How Millionaires are Preparing for the Recession, Balancing Acquisition and Disposition, and Dan's Fascination with Novelty Goods

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] That is the difference between the people that make millions of dollars and those that hope that they make millions of dollars. Is they're like, hey, cool. We're going to stockpile that cash. We are going to spend that money right now before there's investment opportunities to create those opportunities Yes. In the future. And then we're gonna, you know, be able to capitalize on them.

Speaker 2: [0:20] Welcome to the collecting keys real estate investing podcast with your host, Mike DeHaan and Dan Austin. From wins, losses, horror stories, and tactics for optimizing your business, Mike and Dan take a real uncensored deep dive into the ins and outs of running a full time real estate investment and wholesaling business.

Mike DeHaan: [0:43] What's going on, guys? Welcome to this week's episode of the collecting keys Mike and Dan show, where I, Mike DeHaan, and my cohost, Daniel Austin. Daniel. That's you, Daniel. Woah. Yeah. That was weird. You're not my mom, dude. My mom's the only one

Dan Austin: [0:58] that calls you by that name.

Mike DeHaan: [0:59] And my cohost so I should business partner, Dan Austin, talk about real estate investing business and everything else in between. That was funny. I don't know why that came out. I think it's because I just wrapped up at a at a go abundance event this past week. And, you know, regularly comes up that you're also in go abundance. You know, I say like, Oh, his name is Dan Austin. And a lot of people they know you from Facebook or social media or things like that, where you have your full name. Oh, really? They'll be like, Oh, are you? Are you Daniel Austin's?

Dan Austin: [1:31] Don't know, that's, I'd never thought

Mike DeHaan: [1:32] I about

Dan Austin: [1:33] don't have to look at that on social, Dan. I haven't earned the additional three letters in my name yet, I gotta get back to You know, like, there's some people, like, they just use their full name, and you're like, damn, yeah, that sounds prominent, I'm not there yet. I need I gotta overcome those extra three letters.

Mike DeHaan: [1:47] Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so I just got used to it apparently. Yeah. Yeah, Daniel, that's my boy. Yeah. After after twelve hours of networking a day

Dan Austin: [1:57] for the last week. That's exhausting, but fun at the same time.

Mike DeHaan: [2:00] It just started to stick together. But but yeah, so yeah, it was it was a good event, though. But yeah, so I spent the last week in Tahoe at the GoBundance Winter Mastermind. And you guys aren't familiar with GoBundance. It's basically a it's always kind of a hard thing to describe, but it's a millionaire, like mastermind group with people of all different kind of walks of life and businesses and things like that. But the common ground across everybody is everybody is, I guess, higher net worth. And then, you know, they all want things that are, I would say, like, bigger than just business. Yeah. So there's always a lot of talk around family life and balance and that sort of stuff.

Dan Austin: [2:39] Right. Yeah. The minimum requirements are $2,000,000 net worth, and then there's certainly people with 2,000,000 and certainly people with 100,000,000. Uh-huh. So there's quite a few different people, like, I guess variations, but we talk about it a lot. But I I was thinking about this, like, why would we talk about it? I think it's because of the fact that that is a mastermind group that really does, you hit it on the nail on the head. It's not just about net worth, that is just a requirement. Uh-huh. You also there's other, I guess, pseudo requirements, you know, like, people do get kicked out for certain behaviors, but it's really about, like, well rounded lifestyle and not just focusing on money, which is an important part of our life because it can feed different areas of our life, but it's not the only piece. And it's probably more about just knowing people It is. And getting to know other people at a deeper level than you normally would at any other event or a group that I'm part of.

Mike DeHaan: [3:30] Yeah. And especially for us, you know, we kinda live in an area where it's tough to find other guys that are, you know, kind of the similar goals and similar aspirations. And it's a great way to, like, be able to connect with people nationwide, right, you know, that want to not only grow their businesses, you know, kind of massively and then but also make like, impacts in their communities and, know, be

Dan Austin: [3:55] able to incorporate have adventures and

Mike DeHaan: [3:57] yeah, incorporate healthy. Exactly. Maintain your health, be able to incorporate different levels of success with your family, and all sorts of stuff. I think

Dan Austin: [4:05] that's one last thing before we go that I would touch on. I think the the key to success with any group, regardless it's GoBundance or anything, is that the thing that works for us with GoBundance is that there is a baseline of what like, a baseline for, like, starting point, guess, is what I was gonna say. There's a starting point where everybody agrees that these are things that are important, and these are things that I don't compromise on, and that's where you can go. Like, you could go and and meet up with a bunch of high net worth individuals and walk away and be like, I don't like any of those people, or I gained zero, and it's because they're totally different people. GoBundance has a standard starting point for what's important in life, and people that subscribe to that are the people that join, and so you tend to already have a pretty good basis relationship with the people you're with.

Mike DeHaan: [4:49] Yeah. I think that's super true. And, you know, that expectation is established extremely early on when you join in of of kind of, you know, what that looks like and the openness that a lot of people have. And, you know, that this is my second year going to the winter mastermind, which I think is kind of the the biggest one every year. And there was a lot of guys. And one of the things that really stood out to me this year, which I thought was really interesting, was in past years, there's been a lot of, like, syndicators and, you know, multifamily people and people that are kind of there. Honestly, it's just like, kind of raise money from other members. Right? Other millionaires. Yeah. And there was still a little bit of people that sort of fit that mold, but it was a much more diverse group in terms of, you know, the kind of business people run. Yeah. I think a lot of the faux syndicators that were, like, able to qualify in 2020 and 2021 just because of the way the market was have gotten wrecked. Right. And or, you know, moved on to other things because the opportunities that they were. Well, and they

Dan Austin: [5:46] don't see the value in being around high net worth individuals anymore because they don't have a business.

Mike DeHaan: [5:51] They don't have a to syndicate. Yeah. Or they they realized, you know, that a lot of the people weren't just gonna be writing them checks left and

Dan Austin: [5:57] right. Right.

Mike DeHaan: [5:58] So there was a lot more business focused talk, which I really enjoyed. Yep. A lot more people with, you know, backgrounds in different kinds of, like, brick and mortar businesses. Right? Like, trades, or people a lot of people with medical backgrounds or in tech backgrounds, which was really interesting. I feel like in the past, it hasn't been like that. But

Dan Austin: [6:16] Well, this event, tell me if I'm wrong, this is the first event since the Matt King was the new CEO, and they've kind of agreed to reset a little bit. And so this was kind of that resetting event, maybe going back to old school GoBundance or previous years GoBundance. Did it feel that way?

Mike DeHaan: [6:32] Yeah. Yeah. It did. So in the first year and a half that we were in, there was a CEO that was there that was doing a lot of bringing a lot of, like, outside people for presentations and was making it less, I guess, community driven. And what it was, I previously, which we weren't was before we're a part of it, it was mostly people that were within the community that were doing a lot of the talks and conversations like that. And the previous CEO has shifted away from that, but now they brought it back. So, you know, we still had a couple outside speakers, like the the keynote speakers, Tom Billieux, who if you guys aren't familiar, he founded and sold quest nutrition, you know, quest bars, you know, then, you know, different quest patterns and all that sort of stuff. Beast sold off, like, a billion dollars Legit. A few years ago. And so he was, like, kinda the keynote speaker. But outside of that, all of the other stuff was speakers that were internal to the organization, which was which was good because I think in the past, just with how they were growing, they failed to recognize how many heavy hitters are in there and, like, the insanely big things that people are doing. Yeah. This was the complete opposite of that. And just like the caliber of people in there in general, not only in terms of their businesses, but also how high profile a lot of them are. So like, with this event, they had, like, assigned tables every day.

Mike DeHaan: [7:50] When you went into the the conference room, and that way, it was, like, sort of forced everyone to mingle outside of their normal clicks and

Dan Austin: [7:57] To me, yeah, to meet other people that aren't just the same person every day that you sit down with breakfast Yeah. Rest of the day.

Mike DeHaan: [8:02] Yeah. Exactly. Or people from their own, you know, community, stuff like that. But literally, at one point, I was on the the second to last day I was sitting at a table, and I had David Green at my table, and I had Matt Faircloth at my table. Cool. Bigger pockets heavy hitters. But, yes, both big big bigger pockets guys. And it was kind of like a surreal moment for me because David Green from bigger pockets, his book, you know, he wrote like the burr book, which is, you know, if you're been in real estate at all, you've heard about the burr method where you, you know, you buy, you rehab, you rent the property out, you refinance your money, you repeat the process. He kinda like wrote the book for that. And that's what got me into real estate. And then I was sitting at a table with him, and he was talking about the issues with his business that he's trying to overcome. And I was, you know, it was kind of a surreal moment for me to have it come full circle that now appears. But, no, it was really good event though, and and tons of takeaway. I always come back from things like that with just like tons of great notes and tons of good motivation around, you know, business and just direction, I guess about what what we need to do to improve. And, I mean, I hate to hate to say it to Dan, but you need to go to one of these ads and you have been one yet.

Mike DeHaan: [9:14] Every time I go to one, I realized, man, we're so fucking disorganized compared to some of these people.

Dan Austin: [9:21] Know, know, I agree. And I think about that a lot. I'm definitely planning to go to these events once I stopped having babies and not sleeping at night, which will be a hopefully, this summer event will be one of my first events Yeah. Which I'm excited about. And some regional events you and I are gonna kick off. So if there's any listeners that are Uh-huh. Local to I don't know what you see, Eastern Washington, Idaho, Montana, Eastern Oregon, kind of that Inland Pacific Northwest. You know, we're gonna have our own little regional GoPundance group, so you should definitely join so you can participate with us.

Mike DeHaan: [9:51] Yeah. Because they all have local chapters as well, and ours is pretty sparse just in terms of mean, I in population, it's growing, the number of people that are in, like, our local area. But right now, they lump us all in with the Seattle folks, and it's just like a completely different personality, different kind of person. And then they do a lot of their events that are like, oh, we're doing this thing, like, in Downtown Seattle. It's like, well, we're not going to that because it's like a flight and, you know, what several hour drive away.

Dan Austin: [10:18] Yeah. It's just a day, and and it's hard to definitely hard for us to plan around, honestly. Not that we couldn't on we could. Yeah. No excuses here, but we've chosen not to, I guess. We tried to a little bit, but that's why we're starting our own group.

Mike DeHaan: [10:31] Yeah. Exactly. But no. It was good. And there there was a lot of talk, obviously, around recessionary stuff for coming into the year, which was really interesting to hear.

Dan Austin: [10:40] What's the bull versus bear argument on that that you agreed with? Like, which side of the argument? Bear or bull?

Mike DeHaan: [10:46] Why? I agree with the bear, but to be fair, they they had Aaron Amusekichi, who's I think it's how I say his last name. He's a very prominent investor down in Austin, who is super sharp with economics. And they had him and this other guy who has been on like, the various mainstream news sources talking about the economy against the two bull guys. So the people who thought the recession weren't gonna happen were more casual investors. So it just, like, wasn't even fair.

Dan Austin: [11:14] Yeah. What's his name? I know his name. The other guy, the other economist guy oh, dang. I know who you're talking.

Mike DeHaan: [11:19] John Huber.

Dan Austin: [11:20] Yes. Is it John or is it Frederick?

Mike DeHaan: [11:22] Oh, sorry. I've read here. We had Joe was on the

Dan Austin: [11:25] other side. Yeah, Fred Fred Huber. Yeah, I listened to him on maybe capital hacking last week. And I was like, damn, that's some he's sharp. He's like, he's go listen to that. He's a good guy.

Mike DeHaan: [11:34] Yeah, he's super sharp. So it was hard not to agree with the bears on it. But just like looking at a lot of things, though, it was, it was interesting. Because a lot of people right now, when they're looking at recession stuff, you're hearing it all around social media, people saying like, oh, you need to start stockpiling cash for opportunities. And, you know, getting ready to like, pass all sort of stuff. But so many of, like, the Instagram gurus, the social media gurus, they fail to talk about where their opportunities are gonna come from. I know. Right? And they they act like if you just have money, they're gonna fall on your plate, which obviously isn't true. Exactly. So one of the big things tons of people talked about was how they're starting to scale their marketing. And, you know, like getting their lead gen and all that sort of stuff going, and focusing more on like, the lead indicators, and like the the lead actions to get the opportunities as stuff turns over. And I thought that that was a really big message. Actually, made an Instagram reel about it the other day, because that is the difference between the people that make millions of dollars. And those that hope that they make millions of dollars is they're like, Hey, cool, we're going to stockpile that cash, we're going to spend that money right now, before there's investment opportunities to create those opportunities in the future.

Mike DeHaan: [12:42] And then we're gonna, you know, be able to capitalize on them. Whereas like a lot of casual people be like, okay, cool. I'm gonna go sit on my $100,000 that I've been saving up my entire life and just wait for my investment opportunity with this recession.

Dan Austin: [12:54] Like, it's gonna knock on your door, which it never does.

Mike DeHaan: [12:57] Yeah. And and even if it does, cool. You'll get one opportunity. You're not gonna be the guy that, you know, we all look at right now who started buying properties back in 2010 Mhmm. And is, like, super rich. That dude was doing The opposite. You know, was creating the opportunities, and finding the different leads back then. Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [13:12] And the same thing's gonna happen now. So Which has been really challenging, honestly, even now, to hold on to dollars, because there are like opportunities are like, you know, and I'm a deal guy. I like to do deals, and so it's like really hard to do that. Was there a specific asset class that you think? Or is it just like, hey, whatever your asset classes, be ready for it?

Mike DeHaan: [13:31] Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people obviously are are looking at multifamily stuff, especially right now. So so I didn't I didn't realize people had been doing this, but there's like a multifamily specialty talk. Okay. And what a lot of them are targeting is there were people that were getting these multifamily commercial loans over the past couple of years with three year balloons. That were interest only. Right? And as as the guys that were on stage put it, you know, the the guys that were on stage across them, they had between the the four guys over a billion dollars in assets. And it was like, like, 15,000 or 16,000 units, something like crazy. And that they all been in the game for a long time. And they're like, yeah, there's just sucker loans. They were giving out to these new syndicators that didn't know what the hell they were doing. And what they're doing right now is, a lot of them, they are trying to figure out, you know, how how to identify these loans. They start marketing to those people four to six months before their loans come due. Because what's gonna happen is every single one of those people are going to have these balloon payments where they're gonna be forced to sell or refinance.

Mike DeHaan: [14:36] And if they refinance

Dan Austin: [14:37] It's gonna be upside down.

Mike DeHaan: [14:38] All commercial lenders are looking at dollar service cost ratio, right? The DSCR Debt service. Yeah. Sorry. The debt service. Yeah. The debt service cost ratio. So how much more the rent is versus the debt? They're gonna be the refinance, or I have to sell?

Dan Austin: [14:51] Yeah. What is a typical rate? 1.25 right now? DSCR?

Mike DeHaan: [14:54] Yeah. 1.25 to 1.35, depending So if

Dan Austin: [14:58] you go below one, what does that indicate that you would be losing money every month?

Mike DeHaan: [15:02] Well, basically, you're not gonna be able to refine it.

Dan Austin: [15:03] For sure.

Mike DeHaan: [15:04] It's like they're gonna the the lender's gonna force you to bring capital, which none of these people have. So they're going to be forced to liquidate. And, you know, as as the guys on stage, but, like, it's gonna be terrible because what'll probably happen with the kind of people that were dominant for themselves situation is all of their LPs, all of their limited partners who invested with them are gonna get wrecked. These guys are gonna go and save their own skin and go and move on

Dan Austin: [15:26] to another day. Those guarantors that they got to sign with a high net worth, they're gonna that's their debt they're supposed to be liable for that you are signing for. Yep. Yeah. That's something I've said in the past was that there are these we call them the syndicators with quotations around them. I think they instead of working hard, I think they're just gonna walk away. Mhmm. And I think their LPs are gonna get wrecked. I think that their GPs that are signing on the loan are gonna get wrecked. They're gonna they're not gonna know how to fight for it, and they're not gonna probably try that hard if run into a situation. They call one bank, and they're like, oops. Sorry. They're gonna try to do a capital call. Their investors are gonna either have to come up to the table with a pile of capital, or they're gonna be like, we can't do that. You know? You know, your uncle and your mom and your grandfather, they gave you their retirement already. Sorry.

Mike DeHaan: [16:10] Mhmm. Yeah. And if they get foreclosed on, I mean, it has to come from somewhere. Right? Yeah. And, yeah. So there was a lot of talk around that, which is which is pretty interesting. And that's but that's kind of the strategies everyone is focusing on the lead gen almost more so than getting the capital, especially because with a lot of these guys, they recognize if they get a strong opportunity, they're gonna be able to raise the money. Right. Especially as people are gonna be hungry out there. So that was a big talk. And then another thing too on that same line was how people are keeping their cash active while they are waiting for these opportunities. So there was a ton of talk about people buying these these three month, like rotating treasury bonds. Okay. And the different ways they're doing that. So I don't know if you've heard about that before, but Alex Shmozzi actually did a podcast a couple weeks ago talking about this. And basically, what you can do is you actually I don't know how feel about this part. But what a lot of people will do is you can set it up and you register, and you basically give the US government like access to your account. Right? So you have, like, you know, account that has a couple $100,000, whatever in it.

Mike DeHaan: [17:13] That's your large investment account. Yep. And what they'll do is every three months, they will basically pull the cash. You can request it back at any time, and it'll basically be like prorated interest. But it's like a rotating quarterly draw. So, like, they'll they'll say they'll pull out a $100, and then after three months, they will redeposit it with, you know, your 5% annual interest on it, which would be like, you know, $1,500 or whatever at that point. And then they will pull the $100 again, and they basically are just always doing that. So it's like a high interest, almost like savings account, but you can call it back within like a two week notice. Oh, okay. And so people were really getting into the different ways that they're structuring that.

Dan Austin: [17:54] That's not bad because you can get to you can get your money in two weeks is pretty liquid.

Mike DeHaan: [17:58] Yeah. I mean, and and a lot of these guys, you know, they are sitting on $20.30, $40,000,000 for acquisitions that they've raised in their funds that they pay us 6%, 7% preferred return to their investors on, but they're able to get like a five and a quarter from the US government. So basically, it makes their holding cost now be like one to 2%

Dan Austin: [18:17] on Very much. Yeah. Way lower.

Mike DeHaan: [18:19] You know, $40,000,000 instead of 7% or 6% or whatever it is. So, you know, it was it was just interesting hearing a lot of people are getting to that. And something I'll say on that for people if you're like, well, I don't have that much cash I'm sitting on. It is I I think the minimum on it was shockingly low. It was like $50 That was so bad. For you to be able to do it. So even if you have a small amount of savings that you're looking, you know, that you're worried about losing to inflation, it is an option. Or even if you don't wanna go that route, just the the money market accounts too, which I know we have a couple of, but those are paying just slightly below what the bonds are paying, and they're also just just as liquid from liquid. So yeah. So it was really good. Lots talk lots to talk about that. And then as is common with these sort events, lots of people talking about family stuff, and just like hearing how some of these people live life with their families is is pretty crazy. You know, very few people's kids go to, like, normal school.

Dan Austin: [19:13] Yeah. The big one's the Acton, a c t o n, Academy is a big one.

Mike DeHaan: [19:18] Yep. Yep. A lot of them, yeah, they're just, like, Acton Academy, which is kind of more like a a learning by doing sort of academy, it sounds like. I don't know too many deals on it.

Dan Austin: [19:27] You know, the one thing my wife and I have struggled with with that is, like, how do they and I don't know because I haven't done the research. It's like, how do they handle organized sports? Because a lot of them join these these schools so that they can travel or be somewhere part time for the year or just not in regular school because they don't believe in the, you know, school system.

Mike DeHaan: [19:45] Yeah. I mean, I think you have to play club sports. Right? Like, it's

Dan Austin: [19:47] not gonna be through the school. Right. Of course. Yeah. I just didn't know with some of them if they're traveling. One of the reasons why they like these schools is because they're actually homeschooling, but they're part of an academy, and then with the homeschool, they can travel. So maybe those folks that are traveling two to three months out of the year in different locations, or six months out of year, maybe they aren't. They're maybe their

Mike DeHaan: [20:05] kids aren't playing organized sports. Yeah. Yeah. Probably. That's what I would guess. But yeah. So I'm doing that. Yeah. They're doing homeschooling, or they're doing these other sort of things, which is always interesting to me because, like, the general consensus is I mean, all these guys are entrepreneurs. Right? Yeah. The older people, I would say, are are still pretty into, like, higher education. Sure. But those people that are, like, I would say, like, 35 and younger are, like They like like, if my kid wants to go, that's fine, but I'm not going to encourage higher education unless they're just, like, super keen on it.

Dan Austin: [20:37] Right. And then you can go I mean, think about it. In my case, so I spent time in the military. So I think I went and got my bachelor's. I think I started at age 24. You could if you were not going to go in the military, you could spend six years just cutting your teeth on entrepreneurship, fail multiple times, and then go get a degree. What? You'll still end up somewhere. I'm at least not in the gutter because I waited six years.

Mike DeHaan: [21:00] You know what I mean?

Dan Austin: [21:01] You could wait ten years. Nobody's saying you can't. Don't if everything else fails, go back to the traditional model if you really feel like you need to.

Mike DeHaan: [21:08] Yeah. Yeah. For sure. But a lot of these people with their kids, their thought is like they're hoping that they can raise them in a way that they don't feel like higher education is the only answer for them. Well, because it's not. It's actually probably the worst answer. Yeah. I mean, these days, honestly. But, yeah, it was super good event, though. I recommend if anybody's looking at this sort of organization or so much of organizations that you give it a serious look because, I mean, it it is extremely valuable.

Dan Austin: [21:33] Well, I think the the great thing, and I wanna ask you some more questions on on your time there, is just we touched on it earlier, is all the the variety of things that are in your life that you can accelerate or get better at by surrounding yourself with people. One of the things there is is adventure, and that's what I've really attracts me. I'm actually an adventurous person, although haven't done very many lately. But what what are the reasons why Tahoe. Right? Because skiing. Yeah. So they did I don't think they did hella skiing this time, did they?

Mike DeHaan: [22:02] No. They didn't offer it, but they did cat skiing, and then they they did cat skiing, and they had, like, a snowshoeing thing, which I guess was pretty cool. They well, what they did though is they, like, snowshoeed them out, like, up onto this peak, and they, like, snowshoe along this pretty sick ridge line, which looked cool. But the gotha the gotha bed was there was a backcountry skiing thing that was booked that they could do through GoBundance. Everyone their thought was like, oh, yeah. It's like backcountry skiing. We'll go we'll, like, shuttle cars or we'll do helicopter. No. They're like they got it to an area, and the guy's like, cool. We're walking this way. And all the guys were like, we did not sign up for this.

Dan Austin: [22:35] So they they were snowshoeing or they were doing, like, like No. Randon A skiing? Like, they had to like No.

Mike DeHaan: [22:41] It was like, you're you're wearing your boots and you're hiking up a boot pack into the backcountry area. To ski though. To ski. Okay. Yeah. At least

Dan Austin: [22:48] you maybe got some freshies, but yeah, that sucks. Do you have to like hike through that's the one thing that sucks like Randon A or backcountry is like, if you're doing it on foot, it's, like, three or four hours, sometimes six hours of hiking for, like, one sick run. Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [22:59] And that's exactly what it was, and and guys were not prepared for that.

Dan Austin: [23:02] But you'll never forget that. That's that's a piece of the adventure is, like, that probably sucked a little bit. Some guys are maybe a little colder than they should have been. Some guys are maybe a little hotter. They didn't have the right gear. And part of it was like, that's part of the adventure in my opinion. And so there's a lot of other trips. And my encouragement for you has been, man, you should start one of those because you're such a travel junkie. You should start or put together a adventure trip for GoBundance. Yeah. You know, where you basically, what you end up doing is you plan out like some cool maybe week or two weeks somewhere really cool, unique, and then take a group of people that wanna sign up and are like into that like trip. I don't know. Something something wild like whitewater rafting down some crazy ass river in South America.

Mike DeHaan: [23:46] Yeah. That would be But

Dan Austin: [23:47] those are like once in a lifetime bucket list things that typically are offered and encouraged through GoBundance at some level. Right? And you can always find a person willing to do it with you if you can't find that in your local, you know, community, which sometimes is hard.

Mike DeHaan: [24:00] Yeah. A lot of the guys, they do travel together. They do all sorts of stuff, which is pretty cool. I mean, even for Thanksgiving this past year, I was talking to one guy. He owns a giant Airbnb down in Costa Rica. That's cool. And he brought his in so everyone in the group is put into what's called a pod, which is like a small accountability group. Four or five people. Yeah. Four to five people. And everyone in his pod and their families, they came down his Airbnb in Costa Rica.

Dan Austin: [24:22] That's so cool.

Mike DeHaan: [24:22] And they just have, Thanksgiving there together.

Dan Austin: [24:24] That's a lot of fun.

Mike DeHaan: [24:24] You know, they're like hiking and all sorts of stuff, which is pretty cool. Oh, man. But, yeah, either way, super good event, though. I recommend people look into it if you're interested, because, like, you know, it gives you a whole different perspective on life as well once you meet people that are, you know, worth like $50,000,000, and you're like, oh, they're actually just like me. They just like did things a certain way.

Dan Austin: [24:43] Yes.

Mike DeHaan: [24:43] Right? Or like, I met a guy that started real estate the same time that Dan and I started working together, and he owns 140 properties in Eastern Tennessee, 80 short term rentals, and 60 long term rentals. And he's developing and building 60 more of them. And he is younger than I am.

Dan Austin: [25:05] Makes you feel like dang.

Mike DeHaan: [25:07] Yeah, crazy. You know, and the crazy thing is too with his stuff is he doesn't have like a rich benefactor. He doesn't have, you know, like a, I don't know, a real estate background or a family or anything that's carrying him. And it was literally like he's did the same business as you and I did.

Dan Austin: [25:24] Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [25:24] We're doing this off market deals, but he focused on development opportunities. And then when stuff would come down, he would work on raising money.

Dan Austin: [25:31] Nice.

Mike DeHaan: [25:31] And like getting partners on board at that point. But even then, he said, on the vast majority of the stuff, he is at least a 25% owner. That's great. Yeah. So, like, just crazy how how quickly people can accomplish it, and it's just a wealth of knowledge.

Dan Austin: [25:43] So Well, yeah. And it's like that level, like, step up. Like, if you think you're doing really good, go surround yourself with people that are doing better, and you're gonna be like, okay. There's the next level. It's not like to make you feel like you're not doing as well as other people. It's like giving you that motivation to see like, oh, okay. And there's maybe a different path. Like, all learn a certain path of how we're going to invest in real estate or we get kind of in our one niche. And then you like, you step back, you're like, oh, wow. There's like this whole other playing field that I'm missing out on because I've been so focused on whatever it is within my one market, thinking that I'm doing the right things. I listened to episode 348 on BiggerPockets, and on that one, they said to do this. Uh-huh. It's like, well, there's other options out there too. Yeah. And you could go bigger. Yeah. There's always somebody doing it bigger than you.

Mike DeHaan: [26:27] Yeah. And like a lot bigger than you

Dan Austin: [26:29] would expect as well. Like scale, magnitude bigger. So

Mike DeHaan: [26:33] either way, that was good stuff. And then business chugged along pretty well. Appreciate you holding down fort. What do we have?

Dan Austin: [26:38] Like, four got a couple contracts, I think, last week. Signed new ones. Yep. Yeah. Signed new ones.

Mike DeHaan: [26:42] And we have, what, three or four closings, I think?

Dan Austin: [26:44] Yep. Yep. We had well, we had two last three no. Yeah. We did get three. We just didn't get paid on the third one. And then we got, Oh, okay. Four more coming up this next week, basically, the next seven to ten days. So we got a lot of closing yet. February has been wild as far as, like, just organizing all the closings just because they're just title companies. We got, like, four years, like, three or four different title companies, and they're all, like, different, like, degrees of just not that great at this. Yeah. So that's been kind of fun for us and our partners over there to do some of that. But, yeah, business went well. Got one under contract. I think that happened this week, didn't it? Or maybe Monday, did the one in our in Spokane. Got that one under contract, which we should be a wholesale in here quite shortly. So that'll be cool. Yeah, that this is the good

Mike DeHaan: [27:29] thing about having a business out of way for a week. And I have no idea what happened. Was here and

Dan Austin: [27:34] I don't even remember what happened.

Mike DeHaan: [27:36] Yeah. No. It's well, it's all of our if you guys listened a couple weeks ago, we had the beginning of January, we signed around a shit ton, and a lot of them started closing here this week. Yeah. We've been

Dan Austin: [27:43] popping them off, like like our sales guy, he's gonna do very well for himself Uh-huh. As far as commissions go this in the within the last six weeks. And that's just, like, a good I think for anybody to, like, see, like, okay. I think in the last six weeks, we'll have done, like I don't know. I'm just gonna, like, say, like, in his, like, just his markets, like, eight or 10 closings, which is pretty good amount of commission for him. Yeah. And, like, it's like, okay. Now how do you repeat that every month? And that's why just staying on your leads, hitting all your follow-up. Obviously, we're continuing to market to bring in new leads to that person. But then it's just like keeping your gas on the pedal. Like, do not let up and be like, whoo, I made some cash. I'm gonna go party this weekend. Do whatever, pay some bills, and I'm good for a while. Could ride this out for, like, a month. That's like the worst attitude you can have. Right? The attitude is like, right on, like, I'm gonna try to beat it next month. Next month, I'm gonna close 10 deals. I'm gonna close 12 deals because you know the leads are there. You and I know if you keep bringing leads, and we know if you keep following up with your old leads, there's a conversion rate. And if you can just do that and stay consistent, man, you can have a great year.

Mike DeHaan: [28:49] Yeah. And that's something that we work a lot with people on our in our group coaching program, the instant investor program with a lot is like, especially when you're a one man show that you get into a zone where you are in acquisitions mode, you get a bunch of stuff signed around, and then you turn into transaction coordinator mode, and you're trying to get all these things closed so they let up on the marketing side. And we struggle with this as well when we first started. You get into this phase where you're, like, making money, and then you're broke. And you're making money, and then you're broke. And you have no consistency, and it gets really, really stressful. And, you know, you're really when when you're like that, you are one or two deals going sideways away from being in big trouble. Right. And it you know, it's so so important that you maintain that consistent marketing and sales process. And if, you know, you're at a phase where you're doing what I just said, where you're, like, kind of going from acquisition to transaction, going back and forth, that's when the incentives start bringing on some virtuals. Yep. You know, bringing on someone to go and help with, your cold follow-up or your different kinda, lead follow-up and scheduling and those sort of things. Because otherwise, you will burn out in this business Yes. And you will always just have this turbulent Right. Uncomfortable feeling.

Mike DeHaan: [29:55] Well, and

Dan Austin: [29:55] I think some people too, they they let off the gas on the marketing because they're like, okay. I got this deal. I'm gonna flip it or I'm I'm burying it or whatever they do. They they get their single focus on that, or they think, like, when I flip this, I'm gonna use those profits for my marketing. It's like, yes, you will use some of those profits for your marketing, but in the meantime, you should keep investing in your marketing so that you do have that steady flow, so that we're not you're not doing what you're saying is pinging to the top, pinging to the bottom, pinging to the top, pinging to the bottom, and getting super stressed out, and then burned out. You know, you're much better off of, like, building your systems and maybe hiring somebody to help you do certain things so that you can go and bur a property or flip a property while you're continuously marketing, continuously bringing in leads, and continuously closing new contracts so that you always have this this steady feed. You're trying

Mike DeHaan: [30:40] to take the peaks and valleys out of your system. Yeah. And this is why I like direct mail too, as our core, you know, that's what we've used as our core marketing course for so long. But with direct mail, you can realistically set your marketing cycle for the next month, like, one time, and then make it drip out over the course of the month. Yep. As opposed to a lot of people, they chase things like cold calling or texting and that sort of stuff because it's quote unquote cheaper. Even though if you look at cost per deal, it's really the same. But that takes so much more focus. That's right. And that has to be something that's actively happening all the time. Even if you have a VA that's doing it or, you know, you have a virtual that's cold calling or you have a cold calling company. Right? That still has to be actively going on. Yeah. And, you know, if you have the cold calling company as well, which you'll find is you have a bunch more work than you might potentially want because the leads that are especially if it's like a kind of a shitty company, which most of them are, the leads that they submit are people that did not hang up on them and tell them to go ask themselves. Right? And they'll submit it to you as a lead. So now you're, you know, constantly trying to play catch up with it. But with direct mail, it's very easy to prescreen them because if they called in, they rose their hand, they chose to have a conversation with you, And then basically, it wasn't a, you know, go kill yourself, take me off the list, or I want a million dollars for my house that's obviously worth 150,000, then you know that there's an opportunity there that you can focus on instead of trying to churn through a bunch of data that's probably pointless. For sure.

Mike DeHaan: [32:03] But yeah, so that's all been going good. And then we have several new markets with new partners that we're starting up with here very shortly, which I'm super excited about. So yeah, we have we're starting some stuff up down in Florida. We're starting some stuff in some other places in Washington. We have a few other people that were probably starting up here in the next couple weeks, one out in Wisconsin. Speaks to

Dan Austin: [32:22] that getting out in front and marketing for the opportunities that will present themselves.

Mike DeHaan: [32:27] Exactly. Yeah. And that was a that was a big thing with different people that were interested in partnering with us being part of our partnership program was folks that took that to heart where they're realizing I have money, I don't have a lead funnel. I can do that. And we can offer an easy button for that. Totally. And lo and behold, we have a bunch of people that are gonna be sitting in a prime position here in the next couple months. So lots of good things going on. And then he our new internal systems manager has been crushing it. Yeah, he's awesome. I'm really excited. Yeah. Because what we're going to be having here pretty soon as well for our different partners is we're actually gonna have a collecting keys mobile app. Oh, an app. Yeah. So people will be able to, you know, review everything with our team between our team and them and review their marketing metrics and all this sort of stuff. So it'll be really seamless system, hopefully. It'll at least make us look super professional. Nothing else. So

Dan Austin: [33:18] Yeah. Can we get, like, you remember on the old Nokia phones where you could get snake? Could we get that added to our app so that there's just, you know, there's an incentive for everybody to be inside of our app all the time? It'll put some, like, advertisement banners there and make it really scammy as well.

Mike DeHaan: [33:35] Run apps in our own, like, in our own business app. Right?

Dan Austin: [33:39] No. I'm actually really excited for that app because because that has been it's just a lot of work on our end, trying to maintain communication with all of our partners across the country, and so I think that's going to just help for everybody involved in the collecting keys ecosystem at whatever tier they're in, to be, like, actually have a one one stop shop where they're gonna be like I mean, it's kinda cool. It's like you open up an app, and now all of a sudden you have deals in front of you, like, legit deals that are yours specifically. That's pretty freaking cool.

Mike DeHaan: [34:04] Yeah. It's gonna be good stuff. So if you have any interest in any of those sort things that we offer, go to collectthesepodcast.com/store, and you can see our 7 figure investor mastermind program and some basic information about our partnership program as well. So you check that out if you're looking to expand that very rapidly. Yeah. Besides that, we got some deals closing. We're actually selling some stuff sub two, which will be interesting. So we are also looking for some I guess, we're planning a ten thirty one into some triple net commercial stuff. So if you guys have anything that that you wanna sell, you should hit me up on Instagram because

Dan Austin: [34:37] Seriously, we're looking hard. Looking very,

Mike DeHaan: [34:39] very hard for some opportunities. But outside of that, I feel good, man. I feel like we have a lot of stuff going on. And this is I I would say for everyone, if you had a twenty twenty twenty twenty two kind of like, I'm not really sure what's happening year, 2023 seems to me, just based off what everyone's saying, it's gonna be the year that there's gonna be a lot of opportunity. So if you've been sitting on the sidelines kinda waiting, at times, they're putting your foot down because stuff's gonna be running around. Be quite yep. Exactly. So cool. Anything else from you for last week? Or is that that kinda all we got?

Dan Austin: [35:11] No. That was it, man. Just systematizing while you're gone, finishing up tax stuff, and getting ready to rock and roll.

Mike DeHaan: [35:18] There we go. You don't have Dan's freaking TikToker of the week or whatever the fuck you normally have. You always have, like, some you should have, like, some

Dan Austin: [35:26] dumb influence you wanna talk about. And I didn't have time to be bullshitting around. I was busy. Yeah. No. I don't. I was just trying to wait where my for my BDE shirt to show up. It still hasn't. Now I'm like bored with the term BDE. Need to come up with a new term for it.

Mike DeHaan: [35:39] BDE. I know what we've been rebranding our marketing companies. That's next on the list is the collecting keys official merch store, where you can get a collecting key shirt like Dan's wearing on this video, or you can get his BDE Big Dan energy shirt. And then as we come up with more stupid sayings that will only be funny to the eight people that come to the collecting keys, like conference room.

Dan Austin: [36:01] They're all gonna be rocking BD shirts, dude, with my face on them. Nice. Yeah. Now, you know, I am excited. So I love companies that have merch. Right? So Yeah. The big one that I followed, and I've I have promised myself I'll never miss another launches things from The Boring Company, Elon Musk, because when the flamethrower came out, I was like, oh, I should totally buy that. I just didn't. It was only like $250 or something

Mike DeHaan: [36:24] like that. $500 was $600 and I didn't have $600 back then I did. And I

Dan Austin: [36:29] just I just was like, oh, yeah, that's kinda cool. Didn't think about it. Must be missed a couple things. But I so my first time I was able to pop in and get something for sold out was the burnt hair perfume.

Mike DeHaan: [36:40] So You got the worst thing. Like, that's I know, dude. Literally the worst

Dan Austin: [36:43] thing, but I'm so excited. I keep getting email updates, like, there it's still coming. And so I'm super excited for it. Like, I'm pumped.

Mike DeHaan: [36:50] I mean, if if you want a a shitty product like that, why don't you go get It's

Dan Austin: [36:53] not shitty. It's high faze.

Mike DeHaan: [36:55] What's the what's the lady that as like the big, like, anti vaxxed lady that was she's on Iron Man. She's on Iron Man? Yeah. What the fuck is her name? I can't remember. But she has the candle, and the candle's cough up. Like, candle smells like my vagina. Oh, Gwyneth Paltrow.

Dan Austin: [37:11] What's your name? Gwyneth Paltrow. Yeah. They're sold out.

Mike DeHaan: [37:14] Yeah. Why don't you get some of those? They're out. They're sold out. Looked it up when I

Dan Austin: [37:17] saw that. Was like, is this real? Like, you know when you're like, is this real? Because I gotta repeat this? And it and I showed it to my wife, and she's like, are you kidding me? I was like, yeah. But it's sold out.

Mike DeHaan: [37:26] I mean, just brilliant marketing.

Dan Austin: [37:28] Absolutely. That's definitely sold out. Yeah. So people enjoyed it.

Mike DeHaan: [37:33] Yeah. If you wanna buy more crappy products, yes, that's what you should do next. Anyway, so, alright, guys. So that is the rundown of this past week for us. So go buns event was big. If you guys have any if you have any questions about that too, if anyone's kind of on the fence about it, feel free to shoot me a DM on Instagram at Mike underscore invest. I've had quite a few people recently that were just sort of curious in the other groups that I'm involved in. And that's a big one that I'm happy to happy to chat with people about. So go ahead shoot me a message on Instagram about that. Aside from that, guys, if you want to get your free five step guide, start generating off market leads, so you can start building that pipeline to pounce on all the upcoming opportunities in 2023, go to collectingkeyspodcast.com/free, and get yourself a free five step guide there. And besides that, you guys, we have an insane amount of stuff coming up over this next next couple of months. So make sure you guys subscribe to the show. Go ahead and share it with anybody who might find it interesting. Big drops. And we have, like, some big guests coming. We have all sorts of things coming up over the next year. So yep. Yep. Big collecting keys content coming your way. Anyways, guys, thanks so much for listening.

Mike DeHaan: [38:39] We'll talk to you all next week.

Speaker 2: [38:46] Podcasts, and check us out at collectingkeyspodcast.com for tips and guides on starting your own real estate investment and wholesaling business.