#38: Donato Callahan, Real Estate Investor - Getting started investing early, the power of asking “why not”, and creating more options for yourself

And being able to be in control of my wealth building through a mechanism like the stock market proved to be too volatile, which is where I saw, hey, real estate, there's a very long, proven track record of people building wealth here. There's a playbook I can follow. And the great part is like, people like yourself, Steve and Jake, there are so many people who've gone out there and done this before that I just had basically entire vineyard of grapes of knowledge that I could just pick and say, hey, I want to take that, I'm going to take that, I'm going to take that. And I made a great wine. And I'm like, this is going to be perfect. Basically got 500-year-old wine in within a six month period. By taking 10 years of wisdom from you. 10 years of wisdom from you. Ten years of wisdom from you and boiling it down.

On today's episode, we have entrepreneur and real estate investor Donato Callahan. Steve, this was a fun one. I, I said it on the podcast, but Donato is the youngest guest we've had to date. I think he's 20, 24 right now. And if I didn't ask him his age and I didn't even announce it, and maybe we even turned off the camera based on the wisdom that he was dropping, you would think he was in his fourth 40s or even older because this kid was just filled with so much knowledge. It blew me away. And I know this is going to be an episode that will resonate with just about any age group.

Jake, I loved it when he said, and he uses for anybody in life and starting out, he said, the first thing you want to do if you're heading down on a new venture or Something is meet 10 people with 10 years of experience of what you want to do, and you'll have 100 years of experience right off the bat. I thought that was unbelievable.

Yeah. I mean, and even just to think about the path he's been on since he graduated college. You know, he is an analyst for the Department of Defense. He started a market research company, software company that's up to, I think, 10, 10 worker employees currently. That helps people, real estate investors analyze the market. He's investing in real estate himself and he's just 24. He's got his head screwed on the right way. So I think this would be a great episode for people to tune into. But let's head west. Stay tuned as we discuss getting started, investing early, the power of asking why not and creating more options for yourself with Donato Capital. Callahan this episode is brought to you by Skyline Point Capital. If you're anything like me, you're always considering where to invest your money. Stocks, bonds, crypto and rental home. The list is literally endless. As we've all seen over the past year, the stock market is unstable, the housing market is just weird and inflation is on the rise. In times like these, the clear place to invest my money is in multi family real estate, AKA apartment complexes. Here's why. Returns on real estate investments have little to no correlation with the stock market. There's lower volatility, stable income streams, and the tax benefits are insane. And let's not forget that the apartments will typically appreciate in value over time, which means you can walk away with a pretty nice return when the complex is sold in three to five years. Best of all, multifamily investing is passive, so you get all the benefits without the hassle and headache of your typical rental home investment. Getting started has never been easier. Head to skylinepointcapital.com to learn how you can start investing today. I'm excited to get into this, this episode because I've heard you on a couple other podcasts. I reached out to you because I wanted to hear your story firsthand and you might be, well actually I can say with definitively you're the youngest we've, you know, guests we've had on the podcast. So congratulations. We'll send you a gift after the thank you so much or something. You know, something, something, some joke relative to your youth. But I, I count that as a huge pat on the back. Like I say that as a, as a compliment to you. So I, I want to talk a little bit about that. But I also you have such a unique background, unique story. You know, you're a guy who's investing in real estate, but it's not a full time deal for you. You know, you're in, you're an analyst for the Department of Defense. You own a market research company for real estate investors. You've just got such a myriad and colorful background. I want to hear it all. So let's start at the beginning. Like how did you know you're 23, 24 right now, I believe. How did you get started? Where did it all begin for you?

Yeah, it began with loss to start off with financial loss in the stock market. So when I was in college I was a biology major and I didn't want to pay for college because I don't, I've seen this horror stories with debt and I wanted to avoid that. So I was looking for Ways to not pay for school. And was at the library and looked up on online how to not pay for college and found this program for Department of Defense was trying to recruit scientists and STEM majors to come work for them instead of the private industry. And so they offer this program where super competitive, like thousands of people apply. I think it was like an 8% acceptance rate. Anyone from undergrad to doctoral candidates could apply to the scholarship. And if you won, they'd pay for all your school pay you 30 grand a year to go to school, pay for your books, get a guaranteed job when you graduate, and paid internships over the summer in the intelligence community. That's a good setup. I had been in college for three months at that point and thought, well, clearly I'm qualified for this. They said when it said, please post your accolades and your publications. None. What awards have you won? None.

What.

How many letters of recommendation do you have? Here's my counselors and guidance counselors, things like that. And I went for it. And at the end of my freshman year, I had won, and I was one of the three biology majors in the country to win that award. So I was saving this money. So I've never been a big spender, and I'm putting this money away. I'm not really doing anything with it. And my folks, who were traditional W2 workers and had invested the stock market, got to my junior year of college. They said, you got to do something with this. So I listened, and they put it in the stock market. Now, the one stock that I picked, I did about a month of research, and the one stock that I picked was Nvidia, back when it was 200 bucks. Sorry, 50 bucks a share, pre split stock. It was a lot of luck. And I put somebody in the stock market, watched it go up. And then about two months later, March 2020, lost half of it.

Wow.

Covid hit. Lost half of it overnight. And I thought, this is terrible. And I started thinking, what can I do to be more in control of my own wealth building? Which turned me on to real estate. So that's when I started consuming the podcasts, reading books, and just talking to a lot of people in the real estate space to ask questions of, what have you done? That's worked out well. And if you were my age again, what would you do, knowing what you know now? And the biggest thing people told me was get mentors and go house hack.

Yeah.

And that's what I did. What.

What is it about you? Was it something about your upbringing or just. It's Innate in you that. That gave you that drive. I mean, you're. You are exactly what Steve and I wish we were at your age. Steve got into a real estate late. I got into real estate later than I had liked. But you got in early. Was that something that you learned from your family? Was that something where they were pushing you? Or was that just like you found yourself thinking, I don't have a lot of control over, like you said, my financial outcomes or whatnot. And you said, I got to start now or else, you know, I'll be 40 before I know it.

Yeah, it was more the latter. So, I mean, growing up, my parents were very much, hey, do what you like to do. You can go to college and go to school. We work jobs. But we were not like entrepreneurial family. My grandfather took over his grandfather's small business, but he had sold that back in the mid-90s. And he was actually one of the few people that told me, don't forget about your day job. When I was looking at entrepreneurship, he was like, hey, remember your day job. You have a good thing going with the Department of Defense. And I'm like, you're the one person I would expect to push me into entrepreneurship. And that didn't happen. So I didn't grow up reading Rich dad, poor dad, or those books. And that wasn't quite what we talked about, but it was very much. I had talked to enough people and recognized from an early age that having financial stability equates to a higher satisfaction, happiness, and overall control with your life to a certain degree. And that the more people were in control or conscience about their wealth building, I could see that they were breathing easier life. When life threw them a curveball, they were able to handle it better and they could do more fun things and the stress was lower. And I knew that those are the feelings I wanted to be able to have every day. And being able to be in control of my wealth building through a mechanism like the stock market proved to be too volatile, which is where I saw, hey, real estate. There's a very long, proven track record of people building wealth here. There's a playbook I can follow. And the great part is people like yourself, Steve and Jake, there are so many people who've gone out there and done this before that I just had basically an entire vineyard of grapes of knowledge. I could just pick and say, hey, I want to take that. I'm going to take that, I want to take that. And I made a great wine. I'm like, this is going to be Perfect. I basically got 500 year old wine within a six month period by taking 10 years of wisdom from you. 10 years of wisdom from you. Ten years of wisdom from you and boiling it down. So that's where it really, just by talking to people who had come before and hearing about how their lives turned out by getting into this space, worked out really well. And I thought that's for me.

Yeah, I remember being a younger and I, I always wanted to learn the mistakes myself. Not because I was wise and I'm like, this is better for me if I learn this. Like I screw things up and learn it. But I was just stubborn, I was hard headed. I figured I knew everything and it's, it's. I wish I had known again at 23 that, that I'd rather stand on the shoulders of giants. Right. I'd rather learn from other people's mistakes. Like Steve has been through so many things through owning businesses and, you know, things with faith and family. I'd rather learn from the things he's learned and be humble about it and take it in rather than find out the hard way. And I think that sets you on a much faster path to success than I need to go through these struggles myself.

I mean, absolutely. I mean all I had to do was keep showing up, you know, and having that bit of a grit and that dedication to say I'm going to keep trying this. But when I was able to show up, I was able to find people who are willing to reward that with expertise and knowledge and relationship building which really helped grow my network. And that network is what propelled me into all my opportunities legitimately. I can track probably five huge decisions in my life that got me to where I am today that were the result of me asking why not? Instead of asking why should I try it? Saying why not try it? And there was always a person associated with that decision that got me here. Like I can just go back in time and there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, I can track that growth.

That's what I love about real estate is that it's a pay it forward sport and you can find organizations, people and mentors that will help you. And there are a lot of people that are 10, 20, 30 years ahead of you that are willing to teach you the ropes. And when you talk to people that are that much further, they get a smile on their face because they remember when they were your age and going through the exact same things. And that's what I love about real estate. You see that in triathlons, but There are some industries that you don't see that pay it forward is very competitive and they aren't going to help anybody. But real estate's a different animal.

Absolutely. Because I think the more you do the business, you realize that you really do work with the same people over and over. You know, the same names keep coming up and it's like, oh, I just did a deal with this person. And now they're working, collaborating with this entrepreneur over here. And the people that you're working with very quickly become your friends and people you see at every conference and every podcast and every show. And you end up really just exchanging information. And as they grow, you're able to offer your services off your wisdom and you end up growing together, which is what I'm really passionate about, is finding other people, my age bracket as well, who are looking to get into those different mindsets. Actually, as we're recording this, I think tomorrow I fly out to Penn State University and I'll be a guest lecturer at their real estate college talking to the students about real estate fundamentals. And it's super exciting for me because I'm like, I'm only a few years older than you guys and I'm here, so imagine what you can do. If you take action today and you're 20, 21, you'll be even further ahead than I am. And just seeing other people catching them while they're still in that college age saying, you can do this. I'm living example of it. Let me help you do it. It's just so rewarding.

Yeah. What is that message that you, that you like? I'm sure you have conversations with people your age or somewhat somewhere about there. What's your conversation with them when it comes to just get going, start heading west today? Because the more you wait, the less impact and the less positive outcome that you have. Literally every single day you waste is a missed opportunity.

Yes, it's pretty interesting because when I go to talk to the students who are in business colleges or real estate colleges, a lot of them already have real estate on the mind. Now they're watching the news about inflationary pressures or more and more difficulty to afford homes, and they've consumed this media and they're already looking for other opportunities to make themselves more secure. And so a lot of them have seen people on Instagram or social media talking about real estate, but they haven't quite understood how to put themselves in those shoes yet. So really don't have to sell them too much on what real estate can do for people, it's more about them believing that someone at their level of life experience and education has the capacity to do this. So a lot of what I do when I'm speaking to people like that is explaining the step by steps. Here's the actions that I took when it comes to I found a list of real estate agents three states away from a market that I was never going to invest in. So I didn't end up pissing off everybody that I was going to work with. And when I was trying to answer questions and I made a list and said, hey, I'm going to call these agents and I'm going to ask them as many questions as I can. And when I get that information done, I'm going to go to a local meetup and maybe they're free, maybe they're $10 and I'll walk them through how I started building this knowledge, what books I read, what podcasts I went to, and then reminding them, like you just said, in 10 to 15, 20 years you're going to be X age. You're going to be 35, 40, 45 already. And if you can take a small sidestep and decide that you're going to start this now and actively choose it day in and day out, you are going to be at that age regardless. But much further ahead in terms of your long term security and stability and have options. And that's something I really drive with them, is that you may not know what career you want to go into right now, you may not know where you want to live, you may not know what your ultimate purpose is in life, which is a big question people ask when they're in college. But by pursuing real estate, you are giving yourself the option to choose and say yes to. The thing that really fills your soul when it comes into your life without having to think about taking time off or how you're going to be able to afford it. You're allowing yourself the opportunity to say.

Yes, I that's such a. An amazing. Where the heck were you when I was in college?

I'm sure. Actually I think I was before back in somewhere up above, somewhere floating around the atmosphere.

You're probably further ahead at that point than I was already.

Somebody's imagination.

Yeah, exactly. Like I might want a kid someday. Maybe I'll call him Donato.

Yeah, but that's such a great point though, of like, you know, in nowadays even like I'll be 40 here in a couple years. And even up until I'd say five years ago, I was still Somewhat not sure what I want to do, you know, forever. Like, I, I had some thoughts and some interests and I liked a lot of things. But if I had started real estate much sooner, to your point, I would have had more options at my disposal because I probably would have had some passive income through real estate coming in that afforded me the opportunity to test things out, try things new, or, you know, take some time off if I wanted to go back to school or I could put myself through school. And I don't think people have that, that foresight. Earlier on, you know, especially through high school and college, I had this, this, this resonated with me so much. But to your point, I had this mentor, he's a financial advisor, and I'm pretty sure I'm screwing up the numbers. But the point will come across is he said if you're 30 and you start saving, let's say 20% of your income, and you're making the national average of what a household makes, and you start saving today, if you compare that to what your retirement amount will be if you just wait three years, the gap between those two time frames when you retire at 65 is three to $400,000. That's just three years of waiting. And the outcome in 30 years is, is magnified that much. And from a real estate perspective, that applies as well.

Absolutely. One thing that I do to, you know, people will run towards pleasure and away from pain when it comes to making decisions. And so when I talk about the options, that's what I consider the pleasure. Like you can have the opportunity to choose. What I do also say and illuminate for folks who are looking at more traditional retirement pathway and are considering alternative investments is, I'll drop this on them and say any retirement account that is tied to a certain age for you to get the benefit of it is for your employer's benefit, not for yours. If you have to wait until you are 60 or 65 to access your own money without having penalties, then that is a system that is incentivized to keep you in that space for as long as possible. So if you have dreams of being able to do what you want before that age, then you need to have. It's not even a question of what you want to, but you need to have another venture or another avenue to bring income in. And that is something that I do find and resonate a lot with younger folks as well. Like, ah, yes, that makes sense to me. That kind of flips the switch that if I want to be able to do Something sooner than that, I need to find something else that's going to pay me without penalty, which helps open the mind to stocks. Market investing can be extremely useful, but I need to pad that with something else like real estate.

DeNato, one of our good friends and a partner in some of our properties has a phrase that money buys you experience and experience can make you money. And the point being is in coming out of college and this is one of the tough things for anybody coming out of college in the 20s trying to understand that, you know what, maybe it's okay if I take some of my money and get some experience, get some training and don't make the so called big buck in 2020 like your friends are doing. But you're investing in yourself, you're investing in your future, but that's a mindset that you have to make. And we're under the belief and that phrase get the education as fast as you can, even if it costs you a lot of money. But you're so much further along. How do you convince and motivate those college students to see that mindset and not just take the $60,000 job out of college or whatever that is? That's money right there today. But I could be doing something else for the future.

I tell people all the time that college is a tool. And I think for a long time people look at college and they look at it as something that is this, you know, I'm going to go there, I'm going to land this six figure hired job and that's the ultimate goal. And when I look at students, I say college is a tool that you need to pick up, learn how to use to build the future that you want. And in this particular educational environment, you are never ever again going to be in a room where everyone's your age, relatively same level of experience with so many people invested in your personal success, opportunities to go abroad, opportunities to study different cultures and languages, to get exposed to different industry professionals who actively want to share their knowledge with you. College should be looked at very consciously of building exactly what kind of future you want using all the tools and resources available to you in that ecosystem. So when I was a junior in college, I knew I was going to go to D.C. for 12 weeks of to intern on Capitol Hill with the intelligence community. And after that period of 12 weeks, I knew I want to do something else. And so I wanted to invest in myself. And I ended up finding a 10 week immersive educational experience in the mountains of Montana where I lived in a Log cabin met wildlife ranchers. The Salish and Kootenay Indian reservation tribes met with their water rights lawyers who are fighting for reclamation of certain resources. I was able to go meet loggers and people who were tearing the logs into finished products, visualize supply chains, you know, watch grizzly bears walk 30ft in front of me with their cubs. Terrifying, but amazing. And I did all that for 10 weeks, got college credit for it, and then flew myself to South Africa for a month to volunteer in a wildlife reserve. And all of those things, while they might not have been directly real estate related or building a, getting a high paying job right off the back end of college, they weren't related to that. But it was exposing me to different ideas, different cultures and different overall experiences that allow me to learn more about myself, what it is that's important to me and become more well rounded. So I'm going into the workforce. I'm a better appreciation for this that I really want and I've been able to broaden my horizons. So I really advocate for looking into college as a tool and using it to build consciously.

You make such a good point. Most people feel like when they go to college they have to have their career and life figured out. Now sure, if you want to be a doctor or dentist or a lawyer, there's a path you have to be on. But I wish I would have learned this earlier because I the reason I went to college, because I played college sports, played baseball, that was it, that's why I went to college and apart from that point. But college is more of an environment to learn how to critically think, get experiences and understand how to work with people. Solve problems in life is solving problems and thinking critically and getting as much experience as you can when you're younger than trying to figure out everything. Right now at 23 and 24, you're on that journey and build those skills because you know, it's interesting you say this because in college you think you're going to get out college and you're going to be with everybody that's 22, 21, 24, whatever that age. Well, you come out of college, you're with people your age and 60s and 70s.

Yes.

And how do you deal with all those people and all those old people, these gray, gray haired people. But it's, it is a, a time for critical thinking and I've done some graduate work and we studied cases, but I learned the most when I was around people outside the United States and how they think, how they solve problems and when you think You've, you've. You've nailed it. I've nailed this case. I understand the issue. I understand the problem. I got it. I got it right. Someone else comes up with something totally different you didn't think or even imagine. And that's like with you going to Africa and in Montana, being exposed to different things, how people think, it only makes you a better person for the future. So I commend you for that.

Well, thank you. I appreciate it.

So, Donato, I want to pick it back up. So you realized pretty quickly that the stock market's too volatile for you, and you decided to get into real estate. Where did you start? Did you. Did you go the normal path where you bought a residential unit? Did you. Duplex quad? Did you go right into multifamily? What did that look like?

Yeah, so unconventional path. First thing I did was look into a mentorship program, and I joined a mentorship program that was focused on wholesaling with some flipping. And I'd heard this is a life. Slow cost way to get in wasn't my experience. I spent a lot of money on a wholesaling business that did not work out. That's okay. That's largely on me, you know, But I spent my entire senior year learning that business. So I learned how to do cold calling and text messaging and direct mail marketing, how to do inspections. I would. I made friends with local agents, and whenever they sold a house to an out of state investor, they would call me and say, hey, I'm a person here who bought an Airbnb. They live in California and they need someone to go furnish the property and actually pick out furniture and move it in. So they'd call me and connect me with an investor who would teach me about the Airbnb model. I would drive around Boise to different furniture stores with a my camera and live facetime them and say, do you like this couch? No, do you like this couch? Do you like this table? And I'd borrow a friend's pickup truck, load it all in. They'd pay me for my time to do it. And by the end of that relationship, they said, if you ever need a private lender for your next flip, give me a call. I was able to build a relationship with them, and then I went and got a job as a maintenance coordinator for a property management company to learn how to deal with tenants, how to do inspections, how to get inside houses, because it was a way for me to get inside properties for free all across the town. So I did that and worked these jobs and have these odd opportunities. And this consumed books and knowledge and asked as many people as possible until about February, March of my senior year. And that's when I realized that even though I'd gotten some things under contract in wholesaling, as soon as I sell one I have to go do another one. Which is nice, but I want to do something once and reap the benefit for it over and over again. So I want to own something. That's when people were telling me that house hacking is what you really need to be interested in. So several months in advance. I knew I was moving to St. Louis, Missouri when I graduated college. So I started calling agents in St. Louis saying, I'm in college, I'm eight months away from buying, but I want to buy a four family house hack and I want you to help me. And so I taught myself how to quickly underwrite deals in five minutes. I did that 70 times as properties came up over and over again. And at that same time, as I was shutting down my wholesaling business and I was looking at four families to buy, that's when someone in my mentorship group introduced me to the concept of multifamily. He said, have you ever heard of syndication? I had that point, I hadn't. He said, well, you're able to buy a lot of units with a larger team, you have big tax benefits and you're able to get long term wealth generation through this platform. As I looked into it, it made all the sense in the world. So I partnered with him, ended up finding a 96 unit building in St. Louis that was going to be sold for $3 million. Had no idea what I was doing. Wrote them an offer. They accepted the offer for the 3 million strike. Ended up graduating college around May of 21. Road tripped for three days from Boise, back to Iowa, got home like 11 o' clock at night. And the next morning at 4am I was in my car driving to St. Louis to go meet my contractors that had hired to do the walkthrough for that 96 unit building. So I'm in St. Louis walking through property is not in the condition we thought it was going to be. We're talking to the seller, asking questions, saying we still want to move forward, but it has to be. This is not what we had discussed. That deal falls apart, I lose several thousand dollars and the inspection costs and the things like that. So I lost money. Then about a month and a half later, the perfect house comes up in St. Louis for a house hack. It's the one I actually live in right now. It's a four family building with 1200 square foot units that are rented for 450 to 500 bucks a month. When market rent is 1200, I'm like, absolutely, I want to do that. So I make an offer, and on my 22nd birthday, I signed the documents to buy this first property. Rolled out of bed, had a muffin, went to the bank, signed the docs. So my real estate journey was trying wholesaling, didn't work out. I did one remote wholesale deal. So first transaction was remote wholesale deal. Second transaction that work went through was my house hack that I bought my 22nd birthday. And then about a month or two after that happened, we're in the fall of 2021 now. I got. I was approached by an old connection from Boise and said, I'm learning how to do multifamily. I know you taught yourself how to do this. Do you want to join this paid mentorship with me? And I said, why not? And that turned into my first 172 unit, $15.5 million acquisition nine months later.

Wow, that's incredible. Where was that at?

That was in Waco, Texas. So did the Wonderboat wholesale house hack. On my 22nd birthday, fall of 21, I started working for the Department of Defense, started working with the multifamily syndication group, and started my company, bright investor. And mid-2022, we closed our first deal. And I'm actually right now about five weeks away from closing my second deal, which is a $20 million acquisition, 200 units in San Antonio, Texas.

Wow, Congrats. That's big.

Yeah. Thank you.

How are the. How's the fourplex going? You say you live there now, so I assume it's going well. And how's the. Your first multifamily deal? Like, what did you learn from those first few deals that. That you're able to propel into this second deal?

You're doing one, find someone that knows more than you. It's crucial. Like my entire multifamily journey, I was able to connect with people who've been doing this for 20 years. And the one thing I did was ask them, what part of your process for finding, acquiring these properties do you like the least? They're like, oh, market research. I'm like, oh, I'm actually interested in that. I can do that for you. And so I started saying, why don't I just take care of that? And I'll go, me and my team, we'll go find the properties, we'll do the market research, and we'll give you a nice one page report that you can say yes or no to for a new property to partner with us on. I did that 96 times in the fall of 2021. And until we found one, that person's like, okay, you're clearly not going away and you're listening to our feedback, so let's go ahead and work with you on it. And that was the one that we ended up closing. But it was because I got to meet them, show that I was going to keep showing up, learned from their feedback, and was able to solve a pain point for them while they taught me. And those very same people became some of my first investors in my software company through the relationship that we built. And I'm going to their wedding vow renewal next month. Like, they became strangers to some of my investors, to some of my great friends, just being able to solve that pain point. And then on the house hack side, I mean, it taught me everything about, hey, how do you respectfully handle residents when they're doing great, when you have an issue, how do I be professional without being someone that they can walk all over? How do I manage the income, the expenses? And now after about two years, I renovated almost every unit, moved unit to unit to unit to do it slowly, turned units as they turned over, and now I live completely for free. The entire time I've lived for free, but now I'm cash flowing like 16, 1700 bucks a month. And when I move out of this, It'll be over 2,000.

Wow.

It just showed me the power of, hey, if you take your time, mitigate your risk effectively, ask questions, have people willing to help you and learn from folks. I'm in a situation where now my worst case scenario is that I move back into my house hack that I don't have to pay anything for, and I'm making over 1,500, 600, 700 bucks a month. That's my new floor if everything else goes wrong in my life. So it's like, okay, that's a great way to elevate my potential and reduce my risk as a young person. And that's what I learned.

Donato, you mentioned paid mentorships, and you've probably looked at a lot of them. For somebody new getting into real estate, what have you learned from that? And who would you recommend if you wanted to get in multifamily?

Absolutely. So the paid mentorships, the biggest value you're going to get from them is folks who are in the community because a Lot of the education that I found in paid mentorships, you know, if you were to spend dozens and dozens of hours across YouTube and books, a lot of the information is available, but it's not focused, it's not condensed, it's not delivered in a way that you can understand enough to say, got it. Now I feel comfortable enough to go take action. And I found that it is so much more reassuring when I'm able to go speak to someone who's actively doing a deal in this paid mentorship of access to say, hey, you are actively doing this. Can I learn from you? Get my eyes on the process. That's what's been really valuable to me. Every person I meet has, is doing something a little bit different in the industry or is in a different asset class or has a different background that I can go tap and add to my own toolkit. And when I go through the knowledge, I'm able to make sure that my fundamentals stay consistent. And I'm getting access to all these people who either have access to capital, knowledge, deals or resources to help me move forward in my own journey. And so the one that I went through, the first one I ever went through was Ryan Dawsey, CCF Create Cash Flow, a mastermind or wholesaling and flipping. The one that I went into for multifamily was Tyler Devereaux's multi family mindset. And now I, since I've actually retired from the Department of Defense back in September, I say retired. Some people say quit. I like retired.

That sounds better.

Since I've left them. I actually was given an opportunity to partner with Rod Khalif's Cree Capital and Lifetime Cash Flow. So I'm now a partner on their equity team and I work with them to acquire assets. So those are the three paid mentorships I've had experience with. Besides one that I'm actually in right now, which is a one on one coaching, learning how to be a better speaker and actually be able to communicate my knowledge via coaching other people as well. So I'm being able to expedite my skill sets by learning how to talk to people better and deliver information a way they can consistently take in and then take action on.

And I'm knowing from our experience, being in a paid mentorship is not inexpensive, depending on who you go with and one on one. And it comes back to your spending money to get education.

Yes, it is, absolutely.

And with that paid mentorship mindset, you can read the books, you can watch all the youtubes and etcetera but the things we find, we found is like what you said, it's you can get on the job training, you can learn from people that have done well and also made mistakes. And in my personal life, I learn a lot from the mistakes other people made because you, you don't want to make them and you want to know about them earlier. Is there any tricks to the trade or analysis that you would recommend for your college students or the people you're speaking to? How to find a paid mentorship program?

Yeah, so one of the first things I would do is start looking off resources like, you know, BiggerPockets is a great directory of people across the entire U.S. so if they're a specific, I'd highly recommend starting in your college town. So looking for real estate agents, investors or lenders that are active and posting from locations in your specific college town. Then when you're finding those people, offer to either give them a call or go get in contact with them. Property management companies and look for any potential openings. Look for any meetups those agents attend. Because usually agents that are active on social media or those online directories typically tend certain meetups where they have speaking events, going to those and interacting and building a network of people who are currently active in your space and then asking them for their recommendations for paid networking. Because almost every real estate professional that is dedicating time to spending on meetups or online resources have gone through some type of paid networking and they have exposure to ones that might be interesting to you. Because there are so many out there. I typically loved being able to use the referral method to learn about folks who have gone through program, what their experience is and then what the particular program works specifically about. Because the word of mouth is how I got into pretty much all of my different programs is being able to say this person was in there. They've seen success with it. I like what they're standing, I have an interview with the person and I move forward. And when you find that right person and you've had that recommendation from a local professional, especially as someone who's in college, you have someone who's going to be able to make a recommendation based off your level and say you're getting into this space, here's a great entry level real estate master mastermind that's going to help you get from level zero to level one. And then as you go through that, there's almost always someone in real estate mastermind that's in multiple and you say, you know what? I'm in this one right now. And I'm also in this one over here. So once you get your value from this community, I highly love recommending you coming over to this one. Go from level one to level two. And that's where I've gone over time is being able to go up and up and up. And for full disclosure, my first mastermind, it was like a thousand bucks a month. And I asked them, hey, I'm a college student, would you be willing to negotiate or work with me on the monthly fee to be able to access this? And they were. I was able to cut the fee down by, in half just by asking the question, saying, I'm willing to invest in my education here, I'm going to work to make sure I can afford it. If you can work with me on this, I'm going to give you my all. And that group was willing to do that for me. So it's not always a, you have to push yourself. You have to, you know, treat these particular hurdles as the end all, be all because a person's on the other side of it. And a young person who has the grit and discipline to show up almost always opens doors that may have been otherwise unavailable to them. By simply asking the question of, can you help me? Are you willing to.

That's super good. I want to go back to. You had mentioned kind of the start of Bright Investor and you had said that you reached out to some individuals and you said, hey, what part of this process do you hate? What you know, what's the pain point? And one, I want to point out that that is the best way that at least I've ever seen, heard of and know about of starting a business is ask, ask an audience. What do you hate? What's your pain point? What's the thing that you just really do not like doing? And then build, build a business around that. And it sounds like, you know, you did 96 of these of market research and it sounds like that was the impetus for starting Bright Investor. Is that, is that accurate?

Yeah, I'd say that's one part. That's one part. The very initial idea actually came when I was in my last semester of school and I was in a mapping course. And the final project was make a map about something that you care about. And I was caring about real estate and I knew I was moving to St. Louis and I'm sitting in Boise thinking, how am I going to find the best area to invest in St. Louis? I've never been there before. And so I started thinking for my final project what if I make a map of real estate data to answer my questions of where I should invest in St. Louis? And so that was my senior project, and I made a map and I collected all this publicly available data. That took way too long. It was way too hard to understand. And I thought, you know what? I wonder if this is something that people would want. So I started tinkering with the prototypes until right around my birthday, where I met my co founder. And he was Brandon Turner's personal assistant on Hawaii for six months. He had just come back from that experience, and he was looking to connect with other young entrepreneurs. So he said, hey, I was Brandon Turner's assistant. Let's connect. Like, 70 people had commented in his comments. And so I asked the question, why not? Threw my hat in the ring, said, let's connect. He DM'd me on Facebook and we started having weekly zoom calls, getting to know each other until about six weeks later, fall 2021. I say, you know, Drew, let me show you something I've been working on. Flipped my zoom screen and I showed him the initial prototype I'd built of what would become Brian Investor. And he looks at me and he says, donato, you're not going to believe this, but I'm working on the exact same problem. He shared me his screen and he showed me his prototype that he'd been working on after talking to Brandon Turner, who had said, there's such a gap in the marketplace for a product like this. No one does this. It's so hard. And so in that second, we went, we're gonna do something with this. So we started talking about what this would look like and putting the other slide decks. And I was doing multi family at the same time, where I'm talking to people saying, is this something you guys have trouble with? Oh, absolutely. I hate doing that. It's so much work for every single property. Like, okay, so I'm building this idea that I had, getting market validation, and then within a period of three months, I had formed the company, hired our first team, raised some seed capital. It was off to the races.

Wow. And so do you. So you say you started with Rod Cleave's group. Are you splitting your time? Are you just part time with Rods and you're spending as much time as you can on Broad Investor, or did you build Broad Investor with the intent of, I'm really just going to oversee this thing, I'm not going to be in it day to day. Sort of talk us through that, that structure of how you built Bright Investor.

Yeah. So Bright Investor we've been building for since we started development. January 1, 2022 was the first day we put fingers on a keyboard to start typing it out. And we spent 15 months developing it while I was still working for the Department of Defense and I was still worth my first syndication group. So I'd be at work between 6:30 and 7:30, work till 3:30, come out to 40 messages and 10 missed calls, then do Bryant Vester until 8 o' clock at night, hit the gym, and then be working till 1am and do it again for nearly two years. And so I did that over and over again and bryantvestor started off with a lot more in my involvement. And as we've grown, we've nine people right now, looking at our 10th. We are at the precipice of where a lot of what I do is marketing and podcasting and speaking to people, learning and talking about market research and doing some driving for our outside marketing. So now once since I've left the Department of Defense this last September and I'm working with Rod, I'm able to do Rod's accrete capital full time, which is all about me finding deals and doing market research. So I'll come in and I'll speak to his education group about what I know about market research. Just about my experience. I'm able to talk about real estate, find deals, and then consistently refine Bright Investor based on what people are telling me they need in the educational groups. So I've been able to basically build BrianVester up to where I'm not having to be involved in every decision day to day. We have teams who are doing things and I'm able to focus a lot on being able to build my syndication experience and brianvestor right along with it because they're so complimentary.

Yep, absolutely. Yeah. Go ahead, Steve.

Oh, no, no, go ahead.

Go.

Jake.

I love that you built this business that complements the. It complements the. I want to say. I don't want to say hobby. Real estate is not necessarily a hobby for you. It sounds like. It sounds like this is a passionate. That's a better way of saying it. You've built a business that is complementary to the passion that you have. And so as you're able to build your business, it's able to actually help the passion that you have and they can grow alongside one another, which I think is a brilliant idea.

Thank you, man. It was so, because I do coaching as well, whenever someone does Bright Investor, they just sign up for an annual membership, I would typically offer them a free coaching session with me just to learn how to use it and all these things. And yesterday I had two back to back and I had someone say, hey, I heard about you from a podcast. I came and tried your free trial and I ended up coming to one of your weekly webinars that we do market deep dives on market research. Like last night we did Phoenix, should you or shouldn't you? And he used Bright Investor to decide which market to invest in and what property to invest in. And he said, donato, I'm buying my first out of state long term rental on Friday because of Bright Investor. And I have the person right after that said, I'm trying to do my first Airbnb into my next syndication land development deal. Brian Investor has helped me avoid some terrible deals, help me focus on my sub markets. And so I have people coming to me from the long term rental space, the Airbnb space, the syndication space, development space that I'm working with every day to do deals who are telling me that this tool is helping them do this passion that I have and do the passion that they have. And so watching that feedback, it just fills me with fire to keep going because I know there's more and more people that can be helped do real estate easier, faster, better with Bright Investor.

Love that.

Denato in my business career, if you looked at, I graduated with mechanical engineering with a mechanical engineering degree and what I end up finally doing is nothing with what I started to be.

Yeah.

And if you look at the journey, it's one of the craziest journeys from that side. When I hear you, I hear software developer, business entrepreneur, real estate investor, coach, mentor, speaker. Who's Donato in 10 years?

Oh, retired again. That's a good question. You know, last semester I actually spoke at Iowa State at their emerging leadership. There we go. Alma mater, Right? Perfect.

We're clones. Cyclones.

Perfect. Yeah. I was at their Engineering Leadership for Tomorrow conference and I was their keynote there. And I really enjoy getting to speak to young people. So in 10 years from now, I hope to amass a very sizable portfolio in the syndication space. I hope. Brian Investor has been able to help tens of thousands of real estate investors that I'm able to oversee. And ideally, I'm doing some speaking to young audiences, showing them different avenues they may have not been exposed to. While splitting my time between a nice remote cabin in Montana where I can play very complicated board games with my family and go do some hiking and camping alongside being able to dive into some of more other passion projects for one being conservation easements. It's a way to buy and protect rural land and areas like Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming, north South Dakota and protect them for to maintain the wilderness that they have and be able to say we're going to raise money to protect this natural wildlife corridor and preserve these species for years and years to come. So I'd love to be able to dedicate more time to the education and the enriching and preservation of particular natural resources and across the US while tinkering with some side projects. I've thought about light rail systems, but I don't know if I'm not sure if I'm going to dedicate. So I'm still playing around with that. But ideally that's what I'm doing professionally and hopefully being married with kids at that point because I love to have the experience of being a father down the line. Not quite ready for it yet, got too much going on, but I'd love to be able to be experiencing the joys of that.

That's fantastic. Well, I think that's a great segue. We do a speed round with every guest and it's just a great way for listeners to get to know you a little bit better. But so I'll jump into it. It's quick questions, quick answers and we actually tackled one of them right there is, you know, what is, what is heading west look like for you? What is, what does the future hold? So I'll skip that one. But the first one is what's one piece of real estate advice that you give to others?

One piece of advice I give to others is talk to 10 people who have been doing what you want to do for 10 years and you'll have a hundred years of wisdom from the very first step.

Super wise. What's one daily ritual that you swear by?

Oh, daily ritual that I swear by is nowadays taking time to decompress. I didn't do that for two years straight and I've been able to take time to go on a walk outside or go do something that makes me laugh for like at least 30 minutes or something to decompress and allow myself to say there is a reason I'm doing this. I can't just do work. So finding either a board game to play, show to watch, person to talk to, or walk outside to give myself the mental space to think about what I'm doing instead of just being nose.

Down in it, that's good. What's one business you wish you could go back and start or invest in.

I probably would have kept a little more stock in Nvidia. If I can go back, kept a little more in there, that's just done phenomenally. But I can soundly say that I've been able to do all the things that I've wanted to do at this age, and I'm looking forward to being able to connect with other folks who have more opportunities for me to pursue in the future.

Future, yeah. All right, last one. What's one book that's had a great impact on you recently and why?

Oh, some of my favorites are who Not How, Dan Sulman's who Not how, and Traction who Know how is crucial to ask not how, how am I going to get this done, but who can help me get this done? That was monumental in my mental shift to being able to start a company that's not just going to be two guys in a garage and actually start having a company that's, oh, I can pay this person a portion of the revenue they're going to generate for me, and they're going to have the shared vision and I can create something that's much more scalable. And one of the biggest things I'm proud of the most with Bright Investor is when I talk about our team, they say our company, our product, our audience, our users. It's not Donato's company, it's ours. And I love that, that they see the benefit that they're having on other people and they get all the credit to everything that we're doing because I couldn't do it without them.

I love that. Well, Donato, if people want to get a hold of you, if they want to look you up and Bright Investor, where can they find you?

Yes, you can check us out@brightinvestor.com and as of a couple days ago, my personal website's been launched@donatocallahan.com it's d o n a t o callahan.com and you can check us out on social media at Bright Investor Official and myself, I'm Donato Underscore Cat Callahan on Instagram, and I'd love to get in touch with.

Anyone that wants to love it. Well, Donato, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Heading West. Appreciate it.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Donato.

It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Absolutely.