Early Investing, Early Profit with Dan Butler

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Welcome to the Next Level Income show where it's our goal to take your income, investments and life to the next level. I'm your host Chris Larson. You can get your free copy of our book@nextlevelincome.com Today's show is sponsored by Money Insights and their investment Optimizer strategy. In my book, I share how I use this strategy to invest my money in two places at one time. This strategy has been used by the wealthy for generations for estate planning, minimizing taxes, preserving wealth, and increasing stability for their investments. Money Insights can help you develop a plan to build an emergency fund, pay for college, fund a business plan for retirement, and optimize your investments. Find more information by checking out NextLevelIncome.com and clicking on the banking link. On today's show we have Dan Butler. Dan Butler is a co founder of 6am Core Collective, the parent company to Crestcore Realty, Coreland Financial, Crestcore Property Management, Core Build, City Light commercial services and coreassist. He spent the first 20 years of his career in plant management and operations with Fortune 500 manufacturing companies, then left the corporate world in 2014 to be in real estate full time. Today he owns over 900 units. Personally, he's been an active real estate investor since 2001, focusing on buying, managing single family homes, duplexes and multifamily apartment buildings. He co founded Cresco Realty in 2012 and currently manages more than 3,000 properties in Tennessee for over 700 local, national and international investors. Dan, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here. Excited.

Yeah man, it's great to talk to you again. Talk a little football here before the show.

That's right.

Yeah, I'm hoping that. Yeah, I hope so too because I'd love to bring my boys to watch Virginia Tech play Clemson.

Yeah, that'd be awesome.

Yeah man. So for our listeners that haven't met you before, maybe you could share a little bit more with the audience about how you ended up in the role you are today and more than 3,000 doors man.

Share your story oh man. Goodness. Yeah, I mean it really goes back to high school. I had a mentor in high school that I helped do grunt work. Helped to the yards of rental properties that he owns and that his father in law owned and he just taught me about wealth creation and just really listened intently and just so going into college I just had that in the back of my mind that at some point I was going to do real estate. Estate. Didn't know what that was going to look like did engineering and then had a lawn care service as well. And so out of that, created some cash to buy my first house right when I graduated, which then parlayed into lines of credit. So then I moved to Memphis in 1998 and was determined to buy my first rental. And I think the book was nothing down in the 90s. I think it was Robert Allen.

Robert Allen, yeah.

So, I mean, I think he's got the 2000s now and all that stuff. But like, I was in the 90s at that point reading that one. Before the BRRR Strategy became the BRRR Strategy, it became popular acronym through bigger poc. That's the strategy that I kind of figured out that I wanted to do. And so I just had my manufacturing gig. I was in as we talked about engineering and operations, plant management, and started buying real estate on the side. And the whole goal was to have choices. I didn't really know what that meant. In my mind, it's like, all right, when I hit 55, which sounded earlier than 65, I could either quit and just be a landlord or I could accelerate my income or speed up the retirement and all that kind of stuff. So I just. I just wanted choices. And I didn't know this was going to lead into what it did because I parlayed two careers for about 14 years, which was brutal. And a lot of testimony coming back around now these days of just the journey that I went through to do all that. But yeah, just blessed that, created that and then that created a property management company. We wanted to manage for others to create fee income so that we could manage our own. Like we wanted to be managed. And then we just started the whole vertical integration kind of thought process. What else can we add to help feed the businesses? And I'm happy to go through all those, but I mean, each business is linked some way somehow where we're normally the largest client. You know, like we have 900 units out of 3,000. We're the largest client of the property management company. You see what I'm saying? So they're all. That's how. That's all. Or the maintenance company. Largest client at the property management company. So it just kind of plays off that and that's how the businesses got started and built.

Yeah, excellent. Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about why you went into engineering. Because we have a lot of similarities. For those that are familiar with the show or have read our book, you know, they know that I have an engineering background. You have an engineering Background, real estate. I listen to your story and it sounds like you're like a real life rich dad, poor dad story where you're thinking about that. But tell us a little bit about why you went into engineering and what was the inspiration. You know, you talked about family, friend or mentor that talked about wealth creation and the thought process behind that.

Sure. So through middle school and high school, I loved math, enjoyed math, was good at math, hated English, that side of the brain and the artistic side, you know, like just I didn't have that artistic side, I just had math. And come to find out, my dad tells me like last year I was like, why didn't you tell me this before? But he said since I was 9 years old, I'd be doing math numbers and stuff on church bulletins or calculating how much I was going to make by cutting yards, just all that kind of stuff. My mind's always been spinning that way. So anyway, my mentor actually was a mechanical engineer. And so between what I had with math and what I saw, how he thought that analytical, that troubleshooting, that problem solving, that mindset, that's what I was really after. As soon as I got into engineering, I realized I did not want to be that design engineer. That wasn't who I was. I wanted the ability to think different and problem solve. And then I realized I have a love of coaching people. That's how I end up. But operations when I did, because I saw those two combined, I could do use my engineering process while coaching people in a manufacturing environment and that's how that kind of played out.

So yeah, so you talked about running those two parallel careers for 14 years. Talk about, you said, you kind of shook your head when you said that. What were some of the challenges? But what else did you bring from your operations career? Because I know a lot of the stuff, kind of very similar, 15 years in the med device space and learn a lot along the way and think, okay, how can I apply this here? I often talk about working with surgeons and just what I learned. Maybe you can share with the audience. Operations to me sounds like a great fit for what we do in the real estate and the multifamily space.

Yeah, so great, great question. I mean I think back then I was blessed to get Six Sigma training, Lean Kaizen training where you're getting rid of non value added activities workflow, get ISO certification which is like your standard operating procedures on steroids basically. So yeah, I carried all that into creating these businesses and having that mindset of just efficiency processes, coaching people that kind of thing. What I didn't realize pitfall of all that is that in corporate you got a lot of peripheral stuff like they've been around a long time, so they got a lot of support system. So when you're starting on your own, you don't realize how much relying on others and how important that hiring piece is to creating your business. And that that's probably where we, if I had to say one big mistake where I didn't use my skills set from before of vetting people and training people on the front end, I just was, oh, you do property management, Come on in. That kind of. Does that make sense because you're just blowing and going and you're entrepreneur and starting up and you're just trying to plug holes and just keep things afloat. And that would probably be my biggest piece that I would say was a struggle very early on.

Yeah, no, I think you bring up a good point. If you look at the skill sets that are most desirable these days, I mean we can hire, we can outsource, we can bring in from overseas different technical capabilities, but the ability to lead, to find talent and to train talent and ultimately find the best fit, I think that's really what provides the robustness and durability of a company over time. So I think that's a great lesson for anybody at the commercial side operations Six Sigma, when you're operating from a lean perspective. I was on a webinar earlier today and talking about the lower the cap rate, the more the value creation. Dan, share a little bit about your transition from the single family space to the commercial space and where you focus today as far as the real estate market and why that is.

Well, I think I started out early on with like the smaller multifamily that did not require on site management. And I like that space because I call it under 50 units. Just for simplicity. You don't have to have an on site manager. Your cost, the overhead on that is a lot lower. And you don't have the hedge funds or private equity really chasing after that. That's just too small of a fish for them. So you can find those, for lack of better words, a mom and pop landlord that may have owned it for 30 years, that's now ready to retire and all that kind of stuff. And so out of that would become potential for owner finance or partial owner finance. Because one of the key things that my business partner, one of our, we were willing to give up personal guarantees early on. Like some people hold that piece, like they don't Want to do personal guarantees. I'm like, I mean, it's either going to work or it's not. That's just my personality. But we wanted no money down. That's always been our mantra. So every multifamily we bought, we bought with no money down. And every house we bought. Yeah. So it's always been no money down one way, some way somehow. So that's how I got into it, and that's how I continue to buy to this day.

Wow. I mean, that's impressive because. Yeah. Reading the same books by Robert Allen, I'm trying to remember there was a silver one he had. I can't remember if that was no money down for the 2000s or his multiple streams of income. And I think all the ones that influenced me. And a lot of the early properties I bought, I leveraged off of other ones and took out credit card loans and different stuff. And when I was buying in the early 2000s, you can probably relate. They're like, just sign here.

That's right.

That's it. You're going to give me a loan. That's terrific. I'm like, well, fortunately, I had good income and we could do stuff. Was there a point, though, Dan, where you made a jump? Like 700 units? That's a lot of units. I mean, did you go from like 2 to 4 to 8 to 16, or was there a jump where that curve went from linear to curvilinear?

Awesome question. I would say this is one of my. I would say a weak strength and a weakness all rolled in one. I like to go big or go home. So I started out with a 19 unit multifamily when I was 27 years old. Had a 16 unit when I was 28. I still didn't know what I was doing. I was underinsured, no renters, insurance, had a fire. That's a whole nother story. But. But one. The other piece was, I learned early on was the big banks. You're just a number. It's kind of like being at Clemson when I was going to. Like when you're in chemistry class and you're like 300 people there that your professor will never. I mean, who is this guy? He's a number one, you know, number two or whatever. So that's why I felt with the banks, when they were saying, all right, we just sent underwriting to Birmingham, Alabama, and just a yes or no. So I learned to do with the local banks.

Yeah.

And so I created a system where I had like five of them going at One time and they all gave me say $250,000 officer's guidance line, which is basically, I could buy one house for 250 or five. At 50, they didn't really care, but they proved me to spend 250. Does that make sense? Oh, yeah. So I had that across five banks. But so by the time I came back that next year, I'd already spent the million that these five had given me and now I want another million. So fast forward from 01 to say 08 when the crash happened. Part of that equation I'd say as well is that I've seen people getting taught about getting houses buying cheap, fix them up, appraising them high, and taking money out. You remember that strategy?

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. Which is over leveraging. So I just. That's where you took a key piece of the engineering piece. Was like, I'd extrapolate that out. I'm like, this makes no sense. What if the tenant moves out for two months? Like it just started becoming a negative cash flow. I could see the math not working for the long term.

So you were buying on cash flow, you weren't buying on appreciation like everybody else in the mid-2000s? Yeah, that was nuts, man.

Always cash flow. So the piece that I was getting to was that because that relationship with local banks, when 2008, 9 and 10 hit, they were calling us left and right to take houses that they were taking back. And so I would get 10 houses here, five here at one instance where we got 100 houses in one fell swoop. So in that 08 to 10 where a lot of people were losing their property, we actually ramped up about 300 units in that three year span. It was crazy. But part of that too though, is you had to take the good with the bad. You get 10 houses, eight of them were awesome and two of them were dogs. And so you lear little too long of a lesson. But you learn later on you should never kept those dogs. You should have just got rid of them. But anyway, to answer your question, that was the crash was actually our accelerant, which is opposite most people we probably hear is when they were just trying to hold on, we were actually pedal to the metal and take it off.

So I think that's an awesome lesson and it's something that I talk about in my book. Kind of going through that period, we didn't lose anything. We didn't lose any of our properties. We were cash flow positive. We stopped buying in 05, I think it was. So we had 34 years of lag time and ample reserves, but it still sucked sitting on properties that you saw go down in value, even though they were still cash flowing. But we were still making investments, but we didn't have as much capital as I would've liked to have to really, really jump in. And that's something I think I talk about real estate cycles. And it's gonna happen again, right? Like we're gonna get over leveraged. Probably not gonna look exactly that way, but I think it's a. That's a great lesson if you're listening, to make sure you're not over leveraged. When it looks crazy out there, prepare because what does Buffett say when there's blood in the streets by that's right.

Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.

So there you well said, Dan. What are your rules that you follow? Looking at properties now, I'm a little.

More picky than I used to be. As far as the areas I was buying a ton. Just if the numbers looked like they made sense on paper, I would buy. But as you get older and wiser and kind of been through few cycles, you realize certain areas are better than others. So you really hone in on that. I think my whole rule of thumb has always been no money down. And then if it'll cash flow positive, even a dollar on a 15 year note and that's with reserve for maintenance, insurance, taxes, all that stuff. To me that's a good deal. That's my barometer.

Say that one more time. So no money down, cash flow POS on a 15 year note.

Yep. So that's a small buy box, right? I mean like you got to find a good deal to make that work because especially right now, I mean most people are selling and I'm sure over where you are, like you have to put 25% down on a 30 year note to cash flow.

Yeah. I work with a handful of young investors that are getting started and I just talked to say young in terms of investing, not age. And I was talking to one the other day and walking through a deal and I brought up the 1% rule. I said, hey, if you see a deal, just run this on the back of the napkin. And he's like, no way. I said, well there you go. I said, but feel free to say happy to walk you through it. We're getting to that point again where the numbers aren't really making a lot of sense. In a lot of different markets, you have to either be really picky or you have to Be looking at different stuff.

Well, and to your point, just FYI, like my engineer, you're looking for those angles of that of how I apply that. I figured out before that 1% rule came across that 1.5 was my rule.

1.5.

1.5. That would make it better in your note. Yeah, so that's my buy box. It's got to be a 1.5 or better.

Yeah. Outstanding. You got to kiss a of frogs when you're looking at those numbers. But here's the other thing I noticed, Dan. So most of your properties are in what I would call the heartland of the country. And I think a lot of people romanticize like, oh, it'd be great to buy a property in this cool area. But I think we see better deals from a cash flow perspective in what I would call the heartland of the country. Can you share your perspective on that and experience with that versus buying in San Francisco where you're paying a million dollars for a row house?

And I came from Greenville, South Carolina, which is 1% rule is for very prevalent over there. And I have some buddies, so I keep up with kind of the market. I had no idea. I was blessed to come into Memphis, Tennessee with top 5 price to income ratio. The rent to price ratio was one of the top five in the nation. And what does that mean? That just means that the deal is you're going to be able to get 8, 9, 10% cap rate here in Memphis, whereas you can't get that in New York City where they're fighting to get 1%, 2%. Like crazy.

Amazing, right?

It's amazing what that makes people do too, because 95% of our clients are California. And you're like, man, these guys buy houses left and right from California in Memphis, sight unseen. Never been here. It just blows my mind because I'm like, I couldn't do it. I don't have that. I gotta go and see it and.

Understand the same way.

Yeah, I mean I might would invest over there, but I've got to like drive every street. I'm gonna meet with all kinds of agents and I'm gonna really dig in. But I mean, you got business professionals out there that got extra income and it's so much less risky to put it over here, even if they lose it all because the real estate's so much cheaper over here.

So yeah, I worked for Medtronic for years, which is located there, the spine division in Memphis. And Memphis has a lot of great industrial factors, employment factors that make it a real positive and Again, I think that I know people that are investing, they're buying turnkey rentals in different areas of the country, like Memphis, because it works where it doesn't work and certainly doesn't work here in Asheville, North Carolina, right now.

You bring up a good point. I think for your listeners to understand, like a Memphis, we are 55% rentals, whereas the national average is like say 36, 35, 36, something like that. So you take that 20% delta on 300,000 parcels Memphis, that's 60,000 units on a comparable city. Does that make sense?

It makes perfect sense. Yeah.

So that's a ton of inventory, ton of stuff that can be consumed by investors to create cash flow and income.

Yeah. One of the things we talk about, consistently talk about in the book, you pick a strategy, it doesn't have to. Like we were talking about the BRRRR strategy. Buy, renovate, rehab, right. Refinance, rent it out. And it's like, okay, that works. Multifamily strategies work. Different strategies work. Pick a strategy, then pick an area of the country that works for you. And I think if you're, if you' listener and you have geographic mobility, you say, hey, this is what I want to do. If you can move to an area of the country that's a lower cost of living, it has characteristics of the investing strategy that you are interested in moving to. Dan just brought up, I think, a phenomenal golden nugget right there. So shifting gears a little bit, Dan. I know in addition to being an engineer, you're an athlete, you're a runner. And I love the saying, have a hobby that keeps you healthy, one that makes you smarter, and one that makes you money. Talk about being a runner and maybe you can get into the 6am core collective and how that came to be.

Yeah, that's a great question. I think I've always been an athlete in sense of just always worked out some way somehow, whether it be racquetball in college or lifting weights. So I carried that all the way through to moving to Memphis. And I met my business partner. He's a neighbor, actually, and our wives knew each other in high school, and we both said we wanted to try to run. And so we started running literally in 2004. And so in 2004, we just said, let's start running. We tried 5pm we tried 8pm which not good because then you can't go to sleep. Tried 5am that's way too early.

Yep.

We settled on 6am which seemed to work for both of us. We both get in bed in time. And the beauty of that was just the personal accountability. I mean literally, snow, rain, doesn't matter, like he's going to be outside my door and vice versa. And out of that became business strategies and just I taught him what I was doing. And then also we realized because he's a CPA, CFA, accounting background with real estate technology, and realized that one plus one was three for us to be partners. But that's how the 6:00am Core Collective kind of came together. Was like that. 6:00am Means a ton to us. Like that six, that's 16 years in right. Of just five, four days a week, five miles a day. That's a ton of mileage.

So yeah, I got a great group of cyclists I ride with at 5:30 in the morning. That's a hair early. I would like 6 too, but 5:30 works for us. We probably ride just a little bit longer too than you run. So you probably end up getting home at the same time. But it really is amazing what you, the bond you form, you spend that many hours kind of the. I think there's something special when you're enduring a heart. Whether it's physical hardship through athletics or anything else, you know, there's a real bond that forms and if you haven't been through it, I know Dan's shaking his head up and down here and I say, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So talk about. We mentioned several of your companies here, Dan, as we got started. What's the latest company? What's your current focus? And how did that idea come to be?

Oh man. Our latest company has been a company called CoreAssist.

Okay.

And that's our virtual staffing company basically. And so several years ago we were trying to figure out property management has very slim margins. My brother, when I got into it, he goes, yeah, I looked at that and it's got one of the smallest margins of most industries. Didn't know if you know that they like groceries. Yeah, that's right. So there's not much money there, but it's a very labor intensive business. And so about four or five years ago we started using a third party and actually out of India where we'd scan invoices, scan machine, and the next morning they're all input into our property management software. And we're just cutting the check to the vendor and we're like, okay, this works good. But we didn't know the people. We didn't know who was behind doing the work, which is a service. Then we were In a mastermind in Dallas, Texas, that we were going to three times a year and met a guy in Dallas managing 300 properties with 12 people in Bangladesh, India. Wow. And I'm like. And he had no employees here in Dallas. I'm like, what? Didn't make sense? So I'm asked peppering him a question. Then I came back and told my business partner about it. He didn't believe me. No, it's not impossible. And he's actually from Dallas, my business partner. So he met up with him in Thanksgiving. And I remember he called me, I think it was Thanksgiving day, and said, you won't believe this. The guy has no offices. Like, it was just him sitting in a room and there's nobody there. It's just him and it's literally the people. I remember he said, we're all eating ice cream in July and this guy's eating cake. Meaning totally different process. So anyway, in that same mastermind, a guy was there that provided that service to give you employees from the Philippines. And we did that. And our team's like, man, we could do this ourselves because we're using so many of them. So we just started doing ourselves. And then that led to people saying, hey, how do you doing that? Can you give me one? You know, can you find me, source me somebody? And so we just got really good at sourcing virtual employees because you're talking about something that's thousands, thousands of miles away. And it's like, how do you sort through resumes and personalities and all that stuff because you can't physically get in a room and interview. It's all virtual.

Yeah.

We have probably a little over 100 virtual employees right now. And half of them work for us, and then half of them we outsource to other companies.

Yeah. How do you structure that process so it's repeatable? Dozens of employees like that. Do you have somebody in the Philippines that's helping you out with that or going back to the engineer? I'm very systems oriented. Have you put a system in place to make that happen and more predictable or how have you done that?

Yeah, so we just replicated what we had for the states for hiring, and we hired somebody that's in the Philippines that puts the ads out. They take. We do use a thing called Culture Index. I don't know if you're familiar with Culture Index.

I've heard of it. Yeah.

It's a behavior based survey. And so it helps us sift through. Like if you're looking for somebody that can cold call. So loves to be on the phone has empathy, all that kind of stuff. That's gonna be one personality profile that you're gonna get versus very detail oriented, likes repetition. That's probably somebody that you wanna put in billing. Does that make sense? So depending on what our need is or what our client is, we know what profile of a person. So we'll get 200 resumes and we are, we're only talk 10 people. We're not talking to 200, we're taking the 10 because we have to take the survey before we'll talk to you. Yeah, that's kind of our pre filter if you will. And that's if you ask our clients internally and externally what's the biggest success? For courses that's been the biggest piece is just our sourcing because they've tried it, they've gone to onlinejobs, ph and places or upwork or places like that and they just had not had a success. You know, they just, the person didn't work out and all that stuff. And it just boils down to recruiting is what it boils down to.

Yeah, that's phenomenal. And I mean anybody listening, it comes down to how can you systematize things, how you can improve it. Whether you're in property management or whether you're looking at. You said it's impressive. You've applied a lot of the same principles and done that. One thing that really resonated with me, if you go to our website, we talk about putting investors first. Dan, I saw that pop up in yours. I confused this earlier. I said over 700 properties which you do or units. It's actually over 900 but over 700 investors. So please share with the audience. We try our hardest to delight every one of our investors and just provide the highest level of communication whether it comes to returns or communication or information, information education. What are some of the things you've learned in working with investors and some of the principles that you apply?

So I think to your first piece, I think our whole goal is for our residents and our employees and our clients to thrive, to be fulfilled. And so if you put that first in a global perspective or however you want to say it, like money is last, it just changes your perspective on how you run your business, how you treat your employees or your clients. You're treating your clients as a commodity. One of our key terms is long term partnerships versus short term transactions. You know, like being in property management. We could charge anything and everything that we'd want because we're controlling the money. But every One of us has the mindset that we want that person to be with us three years from now, five years from now. They want them to organically tell their friends about us, go in bigger pockets and mention us or whatever. So if we try to make that short term dollar, that's just not gonna work. So it's just not worth it. Life's too short. That's kind of our mantra. Like if an owner really feels really upset about $100 charge, I'm not gonna spend hours defending that $100 charge. I'm gonna probably credit that and just move on and just chalk it up for how do we get better on our process to communicate or make it cheaper, whatever. What can we learn from that experience versus fighting for that almighty dollar? Does that make sense? Like.

Oh, it makes wonderful sense.

Yeah, that's probably the biggest piece. But then you asked me what we learned. I think communication, transparency, you can't over communicate enough. I think that's the piece in this business because you ton of money that people are their life savings, their 401k, their self directed IRA, whatever it is they're using to invest. It's their money. They worked somewhere to pour that money in, then funnel it through life. Yeah, it's their life. That's right. So that's why it's such a big deal as far as trying to make sure that you stay transparent, have integrity and try to just do the right thing. That's. That's what our mantra for the employees, just do the right thing.

So I love it. Yeah. I had, when I first started in the medical sales industry, I had one of my mentor, my senior rep that I worked with, he said, Chris, if you take care of the patient, the money will take care of itself. And it was like somebody, it was so obvious, but it was like something hit me upside the head and I'll never forget that. And I love that philosophy, Dan. I think it's fantastic. We're coming towards the end of our time here and one question we always ask our guests is if you go back in time to your 25 year old self and give you a piece of advice, what would it be?

You're catching me in an interesting time of just reflection in the last several months with this Covid, I think I would say the two things that come to mind is I would have started earlier. I think the earlier the better. So that's why I always tell people like they always want to wait for the right time or, you know what I mean? Like, or the market's Too hot or whatever. Like, you could still find deals. You just might have to sift through a bunch of hay to get to that needle. Yeah, but it's a 10x. I love Grant Cardone. I love the 10x mantra. Like, just do it. 10x. Figure it out. The other pieces I would just say is just put things in perspective, you know, like, especially the entrepreneurs that are out there and people that are building things, you know, I would say balancing family and work and just bucketing it a little bit more. You know, that's one thing I probably would say that was a key learning for me coming out of this Covid. When you slow down, you really realize what's important, I think. And it's hard because as an entrepreneur, a business owner, you're trying to build and you're just going fast and you're just doing all these crazy things to make it happen. But don't neglect what's really important. Does that make sense? So that's probably.

Oh, my goodness. Yeah. So much sense right now.

Yeah. I just think. Yeah. In light of everything that's going on, I think you just gotta look back and say, what's the most important thing? Your family, your relationships, your kids. And just make sure. Put that laptop down and, you know, or put that phone on silent for a couple hours, Whatever that takes. I'm just coming from the heart today just to share that, because I think that's something I've really learned through this Covid experience so well.

Dan, you've shared a lot of great lessons today with the audience. And for somebody like you that's had so much experience. Yeah, I've loved having you on the show. You know, I like our backgrounds, but if people want to learn more about, you know, whether it's CoreAssist or your investments or even your property management company, what's the best way to get ahold of you?

Simply email dan at the number6amcc.com dan@sixamcc.com or just my cell. 901-289-7888. That's the only number I have and don't mind handing it out to if I can help somebody out. Surely try my best.

Awesome, man. Well, we will make sure that's in the show notes. We'll have all this in here. Dan, again, thank you so much. I'm so grateful that we've been put in touch and, you know, getting to have you on the show and look forward to sharing all your wisdom with our audience.

I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

Absolutely.