Be The Bank

006 - Place A Monetary Value On Your Time

April 22, 2020 Justin Bogard & Super E Season 2 Episode 6
Be The Bank
006 - Place A Monetary Value On Your Time
Show Notes Transcript

2 Wealth Show S2 Ep6 – Place A Monetary Value On Your Time

Super E and Justin Bogard interview landlord coach Mark Dolfini in the 6th episode of season 2. 

Get to know who Mark Dolfini is and receive some of his awesome coaching!

Key Takeaways:  

  1. Strategic Terms and the WHY
  2. Time Wealth + Freedom of Your Calendar
  3. Without a Vision, You are Easily Distracted

Resources and links discussed  

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 About the Hosts 

Justin Bogard – Note Investor specializing in performing Residential Real Estate Debt. He finds deals and acquires them for his own portfolio as well as educates investors while walking them through the process of owning a Real Estate Note!  

Super E – Real Estate Investor specializing in short-term rentals and the management of them. She connects investors with short-term tenants and manages everything in-between. 

Connect with the Hosts: 

  • @2wealthshow – Facebook/Instagram 
  • @wealth_show - Twitter 
Justin Bogard:

[inaudible]. Welcome to the two wealth show, a show that shares how you can create real wealth for you and your family. I'm one of your hosts, Justin Bogard and my cohost is Elizabeth Sickles, AKA super E. I am a real estate note investor specializing in performing residential real estate debt. I find the deals aquire them for my own portfolio as well as educate investors while walking them through the process of owning a real estate note, my cohost super E, a real estate investor specializing in short term rentals and the management of them. She connects investors with short term tenants and manages everything in between. Our show is sponsored by BrightPath Notes and Elizabeth Maora. You can find out more information by visiting our website at brightpathnotes.com and Elizabeth Maora. com. Hello everybody. So I am Elizabeth Maora-Sickles, AKA super E. hi, I'm Justin Bogard with bright path notes and we have our guest speaker again today. Mr. Mark Delphine, hey there. How are you doing today, Mark? I am great. How are you guys? Um, I'm doing pretty well. As you can see. I'm still at the home office here. All right. Out from your bunker. I see. Yeah. Yeah. They let me out every once in awhile. All right. Awesome. Awesome. The dog does too. Very good. How about you? Super E. How are you doing? I'm good. I've got my homemade tofu. Mmm, so that's, you actually made yourself my staff, they have a joke because when, when we meet they actually like they'll ask me. So did you turn on your stove last week? I love it. That's pretty good. I'm going to keep them for a while. I made a tea this morning. Excellent. All right. Well yeah, that counts. Yeah, pretty good. That's a very good thing. We're really honored to have the landlord coach. It's an honor. It's an honor to be on your, on your show, guys. I really appreciate you taking the time and whatever. Whatever a little value I can offer. Hopefully there's somebody out there that can, I can dial in on something I say today. Absolutely. Can you give our audience for those that don't know who you are, can you give them just an overview of what, what you're doing?

Mark Dolfini:

Yeah, so, um, my name is Mark Dolfini, uh, the landlord coach. One of the things that, um, you know, uh, I wrote a book, um, several years ago and I published another book last year, which at the time wealthy investor 2.0 and, um, one of the things that I had noticed was people, um, people in the real estate space that are out there that are the gurus. Um, they teach a lot of tactics, right? They're teaching a lot of things about what to do in the real estate space, but never really the why you're doing it. They never really can teach you to construct a business in the first place. Right. They never really talk about the business. They talk about very tactical thing, but they never really talk in strategic terms. And I felt that there was a huge need in the market for, you know, for a book that really talked more of a top down approach rather than a, you know, how to get into the properties and how to, how to manage the properties in a very tactical way. Um, I, I went from the top down and really started, I want you to design a life that you want first and then reverse engineer a business that can deliver that life for you. So, um, it's just a different way of looking at it. I don't, I don't, I don't think any of any of those individual tactics are gurus are wrong. Um, it's just a different way to look at it. So that's a, that's my approach. And I think that the most fundamental thing, the most, the best type of wealth that we can have is time, wealth, and that's freedom of your calendar to do what you want.

Elizabeth Maora:

Absolutely. So you are a landlord coach and you also do property management.

Mark Dolfini:

Yeah. So I'm the management company that I, that I started, um, no, a hundred years ago or so. Uh, it, uh, it manages my properties as well as the properties, uh, of others. So, you know, it's a, it's a Oh half about what I own and what I have them manage for other people.

Elizabeth Maora:

Okay. And what is the territory that you manage?

Mark Dolfini:

Uh, central Indiana. So we're not in, we don't want to be in every single market. We're very, you know, I made the mistake of not being very selective about asset classes when I was getting into this. And I think that's probably one of my biggest mistakes is I wasn't selective enough in terms of the types of properties I was getting into because of the types of properties that I was getting into. Mmm. You know, uh, they were, they were, they required such a high degree of maintenance that it was attracting clientele that needed a high degree of management. So because of that, because that wasn't really a good fit, um, I was just, I was so time wary that, um, uh, you know, I was spending all my time managing this property. So I, I, I am not in every single market in the country. We're based out of Lafayette, Indiana. Um, but, uh, yeah, we do manage some properties in different markets. Um, you know, like Indianapolis and things like that, but we're not in every, every part of Indianapolis either earned very, very selective markets of the, because of what, what I said, because of the, the identification of asset classes.

Elizabeth Maora:

Do you focus in on any, like are you in all ABC neighborhoods or what's, can you kind of dive into that a little bit?

Mark Dolfini:

Yeah, that's, um, so what I was noticing is that, um, I was in mostly being seen neighborhoods and I'm not sure if there's a D and D classification, but I was probably in those two. Uh, it was horrible. But the, the, the, and I, and I know that's, you know, not an indictment of any particular, you know, um, demographic, it's just that I was dealing with a lot of people that didn't value their own time, so they sure weren't about to value mine. And these were people that would drive 45 minutes out of their way to bring cash to my office. You know, I mean, that made no sense to me. Um, or even worse, they would expect me to drive 45 minutes out of my way to go pick up cash at their house. So, you know, of course when you're broke, you know, your time wary and you're financially wary, you're going to do whatever you have to do to keep the Wolf from the door. So, um, those are the types of neighborhoods I was in and it just didn't work well for me. So when I started to, unfortunately a lot of the decisions were made for me, I had built a a$6 million portfolio out of a hodgepodge of creative financing and wheeling and dealing. And, um, when the economy turns sour back in 2009, I had roughly$65,000 a month in revenues coming in, which turned into about$30,000 a month, month over month over month. And I just couldn't weather that storm. So I ended up losing a significant number of those properties to foreclosure and, um, the properties that I was losing or properties that I really didn't miss that much to begin with. So there was a few properties I really wish I could help, could have held onto, but unfortunately just didn't work out that way. But many of the properties that I ended up losing, we're low in properties, brought me nothing but drama. And, um, you know, from that Friday when, when life was crazy to the following Monday or however it worked out, I just remember my phone not ringing, ringing off the wall to the point where I actually looked at my phone, like, is this thing on? That's actually how it looked. That literally happened. I had actually looked at my phone to make sure that it was still on and working, but that was the, I wasn't getting nonsense calls. I was getting calls that, you know, for people that really needed some assistance in terms of what it was that I was doing. And, and, and, uh, you know, they needed actual, they needed solutions to real problems. So,

Justin Bogard:

so that kinda leads me into what kind of, how Mark and I, we had a business relationship with where Mark actually helped me and he kind of coached me through some stuff. And what I took away from that was his VIP method. Not very important person, but uh, no visually you are to me though. Thank you. I appreciate all those points for you will stay on for an extra few minutes. But your vision, infrastructure and process paradigm that you taught me and it was very, is very clear and it was very eye opening that you know, cause you don't figure this stuff out on your own. She kind of had that somebody like here, let me frame this for you, what you need to do. And that's exactly what you did for me. And I thank you very much for, for showing me that and teaching me that obviously. And I was very lucky to run into you to have that, you know, kind of direction where you need to go and what you need to focus on and where you need to look towards so you can get to that goal stuff. So don't mind lead into kind of what your, your main thing is you're doing right now. Do you call it mentoring? Do you call it coaching? What do you prefer?

Mark Dolfini:

Well, coach, I really do think that more of a coach, because again, these are just my definitions. These are, these are not the universal truth. These are just my truth. You know, I, I mentioned earlier, like, you know, you have the gurus who I think the gurus are good at a thing, right? I think that it's like if they're good at subject two deals and they want to teach her how to do subject two deals, that's, that's their thing. They know how to do that. Or if they're teaching you how to do wholesaling, okay, that's their thing. That's their tactic, right? Where I feel like I'm better is again through the VIP method is about how to, how people can create a business and that, and you can, whether you're in real estate or razorblades, you can use, you can create, use this VIP method to do that. So I remember when you and I first started working together, Justin. Mmm. You know, we were talking about, uh, you know, I know that there was probably some hesitation in terms of, well Mark's a buy and hold guy and I'm kind of in the note, you know, like what's this going to be like and how's he going to tell me what to do? Right. Yeah.[inaudible] and how does he have any clarity? And I don't know the note business, I don't, um, but what I can tell you is that, well, the VIP method, once you have a really good understanding, the VIP method, you become an expert. You become an expert on process and become an expert of business. And so leading into that, the VIP method is really about vision, infrastructure and process. So the vision is really about what you are trying to accomplish, right? So, and you know, a lot of times I'll, I'll ask a, a new investor or even someone who sees and they'll say, Oh, that's cool. You know, what, what are you trying to get to? What's your, you know, what's your goal? You know? And I it, cause even though I think goals and vision are different, if I say, what's your vision people, yeah, weird. You know, they look at me funny. Um, but they, they'll say, Oh, I want to get a hundred rental units. And I always ask the universal, you know, my re universal record 99 won't do it. Right? Right. And then, well, yeah, 99 would do it. And I'm like, so 94 won't do it. Right. And I'll continue on that vein until eventually they'll, I, they'll, you know, I think what happens is people will get confused. They confused the number of units with the life output that they think that that will buy them. Right? So they think that they need a hundred rental units to have this life output that they haven't even very clearly defined. They just want more money and as a result they're willing to trade all of their time for it. Well, how is that not a job? Right? You're doing now, if you're working for an employer, that's what you're doing now. And if you, if you ended up firing that employer and working for yourself and you don't have that vision in place, you're going to end up working for a far worse boss right then, then the guy you just fired. So that's why I'm saying like, I had the worst boss in the world because I didn't have a very clear vision of what I was trying to accomplish. So you know, when you have that very clear vision of what you want and most people think, Oh yeah, I know what I want until I go, Oh really? And then I start challenging on, they're like, yeah, I don't know what I want. It's very, it's not a very easy thing to do. It's like trying to put lotion on your own back. Very hard to peel that out. And you and I worked through quite a few sessions trying to get your vision more clear. Um, and, and it's, it's difficult. And I realized I, in that time I realized that I had a weakness in my own coaching, but I didn't have a tool in my toolbox to give people. And now I do. And now I have the vision roadmap where people, if they want to be a member, that they can go on the membership site and get the vision roadmap that really peels them through. It's only 12 page thing. It's not a really long sucky thing is, but it should be a fun process where you get to dream again and go, you know, I've always thought I was wanting to go to space camp. You know, I never got to go to space camp when I was at 13 you know, I want to do that now. You know, all the things that are important to us as as adults because we, you know, adulting has set in and we just don't want to dream anymore. So that's where the vision pieces, so the vision piece is really, really important. And then we evolve into the process portion, which is the infrastructure and process, right? That's the system part. So the infrastructure is really nothing more than we talked about identifying the asset class. They asked that class is very important, but also just the bones of the business. It's the software, it's the desks, the chairs, the, you know, if you have an office or a home office or whatever that is, that's the infrastructure, right? And then you know, and the reason why we, the infrastructure is next is if you're, let's say a piece of your vision is to sit on the beach for two months out of the year, rubbing cocoa butter on your belly, right? You have to have an infrastructure that's in alignment with that, right? Because if your vision, if your infrastructure is going to require you to return emails and phone calls in a timely manner, that's going to really suck for you if you want to lay on the beach rubbing cocoa butter on your belly for two months, right? So that's why vision has to be clear first. Then we set up an infrastructure that's an alignment, that vision, and then the processes are all the tactics that you've been learning all along. So if you've got tactics in place that you want to employ, you know, you set up an infrastructure that's in alignment with that, right? And then you put the processes in place that run on an infrastructure yeah. That you can, you have this process that a virtual assistant runs or you know, it runs on software that you have or whatever that is. So that's why the vision of restructure process method will work. If you want to be a wholesaler or you know, if you want to buy and sell notes or if you want to be in the Airbnb business, it all works.

Justin Bogard:

Absolutely. Yeah, it was definitely, I had, I come to an internal impasse there for a minute with my vision, you know, just like, man, that was good and you pushed back a lot. Huh? A lot on me. But you did it in a good way. Meaning, you know, you had to get it out of me. Like I couldn't figure it out on my own. And you're like, you know, asking me these questions, probing, getting curious, you know, with the thoughts and stuff. And it was just like, why can't I figure this out? And then all of a sudden just like, Oh, that's what I want. You know, then you have to, you know, once you talk to him and be like, Oh my gosh, okay, now things start to get a little clear. It's not as murky as it was and it did it, it took us several sessions to even get to that point to where like I had too much that I was trying to derail from the real focus and just be like, what do you want? And I couldn't answer that question at first. You know, it took a while to get out, but I'm glad that it got out

Mark Dolfini:

okay. And I know we're running lean on time, but I want to, I just want to point out that if you, without a vision, you know, it's very easy to get distracted. Yeah. And let's face it in, in the real estate space, the real estate is a very, very distractable business. And that's the, that's the problem with real estate. I mean, there's so many opportunities. It's easy to kind of, you know, you talked to one guy, Mmm. You know, at a REIA meeting and it, you know, from one month to the next, he's a, you know, one month he's a wholesaler. Next month he's a fix and flipper and the meth after that, he's, he's in cryptocurrency. Nope. No. Like what, you know, like, because it's so distractible and that's, and, and again, when you don't have a clear vision in terms of what you're trying to accomplish, you know, I liken that to like a mama bear protecting her Cub. Right? You don't get in between a mama bear and her Cub. Why is that? I feel that the truth there is because a mama bear has a vision to see that cup grow up and be healthy. Right. You don't get in the way of that mama bear. No. You know what I'm saying? Like, you don't do that. So if you imagine if you had a vision that was so clear that you could pursue that vision with such a ferocity of purpose, but nothing in the world is going to get in your way, then you'd be unstoppable. But you have to have that clearly defined. Otherwise you're just gonna wander in that general direction trying to make more money. And then what ends up happening is you just end up creating a miserable job for yourself that you never extract yourself from. Exactly. Definitely.

Justin Bogard:

You mentioned about members earlier. Now you have a membership site, correct?

Mark Dolfini:

Yeah. Which I mentioned the, the vision roadmap and it's silly cheap. I mean, I, I'm, I'm wanna, I'm keeping it cheap because I mean, it, let's face it, if I gave it away, you don't value what you don't pay for. Right. You know, I mean, in my own case, I don't, you know, like I'd sign up for something and I never needed, I never use it. If it's, I've been, I'll actually have some money in the skin in the game for nine bucks a month. If you know, a cost of a trip, you know, a trip to Starbucks. I don't buy Starbucks. But I mean, I'm thinking that's what it costs about now that in a friend. Um, but for, for nine bucks a month, people can go out or if you want a free month, yeah. You can sign up for a whole year, it's just 99 bucks. But, um, there's a ton of this stuff that's in there that will help people get, um, not only closer to their vision through the vision roadmap. There's a, there's a whole video course that's around that, but also, um, uh, lots of different videos, training videos, but also, uh, access to a preferred vendor list where people can, you know, get it, get a Mmm, you know, access to private money lenders, hard money lenders, things like that. So if they're really looking to get started in this, this is, there's a lot of tools that are really, really important that can help them do that. So, uh, yeah, they can just go to the disc, go to the landlord, coach, it's landlord, coach.com, forward slash and members and uh, you can sign in, sign up there and sign in there as well. Awesome. I love the passion Mark. Yeah, definitely.

Justin Bogard:

Definitely. If you haven't gone through coaching with Mark, you haven't, you haven't been pushed yet. They're tested as you say. Yeah. I, I really appreciate you saying that. I, I just to be clear that I don't coach for the$9 a month. I am, I'm worth, well, I'm more than that, but I do. But I do include people in, you know, that are members and in group coaching calls. Um, so if they do have challenges like that, they, they, you know, the group can also help them too. But you know, individual coaching that certainly we can have that conversation as well. But I really believe that this is what the, the industry is missing. That's why I'm so passionate about this because, you know, it almost cost me my life. It almost costs. I almost, I got double pneumonia because I was working 16, 1820 hours a day trying to keep my real estate business afloat.

Mark Dolfini:

And I really believe that's why I was spared. So I can pass this message along because there's so many people that get out there and have really, really good. Mmm. They have good aspirations of what they want to bring to the world. I mean, I mean some awesome things. They want to build orphanages, they want to dig Wells in different in third world countries. They want to do some really cool stuff out there, but they're being held back because they're focusing on the wrong thing. And it also, Oh, and this is a slight tweak, a slight shift in mindset that'll make all the difference. So that's it. Absolutely. Super E, what kind of ending questions do we have for Mark?

Elizabeth Maora:

All right, so what is the biggest piece of advice that you have to give no matter where you are in your real estate career?

Mark Dolfini:

Now your time, place a value on your time. And if it, if it's helpful, place a monetary value on your time because[inaudible] think of it this way. If you're going to, if you're whatever, you would pay someone else to do a task, right? So if you would pay someone$12 an hour to clean your apartments for you or your houses for you know that that's what you're paying yourself. Okay? So if you're, if you want it may, you know, I don't think you got into this space to, you know, create a$12 an hour job for yourself. Um, you know, you want to be making 50 a hundred,$250 an hour. Keep in mind that every time you do that$12 an hour task, you're costing yourself that minus whatever you want to be making your$100 an hour person, you just cost yourself$88 by doing that task yourself. So value your time, value your free time. Absolutely. Nice. Some good advice. What, uh, what was, uh, I think you mentioned this earlier, but do you have any other lessons learned in your life that you'd like to share with our audience here? Um, I think probably the biggest thing was, you know, valuing my time. Um, but you know, become a student of business. Don't just be, don't be myopic, don't be myopic and just say, you know, I'm a real estate person and you just learn everything about real estate. What I started doing when I became a student of business, I literally would sit down in places that were running well and looking at, I'd look at the operation of Starbucks and watch how people came in. Watch her, they were greeted, watch the system, watched it, watch how it moved. Watch the watch the, you know, I'm like, almost like the matrix. Watch how the matrix is running. Right? Um, you know, watch. Now I don't believe that we take a blue pill, red pill. I'm not as, I'm not that deep and scared, but I mean, I do. But watch the how businesses that are well run. Here's the problem with infrastructure and process. If infrastructure is running well, the system is running well. It's hard to notice. It's only until infrastructure is missing or broken that you notice it, right? Right. So watch how things are running. Well, we all become an expert of things when things aren't running well, right? This is terrible. Right? But why is it terrible? Why does what? Think about the infrastructure or process that's broken, that that PR, that waitress has seven tables and that one only has two. Right. Think about that for a second. So that's where I would say become a student of business, not just a student of real estate. I'm a student of business. All right Mark, one more time. It was a, your member site was landlord coach.com forward slash members members. That's correct. Yep. You can go to the, you can go to the landlordcoach.com and just look in the menu. I think the member, I think it says a welcome members or you can just go to the landlordcoach.com forward slash members for the direct. Excellent. Mark, thank you so much for being on our episode today. We truly appreciate it and I truly value the stuff that you've taught me in this short amount of time that I've known you and I look forward to having more conversations with you in the future. Super E. Thanks for, uh, getting all those questions together for us. And I know you like to get, yeah, get right to the punch with our getting our guests there. Thanks for doing that. And so I'm just a Bogard with bright path notes. Elizabeth with Elizabeth Maora. All right. And then our guests, mr Mark, Dolfini, I got used to pointing the opposite way. I'm looking here. I know I'm up here. I don't know we're here. Yeah, that's right. You are here on my screen. So the difference. Very good. Mark, Dolfini landlord. Coach. Thanks for having me guys. I appreciate it. All right, until next time. See you guys. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Bogard:

2 Wealth Show was produced by Justin Bogard and Super E. It's sponsored by BrightPath notes and Elizabeth Maora. Thanks for listening and watching our show.[inaudible].