Bryan McAnulty: Welcome to The Creator's Adventure, where we interview Creator's from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. Today I'm talking with a marine turned entrepreneur who quickly grew his brand in the crowded space of personal finance. We're gonna talk about how he did it and what exactly are the key moments or steps that helped get him.

Hey everyone. I'm Bryan McAnulty, the founder of Heights Platform. Let's start the show.

Hey everyone. We're here today with David Pere. He was an active duty marine for 13 years. In 2015, he purchased his first real estate investment, and in five years he went from a negative net worth to a millionaire with a hundred plus rental. Today he runs an online community called From Military to Millionaire, where he helps service members, veterans and their families learn how to build wealth through real estate, investing, entrepreneurship, and personal finance.

David, welcome to the show.

David Pere: Thanks for having me, brother. So my first question

Bryan McAnulty: for you question is, what would you say is either the biggest thing that you are doing or that you did do that's helped you achieve the freedom that to do the things you.

David Pere: Yeah, I mean I really, it was just, it was baby steps. It was you know, I got into house hacking, so I bought a duplex and I lived in one side of it and rented the other.

And then I think the, along the whole journey, it was just trying to maintain lower expenses while building the. You know, real estate portfolio so that I was able to reinvest the income that I was making in order to build the portfolio faster, right? So it was just continuing to reinvest as I built. So when I'd make a little bit extra money, it would go back in the business when I would sell a property and make a profit that would go into another property.

And then being able to roll forward like that allowed me to build the portfolio and buy properties faster in order to achieve financial freedom. Much earlier than if I was actually, you know, touching the cash flow as they say, and, and actually, oh, hey, I made an extra a hundred bucks this month, let me go buy an Xbox or whatever.

Bryan McAnulty: Got it. Okay. Yeah, I wanna definitely get into all this. So first of all, thank you for your service. I, I understand here, like now your goal is kind of to help people in the military like learn how they can be financially free and independent. So your first deal in 2015, it was the duplex we saw you mentioning of how it was like house hacking and I think you kind of touched on what that is.

Can you explain that for people who are not familiar?

David Pere: Yeah. It, house hacking is like, it can be a, a duplex, it can be a single family or, I mean, there's a lot of different ways to do it. You can do it with a single family where you rent out bedrooms in the single family house, but you can do it with a duplex or a triplex or a fourplex where you rent.

The different units in the house and you live in one of 'em, and if it's a fourplex, you rent the other three. And basically you are, you know, housing's your most expensive. It, it's your largest expense really. And no matter what market you live in housing is generally your largest expense. And so if you can go from having to pay two or $3,000 a month in rent or mortgage to buying a place, and then having your tenants pay the majority of your.

Or, or what would've been, you know, your rent expenses. In order for you to own this house, you know they're paying down your mortgage for you, they're helping you pay your taxes, and maybe you're still coming outta pocket a little bit, but it's a lot less than you would've been paying to rent a space.

Well, the money that you're saving there can now get reinvested elsewhere, whether that's into. Your education to learn more about real estate or that's reinvesting into your next property, or just saving to build that big cash position to, you know, in case something goes wrong along the way. But you can save and invest that money that you would've been spending on rent or, or on a mortgage for just a normal house while you're learning to be a landlord and you are.

you know, someone else is paying down your mortgage and you're getting the appreciation if the house goes up in value and you're getting depreciation, you're getting tax benefits. Right. And it's just like, it's just a really good way to get your feet wet. Right. Especially because if you think about it, Investing's kind of scary, right?

Like a lot of people, they struggle to get started with real estate because everyone hears about all the horror stories with tenants or you know, you buy a house and all these things go wrong. Or there's, there's a million ways to not, or reasons to not get started with rental properties. But at the same time, It's kinda the American dream to buy a house, right?

So it's funny because if like you go and you tell your parents you wanna buy a rental property that's three states away from you, there's a really good chance they're gonna try to talk you out of it. But if you tell your same parents that you wanna buy a house for you to live in, there's a pretty good chance they might encourage you.

And so if you buy a fourplex that you live in and rent three bedrooms to, you know, three units to tenants, Instead of people trying to talk you out of it, they'll probably encourage you. And so it's a really like neutral way to get into investing and learning about it and get a lot of those benefits without the, you know, not nearly as much risk and.

A lot less intimidating. And plus you get the benefits of, you know, if you're a veteran, a zero down VA loan. And if you're not a veteran, then a three and a half percent down FHA loan which, you know, if you're investing, you're looking at a 20 or 25% down loan with a two or 3% higher interest rate. So it's just all around a better option.

Bryan McAnulty: Awesome. Yeah, that was a great explanation. So how did you get the idea then of starting from military to millionaire? Can you kind of walk us.

David Pere: Yeah, it, it wasn't really, I can't even take credit for the idea. About three years after I started buying real estate, I was wanting to learn, I, I was thinking about writing a book and asked a friend of mine, you know, how he learned to write and he recommended that I start a blog.

And when we were trying to talk through different ideas for what that might look like, we came up with the idea of essentially, Like documenting what I was learning in real estate, so. Just kind of documenting my journey, right? Like, Hey, today I'm talking about this, or today I'm learning about this. Or, Hey, this is something interesting I learned about buying a apartment, or I'm making offers on this.

Or you know, whatever, whatever that was which is, which is why it originally, there's some really weird articles on there at the beginning. There's an article on there about how to use the advanced search features on Google because I thought that being able to. Used Google to get better advanced or better search results was an efficient thing to learn.

Which I don't really use that well anymore, but, you know so there's some very interesting things in the early stages there, but over time that. People kind of started following along and, and actually other service members and vets really started asking questions. And so I'd get three or four people would say, well, hey, I heard this about the VA loan.

I don't understand this. Can you explain? And I'd go, , oh man, a lot of people are asking me about this. Let me go do a lot of research. And I'd write an article about that. And then now that would start to pick up on Google or you know, and then there would be other questions and then I'd answer those questions.

And so my content strategy basically just started being, what questions am I hearing a lot? Let me answer those. And I'd, you know, try to target my SEO that way and. At some point the community just kind of took off and I've never actually been able to pinpoint why. I don't know if it's just because I'm like this genuine, normal dude who was kind of making things work.

I don't know if it's because the name is just catchy. I don't know if it's just because other people in the community were really helpful and spreading the word or I have really no idea what the catalyst was there. A post that went super viral that I can point to and say that's what took off.

Bryan McAnulty: So like having, was it, do you feel, how long was it, do you feel, until it started taking off?

David Pere: Oh, it was like two years. So it was, you know, like for example, the. The Facebook group was the thing that kind of took off. So the Instagram had some decent traction and everything was kind of like slow and steady. But I remember one day it was like probably spring 2020, the Facebook group had maybe five or 6,000 people in it, and it was growing like maybe a hundred people a week.

That we would get to request to join, and then it was just like a light switch and it jumped from that to like a hundred people a day and then 200 people a day, and then 300 people a day. And then I had to bring in a VA to help me, you know, and it was like all of a sudden we went from like spring, you know, March, April of 2020 to at like six, 7,000 people to the same time next year, the next year.

you know, 25,000 people and then now we're 22, we're at 50,000 people. And, and so it went from, I mean, it was just crazy. It was like it took from 2018 to 2020 to get from zero to like 6,000 people and then. The, within 12 months, we were at 6,000 to like 25. And and there was no change. It wasn't like I was running ads or, I mean, Facebook group doesn't have seo or, you know, there's no like organic traffic to it.

It's just word of mouth, I guess. I don't know. I mean, you can't really market to it, so I don't really have any idea what kind of took off there, but, and it's a, it's a private group too, so people can't even see other people's posts in it unless they're in the group. Mm.

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah. I, I think though that some important points to mention like for somebody else is number one, the consistency, like that you worked at it for two years and like when you do that, like something like this can happen.

Maybe you don't know the exact reason or, or what to like, attribute to why, but I would say it's, in part it has to be because of that consistency and just constantly doing it. And I think it's also important how you mentioned. Like you just started, you made sure that you made this blog. You started talking about things that you were learning, and too many people will make the mistake of saying like, I don't know what I should talk about.

I don't know, like, what would people want to hear exactly from me? And they don't try anything, and they kind of get paralyzed before that. And you took the action to say like, I'm going to make this blog. I'm gonna just start talking about things. And then you learned from that and that that helped you grow to what you are today.

David Pere: Yeah, I, I would agree with that. I think consistencies plays a huge role in pretty much any platform. I mean, there's a reason they say, right, most pla most post, most podcasts don't make it past like episode 20 or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Actually told my, my assistant at one point that it was like six months ago I, I finally told her, I was like, Hey, if a podcast reaches out, unless I get to be episode one or it.

A personal friend that I make the intro to you. Mm-hmm. . If it doesn't have 25, just tell 'em, Hey, reach back out after you have 25. And it wasn't even really because of that statistic, it was just because unfortunately I got burned a few times where I had podcasts that I recorded with and then like they just.

Stopped the, like, they shut the podcast down before the episode even went live. And I was like, okay, now I'm getting, now it's now it's wasting my time. So you, I was a bummer. I was like, oh, not fun anymore. Like I, I have no problem jumping on. I had never said no to a single podcast before that. But then I was like, all right, now that's like, it happened like three times in like the same month.

And I was like, it's really weird coincidence. It's probably time I set up a barrier to make sure this doesn't happen again. . Yeah, definitely. But Unfortu.

Bryan McAnulty: So back to like the finances then. What would you say is maybe like the biggest mistakes that young men in the military would tend to make financially?

And then after that, how can they start to plan their future while they're still in the military?

David Pere: Yeah. Cars and probably chase and tail alcohol, you know, tattoos cars and motorcycles and, and, and going fast. Seemed to be and I'm guilty of that too. I mean, by the time I was 25, I'd owned five, maybe six vehicles Harley s 2000, a bunch of junkie sports cars, a truck, and a bunch of firearms.

Bunch of tattoos you know, all the things. But I, yeah, I would say there's this. Like a, it's not even a stigma, I think. I think what it is that the people who are attracted to the military, like the, the young, like 18 year old men who are generally attracted to the military, I'm not gonna say they're like the, you know, the alpha male, but they are generally the, like, they're the more adrenaline driven masculine, like your typical red blooded American male who likes to go fast and jump.

Things or climb things or, you know, that's the type of persona, right? Yeah. And so they join and then for the first time ever, they actually have some money and they, they don't, you know, when you first join, especially if you're single, you don't have a housing cost. You live in the barracks, you don't really have a food cost yet.

The chow hall, you don't have healthcare. You don't have like, everything's covered. So your paycheck, Literally just goes to your, you can spend it anywhere. You could literally blow it the day you get paid and you're still gonna have food. You're still, you know, so, so it's very easy to be like, whoa, wow, I can afford to buy.

A brand new, you know, Mustang five oh or whatever that thing is and a sports spike and a tattoo. And and so that's usually what happens which is unfortunate because it's like, man, you know time, like compound interest, you know, the eighth wonder of the world and time is the fastest and best tool for wealth building.

And so it's like, man, if you could. decide to hold off for five or six years for all your toys. You could buy much cooler toys because that first five years, if you could dedicate a little bit of effort to put some money aside and investing the right way, yeah. You'd make a, a real dent and some net worth.

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And that's the kind of thing that like, we're just not really taught yet.

David Pere: So Well, and the reality is, like even me, if someone had told me that when I was 18, I, who knows if I would've listened? True.

Bryan McAnulty: True. So then, then how can they start planning their future? Or what would you say that the people should consider while they're still in the military, other than just not spending all of it?

David Pere: Yeah. I mean, I think the first thing is at least they should contribute to the, the tsp, which is the thrift saving plan, which is our version of the 401k. The moment they join the military, like even at, like at bootcamp, they're gonna get the option to set it up and they should at. Contribute enough to get the 5% matching contribution.

So they should at least contribute 5%. I would consider or say that they should contribute more than that. And I would say they should do it off the bat. Right? Because if they contribute zero and they start receiving a full paycheck and then they decide to contribute, now it feels like a, it's, it's hard, right?

But if they say, Hey, I wanna contribute 20. From like the day they're in bootcamp, they've never received a paycheck before. Then they never noticed that that 20% is missing. And so they have no idea. And so I would say like if you could get to bootcamp and say 20% before you ever see a paycheck, then you're gonna get that 5% match.

So now 25% of your paycheck for the entire time you're in the military is gonna go straight into this tax advantaged account and compound forever and, and you just do that for like your first en. First few years, then you can stop and go invest elsewhere, and that thing will just ride until retirement.

Take care of you. . And if you, if you could do that, I think that's a huge first step. And then if you really wanted to crank that up a notch, then every time you got a pay raise, which in the militaries you're every year, your first four years, and then every other year after that, plus every promotion, but every time you got a pay raise, just increase that allocation 1%.

You're still getting, you probably get two, 3% pay raise every time you get a pay raise. So if you get a 3% pay raise and you increase your allocation 1%. You're still getting a pay raise, right? You just maybe a little bit less and your allocation increases, and before you know it, you're matching. You're maximizing your $20,000 every year in this thing, and by the time you actually retire, you've got millions of dollars in this tax advantage account.

And you did nothing. It was 100% hands off the entire time, other than maybe once a year. Tweaked a number once . Pretty sweet. So I love that because it's like the single most passive investment you can possibly make. Outside of that, I mean, surround yourself with people who are good with their money.

You know, don't blow your money on stupid depreciable assets. Learn basic finance stuff and you know, I'm not, definitely not gonna tell you not to enjoy life. Enjoy life, have fun, but just, you know, be smart about how you do it. Right? Like there's a, there is a way to get or achieve anything and everything that you want in life.

You just have to be creative and smart about how you do it.

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah. That's awesome. I like that you mentioned. Enjoy life because while some will make the mistake of blowing all their money, others will make the mistake of maybe being a little bit too cautious and, and waiting for a time that may never come instead of enjoying themselves along over it.

And yeah, as you said, you have to be creative, but there is a way that you can take advantage of all the resources available to you to kind of maximize that for yourself. I. Cool. So you have your online business from military to millionaire, and you're still investing in real estate. Is that correct?

David Pere: That is correct. So what would you say like house last week.

Bryan McAnulty: Okay, cool. What would you say is your main, like I guess like time expenditure and then like revenue, is it still like mainly the real estate or is it mainly like now the, the military to millionaire? Is that the focus.

David Pere: Oh, I would say currently time expenditure is the brand revenue fluctuates.

Earlier in the year, it was definitely real estate, heavy on the revenue side. Currently transitioning towards the brand more just because I, I was running a wholesaling company earlier this year, so, you know, find a deal off market buy at a super low price. And I, instead of doing the house split myself which I would do some of right, I would maybe say I get four or five deals a month.

I would take one or two of them to renovate myself, and then the other two or three, I would just give to another investor and I would mark it up a little bit. They still get a good deal. Homeowner still gets the price they asked for. I get the middle spread. It basically keeps my marketing costs covered so that I can continue to market.

So I was doing that till end of April and then I actually sold that company. So till April. We did 16 deals January through April, and that brought in, you know, probably, probably averaging $20,000 a month net from that. And then we kept four properties from those renovations and sold two of them. And then I've got, One more that I should be listing next week.

That'll be a flip that I'm gonna sell. So the revenue from that was great. Once I sold that, I've been kind of trying to figure out if I want to do renovations again, or I think where I'm really gonna start putting effort in is either buying larger deals with kind of my network or I'm interested in getting into development.

So maybe putting a team together to buy or build. Like apartments or like condo towers or office towers or, or something. Just like the idea of being involved in a deal that I can, you know, walk by with my kids someday and go, that's ours. Or we built that, or, you know, I had a part in that rather than, like, right now, a large portion of my portfolio is like, do I wanna watch my kid walk by this and go.

Watch out for the crack head, but we own that thing. It's don't go too close. You might get a disease, but it, it pays its own mortgage, you know? Cuz when I first started I didn't have any money, so I was having to buy in rough neighborhoods because in rougher neighborhoods, prices are really, and you can get really good deals because the prices are suppressed and the rents are higher per purchase price.

And so it makes more sense on a gross rent to expense ratio. You know, you buy in nice neighborhoods, it doesn't cash flow as well, and it takes more cash. So when you're first starting out, you go higher leverage and you go crummy your neighborhoods, which is great for building cash flow and getting financial freedom.

Once you get a little bit of money, you realize. , this headache is not worth it anymore. It's time to start selling off some of this portfolio and move to things that are actually fulfilling and and not stressful. And that's kind of the transition I'm trying to figure out as I so I'm focusing a little bit more heavily on the brand because it is very fulfilling.

It's more scalable as well. I don't know about more scalable, but. I'm, I'm a people person. I like networking. I like content. So for me, it fits my personality really well more so than dealing with the homeless people that wanna break into my property. So, you know, trying to, trying to navigate that.

Got it.

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah. So for like all of our Creator's and entrepreneurs listening to this or watching this right now we heard like you have this Facebook group with over 50,000. We also notice ourselves that you're pretty popular on YouTube as well. And I understand like some of that we're not really sure maybe where the massive growth started to happen like what caused it necessarily.

But like, something has to be working because you're not losing the members. They're, they're still growing. Right. So I guess like what else would you think? Might be helping you grow for others out there who want to be growing and get to a similar level that you're at. Like would you say maybe, is any of it partly due to like the positioning of just maybe there's not as many resources around for like, veterans?

Or like specifically like being in the niche of like saying like, well, I don't wanna just help people in real estate. I wanna help veterans get involved in real estate. Or do you think it's other things like, I'm not saying it's not your own skill and creativity and everything, so like other things that you're doing, I'm that talent that could be helping that to grow.

David Pere: Let's, let's be real. I'm, I'm not. Super attractive, and I'm not that talented and I definitely had no skills with a camera or writing or anything when I started. I failed an English class in high school and I have a Marine Corps education, so we can get all that out of the way. It is not anything that I'm doing that's that side of the world.

I I really think if you were to scale it all the way back and you were to ask the audience I think what it really boils down to, Is congruency, right? Like, so I'm consistent. So I, I mean if you look at my YouTube, I put up, I've got over 700 videos published. Wow. Are they the best? No. Not a single one of 'em has over 150,000 views, which according to the algorithm is like flipping impossible to have that many view videos.

And not one of 'em have gone over 150,000 views. Right? Like, I have more videos than Graham, Stephan and I don't have. I mean, I don't have, all of my videos combined have less views than like a single video of his kids, right. So, you know, the algorithm just hates me. But I'm consistent. So we got that.

I think it's the fact that I'm, I'm congruent, right? Like I, I align with the audience. I'm genuine. People know exactly what they're gonna get. I say what I mean. I'm even when I say I have no problem calling someone out, like if I see something that I don't like, I have no problem being like, Hey, this is wrong, and this person thinks this crap don't stink.

And it does, and here's why. And this is BS. And. Don't buy into this crap and, you know, whatever. They know that I'm not gonna sell something I don't believe in. They know that I'm not gonna push something that I wouldn't use myself. They know that I'll call people out who do exactly that. They know that I'll call someone out if I see them buying followers and I'll be like, oh, look at this guy.

You know, so, so there's like a, an. It's like a side of the coin there. That's just the fact that like my audience likes the fact that I'm kind of blunt and you know, it, it's a service member thing, right? I can, I can say things like that and they appreciate it, but I do think that there's definitely a side of it that's just the niche.

Just knowing that I speak to these people, everyone else is welcome. 80% of what I talk about is applicable to anybody. Mm-hmm. , right? Like, talk about 401ks. Anybody can have a 401k or an index fund or an ira. Great. But if I talk about the thrift savings plan, it's the same thing except just a different version, you know?

So, but I just, you know, I just niche down into that and, but I think that, Speaking to that audience and having that avatar in mind and just knowing that I'm just talking to a group of service members and having been a service member for 13 years and knowing how that, how to communicate with them just works out really well for me.

So I think if you're building a community, if you can know exactly who you're talking to and be yourself, I think one of the things that hurts people you know, I just told someone this today. He reached out to me asking me to mentor him on building a platform and he wants to build a platform showing people how to be an entrepreneur.

Cool. But he hasn't, he wants me to mentor him on being an entrepreneur so that he can show people how to be an entrepreneur cuz he hasn't ever done. Entrepreneurial. Mm-hmm. , and I was basically, I was like, Hey, pump the brakes. You need to learn how to be an entrepreneur before you can show that. So either you need to go do some entrepreneurial stuff.

And then you can do that later. Or you need to think through this and reframe it to where you're documenting your journey to learn how to be an entrepreneur, and you're documenting your entrepreneurial journey. And over time you can gradually transform that to where you are becoming the expert. But people try to frame themselves as an expert right off the bat, and it's just not genuine, right?

So you gotta. That genuine, like meet the audience where you are currently in your journey and then over time get to that, you know, expert status or whatever. And I think that's part of what helped me out was I. It was just like, I'm this guy, I'm learning this thing. I've bought two properties and I'm gonna do this.

You know? And then people got to watch along the way where it's like, and we bought a hotel and we bought an apartment and we bought an RV park and we bought, you know, and we bought 16 houses in the last four months and now we bought, you know, so it kind of just scaled and people saw that rather than be coming in with two properties under my belt going on a millionaire, which I was not so,

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah, I, I think that's great.

I think the, the congruency is a super, super important point. So you had not just the, the specific niche and not just the consistency, but that congruency and that, that authenticity and I think that really like that, that is the ingredient because a lot of people, like, as you're saying, like the, the person that came to you there, there's people who may just be worried.

It's not even just like a lack of skills. Maybe that doesn't align with what they're trying to. But it could just be like a, a concern that like of the kind of people that they want to attract or they're worried about offending somebody or something like that. Like honestly, like if, if your intentions are not to go out and like blatantly offend people then it doesn't really matter.

You know, it's better to just be yourself and do you want to do absolutely what you wanna do. And when you're genuine like that, it shows through and you'll attract like the audience that's meant for you anyway. Yet there's gonna be people that eventually are hat. You can't, you can't get the haters unless you, you grow big enough with your audience.

David Pere: So yeah, the congruency I think is oh and super important. I have so much fun with the haters too. . I've always viewed that as engagement. I get super petty, like people will comment, you know, stupid stuff and I will just. Just egg them on. My friends are always like, dude, what are you doing? You're wasting so much negative energy.

I'm like, do you see this smile? Does this look like negative energy? Like I am loving this. They are so mad on the other side of their phone, .

Bryan McAnulty: So what would you say are your future plans and goals? Or from military to millionaire?

David Pere: It's hard to say. Cuz I never expected it to grow into this, so I've been kind of struggling with that. Cause it's like, I didn't have a vision for it to get to this point. I had no idea what was gonna happen. I want my, I'm really trying to increase the value within my mastermind community to make it just a no brainer for people to stick there.

Looking to increase create an inner circle within the community, like a, a higher tier doing some more small, small group like higher ticket coaching, and then we're building out. Like a nationwide real estate brokerage. I already have like a nationwide like recommended professionals, team of agents and lenders, and we're just kind of trying to bring that all under the brand umbrella.

Really just for quality control, right? If I, if everything's kind of under one roof, then it's much easier to have the same processes and systems than it is when it's like, this guy's with Keller Williams and this guy's with the xp. This guy's with Calwell Banker. They're all great agents, but they all use way wildly different systems.

So trying to work through all that and flesh out what I wanna do with real estate and somewhere in all of that spend time with family and traveling. And then the, the ultimate vision is, is ultimately just to help as many service members and vets as possible achieve financial freedom so that they.

You know, the, the big stigma with, with veteran community is, is the, the veteran, you know, suicide and homelessness. And I think both can be solved by helping people, you know, get their personal finances in order, which is easy. And we can fix that very easily. We're doing it in the community every day. And the suicide piece is, is finding purpose.

Right? And a lot of veterans struggle with that because they. Leave the military and their identity was tied to being in the military. And so we can also help fix that by getting them in a community of service members and vets who are serious about, you know, becoming investors and helping develop their communities.

And so I think that through what we're doing within the community, we can solve both of those problems. I don't really know how that manifests itself yet, but that's the long term goal.

Bryan McAnulty: Awesome. Yeah, that sounds. So what is, I probably should have asked this earlier, but what is like the main product that you're selling then within military Millionaire?

David Pere: Uh probably the book the OBS Guide to Military Life. The, the, the crown jewel, I suppose is the, the membership, which is just a, you know, a mastermind group. So it's just like, The, you know, almost everything I do is just free cuz I just genuinely wanna help people. We do have a monthly membership that is the, the war Room mastermind group.

And it's more or less just the, like the private community where I bring in, you know, guest speakers and we bring in like members do presentations and there's like accountability groups and office hour calls and we have master classes and stuff like that. And really the only reason. You know that that's a paid, not the only reason at this point, because now there's like employees and stuff, but originally the only reason that that was a paid community is because I'd been in a lot of masterminds and every time I'd been in a free mastermind, it hadn't made it past 30 days without just crumbling.

And so with a little buy-in, people actually stuck around. So I was like, well, if we do. Small buy-in, maybe people will stick around and this will become a cool community and man, I'm glad I did that cuz the community's grown into, I mean, there's guys in there. $200,000 a month in wholesaling and, you know, $5 million a year in online businesses or, or multi-family investing, or there's a guy who just bought a 10 million Bronco restoration company and almost 10 Xed it in the last two years.

I mean, it's, it's kind of crazy some of the stuff that's going on in that little community. And I'm like, man, I never expected this to happen. So it's, it's cool.

Bryan McAnulty: All right. So I got one more question for you. If you could ask our audience anything, then if there's anything that you're curious about, anything that you want our audience to think about after what we just talked, what would you ask them?

David Pere: All right. You said introspective counted. So I'm gonna cheat and I'm just gonna reframe my favorite piece of advice that I've been giving lately. Okay. , and we're gonna use that as an introspective question. So every time somebody gives you advice, ask yourself, is this person who's giving me advice, or I guess the right way to word this is a question would be, does the person who just gave me that piece of advice, are they an expert in the field that they're giving me advice on?

And do they live the life that I want to live? And filter all of the advice you receive through that lens and be introspective in that way and you'll succeed. And, and I guess the clarification on what you're looking for with that answer is, the example that I've been giving lately is like, your parents love you.

They prob they probably do, I hope. And if not, just pretend they do. If you're an orphan, I'm sorry. But let's pretend your mom's not round a rousey. If you want to become an mma. You're probably gonna hire an MMA coach and not ask your mom for advice on how to become a professional MMA fire. But for some reason, when we wanna buy real estate, if your mom says no, you listen to her instead of listening to somebody who owns hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate.

So filter the advice through somebody who has done what you want to do.

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah, that's a great point. Great advice. All right, well David, thanks so much for coming on the show. Before we get going, where else can people find you?

David Pere: Yeah, if you wanna reach out to me directly, Instagram's best. I still respond to my dms there personally.

At for Military to Millionaire, if you wanna join the community really anywhere you look online, if I've done my, my job right from military to millionaire or military to millionaire, and I will pop up on every platform.

Bryan McAnulty: All right, awesome. Thanks so much, David.

David Pere: That obnoxious mustache or a big old beard

Bryan McAnulty: Cool. Thanks David.

David Pere: Thanks, brother.

Bryan McAnulty: If you enjoyed this interview and want the chance to ask questions to our guests live, tune in on Tuesdays when new episodes premiere on the Heights Platform Facebook page. To learn more about the show and get notified when new episodes release, check out The Creator's Adventure dot com.

Until then, keep learning and I'll see you in the next episode.