Episode 29 – Diversifying Your Cash Flow With Air BnB Featuring Danielle Konechne

Michelle: Welcome to the “InFLOW” Podcast. I’m your host Michelle Bosch. Today, I have an amazing lady with me. Her name Danielle Konechne, and she is a top independent residential broker for the last 14 years in South Dakota. And she stands out in the industry for consistently achieving record-breaking prices for sellers in record time. She has experience not just working in South Dakota, but also working in Manhattan, The Hamptons. She provides her clients the highest level of loyalty, and trust, plus a vast knowledge of today’s unique marketplace. Her hard work, savvy real estate skills, and passion for her clients has made her the recognized leader in the real estate industry in her market. Her success has been based predominantly on her relationships and her passion to go above and beyond to fulfill her clients’ real estate dreams. She also has a military background, and that background and her enthusiasm for real estate really makes her be able to get the job done. She understands the importance of discipline, of loyalty, of integrity. She’s also a world traveler, a weapons specialist, a sports enthusiast, and loves to spend time volunteering in South Dakota, in the elderly, the American Legion, grooming teenagers to be entrepreneurs, that is fantastic, I love that, and at her church. Most of all, she ended up spending time with her husband and her two children. Welcome to the “InFLOW” podcast, Danielle. It is a pleasure to have you here with us.

Danielle: Oh, well, you are welcome. I am so excited to be here and to be speaking with you. This is just an honor, and I appreciate you having me.

Michelle: Yeah, I’m very excited to have you. I wanna have many more women in real estate, and there’s plenty of role models out there for the guys. So that’s why, you know, in “InFLOW”, I usually bring only ladies, and usually talk about things that we deal with when doing business and conducting business as women. So tell me a little bit about how you got started in real estate.

Danielle: So I started in real estate about 15 years ago, and how that all came about was I was on active duty orders with the military. And it was a volatile time, so I wasn’t sure how long my orders were gonna continue. And I had been going to night school for business, and so naturally, I was drawn towards those things. I had bought my first house when I was 19. And I just became more and more curious about real estate and how that worked, so then I decided to get my real estate license and jump in full-time.

Michelle: Wonderful. So already at 19, wow, that is impressive. I wish I could say the same, very mature decisions than important purchases of a lifetime are being already done in 19. That’s impressive, Danielle. Now, tell us about what your current focus is today.

Danielle: Our current focus is, you know, we have the retail side, so we’re building that. We have a very relational business. I wouldn’t say all of our business, about 80% of our business is built on referrals and building that foundation. We built that company, we knew we were gonna spend lots of hours with people, and we just wanted to treat them like family. So we focus a lot on that and establishing those relationships.

Michelle: Now, when you say referrals, can you walk us through a process of how you are able to capture such a referral?

Danielle: Sure. So what we do, we don’t just do the transaction. We know that people are going through…it’s very exhausting making a life change, having kids, having someone pass away, upsizing, downsizing. There’s a lot more than just the transaction going on, so we realize that. There’s turmoil within the family or inner turmoil or uncertainty. So anything that we can do to help provide resources for people during that process and encourage them and lift them up so that they have some certainty about what’s gonna happen. And when we do that, we’re always reinforcing what we’re going to do, what’s about to happen, and we appreciate working with them, and we wanna work with people like themselves. So if they know of other people that we could help buy or sell, we would love to work with them. And we reinforce that a couple times during the process.

Michelle: And actually, tactically, how do you go about capturing the referral? I mean, is it just them telling you, do you send a card? How does that work?

Danielle: So a lot of times what happens is people just call us and say, “Hey, Betty sent us over to you guys.” That’s generally how it works. People just either text us or call us and they reach out personally because a lot of times those people spend a lot of time edifying us, so people feel like they already know who we are.

Michelle: So are you also right now… I know we’ve talked about your work and what you’re doing to help, you know, sell for your clients. Are you currently investing as well?

Danielle: We do currently invest. So I’ve been investing for about 12 years, and what I’ve always invested in is duplexes. However, right now, we’re kind of merging into doing more of the Airbnbs and the apartments. So that’s a new territory for us, and that’s pretty exciting.

Michelle: Okay, wonderful. Can you tell me about why duplexes and why the change now?

Danielle: I bought my first duplex out of, it was necessity at the time. And I had some family members that I needed to house, and I needed a good place for them. So it was my first year in real estate and I just bought it because I thought this is a beautiful place, it had been owner-occupied before, and it would help me stabilize the income because there was two incomes coming from the duplex instead of just one, which was appealing to me because I didn’t wanna just buy a single-family home and then just have that one income coming off of it. So moving forward, I really liked that business model because if one tenant left, I always had another rental income.

Michelle: Wonderful. And now, why the move to Airbnb? What is the opportunity that you see there?

Danielle: You know, my husband was speaking with somebody about Airbnb, so we started converting one of our units to an Airbnb, and it took off. And he loved it. I don’t really understand all the technology that goes into Airbnb, so I can’t take any credit for that side of the business. However, my husband has liked that. So we’re developing more and buying more single-families for Airbnbs.

Michelle: Okay, wonderful. Now, I know you work very closely together with your husband, just like Jack and I do. What makes that work in your guys’ particular situation?

Danielle: Oh, you know, I think what makes it work is that I just trust him. And so I’m not micromanaging him all the time or second-guessing him. And he does the same for me, you know. When it comes to the duplexes or fourplexes, he knows that I run the numbers, and if the numbers work, he feels comfortable with it, we move forward.

Michelle: Wonderful. Now, as far as where are you buying the duplexes, or where were you buying them, and where are you guys doing the Airbnb? What areas of the country are suitable for those types of asset classes?

Danielle: Well, so, you know, looking at the Airbnb model, it looks like more of like the destination places are where people are buying. However, we’re buying them in our own town so we can manage them. And we’re placing them close to areas that people are primarily saying, “We have two major hospitals that, you know, are helping the growth of Sioux Falls, which also brings a lot of people who have, you know, family members that are at the hospitals. So we placed a lot of our Airbnbs by the hospitals.

Michelle: That is very smart. Yes, I totally see that.

Danielle: And then, there’s lots of doctors coming in to interview, and they need a place to stay. And so we have, like, a higher end Airbnb that they can stay at, which helps as well so that these companies don’t have to have them stay at a hotel. If they wanna stay at a hotel, they can, but this is just another option for them.

Michelle: Okay. So within Airbnb, different categories, and you guys are specializing for the upper end?

Danielle: Yup.

Michelle: Wonderful, wonderful. Now, going back to your broker roots, and because I think it helps you both, you know, when you are representing a client, but also when you’re investing for yourself and you guys are the principals. But, what are some of the strategies that you guys are using right now to market and to sell real estate in the current market in South Dakota? Any ninja things that you guys are doing or any traditional things with a twist? What are some of the things that you guys are doing?

Danielle: You know, I think some of the things that we’re doing, and I’m not sure, I think other people I’m sure are doing these things as well. We’re doing a lot of showing examples. Like, there’s a lot of fear around because this market is so hot, a home goes on the market and it literally has five offers. So if you have a house contingency, then you might be beat out, or if you need to relocate and you have a certain timeframe, there may not be something else that comes along. So there’s a lot of fear in the market. And what we’re doing is putting our success stories out there, so people can feel encouraged and know that they’re working with professionals as well.

Michelle: Got it. Now, in dealing with actual buyers, I know that one of your strengths is to be able to really connect with people, and you just, like you said in the beginning of our interview, you know, you understand the value of relationships and really making people feel like they’re part of family. So how are you able to… Do you see a difference or how are you connecting differently if you are selling to a lady versus you’re selling to a man, or vice versa?

Danielle: Oh, that’s great. We don’t look at it more, like, as selling to a man versus a woman. However, we have a team. So if there are certain personality style, we connect him with that personality style of who’s on our team because we know that they’re gonna have a better experience.

Michelle: We do something similar with our clients in that we have an assessment that we have them take and we are able to see how do they take action. And based on that, we also pair them, you know, with a specific person in our team, so I can see what you guys are doing there. Ah, tell me more.

Danielle: Yeah, I mean, I think you guys do it as well. It makes the experience on me easier because if I’m working with somebody with numbers or they’re high driver, we just understand each other, so things can move along a lot faster. It’s a good experience for me. If they’re like, say, a high expressive, then I send them to my sister, and she’s great because she likes to talk about the feelings and emotions of the transaction versus the numbers. So in that, I think the other thing that is so key, and I don’t know if this comes with, you know, just getting older, when I first started, I thought I had to make every client happy. And so when it switched for me to let’s add value, then I wasn’t responsible for their happiness because I, you know, I can’t make them happy. It’s a big transition and a big move and there’s lots of dynamics, and some people just aren’t happy in general. And so I internalized a lot of that when I first started real estate and now that I have a little bit more experience under my belt, it’s just, you know, let’s add value, but not be responsible for their happiness.

Michelle: That is such an important distinction. I mean, we see it. We both worked on, you know, and land is one of our asset classes and then multifamily. And on the land side, I mean, you deal with all kinds of people and a lot of them are not happy for sure. I mean, whether it be land or houses, you know, anything, there’s a lot of people not happy for sure. But when you make that distinction that you are taking the burden of property ownership from someone and you are able to then bring that value also to the buyer when they’re able to get into a piece of property, you know, at affordable terms for an affordable price, yeah, you make that switch and it’s a win-win for everyone. Absolutely. So what percentage of your business do you say is you guys representing others and what percentage of your business is the investing side?

Danielle: So, as far as the retail real estate, my sister and I run that business. And then on the investment side, it’s my husband and I. So they’re two separate entities.

Michelle: Wonderful, yeah. And you know what? I love that you say that because we were just discussing this yesterday with another lady, and I was explaining to her how real estate…and she is a professional in a completely different industry, but how beautiful real estate is in that it really allows you to…it has allowed a lot of women to, you know, start in real estate, whether it be flipping, wholesaling, or rehabbing, or doing whatever they’re doing within the real estate industry, and then becoming at some point for many, you know, the breadwinners in their household, and then bringing in their spouses, and bringing in maybe a sibling, and how it allows for the opportunity to really be a truly an authentic family business. And I love hearing that from you right now, like a reconfirmation that observation I’ve had and just the clients that we serve, and you are living it as well as in like you are also a family business, you know, with your sister on the brokerage side and on the investing side with your husband. So that’s beautiful. I think that’s something new, especially for women that are leaving corporate, and that are trying to find something to put all their passion, energy, and effort in. I’d vote for real estate. I think that you would too. Yeah.

Danielle: Yeah, I say the same thing, you know. I just, you know, a lot of people ask me about real estate and I just think like, “The sky’s the limit.” There’s so much opportunity. They’d speak with other people and they were like, “Well, there’s a ceiling on what you can do.” And I just don’t think that. With real estate, it’s just so different than, you know, working for corporate or working 8:00 to 5:00. There’s a lot of risk there too, but I think that’s the beauty of the journey is, doing what you want and being able to create a family business has been one of the highlights of my life.

Michelle: Yeah, the same here. I mean, we work together, we live together, you know, we go on vacations together, like, we don’t want it any other way. And real estate has been an amazing vehicle to provide that lifestyle for us, and we love it. So now, I know originally the person that knew you first is Jack, my husband, and we are actually part of like about three, like three or four Masterminds. And when it comes to Masterminds, you know, there’s a couple that we go together, and then there’s two others where we kind of like divide and conquer. And he goes to, and he’s met you at the Collective Genius, you know, I go to another one in Chicago, Dan Sullivan’s 10x Ambition Program, I don’t know if you are familiar with that, in any case. But we see the value of Masterminds and being in a room with people that are absolutely brilliant and geniuses and have their own unique superpowers. But for you, what have you gotten out of being in a Mastermind?

Danielle: Oh, night and day difference. Because, when I look at real estate, you know, I always tried to model people or ask for mentors. And I’ve asked a lot of people who are predominant real estate people in my area for advice and, you know, they don’t wanna give it, or they view it as competition, or there’s like a sense of scarcity for them. I’m not sure what it is. And so to go into a Mastermind and all of a sudden have almost every answer at your fingertips or resources or people that wanna help you, it is, I mean, I think I cried for the first three days at Collective Genius just realizing, like, everything I had been looking for, all the answers I’ve been searching for, and people are just there to help you.

Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. Usually, you know, people that are attracted to that are incredibly generous with their time, with their knowledge, and are really there to raise you higher and help everyone rise together. Absolutely. That has been our experience as well. We host here in Phoenix as well, a Mastermind for land investors called The Ultimate Boardroom. And that is precisely why people say about the value of it. It’s just problems that they’ve had in their head, sometimes for months, you know, are resolved within like literally minutes or they know, you know, or someone in the room can connect them to someone. All of a sudden, they have access, if there’s 30 people in the room, to 30 high-caliber guys with amazing networks, and this can be truly transformational for businesses. How long have you guys been part of that Mastermind?

Danielle: This is our first year, so we’re just going on our second year with CG.

Michelle: Okay, wonderful. Now, my show is “InFLOW”, so now, I would like to transition a little bit from the real estate and ask you how do you incorporate faith and spirituality into your life to get inflow?

Danielle: I love this portion of what you’re doing because I feel like it’s everything. I feel like it’s everything. The faith is everything, just what I’m doing. We were just having this conversation at a dinner, and honestly, it’s about surrender for me, you know, just surrendering some of the things that I want and moving towards peace and joy. What I mean, peace and joy, everything just kind of connects. And if it doesn’t connect, I’m not attached to it.

Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there is this…

Danielle: It just it’s like having that faith and knowing everything’s moving in the right direction, it just changes my perspective on, you know, the things I say yes to or how I make decisions.

Michelle: When you say that, what exactly are you following? Are you saying that… You just explained at the beginning of the show, you mainly do the numbers, but you’re moving out of your head to someplace else to make certain decisions. Is that what I heard you say?

Danielle: Yeah.

Michelle: What are you tuning into? Is it intuition? Is it, you know, what? Tell us a little bit about the experience.

Danielle: Okay. So, you know, because I was prior service, I am just very structured and regimented and, you know, I always thought that having money and having things would give me peace. You know, growing up in a home with a little bit of turmoil, you think, “If I have money, everything will be fine.” And as my journey of owning a business, I didn’t have any of those things. I had money, and I had things, and I had no peace, and no joy, and no friends, and no relationships. So now, you know, it put me, you know, God first and then my family, and I really put in there, “Is this moving me towards what I want?” And ultimately, I want peace and joy. So if it’s not gonna create peace and joy in my family, or if it’s gonna take away time with my son and my husband and my stepdaughter, then maybe it’s not something that’s for me.

Michelle: Absolutely, yeah. I can see that.

Danielle: Yeah. And at the end of the day, it’s like that was a good decision to say no to that. Even though I really wanted to do it because maybe I could have pushed more information out there, or would have highlighted my retail business better, or I would have had a really good client, at the end of the day, you know, I have to focus on the things that are really important.

Michelle: Yeah. So basically, what I’m hearing you say is, you know, your end goal is feelings. You’re going for feelings of peace and joy. And those two end goals, those two feelings that you wanna experience on a daily basis are kind of like your anchor and are what guides your decision making, if I understand that correctly,

Danielle: Yeah, it really does because, you know, I’m a numbers person and, you know, the profits matter, they do, to an extent. If it’s gonna take away from the things that I believe, I’m just gonna end up tired, and exhausted, and bitter, and resentful, and I want to stay out of that.

Michelle: Yeah, that makes complete sense. It’s always like that, you know, at what cost, and are you willing to pay the price of it? And sometimes it’s just not worth it. Now, on a daily basis, Danielle, what are you doing to get inflow and get results of inflows of cash in your life and ease and grace? What are you doing daily?

Danielle: You know, I think that the things that I’m doing is, first of all, I surround myself with good people, and then I have good mentors. So if there’s something in question, I seek them out for advice. And then I have a great team who I trust. So I’m not doing everything myself. Of course, everything’s delegated and they’re better at it. You know, at one point in time, I thought I was like, “If it needs to be done right, I have to do it.” And the truth of the matter is somebody else is way better at it than me. And I have those people in place to help me stay inflow, so I’m doing the things that I’m good at. When I start dipping into their stuff or micromanaging them or doing things that are not my strength, I am out of flow, I’m frustrated, and then it just gets cyclical.

Michelle: Yeah. So basically what you’re saying is that you have support, and so many of us women sometimes don’t ask for help and don’t ask for support. And what you’re saying is I have a team, and I created or I built this team around me to support me, to help me stay in my genius, and so that I can continue working and honing in on my superpower, where I bring the most value, and they are in their own superpower, you know, complementing what you’re doing and that support is really on a daily basis what gives, as a business owner, ease and grace for sure. I can totally relate.

Danielle: Yeah. You know, sometimes it’s hard to get out of your own way. Like, for many, many years, I just, I thought I had to be the one doing it. And it was really hard for me to just get out of my own way and get back to doing what I’m really good at.

Michelle: Yeah. Now, what do you attribute your success to? What are a few things that you attribute your success to?

Danielle: You know, I think it’s changed. At the beginning, my success was mostly driven by people who told me I couldn’t do things. So it was very motivating for me, and I was very naive, so I didn’t know what I was getting into. There wasn’t a lot of fear. And then, you know, on the latter part of the success is mostly how I treat people and how I want to be known in this world for giving back and adding value. And I think maybe that also goes along with my idea of success has changed.

Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. As we evolve, you know, priorities shift, and you’re in a different season of life and other things become more important. Yeah, absolutely. If you had three top things that you would wanna leave women starting out today or already with a successful business to create inflows of cash, what are those three top pieces of advice that you would have, or something that you wish you would’ve known when you started that you know now?

Danielle: Yeah. You know, I think the thing that’s most relevant to me right now is is everybody puts their projections out there and their goals out there, and they always put like, “Yeah, in three or five years, I wanna be on a beach, and I want this, and I want that.” And a mentor of mine said, “‘What do you really want your day to day life to look like?” And he video recorded what I said. And it went something along the lines of, “You know, I wanna wake up, I wanna spend time with my kid, I wanna drop him off at school, then I wanna pick him up from school and, you know, go shoot guns, or have a good time or laugh with him.” And I watched that video over and over, and I wish somebody would’ve shown me that sooner because I cried so many times watching that because my life was the opposite. I was working, you know, 10, 12, 14-hour days and some days I wouldn’t even see my son from morning till night. And so knowing that that’s what I wanted, it was so easy to say no to everything else. It makes, my life literally started shifting. So really I think the first thing is is know really detail on what it is you want. That would be the first thing. The second thing that I learned, and I learned this from my sister. My sister is just so amazing, and it’s add value. The more value you add, the more full your experience in life is gonna be, and the fuller your pocketbook is gonna be. And then the third one is always extend grace because you never know what others are going through, and you could be the change for them in their life. And I can’t tell you how many times that, you know, I’ve extended grace or helped somebody, and they became a key client for me. Not intentionally, it just happened that way.

Michelle: That’s beautiful. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah, that was like, you know, I had to take notes. I’m like, “Yeah, you know, extend grace to people.” Absolutely. You never know, you know, people are out there walking like a raw nerve ending, you know, you don’t know what’s happening in their life and extending grace can go a long way for sure. What is the best way for people to reach you or find out more about what you do, whether it be on the investing side or on the brokerage side?

Danielle: Sure. So, I mean, either way, they can look up Fisher Sisters Real Estate on Facebook. We also have a website. Other ways, they can look up Danielle Konechne. That’s the name that I have on my Facebook page, that’s my married name. Otherwise, they can reach out to us via email or they can call us directly.

Michelle: Okay. Do you wanna provide your phone number or email?

Danielle: Sure. It’s danielle@fishersisters.com, and they can also call me at 605-261-4882.

Michelle: Thank you so much, Danielle. It was a pleasure chatting with you today. I greatly appreciate you making the time, you know, to have this interview with me. I loved all your insights, what you’ve learned, you know, that you’re going for feelings of peace and joy, that that’s guiding your decisions. And I love everything you guys are doing as far as going from duplexes and why that was, so that you could have not just the investment, you know, be carried on one income, but two incomes, two rental, basically, sources of income. What you guys are doing on the Airbnb and doing this really very strategic, not just going for any price level, but on the higher price level and not necessarily what I was thinking about, which was like, you know, probably property in Miami Beach, but actually right there in South Dakota, right next to the hospital, you know, where people need to either fly in for treatment or doctors have to come in. I mean, how genius is that? Super smart. I love that. And just the dynamics of your relationship with your sister, with your husband, and how you guys have basically used the vehicle of real estate to create two independent, really, amazing family businesses. So thank you so very much. Thank you so much.

Danielle: Yes. Well, thank you so much for having me, and it’s been so great speaking with you. You’ll have to tell Jack hello for me, and I look forward to see you guys more.

Michelle: Yeah, thank you, the same.