Daniel Kwak started learning about real estate investing at age 20, did his first deal at the age of 22 and by 23 he had 83 rental units. Since then, Daniel and his brother have raised millions of dollars for real estate while also running a YouTube channel with over 300k subscribers.

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Announcer:
Welcome to the Global Investor Podcast, a show that focuses on helping foreign investors enter the lucrative US real estate market. Host Charles Carillo combines decades of real estate investing experience with a professional background in international banking to interview experts in all areas of US real estate investing. Now, here’s your host, Charles Carillo.

Charles:
Do you have money sitting in the stock market? And you’re worried about it or worse. You have money sitting at the bank, not keeping up with inflation. My name is Charles Carillo, founder and managing partner of Harborside Partners. And since 2006, I’ve been investing my money and my family’s money into income producing properties. These are real assets, real properties with real addresses that produce real cash flow. At Harborside Partners, we provide passive investors who love real estate with a turnkey investing solution. If you want to put your money to work in real estate, but can’t find deals, don’t have the time to get funding in. The last thing that productive people want to do is manage real estate. We find the deals. We fund the deals and we manage the tenants, the termites and the properties. Partner with us at investwithharborside.com. That’s investwithharborside.com. Go to investwithharborside.com. If you love real estate, you like the idea of passive income and believe that income producing properties will appreciate over time. Go to investwithharborside.com. That’s investwithharborside.com.

Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast; I’m your host Charles Carillo. Today we have Daniel Kwak. He started learning about real estate investing at age 20, did his first deal at the age of 22 and by 23 he had 83 rental units. Since then, Daniel and his brother have raised millions of dollars for real estate while also running a YouTube channel with over 300k subscribers. So thank you so much for being on, Daniel.

Daniel:
Hey, it’s a pleasure man.

Charles:
So Give us a little background on yourself prior to getting involved in real estate investing.

Daniel:
Yeah, I’ll do my best to make it quick. Cause I know usually when I listen to podcasts, which is I listen to a lot, I’m kind of just like, all right man, just hurry up and gimme the gold nuggets and let me get outta here. So very short background. I’m an immigrant to the United States at five years old. To say we were poor is an understatement. I mean, multiple nights our family would sleep in the car cuz we couldn’t afford to pay the heating bill. Slept. Yeah. Slept in the car and, you know, most nights didn’t have dinner. I loved going to school cause it meant I got a meal. So, you know, I, I learned the value of, of the single dollar. If anything, I’m more grateful that my parents were poor as opposed to rich, cuz I don’t think I’d had the work ethic I had today.

Daniel:
So that led to me being 18 years old. I had negative $187 and 65 cents in my bank account. And I still remember, like it was yesterday looking down at my, I think I had a Samsung Galaxy S two at the time, which is mind boggling to me, right? That we have now, we now have like the S 22 right? <Laugh> we have all these technological advancements <laugh> how long before they put microchips in our bodies <laugh>. So I remember looking, I still to this day, looking down and seeing that negative number in my account, had a couple max stock credit cards and, you know, one day I decided to do something about it. And so I started learning about real estate and the way I got to know about real estate is I read an article by Forbes Magazine when I was 17 years old, saying that out of the top 1% of people in the world 76% of those people made their money by investing in real estate. So I was like, Ooh, gotta do that. And it turns out not only do I wanna do it, but I actually really like doing it. So here we are. I guess, I guess you could say the rest is history.

Charles:
That’s crazy. Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s amazing when you see those stats and I I, it’s also one of the things too, if you ever look through through like a Forbes 400 list of something and you people and you, it’s made people make their money in real estate or like, a lot of it’s held in it and it is just kind of it’s amazing how that, how that works. But it’s, it’s true. So when, what was your first real estate investment, Daniel? Like, what did, when you got started, what was your strategy? You didn’t have many funds. You were just you know, getting, getting beginning. Like what did you do and how did you do it?

Daniel:
Yeah. you know, in many ways I’m glad I didn’t have a lot of funds. A lot of people see that as a curse, right? You know, a lot of people are like, oh, I’m so, I wish I had a million dollars right now that I could just invest. And you know, I’m glad I didn’t cause it changed the way I look at the marketplace. It changed the way I look at business. It changed the way I look at so many different things. And so instead of me saying, oh man, I wish I had a million dollars, the mindset and the mentality that I developed, I mean, mainly to give credit where credit is due, due to my relationship with God my mentality changed to, okay, how, what value can I bring to people? So the way they can get me the million dollars to get the apartment building right, or to get the piece of real estate.

Daniel:
So the first deal that my brother and I did was a portfolio of four single family house houses. And it was in this little place called Can Kaki Illinois, which anybody will tell you is not, it’s not necessarily the Beverly Hills of the country. Let’s, let’s put it that way. But we bought it through we posted something on Facebook. I think my brother posted something on Facebook, something along the lines of like, Hey, you know, we’re looking for maintenance people for our real estate investing team. And he made that post in one of those like, buy sell trade Facebook groups. Like, you know what I’m talking about, right? Like, every, every town has those buy-sell, right? So we posted there and we had a property manager who was also a landlord reach out to my brother and he goes, Hey, like I’ve, I’ve got 19 houses that I wanna offload.

Daniel:
You know, can we have a conversation about that? And so we ended up buying four. And that’s how we did our first deal. We raised money from a family friend. And funny enough, right, like, it’s like when you tell enough people about what you do, people get interested, right? Because the minute you start talking about what you do online, people immediately for some reason go to how, how can that benefit me? <Laugh>, right? Like, that’s just the way us humans are wired. And I’d say that’s the first thing I tell people all the time, when you’re starting in your real estate journey, especially if you haven’t done a deal yet, get really, really good at identifying what people want and how you can give it to ’em and how you can monetize that, right? Like, that’s, that’s a really, really good question to ask yourself. I mean, really any, at any point in your real estate career.

Charles:
So when you’re going on from this this, these four units how did you guys manage ’em? Because Where’re, you’re located on the west coast, correct?

Daniel:
No, so we’re, we’re located in the Midwest, so Okay. Midwest. So we live, we live in the Chicago land area. Okay. So right there, so I grew up here. My, my, this is where my parents chose, and we immigrated here, we lived here ever since. I’m a diehard Chicago Bulls Bears fan. So, you know, come at me if you’re a a sports, you know, fan of any other city, although, you know, the bears aren’t looking so great this year, but either way yeah. So we started there with the four units. And you know, we, we didn’t manage them. We had, we had somebody else manage ’em. So the guy that we actually bought them from actually managed the properties. Ah, because the way we saw it is, hey, you’ve owned these properties and you’ve managed them for the last 15, 20 years. Why would we want to disrupt that? So you know, we just haven’t, we had him manage and well, a lot of that has to do with the fact that we were both college students at the time and we didn’t necessarily have the time to manage.

Charles:
How did that work out, like with him managing? I’ve never heard that before.

Daniel:
You know, it worked out pretty well. You know, people always say, Hey, there’s good property managers, bad property managers, there’s good investors, bad investors. Honestly, at the end of the day, there’s just good people and bad people. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, that’s it. You know 90% of the mistakes that I’ve made in terms of choosing the work with people I wish I haven’t worked with, 90% of it had to do with integrity and morals and values as opposed to incompetency. Right? Like very few times in my career where, you know, somebody’s mistake has costed me money. And knock on wood, none of my investors have lost money yet. I’ve never lost any investors any money. You know, 90% of those problems had to do with ethics and values as opposed to, oh, I, I didn’t know, or I forgot. Or, you know, I’m not proficient in that, you know, particular lane of running a business or running a real estate portfolio. So, I mean, I always tell people, you know, when you’re looking for a good property manager, make sure you have a good person first. And when you actually look at it from that standpoint, hiring people becomes much more simpler and easier. As every, almost every successful person will tell you. A lot of this is simple except people tend to make things more complicated.

Charles:
Yeah. No, I see that a lot. But so tell us, after you did this, these four houses, wh what did you do in your business, you and your brother to go from zero to 83 units in a year? Because that’s some growth.

Daniel:
Sure. so I’ll give you my cheat code, right? Which is, this is, this is the part where people are like leaning in, right? As they listen to the podcast, driving home from their work, you know? So the, the process that I see a lot of people, people forgetting is for them when they do their first deal, the thought is, how can I do another one and how can I do another one? How can I do another one? How can I do another one? And then you get to a certain point where you just keep asking that question over and over and over again. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And for me, the mentality that I had is it was more so how do I not do the next deal? How do I actually build a business? And most people don’t know how to build a business.

Daniel:
And I was actually talking to a friend of mine who is a very notable figure in the real estate world. And you know, that’s one of the things that him and I talk about all the time is, you know, what are, what are, what are the, you know, not regrets, but what are something you would’ve done differently since the beginning of your career? And, and the answer that I’ve seen him give hundreds and hundreds of times is like, yeah, I wish I would’ve read more books on actually building a business as opposed to like building a real estate portfolio. Cuz my thought process was, okay, how do businesses scale? How do you know how what you raise capital, right? So, you know, after I did my, you know, first deal or, so, I think the deal I did right after that was an eight unit apartment complex.

Daniel:
And you know, it was around that time, right before that time was when I really started focusing on, hey, like, how do I actually raise capital? But not only that, but how can I actually create a system of deal flow? You know? Cause I think a lot of people, like for example, if I did a webinar right now on, hey, what are the top three ways, best ways to find deals? I, we would’ve thousands of people join that webinar. Like a lot of people would join that webinar. However, if I, you know, talked to you about, hey, like how to leverage virtual assistance, how to, you know, employ people, right? Like, if, if I taught a high, a much higher level on how to create a system, I would make the argument that not as many people would show up to that one, right?

Daniel:
You know, which is sad for me, even before then, I, I focused, okay, how do I actually build a business as opposed to just doing deals? And that allowed me to think about, you know, instead of finding deals, how do I actually create a system where deals can come to me instead of raising capital, how can I create a structure where, you know, investors find me and I have the ideal individual that I want, right? Just like how with any company, every organization has what’s called their ideal avatar, their marketing avatar. And it’s literally a list of a bunch of things, characteristics that make up their dream customer, right? Their perfect customer. And if, if you’re somebody that wants to go from having done 10 units, having 10 rental doors to a hundred, that’s the first thing that I would recommend people do is identify what are the top three things you need to get there and identify your dream customer with doing that.

Daniel:
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So not only identifying your dream investor, like what does that dream investor look like? Are they an individual who just sold their company for 25 million and they have 3 million that they wanna employ in liquidity? Or are they a, a doctor that lives in San Francisco Bay area making $400,000 a year and their CPAs telling them to get into real estate for tax tax reasons. So identify what your dream customer is for your investors, but also the same thing for sellers. Who’s your ideal seller? Who’s your dream seller? Is it somebody who’s 65 years old needs to retire and, and wants to sell on seller financing? Or is it a 36 year old who wants to sell their eight unit because they want to go off and do bigger and better deals? Right? Depending on the answer to that question, the way you market and the way you find these people is gonna be very, very different.

Daniel:
It’s gonna be very, very different. And so, last piece of nugget, before you ask me your next question is, you know instead of finding properties, look for people, instead of trying to find capital, look for people if you look for people, a lot of times things get way, way easier. So even today, like my ways of finding deals is like, we don’t do mailing campaigns. We don’t do direct mail. We don’t do, cuz for me, you know, that’s, that’s a, that’s a way to find the property, you know, and that’s okay, right? I’m not saying that it doesn’t work. Everything works, right? Like the infamous marketer Dan Kennedy, right? He’s, he says, everything works if you do it enough, right? Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. But for me, my philosophy is, you know, how do I find the people as in, you know, how can I reach out to bankers who can then connect me with individuals that they know who’ve owned properties for 20, 30 years? How can I get in touch with different networks and areas and corners of certain societies and communities where a lot of these landlords that I’m looking for hang out? Does that make sense?

Charles:
Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And it’s funny you say that about you know about the VA’s doing a va VA webinar versus investing in real estate. Cuz now when I think back, as you’re talking about any mentor I’ve ever had within real estate or coach around it they’ve never suggested me to read a real estate book. It’s always other books around business and or mindset. So it’s very, I never put two and two together like that. But that’s, that’s definitely true. So, but when you were doing like when you were going, you know 40 units to 83 units, you’re doing that, is that seller financing that you were utilizing at that point raising money and seller financing? Because obviously

Daniel:
Yeah, it was most of it was seller finance deals, so, okay. You know, we, we coined a little term called the force strategy, right? So my brother is a big Star Wars fan and he’s kind of the marketing wiz between the two of us. You know, he’s being our, being our chief marketing officer. But the force strategy stands for Find the Deal. So that’s f mm-hmm. <Affirmative> owner finance it, raise the capital. So that’s f o r, right? C is cash flow it and we talk about property management. And then the last one e stands for expand the business, meaning that hey actually learn how to build the infrastructure where you can actually scale and support another 30, 40, 50 units. Cuz that’s, that’s another thing that really separate good entrepreneurs from great ones, is the great ones know how to look ahead and anticipate the needs and the problems of the next level.

Daniel:
And they prepare for that. I always tell people, like entrepreneurs who are always destined or at the level where they could, they can only handle 30 units, will inherit a 300 unit portfolio and take it down to 30 in a matter of a couple, couple years or at least three or four or five, right? Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So, I mean, even just asking yourself the question is, am you know, with who I am and the systems that I’ve built and the the structures that I have in place and the frameworks that I have, can I handle 20 units? Can I handle 50? Can I handle a hundred? You know, we can want and dream all we want, but do we actually, are we prepared? Just like how if you’re pregnant, you’re gonna buy the nursery, right? Like you’re gonna buy diapers, you’re gonna buy the crib and the mattress and all these things like, you know, you have a registry and all this stuff and you kind of go around the store and just have people buy whatever you want, <laugh>, right?

Daniel:
Which is what a strange concept, but it’s so, you know, acceptable in today’s society. But you know, think about that. That’s a great analogy, right? Like even before the baby comes, you’re, you’re getting the room already and prepared. It’s just same thing with real estate. If you, that baby is a hundred unit portfolio, do you have the crib already bought? Do you have the diapers? Do you have the baby lotion? Do you have all these things ready to the point where that baby can come home from the hospital and you’re prepared? You’re fine. 95% of investors don’t have that.

Charles:
No, no, no. Yeah, it’s, they don’t have their team set before they’re looking for deals. And it’s, I see it all the time because it’s, you don’t have a property manager, you don’t have this, you don’t have an insurance agent, you don’t have all these things lined up that you’re gonna need. Like, hey, when I get that deal, what do I do with it? I don’t know, I’m underwrite it. Well, what do you have for that? So, well,

Daniel:
It’s, it’s the same with raising capital. Like, I get the question all the time. It’s like, Daniel, how do I raise capital? First and foremost, it’s a very selfish question because look at the focal point of that sentence. It’s, I, yeah, that’s the main noun and the, you know, that, that you’re utilizing is, you are the focal point as opposed to, Hey, what can I do to serve other people? Cuz I would make the argument that there’s way more people who wanna invest into real estate with at least a hundred thousand dollars in their investment account Yeah. Than people who actually know what they’re doing in this real estate investing world, right? Yeah. I, I would a hundred percent make that argument. But it’s the same thing, right? It’s like the question I usually fire back is, all right, well, what’s your product like at the end of the day, raising capital is sales.

Daniel:
You’re selling a product, and that product is broken down into three things. The product is you as the real estate entrepreneur and operator. The second is the asset that you’re actually trying to raise money for and sell. And number three, it’s your business plan. Like what’s your actual plan? Like I get you want to go after a 36 unit apartment building, but you know, at the end of the day, like what overall strategy does that 36 unit building fall under? You know? So you as the operator, they gotta, they gotta buy into you as the operator. Like I’m convinced, like you can take a bad business idea, you can put a amazing entrepreneur and old work, right? So you, you as the operator, they have to buy into that, they have to buy into the deal that you’re trying to get them into. And you have to get them to buy into the strategy.

Daniel:
Like what is the actual business strategy you’re gonna do with that apartment building? Are you gonna value add or are you gonna, you know, what type of financing are restructuring? What’s the five-year play? What’s the exit strategy looking like? Right? You get it. So they have to buy into that. And most people who wanna raise capital don’t have that figured out. And it’s just like, dude, you’re trying to, you’re asking me how do I have a million dollars a year in revenue? And you don’t even know what your product and your offer is. Like, how are you gonna do that? Right? Like, so how are you gonna raise capital from investors when you yourself don’t have a strategy when you yourself don’t have a, you know, like, things that you’re going after. Like, you know, what, what do you do? So again, it’s just very interesting, right? Like people, there’s, there’s invisible barriers, right? It’s like to each and every level of real estate.

Charles:
Yeah. Interesting. So Daniel, what is your firm’s current investment criteria? Like, what are you targeting? You’re targeting, I imagine larger properties. Are you using similar techniques or completely different techniques than you were, let’s say, when you started

Daniel:
To raise capital or to do anything

Charles:
For that matter? For just like what kind of deals your, like what kind of deals is your firm? You know, what are you guys focusing on? And then how are you sourcing those deals, I imagine? Gotcha. They get larger, they’re coming from, you’re not putting ads on Facebook for a hundred unit complexes, <laugh> Yeah. You are going to brokers, but like, some of that must still be relevant in your process today.

Daniel:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I have a couple different real estate opportunities that people can, you know get more information about. So one is, it’s a real estate hedge fund I started about four years ago. And all they do is real estate, hard money lending mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and you know, the guy operating it is a, is a total stud, you know, like he is a good friend of mine. His name’s Kevin, and he’s an actual, you know, absolute brother. And he’s got a little bit more gray hair than I do, right? He’s about double my age. But at the same time, you know, he spent I think 20 plus years in Wall Street. It was one of the top private money managers and, you know, ran his own hedge fund for, for a very, very long time. And, you know, he loves lending, right?

Daniel:
Real estate, hard money lending. And he’s done that for a long time. Bridge lending to be exact. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So we have that. I, I kind of just sit on their board and, you know, give advice here and there you know, share my thoughts on the market. And then another opportunity I have is, is a company I started with my very good friend and brother Andrew Willies. And him and I, we were, you know, we started a, a real estate partnership and we’re going after anything between 50 and 200 units and we’re specifically going after lower end class B, upper class C. It’s my personal opinion based on my research that there’s an over-building and an overdevelopment of class a apartment buildings in America. I mean, to give you some data, you know, we right now have 803, approximately 803,000 multi-family units that are currently in development.

Daniel:
We haven’t seen a number of that high since 1973. And when you peril that with 800,000 single family housing units in construction as well, with the amounts of shadow inventory that’s been placed, right, due to moratoriums that we’ve had in the country the last two years. Cause the pandemic, you know, we’re, we’re talking about a giant inventory shift that’s happening right now as we speak over the course of the next six to nine months. So as that inventory shifts, you know, and I think, you know, we’ve had absurd amount of rent increases as a nation, you know, I think the number was 15.6% in year over year increase in, in rents, right? For people that are renting. And to give you an idea, I live in Illinois, we are arguably the worst state for people leaving <laugh>, right? Like it’s us in California. Like we’re, we’re the state where everyone wants to get out, right?

Daniel:
And yet, you know, in my area where I live, the, the, the cost of a, of cost of rent for a three bedroom, two bath class, a apartment co apartment unit has gone up 36%. You know, I mean, which is absurd. You know, the, the place that my wife and I used to rent, you know, our rent went from 21 and when you, when we’re about to renew our lease, they wanted 27. So, I mean, you’re talking about a dramatic increase. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we’ve had such a low inventory in the housing market and a lot of people were forced to go into class apartments. So, you know, the reason why we’re going after Class B and upper Class C is because I, I just see a giant movement of income saturation happening in the class A market, you know, over the next 12 to 18, you know, potentially even 24 months.

Daniel:
So, you know, we’re, we’re, you know, I, I think affordable housing is the gonna, is gonna be the major winner over the next two, three years based on everything I’ve researched and the individuals that I’m talking with. So we’re going after those deals. The most important thing for me is we secure long-term fixed rate financing. A lot of big syndication guys who, a lot of ’em are rank friends and I love ’em to death, but I’ll tell ’em that, listen, the way that you guys are structuring your financing, it’s extremely risky. Cuz a lot of these guys are buying 300 unit complexes, first and foremost overpaying for them. You know, like buying ’em at gosh, 200 basis points below the market value cap rate that they should be at. And they’re structuring two, three or financing in an environment where the Federal reserve increased rates by 150 basis points over the last three, four months.

Daniel:
I mean, like, come on, <laugh>, you know? Yeah. Like what you’re just like putting a sign on your front door that says, hey, like I want risky deals. Right? so, you know, it makes me really nervous cause I see a lot of people structuring bridge financing. A lot of people are doing that and, and mezzanine as well. And so the question that I have is, well, like what’s gonna happen if, you know, a lot of these guys are buying into class A and rent’s not going as up as high as they thought valuation is not as high as they thought L t V is not as low as they thought it’d be. And all of a sudden they’re, you know, their bank is calling ’em and says, Hey, you’re two, three years of bridge financing are, you know, our coming due. We gotta transfer you to some type of conventional financing. And oh, by the way, our interest rates and our commercial rate ha has gone up by two 3%. I don’t see that going so well, you know, and again, maybe I’m wrong, right? Like I’ll definitely continue to do my research, but based on everything I’ve seen so far, that’s something that makes me very nervous.

Charles:
Yeah. Class B is our favorite. That’s exactly, you have that either they still have good bones to properties, they’re in good areas, but you know, you can’t make more of it, can’t make more of a product that’s 30 years old. So I, I definitely agree with what you’re saying. But Daniel, let me talk more about you. We, these you have this, you and your brother have built this YouTube channel with over a quarter million subscribers. Thank you. And what are some strategies you’ve utilized when building your subscriber base that have yielded the biggest results?

Daniel:
Hmm. So there’s a guy that I absolutely love and, you know we’ve been coached by him and he actually coaches a YouTuber. I don’t, I don’t know if a lot of people who listen to this podcast will know who he is. Well, maybe your kids will, but there’s a YouTuber that goes by the name of Mr. Beast. And you know, he’s, he’s one of the, you know, he’s probably the biggest creator on YouTube, right? He’s got over a hundred million subscribers. Oh. And believe it or not, just one of his, I think his worst performing video gets as much views as the Super Bowl which is insane to think about, right? Like, I, I think his worst video gets like 50 million views, which is nuts. But there’s a guy that coaches him, he also coaches me, a guy named Daryl e.

Daniel:
And he said something to me that was really impactful. And he goes, when starting a YouTube channel, there’s two, there’s two pods, like a Venn diagram, right? On one side you have what your channel stands for, and on the other side you have what people actually care about. And your first 50 videos have to be in that middle. And that’s how you hit a hundred thousand subscribers, right? Like, once you develop a fan base, you, you have a little bit more flexibility. But, you know, if I were to instruct someone on how to build a YouTube channel today, I’d say figure out what that middle looks like for you.

Charles:
Interesting. Okay. How have you, cause I was doing some research on this as well prior to our, our interview and it’s, you’ve niched down the focus to gain more subscribers. So tell me about this. Cause this is, I think when you’re ever nicheing something down and getting back to what you’re talking about avatar, it always scares creators. Yeah. Because you’re like, oh, I’m gonna alienate all these people or whatever, tell me why that’s not true or why it might be true and then what you’ve done, because

Daniel:
It’s a very selfish way of thinking, right? Like, the minute you start talking about, oh, I’m gonna lose less at the expense of serving a certain crowd, crowded people, it’s a very selfish way of thinking. And it’s not, it’s not quote unquote wrong. Like most people don’t know that it’s a selfish way of thinking, but you know, if for, so I’ll give you a great example. So two years ago, you know, we post a lot of stuff about the housing market in real estate and we still do to some capacity, but I remember my director Nick, who was just in here fixing my mic you know, he said to me, he, he, he came to me and goes, Hey man, I I really think you should start talking about this thing called the Great Reset. And I’m like, what is it? You know?

Daniel:
And at first I thought, I just thought it was another conspiracy theory, right? I was like, ah, you know, it’s probably the same people who, you know, believe that frogs or homosexuals or whatever, right? Like the birds are the drones of the government that, that come up with this. And I started looking into it and I was like, oh my goodness, this is actually a real thing. Like, you know, if you actually go on the website of the World Economic Forum, the Great Reset is one of their biggest agendas. And they literally has put, they’ve put out a video telling the world what they want by the year 2030. And, you know, I can get into what that world looks like, but you know, either way, I I, we did a video and it blew up. It got like 189,000 views during a time when that was considered a b you know, a really, you know, viral video for us at least, right?

Daniel:
And so we released a second one, got 430,000 views, released a third one, and now it’s at that one’s at 1.1 million views. And so, yeah, you know, Darrell kind of coaches goes, Hey, I I really think you should keep talking about this thing cuz you’ve, you found a group of people that really need your help, that really want to hear your voice when it comes to this particular topic. And, you know, you guys have an opportunity to articulate at the end of the day what people want. So we’ve been posting a lot about political finance, you know just to be open and vulnerable with you. I feel like we’re at a time now in 2022 where everyone’s so afraid to share their own opinion. But I’ll be very honest, I’m, you know, I’m, I lean conservative you know, I’m one of those guys where, you know, I don’t think transgender athletes should, should compete with women.

Daniel:
Like, I think we’re, I think we’re pretty screwed up as a society actually to the point where we can’t even, you know, we can’t even answer a question on what is a man and what is a woman. I think that’s, that is a byproduct of a lot of pain and a lot of you know, unproductive and very mistruth way of thinking, if that makes sense. You know? Now granted, I’m one of those people that I’m, I’ll listen to anybody and everyone, you know, I, I’m, I try to be as compassionate as I possibly can. I’m very people oriented person, but these are things that I genuinely have find interesting, you know? And so we started posting stuff like that, and when we did that in a span of two years, we went from I think 68,000 subscribers to now, today we’re at 2 85.

Daniel:
Wow. So, you know, it’s, you don’t, and there was one, do you, okay, so do you remember watching a show called Malcolm In the Middle? Yes. Yeah. So it was one of my favorite shows growing up. It was, I thought it was so funny. My wife and I just recently finished the show together, but there was one episode where the oldest brother Francis, tells the youngest brother at the time, Dewey this line. And it just like, stuck with me. But he go, he tells Dewey, he is like, Hey Dewey, you know, in life we don’t get to choose the people that need our help. And I, I, I was so blown away by that cause it’s so true, right? Like, you, you know, you don’t, we don’t, we don’t, we don’t have a choice in the people that need our help. You know, we don’t choose that.

Daniel:
They find us cuz they need help, right? And, you know, that, that line stuck, you know, with me. So, so I mean, it was, it resonated with me so much. Cause I think every single one of us, especially as entrepreneurs, we all have an image and a picture of how we want our career to go. We all have this nice picture with sunshine and rainbows on how we want people to see us. That’s why 90% of us who are heart driven entrepreneurs wanna be on stage in front of 2, 3, 4, 5,000 people. We, we, we all secretly desire that, whether you want to admit it or not, right? So for me, you know, it was that journey of, okay, like how do I, how do I actually, you know, not without, without sacrificing, you know, my goals or without sacrificing how God has wired me, but how can I adjust in a way where, you know, I do serve the people that need my help.

Daniel:
And what are the problems that I wanna solve for people and entrepreneurs and real estate investors? And that actually is what inspired me to for us, our team to launch our coaching program. We’d call First Deal Mentor, where we help, you know, high net worth individuals or really anybody, right? Get into their first real estate deal. You know, that’s, that’s what we do. That’s the people that, that we help, is we just help people, whether they’re business owners or, you know, whether they’re, you know, our teacher, we help them get to their first deal and complete their first deal to the point where I’m literally showing them step by step what you need to do. And I think a lot of people are frustrated, Charles, right? Like, we, we all, everyone goes to seminars, we listen to podcasts, we read books, and we get a lot of great information. But at the end of the day, I truly believe there are people out there who just go, okay, that’s all great, but what do I need to know just for my first one, right? What, what do I need to know just, just for this one that I, I wanna do? Cause I think a lot of people are just like, man, if I could just do one right? Like that, that would be the world of difference, you know? So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Charles:
So with that program going on, as we, as we finish up here, what are common stakes you see real estate investors make from that come into your program or people that you’ve just spoken to or listened to, other than you mentioned prior about the fixed term variable debt, stuff like that. But anything else that comes to mind?

Daniel:
Yeah, you know, I, I’d say the biggest piece of advice I tell people is, is, you know, maybe I’m a little biased, but, you know, hire a coach, like hire a coach. And I get the logic of what a lot of people say, right? There’s like, well, and by the way, we don’t, we don’t, we charge a fraction of what these big guys charge, but like, these big guys are charging 25, 30, 40, 50 grand, right? Like, I know certain companies that are charging $60,000, right? It’s ridiculous. Just, especially if you’re wanting to do your first deal, come on guys, right? So we charge a fraction on that, right? But, you know I, I always tell people, hire a coach because I get that you can spend that money to put down on down payment on house, but the coaching, the goal, the objective and the coaching for me at least, right?

Daniel:
Is not for you to make more money. Like, it’s great, right? Like if you join our coaching, but you will make money for sure. You will, you will get your deals done. But my priority is let me make sure you don’t lose money, right? Yeah. Like, that’s where the, the true value of our program is at, is not helping you make a million dollars a year. Although with the information that we provide, I’m sure you’ll get there, right? You will. But it’s more so about, Hey, let’s not have you mess up. Let’s, let’s make sure you don’t lose 45 grand in your first deal. Let’s make sure you don’t lose, you know, 60,000 or 150,000 or worse. Let’s make sure you don’t lose any of your investors’ money. So, you know, I tell people all the time, like, look, you’re either, you’re gonna pay for education some way, shape or form. You’re either gonna pay for it with me or you’re gonna pay for it out there in the marketplace. And I guarantee you that 99% of the time, the the cost of education in the marketplace is 10, 10 x more, a hundred x more than what we’re gonna charge you or anyone else is gonna charge you for that matter.

Charles:
D what do you think are the main factors that have contributed to your success over the years?

Daniel:
Networking. that is, that is good one. I will, I will tell you that is the number one skillset for me was networking. And, you know even before that, I would say if, if you could identify the top two or three things that you’re really, really good at you know, that’s, that’s, that’s gonna be your vehicle to providing value into the marketplace. You know, so I’d say net for me, networking was number one. And number two is leadership. You know, I’ve, I’ve learned very early on that, you know, I have a lot of natural skills that make me a good leader. And over the last two, three years I’ve been, you know, really working hard and I’ve hired a lot of people to make sure that natural gift is enhanced right and honed. So I say leadership and networking is what contributed a lot of my success.

Charles:
So how can our listeners learn more about you, your business and your coaching, Daniel?

Daniel:
Yeah, I love giving out free stuff. So I know I’m not Oprah, but you know, I, I try to give as many free stuff as I can. So if you go to the quack brothers.com and there’s a tab that says free stuff you can click on that and you’ll literally see everything from a, a free three hour owner financing class that I put together where I literally teach people how I negotiate or sell financing, how to find sellers that wanna do seller financing. You know, we have a free real estate course in there where I teach people how to race capital, where I teach, you know, we call that real estate base camp, right? Because if you think about a journey up the mountain, that base camp is super duper important to have at the base of the mountain. So we have that one there.

Daniel:
My brother did a productivity class, and I also do a free meetup every other Tuesday. So nice. As long as you plug in with us and, you know we send out emails and, you know, whatnot. And so yeah, we do a free meetup every other Tuesday, which I think if you just Google Quack Brothers Real Estate Meetup, you’ll, you’ll be able to find it. But yeah, free meetup free course. And I also give out a free book. So if all that wasn’t enough, I’ll throw in a free book in there as well. And so I think with the book, all you gotta do is just pay for shipping. So yeah, just go to the clock brothers.com/free stuff and all that, all that stuff is there,

Charles:
Right? And it’s KWA a k, that’s how you, sir, your last name Kwak. So thank you so much for coming on, Daniel. It’s been a pleasure, a lot of great information for our listeners and looking forward to meeting up with you and connecting in the near future.

Daniel:
Thanks, man. Thanks for having me.

Charles:
Talk to you soon.

Charles:
Hi guys! It’s Charles from the Global Investors Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you’re interested in get involved with real estate, but you don’t know where to begin, set up a free 30 minute strategy call with me at schedulecharles.com. That’s schedulecharles.com. Thank you.

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Links and Contact Information Mentioned In The Episode:

• Miotti Partners Capital
• The Kwak Brothers 

About Daniel Kwak

Daniel Kwak first immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of 5. Due to a financially disadvantaged upbringing at the age of 20 he had a negative amount of 187.65 in his bank account. Motivated by continued financial hardship throughout his life he started learning about Real Estate Investing. The first two years he learned everything he could and at the age of 22 he did his first deal. By age 23 he had 83 rental units, along with having raised millions of dollars in capital and also having done a variety of different deals and strategies. At age 26, Daniel founded Miotti Partners Capital, a core satellite fund that has introduced the equities fund management model into the Real Estate space for the first time. He has also traveled across the country training and mentoring hundreds and thousands of aspiring real estate investors. Daniel & his brother Sam currently also have a YouTube channel with over 300k subscribers.

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