A Little Bit About Dan:

Dan is a father, husband, business consultant, and serial entrepreneur with a diverse portfolio of investments. He owns multiple restaurants and 7 Airbnb properties, as well as investing in real estate. With those titles entailed in his name, you may never have imagined that he described his first business as “do-or-die.” 

Along with his wife, they had their first business after college. They bought a dive bar, remodeled it, and worked on it the traditional way — doing all the work, being there in person all the time, and making sure everything was perfect. Realizing that wouldn’t work out well,  Dan figured out how to make money; that is to have a team and put systems in place.  Aside from thriving in business, the biggest consideration in setting his goal and building personal development is his family.  That’s very obvious in all his social media bios including descriptions of him as “father” and “husband.” For him, his family and personal development have brought him to where he is right now.

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TRANSCRIPTION:

JP McAvoy: Hi, and thanks for joining us on today’s show. We’ve got Dan Templin who shares some of his learnings on business and life and goal setting. Here’s my conversation with Dan. Dan, thanks so much for joining us here today. Happy to have you on the show, I guess from Kalamazoo, right? Tell us what’s going on in Michigan these days.

Dan Templin: Yes, sir. Thank you for having me. A lot of good things are going on in Kalamazoo. There’s a lot of building going on, and beautiful weather today.

JP McAvoy: That’s always nice to have. Now, what a great name, Kalamazoo. You must have heard some stories through the years like how does it get referenced? Or why do people favor or love Kalamazoo so much?

Dan Templin: Sure. So one of the sayings is, yes, there really is a Kalamazoo. There’s some popular cultural references, from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo. Kalamazoo is a great community, and it’s a community that really reinvest in itself. They are putting in a brand new stadium downtown, and that’s all personal money. It’s private money that’s going into that, which is unheard of. It’s like a $400 million investment. We have the Kalamazoo Promise which anybody that goes to Kalamazoo Public Schools has their college paid for, it was a groundbreaking program. And we’re seeing that duplicated throughout the country now.

JP McAvoy: That’s unbelievable to think anybody that goes or gets through will have their college paid for. Quite outstanding, obviously, Kalamazoo is well thought of as well. So thanks for joining us here from there today.

Dan Templin: Thank you for having me.

JP McAvoy: Yeah. Great to see it. I guess we’re connected. And immediately, I was drawn to some of your writings. And as you describe how coming out of college with your wife doing some thinking and trying to try to determine the best ways of doing things is gonna go forward, and you’ve clearly put some of that thinking into practice. How do you tackle the business dealings that you have on a day to day basis?

Dan Templin: Let me start with the beginning. In the very beginning when we started our first business, it really was Do or Die. We’re doing everything, my wife and I were working 80, 90 hours a week. We bought a dive bar and remodeled it right after college. And in that moment, it was literally, I have to do all the work. I have to make sure everything’s perfect. And I have to be there all the time. And as I kind of matured as a business owner, I realized that I’m not gonna be able to do this forever, and I need to figure out how to make money. Have a team in place and put systems in place. And that’s really when our professional lives really changed, and we were able to add more businesses and add more things to our portfolio.

JP McAvoy: You were able to build a team that allows you to leverage, I guess, your time as well.

Dan Templin: Absolutely. We have, right now, probably about 30 ish employees. And most of those are at the restaurant. But we do have employees for our other businesses as well, but those aren’t quite as labor intensive.

JP McAvoy: Do you still have the restaurant?

Dan Templin: We do. Yep, that was about 10 years ago that we started that, and we have a great General Manager in place. We use a company called Restaurant Systems Pro, which is basically a software where the General Manager just has to put in invoices, all the sales numbers. So basically, my only involvement there is a little bit of help on advertising. And then we have a weekly meeting. We go over the numbers for the week, and we talk about any challenges that they have. And it takes about 30 minutes a week of my time. And so I think that that really is where the value of a business comes. So instead of working in your job, you have your business working for you. I think that when you go to sell a business which I know you’re an expert on, that’s what really makes it valuable because people don’t want to buy a job, they want to buy a business.

JP McAvoy: It makes the business more valuable, as you say. Certainly, people looking to purchase, they’re not looking just to purchase a job. They know full well that they could get a job, or they could choose that route if they decide to do so. Yeah, for the most part they want to buy a business. They know that they’re going to be more valuable if they’re not required to be at the bins as well. You certainly have a manager, but obviously a lot of it’s dependent on, in your case for the restaurant, a good General Manager, a good person to help and able to help move the business forward for you, and allow you to focus on that business. But in addition to it, other businesses. I obviously do a lot on the real estate side as well, what other types of businesses are you involved with these days?

Dan Templin: So we have seven Airbnb’s, and I manage that a little bit. But we have a property manager that does most of the guests’ communications and all that. Then we have an automated crew for cleaning, and all that. And then we also have long term rentals, we have short term rentals, we have single family homes, we have a little bit of multifamily. And then we have a little bit of commercial space as well. And the big project that we’re working on right now is we actually bought into a franchise system for a laundromat, which is called WaveMAX. And so we are securing a location for that, and then we’re going to build that out and add another business to the mix.

JP McAvoy: Why did you decide on that particular business?

Dan Templin: So a restaurant is great, but it’s very labor intensive, and the margins are pretty low. Whereas on the laundromat, you have a lot less labor, you have higher margins. And it’s something where you can run it with four employees. So you only need to find four solid people. Whereas at a restaurant, you need 25 or more. So it really appealed to me because money is great, but I also want my freedom. If my family and I want to go away for a month, I want to be able to do that. And there’s a lot of businesses where you just can’t do that.

JP McAvoy: Yeah, it’s so important. It’s more important these days. People want to be able to do things remotely, be able to manage things remotely and know that things will continue on if they’re simply dialing in, or if they’re simply from time to time. What type of places do you guys go when you get away?

Dan Templin: We do a lot of different things. It’s kind of funny the extremes that we go to. Two trips ago, we went to the Waldorf Astoria and Cancun for a week, which is a very fancy nice hotel, top line, everything. And then just a couple of weeks ago for 11 days, we went back country camping with our travel trailer. So we really just like going out on adventures. And as long as we’re together as a family and we’re doing interesting, exciting things going through waterfalls, it’s really just about the experience bringing our kids along, and giving those experiences too.

JP McAvoy: Having those experiences as well. It’s so complimentary. We always talk of business, but business feeds personal as well. If you guys were, I mean, planning for trips coming up, then you say you do the full range. You got anything on the calendar right now?

Dan Templin: We do. Actually, coming up, we are going to do a three day race out in Utah. And that is through the, obviously, very large terrain, and it’s 10 miles the first day, 12 miles the second day, and then I think it’s 11 miles the third day. And so my wife is really into running and she’s kind of dragging me along.

JP McAvoy: Pretty decent distances. What type of terrain, Utah, can handle?

Dan Templin: It’s gonna be through huge elevation changes. So it’s definitely going to kick my butt, and I’m excited for it. And my wife always pushes me, and I appreciate that. Because sometimes, I need that kick.

JP McAvoy: That’s so good. So Dan, what motivates you guys? Clearly, you’ve built on the business side, you’ve been building a great personal life as well, sharing it with family and staying fit as well, by the sound of things. What motivates you? What drives you?

Dan Templin: Honestly, my family. I really am into personal development. Personal development has brought me to, it’s what sparked changing how I ran my businesses. It was probably about 10 years ago, I started listening to Grant Cardone, and then I found a bunch of other people who are in different specific niches. And it really, really makes a huge difference in my life. Sometimes, you get in a slump. Sometimes, you need someone to lift you up. And there’s a lot of people and a lot of resources out there for that.

JP McAvoy: Yeah. How do you typically consume them? I mean, podcasts like this, I imagine is one.

Dan Templin: Yes, I love podcasts. And a lot of YouTube videos. I go into mentorship courses, that is a great resource, and networking events. The last one I went to was a social media course by Ryan Panetta. I flew out to Vegas for that in person event, and it really is a way, it’s like a cheat code. If you really take what people who know what they’re talking about seriously and you implement it, you can get places 10 times faster.

JP McAvoy: Yeah. And you have to have the discipline to implement it. A lot of people shine next thing or they decide to go from one thing to the next without actually implementing. Clearly, you have. What are some of your secrets to actually putting the words into action?

Dan Templin: Goals and not giving up. A lot of people will try something and they don’t see results right away. And a lot of times, results can take one year, three years. Having that mindset that I am going to do this instead of I’m going to try to do this is very important. That’s a mantra that I use a lot especially when you feel like your backs are against the wall, or you feel like you’re just not gaining any traction. You just have to keep going through the process and make it a habit instead of something that you’re just trying to get done and out of the way. It has to be a long term commitment.

JP McAvoy: Sounds like a true entrepreneur. Countless times I talk to folks who’ve struggled through it. But one of the big things that I hear them say is they just don’t quit. A lot of times, it evolves with pivots to use the current vernacular, but it goes from one thing to another. But as long as you keep at it, it tends to be the thing that allows an entrepreneur after 99 failures to finally be successful in that 100 tries, if you will. You mentioned goals or goal setting, how do you set your goals?

Dan Templin: I set goals in a couple of different ways. One of the tools that I use is Andy Frisella has a book called The Power List. And that’s something for more like daily things, basically five things every single day that you’re going to accomplish, which doesn’t seem like a lot. But when you stack five things that you don’t finish your day until you win the day, and you stack day after day, after day, that really is how you make progress. And as far as goals, I tried to set six months, one year, and then long term goals. Where do I want to be in five years? That type of thing.

JP McAvoy: That’s fantastic to the extent that you’re willing to share. Can you go through the process? And maybe, what some of those goals are? For those people that are listening, Dan actually just turned up to look for, so one of the things that we get to is, do you typically write these down? You actually started rifling through, looking for the actual notes.

Dan Templin: I’ll give you an example. One of them was that we wanted to start another business that would throw off at least $100,000 a year, and we wanted to have that done in a year. And that’s speaking about the laundromat. So when we started that, that was probably about a year and a half ago, and I wanted to have that done in a year. Well, we came into a lot of complications with finding a great spot. The great thing about going into a franchise system is that you have a support of the franchise system, and they know what they’re doing. So you don’t have to figure it out from scratch. And they have very specific demographics on where your laundromat needs to go. And we really struggled for a long time looking and finding a spot that made sense, that was in the right spot, that was at the right price. And we finally do have one, and we’re about to get it under contract, which is great. But that just goes to show that, just because you write your goals down and you want something done in one year, if it’s not done in one year, you don’t give up. It’s been a year and a half, and we’re still going to complete it. Could we have moved a little faster? I’m sure. But you have to be flexible with your goals. It’s a construct, and it’s got to be fluid.

JP McAvoy: Yeah. A lot of things actually change as they evolve. It’s important to set a goal. You’re gonna have a much less chance of getting there and getting to where you’re actually, a lot of people don’t even sit down where they’re trying to get to. Goal setting is so key. Writing down is another that we hear from so many entrepreneurs.

Dan Templin: One of my favorite people to listen to is Jim Rohn. I don’t know if you’re familiar. He says in one of his speeches, if you have a massive ship and it’s leaving port, and there’s nobody driving the boat, what are the chances that it’s going to get to destination X? Almost zer.? If you have someone driving the boat and they know where they’re going, what are the chances it’s going to get there? 99.99. People take that for granted. You really do want to have a set destination of where you’re trying to get to in life.

JP McAvoy: Yeah. Let’s talk even more broadly about this. We talk about goal setting, but when you talk of getting somewhere in life, what are some of the things that, I guess, the things that the places you’re trying to get to or places to aspire to, and certainly would be on your list.

Dan Templin: It’s funny because one of my favorite things to do if I’m ever having a rough day, because I save all my goals that I’ve written down over the years and go back six, seven years, and see what my goals were then. And it’s almost laughable what I was trying to achieve then to where we are now. So I always try to think of that when I’m setting goals that maybe I’m thinking too small, and that’s a Grant Cardone thing, you need to 10X your goals, 10 times bigger than what you think you can achieve. So some of the goals I write down for the long term are pretty ridiculous. I want a private jet. That’s something that I’m nowhere close to, but that is definitely a long term goal and trying to manifest it. If you’re watching the video, you can see that I have a poster of a jet up on my wall. So there’s long term goals that almost feel silly to say out loud, but then they’re shorter term goals like the one that we just discussed that are definitely attainable, and they’re gonna happen soon.

JP McAvoy: They’re gonna because you just said that, because they’re gonna happen. Putting it out there for that jet or for whatever dollar figure. You hear so many times, we’ll have it written down there. Jim Carrey writes himself a check suggesting that he’ll be cashing that someday. These are real things. You put it out there, and it certainly sends a much better chance of happening if you do just that.

Dan Templin: I 100% believe that.

JP McAvoy:  Good to be talking to people that are doing these things, that are thinking these things and putting it into practice. Dan, if you want us to take through your typical day, I mean, you’ve obviously got some fitness, you have family, what time do you typically get up? What time do you get going?

Dan Templin: So typically, I work later in the day. So I’m not a super early riser. Typically, we get up around 8:30 in the morning, and our family dynamic actually is going to change a little bit. My son and my daughter, so it’d be kindergarten and second grade. There’s some issues with the school systems, and we’ve been talking about it for a while. And so we finally pulled the trigger, and we’re homeschooling our kids. And so my daily routine is going to shift a little bit starting next week, and we’re kind of playing a test week this week with that. But on typical Mondays, I try to do a lot of organic content on social media. And so I really focus on that on Mondays. And Tuesdays, I take care of our Airbnbs, basically. So there’s deferred maintenance that needs to be taken care of. We need to have a window company come out and replace the window that got cracked, or we need to go in. We use different software for Airbnb, and they’re pretty much set and forget it. But you need to go in, you need to monitor it, you need to look at the numbers. And Wednesdays are basically just for catching up on meetings, that type of thing. And now, a new goal that I have is to be on one podcast a week. And so I have scheduled time out for that. It’s hard to schedule time for it, so it’s like an imaginary chunk because everyone’s schedule is so different. But yeah, typically, I tried to only work about 40 hours a week. It’s very important to me to be with my family. When my daughter was born, I was still working a ton of hours, and I feel like I missed pretty much the first two years of her life. And I had an aha moment where I didn’t know where things were in the house. I didn’t know what she liked to eat at that point in her life. I just said, I have to stop this. So I really pumped the brakes, sat down and looked at my schedule, figured out who I could hire to do the things that I was doing that maybe weren’t the most important. And now my schedule really is just focused on taking care of what we have in place, and then planning into the future of where we’re going.

JP McAvoy: And that’s what should be the primary goal of the entrepreneur as opposed to somebody that’s just punching the clock who is just getting lots of people to do just that. Entrepreneurs need to create, they need to sit back and make sure that, the way we described before, they can chart the direction of that boat right to know where they’re trying to get to. We talked about time arising, time getting to it. And interesting that you say, there’s going to be a dynamic. There has been a lot of shifting dynamics since COVID. We have found people changing a lot of their routines, how late in the day does that typically go, what time do you usually get to sleep?

Dan Templin: So we put our kids to bed around 8:00 o’clock, 8:30. And then I do a little bit of work after that as well. And I typically go to bed around midnight or 1:00. So it’s funny when I see gurus on the internet saying you only need four hours sleep, you need five hours sleep. I need seven hours of sleep. If I don’t have seven hours of sleep, I do not feel great, and I don’t get as much done. So some people are superhuman, I am not.

JP McAvoy: This type of conversation we’re having now, I’ve asked many entrepreneurs, many successful ones, and I can tell you that they say to a person that they get the amount of sleep that they need. Because if you say these gurus will talk about what you can function on. But that’s not sustainable in many cases. And it’s more a case of ensuring that you know what you need to be at your maximum, and making sure that you’re getting what you need to be at your maximum. And everybody’s different in that regard, which is so interesting. You also have had a couple of aha moments. You mentioned your daughter, and that tends to create some of the shift as well. Have there been other aha moments in your life?

Dan Templin: Owning Airbnbs and a restaurant through COVID was definitely an aha moment. So the model at the restaurant used to be a large menu, and we are a dine-in restaurant during COVID. And we offered pizza, but it was not a focus at all. And during COVID, I sat down and looked, we couldn’t have customers in the building. People don’t really order burgers and fries to go a ton. And our restaurant is in a very small town. It’s a town of, literally like 2000 people. And then there’s two cities that are about 10 miles away in each direction, east and west from the town, and that’s where the majority of our business would come from. And so I said, you know what? let’s just go all out on pizza. Start delivering within a 15 mile radius, which is unheard of. Can’t use Uber Eats, can’t use DoorDash, we have to do it ourselves. And we actually exploded during COVID. We bought three pizza ovens, had those installed. We had news articles about us because of how large of a success it was. The new station came in and videotaped us putting out pizzas. And it really, I would have never thought to do that if it wasn’t for COVID. That was what I was talking about, when you’re backed into a corner, you have to figure out a solution, and you don’t give up. And if you keep fighting incline on the other end, it’s a lot better than where you started.

JP McAvoy: Absolutely. And that’s, again, such a telling example, what we’ve been describing through the show, looking at the issue, if it has to pivot or evolve, it does as an entrepreneur, not giving up, not taking no for an answer. And it’s interesting how a lot of the time you come out the other side of it much better. And a lot of people have thrived through COVID as well. The changes that occurred through COVID have allowed them to thrive. I’m familiar with the restaurant, that’s been the case as well. You’ve done things that have allowed you to capitalize on some of the natural opportunities that existed for you, even as you describe the situation, the location. We’re gonna have to deliver to a wider area than perhaps your regular franchise restaurant. But you are wise for moving outside. The typical in the box philosophy of pizza delivery is to say, okay, we can do it this way and grow the business that way. And you’ve done just that. It sounds like you’ve done it in other areas of your business, or you have your businesses as well. Obviously, Airbnb being an example of the real estate growth through the years. What do you think the future of the real estate market in the next five years is going to look like?

Dan Templin: Five years is a pretty long horizon. And it’s cyclical, and I think that real estate will overall continue to go up. So in five years, do I think real estate will be up from where it’s at right now? Absolutely. And I think in the spring, maybe rates will come down. And when that happens, there’s a huge pent up demand for people that feel stuck in their homes, and there’s not enough supply. And I think the housing market is really going to explode. And then after it explodes, there’s going to be a fallout. If within five years that will be completed, I don’t know. I wish I had a magic ball to look into to know exactly when all that would happen, because I would have that jet by now.

JP McAvoy: From these types of conversations, anecdotally trying to determine where things may go. We have the ability to actually create in that way, as well. If enough of us are minded and drive it in that fashion, it certainly will. You’re into real estate, obviously, anything else you’ve ever dabbled in, any crypto or any of the other alternative investments that are around?

Dan Templin: I bought one Bitcoin, I don’t know, 2022. I held it for like a week, and then I sold it. It made like, I don’t know, 800 bucks. But I just don’t know enough about it. I don’t have control over it, and I just didn’t feel comfortable holding it. So I really have dabbled very slightly in it. But that’s about it.

JP McAvoy: There’s just dabbling. Again, it’s the way I asked to get a general sense of how much people are participating. It’s quite incredible to think about the extent to which people are now participating throughout the world. And these new technologies and cryptocurrencies being one of them, and AI being the hot buzz today that everyone’s speaking of? Any thoughts? Have you looked at any of that? And do you know anything about it?

Dan Templin: I use quite a bit of AI, it helps me with it, it’s like a supplement so I can get more done faster. And eventually, I do think that, like ChatGPT. It is wonderful at writing, it is very helpful. We have a pool, and I can tell ChatGPT, my test strip, this is what everything on my test strip says. It tells me exactly what to do to my pool to rebalance it. That is a super useful tool. I used to have to drive down to the pool store, give them a sample of water. They would run it through their little machine, and then it would spit it out. Well, I can do the exact same thing right at home now. So that’s just a small example of how it makes things more efficient and a little bit quicker. But the human element is still the key. We wouldn’t be able to have a podcast between two AI’s that was meaningful. Just out of curiosity, people would watch it or listen to it. But there’s not really–

JP McAvoy: There’d be a subject of another whole podcast, different type of show, what does it mean to exist and that type of idea. You’re quite right. We’re hearing consistently that you still need the human element. AI is so powerful, and you just gave another example. Every time we do a show, it seems we get another example of the way someone’s using AI. And it’s the human input to get the output that can be used after the AI has generated something to be used. So just fascinating to hear that you had another example of how it is being used. I’m sure you’re exploring and continuing to stay up to date with what’s going on so that you can choose other things on a go-forward basis as well to participate with.

Dan Templin: Absolutely. And it’s very useful as a soundboard too. If I’m trying to brainstorm ideas about a YouTube video to do or about how to approach something, I can write out the parameters, give it a great prompt, and then it kicks out a bunch of ideas. And maybe the ideas are 80% of what I want. But then, I can take a couple of them, mash them together. And it is a great tool. I think that’s what we need to think of them as tools.

JP McAvoy: Yes, yes, absolutely. I think that’s what’s going on. These are very powerful tools, and I think they’ll continue to evolve as well, the way that we continue to use them. Dan, this has been a wonderful conversation, I appreciate you delving in. And we talked about goal setting and looking at different time periods. That one year and five years, pretty key for goal setting. And I think you’ve touched on, but if we were to have this conversation in five years, what’s happened between now and then for you and your family?

Dan Templin: Oh, man. So I really think that in five years, we want to have a stabilized portfolio. And there’s a point when you stop focusing so much on growing because you get to a point to have cashflow wise, what you need or want. And then you can focus on stabilizing the assets and paying down the debt. Because with real estate, you are taking on a lot of debt. You’re leveraging and you can continue to do that forever. But you can also get to a point where you’re like, okay, let’s just start stabilizing. Let’s keep what we have, and let’s work towards continuing to build our equity. So I think that five more years of growing our real estate portfolio, and then we’re going to be like, you know what? This is enough. Let’s just enjoy our life.

JP McAvoy: That sounds like a great way to be. And if you can do that within five years, all the more power to you, Dan. That’s fantastic. I appreciate the share on that as well. I like to end the shows with one thing, again, we’ve talked about the way you begin your day, that way you end your day, and the way you’ve been goal setting. You’ve clearly also done a lot of thinking and a lot of work on the personal development side of things as well. For the listeners, can you give us maybe one or maybe more tidbits of something that you’ve heard along the way? Something that’s really resonated with you that someone listening to the show here today may take with them through the rest of the day or the rest of the week. Something has really resonated for you that you think would be the type of thing that if someone listening here, possibly hearing, could be inspired or motivated by.

Dan Templin: Sure, absolutely. I think that one of the people that I enjoy watching and listening to the most was Jim Rohn. He talks about working on your business is great, and how you can make money. But working on yourself will make you extremely wealthy. And that you have to make sure that you’re not just working on growing your business every single day, which is important. You need to really focus on yourself, and the business thriving will come as a result of that.

JP McAvoy: That’s great. Making sure you’re focused on the right things first, and then obviously all good things will come from that. Dan, thanks so much for that tidbit. Thanks so much for sharing here today. I look forward to checking in if not a year, in five years to see where we’ve been since.

Dan Templin: Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.