881: How to Hit Six Figures as a First-Year Real Estate Agent with Dan Lesniak

Aaron: Hello, real estate rockstars. Welcome back. This is Aaron Amuchastegui, today’s host of the Real Estate Rockstars radio podcast. Today, I get to interview a great friend of mine, Dan Lesniak. Dan and I met a few years ago at one of the funniest experiences. We’re at an Ironman training camp out in Florida. It was a totally new event to me. Dan, at the time, had done a few of these things before I got to learn a lot from him. We also found out at the same time we both had a love of real estate.

We get to talk to Dan about all sorts of things today, but if you go find him on social media later, you will see all sorts of content that he’s pumping out. He is building just a huge real estate team out in Arlington, Virginia, and has lots of hacks and fun things that he’s doing. I cannot wait to get started talking. Dan, how’s it going, man?

Dan: Great. I am excited to be back on the show. I’ve been on a couple of times before, but this is my first time being on with you, so I’m excited about that.

Aaron: Yes. You’ve been interviewed a couple of times by Pat Hiban. When was the last time you were on the show?

Dan: It was over a year ago, so it’s been a while. This is a good time to come back on and do some updates.

Aaron: Yes, that would be so awesome. Right now your team– You’re based in Arlington, Virginia, Washington DC area. If we were just going to jump into what makes the DC area unique when it comes to real estate, what’s the real estate environment like out there? What’s the average prices? Things like that.

Dan: The median home price in our area is about 500k. What makes this market unique is it’s very, very, very stable. It has a federal government here. No matter who’s in power, Democrats, Republicans, people have jobs. I remember 10, 11, 12 years ago, Lehman Brothers, financial crisis, all that stuff was going on. There’s double-digit unemployment nationwide.

I don’t think our area ever got to above 5%. People had jobs even during the worst financial crisis that we’ve experienced in our lifetime. People had jobs. You heard about some places, real estate markets going down 50%, 60%. I know smart guys like you were buying in probably a lot of those places, coming off of the sidelines. We didn’t have those kind of buying opportunities in this market. It really only went down by like 10%.

It’s just a good, stable, steady market. You probably don’t get the huge upswings that you do in some of these other markets, but you don’t get the huge downswings. You’re always chugging along at 2%, 3%, 4% growth, which is good and sustainable for the job market and economy. I think it presents another challenge. We tend to have a lack of inventory.

That’s something I feel like I’ve dealt with my entire real estate career for almost a decade now is how to help buyers get homes when they’re competing. There’s just not a lot on the market. That’s my take on the DC market and what I’ve been dealing with for the last eight years or so.

Aaron: That is a great summary, man. There are very few places in the US that during those downturns had the security like that. I think people could actually take that advice and try to find places near their own market where there’s stability. One of the places I invest a lot of time right now is near army bases because army bases tend to beat some of those ups and downs, too. They don’t always have a lot of gain, but they have a lot of stability.

When the market crash was first happening, my wife and I were living down on the central coast of California, near San Luis Obispo. We heard about all these foreclosures happening, but San Luis Obispo is a very beautiful college town, and they probably had 10% price change instead. Then we moved up to Sacramento, California, where the explosion of the foreclosure crisis happened.

Prices were at 30, 40 cents on the dollar, and we really got to see that. I bet you face some unique challenges to be able to compete in a stable market. You’ve got to set yourself apart when you’ve got that lack of inventory. What’s the biggest way you try to attack that lack of inventory?

Dan: Two ways, really. One is we are really, really good at marketing for sellers and trying to find homes before they come on the market for our buyers. That can be through getting the listings ourselves or hunting for sellers. It can be through networking with other agents. We’re always trying to find the deal before it’s on the market. Then two, can we get our buyers to win out when it does come on the market, and not necessarily by being the highest priced offer?

I think the biggest thing to do there is to really steady and know the contract. Don’t just go through and check the standard contingencies, the standard terms that are recommended by the Realtors Association that people have been doing for 20, 30 years because if you just go to the defaults on all of that and you’re left with one thing to compete on and that is price.

I think the key to this is educating the buyer upfront that, A, this contract is 20 pages, 30 pages, however long it is in your market. Here are some areas that you can choose. Do you need a financing contingency if you’re pre-approved with a great lender? You’ve done all the work upfront. Do you need the appraisal contingency, or if you do, how much can you shorten it, or can you alter it so that if it comes in low, you take on some of the risks instead of it being all on the seller?

There’s a dozen things like that that if you at least educate the buyers upfront and let them think about it, they can make the best decision for themselves on how to make their offer stand out and they’re not going through this and seeing it for the first time after they’ve found the home that they love.

Aaron: That is such a great piece of advice for people where you’re in competitive markets and you’re going to be representing buyers fighting against other people. It’s so important to realize it’s not just about the money. It’s not just about the dollar volume. Sometimes it’s about who’s buying the house, other times it’s about the speed. Every seller would rather sell for $10,000 less this week than wait two months to sell it for $10,000 more.

There are all these timing factors and then there’s risk. You meet people that have had their escrows have fallen out two or three times. Now, they just want one that’s going to stick. Being able to go, “Hey, I may not be able to offer.” Then as seller, too, we see those come in where it’s like, “Hey, I’m willing to pay $10,000 more than it appraises for if it appraises under,” or, “Hey, I don’t have this.” Obviously, sellers like cash buyers quick. Not everybody can be that, so what?

There’s different ways that you can tailor your offers. Then I guess the next step is making sure the listing agent knows because not every listing agent is educated or is going to know how to represent them. When you do that, how do you take that offer to that listing agent? Do you call them, you make sure that they know those extra things you’re doing that they may not notice if they scroll through it too quick?

Dan: Yes, I think that’s important. You got to have a good summary where you highlight the offer and sell them the benefit of it. For our agents, we’re telling them to highlight that there’s no contingency for this or that we’ve only got a seven day appraisal contingency because we have a lender that can turn it around and we’ve closed a 100 deals with this lender in the last year and a half. That means something, so we highlight the offer, we highlight the team. We highlight the amount of closings that we’ve done and tell them that, “Look, our buyer wants this place.”

The contingencies are solid, they’re clean, there’s going to be less risk to your seller, more certainty to your seller. Our team is known for delivering. The lenders that we get our buyers to use are known for delivering. You got to sell all that stuff to the listing agent upfront. Have the lender call them to do that, that’s always good if the lender can call and sell them if they need to. Sometimes, the lender’s reputation is so good that it doesn’t matter, but I think it always helps.

Aaron: It’s helping to know, hey, even though this isn’t a cash offer, this is as good as cash. We’ve already done this. I love getting offers from people like we’ve already done the full review. We’ve already gone through tax returns. We put 30 days, we can actually close it in 18, probably. We’ll work through this and now we can change that over. I love those ideas. How many people are in your office?

Dan: We’ve got just over 40 agents now. I think 42 agents and about 35 staff. Some of those are inside sales agents, about six of them. Really, we’ve got 48, close to 50 people in sales roles, and then another 30 in marketing admin support.

Aaron: That seems huge. Are there very many teams that big out in the DC area?

Dan: There’s one other team that I know of that’s probably close to us in overall size. Then I’d say after that, the next biggest team– I may be wrong. I don’t know them all, but the next biggest one’s probably around 25, 30 people. That’s what I’m guessing.

Aaron: That’s got to help you, too, in that competitive market. You have that brand that everybody’s standing behind. The more agents you have, the more signs in the yard. Even if it’s a different agent for that company that’s got to help as you get to grow that.

Aaron: Let’s talk about that Dan Lesniak is living this epic life. When I met you at an Ironman camp, we did that race together in St. Georgia. It was a brutal race, especially for my first one, but you knocked that out like it was easy. How many of those races are you doing right now? Have you done some other events that are similar?

Dan: Yes, I’ve done six full Ironman’s. I think six half, and then last year, I did a 50-mile ultramarathon, so just 50 miles of running up and down two different mountains. That was tough.

Aaron: Is that in the Pacific Northwest? Was that like Washington or something like that?

Dan: Yes. It was near near Mount Rainier.

Aaron: As you’re going through that 50-miler, and you’re going up and down, what were some of those thoughts that were going through your head? Did you feel like, “Oh, I prepared for this”? Did you did you go into that pain place you had to talk yourself through it? What’s the driving factor for all that stuff?

Dan: It was up a mountain, 45,000 feet of climbing and then back down. That was like the first 25, 26 miles, and then you had to do it again on a different mountain of similar elevation. It was a challenge doing that living on the East Coast because I just couldn’t get a 5,000 foot climb anywhere near my house. The best I could do is drive an hour, hour and a half, out to the Appalachian Trail, and run up and down that, but that was like 2,000 feet of gain.

You could do it a couple times, but that’s not the same as going 5,000 all at once. I couldn’t physically simulate it. It really becomes more of a mental game. The biggest thing for me it was just getting past the halfway point. It was brutal going up another mountain after I essentially had a marathon in my legs. Those are some very, very slow miles. To be honest, it wasn’t an easy way to quit. It’s not like a road race or an Ironman where there’s support crews and drop tents all this every mile. You would have to gone a few miles uphill or downhill.

Aaron: During the middle of the mountain. It’s like no matter what, you’re like 20 miles–

Dan: To find a way just to quit. This wasn’t an option in my mind.

Aaron: That’s like a burning the boat scenario, right?

Dan: A little bit.

Aaron: We burn the boat, like we’re there. There’s nothing we could do. You swim a mile out in the ocean. The only way back is the mile back in, but it should be easy. What a crazy challenge. I remember following you guys on social media as you were doing that and just thinking like what a crazy way. Even as you described it, you charged up a mountain and then you ran down and then you had to do it again.

You’ve got these big teams. You’re active in real estate. You’re active in business. You’re a family guy. How do you find time to train for that stuff? What time do you get up? What’s your daily routine like?

Dan: I’m usually up around 4:00 AM. I do about an hour of just reading, journaling, reviewing my goals, then I’ll usually work for about an hour. I’ll dive into some marketing. I’ll dive into social media content. I will create marketing emails for the real estate team or the development team or a coaching company. I do all that usually in the first two hours. Then I’ll usually get my workout in. By the time I’m done with that, usually the kids are up.

I try to spend an hour, do breakfast with them if I can. Then I’m usually into the office around nine o’clock, but I’ve already gotten a good two hours of work, and plus my workout, plus family time. I start earlier than most people, probably, and I probably don’t waste as much time. I’m not binging on Netflix. I’m not watching a lot of TV. I think the average I’ve heard of this– I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve heard of multiple sources that the average American is watching five hours of TV a day.

That’s a whole work week. That’s 35 hours in a week. I don’t know. I think 99% of humans have time to do more. It’s just what do they choose to do with that time. I’m not saying watching– You should never watch TV, but I think more people just seem to be intentional about how they use their time and I’m just very intentional about how I use my time.

Aaron: You and I were right at this event in Aspen last week, Mastermind. Ed was talking and being as high charging entrepreneur, and you talked about waking up before everybody else and working so stinking hardly. Sometimes in life, we have these moments where there’s life hacks, like this is how you can work more efficiently. This is how you can go, live with your life.

There are times that simply about you have to charge harder. You’ve got to work harder. You’re in that super competitive market. You’re in the season. You got to fit it all in. You got to get up early. You got to get up early and you got to work hard. I’ve seen you doing those things, too, where you’re on the bike and you send an email instead of watching TV. One of my favorite things is about– I have a similar morning routine. I have a similar way to hack the days that I workout, ran five or six miles. There’s a light workout, and then coming to work after you’re charging.

One of the cool things that I’ve seen on yours and have the same effect at my house is now my daughters are jumping on the treadmill afterward. Half of the time where you’re on the bike, your kids are on the bike next to you or running next to you. It’s like they see you doing these things, and that becomes family time too, right?

You’re like, “Okay.” By then they’re awake, but sometimes that family time is leading by example. They’re doing it alongside their– Do you know why we were talking about that much, like the example you’re setting, that your kids start want to naturally do that? They’re young, but you could see– Do you think they’re going to follow on your footsteps with that?

Dan: I think it definitely helps. My four and a half year old, I got him this little trainer bike that sits next to mine in the gym. I don’t think there’s much resistance on it, but it can hook up to his iPad. He can actually pedal and drive a Blaze and the Monster Machines around. That’s pretty cool for him. That did translate to him riding a bike at a really young age. He was riding a bike without training wheels when he was three years old.

He’s really good on his bike now. When we’re in our neighborhood in Florida, it’s more– We got a vacation home down there, it’s on a cul-de-sac neighborhood. It’s pretty safe for him to ride in the street there. He’s actually ridden while I’ve done some runs. He’ll keep up with me running on his bike. I think the most he ever did was three and a half miles, which at four years old, that’s pretty good on a bike. I definitely think it helps set the example.

He’ll hop on the treadmill and do a quarter mile. That’s about his max right now. I definitely think kids learn by example. The biggest thing that we can do to teach them is to set a good example for what we want them to model. I think that’s true with our fitness, our relationships, our business. I try to talk to them even when they’re four, three, two, like really young. I try to talk to them about my goals and all these different areas and why I’m doing it.

I think it’s having an effect. I’ll see in the future, I guess, but I think– [crosstalk] I think I wouldn’t be surprised if he does an Ironman at a really young age. It wouldn’t shock me because that’s what he’s seen his dad do for several years.

Aaron: I think all of us know that we look up to the people on our life. We copy them. We see what we like. We see what we don’t like and then leaving– When I get to see my daughter jumping off the treadmill, I’m like, “That is pretty awesome.” What you’re doing is super inspiring. I need to take my son to the next level, ride the bikes so I can go with him.

Again, the only reason I really want to talk about this first part where you’re really diving into nitty-gritty is so many people out there, like people listening to this podcast are real estate agents who are trying to figure how do they succeed in real estate? How do they just succeed in life? How to become entrepreneurs? What are the secrets?

Sometimes that secret- and people are like, “But I don’t have enough time to do that.” You’re like, “I don’t have enough time to hang out with my kids and exercise and do this and do my own marketing stuff.” Your secret is like, “No. I’m going to get up early. I’m going to work hard. I’m going to do it. I’m going to show by example, and some of my kid time might be him ride his bike while I jog, and sometimes just going to be help him with–,” or whatever else that’ll be– You were definitely showing the work hard, and I see that.

Aaron: Let’s change direction a little bit, jump into some of that nitty-gritty of real estate. We’re talking about you. How many houses have you sold in the last 12 months? What’s the volume, commissions, that sort of stuff?

Dan: 2019, we sold 672 homes, I believe. We were just under $4 million in total volume. I believe that translated into just over $8 million in gross commission income. Some of those deals, by the way, were our own development deals and investment deals, so we weren’t getting paid commission on it. That, of course, affects that overall number, but yes, we ended up around $8 million in gross commission. We took home about 25% of that as a net income.

Aaron: That is awesome. About 600-ish houses. You talked about $500,000 at median income, but some of them were deals you’ve done where you make money, otherwise. You may able to get a chance to talk about how you were able to transition from real estate to that. You talked a little bit about representing the buyers earlier. Your teams, your office as a whole. Are you guys mostly listing agents, mostly buyer’s agents, or is it everything?

Dan: We’re about probably 62%, I’m guessing. I may be off by a percent or two, but probably 62% by side, 38% list. I really liked that ratio because there’s a lot of numbers thrown out in real estate and metrics from different books. I don’t know how true they all are, but I know one kind of metric that a lot of people hang their hat on is for every listing, you should do two buy-sides. You don’t see a lot of big teams really hit that numbers.

Most big teams, big agents, they end up being 50-50, or they’re 60-40, or 75-25, with listings dominating. I really liked that we’ve been able to have an effective buy-side. I think it’s one of the most effective buy-side businesses in the industry because I feel like if the market ever does shift in our area, which would take some just crazy event. If it ever did, I just feel like we’re very well-positioned because we just really know how to find buyers and find them homes and get them under contract.

Aaron: Probably a lot of that hard work, it’s something like you teach to your agents to win the day out there and to be confident to go, “Hey, if this changes, we’re well-positioned,” because there’s lots of companies that are heavy on all listings, all buyer’s agents. Now, we’re diversified. If you get listings, maybe you’ll have some of your own listings. We had a real estate company out of California that was based on my wife’s brokerage that just sold my own listings.

We would buy the house, we’d fix them, we’d sell them. It built up a great income stream. She was so good at being an agent, the broker, and she built up these giant teams. That was an income that our family had, but then as soon as we stopped flipping houses in California, all of a sudden, that company that was well-established and built, we had not diversified it. We hadn’t set it up to be able to also be buyer’s agents or whatever. It was a shame because it was like we had these agents, we have these teams, we had these systems.

I was like, “Well, we do listings. If we’re not doing listings anymore, then have the people go work somewhere else.” You’ve got the two different teams. What’s your best way to get leads, whether it’s listings or buyer leads? If you were going to give somebody one tip and one hack to go get a lead, where would you send them if you could only have one choice?

Dan: If you only had one choice. Well, it depends how you’re set up. I think different lead sources are going to work better for different styles of personality and different markets and different teams. Our best lead sources tend to be past clients and referrals. We’ve had several years in a row now of closing several hundred people. We just have a huge database to stay in touch with to drive those leads. We work them hard, so we do a quarterly client event.

This year, it’s going to be same as last year. We’re going to do a Casino Night, Q1. A baseball game in Q2. Fall barbecue in Q3. Santa brunch, Q4. We do these client events. We are doing weekly emails. We’re doing giftings, all sorts of stuff to stay in touch with our past clients. For us, we’ve got the history. We’ve got the ability to work, a big database. That’s our number one lead source. If you’re just starting out, it’s going to be different. You’re not going to have a huge client base to go after.

My recommendation is if you’re a smaller agent, you’re just starting out, you maybe don’t have a ton of clients or a database to work is to be intentional about your target audience. Sit down. I talked about this in my book, this process of STP, segmentation, targeting, and positioning. Go through and segment your market. Pick out a skit, and then position yourself as someone that can add unique value to them.

One example might be maybe you want to work with expired and withdrawn listings. Well, that’s an easy one that’s low cost for a new agent to get good at. You just have to discipline yourself to market to those people. Call those lists every day for a couple of hours. Anyone could start off doing that and go out and do $10, $20 million in their first year. Just not a lot of people have the discipline to actually call those lists for an hour or two in a day.

If you’re starting off and want a low budget way to get to a six-figure times two income even in year one, call expireds and withdrawns. Create a whole program around that. I think really figure out what you would enjoy doing, figure out what type of buyers or sellers you want to work with, and then put on blinders and go deep on that market.

Aaron: If you were giving someone that advice, how long should they expect to stick with it? If you tell them, “Hey, don’t give up before it comes in. It takes a while to get these leads.” If someone’s doing two hours of calls a day, how long would you tell them it takes where they really have to buckle down and not give up?

Dan: It’s not long when you think about how big the rewards can be. This is the interesting thing about real estate is one of the only industries I know where you don’t have to have advance training, advance degree. The barrier of entry is super, super low. For $1,000, maybe $2,000, you can pay for your dues, educations, all that for a year. Very, very low entry when you consider any other business to get into.

The rewards are huge. If you do it right, you can get to six figures within a year, which is the top 10% of all US incomes. If you stick with it for a couple of years, anybody can really become a one-percenter in terms of net income. I think you got to be willing to put in three to six months, at least. This is where everyone gets lost.

They’ll try and call in expires for a week or two, it doesn’t work. Or try open houses for a week or two, it doesn’t work. They just shift around, and they’re always changing their focus and not sticking with it long enough, but I think you give it at least three, but be prepared to give it six months. If you’re willing to do that, you can have pretty much unlimited success in this business.

Aaron: I love that piece of advice. It’s like you got to be willing to stick with it. You got to choose a niche, and find that niche that really matches your personality. At the beginning, you’re learning scripts, but it can become natural, whether it’s people, whether it’s client outreach. I got to go see Star Wars early because an agent that I knew has invited all these families to go do it. There’s parties, or things like that, or that’s some people’s niche, or it’s the buyer’s agent or those expired, finding something that matches your personality, going after it, then also just committing.

It’s the same when people are saying they want to buy their first investment property. They want to list the house. They want to start any business or change any lifestyle out there. It’s like commit to a certain amount of time and be willing to dig in and do that. Do you have a script that you would share that you would talk through? If you’re calling that first person, it’s like, “Hey, their house didn’t sell last week.” I know it’s probably been a year since you’ve done those calls, but when you did them, what was that like?

Dan: We use a basic script when we call expireds and withdrawns. It’s, “Hello, I’m looking for the owner of–,” and I list the address because I’ve got it in Mojo, or whatever dialer system we were using. “I’m looking for the owner of 123 Main Street. This is Dan. I’m a local real estate agent. I want to know if you would still take an offer on your house.” Sometimes they’re like, “Yes,” or “No.” Sometimes they don’t even know that it’s off the market, so they’re like, “What do you mean? It’s listed for sale.” You’re like, “No, the MLS is showing that it’s listed as withdrawn or expired.” Sometimes their agents don’t even tell them that that’s about to happen.

Aaron: What an opportunity for a lead right there. You’re calling and saying, “Hey, so your agent didn’t say your house is off the market.” They’re like, “No, I already have an agent.” You’re like, “Yes, but your agent– It’s not listed right now, they gave up.” They’re like, “What?” If that means you’re going to hire me now. Some of those conversations, at first, people are afraid to make the call or maybe there’s maybe 10 people making the calls.

You got be willing to you do it and handle that rejection every once in a while. That would be the dream call where they’re like, “What? I thought it was listed.” You’re like, “No, [crosstalk] for a week.”

Dan: No. That’ll happen if you called for an hour every day, you will get at least one of those types every day. After we get through that part, I’m trying to establish timing and motivation. The first questions are established the timing, basically, would you still take an offer? Then I’d try to go to motivations. “Why are you trying to sell your house at 123 Main Street?” “Oh, I want to retire and move to Florida.” “Okay, if I can get you that offer, how soon would you want to make the move?”

Narrowing down on the timing. Then I’m going to close through the appointment and bring it all together and tell them, “Look, if I can get you an offer to help get you down to Florida, would you be willing to meet with me for 30 minutes to discuss how we can do that and do a different job than your previous agent did and then I try to present two different options? Is afternoon good or would tomorrow be better?” I don’t want to say like, “Are you available for an appointment?” I want to give them a yes or no option. I want so say, “Are you available today or tomorrow?”

Aaron: Yes, that’s great. Get the yes, get the yes, for sure.

Dan: Those are some of the basic principles. It adapts based on the situation. I think a lot of people try to shove one script at every situation. That just doesn’t work. You got to have some basic principles and be willing to adjust and adapt. I got some of that, by the way. If you go to hyperfasttips.com, you can download a hundred strategies and tips from my book, The HyperLocal HyperFast Real State Agent. Go to hyperfasttips.com, you can see some more of those tips and a lot more.

Aaron: That is awesome. We’ll put that on the show notes as your free gift. It sounds like that is the one that you gave out, hyperfasttips.com People can go even get more of that, even that advice you just went through. Again, if you’re an agent right now and you’re figuring out what’s next, go through and re-listen to that script. The idea of committing to that timeline and then having those different ideas as you figure out your niche, your timeline, and your goals, what a way to be successful and grow that.

I’m sure we can talk for another hour about all the stuff you have. One of the real fun things that I want to talk about. You and I, we’re friends– In normal world, we’re friends on social. I get to see all these fun stuffs you’re doing. There’s times when I see you with videos, interviewing Gary V. You got Grant Cardone on your shows, and you’re doing these summits where you interview different people.

The millionaire listing, all the famous people out there, you’re doing so much fun stuff out there. Do you have anything fun coming up now? When’s your next digital summit or in-person summit? What do you got going on for training?

Dan: A couple of years ago, we started to really focus on taking what we’re doing on our team and bring it to a bigger audience and training real estate agents. We’ve been doing that through– Carrie and I, my wife, have been doing that through Hyperfast agent, that’s our coaching and education training company. We’ve done two big events. Two years ago, we did a big event with Grant Cardone. Last year, we did it with Ryan Serhant.

This year, we decided to do more than just one event. We’re still going to be the big Hyperfast sales somewhat in the end of the year. Coming up in the spring, we’re going to do a boot camp. It’s going be a little bit lower key of an event. It’s not going to be 12 different speakers like our summit. It’s going to be two days in our office. It’s going to be training from myself, Carrie, some of the leaders on our team. For two days, dive into what we do for lead generation.

We’ll do a panel with our inside sales agents. These are the guys on our phones that are booking- they’re each booking four or five appointments a day. There’s six of them. We’re getting over a 100 appointments a week, some weeks. They will actually go through what they do on the phone. They’ll talk about expireds and withdrawns and how they book those. They’ll talk about what they do with sign calls, or how they handle the person that wants to just see the property, the showing, how they actually can switch that to a buyer-consult appointment.

We’ll go over that. We’ll bring our top listing and buyer agents and go over how they do the listing presentation, what they do for buyers. All the things that we do to win offers in competitive situations. We’ll do breakouts for solo agents and team members and team leaders. Whether you’re starting out or you’re a team leader doing over a hundred million, there will be a track in the program for you. That’s going to be March 4th and March 5th at our office in Arlington, Virginia.

It’s in our office. Limited space. It’s going to be very hands-on. Not a ton of people this. It’s not going to be like our summit where it’s hundreds of people. It’s going to be a very, very small group of people.

Aaron: That sounds freaking awesome, man. It’s like drinking from a firehose for two days. You drink your coffee, you show up, take a ton of notes for every access, every aspect of the listing as part of the buying part. You’ll going to learn from the big team. That’s got to be great for people that have a smaller team from other towns where they don’t have so many resources to come from.

Like most of your time right there, you got a big team, you got this list, or how do you get there. You’re going to be sharing some of that information out there. You said that’s just coming up then? That’s on March? What were the dates?

Dan: March 4th and 5th.

Aaron: What do you charge for somebody to show up to an event like that for two days at your office?

Dan: We should charged a lot more than we are, but we’re only charging $2,000 for that.

Aaron: That’s what’s funny. We go to a lot of different masterminds now, a lot of different events, things like that. The one that I was looking to going to– It sounded very similar. They would show up for two days, we’re going to go through all of your ad copy or Facebook so there’s a $10,000 ticket price to go the person–

You got a $2,000 ticket price, any agent can come, invest in themselves. I hate to ask, but I have to for our listeners, can we get a discount? Can we get a Rebus discount for people to be able to get out there? This will air a couple of weeks before that, people will be able to sign up. How do we do that?

Dan: I don’t know if we’ll have space left. I haven’t mentioned this to Carrie, so hopefully you’re not getting me in trouble. I love the Rebus audience and being on with you guys. We’ll create a coupon. That coupon will be Rebus 500, and we’ll give your listeners $500 off the ticket price.

Aaron: That would be awesome. If you guys are listening out there, I promise, it’s events like this that took me to a whole different level in my expertise in business of investing and buying and selling houses, so much of it was from that- was from going out and meeting other people. If you’re thinking that that might be an expensive ticket, that’s actually a really inexpensive ticket price.

If you’re watching on Youtube, Dan’s put it on the wall behind him. Rebus 500 is the code. What website do they go to? Is that Hyperfasttips or a different one?

Dan: That would be a different one. I think we got it on Bitly links. I’ll just write it up here. Bit.ly/HFAbootcamp. Bitly is funny. I probably should just got a vanity URL, you got to get the caps right on that, so it’s bit.ly/HFAbootcamp.

Aaron: All right, bit.ly/HFAbootcamp. We’ll put that as a show link, too. If you’re listening to it now, check your phone, get that. That sounds like it’s a limited time. By the time this gets out there, hopefully, there’s a few seats left for our people to get out there, and a good fun excuse for a trip to Washington, DC. See what other teams are doing out there. That’s awesome. Any of you guys out there that have taken the Rebus University and signed up for classes, you get to see Dan’s wife on there, teaching classes.

There’s so much stuff. You guys have been involved for a long time with the podcast and with the University, so that is super awesome. I guess my last question as we close this out, what’s next? What’s your next big adventure? What’s that thing you’re looking forward to right now, whether it’s a race, whether it’s a family thing, whether it’s a business thing, what do you have going on next?

Dan: Yes, a lot on a ton of different fronts. One of the things I’m most excited about right now is what we’re building out on our investment development side and platform. This all started by doing one deal, I think it was about six years ago now, and it’s just snowballing some more. We’re actually converting rooms and apartment buildings and the condos in DC. We’ve partnered with one amazing builder. He just does a phenomenal job.

We convert these buildings and the condos, sell them, and it’s become a huge, huge, huge business for us. It may surpass our real estate business in the next year or so. I’ve just kind of been focused and heads down and doing this, but I looked up the other day and realized we’ve raised $7 million in investor equity. We raise money for each of these deals and pay our investors a 15% preferred return.

They’re getting a great return. It’s in an area like I mentioned at the beginning of the show, even if a crash comes, our areas is resilient enough for these projects to still be successful. This has grown now to– I believe we’ve got 118 units in the pipeline, which is just crazy. [crosstalk]

Aaron: That’s completely wild.

Dan: [crosstalk] out of nowhere. [chuckles]

Aaron: What a fun passion project, dude. I love rebuilding things. You see how all the shows out there, so everybody’s market has different things they can do and, like you said, taking those real homes, converting them to condos, seeing what’s out there. I can’t wait to see more on social media and the other stuff that you’re doing. If people want to find you on social, what’s your Instagram handle, what’s your Facebook handle?

Dan: Yes, the handle is @thedanlesniak. That works, I believe, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter. YouTube is the HyperFast Agent channel, but for my personal accounts, it’s @thedanlesniak.

Aaron: @thedanlesniak. I promise, if you find Dan on there, you’re going to be able to find all that other stuff, too. He does such a great job at promoting, adding value, teaching agents things. It feels like it’s every day you’re supposed to give video about something, about how to grow your business, how to join something, how to do something big.

Dan, it was super fun catching up today. Thank you. Thank you for the big offer that you gave to all of our listeners today to go to your Bootcamp. Thanks for always being so supportive and getting to come on here and talk about life and family, and business, and everything else. I had a fun time today. We’ll have you back again.

Dan: Yes, I’m looking forward to it. Always great to catch up with you and always great to be on Rebus. Love it.

Aaron: Thanks a lot.