How Gary Davidson Built Castle Law to Free Attorneys and Help Investors Grow

Gary Davidson (00:00)
One of the things that, ⁓ and we work with thousands and thousands of individual investors and people get very, very, very excited at the beginning and they listen to a podcast with Kristen and Gary Davidson and maybe Gary Davidson talks about subject two transactions or contract for deeds or rent to own or double closings or assignment deals and whatever it is, they’re like, yes, this is exactly what I need to do and I need to go out and I need to do a thousand subject two deals because I listened to Pace Morby the other day and the reality is, as investors, we need to have a lot of tools in our tool belt, and we need to surround ourselves with mentor programs, listening to companies like Investor Fuel, talking to people within the Investor Fuel community who can assist us.

Kristen Knapp (02:31)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Post podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with Gary Davidson, who’s the owner of Castle Law. They’re based out of Chicago, Indiana, New York, Arizona. Really impressive company he’s built. So thank you for being here, Gary.

Gary Davidson (02:44)
Hey Kristen,

thanks and it good to get to know you a little bit before we got started here.

Kristen Knapp (02:50)
so I want to just hop into this, you know, tell us about your law journey. When did you, you know, get interested kind of in this real estate sector with it?

Gary Davidson (03:02)
Yeah, so. ⁓

Real estate has been something that has been a passion of mine for a long time. And if you have to think about it, most of the world’s millionaires have created wealth ⁓ through the acquisition of real estate, whether it’s McDonald’s, whether it’s Walgreens, whether it’s any large publicly held company, all the way down to a firefighter who wants to buy their own rental portfolio. ⁓ In order to create that life worth living and the legacy worth leaving, ⁓ real estate is

kind of a foundation of the US economy. So ⁓ just a natural to help people and because I have a go-giver mentality, ⁓ helping people through real estate ⁓ and ⁓ doing that through what I have as a law degree ⁓ is just been natural.

Kristen Knapp (03:53)
Yeah, totally. mean, this industry, there’s so much opportunity within it it allows people to be very flexible and entrepreneurial. So I think that’s wonderful. When did you found Castle Law? How did that come about and how did you get into that?

Gary Davidson (04:09)
Yeah,

so about 1998, I know with this crew cut, don’t probably don’t look like I’ve been practicing law that long, but in 1998, ⁓ as you know, most law firms are called, you know, I like to tease around and say, do it, cheat them and how or, or, know, Davidson and associates because my last name is Davidson.

And what I saw was a proliferation of private equity groups that have been acquiring medical offices, law office or medical offices, dental offices. And ⁓ there was really no brand identification with with law firms. It’s just a string of names. So ⁓ Castle Law was was just born from sort of a metaphor for where you go for protection. And obviously, there’s a metaphor in the real estate industry. Everybody, your home is your castle. You want to have

have a castle.

So we created this brand that lawyers could come under. as you probably know, Chris and lawyers have huge egos. everybody wants to have their name in a law firm. So it kind of took that away because nobody in our law firm really, people don’t know who the associate attorney is and who the owner is. And so it just allows everybody to operate under this brand of CASA law to eventually sell to ⁓ a large institution.

institutional buyer ⁓ and that allowed us because I saw a lot of lawyers that Were basically what I like to say is owned a Chinese restaurant. They were they were literally ⁓ Greeting people at the door. They were performing the work. They were billing the client They were you know, they were doing every single aspect of it and with Castle law what we do is

We allow attorneys, we give them their time back by allowing attorneys to do what they do well, which is practice law. And we’ll handle all the back office for them. And that allows them to give their time back so that they can spend it with their spouse. They can go out and generate more business. They can earn more income. And really, quite frankly, to my core being, which is trading on relationships, that’s my commodity, helping my colleagues have that life that’s worth living. That’s why they went to

law school to be able to provide for other people rather than just running a business because people who are professionals don’t do a good job in actually owning a business. They own a business to practice their trade. So we’ve done that. We’ve helped give people back their lives. They make more money. They service their client better ⁓ and it’s really working out well.

Kristen Knapp (07:34)
think you mentioned something really interesting at the beginning, kind of how you branded Castle Law. I think that’s good advice. ⁓ Seems like you know the branding world really well and I’d love for you to dig in a little deeper of how, calling it a more general name rather than with everyone’s last name on the building. ⁓ Just talk more about kind of like that journey of how you really drilled into your personal brand with the business and how that’s helped you scale.

Gary Davidson (08:02)
Well, I think that the first and foremost is that ⁓ in order to, you for any young entrepreneur or you don’t have to be young for anyone that wants to start their own business. ⁓

you have to sort of check your ego at the door. And everyone wants to have some sort of ownership. So then they immediately put their name on things. You know, when people set up LLCs, they want to they want to call, ⁓ you know, the LLC 123 Smith Street LLC, but that really is a limiting mindset, because the reality is you want to add more to your portfolio, you want to be more than just Gary Davidson, you want it to

be something that’s enduring and something that people can that that people can be attracted to and something that’s larger than yourself. ⁓ And, know, this is just a concept of just, you know, in order to get you have to give and to have that go giver mentality from the very beginning, just when it starts with branding, so that when somebody comes into your business, when you have people that are working for you, everybody

is part of a bigger cause. They’re not just working for you. They’re working for something that’s much bigger than just one individual.

Kristen Knapp (09:26)
Absolutely, I totally agree that it creates longevity. It’s just like a brand name that’s bigger than yourself, as you said, ⁓ which is wonderful. So you get the branding down and then you say you’re an expert at relationships and networking and all that. How do you go about your relationship building?

Gary Davidson (09:45)
Well, the reality is that when you’re talking to someone, you have to identify what it is that’s what’s the one thing I think Gary Keller talks about this. What’s the one thing such that if you can do it for someone, everything else will be easier or unnecessary. too often we

start a relationship by thinking about what the other person can do for us or

everything becomes very, transactional. Someone needs to use me for a real estate closing or set up an LLC and I do that for them. And what lights me up and pays me well at the same time is when I get a phone call and somebody says, Hey, Gary, my garage door broke. Who’s your guy for a garage door? Now I’m not monetizing that, Kristen, but what I’ve put myself in a position of is I’ve become that person’s trusted advisor.

And I don’t care whether you’re selling marshmallows or you’re looking to acquire your first rental property. If you go to, you know, the largest REO agent in the state that you live in, and REO stands for Real Estate Owned, it’s bank owned properties for the people that are listening that might not know. You know.

these folks can sell that asset to anybody. So what you have to identify is what it is about you. What’s the value add proposition that you can add to that person’s business to make things easier on them or to put them in a better position. So my thought process always is and it’s because again, my literally I say it all the time. My currency is not money. It’s relationships.

When you do that for other people, it comes back and pays you multiple times over. But it’s got to come from deep inside you. It can’t be fake. It has to be real. And you have to really want to focus on others. And that, think, is the basis of what I’ve done. And it’s helped me grow and scale my business to a national level.

Kristen Knapp (12:35)
Yeah, and what’s your advice on maintaining these relationships? Because I think that a lot of people get tripped up and like, okay, I made the connection. How do I stay relevant to them over the course of like five years, you know?

Gary Davidson (12:48)
sure. So the devil’s in t I mean, obviously everythi So how many meetings have you go to a lunch and love this person. I can c seem like a really good p like I can do business wi them. know them. I trus do business. But life happ baseball game. We, another re event. The nex up in the daily grind of the next thing you know, it’s

five or six days later and you’re sitting there thinking to myself, who was that person that I met?

Kristen Knapp (13:24)
Bye.

Gary Davidson (13:24)
So you got to have a really good CRM program, a touch campaign that’s very, very purposeful. ⁓ And it can be email marketing. can be ⁓ putting them on ⁓ some sort of list for when their birthday is, a ⁓ call to them on a quarterly basis. And then give some action steps. I mean, the biggest thing,

and I’m 52 now, so I’m a little bit sort of in between. I’m not so horrible at technology that I’m my parents, but I’m not nearly as good as my kids. Like just a yellow pad of paper. Like what are the three things that if I could do those things for Kristen?

⁓ that what she’s trying to achieve in the next 12 months will be easier or unnecessary. And then if people have action items to take away from that meeting and identifying exactly what they need and then you follow up on them.

you know, you’re going to automatically stay in contact. Too often we’re talking in platitudes ⁓ at such a high level about, you know, hey, next time ⁓ you get a property that you’re not going to buy, think of me. Well, that’s just never going to happen, right? Hey, if you ever come across a six unit building in, you know, Manhattan, you know,

Give me a call. ⁓ It needs to be much, much more ⁓ defined and purposeful on what you can do to move that person that one inch, because each one of those inches add up to a massive, massive impact.

Kristen Knapp (16:01)
Absolutely, I think that’s really good actionable advice for people. And you’re right, your network is totally your currency, totally your worth within the real estate industry specifically. ⁓ So kind of going off that a little bit, as you’ve been able to scale this business and be in so many locations and have such top clients working with you, how do you go about finding the right team and seeing if somebody’s a fit for the team?

Gary Davidson (16:31)
Sure, we use a disc profile to identify, to get people in the right seats on the bus. Just because somebody is really good at…

you know, doing podcasts doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to be good at drafting documents. So we need to identify what their best skills are and put them in a position to succeed. You know, and I’m learning every day. My director of business development who actually found investor fuel and filled out the application for me to come on your podcast.

⁓ I was lamenting about two weeks ago about how our ⁓ one of our main people in our loan department ⁓ because we represent a lot of hard money lenders throughout the United States helping them with all of their loans. And obviously the hard money lenders like to use us because ⁓ instead of me performing just a transactional service for these lawyers or for these lenders, I

have all the clients. So they covet a relationship with me because they want access to my database of clients. But I was lamenting about this operations person who is literally the best operations person in the industry. And I’m like, she needs to pick up the phone, she needs to pick up the phone, she needs to pick up the phone. And my director of client development said, does she? Do you really want her to pick up the phone? And

just because I value picking up the phone and it drives me crazy if someone’s trying to reach me and I don’t answer my phone, maybe we don’t want her to pick up the phone at all. And so my director of business development said, that’s my job to pick up the phone. Letting, you know, I’ll transmit that message back to the operations person because what the operations person is going to do is they’re going to say something.

that they don’t deem to be ignorant, but is going to damage the relationship. Like, for example, I don’t have time to do this today. Now, literally speaking, she probably doesn’t have time to do this today. But is that something that you say to a client? You never say you don’t have time to do something today. identifying those those skills and putting people in the right place on the bus, that is going to transform instead of just like having things eat at you.

Kristen Knapp (18:48)
Yeah.

Gary Davidson (19:05)
and say, why isn’t this person more like me? Well, there’s things about you that are very, you know, aren’t aren’t good at all. And I shouldn’t be doing them. And I tell people, hey, I shouldn’t be doing them yet. You know, I want somebody to do X, Y and Z. It’s not what their their mold is. So that’s the key thing is not to frustrate yourself with what someone can’t do. But

to, and I don’t like to use the term exploit because that sounds bad, exploit or foster what it is that they are good at.

Kristen Knapp (19:46)
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, highlight their skill set. ⁓ You’re so right. Everyone has a different way of doing business and yours isn’t necessarily the end all be all best one. ⁓ That’s wonderful. So you work with some of the largest real estate, like huge institutions, but you also work with real estate investors as well. What are some things that you see on the investor end? What are the best ways for people to protect themselves and

and make sure that their business is running smoothly from a legal perspective.

Gary Davidson (20:21)
Sure,

of the things that, ⁓ and we work with thousands and thousands of individual investors and.

people get very, very, very excited at the beginning and they listen to a podcast with Kristen and Gary Davidson and maybe Gary Davidson talks about subject two transactions or contract for deeds or rent to own or double closings or assignment deals and whatever it is, they’re like, yes, this is exactly what I need to do and I need to go out and I need to do a thousand subject two deals because I listened to Pace Morby the other day.

And the reality is, as investors, we need to have a lot of tools in our tool belt, and we need to surround ourselves with mentor programs, listening to companies like Investor Fuel, talking to people within the Investor Fuel community who can assist us,

because if you had to think about it, and let me give you an analogy.

⁓ And this is a perfect analogy for investors. Somebody came to me the other day and they said,

I have a hundred thousand, I went to see this person, they have a property that’s worth $150,000 and they have a mortgage for $150,000 on it. So of course that was an immediate pass, right? Well, not so fast. What if we assume that person’s mortgage and their monthly payment was $1,000, but you could rent that asset for $1,600? Well, now all of a sudden you have a $600 cash flowing asset

and on the backside we can sell that on a contract and maybe we can sell it for $200,000 five years from now. So the point to this exercise is that people need to have multiple tools in their tool belt because you too often approach a situation with a specific

tool in mind and say I’m going to solve this problem with this specific tool and then when this specific tool does not work you say it’s impossible or I can’t or it you know this doesn’t work and there’s almost all situations in real estate where there is some technique that will work

to create a win-win situation for both the person who needs to sell the property and for the person who desires to buy the property. This should never be about taking advantage of people. This should never be about ⁓ taking advantage of someone’s misfortune. We should always be putting ourselves in a position where we’re looking to help each other. And again, the concept is surrounding ourselves with a community such as Inferno

where you can lean on people who have a greater level of experience so that when you have an opportunity that presents itself that you might not otherwise believe is something that you can ⁓

Utilize or make money on and then you next thing, you know, you’re talking to Kristen and Kristen says well Did you look at it from this particular angle and then the next thing, you know You went from passing on a deal to actually having a deal that’s gonna help put somebody maybe help them reset their life get them back on track and ⁓ It’s a win for you as well

Kristen Knapp (24:07)
I think that’s great advice. mean, and it goes back to building your network and making sure you have a sounding board of people to bounce things off of. Well, I mean, you’ve given us such great, like very practical advice throughout this podcast, you know, about branding, building your network and protecting yourself. tell everybody to kind of wrap it up. Tell everybody where to find you and where to find Castle Law.

Gary Davidson (24:30)
Yeah,

website’s pretty easy. Castlelaw.com. I actually did have to pay and a lawyer out on the East Coast a little bit of money ⁓ for that web address about 15 years ago. ⁓ Believe it or not, I think I paid.

$750 he wasn’t really using it and I’m like this is like this is you don’t ever ask you don’t ever offer money to people you ask them what they’re looking to pay so this guy didn’t really know and So I ended up sending him a check for $750 and I own that domain. So look me up at castle law.com Really? That’s the the easiest way it’s gonna have all our contact information. You can send us a message there and christen just if

Kristen Knapp (25:00)
Yeah.

Gary Davidson (25:18)
If people are looking to get connected with wholesalers, with lenders, ⁓ with people in their ⁓ area, I’ve been doing this long enough. cast a very large net. I’m happy to do that. And here’s the thing. If I make an introduction, there’s going to be, there’s nothing, there’s no monetization associated with that. I don’t take referral fees. I’m doing it because I believe that that person is the right person for somebody.

So I’m happy to do that for any of your listeners as my give back for having the opportunity to be on Investor Fuel.

Kristen Knapp (25:59)
Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Gary. And I really encourage everyone to take advantage of that. So thanks for being here.

Gary Davidson (26:05)
Thank you.

Kristen Knapp (26:07)
⁓ And thank you everybody for listening. I hope you learned a lot and we will see you back next time. Bye.