Regular Rich: Why $2M Liquid Beats $20M in Rentals

Mike DeHaan: [0:01] The kinda tricky thing that you'll find find out if you do do, like, most of you do have, like, larger costs start to accrue, particularly when you start to have, like, database structure that has, like, a lot of data or you're starting to like have more users and things like that, it will start to accumulate on the, the prompts and stuff that it charges you for. There's ways that you can set it up where like it will cache previous prompts for a certain period of time, so he doesn't basically charge you multiple times. Like if you don't set that up correctly, you can see why like some of these companies are like, oh shit, I just spent 50 k on freaking AI this month. Especially because when you are in like the Claude settings, like the Anthropic, like main website, where it starts you at as like the cutoff, like the safety cutoff for your account is at 200 k for the month. My god. Jesus. That's where it starts you.

Dan Austin: [0:50] Could you imagine if that happened to us? Like we like let the Filipinos just run rampant and it was 200 k. We'd be like, oh my god.

Mike DeHaan: [0:56] But you have to watch it. Because I honestly, there was one day shortly after we brought everyone onto the platform. And I didn't realize that our doc review wasn't caching anything. So basically it was doing like a fresh, you know, prompt every single time. And so all of a sudden between like their kickoff meeting at 08:30 in the morning and 09:30, we'd spent like $350. And I was like, that needs to stop right away.

Dylan Koch: [1:20] Was that just you noticing? Or did it give you like, hey, you're spending That

Mike DeHaan: [1:23] was me noticing.

Dylan Koch: [1:24] Okay.

Mike DeHaan: [1:24] I was getting emails because I have it. So we only have $50 in the account at a time. So every time recharge, I get an email. And I was literally, like, every, like, ten minutes, it was like, ping, ping, ping, ping. I was like, okay. Okay. That needs to stop. So I actually just should have disabled it for, like, fifteen minutes while I figured it out. And then I figured out how to actually, like, fix it, so it didn't do that. And now I don't think we've had a single day that's been more than, like, a $100 maybe. But it was like over like the course of like a couple hours, it got out of hand really quick. But anyways, you guys don't listen. You're on your phone. Let's fucking start the show. I'm not listening.

Dan Austin: [1:53] I'm not listening. I'm fucking filling out loan docs. Dylan, I am listening. It sounds like me and my wife's talking to me. You're not listening. I am listening.

Dylan Koch: [2:06] What did I just say?

Dan Austin: [2:07] This is I didn't know we were recording, dude.

Mike DeHaan: [2:09] Sorry. Yeah. What's going on, guys? We've collecting keys. Mike DeHaan here with Dan Austin and Dylan Cook.

Dan Austin: [2:15] What's your name again?

Dylan Koch: [2:16] What? Who?

Mike DeHaan: [2:18] Who? What? Are you not listening? I know. You're too busy over there. We all got sick employees out trying to play catch up, whatever.

Dan Austin: [2:24] The disease is here, man. It's what what month is it? It's October 1. I'm telling you. In America is sick.

Mike DeHaan: [2:30] I mean, everyone in America already is kind of sick. That like the whole thing? It's all our food. It's in the vaccines. It's in the plastics. There's a whole, like, culture of people that like to obsess over that and like to think that if they move to a third world country where their quality of life increases significantly with very little income, that the culture in that environment is why they're healthier. But really, don't understand that their $3,000 a month fixed income just gets them into a much nicer area than it does in The

Dan Austin: [2:57] United States. They just

Mike DeHaan: [2:58] pretend like that isn't the difference.

Dan Austin: [2:59] You just gotta spend a lot more money on water filtration systems.

Mike DeHaan: [3:02] Nah, dude. Once you... Like, you're like in Thailand, once you get diarrhea, you're good. Just kinda becomes part of you.

Dan Austin: [3:07] Get it. It just just goes through you all the time. You're like, why do I drink water and it just goes through me? And I feel like shit all the time.

Mike DeHaan: [3:14] It's just like everything else. I will say when I went to Southeast Asia a couple years ago, that is like the weirdest sickness I've ever had because I was not sick at all. Like, I was in Laos, and we went out dinner. And all of sudden, I was like, I might shit my pants right now.

Dan Austin: [3:30] That's an idiot.

Mike DeHaan: [3:31] Yeah, dude. And and and I, like, I was at this bar, and I was like, I gotta go back to the hotel. So I went back, and sure enough, it's like like that. And that stuck around for probably five days Oh. Where, like, I I felt totally fine. Energy levels were good. I was sleeping good. But at any moment, I would be like, I need a bathroom. I need a bathroom now. Yeah. Immediately. And the great thing about countries like Laos and Cambodia are the immediate bathroom options are always less than ideal. Oh, yeah. It just sucked. Like, it was not a fun experience.

Dan Austin: [4:02] Do they have, like, public bathrooms where you have to pay in Laos? Sometimes. Or you know what I mean? Like... Because that's not... It's not uncommon in like other countries that have public bathrooms you pay for. But like when I think it was... Oh yeah. It was, it was Thailand because you know the water market? Did you go to the water market? Yeah. They had like a public bathroom and you had to like pay. And so I went into it and I was like, ah, this is obviously less than ideal as well. But I wouldn't pee in the urinal and I walk out and I hear like running water and I look around and the urinals were literally just going out the back and then floating into the water market. That you're in the boat that you're floating on, it's so gross.

Mike DeHaan: [4:38] Yeah, dude. Totally. Yeah. So so Las is such more of a thorough country. Like it's one of the poorest countries in the world. And like infrastructure in general just kind of sucks. And so like some of the places we'd go, it's like the bathroom. I mean, like a hole in the ground is like generous. You know? Like there's there's nothing, dude. It's crazy. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [4:57] That is where I think the definition of third world country comes in. They actually have like a map of Laos next to it in the Webster's dictionary.

Mike DeHaan: [5:03] They probably do, dude. Like, it's it's really,

Dan Austin: [5:05] really Yeah. Because, like, at least in my my recent experience with, like, Southeast Asia, a lot of those are more developing, and they they have, like, a large disparity of, like, the haves and haves nots, but the haves have a lot.

Mike DeHaan: [5:17] Oh, yeah, dude. They're doing

Dan Austin: [5:19] a hike in those countries.

Mike DeHaan: [5:20] Especially in Thailand. A lot of those cities are super modern. Mhmm. You know? Or even like big parts of Vietnam too. Like, think they kind of lack a middle class, which is gonna be probably the definition of of the second world, those developing countries. Right? Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [5:32] Yeah. I feel like a middle middle class is once you've made it.

Mike DeHaan: [5:34] Yeah. Right. Honestly. Yeah. Yeah. For them, like a middle class is is living on the high horse pretty good. So anyways, thanks for, checking out the episode last year, buddy. We got some good feedback on that. A lot of people appreciated us bringing AJ on. It's funny. I had one of our friends actually reach out, and he goes, oh, did that really suck having to, like, admit that you were wrong? And no. It didn't, actually.

Dan Austin: [5:55] First of all, I did not admit that I was wrong, because I did not assume that I was. Just Right.

Mike DeHaan: [5:59] The guy who

Dan Austin: [5:59] wrote the article was wrong.

Mike DeHaan: [6:01] Yeah. Exactly. And and well, also too, I don't think any of us have any qualms with admitting when something like that isn't factful. Yeah. Here's the thing that a lot of people don't realize. We get a lot of pushback on several of the reels and episodes and stuff that we've had that go big with... Or Pat McGrath or Brandon Turner. And people think that we are we are hating for views. I'm not gonna speak for you guys....

Dan Austin: [6:24] Doing anything for views at this point.

Mike DeHaan: [6:25] Oh, yeah. I'll speak for Danny a little bit, Dylan. I I won't put words in your mouth. But, like, for me personally, I'm a hater for the love of the game. Like, I really don't give a shit about views. Mike's always been

Dan Austin: [6:35] a hater. In fact, that's how we bonded in college.

Mike DeHaan: [6:37] Seriously, I've been a hater my whole life. And my general philosophy is all these people, they all breathe, they all bleed, they all piss just like everybody else. Right? There's nothing special. They have a platform. People put them on a pedestal. And if you use that pedestal to do bad things, everyone should be notified about that. Because I know that you're using that position of power to raise money and do other things. And as being like a principles guy, I just feel like you need to call out those sort of situations.

Dylan Koch: [7:03] A good example of that, Mike, is even... It doesn't matter the crowd you're talking to, because you posted something in the GoBundance, like, you know, own Facebook page. That started a riot. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [7:16] I'm a principal guy. Like, do you know how unbelievably easy it is to not defraud people and not have a Ponzi scheme? Dana and I, we have a fund. We could steal people's money. It is a choice that people make to do that. And it is so easy to not make that choice.

Dan Austin: [7:30] I just wanna like highlight because I I finally got caught up and read that post that you made. I was like, first of all, people, it doesn't matter what the SEC document said. People can raise their hand in this small group of people and say, that guy stole my money. Like, we could talk to people face to face, but he stole my money. So, you know, you could be all butthurt about it. But people will, get weird about, you know, putting people on a pedestal or being righteous for no reason.

Dylan Koch: [7:53] It was weird he had so many defenders that said these are allegations. I was like, bro, like, what else do you need? Like Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [7:59] So this guy, he's he's a... Actually a previous podcast guest. I don't know what episode. You should go and look look back. Mike Ayala. He was a guest on the show. Very charismatic guy. Go Bunnings guy.

Dan Austin: [8:08] Seems to be super nice.

Mike DeHaan: [8:10] He had this this big fund in Texas where he was he was raising money to go and buy mobile home parks. The SEC released, announcement, article, post, whatever it was, an official SEC document that was them coming full circle on their investigation with him, and that they had basically found that of the $10,000,000 he had raised, he had bought approximately zero mobile homes, zero mobile home parks, and he had been paying out investors on what they said it was it was phrase weird of like, what seemed like Ponzi scheme like whatever. Like, the way it was it was it was very set up where it was very intentionally all allegations and not, you know, a convicted thing. The people that came in and defended him about all these allegations, it was weird. Because their whole pedestal was like, well, it's not a proven convicted thing. They're all allegations. But the thing that really stuck with me at the end of the SEC post is he has chosen to not go to trial and to agree just to pay the fines. Right? Because he knows that he will lose. Nobody that is innocent just goes, oh, yeah. I'm just gonna take that. That's fine. So it doesn't matter if they are convictions.

Dylan Koch: [9:15] They're big fines too. Like, were They're huge fines. Of thousands of dollars.

Mike DeHaan: [9:18] Yeah. I think that he had to do... It was like $9,000,000 of restitution. It was like super significant. And I've never heard of

Dan Austin: [9:23] like a fully wrongful investigation from the SEC. Like I feel like that... Not that they... They might investigate people and not find them guilty. But usually, I feel like when they're on top of somebody like that and that person settles, you usually are somewhat guilty.

Mike DeHaan: [9:38] Totally. And and the thing is if they're

Dan Austin: [9:39] It's not a mistrial.

Mike DeHaan: [9:40] If they're gonna settle, they know they're going to lose. Like that's such a huge sum of money. You could probably fight that with some basic level without being like, well, we might get away with that. Like like, it's gonna be a very surefire thing they're gonna lose if they're gonna take that. And like why people settle is because the SEC goes, hey, if you pay this, we won't basically ultimately convict you of it. Like, you won't have it on your criminal record if you just pay up. And so they will do it and he will go and he'll raise more money. He'll do the exact same thing again. Right? But people were defending it. It was super weird deal. But to put to this point, I went and posted that on a private group. Like I said, I'm a hater for love the game. This guy was a very well known person in the space that was taking advantage of his position. And people need to know about that. Right. Cool. Well, outside of that, I've been a Claude fiend working on so many different things. I rebuilt the collecting keys website. If you wanna check that out, collectingkeys.com. I also relaunched a little swag shop. It says shop.clickingkeys.com. I had it like go through. This is like, see sort of like mundane tasks are where AI is really, like, has so much potential. As I talk more to people, still think people are trying to use it too much to like replace people.

Mike DeHaan: [10:50] But if you use it to just like do stuff that is cumbersome, that's honestly what I think the best use case use case is for a lot of stuff right now. And so like, it went through all of our episodes that have all been published online. It created transcripts of all of them and posted all those. It created articles for a bunch of posts that allowed us to review like stuff that had done well, stuff that hasn't. And then one of the things I did is I had to go through all those and find like jokes and stuff that we had made several times that it had hit. And it it helped me come up with ideas for a couple different shirts, which I put on like the little little shop over there. And so, yeah, just trying to get some actual branding and things back behind this and start to build up more of a presence. Because, like, a couple years ago when it went down after I got rid of our, like, whole little marketing team, when Dan and I decided to move away from the content piece a little bit, it was just such a pain in the ass to rebuild the website that it wasn't... I just never did for like a long time. Yeah. But now, you know, I did it in like an evening just in my free time, and it's significantly better.

Dylan Koch: [11:45] How much overhead do you think you've saved just from like subscription services with Cloud so far? Like your business?

Dan Austin: [11:51] Technically zero. Because we haven't we haven't cut anything off yet.

Mike DeHaan: [11:55] Yeah. Especially because like with our with our lending company, there's a lot of records and documentation and stuff that we need to transfer over. Yeah. Sure. And that isn't really something that we can automate. So right now we have virtual assistants that are pulling a lot of that stuff. But once we do get rid of that, I mean, platforms we have right now, it's like $2 a month for an LOS. We had a CRM that we were paying 500, $600 a month for. We had PandaDoc we were paying $500 a month for. What other stuff have we gotten rid of?

Dylan Koch: [12:27] But I mean, just right there. That's... $3. Over 3 over $3. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [12:30] Well, then on top of that, we're gonna... I mean, as as we start building things out, right? When Mike's saying, oh, we got rid of PandaDoc, it's not just like the dollar amount on the overhead, it's the time it takes an employee to log into a different system. So now it's in one. And, you know, you used to... This is the way I would put it, is you would see these these SaaS companies that would be like, look, you can come into our one system and do all these different things and you would never have... You get that one single pane of glass and they would wanna charge you outrageous money. And really that was only available to big corporations when you wanna build a big Salesforce or something like that. Now you can do what? You can just build that right there. And then you can connect and all these companies have APIs. And so the key is like connecting it all to a single pane of glass and your employees can stay in one screen instead of... I mean, I don't even know what the productivity is gonna look like, but I would imagine at this point, it's gonna increase it 40% just with what we've done from clicking around. Mean, you do this business like that we're all in, you spend a lot of time on a computer clicking around. And, like, that's a lot of time.

Dan Austin: [13:29] It's kinda silly to say, but less clicks maybe is more money.

Dylan Koch: [13:32] Well, even even with the ARIA Simply, you know, update that has been a debacle, it takes forever just to, like, load a screen or load a task.

Mike DeHaan: [13:40] That sucks.

Dylan Koch: [13:40] And I thought it was a browser issue, but no, many people were were complaining about it. So... But this add up like, okay, five seconds between each screen thing, like, it doesn't seem like a lot, but it ends up being a lot.

Mike DeHaan: [13:51] It's hours a week, dude, that you could be doing productive stuff. You're just sitting there. That adds up a lot.

Dan Austin: [13:55] Those add up a lot.

Mike DeHaan: [13:56] I guess on our end too, as I was... Like, earlier this year, as you were growing our lending company, there were several platforms that we looked at getting, especially like these different like pricing platforms and different things that are incredibly expensive. 4 to $5,000 a month. Right? And basically what they do, their whole pitch is they will take like your complex pricing matrices, and they will turn it into a tool that you can plug into your loan origination. Your team can like price stuff on the go. And they'll be like, oh, yeah, we'll give you other investors and all these kind things they can do. They're unbelievably expensive because that was previously such a complex task to build out. Honestly, the... One of the biggest reasons that I I sort of started playing with a lot of this tech was we got quoted for one of these pricing tools and it was like a three year commitment at like 5 And grand a I was like, fuck off. You know, and initially I was like, yeah, sure. So like I signed up to do it. And then I was like, that's just like ridiculous. I spent it realized it wasn't gonna work for us. And so I basically told them, I'd signed like the agreement. And I told them like, we're not gonna do it. Like, never mind, you can just cancel. I hadn't paid them any money yet or done anything.

Dan Austin: [14:58] We hadn't even gotten onboarded.

Mike DeHaan: [14:59] They even onboarded. Sent us to collections, by the way.

Dylan Koch: [15:02] Did they really?

Mike DeHaan: [15:03] Yeah. Yeah. Those are bitches. And I I reached out to the sales team. I was like, just so you know, fuck you guys. And you guys are the exact reason that your entire industry is gonna go away. I was a real dick. But anyway, so that that whole situation prompted me to start playing with like these pricing tools and figure out how to build something. And now what you can do is like, basically all the different investments and stuff. I can... I have a price out so you can actually compare them, which is the exact same thing that those companies were doing for $60 a year. You can now just do that on your own. So, like, realistically, if you look at, like, the big view with, like, the time saved, the less staff we're gonna need, subscriptions that we've saved. Right? It's gonna be well over a $100,000 a year, very easily.

Dan Austin: [15:41] Yeah. Adds up. And we're not even a big business.

Dylan Koch: [15:43] And I know, Mike, you're probably a you're little bit more technologically savvy than most people. But like, even me trying to do the already something like that the other day, like, it wasn't that difficult. I just know, like, if you try it like, okay, I'm gonna try to incorporate Twilio into it for like an API so they can do phone numbers, like stuff like that's a little bit harder.

Mike DeHaan: [16:03] So I would just say find another platform. So most of the things you can build internally with it. That's where you people kind of get stuck is they think that they need to connect to these other services. You really don't. The one exception I found is with anything that's communication based or financially based. Right? So, you know, if you're doing texts, phone calls, those sort things, building that in is gonna be really, really tough. And so basically, we use JustCall for like our company calling and texting. Last night I integrated all that with our platform. So now we have texting calls through our LOS platform just like you do in already simply. Right? It was unbelievably easy to set up. And the thing that's really nice about that is because we own the JustCall account. I am in charge of all the TCPA stuff. Right? I am in charge of like getting the 10 DLC, all the different things to like going through RE Simply where they own those numbers. You're kinda screwed. I did do all that myself. Cost a little bit of money. It's not that much. It's a very small expense. When it comes to like financial stuff too, that can get really tricky if it involves moving money or being able to like see bank accounts or those kind of things. The only one I found that really allows that is Plaid, which you've probably used to like link your bank accounts with different things over the years. If you have like Rocket Money or use any of those like personal finance platforms. And so I got approved to link all that stuff up.

Mike DeHaan: [17:21] But really what I wanna be able to do is, honestly for Dan and I, because we have our fund, be able to pair transactions with loans in our account so that we can just have a more streamlined bookkeeping process. And so that's been like a whole thing. But like the problem with a lot of those financial companies is they're meant for like really, really big corporations. So like when I was doing the onboarding stuff with Plaid the other day, one of the questions they'd asked, it goes, how big is your company? More than a thousand people or less than a thousand people? And I'm like, okay. So obviously, we're a different audience here. We're rounding down here. Yeah. And then I've been going going back and forth with their their risk people a bunch. So they're asking all about all the different things we wanna do with it. And was like, I don't need most

Dan Austin: [18:03] of it.

Mike DeHaan: [18:03] Literally, all I wanna do is connect our bank accounts so that I can like do bookkeeping more internally with it. So I'll see if I end up getting approved.

Dylan Koch: [18:10] But... I mean, I even think of like from bookkeeping services, depending on how much you wanna give the AI. But if you just like exported all your stuff and you said like categorize this, I feel like it could easily do something like that.

Mike DeHaan: [18:20] Totally. Yeah. I'm working on a on a better solution for my rentals. Because I have two rentals still that I own. That's And QuickBooks, I hate more than anything.

Dylan Koch: [18:29] And it's expensive now. It's like almost $200 a month for us.

Mike DeHaan: [18:33] Exactly. So like, honestly, with my two rentals, that's all my freaking cash flow. With how everything's gone up. But like, I've seen this fucking QuickBooks.

Dylan Koch: [18:39] I've Well, I pay a bookkeeper $6.50 a month too. So like if you can get rid of that, like...

Mike DeHaan: [18:43] Exactly. So I'm I'm building out like just my own platform. And the only way I found to really do it reliably is because I can connect to my property manager's portal. So they use like Outfolio. Yeah. And so that API is pretty easy to grab that. But besides that, what I'm having to do is basically choose GrockBot to go and grab the statements from, like, their stuff and then upload it to the bookkeeping software I'm using. And then it will basically just automate all the different things based on that.

Dylan Koch: [19:11] Have you heard of Instinct AI? Mm-mm. So I hadn't either, but our mutual friend Craig, in my... He's in my GoPod, he swears by. He's like, hey, I just booked a trip for me and my wife by sending like two text messages through this Instinct thing. And I don't know. I get that this... These new... There's so many different iterations that are coming out and like which ones do you choose, which ones are just like, you're probably wasting your time, but like then they're all incorporated with each other. But I wanna make, like a dashboard for our rentals, like, what's your vacancy at? Like, what's profitable? And you can do that by entity. You could do it by property. You could, you know...

Dan Austin: [19:48] You can do anything. You could just visualize anything you want. Yeah. I feel like there's probably a lot of good use cases for AI and there's a lot of dumb ones. Like I don't really like the idea of AI booking my trip. It's kind the same thing of like dudes. Like I had my assistant book my trip for me and I'm like, I kind of want to do that. You know what I mean? Like that's like something I want to do because I want to be the one doing it. Cause I gotta research the flights anyways.

Mike DeHaan: [20:08] Yeah. But Craig really just wants to be like all inclusive to Mexico. He doesn't do cool travel stuff anymore. Unless he's changed from the last time I hung out with him.

Dan Austin: [20:15] He just wants to... Dude, he just wants to relax, man. He's been grinding.

Mike DeHaan: [20:18] I know he has been grinding.

Dylan Koch: [20:20] He's in Idaho too. So shouldn't doxed him like that.

Dan Austin: [20:24] He's definitely been grinding then.

Mike DeHaan: [20:25] Now, Craig's been on the show a handful of times. You can dox him. We know he's up here. He's also been on my Instagram. So anybody that knows where we live knows that he's nearby. But... So either way, been busy with that. It's been fun. It's amazing how quickly you can do stuff. And it's... I was a, like, an AI skeptic for, like, a long while. I still am. But I do think that if you use it the correct way, it's super, super powerful. But I'm in like a couple different, like, AI chats. And I still think that people are taking the intelligence part of artificial intelligence way too literally. And they don't understand that. Like, the whole point is not to have... What's the robot from Iron Man? What's his name?

Dylan Koch: [21:04] Oh,

Mike DeHaan: [21:05] Jarvis. Jarvis? Yeah. It is... The whole point is not to have like a Jarvis that like does everything for you. But if you use it as a productivity tool, that is will be ultimately what I think you can get the most value out of. Right? But so many people are spending so much time trying to be like, oh, I need someone to like, answers the phone and like does my outbound sales, do all this kind thing. I think we'll be a long way off from where that actually is good. Yeah. There's not as much intelligence there. Yeah. A lot of people think it's good, but there's also people that think that AI music is good.

Dan Austin: [21:31] Those people are dumb. I've never heard an AI music song.

Mike DeHaan: [21:34] Yeah. You probably have.

Dylan Koch: [21:35] Actually, were. Yeah. Dan, they got you. No,

Dan Austin: [21:38] dude. Taylor Swift ain't doing AI. Come on, dude. It's really Taylor Swift. Yeah. I would say on that note, just to wrap that up too, is with the, different, like, intelligent levels. Like, we're so far away from that, but I also think that there's some good use cases where people are agreeable to working with an AI bot. I know I certainly am because guess what? They're usually faster. A chatbot. Or when you're on the phone and they're trying to cycle you through to the right person through customer service. Like, just do it. Just give me the right person. Like, I don't wanna have to just pound zero every time to just try to talk to somebody like... So I think there's some good use cases. Other stuff I've noticed like people using it for their software, and having like a bot that has access to all of their user manuals and troubleshooting manuals, you just ask them questions. Like that's super cool. Because then what I've also noticed with that is there's usually a live person available that's a much higher tier troubleshooter. So they're allowing the bot to get to a certain level and say, okay, this is... This customer needs really good customer support. So with that, I feel like customer support has gone up like 10 x some scenarios with some companies because they're using it the right way. They're not using it to what you said, Mike. I want this AI just to like treat my customer really well and do everything my customer needs. It's like, that's not what it's for. Like use it to filter out the easy stuff that can be taken care of and done, and then let the expert, the higher paid person jump in instead of having that first threshold be somebody that is just basically reading off of a script anyways.

Mike DeHaan: [23:03] Yeah, absolutely.

Dylan Koch: [23:04] It's funny, you remind me Dan, is back in my pharmacy days, we'd have to call insurance companies a lot. And the way that we would get around the then automated system, which keep in mind, not near as good as it is now, you just swear at it. If you said curse words, it would like take you to like a human almost immediately. Really? That's funny.

Mike DeHaan: [23:20] That was

Dan Austin: [23:20] the that was the trick.

Dylan Koch: [23:21] Yeah. Found that by accident, but it ended up working. So then you hear the whole like... So you hear the whole text like mumble under their breath like, did we do a fucking... Like, it's just...

Dan Austin: [23:31] It's all quiet. Like some like super good mid midwestern Christian girl is like your tech, she's like, I gotta say what?

Dylan Koch: [23:37] Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [23:40] Yeah. Okay. That's funny. So... Well, bigger picture stuff. Interest rates are looking solid.

Dylan Koch: [23:46] Yeah. If you're a fucking boomer.

Dan Austin: [23:47] Who cares? Interest rates. Let me ask you guys that. Do you guys Can

Dylan Koch: [23:50] AI fix my business where it's the slowest market I've ever been in?

Mike DeHaan: [23:54] Yeah. Oh, dude. Yeah. I can only imagine right now. Like, I feel like so many people wanna sell because prices have gone up so much. Or or like the actual holding cost rather versus taxes. Rents have gone down. You can't really sell because... And like if there are buyers, they're gonna ask for the world because they can. It's probably one of the worst times to be in like the transactional side of this business. And it's not really that much better to be in like the holding side of the real estate business because things are gonna continue to go up whether you like it or not with all the costs and everything.

Dan Austin: [24:24] You think they will?

Mike DeHaan: [24:24] There's always gonna be something to get nickel and dime in.

Dan Austin: [24:27] I have no indication, but...

Dylan Koch: [24:28] We get reassessed this year, so I'll know my new tax bill come January for all my stuff.

Dan Austin: [24:33] I will say this, if they're reassessing you for a higher value, that's a pretty, pretty bold lie on their part.

Mike DeHaan: [24:39] Yeah. Well, depending on where you live, they'll, they'll start to get you on other stuff with your taxes.

Dylan Koch: [24:43] Yeah. We reassess every three years. So they they actually probably will because we reassess every three years. So the last reassessment is 2023.

Mike DeHaan: [24:51] Yeah. Depending on where you live, they'll... I mean, they'll get you out of the other stuff on your property taxes. So there was a... There's one around where we're at, Dan. This is a funny story. I thought this was funny. Someone posted on our our local neighborhood Facebook page about the, the fire department levy that they're putting as, like, the first levy they've asked for in, like, forty years. It's like nine fire departments, you know, a 180 people are involved or whatever it is. Like, pretty, like, pretty big. And basically what they wanna do is per thousand dollars in value on your house, it's like... I don't It's just some... It's almost like 50 something cents. And so basically, in our neighborhood, like in our area, average home price is 500 k. So it's like $28. So someone posted this, some old boomer, and there was a bunch of false news that came out, like false statements about whatever. Like it's like one guy was like, that is outrageous because that fire district is 50,000 people. And so if you look at $28 times 50,000 people, that's like 96,000,000 like, well, it's per household, homie. That's not really how it works.

Dan Austin: [25:48] Yeah. So just... Yeah. Just people are being outraged by it. Yeah. I get it. I get it. I don't like taxes either. Outraged now that you're telling me the story. I'm getting mad.

Mike DeHaan: [25:55] But there there was this old guy, I thought I thought I personally was super funny. And he was... He commented when I like broke down for that one guy that like actually take a thousand homes or whatever. And he goes, well, when you're retired on a fixed income, any kind of increase in your living expenses that's out of your control is just not welcome. And I said, well man, unfortunately, we all gotta pull ourselves up by our bootstraps sometimes. I was proud of that. I thought that shit was funny.

Dan Austin: [26:20] I don't know where you find time to get in Facebook. I don't even see these posts and I'm in the same neighborhood fucking group. I don't see this.

Mike DeHaan: [26:28] It's because I'm ADHD over here, just everywhere all

Dan Austin: [26:30] the I will say this. Property taxes are bullshit. We have to have them, but they suck. You don't actually own anything. You can't own it. You don't own your house. People are like, oh, the bank owns it. I'm like, no, no, the government owns your house. Because if you don't pay your taxes, they take what's on the property. So it sucks. I get it. But we gotta have it.

Mike DeHaan: [26:48] You gotta have it. I mean, they gotta pay for all the stuff that's like within your community, pay for the roads, pay for how you're gonna get to your house, pay for the general infrastructure. Here's the thing I

Dan Austin: [26:56] don't understand though. Exactly. You you have to, because we're all sharing it. Right? Now I think it always goes back to... This is what I think. People don't generally dislike taxes. They dislike how it's spent or how they perceive it spent. That's usually what it is. Right? But I gotta do a lot of school fundraisers all the time for my daughter's school. I'm like, we're paying quite a bit of taxes going to the school district. Well, actually, that's most of our taxes. I'm like, why do I still have to fundraise for this? Also, we're in like a decent zip code. They can bring their own markers to school. We can afford it. Why are we paying that? Why are we doing this through taxes?

Mike DeHaan: [27:26] Less problem is, like, it's all going in the same bucket, you know, and and you don't know where it's going. I will say, like, where it does get tricky is, I'm pretty sure a lot of local municipality... Like like, the local governments aren't flush. Regardless of how much money they take from us, it's like... I'll tell

Dan Austin: [27:41] you what, they don't pay our local government people very much either.

Mike DeHaan: [27:43] Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Like they're not making a lot of money. So like the money's going somewhere, and we're obviously having to get state money just like most other towns. You have to get money from like the actual state, who also gets money from the federal government. And aside from what, like seven states, most of them are in a deficit if they don't get money from the federal government. Right?

Dan Austin: [27:59] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [27:59] So I I think like there's only things like seven states that are actually self sufficient. I have look that up. I know Washington

Dan Austin: [28:04] is It's one of there's no way Washington's self sufficient. We have like an $18,000,000,000 deficit.

Mike DeHaan: [28:09] No, dude. It was a... It was one of the only states that could turn a profit without the federal government. Remember That's a lie. Unless it's changed.

Dan Austin: [28:14] You're watching fake news. No. It's been that way for several years.

Dylan Koch: [28:17] I just remember when one of those levies came up and they're talking about, like, if it should pass or not, to your point. And... But they also, in the same, like, levy, the school administrators, not the teachers, but administrators are, like, doubling their salary. Like like, something like that. It's like, okay. Where is this money actually going? Yeah. Like...

Dan Austin: [28:35] I do wanna... Speaking of taxes though, this is actually a topic I wanted to bring up. Have you guys... Well, you guys probably haven't. There's this guy I follow on Instagram, his name... You guys should give him a follow. Templeton Walker, I think is his name. He's down in Arizona.

Mike DeHaan: [28:46] Yeah. He's home. He's with with Aaron Beale. I tried to get him a conversation a while back, and he goes to me.

Dan Austin: [28:51] Oh, okay. See, Mike... Really? F that guy then. I was actually

Mike DeHaan: [28:54] I like he's f it.

Dan Austin: [28:54] Fuck it. Screw that guy. Don't go follow him. He... I think he would be a cool... Listen. But he had this concept that he's already abandoned because he got too much flack, not flack, but like, it's... I'll just say. So he had this idea of like regular rich, the concept of regular rich. Like, what is it like to be just like regular? It's like people have this idea of of wealth and like status and all this, and like what that means to them. He's like, there's this level of regular rich, which he essentially describes as like financial freedom. I appreciated it because I thought it was like, that's a that's a really good concept. And then he he started like blowing up a little bit on Instagram and then he like made a post like this week. He's like, ah, I don't really wanna talk about this anymore because this is basically turning into a job, and this is not what I like. I actually like doing what I do. Anyways, what would your guys'... I thought the audience would probably appreciate this. What would your regular rich be? And what he describes is $2,000,000 liquid. And by liquid meaning it's not like locked up in equity. And that you can earn you can earn a 10% return on that, which is what $20 or 10%, $200 a year. So you have that and you can earn 10% on it. That's like regular rich. And then your house is paid off.

Dylan Koch: [29:59] I've seen similar things go around like this. Like someone said, house paid off, like 2 to 3,000,000 in the bank. And that's just like your FU number. Like, you don't have to report to anybody, but you're not

Dan Austin: [30:10] like Like, you're like not working, but you're like, right, like his opinion. Like, his opinion is that's his regular

Dylan Koch: [30:15] This is the whole thing of like, Coast Fire too. Like, people are in the fire committee to Coast Fire. Like, once you get to a number, you don't have to work and save so hard. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [30:22] Yeah. Like, depends on the definition of rich. Right? Because I think that to be considered rich, you have to have an amount of surplus that, you know, is significant. Right? Like not like have an extra like thousand dollars a month, but like enough that you can... You have so much surplus, can kind of do whatever you want. And so to your your definition, reading that $20,000 a month, you have a house paid off, but you have like car payments, and you have a baby mama, and you buy... Go out to dinner three times a week, and it costs you $2,000 each time.

Dan Austin: [30:50] Like, you're you're in a deficit. Like, you're not rich at all. So like, that's his... I guess that's, yeah, his his definition of like regular rich. Because you... I would agree with him at the level that, like, you don't have to report to somebody. You have a little bit of flexibility to do your own thing if you're doing that. Like, you've done something well. What would your number be to be like regular rich? And by regular rich, mean, just like, just like a regular dude.

Mike DeHaan: [31:11] Like for me personally or like big picture?

Dan Austin: [31:13] Yeah, yeah. That's why I'm asking you personally. This is his definition. I was just... I wanted to get your guys' opinion on that. You disagree with it. What is the definite... It could be any anything. It doesn't have to be your house is paid off. Like what would that mean to you?

Mike DeHaan: [31:26] Yeah. I mean for me personally, it's just that I can spend or give money however I want without thinking about it.

Dan Austin: [31:34] How much do you need to do that?

Mike DeHaan: [31:35] As much as I have right now. Like, it's it's a lot less than people think it is. So are you are you regular rich? Yeah.

Dan Austin: [31:41] Okay. Okay. That's what I'm getting at. I I mean, and you don't have to say what you have. I'm just saying like, for a lot of people, they have this like financial freedom number. But like, if you step back and you're like, what does that actually mean? Right? Like, okay, what does that come down to?

Mike DeHaan: [31:53] A lot of it's around mindset too. Because I would bet you that a lot of, like a lot of people that we know then would admit are in that same boat. But people have a lot of insecurities about money because they don't believe in their own earning potential. Exactly. Right? Or they don't have enough of like a backup plan. And so like with us, Dan, you know, our business is obviously doing very well. I have very strong belief that we are gonna continue to make money. So I am willing to overspend on certain things right now because I have very strong belief it's gonna come back. There's a lot of people that are like that, but they have like this old school saving mentality that does not allow them to live that way. This is one of the reasons when we would do the scale meetups.

Dan Austin: [32:30] Are you saying like oversavers then? And that can They're oversavers. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [32:33] Yeah. Totally. And and like whether that's driven by greed or fear or what, I don't know. Because there are a lot of people that are like, I like number go up. Number go up, make me happy. You know? Like like that's

Dan Austin: [32:43] So doesn't matter how much. It's just gotta go up.

Mike DeHaan: [32:45] It doesn't matter. As long as it go up. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [32:48] We need that as a caveman shirt, dude. Number go up.

Mike DeHaan: [32:50] Number go up. Should. That's actually a good shirt. But there's a mentality of like when you understand how to make money, and you also know that any expense that you make is like a one time expense and not a recurring thing that you're gonna do all the time. It is easier to, I don't know, live richly. Right? And that's relative to everybody.

Dan Austin: [33:14] Mindset does have a lot to do with it though. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [33:16] Yeah. What you're saying like

Dan Austin: [33:17] richly, live richly.

Mike DeHaan: [33:18] So like, you know, if I if I fly overseas, I fly business class. It's stupid. It's like a fucking twelve hour flight, and I'll spend 3 or $4,000 a person to do that. That is such a dumb way to spend money. But for me, the vacation starts to get to the airport, I get to be significantly more comfortable. I basically have extra days of vacation. And I know that I'm not doing like a monthly trip where I'm spending $10,000. I'm doing it once, maybe twice a year. And for my income that's small enough that it's fine. Right? But there's a lot of people that are like, I... Oh, man. I could never afford that. I'm like, bro, I know what you do for a living. Yes, you can. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [33:56] You just don't Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [33:57] Want to because it's not worth it to you. And that's fine.

Dan Austin: [33:59] Right. Totally.

Mike DeHaan: [34:00] But I would say you are regular rich when you feel comfortable enough to spend excessively on things that matter to you without it becoming like a moral conflict.

Dan Austin: [34:11] Okay. I like it. What about you, Dylan?

Dylan Koch: [34:12] I like that. Because I feel kind of attacked. I'm the number golf guy. Yeah. I know you are the number golf guy. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [34:17] I was there. I was actually thinking about conversations we had with you earlier this year, Dylan, specifically about that. Yeah.

Dylan Koch: [34:23] So I don't know if I have an answer for you. I do... There is some solace in this off market business even though it kind of sucks right now, that if I know I'm like, man, I can need to go make $20. I'm pretty highly confident myself that I can do that within like a two to three month time frame. Like, I'd have to maybe work a lot for it more than I do now, but like, I think I can go do it. I don't know. I mean, there's there's the number, like the net worth number that could be a liquid like, you know, what... Call it $5,000,000, but there's also, like, what if you didn't have $5,000,000, but you had 7,000,000 and paying off rentals to spin off 250 k a year. Right? So you don't have it liquid, but you still have the income coming in that could really afford your entire lifestyle. So

Mike DeHaan: [34:59] Yeah. But I mean, and there's there's like the long term savings piece, because that $7,000,000, that's not buying first class tickets here. No, it's not. And so like, what's that worth to people? It's an interesting question. Because like, you know, it marries so much because there's also people that live in a van in fucking San Diego that, you know, probably work in a bar or a coffee shop, and go surfing every day. And they can do literally anything that they want in their life within their very small sphere. And that, like, there's always been the argument. That is probably one of rich people you'll ever meet if they are legitimately happy doing that.

Dan Austin: [35:29] I don't think they're regular rich though. Because it's not regular to live in a van.

Mike DeHaan: [35:34] Maybe it is for them. You don't know their background. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [35:37] I think there's a a certain level. I think what he's saying or his theory with the 2,000,000 is is valid. Think for most people, that's probably... That that would be considered wealthy and allow people to feel wealthy, feel rich. What I think about though, it makes me kind of recognize is like, if you're... Because we are a real estate podcast or have been. If your only investment strategy is real estate and your only source of income is cash flow from rentals, you're probably not as wealthy as you think you are. Now there's extremes to that, of course. Right? But if you're like, I just buy rentals, number go up and you get cash flow, like, it's not accessible liquidity. Right? And the cash flow can be quite variable until you get to a really, really large size. And at that point in time, you probably have some concentration risk. Right? Because all you're doing is real estate. And so I... To me, like ten years ago, I would have probably said something slightly different. I would have still thought, you know, well balanced portfolio would have been smart, but like, it's hard to say no when you're in your buy mode for real estate or you're you're in cash flow mode for real estate. It's hard to not do something else because like that, you do have to focus a lot of effort into it. But, there's a lot of other opportunity that will make you feel wealthier with actually less net worth on your balance sheet.

Dan Austin: [36:45] Right? $20,000,000 in real estate probably doesn't feel as wealthy as $2,000,000 that's super accessible tomorrow and is kicking off 10% to you every single month, whether that's in dividends or, you know, whatever. All that. Debt funds.

Dylan Koch: [36:59] Yep. Yeah. And your... Not debt funds. Your portfolio and net worth architecture matters. Like, you should probably have

Mike DeHaan: [37:04] a little

Dylan Koch: [37:05] bit of everything. Right? Yeah. I mean... Oh, man. What was I gonna say on top of that? I thought I'm blanking now. But there is a movie, I can't think of it, but it's Mark Wahlberg, and he basically just like talk about gambling. He's like, everyone knows that if you want to get two to three million dollars, you put it in the bank or in a 3%, you pay off your house and pay off your car, and then that's your like, no one can tell you what to do anymore number. But...

Mike DeHaan: [37:27] There's a... Was a post from Alex Hermosy. I wonder if he took it down. I think maybe he just didn't do very well, but I thought it was interesting. But it was like, what different levels of money mean. And it was like, you know, $0, you're broke. Right? It was like a $100,000. It was like, you know, ability to choose or something. And then it was like a million dollars, like like basic abundance. Then it had like $10,000,000 and it was like whatever. And then it was like a billion dollars, like enough to live like an asshole. You know, I like had like all these different things. I'm butchering it. I wish I could find it. Because I thought it was pretty good.

Dan Austin: [38:02] A billion dollars, you could pollute the ocean.

Mike DeHaan: [38:04] Yeah. But basically it had like, essentially just like added like a zero every time. And it went up. Yeah. And it basically gave like a definition to Yeah.

Dan Austin: [38:11] Yeah. Okay. $100, million, 10,000,000, 100,000,000,000.

Mike DeHaan: [38:14] His thing though, what I noticed was, so he had the, $4,000,000 was his number. Basically, I said like, it's like $4,000,000 invested. It was like enough to not work for the rest of your life. That was his number for that. And so am I with 2,000,000? I don't know.

Dylan Koch: [38:30] I guess two things. One, if you are like in a position where you could just put money aside and get like dividends, you can do private placements like funds. But if you can buy a ten year treasury at five and a half for tips at 7%, like, that's really not that bad if you're older, you and could put a couple million bucks in at that. Like, you can live off that, and that's like, there's not much credit risk in those government bonds. Like, sure, your purchasing power might go down, but it's still not a bad return. Right.

Mike DeHaan: [38:55] Yeah. Let's have an appropriate time horizon too. You know? Because like, if you're, like, in your eighties, you really shouldn't be worried about growth. You know? This is actually something I I talked about with my dad kinda recently, where he's, you know, he's 81. And so he's from, like, firmly baby boomer. He was born, like, a week before we dropped the bomb on on Hiroshima. Right? That's that's that's how old the 81 is. Right? And they... They've done well for themselves. They've, you know, lived a good life and all sort of stuff. And all of a sudden, like, in the last month when I was home after the fire for a little bit, my dad's like, yeah. He's like, I don't know why we're saving money. He's like, he's like, we we have plenty. He's like, you know, they're more enough for like the rest of his life at least. He's like, we just gotta like start doing more stuff. You know? And that's that's why we're actually going to Japan with them in November is because he's like, you guys wanna go on a trip? He's like, let's just go. He's like, wait. I just wanna do as many things as I can because he's in his eighties. And he's

Dan Austin: [39:49] like He's finally having his midlife crisis. A tough time. And he's one year

Mike DeHaan: [39:53] old boy. No shit. Yeah. But, you know, like like... But there's also guys that are like that that are... Have done well for themselves and like, you know, money go up. That's what they want. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [40:01] It is hard to... Well, think about this. You... Because we weren't... None of us are there, but you save for forty years in your career and then it's time to retire. Like, it's just ingrained into a lot of people just to keep saving. Unless you weren't a saver before. If you weren't a saver before, then yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [40:15] You just kind

Dan Austin: [40:15] of keep business as usual.

Mike DeHaan: [40:17] Yeah. For sure.

Dylan Koch: [40:18] Once you get to what? 25,000,000, is there a difference between 25,000,000 and 250,000,000? Like, besides for buying, like, jets or yachts, they're probably not. Like

Dan Austin: [40:27] Well, there is if you start hanging out with people with 250,000,000.

Mike DeHaan: [40:31] Sure. There

Dan Austin: [40:32] is. Because then you're the ego. The ego comes into play. Like, well, Steve has 250. I only have 25.

Mike DeHaan: [40:38] Yeah. The ego starts to come in. There's... I don't if I can find it this quick. There's a Dave Chappelle quote that talks about being rich. It's like this whole clip on it was like, I'm rich, bitch. If you guys remember that bit. Yeah. He's like, like... And he's talking about... He's like, he's like, all these people, they're trying to talk about this person. He's like, it doesn't matter. He's we all live in the same houses. We all sleep with the same women. We all drive the same cars. It's like, we all hang out with the same people, go to same parties. Like, once you get to this level, it's like, it does matter. And that's he goes like, I'm rich, bitch. That's the whole thing. But that's very true though. Like to a point, it becomes diminishing returns. It's... You're totally right. Unless you're like a Elon Musk and you're trying to, you know, do stuff that is so otherworldly that you essentially need to be your own nation state to be able to do it.

Dan Austin: [41:25] That's crazy to think about. Yeah.

Dylan Koch: [41:27] These, political ads, but I keep getting these texts. Don't go to them too.

Mike DeHaan: [41:32] Yeah. Bro, you're you're in a swing state. You better get used to that shit, Yeah. That is

Dan Austin: [41:36] the the perfect politic, like the slap in your face of like, you know, we get to do what we want, but you can't do it. Yeah. That's a... The texting is a perfect example.

Dylan Koch: [41:44] I've gotten like three in the past hour.

Dan Austin: [41:46] Yeah. It's so frustrating.

Mike DeHaan: [41:47] How I typically respond to unsolicited texts, I go on to Google translate, and I change from English to Google. And I type in, thank you for subscribing to Happy Gay Boy Chinese Club. And I type... I I copy it in Chinese characters, and I paste it and send it back. So then if they translate it, they're like, goddamn it. Otherwise, they think they'd send it to a Chinese hacker.

Dan Austin: [42:07] That's actually pretty funny.

Mike DeHaan: [42:09] So... Hi, everybody. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.

Dan Austin: [42:11] See you. I'm gonna start doing that.

Mike DeHaan: [42:13] This episode is sponsored by Sir Lenzelot LLC, also known as SLA Capital, which if you didn't know, is Dan and I's private lending company. So, yes, we are sponsoring our own show, but what you're do about it? It is our private lending company that offers hard money and DSCR loans to real estate investors of all types. So you can be a new investor, an experienced investor. You can be buying flips. You can be buying rentals, whatever. We can do everything. And not only that, but the rates that we offer are just as competitive, if not cheaper, than pretty much every other company out there. So whatever big company you've been working with, bring us their term sheets, I guarantee that we can probably beat it. We have the same connections they do. We just don't have all the overhead and middlemen. So if you wanna come and check us out, go to slacapital.com/keys, and I will know that you came from the show. And by seeing that you came from here, when you

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