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From Industrial Tech Teacher to Owning Over 800 Multifamily Units

Todd Dexheimer

Todd, the CEO of Venture D Properties, is a former high school industrial Tech teacher who started investing in Real Estate in 2008. Since then he has purchased and renovated over 800 units. Today, Todd’s focus is on syndicating value-add multi-family deals in emerging markets, as well as coaching other aspiring investors.

Connect with <<

  • Visit VentureDProperties.com and download a free copy of “Secrets to Apartment Syndication, Achieve your Financial Freedom”
  • Learn more about coaching with Todd: coachwithdex.com
  • Virtual Real Estate Conference October 23 & 24, 2020NREconference.com.  Use promo code: BONAVEST to get a special discount

Transcript

Aileen: [00:00:00] Thank you, everyone for joining today’s episode of the, how did they do it? Real estate podcast. I’m your host, Aileen and today’s guests. We have Todd Dexheimer. Todd, the CEO of venture D properties is a former high school industrial tech teacher who started investing in real estate in 2008. Since then he has purchased and renovated over 800 units.

And today, Todd’s focus is on syndicating value-add multifamily deals in emerging markets as well as coaching other aspiring investors. We’re really glad to have you on the show today Todd, welcome.

Todd: [00:00:27] Yeah, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

 Aileen: [00:00:30] Before we get started, can you give us a little bit more about your background and just how you got started in real estate?

Todd: [00:00:35] Sure. So I was a high school teacher. So I taught like industrial tech shop classes, you know, wood shop and all that kind of stuff.  And it’s just like almost the right of way. Quite frankly, wasn’t quite, for me, wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. And I enjoyed the teaching aspect. I just didn’t enjoy all the other kind of BS that kind of went along with the teaching and I was craving more and so as I was in my search of what else do I do? You know, I’m thinking maybe I’d become a doctor and maybe I do, or whatever, all kinds of other stuff.  And I started, I had already been, I’ve actually been reading these entrepreneurial books, I’m in a couple of years previous, and then just put them really on the shelf and stopped reading them.

When my teaching started, I started taking those back out again and, uh, read a couple of real estate books and thought this is what I want to do.  I could see myself doing this. So that’s really how I got started. It was just the reading books and started reading books in 2007, a  year and a half or so later I bought my first property and then it was game on from there.

Once I bought my first property I was hooked.  I actually really bought three properties at once. I bought a house to have rent. I bought a house to flip and I bought a house to live in and flip while we were living in it.  Like within the same quite a few days and I did it with only a few thousand dollars. I think about 20 ish thousand dollars is all I really had to invest and bless my wife for allowing me to do that with all of our money.   Yeah, it was, it was drink from the firehose. Let’s get this done and then I took it off from there. So then, as you mentioned that I’ve done a lot of flips.

I flipped 150 property or so, and got a big rental portfolio of one to four family properties. I always call them single families, but one to four family properties,  um, had, you know, a hundred plus of those. And eventually graduated, into larger properties. So I did some 20-10, 20-30 unit type buildings.

And then now I’m doing a hundred plus unit buildings and I’m back to teaching. It was just crazy. Cause I never thought I’d teach again, but I’m teaching aspiring, like aspiring multifamily. People that want to do what I do and I’m coaching them, teaching them how to do it. So it’s fun and it’s came back to full circle, but I enjoy that’s a totally different mindset than the kids or there’s no administration, which is a beautiful thing.

Aileen: [00:03:11] No, that’s great. you’ve changed your mindset to coaching the people who are really passionate about real estate and helping them to get to where they are.  That’s really good. If we can go back to the first couple of deals that you started with, were those in your local market, or were they out of state?

How did you find those?

Todd: [00:03:26] Yeah. I consider myself doing several first deals. So I did my first true first deal, which was in my own backyard. And the three that I mentioned were all my own backyard and already started. I moved into one of them. So that point in my backyard and they were small properties right there.

The one was a single family house or two actually all three of them, all three of them were single family houses and then when I consider my first apartment, that deal again, that was in my own backyard consider my first large apartment deal that was out of state. So I consider, I did three first deals.

 Aileen: [00:04:00] how did you transition from that and who are the people that you met along the way that kind of helped you, get into that different mindset and,  get the confidence to move from, you know, the single family, the fix and flips, and then moving onto the larger syndications?

Todd: [00:04:14] Yeah. so when I first started, previous to me even buying my first property, I was reading these books on multifamily, this makes so much sense. Like multifamily is the way to go. And I was at this, this kind of conference where this, conference leader brought in all these gurus from around the nation. And it was like this firehose of gurus and I, and run into the back of the room and buy courses.

And I never run to the back of the room, of course, because quite frankly, I didn’t have any money, but I listened to this guy talk about multifamily. And I thought that is powerful stuff that is I’ve fully committed. I’m doing it. And I had no clue how to do it. And so I ended up buying single families and duplexes four plexes.

That was back in 2008 and it took me a long time to graduate. Finally, I had to like graduate and I honestly, it was just, it was a business partnership that I had. We decided to go our separate ways. I was really itching to do multifamily. I don’t think there was any specific person that got me to change that mindset.

Other than I already had the mindset, I just got stuck. We incomparable. Because I was good at flipping houses and I was doing really good buying these small properties. Finally, what’s making me the most amount of money, first of all. And what’s giving me the most more freedom, flexibility.

What was it? the flips actually, he made less money by it. By the ROI, right then the rentals were and you go, how could that be true? I took into consideration the equity. I was building as well. Suddenly I got to buy these rentals. I got to do that. So I started buying smaller rentals. I thought that was that’s the way to go.

I got to take that next step. So buying these 10 unit, these 20 type buildings, and I’m doing that. And in the meantime, I hired a mentor and I’ve never hired anybody previously, I’ve never paid for a course and I started listening to this things called podcasts. I never heard a podcast until 2016 and it’s crazy, but I started listening to this thing called podcasts, and I heard this mentor and he was more of a business coach mindset coach.

And, I told them, I’m like, you know, eventually I want to get to these hundred, 200 type unit buildings. And he said, why not today? what makes anybody else that’s doing it more special than you? I don’t know. I guess I never thought of it that way. So why do you think you need to eventually get there?

 You can take the steps  do you realize that there’s a lot of people that are doing this business that didn’t take those steps, And I’m like, yeah, I guess so it’s so why again? Why don’t you. Why aren’t you ready? You’re right. You know, like paradigm shift slap me right in the face.

And so that right there within, I bet within a month I had an 84 units property under contract, not quite a hundred, but 84 units under contract got that closed. And then within a month after that, I had 120 units under contract got that closed and the story goes out. So it was just a slight slap in the head.

what are you doing? Like in Alma? I haven’t looked back. It’s not like I am like, Oh 250 unit. I can’t do that. It was just this paradigm shift that allowed me to go.  yeah. Why can’t you do that?

Aileen: [00:07:28] yeah, so that’s great because you got over your basically your limiting belief of what you could do and just got started with it.

So that’s really exciting.

Todd: [00:07:36] Yeah. We all have these limiting beliefs that are holding us back.  And then I still have limited beliefs, right? We all have limiting beliefs that are holding us back and we always have to continue to be pushing our paradigm and trying to look at what we’re limiting ourselves on.

And then I think it’s really important to surround yourself with people that are. Are doing that and listening to podcasts like this is really important because it allows you to surround yourself with people. Cause you’re hearing them. And these are real people talking that are doing stuff and you’re like, Whoa.

I can do that.  there’s never anybody you will meet in your life. That if you actually have a true conversation with them, you sit down with them, you talk to them, you get to know them that you’re like they’re, superhero. they can do everything and nobody can touch them. That’s just not true.

Everybody’s a human and you can go, wow. They can do it. I can do it. Like now you might meet somebody for that, like 30 seconds and go, Holy cow. They’re super human. If you actually get to know them, that’s not the case.

Aileen: [00:08:37] Everybody has to start from somewhere. So, so can we talk about that first 84 unit that you had?

Did you do that on your own and how did you find the deal and how did you know what to look for? I mean, you had a lot of background already in your fix and flips and, what you say, your smaller multi-families. But, what kind of specific metrics are you looking for that made you realize that this could, this is a good deal and, allowed you to move forward with that?

Todd: [00:09:02] Yeah, I was looking for a deal that kind of hit the, the value add components. And I had done a lot of fairly deep value add as a flipper,  you know, everything, and this was a fairly deep value add and it hit all of the health, the metrics settles looking for it, hit where I could be have good strong cashflow, after the renovations were done, after I’m aware of the brace of rents weirdly good, strong cashflow occupancy was quite a bit more than what I wanted, but.

I felt like I could work with that. And then just the overall appreciation that I could create,  through the value add, allowed me to have a nice large kind of gap, which was able to give solid returns. And I was going to bring in investors into this deal as well. So I needed to have good returns for the investors.

So the metrics all hit and then the market to the markets was really important.  had good, strong, solid market. And actually it’s, performing extremely well during this Covid time and, you know, some markets aren’t and so it’s just a really strong, solid the market. The thing I was missing.

Here’s the piece I was missing. And I would caution anybody that thinks they can get by without this piece is strong property management company. And so I got in this deal. And I had a property management company that was recommended to me and I started talking to him and I, decided to go with them when I found out.

And they were actually managing that property. As we are going through the process, they committed fraud. And so I had to exit away from them and my soul said, I’m going to push through on this deal and get it closed quickly. Shotgun brought on a new property, and sure, they did okay. But not that great. So I had to eventually get rid of them and get on a new one property management company. And now finally, after several years of owning this property management company is absolutely bad on unreal. So getting the right team in place prior to purchasing is going to save you a ton of headache.  Had this property management company been my first property management company, the deal would even be better and, you know, things have gone, good things have gone bad.  You know what, when I look at the overall picture, the property is going to do really well, but it’s struggled out of the gates in a big part of that is the property management company, which is ultimately my fault. Everything that happens on these properties are your fault. You have to take responsibility for it and my fault was I didn’t have the team in place prior to me purchasing the asset. I was too focused on purchasing the asset, not enough focus on building that team out and actually along with the property management goes to the contractors too.

I didn’t build the team out well enough prior to actually starting. And that’s something that are really focused hard on right now is if I look, we have to find a good property. We have to have a good market, but none of them that matters if we can’t execute our business plan and you have to have the right people in place in order to execute your business plan, I would rather take a marginal property in a marginal market with awesome property management and awesome contractors. And I guarantee you, I will beat anybody that’s an awesome market with crappy property managers. So –

Aileen: [00:12:26] yes. And you’re working with them long term. So you want to like the people that you work with.

Todd: [00:12:30] that too. Yeah. You want it, you absolutely want to like , know like, and trust.

 Aileen: [00:12:35] And so you mentioned that the first property management company that you worked with, for this property committed fraud, at what point did you realize that they were doing it and how did you then find out that they were committing fraud?

Todd: [00:12:45] Yeah, they were cooking the books. it was fairly obvious after you dug in, but it just, all of a sudden, as you’re doing due diligence and that’s the important of due diligence. I support really digging into these numbers and trying to make sense of things. But as we’re going into due diligence, it was like this doesn’t, this doesn’t match this, like what’s going on here, you know, and as you’re continued to dig in, and then this doesn’t match here and like the puzzles don’t fit together, so what is happening?

And then, you know, we get the next report, Wait a second, like that report doesn’t match certain things. Okay. It’s like these too many things don’t make sense. Ultimately we never like pursued them and dug deep enough to know, they’re committing fraud, but it’s pretty obvious, like, You guys are cooking the books. And, when we closed on the property, then we found out more. And so I don’t know if the seller knew maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t, but we had made an agreement with the seller. Look, we’re gonna put this escrow to the side because of these weird books going on.

And if the property performs when we purchase it, you’ll get that money back when we purchased it.  And immediately the 90% occupancy that they said we found out was like 81%, you know? So those are pretty obvious.

 Aileen: [00:14:06] so let’s talk about a little bit of how you, how do you choose your, emerging markets as you’re looking at the different properties to move forward in.

Todd: [00:14:13] Yeah, I’ve got full article on that. I would encourage anybody to go to. They can go to my website, VentureDProperties.com and check that out. But essentially,  first of all, you have to decide what’s important to you. Okay. So what is it, what is your kind of investment philosophy?

What do you feel like is the most important?  you know, as cash flow. Really important is appreciation really important or is it a mix of both important.  Are you in this long-term, five years? Are you in this far more? Are you in the short term? You know, one to two years, you know, those are big differences.

If I’m in one to two, I care less about the longterm.  you know, potential over the market. I care about what’s going on today, like right now and yeah, in the next couple months, like that’s what I care about. But if I’m in this for five years, I want to make sure this market’s going to continue to be a good market.

So I’m looking at slightly different things for me. I look for markets that have, yeah, of course, good job growth. We want good, solid job growth. And all job growth is not created equal just because they’re putting in. Amazon warehouse or distribution. So does that mean that’s amazing for the city? Is it nice?

Sure. Is that awesome? Probably not because we’re not bringing in many hiring jobs. If we’re bringing in corporate jobs, higher end jobs. Was it a mix of middle management. And of course, then some of them, you know, $20 an hour type jobs, what that does is then brings in even more $20 to $25 an hour jobs, because guess what?

People that make a lot of money spend a lot of money. And when people spend a lot of money, the overall economy needs more jobs to service those people. So I like the jobs that are bringing in a lot of,  a higher end that middle management and above site type of jobs, because those people love to spend their money.

So that’s all aren’t created equal. We want good jobs. We want future job growth. Like what’s the city doing to bring in more businesses? Like what kind of businesses are they courting right now? That maybe are there, but they’re talking to, you know, we also want a good, diverse job market, so I don’t want to see, you know, think of Detroit cars, manufacturing. Okay. What happens when that industry goes down? I think of San Francisco. Okay. If that goes down or if that goes away, Texas is really mobile. So if that goes away, San Francisco to get hurt right now, but it’s been a strong market.  But it could go. So at least San Francisco is not Detroit.

They’re not, they’re definitely more diverse than that, but we don’t want that super concentrated market. So I look for no industry that’s more than 25%. I would really like it to be under 20%.  Population growth of course, we want to look at if we have job growth, types of population growth, but where is that population growth?

Our free city has corridors of growth is just how it is. Every city has corridors of growth, where you got growth going from a certain area in or around whatever. We maybe have some pockets, but typically we have a corridor or a couple, and then maybe a couple pockets. I like the corridors better because those are more predictable.

Pockets are less predictable. They can get hot and cool down right away. Cause they got nothing around them supporting that growth. Nice. So if you could pick that corridor. You’re good. You want to be within that.

Aileen: [00:17:50] can you describe a little bit, what do you mean by the corridor and, what are you looking for in a corridor?

Todd: [00:17:55] I’m looking for?

So typically what you’ll have in a corridor is you’ve got good job. Growth companies coming in to a central location. So maybe it’s the simple one would be downtown, So simple one would be your downtown core. And then you’ve got the growth going say straight West from downtown straight West.

And you’ve got the next Dubai, maybe. The, the urban hip, you know, community that has the mid rises. And then just beyond that, you’ve got that trendy, arts see area that has been revitalized. then the next you have that first suburb, that’s just, just on fire, you know, the next you’ve got the second ring suburban and the third ring suburb.

And then.  you know, next to them is starting to go this way as well, getting wider. So every city has those. If you look hard enough to have those, and there might be some gaps within that. But overall that growth is ready and it spreads out and it spreads wide. Okay. And if you can be. Closer to that middle.

That’s more of a sure shot as you get out, it’s more of a,  you will, it  will fire get put out, right? so you’ve got a little more risk, but you, of course, as you get farther, you potentially have more opportunity to, because you have these that haven’t quite then hit, you know, I like to get to something in the third or fourth, any right where it’s maybe not the hottest market now, but we see the trends are really going.

That way. And we feel like there’s a good opportunity for that to continue, but we might, we also might get a rain delay, you know, that might happen, but at least  that area that’s already started. So it’s typically doesn’t go backwards.

Aileen: [00:19:46] no, that’s a really great advice, especially I really liked the not all jobs are created equal type of, uh, description that you had, because I haven’t really heard about it that way before, but that really totally makes sense.

Todd: [00:19:57] Yeah. Yeah, for sure.  Look, we want to make sure we’re getting into markets and into sub markets and even sub markets within those sub markets that are going to have.  Because if you get that stagnation or the opposite, Man, it really hurts your property. It really hurts what you can do to it.

When you get that, where’d you get that awesome growth, it’s there’s nothing you can do wrong. And I shouldn’t say that cause there’s obviously stuff you could still be wrong, but it’s just, it becomes so much easier and it’s hard to over improve. It’s just, it just flows so nicely.

And I’ve had some properties that I’ve had in markets. And, you know, I watched one of my properties go from renting a two bedroom for $750 to now we’re renting for $1,585, I think. And that was over a course of it’s been over a course of 12 years. That growth just been like, Whoa, amazing growth. And it’s guess what?

I’ve done zero improvements to that, to those units. And received that growth.

Aileen: [00:21:04] Wow. That’s incredible.

Todd: [00:21:05] And it’s of course that’s not every story and you’re not good at, you’re not going to nail those home runs all the time. You’re looking for. You know, above average rent growth, that’s all, that’s what you’re looking for.

You’re not looking for massive. what I’ve seen was it was, it’s amazing, but that’s not what you’re trying to hit and you’ll strike those every once in a while if you do it. So the other thing I really look forward to that I think a lot of people discount and aren’t paying attention to, and I think it’s really important in today’s world is rent affordability.

Okay. We don’t see so many markets right now that are just not affordable for tenants. And what that does is it does two things. One is it puts these tenants at up in a poor position to where it’s going to be tough to continue to make rent. And if they’re not getting large increases in their pay.

Eventually they’re just not going to be able to make your rent and what’s going to happen if you can’t, tenant can’t pay, then you don’t make money. And maybe you’re going to have to lower your rent. Maybe get high vacancies, whatever it’s going to be. If your tenant can’t pay, you can’t continue to raise rents at 5% per year. It doesn’t work. Eventually. There’s a ceiling. The other thing it does is the cities are continuing to get  major pressure. And I’ve watched this happen in several cities and we can just look around the country, Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, where I live.

There’s a lot of legislation that gets introduced and it ends up getting passed. And that is very tenant friendly and really landlord unfriendly, where we’ve got these restrictions and, and all of a sudden you’re stuck. You just thinking, Oh, I was going to do these great things to this property, but now I’m stuck because the city has introduced all this legislation.

I can’t do anything. And so now you’ve got these properties that are super restricted by the governments and you’re in a bad position. So I want rent affordability. And the other thing is I just like being able to charge my tenants fair market and not gouge them as well. Like I don’t think in my opinion, I don’t feel good about charging my tenant, 40% of their income on rent.

I would rather charge them 20%. And so I’m looking for more markets that are in that range where I’ve got some growth, right? Maybe my current property is charging 14% of their income on average, and I can raise it to 20%. Wow. I just raise a ton of rent, but yet I still charging them a fair value. That’s a beautiful thing.

But when we’re going to like, all my tenants can barely afford it. Now I just feel greedy.

Aileen: [00:23:41] Definitely. You want to provide places for everybody to live affordable, safe places.

Todd: [00:23:45] Yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s just sound business to be in markets that allow that opportunity.

Because again, like I said, you’re going to hit a ceiling eventually.  I really want cities that have good landlord that are landlord friendly. I want cities that bringing in business, I want cities that, care about the city.

 I want lower crime cities, and sub markets. When I talk about what I’m looking for, I look at that at the big city level, and then I could continue to dwindle it down to like neighborhoods to,  you know, solid schools. Of course. Um, the other thing I want is I do want jobs near my buildings.

Some people go, Oh, I love whatever city. You know, I love Cleveland, Ohio. And I love what’s going on there, but then they buy in this neighborhood that there’s no jobs and no growth. And then the neighborhood has been dwindling for the last, you know, 25 years. I know people, some people like pick on Chicago and that’s a perfect instance.

Like Chicago has got some amazing growth in his amazing city in certain areas. And then there’s other areas where Chicago hasn’t seen growth and it’s declined. These neighborhoods are declining. They’ve been declining. 50 years. And it’s because there’s no jobs nearby. there’s nowhere for these tenets to even get a job.

So unemployment super high, their crime super high there. And you get a building there cause it’s cheap.

  Aileen: [00:25:06] Great. so let’s turn the focus a little bit to what you’re focusing on now, which is, your coaching career. how did you get started in that and why has it been important to you to share your knowledge and, help other investors achieve their goals?

Todd: [00:25:21] Yeah. you know, like I said, I never paid for a course. I never really paid for any kind of education until I met, my mentor. And that was back in 2016 and I decided, Oh, you know what, I’m going to take that risk. And I’m going to pay this person and see how it goes. And I was like this, what was it?

What did I wait for so long? this was amazing. And I look back and go, Oh my goodness. I would have been doing multifamily real estate years. Had I actually hired somebody to mentor me. So push me. To change my paradigm. There’s so many benefits to it that I saw. And it wasn’t just that they could teach me something because look, anybody can teach you anything.

A book can teach you something by the way, books and podcasts and, you know, conferences. Those are great resources, but it was just that level that was like, wow. That’s what I needed to get to that next level. And I wanted to be able to provide that for other people and, you know, just the teacher that’s who I am.

So it’s just made so much sense to bring that full circle and to other people.  And I continue to like, just help people along and, And see the results and thought I’m going to actually put some focus in on this and see if I can prove the results to people. And, you know, recently I just had some clients that they had never done real estate deal with ever.

This is our first deal and they’re taking down 120 unit apartment complex.

 it’s really fun to do stuff like that and to see the results. And I just, I have really enjoyed it and people will go aren’t you creating competition? but also teaching them to be conservative.

I’m teaching them how to underwrite deals, teaching them how to do due diligence, teaching them how to be respectful business owners. I’m teaching them how to do it in my opinion, the right way, which yeah. Does it, does that create some competition? Sure. But everybody benefits from that competition because we’re creating a really healthy multifamily environment.

And overall, we all will benefit in the end. And if we’ve got competent business owners, instead of a bunch of slum Lords or a bunch of, you know, just people that aren’t respecting tenants and aren’t doing it right. So I feel like. By teaching it by trying to get people to do it, quote on quote the right way, we’re actually creating a better multifamily environment.

Aileen: [00:27:55] No, that’s really great. I really enjoyed that. Thank you.  So what do you think sets them, successful people apart in real estate, from the not so successful people, especially like for somebody starting out?

 Todd: [00:28:06] a couple of things. I would say, the successful people are always willing to.

 first of all, they have focus right there. They’re fully committed and focused on what they’re going to do.  They have that ability to adapt. And I don’t mean that by like chasing that shiny squirrel or shiny object, you know, like running all over. That’s not what I mean, but they have the ability to adapt.

They have the ability to shift their paradigm, And the willingness to.  and then along with it, and the same thing is they’re always learning, always growing. They’re always challenging themselves. And they’re surrounding themselves with people that are doing it. They’re surrounding themselves with people that are in that same kind of mindset.

Those are the real big things that I see. Successful people doing it. And there’s many other little things and it’s all really sellable.  look, you’ve got these big goals, right? We all got these big goals. We want maybe your big goal is you want to buy it a hundred unit complex.

In the next year. Okay. Pick one or two things that you need to do, and then you need to focus on, they’re going to move the needle, the greatest, where you’re at right now, what you need to do to move the needle, the greatest and focus on that every single day on complete right. win every day.

Aileen: [00:29:27] No. internalizing this was like listening. I’m like, Oh, that really makes a lot of sense. So thank you so much.

Todd: [00:29:33] Absolutely. It’s easy to say. It’s hard to implement some of this stuff because. It’s uncomfortable. Like it’s just uncomfortable to do some of this up. And when you do something uncomfortable for the first time you want to go back to what’s comfortable.

Our mind and our body always goes back to what’s easiest and what’s comfortable. We beyond the busy work is easier, right? We always want to get the busy work done, but that’s not going to grow your business. So we’ve got to do what’s uncomfortable. And you got to really focus on those, that little thing like this or that little one or two things that you’ve written, you really need to push your business forward and win a day.

Aileen: [00:30:08] That absolutely makes sense. So how has, real estate impacted your life so far?

 Todd: [00:30:12] man, it’s been amazing. It’s you know, it’s, allowed me to, I’d say have a lot more time freedom, flexibility. I still work a lot. So I worked definitely, probably much more than 40 hours a week, but it allows me to have flexibility.

 It’s, allowed me to, you know, quit my job and do what I love. So that’s the other thing is passionate about what I do. I love what I do and wake up every day. I never wake up dreading the day. I never wake up like sinking. Oh, still Thursday. ah, I can’t wait until Saturday. I never wake up thinking that way.

We’ll go on a vacation. And I remember when I was in school or when I was teaching and I wouldn’t be looking forward to the vacation for two months part vacation. Now I like think about the vacation an hour after we leave for the vacation. You know, cause I’m loving what I’m doing and focus on what I’m doing and it’s just so much more enjoyable.

So I think work isn’t work now. Just part of my life. that’s, you know, it’s integrated and it’s all integrated together where before it was, I have to go to work and then I can enjoy my life now. It’s I live my life and my work is part of living my life. So it’s just a totally different, like freedom type, just a mindset change.

And it’s allowed to, you know, recently my wife quit her job too, so love that as well. So that’s beautiful.

Aileen: [00:31:46] That’s great to hear. And, what are some tools and techniques that you’ve used in either your professional or your personal life, that has made you a little bit more efficient, that you utilize a lot?

Todd: [00:31:56] some management property management software really helped. previously it was like, everything goes on like Excel and, you know, email and then over here and over there. And so just organizing tools like that. for our local properties, which, quite frankly, we was still managing house.

it goes into a, we use cozy, which is free and cheap. It’s just super simple, but it organizes everything or tenants go in there and they can online and they can make maintenance requests or maintenance people go in there, pull out the manage, present and go do those. And so it’s just like a great organizing tool.

I’m trying to think what else? I shoot, I use calendar link is then amazing. Just, I would always send out these emails, Hey, I’m available this day, at this time or this time. And now I just go here, click on my calendar and schedule a time. So I’ve gotten like calendar for my podcast.

I’ve got my calendar for an hour meeting with me. I’ve got a calendar for a 15 minute meeting with me. I’ve got calendar for my coaching. And so I, anybody can just go in and they can click on the link and organized my crazy brain just way better. I think those are the two biggest probably.

 There’s so many other things, but those are the two biggest ones for sure.

Aileen: [00:33:09] Great. And if our listeners wanted to learn a little bit more about you, I know you mentioned Venture D Properties, but is there any other place where they can go to learn more about you? 

Todd: [00:33:18] So I appreciate that.

So Venture D Properties, for sure they can go. I’ve had a bunch of resources on there. I’ve got a free kind of ebook that they can download. It talks about multifamily. The values of multifamily, talks about syndication, what syndication is, it goes in depth a little bit on some, some stuff like that.

And then I’ve got a bunch of blogs and all kinds of stuff on the website, if they want to reach out to me for, so they want to reach out to me to get that information or talk to you about, you know, investing cause I, I do syndication, so if they want to talk about that, happy to have them reach out there. And if they want to reach out to, on coaching to learn more about what we do. It’s coachwithdex.com, coachwithdex.com. They can reach out there and I’d love to have a conversation with them and just see where they’re at and coaching is not for everybody. It’s right for certain people.

And I’m never there to push anybody to make a decision that’s not going to be right for them. So just have to have a conversation just to see where they’re at.  If anybody wants to, They can reach out to me on LinkedIn or Facebook. And I’ve got a real estate conference the conference is October 23rd and 24th.  Virtual, they can go to N R E conference, N R E conference.com and they can use the promo Dex.

I should make it promo for you guys.  

Aileen: [00:34:31] yeah.

Todd: [00:34:33] What should it be? The promo? What do you want it to be?

Aileen:  let’s do “BONAVEST”

Todd: bonavest perfect. So we’ll do that, like type that in.  if they used that promo code, I’ll give him a better discount than if they use the other promo code I just said, so use that. We’ll put it in the show notes.

B O N A V E S T.

Perfect. And then they can get a discount on that. It look, it’s going to be worth it. It’s an experience where it’s going to be like.  Totally all about networking, but it’s going to be educational as well.

So it’ll be fun.

Aileen: [00:35:02] Awesome. I really appreciate that. Todd. We’ll look forward to that.

Yeah, absolutely.

Todd: [00:35:07] All right. Thank you for talking to us today.

Awesome. Have a good day.

Aileen: [00:35:10] Thank you.

 

 

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