3 Degrees of Freedom

Ep 165 - Long Term Success in Real Estate through Execution and Building Teams with Daniel French

• Derek Clifford • Season 3 • Episode 165

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In this engaging podcast, Derek talks with Dan French, a seasoned real estate expert and CEO of a successful property management firm. They dive into Dan's real estate journey, focusing on his resilience and path to success.

Dan started in real estate in 2005 with small four-unit investments. Despite facing challenges, he recognized real estate's potential for long-term wealth. Alongside this, he maintained a career in public service, showing his commitment to responsible financial growth.

They explore the concept of freedom, including location, time, and financial independence. Dan emphasizes the "freedom to" pursue a mission and give back.

The conversation shifts to Dan's background in property management, a challenging field. Dan reflects on his evolution to CEO, stressing team building and strategic execution.

Dan's core work habits come into view, emphasizing grit, discipline, resourcefulness, and setting ambitious goals while achieving short-term milestones.

He values effective written communication and calendar management to optimize productivity.

Dan shares insights into his real estate ventures, including ResProp Management for property management services, ATX Acquisitions for investments, and Rex, a technology-driven real estate approach.

In summary, this podcast explores Dan French's real estate journey, highlighting his views on freedom and his work habits for success. His dedication to discipline, resilience, and long-term vision inspires entrepreneurs and real estate enthusiasts. His insights into real estate and technology provide a comprehensive perspective on the industry.

Connect with Dan thru the social links below and learn more about his business:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-french-691aa767/
Website: https://www.atxacquisitions.com/

Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5-Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift

If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!

If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook

Derek:

Welcome to the three degrees of freedom podcast, where we explore lifestyle engineering with our expert guests to bring you in alignment with your own three degrees of freedom, location, time, and financial independence. Hello everyone. Welcome back to the three degrees of freedom podcast today. We've got Mr. Dan French. He's got nearly two decades of experience in real estate, and he's the CEO of a real estate, private equity and property management firm. That's transacted over 2 billion in assets under management, having overseen a vast portfolio of 15, 000 plus apartment units. Amazing. Dan's also a managing partner at Rex, a groundbreaking technology venture poised to disrupt the real estate industry. Not only is Dan a powerhouse in business, but he's also a dedicated family man, married for nearly 11 years and father to four wonderful children. His story embodies the pursuit of financial location and time freedom. And maybe we have a little bit of things to talk about. Maybe we have, I know in our pre call, you said that you maybe have a little bit of beef. Against the way people have been slinging around the buzzword of freedom. Right. so let's get into it a little bit, Dan. I just want to talk, let's start with the basics. First of all, of the three degrees of freedom, location, time, and financial, which one do you feel strongest in right now, or which one do you think is a misnomer or if all of them are, and which one are you looking to further? Yeah, I know.

Dan:

First of all, Derek, thank you for having me on. I'm excited with what you're doing with your podcast and, hope to add value to your audience today. And hopefully they can find some good nuggets to take away, you know, one or two. Nuggets of wisdom here. but, you know, yeah, I would say beef is a strong word, but yeah, I would just refract or restate the question, you know, like freedom from versus freedom to, you know, freedom from the drudgery of work or whatever, you know, I would say it's freedom to pursue your mission. I kind of was in preparation for this podcast. I was thinking through, what, just what motivates me and how I view the world. And, I just went back to the parable of the talents and this is in the gospel, it's in actually in multiple gospels and what they, what they're trying to convey, in this parable, this story is. When someone is given, some, you know, when they're given something, actually, they're being asked to produce much more. So if your audience might not know the story, basically someone gets 5 talents and a talent means a sum of money, a large sum of money, and that person produces 5 more, right? And then the second person has 2 talents and they produce 2, and the first person just, or the third person just buries that talent in the ground, they don't do anything with their, with what they've been given. And so it's taken from that person and it's given to the one who has proven that they can be a good steward and, you know, produce a lot more. So to me, it's like the, so the outcome of that is to everyone who has more, to everyone who has more will be given. So, so that's how I view the world. It's well, if I've been given some opportunities and I've done okay in business. And I've got a lot of blessings in my family life. Well, great. Now I'm free to do a lot more and give back a lot more. So I hope that helps you better understand the kind of have with it. So I don't know if that explains it fully well, what's in my head, but that's what I'm trying to get at when I'm saying, freedom to do a lot more. That's

Derek:

Yeah. Yeah. I completely agree with you man. I just wanted to have a little bit of fun here and I completely Yeah. Love it. I think we're saying the same thing. Honestly, I think, you know, that parable is really, it's really powerful and it also explains the fact that, you know, back when I was in the corporate world, it even expanded to the logic in corporate world, which is crazy. But if you wanted something done, give it to the busy person. Yeah, so the person that knows how to budget and how it has a budget time and resources and just get done like just make the decisions to make things to get things completed. Yeah, I think that's a really powerful concept and something that folds into the three degrees of freedom. Because it is a responsibility. I think freedom, like you said, is something that you don't run from, but you, you jump into, right? You become a bigger person. And with that bigger person means you can take on bigger problems and serve the world in a bigger way. Right.

Dan:

100%. Thank you, Derek. Yeah. So we're going to be refined my thoughts. So we're saying that, but yeah, basically to answer your question, I think the one that would be top for me would be financial freedom. All my goals would, revolve around providing for my family and make sure they're totally set up and have access to great education and they're stable. Right. And they have, the ability to live well. And then beyond that, I want to be able to get back to charitable initiatives. And for me, that's part of my mission is to do very well and be free. And that way, anything above that freedom level is something I can give back and return to society broadly.

Derek:

Of course. Yeah, definitely. There's no other people, that are well suited enough to give back to society than property management companies. I just have a lot of respect for what you guys do because it's tough. It is a very tough business. And I'm sure that when you started, I'm sure nowadays you have a staff working for you and you've got people in the positions that you need. But in the beginning, you had to wear probably a lot of those hats when you were starting out. And it's a very tough business. So I guess with that backdrop in mind, and then you've got other companies as well, technology, and then an investment company as well. Let's talk about your, in your journey to financial freedom. Can you talk a little bit about how real estate's kind of unlocked that for you? Like, maybe it was there a time in your life where you didn't realize that real estate was going to help you? or has it always just been in your blood for instance, or tell us a little bit about how you got it.

Dan:

Well, thank you. It's a broad thing and I don't want to, you know, take up too much time in this, unless you want to, but basically it does revolve a lot of, my business. History does revolve around real estate. So but maybe for the benefit of your audience, how I got started was in 2005, I started investing in real estate, small deals that are, four unit type of buildings. And just, I felt like it was a way to generate future wealth. And at that time, I was very Driven to be into public service. Now that was a separate career that I had. So I always felt like real estate could unlock a lot of wealth, future wealth creation. I knew I had to delay the marshmallow, so to speak. Right. It's like anyone that thinks there's a get rich quick scheme out there is probably doing something that's. either way too risky or just not, not really fully ethical. In my opinion, there's very few things that just pop overnight. So I knew I had to delay the marshmallows, but I wanted to get started. So in 05, with my business partner, Pete Rex and his brother, just going after being entrepreneurial and taking risk. And, and that was something I think is very broad and durable across Many people, you know, I've traveled a little bit around the world and this is people around the world always know that there's something about real estate if I can just own it and just be a part of this thing, especially in a place like the U. S. That's always basically, I believe, decade after decade, we'll go through recessions, but we'll always be up and to the right. Yeah. I was,

Derek:

no, I'm sorry, man. I was just going to say that real estate is one of the most durable asset classes in the fact that you can hold on and just wait. As long as you can keep what you've purchased, usually the market is pretty forgivable. Because the population of the United States is increasing. It is a little bit different. And I'd like your opinion on this in the tech industry, or if you buy like a franchise or try to do a business on your own, where you start to see sales drop and you don't know what the problem is, that's a big problem to have. If you don't know why your sales are dropping, if that starts happening because of outside forces. You got to figure it out, but in real estate, I've always found that it is very forgivable. It's competitive because there's a lot of people in the space and they know that it's forgivable, right? But it's one of those spaces that you just have to make a decision for yourself. Are you willing to jump into this for the long haul, right? To mitigate your risk? Or are you looking for something that's maybe a little bit more higher on the risk tolerance profile?

Dan:

Yeah, no, let me unpack some of that. I think maybe you're smarter than I was when I was young for sure. Probably still smarter than me, but I can't say that, but no, the, it depends really what kind of market are you betting on? If you're betting on Texas or Florida that they're going to have long term population and job growth. I think, yes, totally up into the right and it's going to be less risky than betting on a single company. If you look at the growth of cities or the growth of real estate, maybe taking out office right now, but definitely look at multifamily or housing. So durable, so predictable again, it's going to be choppy, but it's going to go up into the right. But whereas, if you look at the, S and P 500, what is the staying power of a company on that list? It's right treads and the lifetime of a company is. It's going to be, even the ones that survive and make it that far is still very competitive and there's going to be people, companies that fade out of that. Whereas if you're in real estate you choose a really good location, I think you're very downside protected. You have to choose a good operator as well.

Derek:

Correct. Yeah. It's, it, you just have more opportunities to hit a target rich environment. And even if you do make a mistake, if you hold onto the property, most likely. It's going to work out in the end. It may be a very long hold depending on the number of mistakes that you make. Most likely it will work out for you. So that's one of the reasons why I love it, but you're right. I've seen a statistic out there. I can't remember where it was, but I think, it's something crazy. Like one in 10 businesses succeed past three years or something. And then another one in 10 of those companies make it to five or six years. Which is crazy, and so it just makes me wonder, in real estate, I can see why it's a tough industry, especially right now when times are tough, there's always a light at the end of the tunnel. There's always something that you can do. It's a durable asset. It's tangible. There's things you can do with it. And so that's why I love the asset class. And clearly you do as well because you're involved in them with all of your businesses, which is great.

Dan:

For sure. And I would just say one more caveat is such a debt laden asset? Yeah. It really is a, as a financial asset and, very, very much, goes up and down with the debt markets. So you have to be very careful and we're seeing that now. A lot of owners that, that maybe had floating rate debt and they're in trouble because the interest rates have risen so dramatically. That's. You know, or they took too much leverage, right? So those are ways where you could really mess up in real estate. So you have to keep that downside protection is

Derek:

super important. Love it. So I want to change gears here real quick, before we hop into the entrepreneurial side of real estate. I wanted to ask you, you're clearly very busy. You have three companies, you've got property management, you have acquisitions, and then you have technology, right? All happening in your world right now. And you've also got four kids and a wife. And lots of stuff going on. How in the heck are you able to balance all of this in your personal life? What is your day look like? Oh man,

Dan:

it's every day is a little bit different. First of all, I would say, , I do want to give credit to her. Not hiring, but marrying the right person. That is one of the most critical things you could ever do. It's the most important contract you'll ever sign in your life. And , I just made, I hit a grand slam home run with that one. My wife is Melissa and she's great. She is really frees me up to do what I love. Like for me, freedom is chasing a mission and being purpose driven and, that's when I'm on a mission. To do a lot of good in the world, but through business right now, and to elevate humanity through our business. So having a rock at home is so important. So that's number one. Within business world though, I would say hiring a players and a performers, that's like number one within business is there every time that you don't do it, you never want to have a C play around, but even when you have a B player, things just don't happen on the pace at which you're. You want, right? And you can never truly free up because you have to always dive in and be like very weedy and just get into the mix with them. We have a true aid player. They actually don't want you in the weeds with them. They're like, actually, I got it. leave me alone. Just set me up with good goals. Good compensation, tell me what to do and then check in with me and I'll tell you how great I'm doing. And those are, you just tap dance to work when you get those folks. And so the more you can have and build that kind of like that, a team, the championship team, it's a beautiful thing. Let's,

Derek:

Let's double click into this a little bit more because, you mentioned that one of your superpowers is the ability to execute and lead teams. These are crucial things for anyone that's looking to build a business to help create some degree of freedom in their life, whether it's location time or financial, right? Yeah. Could you talk a little bit about how you develop the superpower of execution? And I also want to talk about teams and team building and ask you for how to do that, because this is selfishly something that I'm working on as well. And so I want to tap into your wisdom to help me build a powerhouse team, just like you have. So let's start with where you got the ability to execute from, and then move over to teams after that.

Dan:

Yeah. I think first of all, when you're good at something and you tend to have passion around it and that passion is, I think, speaking to your soul or something in the way you're built by God given talents. Right. So when I'm in my zone of kind of excellence, I just feel better. I feel like. Boom. This is what I'm made to do. And this is, I can achieve more. I can be in the flow zone more. So I think everyone out there needs to really understand, maybe execution is not for you. You don't like that day to day repetition. You want to be a visionary. Okay. Well, not everyone can be a visionary either. So for me, I'm partnered with this guy named Pete Rex. 18 years in business. He is a master visionary. He can, you know, sometimes be out there and 30 years in it into the future. But I thrive more on the, the follow up leading the teams, the day to day push every day is a push to get things done. So what I would say is Number one, you got to find out what is through your passions, really be in tune with that and then find out what you think you're going to be good at based on the passions. And then once you're good at it, take on a lot more than you think you're ready for. That's my key advice. As I've always done that in my career, even my early career before business. But in, I mentioned public service, I was someone who was just getting involved early. I ran for office early as a young person, I just always took on more and wanted to do things. Whenever people told me I was too young for something that would kind of jazz me up. That would light me up to just go do it and prove people wrong. And hopefully not in a narcissistic way, but just in a way like, all right, you know what, Life is short. I want to just go achieve. I want to do things and I want to build these leadership muscles. You can't build it unless you're trying, you got to put yourself out there. So I hope that's helpful. Yeah,

Derek:

no that's really great. Wonderful insights there, in terms of building because it's funny. A lot of people are scared to put, to, to think about stretch goals because there's an ingrained fear of failure, right? But I have a feeling that you in learning through business and through entrepreneurship and, doing stuff with your own properties that you did fail quite a bit, everyone does because you can't be perfect. What is your relationship with failure or how do you view setbacks? Right. Yeah, just want to talk about that in terms of execution and the frame of execution before we move on to teams.

Dan:

Oh, man, my relationship with failure. I don't know. It's always stalking me. And, it's a it's like an ex girlfriend that won't go away. I guess I don't know. Now, the failure is just part of being in business, actually really just doing any anything that's trying to push things forward, you're going to have failure. So I think we have to, What we call it an Invictus mentality and Invictus means, unconquerable, you might be defeated in a battle, but you're never going to lose the ultimate war, you're always going to keep after it. You might get depressed briefly, but then the next day you have to wake up optimistic. You have to wake up like, all right, cool. And you know what I need to learn from that mistake. Hopefully never made that version of the mistake again and just keep going. Be Invictus, always rising up and always. Thinking ahead and just be prepared because yeah, everyone's going to

Derek:

fail. Yeah, I think so. I think that, when you make mistakes, it's like stepstones, to success. Because, when you are going through the process, that's the true success. To me in my mind, right? As you're executing, you're making these failures. People always misconstrue results with success. And while that's true, that's more of an outcome. right. I see that you show up to your property management company. You're leading people you're doing good in the world. And then you come home and add value to your family. That's success, man. Like it's never a destination. You can't just say, Oh, I'm successful. And then. You end up eating Cheetos and sitting on the couch all day because you're successful and that's it. It's a growing process. And so that's why I love execution is like a long term game. And so is. Stepping stones, these temporary failures, right. Along the way as you execute. So I just saw that in you, because I know it seems like you're not afraid of messing up. And I think that's a key component of execution along with what you said is like stretch goals. And, you know, when people set stretch goals, that's going to be their main complaint to themselves is I'm going to fail. Sometimes you just got to do that to push yourself.

Dan:

No, totally. Yep. You have to have really strong partners too, I would say within business because, - and these are hard conversations, you know, making sure that we have the humility to face. Whatever was our portion of that failure, you know, we have to face it and it's really difficult. It's very easy to get defensive. It's very easy to blame external events or circumstances and not take personal ownership. And I'm guilty of this, right? You know, I don't sometimes want to take ownership, but if you have a good partner that really challenges you and you have to challenge them. You can really stare at it in the face and then you can get a lot better. But if you never do that and never had that humility, yeah, you're just going to repeat and you're doomed. You're in a loop, you

Derek:

know? Yeah, completely. This is a perfect, transition to start talking about teams, partners, our team members, but, I guess, yeah, they are, they're team members, but then you also have people that report to you and then the relationships that go with all of that. I want to talk with you about how you've been able to lead teams so successfully. You have a visionary, you're probably the integrator in some of your businesses, right? And you have the visionary that's, you're working together with to help set these amazing goals and work together to solve problems. What is different about your ability to select and lead teams or what is your process if you're looking to hire someone?

Dan:

Yeah, we can talk about this one for a long time as well, but, lead team leadership is, is a lot of things that I think, one thing I want to make sure I mention is that, yeah. I recommend you get to know people on a personal level as well. You have to really understand their strengths and weaknesses, both inside of work, definitely within work. You want to understand the strengths and play to the strengths. It's like what Drucker says, famous business guru from the, he wrote a long time ago, but you should go back and read them. Peter Drucker says, you have to make the strengths as productive as possible. For every team member. And so that's critically important. You have to know who is doing what and what they're truly good at and then play them there. But then even on like an interpersonal level, you know, what makes them tick? What are they motivated by? Hopefully it's by the mission, but some people have financial goals that they want to hit. So helping them, grow personally and achieve their next career, their step in the career, that is critical because by doing that, you're serving them. You're becoming that servant leader. You're like, all right, cool. I understand what you want, where you want to go. This is where the business needs to go. This is how it's good for both. So that's. I don't know. It's a holistic thing about leading teams, but that it starts with really getting to know your team and then mapping out who's doing what and giving them very clear roles, responsibilities, expectations. Talk to them about career progression. And then make sure you set their comp setting comp, because if it's a mysterious comp, like a lottery ticket atmosphere, no one knows how they're going to get paid and do well, that's terrible.

Derek:

Yeah, it's not good for culture right if you don't know how you're going to get paid. Um, exactly. Yeah, great points here. Um, what are the common touch points that you have with your employees or do you guys review KPIs or what's, what does the communication look like when you're talking with your team and leading them?

Dan:

Man, we've explored every single management thing, but what I've found is that the power of the calendar, if that makes sense, just if something's really important, then some, I might just temporarily set a meeting on it every single day. Every day we're doing it. We're having a huddle. Where's the progress? What's going on? How's it going? Why is this not done? You know, being so good to know people on a personal level, but remember that you're the plus one as a team lead. So you can't be too familiar, right? You have to maintain, um, that, that kind of that edge. Where, you know, we have expectations here and they're very high and we have to, we have to meet them. And I'm going to call you out if we haven't met them, hopefully I do in a loving way, but I'm going to call you out. So I think, it could be different based on what we're doing. If it's a longer range plan, I'm probably not going to meet every day. Right? I don't want to just have debt by meeting. I want to have my meetings be very effective. And get people's attention. And then we always have documents that have, short term goals, long term goals. And some execution stuff in between, those are very critical where, I was reflecting on this for the podcast, but we like to have a written culture here where it's because so much is lost in verbal, and we got that from Bezos and Amazon, but they have this six page. Thing where they have to write a six page memo and everyone reads it before a meeting. So not every meeting where we do that, but oftentimes in a bigger meeting, we're going to have a six page memo that the person needs to prepare. We all read it quietly. Then we discuss. Yeah, I, go

Derek:

ahead. That's right. Yeah, no, I saw that. I saw that on, I can't remember where I did, but I saw him talking about it on stage somewhere. And he said that before every meeting begins, there's a six page memo, six page memo that comes out from the meeting organizer or from, the team behind that organization. And everyone gets to the meeting, the memo is handed out and everyone sits there in silence for 10 minutes reading it for the first in inside the meeting. And because it's fresh, he likes to have that. Flash of insight that people have when they first read things like the gut instinct, right? And then as people start evolving and talking about it, because the idea is new, it's malleable, right? It's easier to come to a consensus because it's new for everyone. So anyway, I thought that is really cool that you guys are starting to adopt that. Um, and I think it's a great takeaway for some people out there who are looking for some techniques and tips to lead teams.

Dan:

Yeah, totally. And then, it's actually, it's a lot of fun at the memos are well written. Yeah, it has to be good, but then it's so much fun because oftentimes you're coming to a meeting and you're checking your phone and your emails. Or, other people are and it's no one is paying attention to what's the purpose of the meeting. So if you have a really good, start to it and everyone's on the same page and they're really engaged.

Derek:

Anyway. Very cool, man. Yeah. Thank you for that. So let's switch, switch gears again. One more time. I wanted to talk with you about. Real estate tech. This is something that I've been fascinated with for many years, ever since I got interested in real estate investing back in 2015, 2016, when we started our portfolio. What is it that your platform does, at Rex and how are you guys looking to disrupt the real estate industry? Because real estate is one of those old guard industries where everything is done because the way it was done was the person before them did it that way. Right. Things are starting to change. There's more opportunities coming. There's a cryptocurrency where you can buy like fractional pieces of properties or, there's roof stock. Now there's all types of crowdfunding platforms. Technology is enabling all of this stuff. I'm curious what Rex does, whether it's a part of your acquisitions company or your property management company, or maybe even both. So please share with us what you guys, what you have going on and how you think this technology will start to impact the industry.

Dan:

Yeah, no, thanks, Derek. It's actually part of neither. So it's a separate thing, but it's all part of an ecosystem. So maybe I can start by explaining that first. So our, I think our big idea here is that, everything should reinforce and synergize or become a flywheel for the other. So if we look at it, like what you mentioned is real estate investment acquisitions. And then so that's one. Two is property management and operations construction management. And then three is this technology venture, aimed at real estate specifically. So we, so the real estate tech is stuff that we over the years, and we didn't get that much into it, but since 05, we've been operating and owning assets, and in the beginning, very hands on, like doing every single thing ourselves. So for about over 10 years, all the pain points. Baked up, we got so frustrated by a lot of this stuff and the tech that was available that, Pete Rex and our team wound up launching a venture to disrupt real estate. So inside that single venture is actually 10 subsidiary companies. Wow. Again, this is all separate from the property management and real estate investment, but those 10 companies each do something different. A lot of it's focused on actually operations. A lot of them are on the maintenance side and the vendor side, which a lot of people are not building tech for those folks. It's not as sexy. It's a lot sexier to build around the revenue or top line side of the business. But we have a FinTech play within there and ensure tech play. We have own prop that's tokenization, real estate using blockchain. So it's 10 different things. Seven of them are active and being built currently and being used. So it's a lot to describe here, but \ that's the idea is that as the tech gets better, it makes the property management team far more effective and that's better for owners. so we serve third party owners. And if the owners have better NOI, a better overall experience of owning their real estate. They're going to tell the other people and then that team can grow a lot bigger and better. And then for the real estate investment side, they work with the property management team. So as that team gets better, it all should synergize. I hope that helps. That's, there's a lot to explain is that is the ecosystem is the big idea that it's all going to support one another.

Derek:

I love it, man. Yeah. I think that there's so much opportunity in this space and so much need. Because there are so many middlemen and waste in this industry. I can see it a lot and, in talking with other property managers, like I just see like vendors, like I, I just know the business well, cause I've explored this for a little bit and, I have a property manager, that's also an investor with us on properties and we. We take a look at this together because he's nearing the end of his career. And so he's just kind of showing me all this stuff that's been happening in real estate for many years on the property management side, that standard practice, at least in the Midwest. And so all I'm going to say about this is that there is plenty of opportunity, for smoother processes, easier communication, and being able to remove middlemen where possible, right? I think it's just a fantastic thing to help make everyone's lives easier. Love what you guys are doing and want to hear more about it, or people can check it out on the show notes, at the end of this episode. All right, so let's switch over to. Your property management company and your acquisitions company, ATX acquisitions. So for res prop, you guys have 11, 000 units or something right now, something crazy like that, right? Yeah, for 11, 000. What insights do you have about? The, about the market right now, like what type of things are you seeing in the Austin market? Cause you're here in Austin with me. What things are you seeing at this point in time and where do you see things heading in the next, in the next 18 to 24 months?

Dan:

Yeah. So the property management team is separate from ATX acquisitions. so the property management team, yes. It handles, about 11, 000 and growing,, for mostly for third party owners. And I would say number one, it's a critical time right now, because a lot of owners are under a lot of stress. So every single dollar really in, in real estate, every single dollar always counts . That's always a case. But when things seem to be going up and interest rates are near zero, there's a lot more room, I like what, this multifamily thought leader named Jay Parsons has been saying he's been, he's from real page, but he's been in, analytics for real estate. Since zone nine has been talking about it, he's this is the first time that anyone wants to talk about operational expenses, it's always been top line revenue. It's always been rent growth. It's always been ancillary income. How do you get a little bit more dollars? Yeah, it's

Derek:

more yeah, just slap on an expense ratio and just get work on the income. That's right. Yeah,

Dan:

so now we have to get much more scrappy, much more disciplined and every dollar on the operating expense side too, because owners can't control as much they don't have as much room to push rent growth right now because there's a lot of supplies coming online, especially in a place like Austin had a boom in units that are being delivered so that puts downward pressure on rents. And so you have to find a way to make these deals work and to survive. And right now, I think, so property management has become even more important. You always have to grow that top line, but now, figuring out how to operate more efficiently. And so we're doing things, around centralization of tasks, instead of doing everything onsite. We do things, a back office way that should be a lot cheaper, more cost effective, let's say. Same amount of work gets done, but you're doing it in a central way. You're allowing people to specialize so they can become better at their task. So those are some of the things I'm seeing. I think, again, it's a very difficult time to be an owner. Yeah.

Derek:

I'm sure a lot of your owners are actually looking for more visibility and wanting to be a part of the process, right? Like wanting to be a part of, the expense discussion and who your vendors are that you're selecting. which is to me. Hopefully, a good property manager welcomes that because if they learn to do a better way, then they're managing their own properties as well. And so they may decide to go with a better way to do things. But I'm sure you're seeing that also, right? Like more visibility requests, more reporting, more rigor on the report on the financials and expense control, right?

Dan:

Yeah, no, you're totally right. Totally and I think that's a big growth area for this. For our industry, , is to have better, more transparency , if I'm an owner, I should be able to sit on my couch and just look at things really fast and, clean user experience, user interface, I should say, and yeah, dashboard, I can do it on my phone. I can do it wherever I'm from an airport. I'm a way to my deal. I want to go check things. That's a big area of opportunity because people are getting much more involved. They're checking in weekly when it used to be bi weekly or monthly,

Derek:

you know? Yeah. Yeah. Totally get that. All right. Last question that I got for you is advice. Obviously you've had plenty of success over a long term. You've seen lots of things. If you've been in real estate since you said 2005, so almost 20 years and you don't look like it, dude, that's all I got to say. I feel like it. Yeah, no, that's good. But you've seen a lot, right? You've seen 2008. Meltdown, you've seen what we're seeing right now, and you're seeing everything in between. What advice would you give to anyone who is looking to invest in real estate, as a means to somehow achieve some degree of freedom, whether it's location, time, or financial freedom? Do you have any advice for them to get started, or any perspective that you can offer them? I mean, I, I

Dan:

think number one is to get started. Does that make sense? A lot of people are just going to think about it for. A long time and just, I would say, get started. So once you commit to getting started, then things will start falling into place. But so first start with that personal commitment. I will do something that's in my head. I'm going to put it on paper. Then I'm going to go execute. So but after you do that, I would say you probably need a partner. Some people do it on their own. I think it's you and your wife for Right. But some people do it on their own, but that's rare. A lot of people do want to team, I think we're teaming creatures. So I would say choose your partner really well and make sure that they have ultra integrity., but then, you talked about failure earlier, just realize there's around the corner. Yeah. So maybe how you react to that failure. It's not a matter of if it's just a matter of when, you're going to fail in some way, make sure you mitigate that failure. It's not going to knock you out permanently and you're going to be able to recover from it, but just realize what do you think is your worst day that is coming. Yeah, your hair is going to feel like it's going to fall out and it might actually fall out.

Derek:

Yeah,

Dan:

there was a great financial crisis that I had that experience where I, I developed like alopecia. I was going crazy because it was so stressful.

Derek:

Yeah. Oh yeah. But I'm glad to see that you went back into it after 2008 and you probably in 2010 were looking at this, maybe with a little bit of shell shock, maybe with concerns thinking about, I should try something else. But I can tell that you kept with it in 2010 and 2010, 2011, 2009, those were probably the best times to buy ever. And, always when you have challenges, I'm confident that there is opportunity on the other side of that.

Dan:

Exactly.

Derek:

Well said. So I think that, you've done a great job exemplifying that and leading teams and being able to execute all those things, just stack on top of each other and being an integrator like you are and me. Is a very rare skill and very sought after. So you've deserved all of the success that you've had, because it is a tough business. So anyway, Dan, it's awesome having you on the show. We have the last segment of our show, which is the rapid round, and it's five questions that we ask every one of our guests. And if you're ready, they're meant to be answered in about 30 seconds or less, and if you're ready for it. Let's, rapidly ask them to you. You ready? I'm ready. Let's do it. Name any resource that was or is essential in your journey to pursuing freedom.

Dan:

Oh man, I would say the gospel. Reading the Bible every day and making it just part of my life and just keeping the, the real goal in mind, which is like pursue, make sure I get to heaven and make sure my family gets to heaven. My friends do. So I don't know. I think that's. That would be the one I go to check,

Derek:

check.

Dan:

I don't know if I'm not allowed to say that,

Derek:

but I know I'm just in my head. Number two, if you woke up and your business was gone and you had 500, a laptop place to live and some food. What would you do first to rebuild?

Dan:

I would go back into owning assets, try to find, find a way to make that 500 and expand it into something that would be like a down payment and own a hard asset. Awesome. Real estate

Derek:

investment asset. Get back into real estate with your 500 seed. I love it. Yeah. Number three, what does your self reflection and your goal setting practice look like?

Dan:

I like to do very long term or even ultra long term goals that are, very audacious. And then, in the short term, it's like milestones. So they're aggressive, but achievable. I don't, I hate when I do the goals are get wrapped into goals. They're just like, no, that's just crazy. We can't do that in three months. That to me is it demotivates the team and myself. I want to think audaciously, but 10 years out or 30 years out, and then three months, I want to be able to just push myself really hard, but be able to do it.

Derek:

That's awesome, man. I love that. That's how. It kind of like coalesces both your team superpower and your execution superpower. Because if you set large enough goals as a team and you have the ability to work really hard to get there, you're an example for your team in getting to that goal. If you believe it, then your team will say, I want to be a part of that. So really cool stuff, man. It kind of went full circle there for me. It just kind of flashed in, in my head. I love that one. All right. Number four, what are the core work habits that you attribute most to your success?

Dan:

Oh man, I would say, just grit, totally, just staying super gritty and scrappy and resourceful and, relentless. And just being relentless and just being optimistic as well. I would say these things are critical to having sustainability, if you don't have all those things. You can run hard, but then you just might tap out. So how do you,

Derek:

this is just a follow up question to this one. So how do you exemplify grit? Does it mean showing up when you're tired or does it mean keeping a daily routine or does it mean, staying the extra night, like staying up and not going to sleep to get stuff done? What I'm just curious what you mean by. The grit in,

Dan:

in, Well, yeah, first of all, I think it is a lot of it's discipline like, I'm a fan of Jocko Willink and he says discipline equals freedom, so great. To me is it was very much around this discipline idea. So yeah, staying on routines for me, that's super critical. I have to work out, I have to have my faith life. I have to have my family time. I have to have my friends time, I have to have these things kind of together and then I'm able to pursue the mission. But then grit also means when you fail, just get up, don't whine. And no one's going to whine. No one's going to listen to you anyway. So when I whined, so I don't whine.

Derek:

Yeah. No one's going to want to work with someone who does that. Agreed. Yes. All right. Last question I have for you for this podcast, what tool or process has become one of the most important time, money, or energy saving ninja magic tricks that you use every day?

Dan:

That's a tough one. Yeah. You know, I would probably go back to the written word, you know, and just making sure we're not just talking to each other because so much gets lost again in that verbal. Communication stuff, but be a, I think that's, I wish I had a different hack, you

Derek:

know, No, it's all good. If you're saying that, you like to write everything down or put stuff down in paper on paper. so that there's no like confusion in instruction. I think that's awesome. I think a lot of people could use help with that as well. Yeah, I don't want to

Dan:

overdo it. I don't want to have our team just write everything just for the sake of writing things or myself do it. But I think that is very important. I would just add the calendar to I'm very much calendar driven and making sure that there's a concept called like a corporate athlete. And so you have to know your rhythms, are you fresh in the morning for creative thinking? All right. So then take your meetings in the afternoon and keep your morning free. That changes me over time. So I'm really cognizant of it. And I try to get my calendar to reflect what I'm doing, how I'm most effective during that project or during that time in the business history or personal life or whatever. So I really think about my calendar a lot. I don't know if that's a hack, but

Derek:

that's great, man. I think that works. Thanks. Getting stuff on calendars, getting it written down. That makes sense to me. So Dan, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much for coming on before we end the show today. Why don't you tell people a little bit more about how they can find out. About you in general, either ATX acquisitions or, or res prop, or, Rex, your technology company, where can people find out more?

Dan:

Yeah, I appreciate that. You know, I'm on LinkedIn, Daniel French, you can just probably find in Austin. But yeah, so res prop is, would love to talk to any owners that would. That are buying an asset or considering switching property management, generally 100 units and above in terms of what we'll manage. And that's in Florida, Texas and the Carolinas. And so we'd love to see if we can maximize your property. We're very owner focused. that's our key customer and we know it. So we have to do a great job for our owners. Residents are obviously critical. Of course, we have to really have an amazing living experience for them. But the owners are the key customer of that business. So let's talk to you at rest props arrest prop management dot com. ATX acquisitions is raising a fund right now going after buying opportunity that we believe is there because of the interest rates and what they've done to, create pressure on owners. And that's, I would say there's multifamily in there because that's a large part of our background, but we're looking at all kinds of deals, probably not office. So if you have a deal that you're looking to sell that's not traditional office. Anything else we'll look at within Florida, Texas, Carolinas couple other states but those are the main ones. So we'd love to serve you as a. And someone who can buy your asset or as a investment partner, if you look into investing in real estate, that's atxacquisitions. com and then rex. com is. Is a really nice overview of the 10 companies that we've launched and are building.

Derek:

That's very cool. And we're going to be linking to those in the show notes. So wherever you guys watch the show, please click the website link. And, you should be able to get all the information to not only the whole transcript of what we were just talking about on the show, but you can also get the links that Dan provided to us beforehand and also the links to your, to Dan's, various companies as well, if you want to find out more information. Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. It's been a pleasure. And Dan, thank you so much for coming on the show as well. It was awesome to

Dan:

have you on. Oh, it was amazing experience. And thank you, Derek. That was a lot of fun.

Derek:

For sure. Yeah. Wherever you're listening or watching this, please make sure you thumbs up, or subscribe to us because we want to hear from you guys and. Find out whether or not this content is exactly what you're looking for. Or if you want some tweaks or modifications, we're always looking for feedback. We eat it for breakfast, so to speak. And we also want to appease the algorithm God so that we can get more and more exposure to more people out there. And this show is brought to you also by Live Whole Wellness. This is a company set up by my wife and I, and we're looking to help entrepreneurs with their internal and external systems with their health and seeing that the stress is a link between the two. We'd like to help build systems for people to take care of their technology systems and automation that helps reduce stress and then taking care of inflammation and health on the inside with nutrition, exercise, and mindset, and much more nutrition, epigenetics, everything. So Dan, thank you once again for coming on the show and, we will see you guys next time. Please reach out and, let us know how we're doing. Talk to you guys soon. Thanks. Yeah.