Breaking Your Chains to Achieve Financial Freedom

Mike: Welcome to the flipnerd.com podcast. This is your host, Mike Hambright. And on this show I will introduce you to VIPs in the real estate investing industry as well as other interesting entrepreneurs whose stories and experiences can help you take your business to the next level. We have three new shows each week which are available in the iTunes store or by visiting flipnerd.com. So without further ado, let’s get started.

Mike: Hey. It’s Mike Hambright, with FlipNerd.com. Welcome back for another exciting VIP interview, where I interview some of the most successful real estate investing experts and entrepreneurs in our industry to help you learn and grow.
Today, I’m joined by David Phelps. David has an amazing story and awesome lessons for us all, really lessons for professionals that want to break the chains of what all too many Americans have become accustomed to wearing these days, whether you’re a small business owner and you think you’re an entrepreneur or not.
David makes a big part of his living teaching dentists and other professionals how to generate multiple streams of income with real estate, so that they can achieve financial freedom and freedoms otherwise. So before we get started with David though . . . He has some great lessons to share with us today. Let’s take a moment to recognize our featured sponsors.

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Please note, the views and opinions expressed by the individuals in this program do not necessarily reflect those of FlipNerd.com or any of its partners, advertisers or affiliates. Please consult professionals before making any investment or tax decisions as real estate investing can be risky.

Hey, David. Thanks for joining me on the show.

David: Mike, it’s great to be with you today.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah, glad you’re here. So before we get started, I know you’ve really got some great lessons and a lot of lessons that really are intuitive when people hear them, but it’s important to hear them again and to hear your story in conjunction with them because I think there’s not anybody that’s listening to this that doesn’t want to achieve freedom of time and freedom financially and know that their family is taken care of and all those things.
But before we get started, why don’t you tell us your background? Because you have a unique background and kind of how you got into real estate, and then we’ll start talking about more of what you do today.

David: Sure, Mike. Well, I was going to college back in the ’70s. So a lot of people probably don’t even know when that era existed. But back in the ’70s, I was in college, and I was getting ready to go into dental school because I thought dentistry would provide me a secure lifestyle, give me the income I needed to provide for my family, that security that all of us want.
I was taking all the biology and science courses, but there was one particular book that I read that really caught my eye, and I’ll go and show our audience what that book was. This is William Nickerson’s book. This was written back in 1980, “How I Turned $1000 into $5 million in Real Estate.”
So I read this book at nighttime, in between my organic chemistry books. This book was really what flipped the switch for me and told me that this was a way that I could invest the money that I would make in my chosen career, my profession, invest it, and have something I could start building outside.
I did not come from an entrepreneurial family, Mike. My family was not into real estate. I was really the first one. So after reading this book and knowing I was going to be in dental school for four years, right here in Dallas, Texas where we are today, that I got my dad, and I said, “Dad. You know what? I’m going to be here for four years. Would you trust me to manage a property if you came in and brought the financing and credit to buy it?” He said, “Okay.”
So he came down a couple times from Colorado, where I grew up. We spent a couple weekends in Dallas, looking around for neighborhoods and trying to find what I understood basically was, “Find the worst house in the neighborhood.” Right?

Mike: Yeah.

David: In a good neighborhood. So we did, bought that house, and we were joint venture partners. I didn’t even know what a joint venture was back then, but we were. Fast-forward. Managed that property through dental school, sold it when we graduated. I learned how to manage. My dad got a return on his money, and we split about $50,000 in capital gain profit. We should have kept that house, had I known what I know today, but that’s what got me going.

Mike: Yeah.

David: So I proceeded on after graduating from dental school, buying more houses. I pretty much bought houses. I got some other commercial property. I get involved in notes as well, but houses was where I spent my time. I didn’t have excess money. So I had to learn how to use other people’s money and usually bought a lot of properties subject too. Back in the ’80s, we could buy subject too and not worry about [inaudible 00:04:51] sell at all.

Mike: Right.

David: [inaudible 00:04:52]. So I stacked up and bought a lot of those and paid them down more quickly. I paid those loans down quickly. Within about 15 years, I had quite a bit of passive cash flow coming in. I thought, “This is really, really good.”
Well, something else happened in my life. That’s my daughter, who’s 22 today. She’s my only child. When she was just two-and-a-half years old, she was diagnosed with high-risk leukemia. That was a very, very difficult two-and-a-half years, where she went through intensive chemotherapy, almost lost her, but she pulled through.
She pulled through. Unfortunately, my marriage to her mother did not. So if anybody knows what that’s like, it’s emotionally very difficult, but also financially. You know? You basically start over.

Mike: Yeah.

David: Everything is cut in half. I kept the real estate but had to pay off her mom, which was the right thing to do. She didn’t even take the property. I had to start back over again, but what I found was that the second time around, after paying off the debt from the divorce and that sort of thing and paying off my ex, then I was able to rebuild the cash flow again, not in 15 years [inaudible 00:05:52] the first time, but six years.
Why? Well, because I had a network. I had people that knew that I was a buyer of good deals. Once you get out there and let people know who you are and what you do and that you can solve problems, everything happens faster. So that was lesson number one.
Number two was my same daughter, Jenna, she had to undergo a liver transplant when she was 12. She went into end-stage liver failure because of all the drugs she took to fight leukemia. She also had epilepsy. So that was at age 12. That was just about 10 years ago, almost 10 years ago to the month, Mike. She had this done in Houston.
Well, I was back and forth to Houston because she was there about 18 months, in and out of the hospital. It was not an easy thing. She had a lot of complications.

Mike: Yeah.

David: I found that I had to pull myself out of my dental practice because I wanted to be with her. That was my number one priority. Money didn’t mean anything to me. It was my time. Well, fortunately I had the real estate I’d built up so I could do that. I ended up, again, just fast-forward here, but I ended up selling my dental practice a few years ago. I ran it as an entrepreneur, not being the dentist in the practice, because I was dedicated to spending the time with my daughter.
I didn’t know how much more time we would have, and I think that’s a lesson for all of us because we think we’re immortal. We think time will go on forever, that we’re healthy today, our family is healthy, all is good, but we can’t count on tomorrow. So I had to figure out a way to, as I talk about, break the chains.

Mike: Right.

David: Break the chains from something that was providing me an income and lifestyle, but it wasn’t allowing me to do the things I wanted to do. Real estate, bar none, was the thing, the platform, that let me achieve that. So that’s a really fast picture, but that’s where I came from.

Mike: Yeah. No, I appreciate you sharing that story, David.

David: Yeah.

Mike: I think it’s easy for people like me. I have a seven-year-old son who is healthy, never had any issues. It’s easy sometimes to get caught up in taking that for granted, but I know there’s a lot of other people out there that have other issues, whether it’s health-wise or otherwise. I think it’s a burden for people that have been trained and conditioned their whole life to work for somebody else, or even if they work for themselves, have lots of other friends that are doctors and lawyers.
As we’ve discussed, their still trading their dollars for time. If they take off a week, or they take off time, then they’re losing money. I think that’s hopefully one of the big lessons that we share with people today, is how to generate those other streams of income so that your business and your income doesn’t stop if you go somewhere to do something, whether it’s to take care of family or to take a vacation or time off.

David: Yeah, it’s what I talk to my doctors about, the fact that we all think that we’ll work hard enough and that some day will come where we can start living our life and doing those things. Well, the problem for most people is some day never comes.

Mike: Yeah.

David: Something happens. People get sick. People pass away. Then all these dreams we had about living this life are gone. You have to learn how to think about yourself different. A lot of what we do in life is about the way we think, mindset. We’re conditioned early in life to do certain things, and a lot of that is go to school and get the highest education possible. Work hard.
Those are good characteristics, but for most people that’s not going to get you to real freedom. You got to think differently and think about how you can leverage who you are, what you do with the experiences, and leverage your network. We’ll talk more about that today, but there’s lots of ways you can leverage. We know how to do that in real estate, with financial leverage, but there’s other ways to leverage as well. That’s really, really important.
Again, these are things I did not know early on. I had to find out the hard way, but at least I figured it out in time. Because Jenna today, my daughter, is 22. She’s doing well today, and now I have all these great years of spending time with her and not saying, “Well, someday I’ll get to that. Someday I’ll make time for that.” I wasn’t going to wait.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. You know from dental school, you’ll know this, but there’s really no formal education that ever teaches you how to build another stream of income. They want you to focus on what they’re teaching you. Right?

David: Exactly.

Mike: So it’s a shame. There’s really no financial literacy taught in education at all, just because I have a friend that’s a surgeon, that we were talking about this recently. Even when he was becoming a surgeon, there was never any discussion about how to run a business. It was just about his practice.

David: Right.

Mike: Let alone, how to build a business to where it can make money without you. Right?

David: Exactly.

Mike: So whether you’re a medical professional or just a professional, or you’re working in another corporation, nobody ever discusses how to build other streams of income, which is a shame.

David: Exactly. Well, and we both even know real estate investors who are really running more of a business. Again, a business is great, and we all have to, at some point in our lives, go through that sacrifice period where we do trade our time for dollars. That’s normal. That’s natural, unless you’re a trust fund baby and just had money falling from the sky.

Mike: Right.

David: But we have to do that. But how do you climb out of that? As you said, number one, have a business that will work for you. Have investments that provide passive income streams without you working. That’s the whole goal. That’s where everybody should be headed.

Mike: Yeah.

David: Keeping focused on that is important, but it’s hard to do because life takes over.

Mike: Yeah. So one of the lessons you teach people that have obviously very busy lives and are seemingly able to brush off, “Yeah, that sounds interesting. I’ll get to that,” but don’t get to it. But how do you advise people to kind of be building something up on the side as you’re doing your day job or your day business, if you will?

David: Yeah. Well, I mean, number one is the people that come to me, the doctors, professional practice owners, small business entrepreneurs who are, again, working hard and maybe making a very good income but don’t know how to exit, how to break free, how to get off that treadmill is, number one, it’s what I learned. So it’s my story because I am one of us. I’m one of them. I mean, I’ve been through that.

Mike: Right.

David: So my story connects. Then you’re right. So it’s like, “Okay. How do I do that,” because historically everybody understands, I think, intellectually that real estate is a great place to amass wealth, but the problem we know, Mike, is how do people that are busy connect with that.
I call people who maybe watched “Flip This House” on TV or something, or they think, “Wow, that’s great,” and they go try it. Then they become what I call accidental landlords, didn’t really mean to get in that, because they don’t know what they’re doing.

Mike: Right.

David: They might go hire contractors to do . . . They pay way over for the house, pay way too much for the rehab. They take the first tenant who comes in, and it’s a nightmare. They have to evict, and they’re going, “This real estate doesn’t work. So I’m not going to do it.”
So the key thing with busy people who aren’t going to be active boots on the ground like many of the people that we’re talking today, you have to show them, “Well, how can I connect to real estate in a way that I can still get good returns and be secure, but not have to deal with their time and with tenants and toilets at 2:00 PM on Saturday night?” That’s the fear factor most people have about real estate.

Mike: Right.

David: You and I and many of our people in the audience today know how to do that. Now, we have to speak the language to these people who have discretionary income and show them how we can put together really good joint ventures, which is what I love to do today. I do a lot of joint ventures, both as an active investor, but also I do it as a passive investor in other people’s deals who I know, like, and trust.

Mike: Right. Why don’t you talk a little bit about joint ventures? Because I think that’s another challenge that a lot of professionals up to this point or even executives in the corporate world have. Probably executives in the corporate world are a little bit different example, but a lot of folks have been forced to be very independent. They don’t really think of, “How do I work with somebody to get to achieve my goal? Yes, I’ll make less. Maybe I’ll make less money, but it gets me in the game, and it enables me to do it, which otherwise I can’t do at all.”
Talk a little bit about the power of joint ventures, of kind of working with others to help enable your goals.

David: Sure. That’s a great point, Mike. Going solo, having that work ethic and that mindset of, “I can do it,” that’s who I was. That’s who I was for many years of my life. It’s like, “I’m smart enough. At least I can work hard enough. I’ll make things happen on my own.” It took me a number of years to figure out that if I learned how to put together good joint ventures . . . Joint ventures are not a partnership.
Partnerships . . . There’s maybe a place for those, but partnerships are like a marriage. You better go in, knowing you’re going to stay, and you better have an exit strategy because things happen in life. I like joint ventures in real estate because we can take any piece of real estate, whether it’s a single-family house . . . You can do it with apartments or commercial, even mobile home parks, as I have. You can do joint ventures where you can split those benefits. One person can hold title. Another person can have a debt instrument. You can use options. You can use leases.
All these documents that we know and use in real estate can split benefits, so that we have what are called severable interests. They’re already separate. We don’t have to go in front of a judge and say, “Well, judge, we need to dissolve this partnership.” So joint ventures can be done very, very neatly, so that each party knows exactly what their role is. You can have an active person who’s kind of running it and a passive person.
So for example, I put money into deals here in Dallas, Texas with people that I know that are good boots on the ground. Maybe we work together on the marketing and lead generation. But once an opportunity is found, they show it to me, and maybe I’ll help them negotiate if they need help. Maybe they don’t, but then I’ll provide the funding. How much funding one wants to provide is up to your safety. Some people will provide funding for the acquisition. Some people will provide acquisition and rehab. So whatever your experience level is.
But the main thing is, as the passive investor, you want to have a secured interest like a bank, so a first lien position. Then the terms of that can be whatever you decide, whatever makes sense for that deal. You can also have an equity participation, which is an index to inflation, which I like to have in deals, because I think we’re going to have some inflation in years to come.

Mike: Yeah.

David: So I can be very passive in those deals, get a nice cash flow return, have an equity index to inflation that protects me there, and I can be very, very passive. So that’s one quick example of how a joint venture on a single-family house can be done.

Mike: Yeah. Of course, you want to try to keep it as simple as you can, but obviously your creativity is limitless in terms of how you can structure deals.

David: It really comes to the education of the person you’re working with. Yes, when you start first with a professional or someone who’s in business, who is just getting their feet wet, yes, keep it simple and let them build confidence with you. As they become more educated, or as you educate them as they go along, then yes, if you want to add more complexity, and you want to show them how to use a self-directed IRA and things of that nature, which are all beneficial, do it.
But yes, you want to keep it simple at first, to bring people in. Getting too complicated is what scares people away, and that’s what we don’t want to do when we’re looking for good relationships. Once you have a few people that start to work with you, and they start to see how well it works, you don’t need a lot of private lenders to help you put together what you do out there in the workplace. You really don’t.

Mike: Right. Right. So take a little time and talk about the power of networking, because I think both you and I know, and it’s a big . . . To be real honest, it’s a big reason why I started this show. I’ve always preached the importance of networking, and it was a way for me to reach out much further in the world than what I’ve historically been able to do. It’s because I understand the power of getting to know you and getting to know a lot of other people that I’ve had on the show or that I will have on the show.
But even in our business of buying houses, which is obviously different from the show, just . . . I have a contractor crew where this guy has rehabbed my last 100, 150 houses. I hardly ever go to houses. I go for 15 or 20 minutes to walk through with him at the beginning and the end, and we’re kind of done. I have some other systems in place that allow me to be much more kind of passive or hands-off than what the average person is.
But that took time to build, and it took a lot of networking. Talk a little bit about your thoughts on networking and how critical that is for people, whether they’re just getting started to even on an ongoing basis.

David: Yeah, Mike. I think it’s not what you know, but it’s who you know in life, because there’s only so much time that each one of us can take to access information, things that we want to learn and become good at. We can’t do it all today. There’s way too much out there.
The example you just brought up is perfect, where you have taken the time to develop a team that can really do amazing, quick, expedient, efficient work on rehabbing houses. It would make a lot more sense for me, knowing you now, to invest my money with you, take a piece of the deal, a piece of the profit, but I can do more deals with someone like you and not spend my time running around, looking at houses, bringing contractors in, coordinating the deal. We both know that takes a lot of time.

Mike: Yeah.

David: When you’ve got a team that can do that, where you hardly have to touch it, you have created something that has high value. Well, maybe that’s not where I’m at. Maybe that’s not what I want to do, just not my area. So why do I want to go do that when someone like you has already done it? There’s a way you and I can work together. That’s a perfect example.
Networking itself, I think, is huge. Jim Rohn, who passed away just a few years ago, but a great mentor, great teacher, said, “You become the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” I think that’s really, really true. It’s why we want to seek to be around other people who are likeminded. We come from different backgrounds, different experience, but likeminded entrepreneurs who are headed for the same goals.
It’s not all about the money. As we talked about earlier, it’s about life. What are we doing in life? What are we creating in our lives? And what do we do to give back? When you have that kind of spirit of people around you, you can’t help but elevate yourself, even in those times in your life when you’re having tough days or tough weeks. You know? I had a child that was very sick, but I depended upon the people that were around me that kept me lifted up and said, “You know what? You can get through this. You can make it through.”
It’s just so much more fun in life to do things with other people. The network becomes your net worth, is what I say. It really is true. Hard work is great, but you got to leverage who you are, what you know, with other people that complement what you do.

Mike: Absolutely. So for a lot of professionals, let’s talk about . . . One of the things that . . . I have a lot . . . I came from corporate America. So I have a lot of friends. I have an MBA from a top program. Some things that are not typical of real estate investors either is obviously being a doctor.
But you know, I’ve seen my life change dramatically in the time I’ve been in real estate, which for me has been about six years, but I have a lot of other friends that are still climbing that corporate ladder and have made progress, but there’s no such thing as a safe job anymore. There’s no such thing as a blue chip company.
So I have a lot of corporate friends, and I know there’s a lot of people listening to this call that have no . . . They essentially have no safety net, and they don’t know how to get started, how to kind of transition or start building these things up. But for anybody that’s listening that wants some guidance on how to just kind of get in the game and start doing things, what’s some typical advice that you give?

David: I think you’ve got to find some groups in your local community, and there are groups in virtually any community. Mike, you work with franchisees all across the country.

Mike: Yeah.

David: But there’s groups that are real estate education groups. That’s, again, part of your networking. So that’s one place to start if you don’t know anybody else. Go to some of those groups. And again, you’ve got to ferret through and find the right people. You don’t just go into business with the first person you meet. Of course not. But that’s where you start to learn, and you start to figure out.
I did a lot of observation early on when I was learning how to do this. I would go to a group or meeting, and I would talk to people, but I would observe and see who showed up on a regular basis, who seemed to be the people in the room who were really looked upon with respect and had education.
You’re going to find people in those groups who love to give back. If you show up, and you’re there, and you have intent and purpose, and you want to learn, you want to get in the game on some level and learn how to do it, there’s people in every audience, every group, who will give their time. They’re not there to earn a buck or something.

Mike: Right.

David: There’s people like that too, and nothing wrong with people who do coach and consulting for dollars, but you’ve got to find good people. You can find them there. So that’s where I’d start. Again, it’s about networking. You know? There’s lots of education resources out there today. It’s just a lot of the people we talk to don’t have a lot of time.
So how do you get them, as quickly as possible, to where they can remove the fear factor? Because fear is an important part of what we feel as emotion. That’s what keeps us safe. So sometimes fear blocks people, like you’re talking about, in corporate America or who are in professions that . . . They come to a place where, I think, they become uncomfortably comfortable, if that makes sense.

Mike: Right.

David: You know? They’re living their life. They’re putting food on the table and living in a decent house, but they know there’s something missing there. The safety net is missing. They know things could change tomorrow. They want to have that security. So finding good people, surrounding yourself with people is a part that does take some time. There’s no fast-track to that.

Mike: Yeah, I talk a lot about the importance of REIA clubs because I think they’re just the foundation of real estate investing. Like you said, there’s clubs everywhere. So we have actually a directory on FlipNerd.com/ . . . I don’t know if it’s REIA clubs or clubs. But FlipNerd.com, we have a tab for clubs where you can find clubs.
I think the important thing there is not just finding a club, but as you said, that people that are there . . . If you ask questions, people . . . Even for me, when I go to a club, to a meeting, I’ve carved out that time, and I’m happy to talk to people as much as they want to talk there. I had somebody in my office yesterday, Kathy Crow. I don’t know if you know Kathy Crow.

David: Yeah, I know.

Mike: She’s obviously a legend in her own right. We were talking about how . . . I’ve said this several times. She used the exact same words. Real estate investing, for many people, could be a very lonely business. You’re doing transactions with people that . . . Once you bought or sold that house with that person, you’re never going to see them again. Now, it’s time to go find somebody new to . . . So it just tends to be a very lonely business.
So I think that, for folks that are listening to this that are newer, you’ll be surprised at how much people will open up, because a lot of real estate investors go to those events, seeking that opportunity to talk to people and spend time networking because we understand the value of it, more so than, say, somebody that sends me an email that says, “Hey. Can I buy you lunch and go talk?” I don’t have time for that. But when I go to a group meeting, I’m all yours, whoever is there.

David: Right.

Mike: I think if people take advantage of those opportunities to essentially get somebody that’s in a room, that’s there to network, and ask whatever you want, you’ll be surprised at how much people will open up and tell you.

David: Exactly right, Mike. I’ve had the same experience.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. I know you have a book that you wanted to share with us, which I think is an awesome opportunity for folks. Why don’t you share that book with us?

David: Yeah, Mike.

Mike: Give us some backdrop too.

David: Yeah, I wrote a book this last year, just, again, based on the experience I’ve had with working a lot of my doctor colleagues and those who want to create freedom and, just as you said earlier . . . How do they get started? How do they figure out which way to go? So I’ll just hold it up here. This is the book. It’s “From High Income to High Net Worth.”
It’s the problem we just talked about, people that have a corporate job or in a profession. They can make an income, but they don’t have real freedom. The net worth is not there to provide the passive income. So I wrote this book and really wrote it in a language that I think connects well with people who might want to be a passive, private lender. It tells them how they can utilize what they have in joint venture.
If anybody would like just to get a few chapters of that book, and I’ll just hold this up real quickly too, this is where they can get it at this particular website, Freedomfounders.com/free- . . . Hyphen . . . You can read it better than I can. I’m reading it backwards here.

Mike: Yeah.

David: Book chapters . . . You can see it there.

Mike: We’ll add a link. We’ll add a link down below the video.

David: Just add a link to it. Add a link. If they want to get the chapters . . . I don’t have it up on Amazon yet, but they can . . . There’s also a place where they can get the book if someone wants to get the book. I’m not here to sell books, but it’s just [inaudible 00:26:10].

Mike: Yeah, but it’s great information, I think. I think it’s that education or that reference material that helps a lot of us move forward in ways where we feel stuck.

David: Correct. Correct.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Well, David, can you take just the last couple minutes here to share some just general advice you would give people on really . . . Just kind of summarize what we talked about, the power of moving from . . . Even if you make a lot of money today, as we talked about, there are a lot of real estate investors that make a lot of money flipping houses, buying and selling houses. In my business, we’ve done very well. But if we didn’t have . . . This is . . . It’s interesting, the economy right now. It’s gotten harder to buy houses.

David: Correct.

Mike: Our transaction volume is down. Several times, I’ve thought to myself how blessed I am to have built up a rental portfolio to help get through a time that’s slower. I thought about it in the context of how blessed I am to have some passive income streams, and we have more than just the rental income, but some passive income streams that come in, whether I’m working or not, in terms of . . .
I asked somebody recently if they wanted to go on a vacation with us. They kind of made some reference that they didn’t have any more vacation time. I’m thinking to myself . . . I’ve kind of forgotten that world already because I just take time off, for the most part, when I want, but I think you can’t do that unless you’ve built up some other streams of revenue. But somewhere in there was a question. Why don’t you maybe share . . .

David: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: . . . some of your thoughts on the importance of kind of building those streams in people’s lives.

David: Yeah. Again, we all came from a point where we had to go to a transaction-based income, trading time for dollars, whether you’re an employee or self-employed. Great place to start, but we’ve got to work our way out of that, so that we have passive income streams. Otherwise, I think most people will hit a plateau.
Maybe they can inch up a little bit, inch that transaction income up a little bit, but there’s no safety there. Again, safety in losing a job. You can become disabled. Then what do you do? Maybe you have some insurance. That’s great. But what do you do?
So having passive income is really, really important. We’re here talking about real estate because I think that’s the best place to have passive income.

Mike: Yeah.

David: You can decide what asset class you like. Single-family is a great place to start and learn the ropes. Other people like multi-family, commercial, mobile home parks. They’re all great. You just need to learn the ropes.
But the passive income is there. We know everything cycles because a lot of people have fear. They go, “Well, David, you know, back in 2007 and ’08, real estate took a big hit. Didn’t you lose all your money?” Well, I said, “People . . . There were people that got upside-down,” but I said, “Most part, they were speculators, people that were riding that bubble.” Everything bubbles.
Everything bubbles and cycles. It depends on your financing, how you’re leveraged, if you’re leveraged, how you do it. You’ve got to do it the right way, but realize every cycle, there’s profits to be taken. Every cycle has its niche, and you have to learn to be flexible and understand the cycles. Yes, just as you said, it’s more difficult to find good deals today, but I think we’re hitting a little bit of a bubble again, not like we had six years ago, but a little bubble. Things are getting a little bit open again. I think we’re going to have another reset.
So realize that when that happens, there’s going to be deals available again, but there’s always deals out there. You have to work harder for them. You have to do better marketing, lead generation, than you had to a few years ago.

Mike: Yeah.

David: But just you’ve got to be in the game. If you’re passive, then be in the game with somebody like you, Mike, or people that are within your group who are active and have their finger on the pulse of the market. That’s how you stay relevant, and you remove that fear factor. Everybody I know . . . They’re afraid. They’re afraid. They’re afraid.
So how do you mitigate your risk? Well, you get around people who have been through this and gone through the cycles. Learn from them how to secure your position. So as you’re building the passive income, you don’t take a hit when the markets cycle, because they will. The markets will always cycle.

Mike: Right.

David: It’s part of life, but you can’t stay on the sideline and just watch and go, “When’s the water right to dip my toe in? Is it right now? Well, I don’t know. Well, maybe next year.” No, no, no. You have to get in today, but just do it the right way by associating with people who have been there, who have done it, can give you guidance. That’s a trick. Piggy-back on other people’s deals. Just piggy-back with them until you feel secure enough. You want to start going and doing more active on your own. You can do that. Play where it works for you. Fit it to your own lifestyle, where you are. Have your goals to where you want to go, and you’ll get there.

Mike: That’s great advice. Thanks, David, for joining us today. Definitely appreciate your sharing your story and your insights. It’s great information, and I think you and I both hope that lots more people will use real estate as a vehicle to build up some additional revenue streams and some security from things that maybe you don’t even know they’re going to happen yet in your life, but we all have issues that we face that we’ll appreciate having that passive income there.

David: No question, Mike. I enjoyed being with you today. Thank you so much. Love what you’re doing, by the way.

Mike: Thank you. Thank you.

David: It’s great.

Mike: I’ll be seeing you here in a couple months.

David: Absolutely. Thanks, Mike.

Mike: All right. Have a good day.

David: You too.

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