RG 271 – Living Life By Design with David Allred

On this show, we always strive to live life by design. Today, we have a very special guest who is doing exactly just that. Tune in to our episode we David Allred where we talk about organizing your goals, aiming for progress, and ultimately—living life by design.

David Allred is a seasoned real estate investor with properties across multiple asset classes, including single-family, multifamily, and commercial real estate. He also has extensive experience on joint ventures, hard money lending, senior housing, house flipping, and so much more. Since starting his business fifteen years ago, David now holds one of the most impressive and diverse portfolios to date.

However, getting to where he is now was never easy for David. Having grown up in a low-income, blue-collar home, David had to put in every ounce of hard work to grow without the help of privilege. Through years of grinding and learning tough lessons along the way, David now has multitudes of investments across many different fields.

In this episode, David shares his life experiences that led to where he is now today. He tells us about the lessons he learned, the strategies he used (and is continuing to use), and the mistakes that he made along the way. He also shares valuable insights on how to organize your goals and investments; control your emotions when investing, and figure out financial freedom in a way that works best for you.

Regardless of what background you come from, David’s story is sure to resonate with you—so don’t miss out on this special episode!

Key Takeaways

• Keeping your investments organized can help you take a holistic approach to each deal.

• Over time, you can learn more about what kind of investor you are.

• The higher the emotions, the lower the intelligence in investing.

• Loss can help you reorient yourself and figure out the things most important to you.

Be Bold, Be Brave and Go Give Life a Crack!

David Allred (00:00):

In my opinion, investing should be very, it should be very intentional. It’s not most people invest based on a FOMO or fear greed, right? It’s emotional. But I found that the, higher, the emotion, the lower, the intelligence, when it comes to investing again, the higher the emotions, the lower the intelligence. And so my goal is to actually take out the, take the emotion out of the investing equation and really do it based on purpose and intention and making money matter.

Reed Goossens (00:39):

Welcome to investing in the US a podcast for real estate investors, business owners, and aspiring entrepreneurs looking to break into the US market join Reed. As he interviews go-getters risk-takers and the best in the business about their journey towards financial freedom and the sheer joy of creating something from nothing

Reed Goossens (00:58):

Good day. good day a ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another cracking edition of investing in the US podcast from Los Angeles. I’m your host Reed. Goossens good as always every with us on the show. Now, I’m glad that you’ve all tuned into learn from my incredible guests and each and every one of them are the cream of the crop here in the United States. When it comes to real estate, investing, business, investing, and entrepreneurship, each show, I try and tease out their incredible stories of how they have successfully created the businesses here in the US how they’ve created financial freedom, massive amounts of cash flow, and ultimately create extraordinary lives for themselves and their families life by design. As I like to say, hopefully these guests will inspire all of my cracking listeners, which are you guys to get off the couch and go and take massive amounts of action.

Reed Goossens (01:45):

If these guys can do it. So can you now, as you know, I’m all about sharing the knowledge with my loyal listeners, which is you guys, and there’s absolutely no BS on this show, just straight into the nuts and bolts. Now, if you do like this show, the easiest way to give back is to give us a review on iTunes. And you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter by searching at Reed Goossens. You can find the show, every podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Google play, but you can also find these episodes up on my YouTube channel. So head over to Reed goossens.com, click on the video link, and it will take you to the video recordings of these podcasts. You can see my ugly mug or the beautiful faces of my guests each and every week. All right, enough of me let’s get cracking and into today’s show.

Reed Goossens (02:32):

Dennis, you have the pleasure of speaking with David already. David first started investing 15 years ago, and since then has scaled his business into a really impressive portfolio of multifamily and commercial real estate across the United States. He has extensive experience, which includes investing in single family houses. multi-family joint ventures, hard money, lending equity, and debt sourcing, self storage, senior housing, flipping land acquisitions, and entitlement, distress, acquisitions, and syndications. He’s got a ton of experience. He’s now actually launched a new fund called under these partnership called axial partners. And it’s a fun focus on creating wealth through recession, resilient, passive income, and his passion really lies in helping inspire others to gain financial freedom through lifestyle, investing, being a professional adventurer and living life all in I’m really pumped and excited to have him on the show today to share his incredible experience and wealth of knowledge with us, but enough that I Made let’s get him out of here. Get I, David, welcome to the show. I don’t tell you, mate, I’m doing

David Allred (03:30):

Gray reads, so happy to be on your map. Thanks for the opportunity.

Reed Goossens (03:33):

Oh, my pleasure. We were having a great little chat in the green room about all the small circles of the syndication world here in the United States. So I’m so, so great to have you with us mate. Um, before we dive into today’s show, can you, the first question I ask all my guests is, can you rewind the clock and tell me how you make your first ever dollar as a kid? You bet. So, I mean, when I was a young child,

David Allred (03:52):

I started off with a newspaper route, right when I was 14 years old. And after that, I got a job with it at the city, you know, Molly [inaudible], the grasper is $4 an hour back then. Um, but my first real job was when I graduated college, I was getting an opportunity to go out and Ashley knocked doors, going door to door sales to sell home security systems. And, uh, it was going to be used a four month career in Chicago and ended up turning into a 17 year long career. And, uh, you know, growing up, we lived in a very low income. It very well, and we never really had a lot in terms of quality of life for discretionary spending. Um, you know, I, I knew that, uh, when I grew up, I wanted more for my family. I wanted a great quality of life, my kids and, and, uh, so I, you know, let, they have some, some clarity or some vision there in terms of what I really did want later on in my life.

David Allred (04:51):

And so when I was going to college, you know, they had a recruiting booth instead up there to recruit polishing out knock doors. And obviously knocking doors is like a fun job. It’s not prestigious. It’s not something that was like, Hey, I really want to go and do that. But the earning opportunity was substantial and so jumped on the opportunity without struggle. And, uh, honestly it was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my, my life. Um, you know, I had a lot of failure in the first, uh, first month months, she was really, really hard. Luckily around mid summer, mid point, it started to pick up a little bit for me, and I was able to make $31,000 in that four month period. And for me at that point in my life, that was amazing. Right. That was an incredible amount of money. And, um, yeah, so then I was offered an opportunity to come back as a sales manager next year, and then became a regional manager for a few years and then a regional vice president sales for the company, uh, that company, uh, didn’t smart, home it public for multiple billion dollar valuation.

David Allred (05:52):

Uh, I was able to then switch over to sister company Viven solar and worked with that company for three years as well. They actually promote liability evaluation as well. Um, but all along the way I was investing in real estate, you know, as a side hustle and, you know, I never really knew a lot about how to invest. I just, once I started to have some, some capital, I got to figure out what to do with this, and you’re having any tax advantageous. I remember asking my CPA said, Hey, you know, what are your wealthy clients doing with their, you know, to create wealth? And he said, every one of his wealthy clients were either owning their own businesses or investing in real estate or both. And it really clicked. And so I committed to learning how to do real estate and start reading books and podcasts, and just trying to figure it out, but, uh, dove into it. So that was a side hustle. And so about four or five years ago, and I retired and committed to full-time real estate as a full-time real estate developer and operator.

Reed Goossens (06:49):

That’s awesome. And something going from a door-to-door salesman to have your 17 year Korea with Vivian, is that what, how to pronounce that correctly? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s incredible. And then making the transition into real estate, I want to give you kudos for the fact that you stay with the company for 17 years, because most people don’t right. They, they, they want a pay increase. They think they shift across to another company, but the well done to you, but what was the, the first purchase you made and that mindset of like, I need to do more with my life than just bead is door to door salesman and work up the corporate ladder. So really it

David Allred (07:28):

Was, well, it was really, I know we’ll talk more about this on the podcast, but it was getting really, really clear on what I really wanted at the end of the day for my family and the quality of life that I wanted and really curating that experience. And you’ll hear me talk a lot about reverse engineering, you know, and so it’s like reverse engineering. What do you really want at the end of the day? How do you measure success? You know, what really makes you happy? What gives you the feeling of a life of significance? And so, you know, there’s one thing I think that I was able to do well early on was to get clarity in my life, on what I really wanted. And, and secondly, it was to learn how to be comfortable being uncomfortable. You know, that’s, it’s actually a skillset to be able to be, you know, to embrace being uncomfortable because sometimes that’s where the real opportunity is, you know, sometimes in real estate the best yield or the best margin is actually in a deal where there’s a bit of pear on it, right.

David Allred (08:20):

There’s a little bit of there’s some extra work has to be done on the deal. And so, you know, I just realized that. And, uh, but, but I will say this as well, you know, I’m really proud and happy of the success we’ve been able to accomplish my family, my friends, my partners, but it didn’t start off that easy. You know, we, uh, I remember my first real estate deal. I read the book, um, how to invest in industrial properties for dummies, no, those black and yellow books say, let me read this book and okay, all right, I’m ready to go. And so I Googled, you know, for a real agent, find one, found this lady. She found me a fourplex up in salt lake city. And, uh, I was real excited about it, closed on it at the closing table. You know, I signed my name on the, on, on the purchase, uh, you know, the contract mortgage, and then we stand up and she reaches over and she sticks her hand out.

David Allred (09:13):

She says, Hey, Dave, I just want to say, thank you for my first real estate closing. I was like, hold on a minute. How did that not come up until now? You know, this is your first time as an agent and representing a buyer. And so anyway, long story short, about six months later on that fourplex I, the, the two mother-in-law apartments, uh, they got in a fight and they called the city. And so the city sent me a letter explaining that it’s actually not a fourplex. It’s a duplex with two mother-in-law apartments and that’s an illegally rented unit. And so I had to actually evict two of my tenants. So when from fortunes and they come down to two strings of income and, and then, and you know, oh, 8 0 9 hit and I lost 60 grand on the exit. And honestly I learned every lesson. I could possibly learn that how not to do a real estate deal, but, uh, you know, grateful for the opportunity to learn that earlier on in my career. And

Reed Goossens (10:09):

I mentioned early on in the introduction that you’ve got a lot of experience across many different asset classes. How has that come about? Because so many people get into real estate and they focus on one thing and then they slowly move up and they may do two or three other things, you know, they might buy a fourplex and then slowly move up into large commercial multi-family. But you’ve been involved in senior housing, in self storage in flipping. So was that by design or was that just more, you want to get as much experience as possible?

David Allred (10:38):

Great question. So I’d say two things. One is mainly, it was that I want to learn. I kind of don’t want to learn everything. You know what? I definitely have what I call a growth mindset and I love learning more about opportunities and people. And I found that as they go into different areas, you know, venture capital or seed capital or jumping into self storage units, or, you know, invest in other people’s funds. I not only learn a lot, but I also meet some really fascinating people. And I’m a, I’m a relationship guy. I love relationships. People fascinate me and I love to see how they operate and why they operate the way they do. And so, you know, I don’t want to try to master every different investment vehicle or, you know, different sectors, but I do want to know enough to be dangerous.

David Allred (11:24):

And I feel like when you, you have some experience in basically every different assets, I, it really helps you to be having more of a, a comprehensive holistic approach to your due diligence and time of year asset acquisitions and dispositions, as well as you’re approaching your value, add how you hold on his assets and a better understanding for overall risk mitigation. You know, I, I, uh, it is well, a few things on that. Um, I keep a spreadsheet, I’ll show it’s very personal, but I’ll share it. Um, because in case it creates value for your listeners. I keep a spreadsheet of every single investment ever in my entire life and a simple spreadsheet. It lists the investment, how much I invested the overall return on investment. And then I rank it one through 10, 10 being the best, and it’s categorized by asset type. And so I can see easily that, you know, hard money lending, um, is on the very best I’ve never lost.

David Allred (12:16):

And I make a great return on investment. Number two is been my residential real estate. Number three is commercial real estate, et cetera, et cetera. But most importantly, on the far right hand column, I, it says lessons learned and how to let every single investment write down what I did really well or what could have done better. And fast forward after, you know, say 200 different investments, you really learn about yourself, what your investor DNA is, you know, what are you good at? Um, where are your competitive advantages? And so I challenge everybody listening to podcasts and, you know, start writing down your takeaways or your lessons learned from your investments, because in my opinion, investing should be very, it should be very intentional. It’s not your most people invest based on the FOMO or fear greed, right? It’s emotional. But I found that, that the higher, the emotion, the lower the intelligence, when it comes to investing again, the higher the emotions, the lower the intelligence.

David Allred (13:12):

And so my goal is actually take out the, take the emotion out of the investing equation and really do it based on purpose and intention and making money matter. Okay. So that was the, that was the first thing. And then the second thing I’d share, well, actually went back to number one. I also very clear on my asset allocations. So whatever your net worth is, whether it’s a thousand dollars or a hundred million dollars, the way I approach that is I have 1% of my net worth in cash. 1% in precious metals, 3% in blockchain, cryptocurrencies, 5% hard money, 5% bonds, 10%, and the stock market, uh, 15% in private equity, 25% in residential real estate and 33% in commercial real estate. It’s not perfectly, you know, exact, but give me that gives

Reed Goossens (14:02):

Me what I want to see that exact spreadsheet to see those exact numbers. So that’s awesome.

David Allred (14:07):

I’m happy. Sure. Yeah. Keep going. But to me, that’s an all weather, the portfolio that I know that everything’s cyclical, right. And so I sleep well knowing that, Hey, you know, the housing market might have a correction. The stock market might, you know, cryptocurrency might go down to zero, who knows. Nobody really knows for sure, but it’s all weather diversified portfolio approach. And then the second thing I was going to say, Rita is your question is, you know, like it, you know what the question was, why do I invest in so many different asset types? Ultimately, what I’ve learned about myself is I’m a cashflow investor and I really don’t invest for equity appreciation anymore or even net worth. And frankly, I care about what my cashflow is so much more than my net worth or, you know, my, my, my equity is an ideal cashflow is everything to me. I love the fill of mailbox money. And I’d say, ultimately, it really, what I do is I, I like to assume a lifestyle investor. And so I know a lifestyle that I want to do, my family, those that I care about. And so it’s curating your investment strategy around the lifestyle that you really want.

Reed Goossens (15:15):

Yeah, no, it makes poses. And I love the fact that you’d broken it down to the sunglass detail in terms of precious metals, in terms of cash, in terms of resi real estate, in terms of hard money lending in terms of cryptocurrency, which is super interesting, um, really giving the listeners an incredible display of what the portfolio for your personal wealth looks like. And I think what I’m also hearing is that, and I know we spoke about this in the green room before pressing play is that you are more into that cashflow and the cultivation of helping others rather than being the master of one particular asset class. Right. You can get to have your cake and eat it too. You can be in all these different things and benefit justice, but you don’t have to be the master. Right. And I think that is super important for a lot of people listening to this show because so many people out there want to be the master and they, they, they, they drummed their head against it. And it’s great to be a master at something, but sometimes there’s also this other side of the coin of being spread evenly and diversification, which has a massive role to play in creating that personal lifestyle, which is really what drives you to make those investment decisions, right. Which is all through the base of creating a lifestyle by design. You got it. Exactly. Speaking

David Allred (16:28):

Of lifestyle, um, you know, I mentioned earlier this, so, so we talk about intentionality and whatnot. Uh, one thing that I’ve I’ve created over the years is what I call lifestyle design. And it’s just a simple spreadsheet that I started working on maybe 10 years ago. And I spent a few hours on a Sunday. I sat down at, okay, if I’m gonna be out knocking doors, literally the hardest way to make money, right. Um, one of the hardest ways, like, you know, why am I doing this? And like, you know, how am I going to make this really matter in the future? And so I sat down and I just got really, really clear on, you know, like the 10 different, um, sections of life that I feel are important. And so I made a spreadsheet, I created 10 tabs and the first one is, you know, the, the end goal.

David Allred (17:12):

So that’s my purpose statement for my life. The next one is my health and my family, my time business, money, spiritual, uh, memories, experiences in relationships to me, if I look at, and in my life, when I’m on my death bed, looking back at Devar Ed’s life and legacy, I want to be good at all of those all 10 areas. I think a lot of people are really, really good at making money or really, really good at their personal health, but they neglect other parts of, you know, of life. They’re really important. And ultimately I want to have no regrets, man. I, and I can really say right now in my life, I have no regrets. I have lessons learned for sure, but I have no regrets. And I want to make sure at the end of the day, you know, my life, I can look back and say, I have no regrets in my life as well.

David Allred (17:55):

And so, uh, this lifestyle is Zionist. It’s just, uh, I guess pretty simple process, but it’s, it takes a lot of time and intentionality. So, you know, every, every Sunday I’ll carve off an hour consistently, I’ll go back to the lifestyle design and we import ideas. And, you know, if I heard a podcast that resonated, or I went to a conference or at a book or at a friend’s shared best practice, and I love it, I’ll add that all into my lifestyle design and, uh, nothing there’s real power that comes from writing down our goals. And, you know, there’s eating some, some, some data points to say that you’re 42% more likely to hit a goal still by writing down that goal. What I found is that, you know, this is a lie. This is a lifetime process for me with lifestyle design. When I have it in writing, I can go back and I can actually see those incremental improvements I’m making in my life.

David Allred (18:41):

And that’s really motivating for me. It also holds me accountable to what I was saying, you know, last year, 10 years ago, because ultimately a goal is not written down. It’s just a dream. It’s just an idea. And so, and I’m actually happy to share this lifestyle design template with danger list as they want to send me, uh, you know, send me an email or a DM on Instagram. Instagram is probably the easiest way to get a hold of me. It’s just Dave already. I’m happy to share that. It’s a, it’s not a product I’m not trying to sell it. Just something that I’ve shared recently with a few friends and family, and I’ve gotten really good feedback on, on that. And, and, uh, you know, it’s all about creating value. It’s just fine. Let’s get it. And also the Carmen life to create value wherever you can.

Reed Goossens (19:20):

I want to give you a lot of kudos. I talk a lot on this show about being balanced, being balanced across so many aspects of life. And I call it pillars, right? You know, your table is a table is not stable, unless there’s four legs, right? And so many people focus on money and real estate and wealth building, but they forget health. They forget, you know, family being a good person. You talk about spirituality. And I think when people hit rock bottom, I see. And I interviewed a lot of people that do hit rock bottom, but, you know, because they don’t have those other pillars in their life. They haven’t worked on that. And I think what I’m hearing from you is that you’re really intentional about making sure you’re fulfilled across all aspects of life, because you are defined not by the wealth you create or the cashflow you create, but you’re defined by the human being you want to be. And I think that’s super, super important. Um, so more to securitize you, can I ask a question? Was there any life-changing event that made you think like that? Because so many people being young entrepreneurs, but it’s like, I want to just get to that, you know, quit my day job and get to a million dollars of whatever it might be. Was there any life event that really triggered you to say, I need to be more broad-minded in terms of all the different pillars?

David Allred (20:30):

Um, I’d say it to begin with. It was mainly just that we grew up really, really poor and, uh, four amazing kids. And, uh, and I want, and any parent can understand, I want the very best for them. I want my kids to have the doors of opportunity opened up for them, and then not, it’s amazing quality life and amazing honeymoon. And, you know, just all these things like I like I’m big on like envisioning what you really want later on in your life and not getting crystal clear on it, like where you can envision it, you can see, you can smell, like it’s gotta be like really tangible. And that’s where, you know, has where the secret hat, I think, where the magic happens is when you get so clear on what you really want. Um, but where did that come from? I would stay as a mix of, you know, how we were, yoo know, kind of her upbringing, but also knocking no, it’s really, really challenging, hard work, this job that I, that I had and having children.

David Allred (21:20):

And, but that sort of began with, it was just that it was, but then about three years ago, my, my mom, um, passed away completely unexpectedly, age 59. Um, you know, she had a slip and fall at nighttime and, you know, we, um, we found her, uh, you know, almost two days later. Um, and, uh, that really rocked my world, man. Like, I didn’t know that was out of left field, you know? And so when that happened for me, that that was something that, you know, went from, instead of being very kind of it in my mind, like a logical lifestyle design, like what do I want, you know, like financially everything else to more down in my heart, like, okay, well, what, what do I really, what what’s really going to create happiness and meaningfulness and purpose and, and legacy for me with my family, my kids and my grandkids.

David Allred (22:13):

And, and so it went from being very much more, um, technical to more of a little bit deeper, you know, and more about purpose in meetings. Um, and so, yeah, so that’s my answer. I would say this lifestyle is, I’d definitely a lifelong, you know, it’s not one thing that you write one time, like, you know, it’s a living document that’s continually evolving as we evolve as humans. So, but, but, but I’m happy to share that again, you know, for me, that’s been a really fun process to it. And what I think that does is it by having a lifestyle design and having clarity there, you know, I always say, you know, most people spend more time per year planning out their, um, their annual vacation. They do planning out their life and which is crazy to me. Right. And so, you know, I think it’s really important that we just take a step back and figure out where we want to go.

David Allred (23:02):

You know, we fight every day to, to, to make progress, but sometimes our progress isn’t towards the end goal that is really going to give us me in line. And so anyway, yeah, happy to share that, uh, you know, inside that lifestyle designed to be part of that was the financial freedom. You know, one of those sessions was, was finances. And, you know, I think money is really just a tool. it just helped us to, to, to, to, to get where we want to faster. And, uh, if you don’t mind me speaking on this for a minute Reeves, I love to share this, uh, this equation that really helps me a ton in my life. Um, when I was 30 years old, I read books on financial freedom and whatnot. And I said, okay, I really want true financial freedom for my family. And so I sat down for four hours and I figured out what my family’s cost of living was.

David Allred (23:51):

And, uh, you know, unless as an example, let’s say it’s $200,000 and then the next on the spreadsheet and the next thing was okay, so my financial freedom number is $200,000 of passive recurring income. The next line is, well, what is my current passive income? Let’s say it’s 50 grand from a condo or some dividend stock or whatever. So then that difference is your net difference for financial freedom and that situation, it’s $150,000. And then the next line in that spreadsheet is how many years am I, am I willing to invest to make sure I hit this financial freedom number? No, let’s say it’s 10 years. Um, so that would mean that you only need to need to increase $15,000 per year in passive income to be able to, to achieve true financial freedom. And so that’s it, that may have sounded very, very simple, but for me, honestly, that changed my life, like from a financial standpoint.

David Allred (24:47):

So I figured out, okay, I need this much passive income and have this many years to do so. And for me, I was three years old and the number wasn’t age, 40 rental properties by age 40, you have true financial freedom. And so I committed to it. And by the way, committing is very different from wanting right? Every wants things committing, being committed as a whole different ballgame. So I reverse engineered this whole game plan came 40 rental properties. How am I going to do this? What do I need to do? Um, how much capital that I need throughout the whole blueprint and committed to me, I started working on it, putting time, energy, and resources into it. And I was able to hit that goal when I was 36 years old. And, uh, it was just fun. Celebrate it for, you know, for day my wife went out to dinner.

David Allred (25:34):

Um, but the next day I’m like, okay, what’s next? You know, one thing you’ll see about me is I’m always trying to do, trying to beat yesterday. Uh, you know, my goal, a guiding principle in my life is to always do bigger deals and, uh, yesterday, so, you know, surrounding towns, condos, and fourplexes, then 20 plexes, 60 plexes syndications. Now it’s a real estate fund. It’s all about progression. It’s all about getting that next level. And to me, that’s where I’m actually happy. So my life is when I feel like I’m making forward progress. And so the next day after hitting that 40 rounds of doors, okay, I want to do it. I want to get an ownership at a thousand rental properties by age 40, I’ve got some momentum, I’ve got some confidence. I know kind of what I’m doing. So we reverse engineer. it all, drew it all out, committed to it, cause some time, energy and resources into it. And I was able to hit that goal, um, when I turned 40 in December of last year. And, uh, yeah, man, now it’s, uh, I wanna tell you guys my next full, because I actuaaly get it, but, uh, that’s just kind of the fun thing of life, man. It’s just like pushing yourself that next level and always trying to find the best version of yourself.

Reed Goossens (26:40):

No, I look, I appreciate you being super vulnerable with us. I want to just reflect that. Um, my mum also passed away about three years ago and it was similar. I actually did an episode on this podcast of priorities versus goals and, and very similar to what you’re doing. Reorientating your life around. It’s not just the chasing of the money. It’s gotta be more because you’ve got to enjoy it because you could be dead tomorrow. Right? And then is it blunt? Is that, is, that is the truth. And it’s through loss like that, which you’ve experienced. I’ve experienced in a lot of people, probably listening to the show. It just helps. It’s a world reminding you that you, you, you, you have to be present. You have to present in your family. You have to be, you got to keep, you’ve got to keep healthy though.

Reed Goossens (27:22):

He’s not gonna be that the kids, um, if you don’t enjoy the journey, it’s always gonna be something new, something better, something next, and you’re never gonna feed it, feel fulfilled. And I think that’s so important for all of us as, as we chase this journey on entrepreneurship and financial freedom that we have to remind ourselves constantly. And I think your tool helps people systemize that a little bit better and take the time every, you know, once a week or once a month to write down those goals, what is truly important, not what you think is truly important because you will find when you sit with it for a little bit of time, you’ll go deeper and you’ll, well, I, it’s not the fully houses. It’s the result of having those 40 houses? What does that mean for my time and my family? Well, it means I can go spend more time with them. I can go and take them on trips that I never had as a kid growing up. So I think that’s super important. I’d love you to share that tool with, with the listeners, where would they go or who would they reach out to you if they wanted to get their

David Allred (28:16):

Hands on? Probably just send me a DM on Instagram. That’s where I’m most active go to Folsom store or my email just dade@axialpartners.com or LinkedIn, either one of those venues. Um, but I just want to say one thing on that real quick, we talked about purpose and meaning. I really do believe that, you know, money naturally comes more easily to do to where it knows it’s going to be well taken care of or will deploy. And so if you have a, and I can’t prove that scientifically, but you know, if you, if money flows to where it’s going to have a good steward where it’s going to be used well, and it, and so I think that the more looking at purpose and intentionality to our financial goals, then the easier it is to, I don’t know the eat, not only the easier it is, but the more enjoyable it is in the pursuit of what we want our lives.

David Allred (29:08):

And, uh, so again, it’s about making, you know, money matter and type purpose and intentionality to it. And it’s not just because you want to have a sports car or a Lamborghini or a new house, or a second indication home. It’s about, it’s got to have a real meaning to it. It’s got to have that purpose to it. And I think that the more we can, but that takes time to sit down and really figure out what you know. And one thing that I realized for me personally, was as I’ve gone deeper and deeper into that question is what really drives me at my core is freedom, right? I want a lot of freedom in my life and that’s freedom for me, my kids, my wife, to be able to be doing what we want to be doing when we want to be doing it, where we want to be doing it and what that does for us.

David Allred (29:50):

And frankly, even though I have that now I’ve worked, I’m working harder than I ever had in my life. Okay. So it’s not, so I can have freedom to go, you know, lay on a, on a, on a hammock on it, you know, on The Bahamas all day it’s, but it’s so much more fun when you’re doing what you want to be doing in life, because it’s your choice. And it’s like, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re the steering wheel and you’re being proactive in what you’re doing and really following your passion and your own personal pursuit of your own best version of yourself. So, anyway, that’s, I want to share with you real quick. I really do believe that the more clear you can get on why you want money, the easier it is. And when you have an actual blueprint, like a financial freedom equation, I just outlined, I found that it’s really motivating to go and actually earn more money because you know exactly how that money is going to be deployed, to be able to fast track your own personal goals in your life.

Reed Goossens (30:43):

And I don’t want to get to, we will on that, but it’s because you’re comfortable within your own skin that you resonate a different type of vibration. And I don’t want you to get to the attraction part. When, when someone looks at you and says, Dave, I know you’re comfortable in your own skin. I know you’re comfortable. You’re out with your abilities. I want to invest with you. It’s because you’ve gone through that, that journey to get to that point of being okay in your own skin. I think so many people don’t particularly when they get into this business, they’re just, they, they, they think hustle equates to, you know, getting that experience and then not experience it quite still will, then people will trust me. And there’s some truth to that. But I also think there comes a mindset shift when you understand the attraction of, of, of, of, of being of money of opportunities when you’re more comfortable in your own self, right.

Reed Goossens (31:36):

It starts with your own self and then going out and resonate with others. So I just wanted to touch on that. Um, I were quickly want to jump before we get into top five investing tips is your, you’ve got a fund right now and you just close the fund. Congratulations. But I want to talk just briefly the differences one. Why did you start the fund in two? What’s the differences you’ve really found between the syndications and the fund model and what’s better in your mind or what are you, what do you think is best for your investors?

David Allred (32:03):

Yeah, so we launched the axial partners real estate fund about four months ago, and it’s been amazing. I’ve been really, really grateful and really happy with the progress we’ve made. We finished our capital raise in about three months, and we’re actually oversubscribed on that. Uh, it’s a relatively small real estate fund, you know, it’s our first time doing a fund structure. Uh, so the legal or equity fund, uh, we’ll acquire about 65, $70 million of assets under management. We take a value out approach to those. We’ll actually turn that, you know, in a two to three-year period, redeploy that. So it’s closer to, you know, a hundred, $150 million. It assets under management throughout the funds life of five years, but the whole focus is recession resilient, passive income. And so, you know, we mitigate risks by going into states with a positive net migration. Um, so we have a top 10 states based on you halls, you know, actually the hall data of where the halls are going back and forth and, and a bunch of other data points.

David Allred (33:05):

And so we’re going into those specific markets. uh, the word Aksia is grief for value add. So we’re all about adding value and it’s not just that traditional, you know, new paint, granite countertops, new lights and flooring, it’s that, but it’s also going in and actually it’s more of a modern approach to value add. So it’s certainly an optimization it’s social media. It’s crazy how a lot of these assets don’t, you know, we don’t really leverage social media very well. And nowadays, especially millennials and younger people that go to social media to business, believe it or not. And so, you know, it’s that, it’s also just branding overall, repositioning the signage, really making the, uh, the, you know, the, the look and the feel of the asset look a lot more modern and, and, uh, more appealing. So, um, but anyway, that’s the overall approach we invest into multifamily mainly also RV parks, which are a huge cash cow and not mobile home parks, actual RV parks.

David Allred (34:01):

And that’s probably another podcast for another day as differences there and why we’re focusing on the parts. We’re really, really excited about that as well. So the ask you have mat under contract right now, and then we also do self storage, which is the most recession, resilient asset of any type of real estate, at least based on the last two corrections recessions that we’ve gone through. And so that’s our overall approach, um, as for why I decided to go into the fund model, you know, I’ve done over a dozen syndications and frankly I love the syndication model. Uh, it’s been amazing that no bill to create value for the people that come in and do bigger deals with them. I think it’s a great way to be able to help scale, uh, your portfolio. Um, but, uh, the reason why I went into the fund model is one, uh, it allows a much greater diversification, right?

David Allred (34:51):

So an asset allocation is usually just one asset. It’s one address, whereas on a fund, you know, we’re going to be in three different asset types in six different states across the country. And so our investors are diversified with equity and every one of those assets. And so literally we probably, you know, 18 different assets across the country. And the second big benefit is that we’re fully capitalized, right? So usually on a syndication, you find the deal and then you go and you raise the capital, uh, especially in today’s competitive market. It’s great to be able to go into a bidding war, you know, say multi-family assets and say, Hey, we already have all the capital even close on an all cash and the refinance if we needed to. And so we’ve actually had some, a lot of success with that, um, just by being fully capitalized upfront.

David Allred (35:39):

And then the other big benefit for me is on syndications. I’m usually only working with, you know, five to 40 partners, uh, with a fund structure allows us to really create value for a lot more people now, a few hundred partners. And then the last thing I probably, I could list 10 things, but make the last one that’s very significant is the fact that we have accelerated compound returns. And so on our fund, we pay a 7% pref rate along the way, you know, no more, no less. And, but anything above that is redeployed on, you know, more assets, more real estate, more RV parks, sell storage, all the family. And so we’re able to reinvest and really compound those returns and you mix that with the value add approach. And it’s a pretty incredible, we’re really, really happy with our investment thesis. And we feel like it’s well timed with the market where we’re, you know, 12 years or so into a phenomenal housing market in this country.

David Allred (36:33):

And frankly sign matter if there’s a recession, but when there’s a correction or recession. And so, you know, we’re about the schedule and one is don’t is don’t lose their money. Well, number two is don’t forget rule number one. And so it’s really taking that approach, but still trying to find asymmetrical returns where the risk profile and the risk to the capitalist is low, but we can still create strong yield or margin for our capital partners. And so that’s, that’s the main reasons why we decided to own the fund structure. And I guess it’s fun. Number one, uh, we, you know, assuming this is our, we, we get, we hit our returns and as a flagship fund, we’ll be launching future funds, you know, fund to probably next year and continue growing the business from there. Oh, one last thing I loved about the, uh, the fund structure.

David Allred (37:15):

I’ve always been somewhat of a solopreneur, you know, all the syndications that I’ve done and just been me leading the charge and in a fund structure. Now I now have, you know, five GPS and three, a fund manager, Debbie fund manager, and a financial manager. So now we have eight people they’re all helping out. And so it’s nice to have that collaboration, that synergy, you know, that those is there any blind spots we might be operating with. It’s just nice to have that collaboration. And frankly, it’s really fun to be able to have like-minded people on the same mission with you. And so I’ve been really grateful. I love the team that we have right now, also

Reed Goossens (37:51):

Congrats by the congratulations. And then $20 million is no, it’s not nothing to a bit of a poke in the eyes, but more successful than other people who’ve gone out and started raising a fund from day one. So is to you, um, mate, at the end of every show, we’d like to dive into the top five investing tips, you ready to get into it? What is the number one habit you practice to keep on track towards your goals?

David Allred (38:14):

Number one, habit, to stay on my goals. Um, so I’m gonna give you two. Uh, one is every Sunday I sit down and I spend one hour doing what I call a Sunday power hour. And it’s looking at my upcoming week and looking at everything that I’ve got to get done, but then also comparing it to my not what’s urgent, what’s important in my life, right? And there’s a big distinction between what’s important and what’s urgent. And usually people, they just, they do. What’s urgent a lot of times when you, these are really urgent, but out fires, it’s just creating more of those down the road. And I’ve found that if you like focused on what’s important, you actually put out a lot of those fires proactively anyway. So, so it’s just spending the time to block out the time for that coming week to make sure that I answer any time with my kids.

David Allred (39:02):

You know, that Fridays, Dana is my wife that, you know, Sundays ice cream sundae with the kids that Tuesday is my date night with each one of my four kids, each, each note, each kid one week, each month. And I love my favorite time every night from eight to 9:00 PM. That one is blocked off for my kids. And frankly, I don’t get a lot of times my kids, my son, I like to, or I’ve learned that it’s quantity, it’s quality over quantity when it comes to that time. You know, it’s just certain things are really important to me and I’m working out in the morning, my physical health. So that’s a non-negotiable. Um, so anyway, so Sunday power hour, and then every Monday, I’m sorry, every weekday. Um, I have a two hour routine called my, when the morning routine as from 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM. And you know, it’s waking up, it’s working out for five minutes, my home gym it’s, you know, it’s a cold shower, airman fasting, uh, you know, reading for 20 minutes, you know, gratitude lists, you know, planning for the day, a few other things as well. So anyway, just those two routines really helped me to stay on track and make sure I’m prioritizing my time. Love

Reed Goossens (40:05):

It. Love it, man. Uh, question number two is who’d been the most influential person in your career to date?

David Allred (40:10):

Well, I mean, a lot comes to mind there, uh, from a business perspective, Todd Peterson, the CEO of vivid smart home, uh, he’s been really helped me to increase my perspective on potential and what I can do in my business career. Uh, on a personal level, I’d say, it’s my wife. Um, she’s been in my corner and so supportive to be able to help with our kids and taking care of everything on the home front so that I can be all to go out and do what I do on the business front, you know, without her support. Um, there’s no way I’d be able to do the things that we’re doing right now. Um, yeah,

Reed Goossens (40:45):

A question on the three is what is the most influential tool in your business? And when I say tool, it could be a piece of software, or it could be a piece of hardware like your phone or a diary. What is the most influential thing that helps run your business day in, day out? I think we might’ve already spoken about it.

David Allred (40:59):

Uh, yeah. Uh, Instagram ads. Yes. I mean, after I send more, more DM, same text messages, you know, and people want to give me a business card. And I was looking at my package, my DM, I mean, frankly, think about a business card versus your Idea, your Instagram profile that says so much more about you, what you stand for, who you are, your family, your life, your businesses. So Instagram

Reed Goossens (41:22):

Question number four in one sentence. What has been the biggest failure in your career? What’d you learn from that failure?

David Allred (41:27):

Thinking small. Um, when I, when I was 20, I was proud of what I was doing. Uh, when I spoke, when I turned 30, I was back at toilet, man. I was pointing so small when I was 30. I was so proud of what I was doing, you know, running these 121 teams across the country for vivid. But then I looked back at it as a four year old and like, man, I was playing small. I could have been doing so much more and I helped them 50. I look back at Dave already today at 40 and say, man, I could have done so much more. I would just thought bigger. And so I think our biggest limitations are our limiting belief systems that we all have. And so that’s my biggest regret. Awesome.

Reed Goossens (42:01):

Question number five is the last question is what do people reach you to continue the conversation they want to be in your sphere? Where do they go?

David Allred (42:07):

Uh, yeah, we covered that a little bit already. So Instagram they’ve already, uh, if you, an email would be gave@axialpartners.com uh, LinkedIn, Dave Allred Facebook Dave Allred, um, should be for you to find just anywhere Dave Allred.

Reed Goossens (42:22):

Awesome stuff. Well, look, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show today. And I just wrote a bunch of notes here. Some of the big takeaways I took away from today’s show, I think is your ability to be balanced across so many aspects in your life. And I think that’s super important that drives the needle back into making sure your business is successful, right? You need to be successful in other aspects of your life in order for your business to be successful. You’re not just focused 100% of your business and your family’s not doing well or your health not doing well. I think that’s super important to so many people listening to the show. Um, the other thing I will also, you know, is how self-aware you are. And I think that comes back to that being, being very, um, spread evenly across all your pillars in your life and then creating your, your, your little worksheet that, that helps you, helps you write down exactly all the things you want to do and achieve in the different pillars, in the different stages of your life. So you can be successful. So super grateful for you for sharing those things with me. And the last thing I’ll say is that I love that you have no regrets because I think everyone is like that in life. Um, but, but deliver anything out now, the man that was awesome.

Reed Goossens (43:30):

My will look, as I said, thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to jump on this show, enjoy the rest of your week and we’ll catch up very, very soon. Thanks without having another cracking episode jam pack. Some incredible advice from David already. Remember if you want to check out where he is at, get on to Instagram at David or ed or on LinkedIn, he is very active on both those platforms. I want to thank you all again for taking some time out of your data tuning, to continue to grow your financial life view, because that’s what we’re all about here on this show. And if you do like these show, these sweat and give back is to jump onto iTunes and give us a five star review. And we’re going to do this all again next week. So remember be bold, be brave, go give life a crack.