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Discussing Business, Life, and Everything in Between with Danny Tran

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We had the opportunity recently to sit down with young millionaire Danny Tran and he shared valuable insights entrepreneurs can learn from. Danny is the man behind Highstoke Media, a company that scaled past 7-figures in just 18 months. In this interview, he tells us about his journey and vision.

Can you tell us something about your company Highstoke Media and how you got here?

I came up with the idea for Highstoke Media at the lowest point in my life. At that moment, I had just about 14$ with me. From day one, I had sincere faith in the company and gave it my all to make it bigger and better than anything I’ve done in my life.

The idea behind Highstoke Media is simple, we help people. We help companies grow with us. Many companies have benefited from our help and we’ve helped them grow to a six-figure level. We’ve helped aspiring entrepreneurs to reach their business goals and every day, we help as many people as we can.

Was it difficult to create a company that grew past 7-figures in just 18 months?

To be honest, anything worthwhile in life is going to be difficult. Highstoke Media was created for struggling businesses and entrepreneurs but at the same time, we faced significant challenges in our own journey to the top. I believe, what is important is to remember why we wanted to do this. Even when things were tough, we didn’t give up. We always kept in mind our mission to maximize impact in the modern world of digital marketing and paid advertising. So in moments like when we’ve lost all of clients and  faced severe competition, remembering our “why’s” always pushed us through.

Even when we did start doing well, we always kept trying to find a better winning formula. If you stop after finding the key, your growth stagnates. The business and industry are always evolving and you have to evolve with it.

Do you have any advice for the people trying to follow your footsteps?

As a young entrepreneur, you are bound to make many mistakes. One of them is being focused on too many things or on the wrong things. Shiny object syndrome is a real thing and can lead to the demise of your business. In addition to that, too many people try to sell products and not solutions. Your key to succeed in the market is to solve an actual problem and not just push out a product you think that will sell.

Also, with so many things prone to go wrong at any given time, you have to be patient. So many people dive into entrepreneurship or the world of business thinking it’s a get rich quick opportunity. Remember that all great things take time and for us, we didn’t finally reap the rewards of all of our efforts until after almost two years.

Is there anything that one should avoid doing with their ventures?

The number one thing is remaining stagnant. In the world of digital marketing and entrepreneurship, the industry is changing daily. Strategies and tactics that worked a few months ago will not last forever. Simply put, if your business stops innovating, it will stop growing and eventually decline.

The second is to be a copycat entrepreneur. I’m a huge advocate for taking frameworks and improving on existing things that work but if you can’t expect  to get very far if you model someone’s business to the exact details. With so many new businesses being created daily, it’s crucial that you not only break  into the market place by solving a valuable problem, but to also stand out from the millions of other businesses out there.

Being a young millionaire, what goals do you have for the future?

To be honest, it’s crazy to look back at everything we’ve accomplished so far. If you asked me 2 years ago, I wouldn’t have expected to have built a million dollar company from the ground up with $14 to my name. Now with an amazing team around the world, I hope to scale Highstoke Media even further and be a household name in our industry.

In addition to that, we hope to continually grow our impact in the digital space especially with young entrepreneurs. To date, we’ve coached and mentored thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs and hope to build a larger community to maximize the amount of impact we can have in this ever-evolving industry.

What values do you try to instill in your daily life to maintain success?

Achieving success is all about having the right mindset. Introspection is a very important aspect of what makes me myself. Being self-aware helps you think clearly and make better decisions. The key to making better decisions in life is to understand perspective. Everything that happens to you in life can be perceived in a good or a bad way. If you look at things negatively, you will never be able to get out of a stump.

Most importantly, I try to live every day of my life to the fullest. Having a tough background, it is easy to be obsessed with achieving it all but you have to learn to live your life to the fullest and enjoy every moment of it. After all, you only live once.

The idea of Bigtime Daily landed this engineer cum journalist from a multi-national company to the digital avenue. Matthew brought life to this idea and rendered all that was necessary to create an interactive and attractive platform for the readers. Apart from managing the platform, he also contributes his expertise in business niche.

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Business

The Perfect Investment: RAD Diversified and Income-Producing Farms

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Amidst the global lockdown of 2020, Dutch Mendenhall, founder of RADD America, began looking for an alternative to standard residential real-estate investments. So, he turned his analysis to farms and was blown away by the immense potential he saw. After going public in late 2019, RADD America purchased US farmland and made slices of the real estate available at minimum investments of $10,000.

Income-producing farms vs. other real estate asset classes

According to Mendenhall, an apartment complex in today’s US real estate market commands approximately a 4% or 5% cap rate. Farms offer somewhere around a 15% to 20% cap rate.

“When I first began looking at investing in farms, I compared each acre to an apartment or housing unit,” Mendenhall recalls. “The variety that income-producing farms provide is what I really love about them as an opportunity. With one season producing wheat and corn the next, you can double tap — you can raise livestock on top of agriculture. Putting money into the farm only pays off in time. Everything from improving soil to increasing irrigation makes a major impact on potential income, and so much of America’s farmland has fallen into disrepair during the last 20 years.”

When Mendenhall began investing during the early days of the pandemic, sustainable acres of producing farmland sold anywhere from $3,500 to $5,000. Today, he finds that income-producing acres of farmland easily sell for $9,500 to $10,000.

“I’ve seen farmland values almost double during the last couple of years,” Mendenhall says. “Currently, we’re in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Idaho, but we are analyzing land all over America. What reports don’t show is the difference between a properly maintained acre of farmland and an acre that is in disarray. There’s only so much workable farmland on the market today. We’ve hit the tipping point, and now, there’s a scarcity of land for people to buy. If you have the opportunity to purchase amazing agricultural land, you have to pull the trigger quickly.”

Income-producing farms as an asset class

Mendenhall is no stranger to investors. Since 2006, he’s connected them to deals in short sales, wholesaling, residential properties, and storage units, though he admits that every asset class has caused the same excitement as farmland. “At this point, we can’t find enough bargains for our investors,” he says. “They take real pride in their investments and keep asking us for more.”

RADD America takes a true grassroots approach when connecting its investors to farmland. “The farming world is different from any other in real estate,” explains Mendenhall. “We start by having our acquisitions and agricultural teams meet with farmers. When we get ready to brand cattle or plant, all the local farmers come and help. In the same spirit, our teams go out and help the local farmers when it’s their turn to brand and plant. To do it right, you have to build a relationship and a connection that’s quite different than other types of investing.”

RADD America is composed of expert investors and expert farmers. The company offers its investments through fractionalized ownership. In other words, the company purchases one farm and then allows a joint pool of investors to own it together. 

“If you don’t have a team that knows how to farm and maximize income, you’re not going to get the best possible return for investors,” warns Mendenhall. “Thankfully, our team isn’t so big for this type of investing that we forget who we are, and we have the economy to scale at a great pace.”

The impact of global competition on income-producing farm investments

RADD America closely monitors global trends. In Mendenhall’s experience, investors win when they move before the market. However, when they move after the market, they lose.

“When Russian first invaded and sparked its war with Ukraine, for example, we kept a close eye on its global impact,” he says. “As one of the largest producers of wheat in the world, we knew that Ukraine — now in the midst of a war — wasn’t going to be able to produce wheat at the same scale, so someone else needs to step in and fill the gap. We’re constantly monitoring what’s happening in the world to stay on top of evolving trends.”

In terms of global competition, Mendenhall is frustrated by foreign entities staking ownership of American farmland and agriculture. In this area, China has positioned itself as the number one threat to the sovereignty of the United States.

“When foreign powers have ownership of agricultural land in the US, it puts us all at risk as Americans,” remarks Mendenhall. “Over the past few years, we’ve seen soil quality erode, closures of meatpacking plants, and numerous fires. The likelihood of nuclear war in this age is very small. The quiet war of buying American agriculture and unsettling the American dollar is the threat we face today.”

Clearly, RADD America has a lot to pay attention to at home and abroad. “We’re monitoring weather patterns and making one-year, three-year, and five-year predictions,” Mendenhall explains. “We’re also paying close attention to interest rates to see where this shifting economy is headed. The up-and-down cycles are faster than they’ve ever been. Monitoring the industry is critical. With expert investors and agricultural specialists from RADD America on your team, farmland can be one of your most promising and rewarding investment opportunities.”

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