Retire Early with Less Than 10 Rentals? Dion McNeeley’s “Boring” Strategy

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22:25BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I'm here with Dion McDealy talking about the 2026 market. We've talked about Dion's philosophy, how he spends a lot of time relearning his market every couple of years when he's going to buy a new deal. So Dion, for people who are doing this, getting back into the market, or maybe they're just buying their first deal ever, what advice do you have for people who are just trying to get into it right now? The first thing to consider would be, imagine the cost of waiting. When I hear the people that say, it must be nice to have invested five or 10 years ago, whatever the market conditions are, whether they think it was a pandemic or the recovery from the crash that made that more attractive, there will be a point in time, picture 2035, when people are saying, you were so lucky because you bought in 2025.

23:14At BPCon 2025 in Las Vegas, look how many lenders were there looking for people to give money to. In 2035, that might not be the case. Lending might disappear like it did in 2012, 13, 14, when all of a sudden you can only have four conventional loans in your own name instead of 10 like we have now, or whatever benefit we have now. So the advice to somebody starting today, first, to steal your words, it's a 10-year journey. Don't expect the first deal to be life-changing. Don't expect the first few years to be fun. They're going to be very slow. They're going to be very boring. The expectation is from year one to year 10 that the cash flow grows like a diagonal.

23:53And really, it is almost flatline. I don't think I broke$1 ,000 a month in cash flow for four years. And then it still stayed pretty low until year eight, maybe eight and a half. It hockey stick growth kicked in. And that happens way later when you have multiple levers to pull. And this gets talked about often. But if somebody's starting today, it was a requirement for me. It might not be a requirement for everyone else, but I suggest some form of house hacking. I'm not saying go add roommates. I like duplex, triplex, fourplex. But if that turns people's off because of their spouse or their kids, I had three kids too.

24:26They were excited about moving, but a house with an ADU. And when I say that, most people think a house with a small house behind it, because that's what we can build today. It's got to be behind the other unless you get a waiver. It's only so many square feet. Derek, that ADU guy who you guys have had on the channel, he just builds ADUs. What I did is look for houses with ADUs from before all the laws and regulations. So I own a house with an ADU, which is a 2 ,500 square foot house and a duplex on one property. Somehow that's an ADU situation. They're not attached. They're separate. But it's one property house with ADU.

25:01I'm not actually sure which building is the ADU. I was looking at another one that was a five bedroom house and a four bedroom house on one property. They just hadn't divided it. And so the people who say they can't start with a house hack because they have family, do they somehow magically live somewhere now where they have no neighbors? Right. Because that's how house hacking can be done.

25:19BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:I know. I think for most people like who have experienced some sort of city or even suburban living, like it's really not that big of a difference to your lifestyle. The second thing is the steps are the same to start or for me between deals eight and nine or whatever. It's your saving. How do you increase your income and decrease your expenses? Saving isn't just about spending less. It's about increasing income. So for me, that's staying on top of what goes on with my rents. How do I do value adds? How do I mitigate my expenses? You know, increase my deductible to decrease my premiums or whatever the strategy is.

25:53In growth mode, it was overtime, side hustle. I was playing World of Warcraft and selling things online as a side hustle, making hundreds of dollars a month, playing games with my kids to increase the savings rate, but then decrease the expenses. In growth mode, it was no streaming services, not eating out. I went eight years without a vacation so that the rest of my life can be a vacation. So if you're starting, what can you eliminate without making life unbearable, right? Maybe don't eliminate all streaming services, but they're really good at having one show you like on Netflix, one series on Hulu and the movie on HBO.

26:24So you got to have, have to have all of them. But if you can cut that back and you cut out the eating out meal prep, less vacations, maybe not none like we did, then what is your credit score? Right? The steps are the same. You're increasing your income and decreasing your expenses, work on your credit score, and then actually go talk with a lender. And the first three steps here, there's no agent involved. There's no auto searches. There's no deal hunting, no funnels, because you have to get all of this right. First, if you talk to an agent, one of their first questions, if they're good, should be, what did your lender say?

26:56Because why look at anything until we know what you're able to do? Totally agree. And I guarantee right now there's some agent listening, going, nodding their head, going, yes, please do that. Please talk to a lender to understand your options. And I would never have gotten started if I had talked to agents first, they would have said, well, you hunt for a property or go talk to a lender. And then I talked to a lender and the lender said, you can't borrow anything.

27:19BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:My debt to income was so bad. The agents wouldn't have understand usually to say, well, rent your house out for a couple of years, get rental income on your tax returns. And now your debt to income means almost nothing because we'll look at the rental income on the property you're purchasing. And like one conversation, the lender accidentally, she just kind of threw it into the conversation. I grabbed onto that and I thought, wait, that's a thing. And that changed everything for me. Once you talk to a lender and you know your steps, now it's study your market to pick a strategy. So I worked in law enforcement for about eight years.

27:47And one thing a cop can't do is you can't show up on scene and go, I think this happened. Let me find evidence to back it up. You have to show up on scene and go, let me look at the evidence. And based on the evidence, here's what I think happened. And then as I'm studying it, as more evidence comes in, I will change my opinion based on that evidence. So markets the same way. I looked at my market. I wanted to own single family houses. I understood them. I could house hack them. I could buy it without having roommates or anything and then move out and rent it out. But they don't cash flow in my market.

28:16So studying my market shifted me to small multi-family. I have a friend. She sold her stuff in Washington, 1031 to Ohio. And where she invested, single family houses made more sense than small multi-family. So you have to study the market to figure out what works, where you're investing, what matches your resources, your abilities, and what matches your strategy. And then after you've done all of that, that's where the agent comes in. Your strategy could be driving for dollars, setting up mailers, working with wholesalers. Mine was working full-time, raising three kids. I had agents sending me emails and I filtered through those looking for the ones that I wanted.

28:51Kindergarten simple, wasn't in a hurry. Like it took two years to buy the first duplex, two years to buy the next one. So in four years, I did two whole deals. But that's how you get to financial freedom is having a repeatable process. The work is not so much that you're actually going to be able to do it.

29:06BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:All right. That is great advice for beginners and people who are starting to get started. But I want to hear some of your best tips for managing and optimizing your portfolio next year, because this is sort of your thing, Deanna. I'd love to get your insights on it. If you had to pick two or three of your top pieces of advice for people who want to optimize their portfolio in the coming year, what would those things be? Well, thank you very much for the compliment. It's very weird to have that because I am a product of bigger pockets. My starting position was so bad. I lost money that first year.

29:37I rented out the house. I didn't see myself as a real landlord. So I rented to a friend because I couldn't trust a stranger and I didn't want to contract between friends. So we didn't have a lease. And it was just every nightmare mistake I could make, I was making. So I realized I was the problem. Landlording is not complicated. It's simple. It's not easy. but I was the problem because I was uneducated, right? You know, 13 week bootcamp to become a Marine six month Academy to become a cop. And I'm just going to jump into real estate with no education and replace my income. So I started hunting for rich dad, poor dad podcasts at the time, bigger pockets, YouTube channel, wasn't very big, but I found the website and there was guys like Michael's Uber from one rental at a time.

30:15They were writing on the website. So some article talked about how small multifamily lending was the same as single family. And that made a shift for me? And how do you find a lease? And how do you screen tenants and all of the really basic stuff that I just was winging it. And because I found BiggerPockets in written form, that's the dinosaur days, I'm financially free. So I want to thank you for the compliment, but thank you for the content that is helping people get here.

30:41BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:I mean, you deserve all of it, man. I appreciate that. And BiggerPockets is really that resource. And we love hearing that. And for anyone who hasn't been on our website, it's honestly crazy. A lot of people think we're just a podcast. We have an amazing website. Go to biggerpockets.com. We have all of this free content, networking, the forums, these ways that you can have your answers questioned. It's an incredible experience. We love that. But BiggerPockets is just like anything else where it's like it is what you make it. You know, you have to go out and work hard and figure out your own flavor of how you're going to be an investor.

31:15BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:Because even though thousands, tens of thousands of BiggerPockets members have done this before, no two people are exactly alike. And I just want to, I think your story is so cool because you've really come up with your own way of doing it. And it's based in fundamentals. It's not like you're completely just starting from scratch, but you have come up with a really unique and sometimes contrarian way of looking at problems as a real estate investor. And I don't say this lightly, I don't think there are all that many true thought leaders in our space where people are coming up with new ideas, but I think you've absolutely done that.

31:53BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:So I think the praise is light compared to what you are deserving of. So we are very grateful of you continuing to be a member of the broader BiggerPockets community here, Dion. With that, I want people to hear this because you are a thought leader. You have some really cool ideas about real estate investing. Give us your three top ones for how you recommend managing and sort of optimizing. So this is going to be a teachable moment that I take away from McDonald's. We would all have to admit, fairly successful business model, right? And if people are familiar with Robert Kiyosaki, they know that McDonald's is not in the hamburger business.

32:32They are in the real estate business. But in the 1990s, early 1990s, McDonald's started broadening their menu. They said, we have the chicken, this, we have a salad, that, we have all of these different options. And their profits tanked. Other people were able to duplicate it easier because they were smaller businesses. It was easier to implement. And in the mid-90s, when McDonald's realized they had diversified their menu so much, they were losing clients. They came out with their jingle about the Big Mac and they focused back on that hamburger that is the iconic thing of McDonald's. Still successful to this day.

33:09So in real estate, we tend to do the same thing. I wanted to buy long-term buy and hold rentals. So you fall down into the rabbit hole of how do I educate myself on this? And what do you hear? Burr, flipping, wholesaling, investing at a distance, short term rental, midterm rental, like all of these things that you can try. you'll diversify your menu so much that you'll spread yourself so thin. It's like investing in real estate and stocks and crypto that you won't master an asset class well enough to be successful at it. Well, in your asset class, pick the strategy that matches your resources, your timeline, and your goals, and try to focus on your hamburger.

33:52Mine is, even in retirement, because I save up money and I could easily do BRRRS. I could self-fund BRRRS. I'm not going to. I like to travel. I don't like to do rehabs. I don't like to pull permits. I hate going to the city and begging for permission to improve my property. That's not me, right? There's people who love that. If you thrive on that and the negotiation with the city and the contractors, go for it. That's your hamburger. So that's the first advice is really focus in on what you can master so that you can get, you can get to the point where it's boring. That's where success comes from.

34:24It doesn't come from the excitement of learning new things when you've been doing the same thing for 10 years. Get that mastered.

34:28BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:This is probably one of the more common questions I get is people say, hey, I've done two burrs. I've done a flip. I've done a single family. What do I do next? Or like, where should I go from here? And I usually ask, like, do you have to change? Like, is there a reason other than social media or, you know, the shiny object syndrome that you would do that? Because maybe if your stuff's not working, you should go do something different. But why do you think it is so much in this industry that people have this tendency to want to just move on, try something either bigger or not even necessarily bigger, but just different from the kinds of deals they've done in the past?

35:04It is a part of the brain that we can't remove. When I was reaching financial freedom, I have this friend who was also reaching financial freedom the same year. He retired the same year that I did, but he has shiny object syndrome. Every time he would reach out to me for advice, he would say, what do you think of RV pads? What do you think of by the room? What do you think of short-term rentals? And I would have to reel him back into what we're doing is working. It's very boring. I understand you don't have excitement with what we're doing, but if you repeat it one or two more times, let's run the numbers again.

35:36And then he ended up sticking with it with his nice, boring strategy. And he's been retired now for three years as well. And I have that conversation a lot of times with newer investors or people that I run into is they go, how can I do what you did, but faster? Or how can I do what you did if I use a different strategy? And my strategy is very boring. It's one property, save a down payment, buy the property, keep a tenant long-term. I prefer to buy rent-ready or already occupied properties. I'm all looking to buy and spend a bunch of time fixing it up. That's very boring. But financial freedom after a decade is anything but boring.

36:08BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:I love that. Yeah. I think that's kind of the whole thing. It's just like keeping your eye on the prize and realizing that your excitement doesn't have to come from real estate. You can have your excitement come from anywhere else. There are some people like my friend who's on the show a lot, James Dinnard. He loves flipping houses. Like he would do it for free if no one – I'm just the opposite of that. Like I like real estate. I find it enjoying. I like the problem solving. But like I like the sort of big picture. Hey, I'm doing this because I know the other stuff it achieves for me in my life.

36:42BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:I am not in it because like I have this love of like physical dwellings the same way that someone like James Daner does. So I think it's just really important for people, one, to have that long-term perspective and to recognize what side of that line you're on. There's no right or wrong. If you're someone who's passionate about it, by all means, go be passionate about doing the kinds of value add. I know a lot of people who are contractors or architects or engineers who love building. Like that's super cool. Go do that. If you're lazy like me and Dion, like maybe just maybe just do the more boring approach because that could work for you, too.

37:18BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:And you can find that passion with the free time that you generate from your real estate investing. We've got to take a quick break. We'll be right back. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios, but it's also historically been sort of complex, time consuming and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy. all the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense. That's the power of the Fundrise Flagship Fund. Now you can invest in a$1.1 billion portfolio of real estate, starting with as little as $10. The portfolio features 4 ,700 single-family rental homes spread across the booming sunbelt.

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40:59BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast here with investor Dion McNeely talking about his very unique, memorable, I think super inspiring and relatable approach to real estate investing. So I love that as number one, you gotta find your hamburger. What's number two? So I think a smart person learns from their mistakes and a genius learns from other people's mistakes. But the second piece of advice is, and this is kind of like a thing the way I put it in my head is amateurs chase deals, professionals chase repeatability. While I was starting, I was working full time, raising three kids, didn't have a lot of free time.

41:36Deals would be creative financing, seller financing, the Burr method so I could recycle my capital faster to get more deals faster. But when you don't have a lot of time, while that strategy is repeatable for some people, it wouldn't be repeatable for me. So it was save a down payment, buy a property. Two years to keep studying the market, save the down payment, increase income, decrease expenses. And then two years again, it sounds super boring, but it was repeatable to the point where more units didn't mean more work. I can manage my 17 rented out units because it's basically feels exactly the same as when I had seven or 10.

42:12Like I don't notice the difference. Two or three texts a month, maybe one email. And my system's in place that well. In the beginning, that wasn't the case. So getting my systems in place was more valuable to me than adding properties. And in the beginning, what is everybody focusing on? How do I get the next deal? It's once you have the deal, how do I get my systems? How do I have a list of contractors for plumbing and electricity? So when I have an emergency, I have no stress because I've already got their phone numbers in my phone. Do I have a contact in my phone for every property? So I know what tenants are there, when their leases are due, what their current rents are, what jobs have in In my notes section, in my contacts, in my phone for every property, there is what's been done there and when it was done and when I expect certain meetings to happen.

42:54Like all of these systems that make it very easy to travel, the entire business can be in a device. You don't have to have anything, no spreadsheets or anything. You can have them, but you don't have to have them to travel. So since my system is repeatable in growth mode, I didn't even subconsciously resist adding units because it didn't mean more time. And that's very important to me in growth mode, especially because if it takes more work, your brain will say, oh, we've got enough. Don't add any more. We can't handle any more.

43:24BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:Yeah, I think this is one of the things that held me back the most as a real estate investor. I self-managed from 10 years. And if I had just figured out what you were just talking about, I would have probably doubled. I would add more properties. Cause like, I wasn't actually, I was lucky, you know, I had a high paying job and I could have bought more, but I just like mentally never sat down to invest time upfront to clear time for myself later that, you know, that would allow me to do that. And instead I was just like, you know what, real estate, I have another career. I'm not going to be working on my, my rental portfolio right now.

44:01BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:And I did that for years. And if I just like recognize that I didn't have a very good business at that point, I good investments, but I didn't have a good business or a good system or good, like to your, the way you put it, I couldn't repeat stuff. You know, I was calling different plumbers every time. I was okay, but like I could have done better and I could have grown faster. And I, it took me, God, way too long to figure that out. Probably three or four years longer than it should have. And I missed out. I'm probably scaling some of the stuff that I should have. And, you know, like you said, I don't regret things because it all worked out in the end, the butterfly effect.

44:38BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:But if I were to go back and could tweak some of the things, I think that's the number one thing I would focus on more is systems early. And looking back, my systems weren't there in the beginning either. My first few years weren't just like yours. It felt like it took 20 hours a week to manage my one tenant, let alone two hours a month to manage all of the tenants that I have now. So it was developing those systems over time, educating myself on bigger pockets, finding the people in the community to spend time around with to figure out how they do things. An example is the lumberjack landlord.

45:06For years, I would list my properties the wrong way when I had a rental. I would put them out there and I'll get to the last piece of advice as quick as I can here. I would list a property the way an owner thinks. Here are the amenities. Here's the age of the building. Here's the square footage. Here's the parking. Here's the distance maybe to the freeway. the lumberjack landlord he optimized my interacting with him optimized my advertising my rental so much that i no longer hunt for a tenant i have to filter through applications and it's by not talking about the property the tenants don't really care about the property as much as they care about the quality of life they're going to have in the property so take your address of your rental and put it in chat gpt and say what are five to ten things that my tenants might find attractive about the area that this rental is in and it'll stop it'll pull up parks it'll pull up walking trails, dog parks, chat GPT or Grok or whichever you use will tell you those things and have that in the listing, just bullet point.

45:59These are five things that could affect your quality of life if you lived in this area. And now I get 30 to 50 applicants instead of five. Wow. I love that. Those are the systems. And the third thing that I hope people could take away, whether they're just starting in real estate or they've been doing this for a while and they're optimizing now, is ask yourself this question. What skill could you dedicate the time to mastering that will change the entire game for you. And for some of us, that's deal hunting, deal analyzing. For some of us, it's negotiation. It could be communication. It could be networking.

46:34There is a skill out there that you haven't focused on that you could take the next couple of months and dedicate the time to that will impact the rest of your life as far as investing goes.

46:44BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:I love this. Actually, in one of my books, I talk about this, that there's just no way you can feasibly learn every skill. There is just so many different things real estate investors need to do. Some of them, I'm sorry, you're going to be bad at. It's such a broad, different type of thing. Some people are really analytical. Some people are great people person. Some people just love sales. There's just so many different things. It's really hard to be good at it. And the great thing about real estate investing is that you could specialize and trade people who are good at these other things. You can hire someone who's handy if you're not.

47:23BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:You can work with a property manager. Deion's a great property manager. But if that's something that you're not into, you could probably learn another skill and hire out being a property manager. You don't need to be good at everything to be a good investor. You need to be self-aware, I think, to know what you're good at and what you could feasibly learn and which things, like for me being handy, you should probably just quit. because I'm never going to do maintenance on myself. I've tried that stuff and it never worked for me. It was a huge waste of time. I'm better at learning. For me, I think my skill sets are deal finding and deal analysis.

48:01BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:That's what I'm good at. Not a great property manager, decent enough, but I trade for everything else. So Dan, what are some examples of these skills that, well, what's yours? First of all, what's the thing you invested in and what are some of the skills you think are the best ROI for people to invest their time into? So the one skill that I'm not arrogant enough to say I've mastered, but I've focused on mastering is teaching. The highest form of learning is teaching. And when I look at every aspect of real estate investing or owning the property or managing the property, I think whenever I'm doing anything, talking with a tenant, doing the binder strategy or anything that involves a skill, networking, presenting.

48:43I think if I had to teach somebody how to do this, if I had to teach somebody how to screen tenants, how would I make the lesson outline? How would I convey the information in at least three different audible, kinesthetic, whatever version they learn in doing that? It makes it sound when I talk, like I'm super organized and I know what I'm doing. I'm not, and I don't. But when it comes to an aspect of real estate, if I've had to think, how would I teach this to somebody? I'm very organized and I know what I'm doing about that thing And and so that might not be everyone else's thing. They need to master about how to teach but at least think If you had to explain what you're doing to someone else if you can articulate it, you'll be better at doing it

49:24BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:Do you think it overlaps like the things? Often if people are trying to figure out what skill they're good at like is it Always the thing that you love doing or have you found this also sometimes you're just good at things that maybe you don't like doing I think people benefit more from improving the things that they're good at than working on the things that they're terrible at. Like you said earlier, outsource the things you don't like doing or you're not good at doing. I had no idea until I started working at the CDL school that I liked teaching. I was a driver for years. I was an officer for eight years and I was in the Marines.

49:56But between that, I was a truck driver for over a decade. My first month at a CDL school as an instructor, I became 10 times the driver that I ever was. I think I've translated that into real estate, but I have friends who aren't teachers who are more successful than I am. And I mentioned them a couple of times in this video, the lumberjack landlord, a millennial, Mike and Michael Zuber. They're not teachers. They worked in it sales and they took skills from their job that they had to master for their work. And they've used that in real estate, the lumberjack self-managing over 150 units while burrs and rehabs are going on.

50:29That is a project manager thing. That's his skillset. That's not me. I'm not the project manager. I didn't like doing one bird, but he's doing three or four at a time sometimes. And so everyone listening or watching, what are you doing for work that has required you to master certain skills? Will those skills translate to investing? You might already have a type of superpower. And for me, I think it's putting myself in the shoes of who I'm talking to. So it's sometimes teaching, but sometimes the binder strategy comes from why are my tenants so stressed out about rent increases or thinking they're going to get kicked out?

51:03How can I alleviate that. Put myself in their shoes, came up with a system that made it a lot easier to get the rents up, keep tenants low turnover, happier tenants. But I think almost every job out there has some transferable skill that people are already mastering that they can bring to real estate.

51:17BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:That's awesome. I absolutely agree with that. I'm just resonating this while you're talking about it because I get a deal analysis. I was a data analyst before as a podcast host. I've been doing this for a lot of my career. It's something I feel comfortable doing. I went into that career because I enjoy doing it. I know people think that's crazy that you like looking at spreadsheets, but I do. So there's something out there for everyone. And I'll also say, I also think there's sometimes, it could be even a hobby that you like, something that you've gravitated towards over your career. Even if it's not your vocation and you don't like your job, there's probably something that you've learned or dedicated, committed time to, whether it's a sport or an instrument or something that you have to learn.

51:57BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:Patience or attention to detail. These are great things to do. So before we get out of here, though, Dion, other than your skill set, mine, which is more analytical, are there other skills that you think have really high ROIs for people? I think people underestimate the value of communication, whether it's with your tenants, a contractor. Most people will call it negotiation, but it really comes down to communication. And there is a whole rabbit hole of on YouTube of NLP or negotiations. Chris Voss was at BiggerPockets in 2025 and he talked about different negotiation tactics. And you might not have to get so technical or so detailed.

52:35But if you can learn the difference between parroting, mirroring, memory anchoring, some really simple things that can make your communication easier, easier to gain someone's trust, easier to either get what you want or at least understand why you didn't in negotiation. I think communication, I hear some people often say the most money to an employee goes to the sales department. And that's because they can communicate. In real estate, the money goes to the people who can communicate. If you can keep your tenants happy or your property manager happy, or you can communicate with your contractors.

53:11An example is I communicate with my lenders. And when I give this example, it sounds like a ton of work, but it's really four or five emails. I'll go to a big bank and I'll say, what do I qualify for? And I'll get it in writing. When I go under contract with property, I'll go to all the different types of lenders, credit union, mortgage brokers, use Matt, the mortgage guy or somebody like that. And I'll say, here's what the bank is offering. Can you beat it in a communication style that says I'm offering you business if you can beat their business? And then if they can beat it, I take it back to the bank and say, if you can match this, you can keep my business, right?

53:44And so it's a really simple communication skill, seeing from their perspective that they want the business. I want to give them the business, but they have to give me the best deal. A small communication skill like that has saved me tens or probably hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years with the best interest rate, the lowest amount to buy down the rate. And that's just one aspect. When you add that to contractors and handymen and tenants and the tenant who wants their ESA pets in, or the tenant who has a noise complaint with their tenant next door. If you can master or get better at communication, even if you have a property manager.

54:16So many people use the excuse of, I don't like conflict, so I'm going to have a property manager. You're going to spend more time managing your property. You'd probably spend more time with a property manager than I spend managing my tenants because you have to verify everything or I just have to do everything. But that communication skill, it pays off in every aspect of investing.

54:33BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:Yeah, the thing I've always loved about Chris Voss, I've been a fan of his forever and we were both at BPCon talking about it, is the stuff he's teaching, like people hear this word negotiation and they think it's like manipulation, but it's not. The way I think of it, at least, is just emotional intelligence. You're learning how to create mutual benefit to people, explaining to people what you need, what works for you, learning from them what's important to them and trying to find an agreeable solution for both of you. I self-managed properties for 10 years. I now have property managers. knock on wood, I've never had to evict someone.

55:08BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:I've always just been able to have conversations with people and work it out. And you still have to convey where your lines are as a property owner, where your lines are as a property manager. But if you're good at this, you can figure out the right ways to build your business in a really mutually beneficial way. You're not negotiating trying to manipulate your bank, right? You're just trying to find a loan product that works for both of you. And if you take that kind of approach to every relationship that you have in real estate investing, I totally agree with Dion. You're going to be better off in your entire portfolio if you learn that one skill.

55:46BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:That's a very good high ROI piece of advice there, Dion. Not surprised though, you are full of high ROI pieces of advice. So thank you so much for joining us here today, Dion. This was a lot of fun. I appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity to come on here anytime that I can. I really loved coming to BiggerPockets in Las Vegas, and we have this one coming up next year. I hope people get surrounded by people who are doing what they want to do because then you're more likely to do it yourself. Absolutely. That's what the BiggerPockets community is all about. So check out our website. There's literally hundreds of thousands, millions of members who are there helping one another succeed in real estate investing.

56:27BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:Check out all the live events that we're doing over the next couple of years. get into the same room as real estate investors, it is gonna help you more than you can possibly know. On top of that, if you wanna learn more from Dion, you can check out his YouTube channel at Dion Talks Financial Freedom, where he's always giving out great advice. Thanks again, Dion. Thank you so much. And thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer. We'll see you next time. Thank you all for listening to the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.

57:03BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian Kay. Copywriting is by Calico Content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing.

57:31BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Hosts:You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. BiggerPockets LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast. Want to see your brand on TV? Roku Ads Manager makes it easy to launch targeted ad campaigns in minutes, track results in real time, and drive on-screen purchases with just a click of the Roku remote. Get a$500 match on your first$500 spent with code Roku500 at ads.roku.com. That's code R-O-K-U 500 at ads.roku.com. Terms apply.