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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, Micah Johnson interviews Dan Cantillana, a seasoned real estate investor with over 20 years of experience. Dan shares his inspiring journey from humble beginnings to building a successful career in real estate and multiple businesses. He emphasizes the importance of trust and referrals in business, outlining a systematic approach to generating referrals through daily practices such as handwritten notes, videos, and power meetings. Dan also discusses the significance of lifelong learning, community connections, and the need to overcome fear in order to achieve success. The conversation highlights actionable strategies for building a strong referral network and the value of authentic communication in fostering long-term relationships.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
DanCan (00:00)
if you truly want to have joy in life, be the guythat your friends wanna call when they get a job promotion.
that they know that you’re for them or they got that surprise check in the mail that they know that you’re not comparing yourself. You’re not in competition. You’re with them. You’re the brother. You want to celebrate life with them.
Micah Johnson (01:53)
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I’m speaking with Dan, who’s been making some moves in real estate investing for about 20 years now. Dan, welcome in, man. Glad to have you.DanCan (02:04)
Hey, thanks for having me my friend. I’m excited to be here. ⁓ My goal is to help people snap that ball, get her first down, get another first down, get a touchdown and get to the Superbowl. So let’s do this.Micah Johnson (02:18)
Love that, man. Love that. think our listeners are really going to take some value away from how you approach your business, your storyline behind it, and then even how important referrals are throughout the process. Now they create a great foundation for you. So let’s dive in. For folks who may not know you yet, what’s your main focus right now and what markets you operate in?DanCan (02:37)
Yeah, well,my full name is Dan Cantiana, but I created a personal brand about 24 years ago called Dan Can. And if you’re watching this via YouTube or you have a visual, you can literally see Dan Can, Perfumalia everywhere. I mean, I got a Dan Can on my notebook, Dan Can on my microphone. I got Dan Can over my shoulder and I got Dan Can on my computer and I got…
Dan can’t on my phone. So if you don’t remember Dan can after this, that is not my fault. Yeah, so Dan can’t you? That’s my name is obviously last name can’t Tiana. ⁓ It’s Latino. It’s my family’s from Santiago, Chile. And that’s actually a big part of my my story and my origin Genesis, if you will. ⁓ I’m the son of two immigrants. So I’m first one to be born in North America. My mom
immigrated from the United Kingdom, England in 1958, literally on a steam liner across the Atlantic, went to Ellis Island, got on a train and went to Tacoma, Washington. My biological father is from Santiago, Chile. He immigrated in 1973. He was escaping a military coup there at the time that was recruiting young men, 14, 18, to join sides. My family felt like that was a dangerous bad idea, so they moved up.
My mom and dad met when I was 18. My mom had me and she was 18 years old while she was still in high school. So or just out of high school. And so very humble beginnings. But biological dad left when I was four months old. So I grew up in single with a single mom, right? And then also, ⁓ section eight housing, food stamps, that whole thing. I’ve had three step dads. Just really the start of my life was was difficult.
Now, within that, there is amazing grace there. And I do use that term correctly. I’ve always been blessed with obviously a fantastic mom, but also fantastic babysitters, fantastic teachers, fantastic families, fantastic coaches and mentors. And so because of my mom’s hard work and those coaches, teachers, other families, I was able to have some stability.
⁓ And in that I was able to graduate high school, I was able to graduate college and I’m on the first one on both sides of my family to have a four year degree. I also was able to obtain a master’s degree. So I have a degree as from seminary and Christian leadership divinity. And so I really love helping people because of all of the help and support that I got growing up. And so
One of the drivers of this show is man, if you’re thinking about getting into this game and if you have a fire and a desire, and if you know how to consistently show up and show out, you’re going to do really, really well.
Micah Johnson (05:36)
I couldn’t agree more, man. You’re your own greatest fan and your own greatest enemy in this industry. Like there is no competition. It’s just you. If you’ll wake up each day and get that work done, it’s one of the few industries you can get into that will reward you unendingly. Like there’s not a ceiling on it if you’re willing to get in there and do it. And man, here’s something I’ve learned. I really appreciate that story that you shared. Cause what I’ve learned from folks who’ve gone through hard,They’re the ones most willing to help. Like if you’ve been in it, if you know what it’s like to walk hard, you never close the door behind you. You realize, if I can find a way out, I’m gonna help as many people find a way out, because I’m blazing a trail here. I gotta go through a bunch of doors and I’m not gonna slam any behind me, because the guys say, this way, come this way. Because there’s something about it, there’s a level of empathy it builds inside of you.
DanCan (06:23)
Yeah.Micah Johnson (06:34)
that I have found is especially helpful in real estate. The way you can connect with people. Like the more you’ve been through, it’s kind of a secret weapon in your life because it gives you massive amounts of perspective. You see life from a way most people don’t. As you know, the hard part of being out on an extreme statistic is your version of normal is not normal. It’s not what most folks go through. So when you can put that together and come out like someone like yourself,It’s not just success that you’ve built. You’ve got better at being human. You’ve created a real life. You went from here to here in a way that most folks don’t. And man, that’s powerful. Congratulations on that.
DanCan (07:18)
Thank you, man. Thank you. Yeah, I really I mean, there’s there’s no way I would be where I am right now. If some strategic families hadn’t stepped in. I mean, just there’s I might start crying. I mean, it’s just there’s no way at all. And I know that I’m 50 years old and I’m a follower of the way I’m a believer. And so my goal is to give my life away to help others. And so I’ve seen that time and time again.and testimony strategic moments in my life, strategic moments in my marriage and my parenting, ⁓ business opportunities, real estate opportunities. And so if if at the end of this podcast, if somebody can ⁓ tangibly put into practice what we’re going to go through, I know it works because I’ve seen it, I see it every single day. I own five businesses. And so real estate is just one
of the revenue streams that I have. ⁓ The Lord of God speaks to diversifying your revenue streams and I do that. I believe in it. If you look at all the successful investors and entrepreneurs out there, ⁓ big picture, they all have diverse revenue streams. I mean, you can think about Amazon, right? He started with books, but the majority of the revenue comes from data services now.
And you know, they still sell books, they still do all these things. I do entertainment, I the Thursday night football pick something. And I’m not saying being don’t be Jeff, don’t be Amazon. just saying like, look, look to successful models and emulate those.
Micah Johnson (08:55)
Right, right, exactly. And it’s, love the Amazon example because you got to start somewhere. They only sold us books for nine years. And once we, they were so good at that and understood that and everybody bought in. Now though, the diversification becomes way simpler of what we’re going to do next, of what they’re going to sell us next. And that’s, there’s something to that. Like the more successful people I’ve talked to that when to diversify, that moment becomes obvious. You’ve built something soDanCan (09:11)
Mm-hmm.Micah Johnson (09:24)
strong and powerful that now it can be leveraged into other things. And I couldn’t agree more, man. The book of Ecclesiastes is one I consider to be the first written on investing, that the section of cast your bread upon the water, you don’t know where it’s going to come back from. If that doesn’t say it, I don’t know what says it.DanCan (09:40)
Yeah.You
So good. I love
that, Micah. That’s awesome.
Micah Johnson (09:51)
Right.And okay, so let’s, let’s switch gears again. Thanks for sharing that story. All of those things really line up with where we’re going to go next, which is, which is really into something you’ve discovered through all of your businesses, that ability to generate referrals and how important that is inside your business and what it can do for it in the long term.
DanCan (10:59)
Yeah, so once again, man, Genesis, the start of the origins. So I went to school to be a fourth grade college to be a fourth grade teacher. Now, one of the things when you come from an immigrant family on both sides, like stability is number one, right. And so a lot of my relatives work for the government. And because historically, that’s been a real stable ⁓ job occupation. So I just went that route. And I love kids. I still love kids. I love teaching. That’s what I view.podcast is as teaching and I have a podcast. And so loved teaching I met my wife at church. And our debt to income was really bad DTI because it took me five, five and a half years graduate college. I was playing rugby and having a good time. And then my wife went to a really expensive private college. So that equation made for a lot of student debt. So I had a mentor in my life who told me, hey, you need to step away from teaching and go on outside sales if you want to get married.
And I was like deathly afraid. I mean, the first thing I said was like, do you think I could do it? And he started laughing at me he’s like, yeah, yeah, you could do it. So I helped sell direct mail, I helped start a marketing company. And so imagine this, man, I went from teaching fourth graders who thought you were the king, you know, you know, amazing to I was selling direct mail to general managers of auto dealerships all around the country.
Micah Johnson (12:26)
That’s a big change.DanCan (12:27)
And,⁓ dude, it was brutal. And so, you you went from a, you went from, you know, a clientele that thought you were a king to a clientele that thought you were a peasant. And so it was bad. And we had zero clients when we started. And so I’d make 60 to 120 outbound cold calls a day and just smiling and dialing as they say. And I got in front of this guy, Tony Wren, who was amazing. And
he took a shot on me and I’ll share the story at another time. But basically he took a shot on me. Well, you gotta imagine man, I went two and a half months without selling a thing. Working 40 hours a week. Just now everyone’s like I work 40 hours a week is like, yeah, but cold calling 40 hours a week is a lot different than being a bagger at a grocery store for 40 hours a week. I can tell you that. And so and I’ve done both. And so I got ahead, I got ahold of him and Tony took a shot on me and
He was the cowboy in this large organization, this large auto group. And you always want to find the cowboy because those guys talk. And so ⁓ I did a promotion for him and I’ll never forget it. I mean, this is the genesis of when I saw the first lighter referral. I’m talking to Tony, we’re going over his promotion. They made hundreds of thousands of dollars. And then he said this.
I want you to call my friend Tom Murdock down at Renton Chevrolet. It’s good Chevrolet at time.
You got it. So I called Tom. He literally signed up basically over the phone and I just went what just happened. I just spent two and a half years of my life trying to get one deal. Tony says Tom. Tom says Tony I’ll do it and boom. And I was like this is it. Like how do we do this again. And so ⁓ I’ve spent over 20 years.
building businesses off of referrals. And so I have a systematic approach each and every day that I do to generate and I know I’m talking really loud, but I just get so excited about this, my it’s just, it’s, it’s basically in sales, any big ticket item, really what I mean, we can say sales and closing all this stuff. But what we’re really talking about, Micah is trust. It always boils down to trust.
how you generate trust, how can you transfer trust? And so that is at the essence or what I call the root of referrals is trust. You gotta have competency, you gotta have capacity, right? And so that’s, if we could spend time on that, like that I believe will give your listeners the biggest value. And Tony Wren has been an amazing mentor of mine.
ever since 2001 2002. mean, so much so like he let we were just like I said, Lisa and I were just married and he let us use his cabin up on the lake and just all this stuff. We flew all over the country together because he became a district manager and he’d give me sales material and magazines to read and encourage me still this day he texts me and encourages me and so once again back to my Genesis story, the good Lord and I do mean the good Lord put unbelievable people in my life to help me along my journey.
Micah Johnson (15:34)
⁓ nice.DanCan (15:55)
and those people are still with me on my journey.Micah Johnson (16:00)
I love that. And I definitely want to dig in deeper, but people are real estate is a team sport and there are incredible people in the industry and even outside of it that share into you. And that’s something that if you’re listening or watching in, be intentional about that part in your life of connecting with people. Cause you never know what it’s going to turn into my mentor. He’s man, I message him every day. He is except on weekends is somebody that I lean on andLike you said, man, they’re just a pivotal part of life, what they do and how they help you keep growing. it’s finding someone who’s ahead of you to show you, hey, think about this, what about that? It’s my favorite. I don’t wanna make the same mistake over and over and over again if you can show me how to avoid it. But let’s…
DanCan (16:47)
absolutely. And if you have a hungry heart and you’re teachable and you’re ready to act, man, like you said, there’s there’s no lid man, like you can scale and I have a discipleship group with some young men we meet Tuesdays at 1pm and I love them, four to five guys, and they’re just getting into the marketplace, you know, and they it’s just it’s so fun. I just love the juice of young man. I played rugby in college, like I said, and I coach rugby for four years andI just love being around young dudes that just got the juice, you know, like I just love it because you know, they could be buffoonery. They have a lot of buffoonery and they have a lot of successes and but one of the guys in the group, you know, I always start with hey, like what’s going good in your life and you know, everyone shares like, hey, what’s something that’s not working right now and and I’ll share to you obviously and one of the gentlemen, he’s just a handsome gifted guy like totally taking awesome risks right now and really proud of him and he just goes
Man, I’m prideful. I’m like, okay, like, what do mean? I don’t know, like, I don’t know what I’m doing. And I don’t even ask for help. And I keep making the same mistake. Like, what’s wrong with me? And I’m like, wow, man, you just went from zero to 60 like that. And let’s unpack that. And you know, just, it’s just so funny. And I can totally relate to him. I’m 50 and I can say that. you know, just having the joy of like you said, someone that’s gone before you to help you out.
You know, real estate, it’s such a fantastic and I call it a vehicle. Okay. I call, I call real estate a vehicle and ⁓ you know, people understand real estate. You know, there’s some new investment strategies out there like tokenization and obviously, you know, futures have been around for a while and covered calls and you know, obviously we have cryptocurrency now.
And you know, you can learn those, you can get those. But man, if you say single family house, like people know that, right? You say mobile home park, people know that you say warehouse, people know that you say apartment multifamily, people know that. And so just right off the bat, people know what you’re talking about. And that really helps with building a referral model. ⁓ Whether you’re trying to acquire off market properties, whether you’re trying to ⁓ acquire financing from private investors,
Micah Johnson (19:00)
youDanCan (19:09)
whether you’re trying to find multifamily, more than likely, your next deal is going to come from a prior relationship, rather than some random email or text. Like that’s just the way the world works in this specific space. Because back to that word trust. And if you’re taking notes, and I hope you are, you probably want to write down the word trust four to seven times. Becausethe people that are going to refer or bless you with investment dollars, they got a trust that you’re going to be able to see this through. And if you can’t, man, you got to get some training on how to do that. Because referral is all about trust and competency. And so if and I actually host a referral seminar here in Spokane, and that’s where I’m at. And I never asked, I never answered that I apologize, just get so excited talking about referrals.
So I primarily work in the Pacific Northwest. And so I live in Spokane, Washington, go Hawks, we’re going to the Super Bowl, let’s go. And also go Gonzaga basketball, I’m a big fan. So I between my real estate partner and I we flip 40 to 50 houses a year. And that’s in the Spokane proper. And then also over on the west side of the state. And there’s a big difference between Eastern Washington and Western Washington.
He’s in Kitsap County, primarily in some Pierce County, ⁓ big, big federal dollars and Department of Defense over there, much like a little bit like Jacksonville. ⁓ And so it’s, and so he and I have known each other for 16 years. We partnered on some deals flipping. And then two and a half years ago, I was ⁓ my wife gonna switch gears here. My wife loves yard work.
I am on the other side of the spectrum. I hate your work. And I don’t use the word hate very often, but I definitely can use the word hate for your hard work. And she had texted the family and said, Hey, fun, fun weekend, we’re gonna have a family work party weekend in the yard. And I’m like, Yay. And, you know, I know we’re all called to serve and I try to serve but I try to serve in other arenas and I pull up Friday. And I’m not lying, my she had delivered
the biggest pile of beauty bark you’ve ever seen in your life in our driveway. And I’m like, okay. And ⁓ then I also knew I also knew and I don’t know if you’re married or not. But I also knew that we were going to plant some trees and replant some bushes and roses and stuff. And I don’t know about you. But I have never dug a hole where the hole was supposed to be when it comes to a tree or a bush. And, and I thought to myself, I thought to myself, hey, I
If I do the beauty bark, all I have to do is just put in the wheelbarrow and dump it and I don’t need to talk to anybody and I could just do that work and I don’t need to redig holes. So I was like, Hey, everyone, I’ll do the beauty bark, you know, and well, right before I go to the beauty bark, I was like, let’s make this a learning opportunity because I knew I had four to five hours of beauty bark duty. So I literally go to podcast, I go to the search field, and I put in raising private money. That’s all I did, man. I put in raising private money. This homeboy
his name, Jay Connor, he pops up and it says, raising private money with Jay Connor. And I go, okay, I’ll listen to that. I listened to this guy for four hours straight. I ordered his book. I read it twice because I miss things. And I thought I can do this. And basically his whole model is if you can find the vehicle, which is the house you could buy at a discount. There are people out there that will invest in you in that house because of the margin of safety that’s found in the differential between what you purchased it for
and that ARV after repair value. Man, was on to the race. I was off the races. I’ve been in the insurance and financial industry for over 20 years. And so I just started calling different people that I knew that had some excess capital. Well, long story short, my real estate partner and I partnered, I started a private money company. And in two years through referrals, I’ve raised over $13 million. And, and this is a this is a side. Like this is basically a side hustle. I own I own a
I own a dynamic insurance agency. have seven insurance agents. I’ve been in insurance for 18 years. And I did this on the side. I raised that 13 million on the side through referrals.
Micah Johnson (24:14)
That’s powerful. ⁓ Take us in deep, man. What’s that secret? How are you building that trust that people have in you to do that? What are those steps?DanCan (24:18)
ThankYeah. ⁓
Yeah, first thing you need to do and just you can fight me on this ⁓ fictitious reader or listener podcast listener, readers lead and leaders read bottom line, readers lead and leaders read and you can fight me on it all you want. But I’m telling you, if you want to get ahead in this world, you got to do things that other people aren’t doing. And first thing you need to do is commit to learning to be a lifelong learner. We, we homeschooled our three children. And it was an
awesome process. It was fantastic. It was also one of the hardest things we’ve ever done. And we adopted the classic learning model, which is read and discuss. And so you read classics, and then you discuss them. And it’s how all of our founding fathers were taught, basically, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, john Adams, Benjamin Franklin, they all were a part of this model. And so if you’re taking notes, you want to read these three books, atomic havoc, atomic habits, James Clear,
Number two, richest man in Babylon.
Number three, how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. Fourth one, obviously, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, ⁓ people have probably heard about that. I read those four books once a year, every year. And even last night, I was reading James Clear again. And it was just such a fantastic model to follow. And we don’t have time to get into that. But so first and foremost, you want to start there. So order those books, if you can’t afford it, get one.
make your way. Second thing is this. If you have current customers, past customers, a sphere of influence, that’s people that you know, and that know you and current referral partners. My referral system can help you. So if you said yes to any of those things, okay, you can do this. So what you want to do
is you want to take and we’re just going to go straight into it if you don’t mind, because
Micah Johnson (26:32)
Man, I got my note taker right here. I’m pumped, man. Come on.DanCan (26:35)
Okay.So, and I’ve learned all of this between, like the story that I always say on my podcast, my podcast is the invested life with Dan can. And so the invest life with Dan can is it we look at eternal principles for everyday living. So eternal principles for everyday living. So you know, you reference Ecclesiastes, I love that book, there’s nothing new under the sun. Like we keep trying to find these new shiny things. But guess what, it’s going to boil down to love and trust. It’s always going to boil down to
But anyway, so I, every day, when I’m in office, and I strategically place my time to where I have margin to dream and so I’m not in the office every day. But in the days that I’m in the office, I do this every single day, you want to take your Christmas list. And if you don’t have a Christmas list of people that you’ve been able to on Christmas time, I’m going to tell you right now you better start one. And I don’t care if it’s five people or 500 people.
Like we know a lot of people, man, our Christmas list is only 185 people. And so you start there and then you create a list. So that’s your sphere. Okay. Then you create a list of people. Anybody that you spend any kind of dollar with needs to be on this list, whether it’s an escrow company, a painter, a plumber, a surveyor, an appraiser,
the guy that changes the oil in your car, okay, write this down three to one. For every three referrals that you give out, you want to get one. And if you’re in real estate world, you are referring somebody because of the beast called the house. There’s so many people that specialize in something with that, whether it’s a roofer or a plumber, I mean, a deceptive guy, you got to understand.
every person that you give a dollar to, they’re giving their dollar to somebody else. Right? That’s how it works. And so they know people. And so this referral system is based off of always what I call leaning in, you got to lean in every single day. If you spend any time with me, you’re going to hear this, whatever you talk about happens.
Whatever you talk about happens. If you talk about buying off market properties, it’s going to happen. If you talk about raising private money, it’s going to happen. If you’re going to talk about finding mobile home parks, it’s going to happen. If you keep talking about it. The problem is, is we talk about it, we talk about it, we talk about it. I get a little success, Micah, and then I stopped talking about it. And then I go, Hey, what, happened? And so I talk about referrals every single day and all of my businesses.
So when I’m in the insurance agency, I run what I call a pre-day meeting. And this is 10 minutes before we open the doors. It’s me and my 17 members. I talk about who we are, where we’re going, and how we’re gonna get there every single day. And then I say, hey, I’m glad you’re here. How many referrals did we get yesterday? I talk about it every single day. Look at this form. This is a form. has every day, every month, right? The day.
And I track how many referrals we got every day. And then on Monday, I post on socials, Tell the Truth Monday. I borrowed that from the Seahawks. The Seahawks call it Tell the Truth Monday, where they watch game film about what really happened.
Well, I borrowed that. And every day on Monday, I write down for the week, we generated 13 referrals or we generated 20 referrals. I have a little plastic, you know, and I write it down, I take a picture of it, and I post it on all the socials.
And what am I doing? I’m talking about referrals. So everybody on my LinkedIn, on our Instagram, and on our Facebook, they see that I’m a referral agency. And so you just write down how many referrals. So if you’re a solopreneur, you’re one guy, well, you got to create this for yourself and ask yourself how many referrals did you get yesterday? This is a tangible daily discipline that you can do or not do.
If you do it, you’re proven to yourself that you want referrals. If you don’t do it, you’re proven to yourself that you don’t want referrals. And it’s that simple. So that’s the first thing you want. You want to create this sheet, right? And you write down all the referrals. Second thing you want to do is you want to have fun things like this. I had this shirt made it cost 20 bucks. I love referrals. I wear it all the time. I walk around all the time. I’ll do my podcast with this shirt on. I love referrals.
Do know how much money I’ve made off of referrals in my life? I’m gonna tell you, a lot. And what’s that?
Micah Johnson (32:03)
That shirt helped. I the shirthelps.
DanCan (32:10)
sure, man. Because peopleare like, what are you doing? And it’s like, hey, are you in it to win it or not, man? Like, how are you going to stand out? How are people going to remember who you are? Right? No one’s going to remember Dan Cantina. Dan can hire likely likelihood of remembering that right. So back to the list, you’re going to have your list of you know, your Christmas letter list. And then you’re going to have a list of your subcontractors.
people that you know that own small businesses, you got to understand everybody that has a small business is some kind of connector. Like they typically are communicators, right? And I’ve gotten this information from a lot of books I’ve read. So I just want to make sure that people understand that I did not create all of these things. Like I’ve cut and pasted from different books. And so what you do then is you got to spend some money. You get some custom note cards made.
And so I have these really nice custom note cards that say Dan can, and then a black line under it. And it’s just a really nice postcard. I borrowed that from one of my dear mentors that sent me ⁓ a really nice postcard after I flew down to Dallas for his second retirement party. And I was like, man, that’s slick, Jim, that looks really good. I’m going to do that. So I just borrowed it. You want to write three handwritten notes a day. Now,
Micah Johnson (33:28)
Nice.DanCan (33:36)
This is where you really gotta pay attention.These notes have to be authentic. You can’t just write about fluff. You got to know the person and you want to write things about them and not even mention your business. Okay. So for example, ⁓ I was writing ⁓ my notes and you do three a day. So usually it’s two from the Christmas and then one from the vendor. Right. I just go back and forth.
Micah Johnson (34:09)
Gotcha.DanCan (34:10)
And so I got to my wife’s uncle and his name’s John. And I don’t know him very well. Like we don’t see him very often. But he did stop by one time in Spokane and the dude is just full of joy and was jumping on the trampoline with the three boys and just was an awesome experience, right? Well, this happened like 14 years ago. Well, that’s what I wrote about. You know, I just said, Hey, John, Dan here.I know I haven’t talked to you in a while. was just thinking about you. I thinking about just, I really admire how much joy you have. And I really was thankful that you spent time with your nephews and you jumped on the trampoline. We still talk about it today in the house. You know, hey, if you ever want to talk, call text me. I’m here for you. Love well do good. Dan can. That’s it. That’s it. You write something affirming about the person. Now don’t lie. Right? You got to tell the truth. And you got to have some kind of connection or something.
And you just write that out. And then I’ve often times I’ll take a post it note and I’ll put it on top of the card and I’ll say call text me anytime my phone number send it. What that teaches you to do is it teaches you to think about other people. And it teaches you to think about the good and other people. And I’m telling you it starts this momentum in your day that’s stinking addictive. And then you just try to start finding the good around now bad things happen and all that stuff. But like
It’s so different than our natural response, which is, you know, the sky’s fall. So you do three notes a day. And then you do three videos a day. Now know some people are like, I’m not gonna do a video. Well, do you want to be successful? You better start doing videos. And so I literally I grabbed my phone. So like, let’s say I had your cell phone number, right, Micah? And you shared some things about, you know, how you’ve had some victory overcoming some things, right? Well, if I had if I had your cell phone number, tomorrow morning,
I’d be like, Hey, Micah, thanks for having me on the show. I was just thinking about what you overcame. Man, what a story 40 you still got 45, 50 years to kill it, man. Go for it. Go for it. Use it help others. I’m here for you. Call, text me anytime Dan can. I’ll just click send it gone. And then I’ll do that for two other people there had a great meeting with my pastor yesterday. I’m gonna do a video today. Hey, I was thinking about what you said. Love love that you made time for me. I know you’re busy, man. I’m here to help. Let’s serve God and his people. Let’s go get it.
send it to them, right? So I’m leaning in. I’m leaning in. So you do the three cards, you do the three videos. And then every week, you want to have at least three power meetings. And you want to have these power meetings on the same day, back to back to back. So you’re not running around all over the place. So I have one today at 1pm. Now, you’re probably thinking, Dan, you said three, you only have one.
And I’m going to say that’s correct because I, my wife and I just got back from Hawaii for a week. And so I’m a little behind on the responsibilities. That’s why I’m so tan. And so, ⁓ I’m excited to meet with this gentleman because a he’s an amazing man, but B it’s just going to be awesome. Cause we’re to talk about real estate investing with Dan can. So that’s how you start the process. Now, a lot of people are going, well, I just don’t have that many people. And I’m going to say, yes, you do. You just haven’t thought about.
And every opportunity that you have to grab somebody’s business card, grab it and you put it in the database. So for example, like I just said, I’m 50 years old, I own five businesses, I’m highly involved in my church, I went to go make a deposit because making deposits are cool. And I went to the bank, I go to make a deposit. And there’s a mortgage, there’s a mortgage guy for the bank, there’s his card, well, I grabbed the card because I want to market to him for my insurance agency.
I look at the guy’s card and I was like, ⁓ I have a connection with this guy. He was in the group behind me in a golf tournament that I helped sponsor for Spokane Mortgage Association. So now I can write him a handwritten note. Hey, I was thinking about it. You and that joke you cracked and da da da. Let me know if I can help you anyway. We have six carriers to help with homeowners insurance. I’m here for you either way. You’re sure funny. Let’s have fun together. Dan can’t. So you just have to be initiating
Micah Johnson (38:07)
Thank you.DanCan (38:24)
And those are the first steps like that’s that’s where we start is creating that database going through this process each and every day, being consistently consistent. So the note taking the videos, the three meetings and then you want to make three phone calls a day. Just to say hi, just to catch up. Is there any way I can help you with anything? I have a fantastic referral ecosystem. Think of me as a resource.Even if you did that three days out of the week, it’s going to probably be more than three times than what you’re doing now. And what that does, Micah, is that is what I call it creates dust. You’re creating your own dust, you’re initiating. Yesterday, right before my meeting with my pastor, I got a phone call from a wholesaler. And we had just talked last week and he called me about off market commercial property.
Micah Johnson (39:00)
Mm.DanCan (39:23)
Well, he did that because we had a conversation yesterday that had nothing to do with off market commercial, but you want to be top of mind awareness, right? Top of mind awareness. And that looks like initiating through videos, phone calls, handwritten notes and meetings. That’s the referral system in a nutshell. Most people have a database of 180 to 260 people.Micah Johnson (39:32)
Right.So no real excuses then.
Hahaha
DanCan (39:58)
I mean, that’s it, man. You know, on my, my podcast, the invested life, we talk about how like a principle such as joy or giving generosity. We talk a lot about the marketplace. But at the end of my podcast, we always do this, which is the law of 72. And what the law of 72 is, take oneconcept or principle from this podcast, and you have 72 hours to implement it. I read that in a book 20 years ago. And so any seminar I go to any sales training I go to any podcast I go I’m listening to like, I have 72 hours to do at least one thing now I usually do three. So if you’re listening right now, your law 72 would be
Get my database in order get to 200 people in the next three months. Order my personalized note. Three, make three videos today for create three meetings, coffee meetings next week. And here’s another thing. I got this from a dear mentor of mine. Don’t do lunches. Do coffees. You can get in and out of there for under 15 bucks, you do three lunches and you’re gonna spend 140 bucks. I don’t care how much money you have like
I’d rather spend 14 bucks than 150 bucks. Now, if I’m going to lunch with my mom or something like that, yeah, let’s do that. But or like, you know, we just closed a big deal together. Yeah, let’s do lunch, but just do coffees. It’s it’s so quick. It’s in and out. And when you do a back to back Micah, it really condenses your message. And then it’s like, hey, Micah, thank you so much. My next appointment here, Sam and Hey, Sam, this is Micah. Micah specializes in on market properties. Sam, he’s my plumber, you guys should connect.
Like it creates this ecosystem and it makes you look like a connector, which obviously you are, but it creates this community and it really works out.
Micah Johnson (42:04)
Love that man. I mean, you have absolutely dropped some diamonds on us today. And the biggest one is it’s intentional. It’s not going to happen by accident. We all hope we get referrals, but you literally created an offensive playbook on how to go get them. And that is something I love to be able to do is, you can feel stuck waiting. What can I do? What are the actions I can take to go on offense or what I get obsessed about? So man, the three handwritten cards,Having received them and sent them, I can vouch they are powerful. It is powerful to get one because nobody does it. Nobody writes anymore. And to get something in your hand with someone’s literal handwriting on it, I mean, we have robot mailers now that can write. like even just a human being handwriting you is like, whoa, that’s amazing, incredible. I even have a special pen that I use because it, ⁓ to do it with.
DanCan (43:00)
Yeah, good. Yeah, use blueink.
Micah Johnson (43:02)
Yeah, that’s it. I have a fountain blue ink pen. Like they’ll kind of even have to refill with a nice tip because I like to write. And so I want to enjoy doing it when I’m doing it. Like it’s a special moment. Right. And then what do we have three videos? The beauty of those videos are just do them. One thing that I’ve learned, I was, I was going through life thinking, okay, I want to be happy more. How do I be happy more? I don’t, and I started, I journal a lot and I keep track of my day to day life. And it’s like,DanCan (43:10)
I’ll get for you.Micah Johnson (43:31)
You know, there’s obviously the things you have your normal joy about and you’re grateful for, but that happiness, where can you really get it? And I realized I’m going to just start celebrating with other people. Anybody who do I know that they have something awesome going on that I can just, Hey man, that’s amazing. I’m so pumped for you. I’m so glad way to go. All of a sudden I had way more happiness in my life every day. And that relationship got better, right? You, you want to feel, you feel kind of silly doing it, but they put yourself in that other position. What do you think it feel like to get a video of someone just being like,Hey, Dan, I appreciate you, man. Thanks for all you do. I had a great time doing this. Just, I was thinking about you. Keep being awesome. It’s the best freaking feeling in the world, right? Like, and you have the control to put that into people’s lives. I love that dust up example, your power meetings and especially with the coffee shop that does so much for people. I’m very big on coffee too. One, cause once I start talking, I don’t eat. I got so sick of cold lunch.
that I was like, I’m not going to lunch anymore. I’m just not doing it. I’m going to go somewhere where I can sit with people and be like, okay, you know, we’re casually talking. You can take your sit, right? Like it’s more conversational driven and you’re there. And when you can stack people, one, it makes you look like the connector to the person that’s sitting there switching. They’re like, Whoa, who’s this guy?
DanCan (44:30)
I haven’t heard that before, that’s good.Yeah.
Micah Johnson (44:54)
He’s got people meeting him. He’s got more people meeting him at the coffee shop. Wait a second. What’s really going on? And like you said, now you get to do your magic. Hey, you two should know each other because you’re not meeting with random people. It’s not like a random thing you’re doing. It’s very intentional. And then, okay, what was that fourth one? You had three threes, three handwritten notes, three videos, three power meetings, and it was three phone calls.DanCan (45:15)
And then the phone calls the phone calls justYeah, and out of all of them, my friend, the phone call is the hardest one and literally on my sheet and I have a sheet that I literally my assistant will she prints them out. She puts it on my desk every morning and it’s there and it’s like, am I going to do the daily task and that’s why you want to read atomic habits you want to read atomic habits because you want to get 1 % better every day. And so you have this sheet and I literally have
typed on my form. Don’t hide behind technology.
don’t hide behind technology. And when you go to make that phone call, you are putting yourself out there and out of all of them, that’s actually the hardest one for me to do. And so but it’s the most rewarding. So it’s so silly, right? Like, why wouldn’t you do something that makes you successful? Like, why wouldn’t we do? Why wouldn’t we do the things to make us successful? Well, it’s fear, right? Fear of rejection is fear this is fear that so whatever fear sucks, man, like it’s the word second to be one seven have not been given a spirit of fear, but power, love and sound might
Micah Johnson (46:06)
Right.weird
DanCan (46:19)
Let’s focus on power, love and a sound mind. I don’t want to focus on fear. Like I got to break through on this. Well, you know, you’re having this talk to yourself. No one’s around, right? But like that’s how you get successful. And, know, it’s amazing, Micah, you bring up who has succeeded because literally on Tuesday at 1pm towards the end with my guys, I told them I just stopped your group. said, Hey, listen,if you truly want to have joy in life, be the guy
that your friends wanna call when they get a job promotion.
that they know that you’re for them or they got that surprise check in the mail that they know that you’re not comparing yourself. You’re not in competition. You’re with them. You’re the brother. You want to celebrate life with them.
And I’m telling you, I, I’ve been that guy a lot where people will call, text me, they got a job promotion, whatever it is. And I love celebrating with them. Like, I just think that’s amazing. Like way to go. And so this referral culture,
that you want to adapt. It works with any item, whether it’s a small ticket item and large ticket item, because it’s what you already mentioned, you’re initiating, and you’re focused. And what happens is your message, whatever your message is, whatever value you’re bringing, you get to instead of just talking about it once or twice, you’re in a week, you’re talking about it 15 to 25 times.
So you’re increasing the rep on the bench every single time. And so you get better and better and better. And then if you’re not getting results, you actually, it actually helps you because you think, okay, I’m doing something wrong. Like I’m skipping a step, I’m not building enough value, I’m not actively listening. And whereas, and if you only do one or two, you don’t get there. But if you do 10 to 15, you get there. And so raising $13 million, right?
outside of my big three investors, because I deal with 24 investors currently, outside of my big three investors, the average contributions $120,000 that I get from my private investors. So in order to bring enough trust for someone to write you a check for $120,000, you have to communicate and initiate and you have to show them that you have the capacity of
and the competency to do what you do. So I have a goal each and every day, where and this is a part of my daily routine that I put in my journal here. And we don’t have enough time to get into that. But I post to I post to socials a day. Every day 10 and 4pm. I don’t time them out. I do them at 10 and 4pm. I make five reels every Monday.
I have a team member who edits and posts that and we do time those out. But, and so I’m always talking about real estate. I’m always talking about referrals. I’m always talking about insurance and I’m always talking about raising private money. And so I just, everyone is sprinkled in there, whether it’s insurance, whether it’s off market properties, like we just, this house, man, it was wild. ⁓ I bought a house off market house from a church, from a church, man. They needed some help and
Micah Johnson (49:38)
That’s cool.DanCan (49:43)
they went to their referral, who was a real estate agent, who was a referral. You know who this real estate agent was referral from?My 17 year old son at the country club.
He’s hitting balls on the driving range. He’s a stick. He’s a plus 1.75. He’s golfing in college. He’s hitting balls one summer. ⁓ A guy that used to work at the club four years ago comes walking up to the tee box and my son Cameron’s like, hey, where you been? What’s going on? He’s like, I just graduated college. he’s like, Cameron’s like, good for you, man. That’s great. What are you doing now? He’s like, I’m working real estate with my dad. My 17 year old son says, well, hey, my dad and I
My dad and I buy off market properties. If you ever find one, let me know the guy’s jaw drops and says I have an appointment after hitting balls here with somebody that needs to sell quickly.
Cameron, my son, I gave him a 1 % fee. He made $2,400 on that one conversation. I’m walking the house. I buy the house. We sell the house. I don’t know these guys in real estate. I get to know them. He calls me and says, hey, this church, they need money really fast. They have this really clean property that they’re going to parcel off, and they need to sell it fast. I said, well, let’s walk it. So we walked it. Cleanest house I’ve ever walked off, Mark.
It hadn’t been touched since 1965, but it was clean. Well, Cameron made another 2,400 bucks. I bought that. We just listed it. So if my 17-year-old son with a golf club in his hand can generate a referral, you can generate a
Micah Johnson (51:31)
Anybody can, man. And like you said, it’s just talking about it. Open your mouth. You have not because you asked not. Right. And there was something I was taught as a kid, don’t ask for stuff, which I was taught a lot of other weird stuff as a kid. But like this idea, don’t invite yourself. Don’t do this. Don’t that. Let your work show. Man, nobody cares if you’re not going to talk about it because why would we? We’re in our own lives involved in our own stuff. So it’s up to you. It’s truly up to you to say out loud what’s important to you.DanCan (51:56)
Yeah.Micah Johnson (52:01)
And that’s where your vibe attracts your tribe kicks in full gear. Cause once you’re just saying it out loud, like you’re saying, and you do it consistently, all of a sudden you get known as that. And that’s where it, you know, it’s front loaded effort of telling people what you do, what you do and what you do. And then all of a sudden, one day you get that first one and you get that second one. And as long as you’re not stopping, now the train’s going. You’re able to wake up each day and ask your insurance company, how many did we get today?Right? To even be able to ask that question required a massive amount of upfront work to establish the fact that this is normal for us to do. You should be asking referrals where, and if you’re listening in, I know we’ve been going for a while here. Think about it at the very get-go. It’s anybody that you’re meeting. is something you’re thinking about out of the gate and what do they need? Listen to them and see what they need.
DanCan (52:31)
Mm-hmm.absolutely.
Micah Johnson (52:56)
When you lead with the fact that, you should connect with this person first, somebody I know that could help you with that. Then it leaves you your chance to connect back with them later. All right. Hey, did you get ahold of them? How’d it go? It was good. Okay, great, man. That’s so awesome. Just so you know, if you ever need anything in this side of the world, I can help you with that. And now you’ve got somebody that literally went through, they know that you care. Now they care about what you know. Like how, how can you help me over here? And it’s an intentional move. So don’t be afraid to say it out.If you’re around a bunch of people who don’t like listening to it, find new groups, right? Meet more people. Get out there and put yourself out, because they’re out there. And it’s a, I want to go back to one thing, because it’s the secret sauce. And you mentioned the book that taught me the secret sauce, how to win friends and influence people. I couldn’t agree more with that one. You need to read it. Dale’s going to say something about three quarters of the way through that really changed my life. You have to actually care. That is the secret sauce.
You have to actually care. If you don’t care, people will know. They’ll sniff through it. So when you’re going about doing this, make sure of that. Do I actually care? Am I really just showing up here for you? Do I have commission breath? Which one? Because the heart of it matters, right? The heart of it matters. And they can tell, everyone can smell that breath from a mile away when you’re coming at it. So, man.
DanCan (54:09)
Commission, bruh.Micah Johnson (54:21)
Dan, I appreciate you being here today. Thanks so much. I could go on and on and on with this conversation. These are the kinds that get me hyped up. So again, if you’re listening out there and you want to build a strong referral section of your business that keeps feeding you over and over and over again, write that three handwritten. Well, first make your list of people. Who is it that you can start reaching out to and growing? Then write them, then send them videos, then send them, then make phone calls and then meet with them. Put yourself.I call it getting in the way of opportunity. That is where it happens. Go out there and get in the way of it. All right, Dan, again, man, thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing so much wisdom with us today. For those that are listening, if you got value out of today’s episode, please like this episode and share it with someone else. There was some really good stuff. Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast. We appreciate every single one of you that follows along. Thanks again for joining us. We’ll see you on the next episode.
