Why Not Me? Building Lasting Wealth, Freedom, and Vision with David Osborn

[0:00] Welcome back to the REI Agent. Today’s guest is David Osborne, a real estate entrepreneur, investor, and bestselling author who has spent more than 25 years building businesses and wealth through real estate. David is the founder of Waterloo Associates and co-founder of Go Management, which grew into one of the top residential real estate brokerages in the United States, executing more than 32,000 transactions and over $11 billion in annual sales volume. He is an operating principal and investor in multiple Keller Williams regions and market centers, has personally owned more than 1,000 single family homes and acquired over $100 million in distressed real estate assets throughout his career. David is also a New York Times bestselling author of books, including Wealth Can’t Wait, Miracle Morning Millionaires, and A Tribe of Millionaires, and has been consistently recognized among the top 100 most influential people in real estate. What I’m excited about in this conversation is Dave’s perspective on building real wealth, creating freedom through investing, and designing a meaningful life alongside business success.

[1:05] David, welcome to the REI Agent Podcast. It’s great to be with you, Matthias. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got to say, it’s really exciting to talk to you. I’ve heard you speak. I heard you in Austin last year and have read two of your books, including The Miracle Morning Millionaires and The Tribe of Millionaires. But how did you get started? Walk us through that journey for people who haven’t heard your story. What got you into real estate to begin with? Yeah. That’s a great question. So it was Gulf War. During the Gulf War, my dad was a Green Beret Colonel. And he was a special forces behind enemy lines in Vietnam. And my mom was a real estate agent. She was a housewife actually most of her life. But when he retired towards the end of his career, she got into residential real estate. And during Gulf War I, my dad turned to me and he said, son, you should enlist right now. There is nothing like being on the battlefield.

[2:02] So I turned to my mom. I said, mom, you need to give me a job. Dad’s trying to get me killed.

[2:08] The truth is that I was kind of in tech sales and I had done quite a bit in tech. And I was at Novell Systems selling computer systems. And I got sideways with my boss. So I quit. I was mad. I quit. And I needed a job. And my mom was looking for her assistant quit at the same time. This was in 1994. So I told her, look, I’ll come work for you temporarily while I look for a real job. Like my viewpoint was always tech and sales. I was pretty sure I was going to be a tech salesman. I even thought maybe solar power, which I’m glad I didn’t go down that road now because it’s taken so long to actually go anywhere. But back then I thought solar power made a lot of sense. But I went to work for her temporarily, got my real estate license. And I remember one day, a friend of mine from college said he was looking for a house. So I drove him around in Austin.

[3:00] We’d drive and look at homes for a few hours a day. Then we’d go have a beer and have a good time. And then eventually he picked a house. I think it’s, I think it was a $75,000 house. And I got paid. I got paid whatever the commission on that is. And I remember thinking, man, this isn’t that bad of a career. I just get to drive around my buddies, have good conversations, get a beer at the end of the day, and then get paid. And so I kind of fell in love with the sport, with the game of real estate. And we did really well. So I was with my mom. She was, you know, doing like 11 million a year in sales, which is about 330,000 in commissions. And in three, just under three years together, because I started halfway through that first year, we grew it up to 750,000 in commissions, and 25 million in sales, which at that time, we were at Keller Williams, a pretty small company, we were, we were the number one team in the company, which was pretty cool. Now, during that time, so then I fell in love with real estate, I was kind of like, man, I get to drive people around. I kind of like people. I’m a, I’m not a, I’m not a crazy

[4:01] extrovert, but I’m definitely slightly extroverted. Serve them, take care of them. And I realized pretty soon that the real estate was actually pretty easy. The only hard part was finding the buyers and sellers. I think I made a hundred grand and I made 55 my first year, like 75 my second and a hundred my third. And I was like, yeah, this is the kind of career I could do. This is a good way to go. Oh, totally. Tell us about how you were 26 broken, starting over. And what was a single belief or decision that shifted your trajectory? How do you still instill that same belief in the brokers and investors you work with today? If you’re like any, if you’re like me, or if you’re like most humans, we’re full of doubts, you know, we’re full of anxieties. We’re full of critical thoughts, you know, like, and for me, after selling for three years, my mom had opened a brokerage up in Dallas, a couple of them actually, and they weren’t doing very well. They were, she, she was actually under a lot of stress. She had shingles from stress. And I remember telling her, like, I had actually spent two years from 24 to 26, uh, or actually 23 to 25 hitchhiking around the world and spent two

[5:01] years basically with a backpack, no money, just chasing life, having a great time experiencing, you know, the wonders of the world, literally and figuratively. And, uh, so I told her, I was like, mom, you need to sell this thing. Like, I love you. You’re my mom. You got shingles from stress. You need to just get rid of those brokerages. They’re too stressful. Um, but she had other ideas. She, after selling for three years, uh, she invited me to go up and run the market centers for her. And three years later, I had shingles from stress and the stress was, cause by then I, we had six franchises by then. So we’d open six and none of them were going that well. I had one going well and like four going badly, um, and one doing okay. So I was just trying to do so much.

[5:40] And I remember I would still commute some, I kind of moved to Dallas in, in, you know, 96, but for a while I was commuting and I remember driving up by 35 and coming up over this hump in the road. Whenever you came over this hump of the road, you would see the city of Dallas, Fort Worth in front of you. I remember the post office tower and, you know, now there’s the downtown American airline center there before there wasn’t now there’s the W hotel before there wasn’t. And there was the state fair. And I remember I would see the city of Dallas and I would think to myself, who am I to go build a real estate company in Dallas? Like I had this insecurity, like, like imposter syndrome, like doubt. I was like, who am I? What, what, who, how do I deserve to win at this? Like, there’s like big companies here. There’s Abby Halliday, there’s Remax, there’s Coldwell Banker. They’ve been around forever. Who am I? Little old David just to compete with these big guys. And somewhere along the way, like an answer came to me. I think it was from a Jim Rohn tape that I listened to. I used to love Jim Rohn and Tony Robbins and all those guys.

[6:35] But one of the things I think Jim said was why not me? Like, why not me? And I realized that I can either live in my insecurities or I can live in that simple question. Why not me? Somebody is going to come build the number one real estate company in Dallas. Somebody is going to have an incredible life of financial success and abundance. Somebody is going to have a great, great relationships and keep their, their, their fitness high their whole lives. So, so I just began saying to myself, why not me? And that was my answer. So, every time my inner critic would show up and say, who are you, you know, to do this? My answer would be, well, why not me? Somebody’s got to do it. They don’t, they don’t, they might be smarter than me. They might not. They might be prettier than me.

[7:19] They might not. They might be harder working than me. They might not. But why not me? And that’s kind of become a mantra for my entire life. Every time I get doubt in my mind, why not me? Like, I can, like, somebody’s got to do it. Why not me? And the brain can’t answer that question except with like, well, okay, why not you? Let’s go see what we can do. So that became sort of, that’s kind of one of my secret silver bullets for life is every time I have doubt, I just ask, well, why not me? I’ve seen dumber people have more money than me, Matthias. I’ve seen, I’ve seen uglier people that, you know, had pretty friends. I’ve seen, you know, I’ve seen, I’ve seen people that work less hard than me have more money than me. So, so it’s obviously it’s possible. So then why not me?

[7:59] That’s kind of a cool little ingredient for life. I love that. Cause I think, you know, it’s, it’s easy to get stagnant. And I think it’s also easy to get intimidated by that uncomfortable feeling of you’re, you’re pushing yourself, you’re growing. And I think without that challenge, without that growth, I think it’s easy to get, I mean, depressed, honestly, like, I think it’s important to do that to yourself physically. Like, you know, if you’re exercising, I think to push through, to, to grow it involves ripping the muscles, right? I mean, it involves kind of that rebuilding process and it can be a little bit painful, but that is a silver, silver bullet for pushing yourself into those situations, but also to like, kind of keep yourself going. Cause it’s easy to let that doubt take over. So I love that. Yeah. I think our minds are our own kind of, they’re our own opportunity, but they’re also our own, you know, they’re our biggest cheerleader, but also our biggest critic. Like for sure. Most people I know are harder on themselves than almost anybody else’s. Yeah. Not everybody. There’s always that one guy that’s always happy all the time.

[9:03] You’re like, wow, what the hell is that? You know, what’d they take? What’s going on with them? But most people I think are pretty hard on themselves. And, you know, this, this little one, why not me line took turns, turns your critic into your ally. It turns your brain into your ally. Um, the other thing I’ll tell you real quick on this is if you ever saw that movie, the beautiful mind, you ever see that beautiful? Yes. So the guy’s got schizophrenia, right? He has at the beginning of the movie, you think it’s a real thing going on with a spy, but it turns out to be just the people he’s seeing in his head and they’re crazy. And at the end of the movie, he wins a Nobel prize, but he, um, but he doesn’t get rid of the schizophrenia. He doesn’t get rid of the people that he sees what he does. He just stops listening to him. So you see him walking in to collect his prize and you still three, you see these three fictitious people trying to get his attention, but he just ignores them and walks past them. And, uh, that’s what I also found to do with my critics. Like I, I, you’re always going to have doubts. You’re always going to criticize yourself,

[9:56] but I learned to just turn down the volume on the critic of inside of me and then just walk right on past them through the doorway to success. So it’s a similar thing, but just you’re, you’re going to, if you think one day you’re going to just a hundred percent believe in yourself a hundred percent of the time, maybe that happens for some people, but it’s still never happened for me. I still have self-doubt. But I’ve just learned to not pay so much attention to the doubt and pay a lot more attention to what’s possible. I love that. And I mean, I think that’s true too with, um, especially if you’re maybe starting off, um, in a, in a new career or a new venture or whatever, you might be surrounded by friends that, that don’t get it. Like, you know, it’s, it’s very different to go into this world of, you know, uh, self-employed business owner, that investor, that kind of stuff. And, and there’s going to be friends that, that, that don’t get it and might feel insecure about it. They might, you know, also be critiquing you or, or just kind of a negative influence in your life. And, um, you know, I think that kind of mindset also relates to real people. And also, I mean,

[10:51] it’s kind of a segue into the tribe of millionaires, like surrounding yourself with people that, um, you know, have experience that can keep you accountable, that can, um, you know, move the, the tide moves all the ships up, right? Like we want to be, uh, moving each other in the right direction. Well, that book is written about our company go abundance, which is all about being around people that you don’t have to apologize to for being awesome. And the idea of that is, and I think you bring up a really good point here is when you start rising, which you will, if you say, why not me, you’ll start finding people, uh, criticize you. People tear you down. There are people that actually are envious or jealous of your success. And a lot of times I think the jealousy comes from like, not really disliking you, but more, they don’t want to do what you’re doing. So they, they, they feel bad about themselves. So they attack you because they know they could do better. So instead of trying to figure that out themselves, they just tear you down. And I’ve definitely lost some friends along the way, Matthias. I’ve, I’ve had people fall by the

[11:50] wayside. I’ve had people that just couldn’t ride with, by the way, you don’t have to be successful to be my friend. You just have to not judge me. You know, I remember specifically, I bought my first airplane, you know, private little twin prop just to fly around in. Cause I was working, you know, 60, 70, 75 hours a week. And I had to go to places like Memphis. And I was going to places where there weren’t really good air service. So if I went there and I didn’t finish by four o’clock, I had to spend the night and I had kids at the time. So I bought my plane and I was able to work till eight, nine, 10. I could go as late as I like and still get on my plane, fly home, kiss my kids in the morning. Right. I earned my way there.

[12:26] My whole life I’d wanted to have a small private plane. And, um, I had had a mentor that had one. So I’d been on one a few times and I knew the kind of, you know, it’s not a more comfortable way to fly, but it is a time machine. It saves you time. Like that’s, that’s the benefit of a private plane. So I’m golfing with these guys that I golf with, you know, I didn’t know them that well, but they were my golfing buddies and it was the day I bought the plane. So I’m so excited. I’m like, dude, I just bought my first plane. Like, and in hindsight, it was pretty insensitive to be clear. I didn’t really think it through. I’m like, I don’t know. This was, I’m like 40 years old, probably. And it’s 2020. Yeah. Yeah. I think I was about 40, maybe 39, 40, right around that age.

[13:04] So I was old enough to know better, but still young enough to not have like, now I’m aware, by the way, now I don’t talk about my life too much because it’s too, too abundant. And people will just think I’m being an ass. So I told him I bought this plane. They immediately started giving me shit. And then I find out that some of the guys are talking about me in the club, like I’m a douche bag because I talked about this plane I just bought. But what’s funny is I don’t feel like I’m that kind of personality. I wasn’t like, I got a plane. You don’t, I was more like, wow, I’ve had a plane on my vision board for 10 years. And today is the day that I accomplished that 10 year goal. And, and so these guys, and by the way, again, I want to own my insensitivity. I didn’t think through like regular guys are in a regular salary. Probably don’t want to hear about me buying a million dollar plane. But at the same time, it was like, Oh, these are not the right people for me.

[13:52] This is not like, and we created in GoBundance, a group of people that you don’t have to apologize for being awesome. You could call me tomorrow and say, Hey, I made a million bucks today. I’d say, way to go. In fact, the guy texted me before I got on this podcast about how he made 20 million bucks investing in Rocket Lab. You know, it’s a, it’s a company. His thesis was because SpaceX is going to go public in a couple of years or 18 months. It’s going to drag up the number two rocket company, which happens to be called Rocket Lab. He’s lucky enough to have a bunch of cash. So he put a bunch of cash in it, um, like 10 million and he’s up 20. So he’s made, he’s got 30 in there. He’s up like 20 million roughly. Okay. By the way, he told me that when it was, he got into what it was for. He told me when it was 40 and I made 700,000 following him. So I put in, I don’t know, a couple of hundred.

[14:39] Now it’s worth 900. Let’s say our, it’s worth 850 or something like that. So I’m up 650 grand because he gave me that tip and I trusted it and I followed him when he tells me he made 20 million. You know what I say, Matthias, you should be so proud of yourself. You took a risk. You saw the shot. You went all in and you wrote it all the way up. And thank you for telling me about it. I wish you told me when it was four, cause then I would be up a lot more. Um, but, but as it is, because of you, I’ve made almost $700,000 and that’s the kind of people I want to be around. Like I want to be around a person where I can be my brightest light and they don’t feel threatened by that. And then feel like I’m being a douchebag for sharing my life. By the way, our whole company, that, that environment is not just about, uh, how much money I made. We’re right now, Matt King, who runs that company is riding a bike from Mexico to Canada, something called the ride.

[15:30] And he’s trying to raise a million bucks for disadvantaged women and children. I’m giving him a hundred grand tomorrow. He doesn’t know yet, but I’m going to give it to him on Friday, uh, uh, to day after tomorrow. And, uh, it’s all along the ride. He’s finding people that have hard luck. And like one kid that he just helped the, the, the kid fell in a pool and got brain damaged. The parents are having to look after him at home. They couldn’t afford a hospital bed. He’s getting bed sores. So we use the first gift to buy a hospital bed for him. So I guess it rotates the kid like somehow electronically. I don’t fully know, but that, and the family was so grateful. And that’s just an example of what you can do with money. And we talk about that stuff too.

[16:08] We brag about, you could call it bragging. We’re living this big life of helping other people, of manifesting success, of keeping our bodies in shape, of having great relationships. And when you’re around people like that, that validate that and encourage that, and that you don’t even have to flinch about being yourself. Um, it makes it that much easier to succeed at another level. So it’s a whole room full of people that have said, why not me? You know, I think that’s probably one of the biggest, like maybe mind shift things that people have to go through to kind of, to succeed, to see success is, is to be happy for others’ success. I don’t know if that’s like fundamentally not something people are wired towards or, or I don’t know if I was a big, like, you negative Nancy about people like succeeding. I’m sure that came up in competition of some sort. Uh, but I think if you can really shift that, if you can look at the person that is where you want to be as, you know, like, wow, how’d you do that? That’s awesome.

[17:05] Like, you know, the plane thing, like, like, I mean, let’s say somebody, you know, trained to, to run a hundred miles and then they do it and they, they, they’ve had to train for years to do that. Like, that’s not a money thing, but that’s a huge accomplishment, right? I mean, that’s something that took tons of work and intentionality to achieve. And that’s in the same vein. Um, but I think having that mindset shift is gotta be such an important part to kind of getting anywhere. And I guess it’s, you know, abundance versus scarcity, right? Yeah, it is. It’s abundance thinking versus scarcity. And it sounds like, I don’t know that I was ever that jealous either. Um, I might’ve been jealous of the guys in college that got all the girls. So I can see, I can see a moment of jealousy here and there, you know, um, or man, I might’ve been jealous that I wasn’t like a little faster on the sports field. And, you know, I was always an okay player, but I was never a great player, if that makes sense when I played soccer. So I think I can see some areas of jealousy, but in terms of general life, like, here’s what

[18:01] people need to know that if your five closest friends are Bill Gates, Elon Musk, you know, Peter Thiel and, um, Warren Buffett, you’re almost certainly a billionaire, right? So whoever you are, whoever you admire, you look up to, you like, like my first mentor had a jet, you know, he had a, uh, global 100 and I got to fly on it all, you know, not a lot, but a lot enough. And it was because of that experience that I re I would have never owned a plane if I hadn’t had a mentor that had a plane. And I just saw the benefit of like going straight to the airport, getting on the plane and flying home. I’m telling you, the experience on the plane is no different. It’s just as good to be on a big plane as it is on a little, it’s the, it’s the, Hey, I’m running late. I’ll be there in three hours. It’s, Hey, I want to land at one o’clock in the morning. It’s, Hey, I’ve changed my mind.

[18:48] I want to go home right now. It’s like, that is the benefit of that. And seeing that from a productivity point of view as a business owner, I mean, it’s just a gift. And if your close friends do really, really well, they lift you up, you know, like, um, so once you get that and it’s maybe a little bit easier to get out of envy and into abundance. Um, but there certainly seems to be a trend or a trait with certain people to be very envious of others. I’m definitely not that like, I’m super, I think Elon Musk deserves everything he got, by the way, the good and the bad, right? We all, we all, our lives are just autobiographical biographical. So we manifest. Uh, what I mean is like, sometimes he picks fights with people and he gets in these big fights and you’re like, well, you manifest that. But on the other side, Starlink, you know, space being, being the number one country in space again, NASA wasn’t going to get us ahead of the Chinese. Elon did that. Um, you know, like all the things he’s created, the first electric car that got trendy. So now the whole world’s on electric and, uh, it’s just, it takes sometimes like, or if you think of, uh, Sir

[19:52] Richard Branson, like he also like, just, I met him and he just so inspired. He’s created 300 businesses and 200 of them failed and a hundred of them are doing really well. And it’s just like, wow, look at that person and the impact they can have. I would never be jealous of that. I’d be grateful. More people like that helps more of us. You know, it’s no difference than a guy that has a cure, some kind of medical disease or some guy that does an incredible charity that serves like the guy that did Habitat for Humanity. Now, how many homes have been built because of that one guy? You, we, we, as a society, as a people should honor. And now we might say, Hey, things are a little unfair. We need to adjust this or adjust that socially. And that’s a social contract. And I don’t disagree with that either, but ultimately we should honor and revere those that have made an impact for all of us. Yeah. Elon’s a great example of an audacious, why not me? Like, I mean, like PayPal to rockets. I mean, he’s crazy. I love reading about him. He’s like, I think he said recently, like, I, I believe we’re in the matrix and how could I not believe that? He

[20:54] said, I believe that the matrix wants you to do the most difficult and interesting things possible. And if you do that, the matrix will work. And I’m like, well, I mean, I could see that. Like, from his point of view, it’s like a virtual world and, uh, it must, must be hard for him not to believe that. But yeah, I mean, even, even if you’re a person that just touches 50 people’s lives in your community, I honor, admire that. Like everyone needs a little help. You know, there’s so much need for help and for support and for pulling one another up. It’s like that monkey game. Remember where you hook all the arms of the monkeys together? Like that’s really society. If we can all reach down and pull someone up and someone above us is pulling us up, um, you know, what’s better than that. That’s a good life. I love that. Um, along your journey. So we, we got into the building of the real estate, uh, brokerages. Um, when did you start investing?

[21:41] What did that look like for you? Yeah. So I’m building the real estate brokerages. And the one advantage I’ve had is I’ve always been in on business building. I almost never had a salary job. So I always was working for myself. And that’s a great reason to be a real estate agent because you are literally working for yourself. You only get paid on your capacity and your skill. Um, so I’m playing this game of life like we all do. And I’m, I realized pretty early on that it’s not about how much money you make. It’s how much money you make off of things you own. So it’s not about like, you know, there’s not a single billionaire that doesn’t have a billion dollars worth of assets. I read this in a book recently and I sent it to a friend because it said the same thing. It said a lot of the difference between rich people and poor people is a lot of people, poor people think it’s about the amount of money you make, but actually that has almost nothing to do with it. Yes, it helps. But what it really has to do with is the amount of assets you own.

[22:32] And then from my point of view, cash flowing assets. So I bought my first rental property in 1997. It was actually my residence. So I moved into it and then I eventually decided I didn’t want to cut the yard anymore. So I moved back into an apartment and I turned it into a rental. I bought it in 97 for 77,000. Today it’s worth 550,000. It’s in Austin, Texas. And in 2001, I refied it and took out 60 grand and brought three more rentals. But these ones were in Lubbock for 70,000 a piece roughly. So I put 20 grand down on each one. And those today are worth probably 150. I should have just kept buying in Austin, but I wasn’t that smart. So I was looking for cash flow instead of growth or appreciation.

[23:14] But those four homes today are worth pretty close to a million bucks. Probably over a million by now. I haven’t told this story in a while. And they generate about 40,000 a year in free cash flow. I let them all get paid off. So I turned $20,000 in 1997. Now it’s 2026. So 30 years later into a million dollars and 40,000 a month in free cash flow because they’re all rented and I just paid off the mortgage. Now, that’s an example of what’s possible for anyone. What’s possible for any realtor is just buy a house, turn it into a rental, refi it after a certain number of years, buy some more rental properties. And that was the game I sort of was playing on the side for quite a while. And today, I have like 150 rental properties, but I did step it up. So I didn’t do very much from 97 until 2006, other than build my franchises and buy a few opportunistic rentals. But then after the housing crash of 06, 07 and 08, I was, I probably had about eight rentals at that point. And my income went by the way, down by like 70%. And my, my overhead was 700,000 a month. So I’m sitting there in the crash. I’m like looking at the net. I think, I think I had 3 million in cash in all my businesses

[24:26] and I was burning 700 a month. So I was like, I’ve got just under five months here. No, seven months, something like that. What did I have? I had 3 million and I was burned 700 months. Yeah, five months. So five and seven is 35. I was like, I will go broke if I don’t have revenue. And if you remember real estate just crashed, came to a preaching hole, but I made it through and I was still profitable. So I’m very lucky. No one should feel sorry for me, but for me, I was like concerned for me, but no one else should. And then I got through it. I’m still making some money, way less than I had been making. We’re making money. And I still have my savings. I didn’t have to dip into my savings too much. And then I look at real estate in 2010. I was like, wow, it’s really taking a beating, but I’m still in the blood of it. You know, the blood’s running in the streets. I’m so panicky.

[25:09] But 2011, I looked around, I was like, man, this is a good time to buy. So I’ve been in real estate a long time. I could tell prices were off a little. So I kind of put my toe in in 2011, started buying some stuff. And then in 2012, I was like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. So I went all in. I bought everything I could, single family residences, um, distressed debt on real estate. I just started buying everything I could and, uh, ended up going really all in from 12 and 13 and 14. Um, and went really heavy on investing at that time. And I would say that’s an example of like preparation, meaning I’d been in residential real estate. I’d bought enough properties. I knew enough about real estate, uh, to, to be aware of what was going on, meeting opportunity. And by the way, in 2012, people were still scared. There were still abandoned like developments all over the place. It’s not like it was, it sounds obvious in hindsight, but at that time it wasn’t obvious, you know, people that had bought in like 29 got foreclosed again in 2011, because it didn’t get better. Everyone was expecting it to get better, but then it did get better and it shot up like crazy. Um, and by then I had quite

[26:12] a few homes. I bought like a single, uh, about close to a thousand single family homes from foreclosure. And now I think we bought close to $140 million worth of debt, the debt, that the debt market’s gone away, but the debt was just like buying a debt on a commercial building or something like that. And there was so much of it out there then that we might buy a note that was 2 million bucks. We might buy it for a million too. We figured the underwriting asset was worth one five. And we called the owner and say, Hey, we got three options. You can give me 200 grand. You’ll still keep a hundred. We’ll keep you in the money. You can give me the keys and I’ll take over the property, or we can do a short sale. We can sell it together. What would you prefer? So we give them those three options.

[26:50] And you’d be amazed at how many people were like, I am so glad you called. Thank you so much for calling me. I’ve been trying to get hold of this giant private equity firm that owned my debt. No one’s returning my call. They don’t care about me. I can’t get any action. And, uh, we even had one guy say, we literally, he’s like, you probably saved my life. He’s like, I was about to commit suicide because he owned, but we, we, he paid us off. He’s like, I have money to buy off, but no one will take my calls. And he was like going through a lot of stuff, but we bought it for like one, one, that one, we made like a quick 350 grand, but we left him with 200,000 in equity for what we thought it was worth at that time, which was at depressed prices. So he was able to save it, turn it around. And I’m, I’m assuming his life went on good from there. So that was kind of like where we were at. And that’s when we started making a lot of money. And so the, the crash became the opportunity. The fear became the opportunity. And then I became a big time investor. And then I realized also that the real estate brokerage wasn’t the most secure place to

[27:46] invest all my apples, right? Because I’d seen the crash and I saw how quickly it turned from like 2006, we were killing it. 2005, we’re like making money hand over fist 2008. We’re concerned we’re going to go bankrupt. You know, we’re just trying to keep the lights on. And so I realized that having a bunch of diversified assets really served. And I started buying a lot of different things at that point. Wow. I mean, so yeah, you built this large Keller Williams franchise, one of the biggest in the world alongside this, all this personal investment portfolio. How do you balance now scaling a brokerage business with your wealth building goals and where does your energy go today? You know, it’s such a good question because I think the first thing I had to learn, Matthias was self-discipline. So I had to learn how to manage me. And then that was like the mindset, which is why not me. That was the work ethic. I wasn’t really that motivated in high school. I was a C student. I did like working. I was always, I had a lawn mowing company. So I was that kid that liked to work. But I had to, I had to develop the mindset and then I had to develop the

[28:45] work ethic. And I developed the work ethic actually by joining a mastermind of a bunch of top agents. And one thing you can say about top agents is they usually work really, really hard. And I picked up a lot through osmosis of just that level of work ethic. But then what really changed my life was learning the riddle of people. And when I had multiple franchises, I was kind of forced to learn this early. Many people never learn this. They just learn how to work really, really, really hard. And then they hire people that do an okay job to follow them up. So they’re always like, oh man, I got another bad assistant or I can never find anybody good. You’ll hear people say, I can never find anybody good. That’s their mantra. Like it’s impossible to find a good employee, but they got an incredible work ethic. So they hire a bunch of people that kind of pick up the pieces behind them. They make good money, but they’re not really blowing up. Well, I had six franchises.

[29:32] Like I said, one was doing well, one was doing okay. And four were doing badly. And I kind of got shingles and had almost an identity crisis where I was like, just dying. Because I couldn’t, I couldn’t work hard enough to fix six franchises. There’s six franchises in Dallas, Fort Worth from Flower Mound, all the way to North Dallas, all the way to like DeSoto. So I’m driving around trying to serve all these businesses. And I took a class about people and it was all about how to identify and hire really talented people. And you might’ve heard of the disc profile, the drivers, the influencers, the steady state and the compliance. You might also have heard of Bain Hennion. He taught this recruiting class. I think he’s passed now, but it was, the idea was people that are successful, they leave clues. They repeat there’s, and people that fail kind of repeat certain behaviors.

[30:20] So if you can find a person that has maybe one of your top agents, rookie of the year, but before that they were a good athlete. And before that they did something hard that they were good at. People like that, when you find them in the thirties and forties, they tend to continue that pattern. So I’ve got six franchises, four failing, one’s doing okay and one’s doing well. And I went out and hired one good manager and it took, I took a long time. So in the past, I would just say, oh, you seem like a nice person. Let me hire you to be my manager. You want the job? Great. I’ll give you the job. What this class taught me to do is spend 10 hours in the interview process, not tell them what you were going to pay them, not answer any of their questions, just ask them questions. So they talk in these 10 hours of interviews, like 75% of the time.

[31:02] And you’re just trying to uncover who they are as a person. You use behavioral assessments, you check references. And I started doing this process called the recruit select. And I hired this one really good manager and I put her in this failing office I had. My manager before that had been an alcoholic. And I only knew that because one of my agents came to me and said, Hey, I noticed that a meeting the other day, she took a flask out and took a suede off of it. And by the way, she’s undermining you in the office. So I have a manager who’s drinking out of her purse. And as I applied pressure for results is undermining me with all the agents. So I’m walking in the office and the agents think I’m a jerk, but I’m just trying to get results. I’m trying to get the business profitable so we don’t have to keep losing our money and the investors money on the office.

[31:44] So I put this, this lady in charge, Holly, and suddenly the business starts turning around. It starts getting better. Now there had been an agent I’d recruited in there and I’d been there all the time because I’m trying to fix it. And her name was Stacy and Stacy. You know, I recruited her, brought her in. My alcoholic manager didn’t run her off. We’re trying to build this business. Um, and Stacy’s kind of the one that said, Hey, I’m, I think you’re getting undermined here. So finally, I get a good one in and all I do is coach her. I coached her for about six months and she’s doing well. So I, I quit paying attention to that office. And I went and paid attention to one that was failing somewhere else. A year goes by, I go back to that office. It’s now making money.

[32:24] It’s profitable. I’m not having, I’m working less, not harder on it. And I meet Stacy again. And Stacy, who, who I’d recruited, she sits down for me with lunch. And she says to me, you know, David, after I’d worked with you for a while, I wasn’t sure about you as a leader, but now I believe in you. Now I think you’re a great leader. And I thought to myself, you know, the only thing is I’m the same guy, but I haven’t been in this office for a year. So be not being around made her just think I was a better leader, but hiring that great leader was actually what made the difference. And then I became obsessed with finding talent. So that business went up. I hired another great guy, put him in another failing office. That business went from losing 200 grand a year to making eventually, a million dollars a year from this high charging ex football player that I hired.

[33:08] And so I kept following this philosophy. And then a few years ago, like, I can’t really remember, but I would say probably eight years ago, I merged with another up and comer, a very talented guy called Smokey, Smokey Garrett. And we made our two office groups one. Now I had a bigger group and he had a smaller group, but we became 50, 50 partners. And he’s been running that show for the last eight years. So now that company is, we’re struggling a little bit now. It’s been a little bit tougher, but we grew and we did really well, became one of the top five residential real estate companies in the United States of America. And basically I work through Smokey and then I have another business go abundance that I work through Matt King. And then I have another private equity firm called Waterloo Associates that’s run by Mike Stewart. So the way I built my world, having learned from the franchise level is to hire, I call it the riddle of people. If you can understand people and you put the right people in the right spots on the bus, the bus starts going where it’s supposed to go and you look better,

[34:04] you make more money and you work less. And so that’s become my like focus on life is getting the right people in the right seats on the bus. It’s not easy, but it’s called the riddle of people. So if you go back to that original example, I gave you a top producer who’s like, I can’t find anybody good. What I noticed was most overachievers is they don’t slow down enough in the interview process to look at who they’re really hiring. They actually talk 90% of the interview. And then they think the person is great because they listened well, but that’s a follower. That’s not a leader. By the way, you can find leaders who are good listeners. So I’m not saying that I’m saying if you came in and dominated the conversation and told them how great everything was and what you were up to and where you were headed and why you needed them on the team, and then you hire them, you have no idea.

[34:47] Yeah, who you just hired. You just felt good being an overachiever and an overproducer and an over talker. And you felt good in that meeting. And so you thought they were good and you hired them. And I see this over and over again. So it’s really learning the riddle of people. Who are you hiring? So I’ve done that. So even though I’m making a ton of money and I’ve got great businesses right now, I’m working less than I’ve ever had to work because in the past, all my energy went into new opportunities. And now I’m just working on my health, my family, my relationships, and my own personal state of mind. And I don’t have to grind anymore. I’m working 30, 35 hours a week and making a ton of money. It’s great. That’s awesome. I was laughing because I know that one of my default tendencies, and I’ve been going through cultural index training and that kind of stuff to learn the hiring process better. And the thing that I tend to do is go on vision quests. So if somebody’s in a meeting with me, I’m going to probably tell you about like 10 years in the future, and we’re going to be going on a

[35:45] slide. But they’ll probably have no idea what they actually even think about it. But so that’s- So I understand that. It’s totally natural. You’re excited about what you’re creating and you want to share it. The problem with that is at the end of it, you got no idea who you got. You just, they always get caught into your excitement because you have a lot of passion. Like almost everybody I’ve ever interviewed wanted to work for me because I have a lot of passion too. But the danger was getting somebody and you get the wrong person because you were so excited that you just read them. People, you view it almost like a popularity contest. Can I sell this person on coming to work for me? And that’s not what you should be doing. It should be like you’re interviewing a doctor to do life surgery on your body. Like, do I have the right doctor? Is this the right person to come work for me? So I hear you, man. By the way, don’t beat yourself up. Everybody does that.

[36:30] That’s the way it is. Well, and I think also maybe a way to describe it is like, you know, like the visionary type might be kind of gas and often they need breaks to counterpart them. And so like, that’s not always going to be this hype train going to the moon together. You’re going to have a little bit of a conflict there and potentially. Yeah. That’s a great analogy. Like my right hand man, Matt King, who’s worked for me for years now, his number one gift to me is saying no. I say yes to almost, I’m not as bad as I used to be, but 10 years ago I said yes to pretty much everything that came along. I’m like, that’s great. Let’s do that. That sounds great. Let’s do that too. Oh, you’ve got that idea. Let’s go do that too. So yeah, I get that. You need the nose, the integrator.

[37:11] Yeah, exactly. So with, with, I know, I know in Austin, you all have seen a pretty good price hit, hit on the prices in the real estate there. Interviewing people all across the country, you know, I hear different pockets of, of, you know, some doom and gloom, that kind of stuff. And, and, you know, it’s different again, everywhere I talk to it, it’s not a national thing by any means, but I’m just curious you coming from that perspective, that lens, what do you think are some big opportunities that people may be missing in today’s market? Yeah. I mean, I think it’s been really tough for quite a while. This seems like a pretty tough downturn. Like they always seem tough, but this one’s lasted. And I think it was just getting better. And then we got into that war with Iran and it raised interest rates again.

[37:57] I think we were kind of like on a recovery, man, we got pushed back down. So I think we got to be closer. Here’s one thing I’ll tell you that I’ve always used to keep me inspired. Every day, you’re in a bad market. You’re one day closer to a good market. And every day you’re in a good market, you’re one day closer to a bad market. So you got to keep that in mind. But I think the opportunities have got to do with the, the, the, the hot sectors of the moment, which is data centers, AI companies. And if I were buying investment properties today, I would go look around where space X is. I would go look around where the data centers are being built. The new one that Tesla is doing. You know, I would go look around Samsung in Taylor, Texas. I think the opportunity is to go where, you know, people are going to go and they’re going to be moving there. And that’s going to drive up prices and rents. Like ultimately residential real estate is a demographic issue. And there’s a lot of it going on. There’s like, just go find out where they’re building the next five data centers.

[38:52] And you know, you know, we’ve been buying in McGregor, Texas. McGregor, Texas is near space X. We built a 80 unit multifamily there. It hasn’t crushed it, but it’s got some wind behind it because there are people still moving there. So you want to look at the demographics in real estate and follow the demographics and then make sure you’re always buying something at below market or making or below replacement costs. So you still got to find that edge. And as a real estate professional, you should have that. You’re looking in the market all the time. You get the 3% commission. You can figure out where the market is for a property that might have some opportunity. And so I think I would look where the people are going. And Austin, Texas, Texas is still a good place. We just need to, we just need a little more recovery. And by the way, it probably means it’s a good time to buy because my sense is it usually doesn’t stay down long, longer than, you know, it’s usually two years, but we’re past two years now. So we’re probably in year three right now.

[39:46] So downs don’t usually stay down for that long. We got to be close to a boom. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great point. The whole tool craze, right? You got to know when to that when everybody’s feel fearful, it’s a great time to invest. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone was feeling so jubilant before. And that always makes me nervous when everyone’s happy. Now everyone’s pretty despondent. So it probably means we’re pretty close to a bottom. Yeah. But the boom I’m saying is I’m not saying buy AI stocks. I’m saying go buy rentals near the AI factories and stuff. Cause you know, there’s going to be a lot of workers there. No, totally. Got to ask. I mean, we’ve had a ton of golden nuggets already in this podcast, but curious what golden nuggets you have for our listeners.

[40:30] Okay. You’ve heard this one before, but get in the right groups, be around the right people. Number one is you are who you hang out with. You are probably the average of the five closest friends is probably your net worth, your health, your wealth, everything. So get in the right rooms. You can buy your way in the right rooms, or you can just earn your way in the right rooms or do both. Like I do, I’m in like three masterminds right now. Two of them, one of them cost me a hundred K a year. One of them cost me 75 K a year. But I do it to be around the right people. And the other one’s actually only six K a year, which is probably the best value, but it’s YPO. They’ve been around forever. And I’m just happy to be in a kick, an amazing forum. So number one, be around the right people.

[41:07] Number two, always have a vision for your life. You talked about vision casting just now. No one wants to go work for a person that has no vision. It’s not inspiring to be me if I don’t have a vision. So I like having a vision for my life. And if your vision is big enough, the whole world fits in it. Like if Elon Musk called me tomorrow and said, Hey, David, I want you to come work for me for free. I’d probably consider doing it because his vision is so darn big. I would know that I would win just by being near him. But my point of that is like, always have a vision. No one wants to work for somebody that has no vision. And if your employee has a bigger vision than you, then you should go work for them. And then lastly, I would say, take care of your body. Like your body is your life is all about energy. Money is actually just stored energy, right? So money in itself doesn’t do anything, but it’s stored energy.

[41:51] I can use it to make things happen. And your body also serves you. So I would say eat right, exercise, do all the things you can, especially at my age, because I’m getting older now and it really makes a difference. I’ve seen guys my age that are like, have half my energy. And I definitely have way less energy than I had in my thirties and forties now that I’m in my fifties. But I’m really paying attention to it. I’m managing myself well. I’m looking after myself. I’m keeping myself emotionally, physically, and nutritionally charged up. So I’d say really pay attention to your energy and your self-care. I love it. It’s so important. And it’s so easy to neglect, especially when you’re going through the grind phase of kind of getting things rolling. But you’ll be amazed. I think my biggest year in sales, I think I worked out like four days a week at noon. I just didn’t do lunch appointments.

[42:43] I just went to the gym. I love it. You can make it happen for sure. Okay. What about a fundamental book you think that everybody should read or just one that you’re currently really enjoying? I mean, I’ve got an odd one for you. It’s called Leadership and Self-Deception. Okay. And the cool thing about leadership and self-deception, I loved it when I read it. It said, if you criticize someone, it said, we tend to objectify people instead of keeping them as human beings. So we tend to turn them into objects. And it said, if you criticize somebody, you fall into a glass box and you see evidence for your criticism all over the box. So like, let’s say I want my wife to clean the kitchen and I say, clean the kitchen. You never clean the kitchen. So I fall into this glass box and I say, she never does this. She never does that. She never does this. Evidence becomes everywhere for your criticism. And the truth is, if you want something done, you should just do it.

[43:34] So if I want the kitchen clean, I should just clean the kitchen. And so the self-responsibility that that book taught me, it’s about leadership and self-deception. Like everything in your life is autobiographical. Now, I’m not suggesting you should do all your employees’ work. You don’t have to do their jobs. If they’re not doing their jobs, you can correct them, educate them, or change them. But what I am saying is if you walk through life finding a lot of things wrong with everything around you, you’re just going to live in this world where there’s going to be more and more and more evidence of all these things that are wrong. So when people get lost in criticizing the government or criticizing a particular politician or criticizing their football team or criticizing their spouse or their employees, it’s like a never-ending vortex of criticism. And really, the way to the best life is full self-responsibility, full sovereignty, and using that as a launch pad into building things better. It doesn’t mean you don’t find things wrong, but it means that you don’t go into like, wow, they never do their job. You go into like, hey, I noticed you didn’t do this piece of your job

[44:34] that I asked you to do. Do you need help doing it? Do you need coaching? Or would you prefer I found someone else to do it? So it’s like more of that. It’s like taking on ownership and not living in criticism. Yeah. Or like maybe I didn’t explain it properly or something, or maybe we need to have a better system to make sure that it’s clear what needs to be done. Yeah, it’s so true. I mean, I think you can just, I mean, you can become a victim or you can become, you know, learned helplessness. I mean, all this stuff is, if you only see that negative stuff, you’re just going to become like, what’s the point of even trying? Because I don’t really have control of it. Everything else is against me. It can spiral out of control, like you said. Very quickly. Amen.

[45:13] Yes, sir. Well, I mean, David, you’re everywhere, I’m sure. Like where can people find you if they want to follow you on social media? I mean, I’m not really looking for anything from anyone, but if you go to I am David Osborne, I post there sometimes. You can pick up the book Wealth Can’t Raid or Tribe of Millionaires. But yeah, it’s a pleasure to be on with you, Matthias. It’s been great. I appreciate your questions and I love what you’re doing, man. Anyone that’s trying to make a difference in the world through a podcast, a book, any kind of work ethic, I’m a big fan. So thank you. Well, thank you so much. It was a lot of fun talking to you and I’m sure we could have gone on for a couple hours because we have a lot to talk about it, I’m sure. We do. Thanks for listening to the REI Agent. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week. Visit REIAgent.com for more content. Until next time, keep building the life you want. All content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.