Stewart Hsu

I have a confession to make, I owe a good deal of my success to David Lindahl. It was a serendipitous thing — I had left my job in June 2006, and saw David Lindahl in July 2006. It wasn’t planned, it just happened. I knew real estate was my passion, I just didn’t know yet which field within real estate.

I remember thinking to myself as David starting speaking that summer night at the real estate club, that I was just going to listen and learn, and not buy anything. That evening I signed up for his “Apartment House Riches” homestudy course along with his 1 day course. Special price, that night only, $795 bucks. David has excellent persuasion skills. In hindsight, I have as much respect for him as a businessman / marketer, as for the results he’s been able to achieve with his multi-family investments.

David Lindahl’s Background

He grew up on the south side of Boston and spent most of his 20s as the lead singer in a local rock band. In his late 20s, he started his own landscaping company. After realizing the cold weather of Boston (i.e. snow), wasn’t good for business he started doing some contracting/rehab work. His curiosity grew, along with his evident desire to constantly improve himself, and he started doing fixer-uppers himself. By the time I met him in July 2006, less than 10 years after he got started in the business (I’m estimating here) he owned/controlled about 2,000 apartment units across the U.S. No joke.

I love rags-to-riches stories, and he’s definitely one of them. For all the skeptics out there, either I’m a fool (which is entirely possible) or David’s the real deal. For all the believers out there, David is proof that what “you can conceive and believe, you can achieve.” Really, in the big picture of things, becoming very wealthy through real estate is not that hard to fathom. In comparison, Edison inventing the light bulb, the Wright Bros inventing an airplane, or JFK wanting to take us to the moon, were all, at their time, thought truly impossible. Why should you wanting to achieve financial success via real estate be any less possible? It’s not.

Lindahl’s 5-Year Goals

We had lunch in 2006 November, and I remember asking him what his 5 year goals were. He told me he wanted to spend more time with his family, take excellent care of his health, cook more at home and wanted to have 5,000 units under management. I was taken aback, cook more at home? JK. 2,000 was already a lot of units, and 5,000 took me some time to get my head around. Up until that point, I’ve heard of people buying a few hundred houses (seriously), but 5,000 apartments units was a huge number. It stretched my thinking. Today, there are probably about 70 organizations in the U.S. that own this many units or more, but still, for one guy, with his background, to achieve this much, this quickly, still struck me as impressive.

The amazing thing was, when I saw David again earlier this year (May 2008), he had already exceeded 5,000 units, more than 3 years ahead of schedule. On top of that he’s published 2 books, with a 3rd sponsored by Donald Trump coming out this September. Incredible.

The man is driven.

Seminar Skeptics

I have another confession to make. I’ve been to my share of real estate seminars. Many of you may have been to one of The Learning Annex’s Real Estate Wealth Expos that were wildly popular about 2-3 years ago, all over the country, NY, San Francisco, Chicago, etc. Donald Trump spoke live at many of them and was one of the big draws. There are a number of seminars out there, and yes, some are definitely better than others. In my humble opinion, the biggest “sin” they make is that they make it sound much easier to succeed than it actually is. It really takes discipline, dedication and courage. I firmly believe, you can make almost any “real estate system” work if you are serious enough about it. Unfortunately, many people are looking for an easy way out, and are not willing to trade their time and efforts for results. I have met a number of investors over the years, who surprisingly have gotten their beginnings from real estate courses purchased at seminars and even late night TV. We all start somewhere, and some get their start from the TV at 2am.

David Lindahl’s Courses & Bootcamps

When/if you buy his course, one of the reading materials he includes is something called “Success Principals”. It’s a compilation of thoughts, beliefs and learnings he has pulled together that make an investor successful. I share the same philosophy of those ideas 100%. The best tools in the world won’t help you if you don’t have the right mindset. These principals, and this website/blog, are intended to help give you the mindset you need to get the most out of your investments and even your life.

As you may have noticed, I don’t pitch many products on this website, in fact, I’ve shied away from many – partly because I didn’t believe in them and partly because I haven’t used and experienced them firsthand.

However, I felt somewhat compelled to share my thoughts here on David Lindahl after being asked many times how did I get started in the [multi-family investing] business. If there was a definitive starting point, it would have been back in July 2006 when I met David.

When people ask me for advice on any course or bootcamp, I tell people this, the *best* course is at most 50% of what you need to be successful. The other 50% comes from you, from within — how resourceful and how tenacious you are counts for a lot. If you think you’ve got the can-do, do whatever it takes attitude, then congrats. And if so, in my humble opinion, David’s courses and bootcamps are the best out there for learning how to how successfully invest in multi-family real estate.

In case you’re interested, here’s the Apartment Homestudy Course I purchased almost 2 years ago to the day. He also has a 3-day bootcamp course, that I believe is second to none. No other source will give you more organized, practical information or get you up to speed more quickly on multi-family/apartment investing. David does only a few of these bootcamps a year. What’s the price of success? Click here.

One of my favorite sayings is “if you never give up, you can never fail.” Another way of putting this:

“Never, never, never give up.”
- Winston Churchill

Parting Thought

Back in July 2006, after I made the purchase, I saw a bunch of folks standing around David asking him questions. I thought about going up and asking a few questions, but didn’t want to stand around, I really wanted to get home and start reading all of the materials asap. Before I got to the door, I heard someone behind me say “hey!” I stopped, turned around, and it was David. A bit surprised, I walked over to him. He asked me my name and where I was from. We engaged in a brief chit-chat, but I never forgot that moment. It seemed strange he would call out to me with a bunch of people already around him talking with him. When I had lunch with him some months later, I asked him why he did that – he said “Life’s unpredictable, and you’ve got to make the most of the opportunities when they arise. I felt like that was my chance to meet you.”

Perhaps it was just serendipity.