Episode #107 – Mastering Networking for Real Estate With Andrew Dunn

You're listening to the “REI Marketing Nerds” podcast, the leading resource for real estate investors who want to dominate their market online. Dan Barrett is the founder of AdWords Nerds, a high-tech digital agency, focusing exclusively on helping real estate investors like you get more leads and deals online, outsmart your competition, and live a freer, more awesome life. And, now, your host, Dan Barrett.

Dan: All right, I am here with Andrew Dunn. He is from TheValueAddGuy.com. That is “The Value Add,” two Ds, A-D-D, “Guy” [dot] com. Andrew, welcome to the show, man.

Andrew: Thanks, man. Really appreciate it.

Dan: Yeah, I'm super happy to have you. We were chatting before we started recording and I was having a gay old time already, so I'm like, This is great. [01:04.0]

Andrew: Yeah.

Dan: Going well. Let’s start kind of at the beginning. I said I was going to ask this. I ask this in most shows. Just kind of what got you started in real estate investing? What was your in to this world? Because it's kind of a weird corner of industries, so what was your way in here?

Andrew: Yeah, so I’ll give you the quick minute elevator pitch. I was born and raised in Orange County, California, grew up in a really hard life in Laguna Beach in San Clemente.

My parents got divorced when I was four. My mom remarried to this guy when I was about eight. It turned out he was a residential oceanfront developer in Laguna Beach, builds really cool custom beachfront homes, but he also does flips. When I was growing up, I would always go and tour these job sites. Then eventually when I came back from my first year in college, I worked for him. I worked for him as a good, old, hard laborer. He was like, Move these 400 pieces of wood from that point of the yard to the other side of the yard. Dig this hole. Shovel that. Sweep this. [02:09.7]

Then I eventually worked my way up to a little bit basic-level carpentry, got to see plumbing, got to see a kind of all the ins and outs of electrical and stuff like that and got to work on some really fabulous homes, but I never wanted to do real estate. I didn't know what it meant. I was like, Realtors? What the heck is this? Can I even make money doing this? I had no idea.

Then I met a girl in college. We ended up dating. It was my senior year of college. My dad passed away in November and I graduated in May and I was kind of just like, What do I do? My girlfriend's dad was like, Come work for me in Vegas. I was like, What do you do? He was like, I do real estate, and I was like, What do you mean? He was like, I don't know. I just do real estate. I was like, All right, great, that's super helpful. Thank you. He was like, Well, I’ll include you in on some emails and calls, and see if you fit in and like it, because I wanted to go into the financial industry like investment banking and stuff like that. I was like, All right, fine. [03:08.8]

He just told me. He asked me what I wanted to do. I said financing. He was like, All right, cool, I'll get you into it. I mean, he wanted me to be close to him. He wanted his daughter to be close to him out in Vegas. Totally understandable.

So, he gave me an offer. He was like, I’ll pay you 800 bucks a week. I'll take care of your rent for the first year. Come down to Vegas. And my family was against it. Everybody that I knew was against it because of just working for your girlfriend's dad at the time, moving to a different state, a different city, especially Las Vegas. It's Sin City. There's a lot of issues and it was like, Oh my God.

He brought me out here. No, nothing. I knew nothing besides that I was getting paid to just learn, so for the first three to six months, didn't know anything. I was like, What do I do? We went back and forth on a lot of clashing points on that and there were heated discussions. I was like, Amber, is this really the right thing for me? Then eventually they showed me about them flipping houses and I was like, Okay, and they were doing one to four a year, and so I got my experience. [04:11.0]

Dan: Yeah, very small volume.

Dan: Very small operation. This was back of the napkin, maybe find it from a wholesaler, the auction, blah, blah, blah, but they really built the business back in 2008–2010. They bought 150 houses all from the auctions. When Vegas was at a barrel, they were buying houses for 50, 60 grand, putting 15, 20 into them, and then selling them for 100 to 125. Lo and behold, those houses are now worth $350,000, but they were just quick money, let's turn and burn.

So, that was one component of their business and I kind of took it and got licensed and read a lot about marketing, started networking, joined Facebook groups and just kind of really built my network around there, and that's where I started building my little niche inside the company. Then I switched over kind of to the commercial side because that's what the company is. [05:04.6]

The company is a commercial real estate development group. They do office buildings, multifamily projects, retail, building, self-storage, hotels, kind of you name it, they've done it, and they're really big and redevelopment and they started back in 1978 in New York on a little 100-unit, Section -8 housing project, worked their way down to Miami all the way over to Hawaii and then back to Vegas in 2008. Then, since then, I’ve been here for about three years, just cranking along and, yeah, so that's how I’ve got involved in real estate. I skipped over some stuff, but that's the general [inaudible.]

Dan: Now it’s now.

Andrew: Yeah, now it’s now. Now we're here.

Dan: That’s fascinating to me. One of the reasons I like doing this show, I’ve interviewed so many people at this point and you start to see some of the patterns with people. One of the big ones in real estate that I think really is the people are really successful, they tend to have this period where, and I loved the way you said you were getting paid to learn. [06:04.3]

So, it's almost like an apprenticeship where you sort of have…even like when you were working with your stepdad, doing manual labor, you were getting the context and the background, and you were sort of seeing how it works. You were seeing what's possible, I think that's really awesome.

For you, what was it about flipping that made it click for you? Because it seemed like you were kind of looking for where you fit and then you were like, Hey, this is the thing, and that's when you started, you said, you were going on Facebook, you were growing all these things, and you were doing the research yourself. Was it just that here was the thing that you could build up? Was there something about flipping that kind of caught your imagination? What was it?

Andrew: Arbitrage.

Dan: Arbitrage.

Andrew: Relationship arbitrage. My biggest concern with going into the financial sector was artificial intelligence taking my job and I don't know how it's going to take over real estate. We're starting to see that in a variety of methods with lead generation, but I know I'm a people person. I could talk to a fly in an elevator, and if I can leverage the way I communicate and the way I speak, and connect with people, this makes sense. [07:13.1]

This is a very relationship-driven business, and I was like, Okay, I'm good at talking with people. I'm getting better at negotiating. I wasn't this master negotiator. Neither am I now. I can always get better. But I saw that there was an arbitrage with relationships, removing technology from the field, a lot of it, so it leveled the playing game for a novice like myself.

Then, also, buy low, sell high. The numbers were relatively simple. Okay, I'm going to buy a house for X. I'm going to put Y into it, and then I'm going to sell it for Z and I make the difference over Z - (X + Y), obviously the fees involved and everything else like that. So, the math was simple, so I was able to pick it up very quickly, especially through a lot of the resources through underwriting templates we built, through rehab estimators as we built. So, I didn't have to have this extensive knowledge on construction to really do my deals and to really start building a business for myself, so that's what really attracted me to it. [08:11.4]

Dan: That's fascinating. I mean, you're the first person to really bring up AI on this show, I think, but that is a very real thing. That is a very real thing, and I do think that in real estate, we haven't seen how that's going to disrupt things. It’s just having this conversation.

I had a student join my coaching program, so we were on a program called REI Marketing Mastery, which is like you come and you spend a year with us. We set up all your stuff. We're teaching SEO, that stuff. Their question was they were out in Houston, so really competitive market, and I was saying, That’s just competitive. It's not just you versus the other investor. It's their hedge funds and Zillow is there and everybody's there. Right?

Andrew: Yeah.

Dan: And their question was like, What do we do to stand out through some kind of…? They didn’t say this, but the question that under that is always like, Is there some kind of online strategy that they don't know that we can figure out? And I'm like, No, you know what I mean? [09:14.7]
They know it. Everyone knows there are only so many ways you could type in “sell my house.” There isn’t something like a hidden way.

Andrew: A hundred percent.

Dan: But the thing that they can't do, the thing the hedge fund can't do, the thing that Zillow can't do, and the thing that all these huge companies can do and the things a lot of investors don't do is actually have a human relationship built on an acknowledgement of dignity. You know what I mean?

Andrew: Yeah. Agree.

Dan: And so, I think that that insight that you had that you can't AI that.

Andrew: Nope.

Dan: I mean, let me put it this way. When we can AI that, we're all doomed. It’s over for us. This is a huge--

Andrew: We're out of a job. I’m sorry, guys, we're done. We're done. Build your portfolios now. We're done. We're done, or you're in it and you built it, and then, great. You're going to definitely…

Dan: No, the second thing that Arnold sort of walks in and he’s like, Hello, I'd like to buy your house, and it’s over. [10:08.8]

Andrew: Yeah.

Dan: But I think that's such a great insight. For you, if that's really the core of what you do, it seems like that's kind of what you view as the thing that makes you special, your core competency. Right?

Andrew: Yeah.

Dan: What do you think are the things that you do that let you do that well? Is it, Hey, I just have a natural tendency. I like it? Is it like, Hey, I make it a thing. Every day I call five people? How do you approach that whole process of optimizing that or doing it well?

Dan: Doing it well, it's a lot of trial and error. You’ve just got to get out there. I’ll record my calls just for me and kind of like, Awesome, hey, can I record this call and see how I react and look back? I'm very reflective. I ensure I respect myself a lot and see, How could I have done that better? Is there something where, if I didn't say this, could I have actually gotten the result that I wanted? Or because I said this, I could have gotten an extra five grand, but instead I lost and I lost that leveraged point of view? [11:05.0]

I'm very big on sales videos, sales books, and kind of just sales, and because my dad raised me to the belief that, Andrew, if you could sell, you'll never be out of a job, and that's how I’ve grown my life.

Also, what I’ve also learned is, if you just listen to people and you actually take an interest in what's going on in their life, and show human emotion and the sense of vulnerability, then you're going to dominate. A quick little side story is when I really understood my ability to be vulnerable as an asset was when I was a sophomore in college and we had to do these big résumé projects. It was a 15-page portfolio on “Who are you? What makes you you? And who are you trying to be?” So, you give this big presentation, 15-page booklet, go out and do surveys and people give keywords about what are your pros and what are your cons? [12:03.1]

Dan: Wow.

Andrew: Then you kind of come back like, Wow, this is kind of crazy. So, I told the class, what are you going to be? I want to be an entrepreneur. They were like, What the hell does that mean? They're all like, Oh, I want to work as a flight attendant or something like that or just a car salesman. I'm like, All right, no, I want to be an entrepreneur.

So, I showed up and the professor's thing was “to make me remember you.” This whole thing is about making me remember you. I said okay, all right. My crazy kind of marketing funk Andrew Dunn style said, “I'm going to make this guy remember me. I'm going to make this whole class remember me of 50 people.”

So, I’ve got this class. I'm giving my speech, PowerPoint, blah, blah, and I'm dressed in a suit. I end up closing it out by stripping down to my underwear in class and saying like, I'm just a regular guy getting up everyday, trying to make his own brand and everything, and I'm literally butt naked, not butt naked, but I’m in my drawers in class. Then everybody looks at the professor and five seconds go by, and he just starts clapping. He's like, That's what I'm talking about. I'm going to remember you. [13:04.1]

I put myself out being vulnerable in front of a bunch of people and I got a lot of positive feedback from my professor. So, when I’m showing my vulnerability, I’ll go in and I’ll talk about…because, I mean, a lot of these situations, they're motivating for a reason. They got cancer. They lost their job. Their mom died, somebody in their life, or they can't pay their bills or it's just too much and they just want to move on, headaches, divorce, whatever.

Through my negative experience, not negative experience, just my life experiences, parents getting divorced, I know the process. I know what it's like. I’ve been in the court system. Dad died of a heart attack suddenly. I know how the probate process works from firsthand and I know how to deal with it.

I know certain situations to help cater to them and create just a common emotional bond via my vulnerability, because it helps them. It calms them down. I mean, you know this. You'll be on phone calls and people will start breaking down, crying in front of you, and it's emotional. [14:01.3]

So, for me, if I just looked at it on a dollar per dollar basis, you can't succeed in this business. You might as well just be an open door or an offer pad, and just churn and burn the money, spend the marketing dollars. For me, it's about the people, and then I’m walking away from a house where I actually helped that person or did I take advantage of it?

I'm not saying I'm giving away money for free and I haven't not leveraged their motivation for my own personal gain. I'm not saying that all. I'm just saying how can I help them, but still get what I want? And that's how I’ve built my brand and that's how I’ve built my business, and it has been very successful.

This is Las Vegas and my dad lived here in the late-70s, early-80s, so I understand how to take care of people. I don't screw people over on commissions. I don't screw people over on fees. I don't screw people over on work. You do it. You brought it. I pay it. I pay you five grand, pay you 10 grand, whatever the case is. For a finder's fee, you earned it. Let's do this. That's what people keep coming back to me, because I'm not trying to just beat them down constantly, because I'm not a machine. I'm a person. And I understand you’ve got a family. You’ve got to take care of your family. [15:09.8]

So, that's how I’ve built it and that's kind of my approach on a daily. It’s just being vulnerable, thinking about them and how I would want to be treated if I was them, because it's scary.

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Dan: You clearly have that kind of long-term vision, where it's like it's not just about this deal. It's about every deal we're going to do together. Right?

Andrew: Yeah. [16:00.0]

Dan: It's so fascinating because I literally was just talking about this earlier today, where we were talking about motivated sellers, this kind of term. Look, it's AdWords Nerds, ever since we started, it's been, we get motivated seller leads, right? That's what we do. Motivated seller leads are what our clients want. It's a term that we throw around, but I was talking about it to an investor and I was like, When you say “motivated seller,” what you mean is it's someone with their back against the wall, right?

Andrew: A hundred percent.

Dan: It's not fun to be motivated. By definition, it means you have the power and they don't, and the act of just acknowledging that and empathizing with it, it's such a big deal. We were talking before.

I want to bring this back to your company now because I’m going to connect us all together. Your company is the Value Add Guy. Again, if you're listening to this, by the way, if you're listening to this and you do online marketing for real estate—I do, too. That's why I do this show—you should go check out TheValueAddGuy.com because Andrew has done a really, really amazing job with his website. I highly recommend you go check it out and sort of look at it as a model for someone who's really been quite thoughtful about this kind of stuff. [17:22.4]

Before we jumped on, on the podcast, we were talking about the brand and you were saying, I'm thinking about 10 years from now, right? I'm starting now with this brand, but I'm thinking about 10 years from now. We’re kind of connecting this back to this long-term vision. Tell me about the brand, the Value Add Guy. Where did that come from and where do you see it going?

Andrew: Yeah. For me, where it came from is I worked for this group called WG Group. Like I said, two partners, one of them, 65. He's my mentor. Then, the other, 75, also a really smart guy.

I didn't want to do initials because I hate companies with initials, because if you leave, then you’ve got to redo the branding and the entire thing. I was like, All right, no Dunn group. No that. Get out of here. [18:09.4]

But I was thinking about the long-term through our house-buying business. I was like, Okay, I’ve learned a lot about SEO from you guys and saying this is a long-term game. I've seen guys on YouTube post videos once a month for years, and then they're getting 50 views, 100 views, all right, 1,000 or 2,000. Then, in that seventh year, they just hit a million out of nowhere and then they get 174,000 subscribers, and I'm like, Where the heck did this come from?

It's nothing special, but it's the consistency of putting out content, backlinking it to your site, being on multiple platforms and going out. I was like, okay, instead of thinking more in a retirement perspective in stocks, because I don't necessarily have time for that unless it's a passive portfolio, I was like, let's build a brand. I'm 24 years old. Where do I really want to be? My partners and my mentors aren't going to be here for the rest of my life. Let's think long-term. [19:03.7]

I went in and I was like, What's the brand? What are we doing? I was like, I add value to people's lives. Our commercial real estate group is a value add investment group and that's all we do. It’s value add. I don't do stabilized assets. We either do ground up or we do redevelopment, vacant buildings, 50% occupied buildings and come in. So, I was the value add guy.

I was kind of thinking of what's kind of this character that I can put on like the Points Guy. It actually came from the Points Guy and I was like, Okay, let's create a character because I'm kind of funky. I’m out there a little. I’m literally not eccentric, but just kind of funky. Let's put on this character. Let's create this value add guy. It will be funny in the beginning, but it's going to be catchy and people are going to be like, Did you hear about this? Did you hear about Andrew just doing this crazy little thing? I’ll get different reactions from people in the industry like you. They're like, That's a good name. That's a solid branding.

I thought about that, but the vision is I need to add value to people's lives, so let's just put it right in my brand, the Value Add Guy. If I'm not adding value in your life, don't use me. [20:08.4]

Eventually my goal is to just build this database of sellers, property owners, investors, and everything else, and turn it into my own real estate brokerage, real estate development group for the long-term for when I need to go do capital raising. I can bring those investors in based on this network I'd build up over five, 10 years, to do my first ever development deal. When I have the financial means and I have that deal, then I'm like, All right, cool, I'm putting in 10% of the equity. I need to raise the other 90%. I'm charging my fees and that's how I'm going to make my money and build my development company. That's what I did, so it was a long-term goal for me. I want to have a real estate development company. That's something that fascinates me wholeheartedly.

Dan: Yeah. I think it's so interesting, dude. I think your approach is a hundred percent the right one. Again, we were saying, when I first heard it, I was like, Wow, that's great, because so much real estate investing is incredibly bland. It's been an industry that has forever leaned on the fact that, if I just tell you what I do, it's enough. [21:14.3]

Andrew: Yeah.

Dan: So, it’s “I buy houses cash Dunn [slash] org [dot] fax” or whatever.

Andrew: Yeah, that’s exactly it.

Dan: Anything different than that immediately stands out, right? And I think it implies long-term thinking, right? Because there's fast cash home. There's always this sense of like, Are you going to be in business two years from now? What is the deal with this? right?

Andrew: Yeah.

Dan: Let me ask you about this, too, because this is something that has come up in my life and you seem really good at it, so I'm curious because it’s a few things, yeah.

Andrew: Go on.

Dan: Yeah, ask about it. So, how do I get girls, Andrew? What do I do?
Okay, so you are clearly taking this approach where you're like, Okay, I am building a network from the ground up and my network is going to be kind of where I build the foundation of this business? Right? [22:08.5]

So, you're building relationships and you're being strategic, but, also, just like you said, you're adding value as you go. You're not using people to get to where you're building that network. You have a system for networking or kind of tips for networking, because I know a lot of people, but I'm bad at following up with them. I'm bad at checking in with them. I know for a fact, and I took last week off and at least for me, when I take time off, I end up thinking a lot about work and sort of coming up with a lot of ideas for work.

Andrew: Yeah, you do.

Dan: And I was like, What would it look if I…? I say I intellectually understand your network is your net worth. Say that to me. I get it. I understand that. Right? But I don't act like I believe it. What would it look like if I really believed them, I really put time into it? And that's been on my mind.

I'm curious, how do you approach networking or do you even think about it that way? And do you have tips for people or strategies that you kind of used to approach that? [23:15.6]
Andrew: Do not have a sophisticated system. It's more of an Excel spreadsheet, but I take notes on everybody, but the hardest part isn't managing it. That's just being a relationship person and just talking to people. The hardest part is going out and finding that.

For me, I’ve leveraged my developer, the development company I worked for, their branding and all their amazing projects out there, and I go ask people like, Hey, I'm looking. I think the beauty about aiming from the developer's perspective as I'm networking with brokers, I'm networking with contractors, I'm networking with lenders, I'm networking with city council members and people that oversee projects and planning, and I really [wonder] why. Why do they want to go out with me? Why do they want to build a relationship with me? It's because I'm going to add value to their lives or it's going to be mutually beneficial. [24:02.4]

So, before you go out and call somebody, what do you think they're thinking of? There's just some random person calling me. What am I going to get out of this? At least buy them a coffee. At least take them out to lunch, breakfast, dinner, whatever, and actually be a human being and meet face to face if you can. That's not easy in today's day and age with COVID.

Dan: Yeah.

Andrew: It would depend on the type of person, but I'm a very old school guy. Like I told you, my dad was in Las Vegas. He kind of taught me the game. And when you're a younger individual coming out and being like, Hey, I'm taking you out to lunch, even though that person can pay 10,000 lunches, even though that one lunch might be a burden on your wallet, I don't care. It's an investment.

I don't invest in…like I told you, I'm not a stock guy. I'll invest in real estate and back in my business, but when I take somebody out to lunch, I take somebody out to dinner, one, you can write it off via your LLC, so it's technically back in my pocket.

But the other thing is, I'm investing in a relationship, and I always tell people this. Listen, I'm not a one-year guy. I'm not a one-deal guy. I'm a 40-year guy. You're going to be in my life forever. As long as I can say it, I want to be at your birthdays. I want to be at any celebration you get. I hype people up. I'm a hype guy for a lot of people. And I think about that 20, 30, 40 years of us working together and building something. [25:20.8]
So, when I take my approaches, I try to make three meaningful relationships a week.

Dan: Wow.

Andrew: Just three. Don't complicate it and that's hard. Hard. I want the truth.

Dan: I was going to say that seems like a lot.

Andrew: Yeah. That’s hard.

Dan: You're not just saying three randos where you're like, What's up, Frank? or whatever. You're talking about a meaningful relationship to both of them.

Andrew: Yeah, to both of us. And does it always hit? No, but you aim for three where I will take you out to lunch, where I’ll take you out to dinner, where I’ll come to your office and I’ll bring you a coffee, or I’ll bring you a nice bottle of wine or something like that. [25:56.5]

And you're going to remember me, not just because of my red hair and my goofy personality, but just because I took the time to actually care about you and think of you as a human being, and not just like, Oh, this guy, he does 100 flips a year. He does 200 wholesale deals a year. How can, how can I work with them? How can I work with them?

Why does he want to work with you? Are you going to bring him deals? Are you going to bring him a contractor? Are you going to bring him another financing source? What are you going to bring to the table? That's how I really looked at it.

Then, managing and the follow-up. I think I do about 15 to 25 check-ins a week, just whether it's via a text message, a phone call, an email, like, Hey, what's going on? How have you been? How are the kids like? Oh, how was Billy's football game? How is your wife and how is your mom doing, man? I heard she was in the hospital. Oh, sorry, you lost your dad.

Take notes. You need to take notes on people, not so much about the deals. Take interest in their lives and it's going to go so much further, and they're going to want to help you because they think you're being genuine and, inherently, you're going to be genuine and you're going to show your own vulnerability. [27:09.1]

And don't talk about yourself. For the love of God, do not talk about yourself. You will talk. I want you to talk 10% of the time and ask every question imaginable about them and just talk to them, and you're a sponge and you're not like, Oh, well, I did this and I’ve been a part of this. No, you can show that to show your credibility, but that's it. Don't keep going into that. Really care about them.

So, that’s my system.
Andrew: That is amazing advice, dude. It’s super good and you're hitting on all this stuff that I think, like I said, it's all these things that I kind of know but I don't do a great job of implementing. It's super helpful to me and I'm sure for the people that are saying a lot.

I'm super curious. You mentioned sales, and we've got to wrap it up. We're coming close to the end here. What are some of your favorite sales books, salespeople, sales resources? When you think sales, who are the people you look at as people that you either look up to or you think they have a good approach, or that would be good for someone to learn from? [28:14.9]
Andrew: I think in regards to sales books, I have a mixed feeling about them. Grant Cardone, Sell Or Be Sold, it's an interesting book and he's got a mixed personality and reputation in the space.

Dan: Right.

Andrew: But he hits the nail on the head. He hits the nail on the head in regards to networking and getting out there and never eating alone. I really like his book.
Never split the difference. That’s one.

Dan: Yeah, Chris Voss, right?

Andrew: Yeah. He's amazing. I love his negotiation tactics.

But then there's another book that has no inclination to sales whatsoever and it's called Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins. He is a stud. You want to talk about attitude and getting what you want? Do that. He's a guy that was 300 pounds, lost 100 pounds in three months, went through Navy SEAL training three times, finally became a SEAL, ultra-marathon runner, Ironman athlete, transformed his life completely, and he was out in Vegas. [29:14.9]
I think those are the three books that I would really suggest to people.

Dan: Cool. All right, so that is Sell Or Be Sold, Grant Cardone.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dan: Never split the difference, Chris Voss, and Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins.

Andrew: Yeah, that’s it.

Dan: Sweet. That's amazing, dude. I was going to say a lot of people recommend the Goggins book and that's not actually the case. You're the first person to recommend it, but I feel like I’ve seen it around and every time I'm like, I don't know what that is, and I’ve just kind of brushed by it, so that's awesome. I will definitely look it up.

Andrew: That book changed my life. It got me to do three triathlons. It got me to do a 100-mile bike race.

Dan: Seriously?

Andrew: Yeah, it got me to do a 100-mile bike race, got me to do a marathon, and then now I think I'm going to go all in and shoot for the Ironman next year. [30:06.2]

Dan: Yeah? Wha?

Andrew: Yes.

Dan: That's going to be sick, dude. That’s going to be sick. I have run. I hate running. I have run in [crosstalk].
Andrew: I hate running. I hate it, too. It’s awful. I hate it. I hate it. It’s so bad.

Dan: While I'm running, I'm like, Why am I doing this? Why in the world would I ever do this? But my cousin convinced me then up near Boston, they have the Smuttynose Half Marathon, so it's a brewery. It’s a half marathon and at the end you get a lobster roll and free beer. So, I was like, Yeah, I’ll do it, and I was training for it and everything.

Then something happened in my life. Someone got sick or whatever, was it? Something happened and I couldn't train for three weeks before the half marathon, but I was like, I'm still going to do it, and I finished, but I couldn't walk upstairs for a week afterwards. I couldn't lift my knees up, you know what I mean? That was that for me. [31:00.0]

Andrew: No, for him, quick little story, he did a 100-mile race, a running race, had almost no training for it. Then after the race, like you, except a little difference, he was peeing out blood, and he was dead and he had to go to the ER, and he talks about it. He's like, Nah, I want to sit here and experience this pain as you lay in the tub after. Complete psycho.

For me, I do it just to fight demons just inside my head, and because I'm a pretty positive guy and if I deal with that, with those demons, outside the desert in Las Vegas, I’ll be fine. I'll get through anything.

Dan: That is the perfect place to leave it. We're going to leave you here. We started with relationships and we're leaving you paying blood in the desert outside Las Vegas, and it’s perfect.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dan: But, Andrew, this has been amazing, [your] approach. Again, if you are listening to this, you need to go check out Andrew's website. It is The Value Add Guy. That's “add,” as in A-D-D. TheValueAddGuy.com. It is an excellent, excellent example of a real estate investing website. He's got a killer brand. [32:11.4]

Andrew, it's clear. I really, really appreciate your approach to this industry, the way that you're thinking through what you do. This was awesome, so thank you so much for coming on and sharing it with our audience.

Andrew: Yeah, thank you, man. I appreciate it.

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