Passive Income May Be Dead But The Real Estate Market Is Alive

Dan Austin: [0:00] What we're building is somewhat novel, so it comes with more unknowns, right, uncharted territories with our partnership program and how we're building that out and at scale what that looks like to wholesale in dozens of markets across the country.

Mike DeHaan: [0:12] Yeah. However,

Dan Austin: [0:13] just the standard real estate investing and wholesaling company or house flipping, you can really just copy other people. So, although you're you're still investing and there's still some risk in that investment, just like if you invested in the stock market, there's risk associated with that. Although there's that, you can still kind of define those outcomes a little bit better, and I think that opens up and I would imagine like, you know, lot of our listeners out there, they do work a day job, but they are also running, starting or or are running this type of business. And so, how can somebody that works, you know, a forty hour a week job or even fifty hour a week job run the wholesale business as a side hustle?

Mike DeHaan: [0:58] And what's going on, guys? Welcome to today's episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast. If it's your first time here, this is the show where we teach you to make massive income, not just passive income with your real estate investing business. And I am Mike DeHaan here with my co host Dan Austin. And on this Wednesday Mike and Dan shows, we talk about real estate investing, business, and whatever else we feel like for the week. And I will say, we are coming into February and it is officially starting to get to the hot season, Dan, because we have had a sort of heck of a week going over the weekend and everything. We

Dan Austin: [1:37] of a day, heck of a week.

Mike DeHaan: [1:38] Heck of a week. Yeah. We're at five contracts in five days across the team, which has been pretty solid. Which brings us up to we have 18 in escrow right now as we sort of start to go into the springtime. Perfect. And it's funny looking at this in comparison to like last year, there's just like a whole different sentiment in like the real estate market on the seller side, on the buyer side. Even on like the lender side, feels way better.

Dan Austin: [2:02] Feels way better. Yeah. I would say like I'm excited going into the the spring season, like, with how our winter has actually kind of been pretty good. If you think about it compared to like all of 2023 now, I look back at 2023, and I'm like, man, that was a bummer of a year. Like, we still operate. We still did well as a business and we as personally, our business scaled a lot, but it definitely felt like there was a lot more friction working with sellers, working with buyers, everything included. And now it just seems like things are getting a little lubed. It's not there yet, they're getting a lot more lubed up.

Mike DeHaan: [2:34] Yeah. They are. And I mean, think a big part of it is probably, you know, we've heard some of the financial execs out there talk about how people's COVID savings are starting to get used up. People are starting to be more financially distressed with the economy on the consumer side. I think that you probably have a lot of sellers that were sort of like biding their time or trying to figure out whatever situation they had that are now having to make a decision. Right? Like we've been getting a lot more people that have financial distresses that are lingering, that they are now trying to solve. Or actually we've had a ton of people that are dealing with their grandparents financial distresses that they sort of picked up over the last couple years and now the grandparents are unable to, you know, deal with it or they've passed away or things like that. And that's just become a reoccurring theme. Then on the buyer side too, started using investor lift this year on some of the dispo side and we've had a huge, like, just engagement on there with different deals that we've been sending out. So I mean, especially in larger markets, we've had some some of the deals, we've had like forty fifty inquiries on them.

Dan Austin: [3:39] Yeah. I'm actually surprised with the amount of traffic we're getting. Even on deals that we know really aren't deals and we're trying to get pricing, which is a strategy, right? Put it out in front of your buyers and see what their top dollar or their bottom dollar, how everyone look at it is. Mhmm. What is that? We're still getting a lot of traffic that which means to me that the buyers are thirsty for deals and they wanna get out there and do stuff.

Mike DeHaan: [3:56] Yeah. Even in rural areas too. Like a lot of stuff I've heard That's crazy lift in the past is that you need to be in these major metros. We wholesaled a deal in this little market that was like 8,000 people.

Dan Austin: [4:06] A sub two deal too of nonetheless.

Mike DeHaan: [4:09] That's probably why because all the freaking sub two doors come out.

Dan Austin: [4:12] Yeah. Sub two. It's gotta be a deal.

Mike DeHaan: [4:14] Yeah. So they also come out and start jerking off over it. But, I mean, either way, like, not buying a sub two deal in a market with 8,000 people in the middle of freaking nowhere.

Dan Austin: [4:23] Somebody is, apparently.

Mike DeHaan: [4:25] Now it's just interesting to sort of like see the shift because I feel like we've been talking about that loosely for a while. People have been speculating that. But now all of a sudden with everything that we've been seeing, it definitely feels that way. And not only that, but one of our our inside guys, Robbie, he does all of our, you know, inside systems and our KPIs and stuff. He pulled like all of our marketing KPIs for the month. And we've had a massive drop in our cost per leads, basically meaning the leads are getting significantly cheaper to come in. This isn't just like from December where you expect it to be slow, but this is basically the cheapest that it's been since like early twenty twenty three. And so I think it really shows how much of a wall in the market there truly was last year.

Dan Austin: [5:05] Absolutely. And that's with us just running basically one marketing channel and we have we've got our cold collar stood up too just recently, but really that's based on one marketing channel, we're not even fully marketing right now just due to the some of the 10 DLC laws and stuff like that that slowed us down in this like near term. So I'm fully expecting going you know February numbers and March numbers would probably be even better.

Mike DeHaan: [5:27] Yeah, I would expect so.

Dan Austin: [5:29] You know what I mean?

Mike DeHaan: [5:29] I mean, especially because like the winter's been pretty mild everywhere, people don't have the typical weather excuse that they normally do this time of year, so things will start heating up.

Dan Austin: [5:37] No. Like you're going outside, like I was just driving home and I saw my neighbor outside like doing gardening. Like Yeah. We're usually historically not gardening right now. I mean, she was just cleaning up her yard, but still like out there with her dog in her little green bin, like picking up, you know, whatever you pick up in your garden.

Mike DeHaan: [5:53] Whatever you pick up in your garden, whatever.

Dan Austin: [5:55] I mean, she's not growing vegetables right now. Plants, flowers, something, whatever people do that like to that enjoy that sort of stuff. But I'm just saying like, we're well, we're in February now, but to your point it's a light winter and I think just people are willing to make moves sooner rather than later since, like you said, there's might be a little bit of pressure from COVID money running out or just things that have drug out and now they finally have to face them. Maybe there's, what do they call that, long COVID? Maybe there's some long COVID issues, deaths in the family.

Mike DeHaan: [6:24] Dude, I still keep hearing people saying they got COVID. Don't know if it's a thing anymore.

Dan Austin: [6:28] I do hear that and I'm like, you just didn't wanna come. Usually people have COVID when there's like a birthday party or like an event, Right? Like, yeah, I've got COVID or I I was emailing this guy. This is great. I put him on blast. So I've been working with for our community to get national like level like pricing for some of the big box stores. I worked with this guy and then he just didn't like respond, he just stopped responding for like three weeks. And then his response finally was like, hey, yeah, sorry I had COVID. I was like, dude, you work at home? Like, you can't, like, that's not an excuse anymore, You know? Yeah. So he's just like, oh I have COVID. So it's when people didn't do their job, said they had COVID too. Because remember when you have COVID, you're completely incapacitated.

Mike DeHaan: [7:06] Like honestly. Yeah man, and I've traveled completely unmasked through Asia, through Africa, through a bunch of Europe, and I didn't get it. So I've been around a lot of people over the past couple years in different places and haven't seen it anywhere.

Dan Austin: [7:20] Got malaria but not COVID.

Mike DeHaan: [7:22] Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Got hepatitis but that's fine. That's, you know, take a shot for that.

Dan Austin: [7:27] Got the good one. It was a, not c.

Mike DeHaan: [7:32] By apparently, you work at Lowe's, you get there if you have a five year old five old's birthday

Dan Austin: [7:36] party. Anyhow.

Mike DeHaan: [7:38] So, yeah, but no, I'd say it's been interesting. And even on, you know, within our scale community, I've noticed a shift as well of people, I don't know, months ago, the focus was like, hey, I'm trying to figure out how to get more lead generation. Those questions have kind of gone away. Most people are trying to figure out how the hell do I keep up with all these leads? We've been doing a lot of coaching and calls and stuff around like building the follow-up process, bringing on VAs and those sort of things. Because I guess the lead generation problem's kinda solved now.

Dan Austin: [8:05] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [8:06] Everyone's got that dialed in, now they're just trying to figure out what to do with them.

Dan Austin: [8:09] Everything's greased up now. It's like questions the of like, hey, how do I bring on a lead manager or how do I where is the transition point of my lead when a lead manager has it to my act manager or to me or whatever it is. And so it's definitely feeling more productive on that end from from the lead gen standpoint.

Mike DeHaan: [8:23] For sure. It'll be interesting interesting year overall. I mean, I think that it is definitely a great year that if you were accumulating capital over the past couple of years, like a lot of the rich people said you should be doing, it's gonna be a great year to start deploying that again into assets faster. You should be because if you're in the real estate game and you don't have a long term aspect to your business Yeah. You're kinda stupid. Yeah. Like honestly.

Dan Austin: [8:45] You know what I like about this? I'm starting to see more and I think I feel like we should get credit for this because we've been preaching this for like two years now. Least a year and a half, probably two years. The people that are out there talking about how real estate isn't passive, like rental properties aren't passive. I'm starting to see a lot more people doing that. I'm like, I'm for sure either they're finally realizing it or they're just copying us, one of the two.

Mike DeHaan: [9:06] That's probably a combination.

Dan Austin: [9:07] There's just so many different ideas when we're talking about long term strategies. It really is long term and the way we're looking at things, it has to be long term. We got away with a couple years, like '21 and '22, short term investing, you could make a lot of money. Like flipping, wholesaling, even buying rental properties at just massive discounts, that all of a sudden had a pile of equity in two years later. And so now, we've kind of reset. I think there's gonna be some quick transactional funding back on the table. I think flips and wholesaling are going to be back again, But those unheard of like short term gains in your in your rental properties that may that that kind of hid how not passive some of your properties were, I think that's gonna kinda temper out a little.

Mike DeHaan: [9:46] Definitely is. I mean, and it's funny. You think that that's a symptom of so many people getting into real estate kind of at the same time when it was so hot. And then all of a sudden you have like that quote from Shelby Johnson, you know, talking about, I knew that rent was gonna be a problem three years ago and now that checks do. Do you think everyone's sort of going through that at the same time? Or is it just like all the quote unquote passive cash flow strategies that people were employing like the Airbnb's and the midterm rentals and all the stuff that turned out to be completely blown out of proportion thanks to social media. What do you think the the catalyst is? Was everyone just wrong or is everyone just getting like a reality check?

Dan Austin: [10:28] I think honestly, I think there is an unprecedented time frame that like it was a perfect storm. Go ahead. And I'm gonna give me three minutes to explain this. So we'll touch on social media first. So I think social media coming into 2018, '19, right at 2020 was very mature. However, like TikTok came on the scene, was a big thing. And at that same time, like social media being very mature for a vast majority of the audiences, like we always joke like baby boomers and Gen Z use TikTok, right? Yeah. Because that that's just who it is, and the millennials are on Instagram, and somebody's on Facebook, I don't know. Like, very mature, every age group now is in a social media platform, and at that time there were big people, Cody Sanchez coming on the line, I think, you know, Ryan Pineda, all these big names, Bigger Pocket was around, but like, all these other big names in Florida, I talking about rental properties and real estate, at a time where people were needing a social outlet Mhmm. Because they were stuck at home from COVID. So I think that's one of them, and then I think COVID created a shift in my, in like migration, even like a 1% change, right, in migration level, that's huge, right? So I think that impacted it. So that is a big one but going back to the social media and like the influencers, like talking about real estate and everybody's saying, yeah, screw this, I went out of my corporate job, let me figure out passive income and I can move to this cheaper market where my parents live and then buy a bunch of rental properties. That I think kinda drove even another micro change of that all the same time.

Dan Austin: [11:54] Like if one of those happened, it would increase the market, But two or three of them happened and then the government printed more money than they ever printed in history at that same period of time, flooding cash into the market.

Mike DeHaan: [12:04] Yeah. You know something that's been really interesting along those same lines, like I think you're completely right. But now we've kinda gone full circle and I've started to see this really big influx of people, which I fully support this, where they are going, you know I tried like the financial freedom and entrepreneurship thing and it sucks. Like it's not for me at all. And so you're starting to see this really big wave of influencers and you know, masterminds, things like that that are like, here's how to build wealth while having a w two so that you don't like rely on it as much to kinda give you like options. Right. Right? Or like for like personal security, things like that as opposed to like here's how you can like quit your job and like travel the world or like do whatever else the financial freedom crowd was after. Which I think is an interesting change because for, I don't know, the last ten years, so many things are kinda driven by like the four hour work week and like this is how you work as little as possible and get as much out of it. Whereas like now, maybe it's like the aging millennials that are like having kids and those sort of things. There's a lot more around just like general security.

Dan Austin: [13:08] Yeah. There's probably a lot to do with that, age and the demographic of people and then also recognizing that those people that failed at the financial freedom had to go back and get a job, which is fine. There's like that's what your plan b is, go get a job. Like, so you gave the college educated try or whatever.

Mike DeHaan: [13:26] Or at least they like sat around in a bunch of groups and like jerked each other off about like how much planning they're gonna do. And they did like their intention journals and then Wayne took out a 0% credit card to buy their $25,000 ice bath that they don't use.

Dan Austin: [13:40] Dude, I'm gonna say something. Okay. Before let me finish my thought here. So I also think there's a large demographic that was untapped that saw those people, but weren't ready to make the leap. Yeah. And they see the value in having a diverse diversified income source via a side hustle and it's very easy to do. If you wanna know how to do a side hustle and make $100,000, hit hit us up on Instagram. Mike and I will give five ideas and you can go and execute on. Like seriously, like it's not that hard to do. Like you really truly can. It's gonna be a lot of hard work, like the idea doesn't have to It's Simple, you can

Mike DeHaan: [14:15] but not difficult. You can

Dan Austin: [14:16] copy what other people are doing super easily in your free time.

Mike DeHaan: [14:20] So I'll end that. But I was

Dan Austin: [14:21] having this thought, it pissed me off, like not pissed me off, just I was like this was that was a weird time when people were selling their houses and buying $180,000 vans to live in.

Mike DeHaan: [14:33] Yeah. If you have looked

Dan Austin: [14:35] at these RVs that are for sale, the ones that are those vans, if you were to buy one outfitted off the shelf, they're like 175 to $225,000.

Mike DeHaan: [14:43] Yeah. They're selling their house

Dan Austin: [14:44] and buying this thing. And to your point, the check is due now. Mhmm. And that $102,100,000 dollar van now is worth 125, the house they sold is worth 400,000, know? Absolutely. And they're kinda like, oh crap, I don't like living in this van with this little sink I can't even wash my hands in.

Mike DeHaan: [15:01] Yeah. But you know what? You can never take away their memory of them sitting on their laptop and you know, out in the desert in Moab amongst the red rocks, sitting there getting ready to start their blog. They never actually started. Bro. I know it wasn't that fun. Dude, I I remember traveling that period of time, and you'd see them everywhere. It was always like the same demographic. Right? They were it was always a couple. They were white. Yeah. They like were somewhat fit. Know, she had nothing else to do but work out all the time.

Dan Austin: [15:34] They shopped at REI.

Mike DeHaan: [15:35] Yeah. They shopped at REI and they always had a little Instagram sticker with their handle like on the back Oh windshield. Like people wanna follow their freaking van. Got all the same national parks that everyone else goes to. You know what mean? And you'd see them in like some miscellaneous parking lot, you'd always see one of them that was like sleeping or like not doing anything, another one was that was like standing outside pretending like they were doing something. You know, but the thing is, know there are people that were successful, but I also think there were so many posters that really committed to the bit, but never actually gave it like a college drive, they were just looking for an excuse to take a vacation, which is fine. Great. But like, I don't know. It's just also kind of silly. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [16:15] When I saw the prices of those vans and like people selling their houses for a month, I get why they're selling their houses. It was still a bad idea.

Mike DeHaan: [16:21] Yeah. So they started to see that movement though really calmly and I have fully supported too because I'm a really big believer that entrepreneurship and small business is not for everybody. Right? Fact Yeah. It's not for the vast majority of people and most people they want the result of having your own business and not the lifestyle. It's funny like, I regularly get the question like, how I was able to quit my w two in 2018 without like a real plan? Like how did I like know that I was going to be successful, and like we've grown relatively quickly since then to break a lot of people's standards.

Dan Austin: [16:58] Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [16:58] And I think the main difference is that like when I left my w two, it wasn't an option to go back in the way that I was never gonna allow that to happen.

Dan Austin: [17:08] Sure.

Mike DeHaan: [17:09] And then as we grew into our business, started making money, a lot of it was heavy risk with asymmetrical upside. Like I was just putting it all on the line and it had to come back. Like I didn't have a choice, and that's why we were scrapping together some of these deals and doing weird shit. We're helping people move, or we were like fronting money to people to like go get an Airbnb so they would move out of their house, we could wholesale, like things that no one else does apparently. Yeah. We just thought it was fine because I didn't have a fucking choice, it had to work out.

Dan Austin: [17:40] That was kind of like the back up against the wall strategy, what else?

Mike DeHaan: [17:43] It was. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [17:44] Well and also yeah, I would just like not I don't know if it's like building in the silo, but like not doing it the conventional way or following anybody else's path. Right? Think there's Totally. To be said about that because then you don't do the conventional thing.

Mike DeHaan: [17:55] Yeah. And realistically, what that looked like to get success is, I did nothing else except work. Even my wife said, they're yeah, you just kinda like went into the basement for two years and they came out and like you were suddenly doing pretty well. Right? And it's like it's like how did how did we grow a pretty decent business in five years? It's like, I've worked fourteen hours a day for six days a week Yeah. For the last five years. Like that's that's the reality.

Dan Austin: [18:21] There's a lot of hard work and effort that goes into the ultimately successful entrepreneur. You know? The ones that, I mean there's for every one that's failed too, there's ones that did that same amount of work. For every successful one, there's ones

Mike DeHaan: [18:33] that did that

Dan Austin: [18:34] fourteen hour days for seven days a week and five years later still end nowhere.

Mike DeHaan: [18:37] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [18:38] That's the risk and you and I were having this conversation the other day about the most recent Alex from Rosie podcast and he talks about this, and this is something I truly believe in and I have said, like, everybody is willing to work hard, but they're not willing to work hard not knowing the outcome. They wanna know an outcome. Yeah. And when you go into like solving very difficult decisions, at least they're difficult to us, you know, where we're at in our business, when you're making decisions to do something to invest in your business to maybe take money out of your own pocket, to put it back in the business. And your thought is, and your idea is that it will grow you more down the road, and

Mike DeHaan: [19:15] you'll have

Dan Austin: [19:16] more, you'll have more, you know, fruits of your labor. But in reality, if you don't know if it's a good idea and you don't know if you're capable of actually doing that thing.

Mike DeHaan: [19:24] Mhmm. Absolutely. And that's why, like that point alone is why most people are not cut out to be entrepreneurs is because there's a level of unknown

Dan Austin: [19:33] Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [19:33] That the vast majority of people are not comfortable with because we go up through the school system, right, where we kind of have a very linear path to what graduates say we're going to college looks like. You go to college, it's very linear. Especially if you go to like a good college that has company connections, it's pretty easy to find a job. And then when you're in the workplace, can be like, cool. Even you you know a of bosses, they'll be like, well, what's your five year plan? What's your ten year plan? And they will sort of allow you to project that, right? And if you work this many hours, this is what'll happen. More often than not, like you know this can be like 90% kind of in your favor. When you're an entrepreneur, it's completely the opposite. You can make a three or six month plan and not hit it at all. You can make a one year plan and hit it out of the park, like you just really don't know. And there's so much chance that has to go into it. There's so much money and time that you will spend that you know, you do not get back. Right? You will spend an incredible amount of time for cents an hour, honestly, if you get anything. It might just be $0 an hour. You might spend an incredible amount of money that just goes to what more, a little bit more seasoned entrepreneurs say an education. Right. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [20:44] That's the fancy way of saying I lost money on that deal. It's like I paid for an education. Right? Like honestly. And most people aren't down with that and that's perfectly okay. I just think it's silly for people to pretend like they are. When realistically what it should look like, like wealth should look like for most people, or investment should look for most people is getting as decent paying of a w two job as you can at a company that you don't hate working for, and then learning to invest in a way that matches your risk profile. Whether that means you're buying properties, whether that means that you are putting into a debt fund, whether that means you're putting into stocks, whatever that is. That is what most people should be doing, generate wealth instead of like trying to create these like silly businesses or just like wasting their time pretending like they're going to do it when they're never actually going to.

Dan Austin: [21:30] You know, that's the interesting thing too that and I was gonna ask the question because in some senses, what we're building is somewhat novel. And so it comes with more unknowns, right, uncharted territories with our partnership program and how we're how we're building that out and at scale, what that looks like to wholesale in dozens of markets across the country. Yeah. However, you know, just the standard real estate investing and wholesaling company or house flipping, you can really just copy other people. So Mhmm. Although you're you're still investing and there's still some risk in that investment, just like if you invested in the stock market, there's risk associated with that. Although there's that, you can still kind of define those outcomes a little bit better, and I think that opens up and I would imagine like, know, a lot of our listeners out there, they do work a day job, but they are also running, starting or are running this type of business.

Mike DeHaan: [22:18] Mhmm. And

Dan Austin: [22:19] so, how can somebody that works, know, a forty hour a week job or even fifty hour a week job, run the wholesale business as a side hustle?

Mike DeHaan: [22:30] Yeah. So in in order to run any business, right, you have to have some kind of leverage whether you're leveraging somebody else's time, you're leveraging your own money. You have to like pay in some capacity. Right? Whether it's through through time, might leverage. So you have to pay either with time or with money or like experience, I guess you have that. You don't have experience. If you did, you wouldn't be asking this question. So that means that you have either money or time to do that. Okay? If you don't have either of those things, then you gotta figure yourself out first.

Dan Austin: [23:00] Right?

Mike DeHaan: [23:00] Yeah. If you have no money, you don't have time, either need to get a higher paying job that allows you to do that. And if you have a job that's not paying you anything, then you need to leave that and commit to time. Right? Or like you know, try to find a way to make more money so that you can leverage other people's time, that's by hiring VAs, it's hiring systems, that's like getting involved in different things. Because like where people really get stuck is they are working these jobs that don't really pay them any money, they take an incredible amount of time every single week, they're trying to figure out stuff on the back end of it while they have like a Like honestly, you're the most disadvantaged person that you could possibly find because you have no ability to create anything. Have none of the resources that are required.

Dan Austin: [23:45] Yep. You don't have the time, don't have the money or the skill yet.

Mike DeHaan: [23:49] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [23:49] That's kind of like the hard thing.

Mike DeHaan: [23:51] Yeah, you have to develop them, right? And the way you develop skill is by putting time in or by investing in your education which requires money. And realistically, it's not something that you can do in like an hour a day for a year or two years or five years. Because the problem is, especially if you're trying to do a wholesaling business, is you're competing with the people like us that are investing a $100,000 a month, plus have leverage through staff and team and systems. And we're competing for the same deals as you. Who's gonna win? Not Yep. Right? Ever. I mean honestly. You might get lucky every once in a while and they scrape out a deal, that's great. I'm super happy for you. But you're not gonna do that every single month if you have one hour a day and no money to do it.

Dan Austin: [24:34] Mhmm. Yeah. That's really valuable insights too. And you talk about these different resources and it kinda takes me back to like when I bought my first rental property. And I think I had like, I was obviously scared to do it. Like, I didn't know what I was doing, but I knew enough about real estate, not enough research that this was gonna be a good idea. And I think I had like about $30,000 to invest, which sounds like a lot to a lot of people. $30 is not the stick out, but the amount of time so I was making at that time, I think my engineering job was like $60 a year. Right? It wasn't like a ton, so that was half of my my income. But it took me however many years of life and skill to get to that point, to where I had that money. So I wasn't a 19 year old with $30,000. I was how old was I? Don't know how old I was like 27, 28. You must have been yeah. 28. I've been in

Mike DeHaan: [25:23] your late twenties at that point. But I mean, that point, you already had a military career. Yeah. Right? You've been making money. You've gone to school.

Dan Austin: [25:29] I'd got a college education.

Mike DeHaan: [25:31] Yeah. You had your engineering job and you'd been living, you know, appropriately there. Yep.

Dan Austin: [25:37] Yeah. So it's like this buildup of time just to get to that point and that whole time, I knew I was going to I was going to do something different than what was laid out in front of me in that whole path. Like, I knew I wanted to do something bigger, I wanted to do something in business, didn't know what that looked like, but it took all that time to get to that point, and then that was 2016, and then you fast forward to now in 2024, where our business has gone, and how quickly it's accelerated, and even if you look at the last twelve months, how much it's accelerated, it's like this compounding effect of all the effort and time and all the studying and research research you were doing. I I still remember like, I go went into Barnes and Noble's, I still have the book, it was called Investing for Dummies. Literally have that book my office somewhere here. I was probably 18 or 19 when I bought that book. Had no idea, had no context, I knew like, okay, I know what I gotta do here, I gotta be investing. I didn't do shit with it right away, but it was like that first like phase of like learning and educating, learning, educating, iterating on ideas, real estate's not like, that's sort of my first idea. And so to get to that point, when you do all that investing, my point is, is that it's just this asymmetrical growth as you get more skill and then you get more money and then you get more time and it compounds and it compounds and it goes faster and faster. But behind all that, like we said earlier, there's a lot of years of of work and effort to get to it.

Mike DeHaan: [26:54] There is. And I think that's the part that people wanna skip. Right? Because they're desperate to get out of But the I honestly think that that is the part that sets you up most for success. Right. I mean, even on my end, even though I I jumped from my engineering career, that's kinda like the story that I tell on every podcast. The reason I was able to do that was because I had an engineering degree, which allowed me to make a decent salary, and I had been living well below my means for five years and investing heavily in my IRA. So, you know, like when I left, I had a $100,000 as like a backup plan in case my wife's income was not able to sustain us. She was making $40,000 a year at her job. But what we did, right at my left, is we basically said cool, limit all expenses, we're gonna live off of my wife's salary. And then if we need to or we have an emergency, we have an extra 100,000 in the bank that I have been diligently saving for the last five years as an engineer. Mhmm. Right? Where I was making between 80 to a $100,000 a year after year. So we're saving 50% of our income. Plus I had this $40.01 k that had been getting invested, that had, you know, been getting employer matched and all that sort of stuff. I had like the ability to take a leap and figure stuff out because I put in that work preemptively. You know? And if you're in a situation where you don't have that, you haven't been learning, you you know, don't have any time to learn or pursue anything else, like you're not going to be successful unless you somehow honestly win the lottery in like a business sense, which won't.

Dan Austin: [28:23] But you know what the good thing is is they say the best time to plant a tree was ten years ago, the next best time is today.

Mike DeHaan: [28:29] Mhmm. For sure. And the way you should not do it is probably pursuing dipshit to tell you that you can do things like, you know, generate wealth without cash or like they they sell you any get rich quick scheme or you have some wholesaler that calls you and says like, oh, I heard you wanna get into real estate, you should buy this house because I have a, you know, really good background in whatever and I'm like the local wholesaler that runs the meetup in my market.

Dan Austin: [28:54] Damn.

Mike DeHaan: [28:55] And people see me on Facebook, know like I do all these posts about how I'm so good at selling deals to investors. Because if they approach you and you're the newbie to buy this deal, they're probably trying to rip you off. I'm not saying any names, I'm not saying any people, any companies, I'm just saying this is a reoccurring pattern that we see in every market.

Dan Austin: [29:14] Alright. You know what they say, they say Alex or Bozzi, I'm just gonna start saying Nate because I don't wanna quote him all the time, but like this that pops he in my has so many good one liners is like, when and he probably didn't come out with this, but he he said, when experience meets money, experience always gets the money. Totally. Meaning that, like when you're the huge to your point, when if an experienced person comes to you as a newbie, there's a reason why. Right? And they're probably gonna walk away with all the money and you're gonna be kept caught holding the bag. So you just gotta be very cautious and Alex says that about the time his business partner, one of his business partners who had a lot of experience basically stole all of the money. Absolutely. And that's what happens.

Mike DeHaan: [29:48] You got taken advantage of by somebody in that case, you know? Be cautious. I guess point being is where it gets tricky too is there's that fine balance because you need to take the risk in order to do it. But you also need to understand the inherent time and learning and knowledge and like your sort of profiles to decide if that even makes sense for you to do. Right. And there's problem with social media is I've never seen so many just like nonsensical views on Yeah. How easy it is to be successful when it's like all these different fads that are out there. Now this is one of the most recent ones I had to today and like it's a different group I'm in. Where one of the guys said that one of his goals was to make $5,000 a month passively this year by buying a business. Can you imagine buying a business to make $5,000 a month? You fucking understand what that means?

Dan Austin: [30:39] Dude, I own a business and if I only made $5 a month, guess what? I'll be shutting that thing down.

Mike DeHaan: [30:45] Right? And this dude's trying to buy a business while keeping his w two so that he can make an extra 5,000 That just doesn't even make sense. That's like something that like a child says when they don't understand.

Dan Austin: [30:56] Dude, give me your money and I will give you $10,000, well depending on how much money it is. Give me your money, I will use it to, in my investments and I'll pay you more. You don't

Mike DeHaan: [31:05] wanna do anything or

Dan Austin: [31:06] take down any risk, like, there's some things that are not good ideas and you get too much of that on the internet, you know. There's a couple things, I've actually am in the process of writing down a text post I was gonna put on Instagram, but I haven't got my third one yet. But there's a couple things that annoy me and are a complete waste of time, and I think people get caught up in those because it goes to that no money down strategy or that no money Mhmm. You know, wealth strategy. One, credit card hacking. Yeah. So annoying. Like you see these people out there, they're like, dude, go get, you can get basically get yourself a million dollars on credit cards, yeah, you gotta walk around with a stack of credit cards, dude. Mhmm. That's like the stupidest thing ever, get the credit card points, I get it, that's cool, you can, it's a little benefit, all that sort of stuff, that's stupid. You know what else is stupid? Couch flipping.

Mike DeHaan: [31:53] That's very pointed, Yeah. That's funny.

Dan Austin: [31:56] It really is though. When I was thinking about the the reason why I started down this path the other day while I was thinking about this was this credit card guy, was like, that is so slimy, the stuff he was pitching. I was like, this is dumb. Don't waste your time trying to get 25 credit cards so you can get some points and like, go flip a house with credit cards, like that's like, you have way better use of your time to figure things out and skill. But then I was like, I've never, like, when I was in the military, I bought a couch on Craigslist. It was gross. So cigarettes, I bet you it had bedbugs, I have no idea. Basically bought it for $25 on Craigslist to put it in, the bar that we had was in our barracks. It was gross. And I can't imagine buying couches on Craigslist is any different for anybody. And so the amount of time you're gonna take to flip a couch to make like $50, go and like just watch YouTube on how to be a wholesaler. I don't it's just to me seems way better.

Mike DeHaan: [32:45] Yeah. Well I I think you're talking about, was actually Ryan Pineda did, that's what you're making a

Dan Austin: [32:48] But joke

Mike DeHaan: [32:50] I mean I think when, depending on the market you're in, there's probably some higher margins you can get, right? Like you're buying the couch from the estate sale for like $20, and you're selling it to somebody for like 300. But either way, that's still not a huge ROI.

Dan Austin: [33:03] Yeah. But how how much time does it take to do that? Driving around, moving these couches, and this I'm using couches as just an example because you're right, it's a well known example, but there's a lot of other, you know, flipping type stuff out there.

Mike DeHaan: [33:16] Really?

Dan Austin: [33:17] Learn how to do something that's a lot more high value, put your time and effort into that, and you're likely gonna waste a hell of a lot less time.

Mike DeHaan: [33:23] Yeah. Totally. I don't have

Dan Austin: [33:25] my third one yet. If somebody has a third one that I should put on there, I will just DM me at investor bandann.

Mike DeHaan: [33:30] Yeah. And I should do that. Yeah. And then you should go follow me as well, Mike and Skord and Best. I just had my first post across a million views that was a Oh, awesome post.

Dan Austin: [33:38] Welcome to the club.

Mike DeHaan: [33:39] Welcome to the club. Yeah. But but mine wasn't losing Lady Gaga. Mine was a completely original post that I thought.

Dan Austin: [33:44] But I'm at like 2,000,000 Like on that one,

Mike DeHaan: [33:46] on on the YouTube, I can't see it because I'll blur it.

Dan Austin: [33:50] No. That's legit. Ramon Ramon, him you have about it. Ramon wanted to do a one about the military. Was like, no, Ramon, it's overplayed. I don't wanna do it.

Mike DeHaan: [33:58] Yeah. It's fair. I mean it's overplayed. I mean it's like every second person that we have on this show is in the military in some way, which thank you for your service. It's just like the war's been over for a while. We left war four years You're fine.

Dan Austin: [34:09] Yeah. My my Lady Gaga post, hold on, for the listeners that care out there, so I can one up mic on one thing.

Mike DeHaan: [34:15] Oh, you must be at two and a half on that?

Dan Austin: [34:17] I don't know anymore. It is oh, dang. I'm still stuck at 1.9. I thought I was over two.

Mike DeHaan: [34:22] Oh, man. How many shares and comments do you have?

Dan Austin: [34:27] 7,300. I only got two shares.

Mike DeHaan: [34:30] Only got two shares? Yeah. So mine has a 21,000 shares.

Dan Austin: [34:34] That's incredible. Mike went viral. That's incredible.

Mike DeHaan: [34:37] What what's the definition of going viral? I was actually thinking about this earlier. I think so. This one, I posted like four days ago and it has over a million views and 21,000 shares.

Dan Austin: [34:46] But you had over a million views within like the first forty eight hours probably.

Mike DeHaan: [34:50] I can't cross today.

Dan Austin: [34:51] So I literally crossed it while

Mike DeHaan: [34:52] we were recording this show. So it's been four days.

Dan Austin: [34:54] Mike's been refreshed the whole he hasn't even been paying attention. He's just been refreshing his iPhone.

Mike DeHaan: [34:59] I have. I wanted it to happen on the show or recording. But I also can't help it because Rahman keeps sending me updates because he's so I know. Freaking

Dan Austin: [35:05] He's so proud

Mike DeHaan: [35:05] of it.

Dan Austin: [35:05] Rahman's our social media guy. He does a good job. Good job, Paul.

Mike DeHaan: [35:08] He does a good job. Yeah. So anyways, cool. Anything else you wanna say before we wrap the show here? Nope. I'm good.

Dan Austin: [35:15] Nope. I think more of

Mike DeHaan: [35:16] the story, you're probably not cut out to be an entrepreneur. Pussy. Pussy. Yeah. Right. So but if you think you might be, you should hit us up at collectingkeys.com/scale and we'll teach you how to make a you know, a couple million bucks with your real estate business. But if you're kind of on the fence or you're like that sounds like a lot of work, I don't know. It sounds like a little risky, then don't bother because you're gonna book a call with Nick and he doesn't wanna talk to you if it's not as serious. So either way, collectthekeys.com/scale. We got some heavy hitters over in that group right now. And you know, if you wanna take it seriously, we can get you there reading. Awesome. Alright, guys. Well, thanks for listening. We appreciate you all. Please share this podcast with anybody who is interested in a couple knuckleheads talking about real estate and different things once a week or three times a week, depending on how many shows you release, which is usually three, but this one we record on a weekly basis. But besides that, thanks for listening everybody, and we'll talk to you next week.

Dan Austin: [36:08] See you.