

So, for anybody that hasn’t seen Dan Brisse stuff, you got to just go down the YouTube rabbit hole. But from parking garages to rails to, you name it, terrifying stuff. When you go into what you know is going to be death-defying, what’s the mental checklist you go through before you do that?

Dan Brisse: Yeah. This is a challenge of any snowboarder who’s extreme in doing what we were hired to do. I was hired by my brands to be the most gnarly urban rider on the planet. I mean, really, that’s what X Games comes out, this event called Real Snow, and basically, you have a minute and a half to fill the best footage you can in that minute and a half slot. As they continue to up the compensation and the gold medal victory of like, “Hey, you get this 50K payout,” plus all your brands start giving you 50K if you hit these certain numbers, all of a sudden you can see half a million bucks, which from snowboarding, that’s a big deal for us. And so, we continued just to grind and push it and push it, push it.

And for me, when we started to get to these features, it was always a gut check feel like it’s hard to tell an athlete what feature to go hit. It really comes down to the athlete. For me, at this case, being the rider, being with my crew, we have a couple of filmers, a couple photographers, and a couple other riders, and we’re literally just driving around looking for features, whether it’s in Minneapolis or Calgary or any state where, any place where you got deep snow finding features that look challenging. And then for me, it’s really, “Hey, how can we get into this feature without getting massively hurt the first two, three times?” Because your first one, two, three times when you hit the gas, it’s so much unknown, right?

The features we were hitting, you’re not training for in the park. You don’t go to a park like Park City or Vail or Rec Ridge and be like, “Oh, I got a nice roof gap here,” or, “I’ve got a rail coming off of a 40-foot drop,” like it’s just not how it is. Like, I shared in the beginning here, it’s so much of over-preparing. How can we get this feature set up so we can survive and stay healthy? Then we can start to peel back the layers and make it more challenging and more challenging and more challenging. And so, that’s really the process of getting into, and at the end of the day, too, Brad, like you got to have this foundation of riding. I’ve been riding since I was 13, and during peak of my career, I was 23 to 33. So, I already had a decade of obsessively snowboarding and failure. I mean, dude, it was brutal on the way up.

So, that foundation helped. And then getting a crew that’s aligned and we’re all in the same goal, we’re all aligned looking for similar features. It was a process of just working your way in slowly and getting to the end result without getting hurt severely.

Brad Weimert: How does that translate into green-lighting a multimillion-dollar real estate deal?

Dan Brisse: Yeah. I mean, the biggest piece is risk in both fields here. Very different, one’s physical, one’s financial, and the piece that I think is important for any athlete, any entrepreneur, any business owner to know is it’s what you know, right? It’s your skill and ability. For us in multifamily, we’ve been through a decade of building these assets and buying these assets. Some have done phenomenal, some have been challenged, and both are good, right? You have to be able to see if the problem is good. What did we learn here? What did we miss? When we’re snowboarding, I got hurt. I got broken bones left and right. Like, that’s the reality, and it sucks when it happens. But what was good? What did you learn?

And those lessons are invaluable, whether it’s in snowboarding, sports, or in business. That’s how it occurs to me. And so, like going through the challenges, you adjust criteria, you adjust principles. And as long as you protect downside in real estate, from my perspective, because we have a value add strategy, a very rinse and repeat value add strategy. We’re buying 150 to 400-unit apartments. We’re driving that operating income. That’s what we do. That’s what we specialize in. And so, if you have that in place and you protect downside, generally, the upside takes care of itself. And what we’re seeing right now in this market, Brad, is folks got way too aggressive back in 2020 and 2021, and they bought with a bridge debt, a variable rate debt.

And that pushed asset prices through the moon. But when the Fed had to raise rates to bring inflation down, folks got stuck in these deals. And that’s where we’re buying now. We’re buying from distressed sellers that purchased in 2021 that are being forced to sell. They didn’t protect downside. If you’re ever forced to sell, you’re taking bottom-of-the-barrel pricing, guaranteed. Re-trades are happening, guaranteed. You’re getting equity wiped, almost guaranteed. So, yeah, it’s just protecting downside and making dang sure that you’ve got safety measures in place that will stop the catastrophic pain from happening.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I mean, Warren Buffett’s number one rule is don’t lose money. And I think, for me, I very much operate from the perspective of contingency plan with everything all the time. And I look at that both in personal life and in business, but I think it’s also a habit that you have to build and flex. I would imagine building that habit when the downside is shattering a leg or your arm or your face, happens faster than in business in different ways. I think that people mess up in business, and the threat doesn’t seem as real until you get into real numbers with money.

Dan Brisse: Yeah. I mean, gosh, when life throws a curveball at you, I mean, gosh, when I’ve gone through injuries, there’s obviously the physical, and you’re out, but there’s also the mental game of what are my brands thinking? What are the other riders doing that I’m not doing now? I mean, it’s such a competitive field in professional sports, like we all see. I’m a part of this really cool group called PAC, Pro Athlete Community. And we just met in Phoenix last week, and there’s 400 pro athletes from all over the world that flew in, mostly NFL, NBA. I’ve transitioned now. So, I know what it’s like to be in my athletic career, seeing the end coming. And talking to these guys, I can just hear the fear, I can see what they’re going through, and it’s super uncomfortable.

I mean, partly too with us, with sports, as you know, like your identity, it’s all you are. It’s all you know. I’m the pro snowboarder, and that’s who Dan Brisse is. And when my career ends, some of these guys, it ends quickly. Like, one of my good buddies didn’t expect an end coming, got fired, and he committed suicide. His reality was, “There’s no more. I’m nobody.” And so, pro sports is phenomenal for passion. It can make you great money at a young age, and it can be such a damaging exit if these guys don’t get ahead of it. And the reality, too, you can imagine, Brad, is you sign these big contracts, and you start making, like for me, dude, I was eating peanut butter and jelly, literally working at Blockbuster, Payway, making $3,000, $4,000 a year.

And in the peak of my snowboarding career in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and I was making around $500,000 a year. And to go from nothing to $500,000 a year, like just a very big gap, right? And that’s not a lot compared to a lot of you, guys. Of course, you’re making multi-millions, but still, if you don’t take that capital and get it invested, working for you, and you go buy a liability, big house, big cars, you look like you’re rich, which a lot of my buddies unfortunately did. Once their contract ends and you’re 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and they got a 30-year mortgage at $40,000 a month, like, what are you going to do? That home’s gone. They’re taking it all from you, and you just gave it all that money to interest at the bank, right? Your car, your Ferrari, your Audi, it’s gone, and you’re literally back at the grocery store. And I’ve seen it over and over again.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, man. I mean, look, I think that’s a lesson for every pro athlete out there because the reality of pro athletes is it’s only the elite of the elite that are making millions and millions a year. The vast majority of pro athletes are making a good amount of money, but sub 1 million a year, and they’re doing it for a very condensed period of time, and then they’re benchmarking against those people that are making millions and millions and millions a year. And they get into that lifestyle creep mode. And that’s the same thing with entrepreneurs, right? New entrepreneurs see the person who’s renting a Ferrari on Instagram, who is renting an opportunity to look at the private jet or be in the private jet, but doesn’t actually have the money. And it’s very easy to get caught in that trap.

I want to get back to the pro athlete transition, but I want to talk about the experience, snowboarding, because you were unique from my perspective, because you weren’t just a badass snowboarder. You were doing a bunch of wild stuff while you were snowboarding. So, you’re doing, like, you’re inside of a city, and you’re finding that rail that goes off a 40-foot drop afterwards. You’re riding the line of a roof, right? You are creating jumps off of physical structures that nobody else could see. You are building the tricks. And when I look at that, I see a creative outlet. Did you see it as a creative outlet at the time? And when you transitioned away, did you have to fill that creative outlet somewhere else?

Dan Brisse: Yeah. For me, I mean, I don’t know if I saw it as a creative outlet. I just saw it as a feature that when I wrote out, I would get that adrenaline hit, that dopamine high that was just indescribable. I think back to some of the highs of my snowboarding career, and it was literally 5, 10 minutes after some of the gnarliest features, literally the ride out. It gives me chills right now just thinking about it because it was such a powerful, positive feeling. And it wasn’t just me, dude. It was the whole crew, like my filmers, they’re with me there. They want to be proud of the footage we create, right? The photographers are proud of the photos that are going to go in the magazines that are seen all over the world.

And so, it was really chasing. It sounded as bad as it sounds. It was a trick chasing this high, this dopamine hit that was just very, very powerful. And in the process, doing something that was really hard and working through it and finding an outcome and saying, “Hell, yeah, we did that. We jumped off of that bridge that had a rail that ended, and it came over a fence, and you survived it. So, for me, it was really more of dopamine, I’d say, than art. And I don’t know if that’s bad or that’s just the way it was for me.

Brad Weimert: I don’t really believe in good or bad as an absolute. I think it’s all contextual, and it seems like it was a pretty important part of your journey. So, I would call that good in the scheme of things for you.

Dan Brisse: I agree.

Brad Weimert: So, part of winning is losing, and losing sucks, but for the right people, it also fuels them. And winning can be awesome, but for many people, when you win, it radically changes your motivation, your drive, your ego, your ambition, your risk-reward, maybe. How did back-to-back gold medals in the X Games in 2011 and 2012 change your relationship with fear and failure?

Dan Brisse: Looking back to that part of my life, I specifically remember making some, I call them quick decisions and then sticking to them. Like, I can still remember the point in my life where I made a decision, where I was going to be a pro snowboarder. I was going to die trying like I was 16 years old. I remember where I was, something clicked, where I’m like, I’m going to do this no matter what. And then I didn’t stop with that decision until it happened. During my snowboarding career, when real snow came around, I set a goal right out of the gate. I wanted five X Games gold medals. And so, that didn’t happen, all five, but I got through number two, and I was like, “Okay, we’re just on course,” you know?

And then number three, I get a silver medal, and yeah, like if I’m beat fair and square by a guy who actually performed better, all good. Yes, I’m frustrated, but if it’s well deserved, it’s well deserved. But what happened with Real Snow, by year four, they started to let the riders who were in the contest vote. And it kind of pissed me off, to be honest, because it’s like, hey, you got two gold medals, a silver medal, and now the athletes are going to vote on who’s the best. And that year, I didn’t place, and it’s like, so that pissed me off big time, right?

Brad Weimert: I bet.

Dan Brisse: Yeah, right? I mean, and I know the guys on that podium like they didn’t deserve it. So, yeah, when I’m beat, and I know I’m beat, fair and square, it’s okay. If I’m beat and it’s not fair and square, it puts gas on the fire, and it just makes me do things, I think, at a whole different level of commitment. So, with that said, though, I think setting massive goals and just not backing down, knowing that challenges are coming, knowing pain’s coming, knowing failure’s coming, and just pushing through, being relentless. It’s a unique skill that I don’t see a lot of people have, and I think it’s something that really separates those that do unique and major things versus those that keep fumbling along and looking for the next shiny object.

Brad Weimert: Well, you used the phrase, “I’m going to do this or die trying.” Now, a lot of people use that as hyperbole. In the scheme of the X Games and riding, that might literally have been the situation.

Dan Brisse: Oh yeah.

Brad Weimert: In the transition to real estate investing, what was the pivotal moment, and was it easier mentally and emotionally to get into real estate investing or more difficult knowing that this mentality of do it or die trying wasn’t literal anymore, but maybe it felt that way?

Dan Brisse: Yeah. The moment for me that changed everything, still, it’s like it was just yesterday riding up the chairlift at Mount Hood, beautiful sunny day, I’m riding in the park, and just this like slap in the face, punch in the gut realization that my career is going to end. I’m not in a position where I can sail off into the sunset and not do anything else. And just the realization that I can work once and get paid many, many, many times versus if I don’t strap in this month and next month and next month, I will get axed. And so, what happened for me is I realized how risky my snowboarding career was, focused in that one income, my body, my health. For me, it was okay, this is kind of similar, make it or die trying, all focus, all effort into building multiple streams of passive income.

It was like a really clear light bulb moment. Again, I made a quick decision, like in the next 10 years, I’m going to have X amount of passive income flowing in every month. And that decision is still there. I’m still working on that goal, right? My goal is $83,000 a month of passive income. And so, passive income is the most powerful income. It’s not taxed, right? If you can have a $1 million flowing in whether I work or don’t work, now you can get a lifestyle that’s very comfortable, very lavish, right? And that’s not taking into consideration, into the appreciation, acquisition fees, all that crap. It’s just purely passive income. And that idea and that goal has been the foundation of what we do at Granite Towers every day, today. Like when we’re buying a deal like we’re buying right now, it increases that passive income goal.

Yes, there’s a forced appreciation and all that crap on the back end, but the main thing is how do you continue to put blocks in place that has passive income flowing in where I can work once and get paid for 5, 10, 15 years on that work.

Brad Weimert: So, I’ve talked about, I spend quite a bit of time investing in real estate and am involved in a few other people’s funds. I may or may not like control a little bit so I like to do a lot of my own sh*t. So, I’ve talked about a lot of this, ad nauseam, but I think it’s really important to get kind of the transitional into Granite Capital and how you looked at it, because I think that’ll tee up your relationship with what Granite Capital is and, sorry, Granite Towers. Yes?

Dan Brisse: Yep. Granite Towers.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. What Granite Towers is, and how it works. So, I also think that this realization from pro sports to, “Oh, sh*t, I’m functionally paid for my time right now,” which every doctor, every lawyer, every high-paid professional comes to that realization as well at some point in time. And the question then is, how do you create recurring income? And so, there are lots of business owners too that are building something, and they’re operators, and they’re tied into the operation, and they can’t leave it. And they’re not working on the business. They’re stuck working in the business. So, I think that the lesson is important here. Why real estate? And what was the first thing you invested in? And how did you go down that path?

Dan Brisse: In 2012, I realized that I needed other streams of income, and so I was reading all the books I could get my hands on.

Brad Weimert: Hold on. So, 2012 was in the middle of your heyday. 2012, like you either just won or are about to win your second gold medal.

Dan Brisse: Yep. I was at the peak of my career, and I got to know, like my heroes of the sport, I’m finally kind of the dude, right? I’m winning multiple X Games gold medals. I’m nominated number three rider in the world. I’m on the cover of every snowboard magazine. And all these guys who I used to admire and fantasize over in Minnesota became my buddies. They all lived in Salt Lake City, and we were hanging out. And so, when I’m hanging out with guys who are five or 10 years in front of me, I’m seeing their wind-down starting. And when I’m seeing their homes taken from them and I’m conversing with them about how they’re not sure what they’re going to do, that’s my light bulb moment as well of saying, “Okay, wait, hold on. You’re telling me you guys, who had already a 15-year run, you’re the biggest of the biggest in our sport, you’re losing your home? Your wives are leaving you. You’re traveling around the world with massive parties and coming back with tattoos on your face saying, ‘Money ruined you.’”

Like, if I go down that path, I’m screwed. And so, that’s where I’m like, “Okay, I have to do something different,” and I got to start to take the capital I’m making and put it to work for me. And so, that’s where I just started going down a rabbit hole of reading a tremendous amount of books and podcasts on what to do with the dollar. I never heard that growing up, never heard in K-12. What do I do with the money I’m making? 50% of it is making it, what the heck are you going to do with it so you can make it grow and provide freedom? Like, I look at money as a tool, right? How much can I accumulate, and how quickly can I get it to work for me in the most efficient way I can without paying tax?

And so, all that realization happened in about 2012-2013, and I bought a duplex. I put in $25,000, and I had a little stream of income, and I bought a nine-plex. Put in $85,000, I got another stream of income. And I bought a 24-unit deal and kept going and kept accumulating different streams of income. And my CPA at the time, first of all, I had a CPA that did not understand how to use real estate to save on tax. And I’m blowing through tax money too. At the end of the year, the guy like, “Hey, 40% or whatever you make, you got to pay that in.” And I’m like, “Wait, hold up, hold the phone. You’re telling me that I just spent the last decade eating peanut butter and jelly, working at Blockbuster, and now that I finally make money, 40% of it has to go to the government?”

And so, I’m getting kind of fired up, obviously, as you can hear me talk right now. So, I get a new CPA, and that new CPA says, “Hey, Dan, you are structured very poorly, very inefficiently. Your wife who hates working at Red Robin, who wants to be a stay-at-home mom. You already own 20, 30, 50 units. Make her manage the property, and she can be a real estate professional. Now, you qualify as a real estate professional.” Now, I can pump 100% of my income into these deals and reduce my tax bill to zero. Didn’t ever hear that growing up in K-12, Brad. So, those were the light bulb moments from 2012 to 2015. It was just on my own buying two duplex, 12 nine-plex, 24-unit deal, 28-unit deal. And then later, we started the company.

Brad Weimert: Damn. Two to nine to 24 is an aggressive jump. Most people, when they say, “Hey, I’m going to buy a duplex,” their second acquisition is another duplex or maybe four, but they usually don’t ramp up to that point. What gave you the confidence to do that as somebody that clearly protects the downside?

Dan Brisse: Yeah. I think a little bit of it was I was lucky on timing in 2012, so the stuff I was buying was just crushing it, and it gave me false confidence. Like, I just thought I was so savvy and so smart, and really, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And honestly, I just got lucky with timing. And so, I can’t say more than that. I wish I had like some beautiful answer of how I knew this or I didn’t. I just literally got lucky and started buying, and I started seeing these streams of income. I saw my tax bill go to zero, and it only made sense to go bigger because the bigger the deal I bought, the bigger the passive income stream. But, eventually, I think I had $500,000 or $600,000 that I had invested.

And by that time, I ran out of capital, and like I still wanted to buy deals, and I still saw the value it was bringing me as an athlete with passive income and hedging inflation and depreciation. So, that’s when I was like, “Hey, if I can do it for myself and I keep throwing my money into these deals, we can buy bigger deals as groups.” And that’s how we kind of transition into doing bigger stuff.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I think I got lucky in that I started investing in real estate in ’06, ‘07, which was a horrible time to buy stuff because the whole world collapsed in ‘08, right? But I think I got lucky from the perspective of my risk tolerance got stress tested immediately, and so all deals in the future, I had a completely different expectation of myself for the due diligence before I got into something.

Dan Brisse: Yeah, man. The pain in real estate is slow and long. That’s how it was for multi-family. So, like with snowboarding, you’re like, boom, it’s acute. You broke your leg, and you start to recover. Real estate, it’s six months. We just took a step down. Ooh, there’s some pain. Six months later, more pain, six months later, more pain, and you’re in this long, painful decline. And those lessons for me, when you’re in pain for a long time, you learn them deep. So, I respect that, and what a gift for you at a young age in beginning to get through that and to realize that there is so much risk in real estate if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, I think this will come out as we talk about kind of how you think about investing, and why you’re in the asset classes you are, et cetera, which I want to dig into. But one of the things that I look at when I am doing, when I’m underwriting, and I hate using that term in real estate because it’s confusing to people that aren’t entrenched in it. But when I’m assessing a deal, when I’m looking at the downside of a deal, I look at what happens if all these things go wrong and I’m still holding it, and I have to be holding it for this period of time.

And if I can make the decision in the beginning that it’s going to suck through that period, but that’s okay, and it’s still okay for me to hold it at a loss or at a neutral for a period of time instead of making the gain that I thought I was going to, as long as I go in eyes wide open and I’ve assessed that, then I feel less pain. And well, it’s tough, right? Because like the knee-jerk reaction is, “Sh*t, I’m in this situation, and now I’m bleeding X a month for a period of time.” But if I knew it going in, it’s easier to kind of shift that mental switch and say, “No, no, this was part of the gig. This is how I underwrote this. It’s fine.”

Dan Brisse: Yeah, man. Gosh, that’s an experienced investor right there. And when I hear you talk, obviously, I can hear you’ve been through challenges, and you’ve been in the game long enough to know, and 100% agree. When we’re doing due diligence on a deal, if we can find everything that’s wrong and we have no surprises, it’s the surprises that hurt, right? You do a great job of predicting the next 3, 5, 7, 10 years. And one thing that I think needs to be talked about more that’s just not as you get later into the cycle is the cycle of real estate assets, every asset cycle. And to not be in tune with where you are about in the cycle is such a dangerous place to be investing in.

And in reality, as you look back, it’s very easy to see that multifamily peaked, which is what our space specializes in in late ‘21, early ‘22, hands down, blow off top peaked. Well, do you think maybe in 2020, I should have been a little bit more aware of that, “Hey, things are frenzying, rates are zero, people are throwing inhibition to the wind. They’re underwriting 10%, 12%, 15% rent growth, probably a sign that things are frothy.” Investors don’t care anymore. They’re not worrying about underwriting. They’re just like, “Go, go, go.” That is a sign of market speaking, which is a sign to be doing exactly the opposite of what everyone’s doing, which is frenzying in is to be liquidating on the way out.

Brad Weimert: I mean, you’re not wrong. Also, the last cycle was significantly longer than the other cycles that I’ve seen in my life, or that even the age of the group above us has seen in their lives. And so, I knew people that pulled out of real estate in ‘16, ‘17 because they were like, “Hey, this cycle’s been going too long. It is frothy. It’s too good. We’re going to be crashing,” and they missed ‘16 to ‘21. In that time period from ‘16 to ‘21 was such a significant growth period in the economy. And so, I don’t know the answer to that, right? But timing the market is tough. So, I don’t know, it’s read the signals, but plan accordingly. Like, I don’t know what the lesson is there, but maybe it’s just be aware of the cycle and don’t try to time it.

Dan Brisse: Yeah. I think that’s good. What we’ve done is we’ve put some fundamentals in place for us. Like, if you have to use bridge debt, variable rate debt, and leverage it to 85%, 90%, 95%, that’s a signal that we’re out for now. And as long as people continue to do that, just a piece of criteria for us. It’s not emotional. We can buy with 60%, 65%, 70% leverage, like you can right now, fixed debt with Fannie Mae debt. We’re in all day, let’s roll, let’s roll hard. But as we see those things change and the fundamentals change, where we have very clear criteria where we can’t make deals pencil, based off of the debt we’re using, that’s a sign that we’re going to take a break and we’re probably going to start to liquidate and take top, top pricing.

But again, you’re right, Brad, it’s so easy to look back and be like, “Yeah, you idiots. Like, what were you doing?” It’s like, well, everyone, what we know, and I’m talking people that have been doing this for 20, 30, 40 years, who we know well, who are billionaires in this space, who fly around on private jets, legitimately, they own them. They got sucked into the hype, too. So, it is challenging.

Brad Weimert: Oh yeah, dude. Nobody gets to escape these cycles entirely, right? Some people look smart, but then f*ck up the next one. Right? You said something that I think is really important is that you put a criteria in place that helps protect you. And I’ve done some endurance athletics, and I have a general internal mantra, which is, f*ck your feelings. And what that means to me is it doesn’t matter how I feel in a moment when I’m doing something. I have to go do the thing, right? I have a training regimen in place, I have a goal that I’m after, and I have to go do it. Doesn’t matter what the weather is, doesn’t matter how I’m feeling, doesn’t matter if I accidentally drank too much last night, doesn’t matter if I’m not nourished enough, I’m going to do the thing. Period. F*ck your feelings.

And having that criteria in place in investing, I think, is very similar, which is, look, if you have a gut reaction to something, sometimes it’s in alignment with the check boxes that you had, and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you go through your underwriting criteria and all the risk-reward check boxes, and you still don’t feel good about it, and people have different opinions on this, but for me, if I know that I did the due diligence and I trust the process and I trust the criteria, and I still don’t feel good, I’m trusting the criteria.

Dan Brisse: Yeah. No, that’s powerful. I think that’s something that we tune into all the time with our team as they’re looking at new deals. How much are you emotionally tied to making this deal work right now? How much are you focused on the fundamentals? How much is our criteria making the decision, and the data making the decisions, and that’s experience. I can tell you right now, we’ve chased deals in the past emotionally, and it hasn’t turned out well. So, put your criteria in place. I love that line, f*ck your feelings. I think Jesse Itzler talks about, you probably know Jesse, he does these hundred-mile runs. He says the same thing. Something like, “Yeah, I don’t get tired. I don’t get tired.” And so, like, no matter how tired you get, you just keep saying, “I don’t get tired.” And it’s an interesting line.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Totally. I do know Jesse, and he puts on an event for, I’ve talked about it ad nauseam, but he puts on this Everesting event that I’ve done a few times.

Dan Brisse: A while you’ve done.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I did the first one and I’ll spare the audience from the story because you can go look at, I think, it’s at Everestingx2.com, but in the period of time that people were to do it once, I did it twice. Yeah. And it was a harrowing emotional journey for me, and physical, obviously, but tons of lessons out of that. And I’ve done other episodes on it, but it was a trip for sure.

Dan Brisse: Dang, dude. That’s the next level. You did it twice in one go.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. It was 40 hours straight of just doing the thing. Yeah.

Dan Brisse: You’re like to that level. That’s intense.

Brad Weimert: It’s incredibly intense, and I think one of the lessons that is applicable to everything we’re talking about in investing is one of the reasons that I like a physical activity as a path to understand business so much is everybody can relate to the physical side of things, and everybody has a body and can move. And it doesn’t really matter what scale you’re at. You still going from one level to the next involves a similar set of actions. And while I think that’s also true in business and investing, people don’t see it the same way. But we all know that if you pick up a basketball and shoot it, the more you do it, you’re going to get better at doing it. And it’s accessible to people.

But in the world of investing, I think that the framework of like the athletics is before I start doing something that I know is going to be going for many, many, many hours, I have to have a rule set going into it to say, “How am I going to behave in the inevitable moment, the inevitable moments where I’m challenged?” And if you make a decision before you go into those moments or those experiences that you’re going to behave a certain way, it’s a lot easier than trying to make the decision when you’re in the middle of the emotional turmoil.

Dan Brisse: Man, that’s so powerful. I couldn’t agree more. I think about that in my snowboarding career. I think about that in real estate. I think about that as a parent, and I tell the kids, “This is how we’re going to go. This is how it’s going to be.” How much easier I have for compliance with those kids, versus in the moment when my 7-year-old starts to freak out because he wants to watch more of TV or video games. Like, it is out of control style. So, he could bring this to the basics. It doesn’t have to necessarily be we’re buying a $50 million deal or scaling Mount Everest twice. Like it could be the basics. And I just love that concept. I really haven’t put it together like that, Brad.

Brad Weimert: I love that. Well, I think setting expectations for yourself and for other people has a lot to do with how you accept the experience later. You ever see Elf, the movie?

Dan Brisse: Oh yeah.

Brad Weimert: There’s a scene in Elf when he takes the girl out on their first date, and he brings her to a coffee shop and has her taste a cup of coffee, and she tastes it, and she’s like, “It tastes like a sh*tty cup of coffee.” And he’s like, “No, no. It’s the world’s best cup of coffee.” And that made me think of it because he was committed to this being the world’s best cup of coffee. Didn’t matter how it actually taste. The expectation was set ahead of time. And I think that’s very true for what you tell yourself and also what you tell your team, as you move into things, is painting that picture for the future.

Dan Brisse: Yeah. It’s gold. I think about that. I’m going to take that in my business meetings today of setting the stage so people are mentally prepared for what we’ve got coming these next two years, because the opportunity is something like I’ve never seen before. So, get the team set right mentally.

Brad Weimert: I love that. Well, let’s talk about that. So, you did the duplex, then the nine-plex, then the 24. You’re all in on multifamily real estate. Why is that the asset class? And it sounds like you’re in B class versus A. Why did you make those decisions? Real estate, you can go so many different directions, invest so many different ways. Why and how did you land on that?

Dan Brisse: Yeah, a little bit of it fell into my lap based off the books I was reading in 2012. I really got attached to a guy named Ken McElroy. I read the Rich Dad Poor Dad series, all that stuff. And so, what really was the main driver for me with multifamily is, as I got into my 60 units, I didn’t realize how to professionally come in and move the needle on net operating income. And that’s the real superpower of multifamily is driving net operating income. And all that is, is income minus expenses. And if you can drive NOI at a five cap, it’s about $20 in change. So, what I mean by that is you increase NOI by a dollar, on your exit, it’s $20 of capital gain or gain. So, if you can drive NOI on a decent-sized deal by a million dollars over a five-year period, you just forced the creation of 20 million of value.

Brad Weimert: Let’s break down that math real quick for the people that are investors or want to be investors but aren’t entrenched in real estate all the time. How does that work?

Dan Brisse: Yeah. So, when you drive net, multifamily is valued based off of an NOI and a cap rate. And when you take a net operating income and you divide it by a cap rate, it creates a value. And that’s how all banks, all buyers, all brokers are assessing the value of the business. It’s based off of the cash flow you can create.

Brad Weimert: So, let’s talk about just the calculation of the cap rate for people, how you come to that, because all commercial assets are discussed in cap rates, right? And I think when you come into it from the outside, that can be a mental break for people that are like, “Okay. Well, I don’t really get it. I don’t understand how it trades.” And then how does that transform into value with the net operating income?

Dan Brisse: Yeah. So, a cap rate is created by the market. It is a number that if you bought a deal with all cash, let’s, like, we’re buying a deal right now for $39 million. If we paid all cash and it’s a five-cap deal or a six-cap deal, we would get about 5% cash flow each year, or 6% cash flow, or cash-on-cash return. So, a cap rate is market-derived. It is changing based off interest rates. You can ChatGPT cap rates down a rabbit hole. But for the best way for us to describe it here today, it’s a way to value real estate, and it creates a valuation of what a deal is worth based off your net operating income.

And literally a million bucks divided by a five cap, and you’ll see the value of what that is. And so, our goal, how can we efficiently move the needle on our NOI by doing very simple rinse and repeat value-add strategies like we’re going to upgrade units, right? Basic upgrade units based off what the submarket’s doing. We’re going to add reserve parking, right? We’re going to put in a Wi-Fi package that we’re going to own, and now instead of using Comcast or an outside source, we’re going to control that, and we’re going to allow the people to rent from us for a better price, and we’re going to take all that income in. So, these different, somewhat simple value-add strategy is based on your submarket.

Now, none of this stuff works if you’re not in the right submarket. You got to be in a submarket that demands this type of value-add strategy. But when you can get into that type of scenario, like a deal we’re buying right now in Plano, Texas, the submarket is phenomenal in the sense that there is an A-plus school district. You’ve got Whole Foods across the street, Williams Sonoma, Sephora, this premier location, and there’s not enough new units in this little submarket where everyone wants to live. So, when we can come in and buy from a distressed seller like we are, that’s having to sell, they’re forced to sell. You get this big reduction in purchase price, and now you come in with a value-add strategy that we know the residents in this submarket.

When I say submarket, I mean the people who live within a one or two-mile radius. We know that they want based off of the competitors that we’ve already physically shopped, now we can build this business plan to come back in and really strategically, methodically over a five-year period force NOI creation. And that’s the superpower of multifamily. And that’s what got me into really realizing, “Hey, once I get over 25 units, really over 30, but ideally over 60, the bank is now 100% going to look at your apartment like it’s a business.” And however much NOI you can create, as long as you don’t have a huge change in interest rates like we did do, like, that’s a whole another piece, like if interest rates run and cap rates follow, it will affect value.

But if you have a somewhat stable market over a 3, 5, 7, 10-year plan like we did from 2012 to 2021, and even some cap rate compression because rates came down, now you can create value quickly, and it’s real value to banks and to the investors.

Brad Weimert: So, the increasing NOI, basically your formula there is be aware of the market you’re in, know what people are looking for, right? And add enough value to the building that rationalizes increasing the rent on the building, and that produces a net margin increase. Even though you’ve spent a bunch of money to make it better, the rent increase offsets that.

Dan Brisse: That’s exactly it. That’s exactly right. Yeah. It’s a somewhat basic, simple formula, and anyone can go do it. It does take effort and work to get to know a sub-market in detail. It does take having team members, right? This isn’t something that Mike and I, who own Granite Towers 50/50, do alone. Like, you do need a team, which is another reason I love real estate, because I’m not an A-plus student when it comes to tax and CPA work. I like to hire that A firm, right? I’m not an A-plus student when it comes to cost segregation, like we hire that firm. And so, you can hire the team members for the things you’re not good at to be A-players. And we just always say, and it’s something that I will stand back behind until the day I die, the best team in real estate wins.

If you hire a great CPA, a great broker, a great property manager, a great asset manager, you’re going to perform significantly better than a bunch of B-grade team members. And that comes down to the leader of the company dictating and deciding, “Yeah, you are my fit. You are my horse. Let’s go together.”

Brad Weimert: God, you’ve opened the door to hiring. I want to talk hiring, but first, since we hit on kind of assessing these deals, how do you assess them? What’s your underwriting criteria? What does your buy box look like, and what are the deal breakers? Because this is where the rubber meets the road, right? You said, “Hey, anybody can go out and do this and can add value to an apartment complex and increase the NOI.” But what do you look for? How do you do it?

Dan Brisse: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, for us, our criteria has shifted tremendously in the last three years. Some of the basics that anybody can recreate is 1985 or newer. And the reason is that is we want to get away from the old plumbing and the old electricity. It’s just very expensive to continually maintain and repair. So, that’s number one. Ideally, 1990 or newer, but we will do like 86 or newer is all good. We’re looking for 150 units plus, something that we can come in and really drive net operating income for a stack of investors, right? Our investor database is almost 4,000 people, and we’d like to be raising 10 to 20 million per transaction. Otherwise, it’s just not as efficient.

We’re looking for A-plus locations, like that’s a non-starter. And when I say A-plus locations, I mean like you got an A school district, you’ve got premier retail, you’ve got low crime, you’ve got very high one-mile median income. And median income, all that is, is if you took everyone in a submarket, let’s just say Plano, you took everyone who lives in Plano from the wealthiest guy or the highest income earner to the lowest, and you put them all on a chart, median is the middle. It’s not an average. It’s the middle number. So, there are a lot of people who have high median income, which means a lot of people can handle our rental increases, can pay for the upgrades we’re looking for,

And so, location, also, for us, we’re looking to be in landlord-friendly states. We’re looking to be in business-friendly states. We’re looking for job growth, population growth. We’re looking for sub-markets that do not have enough supply and cannot be supplied easily, so like a Plano market. Again, this is why I can just keep talking about Plano because it fits our criteria perfectly. There’s no new build coming for the next two years, and they’re already at 95% to 96% occupancy in the submarket. And we know that from the shops, from the comp shopping that we’ve done. And so, you start putting all that together and then a value-add strategy that’s rinse and repeat, something we’ve done over and over and over again.

I listed a few of them. It might also you could do utility upgrades in there. You could paint exterior, you could reside, you could do landscaping. Whatever you can do to make your asset with a shiny little gem in that submarket. We’ve come into assets in other locations where the deal is struggling. It’s at 85%, 86% occupancy, but we can see the submarkets at 93%, 95%, 98%, and we come in with our value-add strategy and become the premier location. Let go of the management company, let go of the people, bring in a great management company, a great leasing agent that makes it warm and inviting, and all of a sudden, all the people that were at these other places are now wanting to be at our place.

And now we’re the shiny gem in that submarket. We have the best rent. That’s how you drive value in apartments efficiently and quickly. And it’s the soup, right? I can’t go do this potentially in Oklahoma. No man’s land. And so, we also, Brad, have eliminated buying in many different places. We’ve decided, just like my snowboarding career, the separator for me was an inch wide, a mile deep in real snow in urban riding. I was the man in urban riding for many years, right? That was my strength zone. Same with value-add apartments, Dallas and Nashville specific sub-markets. I want to be the best, well-known as the best value-add operator in these markets.

And will I get there in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years? I don’t know, but that’s the goal: to be laser-focused. This is what we do in this little area, and this is how we do it. And it’s just a rinse and repeat model. Like, I don’t need to be in storage. I don’t need to be in office. I don’t need to be in all these different asset classes. I need to be the best of the best in one asset class. So, our company, Granite Towers, stands out as like, “Yeah, those guys are the best. There isn’t anyone better.” And that’s my goal.

Brad Weimert: I love that. Well, I want to also highlight that in order for you to be the best at urban riding, snowboarding, you had to be a badass snowboarder. So, yeah, you specialized in this little area, but you had to have the broad skillset to see what was for the rest of it. And to be clear, I’ve also seen you launch some f*cking ridiculous backcountry jumps as well, and in the park, et cetera. And in real estate, you have to understand the mechanics of the real estate and understand how everything works and study that game and then choose to be in this little niche as well. So, I think that that’s relevant because sometimes people get so deep down a little rabbit hole and then miss the overarching broad picture because they didn’t build the skillset to be an expert in that space in the first place.

With the submarkets, and this is scratching my own itch here, but when you talk about standing out and being the place that people want to go in the submarket for an apartment, for example, how important is it or how do you think about the importance of the team and the management on property and the leasing agent on property versus the investment in having the best gym or the best aesthetics? Because like you can go really expensive. Like one way to be sure that you’ll be the dopiest building in town is to put all the dopiest sh*t in the building. But you can definitely kill your margin entirely and offset that the wrong way. And then you invest in this beautiful tower that you have destroyed your ability to lease because you priced yourself out of the market, or you just put too much into it.

Dan Brisse: It’s such a great point to not over-improve, right? What we’ve done, and we’ve made mistakes here. So, take this as a beautiful piece of experience that has definitely not worked, and then worked is if you go and finance your CapEx with the bank, like, which a lot of people did and a lot of people still do, which if you want to do it that way, well, go. But what happens is, is if I go and finance my cap back, let’s just say we got a $5 million value add strategy, and I chuck it in with the loan. Now, the lender has control and will push us to sometimes over-improve an asset because that’s the plan we made 6, 12, 18 months ago. And the market doesn’t need that.

And so, what we’ve done, and I advise folks to look into doing if you’re in our space, is to raise that capital upfront and keep it liquid. And it now is your decision what to do with it. And so, what we’ll do close on a deal is if we’re really, really clear, the CapEx on the exterior is needed, we got to upgrade the exterior, paint it, upgrade landscaping, whatever it is, we’re just going to go ahead and take care of that. But for upgrading units, amenities, like you’re just talking about, Brad, we’re going to test the model, right? So, we’re going to upgrade 5, 8, 10 units in the beginning at different levels, and we’re going to see what the market will allow. And that is a mix. Like, you couldn’t be the beautiful, best place in the submarket.

But if you don’t have a leasing agent, you don’t have a regional that has great leadership, you’re never going to be a standout asset in that submarket. It has to be the whole ball of wax in order to really be that premier property. You want to have the amenities that that tenant profile will pay for. We have some A-class property like one up in Hendersonville, Nashville, like it’s got a premier gym, pool, like it is unbelievable. We would never put that in one of our C-class apartments because the residents just can’t pay for it. So, you’ve got to be really in tune with your submarket and your resident profile and provide what they actually can pay for based on the cost to rent increase.

And it’s all this relationship that you got to know what you’re doing with your underwriting. You got to be able to see the future of what’s coming. And you got to know your submarket intimately because if you don’t set the deal up right, you’re toast, right? You got to buy right, of course. No question about that conservative underwriting. You got to know the submarket. You got to know your rent projections, expense projections. You got to know your debt, insurance, property taxes. You got to know all that. And you got to know based off of what the data you could see now, what’s likely coming in 1, 3, 5, 7, 10 years in this submarket. And how do we get ahead of it to be there when that market is where it needs to be, so that you are able to profit from it and enjoy that ride?

Brad Weimert: So, when I think about the submarket as somebody that doesn’t do a lot of multifamily and invest almost entirely in Austin, that’s not entirely, but personal investments are all in Austin. The reason I do that is because I have a lot of contextual information from living here, from knowing people, from talking to people, from being exposed to things, from conversations that I’m privileged to have. How do you approach the analysis of a submarket when you aren’t entrenched in the environment like that?

Dan Brisse: Yeah. So, we do own some up in Minnesota, where Mike and I both grew up, but in order to really get into a new submarket like Dallas, for us, it took a lot of time, a lot of underwriting, touring a ton of deals. And what’s helped tremendously is these brokerage firms have so much data on these submarkets, and with CoStar, hey, Jen, all these new AI tools coming out, you really can get a pretty good sense if you do your market research of where the market sits and what’s likely to come. Now, it just takes time and effort of digging in and researching, meeting with property management companies, meeting with your vendors, meeting with people that are boots on the ground.

But best thing I would say is get really intimately connected with CoStar, get intimately connected with some of these new AI. We started with AI Archer. It does a ton with underwriting for us, helps us with data analytics. You’ve got just a ton of data that you can be digging in and visiting these sub-markets. I mean, after you do this enough, you’re going to get a really good sense when you drive a submarket if you want to own there or not. Like I can tell you pretty much within 30 seconds, you drop me in any city and let me drive around for 30 seconds if it’s something we’d even look at or if it’s just a no-go. And that comes too with experience of owning, like we’ve owned in locations that are really difficult to manage.

And it’s not to say if you buy a sh*tty location, you can’t still do well if the price is right. If the price is low enough and you underwrite 50% vacancy and zero rent bumps and your debt’s 50%, you could still do really, really well with that deal. But now I don’t see many of those deals anymore right now, which doesn’t mean they aren’t coming. But it’s such a package deal, right? You have to intimately go into these markets and see the future. And that’s through data analytics and studying, or like you said, live in there.

Brad Weimert: If you’re a brand, this is how I think about this. This is how I thought about it, and I have to ask you about hiring still, but I want to transition into a kind of your framework for successful passive investing. But how I think about this, and I think what I heard is like the understanding of the sub-market, and just said another way is, location, location, location. Understanding it, if you’re a brand new investor and you want to invest your own money, and you are controlling things. And maybe even if you’re not, you probably are wise to do it in the area that you understand and know best. Is that a fair assessment?

Dan Brisse: Yeah, if you’re going to go into this first time and you’re starting out, I would go into a submarket that you enjoy visiting. Like, you’re not going to be scared to show up there at 7:00 PM to check on your property. And if you’re okay with that and you’re, “Hey, this is how I roll. I roll around with a nine millimeter, and it’s what I do,” and you know what you’re doing. But I mean, at the end of the day, like I’m buying in locations that I want to visit. We’re buying in locations where we have A schools, where we have beautiful retail, where crime is low, where people are working, where people want to work, where they don’t want to work the system. They don’t want to be like, “Hey, how can I stay home and figure out how to not pay you rent and not get evicted?” I don’t want to mess with that.

And if you do, like, all good, just got to know what you’re looking for based off of experience. And like you said, Brad, if you’re going to start, start at home.

Brad Weimert: So, that’s the one side of it, right? And this is how I grew up in real estate, is I was underwriting, I was figuring it out, as I mentioned, taking a few punches doing it. The other side of this is delegating that to somebody like Granite Towers. And so, if you have an e-book, which is sort of a crash course for busy professionals on how to think about creating passive income through real estate, what should a new investor be asking somebody like Granite Towers, the general partner in a real estate deal, before they give them money to invest?

Dan Brisse: Yeah. For me, if I’m looking at investing with someone passively, I’m obviously wanting to understand how much they’ve been around, how many markets they’re in, what is their criteria. Obviously, track record, and doesn’t mean if, hey, if you’ve done bad on a deal, doesn’t mean I’m writing you off. In fact, I’m looking for folks that have had kick ass deals and had challenges, and they’re still here because those are the folks that are the most experienced. Now, obviously, a lot of folks that were on in 2020-2021, in ‘21, they’ve had one bad deal, and they’re gone. They lost it all, and they’re onto the next thing. So, I’m looking for a team that has a professional company behind them that had ideally a decade of experience, right?

They’ve ideally been through a downturn. That means a lot to me. Now, I probably wouldn’t invest with a newbie that hasn’t been through a downturn after going through a big downturn. I’m looking for assets that actually is something that I’d want to own. Like, if they’re buying something that I would never want to own, that may affect my opinion. That’s a small piece, but it’s still something on my radar. But really, more than anything is their commitment and who’s on their team and how professional are they, and then track record, basic company profile. What are your core values? And just get to know them and take time. What’s interesting about it, too, for us, Brad, is we’ve got in with some much larger capital partners recently, and all of them move slow.

They don’t meet me and say, “Okay, next week, here’s $1 million. Here’s $5 million.” It’s, “I met you six months ago. We’re still in contact. Let me see your next deal.” We looked at it, okay, we’ll look at one, and 12 months later, they make a large investment. So, I would also say just move slow. Ideally, get a referral on somebody else who’s invested with them. That would be ideal. The big, big, big thing that is and can be challenging is if people are being ethical with the money. Like, that is the one thing that if I’m going to invest with people, I got to know that operator well enough to know they’re in a fiduciary role and they’re not doing something that’s shady with capital.

That’s the thing that has come out over the last few years, unfortunately, and it gives us such a bad name in our industry, is when people are running Ponzi schemes, or they get a tough deal over here, and they start to siphon money to save that deal. And it just clogs everything up and, honestly, it’s illegal, so you end up having really bad rap. So, the reality is you got to get people you know, like, and trust.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I think one of the things that I can’t remember where this came from with me, but I’ve developed, it’s become part of the fabric of my decision-making process. If somebody pushes me, on urgency, and they’re like, “You have to do it by now,” my answer is, “Sorry, I’m out. Your urgency is not mine, and I don’t know why you’re driving urgency. I don’t know if it’s a sales tactic. I don’t know what’s going on, but your urgency does not impact my decision-making criteria. Period. Full stop.” And it’s such an easy trap for early investors or seasoned investors to get looped into, especially with other asset classes today, like AI.

“Hey, there’s this new round. We’re raising for a new round. You have an opportunity to get into this thing, but only if you do it by Friday.” I’m out. Slow, steady, wins the race. You’re more likely to make a mistake when you’re pushed on urgency, and you’re far better off missing a good opportunity than getting into a bad one.

Dan Brisse: Yeah. I love that. I think it’s so important. The one piece or the challenge we’ve had in the past is some of our investors don’t know that it’s filling. And all of a sudden, the deal is actually full because with some of these deals, like you can only take so much money. If you take too much, it starts to hurt the deal. And so, we’ve had investors who said, “Hey, I was planning on coming in, and now I’m full, and I can’t come in.” And for those people, “Hey, we have another deal coming, don’t worry.” The tough part is when you get to the end of the year, and they’re tax planning, and you end up failing something, and now you’ve got investors who actually are getting upset at you.

And so, the one caveat, the challenging part, how do you word it by saying, “Hey, just so you know, we have X million available. It will fill. I’m not pressuring you, but when it fills, I can’t take any more. First-come, first-served.” And that’s the best I’ve found. And so, I don’t know if you’ve experienced that, Brad, but that is the one time where I’ve had investors kind of upset. And it’s a challenging situation because you just can’t take the capital anymore. You’re done.

Brad Weimert: Look. Yeah, my sentiment does not discount the reality that there is urgency and scarcity in life. Those things exist, but if you allow those to be part of your decision-making criteria, you are substantially more likely to make a mistake and oversee something because you didn’t do thorough underwriting, usually. Substantially more likely. That’s where I’ll leave that.

Dan Brisse: I agree. I totally agree with you, especially if you get this urgency, if it has to be by Friday like that is a good hard stop. I couldn’t agree more.

Brad Weimert: Okay. Before we wrap, I have to talk about hiring because you’ve mentioned the value of a team multiple times through multiple different parts of this. In the beginning of your career, you made a reference to how important all the people on your crew were, and it was camera people to the people riding, teeing up the right stuff. When you got into real estate, you talked about the team on site, the manager, the leasing agent running the property. You talked about the value of your team in office for raising capital, for running the operation. How do you think about hiring people? What criteria do you use, and what do you look for when you want to align yourself with good people?

Dan Brisse: Yeah. Man, I would say this skill right here of being an attractive firm and attracting A players is the separator. Yes, you got to know how to buy real estate. Yes, you got to have a rinse and repeat value-add strategy that can take capital in and multiply it. But the reality is if you don’t have the right people running the boat, running the ship, running the jet, you’re going to crash and burn. And so, the leader, which Mike and I, in the beginning, we started to bring in specific strategic people. And in the beginning, sometimes we had our other, like I had my CPA day one in 2011 and 2012, guide me and say, “Hey, you need to be investing in real estate.”

Remember my wife being a real estate professional? He said, “Hey, you guys are getting to a stage where you need an accountant, someone to be managing your books professionally when you’re raising now $3 million, $4 million, $5 million.” We only had probably $10 million of equity under management, and today we have $195 million. So, like a lot has changed since then. But the first person we brought in was an accountant. That was the first team member we hired seven years ago. And then it ended up being an asset manager to eventually take over some stuff, then a data analytics underwriter. But the way we’re hiring is we’ve got a very clear role, and then we’re hiring based off of core values.

I mean, I know it sounds really stupid, and it sounds really basic, but I’m just telling you guys, like when you hire from core values, you’ve got the basics, you’ve got the skills, but if we hire on core values, which ours are really, really simple, it’s positive mental attitude, be relentless, do the right thing, and constant, never-ending improvement. And every time we have challenges with team members, we can go back to one of those four core values and say, “Hey, you’re either missing here, or we need you to exude this more here,” and it solves every problem, like every time. And when it doesn’t, when we don’t have those four core values, we blow up, and the deal, the relationship just does not work.

And so, when we’re hiring people, what I love to do is I love to give them a core values speech. And this is EOS. If you’re familiar with EOS, it’s Entrepreneur Organization System. They teach you, and it’s been a superpower for us to attract A players and to bring the right people in and say, “Yes, you are a person.” But you do a core value speech, and during that core value speech, I go through stories of the four core values of this is how it looks, this is how it is in our company. And I want that person to be able to look inside our company and say, “Yeah, Dan, you’re way too intense. These core values don’t align. I’m out.” That’s a win for both of us versus, “Oh yeah, I’ll come on board with those, and I really don’t align.”

And then six months later, I ask you to read three books in the next quarter because I can see you need it, and then you say, “I’m not doing that.” Well, dude, you’re done. Like, what did you do? I told you constant, never-ending improvement meant we’re going to continually be learning and improving. If it’s not a good fit, great. Like, just get out of here. If it’s a great fit, get on the bus because you’re going to love what we do. And so, it’s a basic, basic. Idea. I know people preach it. And that’s the way we have hired and hire every single person that comes into our company. And it’s been phenomenal to bring the right people in and to train them up as leaders. I mean, at the end of the day, some people come into our company, Brad, and they don’t have the skills. They’re not where we need them to be, but we can train them if they exude those four core values.

We can make them better as long as they’re willing. And it just comes down to are you willing to improve, and are you willing to have a positive mental attitude when things go haywire? Because it’s business. You’re going to have sh*t go haywire left and right. That’s the dollars to it.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, I couldn’t agree more, and it took me a very long time to, I like to say that I am not very good at learning from other people’s mistakes, and eventually I’ll learn from my own. It took me a very long time to understand why core values were so important, and I really thought that they were this fluffy bullsh*t that you put on the wall, and we’re all just supposed to do it. And it was part of the game. It was a checkbox. And it wasn’t until I met, really, a pivotal point was I read a book called The Core Value Equation, which a friend of mine, Darius Mirshahzadeh, wrote. And when I first heard about it, I was like, “Ah, man. I don’t want to meet this guy.”

And within a minute of talking to him, he was like, he started talking about the core values, and then he said, “Just to be clear, none of this means sh*t if it doesn’t produce for the bottom line.” And I was like, “Oh, I kind of love you.” And it started me down the path of understanding that if you have the right alignment on the front end, those people can make decisions that would be similar to the decisions you would make if it’s unclear. And that was like the foundation for me saying, “I am hiring and firing based on core values.” So, couldn’t agree more. And I also think it’s one of those things similar to the buy box, similar to the checklist before you do a crazy jump, similar to EOS, where if you have structure in place, tremendous freedom exists on the other side of that, because you don’t have to make all the granular decisions, the structure’s already there.

Dan Brisse: Yeah. It’s beautiful. I think that if I was listening to this podcast, this would be the part that I’d be, “If I’m building my company, this would be the part that correlates to any company.” Anybody who’s building a company, if you can attract A players and you can bring them in and set them up for success, A players want to work with A players. You bring a B player in, all of a sudden, A players start talking, they start looking around saying, “Hey, is this the right fit? What are you guys doing? Can I trust my leader?” And so, yeah, it’s the difference maker. It’s a separator.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more, man. Well, before we wrap, the other thing that I noticed through your journey is this connection to other more important things in your life, or equally important things in your life. You once pledged X Game prize money to support a fallen officer’s family. You have a commitment inside your current company to donate a portion of the proceeds to help end human trafficking. How important is business if you don’t have something like that tied to it? Or how important is any venture to you if you don’t have that tied to it? Is it a make-or-break? Is it still worth doing? How does cause and purpose outside of the venture itself tie into your desire to play a game or win?

Dan Brisse: Yeah, it’s a great question, and nice work in your research here. Yeah, I think the biggest question is, why are you doing what you’re doing? When the why is big, the how is easy, and it’s true. Like, if you’ve got a real big why, for me, my snowboarding crew was to help my parents financially. Yes, I love doing it. Yeah, it meant a lot. But like to pay off their mortgage just six months ago, that felt good, right? That’s something I’ll never forget. And with the child trafficking piece, like it’s the nastiest thing I’ve ever seen on the planet. Like, I just can’t relate to it. I don’t understand how you could be a human being that would want to do that with a child. Being a father with three children, it’s hard to see.

So, if we can make an impact on things like that, and I can change people’s lives by what we’re doing, like at the end of the day, yeah, maybe it’s a little selfish because I’m looking for that happiness hit. But it does add value to many, many people. And that’s the beauty of business for me. It is not the second house, the Ferrari. It’s cool sh*t, no doubt about it. But I’ve had enough of it already to see that it’s not going to make me ultimately a happy human being at the end of my life. And so, for me, I think the way I find the most happiness is by being able to help more people. And is that through child trafficking? Is that through just paying on my parents’ home? Is it through a nonprofit we start eventually?

But that is the ultimate for me as we build Granite Towers into whatever we can over the next decade or decades. And that’s my intention to be around for decades, long term. I love to be sitting here when I’m 80 doing the same sh*t we’re doing today. And so, if you do it right, if you build great, if you buy great assets, it’s very, very likely that based off of the folks I’m associating with, there will be a lot of extra capital and a lot of extra impact. And so, at the end of the day, it’s the ultimate feel-good for me.

Brad Weimert: Love that. What advice do you have for pro athletes?

Dan Brisse: Don’t spend the capital you’re making out of the gate. The most important habit you will ever, ever create is to save and invest before you spend it. Because if you do that, you can be free the rest of your life. Or if you go the other way and you want to bowl and look like you’re wealthy, it’s likely going to be taken from you, and enjoy your three or four or five-year run, and then you’re going to be back to where you were. So, unless you’re a Tom Brady or Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, totally different story. But for the majority of athletes, invest that capital into something that you like, that you want to learn about, that ideally produces cash flow next quarter, next quarter, next quarter, next month, and helps you offset your living expenses while you still own and control that pot of cash, that pot of cash that’s ideally hedging inflation and get the heck out of that tax hit by using some sort of asset class to help you reduce your tax bill equally.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I would argue that even if you are, even if you do have an ambition of being the Tiger Woods, the Michael Jordan, the Kobe Bryant, et cetera, still take the first chunk of money and invest and secure your future later. There is no downside to doing that. There’s only upside and injuries are unpredictable in that world. What advice do you have for a 25-year-old entrepreneur starting out?

Dan Brisse: Man, the best advice I have for someone who’s young starting out is I would be building something with AI. I mean, I have my 13-year-old. He homeschools in the afternoon, and I’m saying, “Hey, Zealand, you want to be relevant? You want to build a company? Get super savvy with AI, and let’s go to some businesses around here in Portland, Vancouver, and let’s go add value to them immediately. You get around business owners, right?” And he set up Manus yesterday, he’s 13, to oversee and manage my email. And I’m like, because I’m drowning in emails, right? I got a new executive assistant that just started, we’re training her in, and she’s going to help out.

But, man, if I can have Manus manage my emails and eliminate 4, 5, 6, 10, 20 hours a week of me emailing people back, like, that’s a superpower. That’s value right now. And so, I would say go down the AI path, stack a ton of cash, live below your means, like you’re broke, invested into things with people or by yourself that produces streams of income, and just get wealthy as soon as you can get free.

Brad Weimert: If you started your journey over right now, would you still risk your life jumping across buildings, or would you start in business from the beginning?

Dan Brisse: Yeah. Knowing what I know now, I never would’ve been a snowboarder again. Yeah. No waste of time. It was super passionate. It was the right place for me at that time, being young, wild, and adrenaline-rich, but going back, no way.

Brad Weimert: Dan Brisse, where can people find out more about you or Granite Towers? Where do you want to point people?

Dan Brisse: Yeah, just go to our website, GraniteTowersEquityGroup.com. Contact us. Reach out. Would love to connect with you. Get on a call. See if we can help.

Brad Weimert: Dan, love talking to you, man. Looking forward to seeing you in Austin in May. And until next time, man.

Dan Brisse: Thanks for having me, Brad. It’s a pleasure.

Brad Weimert: Dope. Love it, man. Appreciate that.

Dan Brisse: Yeah. Dude, thank you. It was a great podcast. You’re good. You’re good at bringing out different types of questions. I’ve been on, I don’t know, hundreds of podcasts, and they are some of the most unique questions I’ve had out of all of them.

Brad Weimert: That’s awesome, man. I love hearing that, dude. That’s good. I mean, you’re a fun character to dig into. The snowboarding thing outside of just the athlete thing, that particular experience is, it’s f*cking crazy. You’re a f*cking crazy person.

Dan Brisse: Yeah, I agree. I agree. I watch these videos, and I think the same thing, Brad. I watch me jump buildings now, like parking garage or parking garage, and I cringe, man. I mean, if that rope would’ve snapped, if I’d have caught my edge, I’d be dead.

Brad Weimert: Yes, dude. How do your kids feel about seeing that stuff?

Dan Brisse: I don’t think they really realized the amount of risk I was taking. They see it on being, they’re like, “Oh, it’s cool, Dad.” And I’m like, “Yep.”

Brad Weimert: Well, I’m curious to 10 years from now, hear how they digest that.

Dan Brisse: Yeah. I think that as they mature and realize that I’m lucky to be here, it’ll be different.

Brad Weimert: Love it. Well, Dan, thanks for carving out the time, man. Looking forward to getting more.

Dan Brisse: Thank you. Thank you. I’ll see you in May. Have a great day. Bye.

Brad Weimert: You too, man. Peace.