Lessons from a Millionaire Conference

Dan Austin: [0:00] Don't expect to show up to your childhood best friend and talk to them about like investment strategies in commercial real estate because they might be like,

Speaker 2: [0:07] oh man, must be nice to have money. You know, like that's not a

Dan Austin: [0:10] kind of... That's a negative one. They're not helping you. Right? They're maybe taking away time from you. But that leads me to my my main point.

Mike DeHaan: [0:22] What's going on, guys? Welcome to today's episode, the collecting keys real estate investing podcast. This is the show where we teach you to use real estate to make massive income and not just passive income. And boom. There's the new tagline. My name is Mike DeHaan, and I'm here with my cohost, Dan Austin. And we're super excited to have you on today's episode of the Mike and Dan show. So we just spent a week in Georgia at a little millionaires mastermind conference, a group called GoBundance that we are both a part of. And it's funny. You've heard about GoBundance before. You might have heard on like BiggerPockets or just a handful of other real estate and business podcasts that have members that are in that group. But it's always a very enlightening experience, Dan. It is. Yeah. Getting into a room of 300 other guys, it's all men. They do have a women's version as well, but I don't know a lot of the information about that. So Never been. Sorry, ladies. Yeah. Never been. Wasn't wasn't invited. Yep. But it... The kid is a group full of guys with their main objective being that, you know, I guess they have a higher net worth. They usually have some sort of business that they work on, and their goals are figuring out how to continue to grow and preserve their wealth while also being able to live like a good lifestyle and do other things as well outside of business.

Mike DeHaan: [1:42] Yeah. Several pillars outside of just being rich. Because there's

Dan Austin: [1:45] lot of masterminds out there that are all about like financial freedom and financial growth, which is great. GoBundance is just one of those that, you know, they really push you to be great at everything in life. I shouldn't say everything, but main pillars like having bucket list adventures, and being, you know, a good spouse, having good relationships, all that sort of stuff, that make it a little bit more of a different dynamic when you're in the room with people that are trying to do well at everything. Yeah. And generally, have a, I'm not gonna say it's all of them are this, all the people there, because we ran into some boneheads, but just generally because of the values that the group holds, there's just a higher level of ethics Mhmm. That you end up being with. And it also makes it easier for you to walk into a room of random strangers you've never met, and talk about super deep personal things that you wouldn't be able to share Yeah. Typically with other people.

Mike DeHaan: [2:31] Which is super massive, right? Especially for guys in the time of if like male suicides are super high, there's like all these depression issues, different things, skimming people a platform to be around like minded folks, are super viable. That was my, I think, fifth event that I've been to. But this is your first even though we've been in here for two and a half years. I guess what were your main takeaways from hanging out with a bunch of millionaires for a week?

Dan Austin: [2:56] Let's see. Main takeaways, I thought one of the interesting comments were when we were talking about the seven to eight calls, which is basically where they interview, was it month to month? Yep. A person that went from being a 7 figure millionaire to an 8 figure millionaire, and so the guys, Aaron West and Daniel Del Rio, who actually put that show on within the group, talked about a couple things. One is the hockey stick of their net worth. Does it? It's like steady, steady, steady, then finally takes off to get there. They also showed a graph of the annual cash flow or income from each of these individuals that they've interviewed, which is like a 100 people so far, I don't remember how many it was, but a lot. And how wildly different their annual cash flow was from like 8,000,000 to like 0 to 3,000,000 to 1,000,000, you know, just like all over the place. Yeah. And these are people from everywhere worth, you know, 10,000,000 to over a 100 So like a pretty wide range of people, so I thought that that was an interesting comment. And then the last comment, this was kind of in the opening session ish, opening time frame early in the conference, so had a good impact, all still fresh, was the amount of stress and pressure when you're in the single digit millionaire status. Now you think that somebody's sitting up on their perch is saying, oh, yeah, down there's the term would be must be nice, right, to have that problem. But to get there, typically, because most millionaires, what is like 80% of millionaires are self made? Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [4:20] Is that what they say? Something like that.

Mike DeHaan: [4:21] Don't know

Dan Austin: [4:21] what those numbers is. It's high, right? And most of them are made in real estate, to be honest, that's the other stat. But, the length of time, how much work you have to put in, and the stress of doing that work to finally reach what's considered like wealth in America, and to realize the amount of pressure it is to hold that wealth, while still growing it, and also not having enough money to do absolutely nothing, but having enough that you can be comfortable. This is And that comfort is usually the biggest stressor and challenge for a lot of people to overcome that end up getting to 8 figure level, which is about when you can finally deploy money into systems that can help you go even bigger.

Mike DeHaan: [4:58] Mhmm. Absolutely. You can start to coast from there. So it's like that, there's that line. I think it's in like the first season of Succession where one of the characters is like an assistant, like his aunt dies something and he inherits $5,000,000, and he's super stoked because, like, his life has changed. He's like, you know, he's like, million dollars. But then all, like, the mega rich people are like, oh, damn, bro. That sucks. Sorry. And then it's like the whole thing is, like, $5,000,000 is just enough to not have to care, but not enough that you can stop doing stuff forever. Right. Right? And so it's almost like a curse to sort of be in that zone. And like you said, one of the biggest themes was like that must be nice sort of mentality that a lot of people experience as you start to have any form of success. And if you're looking at listening to this and you have any sort of regular investments you've done over the past number of years, especially in real estate, you've probably had people in your circle that don't totally get what you're doing, that have seen you go from your previous financial status to now. And, you know, they start with like a supportive thing maybe, and then it sort turns into a little bit of envy, or a little bit of like, you know, oh, it must be nice that you can just take a day off and go play golf or you can take your family to Europe or you can go on a vacation, you can do these different things. And that is a very real sort of like, let's say rich dude problem. This people do deal with. Right? And you know, not that everyone feels bad for it.

Mike DeHaan: [6:14] But that's also why you have groups like GoBundance where people kinda get it, and why it can be super valuable.

Dan Austin: [6:19] You're right, you can share that. Like, there's guys there that you run into that they're just afraid to even share what kind of wealth they have with their family because it's just, it would change the dynamic between them and their family, they're trying to hold onto that. So there's like all sorts of weird dynamics that come with it. I definitely, that resonate, I resonate a lot with the stress, because there is a lot of stress at that situation when you finally get into that millionaire status, and you're trying to go to the next level, because you're pushing so hard to get

Mike DeHaan: [6:43] to where you're at, and you

Dan Austin: [6:44] can't stop. Honestly. Because you know, it's just, that's not how it works.

Mike DeHaan: [6:49] Yeah. So I thought that was a great takeaway was that whole thing. And then also too, I guess for me, one of the biggest takeaways was in the... On the first day, we did a deep dive into analyzing your personal, like, life values. And almost like a like a corporate exercise, which I typically don't like where all these companies are like, oh, well, these are our values. So like integrity and, you know, honesty and whatever. But switching that around so that you're looking at it from you as a person and the things that you value, and then lining out what we do like the top six people in your life that you feel like have an impact on your life, maybe inside your business, maybe personally, and then rating people on how they line up with those values with you, right? And so those people that were on that list included everything from your boss or your business partner to your spouse to your best friend to your, you know, church group, like, Right? If there's like a community that you're a part of. And going through that, I found to be very interesting just because, I don't know, when it comes to doing that, like, our business, I really struggle with it because I I think I'm jaded just from being in the corporate world for a short period of time where they always have these values and things that are just absolute bullshit.

Mike DeHaan: [8:03] Right? Because all these companies are run by people who are not part of the initial onset or the development of the business. They're purely there to collect a paycheck. And even though they have, like, fiduciary responsibility to shareholders and things like that, you can't tell me that everyone that's at, like, Boeing is like, yes. We, all of our values are integrity, It's all bullshit. But doing that on a personal level, I found to be a really interesting exercise. And like the main things that I ended up with for mine were I had like personal accountability, that have a growth mindset, they had to be reliable. They had to be like a outside the box thinker, I wanted to go like against the mold. And then I had one other one, can't remember what it was. But just coming up with those sort of like took me a while and then going through everyone that was sort of on my list. It was a very sort of just, I don't know, I would say eye opening thing when I realized like, oh, there's actually some people that I spend significant time with that don't have a lot of things.

Dan Austin: [9:00] Right? That don't align with this. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [9:02] But then the main takeaway was like, why why do you spend time with these people then? Right? Yeah. Or like, you know, how do you educate that person on like the kind of stuff that you do value to sort of see if they are in line with x maybe they don't even know that that's important to you. And a lot of the relationship stuff that we did there, I found to be really good. That was kinda one of the themes of the entire week, which they always have a little bit of a theme, the sum was all around building your community and your team.

Dan Austin: [9:24] Yeah. That was that was a good... They called out the empire expander. So the idea being is like who's helping you expand your empire, who's actually not, who's holding you back down. I'm planning to spend some time coming up. I'm gonna write down like 10 or 15 personal values, because we all have them regardless, right? For you and me, a personal value is like fitness, like being healthy. Yeah. When you and I just naturally, that's whether we were business partners or that would be a value of ours that we would want. Now does that necessarily need to fit in your empire expander? No, but there's probably a long list of things outside of... We did like, usually, what was it

Mike DeHaan: [9:53] like five or six? Five or six.

Dan Austin: [9:54] For this, which is probably the top five that matter, but you could do more, and then the people that you spend your most of your time with. The interesting thing is there's also kinda like this theme of like toxic people and maybe getting them out of your life, and like maybe people that are on your Empire Expander that are like zeros or negative numbers. Just because like they're family, or whatever, close in your life, doesn't mean you cut them off, but you gotta keep them at an arm's distance, they're not going to be the ones expanding your empire, they might be holding you back now, so you need to just check that relationship with those people, and it's okay. It could be a parent, it could be a sibling, it could be, I don't know, a best friend that you grew up with, those are still could be in your life, but you need to manage those relationships differently, and don't expect to show up to your childhood best friend and talk to them about like investment strategies in commercial real estate, because they might be

Speaker 2: [10:40] like, oh man, must be nice to have money, you know, like that's not a

Dan Austin: [10:43] kind of, that's a negative one, they're not helping you, right? They're maybe taking away time from you. But that leads me to my main point, which is one of the cool things that I noticed almost immediately when I walked into that room of like, what was it, 300 plus people, is it's so liberating and also almost crazy to be in the same room as a bunch of people that are just like you.

Mike DeHaan: [11:05] Yeah. Because you can go

Dan Austin: [11:06] to like a industry conference for whatever day job, w two income you had or have or whatever, right? And you go in there, it could be you you worked at Boeing, it could be like airplane conference. Mhmm. And be nothing like anybody there. You might share one thing, and that's that you work on making airplanes. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [11:22] Dude, I remember when the one conference that Boeing did send me to when I worked there. And I was like kind of excited about I like, I'm going to a conference. It'll be cool. No. It sucked. Yeah. Literally everyone was there because And they were meant to be only thing everyone wanted was the free lunch and everyone fucking left. Like it was such a waste of time. So

Dan Austin: [11:41] trash, right? And like, going into that, like literally, you could run into somebody in the hallway that you've never met, you're kinda like, I think this guy's in like, goblin. And you're like, how's it going, man? You can like literally strike up a conversation about anything that's on top of your Like, if you came there with a specific intention, and you just opened up the conversation without out the door, somebody's gonna be able to accommodate that, and understand you. Might not dive deep into it while you guys are passing in the bathroom, but the idea being is that you can literally just jump into these deep conversations with people that you haven't met before, because they are just like you in many ways, and you're part of a group that has shared values, and so when I think when you have that good alignment, it's just this weird, I don't know, dynamic when you finally get to see that in person and be like, holy cow, I'm in a room with a bunch of people that are just like me.

Mike DeHaan: [12:25] Yeah, it is always great. And then something to do that I was, I really appreciate about that group, and then we'll move on from this, is the like the caliber of the heavy hitters that are in there, especially in the real estate space. I mean, of like all the who's who's in real estate are a part of that group or they are like one arm's length away from it. Know, mean, Brandon Turner's part of the group, David Green's a part of the group, Michael Blanc's a part of the group, right, from the multifamily,

Dan Austin: [12:50] but

Mike DeHaan: [12:51] also investing podcast. But other guys are in there.

Dan Austin: [12:53] Some of like this huge Aaron Amuchastegui is in the group.

Mike DeHaan: [12:56] Aaron Amuchastegui is in there who goes on our episode J. K. Harris who's huge. Like, pretty much if you go and listen to almost any real estate podcast, the host of that is probably in that group. Right? And on... And honestly, if you're able to join it, you will get to meet that person, and they will immediately see you as an equal and want to, like, spend time with you. Yep. Which is pretty wild. And then even people that don't have platforms, like, there's guys in there that... Like, one of the guys that's in the Champions or the high level group, he's like the number one Century twenty one realtor in the country. Right?

Dan Austin: [13:27] Ain't that crazy?

Mike DeHaan: [13:28] And this dude, like, he's kind of like a goofy southern guy, like, just super easy going. He's like not much older than me. He's like 33, 34. You know, he does insane amounts of business. Right? And there's guys that have thousands and thousands of units, you know, make millions and millions of dollars a year. And then they're just like you and me. They they still roll up. You know, they're wearing their jeans and their freaking, I don't know, Patagonia shirt. Right? Their their RI shirt they got for $40, and they're just like, yeah, you know, I I own 47,000,000 worth of real estate, that's pretty cool. Yeah. So that's super fun. But anyway, I recommend that you guys give it a look if it has something of interest to you. They're like the main group, it requires like a $2,000,000 net worth. And then what I I think they just update updated the press. I think it's like 12 or $15 a year now to be a part of it. $12.05 a year. $12.05 to be a part of it. But they also have an emerge group for people that don't hit the net worth cap but still wanna be around

Dan Austin: [14:23] the same environment and we have Nothing hits hard, man.

Mike DeHaan: [14:26] Emerge is sick. Emerge is sick. Yeah. They've been doing that. They've been running that really well and we have friends that are in there. We have staff members that are a part of Emerge and really enjoy it. So either way, you can go Google, go bunnets, you'll find it, they got

Dan Austin: [14:37] a lot of good stuff there.

Mike DeHaan: [14:39] But either way, while we're gone, it was a good little test for the business as well. So you're going, one of the things that has been very eye opening over the past little bit with our real estate business has been how much it sucks to rely on like third party providers for things.

Dan Austin: [14:58] For things, yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [14:59] Because we've just had a freaking hell of a time. So like our CRM that we use, we do all of our communication and everything through RE Simply, which by all intents purposes has been a great CRM, but they started making these goddamn phone migrations, because I don't know what the actual intent is, but they're switching from one phone provider to the other. And it's taken like a month, and our communication and stuff has been horrifically bad for the last little bit. You know, we're still having some calls get through, but we're having calls get dropped, text messages not going through, constant problems, And all of a sudden, it it reveals like an extreme vulnerability, right, in the business. Absolutely. Regardless of how many systems and stuff that you have in place, all of a sudden, right, like the shield has been pierced. Uh-huh. It's kinda like when, like, don't know, it feels like when COVID started, and all of a sudden you're like, shit, there's no toilet paper? I didn't realize we could just be out all

Dan Austin: [15:54] of a sudden. And the effects of that?

Mike DeHaan: [15:58] Oh, crap. Yeah. Again, it's a huge thing to try and get back to it. So we've been dealing with that for weeks. Then of course, felt like last week it was especially bad because we were both out of town at this conference.

Dan Austin: [16:10] She had stuff going on there. And then along with that, I don't know what's going on with

Mike DeHaan: [16:14] the telecom side, but like our entire SMS texting team has had some super major issues and delays on their end, which has impact us getting started in a couple of new markets.

Dan Austin: [16:23] Uh-huh.

Mike DeHaan: [16:24] And it's just tough. Right? It makes you sort of quickly realize how vulnerable a lot of things are Totally. Like with any sort of business, especially when you're relying on third party providers.

Dan Austin: [16:33] When you have to like make a decision at some point in your business as you're growing a business from scratch is like, do you go vertical? Which would mean that you bring everything in house. Like, for our business, like, could print our own mail, we could do all of our texting, we could do all of our own CRM and call services, all these sorts of things, you can kinda bring all this in house. When you first start, it's almost impossible because there's no way you could start all these businesses. Mhmm. But as you grow, there may be an advantage to bring certain things in house, but the challenge with that is, and why most people outsource a lot of this, is then you have the management expense and cost, which is a, typically, a kind of like just a line item on your P and L that's an expense, right? When you have middle management, they're generally an expense, and you have to have that to run these different verticals, you outsource it, which is generally a huge value. Yeah. But what it brings up, a good point, is having this term was used last week, a business continuity plan. Uh-huh. Like, what are you gonna do? If you think about this, it doesn't have to be really crazy, but what would you do if your phone services go down? If you use Uh-huh. A specific phone service for calling your customers, right? What would you do if that went down?

Dan Austin: [17:35] Okay, you need to have that backup plan already ready to rock and roll. Same thing goes like if your mail house that you rely on shuts down, and they no longer, they cease to exist, or they they just turn to shit, who are you gonna go Like, having these different, they call them like n minus one scenarios that you actually plan out so you know what to do. It's already pre vetted, so in the moment you don't have to do it.

Mike DeHaan: [17:55] Yeah. I mean, and it's so important to have that because ultimately there will be something. Right? If you're in business for long enough, you can never predict what it's gonna be. There will always be some kind of a major issue. And I think that especially if you're in the real estate space, or you're doing that kind of the wholesaling or flipping, it's a very capital intensive business. We all kinda try to look at like the macro sort of things, you know, what's gonna happen with the economy, what's gonna happen with interest rates, whatever, everything else. But these little situations, like if I look back to when we were like a smaller business and you know, we didn't have big capital reserves and different things. If all of a sudden, like we were unable to do phone calls or do sales for like two months, we would have... Like we had staffing with that, we would have run out of money.

Dan Austin: [18:41] We would

Mike DeHaan: [18:41] have been completely screwed. Right? And Totally. Like that can happen to any business. I also think that's a good good reason if you're in the real estate business that you should line up one of the biggest advantage that you have over other businesses, and that you can use your business to accumulate cash flowing assets that can offset your costs. Okay. Right? Because like for us right now, even though you know, don't get enough cash flow that we can necessarily cover our overhead, we have cash reserves for that. But worse comes to worse, let's say that our entire system shuts down, like the CRM no longer exists, all this sort of stuff, know, SMS marketing becomes illegal, direct mail, house closes that, all that happened, at least we bought a bunch of assets, so we're not just like completely Exactly. Shit screen.

Dan Austin: [19:21] Right. We have cash pulling assets that are valuable, right? Yeah. You have kind of like that uh-oh plan. Mhmm. Which, yeah, you should, and they also... I mean, we could dive into the profit first model, why should take money out of your business too, but I think the bigger point here is, it even drives, like if you're like, well I don't have to worry about that right now in my business. Like, well if you're doing rehabs, who's your n minus one drywall, or who's your n minus one plumber, like who's the person that you're gonna call, need to do this, and write this down. The cool thing is is if you systematize it enough, you just have a VA do it. Don't have to worry about it, and so it's just a lot less stressful to run your business that way.

Mike DeHaan: [19:52] Yeah. And I was like, what's your exit strategy? What's your backup plan for performing that even outside the rehab? Mhmm. I mean, there's a lot of people, and in our instant investor program, we're regularly working with people on this, is like, what are both exit strategies if this perfectly sort of like plotted out situation that you were going into this deal sort of expecting does not pan out. Never does. Right? We see this all the time. People, they're they're like, well, this is the price amount. I know it's high, but, you know, what if I separated the lot and then I added some square footage and I did all these things, then it should be worth this much. Like, what if it's not? What if you can't separate the lot? Mhmm. What if you can't finish out the basement like you thought because of something with, like, the plumbing or the groundwater or something else that you can't even foresee? Or in order to do that, it's gonna cost you $35,000 extra because you have to install a freaking French drain because your goddamn remodeled basement keeps flooding over and over and over again.

Dan Austin: [20:45] Three times?

Mike DeHaan: [20:46] Nice. There's a real situation that happened to us. Right? Yeah. But if you don't have an ability to weather the storm or to get around that, you can shoot yourself in the foot, especially when you're early on in this business, and expensive mistakes can end you. It's Totally. It's just so important.

Dan Austin: [21:01] That's something we've always lived by, I'm proud to say that we continue to live by that, which is like the multiple exit strategy. Like, that's just not a that's not just a talking point, but you and I have always lived by that. And then also just understanding where you're at at the macro level of your business, people ask a lot of times, do you decide to wholesale a property, or flip it, or keep it? And a lot of times, it just depends on where you're at, what moon cycle you are in your business, because sometimes it's a great deal, and you just need to wholesale it, and make a quick quick bit of cash, because you're already leveraged with another flip in a rehab on a bird project, that maybe isn't going as well as planned. And so it's just really like, there can't be a cut and dry answer, because you may be at a different point in your business that month, than you would next month. And maybe the next month shit all comes together and you're like kicking yourself in the pants for not keeping it, but at least you're still in business and it wasn't the one that screwed And you

Mike DeHaan: [21:47] it is challenging too. Right? I mean, especially when you are seeing people around you that are doing, you know, things a certain way or they're taking, like, larger risks than you're necessarily willing to take. But, like, it's so easy to get shiny object syndrome. And this was a bitch thing in 2021 where there was so many people that were, you going and buying these, like, super tight deals and able to squeeze stuff out. And you and me, we struggled with that a lot. Totally. We see some of the stuff that people bought stuff for like, man, they moved like 30 on that. They didn't do anything. Totally. But that's kinda like juggling fire. Right? And eventually, it catches up to you.

Dan Austin: [22:21] It should catches up to you.

Mike DeHaan: [22:22] Yeah. And that's why in 2022, all the companies that were doing that all went bust, and they don't really exist anymore. If they do exist, it's a way less capacity.

Dan Austin: [22:30] Right. And they... Or they don't have the opportunity to pivot even because they go to you so fast because they were so over leveraged, like, best thing you can do is pivot a little bit and stay in business, or just stay in business doing what you're doing because you worked in sort of revenue.

Mike DeHaan: [22:42] Yeah. Exactly. It's super super tricky. Yeah. Anyway, so that's just been like our current sort of headache, I guess, is dealing with that. And then same on, like, the staff issues and things too. It's always important to make sure that you have backup for staff members in case stuff does get weird. Or at the very least, if you don't have the capacity to be able to have redundancy in your staff, then at least make sure that you have systems for everything so that if you do need to replace somebody, you're not having to reinvent the wheel. That's something that we've learned the hard way and been very proactive about. And we're in that phase of business right now where it's just like, how do you optimize things, continue to grow it outside of just like, you know, pushing more, doing more deals. Totally. But it's just... Especially with like the economy and things like that, you just gotta make sure that you're a little bit more refined in what you're doing.

Dan Austin: [23:29] Absolutely. Yeah. That brings to one point you talked about employees that I wanna bring up because I remember I've gotten asked this a couple times. It's like when do you know like when to hire your first act manager or whatever. It's like, this is something that I've had to learn is like just put a job You posting out don't even have to intend to hire a person, just see what comes in. Because, you and I have talked about this before, as the CEO of your business, like, that's your job is talent acquisition, so you should always be looking for talent, and always be kind of protecting yourself for the next level of your business. Because if you're not, you're kind of like, you're kind of running at risk, to be honest. Because you're not ready for that next level.

Mike DeHaan: [24:04] Yeah. I mean, I I think that's actually a really great point is there's no harm in always recruiting like that. And I think that especially new business owners, they think that if they have a job posting out there, that it means that they need to be actively interviewing. Which isn't true.

Dan Austin: [24:17] You know what mean?

Mike DeHaan: [24:18] It's just like every other form of sales and marketing, right? You're building that pipeline. And then if it's there when you do need it, you have a bunch of leads you can

Dan Austin: [24:25] Right? Go talk

Mike DeHaan: [24:26] then you just check the leads every so often, and if one of them fits your buy box, they fit your box or what you're looking for in a staff member, then bring them in. And if you don't know what that looks like yet, honestly, you have to kind of experiment and play around with it. You're gonna have to bring people in. You're gonna have to fire people. You're gonna have to have, you know, tough conversations, and that's part of being an entrepreneur. Yeah. That's the truth.

Dan Austin: [24:46] Yeah. It sucks sometimes. You have to have those tough conversations.

Mike DeHaan: [24:48] Totally. And so many people, I think they have a major aversion to that because when they're a corporate employee, their worst sort of nightmare is getting laid off or losing their job or those sort of things. And unfortunately, does come with the territory of being a small business owner, especially when people come in and they're not as effective as you want them to be. Right? They're not a good culture fit. They're not necessarily in line with you and your personal values like we talked about at the beginning. Then you're gonna have to cut ties. And it's never fun, but that is the nature of the beast right now.

Dan Austin: [25:20] Yeah. I mean, that's what you... It's your business, It's not their business, you have to take care of it. You... And the cool thing is is the more you do it, the better you'll get at it. As far as hiring, and realizing that it's hard to say, like this is hard to say, but it's easier now, is like when when you're a small business owner, people are yeah, it must be nice to hire for culture and values, I just need someone to do the damn work. Yeah. Totally get it. But, when you can do that, and when you do do that, it's always a much better match. Even like on your virtuals, like, people kinda think that like the virtuals, because they are just so much easier to hire, because there's, you know, they're lower cost than a US based employee and all this sort of stuff. But when you find the virtuals that are aligned with your values and your culture, it's a 100% better. They're happier, you're happier, so I think this extends to everybody you're gonna hire.

Mike DeHaan: [26:05] Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that too, it's a hard thing to understand until you found those employees that really come in and do extremely well for you. Right?

Dan Austin: [26:13] Right. Yeah. We were just having that conversation earlier. They were. Literally, just earlier. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [26:17] I mean, and and you don't know until you find it. And then also to that person that starts out doing really good might not be doing good in six months. Mhmm. So you constantly need to be addressing, readdressing it, checking in with people and all that sort of stuff. Because even though when you start your own business, it kind of like is everything to you, like you're putting your life on the line for it or you feel like it anyway, your staff unfortunately does not feel the same. Right? Right. There's nothing you can do about it. You know, even if you go in, you give people equity, you give people opportunity, which is what everyone says they want, 99.9% of people will work up to the point of comfort for like their lifestyle and their ambitions, and not any more than that. For sure. You can only expect them to be efficient up to that point. Right?

Dan Austin: [27:02] Yeah. They have seasons, just like your business has seasons too. And sometimes you catch them in a good season, and then they go into a bad season. And unfortunately, when we're talking about business, like as a small business owner, you don't have, you can't really afford for people to have a long, dark, miserable winter of a season, so sometimes it just doesn't work out and you have to move on. But also as your business grows too, that person's not gonna necessarily align with them.

Mike DeHaan: [27:26] Which is very important.

Dan Austin: [27:27] It is what it is.

Mike DeHaan: [27:28] A lot of new people as well, they always worry about having a staff member come in and saying like, oh, well, you know, no one's gonna be able to do that part as well as me or whatever. That's kinda how it goes as well. I've always viewed staff members for the most part is you are bringing someone in that's going to be 80% as effective as you ideally, but it's gonna give you 80% of your time back as well. So you can use that to go Right. And do other parts of your business that will make you more money. Totally. So... Cool. Outside of that, do we have anything else pressing? Have we gotten our our lease to own house fixed up yet so we can get that thing sold?

Dan Austin: [28:00] Yeah. I talked to our contractor last week and I forgot what he said. But yeah, they're working on it. They're actually... Yeah. Because he's doing two projects for us right now. Soon. Yeah. It's it's moving forward. I'm trying to remember they had a painter in there, I think, last week or something. Yeah. We're we're getting there. I'm hoping here in the next, like, seven to ten days, it'll be pretty much all buttoned up and we'll be able to put it on the on the market. So I've been diving deep into that on how to legally set up the lease to own options and what's the best strategies for that, so we can dive into that in another episode. So that'll be good. Keep listening for that upcoming episode.

Mike DeHaan: [28:33] There you go. Yeah. But yeah, that that's been

Dan Austin: [28:35] kind of interesting, because we've done lease to own, but just taking a deeper dive into it, and kinda organizing in a format that you're like, okay, these are our true options. I think when we did it before, it was like, okay, this is an option, now we have, you know, taking a deeper dive, learning about all the options to best do because we have the time and we have the comfort and we're in a good position to do that. So hopefully, can provide some super good value for the listeners on that one when we comes together.

Mike DeHaan: [28:56] Nice. I'm excited about it. Yeah. How doing it correctly. That's the other thing too as you start to grow your business, you definitely are much more driven to do things by the books. Have something First to is when we started, would just be cowboying things left and right, you know?

Dan Austin: [29:11] Yeah. And you don't know what you don't know until you run into issues, to Like, be you really don't. It's like if you're a, you talk about like landlording and stuff like that, like, you don't you just don't know what you don't know until you run into that issue, you're like, damn.

Mike DeHaan: [29:22] That's a

Dan Austin: [29:24] tough learning lesson. I mean,

Mike DeHaan: [29:25] it's always it's always gonna happen. And and I think that honestly, to get so off the ground, you kinda need to be willing to just throw faith into the wind and and figure it out a little bit. Right? Absolutely. Because I mean, all the people that we've worked with, instant investor program, or even just stuff outside of that. Right? It's like doing like general mentorship with random people. I know, especially way back in the day when we were kinda getting start up, we had a bunch of like green green people that would wanna talk to us, like pre collecting keys days.

Dan Austin: [29:51] Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [29:52] And the ones who would fail were always the ones that were so conservative that they were not willing to take any shots at all.

Dan Austin: [29:59] Right. They had to get it all right before they tried once. That is the worst Mhmm. Way to do it.

Mike DeHaan: [30:04] That is a person who is not an entrepreneur. Like that does not work Right. At all. Right.

Dan Austin: [30:10] Yeah. You can't get it perfect, and if you try, you're just gonna waste your time because there's just no way for stuff to be perfect. Mhmm. And you're gonna get frustrated, you're gonna get upset, you're gonna beat your head off the wall. So just gotta jump in. That is another cool trait about GoBundance that you see that's encouraging, that you see a lot of people. You're like, how did you even come up with that? It's like, I just tried it.

Mike DeHaan: [30:28] And I was...

Dan Austin: [30:29] You know, it's just some wild ideas out there that you see that people are successful at.

Mike DeHaan: [30:33] Yeah. All sorts of stuff. It gets pretty crazy. So cool. I think that's all for we have today then. Right on, guys. Well, thanks for listening. We appreciate you all. Please go and share this with anyone who might enjoy this podcast. Just like go and send them a link to the show from your Spotify account or iTunes or whenever you listen to this on. And, let them know that you've been enjoying the show in this episode, this episode or any episode really, and that they should check it out because that is the easiest way to help us grow. We really appreciate it. So besides that everyone, thanks so much, and we'll talk to you all next week. See you all.