Welcome to The Accelerated Investor Podcast with Josh Cantwell, if you love entrepreneurship and investing in real estate then you are in the right place. Josh is the CEO of Freeland Ventures Real Estate Private Equity and has personally invested in well over 500 properties all across the country. He’s also made hundreds of private lender loans and owns over 1,000 units of apartments. Josh is an expert at raising private money for deals and he prides himself on never having had a boss in his entire adult life. Josh and his team also mentor investors and entrepreneurs from all over the world. He doesn’t dream about doing deals, he actually does them and so do his listeners and students. Now sit back, listen, learn, and accelerate your business, your life, and your investing with The Accelerated Investor Podcast.

Josh: So hey, welcome back. Welcome back. For all of our listeners who’ve been with us for a while or whether this is your very first Accelerated Investor podcast, thanks so much for joining us. I’m honored to be here with you whether you’re in the gym, whether you’re on a walk, whether you’re getting ready for your day or you’re in your car, on your commute and you’re listening to Accelerated Investor. I hope you’ve enjoyed all of the episodes. I’m so excited to be part of your routine part of your life and helping you achieve your goals as a real estate entrepreneur and helping achieve your lifestyle goals and your cashflow goals. Just love bringing you, whether it’s a guest, whether it’s a solo cast, and bringing you some of the best of the best information to help you along your journey.

Josh: My guest today is a good friend of mine. We’ve actually known each other going on nearly 10 years. His name is Daniil Kleyman. He is a real estate entrepreneur and a software developer from Richmond, Virginia. He owns over a hundred units of properties, both single-family duplexes, commercial buildings. He’s a developer, he’s a builder, and he also has an amazing software company that helps real estate investors. We’ll talk a little bit more about that and what I’m excited to talk to Daniil about is also our journey.

Josh: When Daniil and I first met years and years ago, he was single. We were relatively new to real estate. Now both of us are a little bit aged, a little bit more white hair, married, both of us with kids, and we’ll talk a little bit about our entrepreneurial journey and how family has actually maybe changed our perspectives, changed our priorities. So Daniil, thanks so much for being here. Welcome to Accelerated Investor.

Daniil: Yeah, man. Great. Great talking to you again. I feel like it’s been a couple of years, but it probably hasn’t been that long, so.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. So Daniil, tell us a little bit more about you’ve taken now all this experience as a developer, builder, raising private capital funding deals on your own, building a massive portfolio, doing new construction and you’ve kind of boiled all that down into your software, Rehab Valuator which we’re very familiar with. A lot of my audience is familiar with it because we’ve promoted it in the past, but I know what’s evolved over the years. You’ve added to it over the years. It does amazing things. So I definitely want to kind of plug that, tell my audience that they should be using it and where they can go get it. So just describe it real quick about what it does and then just throw out your website where our folks can go get a free trial.

Daniil: Sure. And you know, and I appreciate you, you know, you’ve spread the word about the software in the past and I really appreciate that. It’s basically the software the original version of the software came out almost when I started my real estate business. And it was originally developed as a spreadsheet just for myself to use in doing deals. And since then it’s evolved into a pretty sophisticated cloud based platform and there is a free version and there is a premium version and you can get the free version if you go to RehabValuator.com R E H A B.

Josh: Yeah, we’ll put that in the show notes as well. RehabValuating.com

Daniil: yeah, so it really does three things. It’s an analysis, it’s a deal analysis, deal marketing and project management software. So in terms of deal analysis, you can use it to pull comparable sales, determine your after repair value, determine the offer that you should make on your property. Look at different financing scenarios and see what your financing will cost you, determine your projected profit if you’re going to flip the house or if you’re going to rent it, you can use it for rehabs, you can use it for new construction.

Daniil: We use it in our development business because I can literally model, this is what I’m buying land for. This is what my construction will cost me. This is what my short term financing costs me when it’s done. This is my projected income, projected expenses. And now I’m going to refight the permanent financing and it spits out what my debt coverage ratio on the new loan will be, what my net cashflow will be, how much equity I have in the deal.

Daniil: So I use it daily for my development projects, so that’s one, that’s analysis marketing. If you’re a wholesaler, it creates marketing presentations that you can use to sell your wholesale deals and you can, there’s social media syndication functionality there that you can use to build your cash buyers list. And then marketing also in terms of if you’re buying a deal yourself, you need to raise money. So a lot of our users use the software to put together private lender presentations for their projects as well as bank financing packages for their projects. And I do the same. So I’ve raised over $10 million in funding probably using just a simple presentations that the software puts together. And then lastly, there’s the project management components. So you can build out detailed rehab budgets. You can create costs templates so that when you’re looking at your next deal, instead of recreating your budget, you can pull up a cost template and then create a rehab or a new construction estimate for your project in a couple of minutes.

Daniil: It’s got the ability to put together a scope support for your contractors. You can track all your bids, store your documents. There is a in-app accounting system that basically lets you track your project as you’re paying people, contractors. And then it tells you in real time what’s my budget versus what’s my actual, where does my project stand category by category. And then creates really detailed, easy to understand reporting around that you can use internally with your team, where you can share with your partners, with your lenders. And we’re getting ready to release scheduling functionality for your rehabs. A couple of other things, but I really just, you know, it’s always been, I’ve built it based on my own business. Like I’m my own client and it just so happens that we’ve also been able to help thousands of other investors, which is pretty cool.

Speaker 4: Yeah, guys, check it out. RehabValuator.com we’ll put it in the show notes. I highly recommend it. I mean, Daniil builds that software. I mean, again, it’s amazing you built your real estate business with very few full time employees. I know you’ve built your software business very similar with very few full time employees, a lot of outsource developers and things like that, so congratulations on that. Fantastic. I wanted to wrap up Daniil by talking a little bit more about entrepreneurial routines and talk a little bit about how those routines may have changed over the last couple of years. You recently got married a couple of years ago, had a few kids. And so, you know, when you’re 30 years old or 35 and you’re building your real estate business, you’re single, you know, you have certain entrepreneurial routines, you got a lot more time in the day. You know, I know what that looks like 10, 12 years ago before we had Juliana and now those routines are changed.

Josh: So help me understand if there’s maybe two or three or four routines or things you do on a daily basis to push your business forward. So that’s question number one is what do you do every day to push your businesses forward? Do you find yourself doing the same couple of things to push your businesses forward? And then I’m going to ask you a second question, which is, what entrepreneurial routines have you kind of tried to embed into your relationships and your personal life that allow you to still build your businesses and have balance? So let’s talk first about business. What are you doing every day when you get up and get started with your work day to push your business forward?

Daniil: And that’s a great question because, you know, as we had children, well, as I get married and we had children, I mean, yeah, it’s a completely different world. You know, I used to be workaholic. I would work seven days a week if I wasn’t traveling, I would work nonstop. I’d work in the morning, in the evening, well into the night and, and I would just crush it and just get so much done. And then you get married the night I got lucky because my wife, before we even had kids, she was great. She would let me do my own thing and she kind of knew what she was getting into. So there wasn’t any of that nagging of I wasn’t spending enough time with her. She kind of let me do my own thing without like neglecting her. And you know, I mean, but then we had kids and the changes because, because now I wake up at 5:00 o’clock in the morning, but not because my alarm goes up, but because my two year old daughter is screaming from other room, daddy, daddy, daddy.

Daniil: So that’s my morning. I get her ready for her daycare and then I’m usually in the office by like 7:00 AM. So I’ve been, it forces you to be more productive, right. As you as I’m sure you know, you want to spend time with your kids, you want to be a good father, but you don’t want to neglect your business. So it forces you to get the same amount of things I used to get done having seven days a week, you know, 16 hours a day. I’m basically now having to figure out how do I get that same amount of work and now as my businesses are growing and they’re more demanding, I have to do even more than what I used to do.

Daniil: So I’ve been kind of on the big productivity kick. I’ve changed up my diet a lot. You’ve probably heard of the Bulletproof, but all I do in the mornings, I, I make a big pile of coffee. I put it in the Vitamix, I blend it with a butter and some MCT oil and they pour myself a thermos. I actually have it.

Josh: Nice. There you go.

Daniil: I pour myself a thermos of Bulletproof coffee and that’s all that I consume until about, I tried to go until about 1:30, 2:00 o’clock. Sometimes I get hangry and you know, I have a protein bar or something, but you know, something that’s simple has made a huge impact on my ability to focus, right? Because I didn’t realize this in my twenties but what we eat, directly impacts how well we’re able to focus and think and how energy we have in that. It’s crazy to me if look back on my twenties when I would wake up and have this huge breakfast and then wonder why I was sluggish at 10 o’clock in the morning and I’m on like my fifth cup of coffee and it’s so obvious, right. So I do intermittent fasting now and that’s now from like 7:00 AM until 1:00 PM I just, I kill it. Like my focus is insane. So that’s been the big thing that’s allowed me to be really productive. Just intermittent fasting, not eating food until a very late lunch..

Josh: Yeah, yeah. I love that Daniil. Because like even for me, like I lost my stomach in my surgery right in 2011 so if I really eat anything at anytime of the day, my body has to work overtime just a process that food. So the later in the day that I eat, the more energy I have. And I definitely can tell as soon as I put something in my mouth, my energy level, it’s going to slow down. It’s partly with age, partly because I don’t have a stomach. So it’s amazing to hear that routine can change everything and the focus level to just stay. And you’re not getting up looking for the next snack. You’re like getting up, looking for the next pot of coffee. You’re not getting up thinking, what am I going to eat? You just eliminate that from the conversation in your head so that you can just stay down focused on whatever you’re working on. I love it.

Daniil: It’s, so yeah, so you’re onto something because there’s a secondary benefit to that. It’s that I don’t wake up in the morning and spend anytime making like a decision of what to have for breakfast and the more you can eliminate those tiny, you know, if you add up all the tiny choices you have to make throughout your day. If you use up your willpower and your ability to make those choices early in the day, you’re not going to have enough left for the important choices. So figuring out what to wear in the morning, figuring out what they have for breakfast, all of that. They seem like minor choices, but look at how much time you’re spending in the morning, figuring that stuff out and it eats away at your ability to focus. It eats away at your time. So most of the time when I am out in the bowel or when I’m at the office, I have the same t-shirt on, right?

Daniil: I have like 20 of identical t-shirts. They either have my software logo on them or there’s just a basic blue t- shirt and I wake up in the morning and put on a pair of jeans and I put on one of those tee shirts and I don’t think about it. And it might seem like a minor thing, but it makes a big difference. I wake up, I don’t think about what to wear. I don’t think about what to have for breakfast. I just go.

Josh: Yeah, love it. Love it.

Daniil: And it makes a difference. So that diet is one. Obviously I’ve had to be better at building a team like we talked about in the beginning and surrounding myself with really good people in outsourcing, more of the things I don’t want to be doing. And that’s a constant, you know, it’s a constant challenge and struggle. And I’m still way too much of a control freak and I don’t outsource enough and I’m still doing too many things myself that I should have probably had like a personal assistant do a long time ago.

Daniil: So, you know, I’m getting better at that. And I have to, right? Because my amount of time is compressed. How many hours I have in a day is compressed. So some trying to make a better effort to do that and surround myself with more good people. And there’s other small things, right? Like, like exercising that that’s become more and more important because you know, you get into your late thirties, your metabolism slows down and the things I could get away with in my twenties I can’t any anymore, right. So exercise…

Josh: We got away with a lot in our twenties a lot. You realize when you’re about 40 you’re like, wow, I didn’t even think about all the bad things I was doing to myself and my body and all this crazy stuff and it didn’t even matter. I had just as much energy and now it’s like holy cow, what did I drink on Friday that I’m still sluggish on Tuesday?

Daniil: I literally am like twenties, because my first six years were spent on wall street. I would go out during the week with my buddies. We would, we would party all night and then walk onto the trading floor and work all day. Just saying that out loud right now gives me anxiety. I have two bourbons and I’m done for the next day. It’s night and day. So we have to take better care about ourselves. I, you know, I drink a lot less. I’m also like really into cold showers in the morning. Freezing. Like I finish every shower with 60 to 90 seconds of the coldest setting possible, and it has also a really positive impact on my energy levels throughout the day. There’s, you can read up on it, I’m not going to go into a whole spiel on it, but it’s habit stacking, right? It’s not a term I invented, I don’t know who invented it, but it doesn’t really matter what you know, it doesn’t even matter what you learn in this podcast, right?

Daniil: It doesn’t even matter what you, it doesn’t matter what you know, what matters is what you actually do consistently. I think that’s a quote I read by Tony Robins recently. It was like, oh my God, it’s so freaking brilliant, right? The only thing that matters is what daily habits can you build in that become habits, right? Because that’s what has a big impact over the longterm on whatever it is you’re looking to make an impact on your health, your productivity, your, your bank account, right. The only thing that matters is habits. So I’ve made a big effort over the last 12 to 18 months to just stack new habits on top of each other and make them almost things I don’t think about. So I wake up in the morning before I get out of bed, I chug 32 ounces of water to rehydrate myself. I take a cold shower and make some Bulletproof coffee and I’m off to the races and I’m really productive for most of my day. And it’s, you know, it’s made a big difference.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Wow, that’s fantastic. And what I love is the comparison or the kind of two things like habit stacking. And then I wrote down the word property stacking, those two things, right? And then, you know, for your software business it’s really about like, this is a raw way of saying it, but it’s customer stacking, right? Bring in enough customers that like the software that use it on a free basis, upgrade to the premium version and they have a great software that they can use, like you use longterm and they stay for a long time. It creates consistent cashflow. And if you think about those three things, they permeate through your personal life and your habits, your properties and your software is creating longterm habits, longterm cashflow, longterm assets. So last and final question is relative to that is you’ve made a lot of longterm decisions and things that are not necessarily paying off today, but you knew they would pay off in the longterm.

Josh: Many people I think want to get into real estate or want to create habits or want to create a business that will pay them for the longterm, but they constantly have the short term temptation to either maybe flip a property, because I can make more money now or to drink too much alcohol because it makes me feel good now. Or to sell a product that’s transactional where I can get more money now. And so how do you think in your own mind, how did you come to the realization that you’re going to sacrifice some short term, immediate gratification for all of these longterm things? The habit stacking, the property stacking, the customer stacking, because that is a tough decision that eventually everybody has to make. We want to get into real estate for longterm equity, longterm cashflow. So we’ve got to give up some of the short term, like you did the $600,000 windfall on the land to develop a hundred units. So talk to me about that for a second.

Daniil: I think the first question you should be asking yourself is like what are your values and what do you truly want? I mean if you want to go pop bottles, the club next weekend, you know, and buy that $20,000 thousand dollar Rolex, if that’s what you truly want then live your life. Who am I to tell you differently? Like do what makes you happy. At the end of the day, we’re all going to die. Just live, you know, live your life the way you want to, the way, the way that makes you happy, as long as you’re not hurting other people. Live according to your values. I’ve never really been into material stuff myself. I’ve never really, you know, I grew up, we’re immigrants. We came here with nothing for most of my middle school and high school I had nothing.

Daniil: I’m fine with going back to nothing like I’m, it’s okay. Like I, you know what some foreign to me is, is freedom. I suck at having a job. I suck at having bosses. I cannot stand the thought of ever, ever again in my life calling another man, my boss. And I can’t stand the thought of ever being somewhere where I feel like the world is passing me by and I’m not really contributing anything or making my mark. You know, I used to freak out about that when they had a full time job that I was meant to be doing something else and I wasn’t making any kind of difference where I wasn’t. So what’s important to me is having that freedom, right? Having, I’ve been publishing a lot of content for our subscribers and they call it the F-You Wall, right?

Daniil: Every, every unit I add, every property I add to my portfolio puts another brick into my F-You Wall. And there it started as a pretty vulgar F-You and, but you can also call it like financially untouchable or financially unstoppable wall. And so I’m building this portfolio and it builds freedom for myself, right? It builds freedom for myself against ever having to work a job. It builds freedom for myself against having to start a Go Fund Me campaign because my dog died, right? And we need a funeral. Or because my car broke down. So I’m not in it for the money right now. I just want that freedom and flexibility to be able to sleep at night and know that if I want to stop working tomorrow, I can, I have a portfolio that supports me, that will continue working for me.

Daniil: And you know, we’re making lifestyle plans. You know, we want to live in other countries when the kids are a little bit older and we want to travel the world for extended periods of time and that’s what my version of my real estate business will allow me to do. And you know, that’s according to my values. It shouldn’t be everybody’s values. And you know, I never tried to impose what I do on other people, but for what I care about is optionality, right. To be able to wake up tomorrow, have the option to work or not work. And I always choose work because I love what I do, but I want to have the option to, you know, if something unexpected to happens I want to have optionality and to have the ability to take care of those things, right.

Daniil: So like as an example, and two weeks ago it was, my wife’s birthday and we had a flight to Miami and it was for three nights and we had dinner reservations that Friday night. And American Airlines just completely should the bed and canceled our flight, right. And they didn’t just cancel her flight. The only flight they could rebook us to was a flight that would make us stay overnight in on another side of the country. And then maybe eventually the next day you get us to Miami. So like it was a completely ruined weekend and it sucked. But because I don’t live like a super rich person, but I’ve built up a portfolio that pays me really well. We called up a private jet and within two hours we were on a jet to Miami. That’s the F-You Wall, right? Like that’s having that F-you ability and that’s what I work for. I work for that optionality to be able to not deal with shit, right, that life throws at you. I don’t know if that makes sense. That’s what I’m just, it’s a crazy.

Josh: I love it, man. I don’t, you know, whether it makes sense to other people or not, like I don’t do this podcast and interview my friends and guests. I primarily do it for my own and I tell my subscribers, all my listeners, if you haven’t heard this before, I do this podcast for myself and I just hope you like it. I’m going to do these interviews regardless because of the value I get out of interviewing guys like Daniil and my other friends and other amazing entrepreneurs. And when I do solo casts, you know, the same thing. Like I just kind of throw up in the microphone because it makes me feel good. And I hope I provide value to people if they listened to it. And you know what, if they didn’t listen to it, I would probably do it anyway because it makes me feel like I’m getting out my thoughts, my ideas, and you know, you do it for yourself, man.

Josh: So the fact that you’re doing what you want for the optionality, for the freedom, and ultimately there’s the, you know, the financial independence, the financial unstoppability and the F-You Wall for whatever reason. Sometimes it’s to put it in their face and sometimes it’s just for you guys. It’s phenomenal. So Daniil, listen, this has just been, I’ve had an absolute blast doing this interview. It’s great to catch up with you. Happy birthday. You know, amazing, amazing stuff. Congratulations on your success.

Josh: And for all of my subscribers who are listening, if you’ve enjoyed this, make sure you go visit website, RehabValuator.com he’s giving away a free membership, a free trial membership into his software and have the opportunity to upgrade into the premium version, if you’d like. But the free version is dynamite. Trust me. I’ve used it. I’ve checked it out, I’ve promoted it. You should absolutely should, should check it out. Also to know any other places online, whether it’s website, Facebook that our audience should connect with you on or check you out on?

Daniil: Yeah, I’m not a lot of social media. I’m on Facebook so you can find me on Facebook pretty easily by just searching my name. I’m not really on Twitter or Instagram or I’m still figuring those things out and I’m not sure I even want to. It’s already too much work, but you know, I’m on Facebook and we have a dedicated Facebook group for our Rehab Valuator to users and kind of a community of real estate investors there. And that’s something you can, if you just search for Rehab Valuator to users, you can find that group on Facebook as well and you can connect with me that way. So.

Josh: Perfect. Well, Daniil, listen, thanks so much for being on an Accelerated Investor. I had an absolute blast with you today.

Daniil: Thank you man. I appreciate your having me on. It’s always awesome talking to you. And you know, I mean you’re asking great questions so it’s always, you know, it’s intellectually stimulating to actually do this. So.

Josh: Yeah, you bet. My friend, appreciate you being on and we’ll talk to you soon.

You’ve been listening to Josh Cantwell and the Accelerated Investor Podcast. Leave a comment on our iTunes channel and let us know what you want to learn next, or who you’d like Josh to interview. While you’re there, give us some five star rating and make sure to subscribe so you can be the first to hear new episodes. Follow Josh Cantwell and his companies, the Strategic Real Estate Coach and Freeland Ventures on all social media platforms now and stay up to date on new training and investment opportunities to start your journey toward the lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of. Apply for coaching at JoshCantwellCoaching.com.