You don't need more information. You need a plan.

Show Summary:
In this solo episode, Markian cuts straight to the point: if you're still consuming content but haven't taken action on your first (or next) real estate deal, you don't have an information problem — you have a plan problem. He shares his own story of staring at the military pay chart and realizing his income ceiling was controlled by someone else, then walks through the ADPI First Deal Plan — a simple, six-step framework any military member can execute this week.

Key Takeaways:

• Learning feels productive, but it's not a substitute for decision-making and structure.
• "Information without a plan is just anxiety with a better vocabulary."
• Your plan must survive real military life — PCSs, duty rotations, kids, and everything in between.

The ADPI First Deal Plan (6 Steps):

1. Define your Military Financial Freedom Number — How much monthly cash flow would actually move the needle? Review your last 3 months of bank/credit card statements and pick a number.
2. Choose one strategy — House hacking, buy-and-hold rental, live-and-flip, or primary-to-rental. Pick one lane.
3. Choose one market — You can't build a team in six markets. Commit to one.
4. Build your purchase team before the property — Get a military-friendly lender, an investor-savvy agent, and a property manager (or self-manage with a tool like TurboTenant).
5. Run a simple deal filter — Use the PITI-PMV formula: Rent minus Principal & Interest, Taxes, Insurance, Property Management, Maintenance, and Vacancies (plus reserves). If there's money left, you're in good shape.
6. Set a weekly cadence — One hour per week: review deals, talk to your lender/agent, adjust criteria, make offers. Same time, same place, every week.

7-Day Challenge:
Stop watching videos for seven days. Instead, build your plan using the six steps above.

Notable Quote:
"Boring is good. We like boring. Boring gives you capacity and headspace to optimize and get better." — Eric Upchurch

Transcript

MARKIAN FRONT 0:00

Hey there everybody. Welcome to another A DPI podcast and this one I'm gonna title you don't need more information. You need a plan. Okay, this is just gonna be solo. Me being very truthful, honest, and direct with you guys about the mindset piece. Okay? So, uh, my intent, my goal is to convert every listener who's still in the listening and learning mode to convert you to be the, I'm taking the next step this week person, right? I want you to be that person, somebody who's executing on something this week. All right? So let me guess. You've watched. The YouTube videos, maybe you've saved some reels, some tiktoks. Even you, you've got maybe like 37 tabs open like I do, and you still haven't bought or invested in anything. Now, the reality is, is that's not because you're lazy. It's because you don't need more information. You need a plan. Here's the lie that keeps military investors stuck. Okay? It's that if I just learn a little more, I'll feel ready. No, you won't. Because learning isn't the bottleneck. Decision making is, and decision making requires structure, not vibes, not motivation, not another, I don't know, bigger podcast episode at like two x speed a plan, because the brain loves information. It like it, it feels productive, it feels safe, even. But in reality, it's a trap. Information without a plan is just anxiety with a better vocabulary. Okay. Uh, let's go over my story real quick. Like, you've probably heard it a million times, but I'm gonna rewind back to a moment I'll never forget. And it's, it's just me remembering, like, like just staring at the military pay chart like it was my future. Calculating, like when I'd pin on captain and when the next pay bump would happen, and then when my income would go up. By what? Like a couple hundred dollars. Right. And I was, I wasn't anxious because I was flying a helicopter, although I was, but that's not the point. I was anxious because I realized my income ceiling was controlled by someone else.

Cedric 2:11

That's when I started looking for a plan, not a hack, not a secret, A plan. Because in the military we don't, we don't execute without one. Right? Like you don't just wing it on a mission, you don't figure it out. Mid-flight, you plan it, you brief it, you run checklists, you, you build contingency plans. But for some reason, when it comes to money, we just freestyle and then we wonder like why it feels unsafe even, right.

MARKIAN FRONT 2:41

Or like anxiety inducing, right. So here's the difference, all right? Information tells you, okay? It tells you what a VA loan is, for example. Uh, what a cap right cap rate is. Excuse me. What, uh, what house hacking means, what cash flow means a plan. On the other hand, a plan tells you what you do next in your market. With your timeline, with your risk tolerance, with your military life constraints, information is general. Whereas a plan is personal information is infinite, whereas a plan is

Cedric 3:25

is

MARKIAN FRONT 3:25

finite, it has steps, it has sequence to it, it has deadlines. And you know how much I like, like sequential order of operations, if you've heard any of my previous episodes. So if you are stuck, here's the diagnostic question. Do you have a plan you can follow this week without watching another video? If the answer is no, you're not missing motivation. You're just missing structure. So let's call this like the A DPI First Deal Plan. Okay? Super short version. So bear with me. Okay, I'm going to give you the skeleton of a real plan, like right now, not every detail, but enough to move. Okay? So without further ado, let's go over it. Step one, def. You need to define your freedom number, or we like to call it our military financial freedom number.

Cedric 4:16

So this isn't like your dream life, this is just your number. Something that like will help you cover your bases. How, like how much? You need to start asking yourself like, how much monthly cashflow would actually change my life that actually moved the needle? Um,$500 a month. A thousand dollars a month.

MARKIAN FRONT 4:34

$2,500 a month. Like this is maybe for those people that have other streams of income to supplement. So just pick a number or maybe if you want, maybe if you don't plan on having a retirement or, or disability, maybe it's much higher, like 4, 5, 6, 7, 10,000, whatever, right? Whatever it is, pick one. Whatever it is, pick that number. It might help to go back in time, uh, through like the last three months of your bank statements or credit card statements and get the average. That's what we teach at A DPI. But whatever it is, get the number. It shouldn't take you more than five minutes to figure out and settle on it. Write it down. A plan without a number is just a wish.

Cedric 5:14

Now, step two is choose one strategy. So no dabbling here. Pick one, whether it's, let's say house hacking or you're gonna buy a primary residence and turn it into a future rental plan, right? Or you're just gonna straight up buy a rental or you're gonna do a live and flip. Uh, most people stay stuck because they're just trying to do it all at the same time.

MARKIAN FRONT 5:34

Pick one lane. All right. Now step three, choose one market, not maybe Florida, maybe Texas, maybe North Carolina. Just one market because you can't build a team in six markets. Ask me how I know managing, you know, multiple people in multiple markets. All the emotions, all the, it, it is just too much. Pick one market and, and that'll help you pick like. Work with one set of people that have the boots on the ground, especially if you're a remote. Like I can't highlight that enough or underscore that enough. Okay. Now step four, build the purchase team before the property. Okay? This is backwards for most people. They go, uh, I need a deal first. Right? No, no, no, no, no, no. What you need, you need is a lender who understands the military and your goals, right?

Cedric 6:28

right?

MARKIAN FRONT 6:29

And an agent who knows, like the investment mindset can work with investors, knows how to work with investors. Then you need a property manager if it'll be a rental, obviously, right? Um, or you can self-manage. We have an awesome partner, you know, turbo tenant, that'll help you self-manage from wherever you are in the world. Your team is your guardrail. Okay? Now step five, run a simple deal filter. All right? You don't need a 40 tab spreadsheet at the beginning. You just need a quick yes no or maybe filter, because coincidence comes after repetition, not before. Okay. Now if you're wondering what is like some easy back of the napkin math trick that you can do to help you filter out. A property as far as the numbers go, as far as a rental would go, okay, here, here's the easiest way you can do it. All you have to do is first find out what the projected rent's gonna be and be conservative on this, by the way. So how much are you gonna be able to rent it out? And then you subtract these numbers. Okay? Here's the, here's the mnemonic you can use to help you remember. P-I-T-I-P-M-M-V. Okay, so what that stands for is principal and interest taxes, insurance, property management, maintenance. And vacancies. And then I actually like to add in reserves as well. And that's it. So if you can take the rent and subtract all those numbers and you're still left with something, you are in good shape. Now. Step six, set a weekly cadence. This is where people fall apart, okay? They do one big burst of learning and then nothing for like three weeks, okay? A plan requires rhythm.

Cedric 8:01

One hour per week. Review deals. Talk to your lender. Talk to your agent. Adjust your criteria. Make offers when ready, like write down that cadence and knock out the, it's a checklist really, but do it on a timeline at the same time. Same place every single week. That's it. That's the skeleton. That's a plan.

MARKIAN FRONT 8:22

So, okay, here's, here's a truth bomb. And this is like why you keep doing the, starting it over a lot, like a lot. I mean, I, I don't know who you are out there listening to this right now. Maybe you're crushing it. But I do know that a lot of our listeners, just because of sheer statistics, are probably just that listeners. And so I'm talking to you, I want to help you and I want you to actually get results and change your life. Look,

Cedric 8:47

people don't fail because they can't do real estate. They, they fail because they never commit to a plan long enough for it to compound. They keep restarting new market, new strategy, new podcast, new guru that they're watching on TikTok or whatever new spreadsheet, right?

MARKIAN FRONT 9:05

And you end up with the same results. If you want results, like real results, you need a boring plan. You can execute while tired. Eric Upchurch my, uh, my partner. He, he said, he, he said, this line that has stuck with me for a very long time, he's like, he's like, boring is good. We like boring, right? Boring gives you capacity and head space to optimize, to make better, to learn lessons. If you're constantly on fire and chasing you, you might not even be able to get better at what you're doing, right? Give yourself the ability to get better. Stack the deck in your favor. So again, if you want real results, you need a boring plan. You can execute even while tired. Because military life will keep happening. The PCSs, it will keep happening. If you're active duty, kids will keep happening. Maybe you have to stand duty too much that month or whatever. Life will happen all over the place, right?

Cedric 9:58

Your plan has to survive real life, and on top of that real military life, right? So here's the challenge. Stop watching videos for like seven days. Just write it down right now. I'm gonna stop watching videos for seven days. Stop what you're doing mentally. Decide that right now you're gonna stop watching a bunch of videos and tiktoks and reels for seven days.

MARKIAN FRONT 10:17

And instead, build this plan We talked about. Figure out what your financial freedom number is. Write down the strategy, the market, the purchase team, your deal filter. Then a wait weekly cadence. If you want help mapping that plan with people who actually understand military life. That's what we do here at A DPI, right inside A DPI. That's what we're all about. I mean, education is everywhere, but execution is truly rare, and that's the difference. All right, go ahead, build the plan, and I'll see you in the next episode.