From Teacher to Teacher with Venture D Properties' Todd Dexheimer

0:00
Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, Founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. Stick around to the end of the show; we'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go.

All right with us right now. We've got Todd Dexheimer. And Todd, you are the owner of Venture D Properties. You're the host of the Pillars of Wealth Creation podcast. Thank you so much for joining us.

0:47
Yeah. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.

0:49
So Todd, just quick overview. What does venture D properties do?

0:53
Yeah, we focus on multifamily acquisitions and value ads. Or taking properties that are a little bit beat up, maybe outdated, just need some help, and we're fixing them up. We're typically raising rents, but one of the biggest things we try to focus on is lowering expenses, doing odd things in there like green systems and, you know, just just striking our efficiencies. And we do that through syndication. So basically pulling investors money together to buy the asset and providing our investors with solid returns

1:29
now, and so kind of interesting about your background, you used to be a school teacher.

1:34
I used to be a high school industrial tech teacher, so shaft class like wood tech, and oh my gosh, I was great. Do you know if they

1:43
that's is that still done?

1:45
It's still done it you know, when like, as I entered into the field, it was really getting pummeled. They were taking it out of schools. So last name and last name and last name is still kind of getting Hit a little bit but i think is actually kind of coming back a little bit and I wouldn't necessarily call it now wood wood shop and like metal shop in traditional sense it's that step right science technology engineering and math. And it's kind of shifted how it is so there's a lot more computer work but there's a lot more like into the manufacturing the engineering aspect of it and last in the like the Hey, let's make a cabinet. Right. We'll just 3d printed cabinet now. Yeah, we're gonna 3d printer cam.

2:37
That's so so what was so you were working for the school district? And then did you decide at some point? You know, I'm pretty handy here. Uh, I guess at the same time you had you were doing properties on your own. Um, can you explain that little evolution there? Well, yeah.

2:54
So you know what Josh is almost started like right away, right when I was Teaching them like this is just isn't for me like this isn't getting me up in the morning and I'm not excited to do it. I enjoyed it to an extent, but it just wasn't quite for me. And so that evolution was like reading books and just like figuring out what I wanted to do next and I was good at I was good at the construction side I did construction through the summers, I was like, it was a natural fit real estate made a lot of senses. These books, I'm an analytical type person. So I'm reading these books, and I'm looking at these numbers, I'm gonna mind that this just makes sense. I got to figure out a way I can get into that. And, and so I started buying these small properties, single family houses, duplexes, finding partners to buy with like figuring out how we could get in there and eventually it just snowballed into, you know, doing a lot of flips doing a lot of one to four family rentals and and eventually ended up now where I'm at right now which is buying typically we buy like 100 plus unit apartment.

3:59
Whoa. Wow, wow. So I mean, that's it sounds impressive. I know you've been doing this a while but you know, properties of that size. I mean, obviously, again, you know, everyone's you know, everyone's doing their homework, you know, you're syndicating the buy. So like, everybody's kind of coming in so well, so what was your first property? And what did you learn from that one?

4:22
Wow, man, you're taking me like way back in ancient history. Right. Great scores,

4:28
flipping properties in grade school.

4:30
Yeah, it's funny actually, because I, I apparently don't like to do things small. So my first property was actually about three like houses all at once, pretty much I must have closed on them within like a couple days or a couple of weeks for sure of each other. I don't remember. So I'm just gonna take you through one of them. Or maybe we can talk about all of them. It's up to you. But the one over that I would go through was a single family. It was a rental that I create. I made it into a rental and I bought it for Right around 60,000, I put another about 15,000. I did all the work myself with actually a couple of like friends, my wife even came and helped. I think my parents came one day and helped a couple days maybe. And we just fix that property up, got a tenant in there was renting it for like 1400 bucks a month. So that math works all day. And I ended up meeting somebody fairly shortly thereafter, who was a mortgage broker who said, Wow, you've got a bunch of equity that you've created in this property. Why don't you refinance? And I thought, well, that's impossible, right? The market, this was 2008. So the market like crashed. Yeah, he was running for the hills. But we ended up refinance ended up pulling actually cash out of it like 20 K or so of cash out of it to be able to buy my next property. So that's working out really well. I actually still hold that property to this day. I've just just refinanced I haven't refinanced it again. So, like I only I don't know very much. It's great.

6:05
Yeah. Nice, nice. Well, it's great to own properties free and clear with no mortgage on it.

6:10
Yeah, it's probably 30 soon actually some nice cash

6:13
flow. Right. Um, so Todd, at what point then do you say you know, this is going pretty good for me. I'm going to now open this up to you know, either teaching what I do, or you know, as you do right now, you know, again building and forgive me on the vocabulary what syndication deals Is that right? Yeah, okay.

6:35
Yeah, I mean, it took a while probably too long, quite frankly, I got kind of probably in my own way. I through this process of buying these properties. I was also flipping so I flipped probably two to three houses before I bought one as a as a rental. So I did probably like 150 flips and the bought a big rental portfolio of small properties. And eventually I got into the kind of mid size apartments and then to the syndications. So it took a long time. I think my first syndication was in 2016. So just a few years ago. And like I said, I just got my own way. It was like I got comfortable, you know, you know, I mean, I could just like fat and happy, it was easy to do what I was doing and I wanted to step up. But I ended up just waiting. And eventually as I I had a business partner for a while there and I when we split, I just kind of looked at everything. And one an analyze and said, Man, these rentals makes so much sense. I need to double down on these stop the flipping. And as I did that, and I started buying bigger properties. I said, Wow, this makes sense. Like I get to continue to buy bigger properties because the scale the efficiency is just so much greater as you do more. And so it made a lot of sense. To continue to go up and scale, and I had a lot of investors quite frankly, that I use during my flipping days, they would fund my flips for me. And they wanted to put their money into my flips still. And I said, Well, I'm done doing flipping, but I'm going to do this. Would you like to come along with that? And they all said, Yeah, let's do it. So it was able, you know, to also keep them involved as well.

8:23
Nice. And so at what point do you decide I'm going to be a teacher?

8:29
I'm not going to be a teacher.

8:30
No, no, no, at what point are no now Are you a teacher for now?

8:35
Now Now we're going into my new kind of teaching. Yeah, because I thought there was no possible way I would ever go back to education like ever go back to and now I teach multifamily real estate. Yeah. So

8:48
are the students any different behaviourally?

8:51
No 100%. Right. They want to be there. They're paying to be there your age, and they're very motivated, and I only want motivated People I think anybody who is in this business understands, like, we only want motivated people that are actually going to take the action and do the work. I don't want somebody who thinks that I am going to give them the deals and I'm going to find them the money and I'm going to, you know, do everything for them. Because that's just not how it works. You have to be motivated. If you're gonna have success, just period, you've got to you've got to be willing to do the hard work. So I, it was a process, you know, I had thought about it for a while again, but I started really diving into teaching in kind of late 2017 2018 I really started getting into it, and then in 2019, it's a day so it was, you know, as I as I was learning a lot and had learned a lot and it made a lot of mistakes and, you know, learn more From those, I'm finding that others were wanting that same knowledge that were maybe, you know, years behind where I was, and they want to get to where I am quicker than what my journey was. The other thing is I hired a mentor. And I realized the power that that mentor provided me and I went, Whoa, like the light bulb turned on. And I said, Whoa, this is this is really powerful. I want to provide this to other people.

10:34
And so the, in terms of you know, your education that you do, obviously, you're a podcaster. Yeah, pillars of wealth creation. And then, do you also have courses that you sell to potential investors? And so how do you decide what to giveaway and what to charge money for?

10:56
Yeah, that's good question. Yeah. So my podcast is Right, it's free. People, people can listen to it. And that's a different form of education. Obviously, I don't can't necessarily control who my audience is, and nor do I, you know, do I want to I want everybody to listen, that wants to listen and motivate. But that's all free. I do a lot of webinars for free. I do. You know, I write a lot of blogs, obviously, those are free. You know, I go to conferences and meetups and speak at those and those are free. I haven't ever charged for those. So a lot of that's free. A lot of it's, you know, you've got to look, I think you got to look at a couple things. First of all, I mean, you have to create influence, like, what you're what like what the show is all about, right? So you've got to create influence. You've got to get your name out there. You've got to make sure people understand who you are. And also, you know, it's it's, it's actually really enjoyable. To create that value, I get these emails from people that tell me I've made a massive impact in their life and it's really, really cool. Um, so I think that there is, I don't know if I have the magic answer on really to when when do you charge and when is it free? I think I would err on the side of more free and last charge. That's me personally. I want to provide a lot of information to you and I want to make sure that you when I do my coaching that I charge for it's for multifamily investors, and I want to get motivated people that are already educated. Like I don't want to teach you what the word syndication means. I don't want to teach you what the word noi means. net operating income for those of you who don't know and it's your

12:58
Oh, I knew that but but other Thank you for sharing.

13:02
I don't want to teach people that stuff like I want you to come already educated. And so that's why not give away a lot of that education for free. That way. They're already smart, they come out, which is a smart, smart and what what I'm trying to teach, you know, understand what I'm trying to do, and then we can really hammer into the details, we can really help create that success. So I want to shorten that curve, right? I want to make it so like when we start, we can be successful in that short period of time that we're working together.

13:38
So and, and so Todd. Now the so people, that action now you're producing all this content and goodness, you've done a 200 over 250 episodes now of your podcast. Yeah. So I mean, in terms of podcasts go that's you know, that you got some legs there, right, right at the podcast itself. I would imagine has been very helpful for business and, and aside from just, you know, producing content that people can discover what other ways is the podcast been helpful for you?

14:10
Yeah. You know, as far as like, how is it helped my business? I mean, first of all, I do have some sponsors. And that's not probably a big revenue source when you look at Okay, while you're making a bunch of money on podcast, no, I'm making like pennies basically on it, but it's not costing me money. So that's kind of nice. But the, the benefit is I've gotten a lot of investors out of it. I've gotten clients out of it for for coaching. And so people will hear me Yeah, I've had, look, I get these investment calls to people are interested in what I do, and they want to invest in real estate. And so they'll, they'll, they're doing the research, trying to find who the sponsors are out there that they want to get to know and they listened to me on my podcast and I've had people that have have, we've had first call and I say you know just what kind of information you want to know about me my company and they say, Well, I really know everything already. I've been listening to you for the last couple of years. So the podcast provides that people get to know my personality, they get to know what my basically what my belief systems are and all that kind of stuff, they get this deep dive into who I am. And for those who don't know as much and maybe they've heard me on somebody else's podcast or they read one of my blogs and then they reach out it's easy for me to go Hey, check out my website, check out my podcast and get to know me a little bit. Yeah. And so it's that's been that's been huge as far as just that being able to get the you know, investors and the clients and even some, some potential deals out of the out of the podcast. I haven't closed on a deal that's been brought to me but I've gotten deals and potential partnerships that have came through the past.

15:56
So you know, the, you know, This might feel like a little bit longer of a sales cycle. But I mean, from my experience, this is what people are expecting now because there are so many quote unquote, experts in real estate, I'm going to end up doing business with someone with whom I have a relationship with. I'm not listen, you throw a Facebook ad in front of me, and you put me onto a page where you're going to sell me your book for $20 and I've never heard of you forget it, it's not gonna happen. Like I'm not gonna do that. But if you make it ridiculously easy for us to spend time together, now I feel a level of comfort and then I hear Oh, well I do have this video series. I've got this book I've got you know, whatever it is, like okay, you know, I'm interested in taking that next step, but it's very much like the dating metaphor, you know, so you know, I often bad mouth marketers who are just being overly aggressive and trying to speed the the dating process along too quickly. People aren't really buying it.

16:59
Yeah. No, I I agree. And in plus I don't know, I just, it's just comfortable for me. And it's the way I like to be sold to I. And so it's the way that I do it as well. I mean, it's just look, you could put Facebook ads out there. But if you put Facebook ads out there for me, it's like, maybe put some Facebook ads out there that drive people to your free content, which eventually then drives them to your paid, you know, programs that you that you might have, but give them the free stuff, overload them with the free stuff First, make sure they're the right fit. You want people that are going to be I want people at least that are going to be successful with what I have to offer. And if they're just jumping in both feet without having that knowledge, having that desire, they're gonna ultimately fail. And that looks bad with me if I've got you know, 50 students and 45 of them fail or you know, don't do it. What they set out to do that looks poor on me, right? And so I don't want that either. I want the right people.

18:08
So Todd, you've got the, again, your podcast pillars of wealth creation. So for someone listening to our conversation right now, or they're watching it just go on to a any podcast directory, right? And you know, if there's 255 episodes, guaranteed, it's in every single player. It's in every single directory. So yeah, so you could just search for pillars of wealth creation. You have a lot of great guests talking about, again, real estate strategies. And again, how else would you describe or kind of explain what's unique about your show?

18:42
Yeah, I think we're, we're not solely for real estate investors, but we're very, very focused on real estate and real estate investors. So any business owner would get value out of it, but the most value would be if you're a real estate And we talk about essentially a How do you operate your business properly? How do you structure it properly? How do you put the systems in place properly? Because what I find is a lot of real estate investors, they only think about the deal, right? Getting that next deal. And we what are we going to do? We're going to buy a 20 unit apartment or 100 unit apartment or fire or a duplex or whatever it is. And that's all we think about. We don't think about the systems or processes that we should put in place to create a successful business. We don't think about all the other things, the mindset and all that other stuff that's really important to create a successful business to be able to grow and to be able to, you know, continue to make money, not just today.

19:44
Yeah. Well, excellent. Well, Todd, is there aside from the podcast? Is there anything that if someone's like, Hey, I like this Todd guy seems like where would where would they connect with you?

19:54
Yeah. So if they want to talk to me about you know, multifamily investing And anything like that they can go to my website that's actually my catch all website would be Venture D Properties.com V E N T U R E D properties.com and or they can go to you know CoachWithDex, D E X, .com if they want to learn more about that and I'm on I'm on all kinds of social media I'm on I'm on Facebook. Yeah and a little bit on Instagram so their Facebook and LinkedIn are the to to to to reach me out probably

20:30
yeah yeah for sure. Excellent. Well Todd Dexheimer you're the owner of Venture D Properties. You're the host of the Pillars of Wealth Creation podcast. Thank you so much for joining us,

20:41
Josh Bridges you have me on. fantastic day.

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