X Games Gold Medalist to Multifamily Operator: Why "Inch Wide, Mile Deep" Beats Every Strategy

0:03Okay, we got Dan Breezy. So this is our first pro snowboarder, X Games. I love snowboarding, skiing. I took my son last year and he loves skiing and then throwing snowballs in my face. So you're doing a lot of multifamily. Tell me what the number one ritual affirmation you used when you were going down and throwing yourself high up in the air and doing backflips and some crazy stuff.

0:29Dan Breezy: Yeah. Yeah. You know, for our sport, it was extremely high risk jumping off buildings, hitting back country jumps, like double flips. It was, it was very dangerous. Like you can, you can die. Um, and for me, you know, the biggest thing to stay healthy was I would watch the people who were my heroes on videotape over and over and over again. So like summertime, I literally would wear out my VHS tape of my heroes. And come winter, I'd show up at the park and I would try a trick and I've never done it before in my life. And boom, I would hit it first try. And my friends would be like, dude, how did you learn that trick?

1:06Dan Breezy: And I'm like, I don't know. I could just see it in my mind's eye perfectly. And so when I think about real estate investing now or anything I'm doing, if I can see the answer clearly in my mind, it's almost certain I can go do it. So getting it clear. And I, and I, there's times when I didn't have tricks where I'd have mental cobwebs, I'd call them. I couldn't quite see it. I'd get lost in my visualization means you got to stay back, go back to the drawing board. And every time I would go for tricks and I couldn't see it, I'd screw up. I'd get hurt. So mind's eye clarity is key. That's amazing, bro.

1:37I I'm with you. I used to, when I fought, I used to see the person, see me smashing them winning. And then I would go do the fight. 100 yeah 100 i'm with you yeah what's a what's the number one uh million dollar lesson that you

1:52Dan Breezy: learned uh and that you give advice yeah you know when i look at my snowboarding career what separated me to be you know multiple x games gold medalist is that i was in inch wide a mile deep you know i wasn't doing backcountry slope style super pipe everything i was an urban rider and i was known as one of the best for a while in urban snowboarding period. So it wasn't a bunch of different stuff. And same with what we're doing here at Granite Towers today. It's how do we become the best value-add multifamily operator in Dallas in specific sub-markets and just laser focus on that and just be relentless at being the best at that one asset class.

2:33Dan Breezy: I don't need to do five, six different asset classes. I need to be the best at just this one. And so that's my focus is just laser focus for a long period of time on one thing. That's awesome. What's the biggest financial mistake you've ever experienced? You know, for us, I would say looking back, we've had success, we've had some pain, and it's just running into optimistically, thinking things are going to continue to be good, and, you know, getting sucked into FOMO, like not being tuned into the cycle. Where are we in this market cycle about? You know, what are we doing to structure this deal based off of about where we are.

3:10Dan Breezy: We don't know exact, right? We can see where we are now about, we're, you know, four years of pain and we're starting to see some stability, right? Interest rates are being more stable. Okay. So we got five, seven year runway. What kind of debt are we going to use? What's our leverage? What's our cost basis? It's just more about preparation on how to exit something based on the cycle. Just get comfortable cycles in any asset class you're in and really study them. How'd you get into multifamily? You're based in Dallas, right? I live in Washington State, but our team is based in Dallas. Okay, cool.

3:40Dan Breezy: How'd you get into multifamily? Yeah, so in my snowboarding career, I saw all my buddies who were five or ten years in front of me losing their careers. And I saw them lose everything. Suicide happened, and it scared me. So I was looking for ways to invest my capital. So I started buying cash-flowing deals and looking for depreciation. Obviously, like Bronson said, I was getting crushed in taxes. Never heard about it. middle-class kid out of Minnesota, all of a sudden half of my income as a snowboarder after 10 years of failure start to make good money, and they ask for half of it. And I'm just like, what is going on here?

4:11Dan Breezy: So it was the pain of taxes. It was, hey, something's going to happen here at the end, and it's not pretty for most athletes. I mean, 78 % of all pro athletes are broke within three years. That's the stat. So got to do something different. Did you have a mentor that taught you open doors, gave you life experience? Yeah. There was a period of time where I was buying on my own and it was just smaller stuff and got to know Brad very well. Sumrock, he's around here, work with Bobby Castro, work with Ken McElroy, work with guys that have been doing it for a lot longer than us and associating with them.

4:44Dan Breezy: You know, like, what are you guys doing? What have you been through? They've been through many cycles. You know, we're just going through our first cycle right now, coming on 10 years of ownership. We're young. We're just getting going. Like we're, I feel grateful to be up here, but like 10 years, like that's the point where you turn pro. That's how it was for me, at least. In my snowboarding career, I struggled for a decade, and then all of a sudden I turned pro. I feel like that's happening in our company right now. It was a struggle for 10 years. You had some success, you had some failure, but finally turned pro.

5:11Dan Breezy: Dan, thank you very much, bro. Thank you. Appreciate it. Give him a round of applause, guys.

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