Don Wenner is the founder & CEO of DLP Capital. His mission is to serve the lord, leveraging DLP as his platform, and utilizing his skills as a CEO and Leader to positively impact the major crisis in the world of housing affordability, jobs, legacy, and happiness while being the best father and husband.
Don has been the CEO of DLP Capital for 15+ years, Their team has helped more than 600,000 lives by providing solutions to their investors, sponsors, residents, clients, and team members. They have completed more than 5 billion in real estate transactions, achieving the Inc.5000 list for 9 straight years and the 4th fastest growing company in America to make the Inc.5000 list 5 or more years in a row.
Don is also an author & speaker. Let's join Don as he shares his journey with us!
Highlights:
[00:00 - 06:04] Opening Segment
- Don Wenner is the founder and CEO of DLP capital, a private real estate investment and financial services company.
- Don has humble beginnings, starting as a 16-year-old working for his parents in their home daycare.
- He developed himself as an entrepreneur and grew his company to 300+ team members and 3.4 billion capital under management.
- Today, DLP is one of the 5,000 fastest-growing companies in America and has impacted hundreds of thousands of lives.
[06:05 - 11:50] How to Succeed as an Elite Real Estate Agent
- Nathan Robinson convinced Don to get into real estate
- Don started a lawn care company and hired friends to help him
- Don read a lot and developed a system for growing businesses
- Don shares that he realized that leadership was the main challenge in his organization and focused on developing leadership skills
[11:51 - 19:50] Developing Leaders Requires Dedication and Discipline
- Don spends over half his time on out-hiring, doing 6-day interviews a week for 10 years, focusing on developing leaders, developing capacity, and developing abilities to execute.
- Every person at DLP knows their key numbers and expectations and has a personal compass.
- Building leaders is a lot of work, but having a successful organization is worth it.
[19:51 -22:49] Closing Segment
- Reach out to Don
-
- Final words
Resources Mentioned
Building An Elite Organization - Don Wenner
Traction - Gino Wickman
Five Levels of Leadership - John Maxwell
Tweetable Quote
"Building a great organization is investing in your people, and you can't fake it."- Don Wenner
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Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
[00:00:00] Don Wenner: You can't fake it. You generally have to care. And in order to really invest in, in your people and invest in them as a whole. And that's one of the other quick notes that we invest a lot in. So I believe one of our core values is called living fully. And I believe living fully is when you're achieving success and significance across all areas, your life.
[00:00:30] Sam Wilson: Don winter is the founder and CEO of DLP capital of private real estate investment and financial services company focused on making an impact by acquiring, developing, and building relationships, housing leaders, and organizations. Don, welcome to the show.
Hey pleasure.
[00:00:43] Don Wenner: Thanks for having me on today.
[00:00:45] Sam Wilson: Hey man. Absolutely. The pleasure's mine. There are three questions. Don ask. Every ghost comes to the show in 90 seconds or less, tell me, where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?
[00:00:53] Don Wenner: Great question. So I started in Beth in Pennsylvania to , two young parents who had me at 16 years old.
I moved out of their home at 17 years old and went out on my own as a junior in high school. So humble beginnings. Mom ran a home daycare, six kids in my home. Plus my three younger siblings at all times. My dad ran a prison, was a prison guard. So those were the. Today we have 300 plus corporate team members, 3.4 billion capital under management.
We've impacted hundreds of thousands of lives owned tens of thousands of units. We're a large lender and equity partner to other operators as well, grown 60 plus percent a year, every year for 16, straight years, 10 years in a row is one of the 5,000 fastest growing companies in America. Fourth last year out of any companies that made the list five times, we on list 10 straight years, we built a really.
Consistent way of consistent growth which is centered around discipline and really great people. So that's where we're at
[00:01:43] Sam Wilson: today, man. I love that. So you said you moved out when you were 17 years old and went out on your own. What was your next step? How did you get involved in real estate?
I'm gonna ask you a whole bunch of questions here. Yeah, I got it. How did you develop yourself? I mean, as a person, cuz there's a mindset shift that has to happen. When you grow up in a working class run, and again, there's no, no problem with it. I'm not, I grew up very, not even blue collar. We grew up they're poor.
Yeah. But there's a mindset shift that has to happen when you go from humble beginnings to, Hey, now we're running a billion dollar company. How did it happen?
[00:02:19] Don Wenner: It's a big question. I'm gonna try to keep it tight. But so, the, so my dad told him my wedding he gave a speech at my wedding when he knew I was an entrepreneur and it was when I was in kindergarten and he got a call from the school because I was selling little brown hostess donuts to my classmates for 50 cents a piece.
Right. Right. And yeah. And so that, that continued all through my childhood. I mean, in middle school, I. I didn't cut lawns. I ran a lawn care business. I hired my friends. I had marketing and distributions signed up lots of homes. So I just had this entrepreneurial desire at an early age. And my parents were the people who thought about everything is how do I save a penny instead of how do I make a dollar?
Right. And it was scraping and claw. And I used to always find myself thinking. Why don't you just work more, right? Why don't you do something else? Why don't you do something more? Right. And so, I don't know what instilled that at an early age. I have a father of three young boys now and so I, I spent a lot of time teaching them and focusing around two big things with them.
Grit. And growth mindset. And I think those are things that can be teach te taught and improved upon. But I was blessed that I was kind of born with a growth mindset, a mindset that, Hey, if I'm willing to work hard enough and learn and ask questions, I can do anything. Right. So when I was in middle school, a financial advisor came in.
Let's tell you kind of how tell you guys got into real estate. Financial advisor came in, he showed this little chart. On his little chart he showed that financial advisors made more money than doctors, lawyers, accountants, all the jobs your parents tell you to become. Right. And as an eighth grader, when this happened, the, what I took from his presentation, I don't know if this is what he actually said, but this is what I remember was that to be great.
As a financial advisor, you have to be really entrepreneurial self starter and you have to be great at. And I was like, well, that's me. Right. I was, perfect S a T score math. It was great, great math and I'm very entrepreneur, right? And I'm like, well, that's for me.
Right. So I started shadowing financial advisors in middle school and high school. And I always knew that was what I was gonna do, but I like every other kid, I was told I had to go to college. And so I moved outta my parents' house as a junior high school waited tables to get through high school I'd work, swing shifts, I'd skip school, kind of midday work, swing shifts, get through.
But I, still had the determination I needed to go to college fortunate due to. Grades and N a T scores and such. I got nearly a full ride to Drexel university in Philadelphia. And they have the best co-op program in the country. You go to school half the time and school half the time I did, 'em both at the same time but it's a really cool program where they set up these internships.
I got to work at BlackRock. I had to work at Merrill Lynch at MC glad Poland, which is fifth biggest accounting firm in the country. Cause I was studying finance. And so I got all these cool experiences, but I already, I got my, my, all my licenses, the day I turned 18 and I could. For insurance and series six, I think 65.
And anyway, so I . Knew what I was gonna do. Until, and I kept waiting tables on the weekends and this guy came into the restaurant, worked that I was 19 years old and he kept asking me to come work for him. And he wanted me to come work for him because if you ever worked at a restaurant, the least restaurants I'd work in, this was a Texas Roadhouse at the time.
They'd say, Hey, whoever sells the most flaming Yas tonight makes 50 bucks or whatever. Right. So. Everybody was eating flam on that night. Right. So, so he kind of, he was a sales guy. He realized that I was, I had I had some basic sales skills, nothing great. Right.
But at least I, had a little bit of persuasion. So, he convinced me to come work for him. Didn't really understand what it was. He told me it was security. It turned out it was ADT security. So my job consisted of. Knocking on people's doors. And I became the number one sales rep in the country for ADT at 19 years old, 150,000 reps.
All that tells you is I knocked on a whole lot of doors. And a lot of doors, I got a little better as I went going, but I knocked on a lot of doors and he convinced me to come work for me, him by telling me I would make $2,000 a week. If I came to work. 19. That sounded pretty darn good. My first paycheck was $5,280, and then I was making six to eight grand every two weeks from there.
And so I think I'm, I'm doing so great. I'm making all this money. I'm still in college. I'm still, got my plan. And one day I'm sitting at his kitchen table. And he's cuts me my check for the two weeks, whatever it was, 6,000 bucks or something. And I see on the other side of the table, a check for $17,000 a check for $20,000, I'm like, what's that about?
And he says, that's my real estate business. So in addition, his name's Nathan Robinson addition to owning this security company, he was a real estate agent. And he, that, that night, he basically convinced me that if I wanted to get into real estate, I would do great at it. And I basically gave up sleep for about three weeks.
Took my classes online. Took the exam flew out to Scottsdale Arizona. The day I passed my exam went to a marketing conference, came away from that conference with a marketing message of your home sold, guaranteed, or I'll buy it. And that was October, 2006, the peak of the real estate market. So my marketing message was at a good time.
People were motivated to sell and I'd either help, 'em sell their home or I'd step in and buy it. And that was never the plan. But so I started doing and flipping their home and then, that built into all the things we do to this day. So complete mistake per se, but fell in love. Second, I got into the business and kind of never
[00:06:55] Sam Wilson: turned back.
Man. That's really cool. I love that. I love that. All of that story is fun. I wish we had more time to hear some of the nuance to it cuz that in stories like that. You just go man, like that's really cool. And it just shows the hustle and the grit, that it takes, I think that was the, was that the word you used earlier was grit.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So just, it just shows the, what it takes and that, that grid is so much of that. You've written a book called building an elite organiz. All right. I'm out here doing it to, and I know you kind of hit alluded to this early on. When you said you, you started lawn care company, you got, you were out hiring other kids to come work for you and cut grass, but there's still a shift from that to building a elite organization, bringing in right team members and effectively scaling your company.
How did you learn how to do that. .
[00:07:41] Don Wenner: Yeah. That's a great question. So, I was not afraid ever to hire I don't think until you just said that right now, I never connect personally connected the dots between the lawn care side and hiring my friends to, but when I got into real estate I was so busy, I'm in an office of 158 real estate agents, and I'm so busy running around.
I realized from, I kind of learned this from the sales trainers, right. From eight to. I gotta be out selling, right. Everything else is a distraction. Right? So three weeks into the business, I hired an agent who wasn't productive in my office to help me part-time she was full-time by the end of the week, I had three assistants working for me by the third month in the business.
I wasn't afraid to kind of delegate. And free myself up. And so I did that from early, early beginning. And then what happened was, after a few years of just hustling and I was the main salesperson driving, 90% of the business, I was driving all the strategy. I was, driving the engine forward.
And while I'm doing on that, I'm reading a ton. So I had a discipline of reading about three books a week. For the last, 20, 15 plus years, I mainly do it on audible. But I read a lot and listen to lots of people. And then what was cool when I entered real estate, I realized, Hey, there's 1.2 million real estate agents doing the same job.
Right? There's a small percentage of doing that job well. So I wanna figure out how to do it. Well, all I have to do is talk to the people doing it well, right. There are people doing well. So I always, took the mindset of, give first and so I. Would go out and reach out to the top real stages in the country and offer them something of value.
Something I could teach them, which at the time was how to sell real estate on Craigslist for free. And they would let me come talk to 'em and I'd show up there with eight pages of questions. They want me to come show 'em this Craigslist, gimmick or trick, right. Which I was selling a lot of homes for free on Craigslist.
And I'd come with eight pages of questions, right. And ask lots and lots of questions. And within, a number of months, people are inviting me into. Inner circles, these, mastermind groups. Right. And that's what the project, I took everything. When I wanted to get into investing, I said, well, who out there is slipping homes effectively.
Right. And I reach out to 'em call 'em right. Go and talk to 'em. Right. And I've just had that pursuit that if I wanna learn something, the information, this is the information age, right. If you're willing to pursue knowledge it's out there. So, so that's the approach I took. And then, so all the reading, I'm doing all the learning I'm doing, I'm hiring people.
What I realized is I felt I had this great understanding of how to grow a business from all the learning and all talking to people. But all the people in my company didn't right. They weren't reading three books a week. They weren't, understanding all this. And so about 11 years ago, maybe now I read book that's on your shelf there traction by my friend, Gina Wickman.
I said, wow, this is great. This is the first book that actually kind of pulls it together into a system. And so I immediately became an implementer for genome just self-paced kind of went through his program and implemented it into my organization and it was so incredible that it gave that structure.
How to grow business. So I realized really on the importance of, of culture, the importance of hiring great people, importance of developing leadership from listening to all these wonderful grades, like John Maxwell and Jim Collins and so forth, and then reading that system helped put into action.
And then for us, what happened was that system wasn't enough. It's a great system to kind of get you going and take you from, a few people maybe to 20, 30, 40 people and get your foundation built. And then for us, it wasn't enough as we really started growing. So we. Took the basics of that.
And some ideas from the ver harnesses of the world and the Sean coveys of the world and Jim Collins world. And we kind of built a lot of custom tools and we built our own system, which we call the elite execution system, which is what I wrote a book on called building elite organization that we run today, built a technology on and teach to other developers and operators, help them implement and run their business on it.
Today, what do
[00:10:56] Sam Wilson: you feel like have been some of the greatest challenges that you've overcome inside of your own organization?
[00:11:03] Don Wenner: So there's only one real challenge. At the end of the day, in my opinion all challenges all revert back to one singular issue at the end of the day, which is leadership.
Every problem you have in your organization comes down to leadership. So everything that we've ever had that hasn't gone, right, or isn't going right, or we're not executing as well as we want or not getting the results we want or having struggle or challenges always comes down to leadership.
Every problem you have is a leadership problem, whether you realize it or not. So that's where I've put, for the last 10 years of my life. Yes, and I'm involved in raising capital and we raise lots of capital, right? I'm involved in doing deals. I'm involved in operations. I drive the engine of a lot of the organization, even though we have 300 plus corporate team members yet with all the things I'm involved in, the number one and number two allocation of my time for the last 10 years have been hiring leaders.
And developing leaders. So I spend, well over half my time on out hiring I average six day interviews a week, half for 10 plus years, and I do six to eight one on one meetings with my leaders a week focusing on developing leadership, developing capacity, developing abilities to execute. So that's some level.
Dedication and discipline around hiring and developing of leadership right. Is not typical. I find in most CEOs or leaders and but I've realized the importance of, and that's the fundamental reason to how we've been able to have the sustained level of growth we've had through multiple cycles, launching many different business lines, et cetera, and sustain.
It has been not, I wouldn't say we've kept up with leadership to the growth organization. We've been close to keeping up, right? So we're always feeling we're fighting to have enough quality leaders and have them at the place of leadership level, to keep up with the goals and direction of the organization.
But it's a conscious, focused effort
[00:12:42] Sam Wilson: when you say, and remind me, sure, have the right question for this. But when you say developing leaders, meeting with your leaders, obviously, KPIs, things like that are important, but there's a lot of kind of soft skill. In leadership that maybe can't be measured on a spreadsheet, there's interpersonal skills.
There's things like you just can't measure it. How are you effectively developing leaders? Like what are things that you say, man, these are things when someone comes into our organization that I really, when I onboard 'em I want them to understand.
[00:13:12] Don Wenner: Yeah, it's a wonderful question. And so the best book on leadership that's ever been written in my humble opinion is called the five levels of leadership by John Maxwell. It's a classic, it's the best understanding of leadership. And John Maxwell himself has written a hundred books on leadership. This is the best book.
And so the way I think about it is most people. And if you haven't read the book, this won't, I won't go too deep in the, we weeds to people, but. Level three leadership is where most people never achieve, which is to be able to consistently generate and produce results with and through a team.
And so I realized that in my organization that I have a lot of people who had leadership titles and some influence because of who they are, and they're great people and encouraging, and great cheerleaders and so forth, but weren't able to consistently generate results. And so I spent, probably a couple years really evaluating.
Our leaders internally and externally in terms, what are the things that, that great leaders do? What are those? And you said the kind of soft skills, the things that that, that really make a difference. And so the first thing I backtrack is a quick second that we do is every time we hire a leader or hire any person in the organization we.
Clearly identified before we even start searching for the person. But then once we hire them, we identify, we call it the R R E K, which stands for role responsibilities, expectations of key numbers. So every person at DLP knows what the key numbers are, that their response, what the KPIs, as you said, and they know exactly what the expectations are.
My belief, especially the people we. But most people wanna win. Right? Most people want to do good. Right. They want to be successful, but a lot of people in most organizations, especially entre organizations don't know what success is. It's never even been measured. So they don't even know what they're aiming for.
Because no one's defined what success is for their job. So that's the first place that most organizations, most companies fall down. But once we've identified success or they're not achieving success, they're not achieving their goals. We fear why that is. Right. Is it, hopefully it's not the case, this is a hiring issue.
If it's a will issue, right. They're not willing to do the work. Right. But if they have a skill issue, right. An ability issue we've developed over again, a couple years, the 24 consistent practices of highly effective leaders. So some examples of those are, discipline and building habits. So they're struggling with keeping up with the whirlwind, right?
They don't have the discipline and structure to their life, let alone their business. Right. Do more than you ask for others, make hard decisions, have difficult conversation. We call alignment being aligned and we have a whole method around that. Listening, speaking simply. And. Coaching teaching follow through buy-in collaboration, emotional fortitude.
Those are some of the examples and we actually have people self-assess themselves against those. And we have then their leader assess them across those. And just by categorizing those things that a lot of will be considered soft skills, categorizing them in that way, and then be able to give. Clear feedback.
It helps sometimes when you feel like, I don't know how to guide them on what they're doing wrong, right. When I can look at this list of 24 practices, I can see, Hey, you've really been struggling with being able to critically think through an issue and be able to kinda lay out solutions, right.
And give guidance on how to get better on that and how to improve and so forth. So, so yeah, it takes a lot of work and time and you have to first care enough to do it. Right. So I always tell people, the key in, in, in building a great organization is investing in your people and you can't fake it.
Right. You can't fake it. You generally have to care. And in order to really invest in, in your people and invest in them as a whole. And that's one of the other quick notes that we invest a lot in. So I believe one of our core values is called living fully. And I believe living fully is when you're achieving success and significance across all areas, your life.
And we categorize life across eight areas faith, family, friends, freedom, fun, fulfillment, fitness, and finance. We have an assessment process that people can assess themselves and we want to help people. The way I think about it simply is I want, if you worked in my organization, I want you to be a great father, a great husband, a great leader in your church, whatever the things that are important to you as well as certainly being very productive in your work.
Right. But those aren't contradict. We call it work life integration. We want people who are successful in achieving their goals in all areas of life. And by investing in people as a whole, every person in our organization has a personal compass. They have a goal to what's their own core values, their mission, their family, B a.
What they want accomplished in a hundred years and we help them, achieve their goals and connect what they really wanna get outta life and have fulfillment and so forth. And so, yeah, so there's a couple notes on building leaders. I
[00:17:14] Sam Wilson: love that. No, that's absolutely awesome.
And I think that's a tough thing to tackle a tough thing as you well know, building, building leaders inside your organization. That's a lot of work and it's a lot of. Planning and probably delayed gratification. I would even imagine as you look at it and go, okay, I'm gonna invest this in you.
And then it could be two or three years before we start to see fruit. But yet it is that constant cultivation of both culture and people. I think that has taken you to where you are today. Turn left a little bit in this conversation. You guys are involved in a whole suite of real estate investments.
Everything from, I think it was maybe I misunderstood this, but build the rent communities to lending, to direct development of multifamily properties. When you want to take on a new business line or a new asset class, how do you guys strategize around that? Figure out the goal and then bring on the people to do it.
What's that process?
[00:18:10] Don Wenner: That's a wonderful question. And we have throw this out there. So, one of our domain that has information on the book and a lot of these tools that I'm talking about, including when I'm about to talk of anybody can download for free DLP, elite.com, DLP elite.com.
You can download this next tool. And a lot of the other tools I've talked about which we call the elite compass. And so the compass. Is in the term for it sort of intraction they call it VTO. So it's sort of like that but a lot more to it. And so we, we have very clear big pictured organization.
What's our big hero goal. What's our purpose, our mission, our core values. Who's our core client. What's our secret weapon as we call it. Clearly understanding who we are. In who we serve. And then we go and we break that down then into what's our three year aim for the organization and what's our one year bullseye.
And then we break that down to what we're gonna do in the next 90 days. So we've got this really clear direction of where we're going and it's not just something that I know it or I, senior leaders know the whole organization knows it. We do a vision day every year that we invite all of, not only our employees, but all of our investors, all of our operators to join us, or we lay out exactly where we're heading.
So anytime we think about launching a new business line or a new product, we go and we look, we filter it against the compass and we say, Hey, is this in a line with our values, with our purpose, with our mission, with our big heritage goes, this gonna help us get there, or is it gonna be in conflict with where we're going?
And then it's often a situation of, Hey, we've got 10 different things we wanna do. If we're gonna add one thing in, what's gonna be the most, advantageous thing to do, what's gonna best fit with being able to serve our clients. And one thing that's helped me as an entrepreneur cause I, I, there's lots of things I wanna do.
Right. I have, kind of 12 different business lines today that make up DLP capital. But I have 50 that I liked. 'em right. And so one of the things that's helped me to avoid that is that I don't say no to things I say not now. Right? So I'm not ready to do it now. Cause we only have 24 hours in a day.
All my leaders are busy, we're all swamped. And that's the other big thing. When we launch new business line, we don't go and set up a separate set of leadership and no we're gonna use the same marketing department, the same it department, the same legal department, the same HR department, same CFO, the same senior leadership team.
Who's gonna oversee this, which is what makes it possible. I have to have separate leadership teams and separate values and separate missions. It's impossible too often. I have entrepreneur real estate entrepreneurs who sit down with those on a day. We do at DLP called compass day, where our members come in and we help them lay out the compass to the organization.
I sit down with each of our members for a few hours and help them kinda lay out strategy. And I'll get operators sit down with me and they have 10 employees today and they have seven business lines. They're on property management, they're construction management, and they're doing acquisitions and they're raising capital.
They're launching a fund and they're doing that in two markets. And they're telling me in the next year, they're gonna add five more markets. And now they're also gonna self-perform construction. And then they decided they're gonna launch a plumbing company. And oh, by the way, we thinking we're gonna lend some money and they have more businesses than they have employees.
Right. . Are you doing any of those businesses? Well now are you actually making any money at any of them? No. Right. Why do you need, all these are big businesses. Why do you need to be in every chain? Right. Don't let your, your back of house, become front of the house.
Right. And try to do everything yourself. So, that's kind of how we do it, but it's hard. It's hard as entrepreneurs.
[00:21:09] Sam Wilson: That's that's well said, certainly appreciate that. And thanks for taking the time to break down. So many of your thoughts here from leadership to how you guys have built an elite organization systems you've built, I've loved hear in your story from, starting selling, what was it?
Ding, dons or donuts, host donuts, hostess, whatever. , yeah, that's a fun story. I love that. That's that's something they shut us down. I think I was in third grade, second grade. You remember those those jolly rancher they to sell in stick forms. Huh? Remember that? Yeah. So that was, I used to sell jolly rancher sticks in the the oatmeal cream pies in second or third grade.
And I got the teachers shut us down, but that's that's funny. So I'm glad to hear. Somebody else also was in the uh, but you started much younger than I did so well done. it's loads of fun, Don. Thank you for taking the time to come on the show today. This has been an absolute pleasure having you on. I know you've mentioned a few different websites here and ways that our listeners can get in touch with you or learn more about your organization, but just one last time.
So it's always in the same place in the show. What is the best way to
[00:22:07] Don Wenner: do that? Yeah. The domain I mentioned earlier, we can get all the free resources DLP elite.com. Our main website is DLP capital.com. You welcome to find me on all social media. I have a podcast called to impact with Don winter. And my email is Don DLP,
[00:22:20] Sam Wilson: capital.com.
Fantastic, Don, thank you so much. Appreciate your time today.[00:22:25]
Don Wenner: I appreciate it, Sam.
