Buying Hotel's and Playing in Missle Silo's with Military to Millionaire, David Pere

Dan Austin: [0:00] What's up with the missile silo? Do you own this? Did you help a friend like what that is fascinating to me?

David Pere: [0:05] Okay, that's not mine. That's my buddy, Hugh. He's my partner on the hotel. And he he bought this thing, and it is nuts. And he's turning it into an Airbnb. But yeah, it's a decommissioned Atlas missile silo in middle of nowhere, Kansas, that's like, you go like 40 feet down, and it's got, like a living area. And then like below that another living area, they're going to turn into I think like a three to like Airbnb. And then it's got off the bottom one, there's a tunnel that shoots out. And that's where the actual missile silo is. And that goes 18 stories underground and well to date, we haven't actually been to the bottom because the scaffolding's all broken off, and there's not, like, a That's a crazy shit. To rappel down. And, yeah, it's it's sketch.

Speaker 3: [0:52] Welcome to the collecting keys real estate investing podcast with your host, Mike DeHaan and Dan Austin. From wins, losses, horror stories, and tactics for optimizing your business, Mike and Dan take a real uncensored deep dive into the ins and outs of running a full time real estate investment and wholesaling business.

Mike DeHaan: [1:16] What's going on, guys? On this episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast, we have David Paray from Military to Millionaire. And he's, like, I would say, the highest profile person we've had on the

David Pere: [1:27] show so far. He's friends with Brandon Turner.

Dan Austin: [1:29] We're one degree away.

Mike DeHaan: [1:31] Turner. Yeah, he runs an awesome group called military to millionaire focusing on helping servicemen get into real estate and sort of like, you know, take advantage of different opportunities that they have. And on top of that, he runs a pretty interesting business, right? He's run a bunch of different businesses. And from what he was saying, especially as we get sort towards the end of the podcast, he's kind of just like living the dream right now. Like to the point that he has a lot of passive income. He's looking at different opportunities. He's focused on just growing his group. And as he put it, what do you say he works like two hours a week?

Dan Austin: [1:59] Yeah. He says that pivotal point to where we all wanna get, which I'm not saying it's easy for him or was easy to get there either. It's like he's he's grown to where he needs to. And now he can choose what projects choose what he's wanna do. Like he talked about building a goddamn skyscraper. So we'll see what he does next. Who knows?

Mike DeHaan: [2:16] Yeah. Exactly. So anyway, super interesting. Listen, if you've never listened to David before on any of the other stuff he's been on, he's really a character and he just has, you know, some he's a great guy and a lot of awesome things to talk about. So enjoy this episode. And if you enjoy it, please go and subscribe to this podcast and share with analysts who was find who might find it interesting. Also, go and leave us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast. Aside from that, if you want to learn how to start a 7 figure wholesaling and off market real estate business, not just wholesaling, but basically just finding good deals, Go and check out instantinvestorprogram.com. And Dan and I will teach you exactly how we have done that with our own business. So go check that out, guys. And besides that, thanks so much for listening and enjoy the show. Davis, thanks so much for coming on the show, man. We appreciate it.

David Pere: [2:59] No. Thanks for having me, Mike Dan. Always a pleasure.

Mike DeHaan: [3:02] Yeah. Absolutely. So you've kind of done a ton of stuff over the years. So I think that a great play to start for people who might not know who you are, kind of what's your background, What kind of stuff you've worked on in the past and sort of where you're headed now, especially as the mark started term, we had some interesting conversations before we got on this. We'd love to hear all that as well.

David Pere: [3:21] I'm a hodgepodge dude. So I you know, I was a joined the military in 2008 joined the Marine Corps didn't have any idea what I wanted to do with my life and grew up in Arkansas. So I wanted to get out of Arkansas, traveled the world a little bit. 2015, I was still in the military and realized I had no money to my name. Someone handed me the book Rich Dad Poor Dad on a, like on an audio CD, right? They were like, here, listen to this while you drive. So I I did. And so that kind of started the wheels turning in like four or five months later, just so happened like stars kind of aligned like my apartment lease came up and I came into enough money for a down payment. And I house hacked a duplex. And so, you know, that was kind of the catalyst. I was like, Oh, wow, this works. And then I moved out and it was cash flow and just enough to be kind of content with it. Proof of concept, I was hooked on real estate. But as a young enlisted marine, with no actual cash or savings or net worth, It's not like I could just go buy a bunch of real estate. So my entire like, you know, origin story is like, super high leverage, creative financing. And just like, there's got to be some way to make this thing work. How do we make this thing work? And just creativity and, and whatever and like, slow roll, slow roll, slow roll. So I've done a lot of really weird stuff. So when people ask me, Oh, what do you do in real estate?

David Pere: [4:45] It's like, I buy and hold things. And they're like, Well, yeah, what do do? Like you would single family four plexus? Like, what do you buy and hold? And I'm like, everything. Like, yeah, like, I've got one to four units. I've got, I had a 10 unit to 15 to 23 a 40 unit hotel and RV park, pieces of some syndications. Don't know, if I can hold on to it for a while and cash flow, I'll buy it. If I can find a way to buy it

Dan Austin: [5:12] chasing that return. You're just chasing ROIs. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I like perfect. Well, before we get too deep into this, I have a question because I was watching some of your content. What's up with the missile silo? Do you own this? Did you help a friend like what that is fascinating to me?

David Pere: [5:28] Okay. That's not mine. Okay. But that is that's my buddy, Hugh. He's my partner on the hotel. And he, he bought this thing, and it is nuts. And he's turning it into an Airbnb. But yeah, it's a decommissioned Atlas missile silo in middle of nowhere, Kansas. That's like, it's like, you go like 40 feet down, and it's got, like a living area. And then like below that another living area, they're gonna turn into I think like a three to like Airbnb, and then it's got off the bottom one, there's a tunnel that shoots out. And that's where the actual missile silo is. And that goes 18 stories underground. And to date, we haven't actually been to the bottom because the scaffolding is all broken off. And there's not like a tie off point to rappel down. That's creepy as shit. Yeah, it's it's sketch.

Dan Austin: [6:17] Okay. So I always have to ask questions, because we've had a couple other guests with some unique properties, and I always ask the question like, where does the poop go? You're underground. You gotta get it out

David Pere: [6:25] of there. Right? So first off, I should say that we have 100% shot a rifle off inside of the Of course, wouldn't you? So we actually posted that on TikTok and it got it got taken down immediately. But then the other video of us drinking beer running around the silo is my most viewed TikTok video ever. So, you know, actually, so the first time I went out there, we had nothing we were just using the silo or the RV they had parked outside. But we went out there and did like a weekend trip with a couple buddies, talk real estate, hang out in the silo and just screw around. And they had their contractor go out there a few days prior. And they actually got a shower and a toilet set up and they have a macerator pump or whatever that pumps everything back out. Yeah. So it functions, we were able to, it was like the thing it was like, Oh my gosh, I can

Dan Austin: [7:16] take a shit. That's great. Underground pooping. That is so cool.

David Pere: [7:21] Yeah, it's like, you know, it is great. Because it's like, right now, all they literally have is like, a crappy wall with like a shower curtain. So like, for both, so it's like, you know, like one person's like, taking a crap and you know, like shower curtain and then the next guy's like right next door, shower and then you're totally exposed other than that. Oh, god,

Dan Austin: [7:39] but it works. Just it'll be

David Pere: [7:40] a really gnarly Airbnb when it's done.

Dan Austin: [7:42] Was gonna say that is actually really cool. I mean, just from a from a destination like, hey, I gotta stay in a missile silo that I thought that was super fascinating.

David Pere: [7:49] And it's 67 and a half degrees like perfect around on in there. Yeah, that's so cool. It's great.

Mike DeHaan: [7:55] What is the financing for something on that look like?

David Pere: [7:58] It well, in his case, it looks like somebody you know, has a lot of money and they pay cash, and they close it four days after you lock it under contract.

Dan Austin: [8:07] Well, I think it probably also depends on like, if you have the missile with it or not with it to, you know. Yeah, right.

Mike DeHaan: [8:15] You could you could get some some foreign interests lending you money on that in exchange for information on the missile.

David Pere: [8:21] To answer your question, though, he and I we wrote an offer together for the one there's another one that they made them in groups of 12. Okay. And he and I run an offer on one that was 20 miles away to have a neighboring one, but we got outbid. There's another style of not to go way down the rabbit There's another style of missile silo that actually had multiple different missiles that has various tunnels, and it's like a mile or two of tunnels underground that connected them all. And if I can never get my hands on one of those, I will 100% buy it. So they're super cool.

Dan Austin: [8:55] That's fascinating. Like, there's a market

David Pere: [8:56] and like,

Dan Austin: [8:57] you got outbid on this thing. Like there's enough demand. Wow. Okay, cool. I'm gonna start looking for those.

Mike DeHaan: [9:03] Yeah, what kind of price point if we can share that? I'm just curious

David Pere: [9:06] what he will if you were to ask him the question, his answer would be under 1,000,000 because he he can't whatever n d e signed like something that I can't disclose the exact amount. But the one we offered on was like $3.50. But it was a much worse shape. What's crazy about this is, and this is what's what's hilarious. So this one was built in like the cold, the Cold War era or whatever with with Russia. And it was built. And I think the, like, value of this construction project would have been like $13,000,000 or something. Right? So it's not a cheap project to build this thing. And I think it was like, two years after the build, that it takes like fourteen or fifteen minutes to launch said missile. And then Russia came out and was like, could beat it by a minute. So then they were like, well, this is useless and built a different style missile and shut it down. Of course.

Dan Austin: [10:00] Oh, my gosh. Good to know.

David Pere: [10:02] It's just nuts. It's pretty. It's hilarious.

Mike DeHaan: [10:04] Classic government like waste and obsolescence. Oh my god, that's so crazy.

David Pere: [10:09] Behind these things is is actually really funny. But anyway, we should probably as fascinating and interesting as these things are, you should have Hugh under show. I'll make the introduction. He will go way down the rabbit hole and it is hilarious. Perfect. I love it. We're gonna

Dan Austin: [10:23] do a missile silo episode.

David Pere: [10:25] Yeah. And he's got even more just crazy, weird investment things and stories. And he's he's hilarious. You should just come out to Springfield and hang out. It'll be great.

Dan Austin: [10:35] Let's do it. I'm down. I'm down. Let's do it.

Mike DeHaan: [10:37] Yeah, there we go. That that would actually be awesome.

David Pere: [10:39] He's he's got like four like six wheel drive military trucks in his backyard. He's just a weirdo. We're gonna bring your

Dan Austin: [10:46] father-in-law Mike. He would be all shit.

Mike DeHaan: [10:49] I know. Yeah, my father-in-law and another and another wife he, my father-in-law is an ex plumber, who now does like military contracts, like r and d stuff. And he's designed everything from like, you know, just super basic, like custom packs and things like that to like custom rifles for one off stuff. And now he does like, different sort of accessories and contraptions for like drones and like stealth warfare and like, when he was like building this thing to like catch drones like out of the sky and like doing all this sort of stuff. But he's like a total just like military geek.

Dan Austin: [11:25] Yeah. That's true.

Mike DeHaan: [11:25] And as as Dan put it, he never served either, which is fascinating. But he knows everything about it. But I think Daniel said he talks more like a military guy than most military guys.

Dan Austin: [11:35] Totally. You're like, what did you do? Twenty, twenty five years? Yeah. Come on. Nope.

Mike DeHaan: [11:39] None. No single day. He was a plumber

Dan Austin: [11:41] for twenty five years. So,

Mike DeHaan: [11:45] yeah. But no, that that's cool. So, I mean, you're obviously making some some interesting investments. But, I mean, your your general stuff too. So that that's something that you put together through the connections that you had with those guys. And from what you're saying before, that's kind of been your superpower as well as, you know, a lot of the deals that you've done, as you were saying before we hopped on this show were deals that you've been able to get into by connecting the a and b party, and basically carving yourself a piece of that middle. Like, what other deals you put together there? Unknown Yeah, I've got

David Pere: [12:16] a couple weird bits and pieces. The most recent one, I've got a there's an RV park that I technically I do almost nothing. But I actually, I enjoy the marketing side. So I do like I run the Google My Business profile. And I, I did all the RV site, like getting it up on all the RV platforms and pushed a bunch of reviews towards it, tweaked a bunch of things and getting all the photos updated, all the online presence crap, which I think is actually, know, very valuable, but not a whole lot of work. And I enjoy it, so it doesn't feel like work. So basically, the only thing other than that, which I enjoy, that I have done or will do on this property, is my buddy brought me this RV park, the numbers look really good, and he's like, I wanna buy this. I found this, this is a great deal, but I need like a $100,000 to make it happen. And I was like, I might know somebody. And then I asked my buddy, hey, you still looking to buy some stuff that looks kind of like this? Here's the deal. And he was like, yes, I am. And then I put them together. And ironically, I had kind of joked with one of them like, hey, if I make this introduction, you're gonna give me like, you know, that 5% for finding someone. And he's like, yeah.

David Pere: [13:31] And then we were all texting and the other guy who I hadn't made the joke with was like, so we're doing forty five forty five ten question mark. And then first guy was like, yeah, sounds good. And I'm like, Oh, Okay, cool. Thanks, guys.

Dan Austin: [13:46] Like, I like a smiley face kissy face. So, so

David Pere: [13:52] I mean, and that just kind of goes to the character, right? Like, they're really, they're both really good friends. One of them had been a private lender of mine for a long time. But before that, he'd just been a good friend. And the other one has been a friend for a long time. And he's actually the community manager for my mastermind group as well. So like, yeah, we're and we've done deals together before. So like, it's not like they're just random people. And so yeah, one guy brought the money, the other guy found the deal and operates the deal. And then the only thing that I really did up other than the online presence is I put the two of them together, introduce them to my asset protection guy to form the LLC, introduce them to my lender to do the loan.

Mike DeHaan: [14:30] That's it. I mean, you say that's the only things you did. But those are pretty critical parts, right? That are difficult for people that are especially if they're new investor, they do have a unique kind of property. Yep. You know, like, like being able to find especially a lender for like an RV park. It isn't exactly simple, especially these days. But Totally. You know, you can find some people do it. But like also to I mean, we've kind of been down this rabbit hole where there's a newer investor that has a asset that's maybe like slightly larger price point and things like that. And no lender will talk to them. But because we have a relationship with lenders, we can go and say like, Hey, look, there's this deal, we have a friend will vouch for them. I And can get a deal done for some people that is super, super valuable. So you definitely deserve to be compensated.

Dan Austin: [15:09] And they got it at 15% down, which is pretty sweet. That's amazing.

Mike DeHaan: [15:11] There you go. So cool. That's awesome. So yeah, so that's sweet. So like, what is your total like business life look like right now? Because I know you said you've, you know, you bought a bunch of properties, you've done some wholesaling, you're doing these partnerships, you're shooting guns into a missile silo, living the dream. Yeah, you're living the dream pretty much.

David Pere: [15:30] Yeah, it kind of looks like if you were to just, like, get on a treadmill, and then turn it all the way up. And then there were like people on both sides, you just like throwing punches, and you didn't really know

Dan Austin: [15:41] why you

David Pere: [15:41] were on the treadmill. It's kind of

Mike DeHaan: [15:42] what feels

David Pere: [15:43] like. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of, kinda like the perfect analogy, I think for just entrepreneurship in general. It's like, I feel like I'm supposed to be on this treadmill, but I don't really know why I'm, I kind of joke the other day, I drove to Kansas City, Monday afternoon to have, like, a early dinner and drink with a friend and then drove back. And that's like a two and a half, two hour, forty five minute drive from my house. And a friend of mine, was on the phone on the way up there. He's like, why are you driving all the way up there just to hang out and have like lunch dinner for like an hour and drive back? I was like, honestly, I mean, obviously, want to hang out and whatever. But I think part of it is just that I'm trying to like force myself to learn that I can take time out of the office to do this. Right. I'm so bad about like today. Like my assistant's sick and there was really no reason like everything that I did today, including this podcast realistically, would have been done from my laptop in my house. Okay. Yet, I spent the entire day in the office, minutes from my house because I feel like I should come to work. So yeah, I'm trying to kind of figure that out. It's like, got all these projects and the things that I'm working on.

David Pere: [16:57] And then I'm really trying to figure out what the next real estate move is. Because as we kind of mentioned, I, I sold my wholesaling company. And I'm, I'm moving out of kind of crack house world. You know, that's not as exciting as it was when I, you know, when you first start investing, you're like, I don't have money, I need to leverage everything. And I need to buy c and d class stuff that cash flows like a king. Then you get some money and you're like, I need to get rid of all that and buy stuff that is not a headache. So I'm in that stage, and I'm trying to liquidate some of those and either go, I haven't decided yet if I'm gonna try to move more into just LP positions, and really kind of go into like the raising money side of things and just kind of expound on the networking piece. If I I'm actually, what I've really been trying to explore, and the reason that I went to Kansas City, because the people I met with were friends that are architects, I'm trying to explore the idea of getting into developing and not like, Oh, I want to build a house, but like,

Dan Austin: [17:57] you know, what would it look

David Pere: [17:58] like to build like a tower? Like something something cool to like point

Dan Austin: [18:02] out one

David Pere: [18:02] day and be like, Hey, kid. Like, we built that. I don't know. Just because it'd be you know, I'm like, what part of real estate could like make you excited to wake up? And so

Dan Austin: [18:11] I don't know what that looks like.

Mike DeHaan: [18:13] Can go over to Saudi Arabia and be a part of like, what was that like mega city thing that they're building? It's like a 100 yards across but That's crazy. Right? Five miles. It's unbelievable. And they're serious. They've they started building it.

David Pere: [18:26] I haven't decided yet if I love it or hate it. Yeah. They started. Wow. Incredible. I feel like that's one of those things that's gonna be like the iPhone where it's like, everybody who lives there just feels like they have to tell you it's the greatest thing in the world because they bought into it. Even if they hate it. Absolutely. You're like, wow, that city must be so great because you're stuck there. They're like, wow, you guys all suck

Dan Austin: [18:49] because you don't live here. Like, you look miserable. They call it right the line.

Mike DeHaan: [18:53] Yeah, it's like people that live in most major metros, right? You know, like, San Francisco, see,

Dan Austin: [18:59] I'm like, we have such a variety of food.

David Pere: [19:02] Know, that's exactly what I was thinking about while I was stepping over people and poop the whole time.

Dan Austin: [19:07] Exactly.

David Pere: [19:09] Man. Wow. Yeah. So they'll

Dan Austin: [19:12] get us back on track here before we start talking about poop again. Sorry. I love it. Trust me. I love it. I was gonna ask you, so what does it look like? So are you set up with your business such that everything is passive? Or would you count it all as your horizontal slash passive income? Or are you looking at you have active and passive? What does it look like for you? Like, what's work? What's not work? Yeah, on on the real

David Pere: [19:34] estate side right now, I'd say it's all passive. Okay. I'm not, I'm not actively hunting for deals right now, until I kind of figure out what the next pieces. And I have a property manager who handles everything, I would say, well, take that back. I have two thirty minute calls every week, just because my hotel slash apartments that we bought has needed some help with stabilizing as we brought in some new management for the hotel. But aside from those two thirty minute calls for the last like two months, I don't do anything. Awesome. And I really don't do much on those calls either. Just kind of listen and occasionally point out things because I'm more of the like, big idea guy who says, hey, have we thought about this, this and this for marketing? And then I shut up. Right. Or like, hey, we could do some of this to bring in business or some of this to bring in reviews. I'm not the operations guy. I'm the, you know, you're the visionary. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. There's not a whole lot of reason for me to be on the call. Because as they start pulling up spreadsheets and expenses and stuff, go cross eyed. So yeah, I just like, like, literally have to call I'm on the other screen, like, just kind of listening while I'm like, doing other stuff.

Dan Austin: [20:45] Yeah. So other visionary stuff.

David Pere: [20:47] Yeah, I'm like, let me know if you need me. Yeah. And they know it like, it's very open. Like, tell me when you need a problem solved. I'll pay attention. But yeah, other than that, I mean, my property manager runs most of my real estate stuff. And so then most of my focus goes towards the, like brand and community side and helping work towards the, the what's next and the giving back and the helping other people with, you know, what they're doing in real estate. As I try to, as I've kind of paused my growth in real estate to figure out the what's next. Wow.

Mike DeHaan: [21:21] Yeah. So I want to talk about your community here. But I guess just really quick going back to what you're saying before, where you've kind of, you've like delegated out a lot of the different things that you do to the point that you can just be in your visionary role. I do think a lot of entrepreneurs of various size, I mean, even like smaller entrepreneurs, right, they can benefit from having that similar sort of mindset, right? If that just like isn't them to be the implementer. So do you have any like tips or thoughts for people that sort of want to get to that position where they can just be purely visionary?

David Pere: [21:51] Yeah. I mean, I think the first thing would just be recognizing that the vast majority of people aren't actually visionary. Yeah. And I'm and I'm not, by no means am I saying that being a visionary is better than not being a visionary. In fact, would say that there are a lot of times that I wake up and go, I wish that this was not me. My assistant my assistant sees me in here all the time stressing out about things, because I'm just like, like, she's she's very much a doer. And she's not the integrator. So like, if I could, I have this great idea. And if I could get to where it's like, here's the process, just do this, then she's got it. Yeah. By getting to that part. That's the part that I bang my head against the wall. And, and so like, I'll sit in here with like, you know, a massive stack of like, just like notes and ideas from like, church and like, you know, it'd be like, oh, I need to get this process ironed out. And, and I'll stare at

Dan Austin: [22:49] it for like weeks, and

David Pere: [22:49] it'll stress me out until I finally like force myself to walk through it on a whiteboard or whatever. But after after you come to terms with the fact that you might actually be the visionary person who comes up with a million ideas and has no idea how to actually sort them all out, I think it's just it's figuring out how to outsource that stuff, right? It's, know, understanding how to find a VA or utilize Fiverr or freelancer or get an assistant or calendar or whatever that tool is, or those tools to organize all that stuff around you so that you can lean into the vision side, right? Like, give yourself time to think, give yourself time to be creative, give yourself time to lean into that. Right. Because if you try to, like, hush that side of your brain, and just work, and you don't do the creative stuff, you're just gonna go crazy. It's not gonna work out for you. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [23:47] Yeah, absolutely. I think

Dan Austin: [23:49] the biggest challenge and Mike and I had this conversation, I was pitching to Mike earlier today, I was like, I gotta figure out how to delegate better. Like you said, how do you how do you offload that stuff so that you can do what you're good at? Or what is like important to you and your business at that point in time? It's hard. It's harder, you know, to do than it is to say.

Mike DeHaan: [24:06] Yeah, and I'll say it for you, Dan, you're definitely a bit more of an implementer role than I am. I would say I definitely more on like a visionary role because I kind of with you on that day where I have like a bunch of ideas. It's like finding that person and Dan knows like every couple weeks, Dan, I come in, I'm like, oh, yeah, we have like someone starting up is gonna do like video editing now. And Dan's like, okay, for what I'm like, I don't know, we're gonna need them here soon.

Dan Austin: [24:29] Because we're headed. Exactly. Yeah. Well, the difference too is Mike doesn't waste time procrastinating. If it's a thought he's doing it. He's to the extreme of what you're saying, David is like, offload it, go.

Mike DeHaan: [24:41] Yeah, exactly. And like, you know, even if it's not the perfect person, or even like the best person, I'll find someone that's capable. And then I'll throw it at them. And then if it sucks, I'll just be like, man, next person, and then we'll just basically go through and it becomes a big vicious cycle.

David Pere: [24:53] Well, since you mentioned procrastination, that's actually a great thing to pay attention to. In, was it Dan Sullivan's book, Who? Or Who Not How?

Mike DeHaan: [25:02] Who Not How, yeah.

David Pere: [25:04] Yeah, he talks about that, that was probably my best favorite nugget out of that book was, you know, when he says, pay attention to the procrastination, because if you procrastinate something, that is your mind's way of telling you that either you're not good at it, or you don't like it, therefore And you should I had never thought about it from that frame. So I would like push stuff off on my calendar, or push stuff off on whatever, industry like that. And then as soon as I started to think of that way, like, oh, absolutely. My biggest problem was just that I didn't, like realize what needed it. Like, I at one point, I was trying to tell my assistant like, Look, if you see something, just take it from me, because I don't know what to give you. Like, I

Dan Austin: [25:43] see that you're bored, like, I have no idea what to give you. And Yeah. And so I love that you're going through that, because that's what I go through.

David Pere: [25:49] Finally became my trigger. Yeah. It's like, know there's stuff for her to do, but I don't know what it is.

Dan Austin: [25:54] Right. Well, you're right. And they tend people people say like, what feels heavy, but you gotta pay attention to what feels heavy. It's really what you do. Otherwise, you're gonna miss it because if you're like, you just said, if you push it on your calendar, it's the last thing that you get to at the end of the day, you're like, oh, fuck it, I'm not gonna do it. It's probably something you should delegate. That's why my assistant is as of the by the

David Pere: [26:13] time tomorrow that I finally go through and catch up on all this tomorrow, when I'm done with this email, my assistant will get a Loom video of how I did it. And she will be taking over my monthly bookkeeping tasks because Oh, nice. It is now the ninth and I have put off what my bookkeeper has requested from me since the first. And I have been instructed that I have to do it tomorrow before my call with my bookkeeper. And so in that doing of it, I'm gonna record how I did it, so that I can just be like, here you go, Rachel, because it is stressing me out.

Dan Austin: [26:48] I love that. There you go.

Mike DeHaan: [26:49] Dan, how relevant is that to

Dan Austin: [26:51] you right now? Just talked to our bookkeeper for an hour before this call to.

David Pere: [26:57] She's like, I need you to download all your bank statements and upload them to here. And I'm just like, Oh, yes. That's the worst. Rachel's like, just teach me how to do it. And I'm like, ah, but it's faster to do it. She's like, Yeah, but if you teach me, I'll never you'll never have to do it again. I'm like,

Dan Austin: [27:12] No, but I'm right thing wrong with you, man.

David Pere: [27:15] And I want to do it.

Mike DeHaan: [27:17] That's so funny.

David Pere: [27:18] Can't you just learn?

Mike DeHaan: [27:19] Yeah, it's a hard mindset. So all of us, you know, going up through the Western school system, like what they teach you is if you don't, if you procrastinate on it, that's like lacking discipline, right? And so, you know, you get into the workforce and you get into, you know, your adult life with the same sort of mentality. And so that's why I see so many people, especially if they're new entrepreneurs, where they're like, man, I gotta learn how to code. I gotta learn how to do graphic design. I gotta learn how to sell. I gotta learn how to do all this stuff. And it's like, or you could honestly just go find people to do most most of those things and go significantly faster.

Dan Austin: [27:52] And being okay with not being good at everything, that's back to the, like, the system we grew up in is like, you don't have to be good at everything. Just be good at what feels light to you, and then you'll honestly naturally just progress and be good at that instead of trying to be a good bookkeeper, a good note taker, a good this, a good that, like, who gives a shit about those stuff if that's not what is alignment with what you

David Pere: [28:10] can do? Absolutely, Rhyee. Exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [28:12] Cool. Well, let's hear about your community and all the stuff you're doing over there. You know, you're doing some really awesome things. I've been seeing your posts on social.

David Pere: [28:19] We try. Yeah, we're the largest military real estate investing community out there. And we just try to help service members and vets figure out how to to not work forever, right? You know, I noticed my last command, how many my last command, was at a really high level Marine Corps command, the highest level command on the West Coast. We ran basically the the first Marine. Yeah. Anyway, I saw a lot of people retiring after twenty, thirty, forty years in the military, and then getting another government job. And a lot of them, it was because they weren't able to actually like retire at the level of comfort that they wanted. It wasn't like they just wanted to go get a job again. I was like, man, that's, that's kind of crummy, like, right? Like thirty years of service, and, like, full military retirement plus, you know, disability benefits plus, health care, all that stuff. Yeah, you're still not able to make it work.

Dan Austin: [29:22] Well, it's not that it was just thirty years. It's like thirty years of hundred hour weeks. Yeah. Easy. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [29:28] I mean, and there's people that aren't able to make it, but I mean, there's a whole subset of people too that go into the gutter with that. Right? And they become homeless, and that's such a huge problem in the country in general. And you're basically trying to be the antithesis of that and saying, you know, not only fully avoid being homeless, which is a big problem, but these people can actually live a life of prosperity and wealth once they get through all of it.

David Pere: [29:48] Yeah, like, think if you'd like, just even just once in there, if you had used the VA loan to house hack it, you're four, you know, now, like, you're 20. And you've got a mortgage with fourteen years left on it. That's been cash flowing for half the time. Right? Yeah. Like there's a lot of opportunity there, you know?

Mike DeHaan: [30:06] Yeah, absolutely. So is that the primary the focus of your group is utilizing the government and military services provided like effectively? Or is it just like, you know, that's the archipel people that are in there still sort of feel comfortable around each other?

David Pere: [30:20] Unknown: Yeah, that's probably more the definition. So I mean, 80% of what I talked about is applicable to anybody. We do definitely touch on, you know, specific stuff like the Thrift Savings Plan, which is that's a four zero one ks that's applicable to anybody. It's just branded as the military one. You know, that VA loan is not a whole lot different from the FHA. Some nuances. But it's Yeah, it's just, you know, the whole brand started as me documenting my journey out of the military into real estate. And so a lot of the community was built that way. And the niches just stuck. So that's really just kind of where I leaned into. And it seems to work. People seem to like it. And I think it does a really good job of facilitating community. So it makes it easy to plus, and this is just more of a selfish thing for me. I don't have to deal with woke, and I don't have to deal with worrying about what I say. In fact, I have actually learned that the more like blunt or brutally honest that I am, and like if I call people out for their bullshit in the group, they love it. Nice. Like the group just eats that stuff up. And I'm like, oh, this is great. I got to be like, tell this guy exactly what I thought of his stupid spammy comments and everybody loves it.

Dan Austin: [31:30] I see. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [31:31] Well, I think if you establish that as your persona pretty early on to usually do okay. Because like, you know, now somebody came in and said like, need to be woke, like you haven't been that way for the entire time. You now.

David Pere: [31:44] Take your pronouns and

Mike DeHaan: [31:46] yeah, exactly. Yeah. And have that hard hard ass mentality. I mean, look at some of those other sort of guys like Yocco willing, right? You know, that dude never asked for about being woke because he's been like the hard ass military guy telling you to suck it

Dan Austin: [31:59] up and people just accept him for who he is.

Mike DeHaan: [32:01] Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it just makes life so much easier.

David Pere: [32:05] If I ever get on this podcast, I should like, start my intro and then like, halfway through just be like, I'm they them. You should do? What he says?

Dan Austin: [32:16] Challenge him publicly to a jujitsu match. That's what you should do.

David Pere: [32:19] Yes, that'd be great. Yeah, considering that I have never done jujitsu. That would be perfect. Would be perfect. Mean. Got me on his podcast, I would be all for it. Right? Yeah. That would be my podcast, actually.

Dan Austin: [32:34] Well, I'll see if I can reach out to some folks. There you go. Whatever works.

Mike DeHaan: [32:39] Yeah. Right. Get them on your podcast though, and you'll tell every story just like he's like on a battlefield. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [32:44] There's a

Mike DeHaan: [32:45] crazy play about how I talk. She's always like, well, when I wake up in the morning, first thing I do is I go downstairs. I do 100 pull ups with a towel on my stairs. Know?

David Pere: [32:56] Is it is the hour. It is 02:30AM. It's pretty intense. Yeah. Yeah. He's he's nuts. I love it. That's funny. Jack is awesome.

Mike DeHaan: [33:06] Cool. So true. Right on. Well, you do do a lot of good stuff, though. And I think that that's definitely a really awesome gap that you know, you're filling there. So but, yeah, so as we sort of start to wind down here, I want to get into our our final questions, which I'm sure you have some good answers to especially on the first one, is always the cookie. Mean, I know your background a little bit. Sure you could

Dan Austin: [33:27] answer Colorful your but background.

Mike DeHaan: [33:28] Yeah. Yeah. But what is your craziest real estate investing story? And this can be good story, bad story. No, no limits here.

David Pere: [33:38] Man, I mean, I've got Yeah, been in a lawsuit for like, almost four years. I've got the judgment one and we're at the spot where he's appealed but didn't bond the cash to for the appeal. So he can't stop the auction of the building. So the auction is scheduled. So it's, it's a really weird situation where I've got a $220,000 Well, actually, I probably shouldn't go into too much more details.

Dan Austin: [34:06] Tough. Since it's active.

David Pere: [34:09] But yeah, yeah. Theory, by the time this goes live, it will not be active anymore. Either through a building being auctioned or him bonding the money, and then it will be in an official appeals process. I've done that. Most of my really crazy stories other than that just kind of revolve around like very interesting dead tenant stories. I seem to have a lot of Dead tenants? I've actually Right. Yeah, I've actually been joking. Probably not a good thing to joke about, and not a good situation to have to joke about, but I told my property manager the other day, I was like, know, if I ever wanted to be a serial killer, I

Mike DeHaan: [34:44] could probably just start putting people

David Pere: [34:46] like, in my apartment buildings.

Dan Austin: [34:48] And,

David Pere: [34:50] and like, they would just assume that it was just just another tenant. Yeah, like, like normal, like, I almost tweeted the other day, was like, real estate influencers. If I was to from like a branding perspective, if I was to start claiming the title King of dead tenants, would that be like a good thing for branding purposes or like a bad? Because like, dude, I've had, like the gauntlet, and it is so bad. And they're all like, just weird, weird situation. So like, just the quick, quick, quick, quick, down and dirty, like, I've had somebody pass away, who had no relatives. And like, they passed away, like, within the first week of the month. So they had paid rent, and nobody noticed until they didn't pay rent the next month in like in August. Nice. So it was a mess, you know, like $5 worth of cleanup and industrial hygiene and like strip the room and, you know, whatever. But because there was no family, we had to handle cremation. We had to store their stuff in a storage unit for ninety days waiting to see if anyone claimed it before we could throw it away. We took over a building. And the week we took over the building, someone decided that the best way to move out of said building was to move out by swallowing a 12 gauge. And oh my god, we had somebody drown in our hotel pool.

David Pere: [36:10] Like, we've had some just ridiculous things happen that I'm just like, like, my property manager will call me and I'm just like, dude, not again. And there's just like, there's not been foul play. And it's just

Dan Austin: [36:22] just bad luck.

David Pere: [36:24] Totally. What is going on?

Mike DeHaan: [36:26] And this is all in different properties, all different properties,

David Pere: [36:30] and all very expensive. And it's like, you can't be mad, right? Because that's a terrible situation, but Yeah. Like, every one of those situations has cost, like, no joke, it's like, you know, and obviously, like, it sounds insensitive to say, because it's like, it's a terrible situation, but like, at the same time, like, that incident cost more than the rent that was collected for the entire year prior for them being a tenant. So it's like, dude, man, it's a terrible situation all around.

Mike DeHaan: [37:01] What do

Dan Austin: [37:01] you we do? Like, then we have two tenants die in the same building and they're just like move the body out and then

David Pere: [37:06] we like what happened? It's a mess.

Dan Austin: [37:10] Did we? Yeah, you don't remember that we had an apartment we

Mike DeHaan: [37:12] had an apartment building stationary

Dan Austin: [37:13] and two people died. Oh, you're right. Separate times in the same apartment. I think they just drug the body out and somebody else moved in and started squatting.

Mike DeHaan: [37:21] Well, no. No. No. Because they had their their third mutual roommate that decided that she also lived there, but she wasn't on the lease. So she stayed there as a like, a tenant in common, and then her boyfriend moved in. God. And they were and she wasn't paying rent.

Dan Austin: [37:36] Yeah. I guess so what I was saying, I guess I'm bringing that up because we got all scot free because we didn't have to pay anything. They just cleared the body out, the next squatter moved in.

David Pere: [37:45] We got lucky. Bad. Yeah. Now I know the secret. Exactly. Yeah. Right. I don't know. So that's I can't I can't do that. That's that's unethical. Does

Mike DeHaan: [37:55] insurance cover stuff like that?

David Pere: [37:57] Unknown Yeah, but I mean, it's it's one of those things where it's like, you know, is it worth? Like, you know, it was like right at cusp of deductible on most of them? Is it worth the claim? Unknown You know, man, how many people are you gonna claim before they're gonna start asking questions?

Mike DeHaan: [38:13] Is true. This is true.

David Pere: [38:14] Yeah. Yeah. I'm seven dead people in the last few years.

Mike DeHaan: [38:21] Deductible? Something about the paint that you're using isn't right.

Dan Austin: [38:26] Get three you only get three free cremations here.

Mike DeHaan: [38:28] Yeah. Right.

David Pere: [38:29] Oh my god. Man. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [38:32] That that that's brutal. We haven't had too many of those, but that that makes it super challenging. But I mean, when you're dealing with people's lives, I mean, it's bound to happen Yep. After a while. Mhmm. So It's true. I mean, that's crazy. So alright. So second question, what is a piece of advice you would give to a new investor to, I guess, either a new investor looking to get started or to a small time investor looking to level up their business.

David Pere: [38:56] Yeah, I just I mean, everyone hears the old cliche about network being your net worth. But I think I would just spin it to say, be careful who you take advice from, They might have your best interest at heart, but you need to filter the advice that you receive through the lens of, has this person achieved what I want to achieve? Do they live the life that I want to live? And the best example that I can come up with for that is, your parents love you, and they probably want your best, the best for you. But if they've never bought a house, then you should probably listen to somebody who buys a lot of houses when it comes to real estate, and listen to your parents a little bit less because that's not their realm of expertise, even if they love you.

Dan Austin: [39:39] Yeah. Dude, that's so true. What a great mean, that's a great spin on that.

David Pere: [39:43] Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [39:43] Yeah. Find mentors of people that actually know what they're doing and not the people that you necessarily value their opinion.

Dan Austin: [39:49] Yeah, because you might value certain people's opinions just maybe not buying houses or where you want to go.

David Pere: [39:55] Exactly. Your mom loves you. And that's great. But if you want to learn how to be an MMA fighter, you're probably gonna go hire a coach who fights not your mom.

Dan Austin: [40:04] Not your mom. Unless your mom's a badass and she's Rhonda Rouses.

David Pere: [40:07] Yeah, maybe. You never know. But no,

Mike DeHaan: [40:11] that mean, that's super valid, valid advice. And that's something that we've definitely preached as well. And, you know, and that can be different, like I said, in every part of life too, whether that's real estate, whether that's, you know, MMA fighting, whether that's personal finance, whether that's relationships, whatever, you know, don't go to the divorcee for marriage advice. You know, it's like, it's just this gonna end poorly in general, but awesome. So right on, David, last question, where can people find you and follow along with what you're doing and potentially reach out to you if they would like to?

David Pere: [40:39] Yeah, the the best spot to reach out to me directly if you want, you know, a response from me personally is on Instagram at from military to millionaire. If you wanna get connected everywhere, the website from military to millionaire or just Google military millionaire and I'll pop right up. And then the Facebook community is probably the most engaging. And that's same thing military millionaire from military millionaire, whatever all all platforms are all branded similarly enough that you'll find them all. Cool. If I did my job right.

Mike DeHaan: [41:10] Right on. Well, thanks so much for coming on, David. We appreciate it. You know, you've definitely I would say you've you've reached the point you're kind of living the dream. You're not working super crazy hours. So you know, you get you're doing your thing and you're you're, you know, continuing to make traction. You're changing people's lives. So good for you, I love it. But awesome. Well, thanks so much guys for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please go subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and leave us a five star review and share it with anybody who might find David interesting. Or she might find it's funny to listen to three grown men talk about how you poop in a missile silo. That's good. Damn it. But aside from that, guys, go and check out David at military to millionaire on pretty much every possible platform. Aside from that, thanks so much guys, and talk to you next week.

David Pere: [41:54] Thanks for having me.

Mike DeHaan: [41:56] Thanks for listening everybody. Please make sure you subscribe and leave us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, please make sure you go and you share this with other people within your network. We are really trying to grow this thing and the best way for us to do so is by you telling other people to come check us out. You can also follow us on Instagram. I am at mike underscore invest. Dan is at investor man Dan. You can follow the podcast at collecting keys podcast. And if you wanna learn how to make real money as a real estate investor or you want to grow your already existing real estate investing business, please go and check out instantinvestorprogram.com and book a call with either Dan or myself, and we will see if you'll be a good fit. Thanks for listening, everybody, and talk to you next week.

Speaker 3: [42:39] Thanks for listening. Please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you get podcasts, and check us out at collectingkeyspodcast.com for tips and guides on starting your own real estate investment and wholesaling business.