Marketing to Multifamilies, Using Virtual Employees, The Rise Of AI

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] It's only, like, the larger assets, like, you know, 20 plus units that you're seeing that. Gotcha. So I'm not really sure how to get around that. But there I mean, there are ways you can do it too if you can figure out who owns the LLC, and then you can look them up and try to find where they live directly, which can be as easy as, like, typing their name and then the city that you're trying to find them in.

Dan Austin: [0:19] I think, generally speaking, you can most often find the actual owner's address if you're willing to dig. Mhmm. The problem is if you have a list of 5,000 and it takes you an hour for everyone, you're not gonna spend an hour. So, like, there's, like, a scale factor. But you can have virtuals help you do it as well, which is what we do too.

Speaker 3: [0:41] Welcome to the collecting keys real estate investing podcast with your host, Mike DeHaan and Dan Austin. From wins, losses, horror stories, and tactics for optimizing your business, Mike and Dan take a real uncensored deep dive into the ins and outs of running a full time real estate investment and wholesaling business.

Mike DeHaan: [1:05] What's going on, guys? On this episode of the collecting keys podcast, a show called man, that was a rough start. The Collecting Keys real estate investing podcast. We have episode of the Mike and Dan show where Dan and I talk about business, real estate, deals, marketing, and, you know, kinda just the world in general sometimes.

Dan Austin: [1:23] Birds podcast. B r d. Bird. This is real estate zoo.

Mike DeHaan: [1:26] B r d, Dan. Dan's trying to come up with an acronym for it, but he was his brain was in the gutter before, so we're gonna we're gonna ignore all of the other suggestions. But these Wednesday episodes, we take a deep dive into everything business related, what we're working on, and what's happening in the world, both business and not. So thanks for hopping on board.

Dan Austin: [1:44] It's also a good time if you wanna get the real raw footage of an unintelligent conversation around current events from two guys that will

Mike DeHaan: [1:51] just say whatever the hell they want. Yeah. Right? And and, you know, there's just some stuff that's coming up. And that that's it's funny. It's one of the challenges we always have with this is just like we did right before this recording. We talked for, like, ten minutes, and that's where you're like, dang. You should've just hit the record button, and we could've Tons of tons of worldviews just came out

Dan Austin: [2:07] from Mike and I in ten minutes before this. We need the preshow. We'll we could probably sell the preshow to people for a dollar. That's a good content.

Mike DeHaan: [2:14] Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The preshow or the postshow. You have, like, the subscriber only content. We talked about

Dan Austin: [2:20] it in OnlyFans again. I see what you're doing. I see what

Mike DeHaan: [2:22] you're doing. Right? Yeah. Now, the subscriber only contents are our group coaching calls that we do with the Instant Master program.

Dan Austin: [2:29] There you go. They get to see it. Yeah. Yeah. That's where a lot of

Mike DeHaan: [2:31] real direct actual stuff comes from anyway. But yeah. I mean, we're sitting kinda in just like a slow period. I mean, by the time steps the steps will come out on the December 21 right before Christmas, and the second half of December is always just such a drag for real estate, especially when it doesn't stop freaking snowing. Nasty here, man.

Dan Austin: [2:48] In Spokane. Shuts everything down for whatever reason because we don't know how to handle snow even though it comes every year.

Mike DeHaan: [2:54] Mhmm. Yeah. And, like, you know, sellers always go through this thing when the weather gets bad. I don't know what it is, but they become certain, like, absolutely certain that they will never leave their house again and thought, I'm not moving. You'll have people that were super friendly. You called them up, now they're pissed off. How dare you make ask them if they wanna sell their property when it's snowing. Oh my goodness. Did you

Dan Austin: [3:14] know it's December? Oh, are you celebrating Christmas? Yeah. Right. Not celebrate Christmas. It's just December.

Mike DeHaan: [3:21] I don't believe in happiness. All I know is that you should not call me ever again. And then you'll call them, like, January 2, and they're great. They're super years. New me,

Dan Austin: [3:28] man. They've they've turned a leaf.

Mike DeHaan: [3:30] Yeah. Exactly. But is it just slow? So I've been, you know, spending a lot of time. I know you and I have I know we've needed to work on some different, like, processes and statements of oh, I guess, standard operating procedures and things for a while. So we've been diving into that a little bit. And then I'm spending a lot of time doing just, like, general data work right now. It's one of the things that we're gonna start targeting this next year is some larger, like, multifamily assets. And the challenges with all that sort of stuff is typically the mailing address will go to people's, like, PO boxes or their attorneys or, like, you know, whoever is their Registered agent. Registered agent. Thank you. So what we do instead is you actually go and you find the person that owns it, and you mail it to their house directly. There's a little bit of a process to it that just takes time, and it's one of those things that we don't really do that often.

Dan Austin: [4:18] So we use open corporate a lot when we're trying to hack through these LLCs or whatever. Mhmm. Do they have the registered agent often listed as the governor, or do you think that they, generally speaking because from the way we're set up, we would be listed as the governor.

Mike DeHaan: [4:31] Yeah. So it's kinda mixed. So the governor or the agent will sometimes be the registered agent. So if you guys are kinda lost already, so what we'll do is we will get the list of all the LLCs, owned properties that we're targeting. We will manually look them up in a website called Open Corporates. Anyone can do this, and you will be able to see the address that the registered agent is at as well as the address that the business is registered at. And for most, I would say, like, amateur people or, like, small time investors, although I say that we kind of found this too just because our our stuff isn't really buttoned up. But one of those addresses will be the seller's home address or their office or something that, like

Dan Austin: [5:12] Or whatever address. When you when you sign up for an LLC in your state, you have to put an address, a place of business. And oftentimes Yeah. You know, you just go, oh, well, this is my address. And especially for an investor because you don't have an office, a lot a lot of, like, landlords don't have offices. Right? So they use their home address.

Mike DeHaan: [5:29] Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And and a lot of different reg like, states that they won't let you use a PO box for the registered address for a business, so you have to use actual brick and mortar address so people will put their house. But what you'll be able to do is, you know, if you go and you pull the data, it shows a PO box as the mailing address. They're doing that. Go and open corporates, and you can try to figure out which one of the addresses on there is their home address, and then you can mail the seller directly at their house. They're gonna be significantly more likely to see it when they're not mixed in with all the other postcards and direct mail from, you know, the people that just sent it to their PO box.

Dan Austin: [6:03] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [6:04] So you know? But but sometimes it does end up with the registered agent. Sometimes it ends up with their lawyer. Sometimes it ends up with, I don't know, their accountant, their property manager, actually. There's quite a few that we found through the the list that we're going through where the registered address for the business, for the holding LLC is actually tied to their property manager's office

Dan Austin: [6:23] That's interesting.

Mike DeHaan: [6:24] For larger ones, which is kind of interesting. It's it's only, like, the larger assets, like, the, you know, 20 plus units that you're seeing that. Gotcha. So I'm not really sure how to get around that. But there mean, there are ways you can do it too if you can figure out who owns the LLC, and then you can look them up and try to find where they live directly, which can be as easy as, like, typing their name and then the city that you're trying to find them in.

Dan Austin: [6:46] I think generally speaking, you can most often find the actual owner's address if you're willing to dig. The problem is if you have a list of 5,000 and it takes you an hour for everyone, you're not gonna spend an hour. So, like, there's, a scale factor.

Mike DeHaan: [7:02] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [7:02] But You can have virtuals help you do it as well, which is what we do too. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [7:06] Which is what we do. Yes. We had two of our VAs go through and basically pull the easy ones. But then, I mean, they're only gonna know real estate so well, kind of how the process works so well. So there's always gonna be ones that they miss. So for example, I was looking through the list they put together this morning. I actually went through it on our kickoff call. And there was one of the ones that was this, like, couple they had a couple different LLCs all going to the same PO box, and they had marked it as, like, we couldn't find an address. But I went, I looked them up, and I found an address that was tied to them, but the address was not a registered address in Spokane. So the VAs were like, oh, so it must be a mistake or something. It's not right. Right. But I went and I looked it up, and I found out that they basically live in a duplex, and the unit that they live in is a different address than the registered address of the property itself. Mhmm. Right? And I was able to I was only able to figure that out because I was, like, on street view, and I was clicking around trying to figure it out. Right? Like, why exactly they had a registered address that was different from the city registered address. But, you know, expecting a VA to be able to figure that out, it's gonna have to be a pretty dang skilled and knowledgeable VA, which they can with time. But, anyway, so we're deep we're deep in the weeds.

Mike DeHaan: [8:15] But doing these little things that are wicked boring, right, and just take up so much time are what give you the advantage when you're going into the new year, when you're going into this competitive business of off market real estate. Honestly, this is how we found a lot of deals too. Totally. Yep. Has been going through and doing the extra legwork to either have better contact with sellers by, you know, approaching them directly rather than going through their the lines that they make open to people. Right? Or by, you know, helping people solve more complex problems. Those are two easy ways to be better in this business. So that's what we've been working on. I mean, we don't have anything super sexy for deals or, like, just sort of slow. We have one guy in our instant investor program that got a sick deal locked up. He actually posted about it today. Dylan, he, just wanna give a shout out to him because he got this, like, $1,300,000 12 unit on a seller finance. He's be making him $50 a year

Dan Austin: [9:12] sexy.

Mike DeHaan: [9:12] Basically forever. It's an awesome deal. It's like a thirty year seller carry, $1,500,000. They're carrying it, I think, a 100%. So I think he he wins the deals to wrap up the year because that is an That's a

Dan Austin: [9:27] deal I would love to have. I mean, all day long. I mean, that that's kind of the sweetheart deal that we all look for.

Mike DeHaan: [9:32] Yeah. Exactly. So shout out to Dylan if he's listening to this. But besides that, man, I mean, we're just kinda hanging in there waiting for the holiday period to go through. We've been doing a lot of podcast stuff. Yeah. We have interviews lined up now until, gosh, I think, like, almost May. We got some heavy hitters coming through, dude. I feel like so, like, if you guys are listening, the the interviews that kinda come over the next few weeks, I'll say we're, like, the early phase of interviews. We were kinda finding a flow. We're getting everything going. But as stuff comes into, like like, February, March, April, we got some awesome interviews that I'm super excited about from people that are doing incredible things and just, like, really, really good conversations too.

Dan Austin: [10:14] Yeah. We just did a string of just awesome guests that you just get jacked and talking to them.

Mike DeHaan: [10:19] Yeah. It's funny. It's one of those that, like, after we did so many of those in a row, was like, man, I didn't realize how, like,

Dan Austin: [10:25] I don't

Mike DeHaan: [10:26] feel like unexciting some of the early ones were, because they're fine. But, like, it just, like, it's a different scale. Totally. You know? It's like it's like going to watch, like, I don't know, the two last place NBA teams play versus, like, going to, like, a playoff game. Mhmm. You know, it's just it's like a different level of intensity. You can go and you can still watch people do sick dunks Yeah. When you're watching, like, the bottom teams. But when you go and you, like, go see the the all star game, like, they're doing some cool shit.

Dan Austin: [10:49] It's like Brittney Griner versus LeBron James. Boom. Had to throw in some topical topical news there.

Mike DeHaan: [10:57] Dude, can you believe that whole situation, though, honestly? Like It's wild. God. Like, politics aside, like, I don't know. Let's bring this into the world of chess. Right? They had, like, a they had, like, a pawn that is so unimportant to the big picture. Right. And we just, like, gave them, like, like, I don't know. I wanna say, like, a queen player, but, like, you know, like a. Like, something that has, like, some value in exchange for a pawn. And it's just, like, why? Like, why the fuck do we do that?

Dan Austin: [11:26] Yeah. I don't know. You know, there's just weird things. The we're just not smart enough to understand that.

Mike DeHaan: [11:32] See. And but here's the here's the question I wanna know too. If it was a, like, I don't know, like a white baseball player who was, like, super mediocre Mhmm. Would they still have done the same thing?

Dan Austin: [11:45] No. Because there's a white retired marine still in Russian prison.

Mike DeHaan: [11:49] Yeah. But he's not a public figure. So you know? True. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [11:55] You know what? Good for her timing is of the essence. If you're gonna get captured in Russian prison, this is the best time to do it. Yeah. But Her book deal is gonna be sick.

Mike DeHaan: [12:05] I know. No kidding. Right? Yeah. But the guy they traded I don't know if you ever saw that movie, Lord of War, with Nicolas Cage.

Dan Austin: [12:11] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good movie.

Mike DeHaan: [12:12] Yes. So the guy that we traded is who that movie is based off of.

Dan Austin: [12:15] Oh, is it? Oh, that's right.

Mike DeHaan: [12:17] That's right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So they call like,

Dan Austin: [12:19] the dealer of death or the merchant of Merchant

Mike DeHaan: [12:21] of death. Yeah. One of the most prolific arms

Dan Austin: [12:23] dealers ever. Job selling guns around the world.

Mike DeHaan: [12:27] Yeah. And then even, like, the way that it went down, like, they have, like, a video and Britney and him going, like, shake hands, and then everyone kinda, like, hugs. And then he's, like, go get in their own private jets. It's super weird, dude.

Dan Austin: [12:37] She shook hands with the merchant of death?

Mike DeHaan: [12:39] Yes.

Dan Austin: [12:41] She's like, see you, bud.

Mike DeHaan: [12:43] Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know.

Dan Austin: [12:46] Anyhow, what

Mike DeHaan: [12:47] are we talking about? Yeah. That's that's our tangent. There's been some interesting stuff going on, though, like, with those sort of things in the world, though. The FTX guy finally got arrested.

Dan Austin: [12:55] That's your boy, dude. SBF, bro. SBF. Yeah. A he's a household name. Sam Binkman Fried. Is that his name?

Mike DeHaan: [13:02] Is that what it is? Yeah. That guy's

Dan Austin: [13:04] like, I didn't know that guy until, like, a month ago, and I don't like him just because I don't like the way he looks.

Mike DeHaan: [13:09] No one likes him, dude. But I saw I saw this thing, though. It was saying that he spent they bought $256,000,000 worth of real estate in The Bahamas where he lives. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And now it's all getting defaulted on. Right? Because it's all seized. And these are all, like, properties that are super important to The Bahamas. Like, they're, like, luxury real estate that is now can't

Dan Austin: [13:30] do anything with them. They can't

Mike DeHaan: [13:31] do anything

Dan Austin: [13:31] with them. Government.

Mike DeHaan: [13:33] Yeah. I I saw an interview with this guy. It was so funny because he was just like, what did they say?

Dan Austin: [13:38] Like, okay. I'm gonna screw this up, but I'm gonna paraphrase. They're asking him, like, so what happened to that $5,000,000,000 of customer money? Or, actually, they're like, how much was it? He's like, well, I think it was, like, north of that. They're, like, north of what? They're, like, the 5,000,000,000. He's like, yeah. Like, he didn't wanna say the number. And then he just started, like, throwing terms out. Like, well, you know, what did he say? Oh, he said, dollars, they're fungible. Right? So now he's just gonna throw out some some buzzwords. They're fungible, meaning that so, like, $1, you can spend it over here, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's that dollar over there. I'm like and in my head, I'm like, yeah. But you still spent a dollar. Like, he's and then he's like he's like, it's more of an omnibus system when you think about fiat currency. I'm like, okay, dude. You took the master class on crypto, like, verbiage what to say, and that's the extent of your knowledge, and you're throwing it all out in this interview to avoid saying that you just stole a shit ton of money from people. Yeah. I was like, what are you talking about?

Mike DeHaan: [14:38] It's so crazy, though, how out of hand that got. Now that like, on Reddit, there's been all these videos coming out of, like, him and the different promotional stuff that they were doing. And it was, like, him hanging out with Tom Brady. I know. It got crazy. You know, like, Conor McGregor. And yeah. Like, all these I was

Dan Austin: [14:54] like, what's happening? Gross looking dork that probably doesn't shower on a regular basis is sitting next to Giselle. Like, that

Mike DeHaan: [15:02] Oh my god. It's just it just makes no sense. And then I I think my favorite I saw this meme, though, as a joke about it. It was Saul from, you know, like, Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. And and it was him, and he was like, but your honor, how can he be guilty if cryptocurrency is not real money? Nice. That is a good name. Yeah. Well, he's just like

Dan Austin: [15:25] he's trying to talk his way out of it, but he's not intelligent at all. So Good. Gosh. But he was hailed as, like, this smart guy that was going to change the world in the way that we have used money. That was not the case. He was just a liar.

Mike DeHaan: [15:39] I think the thing is too is it just shows how little the average person actually knows about cryptocurrency. Because, I mean, I'm I I've been in around cryptocurrency for a while. I mean, I remember back even when I worked with you, I was all into, you know, trading coins and that sort of stuff back, what, two thousand sixteen, seventeen.

Dan Austin: [15:56] I tried, and I lost my password.

Mike DeHaan: [15:58] You lost your password.

Dan Austin: [15:59] I still have my little USB thing that has cryptocurrency on it. I don't

Mike DeHaan: [16:03] know what the password is. But the thing is I remember the original run up at the original, like, the most recent run up before this one, right, in 2017, dude. And I had, like, about, like, $8,000 worth. I it was worth, like, 160,000. Like, I was, like, getting ready. I was, like, I'm gonna go quit my job. Dude, I was. I was, like, the coolest dude. I remember all the people at the office going to like, Mike, you gotta tell me how to, like, get into cryptocurrency and all that sort of stuff. And then the thing freaking tank I remember when I first started to tank, it was actually I remember because I was texting you, and you're like, bro, I'm busy. My daughter is being born. My first daughter. And I'm sitting there watching the crypto world just go to hell. And the crazy thing is, though, is, like, there was these similar situations that happened with this whole FTX stuff back then. Like, the same things, you know, like, a little bit of different scale because it wasn't as much money into it. But there was people shutting down exchanges, stealing everyone's money. Freaking BitConnect was like the big MLM scheme in crypto that collapsed and, you know, everyone went to zero all of a sudden. But that was the same thing. You had all these influencers and these YouTubers that were trying to get you to buy BitConnect, and next, it was, like, all tier up. And Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [17:12] This was, like, a slightly more sophisticated version, but it's the same shit that happened. Absolutely. Gonna happen is everyone's gonna get over it. It's gonna start to go back up. All the dumbasses are gonna get involved in it, and the same fucking thing's gonna happen again in, like, three years.

Dan Austin: [17:25] Yeah. Because it's unregulated. I mean It is. That's the bottom line. Like, whether you like government or not, it's unregulated. And now Tom Brady knows what it is, so pretty much so a household name. Yeah. Right.

Mike DeHaan: [17:35] Yeah. So, anyway, those are there's our tangents. But yeah, the the real estate game, though, is, like, it has been interesting to sort of watch how some of the stuff's been sitting on the market and those sort of things because I feel like we have like, it doesn't feel, like, toxic necessarily like it did.

Dan Austin: [17:54] No. It's weird because there's, a lot of headlines. Like like, you you have to, like, read between the headlines. I don't know what you say, but, like, I was in a meeting yesterday with a bunch of GoBundance folks. And one of the one of the gals on there was talking about how BlackRock, and I don't quote me on this, but I'm gonna quote or paraphrase her, was that they were freezing some of their funds. And I remember reading a headline on that a while ago, like, you know, investors couldn't pull their money out. Right? Which that's a pretty nasty headline if you think about it. Investors' money is frozen. It's like, well, yeah, but my money that I'm invested is frozen too because, like, I cannot I'm not gonna go sell a property for for and lose equity that I had in it unless I absolutely had to. And, like, I was, like, you know, going, you know, belly up. Right? Then I would. You know, BlackRock is not going belly up. And so they probably did freeze customer assets because, yeah, they just lost, you know, ten, fifteen, 20% of the equity that they had in houses that they owned or properties that they owned. And it's not a good time to sell them. And they're basically telling their investors, no, bro. It is not a good time to sell. You can't have your money back.

Mike DeHaan: [18:52] Mhmm. Yeah. Well, I think that's kind of the thing is there's gonna be so many people that fit that camp where they're not gonna give up the cash that they have. They're not going to, like, take a big loss because they don't need to. I mean, even us on the one deal that we're refinancing right now that we're gonna be sitting on a pretty decent liability for a little bit. We figure out to do with it. Like, it sucks, but it's not the end of the world.

Dan Austin: [19:12] We just pulled inventory off the market before it transacted.

Mike DeHaan: [19:15] Exactly.

Dan Austin: [19:16] Yeah. Because we didn't get the price we want. And now do I think

Mike DeHaan: [19:18] that we should we're gonna get

Dan Austin: [19:20] the price we wanted next year either? Like, is it gonna like, when we first bought that deal, there's a lot more fat in it. Is that fat gonna be available to us next year? Probably not, but there will definitely be more fat than there is right now.

Mike DeHaan: [19:31] Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Well, it'd just be more interest in it too as stuff starts to open up and people get more acclimated to what purchases and interest rates and stuff look like next year, which, sure, it's still gonna make sense from a 2021, but it's going to be like it was in 2017 and '18. I mean, even even when I bought my first primary property in 2015, I think we were at, like, 5.75. Yeah. You know? Like, that wasn't that long ago. And then my my first, I guess, like, BRRRR property that I used a DSCR lender on 2018, I think we were at 7.25.

Dan Austin: [20:07] Wow. Yeah. I remember getting this my I got a loan in on a rental property that was 5.75. It was a conventional. But yeah. I mean, you were like and that was like, okay.

Mike DeHaan: [20:17] Mhmm. Yeah. That was what you did. And that's

Dan Austin: [20:18] what And they never worked out, actually.

Mike DeHaan: [20:20] Mhmm. Yeah. I know. Like, what we saw last year with you being able to get, like, three and a half percent on an investment property, we will never see again. No. Like, that was just such an extreme situation. I think that I was thinking about this the

Dan Austin: [20:32] other day. The people or the properties that are going to do the best for the next foreseeable future are the folks that bought a house. Like, let's just we'll just put in the context of primary residence. You bought a house in anywhere in 2010 up till, say, 2018.

Mike DeHaan: [20:49] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [20:49] You bought a house, reasonable price, and then in 2021, you've refinanced and got, like, a 2.25% interest rate. You're the winner. Whether you cashed out or not, you're the winner because not only did you lock in at a really good price, you locked in a really good rate. Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [21:06] Oh, yeah. You know?

Dan Austin: [21:07] Because, like, you could have bought in 2021 and gotten a 2.25, two and a half percent interest rate, but you bought in alignment with that interest rate, so the prices were inflated because of that. Exactly. Yeah. So having that interest rate is almost like having, like, a noose around your neck that's, you know, not tight yet, but it's just sitting there. Because if you sell it, you are giving up that rate, and people are like, oh, I'm not gonna give up my rate. But also, when you're selling it, if you're selling it at a higher interest rate environment in the near future before things have appreciated, you're gonna lose equity that you felt like you had Exactly. That you never really had.

Mike DeHaan: [21:41] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're not wrong. I mean, that just kinda goes to the old age old old old adage with real estate yeah. Of Don't wait to buy real estate. Buy real estate and wait. Exactly. It's all Don't ever be

Dan Austin: [21:52] a seller, man. Don't ever be a seller if you if you can avoid it.

Mike DeHaan: [21:55] Yeah. I mean, one of the richest guys that I know of Hey.

Dan Austin: [22:00] You know, don't say that about me publicly.

Mike DeHaan: [22:03] Sorry, buddy. You're not there. But, yeah, Bill's serious. So he's very he's connected with Ryan Dossi, and he came into several talks over in in that group. And his whole MO was just to never sell anything. And his the basic philosophy was if it cash flow, like, a dollar, you know, and it covered it, he'd keep it. And at one point, I think this was two years ago, his own property management company that only managed his portfolio was an Inc 500 company. That's huge. Yeah. That's a lot. It's like his own business that just manages his shit was an Inc 500 company. Wow. Like, that means you're doing okay. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, a one man company.

Dan Austin: [22:44] Well, yeah. He had if you go back to my Friday Focus couple episodes ago, we can show you how to self manage. Yeah. That dude's doing it on a scale.

Mike DeHaan: [22:52] Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, he's he's on his own scale. It is one of those things that's tricky. Like, you need a little bit of scale to be able to do it.

Dan Austin: [22:58] Right. To have a a natural proper property management company. Yes. Absolutely.

Mike DeHaan: [23:02] Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, still gonna beat, you know, all the all the ones that you can hire. But, yeah. So I think that's kinda just our goal of a little bit, though, is just get everything sort of stabilized and get those systems that you talked about locked in. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [23:15] You know, it's like you have all these Band Aids that are kinda slowly falling off when you get you the battle scars throughout the year. We're getting those cleaned up. I would say we're also focused a lot on processes right now just because our business has grown so much, and we have several different businesses that we are and have been growing. And so implementing the right processes. And here's the tough thing that you don't really realize until you have some perspective is it's really hard to implement these tools that other, you know, entrepreneurs will give you if you don't have the context for them or you don't really have the the scale. But once you have that, it's like, oh, shit. I totally get why I need to implement that. You don't need a lot of scale. We should have been implementing these a long time ago, but, it's just hard. And I get it now. I can empathize with folks that are like, I don't know what you're talking about when you have to talk about processes and SOPs and systems.

Mike DeHaan: [24:04] Yeah. We don't have any yeah. Exactly. We don't have any concept for it. Like, it's funny. I remember when I first started getting into business, people told me to go and read traction, you know, which I have sitting on my desk now. I read probably two thirds of it, and I was like, I don't even know what this is saying. Like, it means nothing to me because we didn't have a business yet. We were still, like, solopreneurs. Yeah. You know? But now once you start to have staff and you're getting into this phase, you're just like, why is everything a cluster all the time?

Dan Austin: [24:31] Like, well, you're constantly busy doing something. And then and that's what I've been really focused on personally is if I'm doing something, how do I plug that into an SOP and put that into a task tracker like Asana or something similar to that? Because I don't wanna do it again. And what you fall into is, oh, I'll just do it really fast. But as you keep layering on things, then you're always just doing something really fast.

Mike DeHaan: [24:55] Yeah. Absolutely. And I I will say that I mean, this is maybe an unpopular opinion. I think that people who focus on things like processes and SOPs too early on, they hinder their growth because they spend too much that's like the, I would say, like, the business equivalent of, like, paralysis by analysis. Right? Yeah. They spend all this time building these processes for systems that they don't even necessarily have a run yet.

Dan Austin: [25:19] And you don't even know what they are. You don't know what they need to look like yet.

Mike DeHaan: [25:22] Exactly. And I think that people, especially if they're kinda, like, nervous people or they're, like, super type a, they're planners, they fixate on that When what you should be doing, especially when you're talking about business, you should be hustling, you should be making connections, you should be making money. That you know? Once you're making money, then you can worry about, like, all of the nuances of, like, what should my org chart look like and all sorts of stuff. And maybe in a popular opinion, I'm sure there's, like, a lot of, you know, business coaches or whatever who would be like, you're wrong. If you do it the other way, you'll do better. That's fine. But I also know so many people that are not nearly as far along as we are that spend so much time talking about business processes and whatever business books they're reading, all their stuff. And all I know is they're not making a million dollars a year. Right. In fact, their goals are still to try and, you know, get out of their w two or to basically make a minimal wage off of Right.

Dan Austin: [26:09] Their their sites are so much shorter. It's like it reminds me of, like here's here's a good analogy for you. It's like the person that's, like, very overweight and out of shape, and they're talking like, yeah. This year, I wanna really get in the gym, and I'm gonna start tracking my macros. And it's like, no. No. No. Just stop going to the fast food restaurants and stop drinking soda pop, and you'll you'll fast. Don't try to get too detailed. You're gonna get caught up in the minutiae. You are not ready for macros yet.

Mike DeHaan: [26:35] Yeah. I think that that is a great example, you know, especially as someone since I since someone that like, I used to coach people like that, and that is the number one thing that would always happen, exactly like you said, is you'd have someone that was overweight, and they're like, k. Cool. I need a regimented strength and conditioning program. I need to know exactly what my macros need to be. And I was like, how about we keep it simple? Like you said, let's have serving of protein every meal. Let's stop drinking calories, and let's show up to the gym four days a week. Just let's do that to start, and they would never do it. And then instead, they would go and they would pay some dipshit, you know, $2,000 to, like, take their twelve week master class instant weight loss thing that wouldn't work anyway.

Dan Austin: [27:14] Where they did their where they were drinking. What do they call those?

Mike DeHaan: [27:17] God. There's so many of those.

Dan Austin: [27:18] Liquid fast or whatever they call a juicing a juicing cleanse.

Mike DeHaan: [27:21] Oh, juice cleanses. They literally just make you, like, shit your brains out. And they're like, wow. I lost 30 pounds, like, yeah, of water, and now you're sick. You just shed all of your body's internal linings.

Dan Austin: [27:33] Yes. Oh my goodness. But

Mike DeHaan: [27:36] but no. And I'd like like, that's I mean, that that is a legit and that same thing exists with business. I I would say that, you know, the one thing that, I guess, would be the compromise with that is if you are solopreneur and you are doing basic business, repeated tasks that you do, you know, those are things that can be hired out. Yes. Don't need to create some super fancy process for it. Honestly, and this is how we started. Just go and when you're doing that repeated task, just go and get, like, Loom or some other screen recorder and record your tell yourself doing that task and narrate what you're doing. And then when you get sick of doing that or you hate it, go and hire VA for $5 an hour, they can do it. And you do that long enough, you'll get a base, at which point you can start to build, you know, your your standard operating procedures around. But you don't need to, like, build out your entire playbook for your business before you're doing any of that. Like, do that in tangent with you hustling and building your business and making money.

Dan Austin: [28:32] Right. No. That's a good example too. Like, when you're talking about just recording stuff that you're like, there is a lot of repeatable tasks, especially in our business. And if it's a critical task, you're not gonna delegate it right away. Because if it's critical to as a profit center for you, you probably wanna learn how to do that and become an expert and make sure that it's done right so that you're not losing money by having somebody by delegating it too soon and having somebody suck at it compared to you. Absolutely. There's so many little tasks, I mean, that just add up that are so easily done. And once you like, when we first started, like, we tried to write out SOPs, I'm, like, all about, like, Loom, dude. Just, like, I'm not gonna here's the other thing. Record a Loom video and tell your VA to write it out or put it into whatever system and format. So, like, what I have for for my executive assistant is anytime I create a Loom video, I just send her a link, and she has a document that she puts a Loom video in there. She describes what it's about so it's searchable. Right? So you can search like, hey. How to, I don't know, look up corporate l l LLCs on open corporate. You can search that. Oh, here's a Loom video on how to do that for as an example. Yeah. Exactly.

Dan Austin: [29:35] It take me no time.

Mike DeHaan: [29:36] Totally. Yeah. It's really easy, and we do that a lot, actually. And then what happens as you build it out, you can have, you know, your, I would say, like, your elite VA who does that, writes out the process, gives it to the lower level VA, and then they make sure they're doing it correctly. Boom. You now have a business hierarchy. It's really simple.

Dan Austin: [29:56] Like, a bar chart now.

Mike DeHaan: [29:57] Yeah. Exactly. But and you didn't have to spend weeks, you know, going through, like, the full playbook of whatever book you're reading and doing all of it. Like, you do it by taking action.

Dan Austin: [30:07] Well, here's a good point before we, like wait. Here's a good point that you should think about. So say you're out there. You're like, I own, like, three rental properties. Like, I'm I'm definitely trying to get into wholesaling and doing some off market stuff. I don't wanna be Mike and Dan. Fine. Totally. But you wanna buy more rental properties. What do you need to do to buy more rental properties? You need to make more offers. How do you make more offers? You find more leads. Whether that's I search Zillow all day long or whatever you do to find your leads or bring leads in, you have to spend more time creating opportunity and then making offers. Mhmm. Okay. So when you're managing your three or four rental properties, what can you hand off to somebody else to do? So if it's four hours a month you spend managing them, that's four hours a month that you just gave yourself without putting any extra additional work on you. You just gained four hours a month to go and source leads and make offers. Exactly. I mean, when you think about it, that's the motivating part is because you can replace that. Now if you're like, I just want more time to, like, you know, I don't know, go fuck off, you

Mike DeHaan: [31:06] just gave yourself four hours to go fuck off. Like Yeah. Then there's nothing wrong with that.

Dan Austin: [31:10] And it costs you, what, it costs you? $20?

Mike DeHaan: [31:12] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For for a virtual. Exactly. And there's nothing wrong with that either. I think that No. It's funny. People always have a they always try to hold that stuff close to the chest because they see it as, like, an expense. But especially those repeatable tasks, you know, do what you can to to get away from them. Absolutely. So, you know, it's like when you start to make real money, you know, you can view the things that you don't wanna, you know, necessarily have to deal with in your day to day life, whether that's mowing your lawn, you know, cleaning your house, whatever. Those are things that when you're making money that you can hire out for surprisingly cheap, honestly. Yep. If it's something that, like, you don't like to do and detracts from your your, like, daily life unless you wanna be able to do, you know, don't do those things. Like like, you know, I I there's a lot of people who complain that they don't have any time in the day, but they make, you know, several $100,000 a year. They don't have any time on the weekends, whatever, but you see them out there mowing their lawn and you really don't like it. Go hire someone paying $40. Come freaking mow your lawn. Now you just have, like, half your day back.

Dan Austin: [32:08] Absolutely. Like, you should not be doing things in like, I guess here's a a good point of you only get so much time to do certain things. Like, why would you be wasting your time doing things you do not like to do or that do not provide value? Because, obviously, you're listening to this podcast because it's unlikely that you just come here for the entertainment. There's probably also some value, I hope, that you're getting from this podcast, which means you're a kind of person that wants to grow and wants to, like, expand their knowledge base so that they can find financial freedom or that they can continue to grow their portfolio. So to do that, you have to spend time on that not mowing your lawn. Yeah. Or whatever it is. I mean, I haven't mowed my lawn for, like, four years because once I realized I didn't have time to do it and I started having kids, we started this business, that $50 or whatever I pay a guy, like, that gives me that gives me, like, two hours on a weekend.

Mike DeHaan: [33:01] It does. Yeah. And in that two hours, you can either spend it with your family, which you'd rather be doing, or, like, realistically, that two hours, you could go and you could make $10,000. You could go and make $30,000. You know, there's so much more ROI on that time. But, anyway, how do we even get into that topic?

Dan Austin: [33:18] I don't even know. Like, we got super preachy, soapboxy. I'm sorry.

Mike DeHaan: [33:22] Yeah. Get off your soapbox over there, man. Out out of your come out of your 5,000 square foot house and get off your soapbox, man. Yes. Okay.

Dan Austin: [33:34] Sorry. I'm back. I'm back. You're back. We can talk about something way more interesting. Like, why is Elon getting beat up by the president?

Mike DeHaan: [33:43] You wanna go into that. Right? Right? As we're already at, like, thirty three minutes into I'm just feeling a bit

Dan Austin: [33:48] of a can of worms. What's going on with this guy, man?

Mike DeHaan: [33:50] Dude, I I don't know, dude. Like, I just see the thing he, like, went to a Dave Chappelle show and, like, went on stage, and people were all booing him and stuff. Hey. Here's what I think is funny. I think it's funny that he was so surprised by that just because of, like, the way that going on. He's being perceived in the general media right now, and he was in San Francisco

Dan Austin: [34:09] Oh, yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [34:09] Which, you know, like, you just laid off half those guys' friends, man. Like

Dan Austin: [34:14] That's alright.

Mike DeHaan: [34:14] They all know people that work at Twitter that you just

Dan Austin: [34:16] Well, half the people probably booing Dave Chappelle too.

Mike DeHaan: [34:19] Yeah. Here's also what it comes down to is people need a villain. They do. They always have to have a villain. And, you know, the FTX guy has been arrested. Also, too, they tried to make him into a villain. Like, this guy's kinda weird. We kinda just feel bad for him. Let's let's make Elon Musk a villain. Putin, he's, like, blown up Eastern Europe, but that's far away. No one's seen him for months anyway.

Dan Austin: [34:43] Yeah. We all have to we have to have a common enemy.

Mike DeHaan: [34:45] Yeah. North Korea is totally like the the Gen X villain.

Dan Austin: [34:49] Nobody cares about that chubby guy anymore.

Mike DeHaan: [34:51] Yeah. Exactly. The the millennials need a villain. So the media has decided that's gonna be Elon Musk. So that's what they're trying to do. Man. So what he is gonna do though is he's going to show that all these tech companies with their absurd bloat, with their thousands and of employees that are making, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and working fifteen hours a week. Six hours a week. Yeah. Right. We we I mean, we know a

Dan Austin: [35:16] lot of guys like that. Guys with two full time jobs in the tech industry.

Mike DeHaan: [35:20] Yeah. Exactly. Because they're like, yeah. I work at, you know, two of the major tech companies. I'm a developer. I don't have to do anything. They pay me $200 a year each company. Elon is showing that that is not necessary. You can run a tech company with, was it, like, down to a third of the people as they started with? Right. Right? And that's going to shape the tech industry going forward. Because also too, if you look at a lot of these companies, some a lot of them have never been profitable.

Dan Austin: [35:45] Right. Well, yeah. Because what are they selling? What are they selling? Right? If you think about it.

Mike DeHaan: [35:49] Yeah. I mean, well, they're selling they're selling data or advertising space. Exactly. But if you look at their their revenue lines, right, they haven't been profitable. I bet you can come back if you said, like, well, if you had half the workforce, you would at least be closer to being profitable. You cut off a $100,000,000 a year of your freaking payroll Going through is not actually needed.

Dan Austin: [36:06] I believe it. We're going through the great reset. There's gonna be a lot of lot of tech bros that are out of the job, just like finance bros. Finance bros, like, we're with you, bro. Like, we get it after the two thousand eight financial crisis, like, and automation and AI. Like, finance bros, they're a dying breed. We don't need them as much. We're not gonna need tech bros as much anymore either. And I'm not even gonna say tech bros. I'm just gonna say, I don't know what you'd call them, tech cowards maybe, the people out there that just are not good for anybody, and they are working, like, eight hours a week and getting paid. $2.50 is like a base salary for a lot of these companies. And you're right, Elon. It's like we were talking earlier. Basically, what he's trying to do with Twitter could be uprooting potentially the entire social media model, which is everybody talks about the blue check, and he's charging $8, whatever he's doing there. He's doing that to cover the operating cost because he's planning to give the influencers, the the creators of the the people that actually provide value to these platforms, he's looking to give them the the lion's share compared to what they're getting now of the marketing dollars that they earn for, say, Twitter.

Dan Austin: [37:06] So one of the quotes that I heard was that you would get as a creator the first million dollars of ad revenue paid you as the creator, and then it's a split with the platform of, like, Twitter fifty fifty. Now Google doesn't wanna do that. That's a lot of revenue. And Like you said, they got all these employees getting paid fast salaries. They're gonna you know, they don't wanna do that because if that's the creator, if that's what the platform is gonna pay you, they're gonna go to the best paying platform, honestly.

Mike DeHaan: [37:31] Absolutely. I mean, you're not wrong. And just like the way that that's all coming together too is I think that there's a lot of resistance to it because it's been such a brute force sort of situation. Right?

Dan Austin: [37:43] Well, you're gonna have free agency. Right? Like, look at MrBeast. He's like the guy that everybody knows right now. Mister beast. He's like a he could be a free agent. He can be like, Elon Musk, I will leave YouTube for $10,000,000,000 and just come over to your platform and only be on Twitter. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's that's true.

Mike DeHaan: [37:59] I mean, they already seen that a little bit, especially with, like, streamers. Joe Roganu with Spotify. Right? Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [38:04] He left, and he got paid fat sacks stacks to go and create content just for them.

Mike DeHaan: [38:08] Yeah. I know it'd be interesting. Yeah. It'll disrupt. He's like exactly like the tech group. All of sudden, developers will become less and less valuable even though they already are because, especially, as tech has become easier and developments come easier, you can go and find someone, honestly, overseas that will do just as good of a job for Totally. Significantly cheaper than American developers will. And besides, with the way AI is going, I mean, I'm not sure you've seen all the AI art that's all over the place. It's gonna be replacing everyone here soon anyway. Right. But I don't know how that works. I've read somewhere that, basically, what it does is it takes photos that are on the Internet and, like, kinda, like, finds photos that are similar and merges them and then, like, steals, like, small parts of the person's photo, like, their face and, like, adds them on there. So it's not actually creating art. It's basically, like, plagiarizing a bunch of other people's art and making, like, slight little modifications to it so that it looks like the person.

Dan Austin: [39:00] That's why we're have NFTs. They're non fungible.

Mike DeHaan: [39:04] Yeah. Frank, I'll stick you. I I went on to one of those ones that people were talking about a lot, and I was like, okay. So people are, like, typing in their names that they're influencers, and it, like, makes things because there are a lot of, like, general photos and stuff and videos out there for them. But if you go and you try to do something super just, like, weird, it doesn't it can't figure it out.

Dan Austin: [39:22] Like, how weird? Like, how weird did you get?

Mike DeHaan: [39:24] So I said, I want a photo of a bagel looking at the view over Mount Everest. I couldn't figure it out. It was like, what why would anyone wanna do that? And it was just like

Dan Austin: [39:34] making weird shit. What about LeBron James licking a bagel?

Mike DeHaan: [39:40] That's a good one. See, so I I was trying to make things that wouldn't necessarily ever be together. Right? Bagel, Mount Everest. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [39:50] And the bagels are too heavy to carry an Mount Everest. It's like, you know, ounces make pounds. Yeah. Can't carry that to the top. Can't carry that to the top.

Mike DeHaan: [39:56] Not really a whole lot of fresh baked goods. It's not realistic. Yeah. But, you know, and then yeah. Just just doing anything like that, but then it would be like it would be like, well, how about a suggestion? Would you like to see a a robot in the shape of stained glass? I'm like, well, you're feeding that to me. I know you already have it. Like, I wanna do something that's nonsensical that I come up with.

Dan Austin: [40:14] Well, how about this? Would you like to see an image of a robot drinking milk?

Mike DeHaan: [40:20] Right. So it's like it's like

Dan Austin: [40:23] the old Google, I'm feeling lucky button. It's gonna you know what it's gonna do next is it's going to it's going to go back into this is this is exactly why Pornhub was created to collect your data. It's gonna go back into your porn history and then find things that they know you like and then start serving that up to you. So you do we don't have a bagel on Everest, but we do have a bagel somewhere else for you.

Mike DeHaan: [40:44] Yeah. Right. I know. Was I was gonna say, like, at the end of it, it's all gonna go back to porn anyway. Exactly.

Dan Austin: [40:49] Pretty soon you're gonna you're gonna be able

Mike DeHaan: [40:50] to type in, like, whatever your your sexual fantasy is. It'll craft you some weird porn mix up with it.

Dan Austin: [40:57] I thought that there was some, like, thing, like, last year, a couple years ago where they, like, they let the they let the AI go, and it basically just turned into, like, a Neanderthal fucking, like, a brat boy kinda situation where it was, like, talking about porn and all sorts of stuff and just, like, not nice things.

Mike DeHaan: [41:14] Yeah. I don't I don't

Dan Austin: [41:15] oh, wait. This.

Mike DeHaan: [41:17] No. I I I remember that. Yeah. So it it basically was like a chatbot, and what it was doing is it was taking conversations from people, and it was, like, building identity, and it turned into, like, super racist. That's what it was. Sorry. I couldn't remember what it was, but it,

Dan Austin: [41:31] turned into, like like, not a good thing.

Mike DeHaan: [41:34] Yeah. Yeah. And pretty soon, it was getting, like like, really racist. It was starting to get a little, like, genocidal, and then they, like, shut it off. They're like, okay. This is this is what we want it.

Dan Austin: [41:41] That's like that's human nature, man. That's as close as it gets. It's just the AI gets there way faster.

Mike DeHaan: [41:47] Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, we'll see we'll see what, like, what I want. When AI can come and renovate a house for me, then we're fucked. As soon as we answer that, we're in big trouble because us he flipping everything everywhere. But, I don't know. Like, that there's probably at some point, we already have robots that are delivering pizza. Why can't a robot, you know, install drywall? Honestly.

Dan Austin: [42:10] Definitely can. Probably better. And you don't have to deal with the drywallers.

Mike DeHaan: [42:13] Exactly. And your house is not gonna smell like meth afterwards.

Dan Austin: [42:16] Yeah. You're have to pipes after the drywaller comes through.

Mike DeHaan: [42:19] Exactly. Anyway alright, guys. Anything else, Dan?

Dan Austin: [42:24] Yeah. No. That's sorry sorry about the episode, guys. Hope you enjoyed it.

Mike DeHaan: [42:30] That's fun. This is I mean, you know, Christmas time, real estate. That's how it is. Could be like all the other real estate investors and just go to, like, Cabo, but, you know, we actually have money to make. They're just pretending.

Dan Austin: [42:40] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [42:41] They're they're just trying to trying to figure out what they're gonna do now that they're eighteen months in as a real estate agent is over before they have to come back and try to get their job back as a, I don't know, a secretary at a barbershop or whatever they're doing.

Dan Austin: [42:55] I didn't know they I don't go to the barbershop, but I know they had secretaries there.

Mike DeHaan: [42:58] I know you don't. You're bald. It's okay. That's your problem. Yeah. It's been a long time. Just don't set this conversation again, dude. So, anyways alright, guys. Well, thanks so much for listening. Hopefully, you guys have a good Christmas. This will be the last episode, I guess, before that. If you don't celebrate Christmas, then have a happy holidays or if their holidays are already going on. I don't know how other religions

Dan Austin: [43:21] I'm so woke of you. Happy holidays. Good job.

Mike DeHaan: [43:23] I know. Trying to trying to be inclusive. I I think that we have a really diverse diverse listener group. We don't, dude. We we can see, like, our general listener stats. It is, like, all white dudes between the ages of 30 and 50. So that's I mean, it's fair. It's fair. I can't expect anything less. But anyways, guys, so enjoy your holidays. And, yeah, if you enjoyed this episode, please go ahead and share with anyone that might find it interesting. If you didn't enjoy this episode, but there are other episodes that you think people would enjoy, go and share those ones too. That is really what helps us grow. If you wanna start getting off market leads, and then you can start working on your SOPs and all that sort of stuff. Better yet, if you wanna start getting off market leads, you don't wanna build your standard operating procedures, go and get our five step guide, and it will give you the basis so that way you can just start, you know, from scratch. You don't have to do, like, the whole learning game. So the collectingkeyspodcast.com/ free. You can get that free five step guide. And then aside from that, guys, enjoy your week, and we'll talk to you guys next Wednesday. See you.

Speaker 3: [44:25] Thanks for listening. Please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. And check us out at collectingkeyspodcast.com for tips and guides on starting your own real estate investment and wholesaling business.