Creating Freedom and Life Satisfaction through Real Estate with Dave Allred

I like that. There are so many are I hope our social media person here Ram has a field day with all these quotes. You’re dropping. There are so many golden nuggets in here that somebody has so much great knowledge and wisdom that you’re providing us. And you mentioned not theirs while you mentioned a lot of things, but not getting like greedy and your investments or not.

Fear and just to tie it back into, as you scaled your portfolio and remained passive. I think one decision, a lot of people face when they’re getting started, they’re buying those initial rental properties is man, I’m going to have to pay a property manager eight or 10% of my gross income.

Now I’m just going to do it myself and, save that money and, I can do all that stuff. And you mentioned that doesn’t give you energy. I’ve never managed any of my rentals either because it doesn’t give you. And I would be horrible at it. I would be so bad at that job, but what do you think it is that keeps people from giving up that control?

Is it greed? Is it fear? And what are your thoughts around you getting around that, dealing with that? 

Yeah, I think that a lot of it is just a scarcity mindset, it’s, you want to hold onto something and protect it. You made a big investment, and so you want.

And break the I’m guilty of this too. I have more of a perfectionist in some always trying to micromanage and make sure it’s done. And as we delegate, it, it is for me, it’s been a challenge, honestly, even on that note going from, I’ve always been a solopreneur and did everything.

Oversaw it myself. And that’s what I loved about going to the fun world. Real estate fund world is I now have a team of four other incredible partners, and I have a fund manager and a financial manager, a deputy fund manager, and an executive assistant. I have this team where we can go and go dominate together.

And, it’s something that I wasn’t used to doing that, but man, it’s beautiful when you can collaborate and have a sounding board of like-minded people that are on the same. The year on. And so I think it has been, something had to be very intentional with in terms of delegating and trusting other people to help because I feel like you can only do so much yourself.

We all have 168 hours in a week. And but if you can effectively delegate, then you can focus on what moves the needle and spend your time on your core competency. And what’s going to help you scale. And I think a key there, and one last comment, Maybe this is the best we’re looking at.

Should you be a property manager or not is simply see, okay, what is my time worth? So you say, okay, on an annual basis, what’s my annual earnings today or what you want it to be. That’s probably what you want it to be realistic in the next year or two. And then you divide that by, 52 weeks and 40 hours and it’s $1,200.

2000. There you go. And so it can take your hoped income for the year divided by 2000 hours. Whatever that number is, let’s say it’s 25 bucks. As an example, then you say, okay is my time better spent mowing the lawn or delegating that to a yard maintenance company?

Is it managing, changing toilet seats, and running background checks on these tenants? Or is it earning more money to be able to go invest in more real? So it’s a simple way of looking at it, but I try to do that on a weekly base. So with my schedule, I see, okay, now what’s the best and highest use of my time.

And I say that’s very important, that’s a high-quality question to ask. 

Absolutely. That’s that question has helped me too, but I think it’s, there’s a double edge to that particular question for particularly for people with families or, something that isn’t ever going to make you money, right?

It’s spending time with your kids, your spouse, whatever. It’s not making any money, but it has value. And it feels a little ghost to put a dollar figure on that. But if we spend our lives solely motivated by, dollars per hour, Then I think we’re just going to be miserable.

So how do you strike that balance, creating time for those other 10 things on your list that doesn’t have a monetary value? And as you think about that, I’ll just say my fiance and I spent the whole weekend just doing our thing, over the weekend we spent the weekend together. I, put business aside and, we just did our own thing this weekend.

And it’s great. You have to do that. Frankly, live a happy and fulfilled life. So how do you handle that for yourself? 

So here’s what I do. Every Sunday I sit down for one hour and I call it a power hour and it’s on my calendar. That time is blocked off and I’ll take my upcoming week and I’ll look at everything that I’ve got to do between my six businesses and everything else.

And then. I call it chunking. And so I start with the top, so I’m looking at my calendar for the next week. Okay. Yeah. That’s okay. What’s the number one thing for me is most important and the answer is my family. So I was okay. Okay. So I need to get family time on here and it’s non-negotiable so in a different color, right on my calendar, I’ll have, Monday nights, a family night, like family, Tuesday night is sushi Tuesday with the, all the kids we go out for sushi.

Every Thursday night has 14. I’ll do it. A dad, daughter, father, son, date when my kids for one hour, one to two hours. And so I get time with my kids, one kid per month for two hours of just one-on-one time. Great best practice. It’s so fun too, they’re just different. They’re way more open when they’re new, since you, and one-on-one versus even with two kids or address the kids every Friday night’s date night, every Sunday is ice cream sundae.

As a family. We have some of these traditions that you know, that we do every week and it’s just really it’s. I safeguard that a priority, right? The number two priority for me is my health. You gotta protect your energy. So every morning from six to eight is my when morning routine.

And so I’m waking up at six, o’clock getting a big cup of water. I’m going to go work out for work. I miss my home gym and I take a shower for two minutes. I’m going to read for 15 to 20 minutes. And I spend 15 minutes with my kids and I’m going to spend five minutes on meditation, prayer, and then a quick, gratitude list for the day.

And so I do that two-hour routine. Like I was like, man, that’s crazy. You spend two hours a day. It’s wasting like. To me. I thought, if you win the morning, you win the day and not every day, but the majority of the days you’re going to win because you are attacking the day you’re in control.

You are being very proactive in your approach and you’re taking care of yourself and your health and you’re allocating your time for the day efficiently. And then you go and you jump into it. And So I think that my key is I think my calendar. I checked out that time for health. Next is Axiom.

So I go through the week and I’ll carve out time. I call it chunking. And so I chunk my calendar for the next week, based on my priorities, not what’s most urgent. But what is the most urgent to Dave and what I believe is going to create a meaningful and purposeful life? 

Nice. Nice. Okay. So it’s very deliberate.

It’s done week by week, and I appreciate that you lined out that you’re not going by just what’s urgent because urgent things are always going to come up. And that could easily dominate your calendar. And then you’re not going to get more. Long-term very important, but less urgent things taken care of you got it.

And then also, like I hired an executive assistant for anybody that has a lot in there. Hiring assistants who can delegate offload is smart. Or at least it’d be a virtual assistant to help balance most things. I also hired all of my children as employees of my real estate company.

So it’s been really fun to help teach them the real estate game. And there are also some tax advantages there right now with how you structure that But yeah, I think it’s just, it comes down to just being as efficient as possible and creating maximum value. I could talk for a long time on that one.

A great book is atomic habits enjoyed that book. And it’s all about optimizing your habits because I think a lot of times people, really focus on their motivation and how they feel. But in my opinion, motivation is fleeting. It’s an emotion. What makes a difference long-term is the habits that we incorporate daily.

Again emotion might be motivation, might be important to get you to set the habits and commit to them. But long-term man, it’s all about your habits. And I love the expression that says, it’s Tony Robbins. He says we overestimate what we can do in one year.

And we underestimate, what we can do in five years. It’s just having a little more of a mid-term long-term perspective. I feel like it’s powerful. Yeah that’s, I guess when it comes down to what I’m saying is intentionality, I think living life with intention is so important and most people don’t do that, man.

They’re going through life just reactive. Whatever’s thrown at them how they’re feeling for the day. And it’s not, there’s not enough purpose in. The intentionality in our approach. And another last expression I’ve been saying a lot lately is, that I think most people spend more time planning out their annual vacation than they do planning out their life.

Think about that for a minute. That’s crazy. And I’ve been surprised when I got this from us managing all these sales guys across the country. Amen. What’s your, why what’s your purpose? What are you here for? And they can always give like a quick, a one-liner like, I want to.

Big house. I want a sports car, but you dive into a little bit deeper and they want freedom, but then you dive in deeper and it gets unclear quickly. And yeah, for me, that’s been probably my not my superpowers has been getting clear on what I want identifying that.

I liked that and I want to come to and make sure we address, the scary thing that a lot of people are afraid of doing, even when they hit the point that they can do. You left the corporate world at one point, presumably I dunno. We’ll ask this question. You made the decision.

All right, I’m out. I’m going to go do my own thing. Now I’ve created, all this passive income. Tell us about, making that decision, making the dive, how it happened. Were you scared? Were you excited? Walk us through it. It’s been a few years since you did it.

Yeah. So I would say again, I’ve always thrived.

Always trying to push myself to be uncomfortable with anxiety, which might sound weird. When I, when you hear that, throughout life, I’ve always if something scares you, it usually means you should do it, and I’ve based, skydiving eight times and like literally anything that’s been that scares me.

I’ve just done it and it’s fun, man. We don’t, you don’t have that fear in your life anymore because you’ve already done it. You’ve already caught yourself. You’ve crossed that. And we had the opportunity to step out of my 17-year career and go full-time. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made and it stressed me out, man.

I made a spreadsheet. Oh, it makes fun of mix. I spreadsheet everything pros and cons like very analytical, and that the pros have to step out or less than the cons, but mostly it was just uncomfortable. It was, there’s a lot of uncertainty, and it leaves something after 17 years and it’s very safe and stable and there’s a certainty.

And then leaving that. Uncertainty and walking into this completely new space, not completely new, but fully committed to this space in real estate. Man, I gotta say I’ve never regretted it for a minute. I think life’s full of chapters and it’s fun to be able to close one chapter and jump, head first, jump into a new chapter.

There’s just an energy that comes from that. And a lot of times when I’ve done that in life, I don’t even know exactly how I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it. Take a big bite and then figure out how to chew it. And it’s, to me, it’s, again, personally, personal growth is really important and I’ve gotten that through just taking on big deals and big bites.

And with the 17-year career, they started to like Groundhog day where it was the same thing. Love people who love money and loved a lot of things, but I wasn’t getting that personal growth. And that, that Ford progression. Which therefore made me feel a little more unfulfilled. I think people think that they have more money.

They’re going to have this fulfillment. I don’t know if that’s true, man. I, my experience has been more, I set these goals and I fight hard for them when I hit the goal. I celebrate, for an hour or maybe a day, but then it’s what’s next? What’s the next thing.

And I didn’t even say that right now today. I don’t need to be working but I’m working harder than I’ve ever worked in my career, but it’s because it’s things that I am passionate about that I want to be doing right with the people I want to be doing it with. And man that’s, to me that’s beautiful.

When you blend work with, play in with your friends where you’re just doing business together. Anyway, so walking back through it, it’s just been, really the pursuit of, for progression and life’s short man, and I want no regrets. It’s a motto of mine is. I have no regrets and I can look back on my life there are plenty of lessons learned, but I can say I don’t have any regrets.