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The Military Wallet podcast is a weekly podcast that was created to bring the latest news and information in military and veterans benefits. This is the place to come for up to date information on current benefits programs for active duty members, retirees, members of the Guard and Reserves, veterans, and their family members. We cover topics such as military pay & benefits, military retirement pensions, VA disability claims, VA Loans, GI Bill, Thrift Savings Plan, and much more.
Welcome to the Military Wallet.
I'm here with Dane Gibson.
Dane is an army veteran, a
realtor, a property manager,
and a host of a dose of Dane on YouTube.
That's it. So.
Welcome to the show, Dane.
Thank you for having me. I've
never been to Missouri before.
It was hotter when I landed
than I expected it to be,
but I'm extremely grateful
and glad to be here.
Wonderful. Yeah, it's a little
warm today, but that's okay.
You've got a great story and we're
going to talk a little bit about that,
about your journey from the military,
your transition out of the military,
some of the challenges that you had along
the way and the things you've learned
that you want to share with everybody.
So I'd love to dive in and I want you to
run with this and just share your story
and what you have for
the military community.
Okay. So I joined the
Army, active Duty Army.
I was 13 Papapa Field artillery, and I
joined in 2012, and I got out in 2015,
so three years of active duty. My
first duty station was South Korea,
camp Casey, South Korea. My next
two years after that were Fort Hood,
Texas, and we were in Korea.
We were what we call the QRF,
the Quick Reaction Force.
And so we were very tied to our post.
We had a lot of a higher
responsibility than most there,
which kind of affected the beginning
of my service and started as a
catalyst for a lot of things
that were to come in my life.
Texas was really good. A
little bit more freedom.
I always say that if I was going to live
anywhere in the US other than Virginia,
it would be Texas. I think it was
an hour south or north of Austin.
And have you ever been to
Austin, Texas? I have done.
Yeah.
It was amazing.
It is called the live music capital
of the world for a good reason.
So I fell in love with it.
I got out of the military.
I struggled with the transition.
I did a little bit of college.
I did a little bit of world travel.
I jumped around from job to job without
really knowing who I was or what I
wanted to do. Finally
landed in real estate,
which was something that my family's been
involved in since I was a little kid,
which I sort of flourished in,
but also hit some of the most
toughest times of my life.
In the middle of this real estate
business, I just hit two years sober.
So I was an functioning
alcoholic for a long time.
I dabbled in and became addicted to
a lot of things, behaviors, habits,
activities that are not good for humans.
And through finding or him
finding me, finding him,
Jesus,
he has completely radically changed
me and my life in a way that
has, it's changed everything,
including business,
including my self image,
including my self worth.
And so that's a high level overview
that I'd love to dive into.
So lots to unpack there, and
thank you for sharing your story.
So we were talking a little
bit about your time in Korea,
and you mentioned that because
you guys were essentially on call,
you couldn't travel and
explore the peninsula as
often as you wish you would've
been able to,
that you guys found other ways to make
your own entertainment and that kind of
normalized things for you a little bit.
Do you want to talk a little bit about
that and how you carried that with you
after you left Korea?
Yeah, absolutely. So I
do think that I, I'll,
I say I was an alcoholic and a lot of
people would actually say that I am an
alcoholic, but I think that
knowing Jesus the way that I do,
you are no longer, I'm no
longer now who I used to be.
So I always say that I was an alcoholic,
But I think that in Korea,
that's sort of where it began.
And as this combat MOS, as the QRF,
we could not travel and enjoy Korea
and explore Korea the way that a lot of
people could. We were
very tied to our post.
We slept above the motor pool.
So you lived at work, you slept
at work, you never left work.
So really the only way for us to
have fun it felt like at the time was
to drink. And so after
work on the weekends,
that's sort of what fun looked like.
And I do think that that
carried over into Texas,
that carried over into my life afterwards,
and it eventually got to the point
where it hit a couple of different rock
bottoms. But yeah, I do think that,
and that's something a lot of veterans
can probably relate to in a way.
Yeah, absolutely. And when you're
in a situation, you're young,
you're brand new to the
unit, you want to fit in,
you see the old guard and
they're drinking, and that
becomes your role models.
These are my sergeants, my NCOs,
these are the guys I look up to.
And when you have that pressure,
you want to be one of the guys.
It becomes normalized. This is what we do.
Well, and we were also,
and you understand this,
but we were also 19 in the
best shape of our lives.
We were free in a way. We
had never been free before.
We were making more money than we had
ever made before. Looking back on it,
you realize how much you weren't making.
But so all of this cocktail
of life led to like, well,
let's go out and have
fun and drink and enjoy.
And not everybody leaned on
it in a way that I think I
did and some of us did. I don't
think that's the military's story,
but it did end up being mine. So.
Yeah, I think most of us in the military
have been in units where drinking was
acceptable even, or even
it was the thing to do,
not just accepted, but this is what we do.
So I'm sorry that you took that with you,
but I'm glad that you've had that
opportunity to realize that you needed to
change.
So talk a little bit about when you
went to Texas and what came next for you
and then about that transition,
because you mentioned that was a lot
of soul searching for you and trying to
figure out what's next.
Yeah, so Korea is the first
year. Texas was the next two.
And how familiar are you with Fort Hood?
So I've driven by it many times.
I used be stationed out in
DiUS Air Force Base in Abilene,
so driving from Abilene to my
parents' home in the Houston area.
We would go right by or not,
I would go right by Fort Hood.
So I've been back and forth through
it. I'm familiar with the general area,
but not the base.
Itself. Are you familiar with the
nickname that they have for it?
Go ahead and share it with.
Us. They call it the black hole.
And there's a really good reason for that,
and I hope that I don't catch flack
for saying this, but it's one of,
I think it is the largest
military base in the us.
And so you throw all of those people
there into one spot and it's easy to get
lost in the shuffle and become
just another number or person.
And it's sort of a black hole in ways.
So that was the next duty
station for two years. Again,
we were young and lived at work.
There wasn't much of a balance there.
And I think when you get to the point
in the military where you're more of an
NCO and you can have off base housing,
you have a bit of a separation
from work in a very healthy way,
I think that separation wasn't there for
a lot of the junior enlisted. And so we
would still go out, we would still
have fun and we could explore more.
We could go to Austin and we can go
to San Antonio Riverwalk. But for me,
alcohol followed everywhere I
went. It was still part of the fun.
It was still something that I leaned
on in ways that were unhealthy.
And so I had a good time in the military.
I learned a lot of really good skills
and traits and qualities I carry
over into real estate
into the business world.
So there's a lot of good that came from
it, and there was some bad as well.
Yeah, no, that's fair.
I lived in the barracks for the first
few years of my military career,
and drinking was just part of the life.
It was accepted, it was normalized,
it was something that people did, but
that impacts everybody differently.
Some people can turn it on and off
and some people don't have that.
Some people don't have that.
And that was my problem.
I say that I didn't have an off
switch, and so if I did start to drink,
and it didn't start out this way,
but it ended up this way
that if I started to drink,
I would not stop until I blacked
out. And that caused problems.
Were you enlisted or commissioned?
So I've done both on an active duty.
I served for six and a half years.
I was enlisted, I got out, I
was out for eight and a half.
Then.
I joined the guard's. Right. And
then I did some time enlisted,
and then I commissioned eight years
ago. So I've done a little bit of both.
Understand both sides of the coin.
I did. Yeah.
When you were enlisted and living in
the barracks, what did you get out as?
What was your rank?
So when I left the barracks itself.
No, when you left the enlisted side
for that first six and a half years.
Staff sergeant, so E five for
those in the other branches.
Okay. All right. And what was your
experience like in the barracks? How did.
That Yeah, so it was good from the
sense that I was close to work.
I could go do whatever I needed
to do. Everything was on base.
I was stationed in England. So
at that time, moving off base,
you needed to be a certain
rank, and I didn't have that.
And it was just more convenient not
having to deal with paying for things in
pounds and having a lease in
another country and all of that.
Barracks made the most sense.
It made the most sense,
and that's all I was legally
able to do by their permission.
But in terms of drinking and partying,
the parties would start on Thursday
and they would end on Sunday usually.
But then there's other stuff during the
week if somebody's got it going away or
random Tuesday, whatever. I
mean, you're just kind of there.
So it was sort of part
of the culture still. It.
Absolutely was. And then drinking
age, because we were in England,
it's law of the land. So as long
as you were, I think drinking age,
there might be 16.
16.
Yeah. I think for us, we were all
18 and up, so we could all drink,
we could go to the drink on base, we
could buy stuff at BX to go to pubs.
I loved Korea as a duty station,
and there's so much good to say about
Korea, the food, the culture, the people,
the land, all of it, the
traditions, the history.
But I am in love with
England or Europe in general.
And so I mean that's a pretty
good duty station as well.
It was great for a first
assignment, loved it.
And then I came back to the States.
That's when I moved off base,
got an apartment, but still I was in
operations. I was aircraft maintenance.
I did not know.
Tied to operations, which means we had
high ops tempo, we were deployed a lot.
So work hard, play hard
is the military way.
Yes, it is. Yeah.
So I'm familiar with a lot of that. So
after Texas, you left Fort Hood,
and so you got family back east.
Did you immediately move back there?
You mentioned college and travel.
Yeah, I did. And I'm
piecing it all together.
So I left the service Fort Hood, and
then I immediately went back home,
lived with my parents. So
I was, man, I got on 2015,
so I was approximately 23 at this time.
And so still a child in many
ways. And went back home,
lived with a family. I had two buddies
that ETS at the exact same time as me,
and they were going to college in Texas.
They were trying to go to the local
community college called Blin Community
College. And it feeds into Texas a and m.
So they had the goal of
going to Texas a and m.
I ended up leaving Virginia and
going to live with them at College
Station in Texas and did
college for a little while.
And man, if I thought that I
drank a lot in the military,
it turns out there's an opportunity
to drink even more in college.
And so I actually found myself in
one of the lowest points of my life
in College Station, Texas during college.
And it was a night after drinking and
it was the dark stuff.
And so everybody has kind of those
quirks where the different colored
liquor affects you differently.
If I touch the dark stuff,
then it did dark stuff
to me, no pun intended.
But I woke up the next morning and
I was just so ill, I was so sick,
I was so hungover, I couldn't even keep
water down. And mentally, physically,
I was in one of the
lowest places of my life.
And the thought came to me.
I mean, this is miserable.
I cannot keep doing this.
And one of the best options right
now would probably just be to end it.
And so I found myself with my
gun in my hand and was thinking
about killing myself and just
sat there thinking about it
for five, 10 minutes,
and then found myself terrified
because you don't want to do that.
So I
use water as a tool to
pause and not get emotional
bear with me.
So I found myself sitting there for
five or 10 minutes thinking about that,
realized that, I mean,
that's not the move.
And so called the police,
called 9 1 1 on myself and told 'em
I was thinking of hurting myself.
So they came and got me, took me
to the hospital, spent days there,
took the shoe laces, took
the belt, all of that stuff.
And as I came out and they hydrated me.
And so as I kind of came out of that,
I was way better mentally,
but just kind of realized that
life was, I was spiraling.
So left college,
went back home to Virginia
and hopped around from
job to job. I mean, I can keep
expanding on that. I did end up
traveling to Europe. I did
walk the Camino de, I mean,
I kind of got to the point where I was
like, I need to get away from everything.
And so I ended up walking the
Camino Santiago for 40 days and
then came back, tried to
find a way to produce money,
started at UPS.
Turns out those trucks really needed
to be loaded early in the mornings.
And waking up at 3:00 AM is something
that'll also affect your mental,
I think mental health has become
so important to me that I've
realized that I will not sacrifice
it for anything. No amount of money,
no amount of anything worldly is worth
giving up your mental health for.
So am I rambling too much?
No, no, you're fine. No, thank
you for sharing that though.
I know it's not an easy story to tell.
I think most of us military members
were not have been touched at some point
by suicide. I believe that. So that
we know somebody in our family,
somebody we went to school
with or served with,
it is something that it
needs to be talked about.
The less stigma there is around it,
the more likely people are to make
that phone call. And I'm glad you did.
I'm getting emotional too
because I know several people
who've taken their lives and
you always sit back and wonder,
what could I have done?
And the fact that you are sitting here
is a testament that there is something on
the other side of that darkness.
So thank you for sharing.
That. Yeah, I think it's a
big thing. It's very real. And
I mentioned it earlier, I think it
might be corny, but I think it's true.
I think the devil dines on
what we keep in the dark.
And so by keeping something in the dark,
you're doing yourself and
the world a disservice.
And so suicide is a very real
thing. It affects a lot of people,
especially military
members, service members.
And so I think we need to talk
about it and normalize it more.
And so thank you for saying that.
And I'm sorry for whatever
your experiences are with it.
I'm sorry that you've
had to go through that.
No.
It's a reality that many people face and
we hope that fewer people have to deal
with that going forward.
Sure.
So you mentioned going
on the Camino Santiago,
which I've heard is an amazing experience.
I hope it was enlightening for you.
In many ways. Good.
So after that, I take it you moved
back to Virginia at that point.
Lived at home permanently
with the folks. Yeah. Good.
Do you want to talk a little
bit about that journey?
I think there gets to be a point in every
man's life when you are too old to be
living at home.
That's fair.
And I probably stayed a little
bit longer than I should have.
I ended up, I bought my first home,
and I'm going to bring it full
circle back to answer your question.
So I bought my first
home at the age of 30.
And so I lived with my folks
pretty much until the age of 30.
So from about 24 to 30 was living at
home relatively full time.
And so in that six years,
the beginning of the six
years, I didn't know how,
and this is something a lot of
military members can relate to.
How does field artillery translate
to the civilian world? I mean,
what am I supposed to do
with that experience? I mean,
the answer was basically nothing. And
so, I mean, you had a lot of discipline,
you had a lot of integrity and work ethic
and a lot of good that came from it,
but not a lot of direct skills to help.
So I literally had to just go out into
the world and find what
I'm good at. And for me,
it ended up being interacting with people,
which kind of translated into a
sales world. So I did start at UPS,
hated the early mornings,
and then ended up at a local mom and
pop suit shop or a men's clothing
store. So I sold suits.
I would sell clothes like you
and I are wearing right now.
Started tailoring a little bit,
but also found that I was really,
really good at selling things.
And here's the thing is I
don't think that selling,
I think if I'm good at,
if I'm a good salesperson,
I think that that can come with
a negative connotation as well.
I'm not getting you to buy
something that you don't want,
but I think it's helping you understand
what you do want and then making
you happy. So I was
good at selling clothes.
I figured if I was going to make
a commission on selling clothes,
I might as well make a commission on
what the most expensive thing that people
typically buy being a house.
So I did dive into real estate.
Having the family ties there probably
gives you that familiarity and something
you can latch onto and kind of have
a little closer tie to your family as
well.
It's true. Yeah. So my
family's a local builder,
and my dad's been building
homes since 89 or 90.
And so I've always been
around the job site.
I swept them during the
summers in between high school
and so joined or started my own
little real estate business in
2018. And so what is
that? About seven years.
And it was tough. I mean, there's a
lot of advice I could give. I mean,
it's a good viable career path
for veterans and for service
members.
You expect to make $0 for
the first six to 12 months.
But I ended up thriving in real estate,
which I think was a big part of maybe
ended up connecting with you guys in a
way.
That's wonderful. In terms of
your transition from the military,
you mentioned the struggles you had
trying to figure out how to translate your
military experience to
the civilian experience.
And that is a huge thing that I don't
want to say every veteran struggles with,
but many, many.
Do. I'm sure most probably do.
Well, for me, I was an aircraft
maintainer, so I turned
wrenches, which is fine.
It's a good job. The planes have to fly.
And you could do that on a civilian
sector. I mean, there are certifications.
You can go work at any airport or
translate that into any kind of
mechanical work. So if you could fix
an airplane, you can go fix a car.
You have to learn the differences.
That.
And get certifications. But if you
can fix one, you can fix the other.
But it's not what I want it to do. It's
different when you're wearing a uniform.
If you could go shoot field
artillery as a civilian.
I might do that, actually.
That might.
Be fine, but I get the point.
So for a lot of people, they want to do
something different. Maybe the military,
they signed up for a career and maybe
the recruiter talked 'em into it,
or that's all they had. When they went
to meps, there weren't a lot of options.
That's true. So they've got that,
but now they're ready to change.
And doing that transition into
something different can be challenging,
especially when you don't
know what you want to do.
And it takes a lot of self
exploration and understanding,
and not to talk about it too much,
but that was kind of what the
Camino de Santiago was for me.
Who are you and what do you want?
And so take 40 days where you are with
nobody else and you're on your own.
You have to do a lot of self analyzation.
So you're a good example,
but you did not use your direct
skillset after you got out of the
military.
No, I know you didn't. But I
have a lot of friends who didn't,
a lot of guys that I served with,
and some went directly into it or they
went into a contract here in consulting
job where it was very similar. I
actually started off kind of similar.
I worked for a contractor,
a government contractor.
Actually I did that for about two.
Years. No kidding.
But it was more of a white collar.
It was analysis of why the aircraft were
needing certain types of maintenance.
So I did use a little bit of
it, but in a different way.
It took me a long time to find that
job. I was unemployed for six months.
So the mental aspects of the
transition is challenging.
My situation was unemployed unemployment
for a few months, but not just that.
It's the struggle of you're
going a hundred miles an hour,
maybe you're an NCO or an
officer, and you're in charge of,
it could be five people,
it could be an officer in charge of an
entire wing with 500 or a thousand people
or a battalion commander
or something like that.
And all of a sudden your responsibilities
are gone and your sense of purpose and
your mission.
It's completely shifted.
It's shifted.
So the big thing is to find
something that you don't
have your identity wrapped
into your military service,
but it's hard to
understand what that means.
Especially when you're in it.
Until you step away from it.
Sense of identity, man, I
think sense of identity.
If you know who you are and
you're rooted in the right things,
then life is just better
in every single aspect.
But finding your sense of
identity is probably life mission
number one for most people. But how
do you do six months of unemployment?
I mean, do you have a big bank
account? Do you file for unemployment?
I would say all of the above,
but big is relative, right?
Okay.
So during my six years on active duty,
I had a one year duty assignment where
I traveled around the world and I did
five deployments. Now these
are air force deployments,
not army deployments of a year. They
were more like three, four months.
But when you go into those
tax exempt zones five times,
you're saving a lot of money. So I
had a solid nest egg when I separated,
and I had unemployment benefits for that
time. So that helped bridge that gap.
So financially I was fine. I
was taking care of everything.
I had a very small car payment. That's.
It. Well, it's a lived beneath your
means too, which is a huge lesson.
So the financial aspects
that I didn't struggle with,
I struggled with the sense of
identity. What is my purpose?
What am I going to accomplish? What's
next for me? And to make it easier,
I traveled halfway across the
country and got married right away.
And how is that going?
Well, no, it's great
now. And that was fine.
But that first conversation
with your in-laws was like, hi,
I'm going to marry your
daughter. I'm unemployed.
They were very gracious and
welcoming into their family.
You couldn't ask for anything better.
That's.
Awesome.
But it's challenging when you're trying
to figure those things out and you're
like, you get engaged and yeah,
I'm going to get married
and I don't have a job yet.
I promise I'll have a job.
I promise I'll figure
out how to support us.
But it went well, but it wasn't easy.
And I think my story is
unique only that it's mine.
But every veteran has their transition.
Story.
Or they will have their transition story.
I think the good point
is that every veteran
has transitioned, and it is not easy
for probably the majority of them.
There's my problem is that there's a
lot of resources out there that veterans
just don't know about.
And so I think that that's
an untapped resource,
which in an unfortunate way,
but all veterans do struggle with
transition in one way, shape, or form.
And I think, but your self-identity
is a huge part of that transition.
It is. Yeah. I agree a hundred
percent. And as you mentioned,
that should be finding your self identity
should be life priority number one.
I'm helping. So I don't know
a little bit of a plug here.
I just joined up with a local to, they're
actually, I think they're nationwide,
still small, still growing a
nonprofit called The Safe Project.
Are you familiar with that?
I'm not.
It stopped the addiction Fatality epidemic
started from military
family whose son passed away
from an addiction
overdose or drug overdose.
And now they've started this nonprofit
with the idea of that we need this to not
happen to veterans anymore.
But the biggest thing that
veterans struggle with from
this nonprofit's point of
view is the transition from
military to civilian life.
And so how can we give
them these resources?
How can we help them with this transition
and realize that you're not coming out
of the military and starting
from ground up. I mean,
you have so much that you're
already building on top of that.
You're starting from a
foundation versus ground zero.
So I think it's an important
thing for veterans to realize.
It sounds like a greater organization's
good. Thank you for sharing that.
So as you're going through your situation,
your transition, recognizing that
you have a problem with addiction,
can you talk a little bit about maybe
when you hit rock bottom and you realize I
need to change, I need to kick
this addiction once for all,
and maybe about how that transition went.
Did real estate play a part of that, or
where were you in your personal life?
Just kind of tell that story a little bit.
So I started real estate in 2018,
and I hit rock bottom in about,
I think 21 or 22, the fall of 21.
And this is COVID, and it was a
very dark time for a lot of people.
Couldn't leave the house,
couldn't do anything.
And you already saw what I
was doing for fun in Korea.
So you can only imagine what I
was doing for fun during COVID,
but I will share this, that alcohol
was a huge part of my addiction,
but I also found myself
abusing prescription medicines
and addicted to that
and addicted to, I mean,
I dunno if this is taboo or not,
but even just pornography, I mean,
there were so many band-aids
that I was slapping on my life,
and it turns out that
that didn't fix anything.
It was a quick fix that
didn't solve the root issue.
So I told you that my problems,
I didn't have an off switch.
And my thing was that I would,
so I told you about wanting to
thinking, having suicidal
thoughts back in college.
That was low point number one.
Low point number two was I would
always find myself passed out on my
kitchen floor. And so if I
started drinking in the morning,
I wouldn't stop till I blacked out.
I would always wake up at some
point on the kitchen floor.
And I got to one point where,
and I was still very functioning,
I was still doing my real estate business.
I was growing. I was getting to work,
I was doing well. I was
actually thriving in some ways,
yet there was this dark part of my
life that I just couldn't get ahold of.
And I would go to morning workouts
and still maintained a pretty
consistent good lifestyle.
But one night I woke up on
my kitchen floor completely
hungover, completely ill,
very similar to back in
college where I did want to
kill myself.
And I on my kitchen floor
for the first time in 15
years, said, I can't do this
anymore. I literally cannot.
I can't stop. And so I
said, God, if you're there,
I'm going to try not to get emotional.
If you're real, I need you now.
What a trick. And
he showed up.
And I didn't see anybody
physically standing there.
Nobody can look on the
face of God and live.
But there was no doubt in my mind that
there was somebody in that room with
me
who loved me and wanted
more for me. And he said,
excuse me.
He said, son, there's a different
way of doing things now.
And so let me take care
of you and let me show you
a new way of doing things. And from there,
I went to the morning
workout the next day,
and I broke down in tears with a good
buddy of mine who led the workouts,
who was a very devout Christian.
And I told him, I said,
I encountered Jesus and
I don't know what to do.
Everything's changed from
there. I started to shake,
I call it shedding old skin. You
don't shed old skin overnight.
You don't wake up the next morning,
be a brand new man. You've got 15,
20 years of bad habits
that you have to shake.
But that was low point
and best point of my life,
I guess you could say it. And from there,
everything started to change
radically. I'm happy to dive into that.
It changed business, it changed me.
It changed my form of self-identity.
It changed finances. I mean,
just you can unpack an hour's worth
of stuff just from there. That's.
Amazing, testimonial. Thank you for
sharing that. I know it's not easy
to recount that, but at the same time,
I can see how much it's
impacted your life,
and I hope that it does impact somebody
else to understand that there is
something else. Whatever we're
facing, whatever demons we may have,
whatever addictions we may have, the
struggles we may have, we're not alone.
And whether you find that solace
in a friend, a family member,
whether you find it in your
faith, it is there for us.
And I thank you for sharing that.
So what did that look like
for you? What was that change?
Obviously it's not
overnight as you mentioned,
but can you walk us through a little
bit of what that looked like for you?
Yeah, and I mean there's so much, it's
to figure out the best way to say it,
but it did impact my life.
It did impact business. So
I got baptized in the fall of 22.
And so it was shortly before the fall
of 22 where I had the moment that
I just explained to you.
And so shortly after and then I
encounter in my kitchen, I mean,
I changed everything. I started pursuing
him, I started reading the Bible,
I started going to church.
I just needed to know more.
And so in that pursuit,
I found I got to the place where
I was viewing things differently.
The things that
had luster of this world no
longer were quite as shiny anymore
compared to him. And so I found
myself trying to quit alcohol,
but still couldn't. I think
in the world of real estate,
veterans beware that alcohol can
still be a big part of the real estate
world,
happy hours networking.
And so I found that that still surrounded
me, yet I didn't want it anymore. It
wasn't as appealing to me anymore.
And so eventually I got to
the point where I think he,
for lack of a better word, spoke to me
and said, Dana, I have so much for you.
I have so much joy and laughter,
and I have such a good life
that you will never see if you
continue to go down this path.
And it was at that moment,
August 10th, 2022,
where that was the last day I ever
drank alcohol. So August 11th, 2020,
excuse me, 20, 23, August. So it took
me, and this is a long way of saying,
it took me about a year
from baptism to stopping
alcohol. And so it can take a long
time to shed these old bad habits,
but so much has changed. If we were to
tie it into the world of real estate,
I got a good story for you kind of.
So I
was doing very well in the world of
real estate. The first year I made $0.
Second year I made $30,000,
and then the third year I made
a hundred thousand dollars.
And so for someone in their mid
twenties, it was doing decent,
then I started following God and
I found that all of my money,
all of my revenue that I've been making,
all of my efforts stopped
producing anything.
And so I got to the point where I was
three months away from not being able
to pay my mortgage and all of these
activities that had got me
doing well in real estate,
all of the dialing for dollars,
all of the open houses,
all of the asking for referrals,
everything I was doing to get to making
a hundred thousand dollars stopped
producing money to the point where I was
not going to be able to pay my mortgage
in three years.
And I said, God, I'm following you now.
Isn't life supposed to be
better? I supposed to make
more money now that you're,
and so I got to that point where three
months away from not being able to pay a
mortgage,
and I never wore out the
floor on my bedroom more,
I never prayed more. I never leaned
on him more. And I never said, well,
clearly I cannot do this
on my own, so help me.
And night after night,
and then I got to the point
where he gave me a deal and I
got a paycheck, and then
he gave me one more.
And the lesson in all of this was, Dane,
you used to build your
identity on how much you made,
what your bank account looked like,
and look how quickly that can crumble.
If that's how you base your
identity or your self-worth,
then you're not on a firm foundation.
And so then he showed me that it's not
the money that you need, but it's me.
And so each little deal, each paycheck,
each morsel of food comes
directly from the father.
So there's just a million
different ways life has changed.
And I don't even remember your
original question at this point.
Sometimes the question doesn't
matter. It's the story that matters.
And your story has been very powerful,
and I appreciate that story and sharing
there because we've been talking
multiple times about
how we tie our identity.
Self identity.
Self identity, and whether you're
tying it to something that's external
to the military or to your job or in
this case, how much money you're earning,
there is something more.
And we need to find that,
whether that comes through faith
or internally or something else.
But it needs to be something
that's intrinsic to us.
And you need to be rooted in
it, and it needs to be firm.
And so not only was I basing
myself worth off of income
earned bank account, but
also how hard I worked.
And what I found was that especially
in the world of real estate,
there's always somebody who works harder.
And so if that's how you get your value,
well now you're less valuable than
that person and that doesn't add up.
And so I think life can try to convince
you that your self-worth is based on a
lot of worldly things, and I think
we all need more than that. Yeah.
Very powerful.
So you reached that point and you found
that by putting your faith in God,
you were able to kind of recalibrate,
have a new vector a hundred percent.
And that's been very powerful for you.
Where do you find yourself now and
how have things changed for you?
Well, yeah, they have shifted drastically.
I also focus, my focus has
shifted as well, less on business,
more on him. And so that doesn't change.
So I think a good way of putting it,
what is on the highest hill in your life?
And I think the answer is him. That
doesn't mean that business, career,
family, friends, exercise, those
all have a place on the hill.
They just shouldn't be your highest point.
But so business is something
that has come down a notch.
And I've even been doing
earning less in some ways
than before I started following God.
But my happiness and sustainability
is astronomically higher,
and I've seen him open up
doors and opportunities to
real estate ventures in
a way that's sustainable.
Property management is a good one.
So I fought property management for
tooth and nail for the first five years
of all the work that it would take
and a lot of work for a little bit of
money, which is in some ways true.
But then I started following him,
and a door opened up for it in a way
that was just unexplainably from him.
And so I said yes to property
management. And so now,
and throughout the tumultuous real
estate market of 2022, or excuse me,
of 2020 and all that,
property management has offered
a way of sustainability.
You know what you're going to make each
month without having to sell a home,
and then you sell 2, 3, 4, 5 homes
and it's icing on top of the cake.
So anyways, I approach,
I do not work.
This is something that I think Europeans
and Americans get a little different
sometimes, and you may.
Work to live, live to work.
And so I no longer live to work,
but I do work in order to live.
And so that's expanded into
a lot of ways in real estate.
And we can go into that if you
think it's a good time for it.
And I agree with you,
the European way of life,
and I noticed that when I was stationed
in England and the times I've traveled
over there, it's very much
a Americans live to work,
Europeans work to live.
Correct.
To afford taking their
holidays and their vacations.
And it's interesting how much community
you see in a lot of European places
where people are just out and about and.
Enjoying.
Spending time with each other. And
it's good. It is very refreshing,
and I loved just being in Europe
and being around that very much So.
Yeah.
This is a good time to talk a little bit
about your transition into real estate.
I think there's a lot of
opportunity for veterans,
and especially what I keyed in
on when you're talking about
property management. And I'm
thinking about man, SOPs,
especially Army and Air Force.
You have your checklists,
this is how we do things.
And I know property management is very
much checklist oriented when you're
talking about moving people in, moving
them out the inspections. That's true.
Who to call.
And I love to hear how
your military training
helped you. Obviously you
have some background in real
estate with your family,
but.
A little bit.
Did you find other things
with your military training
that helped you with this
career change?
Yes. And so what I will say,
and just so you know what I do,
and I'll bring it full
circle back to your question,
in the world of real estate,
I help buyers and sellers,
friends, family referrals. I
also do property management.
And so manage about 30 rental properties
for a local company in that portfolio
is growing. And then my
family's a small local builder,
so we purchase land, develop
it, build from the ground up.
And so it's a lot of different
eggs and different baskets.
But I think the military, it's a
very tough business to get into.
And I think the military service greatly
helped be able to pull
yourself up from your
bootstraps or your laces and
start from a business from
nothing. And so, I mean,
who's better equipped to
tough something out than a
military veteran? Not many people.
And so I think that the discipline,
the work ethic, the
early mornings, the, Hey,
I've got to go and I cannot
stop until I succeed.
Mentality is a huge part of
it. So I think that military,
it would be a very good career path
for a lot of military members if you're
prepared to not make a lot of money to
give up your weekends and your holidays
to sacrifice a lot to build all of that.
Yeah, sometimes it does
take that sacrifice.
I'm sure you can understand. Yeah.
Yeah. I had a similar experience of,
mine was like digital real estate.
I started websites and there are some
correlations there where you have
managing properties or
having a rental income,
maybe you have some rental properties.
I had websites that earned money,
but it was the same thing. I started off,
made nothing for the first almost
year and then slowly made money there.
It is the same correlation.
It's why you have a lot of veterans who
are going to go out and start businesses
or buy into a franchise.
And many veterans are very successful
with that because of all those strengths
that you mentioned that
that won't give up attitude.
I have my eye on the
target, this is my mission.
Not.
Going to succeed.
Going to stop the ability to just
figure things out because how
often do you go in the field with
a mission, but no clear direction?
That's true. And yeah, you have to be
quick on your feet. You have to adapt.
That's problem solving. Problem solving.
And so I don't know if you call those
soft skills or hard skills, but I mean,
I do think that the military sets us
up in a lot of really good ways to
tackle life. And so
whatever you choose to do,
I do think that veterans are well
set up to do it. Unfortunately,
a lot of 'em don't see it that way.
So yeah, I don't know if you consider,
I guess hard skills would
be turning the wrench.
I think the soft skills are more of
the internal discipline and work.
Ethic. Yeah.
It's also the talking to people is
being able to have those conversations,
find out what their needs
are. When you're in sales,
there's a lot of soft skills in.
Sales. Totally. Yeah.
I mean to the way I would sell or cater
to or help person number one is completely
different than how I'd help person
number two, and it's actually like
leadership styles in the military.
I think that if you are the same type
of leader for all of your soldiers,
you're going to not lead well
for at least some of them.
I think you have to kind of cater your
leadership style to the individual to
meet them where they're at instead of
forcing them to meet you where you are at.
And so soft skills, navigating
people, social situations, I mean,
that's important in life. Anywhere a.
Hundred percent.
One of the other things that struck me
about your journey and your path and
where you are now in real estate,
you've got your pot on
several different fires.
And I love that from the perspective
of having multiple streams of income.
And you'll hear that a
lot from a lot of gurus.
You just need to have passive income
or you need to have multiple streams of
income. But as it pertains to real estate,
you've got your realtor or you're
making commissions on sales,
or if somebody buys through you, you've
also got the property management.
So there's a lot of different ways
where you can have a little bit of money
coming in over here and
a little over there.
And I find that to be
very helpful in my life.
I've done the same thing with having
web properties where I've done some
consulting, I've done some small business
type things. So for me that works.
But some people from the military,
they prefer the I want that steady,
here's my nine to five. No right or
wrong, just different ways to look at it.
And it's good to understand that there
are different options out there where you
don't need to get that
nine to five salary job.
You can be that entrepreneur or you
can be that person in real estate who's
going out there and having your pot on
different fires and having different
streams of income a lot of ways to do it.
And we've only talked about
a few of 'em. And so I mean,
the ones that we just talked about
are more of the traditional methods.
But I mean, there's also wholesaling.
There's also fixing and flipping.
There's also, you could become a class
A contractor and do renovate. I mean,
real estate offers a lot of
opportunity for a lot of people,
and it might be tough to get into,
but you also get to a point where the
business starts taking care of itself.
And you can go from having
to wear a suit every day to
having long hair and carrying a
little bit less than the beginning.
There's.
A lot of good opportunity.
Short-term rentals is another one. And
then some people will do kind of the.
It's true.
Syndications where they're
letting somebody else do
the property management and
find the investment. They're just putting
a little cash into it and they get.
Yeah, it's nice.
Hopefully if all goes well,
they can get cashflow out of it or
either upon an exit or as part of their
dividends, that kind of thing. So tons
of ways to make money in real estate
does success.
Look like to you.
And.
So I heard it somewhere, this
is not my original thought.
I was probably scrolling on YouTube
shorts, but it resonated with me.
And so the way that I would
define success now is the man
or woman that wakes up,
well, actually, okay,
yes.
The man that wakes up in the morning and
has the least amount of pressure on his
chest life can create a lot of pressure,
a lot of weight and finances and family,
and how do you provide, but I think it,
to sum it all up, or bird's eye view,
the man that wakes up in the morning
with the least amount of pressure on his
chest,
what I will say is that through finding
God and realizing that I don't have to
white knuckle my business,
I don't have to go and find
every single deal on my own,
just do your best each day, be
able to end the day and say,
I can hang my hat on that.
And then it's out of your hands
and he will provide for you.
He will take care of you.
You don't have to worry about what you're
going to eat or what you're going to
wear.
And so I wake up with no pressure on my
chest because I know that I'm well
cared for and that business will,
so it's less now about the income,
it's less now about how many deals
I'm getting and more about him.
Not to be too corny, but.
No, that's great.
You're not putting somebody else's
external measures on your success.
You're defining it by how
you're living your life.
Yeah. But I also, I think that
you do have to work really hard.
I do think you have to do your
best. You have to be a good steward.
I think you need massive financial
discipline in the world of real estate.
If you don't know when your
next paycheck is coming,
then you better have a savings account.
But I do think there's a lot of,
I don't think you should have
all of your eggs in one basket,
because if that dries
up, then where are you?
And so I think that you need to help,
if you're going to do real estate,
find the little niches
that work best for you,
help buyers and sellers
that's more traditional.
That's how people get started.
And then see if you do
property management,
see if you do like new construction
or do you want to wholesale
contracts or So, I mean, there's a
lot of opportunity in that world.
There is indeed.
So let's go back and
look at your transition.
And your transition has a big story arc.
Looking back on your journey,
what advice would you have to
somebody who is about to transition?
Maybe it's in the next six months,
maybe it's the next two, three years.
What advice would you have for them.
The soon to be transitioning
military member?
What advice would I have for
them? Financially or life?
Both.
Yeah. No, that's a good
question. Financially,
I would say live beneath your means.
I think that you need to sock
away money. I think you need to,
there's something that, again,
I probably heard it on YouTube,
but it resonated with me.
And so if you had to break down
people into two categories of wealthy
or not wealthy, or maybe going
to be wealthy or not wealthy,
what the Wealthy classification
asks themselves is,
how much does this item cost?
What the not wealthy asks themselves is,
how much does this item cost per month?
And so I think that we need to
be really, really wise with,
are you familiar with the Parable
of the talents by chance? Okay.
But go ahead and paraphrase
for those who are watching.
Well, yeah. So we are in life,
the parable of the talents is
there's this employer who gives
his employees or basically one, two,
and five sacks of gold. And he says,
go take this and do more with
it and do something good with.
It.
And so the one who's
given one buries it and
leaves it there to be safe. The one
who's given two ends up doubling it,
turning two into four, and then
the one who's given five doubles,
it turns it into 10. And then the
employer comes back and says, okay,
well show me what you did.
And he commends the ones who
doubled what they were given.
And he reprimands the one
who hid his one and said,
this is not what I wanted of you.
You've given me the exact same amount
that I gave to you. You've done nothing.
And so with the idea being that we're
all not given five sacks of gold in life,
some of us are given five, two, or one.
The idea is to take what you are
given and be a good steward of it.
But to do that,
I think we need to not buy to consume.
I think we need to buy things
that end up making us more
money.
Buy assets not live.
Correct. Yeah. And real estate is
a really good example of it though.
So you buy one single home, and
let's say it's a rental property.
So you have somebody who's
paying your mortgage for you,
you're making a little bit of
money on top of all of that,
and it's going up in value.
And so you've got three green
asset things all from one
property. And so live beneath
your means, sock away money,
and then spend it on something that
will end up making you more money.
That would be my financial
advice. Love it. Yeah,
it's good advice to put it simply.
Yeah, life advice, seek Jesus.
And here's the thing is,
so I think that everybody,
and for those that don't
necessarily want that
religion,
I think that even a step
back advice would be seek
something. Seek a higher power, seek
something higher than yourself. Seek,
ask questions.
Don't just believe something because
somebody tells you to believe it.
Dig and get to the bottom
of things. And I mean,
I think I know where you'll end up if
you do all of that, but the point is,
you need something bigger
and better than yourself.
So life advice would be don't base
your identity on how hard you work,
what other people think of you,
what your bank account looks like.
But you need to base your identity on
something way deeper and bigger than all
of those worldly things.
Yeah, powerful words. Your
story has been very powerful.
I appreciate you sharing that with
us, with me and everybody watching.
And you a testament that the
things that we go through,
you are not alone. We are not alone.
And there are times when we're going to
struggle and we're going to have those
challenges. And when we
can find a way out of that,
whatever it takes to do that is
what it's for you. It's your faith.
And for many people it is.
But even if you haven't gotten to
that point where you have found faith,
yet there are still ways to get help. And
just picking up the phone and calling,
asking somebody for help, sharing
the things you're going through.
There are many people out there who are
willing to help and willing to listen
and willing to give you
that hand up. So Dane,
thank you for sharing
your message. Absolutely.
And for everybody who's
watching, if you are struggling,
please reach out for help. Pick
up the phone, send an email,
reach out to a friend or family member.
You do have somebody who cares
about you. So thanks for joining us.