From Hating My W2 To Building A Real Estate Empire

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] What is going on, guys? Welcome to today's collecting keys Friday focus. So today's episode is a little bit different because I recorded this to be like a YouTube video. I'm putting together a little personal YouTube channel. Say, personal personal investor channel different from the collecting keys YouTube channel. And this is one of the videos that I put together that I was planning to, I would say, line up the release with of this episode, but my team has fallen behind. And so I'm gonna release the audio and then release the video a little bit later. So anyways, this episode is a kind of like a long form overview of kind of my backstory, how I got into real estate, and, you know, kind of what I was doing before, and sort of like how our business has grown over the past couple of years. And so if you've heard me talk about my background on other episodes, you'll kinda hear some of the same stuff, but I go a lot more in the into the weeds than I do on some of those guest appearances that I make. So if you have any curiosity around kind of how I got into this, what exactly I do, and, you know, how it all came together and the Collecting Keys brand and our wholesaling business and everything else where it came together at the end of it, then you should definitely listen to this one.

Mike DeHaan: [1:05] And if not, then I don't know what to tell you because that's what this episode is today. So enjoy it. If you wanna check out my YouTube as it continues to come together, you can find it at Mike Invest on YouTube. But just like my Instagram, Mike underscore Invest. So go check that out if you're interested in some more stuff. It's kinda longer form like this for me. And besides that, enjoy the episode. I appreciate guys listening. Thanks, everybody. Being in 2018, I quit my corporate engineering job that I had had for five years and didn't really have a plan, but I quit because I needed to do pretty much anything else. And over the next few years, I worked for a gym, drove for Uber, kinda just like random stuff, and ultimately built a real estate business where I own $50,000,000 worth of investment properties. And I make enough revenue for my business to be able to live the lifestyle that I want. I'm gonna go through my story and what exactly I went through to make the decision to sort of, like, take that risk and take that leap. Right? And how, I don't know, you should consider doing the same if you're serious about wanting to build something great and figure out something with your life.

Mike DeHaan: [2:06] So when I left that job, for all intents and purposes, I guess I had, like, kinda made it. I was in my mid twenties, making early six figures. I had a wife and still have a wife. But we could kinda do whatever we wanted. Like, honestly, I'm, like, an average person sort of you. Like, we made good money. We didn't have to worry about going up to restaurants, things like that. We weren't, like, you know, balling by any means, but things were comfortable. When I left, we lost 80% of our income. You know, my wife had a much simpler job, and it was a tough decision to make. Right? Because we went from really being able to live relatively luxuriously to having to cut coupons and count every single penny just to make sure that we weren't going to be, you know, getting ourselves into a hole. We recognize that, I would say, just like the misery that I was in in that engineering career was not going to be sustainable over the entire time of my life and also our relationship. And so making the the leap just kind of seemed like something that I had to do. To get into the real estate realm like I did, that wasn't really something that I ever expected. So, you know, going back to early early on, I didn't really come from, like, a real estate family or anything. You know, my parents bought the house that I grew up in before I was born. They still live there. And I learned about real estate after I left mostly because it wasn't every business book and and wealth building book that I was reading while I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I was born in the nineties.

Mike DeHaan: [3:29] And so growing up, this sort of expectation was to go to college, get a college degree, get a high paying job just like it was with so many millennials. And I didn't really subscribe to that. I guess I never really wanted to, that's what I did because that's what the expectations were. If you didn't go to college, like, you're kind of a loser. Right? Like, going to something like the trades wasn't even considered. Like, I literally remember a kid in my high school getting made fun of because his dad was a plumber. In hindsight, that's such an insane thing to honestly think about. And all of us would just go to college because that's what we were told to do. And, you know, that's this is where kind of like the old joke came around of, like, go to college and get your pointless, you know, liberal arts degree or, you know, music theory or whatever, because that's what we thought we were supposed to do. Right? And that what we were told was that if you leave your job and you go to college, you'll get a good job, and you'll kind of figure your life out. Right? And that having any sort of degree was really the most important thing. Of course, now in 2024, we all realized a lot of BS. Now we have all these people with student loan debt and everything else, but that's what the expectations were when we were coming up in that period of time. And so went through high school, got good grades, got accepted into a decent school right away. I actually like an early admission thing, and I accepted that mostly because I was too lazy, and I didn't really care about applying to other schools. Like I said, I didn't really wanna go to college, but I chose to go to this school just because they accepted me early on, and it meant that it was gonna be an easy second semester of my senior year, an easy summer. And so I went that route.

Mike DeHaan: [5:08] And then when I got to college, didn't really know what I wanted to study. It was 2009, and the economy was obviously just coming out of the two thousand eight recession. There wasn't a great job prospects in general. I went to go get an engineering degree mostly because I went to this career fair as freshman. I don't know. I just felt like that was what you're supposed to do. And, you know, there wasn't very many companies. I feel like 12 companies because no one was hiring, but all the companies that were hiring were looking for engineers, specifically for electrical engineers. And so I decided, cool. That's what I'm gonna get my degree in because, really, all I cared about was getting through school so that I could finally live my life, make money, and figure out what I really wanted to do, which is what had been sold to us the entire time that I was in high school. And so I went through school, got this degree. I never really was into all the classwork or what the other engineering kids were into at all. I didn't like the engineering process. I didn't like anything about what I was learning. But, again, it just goes back to once I got that job, I, quote, unquote, knew it was gonna be different even though I didn't realize that, of course, it was gonna be different, I guess, but worse.

Mike DeHaan: [6:16] And so barely got through college. I was on academic probation for six out of eight semesters that I was there. Close you guys on my grades. And this wasn't even because I was, like, partying or doing anything fun. I didn't really enjoy a college experience in general. I mean, I I made good friends and stuff there, but the way that people did college, it wasn't really a thing for me. So I kinda struggled through school. And, honestly, I would waste time, like, I don't know, going to the gym, like, doing random stuff, screwing around, playing video games, like listening to podcasts. When I started getting into podcasts way back then, you know, watching, like, documentary, just wanted to learn about stuff that was actually interesting to me. And the engineering work, which did require a lot of study, came after the fact. So I struggled through school, and then when I finally graduated, you know, I had to take some summer classes. I have to graduate on time. But the great thing was because of when I got out 2013, this was honestly, I was pretty lucky is it was so freaking easy to get a job. Like, the economy had turned around. Everyone was getting jobs left and right. We weren't making, like, tons of money. My first job that I got was at a consulting company. I remember I was making $56 a year, which at the time was, like, pretty freaking good. Now it's, like, not a lot with inflation and everything else. I went from graduating to going right into a job less than a month after I graduated.

Mike DeHaan: [7:31] And I moved out to Seattle, and by all intents and purposes, I was like, cool. This is it. This is my thing. You know, got an apartment, started started living life. And the first company I worked at was, like, fine. You know, it had lots of younger people there. The problem was that being a consulting company, there was a ton of expectations around long hours and kind of like this big corporate culture. So after about a year and a half of that, just had to change. And that's when I got a job at Boeing, which was a it was almost like a dream job for, like, a lot of people, mostly because it was, like, the place where you made a ton of money. You had great job security, and you had a ton of room to grow, and they had amazing benefits and all that sort of stuff, all the corporate things that people look for. And I'll always remember walking into that corporate office for the first time, that Boeing office. I I worked in the wing facility, And I was, like, walking through, like, all the factory and all this sort stuff, and it was super cool. And then I get up to where my office is gonna be, and it's literally like walking into an office space, you know, like, the movie office space sort of environment with this, like, really bright fluorescent lights. And it's just cubicle after cubicle after cubicle for as far as the eye can see, and it was dead silent. And as I made my way to my desk, I realized that I had made a really, really huge mistake.

Mike DeHaan: [8:46] So started at Boeing there because I didn't really like it from day one, but, you know, I was in it for the long haul. Like, going there, I had gotten a pretty massive pay raise. So at that point, I was making in the mid nineties. So I'd literally gone from my first raise at my previous job. It got me to, like, 62, and then I got a raise to, like, 95 plus bonus when I went to Boeing. And so I had a ton of money, which was great. You know, at this point, was, like, 25, but I hate it every single day. And, like, literally, I would go to work, and I would just zone out, and I would have these projects and stuff that I had to do. But because Boeing was such a joke of a place to work, honestly, it was like, you didn't have to do anything, and they would give you these projects that you have, like, six months to complete. But realistically, you could do them in, a day. And so I would just screw around. Right? I got that's when I started getting into entrepreneurship a little bit, started listening to podcasts around building business and stuff like that. And, you know, they were very strict about you being in the office during your regular shift. I always had to be pretty careful doing stuff.

Mike DeHaan: [9:45] But I started playing around with with different businesses. I started getting into the FIRE movement, the financial independence retire early movement, getting obsessed with this idea of, like, saving money and investing in stocks and sort of scrolling stuff aside. And so my wife and I, we got really used to living frugally and putting away a lot of money, which ultimately gave me the freedom to be able to take the big risk and leave my corporate job because I did have a nest egg that I'd saved up when I decided to do that, you know, which is a few years after this after this whole situation started. But, literally, I spent every single day at the age of 25, 26 just, like, wanting and no needing to do anything else because I was so miserable. And then, ultimately, you know, what really, I would say, committed me to needing to make a change, my dad had a catastrophic stroke. And, you know, it was while he was on on vacation with my mom, and he, you know, spent I was I think it was five, six weeks in the ICU of a hospital, basically, being given, like, a 5% chance to live. And it happened very suddenly as those things do. And I I flew to to where the show could happen in the hospital. He was in me and my mom. We spent a month and a half, like, living in this hospital.

Mike DeHaan: [10:59] You know, one of us was there all the time. We're, like, sleeping in the lobby, sleeping in his room, like, these terrible cots that he would give you where he wouldn't sleep because you'd be so afraid that he was gonna, like, die in the middle of the night. And that whole time that I was going through that, I just got calls from Boeing over and over and over again. Just basically wondering where I was and, like, why I wasn't there and and and threatening me with, I don't know, punishment and getting in trouble, whatever an employer can do. If I didn't get back, fire me, I guess. But I didn't even care. But they were just relentless with it. Even though my boss had approved me being gone, he was actually great. I did have a great boss at Boeing. I promise I didn't like working there. But he, you know, had approved it, but the company just didn't care. They just kept hounding me for it. And after that, I entered a really, really bad, I would say, like, a spiral of depression where, honestly, the entirety of that year, which would have been 2016 at that point. That's also the year I got married. I don't even know what I did. Like, I couldn't tell you a single thing that happened in that entire year. I just like, I was honestly just completely disconnected from my entire life. And if I look back, don't I know. I guess maybe I have some fuzzy memories, a few things. I remember a little bit of my wedding, but besides that, I lost the entire year 2016 because depression that the the depression I fell into from this family situation I was dealing with as well as my just misery being at Boeing.

Mike DeHaan: [12:22] And so carried on with that for a little bit like I did. And then 2016 was like that. Ultimately, I end up getting a different job. After that, moving to a public utility, which was actually like a a more enjoyable place to work. Honestly, people were a lot friendlier. There was kinda just, like, more going on being a smaller company. And I didn't mind working there, like, at all. And, honestly, that was the big eye opener for me was that that place was an okay place to work. I just hated what I was doing, and so I needed to do something different. And I'll always remember the moment that I decided that I needed to do something else and I needed to quit was, like, I was driving to work, and it was one of those days where, you know, I was I was driving and, like, I was three quarters the way to work. I didn't even have any music on. You know? And, like, I was just in such a bad spot that I had zoned out and not even recognized that it was dead quiet in the car. You know? And I don't even know what compelled me to do it, but I picked up the phone and I called my wife and I said, you know, I think I need to quit my job. And she said, what are you gonna do? And I had no idea. I said, I don't know. And she just responded like, well, are you gonna be happier? And I said, I think so.

Mike DeHaan: [13:28] And she said, okay. Cool. Well, you do what you gotta do. And so I went and I quit my job that day. And I literally had no plan. I had, like, a full two weeks notice to, you know, collect, like, my my final paycheck and do everything else there. Everyone thought that I was crazy. Like, I I literally remember same thing happened when I left Boeing too. When I left the the last job I had, several people were like, you don't leave. You know? Like, what what do you mean? Leave? Like, you'll be back. No. Nobody leaves this job. Like, this is, the job that you get in this town. Right? And I remember hearing that pretty much every job that I had at Boeing and then at the last job I had and looking at those people and just thinking like, man, this is what defeat looks like. You know, this is a person that has legitimately given up on their life and has nothing else going for them that they feel like they need to put up with this to to live their entire life here. And so, yeah, I walked away and and left, and I had no idea what I was gonna do. The weirdest thing is even though I had so much insecurity around, like, what I was doing and kind of, like, what the my future was gonna look like, the first day that I woke up and I didn't have to go into this career that I hated, I literally, to this day, do not know if I've been, like, more relieved or, like, more, like I wanna say happy, but just, like, at peace than at that moment because I recognized that I had, like, escaped from from the thing that I really, really hated. And, you know, going through all that, honestly, the hardest conversation was with my parents of all people, especially growing up as the millennial in the nineties. You know, the expectation was always that I would go to college. My parents had a lot of pride in the fact that I was spelling engineer. I was like this established engineer.

Mike DeHaan: [15:12] I was doing these things. And for them to not I guess for me to throw that away was really, really challenging, I guess, for me to tell them that. I always remember calling them on the phone, and, like, I was literally just sweating bullets. I was so nervous about it. I was very lucky. They're very supportive. But, you know, I know it was hard, and, honestly, it took years. Like like, my my business was very, very successful that I'd I'd started. Like, honestly, this is, like, in the last year or two where I would say they fully acknowledged that I had, like, figured myself out. But for a while, it was tough. You know? And, like, you know, just like the little things. Like, my mom would be like, like, so do what do I, like, tell people that you're doing now? Right? And I know I didn't really have a good answer for a while because I was just trying to figure out anything. And so, anyway, so, yeah, I left the engineering career. And literally for most of 2018, you know and and, again, a big reason I was able to do this was I did have some good money that I'd saved up. So, you know, over those five years, I've been working as an engineer, I saved a lot of money. So I had, like, a $100,000 in my '4 zero one k. I had a really large savings account that I had built up.

Mike DeHaan: [16:18] I had I owned a house that gave me financial security there and fully understand that that's not what a lot of people are able to do. But that was the cards that I was dealt was I give him that opportunity and I chose to capitalize on it. And so, you know, when I looked at everything, we basically we crunched down our finances to be able to live off of my wife's income, which was, $4 a month. So we really had to dial back. But we knew that if we figured out that lean lifestyle plus the savings we had is, like, we could go for a really, really long time even if my wife got laid up and we couldn't figure out anything. You know, we weren't going out to restaurants. We weren't, like, going on vacation or doing anything too crazy. But we kinda knew the zone that we were in, and we were committed to that. And because I had that financial buffer, was able to to sort of take the leap. So I spent most 2018 working in a gym, driving for Uber, like, doing odd jobs for people on Facebook and, you know, just trying to figure out what exactly I wanted to do next. At first, I thought it was gonna be like a startup, so I I taught myself how to code and really focused on, like, building out these, like, tech skills mostly because I wanted to be able to work remotely. I'm really happy that I didn't do that now, especially after all these tech companies have imploded. But it was something that I pursued very heavily for a while, and I did have, like, another job for quote, unquote, job for a startup, which is kind of like a, you know, contract thing that I did after I taught myself some basic coding skills. But, ultimately, I ended up getting into real estate because it was in every single wealth and business book that I read over and over and over again. K?

Mike DeHaan: [17:51] It was this was this recurring theme around wealth generation through real estate, having passive income, and, you know, how that could change your life. And I decided that's what I wanted to pursue. And so, obviously, I recognized I needed money to do this. And so the first thing I did and it's funny. In hindsight, this is kind of foolish. I think I mostly did this honestly because it was a a middle finger to the corporate career that I had left that I hated. But I I cashed out my $40.01 k. I paid all the taxes that were due on that and as well as, like, the the penalty for withdrawing early, but I didn't care. So I had that money in the bank, and I decided to use that as my initial seed fund, start getting into flipping houses. Ultimately, my goal was to buy rental properties, but I knew that I needed more capital to do that. And so I started flipping houses. I had this little bit of extra money, and then what I did is at the start is I had started going to these meetups, and I connected with this other couple, these other investors, and they had basically more money. And they had, I would say, like, a a little bit more experience than me. I had a heck of a lot of time because I was working in a gym and and trying to figure myself out. So we decided to flip houses, and the arrangement was they would bring the money, and I would bring the hustle.

Mike DeHaan: [19:04] K? And I would basically figure out how to flip these things. And, you know, I had had no experience doing anything like this. Like like, literally, when we started, we would buy a lot of houses that we'd flip. There were what's what you call REOs, which you don't really hear a lot about anymore because you don't see them a whole ton. But there are these bank owned properties that banks had foreclosed on, and they were basically looking to sell them, and you'd be able to buy them from from agents kind of off the market. So we would buy these houses. They were usually in pretty bad shape, and the partners would fund it. And, you know, my wife and I would literally show up to these houses on you know, during the week. They would have had, like, all the flooring delivered, and we were, like, watching YouTube videos about how to install flooring. Right? And, you know, we just did the basic stuff. Like, when it came to things like doing plumbing or electrical, the things that are, like, honestly, kinda, like, hard for a house, we would have professionals do all those. But the cosmetic things, you know, painting, trim, flooring, swapping out, like, hardware, like, door hardware, all sorts of stuff, that was all us. And I literally had never used a power tool before in anything on a house until that moment.

Mike DeHaan: [20:05] And we started my wife and I started started putting these things all together. And so, you know, lots of hard lessons learned. The first house that we flipped, it took us four months, our share of the profits were $3,500. And so if you look at, like, the cost per hour, it was cents. Like, honestly, we probably lost money because this place was a little away from our house, and so I was driving back and forth a lot. And I bet that there was a significant gas cost plus plus mileage on my car. You know? But it it we had a ton of lessons learned. And so after that one, we bought the next one. You flip that, made a little bit more money. I was able to take some of those profits and roll it into my first couple rental properties. I bought a duplex as well as a triplex and then some single families as well. Started building a little bit of portfolio. This was all going through, like, late two thousand eighteen, twenty nineteen, and we started to get some momentum going. And then getting into the end of twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, I decided that I wanted to go faster. So the people I've been partnering with, they wanted to kinda keep doing, you know, three to five houses a year sort of thing. I wanted to really start trying to figure out how to make some real money. So I I approached my best friend from college, Dan Austin, who's now my my podcast host. He's still my my business partner. And I convinced him to go into business with me, and we were gonna do these things together.

Mike DeHaan: [21:16] We're gonna figure out how to buy more houses and make more money. And so first thing we did is we joined a a mastermind that's not dissimilar from the scale community that I run. It was a different group that was also focused on building a direct seller marketing company or, like, a real estate company. And we started sending out mailers to all these people in in our our market and trying to find deals. I mean, of course, it's harder than it looks when you when you look look it up online or you hear about it on podcasts. Especially when COVID sort of, like, happens halfway through your your launch process. So we originally started marketing in January 2020. COVID obviously happened in March. A lot of you guys will know that. And then from there, I kinda put a hiccup in things that we just doubled down. And and honestly, when a lot of our competition left the market, we decided to push harder and try to figure it out. And it took us about five and a half months to get our first deal. You know, we were about $30,000 in the hole in our marketing spend when we got it. And when we when we got that deal signed around, you know, our original plan was like, flip these properties or they keep them, but we didn't have any money. And so we wholesaled the deal.

Mike DeHaan: [22:23] We assigned the contract for a fee and made $3,500. And that was our first, like, little paycheck that we got. Now I'll always remember when I took a phone call and got the deal assigned. Like, we were literally out in the yard of another property that we're both walking. And, like, you know, we, like, jumped and, like, high fived in the yard, like, just like a such stupid corny thing. But I always remember that. That was our first big win that, like, we learned that we could make money. And so we made $700 in that one. That was in, like, May 2020. In June 2020, we closed a couple more deals. We got, like, a, you know, $13,000 fee and, like, a $10,000 fee. And then in August, we got our first big deal, which was, a $28,000 fee. And that's when I knew that we were starting to figure it out. And then ultimately, in September, we were pulling a goose egg in and I went to, you know, basically, we had no deal sign around. I went to this meetup. It was, like, in person meetup for the community that I was in, and we were we're doing this, like, big coaching session. We were looking over our our our leads and everything like that. And the guy that ran the group was basically, hey, man. Like, I think you suck at, like, working these leads at, like, the sales process. And which made sense because I didn't come from a sales background.

Mike DeHaan: [23:28] I came from an engineering background. Right? And it's like, I think you need to find someone else to do this piece for you. And so what we did is we went and we we hired a salesperson. I'd never hired anyone before in my life. I didn't even know how to do that. We didn't even have enough money to pay this person, honestly, for the first month. We had, like, $3,000 in the bank account. And all we knew was that we needed somebody that was gonna come in and get us an immediate return, or else we're gonna have a really awkward conversation at the end of the month. And so we plugged this person into our system, and they snagged seven deals in the first two weeks there with us. And in October 2020, we had our first 6 figure month because of that. And I'll always remember that month rounding out. We had a ton of deals that were closing at the end of October, and it was it was my thirtieth birthday at the end of October. And we were at, like, a little cabin that we had we had rented with my to hang out with my parents for my thirtieth birthday. And and during COVID. So we're kind of out in the middle nowhere. She weren't supposed to meet anybody back then. And I literally remember sitting there and watching all these wires come into our account, and we made I think it was a 100 and $108,000 month of October. And I was like, this is it. Like, my entire life is gonna look different because I just learned how to do this.

Mike DeHaan: [24:39] You know, and finished out 2020 really, really strong. Personally made about a $160. I think net, like, was my take home pay at the end of the month. And then going into 2021, we just doubled down, and we really reinvest in the business and learn how to do it more consistently. And then our business process is figured out combined with an incredibly hot real estate market in 2021. Like, honestly, that was my luck. That was my sort of, like, really good fortune, I guess, for being in the game was I was able to capitalize on how crazy that market was, and we made several million dollars in a very short period of time just by doing the thing that we had learned how to do the year before. You know, we built out a really basic sales team. We had one sales guy. He had a virtual assistant that would help work some of the calls, and that was me and Dan just hustling. And we ended 2021 with a few million dollars in the bank. And that and, you know, when we had acquired a few dozen properties at that period of time, we just reinvesting everything back into buying properties for our portfolio. That was sort of where everything started to, I would say, evolve into being like a proper real estate entrepreneur, which we had made that first lump of money. And so a ton of stuff has happened between now and then, obviously. If you fast forward to now, I run a national real estate wholesaling and investing company that is active currently in about 10 markets.

Mike DeHaan: [25:59] I have a sales team that works all virtually. I still live in the same town up in Washington State. And we do deals everywhere from here to all around the Southeast, the Midwest, everywhere, all sight unseen. And what we do is we source off market deals and we sell them. You know, we sell them to other investors for a profit. I've slowed down on accumulating portfolios portfolio properties, mostly just because the way interest rates and stuff are, but I still have a good number of the ones that I bought in 2021, which give me the ability to have financial freedom. This year, we should do about $4,000,000 top line. And, you know, we've also built out the collecting keys podcast, as you can see behind me, as well as our scale community and a few other companies as well. So the main lesson, I guess, with all this and and one of the things that I really like to, I would say, like, encourage people to do is don't be afraid to take the leap, right, and have undying belief in yourself that you're gonna be successful. Like, so many people that I know, they have aspirations to do something big, and they always think that they need to have, like, you know, a business that's established or, you know, passive income from rental properties or from stocks or from something that's gonna cover their current salary.

Mike DeHaan: [27:12] Right? Which really isn't realistic, honestly. It can take a super long time to build that up if you're doing it kinda like part time. Right? And instead, what you should do if you're able to do it is focus on learning to live super, super lean. Right? Like, like, keep your expenses low as possible. Learn to bank as much money as you possibly can so that you have a massive reserve. Right? Make sure that your partner, family, whatever is on board, and then take the leap and spend every waking second that you can trying to figure out what you're gonna do next. Right? Or trying to figure out how to make your idea work. And if you're willing to do that, I guarantee you that your path to financial freedom and to wealth and whatever your idea of success looks like literally can go from taking a decade, taking like a year. Right? Like, honestly, even longer than decade. Taking like decades, taking fifteen, twenty years to being done in a year. And it's not easy. Like, it sucks. Right? You have to go through a lot of BS to get to it. But if that is honestly the secret to being able to do something, like like, Boeing or, you know, leave a a golden Hankuff type career and be able to figure out how to live a lifestyle for yourself. And now, like, I work a lot, but I have since since I started my business and I started making some money, like, I have lived an entire other lifetime in my thirties. Like, so many people talk about how life kinda slows down in your thirties, but I've traveled to just about every continent in the world. I've been able to manage my business completely remotely. I have made incredible connections with some of the biggest names in real estate and everything else.

Mike DeHaan: [28:43] Right? And I've built out something that is going to have an incredible amount of income and wealth generation over the course of my life. And I did that all because I was willing to take the leap and do the hard things and figure it out. I know people don't like, like, the sort of pull your bootstraps up sort of stories and figure it out, but honestly, that is what it takes. And never a guarantee. There's always a risk. But just remember that the quote unquote risk of doing something like that is to just go back to the job that you had before. And your fallback plan will be the same thing as what you were already planning to do anyway. So who cares, honestly? There's kind of my origin story for you. If that was helpful to you, be cool. Share this with your friends. That's a that's a great way to help me continue to grow. Also, check out the collecting keys podcast, and you can also follow me on Instagram, Mike underscore invest. So, yeah, appreciate you guys listening. Thanks, everybody.