Picking the Right People: Building A Team To Win

Mike DeHaan: [0:02] On Air Brands. We got a virtual employee in Romania. These are doing our web development. Our copywriter is currently from Russia. She you know, she's was born there, speaks perfect English. She lives in Amsterdam now. You know, they're they're virtual employees. Right? We like, our media manager kind of handles a lot of our social media stuff. He's from India. You know, we got quite a few Filipinos. You had people in Central America. You know, you name it. You can find skilled people anywhere.

Speaker 2: [0:31] 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: [0:55] What's going on, guys? Welcome to episode 34 of the Collecting Keys Real Estate Investing Podcast.

Dan Austin: [1:01] 34. What are we

Mike DeHaan: [1:03] doing four. Older than me. Almost as old as you. You're funny. You are young. I mean, how what?

Dan Austin: [1:11] Five years

Mike DeHaan: [1:11] younger than

Dan Austin: [1:11] you? Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [1:12] 36? 31? I don't know. To be fair, you know, after your time in the war, you've also

Dan Austin: [1:19] I feel like I have a young I have a young personality from my mid thirties.

Mike DeHaan: [1:24] You do. You have a young personality, but you have

Dan Austin: [1:26] a taste of like that. So wise.

Mike DeHaan: [1:29] Yeah. So, yeah, we are in full growth mode right now. We've been spending the last couple days going through interviews and everything, trying to bring on more staff.

Dan Austin: [1:39] Hiring is such a like, it's a good thing, but it's also so such a slog.

Mike DeHaan: [1:44] It it is.

Dan Austin: [1:45] The right people and do all that sort of stuff and just the process of it.

Mike DeHaan: [1:48] Well and also to you, like, just interviewing people in general is such a bullshit process because we we've done this so many times now. And every time I'm, like, after, you know, after this thirty minute conversation, like, I don't know if I wanna work with this person or not, like, honestly. Like, I mean, I I guess you you can tell a hell no very quickly, but yeses are always super hard to know. Like, you're like, yeah. They're fine. But I've never interviewed anybody and been like, yes.

Dan Austin: [2:13] That is the person. That's the one. That's the one for our business. Because, I mean, especially for us, like, we're, you know, virtual company Mhmm. Which is good and and it has a lot of great it's a lot of positives, actually. First of all, we have a pretty wide candidate pool for our jobs. And Yeah. Because they can be anywhere. So we can pull out rock stars from any city, to be honest. But, you know, being virtual like that, you have to find that right person. A, that is a great communicator. Because when you're virtual and you're not in the office, you're kind of having to trust these people to do what you're telling them. But if they're not communicating back to you, it's really hard to do that. Plus, it's hard to build a relationship through a screen if they're not great at communicating. And then also, they have to be self starters. They have to be productive. And so for us, there's two things. For then they one, they need to be that person. But for us, we need to create that environment for them to be able to operate in and give them the right incentives as part of their employment package to be productive and be a self starter.

Mike DeHaan: [3:16] Yeah. And and it's shocking because definitely not for everyone. You know? I mean, that, like, so many people think that they want the remote workplace, but they think they want the remote workplace because in their mind, they're like, yeah. Because I have, like, more flexibility to fuck off and do whatever I want. Right. Which is true. But, you know, you need the kind of person that's gonna take that flexibility but also still be productive. Mhmm. You know? And this is what this is what I tell all of our staff. I'm like, I don't honestly don't really care what you do during the day. As long as you do what we need you to do and it's done well, and you are responsive. Mhmm. You know, like like I've said to our our sales guys, like, can be hitting a workout, you know, at 1PM. That's fine. But if the phone rings and it's the seller, you better answer the phone. You know, if I shoot you a message because I need something, you need to be available for that. You know, you don't get to, like, make the workday your time where you're off the grid.

Dan Austin: [4:05] Yes. Well, and if you want the ultimate freedom, which is what you and I are working for, that's why we started a business is we want the ultimate freedom. To have that ultimate freedom, sometimes you don't have freedom. Right? You need to be able to play well with others in the sense of, like, if if at 01:00 is the right time for you to work out, great. Every day at 01:00 may not be the best time for you to work out because you have productivity that needs to get done. And if you you can't see that, you're probably going to fail in this environment.

Mike DeHaan: [4:32] Yeah. You kinda have to be always on. And, you know, especially when you're working for a small business or you have a sales role, you kinda have to make that part of your identity where it's always there and you're not really, like, in work mode or not in work mode. And it's kind of the ugly truth of any sort of role like that that has a high income potential or has, a responsive nature like real estate where you are, you know, being responsive to sellers. Mhmm. I mean, we we we've been down this this whole rabbit hole where especially me, I I travel a lot. I go a lot of, you know, places with my wife. We like to, you know, go overseas, do everything. But I mean, I've been, like, you know, out mountain biking in Southern Utah and had to pull off to talk to a seller because they called me and I was like, I better take this. Otherwise, they're gonna call one of our competitors and we're gonna miss out on revenue. Yep. Right? Or, like, you know, I I was in Egypt last October and, you know, I had to spend about an hour every day, on my laptop answering emails and that sort of stuff while the people that we were hanging out with were, you know, partying, hanging out, laying by the pool, whatever. And that's just part of the trade off that you gotta do. Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [5:31] You know? And, like, when you some people, when you're hanging out with them and you're doing stuff like that, they kinda give you shit for it. But you're like, hey. I just paid for this vacation.

Dan Austin: [5:39] Absolutely. Yeah. And that's like, to your point, you gotta be able to keep it on. You you can't necessarily always turn it off, which for some people is a big turn off. And that's why Mhmm. Maybe they're not meant to be entrepreneurs or work, as a, I guess, a term I'd recently learned, intrapreneur. Right? Being self motivated, understanding how to work within a system and be creative. Because if if you're like, oh, I'm done for the day. I gotta turn it off and I you know, what whatever that looks like for you then then you're probably not gonna succeed in, like, this business arena, to be honest.

Mike DeHaan: [6:07] Yeah. And and I think a big thing to highlight is that's okay. Mhmm. You know? A lot of people, they will view if they're not that kind of person as, like, a failure. That's not true at all.

Dan Austin: [6:15] Nope.

Mike DeHaan: [6:15] You know, you can be successful in your own method. You just have to sort of find what that is. And then going back to hiring, when we're going like, when we're looking at salespeople, especially, I mean, working as a salesperson for our company, I mean, it's not like being a realtor in the way that you're a completely sort of, like, self driven individual. You know, you are your own boss. But it is similar to being a realtor in the way that, you know, you have to be responsive to the client's needs and you have to be able to act whenever you can. But, you know, similar to, like, a brokerage, we give them opportunities to make money. At But the same time, if they're not working, they're not making any money because everyone works only on commission. Yep. So, you know, it and they get a lot more shots at goal than realtors do, which, you know, I think is good and bad. Like, even, you know, recently, our our one of our sales guys went on vacation. And I know that while he's down there, he's been down in San Diego. It's been a stressor because he's checked in with me a couple times. Been like, hey. Are there any sellers I need to contact? Yeah. And, you know, I've been like, no. You know, I can take care of it for you while you're gone or, you know, you just happen to actually be in a pretty decent spot where you're tween drops. Right? So you're not getting a lot of leads coming in. But at the same time, he's down there on trying to choice trip, and it's in the back of his head.

Mike DeHaan: [7:27] Yeah. He knows that stuff might be coming in. And that's just, you

Dan Austin: [7:30] know but but he's also signs that are flying through his head.

Mike DeHaan: [7:32] Yeah. Right? But he also, you know, has a really high income potential because of that. So, you know, that hero sticks with you.

Dan Austin: [7:38] 100%. I think too, like, you know, we're in, like, a cool spot for hiring as well because we've hired many different ways. And we're like now hiring people that are probably better than us at certain things.

Mike DeHaan: [7:51] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [7:51] Well, we always kind of have in certain areas. But when you're first starting out and you're hiring for your business, you're just like, what can I offload? How can I hire? So a lot of people, they'll hire a virtual first. So you gotta do a lot of training and get them up to speed and then they kick butt for you. But now, like like one of our interviews yesterday, like that guy was way better than me at creative finance. Like he had, like, whole skill set is around creative financing. And yeah, you know, we can do creative financing sales pitches and we can coach our guys on creative finance. This guy went way more about it than me thinking on his feet. Could I figure it out? Absolutely. And then I was thinking, I don't want to figure it out at the detail this guy has it. Yeah. That's the guy that's going to do it for me.

Mike DeHaan: [8:29] Yeah. Yeah. You're you're completely right. I think that's kind of you reach a point in your business where you're creating enough revenue that you can afford to bring on people that are better than you. And getting to that point is definitely challenging, but I think that if you don't make that transition where you're willing to, you know, bring on people and accept that they are better than you and, you know, be willing to pay them appropriately for that Mhmm. That's kinda what gets people to being very successful is when you make those transitions. Like when I was at that, like, abundance event and Jeff Hoffman, who, you know, took Priceline public, he had his whole thing on hiring. That was his best thing was he was able to take so many businesses public over his career so quickly because he found basically a core team that he hired that went with him to business from business to business. You know? And and one of the most valuable things I think that he said was you do not find the best employees by posting job listings on, like, a general job listing website because the best employees aren't looking for jobs. It's

Dan Austin: [9:28] like They're well taken care of.

Mike DeHaan: [9:29] Yeah. Right? You know, you have to go find them. So he talks about how he found his HR partner that went took every business public with him. And he's like he's like, so I need to find an HR person. What do I do? He's like, he went to the National HR Awards in Orlando, which apparently was a company. You know, when he went there and he said he was the only person they said that, like, they had a name tag and it said, you know, your name and your role in your company. He was the only person there that had the role of CEO. And he said he spent the first three days walking around trying to meet people being like, who is gonna be my HR person? And then on the last day, they had the awards. And he's like, well, duh. I'm gonna, like, snake the lady that just won the award for the best HR best HR lady.

Dan Austin: [10:09] Yeah. Yeah. In the

Mike DeHaan: [10:10] whole country, you know, and he went and, you know, did a whole, like, headhunting sort of thing with her. Right? Like, he kinda gave the full pitch. I don't remember the details about how he got her on board. She came over and started working for him. And they went on to take, like, five or six businesses public together. You know? And he said that same with, like, when he brought on his his engineers. He's like he's like, I need to find the best engineers. He went to Silicon Valley. He found out where all the nerds hung out, and he went and talked to all the nerds and all the bars and said, who is the best coding the best coder that you know? And he said that, you know, there was, like, quite a few names that came up, but there was one guy that came up a bunch of times at various different locations. Like, oh, yeah. Do you know Eric? You know, Eric's the man. Like, he's the guy that's awesome. So he went and found that guy, recruited him, and they went and brought all these businesses built together. Right?

Dan Austin: [11:00] So I don't know, like, that you kinda had said once you're in a spot for revenue, that you can start hiring these people. I don't know that it's tied to revenue. I think it's it's really tied to kind of where you're at with your business, because you can go and hire the best person, right? You know, you don't necessarily have to have all the revenue to pay them. Yeah. Especially in this business, it's pretty commission heavy. Right? If it's a salaried employee, it feels like you're taking on the risk. But I think you can still go out, find the best people and bring them into your business to go to the next level. It's just what for us, where we're at in our business, we have the capacity to to fail fast on an employee, meaning we can take a risk and hire a little bit faster. And if they don't work out, we can pull back because our business is going to keep going. It's not like this person, the the next salesperson we hire is going to be our only salesperson. They are going to be here for an expansion. And so we can absorb, we have a little bit more capacity to absorb the failures within hiring. And so, again, we can hire a little bit faster and take that little bit of risk and as we search for that best person, that rock star.

Mike DeHaan: [12:07] Yeah. And I guess revenue maybe wasn't the right word. Like, you need to have the the visual potential to entice them. Right? Because I mean, because I just I mean, you know, our our revenue dipped pretty significantly because you had a lot of increase in costs over the last little bit.

Dan Austin: [12:26] But Net income has has reduced. Yeah. Our revenue is still good.

Mike DeHaan: [12:29] But Yeah. Sure. Our revenue is still good. Our net income has reduced a lot. But our growth potential is very apparent, and the upside there is huge. So that's really what you need to bring on any players. And I mean, that doesn't like like, you can show that, but I think what a lot of people become hesitant about and, I mean, it's it's always challenging when you're new. But a lot of people, if they have something they suck, say sales. You know, they go and they're like, hey. I need to find a salesperson. And so what they do and there's people in our market that do this, or they'll go on the post on Facebook group like, oh, hey. I'm doing 10 deals a month, and I need a salesperson. And then you talk to them. They're like, well, actually, I've done 10 deals in ten months, but I'm gonna lie about it. Yeah. And, you know, just, like, pretend that that's what I do. And then so, you know, you're trying to bring on people even though you don't actually have opportunity for them. You're hoping that they come in and create opportunity for you. Mhmm. When realistically, if you want good employees, you have to already have the opportunity there and then make it available for them to capture and benefit off of it, especially

Dan Austin: [13:24] 100%. And if you're hiring a good salesperson, they're gonna ask you those questions Right. In that interview. They're gonna have good questions about comp structure and how many deals and what the expected, deal close rate is for your company and all that sort of stuff because they're good at it. They know, and they're not gonna take a risk on something that if that they don't know, especially if you're hiring them out of a great job.

Mike DeHaan: [13:45] Yeah. You're completely right. But yeah. And then, you know, for finding these people it's funny. I just made that joke about posting in the Facebook group about embellishing the numbers. But where we've actually found most of our people is in social media channels or from direct referrals rather than on job posting. I mean, we've done the job posting route a bunch of times. And most of the inquiries we get are just crap. Like they're not good at all. And then the job boards are always like, yeah, and that'll be $500 now for your job posting, please. Right. So, but going directly to where the kind of people that you wanna hire hang out is the best way to find employees because they're going to already have general knowledge. They're gonna have general interest. And if you can present them an opportunity to grow that interest, right, or that opportunity that they're seeking, you know, that that would be the best way to do it. And everyone always says I was actually texting with, one of our, mastermind friends in one of our groups that we're in this morning about that. And she was asking about hiring, and she I was like, you know, we find a lot people in these groups, whatever. She's like, don't you worry about them learning a bunch from you and then going on to do their own thing. I'm like, if they wanna do that, that's fine. That's how, like, every business starts. Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [14:56] You know? And you're

Dan Austin: [14:57] have confidence that you can still operate. Because, I mean, look at all your competitors doing the same thing you're doing.

Mike DeHaan: [15:02] Right?

Dan Austin: [15:02] Somehow you're still operating a business. Throw one more competitor in

Mike DeHaan: [15:05] there. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, you have to be confident in your systems and have enough of an abundance mindset. If people wanna go do that, that's fine. There will people that come and do that. But, you know, if you give them opportunity and you treat them fairly and, you know, you're not trying to shortchange them for doing a huge amount of work, like, they'll be able to, they'll stick around with you for the long haul. Yeah. And it's all about the opportunity that you give, like, the big picture. And, like, in the real estate business, that's giving people the opportunity to invest, which is why most of them are interested in it. Whereas it's amazing to me how many of our competitors don't give their employees the opportunity to invest. Or they give them terrible opportunities. Right? Because they're focused on

Dan Austin: [15:43] the bottom line when it's like, hey. If you wanna be able to provide a really lucrative comp package, that opportunity is huge to people. It's life changing. Yeah. To be able to flip houses, to be able to buy houses at a discount for themselves, for their family, for their portfolio

Mike DeHaan: [15:56] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [15:56] Which is so uncommon for companies to do, which is funny to me.

Mike DeHaan: [16:00] But it's crazy. I mean, yeah, you our our, dispo guy, Judd, was talking to one of our rival's dispo guys because the rival's employee reached out to him looking for a deal. And he was like, why don't you just buy one of those ones that you sent out, like, know, an hour ago? And he's like, oh, my boss won't let me buy them from the company. I have to buy them from somewhere else. It's like, come on.

Dan Austin: [16:23] Like, wait. I know.

Mike DeHaan: [16:25] He's been he's been loyal to you for a while. Like, I get get get If

Dan Austin: [16:28] the that's employee desires. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [16:30] Right.

Dan Austin: [16:31] Yeah. Employee wants to buy deals and grow their own wealth and they're loyal to you, you have to be loyal back to these people. They're not just people you can throw away. And if that's how you treat them, then you're probably never gonna have a great high performing team. Correct.

Mike DeHaan: [16:44] Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's a funny broke mindset with that sort of stuff.

Dan Austin: [16:48] Yeah. Even with our virtuals, like, they're on our team, man. They're part of our family. Yeah. Like, a lot of people treat virtuals as throwaways, which is, I think, a terrible way to do because they're human beings. They kick butt at what they do. Like, they are awesome people. And and, yeah, you're gonna burn through some virtuals because they don't have the skill set you need, and that's okay. But when you find the one that works for you, take care of them. I mean, they're awesome people.

Mike DeHaan: [17:09] I know. And, yeah, you're you're completely right about that. That's a whole other conversation. We could do a whole episode just on virtual assistants because that's one of those things that I always think is funny is people, they hire virtual assistants like they're trying to hire an employee from McDonald's. They're like, want them to have the bare minimum skill set I need. I wanna pay them nothing, and I wanna know what they're doing all the time. So I'm not paying them for hours that they're not working. And here's here's how I've always approached virtuals is you hire them to do a task that fits in your budget. If they do your you know, and that that budget is usually small. Right? It's like $5 an hour, you know, $800 a month. If they are doing that task and it's taking them half the time, who cares? Yep. Right? Like like, it fits into it's doing what you need to do. And realistically, it's costing you so much less if you hire an American person to do it.

Dan Austin: [17:54] Right. And they'll be loyal to you. Mean, we we've had some great virtuals with us for a while. And here we should do an episode of this because one thing too, that I think you're pretty skilled at, Mike, is hiring them. A lot of people just choose to go with the service. Mhmm. And it's the easy button, and you're relying on somebody else to train them to do your your job, and you're and you're paying probably almost double what you could pay yourself when you can literally just go out and do it. Like, it's not that hard to find a a solid virtual assistant to do whatever. When we say virtual assistant, I mean, we have people that are virtual assistants, but they're actually that's not their title in their company. They do a lot more than that, you know, than what you think.

Mike DeHaan: [18:28] Yeah. And and it's not always, like, just East Asian people too, either that are super low skill. I mean, we got a virtual employee in Romania. These are doing our web development. Our copywriter is currently from Russia. She you know, she's was born there, speaks perfect English. She lives in, Amsterdam now. You know, they're they're virtual employees. Right? We like, our media manager kind of handles a lot of our social media stuff. He's from India. You know, we got quite a few Filipinos. You had people in Central America. You know, you name it. You can find skilled people anywhere. Like you said, they're they're loyal. They work hard. I mean, like, one of one of our Filipinos, RV, has been with us for two years now. Yes. His, like, whole village was destroyed by, like, a typhoon. You know? Horrible thing happened. And he messaged me, like, two days later. Well, first off, when it was happening, he's like I was like, I'm on the roof right now. Like, I'm so scared. And I was like, Jesus Christ. Dude. Like, dude, like, let me know if you make it out. Two days later, he messaged us. He's like, hey. We made it. I'm on my cousin's laptop and an iPad, so I can't do all my normal work flow. It's like, but I'm I'm gonna get the work done today. I'm like, bro. Like, I've really appreciated that, but your your home was just, like, destroyed.

Mike DeHaan: [19:37] Like, you know, don't don't worry about it. So, yeah, we should we should do we should do a whole episode, because that is what I get asked about a lot is how we our virtual assistants. And I guess the really quick answer to that is I treat them like every other employee. I expect them to have a skill set. And, you know, I I do I've always been a trial by fire sort of person anyway. So they come in, they don't do the job, then I get rid of them. That simple. Yep. So cool. Anyway, kinda left hand turn. I'm gonna go into our educational topic, which is something that has been coming up a lot in the instant investor program and also just from, random like, people in general have been asking me this. But how exactly we go about finding buyers for the properties that we're looking to wholesale? And, Dan, you've kinda taken over the dispo side of our company, so let you run with it a little bit. But Right. A few thoughts on that really quick after we have our instant investor promo here. And, yeah, I'll be right back. The instant investor program is our twelve week group coaching program, which includes a self driven course and access to our private investor community. We will take you through the full process of how we find our leads, how we market, how we do our sales and follow-up, and how we determine the best strategy for every opportunity that comes our way. On top of that, you will also join a community of other like minded investors nationwide that are all marching towards the same goals, and you'll have direct access to Dan and myself so you can continue learning and growing with us as we continue to adapt and grow our business. So whether you're a new investor or already established, our systems can help take you to the next level.

Mike DeHaan: [21:06] So if you think you might be a good fit, go to the instantinvestorprogram.com and schedule a call, and we can have you talking to motivated leads in as little as two weeks. Alright. Well, welcome back, guys. So disbeling a property or, yes, selling a property to an end buyer that you were trying to wholesale. That is a big question that it's funny. It always seems to be a major concern with people that are getting started. Like, they're where they're not gonna be able to find anybody. And it is definitely you know, I like, a lot of the people will say, like, if you

Dan Austin: [21:38] have a good deal, you'll

Mike DeHaan: [21:38] find somebody no matter what. And that's not necessarily true. Maybe it is in some markets, in our market anyway, our buyers are kinda,

Dan Austin: [21:46] you know, finnicky finnicky. Well, if you get if you get anything oddball Yeah. People don't like it. Yeah. They always joke they want the three bed, two bath carpet paint flip. Me too. That's why I just did one.

Mike DeHaan: [21:59] Exactly. And then, like, the a b class neighborhood. And I think that that, you know, that whole belief is part of the the boomer investor wholesaler mindset. And by boomer, I mean that they were doing it in 2015 when they were up to the abundant. Now Everybody's a boomer to you. Jeez. Yeah. Every everyone's a boomer to me. I'm a millennial. So but, yeah, I mean, like like, these days, especially because most of the deals that you're gonna find are gonna be unique in some way or another, especially because the market's been so hot. Anything that isn't unique, they can just list it on the market and sell it as a piece of crap property and someone will buy it. So when it comes to finding a buyer, Dan, this has kind of been your jam for the last little bit. What would you say are, like, the main steps that people should take?

Dan Austin: [22:40] Yeah. I mean, the like, the first going into it, looking at where you gotta look at it where are okay. Where do you find cash buyers?

Mike DeHaan: [22:47] Like, where where are you gonna go? I would

Dan Austin: [22:49] say the easiest, quickest way, not necessarily the tried and true method, but the easiest, quickest way is you're gonna go hit up Facebook groups. I mean, that's where people go. And you can go and post in there and say, hey. I'm looking for cash buyers. You know, you see those all the time.

Mike DeHaan: [23:01] Well, I would say that's not the way to do it is to go and say, like, hey. I'm new to wholesaling and building my buyers list. Right. Because that looks super scammy. Like, we'll have that guys people do that in the Spokane group all the time, and everyone's always like, are you actually doing that? Are you just, like, checking the box because you don't have any deals?

Dan Austin: [23:16] Right. That's the step from my coaching program to go do and all this sort of stuff or or whatever. No. What what my point there is is you definitely need to join the local market you're in. Join their investor. They're usually be, like, an off market real estate group or something to that effect, investor group or whatever. And go in there and find emails. Also, go in there and find people that are posting deal, actual deals, because they could be a buyer too. Yep. And try to strip out their emails. But don't just you can't just stop there. So say that's all you did, and say you gathered a 100 emails from that Facebook group. Now what you need to do is do some research on those people, see how many deals that they're closing, you know, go and talk to other people that are local investors and see who's the big dogs, and then make connections with those people. Mhmm. Whether it's a virtual connection, a phone call, or an in person connection, buy them lunch, buy them coffee, and connect with them so they know you're real human and they trust you. It's just like anything else because it's a dispositions is also a a sales process. It is. And I don't wanna buy a deal from somebody I don't know that that is maybe a questionable deal that they're maybe leaving out some information.

Mike DeHaan: [24:20] Mhmm. Yeah. You're you're completely right. And that and that's a super valid point. It is a sales process, and you need to be able to present that information to your customer just like you would wanna be receiving if you were the end buyer of any product. Yep. You know, that means you have to have good photos that you can get. You have to, you know, we actually have a checklist that we give our guys to go and and, you know, go through and make sure they get photos and notes of everything. Speaking of which, I have this idea. If you guys want that checklist, if you go to clickandcheesepodcast.com/checklist, you can now download that for free. By the time this episode comes out, I'll have that live. And you can get our walk through checklist that, we give to all of our acquisitions people in all of our markets so that we know that they're gonna be taking appropriate pictures for when we try to dispose property.

Dan Austin: [25:06] Absolutely. And that's the information other quality buyers are going to want. They're gonna ask that for you. And if you can't provide that information or it's tough, they're gonna probably lose interest because they have other deals coming their way too. You want your deal to be the best deal. The next thing I would say, along those same lines, again, this is to Mike to use Mike's words, of a boomer method because Ria groups, real estate investment clubs, and associations seem to be really falling off the map lately. Some markets you and I are in definitely have strong presence. But what I will say is just like anything else, going to those and chatting up, like, who's the big dog in town? Like, who are that big dog may not be there. They may have an employee there. But who are the people that are who are the big buyers? Sure. You can go and get emails from everybody there that says they're a buyer. But definitely, most importantly, I think just asking around and finding the name that you hear pop up the most. Chatting people up.

Mike DeHaan: [26:01] Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, you you have to ask that though from people who are actually doing business themselves. Because I mean, we know this firsthand. Like, if if you go and ask anyone here locally who the big names in real estate are, there's several names that I know would be mentioned that I don't don't do shit for deals.

Dan Austin: [26:14] Right. Because great at networking.

Mike DeHaan: [26:16] They're great at networking. Right? Because that that's with the growth of the financial freedom and real estate investing movement. I mean, real estate investment, groups have become social clubs, which is fine. People need that. You know, people need their their evening away from their kids where they can go and, like, talk about all the life changes they're gonna make that they started trying to make five years ago and have yet to take their steps on.

Dan Austin: [26:37] Absolutely. But

Mike DeHaan: [26:39] yeah. I mean, that that I mean, either way, not, like, completely shitting on those. It is a decent place to start, but you have to sort of, you know, really vet people and get their basic, you know, experience level to know. Absolutely. Yeah. And, again, two years ago, that

Dan Austin: [26:55] would have been a really great maybe three years ago would have been a great place because they they just seem to be more alive and well. But now after COVID, they're just not as valuable. Another method too, think, is honestly reaching out to some of your competitors. Mhmm. I like to Google who the wholesalers in town. I don't look for the the the we buy houses franchise people necessarily unless they have, like, a local presence. And so if you go to Google and you look at Google Maps, like, where are their addresses at? And it may just be a PO box or, like, a UPS box. That's fine. But it's local, which means that they are in that market and looking at that and and reaching out to them. Because those people may have a pretty good presence if they're actually doing all their due diligence. And you can go and see us at Carrot website versus, like, their own website. The people I believe with their own websites probably a little bit more skilled. Definitely. But that's not necessarily, like, a given. But that's another way to just easily go out there from your desk and find people. Another little hack kind of in that same thing that I'm starting to do, which I don't necessarily support or promote InvestorLift as a way to find or sell your deals, but go on there and see who's got all the deals listed.

Mike DeHaan: [28:04] And and so what what so what is that, Dan? I've never heard

Dan Austin: [28:06] of that before. Yeah. So InvestorLift is it's it's a it's a service. It's basically like an off market MLS. And this company going you as a wholesaler can pay them money. It's quite a bit of money, actually. Like $6 a year. It's like $6 a year upfront. So you can't pay as you go kind of thing. You can't test it and trial run it. But essentially you can go there and post a deal. And it's got a cool little, you know, map on there. It's just kind of like Zillow or the MLS, and you can see photos and all that sort of stuff. But they always have the agent who's selling it and their phone number. Mhmm. It's done right there for you. So go in there, and and if your market is heavy, especially with the with investor lift presence, go in there and find the persons the the people or the person that has, like, all the deals. This I don't know that this is going to be a really great way yet, but this is what we're starting to do, and start talking to them. Because if they have 10 contracts for sale, you know, maybe they're all crappy contracts, and that's why they're on investor but they're doing something they're out there. And so a, they might be a buyer. B, they're a good person to network with as far as building your cash buyers list. Cause it's about those relationships where you start talking to them. It may not be the first cup of coffee you have. And that's the thing you got to remember when you're networking with people, You can't meet with them one time for thirty minutes and be like, yep, that's my person. We're best buds.

Dan Austin: [29:22] And I'm always, it's gonna bring a ton of value because that first, that first interaction isn't the part that brings you the value. It's the four or five down the road where you've built that rapport with them and they're sharing with you, oh, yeah. I just sold this deal to so and so. And now you're like, okay. I know who that person is. Let's let's add them to our list.

Mike DeHaan: [29:36] Yeah. And and a quick note on InvestorLift or anything like that. There are these, like, third party services. Be extremely cautious building your business around that. Just like be extremely cautious building your business around a cold calling center or a, you know, VA provider. Anything that, like, isn't in your control, but you're outsourcing to a third party service like that. Cause a) you're gonna pay a premium for it. And b) if that service goes belly up, your entire business is gonna be screwed. So I think that, you know, you can use those as kind of like a bridge while you build out your own system. But ultimately, you should not rely purely on investor lift. And, you know, forgo building your own buyers or making your own buyers connections. Because that's the other thing too with investor lift, or like something like that. I'm guessing they don't prescreen their buyers. So you could have some really janky stuff going on when you're posting deals on there. Whereas, like, if you have the direct connection with the buyer, you know, they're not gonna screw you over. They're not gonna do anything snaky. Or if they do, you can put them on blast for the whole community and just completely wreck their reputation. And b, you can make sure that they're actually capable and going to close on the property. Property. Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [30:41] Because, I mean, we've been down this rabbit hole before where we've gone with people that we didn't know very well, and then they back out, like, right before closing.

Dan Austin: [30:50] Right. Absolutely.

Mike DeHaan: [30:51] Like like, we we had a deal. One of our first deals that we did, I guess, one of our first deals during our first year, we had a sell not a seller. We had a buyer back out the night before the property was supposed to close. The seller had already moved out of the home and put down money on an apartment complex he was moving into. And the buyer called at, like, five PMs, like, yeah, I'm not closing.

Dan Austin: [31:10] Yeah. And so we're doing not business with those type of people.

Mike DeHaan: [31:13] We can't. Yeah. We had we had to go the next day and get a, like, three hour hard money loan

Dan Austin: [31:18] to close

Mike DeHaan: [31:19] on this thing. Yeah. Because I'm because I wasn't gonna put poor Jim, the seller. Super nice old guy. Old man gonna say, like, sorry, bro. You're now screwed.

Dan Austin: [31:27] Yep. And so the just the last point on investor lift. Now I'm not advocating signing up for the service. I'm advocating going and finding the people that have the most deals, and then they will also show you sold deals. Mhmm. Go go look at those sold deals. Go to the county assessor website. And if it's a disclosure state, go see who that buyer was.

Mike DeHaan: [31:42] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [31:43] So which leads me to kind of my final my final point of another way to get them. You know, everybody talks about go find cash buyers in your market. It's easy to do. Go into prop stream, pull cash buyers, recent cash buyers, and then you can also set some filters on there. One one might be like a cash buyer that has multiple properties Mhmm. Which I like to do. And then you can pull down that list of people, skip trace them, and and start contacting and networking with those cash buyers and cash buyers agents, because if they're buying them off the MLS, that's that's a great buyer too. But what I'll say that's even more of a kind of a ninja hack is if you're getting like kind of unique properties, go and do a filter for cash buyers on those unique properties. If you're getting a ton of trailers, go and find trailer cash buyers that and and look at somebody and find somebody that's bought three or four this last year, because that's probably going to be your buyer and they're probably going to be open to that. If it's something else that's a little bit more niche than trailers, go and filter for that specific property for a cash buyer. And then now you have all these venues to bring in these people. A lot of that's gonna be fluff and your is not gonna be as useful to you as the top five people you'll end up selling all your deals to, but you have to start with that large funnel just like you would do with your marketing system. You start with a large funnel, you filter it down until you get to the deals you're going to buy. It's the same thing with your cash buyers list.

Mike DeHaan: [33:04] Yeah. Yeah. And I guess just to add on to that too. A lot of people, they wanna get these, like, huge lists where they send out these emails and have these people bid up and all that sort of stuff. Especially when you're starting out, I don't think that's really a good usage of your time because when you go and you blast out an email to, like, a thousand people, you're gonna get a bunch of people that inquire and ask a bunch of questions, take a bunch of your time that aren't actually serious about buying. You know, they want to walk the property, they want to do all this sort of stuff. And it's gonna eat up a huge amount of the time that you should honestly be using to market and find more opportunities for your next deal. Otherwise, it's gonna happen. You're gonna waste all this time, you're gonna sell it, you might make another 5 or $7,000 more, which is great. But now you're that much farther from your next deal. When really when you're starting out, you got to find, you know, your key buyers to make it super easy, you can offload it to them, know it's gonna close. And then over that, the whole period of escrow, you can go and find your next one. So that way this that one closes, you already have the next one lined up. And you're making money on a consistent basis. And that's a trap that so many people fall into in every mastermind group we've been into.

Mike DeHaan: [34:11] Like, when we went down to Florida last year, that was, like, the biggest thing that half the people said was their struggle was they get a deal, and then they spend all their time managing the deal. And then there's, like, another thirty day delay before they get their next one. So they never have any money.

Dan Austin: [34:23] Absolutely. Right. Yep. It runs an issue. And which brings me to kind of my final point here, maybe to close this out, is the reason why I'm pushing so hard to look for your competitors, your, you know, in quotations competitors, those other wholesalers, those other people selling deals, those other people in the Facebook groups, is because you can JV with them. Especially if you're starting out, find that person that does the deals that has a lot of wholesale deals because they are no they know how to move those deals. So do a JV with them for the first handful. And guess what? You can go back and track who the buyer was, and then you can go directly to that buyer. And now you have a connection with that buyer, and you know they're a good buyer because that other wholesaler has been using them as a buyer. And so now you're bringing that person deals too. And now you have that that core five, core seven people that that you can do. Yeah. Sure. You gave up half your profit on the first few deals. That's okay. You you just saved yourself so much time finding those awesome go to buyers. Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [35:18] And you got your foot in the door, right, with learning the process with somebody that has done it before. And that that is another thing that's challenging when you're starting is, you know, every cent seems like it's precious. And so you don't really wanna give up any of your deals, any any portion of your deal. But, you know, in reality, if you're approaching this the right way with a long term mindset, you're gonna give up a little bit on the on the first few to go and have the ability to make significantly more money and have a much better Mhmm. Reputation over the long run. Like, that's worth the $10.15, $20,000 that you give up combining handful of of early ones. You know? And, that sounds like a lot when you're first starting, but once you get going, you're like, I don't know. It's a price of an education, which really isn't that Yep.

Dan Austin: [36:01] Yeah. We're always happy. You and I, personally, we've JV'd with other wholesalers. We still JV with other wholesalers. Yep. And we we're happy to JV with other new investors because we understand it helps them out. And, of course, it helps us out because we don't have to do a lot of work because we already have some core buyers. And so it's a great flow for everybody to be able to do that.

Mike DeHaan: [36:19] Yeah. And then well, then if you build a relationship with those key buyers too, I mean, there's JV potential even, like, on deals you're competing on. So we're actually doing one right now with one of our main competitors. They had been negotiating with this guy forever and couldn't get him locked down. And he was kind the seller was kinda sick with sick of them. Right? Just because they'd been, you know, beating on his door for so long. Sent us the contact info and said, hey, why don't you guys give it a swing? We treat it as a cold call. We went in with a fresh, you know, personality, got the thing locked up, and now they're desk winning the contract, and we're gonna split the fee $50.50. And, know, realistically, I mean, on this deal, they just made us like 30 some thousand dollars.

Dan Austin: [36:56] Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Because they trusted us and they came to us with this and we kind of strategized the plan.

Mike DeHaan: [37:02] Yeah. Exactly. You know, we're gonna explain, like, a 60 something thousand dollar fee with them. And we made $30 just because of a relationship that we established years ago. Yep. So important. So important. So Yep. Perfect. I think that was a good breakdown. Anything else you wanna add on that before I send it out?

Dan Austin: [37:18] No. I think that's good. Cool. Give us our call to actions, Mikey. Yeah. Call to actions. Well, the

Mike DeHaan: [37:24] call to action on that, I would say, you know, big thing is don't be afraid to get involved in your local community with other investors. And don't be afraid to collaborate with people. Like, generally, the investor community is quite small, even nationwide, and you'd be surprised at how many people are willing to work out and help you out with stuff. So cool. Well, if you want to follow us on social media, you can follow me Mike underscore Invest. You can follow Dan at Investor Man Dan. If you wanna learn from us and how our business works and join our mastermind group, I guess, say mastermind, think a group coaching program.

Dan Austin: [37:58] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [37:58] You can go to instantinvestorprogram.com. It's a DIY video course with a online community and weekly, I guess, Zoom calls with us where we go over, I mean, all sorts of topics. Like like yesterday, we focused a lot on helping some people figure out negotiations. We work on helping some people figure out marketing strategies and dispo strategy. You cover it. We named them the call yesterday. So instantmasterprogram.com, schedule a call to see if you'd a good fit for that. And then go to collectingkeyspodcast.com, and you can get our five step guide to start generating off market leads yourself if that's your thing. Yeah. And then I guess for this one, which I came up with on the spot, which I'll have live by the time this comes out, collectingkeyspodcast.com/checklist. And you can get that walk through checklist, which will help make your dispositions that much easier. It should be providing a better, I guess, a better customer experience for your end buyer. So Love it. Enough of mouthful, I gotta start, like, weeding those out or something. We have too many things.

Dan Austin: [38:57] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [38:58] Alright. Well Cool. Send us off, Dan.

Dan Austin: [39:01] Yeah. As always, investor man Dan signing out. One thing I did want to bring to the table is, you know, if you can't tell there's certain things that are hot button items for Mike, go out on Instagram. And if you see something you know will piss him off, tag him in it. Do it. Just to get him fired up. I love seeing Mike get fired up, so I'd love to see it. And it and it

Mike DeHaan: [39:19] doesn't it's not super hard. I get fired up. He's passionate. I I am I am a passionate person when it comes to certain things, but I'm also quick to forgive your stupidity if you wanna argue with me about something. So it's okay. I'll disagree with you, and we can still be friends. Nice. Alright. See you guys next week. Alright. Then no send off? That was my send off. Oh, you're supposed to have

Dan Austin: [39:39] a copy. No.

Mike DeHaan: [39:40] Oh. Oh, that wasn't oh, that was

Dan Austin: [39:42] a good one. I did you just say that was a good one. That was too good. It's not a send off. Alright. Send off. Alright.

Mike DeHaan: [39:49] Well, anyway, see you guys next week. See y'all.

Speaker 2: [39:51] 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.