How to Hire to Take Your Business From 6 to 7 Figures

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] I think one of the reasons that people tend to struggle with this and why they tend to think marketing is their problem is because the first step to sort of figuring out how to improve your sales process is by doing some personal internal reflection and probably being honest with yourself that you suck at the sales process. What's going on, guys? Welcome to today's episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast. Today is Wednesday, this is the Mike and Dan show. Good. This is actually the last episode for 2023. Oh, it is. So if you are joining us for the first time, welcome. You've missed a a great year in 2023 with the podcast and with business in general. But these Wednesday shows are the ones where I, Mike Tajana, my co host here, Dan Austin, talk about real estate investing and how to make a massive income, not just passive income with our real estate investing business. Mhmm. Yeah, it has been an interesting December Mhmm. In the real estate off market world because typically we have a pretty significant slowdown this month. In the month of December, least we have for the past what, four or five years, however long we've been doing this, and we have not had that.

Dan Austin: [1:18] This felt good. That feels really good. It feels strong.

Mike DeHaan: [1:21] Yeah. Yeah, it feels really strong. Mean in fact in the week before Christmas we had five closings, Yeah. Whereas like traditionally in December, we have like one or two closings for the whole month. We have five in a week.

Dan Austin: [1:32] Right. Totally. Yeah. Feels good. Kinda hat trick yesterday. Three in one day. Yep. Yep. That's cool.

Mike DeHaan: [1:38] Yeah. So I guess, you know, that we had our team signed three in one day, which is always a good feeling, you know, to sort of wrap up December right before Christmas. And, yeah, all in all things are starting to look up. We have been diving into a lot of our preparations for our new setup for our community. Okay. So if you're listening to this episode, some things that you'll be able to find in the collecting keys website, collectingkeys.com, is you will see that we now have our instant investor program is available as a standalone online course that can get you started. And that will have pretty much everything that you would need to know about building a real estate business or getting started with a real estate business from marketing, how to wholesale, how to do flips, how to do creative financing. That is gonna be officially available on January 1, but you can place a pre order on the website.

Dan Austin: [2:26] Now That's the same stuff that we were offering to our community only.

Mike DeHaan: [2:31] Exactly. It was originally just for our community, but we are making the course material available to everybody as a standalone purchase, you don't get the community with it but you can go and run with it if the community is a little bit expensive for you. And then we are shifting our community away from being the instant investor program to instead being our scale community, scale stand.

Dan Austin: [2:51] No changing it now.

Mike DeHaan: [2:52] Yeah, so it's changing it now, officially announced it.

Dan Austin: [2:54] We've been talking about that for weeks, trying to figure out that name.

Mike DeHaan: [2:57] Yeah, yeah, the scale community, scales stands for scaling cash flow assets leverage in equity. We literally finalized it like two hours ago. So I'm still trying to figure it out. Either way, I'm super excited about it and it will be a sort of larger, like higher level, more focused group on people that are deliberately trying to scale businesses. We have a bunch of new perks for being a part of that community, putting a bunch of discounts with like our mail provider, different marketing companies, you're working out some discounts with Lowe's for doing renovations and things like that.

Dan Austin: [3:31] Really at all angles of the business, right, because we know what everybody in our community needs to run a business, whether that's burring, flipping, wholesaling, we all kinda need the same stuff, right? So why not use our community's buying power to negotiate those rates, so being part of the communities is more valuable than not being part of the community. That's the idea, right?

Mike DeHaan: [3:48] Exactly. And we're just sort of reframing it so that that's truly kind of specific and you're not just like paying to get coaching from Dan and I, which is, you know, I think value a lot of other people think it's valuable. But we can offer Still worth a lot. I mean, you know, let's go. But we we can offer more than that. Yeah. And we have a bunch of other

Dan Austin: [4:05] things that are working towards it too. Well, I think just what we learned from KeyesCon, our first in person event was the how valuable the community was to the community that we had created, and so it's like, now how do we continue to drive value, be community driven, drive value to the members that is really just adding like, well, giving them the ability to scale faster and further than they would otherwise, because that's why you join a community, you wanna do things faster, better, harder, stronger, whatever. So let's keep driving that value back into the community is really the goal.

Mike DeHaan: [4:36] Exactly. And there's no reason it can't be like a collective where everyone's profiting off each other, you know, and profiting off each other's success. And then then finally we are taking, I guess, applications for people that wanna be partners as well and join our partnership program, which we were on hold before for the last four months. But anyways, that's on collectingkeys.com. I'll quit plugging all of our bullshit so you can go and check that out on your own if you want to be a part of any of the things we're putting together. But, yeah. Outside of that, we have had some great conversations though, and I think this is a great topic for the show today around sort of like hiring and building a team and trying to figure out how exactly to, I would say like early scaling phase of this business. Yep. When you are kind of past the point of figuring out how to generate leads, which most people they come into our sort of sphere solution to show thinking that lead flow is the problem. Lead flow in this business is fricking easy. I'm sorry, but it is. If you're having trouble with lead flow, you're probably just not committing time and money to the right places. You're probably trying to do it the cheap way where you are sitting on a dialer for yourself, a single line dialer by yourself for one hour a day, right? And not Why not calling, why you're not getting caught up with enough people, especially if you're doing it right.

Dan Austin: [5:45] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [5:45] There's, you gotta, you know, outsource it, bring on a team, do direct mail.

Dan Austin: [5:49] We can give you a master class in sixty minutes on how to generate enough leads that you'll never have to worry about leads again. Totally. Right. It's never the problem. It's not, it's never the problem.

Mike DeHaan: [5:57] And once people realize that, the problem comes when they're in a phase that they have so many leads that they are not sure how to follow-up with them, how to close the deals, they're not good at the sales part, they don't like the sales part, they are over committed to their pipeline. And this has been a pretty big conversation in the group, I've lost a little bit and I thought it would be a great topic of conversation for the show today.

Dan Austin: [6:19] I think so because I feel like when people come to us, they're spending money on leads, but they're not getting the conversion that they want. They're maybe making money, but they're not making the money they want. They're just like beating their head off the wall thinking, like to your point, that the marketing needs to be fixed, and we'll help fix that, right? We can kind of optimize that and do some stuff and give you some philosophical kind of points of views on that. Then the others are the people that are coming that are starting out, they need to learn how to generate leads, but then once they've learned that, it's how do I make better and more improved conversions, and then how do I go from solopreneur to entrepreneur, and you're out, this is a topic that's been something you and I have talked about, just, I feel like we're one of the only people in this space doing specifically off market real estate that really talk about this, because that's what our goal has been for so many years now, is like how do you get away from like, just making a good profit and scaling to where this thing is actually generating income, without you having to grind.

Mike DeHaan: [7:11] Exactly. And then how do you do it without sort of hating what you're doing every Totally, yeah. You know? And I think one of the reasons that people tend to struggle with this and why they tend to think marketing is their problem is because the first step to sort of figuring out how to improve your sales process is by doing some personal internal reflection and probably being honest with yourself that you suck Mhmm. At the sales process. Yeah. And most people don't wanna do that. Right? Like they think that they're good or they think they should be better. And this is a whole situation that we went through as well and honestly what it took was for me to go to my first in person meeting up with our coach back then. And he literally said, he's like, was going through our CRM and he's like, bro, I think you just suck at sales. And I remember being super offended and then thinking about that, and I was like, no, makes sense. And we hired our first salesperson, it'll be close like seven deals in the next month, know, and our entire lives changed because of that, and now it's just the business.

Dan Austin: [8:03] Absolutely. And there's so many levels where, like, having somebody from the outside look at your business and tell you what you need, because you could also be a rock star at sales, but you're freaking a mess So and when it comes to closing, you're a rock star, but you can't get people to closing table because you don't have the systems or the follow-up or just like the wherewithal to actually follow-up process up to that point. So you're just kinda going crazy because we've had great salespeople that still can't close deals because of that, that same problem. Right? Control.

Mike DeHaan: [8:30] Yeah. I mean, let Wigot at the longer

Dan Austin: [8:32] who is

Mike DeHaan: [8:33] I would say probably our most potentially talented salesperson that we had on our team. Absolutely. But he was just so disorganized. Was absolute freaking mess. And then the crazy thing is too is once we dropped him, we pass up all of his leads to our other sales guys who I would say are less proficient closers, but just follow the process a bit better, and they closed three, say they signed three deals that were sitting in his pipeline within the next forty eight hours because he had just not been following up appropriately.

Dan Austin: [8:58] And I think that's a direct like, that's proof in the pudding, right, from our internal business, where we have a full staff and sales team, and we get to see the different personalities and how they play out. If that is not a good example where we're seeing in our business, for you to recognize that in your own business, that it might be you, or it might be your sales rep, or somebody else in your business or you. I don't know what else to tell you if you don't if you don't see that, but yeah. The one thing that we were talking about before the call that I think kinda leads into this conversation about like hiring and scaling, is I was just telling you like, it is super easy to make a $100,000. Like, I can will my way into making a 100,000. Like, once you learn how to like generate income, we can literally go and I can mow lawns to a $100, you know, like, I've flippantly said, oh, I could go start a deck building business because some contractor quoted me a ton of money, and I go went and did that, made some money doing this, you can make some money wholesaling, I can make $30 on a flip. Like, could get yourself to a $100 working part time.

Mike DeHaan: [9:55] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [9:56] Getting to a million dollars of revenue a year, like million dollars of profit I should say rather, that's fricking hard.

Mike DeHaan: [10:00] It's very challenging.

Dan Austin: [10:01] And that's because all of the processes it takes to build and the systems it takes to get to that next level, and your idea has to be good.

Mike DeHaan: [10:08] Yes it is.

Dan Austin: [10:09] Because like mowing lawns is probably not a good use of my time, even though I can mow enough lawns to make a $100 this year. There's enough time in year I could figure that business out, but that's not the most efficient use of my time, and so as I'm looking at opportunities, I have more opportunities to make money laid out in front of me than I have time, and so I have to really be selective, and it becomes challenging to pick the winners out of that, to be honest. Yeah. And to pick the winning things that you're going to do for time, and that goes, that all applies right into your business directly, like, what are the things you are going to be most successful at and what are gonna be most efficient with your time to make the most amount of profit?

Mike DeHaan: [10:42] Well I think it's efficiency and the big thing to sort of get to that million dollar mark, which is always milestone for most people, is you have to use some kind of leverage. Mhmm. Whether that's human leverage, that's financial leverage. Doing it yourself as like a solo operator is going to be extremely difficult despite you know what people like Alex Tremozi say, he has this whole thing, he's like, oh I think you can hustle your way to 3 or $4,000,000 a year. I was like, Maybe you can because you're fucking free. Right. Most people can't do that. We're going to burn out, we're gonna not be as efficient as we need to. And to get to a million dollars, especially in profit, you're gonna have to have some sort of team structure, you're gonna have some sort of strategy, you're going to have to take risk, right, and that's the thing that most people don't wanna do. And this is especially true if you're in real estate, where our transaction time is extremely high, right, in terms of just like what it actually takes to make money, whether you're wholesaling, it's gonna take you three to four months from when the transaction starts when you get paid. And then if you're flipping properties, it's gonna take you even longer, know, four, five, six months. And if you don't have, like I would say like buffer for that, you don't have any sort of systems in place to get you through that or to like manage some of those challenges while those transactions are going on, then you're just gonna be in a tough spot, right? You're always gonna be spinning wheels. But I mean, in terms of you know, making $100,000 especially in the real estate space, I mean, realistically, that can be less than one wholesale deal a month. If you're doing two wholesale deals a month, you should be making more than that pretty easy, but then to do a million dollars as a wholesale business, that's a lot of transactions.

Mike DeHaan: [12:16] I mean it's literally it's 10x that 100,000.

Dan Austin: [12:20] Yeah, well the and the challenge becomes when you're scaling is, there's certain costs that when you hire the person, they're going to increase your revenue. Mhmm. And then there's other people and staff, when you're talking about leverage, even if you're leveraging money, like there's a cost associated with that. And so, when when you're using leverage like that, the cost comes out, right, of the bottom line, right, it comes out of your gross margins and you get down, and so if you hire the wrong people and you let them burn in your business, burn a hole through your business because you're afraid to fire them, that could be a $5,060,000 dollar a year salary for somebody, plus all the other costs associated with getting them up to speed in training, right? So there's all these costs as you scale. Mhmm. So the idea is like, when you and I first started, was just me and you, our profit margins were fricking insane, right? Oh yeah, 90%. We were doing well, we were efficient, we were lean, we were mean, and then to get beyond that, it's like, now we're at 50%, now we're at 40, now you're at 30, right? And so, your profit margins naturally go down, then the goal becomes, how do I optimize the expenses while also growing the top line revenue, which becomes, it's like a two headed challenge and and you're constantly chasing your tail, and so, like, the good thing is, is there's some improvement that you can always make.

Dan Austin: [13:28] The bad thing is, is there are things that can be detrimental to your business that you're not paying attention to, because you're focused on the wrong thing. Like, hey, I'm just focused on growing the top line, and I've seen this before, people just keep hiring, hiring, hiring, all of sudden the business looks like it's doing great. Like, look at all those people they have. Mhmm. But then you're like, behind the scenes it's not as good. Like, we've seen a lot of companies like that, then it falls apart.

Mike DeHaan: [13:47] Totally.

Dan Austin: [13:48] Because they're not doing the right things.

Mike DeHaan: [13:49] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I used to go back and make this actionable. So somebody is in that position, they are, you know, gratitude's in deals, they're working a lot. How do they figure out what that first sort of like human leverage should look like? Mhmm. How do they determine which person's right for them? How do they begin to find that person? How do they even analyze if they're in the position that that would make sense?

Dan Austin: [14:12] The first thing I would start, I would personally start with like without doing anything is just like what feels heavy?

Mike DeHaan: [14:17] Right.

Dan Austin: [14:17] What do you not like to do and what is hard for you to do? What do you like push off to the end of the day? And a part of that, pairing that with like a DISC assessment, which is what we use, I think helps give clarity to that because you might feel like, man, picking up the phone and calling sellers is so heavy, and you go to a disc and you're like a super high C, like yeah, because a high C is more the data driven person, not like the people person, right? And likewise,

Mike DeHaan: [14:42] and so the C stands for conscientiousness in a DISC assessment. If you guys aren't familiar with a DISC assessment, is that Tony Robbins' things that he came up with, or was this something before him?

Dan Austin: [14:51] I have no idea who came up

Mike DeHaan: [14:52] it. I know he's, he kind of is famous for using it, but yeah, it's like a personality test and DISC stands for was it dominant?

Dan Austin: [15:00] I don't know.

Mike DeHaan: [15:00] Influential? Yeah. Stable and conscientious?

Dan Austin: [15:04] Something like that. And

Mike DeHaan: [15:05] so if you're a high C basically that's the opposite of the high d, which is gonna be more of a salesperson. Anyway, sorry, just wanted to clarify that.

Dan Austin: [15:12] Right, yeah yeah. Yeah, that's no, that's a good point because it's easy to overlook that. But yeah, so I like to do what, use your intuition, because your intuition is going to be better than anything else, and then pairing it with the DISC profile, DISC assessment, hit us up, we can send you a copy of the one we use for free, like, yeah, I guess you could, I don't know, you could pay for them, I don't know if we should give it away for free, but we do, So, whatever.

Mike DeHaan: [15:35] I don't know, are worth anything? Like, there's just lots of people that wanna sell them online, and

Dan Austin: [15:40] I don't

Mike DeHaan: [15:40] know if they're like better or worse ones.

Dan Austin: [15:42] Yeah, just DM us disc and one of us will send it to you on Instagram or something like that.

Mike DeHaan: [15:46] Yeah, at mike_investor@investormainDan.

Dan Austin: [15:49] Right, and so, we went through this with our Keyes Con participants, we've gone through this with many people, we're coaching them, because pairing that with your intuition will actually give you some serious clarity on where you need to start looking. That's where I say you start.

Mike DeHaan: [16:03] Mhmm. For sure. Yeah, Jamie, I will also say to you that sometimes the things that feel heavy for you aren't always gonna be the things that you need to do right now. Sometimes the things that you need to do are the things that you like, right? But then eventually your wheels will fall off. This is actually what you see a lot with the people that are good at the sales part is they're grinding, grinding, grinding and they're making money and that's great, but there's no infrastructure. So eventually things go a little bit awry, they get a little bit tired and the entire business collapses. Totally. Versus a lot more commonly is people are good at the marketing and the back end office side and they don't like the part that actually makes them money. And that's like a sort of different sort of position where the infrastructure is gonna be great but there's going to be no actual building going on top of the foundation that they're putting together. So but yeah, that's a great that's a great way to start approaching it. And then without fighting that person, right? So let's start with just like the sales role in particular. Think this is what it usually is for most people, especially people that are listening to a show about building a real estate business. Most salespeople honestly are not listening to this show, they're out That's true.

Mike DeHaan: [17:08] They're true ADHD.

Dan Austin: [17:09] Yeah, that's true.

Mike DeHaan: [17:11] They aren't trying to learn how to get better.

Dan Austin: [17:13] This is true. So here's one thing I would say, even if you're not in a position to hire a salesperson, like you don't even have a business right now, but you know, you're like, yeah, I'm probably not a salesperson, I wanna be a wholesaler, I wanna get into this stuff. Go and post jobs where you know to post jobs, Right? Well, we can dive into good places to do that in a minute, but like, go post jobs. Mike and I have been coaching this to people because hiring is something you have to get good at. Right? You have to practice, and so go post jobs and interview people. The only thing you're giving up is some of your time, who cares, right? Mhmm. But see what that looks like, see what the people are out there that are applying for the jobs, see kind of like how you act when you're interviewing them, and also learn how to interview and get better at that, and honestly, probably do some research on the best ways to interview, cause I think there are some skills you can build up on interviewing people, cause sometimes like you see like newer interview, like people interviewing, like they, all of a sudden they're like on interview with the candidate, they're like trying to sell their company, it's like, no, step back, like that is part of the process at some point, but really it should be more of a you asking questions and them providing the information that you want, instead of letting them drive the conversation.

Dan Austin: [18:19] So practice and learn interviewing, and I will say some of our best hires are like referrals, or people within our direct network and influence, so put it out there, put it on social media, put it in groups that you're close to or part of, like even if it's a local Ria group, put it out there and see what comes back. I would say that's a good place to start.

Mike DeHaan: [18:41] Yeah, and you know, I think a big thing with hiring, you said there multiple times, you know, practice hiring and going through that process. For some reason, there's like, I think it's because most people's experience with the hiring process on the other end of the table as the person that is being interviewed. Yeah. And to you, when you're in that position, it's like a very big deal because you're trying to get the job.

Dan Austin: [19:02] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [19:02] Honestly, when you're on the other end of the table, you're the one with power.

Dan Austin: [19:06] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [19:07] Right? You can totally, like if you want to as an employer,

Dan Austin: [19:10] you can ask whatever question you want.

Mike DeHaan: [19:12] And then I'm gonna get like slapped for some sort of like thing.

Dan Austin: [19:14] No, mean, but like, it doesn't have to be like weird corporate style questioning, Like you should definitely follow like, you know, equal opportunity appointment questioning, but like

Mike DeHaan: [19:24] For sure, right? But the point being, you can interview 25 people and hire none of them just because you wanna practice interviewing. Okay? There is no problem with doing that. And honestly, if you go through that sort of exercise and your intention is to interview 25 people to practice hiring, you will probably find someone that fits what you're looking for

Dan Austin: [19:45] Honestly.

Mike DeHaan: [19:45] Just because you had the intention of, instead of saying, I need to get someone for this role and you're kind of thirsty, you're like, I need to have as many hiring conversations as I can. And you will probably have more authentic conversations and because you're looking at that larger metric of having more, potential conversions, you're gonna find someone.

Dan Austin: [20:02] Totally.

Mike DeHaan: [20:03] Versus I think where a lot of people get in trouble is they're like, I need to hire someone ASAP. So they go and they hire the first person that applies and they're like, I need to put someone in this role and they just bring them on. Yep. Which is okay. One of the things that we've been saying a lot to our group is when you're a small business you need to hire fast and fire faster. Right? As opposed, you know, I hear a lot of people say hire slow and fire fast. And if you're working for a massive company, that's totally true, especially if you have like these different HR restrictions and things like that about how you release people. But when somebody's coming to work for you, or your business of like three people, you can bring someone out of fire the next day if you want to, it doesn't fricking matter.

Dan Austin: [20:40] Exactly, There's no in between process. Right? There's no approvals. No. It's like, hey, they're not a good fit. And I'll be honest, like, when you have to fire or terminate people, speaking, they know they're not it's not a good fit.

Mike DeHaan: [20:49] Dude, I don't think we've ever fired somebody where they didn't kind of know that it was coming.

Dan Austin: [20:54] Right. In my, all my experiences, no matter where you're at, like that's what happens. And it really does, the hire fast, hire faster makes a lot more sense to me now, as we've grown our business. If you're listening, where a lot of people get all their information from, is like, this idea, when it comes to hiring and stuff, is like corporate world, right, how that looks.

Mike DeHaan: [21:13] Okay.

Dan Austin: [21:14] And that's a totally, it's just honestly totally different than small business, it's totally different than an off market real estate business, you know. You're at some conference, and there's some dude up there who's the CEO of big name company, and they're telling you, hire slow, fire fast, and you're like, absolutely. You know, when you hired your COO and grew a Fortune 500 company, that was the right move.

Mike DeHaan: [21:34] Mhmm. But when you're trying

Dan Austin: [21:35] to like hire an acquisition manager to flip a few more houses, like no, you don't have you you can't waste time, you can't let them burn too many of your leads, so you need to fire them fast if they're not working out, and you need somebody in that role so you can get to the next level so you can scale, and so you can't spend six to twelve months courting an acquisition manager that's gonna make 60 to $100 a year. It's not the same, they're not the same.

Mike DeHaan: [21:56] Not even close, know. You can't be like having a small mom and pop business and trying to make decisions like Bob Iger, like you're You CEO of fricking know, it's not even comparable.

Dan Austin: [22:07] He's got a lot of great advice, hiring for your small business is probably not

Mike DeHaan: [22:10] the same. Yeah. That's just a problem with a lot of like general educational stuff that's out there too is Totally. You know, it's like blanket advice. And here's the thing as well, if you learn from a lot of different business books or business speakers, realize they're all just recycling the same stuff that they have learned throughout the years, especially with books these days. Like So we talked about this a little while ago, everyone has a frickin' book. I know them are credible. And it's funny, I actually heard Hermosy talk about this on a different podcast not too long ago. He was saying like, books used to be written by people that wanted to pass knowledge onto the next generation. Now books are mostly written by people that have some sort of agenda or something that they wanna sell.

Dan Austin: [22:51] Absolutely, you could put it on your Instagram or something like that.

Mike DeHaan: [22:53] Or they're seeking some sort of clout. Right. You know, when Carnegie wrote How to Make Friends and Influence People, he wasn't like, you know what, I need a frickin' book. He was already Carnegie, right? Yeah. He'd already like made his money. Yeah. And he's like, I wanna pass this on as like a timeless thing and that's why that book is like considered a great book.

Dan Austin: [23:10] Awesome book.

Mike DeHaan: [23:11] Most business books that come out now, they're just fluff of the same bullshit that they have heard, they've probably never acted on Right. Right? Over a long period of time, and they've just put it into another book so that they can try and sell you on whatever their little group is or a different thing where they aren't actually operators in whatever they're trying to sell you, they are just learned how to consume and regurgitate.

Dan Austin: [23:34] Yeah, they're basically taking what was a blog post, and instead of having backlinks turned each of those into like a chapter of their book. Like, it's just regurgitation of the same information that's out there readily available. And by the way, I mean, most books don't need to be read anyways. No. And so like, then you have a book that really sucks anyhow, so there's no point reading it.

Mike DeHaan: [23:52] Yeah, but hey, I gotta read my 57 books a year, whatever. I wanna do more than one a week, that's my goal. Man. So anyway, but back to the hiring conversation though, it's funny, I feel like for most people that first hire is always the most challenging because it you know, it feels like you're gonna start dating somebody, it's like there's extra commitment.

Dan Austin: [24:10] So let's talk about that actually. Let's talk about what are those reasons that we've heard time and time again, and that we experienced, that you're worried, right? Like what would keep you from just going and hiring somebody?

Mike DeHaan: [24:19] Yeah, so the the biggest one, and this is one that came up on our coaching call today, which I think is so interesting because everyone always does this, where everyone's trying to figure out, especially in the sales role, how they can bring someone in but not pay them anything. Okay? So people are like saying, well, if I bring someone on part time, I can probably justify paying them a commission only. I If bring someone on as a partner, and they have ownership in it, then they might not expect a base pay because they're gonna have more upside. None of that makes any fricking sense. Okay? Like if you honestly think about it. Because you are now looking for someone to come in with either no real stake in the game, or you're gonna give them a portion of your business, or you're looking for someone to come in and treat your job, like working for you as a like side hobby, or like a side gig. Yeah. Which is not going to move you forward.

Dan Austin: [25:03] That's never good, it never works out.

Mike DeHaan: [25:05] Realistically, you can bring someone on, you know, like say a sales person's example, for 2 to $3,000 a month base pay, plus a commission structure that makes sense for your business, whether like for us it's a flat fee, because we're a volume business, if you're a less volume business, probably need to do some kind of commission so they make an appropriate amount of money. You can bring that person on, let's just say $2,000 base pay. You have them for three months, that's $6,000. If they are not closing deals for you within one or two months, you need to drop that person. That's a $4,000 risk for something that is an exponential upside, right? And for some reason, people have a really hard time making that $4,000 investment in that person, but they won't blink their eyes twice at putting another $4,000 into marketing to go and generate more leads that they're already not following up with and not closing. Totally. So why is it different? It doesn't make any sense.

Dan Austin: [25:58] So the thing that, wanna make two points here, one point you you said on a coaching call was exactly what you're talking about, is like, think about instead of buying more marketing, just pay. Pay for this person's base pay and get that person in the role, right? Because there's no point in buying more marketing if you're telling me the problem is you're not closing enough deals, but you have leads that you're not, you're not doing because that's usually the problem, is people aren't able to close enough deals, because they're not able to do enough follow-up. But the other point I wanna make is how we know this to be true, because this has happened to us time and time again, and all the way back when we first started, we hired a person. We gave her a base pay and a percentage commission. She had zero real estate experience, zero sales experience.

Mike DeHaan: [26:37] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [26:37] And she started closing deals within her first week. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [26:40] Because we had the leads. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [26:42] We had the leads, right, they were already sitting there, and there were things, there were appointments we went on that we still couldn't close, she's made the same appointments and closed those people, right. So, you don't have to have experience, so when we're reflecting back, we're not we're not better at hiring, or haven't necessarily been better at hiring than a new person, because we've gone through that, and so we understand, like, that when you get a person in there, you're going to know if they're a mismatch right away, right? Because they're not closing deals. If a lady that had no experience in anything was able to close deals, then I mean, your person should be able to close deals regardless.

Mike DeHaan: [27:15] Yeah. And and you know, we've seen that repeatedly across our business, across other businesses. You know, another way to look at it too is, okay, so you have some extra money that you need to spend on your business. Would you rather spend $2,000 right now to get 30 more leads or to have the potential to close two or three more deals? Right? Most people would rather spend the $2,000 to close two or three more deals than have 30 more leads. Totally. Honestly.

Dan Austin: [27:39] Yeah. To think about this the other the second thing, you're talking about not paying them, like people are always worried about paying them, so to close the door on that one, that is like, make that as an investment. Instead of paying for marketing, assuming you already have leads, just make that in a, that's a marketing investment, right? Mhmm. Because also, they can be prospecting too in their free time.

Mike DeHaan: [27:58] Exactly.

Dan Austin: [27:59] Which brings me to the other point, which is the other gripe that a lot of people have when they're hiring, the fear, the risk is, I don't think I have enough work for this person. But generally, if you've been marketing, you probably have enough leads in your CRM. I mean, don't know, what are your thoughts here?

Mike DeHaan: [28:13] Yeah, mean, you should have enough leads in your CRM in some capacity. So if you've been marketing for a couple of months, you know, and you've been doing at some reasonable volume, market for a couple of months, and you're sitting on a single line dialer for an hour a day, or you've been spending $500 a month on direct mail, you probably have no leads. But if you have been going through, kind of like we go through in our group, or we teach in our instant investor course, 3 to $4,000 a month for a few months, you've been running some consistent SMS, some consistent cold calling, you probably have somewhere between fifty and seventy leads, right? That is enough to get someone started, and so many people are worried like, well I don't have enough to do that consistently until I close more deals. Bring that person in and then in their off time, exactly like you said Dan, they can be prospecting for you. As part of their job, they are highly incentivized to close more deals. If they need more opportunities, use them as a source of lead gen. You know, have them sit on the dock. Have them do the estimates. Have them go and do door knocking for you. And it's funny because I think that the fact that there are these companies that exist that use like VAs for that, people feel like you can't use American staff for the same thing. It's like, well, realtors freaking cold call themselves. That's like a whole part of like

Dan Austin: [29:23] A lot of salespeople cold call.

Mike DeHaan: [29:24] A lot of people do and I don't know why in the real estate space just because you can easily hire a Filipino cold caller, they think that their American based salesperson shouldn't do that. If that's where you're at in your business, that that's what's needed and they need to do that and if they don't want to, then incentivize them in some way. Pay them a little bit extra if it's a lead that they generate with their prospecting. That's totally fine.

Dan Austin: [29:45] Totally. It's a good way to get reps too. Think about that too, as like Mhmm. It's a good way for them to get reps and to learn, and I haven't ever heard of anybody that started out cold calling that ended up becoming a successful salesperson that was like, man, glad that I never did that cold calling, what a waste of time. They never say, they're like, that's how I cut my teeth, that's how I learned these skills, right? So it's not a bad thing to do. Mhmm. And it's a great way for them to prospect, and for you to increase your lead flow without increasing your cost to do so. Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [30:12] Yeah, I mean in fact that's always one of the big dick measuring contests they always have is people will be like, I did nothing but cold called for two straight years.

Dan Austin: [30:19] Right, yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [30:20] Right, and I made no money for year one, but I did it every day. And I will absolutely admit that that probably fit a lot of toughness to their skin and showed them how to do some grit if that's actually true. I'm gonna say most people probably lie and exaggerate when they say that because that is crazy, but

Dan Austin: [30:38] So the other thing now that I hear and I see is the risk of turning their business over to a salesperson, because they're worried about running comps, they're worried about the salesperson negotiating on a contract that they'll have to like uphold, I mean, what do you think? I mean, truth to that, no truth to that?

Mike DeHaan: [30:58] Well this is always such a funny thing to me as well, because at this point they want their salesperson to come in and completely run their entire business as a sole employee, which doesn't make sense. Really what it should look like, and what it looked like for us for years, is your salesperson is out there, you know, calling the leads, working the leads, building rapport, representing your company, but you as the person that is signing that contract should be the one that is underwriting these deals.

Dan Austin: [31:22] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [31:23] You know, people are always like, well how do you incentivize your salesperson to get good deals? It's like, because I determine the max offer. Right? And if you give them too much leeway, they're always going to be coming up to a rush real tight. And, you know, if you are the one that kinda can veto everything or push everything through, then they are going to like meet those numbers. They're not going to be just like locking up stuff too high or putting you into a weird position, because you don't give them the opportunity when you're the boss. That's the ultimate thing is that you're the boss in this situation, you can have someone that's a good friend or someone that you know, have a good connection with that works for you, but you still need to be the authority figure.

Dan Austin: [31:58] Absolutely, and a couple tips that we learned over the years here, the first one being is, don't let the salesperson get in the groove of just calling you and saying, we've a lead, what do you want me to do? Yes. Give them and force them to do basic underwriting. If somebody calls in and they say they want $500,000 for their property, and you go to the Zestimate and it's 250, and they're just, there's no distress, there's no reason for them to be selling their property, you're gonna waste your time having to underwrite that deal. So you want them to go into that understanding what's going on, be able to do quick, just comping, look at the Zestimate, look at what's going on around in the market and comparing that with what the seller, like, why do they call what their lead is against your script when they're, when you're doing an intake call. So that that's a good one, and then to your point, the other tip is like, you're underwriting these deals and so making sure that you're just sticking to your underwriting and you're not like giving your salesperson all this extra leeway because what happens, we had this before, is like them trying to sell you on the property And so really getting them in the rhythm and understanding that your underwriting is your underwriting. Like, that's the bottom line, and this is your business, and you're the one taking the risk of acquiring these properties, putting them under contract, so that you're not having to have these battle conversations, because they're gonna get commission breath, right? They're gonna be thirsty to do deals, and they're gonna try to sell you on these deals when there's really not a deal there.

Mike DeHaan: [33:18] Mhmm, of course. I mean, it's human nature. Like, they have their own best interest, and they will work with you when they're in a good spot, but if they start to get into a tough pinch or things aren't going well for them, which will happen, they will sort of push back on you for stuff, but that's also part of the business, right, that's how it works.

Dan Austin: [33:33] Absolutely and there's some management skill in there. So the last one though I wanna bring up, unless you have anything else to close out on that point. Nope. So the last one is, people are worried that they're gonna bring somebody in, they're training their competition.

Mike DeHaan: [33:45] Yeah, who cares? Right, who cares?

Dan Austin: [33:47] Have we ever had an employee successfully operate an off market real estate business that worked for us?

Mike DeHaan: [33:52] No, they've certainly tried. Mhmm. Right. You know, but the funny the funny thing is, is and I think you put this really well on our coaching call today, the fact that you're even in a position where you are hiring people or you've gotten to the point that you need to hire somebody, makes you different from most other people. Right? Like most people that are out there seeking jobs, or they're looking to work for people, this is 99.9% of humans, they do not have what it takes to be an entrepreneur. And here's the thing is, if let's say you do come in, someone does come in, you train a competition, they go out and they crush it. Hopefully, you treated that person well, and you guys wanna make money together.

Dan Austin: [34:26] Totally. Absolutely.

Mike DeHaan: [34:27] There's 400,000,000 people in The United States. There's like, what was like fifty, sixty billion houses, something like that. You only need to do like 40 or 50 a year to make a shit ton of money.

Dan Austin: [34:38] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [34:39] Like there's more than enough for everybody.

Dan Austin: [34:42] There's plenty of opportunity out there, man. And that also goes to like how people see their competition in their local market, is like, I see them, generally speaking, as more of an asset than competition, can find, will find opportunities to work with them to make money, and there's still a ton of opportunity out there for you both, or the 10 or 20 of you to operate in that market.

Mike DeHaan: [35:02] Yeah, I mean, and we practice that, you know, as much as we preach that as well because even within our community, we have people in there that are within our own market. Totally. I remember when we first started, people were like, isn't it weird that there's people in your Spokane, you're teaching them how to market new sales? I'm like, no. Yeah. They're gonna go out, they're gonna make their money, we're gonna make our money, And you know, the best thing is, is we've done deals together collaboratively. Absolutely. Because we're all running the same systems, we can verify that they're a good person, they're an A player because they're in our circle. And so it's easy to have a level of trust. Totally. You know, because they're a part of our community. I don't know, there's so many different mindset changes that people have to go through from understanding how to be a manager, to having that abundance mindset, to understanding that you are going to have people that come in and aren't gonna work out, and people you know, are an expendable asset in your business and that's totally fine. Uh-huh. But I think that a lot of those challenges are things that inhibit people from really being able to grow, but are things that you need to overcome if you really wanna grow a business and not just be, you know, working your fingers to the bone every single day.

Dan Austin: [36:07] Absolutely. And don't be afraid to lean into this, don't be afraid to lean in, don't let this, don't let the hiring or your fear of what will happen on the other side of that, you know, keep you from scaling your business, or keep you from getting to the next level, because a lot of times people are like, I don't ever wanna have employees, that's why they

Mike DeHaan: [36:23] Go ahead.

Dan Austin: [36:23] They don't wanna be in a business where they have to work with other people, they wanna be a solopreneur, and that's great, but in reality, in this industry, in this business, we know where you can go with that, and usually most people either quit or they bump up against the ceiling and they need to bring somebody in.

Mike DeHaan: [36:37] Yeah, 100%, you know, and we've talked about this for what, thirty five minutes? We did like basically a whole two day seminar just on hiring at KeysCon.

Dan Austin: [36:46] There's a lot.

Mike DeHaan: [36:46] There's so many different things we could go to down this path. So if you want to dive more into that, go to collectingkeys.com and check out our instant investor group and our scale community. That has officially, I would say like rebranding on January 1. So cool. Right on anything you finish up?

Dan Austin: [37:04] Nope. I'm good.

Mike DeHaan: [37:05] Right on guys. Well, thanks so much. We appreciate you all listening. Happy New Year to everybody. We will talk to you guys next year. And yeah, follow me on Instagram at Mike underscore invest. Check out Dan at investor man Dan, and go to collectingkeys.com to check out all of our new offerings. Besides that, appreciate you all, and we'll talk to you next week.

Dan Austin: [37:24] See you.