How To Make $1 Million From Your Community

Dan Austin: [0:00] Hey there. Welcome back to another episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast, the podcast where we teach you how to make massive income, not just passive income. Today, you have me as your host, Dan Austin, for this Friday Focus episode. Happy Friday, by the way. Hopefully, you're listening to this while you're driving somewhere, maybe to go run a seller appointment, or maybe you're going to the office, and you're daydreaming about how you're gonna make a million dollars after listening to Dan talk about it on his podcast, and you're gonna quit your job and go all in on real estate. Hopefully, that's the case. If not, maybe you're gonna have a great weekend, do whatever you're do with your family, maybe you're gonna go out, I don't know what you do, it's fall, go to the pumpkin patch, have a good time. I digress. Today, I wanna talk about community, and I I got you with a nice clickbaity title, how to make a million dollars from your community. And I do wanna talk about that, but I wanna start by going kind of out left field here. I just I took a week off last week. I was out of office completely, like, I couldn't even get to my phone. I had my phone with me, I was just so busy. I could barely keep up with notifications just from my family, let alone other people. So sorry if I didn't get back to you if you're hitting me up on Instagram or if you're hitting me up on Slack, you're in our scale community, whatever.

Dan Austin: [1:11] It took me a bit to get back to you. Anyways, I was I was actually at a reunion for my military unit. I was a army ranger back in my heyday, my younger days, back in my late teens and early twenties. I did that for about eight years. And it was really cool because some of the guys I served with, they're either really senior, like now at twenty years, like they got twenty plus years. Some of them, you know, they're at the highest enlisted ranks. Some of them are officers, all that, that they are doing really good things and and big things for our country. But then other folks, you know, because we're at the age of the military retirement age in our our late thirties after doing twenty years, some of them have retired. And a lot of these guys I haven't seen in fifteen years, honestly. And the cool thing about this reunion is our unit, our ranger unit, does this every ten years. The unit was founded in 1974. Every ten years, they do one of these big reunions to back out the actual unit on the military base. So was kinda cool to go back and reminisce and see city young kids and reminisce where I used to live with all these with all all my boys. It's really cool, though, because you have folks, like I said, going all the way back to 1974 that were there as the founding members, and then you have these young kids who are still active duty in the military, and we're all commingling, and we're all kinda cut from the same cloth. That's really cool.

Dan Austin: [2:26] You can just instantly walk up to anybody. There's a couple thousand people there. You can just walk up to anybody, strike up a conversation, and have a truly a genuinely quality conversation where you felt like you connected with the person, or you laughed truly with the person, where you had serious conversations. I mean, all within minutes. And that to me speaks so loudly for how important community is because when you're part of a community, there's just something that you can't quantify, I would guess, what that feeling is, and the power comes with a community. But I can guarantee you, if you're not in a community or you don't feel like you're part of a community, there's probably something missing from your life. And also from a business standpoint, if you're trying to get into real estate or you're just starting out or maybe you're just doing your first, you know, off market deals, like, if you're not participating in community, you're probably not as successful. And when you see the folks that tend to be the nucleus of the community, they tend to do better for a reason, and that's because they're getting the value. They're milking all the value they can out of their community, out of their sphere of influence. And so I just wanna dive into that.

Dan Austin: [3:29] I wanna highlight that for those of you out there that are part of communities, or maybe you're not happy with the community you're in, maybe you're searching for a community. This is a shameless plug. We do have the scale community, which I think personally is a fantastic community, and I get the same feeling that I do with my old Ranger buddies as I do with the scale community. I talked about a couple weeks ago on the Friday Focus that we were getting ready to do a scale community meetup up here in in the Pacific Northwest in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. And the same thing there. And it's so unbelievable to get to watch it also from as not just a participant, but an observer. When these folks that that have never met each other, they've been on our Slack community, and they've been on our coaching calls, so they know each other. They've talked. They've maybe been part of one of our accountability squads, where we actually have like three or four members pair up together, and they have weekly calls to try to help their businesses grow, and build personal relationships. And it's just like they have so much in common, they're like minded people that they can, you know, get together and have genuinely good quality conversations where both people are interested in each other and interested in each other's success.

Dan Austin: [4:35] And the only comparison I can have to this is, you know, when you go to a conference, and it's a big one, there's three or 400 people there, and you just have a bunch of like shitty small talk, and you're just exhausted by the end of the day. When you're truly in a community like this, you're not exhausted, you're like energized. Like you if you're an introvert, you feel like an extrovert. Right? You're getting energy for the room. That's because you know you belong somewhere. You have that sense of belonging. And I think that that right there is so important. But I would also say like in these communities, real estate communities, if you're looking at joining one or you're part of one, the support you get from those around you, if you're if you're truly in a community that's high quality where people care about each other's success, people care about each other, and they're actually invested in the community, when you're going through hard times, they're there to pick you up. You can see something or you see somebody else that just got over a tough time, and you're like, okay. I can match that. If they can do that, I can do that. You gain all this, like, not just moral support, but, like, literal, like, support in, like, how do you overcome challenges and how do you celebrate your wins when you have them. Because let's be honest, you can't just go talk to your, like, sister-in-law or brother-in-law or your neighbor and be like, dude, I just wholesaled the property. I made $25.

Dan Austin: [5:44] Can you believe that? Because they don't get it. There's no context for it. They're not gonna be happy for you. They don't give a shit. But you join the right community or around community. There are people there to celebrate your wins. Sometimes your local real estate community isn't the right place for that, so you do need kind of like a like a scale type community like we have, where there are other people from around the country that are coming here to really help and support each other, and not see each other as competition. But I think that the support you get from the community, not just the belongingness, is equally powerful. But then if you think about community at a little bit more of a macro level, and let's talk less on an emotional level and more of like a business standpoint, we all talk about doing your real estate meetups or like how do you sell deals when you have them, and it's all about community. It's all about connections with people. You know, Mike and I were just before I recorded this, we're just talking about the dispo on some of the properties. And how you participate in your community when you're trying to sell a deal is everything. Because if you think you can come in and get your little business started up, do all the data, send out the mail, you can do that sitting from your computer, and you think you can go run a seller appointment, talk to them on the phone, and then never actually have to go and participate in community events or talk to people. You know, you think you can just kinda sit here quietly in your little bubble.

Dan Austin: [7:00] It does not work that way. It's not how it works. You're trying to get sellers to come to you. A good comparison would be like, you own a brick and mortar store where you sold widgets. You did a bunch of marketing, people came in, and they talked to your employee at the cash register because you created demand for this widget, and they just scan it. They, boop, they sell it. The better the marketing you do, the more you make. That's the front half of this business. The more marketing you do, the more deals you're gonna have coming in the front door. But on the back end, if you're not, like, actually talking to the other business owners in your city, who in this case would be, like, flippers and other wholesalers and buy and hold investors. If you're not talking to them, your business isn't successful. In the brick and mortar store, who cares what the other business owners are doing? You're just marketing to your customers and bringing them in. Here, you have this flow that has to go out the back door. So you really should think about how you participate in that community, how you could be a nucleus within a community, and how you can kinda be at the center. It's not necessarily who you know, but it's who knows you in this industry. So when there are other deals that come across, they call you, those are great referral opportunities. People are calling you when they need a deal, and you can say, hey, I actually have a deal right now, and you can sell. Those are the great ways to sell deals, but also building trust with the community that you're highly ethical, that you're there selling good deals, you're not trying to scam people. Even if you don't think you'll ever do business with that person again, guess what?

Dan Austin: [8:17] Somebody you wanna do business with might do business with that person. So when you give them a shitty deal, and you lie to them, word gets out fast. Can tell you that because I work in a community where there is a company that is known for that, and there's a lot of bad things to say about them from people that talk to me and call me all the time and bring up deals about that they've seen or that they worked with somebody that that worked with them, and it's never good. And do you you don't want that because that temporary buildup of, like, the income you get from that, which I would just consider unethical type of business practices, that goes away. Like, yeah, sure. You look good while you're doing it, you're making all this money, but it doesn't last. And to be in this business, to make a million dollars for your community, you need to have longevity. So I'll just wrap this up by just saying there is so much power from the moral support, the actual, like, learning and education of how to grow your business from a community, and also just the emotional connection you can have with people. Like, I can't quantify that. Sorry. But I know it's powerful. It helps you in all aspects of your life. But then on the front end of your business, how are you participating in your local economy and your local community for real estate people? Does this mean you need to go start a meetup? No.

Dan Austin: [9:23] It does not. Does this mean you need to go to every meetup? No. It does not. But you should be buying people coffee. You should be calling people when you're driving. Call a buyer. Even if you don't have a deal, just call and chat with them. Build a relationship. Be friends with them. Build your own community, and let yourself be the nucleus of that community. I can assure you that will help you get to that million dollars, and you can then call me and say, Dan, I actually made a million dollars for my community. Mike and I have made multiple millions of dollars solely based on community. In fact, I would say that is probably the single contributing factor to our success outside of the fact that we're freaking just willing to work our asses off and willing to put in the time and effort that sometimes our competitors aren't willing to do. That's it. Give me a shout out on Instagram. I'll post stuff. Sometimes entertaining, sometimes people hate it, whatever. Hit me up on Instagram though, you wanna chat, if you thought this was a good episode, if you thought was a bad episode, if you got questions, at investor man Dan. That's where I'm most active. But you can hit me on Facebook or wherever you're on social media. I'm sure you can find me if you know how to use Google. Other than that, have a great weekend. Hope you enjoyed this. We'll see you guys next week.