EP 136: Focus and Determination: Lessons from Dan Brisse's Sports and Business Career

Discover how Dan Brisse, a former X Games gold medalist, transformed his passion for snowboarding into a thriving real estate empire. In this episode of [Podcast Name], we delve deep into Dan's journey, exploring the resilience, focus, and determination that propelled him from professional sports to building Granite Towers Equity Group.

🎙️ What's in the Episode:
1️⃣ The Power of Resilience: Learn how Dan's sports background instilled a never-give-up attitude, crucial for navigating the ups and downs of real estate investing.
2️⃣ Focus and Determination: Discover the importance of unwavering focus and determination in achieving success, whether in sports or business.
3️⃣ Passion-Driven Success: Understand how Dan leveraged his passion for snowboarding to fuel his entrepreneurial journey, turning challenges into opportunities.

👨‍💼 About Dan Brisse: Dan Brisse is a former professional snowboarder and X Games gold medalist who transitioned into real estate investment. As the co-founder of Granite Towers Equity Group, Dan now focuses on multifamily investments and creating sustainable income streams for investors.

💡 LINKS TO MORE CONTENT Christian Soschner

📌 Quotes: 
(00:04:15) "Creating multiple income streams through real estate transforms challenges into opportunities." 
(00:28:07) "Certainty comes from thousands of reps; it's like walking, not a leap of faith." 
(00:37:08) "Commitment means doing what's necessary without backing down, even when facing major setbacks." 
(01:06:32) "To win the game of business, you need to know and play by the rules."
(01:36:55) "As long as we can get through the next six months with cash flow, we'll thrive."

⏰ Timestamps: 
(00:01:00) Discover the Secrets of Multifamily Investment Success 
(00:06:00) Insights on Inflation, Interest Rates, and Real Estate 
(00:12:02) From Passion to Profession: Dan's Snowboarding Journey 
(00:18:13) Hard Work and Dedication: Life of a Pro Snowboarder 
(00:21:11) "Overcoming Limits: The Reality of Top-Tier Snowboarding" 
(00:27:00) "Balancing Risk and Family: A Professional Snowboarder's Journey" (00:31:33) The Importance of Starting Early in Competitive Sports 
(00:35:08) Overcoming Major Setbacks to Achieve Success 
(00:43:15) The Importance of Defining Success for Goal Achievement 
(00:49:38) True Passion vs. Novelty: Differentiating Between Real and Fleeting Interest (00:52:09) Overcoming Boredom by Setting New Goals 
(00:56:12) Transitioning from Snowboarding to Real Estate Investing 
(01:06:11) Embracing Freedom in Real Estate Investment 
(01:12:19) The Importance of Education and Confidence in Investing 
(01:18:23) Real Estate Investment Strategy for Passive Income and Investor Partnership 
(01:23:11) Challenges and Lessons from Real Estate Investments During Volatile Markets 
(01:30:57) Understanding Real Estate Emotions and Market Reactions 
(01:36:32) Securing Cash Flow and Riding Market Cycles 
(01:44:28) The Discipline of Saying No in Investing (01:45:47) Learning from Pain: The Path to Successful Investing

📣 Call to Action: If you’re inspired by Dan Brisse's journey and want to learn how to harness resilience, focus, and determination for your own success, this episode is for you. Subscribe, leave a comment, and share this podcast. Your support helps us bring more insightful content to you for free.

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Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:18:11

Christian Soschner

Imagine turning your passion for snowboarding into a multi-million dollar real estate empire. That's exactly what Dan Breezy, X-Games gold medalist and co-founder of Granite's tell us equity Group, did.

00:00:18:11 - 00:00:31:17

Dan Brisse

apparent where they're usually in those moments you want to be owning things that are real, things that are real real estate, you know, gold, silver, farms, timber, anything that's real will hold value and

00:00:31:24 - 00:00:34:16

Dan Brisse

by the time I was 16, I pretty much made a decision I was going

00:00:34:20 - 00:00:38:06

Dan Brisse

I didn't want it to end because I was scared, but I did

00:00:38:09 - 00:00:43:17

Dan Brisse

if things don't change and they continue to trend like they are, these next ten years could be

00:00:43:17 - 00:00:56:16

Christian Soschner

In this episode of the Beginner's Mind podcast. We dive deep into the inspiring journey of Dan Breezy from professionals no budding to savvy real estate investor.

00:00:56:16 - 00:01:06:12

Christian Soschner

discovered how he builds granite. Tell US equity Group, a leading multifamily investment firm specializing in value add strategies.

00:01:06:12 - 00:01:18:16

Christian Soschner

What can you expect in this episode? The first one. Uncover the secrets behind dense, successful transition from extreme sports to lucrative real estate investments.

00:01:18:16 - 00:01:27:22

Christian Soschner

The second one is gaining weight, yet insights into navigating the complexities of my tech family, investing even in volatile markets

00:01:27:22 - 00:01:37:20

Christian Soschner

and the fat one. Learn how to create sustainable income streams and unlock hidden opportunities in real estate.

00:01:37:20 - 00:01:51:24

Christian Soschner

Don't miss this opportunity to learn from a true trailblazer. Subscribe, comment, and share this episode with your network to help the show grow and deliver more valuable content.

00:01:51:24 - 00:01:55:22

Christian Soschner

Like this. Now let's dive into it.

00:01:55:22 - 00:01:59:02

Dan Brisse

Do you like podcasting?

00:01:59:04 - 00:02:14:08

Christian Soschner

yeah, it's it's all good. We have a show as well called Keeping It Real Estate. So, if the value is great, it is enriching. I do. If it's if it's not, and it's not so much.

00:02:14:10 - 00:02:16:04

Dan Brisse

How is the show going?

00:02:16:16 - 00:02:17:18

Christian Soschner

it's going pretty good, actually.

00:02:17:18 - 00:02:36:01

Dan Brisse

We're, almost episode 100, right? Like 98 or so. So, it's it's good. We've got some great guests on and it's, I hope, adding significant value to our listeners. But I know we've received some great value just by being able to interview some of these, some of these folks.

00:02:36:01 - 00:02:40:03

Dan Brisse

What do you like the most as a podcast host?

00:02:40:05 - 00:02:44:19

Christian Soschner

for me, I like to meet the people and be able to talk to them for 45 minutes to

00:02:44:19 - 00:02:55:12

Christian Soschner

an hour about what's going on in their life. And I'm a full, committed conversation, and it allows me to dive in deeper to conversations with people that you normally wouldn't have.

00:02:55:14 - 00:03:11:09

Dan Brisse

That's true. I love some fun conversations, especially, for example, Joe Rogan, Lex Friedman and I try to mimic their style with my podcast, so we pretty much don't have a time limit. How much time to you have today for this episode?

00:03:11:09 - 00:03:14:17

Christian Soschner

Yeah, my calendar said 830 to 1030.

00:03:14:19 - 00:03:16:08

Dan Brisse

It's super super, you.

00:03:16:08 - 00:03:17:12

Christian Soschner

Know, 1030.

00:03:17:14 - 00:03:42:09

Dan Brisse

So if I didn't go out in a hurry, that's great. then it's good to have you on the show. In the last days, I've been following your career. from the past. From the beginning up to now. I am extremely impressed. can you tell the guests a little bit about yourself, about what you do currently? And then we dive into what's probably take some of the things I mean.

00:03:42:09 - 00:03:44:14

Dan Brisse

Yes, yes. No party career.

00:03:44:18 - 00:04:10:23

Dan Brisse

Yeah. You bet. Well, thanks again for having me on. I appreciate you doing a little research on me, and I appreciate the compliment. yeah. Now, we are at multifamily investors, so we're buying apartments located in Dallas and Fort Worth, that market in Nashville, Tennessee, and it's all, 3 to 7 year hold, period. We're buying for cash flow, creating multiple streams of income for investors.

00:04:11:00 - 00:04:29:07

Dan Brisse

and it has a value added play component to it, where we will come in with maybe 10 to $15,000 per dollar, and we'll upgrade the property and improve the property and, help it perform at a better, higher level for the residents who live there.

00:04:29:09 - 00:04:35:14

Christian Soschner

It's called how how is the real estate market in Dallas and Nashville these days?

00:04:35:16 - 00:05:01:11

Dan Brisse

Yeah, the market is very dependent on what kind of debt the buyer put in place back in 2021 and in 2020. So if you put in fixed debt with low leverage, you are loving the real estate environment right now because inflation has helped rents move up, signify gently. Yes, your expenses have increased, of course, but rents have moved up more.

00:05:01:13 - 00:05:25:20

Dan Brisse

And if your debt is fixed now, you have more cash flow. and you may have some value compression. The value may have come down due to cap rates rising. But if your goal is passive income and your goal is cash flow for your investors or for your deals, you're you're enjoying it. You know, every month you're getting extra money to push out to investors, and they're along for the ride.

00:05:25:20 - 00:05:30:24

Dan Brisse

And when the market shifts, you'll be in a great position to capitalize on an exit.

00:05:30:24 - 00:05:55:16

Dan Brisse

And I think the great thing for the state is you don't see the depreciation, depreciation of the value right away. It's different than the equity market prior to public equity markets. So fixed interest rates, those who were lucky to lock it in and increasing cash flows with inflation must be a great ride for investors. It looks like you have pretty much the same, discussion that we have here in

00:05:55:16 - 00:05:56:08

Dan Brisse

Europe.

00:05:56:10 - 00:06:08:12

Dan Brisse

That's, those on the other side too, didn't lock in to fixed interest rates. Have a hard time. How is the variable side of life in your area in Dallas and Nashville?

00:06:08:14 - 00:06:11:20

Christian Soschner

Yes. Say that one more time. So. So part of the question.

00:06:11:22 - 00:06:29:20

Dan Brisse

how do they. They're real investors, too. Who didn't lock their interest rate at a fixed rate, but, went along with the right and say the interest rates have obviously been going down in the last ten years. So why should that change? How is life for those.

00:06:29:22 - 00:06:30:08

Christian Soschner

Yeah, it's

00:06:30:08 - 00:07:08:06

Dan Brisse

for us, for the deals that do not have fixed debt. It depends a little bit on if they put a rate cap in place. And a rate cap would cap your interest rate if they put one of those in for a long period of time, it wasn't a large gap. They may be fine, but for the folks that didn't do that or don't have a compressed rate cap, they're in a challenging situation, a very challenging environment where they are looking to potentially sell because they're losing money every month, every month they're bleeding cash to keep the property out or their lender is not going to re, allow them to extend their loan

00:07:08:06 - 00:07:16:14

Dan Brisse

term and their loans coming due. So in those scenarios, you have people who are somewhat desperate to exit deals.

00:07:16:16 - 00:07:28:07

Christian Soschner

How do you expect development of the interest rates in the coming 12 months? I mean, the elections are coming next year. What's your expectation about interest rates?

00:07:28:09 - 00:07:31:15

Dan Brisse

It's a tough one. the best I can give.

00:07:31:16 - 00:07:33:20

Christian Soschner

Just just crystal power. Guessing it's.

00:07:33:24 - 00:08:00:11

Dan Brisse

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Based off history, I would think you'd have about a 6 to 7 month period, maybe eight months of pausing, from the last hike and then rates coming down, how far they come down, I don't know, but you would think they're based off of history, based off of cycles. There would be some sort of ease in rates, which would then be the time to exit your deals.

00:08:00:11 - 00:08:02:15

Dan Brisse

If you needed to exit deals.

00:08:02:17 - 00:08:10:00

Christian Soschner

So you expect. We already saw the peak of the interest rate hikes on the market in the US.

00:08:10:02 - 00:08:31:03

Dan Brisse

I do believe we are close, if not at the peak now, of what they'll do based off of the data that's coming out and the information that we're seeing come, you know, that yeah, I think we're very close if not topped, and it will be held here for a while to confirm that until we probably see some more damage in the economy.

00:08:31:11 - 00:08:34:07

Dan Brisse

Hopefully we don't see more damage in the economy tend to be already.

00:08:34:07 - 00:08:40:18

Christian Soschner

So yeah. Yeah, that's probably unlikely. But I hope you're.

00:08:40:20 - 00:09:02:02

Dan Brisse

Yeah. And you're I mean, you know, Austria, Vienna and we still have an inflation rate of about 7 to 8%. Yeah. So the interest rate changes didn't change much because the, the root cause of inflation here in Europe, in my opinion, the surging energy prices. And this is solely driven by the war between Russia and Ukraine.

00:09:02:04 - 00:09:15:22

Dan Brisse

And as long as that doesn't change, we will see rising prices. the measures of the ECB. I don't I don't think that too much here in Austria we are mostly dependent on Russian natural gas. So,

00:09:15:24 - 00:09:23:01

Christian Soschner

Wow, that's so interesting to hear that, that inflation is still at 78%. What has it been at the last few years there.

00:09:23:03 - 00:09:28:04

Dan Brisse

Before the pandemic? I think almost all over Europe,

00:09:28:04 - 00:10:05:03

Dan Brisse

the inflation rate was pretty stable, about 1 to 2%. it's up to 2020. And this was a period that's I think it was the first time in the European history that Europe saw the decade of stability, peace and hence stable prices and a growing economy. And I think everything changed in March 2020 with the first lockdowns and shutdowns.

00:10:05:03 - 00:10:35:19

Dan Brisse

And, which led to the destruction of major chains. And to think this brought this development in motion that, the first hints on the inflation rate, that probably the value chains, the disruption with the prices. The ECB started after the fed to rise to raise the interest rates, which sort of brought inflation down very quickly after the lockdowns were over.

00:10:35:21 - 00:11:10:07

Dan Brisse

But unfortunately February 2022 happened with the start of the war in the Ukraine and the countries that are close to Russia and Europe signed off, I think, 5 or 6 years ago deals with Russia. Russia provides natural gas at a very low price, and this fuels the economy in half of Europe, in my opinion. low natural gas, Europe competes, the energy side with other regions like the United States or Southeast Asia.

00:11:10:09 - 00:11:13:05

Dan Brisse

And February was hot. It's,

00:11:13:07 - 00:11:16:00

Christian Soschner

Unfortunately, yeah. What a perfect

00:11:16:00 - 00:11:33:15

Dan Brisse

environment for creating inflation. Let's shut down the production and transportation and let's create more currency than ever before in our history of time. So you have those two things here. And now you're dealing with the effects of, you know, what was done.

00:11:33:17 - 00:11:51:12

Christian Soschner

Yeah. But I'm what I want. I mean, if this continues, I think the prices of the houses that, you invest in should go up again. I think ultimately, variations of this, should probably fuel the market evaluation of the houses stand destroyed.

00:11:51:14 - 00:12:08:20

Dan Brisse

Yeah. I mean, when you get into if you follow Ray Dalio, he talks a little bit about a lot actually about the stages of debt cycles. And we're in late stage five of the debt cycle here in the US. And when you're in late stage five you're seeing all of the signs like clear as day.

00:12:08:20 - 00:12:22:15

Dan Brisse

It's apparent where they're usually in those moments you want to be owning things that are real, things that are real real estate, you know, gold, silver, farms, timber, anything that's real will hold value and

00:12:22:15 - 00:12:25:22

Dan Brisse

hedge inflation much better than things that are fake.

00:12:25:22 - 00:12:43:16

Dan Brisse

So that's that's really the goal for us is can you buy something that you believe will have increasing value significantly? And can you get a control on your expenses to create that residual multiple streams of income every month, whether you work or not, work?

00:12:43:18 - 00:12:45:00

Christian Soschner

That's true. That's true.

00:12:45:00 - 00:13:06:03

Dan Brisse

Then let's step into real estate investing a bit later in the conversation, and now make a detour to the beginning of your career. You are not the pond real estate investor. So you didn't grow up with, buying houses. at least what's the internet says? The majority of, posts and pages they found about you.

00:13:06:05 - 00:13:11:21

Dan Brisse

The snowboarding. What brought you into snowboarding?

00:13:11:23 - 00:13:12:18

Christian Soschner

Yeah, I grew

00:13:12:18 - 00:13:36:14

Dan Brisse

up in central Minnesota in a pretty flat area of the country, but very cold and had a lot of snow. There were hills, but there were no mountains. And when I was about 11 or 12 years old, my cousin got a snowboard brought from California to Minnesota, and that changed my life. And in that moment I, I really just had a lot of fun riding.

00:13:36:16 - 00:13:59:05

Dan Brisse

And it was a passion. So as much as I possibly could, I would be asking my parents to take me to the local hills, and it was just purely out of fun at the time. Wasn't trying to be a professional snowboard. I just really loved to do it and I kept doing that for 3 or 4 years and got around a bunch of kids and in school and middle school and high school who were also very into it, and it was just what we did.

00:13:59:05 - 00:14:00:02

Dan Brisse

It was our way

00:14:00:02 - 00:14:06:18

Christian Soschner

way of having a fun time instead of playing hockey. We were snowboarding now, and, one thing led to another and all of a sudden,

00:14:06:18 - 00:14:25:10

Dan Brisse

by the time about 14, 15, 16 years old, I started to hear about professional snowboarders and I started to see these videos of pro snowboarders that were filmed all over the world, a lot of it actually in Austria, Switzerland, a lot here in Colorado and in Utah and in Whistler and in British Columbia and Alaska.

00:14:25:10 - 00:14:46:07

Dan Brisse

And all of that started to kind of open up my eyes that there was a possibility of getting paid as a snowboarder. And as time went on, you know, the part I find interesting with any athletic career is you don't most of time in the first 3 to 6 months or even year, have a goal of being professional.

00:14:46:07 - 00:15:11:22

Dan Brisse

With that. It comes over time and as you put in the work and as you do it and go further down the path, the desire grows and the belief and the confidence grows and you start to adjust what your focus is. So that's really how it was for me. It came into my life and I was just the most fun thing I found to do three or 4 or 5 years later, as I started to get better and better and go to contests and actually plays, I started to believe it was possible.

00:15:11:22 - 00:15:12:15

Dan Brisse

And

00:15:12:15 - 00:15:15:07

Dan Brisse

by the time I was 16, I pretty much made a decision I was going

00:15:15:07 - 00:15:20:03

Dan Brisse

to do my best and chase this career. I was trying to become a professional snowboarder, so

00:15:20:03 - 00:15:23:00

Christian Soschner

that was that was really the way it came.

00:15:23:02 - 00:15:41:23

Dan Brisse

That's great. That's great too. Yeah. What what was the turning point? It would like to learn a little bit more about this switch that flipped me on set. I danced to it as a hobby. in my spare time. I really want to make this for a living. I mean, I grew up in Austria. It's exactly like to happen to a lot of these videos, have been shot in Austria.

00:15:42:04 - 00:16:13:03

Dan Brisse

Some of those spirit blew. And I grew up with skiing and snowboarding, so I'm close to 50. And snowboarding was not very popular in the 70s and 80s of the last century. And it is fun. Skiing is fun, snow is fun. But every time when I addressed this topic of, touching it for living with my parents, they said, no, go to school if you can't make a living with that, but flip the switch in your life that you said this is the way this is the route he wants to go.

00:16:13:04 - 00:16:15:22

Dan Brisse

What was this? events.

00:16:15:24 - 00:16:16:19

Christian Soschner

Yeah. It

00:16:16:19 - 00:16:33:20

Dan Brisse

was. There was a pretty distinct moment where I was where I had a handrail. I watched a lot of the snowboarding we did was urban in Minnesota, meaning it was handrails and wall rides and roof gaps. And, if you don't know what that is, you're gonna have to just Google my name and throw an X game and you'll see what I'm talking about.

00:16:33:20 - 00:16:52:19

Dan Brisse

But I was working on building a handrail down the hill at my house. My parents lived on each, piece of land that was two acres, and there was a hill from the top of our house down to the lake. And in midway down there was a set of 15 stairs that my dad built with stairs. And I built a handrail.

00:16:52:21 - 00:17:20:19

Dan Brisse

And there was a time when I was building that handrail where I still remember walking down to the hill, or I decided, I'm going to do everything possible. Everything I do is going to be 100% committed towards this goal. And I think the thing that changed was my belief that it was possible and my desire and something, whatever it was at that time in time, there was enough belief that it was possible and enough of a burning desire where I was going to do whatever it would take for as long as it would take to make it become a reality.

00:17:20:19 - 00:17:29:13

Dan Brisse

And that would be the best answer I have is there is a moment in time where belief and desire mixed to say it. I'm certain it's going to happen. It's just a matter of time.

00:17:30:19 - 00:17:51:09

Dan Brisse

When you look at your pro life, how is it? can you describe a day in the life of a professional snowboarder? I mean, just to give you the background of the question, first, when I think of snowboarding, you always see the cool guys and the cool ladies. well, that's a great lifestyle. Snowboarding, having fun.

00:17:51:09 - 00:18:15:09

Dan Brisse

They're always laughing and probably partying, throughout the day and nights and just enjoying incredibly right up and go get your name is saw videos on YouTube where you jumped down mountains basically. are, jump down what looks like, a cannon. I can show it later. I don't know how is the reality of a professional snowboarder?

00:18:15:09 - 00:18:20:02

Dan Brisse

Is it all party, or is it, more on the hard work side of life?

00:18:20:04 - 00:18:20:22

Christian Soschner

Yeah, it would

00:18:20:22 - 00:18:46:23

Dan Brisse

depend on who you're talking to. in that phase in their career, for me, it was. I mean, if I was at home, I would. I would get up and have some breakfast. I'd go to the hill and I'd ride until about 3 or 4 in the afternoon. I come home, watch a snowboarding video, get ready to probably go film something at night in go up film until about 10 or 11, maybe midnight, and get up and do it all over again.

00:18:47:00 - 00:19:14:14

Dan Brisse

if I was traveling, you know, let's say you're taking a trip to Austria. We plan a two week trip. We fly and meet a bunch of locals. most of the time when we were filming in Europe, we were filming with a European local set of folks, and we would travel with them and they would kind of take us around to different parts of, of the country, and we would set up shop on different local resorts, and we would just hike and we would get after whatever we could find when we were there.

00:19:14:14 - 00:19:29:14

Dan Brisse

And that would be that would be more of us every day. We are on the same program. We're going up into the mountains, we're looking for a feature and we're filming, and that's those two weeks. You fly home and you may have a week or ten days at home, and then maybe you do have a contest to go to.

00:19:29:16 - 00:19:48:24

Dan Brisse

You'd head out to the contest and do your your few days there, and then you maybe fly to Japan and you film some powder depending on the time of the year. And so it, it really was that it was constantly working with the brands that you wrote for us. You write, you sign contracts with companies like, for example, Volcom.

00:19:49:03 - 00:20:08:20

Dan Brisse

Volcom is a major skate snow surf brand, and they have a team and they're going to help you create your schedule and put you in the best chances to be able to create footage and content that will be able to show what you were like, how you want to be represented on a snowboard. And that's just it, you know, year after year.

00:20:08:23 - 00:20:27:00

Dan Brisse

And and yes, there is a fair amount of partying by some folks, no doubt about that. For me, that wasn't really where I was at. I was just grateful and and wanted to be there. So I was I didn't want to look back with regrets. I mean, I really wish I would have pushed it, you know, I really wish I would have tried harder.

00:20:27:02 - 00:20:41:22

Dan Brisse

I don't have any of those regrets. Like when I was in the game, I worked as hard as I possibly could. In fact, Snowboarder magazine wrote, I was considered one of the hardest, if not the hardest working man in snowboarding, which was kind of cool. so that's that's just name. Yeah. There was a

00:20:41:22 - 00:20:42:17

Christian Soschner

lot of partying back.

00:20:42:17 - 00:20:44:13

Christian Soschner

It wasn't what I was doing.

00:20:44:15 - 00:20:59:03

Dan Brisse

I have to show, I have to show. It is, I guess, since we are in Austria, second to science, the share screen option. Here it is. Red boy featured you on the website.

00:20:59:03 - 00:21:14:16

Christian Soschner

I think it's, snowboarding. Ten breezy backcountry, five park rails. These riders have it all. Must, article from 2016. Does pictures look amazing?

00:21:14:18 - 00:21:24:01

Dan Brisse

Yeah, that's Whistler right there. That's that's a backcountry whistler. We built a job, but you can see you can't see just the look of it. You know.

00:21:24:03 - 00:21:26:01

Christian Soschner

this picture is just.

00:21:26:03 - 00:21:40:20

Dan Brisse

It's like it's the backcountry in Utah, salt Lake City area. That was the year I think I was filming for Pirates, which is a company. And you go overseas and Absinthe Films very heavily European based companies to.

00:21:40:22 - 00:21:49:17

Christian Soschner

That's what's on this funny side. I think it's funny that you have the photographer film team below you. It looks like your champ over him.

00:21:49:19 - 00:21:56:22

Dan Brisse

Yeah. Oh, that trick right there, that. What's going on there? As I was riding up the tree and doing a flip up of the trees. What's happening there?

00:21:56:24 - 00:21:58:09

Christian Soschner

Fire went up here.

00:21:58:11 - 00:21:59:04

Dan Brisse

Yeah. Correct.

00:21:59:10 - 00:22:01:11

Christian Soschner

And did the flips back then.

00:22:01:13 - 00:22:03:10

Dan Brisse

Yeah. Off the tree.

00:22:03:12 - 00:22:11:14

Christian Soschner

Oh. How does it feel? How does it feel. What. What do you think when you do these tricks. What's going on inside you.

00:22:11:16 - 00:22:16:07

Dan Brisse

Yeah. What's going on inside? It depends on if it's your first time. If it's your first time, you're probably

00:22:16:07 - 00:22:28:23

Dan Brisse

quite scared and nervous about what's going to happen. and if you've been trying a bunch of times, you're probably upset you haven't got it. So it just depends on on where you are in getting the trick and how quickly it came.

00:22:29:00 - 00:22:48:18

Dan Brisse

If it's something you do over and over and over again and it's easy, it's just it's just fun. Yeah. All right. This has got work. A lot of times when you're filming in the streets in an urban settings, you're you're hitting a feature you've never practiced before on in your life. So you're trying to apply what you've done at the resort and bring it to an urban feature.

00:22:48:20 - 00:23:07:14

Dan Brisse

And a lot of times there when you've never done it before and you've never had a feature like that, and you're hitting something that is going to be kind of the top tier of your skill level. You may try 30, 50, 80 times, or you even have to come back another day and you'll take a serious beating, potentially.

00:23:07:16 - 00:23:11:01

Dan Brisse

But that's that's just that's just the way it works.

00:23:11:01 - 00:23:34:21

Dan Brisse

It's interesting, when I saw the pictures of, this, snowboarding card before your PR team reached out to me, I wasn't aware that, it even existed. It looks like freerunning. so this is, something that I can connect to my experience and it's dangerous, basically. So it's, this this is this is nothing. I think anybody can do without proper training.

00:23:34:23 - 00:23:55:05

Dan Brisse

how do you how do you build this skill when you you said you fly to a new location and you see the setting for the first time in your life, are you jumping right in and say, I can do this, and I ride this and do it one time, and it works perfectly? Or is there some training phase that you need to go through?

00:23:55:07 - 00:23:56:05

Christian Soschner

Yeah, you're

00:23:56:05 - 00:24:12:17

Dan Brisse

going to start small. You're gonna start with what's right in front of you. You know, if you've never snowboarded before, you're not going to try to hit a handrail. You're first going to try to just get downhill. once you comfortably are able to get down the hill. Now you, let's see, ridden for a few weeks, you're kind of getting bored of just riding.

00:24:12:17 - 00:24:29:24

Dan Brisse

Now, if I hit a job now, you're comfortable and ready to hit a small jump. You're not going to start a 100ft jump. You're gonna start with a 5 or 10ft job and try to see what that feels like to be in the air, and you're going to go through that process over and over again as you continually scale up on everything and what you're seeing there.

00:24:29:24 - 00:24:42:00

Dan Brisse

The pictures you're seeing were pictures and things that were created only after riding for 10 or 12 years every day. So there was over a decade of experience and obsession going in

00:24:42:00 - 00:24:49:22

Dan Brisse

before hitting features like jumping a building. Like if you jump that building right there, that feature right there, anything. What happened? I didn't make it. I would be dead.

00:24:49:24 - 00:25:15:04

Dan Brisse

Obviously you're going to drop 100 to pavement. So and those kind of features right there, we only hit a few times. It wasn't like we were going out of hitting these day after day. There was probably 3 to 5 features like this in my 15 year career. And you know, during a year you might film, in an urban spot, you might film 25 or 30, 30 spots.

00:25:15:09 - 00:25:33:07

Dan Brisse

And like I said, over 15 years we hit three to 5 or 6 shots like that. So those were not common. Those were those were unique. And for good reason. You know, I mean, something could happen even if you have certainty of making it. If the rope snapped, if you caught your edge, if you're finding one out of something, anything, you're you're done.

00:25:33:07 - 00:25:56:13

Dan Brisse

So, but that's good. That's the that's the process. You start small basics with what's in front of you, and you're going to be a little uncomfortable and you start riding like, just imagine you've never snowboarded before in your life. You're talking around, you're going to be a little uncomfortable with the basics, and then you go to the next part, and it's constantly getting a little bit uncomfortable, and then getting comfortable and getting uncomfortable, and then finding comfort.

00:25:56:13 - 00:25:59:21

Dan Brisse

So it's it's constant progression stage.

00:25:59:23 - 00:26:21:12

Christian Soschner

I mean, I totally agree to what you say, that it's training and you increase what you do every time you do it. I think a lot of skiing when I was young, when I was in school, and I always loved, these woods trails, I mean, looking back, let's say, there was no fear back then.

00:26:21:14 - 00:26:43:16

Christian Soschner

before I turned 20. When I look at this picture that you show and, as far as I understood you and the Chelsea you that you jump from this building to the other building, when I walk to the roof and look from one building to the other, I would say, no way, no way, we'll have a tweet.

00:26:43:18 - 00:26:52:03

Christian Soschner

My question to you is, how do you, handle fear and anxiety in such situations? What's your secret to.

00:26:52:05 - 00:26:54:00

Dan Brisse

Well, yeah, just to be clear

00:26:54:00 - 00:27:16:10

Dan Brisse

to you, I would never jump that building again right now. Like things would change in my life. I'd say, no, it's not worth it. so there was a period of time in my life where snowboarding was everything to me, and it meant everything to me. And I wanted the career to happen badly enough where I was willing to, you know, take some risks that I think most people would think were crazy.

00:27:16:12 - 00:27:39:10

Dan Brisse

I will say at the time when we were riding at that level, when you're riding at that level and you're obsessively focused on your craft every single day for ten years, you do see things differently. You feel differently about what's in front of you, which is why you can ride at that level and others cannot. You know, you got the experience under your belt that gives you this certainty that you know you're going to make it.

00:27:39:10 - 00:28:03:04

Dan Brisse

You know, it's possible. Like anyone said, you think it's possible that we're going to make it. If there wasn't 100% certainty that, yes, we will make it, there was no chance I was going to go over that building. So that's part of it, is that you're riding every single day and you're so confident what you're doing because you've been doing it so many reps, thousands and thousands and thousands of reps that you're just like, it's it's like walking.

00:28:03:06 - 00:28:24:09

Dan Brisse

That's what it should feel like. Like you literally. How hard is it to walk from one end of the room to the other? You're certain you're going to make it. That's how it should feel when you jump a building or when you hit a feature that's, you know, challenging. but I will say the other aspect that changed massively was once I had kids and I realized that there was more to it than just me coming home at night.

00:28:24:11 - 00:28:55:17

Dan Brisse

But when that, you know, come home. Yeah, you you factored in impacting these children's lives. So my, my career massively, massively turned once I had my first my son and that was about 29, 2018, 2019 when I went first he started to get of age where I wasn't. The day he was born. It was more that I started to realize how much he meant to me, and how much it meant to be able to be healthy for the rest of my life.

00:28:55:23 - 00:28:58:01

Dan Brisse

How your kids need you. The kids need you.

00:28:58:05 - 00:28:59:08

Christian Soschner

Yeah. Yeah.

00:28:59:10 - 00:29:06:11

Dan Brisse

Definitely. It's, I think, better for kids to grow. Hopefully parents still without parents. So it's a good choice to focus on family.

00:29:06:13 - 00:29:07:23

Christian Soschner

You bet. Yeah, exactly.

00:29:07:23 - 00:29:27:07

Dan Brisse

I, I, I feel the, the, the importance of influencing my children is going to probably be the most important thing I do. Because if you influence them well, they have the ability and possibility to go out and live a beautiful life and have complete control over themselves and the results that they want to have.

00:29:27:10 - 00:29:35:23

Dan Brisse

And so I think that ability to transfer that onto your kids is powerful, and something that I want to take part in every day.

00:29:36:15 - 00:29:39:09

Dan Brisse

Yes, that you have one son. Yeah. I'm out.

00:29:39:13 - 00:29:40:15

Christian Soschner

Three children. Yep. I have a.

00:29:40:16 - 00:29:40:24

Dan Brisse

Really.

00:29:41:05 - 00:29:49:03

Christian Soschner

Cool. Yeah. And your old boy, he's going to be 11 here, next week. I have a five year old son and our one year old daughter.

00:29:49:05 - 00:29:50:13

Dan Brisse

Congratulations.

00:29:50:15 - 00:29:53:03

Christian Soschner

Thank you, thank you. Yes.

00:29:53:05 - 00:30:11:08

Dan Brisse

Let me use let me use this information for phrasing the next question. So let's just imagine that your kids approach you one day and ask you about your snowboarding career and ask you, what are the three most important lessons that you learned? as a professional snowboarder, what answer would you give your kids?

00:30:11:10 - 00:30:12:04

Christian Soschner

Yeah, three

00:30:12:04 - 00:30:43:18

Dan Brisse

important lessons I would say first is to follow your passion, find something you really love to do. And I know that that maybe isn't the most popular answer with a lot of group, but for me, I know that when I'm doing something I love, I try really, really hard. so that was number one is get into something you like and trying hard will be easy, because if you're going to do anything and that's abnormal, there will be competition at the top and there will be other people that you will be competing against, which is great.

00:30:43:18 - 00:31:08:19

Dan Brisse

That's what makes it fun. You know, you see what others are doing and you say, can we take some of that and do it my way or another way? so number one is passion. Number two, I think is just having very a clear certain goal of what, what success looks like in that area. So for me, it was I want to be one of the one of the biggest or most well known professional snowboarders.

00:31:08:19 - 00:31:23:07

Dan Brisse

And I want to make a career out of it. I want to get paid to do it. You know, my parents, I grew up middle class. my parents are so great. They instilled in me to chase my dreams and do what I wanted to do, and that they had no, like, push back. I'm saying you should be in college, Daniel.

00:31:23:07 - 00:31:42:08

Dan Brisse

This is that time. She's my mom and my dad both said, go for it. This is your time to go for it. So, I think that that is. And they didn't give me any money. They didn't say, here's here's 50 grand. Go figure it out. Here's 100 grand. Do you want to go to Vail next year and fit in snowboard with this elite school where you're going to have trainers with you every day?

00:31:42:08 - 00:32:02:05

Dan Brisse

And I'm not. But people that did get that, because there are a fair amount of folks who were in the professional snowboarding industry that came up that way. But, I almost think that that, that that piece of not giving the help was another feather in the hat and that if it's going to be if it's going if it's to be, it's up to me in the sense that get clear.

00:32:02:11 - 00:32:21:09

Dan Brisse

So get clear on exactly what success looks like. And then number three, just don't quit. Just, just you got to have persistence. So those would be that those would be the three I had. I mean there's no there's it wasn't no no track to success. If you could talk to any kids who are young, nothing happens overnight. Creation is a process.

00:32:21:11 - 00:32:43:20

Dan Brisse

It doesn't. You don't just wake up one day and a year later you're a professional snowboarder or in a career that you really, really want to have it takes time. And that that process of creating that it takes mental training and that takes time. So, I think just to and I think it didn't it didn't go from, from nothing a like a perfect slope to success.

00:32:43:20 - 00:33:03:18

Dan Brisse

It was it was ugly. It was it was painful. There was injuries, major injuries before I ever got paid anything, you know, like I was I was 21 years old and I moved out to Salt Lake City like I did every year. And I fell off of a handrail into a rut and my kneecap dislocated. Boom. And my career, my season that year ended.

00:33:03:21 - 00:33:26:21

Dan Brisse

So it was December. It was it was either December, late December, early January, and I fell behind where everybody else was because I usually I usually come down right after Thanksgiving, whereas this year my family influenced me to stay home for Christmas and then go out, which was a mistake, because if you want to be a top rider or you want to be top in anything, you're going to have to put in the work.

00:33:26:23 - 00:33:42:20

Dan Brisse

And the work started the day after Thanksgiving. That's the day you needed to be there, and you needed to be there focused and riding. And so I didn't do that one year. I got there after Christmas and I started riding right in January, and I fell behind some rushing. And you can't rush the process. And I made a mistake.

00:33:43:00 - 00:33:52:23

Dan Brisse

Boom. Kneecap Dislocates chipped my kneecap, tore my meniscus, and I needed surgery. And it was a 12 month recovery process. So that would go on. 21 years old.

00:33:52:23 - 00:33:57:13

Dan Brisse

I've been snowboarding rigorously since I was 1112 years old.

00:33:57:13 - 00:34:15:20

Dan Brisse

I'm snowboarding every day until I'm 18 or 20, and then I have this major knee injury. And brands are looking for athletes that are younger. So they can start to market you sooner so they have more time as your career goes on. Because a lot of times injuries happening in a short lived, especially in action sports.

00:34:15:22 - 00:34:29:16

Dan Brisse

So here I am at 21 years old or 20 years old with a major knee injury. At that point in time, had I not had massive persistence and been committed 100%, that would have been the end of my career. I would have hung it up and

00:34:29:16 - 00:34:34:07

Christian Soschner

went back and started something else, which would have been absolutely horrible because the next year things took off.

00:34:34:12 - 00:34:35:05

Christian Soschner

What do you got?

00:34:35:07 - 00:34:56:21

Dan Brisse

I have I have a question here. I mean, at this point in time, it must have looked to you. This is the end of your career. You have a major injury. And as you said, sponsors, brands are looking for younger folks, who put into work. And you have the message, guys don't come back for a minimum of a year.

00:34:56:23 - 00:35:23:21

Dan Brisse

but I listen to people in Austria, in Europe, at this point, some would say I drop it, I'm done. My life is over. My passion is gone. Pick up the phone, start drinking and do anything but come back to that sparked my question to you is what kept you going? I mean, this was a year of of your passion project, a year not snowboarding, a year of recovery.

00:35:23:23 - 00:35:31:05

Dan Brisse

what kept you going in this time? What motivated you to come back and not choose a not a job, but do something stupid?

00:35:31:07 - 00:35:32:13

Christian Soschner

Yeah, yeah. So this

00:35:32:13 - 00:35:50:09

Dan Brisse

was before my career took off. This was this injury happened prior to actually ever making the career happen. But what kept me going and what made me come back was that I was 100% committed toward making it work. I didn't ever even have a thought. My mind of, oh, this maybe isn't going to work.

00:35:50:09 - 00:36:08:14

Dan Brisse

I probably shouldn't change gears. I had the surgery. I moved to California, where my brother was, and I biked all winter long. You know, I can bike on the beach there and up, up and down the promenade. I biked the beach two hours a day and worked a job and came back the next year and things took off.

00:36:08:16 - 00:36:27:01

Dan Brisse

So I think it's just the commitment and commitment to me is to do what is necessary, and to do what is necessary means that you're not going to back down ever. And so I think that that was the point in time where if I wasn't 100% committed, it would have all ended. So I'm grateful that that certainty was there.

00:36:27:01 - 00:36:32:11

Dan Brisse

And I think a big part of that comes back to your desire of how bad do you want it, and what are you willing to give up?

00:36:32:11 - 00:36:40:18

Dan Brisse

What was the biggest learning for you in this year that helps you still, navigating rough waters?

00:36:40:20 - 00:36:43:18

Christian Soschner

in that year of the injury? Yeah.

00:36:43:18 - 00:36:57:21

Dan Brisse

The biggest thing, for that year, during the year of the injury was just focus on what's in front of you, like you're hurt. What? What's the next step? You don't look two years out and three years out and start to wonder and waffle and waver. What can I do today?

00:36:57:23 - 00:37:15:02

Dan Brisse

Well, today I need to have surgery. Okay. who am I calling the doctor. Okay, this is. And this is. No one's there during this time in your career. Like, you don't have brands, you know, like, with ample amounts of money there to help you and and the resources to say, hey, we have doctors here and here. Let's fly you out and get you checked out, help you out.

00:37:15:02 - 00:37:35:13

Dan Brisse

This is you doing it on your home. So it's it's. Yeah, it's it's being committed and not and not backing down and having a clear desire of of what you're going to do some grit, you know, some fight and just focusing on what is in front of me today and get get the doctor scheduled. Okay. Now you have your doctor's schedule now.

00:37:35:16 - 00:37:48:04

Dan Brisse

Well, now I'm in rehab. Okay. Well, I've got nine months of rehab. Okay, well, what does that look like? Who am I going to work with? Where am I going to go? How am I going to keep my mind in the right spot? And I think that that's the stuff that comes down to creating success in the future.

00:37:48:04 - 00:37:50:17

Dan Brisse

If you can handle challenges well.

00:37:50:19 - 00:38:00:04

Christian Soschner

I think this is a great point. Thank you. Take a day. Sometimes it's all you can do. What's in front of you. So the most obvious thing. But just keep doing.

00:38:00:06 - 00:38:02:00

Dan Brisse

Keep going, keep going. Yes.

00:38:02:00 - 00:38:19:15

Dan Brisse

Keep going in and push it. And and when you think you're pushing it hard, push harder. And that doesn't mean that I would come back and ride before I was ready and, you know, push harder and where you can. when I had injuries, I took my time until my doctor said, you're 100% clear to go.

00:38:19:17 - 00:38:26:17

Dan Brisse

I didn't I didn't push it. A lot of guys would get hurt and they'd try to come back and gals and be like, God, that doesn't hurt. I'm coming back in a

00:38:26:17 - 00:38:34:15

Christian Soschner

month. Don't do that. Take your time. Your body needs the time to heal and you can do a lot. If you're an athlete, you can do so

00:38:34:15 - 00:38:38:12

Dan Brisse

much, and I'm sure any athlete that's further along in their career understands this.

00:38:38:12 - 00:38:57:18

Dan Brisse

But when you're hurt, it's a great time to visualize. It's a great time to watch video. You know, you can learn so much by watching videos and it would happen a lot in the summer. You go home like in Minnesota. We would snowboard from November, December until about March, and then from that time on there was no snow.

00:38:57:22 - 00:39:15:13

Dan Brisse

So all you could do, and if you weren't going out west to Colorado or to Mount Hood, Oregon, you were watching videos and you could watch videos all summer long. You come back the next year and have tricks learned that you've never done before in your life, just because you spent the time training your brain during the summer months.

00:39:15:15 - 00:39:34:22

Dan Brisse

And that can happen when you're injured. You know, I spent a lot of time watching videos, studying my craft, and studying other folks that I thought were good. And as you do that, Allison, you took a year off and I came back better than I was when I got hurt. Because your brain is mentally been programed to understand, and you can see in your head clearly, so you can do it in real life.

00:39:34:23 - 00:39:47:21

Dan Brisse

It's just it makes such a difference to watch videos to train your brain. For instance, it's a replacement therapy. Let's call it this way of real snowboarding with real snow.

00:39:47:23 - 00:39:49:02

Christian Soschner

Yeah. They did a study

00:39:49:02 - 00:40:08:14

Dan Brisse

this exact question you're asking, and they took a group of basketball players, and they had a group that played every day, a group that only visualized and watched videos every day, and a group that did nothing. The group that played every day did have the best results, but very close behind was the group that visualized and watched the videos.

00:40:08:16 - 00:40:32:04

Dan Brisse

The group that did nothing obviously had very poor results. So yeah, it may not be as good, but it's close. And who knows, maybe for some folks who are very good with their intellect, maybe it would be better. I can't say for sure, but it's close. At least if you if you feel like you had an injury and you're going to be way behind when you come back, not necessarily spend the time visualizing and obsessing in your mind.

00:40:32:04 - 00:40:37:16

Dan Brisse

And you can you can progress without being on the on the field or on the course.

00:40:37:16 - 00:40:59:10

Dan Brisse

Yeah, especially since you have to learn new tricks anyway. So. And, you get some inspiration on top of that. compared to basketball us I mean, this would leave me talking it to me questions that the NBA be thinking about the basketballs. Could it mean that if they visualized the wrong thing in their minds, they could destroy their own progress?

00:40:59:10 - 00:41:01:14

Dan Brisse

Even when the train every day?

00:41:01:16 - 00:41:02:16

Christian Soschner

Yeah, I think that

00:41:02:16 - 00:41:19:08

Dan Brisse

that is another great point. I think you have to fix it in your mind. And this would happen in snowboarding. You try to visualize a trick and you can't, and you have to sit there and spin or watch a video, watch another person doing it. What what I would try to do is snowboarding through it.

00:41:19:08 - 00:41:34:05

Dan Brisse

I can relate to it very easily is you watch these videos over and over again, you pick a trick you want to learn, and then you go to that one trick and you watch that one trick 100, 200, 300 times, 400 times. And now when you close

00:41:34:05 - 00:41:41:21

Christian Soschner

your eyes, you can see yourself doing it, and you can almost feel it right as. Yeah. And as you do that, you will train,

00:41:41:21 - 00:42:01:00

Dan Brisse

a skill and you will become very good at that skill. If you can see it in your mind's eye and you can feel how it feels like I can do a frontside rodeo on my mind right now, and I can feel how I would feel if I said, rodeo is a toe side move, or you're going to do an inverted 540 and you're going to have a little bit of off access and you're going to come down, switch.

00:42:01:02 - 00:42:14:20

Dan Brisse

And in my mind, it's clear enough where I've done the trick, enough where I know exactly how it'll feel to roll and to grab, and there's landing and boom, there it was. And if you do that enough over and over again, you'll become very comfortable with front side five 40s.

00:42:14:22 - 00:42:32:21

Christian Soschner

So does that mean when you try to sum it up for myself, given you have skill sets? No. Like you have, a person approaches you and says, can you imagine to do this or that trick? And you never did it. And your first reaction is internally, no, it's impossible,

00:42:32:21 - 00:42:37:00

Dan Brisse

I can't. Then this person says, but and that is.

00:42:37:00 - 00:43:00:23

Dan Brisse

No, but I did it. And you say, show me. And they show you a video and you can run through this video a hundred times. And with each box of this trick on fast forward, slow motion, walking yourself through every single step of this trick, your confidence level rises and till to the point where you feel it's doing, and then you go out into it.

00:43:01:00 - 00:43:01:20

Christian Soschner

Correct? That's

00:43:01:20 - 00:43:14:18

Christian Soschner

exactly right. And that's why tricks in snowboarding, once one person does it, everyone will start to do it in about a year or two. Because now we all have a blueprint to me immediately

00:43:14:18 - 00:43:21:19

Dan Brisse

a watch and be. Now you believe it's possible. So you have a blueprint. This is how it's done. I can see someone doing it.

00:43:21:21 - 00:43:28:19

Dan Brisse

And then you believe they did it. You know they did it. So you know that they did it and how to do it. And boom, a year later, everyone's doing it.

00:43:28:21 - 00:43:36:04

Christian Soschner

Did you ever try a trick without the belief you can do it?

00:43:36:06 - 00:43:43:13

Dan Brisse

I don't think so. No, I think that the beginning idea of trying it was that I had confidence that it could be done.

00:43:43:15 - 00:43:44:11

Christian Soschner

Okay.

00:43:44:13 - 00:43:47:01

Dan Brisse

And belief. You have faith.

00:43:47:03 - 00:43:53:01

Christian Soschner

Makes sense. So this is, basically a blueprint, to increase faith in. Yeah. Ability.

00:43:53:03 - 00:44:08:16

Dan Brisse

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, from the day one of your strapping and and riding, you see someone else doing, you're like, they can do it. I can do it. So you start with riding, you know, and then when you get to that level, you see other people hitting jumps like, gosh, I can hit that jump. You see the person do that trick.

00:44:08:16 - 00:44:14:12

Dan Brisse

You're like, man, I looks like I could do that trick. And so I think there is a belief and confidence level before you try anything, it's quick.

00:44:14:16 - 00:44:37:10

Christian Soschner

Let's go Olympic back in the conversation. you mentioned three points before that. you would tell your kids, when they ask what you learned, the three most important learning. So one is, follow your passion. the third one, boss. Don't quit. this is something which is, very often discussed, in success. But in the middle, there was a part, for the first time, you said

00:44:37:10 - 00:44:47:22

Dan Brisse

define success. Why is that so important, in your opinion, to have a clear picture of what success looks like in your mind?

00:44:47:24 - 00:44:48:08

Christian Soschner

Yeah,

00:44:48:08 - 00:44:59:11

Christian Soschner

because the way your brain works is you can't hit a goal, you know, or you're unlikely to hit a goal you can't see if you don't have clarity what it looks like. Your brain needs something to chase and you need

00:44:59:11 - 00:45:09:10

Dan Brisse

to know what that looks like. Otherwise you're you're running, you're heading in a direction, you know, like, let's just say you're trying to go to the grocery store, you know, you're trying to go to the grocery store, but you don't know where it is.

00:45:09:10 - 00:45:26:02

Dan Brisse

You don't have clarity of where it is. You'll start driving you. You may find it if you're lucky, but it's very unlikely. Whereas if you say, this is the grocery store and this is the path of, of of when I'm there, I know exactly how to get there. Now you now you have something that your mind can chase and you can you can go after.

00:45:26:04 - 00:45:42:11

Dan Brisse

And that's not maybe even the best analogy, because you don't need to know how to do everything. You don't need to know exactly how the process works, because I can tell you right now, once I was younger, I used to tell everyone and it cause young and naive, but confident in that I was going to be a professional snowboarder.

00:45:42:13 - 00:45:57:00

Dan Brisse

And the biggest question I get back in Minnesota as a kid, you know, imagine a 13 year old 12 year old kid is like, yeah, I'm going to be a pro snowboarder. I grew up the question most the time of year, how are you going to do that then? You're not super wealthy. You don't live in the mountains.

00:45:57:02 - 00:46:11:19

Dan Brisse

You. Yeah, you maybe you're decent at it right now, but how are you going to do that? And my answer always be I don't know how you know, I didn't know how. But you don't need to know how. You just need to know what success looks like and just do what you can do in front of you that day.

00:46:11:19 - 00:46:28:16

Dan Brisse

the clarity about, success. Go for how much clarity to you think is necessary to start this process where you subconsciously start, chasing your goals for, how would you describe your goal?

00:46:28:18 - 00:46:29:05

Christian Soschner

I think

00:46:29:05 - 00:46:49:11

Dan Brisse

the more clarity you have, with belief that it's possible, the faster you'll chase it. Because if you can see it more clear on, what it looks like, and you believe it's possible you'll take more action. So I think those those two pieces are huge, are huge. And maybe you don't have exactly what that looks like.

00:46:49:11 - 00:47:12:14

Dan Brisse

I mean, I can't say that I, you know, for the first year or two that I knew exactly what it would look like, but I knew I had a general idea, and I saw these professional snowboarders in these films, how they were riding. And I really just wanted to emulate how they were riding. I wanted to I wanted to have that feeling of what it felt like to be able to fly through the air, you know, and, and land in this pristine powder.

00:47:12:14 - 00:47:28:21

Dan Brisse

So that was it was probably chasing the feeling partially, but but there was an element of wanting to make money. I mean, at the end of the day, like I said, what are you going to do being a young kid without parents supporting you? So I think clarity is it's it's huge.

00:47:28:23 - 00:47:40:11

Christian Soschner

I think money is a side effect of success. success is defined without money, and money comes, as you did, whenever to sum up the last five minutes, in the

00:47:40:11 - 00:47:50:21

Dan Brisse

ten previous success principle, what stuck with me is, on one hand, spend time defining your success. How does it look like? What do you want to achieve?

00:47:50:21 - 00:48:13:24

Dan Brisse

At the end of the day? I started this perseverance bar content every single day. And the second thing is stand not, thinking about what happens in five years or what hardship might happen more. I don't have money. I can't achieve that. The second important part is start right now with what you can do right now, today. But this a single step.

00:48:13:24 - 00:48:22:14

Dan Brisse

What is a small step that brings you a little bit closer to your core? it's just a right understanding. Oh, did I miss something.

00:48:22:16 - 00:48:23:08

Christian Soschner

100%?

00:48:23:08 - 00:48:39:09

Dan Brisse

You nailed it. And if you're on your path, make sure something you love to do. And if it's something you because you don't want to be every day being like, I got to go do this, I know, I know, I need to do this, I know this is, mine. I just got to do it. I got force myself to do it.

00:48:39:11 - 00:48:53:18

Dan Brisse

You're probably not in the right position. Right? Strength zone doesn't mean you need to change your whole life right now. Maybe continue on and just be a tune. There's tune in to. What would you like to do more of? Because I can say right now that I never had to push myself to go snowboarding. I was always pulled.

00:48:53:20 - 00:49:12:11

Dan Brisse

I was always I was sitting in school like the teachers talking, and I'm thinking about a snowboarding. As soon as the bell rings, I'm driving straight to the hill and I'm excited to go. So it wasn't hard. The only time it got hard was when my career started to wind down, and then I started to realize towards the end of like, gosh, this is really a lot of work.

00:49:12:13 - 00:49:18:01

Dan Brisse

And I didn't realize how much work I was putting in ever, because it was always just so much fun. So that makes sense.

00:49:18:03 - 00:49:22:01

Christian Soschner

Absolutely. two questions. Let me start with the first one.

00:49:22:01 - 00:49:45:19

Dan Brisse

Whenever I start something new, it feels like I'm passionate about this new thing, but, I'm a little bit deceived by novelty. So everything that's new, that's novel that I've never done before in my life, feels exciting. And it's fun. And, I love doing it, but nobody pays off.

00:49:45:19 - 00:50:11:14

Dan Brisse

Actually, I think after 6 or 12 months and then routine sets in and things get a little bit boring. My question to you is, how do you feel the difference between, passion, true passion, something you really like to think I really love to do and just novelty just is, like connecting it off a little bit.

00:50:11:16 - 00:50:29:22

Dan Brisse

yeah. You see a beautiful woman, and then you say, okay, yeah, she's lovely. And, you feel these, butterflies in your belly and in your stomach. but it's not really passion. It's not deep love. So it's just a feeling. how do you feel the difference between these deceiving novelty feelings and real passion?

00:50:29:24 - 00:50:31:11

Christian Soschner

Yeah, I think that's

00:50:31:11 - 00:50:49:19

Dan Brisse

a a question I can answer based on what? It's been true for me. and we'll see how it resonates with the folks that are listening. But for me, it's really more on the progress and progression of it. So in the beginning, everything is fun. You're right. It's like, this is new, it's fun, it's exciting.

00:50:49:19 - 00:51:15:24

Dan Brisse

And then within three weeks, six months becomes boring potentially. But if there is progress and that progress is exciting and you're working in that zone or in that field, in that work line and the product, it isn't, how is fun? I mean, I will say there have been times in snowboarding where it's it's work, you know, I mean, and and when it's work, it's frustrating.

00:51:15:24 - 00:51:39:00

Dan Brisse

Like something's not going well. I'm, I'm tired. Like I'm upset. I'm screaming. I'm swearing in the backcountry and I'm not having fun right there. But there is a part of fun where you're battling through to progression. And I think that that's that's it. In anything you do, doesn't matter what it is, whether you're a professional snowboarder, athlete, real estate investor, you're going to come through times in PBR that are tough.

00:51:39:02 - 00:51:59:20

Dan Brisse

That doesn't mean you're not your passion. Your strengths are necessary. Like if you're saying, I'm bored, I would ask, are you progressing? Because even in my snowboarding career, when I was kind of peaking and started to go downhill, I started to get more bored and boredom came in when progression stopped. So I think progression and happiness or passion are are connected and linked.

00:51:59:22 - 00:52:20:00

Dan Brisse

So I think the combination of do you have to force yourself to go to work every day for a long period of time? Probably not a good sign. And then if you do go, are you bored or are you progressing? You know, and this is more of an internal game. Success is an internal game or how are achieving results as an internal game?

00:52:20:00 - 00:52:30:10

Dan Brisse

Whatever you want to call that. and you've got to tune in to how you feel on a day to day basis and thinking the right way to get what you want.

00:52:30:12 - 00:53:00:13

Christian Soschner

I mean, becoming a professional, I think is challenging in a way, that initially everything is exciting and then it's a lot of novelty. But, when you really want to become a professional in any area, there is this point that people must start developing and must start to realize that, basically, they have to focus on a few core skills and repeat those skills over and over and over and over again, and to have to create some sort of routine.

00:53:00:15 - 00:53:03:07

Christian Soschner

And this is one of my biggest blocking stones

00:53:03:07 - 00:53:19:08

Dan Brisse

Routines are boring. So it's doing the same thing every single day, day in, day out. what helps you to overcome this feeling of boredom in your professional career is there's no. And also, real estate investing.

00:53:19:10 - 00:53:19:22

Christian Soschner

Is a

00:53:19:22 - 00:53:27:20

Dan Brisse

great point, and you're 100% right. Boredom kills for a lot of careers. I think that that comes back down to can you progress? How

00:53:27:20 - 00:53:30:22

Christian Soschner

How can you do better and where is your next goal?

00:53:30:22 - 00:53:48:07

Dan Brisse

What where are you going? You know, what's the next step look like? What is an exact success step look like? And I can say like, you know, during the years where I had the best time, it was the most challenging and probably the most frustrating, but the most progress.

00:53:48:09 - 00:54:08:06

Dan Brisse

So if you're bored and the routine is boring, you probably mastered it. Or is there another level you can take it to? Is there is a different direction you can move it to? and you know for real estate investor snowboarding. Simple, right? Let's learn the next trick. There's always a next trick. There's never we've learned everything. You've never learned everything.

00:54:08:12 - 00:54:28:17

Dan Brisse

Right. And most crafts are that way. you know, real estate, maybe it's how can we create X amount of passive income for our investors? How can create that next level and the next level? And then maybe that becomes boring because you created enough income. Now maybe the switch comes to of how can we use this to make the world a better place.

00:54:28:17 - 00:54:53:14

Dan Brisse

What can we do with the money we're making now? So yeah, real estate is still there and you're still pumping into that program, and you've got your systems aligned and you got some of us, a company producing excess cash flows out. Now you take it and head another direction. I think that's just the that's the beauty of life is you gotta tune in and you gotta make those decisions and realize based on how you feel, the direction you you need to take things.

00:54:53:16 - 00:55:25:09

Christian Soschner

Before we step into real estate, I have a final question to your snowboarding career. So you said, one of your decision points, to look for something else in your life via children. So this was the first time that they just started thinking about, giving your life a different direction. And the second form you mentioned to a few minutes before, you said your career started winding down, and, what happened that you felt, your career started winding down?

00:55:25:11 - 00:55:53:07

Dan Brisse

Yeah. It was the mix of me feeling like my children and being around mattered more than being a snowboarder. And once that started to happen, I started to apply myself less vigorously. And I started to put in less effort and take less risks. And due to that, I started to ride in a little bit lower level. So, you know, just imagine 11 years old until about 28.

00:55:53:10 - 00:56:15:10

Dan Brisse

I'm constantly in this path of progress and then my children start to influence me. And now I start to try a little less hard. And it's like a big arc, and I'm kind of flatlined for a while, and nobody really saw the flat except for me. I knew internally I'm like, you're not really getting better. You're out here, you're running laps or doing the work, but no one's really aware of it other than me.

00:56:15:12 - 00:56:28:22

Dan Brisse

And then you start to actually decline because now you're not putting in the work. And so it was a combination of those two things. Last effort because I was had I had other things that were more of a priority than progressing on my

00:56:28:22 - 00:56:30:07

Christian Soschner

snowboard.

00:56:30:09 - 00:56:43:13

Dan Brisse

And but kept you from, from fighting for. So what helped you change direction? Instead of saying, have to man up, I have to fight for this phase and, give my everything.

00:56:43:15 - 00:56:44:09

Christian Soschner

Yeah. For me,

00:56:44:09 - 00:57:03:04

Dan Brisse

it was a realization that the only way that you get paid to be an athlete is to perform at a high level. That's the way that my mind told me. And that's the reason I thought the brands were paying me, was because you could do something unique on your snowboard that very few others in the world are willing to do, or able to do so.

00:57:03:06 - 00:57:20:04

Dan Brisse

And the conflict was that I wasn't going to do that anymore, because I now had kids and I could see that coming in the future. was very scary, actually. It was a very, very challenging time in my life in the sense that here I have this identity, that I am a professional snowboarder, this is who I am.

00:57:20:06 - 00:57:44:07

Dan Brisse

This is Dan Breezy. Dan Breezy is a professional snowboarder. And then you can see in the future that won't be there. There is coming a time you can feel it. It's that how you feel. It's your kids and what you're seeing. Then it's going to come to an end. And that ending is very scary. Imagine like, you know, some of your listeners that maybe have a career and they can see their career is going to come to an end and there's not gonna be enough money for retirement potentially.

00:57:44:07 - 00:58:02:14

Dan Brisse

It could be something that your listeners could relate to. So that happened for me at 33 years old, 34. I just had it earlier than a lot of people had it, you know, and I made good money as a snowboarder. I wasn't making millions a year, but I was making pretty darn good money, really good money compared to where I was in Minnesota and growing up.

00:58:02:14 - 00:58:18:05

Dan Brisse

And a lot of the people I was around. But it wasn't enough to be able to say, I'm 36, I'm retiring the rest of my life, and I'm going to travel and and have all my homes paid for and life's just gone. I don't need any more money. That was not where I was at, so I needed to find something else.

00:58:18:07 - 00:58:37:06

Dan Brisse

So I think that realization that it's going to come to an end and I have responsibility of a family, and I want something else that I'm passionate about in my life. I'm only 33 years old. Like, what the heck am I going to do for the next 60 years of my life? I live to be 9100, I don't later, I don't know a lot a long time.

00:58:37:08 - 00:59:02:20

Dan Brisse

So it was it was everything, you know, it was a realization early that things were going to come to an end. You got to find something else. What would be something that would be that could give you some passion, some more passion, some more freedom, similar or better income. And so that was that was where I started to transition and use the capital I was making as an athlete or as a snowboarder to start buying multifamily, to create multiple streams of income.

00:59:02:20 - 00:59:22:01

Dan Brisse

And that was always the goal was, how can you create multiple streams of income so that you're not so dependent on this one thing that was not the realization that hit me hard was, in your snowboarding career done. Your income is zero. Doctors. Something happens. Your income is zero. Although it's great money, you you know, you're very dependent on your

00:59:22:01 - 00:59:23:07

Christian Soschner

house.

00:59:23:09 - 00:59:47:18

Dan Brisse

Yeah. Sometimes, there is a time when you realize, it's time to quit and find something new. Yeah. And living from one stream of income. it's not very sustainable. So it must not be a snowboard career. It can be a chop. chop. There is no trap guarantee. the. So you came in your career to the point where I said I quit now,

00:59:47:20 - 00:59:51:02

Dan Brisse

how did you find your new goal?

00:59:51:02 - 01:00:01:04

Christian Soschner

Well, that did that. It didn't go quite like that. Where I say I quit. Now, what actually happened was, is I went, I don't want to say I milked

01:00:01:04 - 01:00:12:23

Dan Brisse

the system because it wasn't. I still rode a hard, but I didn't come to my brands and be like, guys, I'm done. They started to see the effort wasn't being applied and the results weren't where they were.

01:00:13:02 - 01:00:24:05

Dan Brisse

And then they came to me. So it was a little bit of I was holding on and wanting to hold on due to fear and just being totally transparent now for everybody.

01:00:24:05 - 01:00:27:16

Dan Brisse

I didn't want it to end because I was scared, but I did

01:00:27:16 - 01:00:32:17

Dan Brisse

want it to end because I didn't want to take the risks. It's a challenging place to be in.

01:00:32:19 - 01:00:52:20

Dan Brisse

So when when that was happening, I was highly motivated again by fear. Fear motivates. If you shouldn't happen to fear, it's not all bad, you know, fear can motivate you and a lot of times fear not motivated me. Not worrying. But in this case, fear motivated me in saying, what are you going to do next? And it's not a question of if.

01:00:52:20 - 01:01:08:05

Dan Brisse

It's the question of when is it going to happen, when are you going to end? And what are you going to do? So that's where during the summers of my snowboarding career, when I had this time off, I would be reading every financial book I could get my hands on to try to better understand what to do with money.

01:01:08:07 - 01:01:26:10

Dan Brisse

You know, money wasn't talked about and trained when I was growing up, so I didn't really know what to do with the dollar. I still remember calling some of my wealthier parents friends and saying, hey, if you had 100 grand, what would you do with it? You know? And their answer was, well, I always paid off that, you know, I just pay that down, which is a decent answer.

01:01:26:10 - 01:01:48:20

Dan Brisse

It's not bad, but it was hard to figure out what to do with the money you made. Because really, step one is there's two paths to creating wealth. And I would rather be wealthy if I'm going to be here than not. And part one is first you gotta make the money. Second, what do you do other. And so those two things are always different levels of skill, how much you're making and how well you're investing it.

01:01:48:21 - 01:02:11:22

Dan Brisse

And those two can always be improved upon, which is kind of a fun thing, is similar to snowboarding is never maxed out. This field of business. You can always do it more and you can always do it better. And I think that's something that is interesting and caught my attention at a pretty young age, is there is always levels and areas for improvement, just like in sports with business.

01:02:11:22 - 01:02:31:06

Dan Brisse

So that's where that's where my mind went and we started, but I started buying small stuff. I bought a duplex, I bought a nine plex, about 24 units. And those are small compared to what we're buying now. But those were those. Those are the seeds. And they weren't nice properties. They were built in the 70s, in the 60s, and and they were old and they were rundown.

01:02:31:06 - 01:02:49:17

Dan Brisse

And it's what I could afford and I thought I could afford at the time. So that's what I started with. I started to see a little trickle of income from each of these assets, and that was little trickles of income. And putting the currency, the money that I was making to work to pay me was very eye opening and shifted my perspective of reality.

01:02:49:17 - 01:02:51:24

Dan Brisse

But what I could do with money.

01:02:52:01 - 01:02:55:17

Christian Soschner

Let me ask you one question to what you said. I can imagine the place,

01:02:55:17 - 01:03:16:17

Dan Brisse

you were with your brand deals. I think, probably the business life in snowboarding is as tough as anywhere else. If you perform, you're in. If you stop performing your routes, then you have to provide for your family. And, you know, if when you stop performing, they will, terminates the contracts, you won't make any money.

01:03:16:19 - 01:03:44:18

Dan Brisse

so it's a scary place to be. You don't want to, take more risk to necessary to be there for your kids. And the brands push you to take more risk. And then you started searching for alternatives. when I look at the two areas, snowboarding and red state, I mean, in your career, except jumping from buildings, I think this is completely this is a completely different world.

01:03:44:20 - 01:03:51:23

Dan Brisse

Why did you discover passion for real estate? What motivated you to walk into this direction?

01:03:52:00 - 01:03:52:12

Christian Soschner

Yeah,

01:03:52:12 - 01:04:11:00

Dan Brisse

what discovered my passion for real estate and what motivated me to go in the direction was passive income. If I keep saying it, I'm getting on it kind of hard. I'm not. I'm realizing it's just that find you can find a way that your money can work for you so you don't have to work for a paycheck.

01:04:11:02 - 01:04:36:04

Dan Brisse

And that idea was worth pursuing. And chasing, for me, is a top priority. Not that I don't like to work, I just work in a different manner now of saying, hey, how can we produce more income from assets versus me going and getting a job and being dependent on somebody else to decide if I'm going to stay or not stay in their company.

01:04:36:06 - 01:05:01:22

Dan Brisse

So I think it was the combination of a passive income. It was a combination of there's no limits, there's no limit to how far you can take this business. You could own a 5000. You got have 5000 units under management. You could have 100,000 units under management. What do you want? You know, so, there is nobody deciding and dictating our pace and and still isn't.

01:05:02:01 - 01:05:23:13

Dan Brisse

There's no one saying, hey, you have to buy this many or you have to do this. It's 100% up to us. So there's a lot of freedom. and I started to see that you can save the tax legally, you know, and one thing that you don't get taught in Minnesota or any in the US, I'm not sure if it's taught in Europe, but if you go for different lines of work, you're going to be taxed differently.

01:05:23:15 - 01:05:43:09

Dan Brisse

And those different tax quadrants are just like the game. You think of any game of monopoly. The game has rules. And I didn't create the game. I didn't create the rules. But they're there. And if you're going to play the game monopoly, you need to know the rules in order to win it or to have the chance at winning the game.

01:05:43:11 - 01:06:00:19

Dan Brisse

And business is a little bit, you know, like, I know people are like, it's no game if you, you know, if you lose, how do you like losing? Well, I do think of it a little bit as a game of how can I play the game better, what are the rules of the game? And if you're going to play the game, what are they to be able to get the results you want?

01:06:00:19 - 01:06:21:03

Dan Brisse

So that's that's really what it more turned into is you have this tax haven as well that if you play the game and you know the rules and you hire the right CPA and you get that clarity, now you know how to behave and you know what to do and what not to do and why. And if you don't know those things, you're likely going to spend a majority of your time, which is not bad.

01:06:21:03 - 01:06:46:22

Dan Brisse

And it's okay that you're going to spend the majority of your time working to pay the government, which, hey, just got to know. You just got to figure out what what, what you want to do. And it can sound bad because people might be listening, being like, well, this guy doesn't pay his fair share of taxes. But I would say the piece I would, I would add to that is that we employ a lot of people, we pay a lot of people, and if we didn't have those tax savings, we would not build a plot to employ as many folks.

01:06:46:24 - 01:07:00:10

Dan Brisse

So, and we wouldn't be able to take care of the properties as well. So there's a lot more to it than I hope. I didn't just lose people by being like, oh, this guy doesn't pay his taxes. There's a lot more to it. And you got to understand before the full circle.

01:07:00:12 - 01:07:00:18

Christian Soschner

I

01:07:00:18 - 01:07:22:14

Dan Brisse

think in absolute numbers you pay much more than other people do. I operate out of Europe. and Europe has very high taxes. So I think I totally understand what you're saying. Let's, talk about the beginning of your real estate career. I can imagine that it was a scary moment in my opinion of me. I'm wrong.

01:07:22:16 - 01:07:43:19

Dan Brisse

but the picture I have in my head after what you said is that you made decent money as is. No bother. But it's didn't put you on the Forbes billionaire list. So starting as a real estate investor, there is one step you need to take some of your money and put it into your first property. How was this step for you?

01:07:43:19 - 01:07:52:01

Dan Brisse

Wasn't an easy going step to say, okay, I asked him money from it and I know it will buy a car for a scary moment like snowboarding.

01:07:52:03 - 01:07:53:17

Christian Soschner

Yeah, it was a challenging

01:07:53:17 - 01:08:14:03

Dan Brisse

moment because you're you could put your money anywhere, right? You have currency, cash in the bank and you can put it in a million different places to try to make money and how to why is that one the one you're going to choose? And you could overwhelm yourself in thinking that way. Or I try to focus in on one thing and become an expert at that.

01:08:14:03 - 01:08:40:18

Dan Brisse

One thing is what is what worked well for snowboarding? You know, for snowboarding it was I'm a snowboarder and this is the one thing I'm going to get really great at. And with real estate, multifamily and apartments made sense to me at, at that point in my life and still do. So I decided to become an expert and obsessively learn about how to buy and own and manage apartments at a high level.

01:08:40:20 - 01:09:02:19

Dan Brisse

And that doesn't mean we figured it all out yet. Today, you know, ten years later, after I've been we've been owning apartments now since 2012. So 13. Yeah, 11 years later, I'm still learning. We're still progressing. There's still better ways to do things. There's still more efficient ways to do everything. So, and, for forgetting your question, what was the original question there?

01:09:03:03 - 01:09:08:06

Dan Brisse

How was it, to put your money into that first property emotionally?

01:09:08:08 - 01:09:11:04

Christian Soschner

Yes, yes. So that was in order to do that first

01:09:11:04 - 01:09:29:15

Dan Brisse

deal, you needed enough confidence and belief in what you were doing. And the only way I got that was through education. So you're going to have to take time and learn about an asset class until you say, wow, I can see the future. Once you've studied an asset class enough, you can see the future to a certain extent.

01:09:29:15 - 01:09:52:21

Dan Brisse

Or at least you believe you can see the future. And if you understand how to create value in an asset class like apartments, you can somewhat say, hey, we're buying an X in five years, it'll be worth Y, you know? So if you have that clarity again, it's kind of like being able to see behind the scenes mentally because you learn stuff and you visualize it.

01:09:52:21 - 01:10:10:17

Dan Brisse

You've got the tools to be able to predict what's coming and that that will help you become a more, wealthier real estate investor. Just like in snowboarding, you can see it clearly in your mind of how a trick is going to go. You're going to be much more likely to hit that goal.

01:10:10:19 - 01:10:25:12

Christian Soschner

It's that's a great point. I think it's the fourth principle said follow your passion, define success. Don't quit. And then you mentioned focus. So you started your real estate career not by going to the bank. so give me 100 million loan

01:10:25:12 - 01:10:35:17

Dan Brisse

interest rates are almost zero. Anyway, since I buy, the property, use your first. Did your work and did your research, real estate.

01:10:35:19 - 01:10:44:20

Dan Brisse

How much time did you invest before you bought your first property? In studying the area that you want to operate in?

01:10:44:22 - 01:10:45:10

Christian Soschner

Yeah, I

01:10:45:10 - 01:11:10:10

Dan Brisse

would say that I spent about six months of study time and that consisted of reading probably eight, ten books on real estate. And I probably went to 3 to 5 seminars. So I do think there is a point where you come to analysis paralysis of you just need more information and more information. You never know enough and you never take a step and you never take a risk.

01:11:10:12 - 01:11:31:14

Dan Brisse

So that comes back again internally of saying, okay, I've read a fair amount. I've been to a bunch of seminars. at some point you got to try, you got to take, you got to take a step. And so I don't know exactly how to say that when that will be for anybody else. But for me, I just, I hit a point where I felt confident enough with the information.

01:11:31:14 - 01:11:48:23

Dan Brisse

I had to give it a shot. And so I started with and it was actually a nine unit deal, and then a duplex that I bought a little bit later, and they both ended up being great deals because of the timing of the market. Really, you couldn't do it in the US in 2012, you bought real estate. You really couldn't miss.

01:11:48:23 - 01:12:04:02

Dan Brisse

So that's part of something to consider too. Is, is was I ingenious and so good or wasn't the cycle was heading in the right direction in the in the water you were flowing in the, you know, the tide correctly. So, that's that's that's how it went.

01:12:04:05 - 01:12:31:06

Dan Brisse

Yeah. In the Bible, everybody is, it's an expert. right. Yeah. I think many people in the equity markets realized that last year when the bubble popped, at least in Europe, and, many companies, went down by up to 80, 90%, which, it's five months. Yeah. Hyped by YouTube. a lot of cryptocurrencies, went extinct during this, this process.

01:12:31:08 - 01:12:52:11

Dan Brisse

FDX, had some interesting stories and real estate. I think also there is some correction going on. but let's stay first. On the positive side of life, what was the investment that you did in the last ten years that made you proud. What's your best investment.

01:12:52:13 - 01:12:54:03

Christian Soschner

Yeah I would say it

01:12:54:03 - 01:13:18:13

Dan Brisse

was either, 40, bought a 45 unit deal in a little town called River falls, Wisconsin. Wisconsin was a state here. And then we also bought a property in, Cleburne, Texas. And both of those deals were bought with the right in the right location, the right debt right now, you had business plan and were managed extremely well.

01:13:18:15 - 01:13:39:13

Dan Brisse

And they were rolling with the cycle up, and they were both sold in 2021. So those deals we 300% return or three exit our investors money. So if you put 100,000 in, we gave you 100,000 back plus, you know, $200,000 of value. So you three extra capital.

01:13:39:15 - 01:13:41:14

Christian Soschner

That's in what period.

01:13:41:16 - 01:13:44:19

Dan Brisse

In about a 24 month period. Two year period.

01:13:44:21 - 01:13:45:21

Christian Soschner

That's exemption.

01:13:45:23 - 01:14:07:00

Dan Brisse

And that's this is not a normal return in real estate. Right. That's an abnormal number. So it's not something that investors should say, oh my I'm invested in this deal. I didn't react to my money. What what happened there. So it's it's more of a it's it's more of, everything was working in your favor and you, you had a couple really big home runs.

01:14:07:02 - 01:14:18:13

Dan Brisse

Typical returns are much lower, you know, 20, 20, 20 to 25% annually if you if you did a pretty darn good job, not not a 100% or 125% annually or more.

01:14:18:13 - 01:14:49:01

Dan Brisse

Let's be I love this outlier success. This, one of mine is Nvidia. I want to share this a couple of years ago, and now they're, they're really capitalizing on artificial intelligence. talking about artificial intelligence in Nvidia, the next question leads to business models. But is the business model that you are running with your company? just asking the question because initially you said you bought property for yourself, and then you mentioned, that you bought property for your investors.

01:14:49:03 - 01:14:54:08

Dan Brisse

How does your business life look like in 2023? Business models?

01:14:54:10 - 01:14:55:11

Christian Soschner

Yeah, yeah. In the

01:14:55:11 - 01:15:16:04

Dan Brisse

beginning, I was just buying real estate on my home. I was buying with my own money and a couple friends here and there and then now the way our company is set up is we go out and find deals, we raise the equity, we sign on the debt and get the debt lined up. We create the business plan.

01:15:16:06 - 01:15:25:12

Dan Brisse

And our equity partners then are showing the deal and they decide, yep, I'd like to invest with you or I'm going to wait for another deal. That's our model.

01:15:25:14 - 01:15:36:22

Christian Soschner

So you have a deal model. You collect money for single deals, and, how do you two. That's the connection process. Is it a is to do a set of funds or what's the standing model?

01:15:36:24 - 01:16:02:22

Dan Brisse

Yeah, you got it. You set up a 5 or 6 B, which is a fund where we can raise capital legally here in the US. And, when we have a deal, we'll create the fund and we'll create the investor presentation of here's the deal, here's the business plan, here's the debt, here's the location, here's the depreciation, and here's the team, and here's what we're going to do over the next five years.

01:16:02:24 - 01:16:26:12

Dan Brisse

We usually start our deals up on a five year old or 3 to 7. It's kind of the number to think about as an investor. And then once that's available, it is shout out to our investor database. These are all preexisting relationships, folks we've met over the last seven, eight years of attending events pretty regularly, nonstop. This is this is what we do, you know, kind of back to snowboarding.

01:16:26:12 - 01:16:47:09

Dan Brisse

Like, that's what we did. That's what I did. This is now what I do. I'm a I'm a real estate investor. That's what we do. That's all I do. And you don't have you don't have multiple asset classes currently. It's just multifamily. and we we do have a friend to we've done a lot of investing with who has done a lot of, triple net leases.

01:16:47:09 - 01:17:05:20

Dan Brisse

And we may bring that into our portfolio with his guidance. But right now it's 100% multifamily website deals available. We bring it to our investors and we buy it as a group, and we own it as a group. You're right. You're a business owner. With us, that takes zero work. You basically decide, I want to invest or not invest.

01:17:05:22 - 01:17:14:08

Dan Brisse

You sign your docs, you are your funds, and then you're along for the ride. Collecting a monthly update from us, as the lead sponsors throughout the life of the hold.

01:17:14:10 - 01:17:39:24

Christian Soschner

How does it track you? go out on the market, find interesting properties, sits down with your team and calculates, a business model and say, okay, how much, can we rent out, how long do we need to hold it to have an uptick in value? And, then you plan for 5 to 7 years if I understood you right, what happens after the 5 to 7 years to you based on the property?

01:17:39:24 - 01:17:46:00

Christian Soschner

Basically, you sell it to a third party and return to capital, to your plan on keep holding.

01:17:46:00 - 01:18:08:11

Dan Brisse

It depends. One on one of two options. Either you're going to sell it after 3 to 7 years, somewhere in there, depending on the market and the value and what you're seeing happening in that submarket where that property is sitting. And if you sell it, obviously you as an investor, you'd be done. You know, we're all done. We all liquidate, take our money and do what we choose to do with that equity.

01:18:08:11 - 01:18:47:04

Dan Brisse

From there, or you're going to refinance the deal. And refinancing the deal simply means that you have improved the value of the property. Enough. Where a lender is saying, hey, the value was 10 million when you bought it three years ago, now it's 615 million. And because the value is 15 million because of your net operating income, and that's just your income minus expenses, your net operating income due to your NOI, your net operating income, the deal now qualifies for more debt because you have more income, and it allows you to put different debt on.

01:18:47:04 - 01:19:04:05

Dan Brisse

Take the initial debt out and give a large portion or all of the investor's equity back and hold the deal long term. That's a tax free play where you don't have to get your money back and then pay tax on it. It's borrowed money, so it's tax free.

01:19:04:07 - 01:19:11:17

Christian Soschner

Okay. To your, the accept US based investors or to your so except, investors outside the United States.

01:19:11:19 - 01:19:25:00

Dan Brisse

We can't invest except investors outside the US. Yes. It's ideal when you have, a larger chunk of funds because there is more paperwork, legal work, but it's it's possible.

01:19:25:03 - 01:19:33:19

Dan Brisse

Must still be registered in the United States as, as an investor is it's, no paperwork that needs to be done.

01:19:33:19 - 01:19:37:19

Dan Brisse

so you ask, if you're an investor in the US, is there paperwork for.

01:19:37:21 - 01:20:05:18

Christian Soschner

Another far for investors outside the US? I think, certain deals are restricted to, some sort of registration process in the United States. As an investor, how is it in real estate when people, for example, from the United Arab Emirates, from Germany, from Switzerland, from Austria might consider looking at your fund structure? what should they expect on, paperwork that comes with that?

01:20:05:18 - 01:20:18:06

Christian Soschner

This is just like, putting money in a savings account to have to add in money to you and to invest it for them, and that's it. Or is there some, mandatory paperwork that needs to be cleared first?

01:20:18:08 - 01:20:40:20

Dan Brisse

Yeah, our legal team. So this is definitely above my pay grade. When it comes, the attorney's language is exactly what needs to be filed to be done. Even when I'm no attorney. but our legal team, when we have investors from, say, Canada or Europe that are looking to invest, our legal team advises the investors to work with their legal team or CPA to make sure that they're set up correctly on their end.

01:20:40:20 - 01:20:59:19

Dan Brisse

And then they come into our fund. So that would be something again, right? I'm saying where if you have a group of five, ten, 20 investors who want to do that, it might be worth it and more interesting to do it that way, because there may be some legal work on the front end from an attorney or a CPA, and I don't think it'd be a lot.

01:20:59:19 - 01:21:11:22

Dan Brisse

But, you know, there will be some work for them to make sure that we're based off of the country. You're coming from, that things are right above the line. And we're not, you know, doing things illegally.

01:21:11:22 - 01:21:20:20

Dan Brisse

Yeah, that's that's, very helpful. And your team assists in that, in that work. So, you know, tonight, right. People to talk to, to clear up, you know, everything.

01:21:20:22 - 01:21:22:10

Christian Soschner

Yeah. We can help with that.

01:21:22:10 - 01:21:38:04

Dan Brisse

Help with with finding a local attorney in your country. That would be, the investors and and you know, most of our investors are either accredited or sophisticated, and they have somebody on their team or they know somebody who can at least get them in line with the league, with the legal counsel.

01:21:38:20 - 01:22:02:03

Dan Brisse

So, but let's, talk about, the challenges in real estate. We talked about challenges in snowboarding. I mean, there are always these nice deals like in video, Warren Buffett invested in that. But just in those one way, it's up. but there are also some deals that really don't go well. One of my, mishaps was Wirecard German company, that went bankrupt.

01:22:02:03 - 01:22:34:13

Dan Brisse

The case looked very well, looked great. They were audited by, the world's best, tax consultants. Auditors. that's that's, from the world's best banking institutions like Deutsche Bank and give, public company listed, the premium market in Germany. And it went bankrupt within one year at the beginning of the pandemic. And if it can never happen, but such things happen when people invest.

01:22:34:15 - 01:22:54:18

Dan Brisse

Would you like to share one of your cases? So they'll say you did all the work. your fast deal is really great. It works out fine. And it's then just simply that it's the other direction. You had maximum conviction and reality said, okay, we have a different opinion on that. Yeah.

01:22:55:01 - 01:23:17:23

Dan Brisse

Yeah. For sure. We we bought a deal, in Carlsbad, New Mexico, 100% dependent on oil. And it's a market, you know, buying anymore. just because of the volatility of the market we buy in Dallas and Nashville, Fort Worth markets that are very insulated with major lines of employment. But we bought this deal as a 101 unit deal in Carlsbad.

01:23:17:23 - 01:23:41:20

Dan Brisse

We closed on it and four months later, Covid hit. And obviously once Covid hit, oil crashed and everyone stopped traveling and oil went down and so did employment. Everybody that was working in the field drilling went home. And just like every other business departments, work on supply and demand. And once the supply went up, massively in demand, right.

01:23:41:22 - 01:24:09:11

Dan Brisse

We had a lot of people vacating and leaving. So our occupancy was 98 to 100% occupied with rent increases that were huge Covid hits. Six months later, we're about 65 to 70% occupied with major rent decreases. So that was a, you know, a challenging, moment for us. Indeed. And it was very eye opening in the sense of picking locations.

01:24:09:11 - 01:24:37:05

Dan Brisse

What I am proud to say is we've never done a capital call or we've never asked investors for more money on that deal. And we're luckily in the moment in time right now. back to 96% occupancy of rents going up very quickly because the market has healed itself. But it was very eye opening and a great lesson for us to learn that it doesn't matter if you buy right now, if if that's right, doesn't matter if you got a great value plan and you're good at managing.

01:24:37:08 - 01:24:58:14

Dan Brisse

If your location is as is volatile. So you have got to be ready and able to withstand the storm. And luckily we were we had a lot of liquidity, on hand. And we were able to weather the storm and we're heading towards bringing it to the market and hopefully we can exit the deal for a nice gain.

01:24:58:14 - 01:25:04:14

Dan Brisse

It won't be like the gain I just talked about, but it'll still be a nice a nice base hit win.

01:25:04:14 - 01:25:18:06

Dan Brisse

so that's that's a story that and this is, this is where we learn the most is through the pain. You know Ray Dalio talks about progress for plus reflection is what is going to help. And pain plus reflection is going to help you learn.

01:25:18:08 - 01:25:28:04

Dan Brisse

And so I'm grateful for the pain we've gone through. And that it didn't wipe us on that one and that we're able to live to see another day and hopefully just get out with a nice return.

01:25:28:06 - 01:25:31:12

Christian Soschner

We enjoy the pain.

01:25:31:14 - 01:25:41:08

Dan Brisse

man, I can say in the moment I don't in the moment, I'm, I'm in the moment. I very much dislike it. Looking back, I am appreciative for it.

01:25:42:01 - 01:26:09:16

Dan Brisse

Yeah, but this I think it was unexpected. I mean, no plans for a pandemic. That's, everything gets shut down from one day to the other. I had a call in the beginning of March 2020 when I think it was Israel, the first country here in Europe that, thought about applying lockdowns. And there was a, conference in Paris plant, and asked my friends, when I'm in Paris, should we meet for coffee?

01:26:09:16 - 01:26:33:09

Dan Brisse

And, he said, do you really think you can fly to Paris in two weeks? And he said, I'm confident. I don't think the phones would go on lockdown. And I was wrong. So, I totally understand that this is something that nobody can factor into a business plan, even when it's, short term. when the pandemic hit, you said stats.

01:26:33:09 - 01:26:58:01

Dan Brisse

Of course oil went down. Yeah. And, your occupancy rates also went down because, people just left. Went home, met with the family supply. But their demand went down. what kept you in the game? why did you decide not to just throw it away and say, okay, we're done with that? We set it off.

01:26:58:03 - 01:27:07:16

Dan Brisse

let's, rescue what we can from the capital. But this will never be done. What? What kept you motivated to hold the assets until now?

01:27:07:18 - 01:27:08:15

Christian Soschner

Gosh, I had that.

01:27:08:15 - 01:27:28:22

Dan Brisse

That idea never even crossed my mind to just throw it in the towel and give up. I think it's because you believe that you can get through, you know, and that you believe that you're going to find a way to still win. And I think that, when you're raising capital. So in this deal, we raised 3.1 million from our investors.

01:27:28:24 - 01:27:45:00

Dan Brisse

Those investors have put their trust in you to say, you're the guy that I'm betting on, and you're the deal. You're you're controlling this deal that's going to make us money. And just giving up and saying we couldn't get it done. You have no chance of being a real estate investor. That's how you were going to behave, right?

01:27:45:00 - 01:28:02:04

Dan Brisse

You just that's not an option. So, that was what it was for me is that I've got a lot of folks who trust me and put their trust in us through performance of giving us their money and so we take that very seriously in the sense that you're never going to quit, you're going to figure it out.

01:28:02:06 - 01:28:04:14

Dan Brisse

And and that's what we're doing.

01:28:04:14 - 01:28:33:08

Dan Brisse

I think this is one of the most important lessons in investing in principle. It's simple, by having to price is low self when the price is high. But I think many people burn capital because they react in the opposite direction. So everybody in the market is, running when the market is in a hype cycle, it's, lovely buying something when every newspaper writes, just can't get better.

01:28:33:08 - 01:29:12:20

Dan Brisse

We have an upsurge. I think it was outside during the pandemic, the digital revolution. There was only one way it was up. And this is the time when many people buy. And then on the other side, on the flip side, when the market is hostile, like it's right now, people don't want to buy. And I have observed observe this behavior in almost every market, equity market, business owners, everything that has to do with investment also venture capital, for example, I realized that as a venture capital can easily come into this territory where they follow their own crowd and echo chamber investment.

01:29:12:20 - 01:29:36:01

Dan Brisse

Everybody invests and they also limited partners. Venture capital, have a similar behavior to buy and sell flow data sets. And now would be the best time, in my opinion, to invest in high risk assets because the market evaluation said no. but they have no experience in real estate. How is this emotional component in real estate investing?

01:29:36:04 - 01:29:48:01

Dan Brisse

You also observe something like that's that many people have buying when, the times are great and are scared when the times are like they are right now.

01:29:48:03 - 01:29:48:21

Christian Soschner

You nailed it.

01:29:48:21 - 01:30:12:19

Dan Brisse

You nailed it. In 2021, when prices were peaking and people were buying with proof debt, high leverage, short term loans, very low interest rates. Investors were jumping in as fast as they could do. Yeah. You got a deal? I'm in. You got a deal? I mean, I would see so many deals be getting done in 2021.

01:30:12:21 - 01:30:38:11

Dan Brisse

Now you got in 2023. Prices have pulled back massively 20 to 30% discount to pricing. Debt has pulled back massively. You can't get a loan for more than 65% leverage. Interest rates have gone up causing the price to be pulled back. And you're in a totally different buying scenario ten times, maybe even 20 times safer now, in my opinion, than it was then.

01:30:38:13 - 01:30:58:21

Dan Brisse

And people are scared and they're holding back and they're like, this isn't a good time to invest. And it's is eye opening as I've ever seen in my life. As far as because this is really the first real recession pullback I've been through in my real estate career because I only started buying in 2012. The last big pullback was the Great Recession here in the US of 089 1011.

01:30:58:23 - 01:31:21:00

Dan Brisse

So 089, whatever, whatever years old works. So this is the first time I've seen it more clearly than ever that if you have cash and equity and liquidity, this is the time to be buying deals or buying a deal right now. and the capital raise on the deal was $9.2 million. And it was a very difficult time to raise the money.

01:31:21:05 - 01:31:44:07

Dan Brisse

We have it more closing here on Friday, which is great. It's going to be close on the deal. But I'm just telling you firsthand and talking to investors over the last month on the phone, sharing with them the deal and why we like the deal and the debt and the business plan and all that. A lot of them get excited and they hear the news 2 or 3 days later, and they pull out and quick.

01:31:44:09 - 01:32:06:24

Dan Brisse

So you have to understand what's going on as an investor. You have to understand that just because the market says on the news says it's it's not a good time. That's the time to be investing because everything is pulled back. It's not when the bad news is talking recovery, crypto is or how high real estate prices are. That is the time to be selling if you you have the assets.

01:32:06:24 - 01:32:11:16

Dan Brisse

But in order to sell them, you have to buy them when they're low.

01:32:11:16 - 01:32:37:05

Dan Brisse

But this is so tough. Nvidia is the example that, pops up in my mind while you were speaking, in I think it was 20, 21st December. they were around 200, 200 something, and now they're about 400. And many professional investors sold back then. And then artificial intelligence hits. everybody had conviction again. The price just went up.

01:32:37:07 - 01:33:05:08

Dan Brisse

it's so tempting, to sell to nuts to something. I'm curious to hear from you how you handle your sales calls. Because basically, you have to ring through investors and convince them to put their money down and to think, probably you face a similar situation, like every sales person, you have those with conviction that the easy to convince small minority, then you have those who are scared to death and will never invest and regardless of what you tell them.

01:33:05:08 - 01:33:24:13

Dan Brisse

And then you have this middle ground of people having objections. But, you can convince them that now is the right time. What are the three things that you tell them to convince them to take the opportunity at hands, which might be the best opportunity in their life?

01:33:24:15 - 01:33:26:00

Christian Soschner

Yeah. You know,

01:33:26:00 - 01:33:44:14

Dan Brisse

I'm never trying to convince. I'm not. I'm not always saying, hey, why am I? I want to convince you to invest with me on this deal. It's more of just saying, hey, here's what we're doing and here's why we like the deal, and here's the data behind why we like the deal. If you see that opportunity, let's roll.

01:33:44:16 - 01:34:19:13

Dan Brisse

And if they're pushing back, I'm never calling twice or three times. And this is not our style. but, you know, one thing that gives me confidence and I try to relay this to the investors is that if we can solve for cash flow, which again, comes back to passive income. And what that means is if you can take your income and you can take your expenses and you know what your income is and where it's going based off of the market, and you know where the expenses are and where they're going based off of the market, which takes time.

01:34:19:13 - 01:34:42:09

Dan Brisse

It takes a team. We're working with our property management, our professional management company that's on the ground managing thousands of units in these markets. If we can work with them to understand the market and have a clear idea of income, clear idea and expenses, and then a control of our debt, of what the debt is going to cost because it's fixed and you know, the number.

01:34:42:11 - 01:35:04:23

Dan Brisse

Are you in a place where you have cash flow every month? Are you going to place a passive income every month? And how much is it conservatively, you can adjust your underwriting to say, okay, maybe we won't have that much growth. Let's pull back a little bit because we've probably going into recession here or, hey, we're going to have expense expense is let's bump the taxes up a little bit more just in case.

01:35:05:00 - 01:35:23:07

Dan Brisse

And if you do those things and you still have cash flow with your fixed debt, let's go. That's a that's that's the number that makes a decision for me. Because as long as we can get through the next six, 12, 18 months with cash flow, it's very likely you're going to come out on the other side of the valuation.

01:35:23:07 - 01:35:46:11

Dan Brisse

It's going to be bonkers. So because that's what everybody will be coming back in, because they'll hear all of the good things happening in the news and you'll be the one who said, wow, these guys are going to buy this for that, and we can get that return again. We'll liquidate for that. And so that's really the name of the game is can you get the cash flow now and how confident are you in that.

01:35:46:13 - 01:36:04:02

Dan Brisse

And can you ride the stock for a little while. No one's disappointed. Getting 6 to 7% cash on cash return on their money while inflation's happening. Our investors are so happy with that. You know it's. And then you get the big bump on the end and you're getting 15 to 20 to 30% a year. It's a great number.

01:36:04:05 - 01:36:42:24

Dan Brisse

Yeah that's true. That's true. but it needs people to understand market cycles. When I think back to 2022, the startups that I'm working with, I mean, many are run by first time founders and still never experienced a market crisis or a crash and a rat's, yesterday linked in, a comment from a US based company where the CEO said we tried to operate in 2022 like we did in 2020, which I thought, okay, it's obviously wrong.

01:36:43:01 - 01:37:07:06

Dan Brisse

And, we started, recommending to startups last year, early last year, when the crisis in Ukraine and Russia began, I said, look, I mean, this is not going well. And energy prices were such, because of the energy markets in Europe, which means investors will pull back, when the your institution says carrots, they don't put money into venture capital.

01:37:07:08 - 01:37:30:21

Dan Brisse

And when venture capital is key, they don't put money into startups and collapse. And when they don't put money into startups since collapse, you know, they have to work. Has a long question how long can you make your cash last? It's pretty much the same that you said before. it's a positive cash runway. And you just have to survive the next months, and then you come out very nicely.

01:37:30:21 - 01:37:43:17

Dan Brisse

At the end of the day. My question to you is, what's your philosophy about markets like, how do you describe to people what's going on right now in the market?

01:37:43:24 - 01:38:06:11

Dan Brisse

Yeah. I think this is a very pinpoint question. If I'm an answer from real estate in the sense that what we buy. So I can't speak on startups, I can't speak on real estate in New York. I can't really speak on real estate in LA. I, I can speak on real estate in submarkets in Dallas that we buy in and hone in in, in Nashville.

01:38:06:13 - 01:38:27:19

Dan Brisse

And adding that to what asset class you're buying. You're not buying a class deals, a class I mean, brand new. and I think you're going to see a lot of pain in a lot of markets and A-Class deals, particularly Nashville, because of how many units are coming online. Supply and demand is getting out of whack because so many new units are coming online.

01:38:27:21 - 01:38:57:12

Dan Brisse

so for us, in our a little tiny niche, that's a small little world of with this little sub market in this specific asset class, we're competing against, call it 7 to 10 competitors in a sub market. And when you buy the deal, you have to understand what the cops are doing and how insulated the market is for job growth and variety of jobs in that market.

01:38:57:12 - 01:39:31:06

Dan Brisse

Remember my scenario or example of Carlsbad, New Mexico? It's oil crashes. You're screwed. In Dallas, you may have 10 or 15 major economic drivers and your sub market an asset class. Maybe at 96 to 98% occupancy. And if you can find 7 to 10 comps in that 95 to 98% occupancy, you know, you're insulated on a workforce and you're targeting a specific, income producer.

01:39:31:08 - 01:39:55:18

Dan Brisse

You can figure out what the data or timing we have to go into here, what the likelihood is of hitting those numbers or close to those numbers. If you do X, Y, and Z for upgrades because you're trying to match and beat your competition right, and you're going to physically walk in, secretly shock all of the cops with your own eyes, you're going to put someone on our team, or me or Mike, or someone on our team.

01:39:55:20 - 01:40:18:07

Dan Brisse

Literally. Secret shop hat backwards, show up. Hi, my name's Jeff. I would like to rent here. I'm going to be doing insurance salesman. I'm going to be here in one month. What do you have for for leasing. And you. And you cop. You do a shot. Come and then you can predict a little bit more. I can't say for sure, but you can predict a little bit more of what's likely coming over the next 24 months, based off of all of this data.

01:40:18:09 - 01:40:19:16

Dan Brisse

You.

01:40:20:14 - 01:40:47:23

Dan Brisse

But there is one point that I wrote down by you guys. Speaking of which, I think quite intimate. It's quite interesting because it resembles your career and snowboarding in my opinion, and also your career in real estate. It's certainly know your niche Niching down on it very, very narrow market. You mentioned it in snowboarding before, or it's my interpretation of what you said, that you defined your dream, your niche and den berg torts and but stay in your niche.

01:40:48:00 - 01:41:08:16

Dan Brisse

And I think this is a very valuable lesson for many investors and many people, many business founders, you apply the same principle to any real estate. You defined, a clear, niche, valuable speaker. You could really define what you're looking for. In which areas, how do the assets look like? what's your competition? And you stay in your niche.

01:41:08:18 - 01:41:09:07

Christian Soschner

Okay.

01:41:09:09 - 01:41:34:05

Dan Brisse

And my question to you is, how do you do that? Sustain your niche very often when you see first and foremost. And you also founded a business before the state, they go out into market and suddenly the world opens up with a lot more possibility and lots more opportunities, and they start leaving carnage too early so they don't stop it down on the market.

01:41:34:07 - 01:41:55:03

Dan Brisse

They start very quickly expanding to market and say, okay, real estate. It could be, why not go into commercial real estate? Why not bilateral properties? Why not do everything and talk about, every real estate possible that we could buy? Because there are so many opportunities out there. How do you do that every single day that you stay in your niche?

01:41:55:05 - 01:41:55:17

Christian Soschner

Yeah.

01:41:55:17 - 01:42:15:06

Dan Brisse

Well, number one, that niche in creating that criteria has taken ten years in real estate. It didn't it didn't I wasn't like, well, we got this criteria. Let's stick to this. It was a lot of learning and a lot of mistakes, a lot of pain of saying, oh, that didn't work. We got to adjust this, this, oh, this worked great over here.

01:42:15:06 - 01:42:36:17

Dan Brisse

How can we apply that to these this as we by moving forward. And it's taking past successes and pain in further and further putting it into a smaller box of this is exactly what we're looking for. And if we can hit these six boxes, there have been pain and these six boxes of success and put it into one deal.

01:42:36:17 - 01:43:01:12

Dan Brisse

The chances of us being successful have gone up significantly. So it's really just been trial and error. And we worked with we worked with a mentor on this stuff and has helped us miss, I think a lot of major pain points. but it it's coming down to refining and constantly refining and, and honing in on your investing criteria.

01:43:01:12 - 01:43:18:24

Dan Brisse

You know, I one thing I love when I heard Warren Buffett say is that there are always buyers every single day. They're buyers, but it has to meet their criteria. And if it doesn't hit their criteria, we'd love to buy it. But we can't. And I love to think of us in that scenario to where I always buyers get very clear on your criteria.

01:43:18:24 - 01:43:39:02

Dan Brisse

Now it comes down to self-discipline of saying, hey, we could buy there are investors in our database that want to buy, but we're going to say no because it doesn't fit our criteria. That's the most stupid investor. I think you're going to come across as the ability to say no because of it not aligning with, you know, past pain or successes.

01:43:39:05 - 01:43:51:06

Dan Brisse

So it's a balance, basically success. It's also a balance between focus and trial and error. You said ten years of, playing around on the market before you found your way.

01:43:51:08 - 01:43:52:03

Christian Soschner

Totally,

01:43:52:03 - 01:44:17:22

Dan Brisse

And you're going to learn more more in these markets during pain. I mean, we're learning some lessons. That's the reality of it. In 2021, we bought a few deals and we have we have, I think, 19 deals under our portfolio. Three of them have variable rate loans. And we're going through some pain on those deals. And we're figuring out how are you going to manage them and what are you going to do moving forward to make sure you're never in that scenario ever again.

01:44:17:22 - 01:44:35:11

Dan Brisse

So, you know, to say that everything has just been uphill has not been accurate, but you take the pain. And I would actually be cautious of investing with people who have never gone through any pain, because there will be pain guaranteed. There's just a matter of when. And the only question will be is did you learn and did you stick with it?

01:44:35:11 - 01:44:37:08

Dan Brisse

Or did you change course and jump to something

01:44:37:08 - 01:44:38:06

Christian Soschner

else?

01:44:38:08 - 01:45:04:06

Dan Brisse

Yeah, that's true, that's true. I definitely think and this is the best time to learn because I think, it opens up the conscious and subconscious mind in a way that's, the glory times on the market. But, your team sent me a link to a book about real estate investing that's. You wrote. let's talk about your book.

01:45:04:06 - 01:45:08:12

Dan Brisse

What motivated you to write a book? And what is it about?

01:45:08:14 - 01:45:08:22

Christian Soschner

Yeah,

01:45:08:22 - 01:45:42:22

Dan Brisse

it's called The Four Steps to Success or Passive Investing. And we wrote the book just to help. A lot of our investors were unclear on what, you know, passive investing even was. And we just wanted to give them a high level look of basic questions in things to be understanding in and under, you know, understand what the heck you're looking for to be able to invest a bit more in it, a bit more sophisticated manner.

01:45:42:24 - 01:46:07:03

Dan Brisse

And it was, yeah, I can't exactly two pages long, maybe 15, 20 pages. It's not that long, but it's very good information to help investors avoid making catastrophic mistakes in, you know, real estate. And it can happen. But if you know what you're doing a little bit and you know some great deal, sponsors know people that have track records, know that have skin in the game right alongside you.

01:46:07:05 - 01:46:18:09

Dan Brisse

You can do very well and it can be a very nice multiple, additional asset class to be invested into that and diversify your, your income, your your, your investments. You.

01:46:18:09 - 01:46:23:24

Dan Brisse

What type of readers, do you recommend your book to anybody?

01:46:24:00 - 01:46:36:07

Christian Soschner

Yeah, 12. I mean, to you, if you're 15 years old to to your late age ages, you it will apply for you. If you want to learn about real estate investing.

01:46:36:09 - 01:46:38:15

Dan Brisse

And it's for free, isn't it?

01:46:38:17 - 01:47:04:21

Christian Soschner

It is. Yes, it is for free. It is just simply a tool to help educate folks and if you have questions after you read the book, reach out to us directly. You know, there's a, contact us form right on our website. just Granite Towers equity group.com, and it's like the Rock Towers active group.com. And there's a Contact Us tab, and you can reach out with us directly to our team.

01:47:04:23 - 01:47:13:21

Christian Soschner

And it'll come to us. And if there's a detailed question do you want to hop on a call to understand something more in in more detail? We can we can make time for that.

01:47:13:23 - 01:47:38:07

Dan Brisse

So in the book, you put your condensed knowledge of ten years, real estate investing. you have a team that also edits to the book. What motivated you to publish it basically is, a free book. Went nuts. put a business model on it, let's say, like, Amazon sell it for $10, $20.

01:47:38:09 - 01:47:39:10

Christian Soschner

Yeah, yeah, it

01:47:39:10 - 01:47:56:17

Dan Brisse

was it was really just just to help avoid major mistakes and to help people if they're looking for a group to invest with, for them to get to know us better. And those are it. That's it.

01:47:56:19 - 01:48:16:00

Christian Soschner

So in principle, everybody who is interested in, using your opportunities to invest can download Steve book and immediately gets a snapshot of your investment principles. And after reading it, they know what you like to think and what you don't like to think and, what risks you take and what you don't.

01:48:16:02 - 01:48:37:17

Dan Brisse

Yeah. You bet. Exactly. It's going to be the basics of what to watch out for, how to get to know if an investment might be a good investment for you. And there's obviously a bunch more that you could get into. But these four points will help massively, help you massively make a decision on this. Hey, this is a red flag.

01:48:37:19 - 01:48:52:18

Dan Brisse

this is something to be cautious of. I'm going to go ahead and pass and that's the other piece that it should be known as an investor is there will always be another deal coming. It's like a bus there. There will be another deal coming out. So when you hear people say, well, you have to get in, this is the last deal.

01:48:52:18 - 01:49:03:21

Dan Brisse

You got to come in right now. Be cautious of that. And that's not the truth. The truth is, is that there will be another deal. And this is just a one for you to learn from. And if you like it, let's roll.

01:49:03:23 - 01:49:17:11

Christian Soschner

Yeah. This is awesome. And then equity markets. I think one lesson that sometimes takes time to understand is that the next opportunity is not the last one. There will be more opportunities. And the most important thing is,

01:49:17:11 - 01:49:46:24

Christian Soschner

investing your capital in companies that still exist in five years, regardless of the return, and not throw the money in, a sales story where someone says this is the last deal and you must buy now, but because tomorrow it's gone and you can't get such a good deal anymore, I think Burning Man is too, biggest risk, on capital markets, as I looked at, at the time.

01:49:47:01 - 01:49:48:16

Christian Soschner

yes. Ten minutes left.

01:49:48:16 - 01:50:12:00

Dan Brisse

this car and I would like to use the last ten minutes to look into the crystal ball because it's just fun. It's just, guesswork. How the future might look like. And my question to you is, when you imagine you in ten years, where do you see yourself? Profession? Nearly. And in your private life.

01:50:12:02 - 01:50:12:13

Christian Soschner

Yeah.

01:50:12:13 - 01:50:39:07

Dan Brisse

professionally. in ten years, I see myself still running this company and my children, my ten year old will then be 20, and I hope that it would be something he would want to do with with me. I just enjoy hanging out with him and and my other one who's younger, who knows he's a little young yet, but, something that we could do together and he could, eventually take over the company if that's something he's interested in doing and really wants to do.

01:50:39:09 - 01:51:05:20

Dan Brisse

but he's just running the company and working on building our team. I would hope by that time we're doing much more philanthropy, philanthropy work. And I would love to be able to do some wells in Africa and, and bring water to more, areas where folks don't have access to it. So that's something that's further out for me that I would love to be able to participate in.

01:51:06:12 - 01:51:18:19

Christian Soschner

personal life. I see being married to my wife still, and, we just had our 15 year wedding anniversary, last week. Okay, great. Thank you, thank you. and

01:51:18:19 - 01:51:27:18

Dan Brisse

just, spending a lot of time with family and friends and having the freedom to be able to choose to do that, that's that's that's my ideal.

01:51:27:20 - 01:51:30:04

Dan Brisse

That's my ideal scenario. In ten years.

01:51:30:06 - 01:51:39:12

Christian Soschner

That's that's great. That's great. Let's spend a few minutes on your philanthropy projects. Can you give us more insights into how it looks like today?

01:51:39:12 - 01:52:04:21

Dan Brisse

Yeah, yeah. So currently the way we're set up is whatever Granite Towers makes 5% of our bottom line goes to one of two organizations, one organization right now is to help feed kids in Minnesota during. So if kids are in school Monday through Friday and they go home on the weekends, they're they're assisted with bag lunches. So, and it's called a Sheraton story.

01:52:04:23 - 01:52:24:18

Dan Brisse

And that has been something we've been a part of for the last five years or so. And then we also do a portion of that to Underground Railroad, which is a program that helps stop child sex trafficking. something that we were led onto by Tony Robbins and Mike and I both having kids felt very passionate about that.

01:52:24:18 - 01:52:31:24

Dan Brisse

So, that's what we do currently. And, it's it's great. I love it, love being a part of it.

01:52:32:01 - 01:52:32:07

Christian Soschner

Now,

01:52:32:07 - 01:52:42:12

Dan Brisse

Two great projects, and I think the last one is very important. We also had a case here in Europe recently and this is off or this is terrible that such things happen in the world.

01:52:42:14 - 01:52:44:03

Christian Soschner

Yes, yes, it

01:52:44:03 - 01:52:59:02

Dan Brisse

happens and probably is happening more than we'd like to know about or think about, but someone has to take care of and fight back. Otherwise it's it's going to be painful. And, so they're great. They're great company and and glad glad to be working with them.

01:52:59:04 - 01:53:05:05

Christian Soschner

So basically everybody who invests in your projects also supports your causes automatically.

01:53:05:07 - 01:53:06:24

Dan Brisse

That's correct. You've got it.

01:53:07:01 - 01:53:22:15

Christian Soschner

That's good to know. That's good to know. we talked about your professional future. Your personal future. Let's look at the macro level. How do you see the world change in the coming ten years from your perspective?

01:53:22:17 - 01:53:53:08

Dan Brisse

Yeah, I, I think these next ten years may be the most challenging ten years I've seen in my lifetime, I think is likely. and I only say that just due to the destruction of currency taking place and the possibility of countries not getting along as we're going later into these debt cycles. I also see it being possible that the US has more internal conflict.

01:53:53:10 - 01:54:18:03

Dan Brisse

I'm seeing it. I think everyone's seeing it that you've got, further right and further left that are wanting to battle and, you know, another thing that Dalio talks about is late stage five. Stage six, the debt cycle is that you have internal civil war. And I hope we don't see that. I hope that people realize that that will cause massive destruction and set everyone back further.

01:54:18:03 - 01:54:26:07

Dan Brisse

And we can, you know, work together harmoniously in that and create a better future. But I do believe, unfortunately, that

01:54:26:07 - 01:54:31:15

Dan Brisse

if things don't change and they continue to trend like they are, these next ten years could be

01:54:31:15 - 01:54:37:12

Dan Brisse

the most challenging decade we've seen in the last in my lifetime, which could be coming up like 40 years here.

01:54:37:14 - 01:54:45:13

Christian Soschner

I couldn't agree more. I think this is the biggest challenge for us to convince people that collaboration and peace is the

01:54:45:13 - 01:55:09:01

Dan Brisse

best way forward. And, I grew up in the 70s and 80s here in Europe and experience the world before 1989 and after that and the 90s, a decades of, hope of, growing collaboration, of, changing power across the borders went down in Europe.

01:55:09:01 - 01:55:51:22

Dan Brisse

People united also Ray Dalio, you mentioned, trade was taken up with China, with Southeast Asia. And I think all of these states, the United States, Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, South America, that all nations started collaborating is the foundation of 30 years of mostly peace and prosperity in the world. And I think this would be the challenge for the next ten years to convince people that we should continue on that path and not go down the other road, which is probably mean not only a civil war in the United States, but they see also scenarios where we could have another world war, for example, whichever side of the crisis we have right now in

01:55:51:22 - 01:55:53:03

Dan Brisse

Europe.

01:55:53:05 - 01:56:16:06

Christian Soschner

Yeah, I agree, I would say if I could give one, one piece of advice, I would say what I would tell my kids and I tell to everybody else is if you have a bunch of currency, find a way to get on the side of owning something real, even some gold and silver. Maybe it's real estate, maybe it's crypto, maybe it's Bitcoin, but just have something.

01:56:16:08 - 01:56:41:01

Christian Soschner

As the governments content continue to print and create more currency for the value of it, and the purchasing power will go down and get get to things in a real, things that are real, you know, we we planted apple trees in a garden in the last few years because of what may come, you know, and that doesn't you're going to change the world with our little apple tree orchard and garden.

01:56:41:01 - 01:56:56:18

Christian Soschner

But at least there's something in. And it's something fun for us to do, too. So it wasn't just, you know, for that, I was really more my reason. My wife just loves to do it. and maybe get another source of power lined up if you can. You know, like, we put solar power on our roof is just kind of a backup source.

01:56:56:18 - 01:57:05:17

Christian Soschner

And, just do some of those things and hopefully it it's never needed, but. And it's fun and adds value to your day to day life.

01:57:05:19 - 01:57:26:02

Dan Brisse

Then this is sound advice at the end of the podcast. Thank you very much for your time. I enjoyed the conversation and learned a lot of new things from you. I love what you do. I wish you all the best for you, your family, your kids, your wife, your apple trees and all the best with your investment projects.

01:57:26:04 - 01:57:29:13

Christian Soschner

Thank you Christian, a pleasure being on. Thanks for having me.

01:57:29:15 - 01:57:33:11

Dan Brisse

Have a great stay. See you soon. Bye.

01:57:33:17 - 01:57:47:08

Christian Soschner

That was a truly motivating conversation with Dan. Prezi. His transition from snowboarding champion to real estate mogul highlights the power of determination and pursuing Bond's passion.

01:57:47:08 - 01:57:58:07

Christian Soschner

Listeners learned valuable lessons about investing in changing markets, understanding market cycles, and building passive income through real estate.

01:57:58:07 - 01:58:25:02

Christian Soschner

Dance success demonstrates that with the right approach and strategies, anyone can achieve financial independence. If you enjoyed this episode, please like, comment and share it with your colleagues and friends. Your engagement helps this show grow and bring more insightful conversations with industry leaders.

01:58:25:02 - 01:58:28:22

Christian Soschner

Remember success takes time and dedication.

01:58:28:22 - 01:58:41:16

Christian Soschner

It requires a willingness to learn and adapt to challenges. But as Stan has proven with hard work and a clear vision, you can reach your goals.

01:58:41:16 - 01:58:52:16

Christian Soschner

Thank you for tuning in to Beginner's Mind. Stay tuned for more insightful discussions with innovators and experts.