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Show Summary
In this episode of the Investor Fuel podcast, host Michelle Kesil talks with Brett Dale about his journey into real estate investing and the mindset that fuels his success. Brett shares how books like Rich Dad Poor Dad inspired him to pursue the B.R.R.R.R. strategy, how his wife and team support his growth, and why continuous learning is key. He also dives deep into mindset—emphasizing planning, belief, and persistence as the foundation of wealth building. Brett explains that achieving success requires effort, overcoming challenges, and surrounding yourself with supportive people who want to see you win.”
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Brett Dale (00:00)
Well, I guess if you feel like you can’t do something and you feel like it’s impossible, it absolutely is because you’ve already set yourself up to fail. So wherever you think you can move to, wherever you think you can go, you can absolutely get there. But you have to the right mindset to want to get there. And people who find a roadblock and then quit immediately, they’re absolutely destined to fail at everything they do. So every time I find a roadblock, I just try to figure out a way to get around it, because I just figured it’s a roadblock. It’s not the end of the road.Michelle Kesil (02:05)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Brett Dale, who’s been making serious moves in the investing space. So glad to have you here on the show today, Brett.Brett Dale (02:21)
Hey, thanks for having me.Michelle Kesil (02:22)
Yeah, of course. I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching ⁓ using mindset and all of the tools to create simple processes for your investing business. So let’s dive in.Brett Dale (02:40)
All right.Michelle Kesil (02:41)
Awesome. So yeah, firstfor those who are not familiar with you and your world, can you give the short version of what your main focus is?
Brett Dale (02:50)
Right now I’m burying houses, is buy, rehab, rent, ⁓ refinance and repeat, which is pretty popular right now. And it’s a really good way to get started ⁓ growing a larger portfolio from just having enough money to invest in one house alone. So you can really build a pretty large portfolio in a short period of time relative towhat you’d be able to build out without using other people’s money. So that’s what I’ve been focused on for the last few years. And I’ve made some pretty good strides so far. So I’m pretty happy. Some houses I’ve made 25,000 walking away after the burr in my pocket. And I would just roll that over to the next house. So I’ve never really took any money and put it in my pocket yet because it seems like a ridiculous, absurd idea to me because
spending a little bit of cash today and not planning for tomorrow doesn’t seem like a lucrative move. In other houses, I’ve come in maybe $5,000 over, you know, because there’s, when you refinance a house, you pay a lot of fees. There’s a lot of things that go on there. And sometimes I’ll come in with my numbers looking really good. And then when the fees hit, okay, I’m now in 5,000 over.
And I view it because the way I do my houses is still a win because I do really good work on the houses. So there’s no way that you could buy a house like what I make for the same kind of money. And with getting in a house for five grand, which is not really what I’m trying to do, but even if I do something that terrible, ⁓ it’s still a win for me.
Michelle Kesil (04:34)
Yeah, awesome.How did you get into this?
Brett Dale (05:24)
I started reading a lot of books. Rich Dad Poor Dad was the first book that really kind of made me take an interest in real estate and understand the difference between an asset and a liability. that probably, I think, drove a lot of people to get into it. And I guess overall, it seemed like the most logical way to go with the amount of money that I had, which is fairly small for my world.or for any world, guess. It’s just, I think I started off with 70,000 home economic credit and a bunch of credit cards. And I’m still working off of home economic credit and a bunch of credit cards, but ⁓ yeah, it’s going pretty good.
Michelle Kesil (06:03)
Awesome. What has been the key to keeping this running smoothly?Brett Dale (06:08)
⁓ the main thing is, is I, I guess I got a good stable job. So I try to use that money to help support this side business. And, ⁓ I just, you know, I got a really good crew of guys that work for me. So that’s really helped a lot. There’s, ⁓There’s the reading of the books. So that helps me rethink different ways to do the same thing. And that helps a lot.
Michelle Kesil (06:34)
Yeah, what kind of books are you reading? Which ones have been like the most influential?Brett Dale (06:40)
Think and Grow Rich was really good. I like that one a lot. It really sets on the mindset on how to kind of conjure money out of thin air. So that was a really good book. I like Dale Carnegie’s How to Make Friends and Influence People, which isn’t necessarily a real estate book, but it’s it’s kind of a good book just to learn how to be a better person. And I that sounds awkward, but it just really helps you.benefit in all your different relationships you have, whether it’s with your girlfriend or boyfriend or wife, husband, daughter, whatever, the contractors, the real estate agents, whoever. It just really helps build stronger relationships with people. It’s a really good book. ⁓ Read a lot of Brendan Turner’s books. I’m still reading a lot of his books. ⁓ There’s
There’s a lot, I got more books than I have time to read, but I keep trying to burn through them. I try to burn through a couple a month. And I think it’s okay.
Michelle Kesil (07:42)
That’s awesome.Yeah, what else has supported you in getting started with this business?
Brett Dale (07:49)
I guess my wife, she’s always been a strong supporter of mine. ⁓guess having a good crew of guys around that really, like I said, that helps a lot. So I get in the houses that.
I got in one house, it didn’t have any floors, it didn’t have any walls, no electric, no plumbing, no heating and air ducts, no nothing. It looked like a garage on the inside.
And yeah, we turned that house around. It looks really, really nice house now. So just having good guys around you and building relationships with them, I guess, helps a lot.
Michelle Kesil (08:20)
Yeah. And where do you see this business going? Like what are you focused on scaling?Brett Dale (08:27)
Well, now I’m trying to build up to where I have enough money to do two houses at once instead of just one. And I believe it’ll take me another year or two. And then I can start doing a little bit more flips and not just burn so that I can build up more equity in the business itself. that’s, I think that’s kind of where I plan on going. And then eventually moving into multifamily, which I mean,you know, 10, 15, 20 unit buildings. I was looking at one the other day and it’s a 26 unit. I think it was priced a little high, but my pockets aren’t quite that deep yet. But I, you know, I got to look out there and see what there is and try to make moves to do what you want in life. You know what I mean?
Michelle Kesil (09:08)
Yeah, absolutely, that’s the only way is to just get out there and start planning for it.Brett Dale (09:14)
Yeah, absolutely. I think knowledge is the ⁓ one thing that helps a lot. Listening to podcasts, listening to books, talking to other people, getting out there to different regroups and just talking to people, helps a lot because you learn a lot. Everybody has something to teach you and if you don’t listen and you don’t spend that time to listen to people, you really sell yourself short.because you don’t, you know, if you, I guess if you, I don’t know, I guess there’s always an opportunity to learn things. And I feel like that’s one thing I try to always take an opportunity to do.
Michelle Kesil (09:51)
Yeah, definitely learning is so important.So what are some of like the tools that you’ve learned that maybe you can share with people?
Brett Dale (10:34)
Well, I guess if you feel like you can’t do something and you feel like it’s impossible, it absolutely is because you’ve already set yourself up to fail. So wherever you think you can move to, wherever you think you can go, you can absolutely get there. But you have to the right mindset to want to get there. And people who find a roadblock and then quit immediately, they’re absolutely destined to fail at everything they do.So every time I find a roadblock, I just try to figure out a way to get around it, because I just figured it’s a roadblock. It’s not the end of the road.
So I try to figure out a way to just push past everything. So if I don’t have enough money, all right, that’s just a problem. That’s not the end of the story. It’s not the end of the deal. It’s just another problem I have to overcome. I guess figuring out how to overcome problems is
The biggest thing and it’s the way somebody’s mindset is, is if you really think that you can’t overcome something or it’s too big of a deal or the task is too tall, then it’s probably not for you. You probably shouldn’t do it because you’re going to fail. You’ve already set your mind up to fail. And if somebody wants to fail, that’s, that they’re allowed. You’re allowed to fail. And if you want to make as much money in the world as you can, you’re definitely allowed to do that. Nobody’s stopping you. Everybody’s out here to support you.
Whether it’s the banks, real estate agents, contractors, everybody’s out here trying to help us. So I really think it’s the way you frame your mindset a lot more so than it is ⁓ anything else. So if you have the right mindset, you definitely can do whatever you want in the world. I mean, it’s even like rules and laws. They’re just meant to be broken. Everybody does it every day. So it’s like, it’s the way you frame it, the way you want to make things happen.
Michelle Kesil (12:11)
Yeah.He
Brett Dale (12:22)
If you want to do whatever you want to do, you could do it. mean, it’s not really… There’s not nothing that’s really that impossible to do. And as big a stream as you want to make or as small a stream you want to make, you can make whatever happen. I mean, the more things you do, the more work there is. That’s simple as that. But you can always just have other people do that work for you. You don’t necessarily have to do it yourself. You just have to understand that, okay, there’s going to be more work.I need somebody else to do this. When I first started getting into the burrs, my original plan, because I could do anything about, I can wire and plumb and I can build walls and drywall, roofs, side windows, whatever. My original plan was to do a lot of the work myself. And I quickly learned I really don’t like doing it anymore. I’m older. I don’t want nothing to do with it. It’s not my thing. So I just pay other guys to do it.
Brett Dale (00:00)
anybody can do anything they want. They set their mind to it. And my thought is if you study to be rich and you spend a lot of time at it and you’re just average, just the average guy, that’s pretty damn good. You can practice to bea good chess player, which I like chess a lot, or a good baseball player, basketball player. And if you’re just average, you’re way better than the average guy. The average guy can’t run up and down the court. He’s not gonna make any free throws. If you’re just average, you’re really, really good. And if you’re average at being rich and making money, that’s way better than most people are doing. That’s just, you’re doing phenomenally well. So I think most people…
If they read, learn, study, listen to podcasts and just immerse themselves in the world of making money, then they will undoubtedly do better. It’s almost impossible not to. And that’s kind of how I think. I don’t know. I just feel like if you surround yourself by something, you kind of create who you are. And it’s kind of like if you take a really skinny…
Weak kid and he thinks he’s a thug and everybody beats him up all the time, right? And he still thinks he’s a thug. Eventually this little kid is gonna get a gun or a knife and hurt somebody. And then he’ll go to jail and then he’ll be the thug he always wanted to be. And I know it’s an extreme example all the way to the left, but the idea is that no matter what your situation is, whatever you wanna be, that’s who you’ll be. And I just think it takes a lot of time and effort and…
A lot of people aren’t willing to invest either one of those. A lot of people kind of want something really quick and really easy and I don’t think that exists anywhere for anything. I think it’s just time, effort, energy and pretty much anybody that wants to have whatever they want in life, you can go out there and get it. It’s there.
But that’s kind of how I think.
Michelle Kesil (01:48)
Yeah, I love that. I agree. I think that’s so important, especially for people who have their own business. mean, it’s going to separate you from someone that’s just trying to make a quick buck versus someone that’s here for like a long term vision as you have to have your mindset focused on that and trust on that.Brett Dale (02:51)
I think so. I mean, think it just takes, if you want to build large amounts of wealth, it takes a long time. If you want to make a quick buck, I mean, you can make 20 or 30 grand off living in a house pretty quick. You can do that all the time. it’s, it just, takes, you know, it takes some intelligence and some learning, but it’s not hard to do at all. It’s really not. I think,If somebody jumped in there with a pocket full of cash and didn’t know what they were doing, they’re pretty destined to lose money really fast. I’ve seen it happen to a lot of guys from real estate agents to guys who just thought it’d be easy to get into and they didn’t really plan on how to run the numbers. They didn’t have a good crew in mind. They didn’t have anything set up. They just got a wild hair and decided to ⁓ go do wild things and then wild things happened to them. So
It’s really all about the planning and trying to figure out what you really want to do. And when you dump large amounts of cash into something, if you don’t have a good plan, a good exit plan, and another good exit plan after that, you’re probably messing up. There should be multiple ways to get into something and out of something, at least out of it. I mean, it’s only learning one way to get into it. But.
I’ve only been doing it for three years now and if I sold everything right now, I would just make money. It’s pretty simple, I would just make money because I didn’t get anything, I didn’t get any bad deals and I really kind of plan out my deals a lot. When I first got into it, my wife thought I was crazy and I explained to her, I have a fairly nice house and we have some decent cars, nothing crazy but.
She’s worried about what we have and what we can lose. And I explained to her, listen, the worst case scenario is they take everything. What that means is we still keep our houses, we still keep our cars. They just take the extra stuff I just started playing with. Like none of it matters. The main thing is if you don’t try, if you don’t try to go out there and really push yourself, you’ll never get anywhere. It’ll never happen for you. You’ll just sit around and dream forever. And dreaming is not a place I want to be.
At least I always dream about something doing tomorrow and then I react on those dreams today. And so I try to set myself up for the dreams tomorrow, but a lot of people just dream and then they go back to sleep and they never do nothing. And then their lives are just like everybody else’s lives, just pretty mundane and, you know, without the riches that they want.
And I don’t know how else to say it, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Like my kid, he doesn’t want to be rich. He has no interest in it. He wants to go to work through a nine to five, and he wants to put no effort in after that. And that’s fine if that’s what you want out of life. But if you want more, you have to work more. And you have to learn more, and you have to be more. You literally have to be more and better than everybody else around you, and you’ll probably be the best guy around you for a while until you find better people.
And it’s, it’s kind of easy. People love being around people just like them, whatever you are. And it’s, it’s kind of wild when you, I guess for me, I climbed out of, I’m not quite climbed out of it, but I’m, you know, from a blue collar job to, ⁓ somewhat of a real estate investor. It’s a different world and it’s, it’s not an easy path, but it’s definitely.
It’s definitely a path that’s worth pursuing and anybody could do it. If they put the time and effort in, it’s really hard to do anything without putting in time and effort. And I think a lot of the world looks for a TikTok real in real life where they get five seconds of, ⁓ I could do this. And then if they run off with a lot of cash and do that, they’ll be broke and poor in no time. It’s a real easy path to break yourself in half.
Michelle Kesil (06:40)
Yeah.Brett Dale (06:41)
But the reality is if you learn and study and put the effort in, it’s easy. And then after you’ve got your systems down and your ideas down, if you didn’t feel like learning no more, you don’t necessarily have to, but I find that pretty wild too because the world’s only filled with knowledge and if you grab as much as you can, you can keep on pulling yourself up to the next level. And there’s really no stopping how much money you can make.It’s unimaginable, honestly. I’m pretty old starting this out. I think it was 48 when I started out. So I figured by the time I’m 65, 70, I want to have at least 40 or 50 million. And I think it’s pretty reasonable to ask for that out of the world. And I don’t think the world wants to stop me. I think they want to give everything to me. And it’s going to be kind of easy to do, just a lot of work.
And that’s kind of how I feel. I think the world wants to give everybody everything they want. And I think a lot of people, they put out a lot of…
Michelle Kesil (07:30)
Amazing.Brett Dale (07:42)
A lot of ideas that the world’s trying to stop them or trying to hold them back or it’s bad. And if that’s the way you think, it’s absolutely that way. Because the world’s just whatever you think it is.And I don’t know. I think you can get as much as you want out of this world.
Michelle Kesil (07:56)
Yeah. Yeah.Brett Dale (07:57)
How about yourself? How do you feel about that?Michelle Kesil (08:00)
Yeah, I totally agree. mean, our thoughts and our beliefs, they project out of our energy field, out of our aura, and that’s what we attract. And so if we believe that that’s what we get, then that’s what’s matched to us. So I really resonate.Brett Dale (08:19)
There’s a split photon experiment where they’ll take photons and throw them through a slit. And if you observe it, it’s one way. And if you don’t observe it, it’s another way. So in one way, it’s a wave function. And in another way, when it’s observed, it changes into the shape of a slit instead of a wave. And based on that,The world barely changes just based on observation. And the thought patterns now are that we’re living in somewhat of a simulation world. And that’s one, that’s one, or that’s one experiment that kind of leans that way. The experiment was done way back in the thirties. But any rate, the point is, is if we’re living in a simulation or not a simulation, however it works out.
It literally is true. However you think and what you project on the world is what you get back. It just works that way. And it’s there’s book after book on it. Almost every self-help book, it talks about the same thing. It’s like everybody kind of believes the same thing, but I don’t believe a lot of people either know it or sit around and consciously spend time and effort to change their thought patterns.
Michelle Kesil (09:16)
Yeah.Brett Dale (09:35)
to try to pull in the money they want. And it’s really kind of easy. Like nobody wants to stop any way from making money. There are some people who hate on each other, but it’s, I find that to be very small and relative to the world. Cause most people really just want to see each other do good. And that’s what I found inMichelle Kesil (09:51)
Yeah. Yeah.Brett Dale (09:54)
That’s kind of how I see the world.Michelle Kesil (09:55)
Amazing. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. So before we close up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect with you, learn more, where can they find you?Brett Dale (10:06)
I’m an Akron and I don’t really get on social media much. My name is Brett Dale and I’m on Facebook. They can reach me there, but I don’t do a whole lot of social media. That’s not really my thing. ⁓ Maybe it should be though. So you never know. Tomorrow’s always a different day. So everything changes with time, right?Michelle Kesil (10:23)
Yeah. Yeah.Yes, amazing. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your perspective and your story. So yeah, thank you for sharing it here.
Brett Dale (10:36)
Thank you much. Thanks for having me, Michelle.Michelle Kesil (10:38)
Yes,of course. And for those tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’ve subscribed. We have more conversations coming with operators just like Brett, who are building real businesses and we’ll see you all on our next episode.
