283 | How to Build a Multi-Million $ Real-Estate Business w/ Bryant Dawson

Jul 5

[00:00:22] Chaz Wolfe: What's up everybody? I'm Chaz Wolf gathering the King's podcast. Coming to you today with my brother, my man, Bryant Dawson. How we doing,

[00:00:31] Bryant Dawson: man? Doing good. Chaz, man. Thanks for having me on.

[00:00:35] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, dude, imm so like thankful for this connection because it came organically, which I love. Organic relationships.

I talk about it a lot here on the show, but you know, because someone had gotten value from knowing me and someone had gotten value from knowing you we made the connection. So I appreciate that. And actually, it's really funny that person that I was, that connected us, I was just telling you a story about someone else that gotten some value and I just in my mind, clicked it.

It was the same person that connected us. Oh, that's excellent. Yeah. Anyway. No big deal. Bryant, tell us what kind of business that you got here, brother.

[00:01:04] Bryant Dawson: Yeah, man. I was I was originally a former oil and gas project manager. Traveled all over the world doing that. Spent tons and tons of my time doing that, so I didn't have any time to do anything else.

And now what we do is, is fully vertically integration through real estate. So we have everything from the construction business to the property management, to the real estate brokerage then to our capital side.

[00:01:25] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, he said that super humbly and low key dude is over there. He's got divisions of, of.

Armies over there just doing work and buying properties, managing properties. You got all kinds of stuff going on, man. So I'll, I'll too, the extra little tune there for you on your horn there. Okay. Appreciate

[00:01:42] Bryant Dawson: it. Go. I appreciate that. Well,

[00:01:45] Chaz Wolfe: in all seriousness, you are, you're a real estate king and and even inside of that, I loved how you just.

Pointed out, obviously you have a construction a pretty large construction portion of that business. And so you're gonna be able to speak from angles of experience in multiple different industries, which is what the show's all about, man. This is where I come from as well. Before we get rolling into your story Brian, I, I wanna know we talked about this briefly on the phone when we talked, a month or two ago, whenever that was originally, but.

I wanna know what the heartbeat is of Brian. Like, why do you wake up? Like what's the deep, deep burning desire in you?

[00:02:16] Bryant Dawson: Yeah, man. That's a good question. I live for a family, family first. That's, that's our, our thing. And through all of our businesses and kind of oil and gas was kind of the same way.

Yeah. So that, I bet that's, that's my, that's my burning thing is, is and the reason I. Created all the businesses and all the success that I've, I've created has all been through trying to, trying to create more time and mainly more time freedom for, for me and

[00:02:42] Chaz Wolfe: my family. Yeah. Why do you think that I, basically, that's your answer is what I wanna know, but.

Why do you think that family or specifically time freedom with your family is what keeps you up and what pushes you so hard? Like why, why is that the case?

[00:03:00] Bryant Dawson: Yeah, well, we had our kids very young. And, jumped right into the workforce. And I worked a, a job working 84 to, to a hundred hours a week seven days a week.

Wow. And I went, did that for, for eight straight years with really no breath in between it. And you start to realize that that's not what it's about. So Yeah. Yeah. You had no time freedom. None. None whatsoever. No. We were working about 330 days on the road a year.

Wow. Pretty much lived in a fifth wheel all the time and traveled around 40 different states, nine countries. Yeah. Wow.

[00:03:39] Chaz Wolfe: Okay. So your own circumstances, it didn't necessarily come from like your parents or a depravity in that way, but you literally didn't have what you wanted, so you said, I gotta

[00:03:50] Bryant Dawson: have it.

Gotta have it, man. Gotta

[00:03:53] Chaz Wolfe: create it. You did all that with kids too, man? Yeah. Yeah. 84 to a hundred hours a week. 3,333 days on the road. Give us a little snapshot of that. What was that like? I'm sure that that was rough on your wife and the kids, but. Yeah. What does it look like? Well, I

[00:04:08] Bryant Dawson: mean, so we homeschooled we made that decision really early on.

We were doing that before homeschool was cool, right? Yeah. So we, thank God my wife was, was there with me. So we had a, had a fifth wheel. We traveled all around with my wife and kids traveled with me, so gave us yeah, that, that family freedom and yeah. So yeah,

[00:04:29] Chaz Wolfe: I loved, I love, that's just such a simple answer.

They came with me. Yeah, yeah. But it's so

[00:04:35] Bryant Dawson: profound. We did try it, to where they would stay and, it's so hard to do that. Yeah.

[00:04:40] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. And not to take away from your, your family, your wife and your kids living in a fifth wheel for eight years. Like I, I'm sure that was a challenge in itself.

I've lived in a trailer at points in my life and. I'm not trying to live in a trailer again but let alone with family and young kids. So I guess what I'm saying is that. Wow. First off, but you made it through and then the simplicity of your answer there. I'm gonna come back to this later when we talk about family, but you just integrated the two.

You said, Hey come along with, you still were obviously at work and you had to do your thing, but you made the most of the situation given, the grind that you were on. What do you think your kids have now? Because of that experience that they wouldn't have, maybe if you didn't do all that?

[00:05:22] Bryant Dawson: They have an profound drive, right?

Both, both my kids are very driven. My, my daughter graduated high school a year early. My son has a, he's pursuing a music career right now and he's, Just unbelievably driven in that. I think that allowed them to see, e every single day I was up, four or five o'clock in the morning, doing my thing, and work 12, 16 hour days to get back and, and you yeah.

Do it all over again every single day. My, my kids are very understanding of that and understanding that that life, life isn't free and have a very good drive for that.

[00:05:56] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. What do you, what do you think that they have now, now that you've been able to create time freedom for yourself?

[00:06:03] Bryant Dawson: Man, that's a tough one. I don't know. We still work like crazy yeah.

[00:06:07] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. But you just do it because you want to.

[00:06:10] Bryant Dawson: Yeah. Yeah. Obviously we, we have, we have goals. We have, missions and we have KPIs that we try to hit and but we have a lot of fun too yeah.

We get to travel kind of on our own, a cord and, and Nobody really tells us where we're gonna be and when we're gonna be there or when we have to be back yeah.

[00:06:28] Chaz Wolfe: Love that. All right, well, let's get into I appreciate you kind of going, let me press on you a little bit on your why.

I just think your, circumstances have, we all have the story of as entrepreneurs, things that we've sacrificed, given up, but you've just got such a stark, like, here's where we were and here's where we are now. It's just pretty, pretty different, even though you're still, high quality work ethic to the max probably.

But that's, that's entrepreneurs and, and really as the guys or gals listening right now that are maybe in a lower point in their business and they're thinking just one day maybe I'll sit on the beach. That really doesn't exist. It, it's more of a, I just get to go to the beach whenever I want, but I love to build.

That's why you're building a business and so you're just in the early stages. Maybe later you have a little bit more time freedom like Bryant, but then it comes down to obsession and desires and goals and bigger targets and, and, and living a fulfilled purpose. Driven life. Okay. Tell us, tell us a little bit more of your story.

I wanna get into some practicals here, decision making, that type of a thing, but. You were in oil and gas for eight years, then you transitioned to real estate. Tell us about the transition. Was it abrupt? Was it quick? Did you, did you keep your job while you were doing it on the side? Give us that story.

[00:07:33] Bryant Dawson: Yeah, so a hundred percent, , and that's why I said, I traveled for eight full years kind of doing that thing. And then at some point in time, there I, I was, I was interested in other things, I just didn't know what it was. Right. And, and in about 2000 12 or 13, I kind of started looking at it.

And then 2014 really started trying to make a decision there. And in from 2014 to 2015 range, I really did a lot of studying and trying to figure out what that thing was. Sure. And still working my, my same job and everything, but I, I had kind of gotten to a point where I was a lot higher level management, so I had a little bit.

More time freedom, a little bit more flexibility there. So it gave me a little bit more time to look at some other things. Yeah. And then 2016 was really the year that I, I started buying a lot of real estate and, and that was 2016 I started tapering off. The amount that I would spend on the road.

Mm-hmm. And it was like, okay, this year I'm gonna take 60 days off and then I'm gonna try to take 90 days off next year, and then I'm gonna try to take, of course I had a retirement as well that I was trying to keep active. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wasn't fully, I wasn't fully vested yet yeah. I, I had to work the last three years.

I only had to work 30 days a year to, to keep active. Wow. So last, last few years were definitely the hardest years because they were not needed. I didn't, I didn't need to be out there. But interesting. I was trying to keep that, that retirement active,

[00:09:12] Chaz Wolfe: Got it. I was gonna say, so why were you, but that was, that was the main

[00:09:15] Bryant Dawson: reason.

Yeah, that was the only reason, cuz I had, I had to finish a certain amount of hours in order to get a hundred percent vested.

[00:09:23] Chaz Wolfe: So yeah, to be vested. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously there's strategy there, right? Like you sat down probably with your wife. Tell me if I'm wrong, but you sat down, you put together a plan, obviously it was multiple years.

What would you say to the person listening right now who's like, Struggling putting a plan together for like next month. Like you created a multiple year exit strategy for your job, which included the last two or three years where you didn't need to be there financially, but you chose to be there strategically for the future self.

You, your kids, maybe even your grandkids or maybe you took all that money invested in the real estate and then then the real estate's part of the, the legacy. But either way, it was a, it was a much bigger move than you in that moment cuz you didn't need it, like you said. But what would you say the person right now struggling with, just making a plan for next month?

[00:10:06] Bryant Dawson: Yeah, plan plans are very, very important. But, I, I've always been this way, and I, I thank my oil and gas career for this because whenever we go in to do a job, the first thing that you're always thinking about is, is how do we get out? If there's an emergency, how do we get out?

So all of my plans, all the time, every time are all planned around exit. First thing that you have to know whenever you're creating a plan for me is, where am I trying to go? Mm-hmm. If I'm trying to go to, go to go to Washington DC I don't just jump in a, in a vehicle and start driving to Washington state.

Right. Right. So you have to know what that exit is and, and kind of have a Yeah. General idea and then the stuff in between is, is maybe good, maybe bad. You make some mistakes along the way, but you learn from those, right.

[00:10:56] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, you do. And we're definitely gonna get into that. This is, I couldn't have planned a better segue, but what I'm hearing you say, and the kind of the point that I'm trying to make to the listener really is that.

Even in a scenario where you're , exiting a job, this could be you exiting a business. This could be exiting a one of your, one of your portfolio assets. This is the thing that you do when you want to do something bigger in the future. And so sometimes it's not just like, oh, I'm leaving my job, or, oh, I'm gonna sell a property, or, oh, I'm gonna fill in the blank.

We've gotta have a little bit of vision, which you did. Obviously. You started thinking, man, this is, this is a lot, this is rough. I don't want this for my family. I'm sure that's probably where it started. Your wife was probably knocking at the door going. Hey, do we ever get you? So that then stemmed this whole vision and conversation around what, what else is out there, how, what else could I do?

And and then it comes to fruition even into the last couple years. That's what I love about it. The detail of your story. Yeah. What I'm gonna transition here into good and bad decisions because you've laid it up. You softballed it for me. What was a good decision? We've just talked about planning, but give us like something super practical.

You did this. And it gave you this result, or it gave you a result that you would do over and over and over again? Something that we can go apply to our businesses.

[00:12:07] Bryant Dawson: Yeah. So a great decision from, from my side and I tell my team this and everybody that, anybody that comes on my team and, and just people around me is, is getting started.

Right. That was, probably the most simple thing that I could do, cuz I, I spent, I really did spend quite a lot of time thinking about it and thinking about it and putting together, I'm a big spreadsheet guy, so I put together spreadsheets and kind of planned it out and, and you go on with that for a while and they kind of call it analysis paralysis, right?

Right. Yeah, just, you gotta get started. You gotta, you gotta start somewhere and you're gonna make mistakes along the way, but, but just getting

[00:12:46] Chaz Wolfe: started. Yeah. Yeah. There's an overthinking to what we do, and probably you've experienced this even after you jumped. Where you've overthought a situation, is this continued for you where you've had to kinda like bite this off?

[00:13:01] Bryant Dawson: Yeah. Yeah. It's continual, and, and I remember buying my, buying my first property and, and that's like, oh, is that a mistake? I don't know. And then you sell, you, whenever we, we flipped our first property, we started flipping. Initially we flipped our first property. And you make a little bit of money, you're like, oh yeah, that wasn't a mistake.

And then I remember buying my first portfolio of properties. I'm like, man, and the guy that I bought it from we did some creative finance stuff on the deal and, and he said, how many, how many properties can you take on? I was like, we'll see. I don't know, and I remember the first one I bought, I was like, man, this might have been a mistake, yeah. But

[00:13:40] Chaz Wolfe: it worked out well. Yeah. Yeah. I was having a conversation with somebody this morning, actually. It's funny how, certain connections that you have tend to connect early in the morning. I'm usually working out, and maybe they are too, but we're like, Hey, what, what'd you think about this?

Or, going back and forth. And it was a very similar conversation, which is, how, how do I, not necessarily how do I know that I made the right choice, but it's like it, and for his case it was more of a like, man, things are really working out and how do I know this is gonna last? And how do I know that?

Cuz that's, in essence it's the same lane of decision making, which is, is this gonna all work out? What's the end gonna look like? And I think that generally speaking, it's worked out for the most part with everything that I've done. Now, that doesn't mean that you just do whatever and it's all gonna work out.

Um, But inside of those decisions where you kind of questioned yourself, that first property that you flipped, the first portfolio company when you left your job, I'm sure there was a little bit of a like, I don't know, but it was backed by some research and some conviction around knowledge and detail and expertise and, and maybe it was yours, maybe it was someone else's that was speaking into the deal.

We, we still have to overcome that, but it's, but it's overcome with, confidence and knowledge and, and data. Would you agree?

[00:14:59] Bryant Dawson: Oh, I'd agree a hundred percent. Yeah. There's, there's definitely e every decision, there, there every decision that you have has a cause and effect, right?

Yeah. And you just have to make , some good decisions there , and really deduce the situation and decide is the outcome of this gonna be good or bad? , and does it right. Does it move the needle enough to make it worthwhile? Yeah. Some, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.

And yeah, I think that's very important too. To really assess the situation and, and don't take those decisions lightly, but yeah, move quick, move quickly at the same time.

[00:15:36] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, that's, it's a, there's a nuance there to that, because like you said earlier, you can overthink the worst case scenario. I'm the same way as you, where I'm like, okay, let's put all the cards out on the table.

What is the worst case scenario? Okay. I've got a situation here where it, maybe it all burns down the property, whatever. Like what's the absolute worst I wanna know. Worst case scenario times 10. And I want to not necessarily plan for that, but I want to have that in the mind and I want to have a couple of contingencies of going, if the direction starts to go that way, what's my game plan?

Not necessarily planning for that, but having a game plan for it. And then to your point, then I can really press into, okay, well I'm going to make this work. Right. And so I think underneath that, what we're both saying, there's like, there's a resoluteness or a definiteness to our decision making where it's like, maybe we're not like a hundred percent certain that it's going to work out, but we're a hundred percent certain that we're gonna figure it out, right?

[00:16:31] Bryant Dawson: Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. , that's probably been my saving grace , through everything that I've ever done. Right? I'm willing to admit that I don't know everything. Always have been really, really open to that fact and it's good. It's true.

Yeah. But, , if Chaz Wolf comes to me and asks me a hard question, which I like hard questions and I don't know the answer, I'm, I'm not opposed to saying, Hey man, I don't know the answer to that. But I'm gonna find it. Right. , and that, that I will do, I will find the answer to, or, or somebody that does know the answer and bring them in and, and yeah.

Yeah.

[00:17:09] Chaz Wolfe: Love that. Yeah. There's a lot of qualities and principles that you've dropped on us here. I hope the listeners taking notes because although again, although simple very profound. What was a bad choice that you've made? You've obviously done a lot of deals. Most of them I'm sure have worked out, but there's been also moments in those deals.

Tell us about a moment where it just not, it was not a great scenario.

[00:17:31] Bryant Dawson: All in all, I think real estate , has been really, really good for me. And I haven't had any like, majorly bad deals in that, but one thing that I do know that, that we did wrong in the kind of over the years was, we, we kind of planned this exit from, from oil and gas and , and our real estate journey happened relatively quickly to where, to where we were, we replaced my income.

In, in a short amount of time. And our, our construction side was probably the biggest driver for, for that. Mm-hmm. Because there are very few operations that provide property management, construction, and, kind of the operations and the entire thing kind of mixed together. Yeah. So that, that was a good driver for our growth.

But we kind of lost sight. We kind of put our construction on autopilot just a little bit. Mm-hmm. And, and it was, it was clipping along really well, and, and we didn't plan for, for pivot as well as what we should have. I've always been , a big fan of, of being nimble, being able to pivot relatively quickly.

Sure. And, and COVID 19 changed a lot in the construction industry. Right. How you view that, that that whole thing, it changed a whole lot. , from, pricing and sourcing materials to, getting decent guys and the cost of those guys and, and that's right.

Being able to perform and get projects done. That's probably the biggest mistake I've ever made was, was kind of distancing myself further and further. Back from, from day-to-day activity and not keeping a super, super great pulse , on, a major component of our business strategy.

Yeah,

[00:19:20] Chaz Wolfe: yeah. So there's a, there's a principle underneath that decision. Basically of, like you said, autopilot or set it in, forget it, or, a lot, I see a lot of salespeople do this when they have a big month, and then what happens next month? Everything blows up. Same thing for small entrepreneurs, because that's basically what they are too, is salespeople.

And so you have to keep consistent. So what did you learn inside of that? Obviously you learned to be consistent, to not like look away, to always have an attention, but what's underneath that that you could have kept doing or what would. What did you miss out on? If you had, if you had been doing what you should have been doing?

Paying attention.

[00:19:58] Bryant Dawson: Well, I guess miss out on, it's just money, and, and Sure. At the end of the day, and well, bigger, bigger than money is like, is like, what did we lose in time? Yeah. And, and , from a setback perspective we , obviously couldn't have changed.

Covid 19 from happening couldn't have changed. What, what did happen from material sourcing and things like, those things, we couldn't change. But we, what we could have done better is we had a, a massive amount of, of clientele projects at the time, and a lot of those fell off the books, so instead of, we could have pivoted and said, okay, we're gonna buy a portfolio.

To keep, 30 or 40 guys busy, right? On this, on these portfolio properties. We, we could have done that but we weren't looking at that close enough and, and just, well, honestly, didn't know what was gonna happen there for sure.

[00:20:52] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, nobody did. And so you can look back today with clear eyes and go, I should have, but you didn't, or you did something different, but, Yeah, that's the beauty of looking back or reflections. It's the beauty of these questions that I get to ask entrepreneurs, which is, okay, well you made the good decision. What'd you learn from it? Okay, you made the bad decision. What'd you learn from it? Because there's gonna be another big decision today.

Maybe it's tomorrow, maybe it's next week, maybe it's another Covid 19. I don't know. But this is how we win in business is not only making good decisions, but a a having a track record. Of good decisions. It's also probably how you've grown so quickly as well as the, with number of investors and people that trust you, that want to come work for you.

Like you can't build teams, whether it's investors or teams of construction guys, even if you don't have a history of good decisions because they look at you and they're like, I dunno, I don't know what he's gonna do. Yeah. Okay. What sort of process, if any, that, that you have around good decision making?

Like something comes across your desk today, maybe it's a portfolio, maybe it's a, an employment issue. How do you make that

[00:21:56] Bryant Dawson: decision? Yeah, so I I, I, I always make a decision relatively quickly. I'm, I've, I've kind of always done that. Good, good or bad. Because what I found is that time is, is the killer, right?

So we can take two weeks to make a decision that we could have made in 10 seconds, and

[00:22:19] Chaz Wolfe: most likely you already

[00:22:20] Bryant Dawson: had. Made the decision in 10 seconds and most likely the, the decision is gonna be the same, in two weeks as it is, today make that decision today, don't spend the extra time on that thing , and just, pull that pulls time forward and allows you to move faster.

So if you get two weeks down the road and you made the wrong decision, now, hey, now we can work on, on correcting the decision that you made that was wrong. But, , a big majority of the time, whether that's, a portfolio thing or if it's a, if it's an employment deal, if you just, if you delay the inevitable , I've tried to do it in the past and it just, it bites you in the butt.

Most of the time

[00:22:55] Chaz Wolfe: yeah.

[00:24:05] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, exactly. That's good. the speed is your friend. A lot of times the, the caveat to speed or, or someone's pushback to speed is that, quality goes down and I, I think that there's a, a limiting belief there. It can be true. I'm not saying that that doesn't exist.

I'm saying that there's a limiting belief that they can't go together. Yeah. You just described everything that I'm talking about, however, I'm sure there's been some decisions that you've made quickly and you go, oh, bummer. Yeah. But then what do you do in that scenario? You keep

[00:24:35] Bryant Dawson: moving. What do you do?

Yeah. You just keep, keep moving forward, you, you have to I'm sitting here thinking about those, those decisions that I've, I've made quickly and I'm like, oh, yeah, that, that was a bad decision. I. But you, you're gonna make bad decisions, right?

Yeah. But the, the, the goal is that you make more good decisions than you do bad. And then, and then it it can't be 50/50 because then you don't go anywhere. Yeah, that's right. It has to be like 80/20 or something like that. So if you make 20% of your decisions are bad decisions and it didn't take up very much your time, the 80% should outweigh it.

And, and you're gonna be further ahead in, in the, in the long run.

[00:25:12] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, I mean you're talking about investing, right? Like you're talking about investing or compounding good decisions. Yeah, and, and yeah, if you make six good decisions, four bad decisions, yes, that's more, and over time that will outweigh.

But man, it's a whole lot better or faster. If you can go 80 20 doesn't mean you have to be perfect. I think that's your kind of, your underlying point is. You don't have to be a perfect decision maker. You, we all make mistakes. We all know that it's true. Super easy to say. It's super easy to Bob and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, but like, that's real.

Yeah, we're gonna make mistakes. And I have to remind myself, I can't get myself down and going, oh man, Chaz talks about good decision making. I'm gonna, I'm a loser now. Like, well, no, that's not exactly how it works because even in the bad decision, You flip the script to perspective of, well, this is just part of the learning.

I actually haven't made a bad decision. I just eliminated one of the things that I shouldn't do anymore. Thank goodness I now know not to do this anymore, and then I go implement not that.

[00:26:10] Bryant Dawson: Right. Yeah. Probably the most important part about that is, is the thing that you just said is the implementation or the tracking of the information.

Right? Right. Yeah. If you know that it was a bad decision you could build a KPI around that. You could, you could, you could build, a SOP around it, yeah. You could build some sort of performance piece around that that says, oh, yeah, don't do this again. That's a really bad idea.

Or, maybe this is not so bad, so if it happens, there could be some lost lease or something like that. That, but yeah. You're never gonna mitigate all of the bad decisions. Right. The goal is that you don't make the bad decision over and over and over and over again.

Right?

[00:26:50] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Yeah. And I think also too, your point is just really, really practical. So I wanna stay right on it for a second. The hunger to know those points so that you don't continue to do them, I think is a little bit over or understated because at the end of your projects, or. For me, for a long time with Edible Arrangements, the franchisees, it was after every major Valentine's Day, we sit down as a team and go, okay, well how did it go?

What do we not, what do we like? What do we not like? What do we wanna repeat? What do we wanna get rid of? For our construction companie, it's the same. We finish a project and it's like, what went well, what didn't go well? Let's immediately eliminate or create SOPs around these things to keep us away from this, because that can't happen ever again.

Even in the podcast world or gathering the King's Mastermind, we do an event that day. All the members are leaving and my team is getting together for dinner that day and we're taking notes and we're, we're dissecting back and forth what, what brought value, what didn't, what do we do next time?

What do we like, what do we not like? All of everything that you just said is super practical. Yeah, but it's not just doing it, but it's also the speed. Like do it, do it fast and implement from that plan. Right?

[00:27:53] Bryant Dawson: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I have a, I have the industry that I was in previously to thank a lot for that because, these are very, Very short durational projects.

You go shut down an oil refinery. They don't want that thing down for very long cuz it costs a lot of money. That's right. So , every action , there's a, reaction from it, right? And, and each thing parlays into another thing. And you have to know what those things are.

To have a successful project.

[00:28:22] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Yeah. That's so true. Okay. I wanna go into our speed run here and ask you some questions. You talked about KPIs a few minutes ago. What is the one KPI you would pick to track forever and ever? If you could only pick one? Hm.

[00:28:36] Bryant Dawson: Probably, probably time to money. Okay. Explain. Time, time to money. So like when, whenever we, I'm gonna use construction for example on this one. Whenever we have say we have 10 guys on a project, we want to know what the time to money ratio is on, on each man, or meet each man hour. Okay. Because we can, yeah, we can, we can say, okay, we need 10 million in the pipeline and we need X amount of people to get X amount out the backend.

Right. And if we're not tracking time to money, there's no way to predict that. This year we did, 10 million and next year we're gonna do 15 million, and here's the things that we're gonna change to, to do 15 million.

[00:29:19] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Yeah. So in essence, it gives you the trackers for kinda like the rest of the formula by based knowing that one kpi, which answers my question for, I think that, this applies obviously to, to other businesses too, but there's a lot of contractors, commercial guys, even, even manufacturing.

I think that this would like just super dial in. Give us just a smidge more, because I like, you've obviously got this dialed in. You have a formula. So I'm, I'm gonna try to extract a little bit more knowledge from you. You're talking to somebody that doesn't have a clue what you just said. Right? Right.

Okay. Help, help them understand and implement it into their business.

[00:29:56] Bryant Dawson: Yeah. E every business is different as far as, man hours. So we won't go too deep into like, monetary man hour piece. But

[00:30:03] Chaz Wolfe: let's, you should know that number is the point. You gotta, you get, like the listener knows, needs to know that number.

[00:30:07] Bryant Dawson: Yeah, yeah. You have to know that number. So let's say that you come to a, a conclusion that, that, that man needs to make you or, or needs to gross revenue $250,000 a year or something like that right now. You can take that, you can divide it out two by 2080 hours, on a. If that's the hours that the person's working, and now you can know what the production of that person needs to be.

Right? Like everybody only has so much physical capability in their life. Like you're never gonna take a $250,000 hammer swinger and turn 'em into a 5 million hammer swinger. Because he just doesn't have that much physical capability. Right? Right. You have to take that guy all the way down and, and we take, I take it down to the minute, so I know every minute that, that, that guy's swinging a hammer we need to get x amount of minutes out of him in order to , create that $250,000 or whatever that, whatever that number is that we're trying to create in that, in that year.

Right. So you take a big number and you reduce that big number down to smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller increments until you get into literally a minute or an hour, something that's very easily trackable. Yeah. And then you can check it every day and you can say, oh, well Chaz, today did he, he was on the clock for 10 hours.

Yeah. And, and we got seven, seven hours worth of technical, billable value out of him. He's 70% efficient. So there's a lot of different ways that this can go, but getting down to, a incremental amount is, is very important. Yeah. Because now you can start making decisions. Well, or, or, or, questioning the person and saying, oh, Do you like painting more than you like Sheetrock?

Right? Do you, do you, and then you can start tracking these things, find out where they excel best for themselves, mentally and physically, and also for the company. You can start steering them in those directions. You can improve you can improve your, your bottom line. At the end of the day, you can improve productivity, so this one KPI allows you to track many, many things and it creates a deeper company culture, creates a better performance from, from the personnel and, and supervisors and all the way, all the way up and down the ladder.

[00:32:40] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Makes it pretty transparent. And it also, it also builds in a mindset and culture that the company has to make money. Yeah. Like some people hear like, oh, well they're making money on me. It's like, well, I'm not sure how you think this works, but if the company doesn't make more money than you, then they don't have ways to pay other things besides you.

And it doesn't work. Right. Although that's super obvious to entrepreneurs like us and maybe the listeners helping, giving the listeners a way to communicate that even, even though you didn't say those exact words to your guys, you're building that into their mindset because. Otherwise there's nothing there.

There's no, there's no meat on the bone if we're not doing it in the proper efficiency.

[00:33:26] Bryant Dawson: Yeah. And that's, that's the first step, right? So you have to, you have to put it in a way in which they understand, because , if you go to the average employee and just be like, Hey, I need you to make more money for the company.

Right. They're gonna look at you and be like, whatever, yeah. And it's probably not gonna be a good relationship for a long time. Nope. So you have to find a way to convey that information , and really put it into their hands. And then reward on that side too. Right? So whenever that, if you're not tracking the kpi, you can't, there's no, there's no way to track how to reward somebody, but reward that good behavior.

Yeah. Whenever that KPI does change,

[00:34:06] Chaz Wolfe: yeah. There's alignment there It gives a pretty good purpose there for them to stay and keeping doing it. If, if there's alignment, it's a win-win is really what it comes down to. Yeah. What, what business resource have you used or partaking in books that you've read?

Anything like that that you'd recommend for the listener to. To grab

[00:34:23] Bryant Dawson: Mm. Books. So I'm a huge, huge book guy. My first year that I decided that I was gonna try to parlay out of oil and gas, I actually read and listened to 110 business books. Love it.

[00:34:39] Chaz Wolfe: He's a machine.

[00:34:40] Bryant Dawson: So it was, it was it was annoying for everybody around me, except for me, I guess.

I actually, even , I was in Saudi Arabia at the time I didn't have my wife and kids, but I, I would listen to books even throughout the night when I slept. Dunno if that did any good or not, but, Yeah. Hey, it

[00:34:58] Chaz Wolfe: didn't hurt you. I know that

[00:35:00] Bryant Dawson: it, it definitely didn't hurt. That's awesome.

But there, there are some really, really good books out there and, and I, I think the first one that if, I, I've got a big say in that mindset's everything, right? Yeah. And, and I think that's where most most answers are, are lost and is in mindset. People don't think they can do it or they don't.

Think they have what it takes or whatever. So I think's mindset's probably the most important thing. Rich Dad, poor Dad is a good book for mindset. There's another one out there by Michael Gerber called The Emith. Yeah. This is also another good mindset book. And then Grant Cardone's got, got a couple that, that are super good for that too.

And that's kind of the growth, the growth shift part. So yeah. And, and I would always recommend, and I do recommend those in that exact order. So it kind of takes you from, understanding the difference. Mindsets , that each individual has, right.

And then really the growth part. So

[00:36:00] Chaz Wolfe: yeah. Yeah. You did a nice little waterfall there with the books. I like that. I, I think that the number one, I agree with everything you just said, but the one thing that I heard you say more than anything was that you have been obsessed about personal development.

And I've heard a lot of people say that they are like this. And I think that that's where a lot of. Even our guests probably relate with me or I relate with them cuz I'm the same way. Not every guest has been like this. I've had some guests say, I've never even picked up a book. But I think that there is an appreciation for going to the next level in all areas, but even specifically mindset because there's just levels upon, levels upon levels of understanding not only just the human brain, but also how we make decisions.

And how those then affect all of the other things. Our personality, your interaction with my personality. What's your personality or, and or negotiating skills? Communication. Like there you could just, the list goes on and on. And I just don't know. I was gonna say, I don't know if I'll ever master those things.

I dunno if I wanna master 'em because I love the idea of going after it every day,

[00:37:00] Bryant Dawson: yeah. Yeah, I thought, I think, yeah. Yeah. You hit the nail on the head. I really don't have anything else to say there. That's you, you're right.

[00:37:07] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. There's a, there's like a hunger that guys like you and I develop around, I was thinking about it actually this morning, believe it or not.

I had this crazy routine. I get up and from five to eight is my like window of time in the morning. I got a little bit of time in there with breakfast with the kids, but basically I'm either reading or reading a visualization or praying, meditating on the things that I want or that I'm working through, or I'm listening to motivational stuff while working out, or I'm listening to a book and all of that happens like in sequential order.

And then boom, I get on my first eight o'clock call. And I'm just like fired up every single day ready to do it. Like I, if I could just do that over and over again and not even have to do the work stuff. Yeah. I just love developing my mind,

[00:37:53] Bryant Dawson: Yeah, I do too. I, I do a, I do a ton of podcast.

I was, I was just on one right before this, and I've got another one, this afternoon after this and, and love it. Love doing networking events and stuff. If, if I could figure out a way that, that I never had to do anything except for that part, like just engage in really good conversation and That's right.

And, and grow the mind and help grow other people. Like, I would just do that for the rest of my life.

[00:38:20] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Well start a podcast and, and that might, you might just get your dream there cuz I've recorded a ton and I've had a lot of people like straight in my eyes ask. What are you doing? How do you do it?

There's so many, we record, we release one every single day. So it's like, that's 365 recordings this year. That's three times more than the top 10% of all podcasts are gonna do, right. Once you get past episode 20, you're basically a rock star. But anyway, the point is, is that you can love the development, and I think that obviously having conversations is a big part of.

You know what I love as well, that's why I even do this to begin with. But all of those book reading talking with people, networking, all those things. I think once you understand the value of just those higher level activities, I think it's pretty spot on. I wanna bring our attention back to to family and, and as we kind of bring to a close here this is gonna be interesting because you and I align in so many areas when it comes to personal development and then just obviously as we've built businesses and real estate and stuff, but.

My belief is that there is no balance like that. It's a myth. I, I was arguing, not really, but, having a heated discussion with somebody about this a couple days ago. But the reality of it is that it doesn't exist. And even if we do obtain balance, it's like just for a couple of seconds as we're teetering.

And so what, what I believe is that we're obsessively going after the things that we want, and people do what they want. This is what mindset is , in a nutshell. Even based on Think and Grow Rich. And so you and I have been obsessed about our family or our, sorry, our business. That's how we've been successful.

You've talked about the. Hours and the books and the decision making, but I wanna know how you've been obsessed with your family at the same time, because I believe you can do it at the same time and I wanna know how you've done it.

[00:39:59] Bryant Dawson: Yeah. So , you definitely can and, and, and it is this like balancing act, , or you, there's, we've tried to set schedule around it.

Which has for us never really worked super, super well because stuff just comes up. You never know when, when you have that construction issue that comes up or you have that investor call that comes up and, and so it's very hard to put something on a calendar that, that, every day at one o'clock in the afternoon, I'm gonna do this thing.

For us. But at the same time, Like we may say, okay, let, let's go for a walk, like right after this or whatever. We're just gonna do it. And that's not planned or anything, sure. We just do that kind of stuff. Or, or like the, we may say, okay, well we're gonna go out west for a month and everybody's like, okay, well when did that come up? Oh, well, like yesterday. Just now. Yeah. And we work through this all the time. Me and my wife and my kids, it's like, okay, well, it, it's getting, it's getting pretty tough, that right now we, we, we haven't done a lot of things in the last X amount of time, and then we'll just, we'll just do it.

Yeah. But I think finding daily things is, is very, very important. And so we, we try to do little, little things every day that, that just kind of keep that connection going.

[00:41:18] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Yeah, I think you gave a really good picture there that there has to be regular things. As well as just the spontaneous, let's just go figure it out somewhere.

There's joy in both of those one's. Obviously more routine and builds differently than the other. But in inside of that practical every day, like for us that's, dinner time. I have a routine with the kids every single night that we go through, date nights with my wife. What are, what are some, maybe some of yours that are maybe on the more of the regular

[00:41:46] Bryant Dawson: examples?

Yeah, so my son, he's a aspiring singer. Like I, like I said, so , he's doing shows almost every single weekend. So we're doing that thing. Love it. So it's kind of cool. We get, we're going to different events and stuff like that pretty much every weekend. And then the weekends that we have off, we do a lot of , outdoor activities.

So we try to we try to go on those and do those, like this last weekend we went kayaking, so Nice. We try to open up our weekends a little bit to, to, to adjust us.

[00:42:15] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. That's cool man. I got one last question here, here for you, Brent. I wanna know if you had the opportunity to go back in time and whisper in the younger Bryants here, what would you say?

[00:42:27] Bryant Dawson: Hmm,

that's a good one.

I'd probably just say go for it, right? Yeah, just, just go for it.

[00:42:33] Chaz Wolfe: What do you think that the younger Bryant needed in that whisper that, that he didn't have, that you'd be given to him?

[00:42:41] Bryant Dawson: Well, I think, I think as a young person, first of all, you don't know. You don't know what you don't know, right?

And, and then you also don't, maybe don't have the confidence or don't know if it's gonna work out. And that was probably my biggest holdback from, from everything that I ever didn't do was just knowing. What the outcome of that was. , and as you get a little bit older and you start realizing , that maybe the outcome may not be exactly what you paint your picture to be, right, there's still gonna be an outcome.

And, and the more outcomes that you can, you can create in your life. The more clear the picture at the end really is. Yeah.

[00:43:34] Chaz Wolfe: That's good man. I think that that ties a nice little bow on everything that you've given to us so far. I think it actually describes you a lot even though maybe you would've been whispering that to the younger you, I think that you've been able to still do it.

I think even just understanding that if the listener can, can get inside of that construct that I just built there of. Your story. I think that that transfers hope more than you being able to actually go back and whisper because you freaking did it, yeah, yeah. Well, it's been a pleasure having you here, man.

I wanna know how the listener can, can connect with you. Number one, because you have opportunities to invest. So if they're listening right now and they want to get into real estate themselves as an investor, or potentially other ways, they need to be able to reach you that way. And then in addition, maybe they just wanna network with you.

Maybe there's a deal that you guys can do together. Maybe there's something in another way that they wanna connect on. How can they find

[00:44:22] Bryant Dawson: you? Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a really great place to connect with me. And then you can also get ahold of me on my website, which is Ingram Capital Fund.

[00:44:34] Chaz Wolfe: Perfect. Awesome man. We'll put all that in the show notes. I love your mindset. I love your intensity, really. I can tell that we're gonna run together and do things for the future in some capacity of some degree. So we'll have to figure out what that is. But thanks for being here, man.

Blessings on your, upon your family and all of your properties, everything you got your hand to, man. I appreciate you, Chaz. Thanks

[00:44:52] Bryant Dawson: for having me.

On this episode of Gathering The Kings, we welcome Bryant Dawson, the powerhouse behind Ingram Capital as a multi-family investor! A man of action, Bryant came from a dynamic background in the Oil and Gas sector, having worked across 40 states and 9 countries over a decade. Then, driven by the siren call of the real estate market in 2012, Bryant used his experience and acumen to tap into tax breaks and maximize his income. Now, he's a juggernaut in both commercial and single-family residential property management, boasting a track record of over 1800 remotes since 2015. The cherry on top? He managed all this while being a father of two, having had both his children in high school. In episode 283 of Gathering The Kings Podcast, Bryant breaks down his philosophies on time freedom and personal development, sharing how these principles guide his decision-making process. He discusses the art of making decisions quickly and then dealing with the consequences, an approach he applies both to his future-based decision-making strategy and his transition into creative finance strategy for single-family residences. If you're hungry for insights from a real go-getter who never shies away from a challenge, click play right now!

Bryant Dawson’s Info:

Website: https://www.ingramcapital.fund/our-team

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryant-dawson-72a838b8/

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