From Cold Calling to Lead Follow-Up: Who to Hire for Maximum Growth in Real Estate

Dan Austin: [0:00] If you have a good title, we have good title people, they still make mistakes, right, and they still sometimes don't help us. The challenge is is when you have these one offs, because normally that process works for them, and you never, it's an easy wholesale deal, done, easy sale, easy flip, whatever, it's done. It's when you have the situation where there's four heirs, one of them's in prison like in this case I believe, those unique situations but you do these enough in off market, they happen way more often than they do with retail agents, retail buyers and sellers, right? We're doing off market, they sell with us for a reason and then these pop up more often, but the title companies don't see that. This is like, you know, 10% of the time, so their normal systems don't affect them, but it's gonna affect your business.

Mike DeHaan: [0:47] What's going on, guys? Welcome to today's episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast. This is the show where we teach you to make massive income, not just passive income for your real estate investing business. If this is your first time here, I am Mike DeHaan. I'm here with my co host, Dan Austin. And on these Wednesday, Mike and Dan shows, we talk about real estate investing business and whatever else we feel like for the week. And on these we also like talk about what our business is doing, kind of like real estate as a whole, just like market wide, nationwide, you know, whatever. And we are going through headlines for real estate news on this fine day at the end of January twenty twenty four. What are the top headlines, Dan?

Dan Austin: [1:31] This one's actually pretty funny that we didn't see beforehand. Leimert, this is Los Angeles Times, the Leimert Park residents upset over calls asking them to sell their house.

Mike DeHaan: [1:43] Oh, there you go. People That's a hell sat with some cold callers. Alright.

Dan Austin: [1:47] My other favorite one here is sister of the year transforms 200 square foot New York City apartment into a shockingly luxe space. Fun. Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [1:57] So that space you should turn a broom closet into a shockingly luxe space. Know? Absolutely. Or like over here on my end, there's some some bangers such as a real estate investor who tried Airbnb now prefers long term rentals. Is that actually a headline? That's actually what I'm like, Don Quartz. No dude, that's on Business Insider. Google and that you'll find Ursula Lariston, who works full time at Google. Okay. I hate, don't even get me started on this now. She's like the person that works full time at Google that's gonna talk about how easy it is to be a long term landlord. Yeah, make 600 I thousand dollars

Dan Austin: [2:34] pay cash for them and rent them to my programmer friends.

Mike DeHaan: [2:37] Yeah, yeah exactly. So there's that one. Going down next, real estate investor, Warren's US is entering the greatest correction of his lifetime with a big picture of Grant Cardone. Oh. What's he saying? Little clickbait. Billionaire fear mongering.

Dan Austin: [2:54] From strip club to luxury towers, the property developer looking to transform Miami. And there's a picture of Travis Scott with rapping music on it.

Mike DeHaan: [3:03] Oh, nice. Yeah. Transform I mean, changing the strip clubs to luxury towers, that's just kinda like rebranding it.

Dan Austin: [3:10] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [3:10] It's not really changing

Dan Austin: [3:10] it. Right. Exactly. It's got extra tall stripper poles.

Mike DeHaan: [3:14] But point being, like real estate in general is just not a lot going on.

Dan Austin: [3:18] There's not a lot going on. But here's a headline. Here's a good headline. Walmart superstore managers to make over $400,000 in compensation next year with their new comp plan. Does that upset you? Does that upset me? That a Walmart manager, like the store, this is like the manager of the store, would make $400,000 a year.

Mike DeHaan: [3:37] No, I mean, it doesn't upset me, but like it's funny, I can see how the average person that would kinda throw them for a loop, and that's why that's a headline, right? Because the average person associates Walmart with like cheap goods you know, and kind of like low quality whatever.

Dan Austin: [3:52] Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [3:53] But I mean, like, if you think about managing a Walmart store,

Dan Austin: [3:57] it's like a lot of

Mike DeHaan: [3:58] shit. Absolutely. Have a huge team you gotta manage of like low income employees that's gonna be just high maintenance in general. I would imagine

Dan Austin: [4:07] there's probably a 100 to 300 employees at least per store, like a superstore like you would see in Spokane. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [4:13] If you're looking at like a twenty four hour that's open seven days a week, Right? That From all

Dan Austin: [4:17] the different shifts?

Mike DeHaan: [4:18] Yeah. And that's in the store. That's not even including like all the contractors that are doing your logistics and and everything else and

Dan Austin: [4:24] It's gotta be a nightmare. Think about this, the hiring because you are like, you're right. Is quite a few like the the minimum wage employees. Actually, I don't know if Walmart has minimum wage employees. Employees, I don't know, somebody could correct us on this. Think they actually do pretty, I'm pretty sure they're pretty competitive with their wages, if I had to guess. Maybe there's some like, the people at the door or something like that, like the guest checkers or something like that, they maybe are minimum wage, I bet you they have different tiers too of like jobs, like death prevention. Oh yeah. That's probably a higher paid job. I don't know, they probably have a lot of different jobs, not just, and not everybody at Walmart makes minimum wage. But, because there is like a lot of those employees, just like the hiring.

Mike DeHaan: [4:59] Uh-huh.

Dan Austin: [5:00] Like you're probably constantly hiring like just the personnel management alone is is a challenge.

Mike DeHaan: [5:05] Yeah. Just like the constant turnover and that's not even including all the other stuff that's where you have to manage like the inventory, you know, I bet I

Dan Austin: [5:11] mean Which is nuts right now, I'm sure of it. Like with just like still lit, like if you drive by a Walmart, they have like all these like, Konex cars in front of their wall, in front of their store. I'm sure they're just trying to manage inventory because like there's delays in in inventory, you have to have things on the shelf and always changing things.

Mike DeHaan: [5:28] You're having stuff gets stolen when like all those kids running That's there probably nuts, dude. San Francisco and just starts stealing everything from the wall truck.

Dan Austin: [5:35] Well, I mean, they're talking about compensation being variable, right? So they can make up to this much. I guarantee you, store forums matters, and I guarantee you, like, loss prevention's a big one. So like, say you're a dude, you're like, dude, I'm on I'm on track to hit my bonus this year, and 50 kids run into your Walmart and just steal all of your Xboxes and candy and TVs, and you're like, there's nothing you can stop, it's a mob, dude. Like, that's happening across the country. Mean

Mike DeHaan: [5:58] Yeah. Ripping the iPhones off the little, like, chains.

Dan Austin: [6:03] Once with all the gross fingerprints on them already that nobody else wants.

Mike DeHaan: [6:06] Yeah, right.

Dan Austin: [6:06] Yeah, dude. Seriously though, like and just like drug addicts passing out and dying in your store and rubbing shit all over the walls.

Mike DeHaan: [6:14] I mean, I I would not wanna do that job for $400,000. Like, the more you're describing it, I would definitely not wanna do that. That sounds horrible.

Dan Austin: [6:21] It's gotta be like 800,000. Like, that's half the minimum. Jesus.

Mike DeHaan: [6:25] Yeah. I mean, does Walmart own the real estate in their where their stores are?

Dan Austin: [6:30] I have no idea about that. I Yeah. Whatever they're doing is probably the most savvy. When I when I was doing my MBA, we did a case study on like Walmart, and from the beginning days, where they had like seven stores, and it's fascinating how high-tech they are. They created, they were like the predecessors to the modern day barcode, like they created that, like they would have SKU numbers on their groceries, and then they built a nationwide network to go from store to store before cell phones existed to transmit that data and their logistics is nuts. They figured out, and now Amazon uses the same technology for logistics where they figure out like this idea of this mobile warehouse, which is all of their semi trucks on the road, they're like, dude, we have the largest trucking fleet, we don't need that many warehouses, they just have this, they do have giant warehouses, but a lot of it is using their vendors warehouses and loading up their trucks with their vendors goods, and then carrying supplies to their vendors, and so they have this massive truck fleet that is a gigantic, like, living, breathing warehouse that's always moving. That's interesting.

Mike DeHaan: [7:34] So bay so basically, they don't the concept being they don't have the warehouses because things are always in the trucks.

Dan Austin: [7:39] Yeah. So they do have massive warehouses still, distribution centers. But what, like, early on, what they're doing is, so, Johnson and Johnson's a huge vendor of theirs. Right? Yeah. So Johnson and Johnson was paying them shipping to drive a truck down there full of Johnson and Johnson goods, and then drive that truck back to the Johnson and Johnson factory empty. Walmart's like, well, hey, we need to take goods to our stores on the way. So how about this? You no longer charge us for delivery. We're going to go to your factory and and pick all your stuff up, and we're gonna deliver to our stores on the way. And so that Mhmm. That's what they started doing. So their trucks were never empty. So they're not paying empty freight, which is a lot of these companies when you're going to a distribution warehouse, they go into the distribution warehouse loaded and you have to go somewhere else empty. So Walmart has cut all of that out of their supply chain.

Mike DeHaan: [8:20] Yeah. That's interesting.

Dan Austin: [8:21] It's nuts.

Mike DeHaan: [8:22] It's funny thinking about that when you're like on the entrepreneurial end, you view things like that so differently versus like the average association with Walmart which is like, oh you have like the weird old people that like reach out the door, you said you have the people like passing out in the aisle way from doing different things. But it's like from a business, I mean they're, if you think about it, they're appealing with like their cheap discounted goods mostly in rural areas to the largest demographic in The United States right now, is people that can't afford any. Absolutely. So who's really the smartest people in the group? Yeah. Let me them.

Dan Austin: [8:54] They're bringing cheap goods to people, especially, I mean Walmart really started out in rural America, so they were bringing cheap goods into markets where commercial farming was depressing the local economies by buying, they're buying up all these people's farms and people were out of jobs, and so Walmart came in and provided jobs and like Yeah. And provided low cost goods to these people. Yeah. No. That makes sense. Good business model. I don't know. I mean, that's my It's more interesting

Mike DeHaan: [9:15] than any other real estate headline that's on the news right now. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [9:20] Good thing we're not a real estate news show.

Mike DeHaan: [9:22] No shit. Right? That would be a struggle bus if that was our thing.

Dan Austin: [9:25] We start talking about Bitcoin.

Mike DeHaan: [9:26] I'm gonna go there. I just don't care. I'm just over it. I'm like over

Dan Austin: [9:31] I know.

Mike DeHaan: [9:31] Like the the crypto thing. Like, understand what you're doing. We talk about AI, and now everyone is white labeling the same fucking AI platform, which is hilarious. From like Brian Pineda to Pace Morby and all these other freaking dorks. They're talking about their AI platform that our our good friend Ryan Dossi pointed out is exactly it's it's literally just real flow, which is like a six year old program that isn't AI, by the way. They have like a sort of algorithm based formula that they use to help you find this. It's not AI. It's very very different because it's not actually comprehending anything. But it's that like white labeled. And you have all these dipshits out there right now trying to sell it at a premium price saying like it's their AI thing. And it just Totally. It really shows how susceptible people are to whatever the current buzzword is. It's just ridiculous.

Dan Austin: [10:25] So easy, right? Like, I mean, even when like people, like, go back to the crypto, right, like in 2020, like, people that should not have been buying crypto were buying crypto.

Mike DeHaan: [10:33] Mhmm. Right?

Dan Austin: [10:34] They had no they had no idea about it because it was just that was the buzzword, Bitcoin and crypto, even though crypto had been around a while, you and I were looking at it way before that, all that sort of stuff. And then, you have this new AI stuff and I have this like, I had this thought the other day where if you were like targeting me

Mike DeHaan: [10:48] with

Dan Austin: [10:48] basic Facebook ads to use your AI marketing software to find new leads, I'm pretty sure it doesn't work. Right? Like, why don't I just use normal Facebook ads if I why why do I need AI to do it for me? It's like, AI is not just because it's software doesn't mean it's AI.

Mike DeHaan: [11:05] No. I mean, yeah, but most That's what people are that's

Dan Austin: [11:07] what people don't know. They're like, well, it's in the box somewhere.

Mike DeHaan: [11:09] It's AI. Don't understand this, it's connected to chat GPT somehow. I don't know how. So I think

Dan Austin: [11:15] Well, the worst thing is that some of these people with big names that like have big audiences, they either have no idea either and they're just saying and regurgitating it They they're lying.

Mike DeHaan: [11:24] Fully no. They don't give a shit. Right?

Dan Austin: [11:27] It's just like peddling bullshit. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [11:29] Yeah. It's frustrating. I mean, it's all about money. That's what all these people do. And you see that across every industry. You know, it's like how there was that whole thing a number of years ago where Arnold Schwarzenegger made this whole documentary about vegan diet or being vegetarian, and it was all kinda like a big promotion for lab grown meat and this different stuff. And he was like a primary shareholder in all these companies that were on that side. Come on bro. Really? You can honestly tell me that Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a meat eater. Right? With how freaky huge he got, he got all that off of plant proteins in like the seventy's when nobody ate it She like

Dan Austin: [12:03] breast and anabolic steroids.

Mike DeHaan: [12:04] Yeah, right. He had a great pharmacist and a great butcher. Those are

Dan Austin: [12:08] two things that he had. That's that's exactly, yeah. You always have to be skeptical of what where they're getting paid with. They're not most people like that aren't pitching just to pitch it, right? They're getting paid somehow.

Mike DeHaan: [12:18] For sure, right? I mean, in the real estate space, they're not selling you health, They're selling you wealth, which is the other thing that's easy to sell. You know, where they say like health, wealth, sex, like, what other things are easy to sell? I don't know. There's probably, I know there's like a list of like the things that everyone

Dan Austin: [12:36] There's like a list of things that you'll pay for?

Mike DeHaan: [12:38] No, the like everything, they always try to like market under those umbrellas, right?

Dan Austin: [12:42] Yeah, exactly, right. The whole idea sex sells, and well you know, people wanna get rich quick, all that sort of stuff.

Mike DeHaan: [12:48] Yeah, yeah. And that's what all these people are doing, They're trying to give you the next best thing, and they're targeting specifically people who haven't even tried any of the proven stuff yet, but they think that by going and paying for their overpriced, not actually AI software, it's going to somehow give them an advantage.

Dan Austin: [13:03] So are you saying that Ryan Pineda is no longer selling his clothes with the weird stripe on the arm that was very reminiscent of like a World War Two military uniform from some different country?

Mike DeHaan: [13:13] I mean, think he is still signed though, I've seen his ads. I mean, has moved on though from selling his Amazon businesses that he was doing for a short little while there.

Dan Austin: [13:20] Oh, he's giving that up? Yeah. How many people lost money with that?

Mike DeHaan: [13:24] A lot, probably. Well, anyone that bought it, I don't know what the actual number is, anyone who bought into that.

Dan Austin: [13:29] Yeah, that's one of those ones where you're like, where the people were asking this question when like, don't see a lot about Amazon storefronts anymore, but people were like, well if you know how to make the storefront, why don't you just make it and make money off it? Well, it's not, that's not how the business model works. It's like, well, doesn't make sense.

Mike DeHaan: [13:44] Yeah. Well, I mean I'm investing with them to like start it up and then we basically split them like, that does, that fundamentally does not make sense. Right? If you just think about Doesn't make any sense. Because if they were really building these stores that were spinning off 50 to $60,000 a month like they're saying, why would they need $50,000 from you to make the next one when they could just wait one month and have it from their current store?

Dan Austin: [14:09] Honestly.

Mike DeHaan: [14:09] And then they put it into the next store and then that one makes 50, now they have a 100,000, And they can do two stores. Right? You know what the crazy

Dan Austin: [14:18] Doesn't work that way Mike. Doesn't work that way. You're wrong.

Mike DeHaan: [14:20] The crazy thing is though, is like when that and you're seeing this now with like all the real estate guru bullshit they're selling, is legitimately smart people that we know get into that.

Dan Austin: [14:32] Yeah. They do. You're absolutely locked by the droves, lots of people.

Mike DeHaan: [14:35] Tons of them. It's crazy. Like we'll see in like the GoBundance groups. Mhmm. I'll see how I get when people ask me conversations, people text me about it, people like in my my Go Pods will ask me like, oh have you seen this thing? I'm like, really? Like you are actually bought into that, that is fascinating to me. Yeah. I don't know,

Dan Austin: [14:52] maybe it's because Yeah that's the unfortunate situation though.

Mike DeHaan: [14:54] Yeah, mean and I don't know if it's like I'm like a natural skeptic, that I just assume that everyone that's trying to sell anything is kind of full of shit.

Dan Austin: [15:01] You are a natural skeptic, but also, I would say it's unique to you though, because you're also a guy that's willing to jump in and like take a risk on something you believe in.

Mike DeHaan: [15:09] Absolutely.

Dan Austin: [15:09] And so it's not like you're like, I sit on the sidelines and like a critic that would not say anything. Mhmm. I think it's just a read on like, that makes no sense, like let me think about that. For sure. You know what I mean? Because you're like, that person is doing that,

Mike DeHaan: [15:21] I don't know that that makes sense. Yeah. Well, you're right. So I'm always really sort of keen on, you know, suspicious of the individual who's behind it. It's funny because I am definitely a natural skeptic on most things in my life. I'm also one of the easiest sales when I do think something's good. I'm like, yeah. I'll wire the money when wanna do it. You know? And that's burned me before for sure. Of course. More often than not, I'm like, I don't know. It always seems really obvious to me when something seems too good to be true. But I don't know if it's just like after repeated exposure, people just kinda get

Dan Austin: [15:55] like Right.

Mike DeHaan: [15:55] Worn down with that and their, you know, bullshit radars eventually wears away.

Dan Austin: [16:00] Well, for a lot of it though, when you especially when you're listening to people like pitch, like like just take a minute when you're listening, when you're seeing somebody like pitch their numbers, like, this is what I'm doing with my AI system, or replace the AI system with whatever they're trying to sell, and do the math and like, does that actually work out? Because usually you can do quick math and you're like, those numbers don't work out. Especially if you have even a little bit of knowledge in that space. Like if somebody's telling me how many deals they're doing a month in off market real estate, I'm gonna know exactly if they're lying when they're telling me how much they're spending on marketing, or what market they're in, or if they're in a single market and they're saying where they're doing 50 deals a month, like, probably not.

Mike DeHaan: [16:33] You know I mean? And it's everyone's always in the same ballpark. Like when you have people that you know are legitimate operators in a market We real estate, kind of all have similar cost per deals, similar operating costs, similar levels of profitability. And then it's when you suddenly have someone that's like, woah, that's like way different number. It's like, oh, and you're also a large brand? Yeah, you're, yeah.

Dan Austin: [16:55] You're a liar.

Mike DeHaan: [16:56] 100%. Yeah, I mean,

Dan Austin: [16:57] and it goes to this point to where we actually had one of our scale members went through and he's like, hey, would you guys mind reviewing my profit and loss to see if what I'm doing is in alignment with what you would expect for a business? We looked at it, and there literally wasn't a single number on there that I was like, oh that's wrong. Like line by line we reviewed it with him as a group, and it was like, yeah you're doing the right things, now you just need to do more of them if you have goals to do more of course. Yeah. And so it's like, you're like to your point, the numbers are so common in our history, if there's like a person way out in left field, they're likely not telling the truth.

Mike DeHaan: [17:28] Yeah. And the the challenge is is that people that they really push that and have like a presence, especially when they're trying to sell you something, there should always be a red flag. I'm like I'm trying to say this a ton with the highs, was it results driven, Josh and Tiffany who I heard from people, their $25,000 weekend over they sell people. One of my good friends said that was quote, the worst $25,000 I've ever spent in my life.

Dan Austin: [17:52] That's what they call it, is it $25,000 weekend?

Mike DeHaan: [17:54] Whatever their like results driven workshop is that they do out in Ohio, it's like $25 to go to that thing but

Dan Austin: [18:00] No, know it's 25. I just didn't know if that's what they called it, because was like, if they did, that's like a total rip off of another book, so

Mike DeHaan: [18:05] Oh, is it? No. I'm just trying to emphasize how expensive it is and overpriced.

Dan Austin: [18:08] Oh, okay. Yeah. There's a book called The Million Dollar Weekend.

Mike DeHaan: [18:10] Oh, jeez. That sounds like something really scamming to you. But anyway, they they have been going in like, and I do think that a lot of the stuff that they foundationally sort of like teach around like sales concepts and marketing stuff is super valid. Right? Like honestly, I've been part of their group, they post some good things on there. But, then they'll follow it up with things like, we currently have 63 deals in escrow, then the first person will comment and say, how'd you do that? Don't you only have two sales guys now? And they're like, yes, but we're really efficient with our sales processes.

Dan Austin: [18:40] AI sales guys.

Mike DeHaan: [18:41] Yeah. Oh my god, that doesn't fucking make sense.

Dan Austin: [18:44] Yeah. You can't get more efficient at phone calls.

Mike DeHaan: [18:46] No. And for them to have like two sales people that are closing 30 something deals over the next like two months.

Dan Austin: [18:53] Could you imagine that? Like how you would even do that? Sales guy, 30 something deals, I mean, I don't know that there's enough hours in the day to call that many people

Mike DeHaan: [19:01] to get that There many is, yeah.

Dan Austin: [19:02] Like there's just not enough. Like even if every call was a hang up, like in thirty seconds, like No. It's not possible.

Mike DeHaan: [19:07] But people see that and they're like, wow, that's amazing. Like just, it just doesn't make sense. Like if you understand the business at all, it's just like logistically how much marketing you would have to be doing than to go into an extremely small funnel with no people, right? If you only have two sales guys and a couple VAs or whatever they had, like it doesn't I don't understand how they can be getting those deals together.

Dan Austin: [19:35] If I just did, if I went off of our average, like what is it, calls to contract, which is like a 100.

Mike DeHaan: [19:40] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [19:41] In which, say you're getting better at that, say you're at 90, but let's use 100 for like a round number and then you know that there's gonna be a a fallout rate too. Especially if you're doing 60 something deals, that means you probably did a 100. Right. So that's 10,000 phone calls one person would have to in their team. I don't even know, like I said, there's not enough minutes in the day. No, Some of those calls are twenty, thirty minutes.

Mike DeHaan: [20:04] Yeah. That's like more than our cold callers do in like a couple of months. And those are like closing phone calls that are gonna be longer. It doesn't make any sense at all.

Dan Austin: [20:14] I'm gonna have our guy put together a I'm gonna have Ramon put together a text post and it's gonna break down one of their posts on how many minutes you'd have to be talking. And I'm pretty sure it's gonna be more minutes in the day.

Mike DeHaan: [20:25] You should. Yeah we should.

Dan Austin: [20:26] Yeah let's do that.

Mike DeHaan: [20:27] I wanna see if I can find that one that they posted because Do it. Like if it's one thing if they're like 20% better than the average. That's reasonable. They got a hit bull sales guy, like they got their marketing dialed in, they're crushing it. When you're 300% better, or like when that gets 3000% better than everyone else that we know, just it's not possible. Like it's just probably a million.

Dan Austin: [20:49] Just not possible. It's just everywhere right now. Just so you

Mike DeHaan: [20:52] can't escape it. And it's a symptom of the market being challenging, you know, more and more people, and I'm just saying this slightly hypocritically too because we obviously have our scale community, you know, have our partnership program stuff that we do. But the one thing I, and I'll hand there again at desk you, is at least we're straightforward and honest with people about what it takes, and what exactly we have going on. And we're not trying to like upsell someone on a $25,000 weekend because we claim to be closing 63 deals with a team of four. You know what I mean? Stupid.

Dan Austin: [21:24] Now that we've broken that down, it's so outlandish.

Mike DeHaan: [21:26] It's so stupid.

Dan Austin: [21:27] I would agree like we have a Even if we had half the ethics, we wouldn't even be close to that number. Yeah. Pitching some bullshit to our people.

Mike DeHaan: [21:34] Yeah. But, yeah, so our business stuff though, going going pretty solid, have quite a handful of closings this month, we've had a handful of stuff get pushed back for various reasons, closing issues, like it's just such an important lesson guys. Check-in with your title and escrow companies throughout the process and don't expect that just because you haven't heard anything for two weeks stuff's getting done. We like literally had a deal that was supposed to close tomorrow, and now we have to delay because they just realized this morning that apparently there's four different people that are can claim title of the property because there wasn't a fully completed probate. What have they been doing for the last thirty days? Not that.

Dan Austin: [22:13] So you and I have put hundreds of deals in escrow. So we know this by now. Whatever the close date is, thirty days from now, back it off about five, and that's when they're gonna start looking at your file.

Mike DeHaan: [22:24] If you're lucky. If you're lucky. Like this one like was like two days before. So why they demand a thirty day closing, I have no idea. It doesn't make any sense.

Dan Austin: [22:34] Well, and here's the thing is, even if you have a good title, we have good title people, they still make mistakes, right? And they still sometimes don't help us. The challenge is, is when you have these one offs. Because normally that process works for them. And you never, it's an easy wholesale deal, done, easy sale, easy flip, whatever, it's done. It's when you have the situation where there's four heirs, one of them's in prison, like in this case I believe, like those unique situations, but you do these enough in off market, they happen way more often than they do with retail agents, retail buyers and sellers, right? We're doing off market, they sell with us for a reason and then these pop up more often, but the title companies don't see that, this is like, you know, 10% of the time, so their normal systems don't affect them, but it's gonna affect your business. So that's why when you're doing these deals, to your point Mike, checking in at regular cadences. Obviously, you get into escrow, say you get into escrow on a Monday, call them on that Friday, just say, hey, wanna check, make sure that you guys got that preliminary title report out, and did you see anything funny? You know, because that phone call might be like, them like, oh crap, we forgot to do that, let's let's do it.

Dan Austin: [23:35] Or it might have them do a deeper dive into something. For sure.

Mike DeHaan: [23:38] It's funny looking at this, I can see why like a lot of people that have grown large businesses, they end up starting their own title companies. Yeah. It's like the wholesale version of someone builds a decent rental portfolio and they're gonna start a rental property management company. They're like, wallet property managers fuck suck, so I'm just gonna go build It's my the same thing when you're doing you know ten, twelve deals a month, and you're like, goddamn, all these title companies suck, I'm just gonna go build my own, and then you realize it comes with its issues.

Dan Austin: [24:04] Well absolutely, yeah, does come with its own issues, but even on the property management side, if you can get three to 5% more efficient by bringing it in house when you're big enough, that could be a 6 figure return back to your bottom line, assuming with a title company. Especially with some of these title company fees, man, they do stack up if you're not paying attention to them.

Mike DeHaan: [24:19] Oh yeah. I mean, I saw one recently, this was actually from a guy in a different group that I'm in, that he was saying that they closed a deal in a new market and they were looking at the title fees and they like didn't even like complain. They just kinda asked, were like, well damn, my god, this is closing out those title fees are really expensive. I was just curious what was all involved in that. And they just came back and they were like, oh sorry, we'll reduce those for you. And they knocked $4,000 off his closing. Really? He like, he didn't even like push for it, just kinda like questioned and was like, what the hell?

Dan Austin: [24:49] Asked why, like hey, what's here that's different?

Mike DeHaan: [24:52] Yeah. Then no response, they just like, oh sorry about that and they just like knocked $4 off. I'm like Oh man. That's criminal, those bastards.

Dan Austin: [24:59] That is not okay.

Mike DeHaan: [25:00] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [25:01] Whoopsie. I mean, if

Mike DeHaan: [25:02] you would

Dan Austin: [25:02] have paid it, we'd been okay with it.

Mike DeHaan: [25:04] For sure, they wouldn't have said anything if they had showed up.

Dan Austin: [25:07] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [25:07] So anyways, but yeah, so we're dealing with a couple situations like that right now. We have one that got pushed back, we have a couple other that have like weird easement issues which is just par for the course. This is a problem with like mobile homes. Of we have a couple right now because mobile homes are pretty easy to do deals with. Where like when the mobile home was moved there, it wasn't put in the lot correctly because the person bought the lot and then it sold their own mobile home and they didn't think to get a freaking survey to see where the lot lines are. So now I have to do like a lot line adjustment to actually be able to sell the freaking property.

Dan Austin: [25:38] So the the mobile is half on another property?

Mike DeHaan: [25:41] Yeah. Yeah. It's like we're like, even even if it's partly on it, right? And so it's like, woah.

Dan Austin: [25:44] Or it doesn't even hit me, maybe it doesn't meet setback rules or something like guidelines or something even.

Mike DeHaan: [25:49] Yeah. Yeah. And it's just problem when you're playing in the gray areas, you have to deal with all these kind of problems. That's also why we can make decent money in this, right? Because no one else is gonna solve those problems. I can guarantee you the seller has no idea what the hell is going on.

Dan Austin: [26:03] Right? No, absolutely not.

Mike DeHaan: [26:04] So you kinda had to babysit that but you know, it is what it is, par for the course but you know, we got a new partner starting up in Texas that I'm pretty excited about. Going down there in West Texas, you've never done any deals before, so that should be fine. And then we have a handful of other, I guess, like our newer markets that we started getting our first deals for this month that have been with us for just under a month right now. Already got a deal in each one, that's a pretty solid start on both those.

Dan Austin: [26:32] Yeah, absolutely a solid start.

Mike DeHaan: [26:34] So it's been good though. But yeah, it's just like the constant up and down and cold calling team's going well though, I'm actually pretty stoked So about if you guys have been following along at all

Dan Austin: [26:43] We're getting leads coming as well.

Mike DeHaan: [26:44] Yeah, I stood up a cold calling team in like five days, kinda just like went for it

Dan Austin: [26:48] and brought on

Mike DeHaan: [26:49] a handful of callers and got it operating. Churning out a few deals a day in each market.

Dan Austin: [26:54] A few leads a day?

Mike DeHaan: [26:55] Yeah, sorry, a few deals a day. No, we're doing 75 deals this month with a team of two and a half people.

Dan Austin: [27:02] Our Egyptian cold callers lock them up on the phone right then and there.

Mike DeHaan: [27:06] They do, If your VAs don't do that, you should go to collectingkeys.com/isuck and look that up.

Dan Austin: [27:14] Yeah, exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [27:16] Or Can

Dan Austin: [27:16] we get that domain please?

Mike DeHaan: [27:17] Yeah. But yeah, get a handful of leads a day, we're getting our first couple opportunities out of those too, so Yep. It's a big takeaway on just like the value of just making sure you get after it and start like getting those leads coming in. And then we even had one of our guys in Scale West, I don't know if you saw his post earlier today, but he had this, this is my favorite bit about his whole post was he said, I think I'm as excited about this as I was when I snagged my first contract. I should have had her on the phone six months ago instead of just scraping data. So he finally got his first, this is something that we've been pushing for with our community forever, about like just start hiring out these lead management. Yep. And he finally got one that's in that's

Dan Austin: [27:58] doing his calls and she's

Mike DeHaan: [27:59] like a killer on the phone, like doing great and it's like dude

Dan Austin: [28:03] It was really good audio.

Mike DeHaan: [28:04] Yeah, if you'd done this six months ago, your life would look so different right now than it would, than it currently does.

Dan Austin: [28:10] Oh, there definitely would be many more deals, right? Because a lot of times what happens, and I'm sure Wes is no different, is that you just aren't doing the right follow-up with the right leads. Because you don't have other time, you're getting distracted. Wes, I know, is flipping houses left and right, and doing all sorts of other stuff in his business. And so, to do your lead follow-up, plus new lead intake, plus manager marketing, plus this, plus that, all that, you things have to fall off, and guess what the first thing for me to fall off is, is gonna be lead follow-up, because it's be Of my least favorite thing to do, which is everybody. So, And and he had a very qualified person, so typically, a lot of times the admin that you hire, by the accent, I believe she's probably Filipino, a lot of times that doesn't translate, but he was able to, he has a, that was an amazing call, right, just to put her in there, throw her in the fire, and that's a good way to do it, nobody's calling those leads anyways, put them on there, test them out, see how they're doing.

Mike DeHaan: [28:56] Yeah, for sure, and it's such an easy thing to outsource, like, is a whole professional environment out there for people to work for American companies to do that role. And realistically, if you're looking at the big picture, it is not the best use of your time to be doing your cold follow-up because you're gonna have a low response rate. Now a ton of people that just like ghost you don't answer the phone, kind of course like on the phone with you when you do interrupt them whatever they're doing. And just having someone that you pay a couple thousand bucks a month or less, like realistically you can get a decent PA for 5 to $10 an hour, that goes through all that and basically takes the bullets for you so you can do the high value stuff. That's like, I really really do think, I think one of my big position, this has changed over the years, that should probably be the first hire for most people, unless you just like are abysmal at closing.

Dan Austin: [29:49] Yeah. Unless you're so adverse to talking to sellers at all.

Mike DeHaan: [29:52] Correct.

Dan Austin: [29:52] Then you probably wanna hire someone else out.

Mike DeHaan: [29:54] Or you have like no lead flow. Right? One that way which case you need to focus on that first. But at that point, you should probably have like a caller or like a direct mail, those sort of things.

Dan Austin: [30:04] For sure.

Mike DeHaan: [30:05] Because you need to be able to keep that person busy. But

Dan Austin: [30:07] One thing I wanna correct, like as you're bringing that up, like one thing I wanna I guess correct in my language, I'm not gonna tell you to do this, but you made a comment about, so you could do high value work. I've been hearing this a lot and let's be honest, this is high value work. It is, for sure. You just need somebody else to do it. It's a lot of high value work. It's just that there's moments in between where there's calls that you're just disconnect, disconnect, disconnect, you're having to go through, you need somebody to do that because, you know, having this lead manager in that role, if you have a standard lead flow for a sole operator, that could be another 15 to $20 in revenue in new business a month from one, maybe two more deals.

Mike DeHaan: [30:41] Absolutely, and you know, and I will say that that is high value work, especially if you don't have a lot of working capital. Know, you should be the one that's doing that because you have more time than you have money.

Dan Austin: [30:50] Right. But as you're scaling, you need to expand your team, and to your point, this is one of the most important roles in your lead pipeline, because you're like, you and I talk, the marketing, we can teach it, people learn it, anybody you go to YouTube like a lot, the marketing can be standardized pretty well, and that's one of the first things a lot of people wanna learn, but in reality, once you learn it, that kind of like set it and forget it. It's the other pieces of your puzzle. So once you get marketing running, now you need somebody to be talking to sellers constantly, doing lots of lead follow-up and what I would say is, most people coming into this highly overestimate the skill needed to do marketing and highly underestimate the skill needed to do sales and follow-up.

Mike DeHaan: [31:26] I know. Well, that's why you have all the dipshits that are trying to sell their fucking AI marketing thing because that's what They're that's what newbies that are willing to sign a check perceive as a skill that's needed, right? When it's really not. This is always one of my favorite things with new people is they're like, how do you get in front of people that no one's talking to? It's like, you don't. There's thousands of people in this industry. It's like every single person that you talk to will have come from the same 20 lists that we all market to. They will have talked to other investors before. Have to have a better sales process and a better value proposition.

Dan Austin: [31:59] News flash, all this is public data.

Mike DeHaan: [32:01] Yes. That's where we're scraping it from. Yeah. And if you do somehow happen to find the one person that has not been talked to by every other investor that's ever looked in that market before, which news flash would be a lot of people, then congratulations, you just found a unit. Yeah. But if you're building your business off of that, you're gonna be really disappointed.

Dan Austin: [32:19] Yeah. You can't build a business off exceptional unicorns. They just don't happen often enough.

Mike DeHaan: [32:23] Yeah. Mean, well, they all work for the highs where they get fucking 68 deals in a month off of a with a team of four people. They're fighting all of the unicorns. They're all gone. Yeah. All They

Dan Austin: [32:33] can't find unicorn because they're all gone.

Mike DeHaan: [32:34] Yeah. They're unicorn poachers. They have them in a freaking cage over there locked up where they're slinging. Yeah. Filarious. So anyways, but no, it's it's just it's just interesting to see that all built out. And you know you're right, with that high value task comment, I will say I need to probably take that out of my vocabulary. Because one of my current pet peeves that I see with a lot of new people is they're like, I don't have any money, but I need to be focusing on high value tasks. So like I need to go and hire someone to do this. I was like, bro, your time is worth nothing right now.

Dan Austin: [33:04] Yes. When you're starting out it's worthless.

Mike DeHaan: [33:07] Direct. It's not like you have a direct path where you can go and make $50,000, so you need to be doing that ugly work, right? Because otherwise what are you gonna do? I was messaging with a guy on Facebook yesterday, he was like, I have $5,000 to my name, I'm trying to find a cold caller. Do you have like a recommendation? And I was like, dude, if you literally only have $5,000, you need to be calling for your by yourself. Yes. I was like, is that a kid in that in your profile picture? Is that your kid? Yeah. You do not have any business hiring somebody else to come and work in your business right now.

Dan Austin: [33:42] Like if you think about this mathematically, like so say, say you cold call for a month. Mhmm. And you get a $15,000 fee and say you had to pay a couple thousand dollars for you know, skip tracing and some software, so your net's 13,000. Are you right now making $13,000 a year in your job or anything else? Probably not, if you only have $5,000 to your name, like not to shit on that, I'm just saying like unlikely. So would you not go to work for anybody else for a month to make $13? Absolutely. So, work for yourself and do the work until you can build up those reserves and that capital to start hiring. And then also, you're way more badass about it, and you now learn that you can pick up the phone and make money at any point in time in your life, and the security that that provides is huge.

Mike DeHaan: [34:22] Yeah. I mean and now also because you've done the skill when you bring someone in, you actually know how to manage them and to make them better.

Dan Austin: [34:29] And you know what they're going through

Mike DeHaan: [34:30] too. Yeah. You can't just find someone and have them come in and expect them to be amazing when you have no idea how to manage that person, that's not how it works.

Dan Austin: [34:36] It isn't right. It isn't. We're not hiring executives here at a Fortune 500 company, we're starting small businesses that can grow to multi 7 figures if you do it the right way, but you can't just go and hire an executive sales coach right away.

Mike DeHaan: [34:48] For sure. You know, and like if you have a job where you make like good money, or you have regular income and you're looking to bring on that caller on the That's the other thing I would say is different. I see this a lot is where you have somebody that has a solid w two job, that makes a lot of money and they're like, I'm gonna spend all of my free time cold calling because I am averse to hiring somebody or to having to pay anything. That's the same problem, that's just the rich people version. Right, yeah. Like honestly, in that phase you should not be doing all that time, you should be investing into the person, into the systems, and now you should be looking at how exactly do you scale that market. Right? How do you learn how to fall, how do you analyze opportunities? Because you have room to make mistakes. Right? You have room to outsource because you have money coming from somewhere else. The funny thing is to me is like, I see this a lot. I see a lot of people that have no money that are really looking to outsource, and they're like, I will spend every last dime I can on a system or a person to make it better when they need to be doing the work. Then I see a lot of people with money that are like, I am so afraid to spend any money that I will work myself to death trying to get something off the ground when I realistically will not commit the time to.

Dan Austin: [35:59] So true. Polar opposites, we've seen them both so many Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [36:03] And I don't know what that is. I don't know what the answer is. I think it's just like probably contrarian to what, I don't know, like whatever got them to that role. Right? The person that makes a lot of money probably got there by working hard, and the person that doesn't probably has had like assistance in their life or like is used to being around team, I don't know. I've never been in that role myself, so.

Dan Austin: [36:23] Yeah, they just haven't had the opportunity maybe to not, you know what mean?

Mike DeHaan: [36:26] Yeah. So anyways, but Yeah, lots of stuff, you know, seeing it's just always interesting to sort of see new people try and figure it out.

Dan Austin: [36:35] Absolutely. Awesome.

Mike DeHaan: [36:36] Well, anything else here, boy, wrap up?

Dan Austin: [36:38] No, man. I think we're good. I'm gonna go apply for that Walmart job here.

Mike DeHaan: [36:42] 4,000 a year. Actually, gotta go walk a commercial property here in a few minutes.

Dan Austin: [36:46] We do. So Let's go. Do you wanna drive together? Do you wanna separate?

Mike DeHaan: [36:49] Sure. Yeah. Like a week shower? Nah. Oh, yeah. I'll I'll just get changed and we can drive together.

Dan Austin: [36:54] Okay. I'll I'll come to your house so you have time to shower.

Mike DeHaan: [36:55] Cool. Right on. Alright, guys. Thanks for listening. We're gonna go walk and walk a commercial property.

Dan Austin: [37:00] And Mike's gonna take a shower.

Mike DeHaan: [37:01] And I'm gonna take a shower. So follow my OnlyFans at collecting teas. Nice. Alright. Thanks for listening everybody, and we'll talk to you next week.

Dan Austin: [37:09] See you.