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At one point, Dan Brault had a construction company working on custom builds in upstate New York. He had left behind a successful sales career to do it and although he was highly stressed, he felt all of his hard work was going to be rewarded sometime soon. That is, until, he had a huge project that went over budget, over the timeline, and forced him into $400,000 worth of debt.

Dan closed his company, went back to sales and started to think about what he did wrong. Was it the leadership? Was it the system? Was it just bad luck? Dan went to work, doing whatever he could to level up his business skills so he could get back into real estate full-time and do so in a way that allowed him to scale.

Now, after going through many of life’s lessons, Dan is doing phenomenally, with him and his team closing on 12+ wholesale deals a month, getting him close to $200k in monthly revenue. He credits his success to his systems, his team, and the way he pivoted his leadership that allowed the entire company to work as one well-oiled machine.

We all reach a point of complacency. We tell ourselves that we’ve done enough, it’s too hard to go further, or we don’t have enough experience, money, or time to accomplish the goals that seem impossible. Brandon Turner, host of the BiggerPockets podcast, was feeling this way too, sitting on a decade worth of real estate, with enough passive income to live his life how he saw fit. It wasn’t until Brandon started surrounding himself with people who did much more than him that he realized he wasn’t hitting his true potential.

Now, leading the real estate syndication Open Door Capital, Brandon has more than 10x-ed his rental portfolio, built a life he loves in Maui, and worked with some of his heroes. This wasn’t by accident, it also wasn’t dropped into his lap. Brandon spent serious time thinking about his “vivid vision” of the future, what he wanted out of life, and who would help him get there.

He’s had ups and downs, with some of his favorite employees leaving, partnerships falling through, and deals being lost. All of these proved to be valuable lessons in his ongoing work to create a mobile home empire and become the best of the best at what he, and his team, does.

The path of a wealthy real estate investor is never a straight line. Often we’ll set up goals we deem worth chasing, then somewhere along the way, we’ll pivot to a more refined goal. Without knowing where we want to go, we can’t get the proper footing to start the journey. This is exactly what snowboarder, skater, real estate investor, and lender, Chris Naugle, talks about with us today.

Chris grew up in chilly Buffalo, New York and knew he wasn’t the employment type of guy. So, after quitting his first job, he decided to start a clothing company in his basement. Then, with some of the profits from his clothing venture, paired with a loan from his mom’s equity line, he opened up a skateboard shop. Everything was going well, until the dot com crash, prompting him to become an advisor on Wall Street.

As an advisor, Chris found that more and more of his wealthy clients were investing in real estate. This prompted him to take the leap and start flipping, buying commercial real estate, and investing in rentals. But, Chris wasn’t borrowing the right way, leading him to have to get rid of his 37 unit portfolio or go bankrupt.

After losing years’ worth of work and a massive amount of equity, Chris started to draw up systems and procedures that could work as a safety net for his investments. Now with a smaller portfolio of around 23 units, he works mostly as the bank that lends other investors their money. All of this was made possible when Chris stopped and thought about what his “perfect day” was and what he needed to do to make it a reality.