Scaling a $50 Million Flipping Business While Working 1-Hour Days w/ Sean Connolly

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] You are a real estate investor, you have probably heard all about subject to real estate. And also if you're a real estate investor, you probably don't really know a lot of the ins and outs of how to do subject to correctly. That is why we created our free subject to course. You can go and grab at collectingkeys.com/subtwo. We will go through all the ins and outs about how to do subject to correctly and legally so that you don't put yourself or the seller in a bad spot by kind of ignoring the small details. So if that's something that you're interested in, go to collectingkeys.com/subtwo, and you'll know exactly where to

Sean Connolly: [0:32] go from there. I wanna give two variables that I think are just really, really important. Number one is your speed to call. You could set them up for failure right away if they're not calling immediately. And they should be calling from at least we call three times and we get it right away out of the gate. Boom, boom, boom, hit it three times. The next thing that I would focus on is the follow-up. That's where the majority of all businesses I deal with fail, is they do not have a follow-up process built up. And even if they have one, it's not good. You know? And there's no way to check if it's being followed. You know, these automations that are in place, that's great. But how many times are you calling that person? So the shifts that we've made is we call for the first seven days, then that transitions over to a VA to

Mike DeHaan: [1:20] call. Mhmm.

Sean Connolly: [1:21] You know, like, if we have we have to make it happen in seven days, it's gonna go to the VA. Welcome

Speaker 3: [1:27] to the collecting keys podcast. The show where you'll learn how to use real estate to create massive income, not just passive income. Real estate doesn't have to be a get rich slow game. Listen to the country's top real estate operators, and you'll have all the tools you need to replace your w two income and go beyond in under twelve months. Ready to take things to the next level? Let's jump in with our hosts, Mike DeHaan and Dan Austin for today's episode of the Collecting Keys Podcast.

Mike DeHaan: [2:04] What is going on, guys? Welcome to today's episode of the Collecting Keys Real Estate Investing Podcast. We just wrapped up our interview with Sean Connolly out of Chicago.

Dan Austin: [2:15] A real banger.

Mike DeHaan: [2:16] Yeah. It is an absolute banger. Like, I will go as far as to say he is probably the biggest and best operator that we have had on the show.

Dan Austin: [2:24] Most high level for sure.

Mike DeHaan: [2:25] Most high level. He has an abundance of businesses. And funnily enough, you've probably never even heard of him before because he's too busy out there crushing it. Right? Mhmm. And he, you know, he says this right at the beginning of the show, but to give you a little bit of a teaser, his flipping business, just his flipping business, which is one of his businesses, currently does about $50,000,000 a year and he works about one hour a day in that business. And that's not even counting the rest of his businesses that he runs that are all equally as successful or are going to be even further. I mean, pretty soon, we had a little bit of like a post show chat and he told us about some of the other stuff that he was working on. And you realize that his incredibly impressive flipping business is just a fraction of what he has going on.

Dan Austin: [3:07] Small time for him. Yeah. Yeah. It's Yeah. It's interesting. The cool thing is is that he has realized because his flipping business is so large, that pivoting into direct to sellers, one of the things he wants to do, so there's a ton of nuggets as he's he's in, he's been doing it six months, so he's in the in the trenches where a lot of us are, especially our listeners, building out their lead gen business for flipping, buying, holding, or just wholesaling. And so there's so many nuggets in here as he's talking about it.

Mike DeHaan: [3:31] Yeah. And we go all into sort of how he's built out that business. He's really heavy on systems. He has his scale virtually company, which we talk about a lot, which is basically a sort of pocket COO where he helps you set up not only virtual assistant systems, but also just systematizing everything in your business in general. And like, you'll get very very quickly. He's a very high level thinker. He is a true entrepreneur. And you know, don't be afraid to reach out with him guys. Like, he's very generous with his time because he's been able to systematize everything. And he literally told us, he's like, he just enjoys helping people and being a part of other people's businesses and helping them optimize everything. So reach out to him after the show and this is one that you probably wanna take notes on. Like I personally ended up with three pages of notes at the end of the call. And you know, it's just a really sort of mind blowing episode honestly about what you can really achieve Amazing. In real estate and other businesses. And if you're thinking that you're like not that good, you're working on as just trying to figure out the basics, this dude is a perfect example of what's possible if you put your nose down for long enough.

Dan Austin: [4:33] Absolutely. He said this off air, but you have to have a big enough vision for people in your business to be big as well. Exactly. That's a

Mike DeHaan: [4:40] great way for keeping a team on board.

Dan Austin: [4:41] Well, that's my quote for the week.

Mike DeHaan: [4:42] That is a really good quote. So anyways, guys, enjoy the show. Share it with anyone who has any interest in business or trying to grow a business. Have a real estate podcast, but this is very much a business show, like a business episode. And this is super valuable to anyone that you know that's trying to grow any sort of business enterprise. So share it with them. It helps out a lot. And aside from that, enjoy it everybody. It's a really great one today with Sean Connolly. Enjoy. Alright, guys. We are here today with Sean Connolly, who is a investor and entrepreneur out of the Chicago area. So Sean, I met down at Aaron and Mochistegui's meetup in Austin last fall. And he was honestly one of those entrepreneurs that I met that left me feeling like, damn, what am I doing with my life? Because this guy crushes it. And you have a handful of businesses, you have strata investments, you have strata managements. I even took a little list here. You have a direct to seller business, you have your scale virtually, virtual COO business that you run, and even throughout a couple other ones that I forgot to write down. So you got a lot going on dude, and you are doing some very big things. So thanks for coming on the show man, we really appreciate it.

Sean Connolly: [5:53] Yeah, really appreciate it Mike. Thanks Dan. I really appreciate being on today. Excited to talk about real estate.

Mike DeHaan: [5:59] Yeah, absolutely. So I guess to give people some context for where you currently are with things, what is your current business look like right now? And then let's sort of backtrack and sort of like go to how we got there.

Sean Connolly: [6:13] Well, my current business right right now, this is a long time ago and probably on eleven years. We're tracking to do close to 50,000,000 this year and I work about one hour a day in my flipping and holding business. Wow. And that's largely been due to heavy investment in systems process and really a focus on people. One of the things that's been transformative for me is getting into masterminds and getting into coaching. You know, I worked with Dan Sullivan and, you know, the who, not how thought process. And also 10x is easier than 2x. It's those concepts, they sound very challenging as an entrepreneur to put in place, especially when you're the one in the daily grind doing everything. It's like how are you gonna get the time out to kind of build the systems? But it's an absolute must that you're gonna take it to the next level.

Mike DeHaan: [7:03] Yeah. There you go. Perfect. And so we say that 50,000,000 in your in your flipping business, that's that's wild, right? Because that's something that people feel like is so hands on, but you've been able to systematize that and optimize that. So what do you even do for your hour a day? Why don't you just systematize that at this point?

Sean Connolly: [7:21] You know, the truth is I love real estate so much. I don't even need to be involved in that hour a day, but I'm a deal junkie. So one of the things that I would love to extend to your audience that we do at Scale Virtually is we help people build meeting cadences. And you guys know anytime you're running a team, that team can run well or they can run terrible. And it's in large part due to the agenda that you set with them, the goals that they have, the KPIs that they're working towards. But if you don't have a way to review that consistently and keep the team together, that's where it all falls apart. And I used to think I did a really good job of it and I did it. It was me having ad hoc conversations with three different contractors and I had construction and there's so much stuff that got missed in between. So that one hour that I spend a day is usually an 08:00 meeting. That's like a fifteen minute meeting with my entire real estate team. And it starts off with construction, and we go through basically any projects we're taking over, any projects we're selling, any moving parts that need to happen there. And then it moves into the second part of it, which is acquisitions. The acquisitions teams jumps in and talks about new deals that are under contract, stuff that's closing, so that everybody's in it together. And the great thing that I've been able to see is my team has blossomed and really gelled without me. I'm not needed.

Sean Connolly: [8:39] Where I always thought I was so needed in every aspect of my business, I'm not anymore. It's sad, but it's also a great thing not to be in that role anymore. And I do have, my CFO kinda supervising those meetings right now. My goal is in six months, I'll be out of those as well. What I'm really focused on now in the track is to take lead generation to a whole new level so we can go national. We're already in a couple different markets outside of Chicago. We do Chicago in, like, 50 suburbs around Chicago. And then we are in Indiana and Wisconsin. We're looking to potentially move into Texas as a new market. But I have a background in online marketing. And, you know, luckily meeting people in Aaron's group and some other masterminds I've been invited to, I've gotten to see how some of the highest level lead generators in the space are doing it and really systematizing it. And that's what we've been doing for the last six months. We've reaped significant That's where I think the growth is just gonna really take We're gonna be able to take it to a next level with that. Because traditionally everything that I've done, I've had I've been on easy street for the last ten years, buy it at the auctions where I could find really juicy deals and it was real simple. And it was basically me running through all the lists.

Sean Connolly: [9:55] Fast forward to today, I have two full time virtual assistants go through all the foreclosures every month in Chicago. They distill like over a thousand properties down to the top 100. I have two guys that drive the top 100. And then out of the top 100, they're gonna come back with what we should what our, you know, maximum allowable offer is on each property RMAO. We send out with that you know, we we will basically send our guys to the auction to make those bids. And we bid on maybe 35 to 50 properties and we might win, Right now it's like five to 12 of them, just depending on the month of where we're at. That's why positioning myself to do more of the direct to seller model. We bought a direct to seller company this year and we're heavily pushing into that. We're seeing higher margins from that. And with auctions, especially in Chicago, you have the issue of you have to buy the property, then you have to go through the court process. Then if it is occupied, you gotta work the person out. I don't have to do any of that now. So it's really been a game changer for the business. And the velocity of our capital, has been a big transition in our business. And I can tell you this is I used to think, you know, if I did a two flat, because the first eight years of our of my career was doing two flats and four flats and six flats and doing complete gut renovations, did hundreds and hundreds of those.

Sean Connolly: [11:13] Transition to, okay, now I'm gonna do the simplest split possible where I can get my velocity of capital really working for me. And I'm not giving up so much of my time to deal with planes and permits and do all that stuff. We're probably going to double our profit just through that one move. It's a decision that we made that instead of all the headaches of dealing with heavy duty construction, we're going buy simpler deals, but we're just going to do more of them. They may not be as high margin as those deals, but we're doing them in a fraction of the time, and overall, we make more money in turn.

Dan Austin: [11:44] Yeah. Wow. That's good. I got a question for you on that too on the processing, because this is what a lot of people in our scale community and stuff are trying to figure out, like how to process size things, how to scale. So, talked about like this really detailed process for your auction buying business. How did that translate? Like, what did you do? Because ultimately, in that, you're trying to come up with an MAO, and you're trying to go and buy these properties. So, you gotta filter through all your junk, and figure out which one do you wanna look at, and then, know, of course you don't buy all the ones you like, but you can get whatever the auction will give you. So on the home buying business, which is really relatable to a lot of our audience, like what is that system you brought over, as far as allowing staff members to do all of that for you? I'm assuming they do it all for you coming up, looking through leads, coming up with MAO and then making the offers.

Sean Connolly: [12:30] So the first thing is you have to develop your buy box of what's acceptable. And when you're buying at auction, you don't know what the strike price is gonna be when the auction opens, right? So you gotta put a base price of what your maximum limit is gonna be. And what we do is we set that at 20% margin, right? So anything so we know that that is set at 20% margin. So that's what our strike price is gonna be based on the offer on the property. So that's how the team can systematize it without using me because you have to build basically what your buy box is and what the margin is you're looking at per deal. But there's a lot of other calculations that go into it, right? When you're buying at auction, you don't know necessarily what's on the inside of the house, right? That's where the door knockers come in. So my door knockers actually door knock all the properties and they're really good at getting in and seeing what we're buying before we buy.

Dan Austin: [13:20] How does that work? This is the first time I've ever heard somebody doing this. Let me hear this.

Mike DeHaan: [13:23] You should see one of Sean's boots on the ground guys. He was at in Austin. Did you bring him to Austin? I forgot his name. Dude, he's he's a big motherfucker, dude. He was like huge, like stacked guys. Like I bet he gets into houses. Doesn't take no for answer. But he's super nice. Like very good. Like, you know, sort of personal presence.

Sean Connolly: [13:42] Yeah,

Mike DeHaan: [13:43] I think I imagine that's what you need in Chicago though. You couldn't have like a little skinny guy out doing it.

Dan Austin: [13:47] But I mean, you're like I mean, officially, you can have no reason to knock on the door. So I guess I'm asking, like, what is that?

Mike DeHaan: [13:52] Like, why are you guys doing that

Dan Austin: [13:53] if you're okay to indulge?

Sean Connolly: [13:55] Well, I don't wanna give away all my secret sauce, but I will tell you this. I've got two very charming guys that when we do a door knock, is basically we're there to figure out if there's any way that we can help them and buy the property before it goes to auction. Gotcha. And a lot of times we're able to see what's inside the property through that process.

Dan Austin: [14:13] Makes sense.

Sean Connolly: [14:14] Okay. A lot of times we're just identifying properties that we know are vacant and then and then flagging those in the system. We've got an entire Slack channel with a grading system. So this has been another thing that the team built themselves. So every property that I have, we have a grade of the property. I identify whether it's occupied or vacant. Anything that we can see externally, we put a budget on right away so I know what the external budget is doing into it. And then we do an estimate of, like, if we can find pictures online, this is what we use the VAs for, is finding the pictures online. Mhmm. Gotcha. We can find them online. We got an idea, but that doesn't always work out about several projects where the basement flooded because the house was vacant for a while and then I had a $60,000 bill to redo the basement. Right? So that that does take it. But what you wanna do is limit your liability in every single way possible. And the VA piece of it, I would say what I've been able to do better than most is leverage VAs in every aspect of my business to give me an edge. I knew I wanted this to be a competitive advantage of mine ten years ago when I heard about VAs and went through the process of figuring out how to layer in virtual assistants in each part of your business to give you maximum output. One thing that I do is I have the most amazing reporting of any business that's out there in terms of looking at real time data to make decisions. That's how we've been able to scale the level that I'm at. Most people don't look at VAs to do that.

Sean Connolly: [15:43] I do that in every aspect of all my businesses because that data is what gives you the insight on where you can make your moves. And the quicker you're getting it, the faster the data intelligence is there to inform your team about how to make a better decision. So that's a big part of what we do here of what I do with them.

Dan Austin: [16:01] What are some of those examples in like, let's stick with the home flipping business, like, where you said you have VAs as far as on the picture, like trying to scrape the web for pictures. What else are they doing that gives you that competitive advantage?

Sean Connolly: [16:14] So transaction coordination. So just imagine all the transaction, the coordinate so I get about a 185 emails a day. Wow. Out of a 185 emails a day, my VAs, I have two executive assistants that process that email. That's the volume of it and what I feel is appropriate. I like to be better, you know, my service to be immediate Mhmm. And respond to people really quickly. But the cadence, we basically go in and we templated it out the last ninety days of what I would typically respond. And then the the GAs are able to mimic in their cadence with everybody. I literally have every system and process that you could think of within flipping, within acquisitions, fully documented. So if we buy in this county, fully documented process. If I'm going to, work with a utility company, we actually call in, listen to the call, record it. We have the script. An example would be if we're calling in to turn on the utility for a property that we just bought and they're gonna say it's electric. They wanna know the ampage, the wattage, the voltage, and the location of the meter. Yep. My VA calls the superintendent before they even call to get that information and then they have it. So we're not wasting any time on the phone. Yep. But down to the littlest nuances, all that is baked into the way we do it.

Sean Connolly: [17:29] So when we do a property takeover, first thing the VA does is they set up all the insurance. Then they set up on all the utilities. Then they'll set up, make sure the security is in place. And then they're gonna get over to construction, and they have a checklist that they ensure the construction does. What do we need from construction? Well, we need the bid. We need to do a collection of the bid, the scope. And then if we're working with a a lender, a hard money lender, my DAs are even trained to submit all that stuff over the hard money letter. So all my loans are done by BAs. I've dealt with, you know, with three or four different national lenders. Perfect.

Mike DeHaan: [18:03] That's crazy. You're you're so granular on stuff. A lot of people, their idea of building systems, and this is us as well, it's very sort of like big picture, but you're down to like the nitty gritty details about like, this is what the conversation cadence looks like when you're on the utility. That's like almost as, I don't know, like the detail as you can get with something like that. How do you even keep things organized? Like what system are you using for that? Like, you must have a team that just oversees maintaining that organization. Because even on our end, right now, that's like the biggest issue is everything's always sort of going towards chaos and just like

Sean Connolly: [18:39] That's a great thing. That's what we do at Skilled Virtually. So what I realized as an entrepreneur is, you know, number one, we're great visionaries and we will we take a lot of action, but we don't always take the action that is gonna strategically grow our companies. Right? And the truth is how many people are good process engineers? I'm definitely I'm a decent one, but it's out of necessity of the business. I'd say it's not my natural state, but when you pair me with a good process engineer, I can think through a process all the way through down to the minute the most minute detail. I'm a perfectionist at heart. I think most entrepreneurs are in that way that their business is their baby. It's a reflection of who you are as a person. You want anybody you touch to deliver that Wow level of service. And for me, I'm a control freak. Like I want every aspect of my service delivery to be perfect. And when I say that, I mean it. That's actually part of our core values. Like deliver a Wow service to anybody that touches our business. Now how can we systematically think about doing that in every aspect of what we do? That's what we deliver through scale virtually to our clients because we work with so many clients on a national basis. My team's been doing it for thirteen years and has built thousands of systems for the largest real estate franchises out there. We've built their SOPs.

Sean Connolly: [19:57] We know what best practice is. So when I work with a client and I can see what they have set up, we can give them the template that's best practice for what they're trying to do with the right scripting, with the right emails that go out, with the right knee and cadence to have, and with the right process to have to make sure all the loops get closed out. And I have to tell you, I was lucky enough to pair up with Six Sigma trained engineers that had history doing this and built a huge team that does it now. And we're just constantly learning best practice from all the master classes that I'm involved in and from all the masterminds that I'm involved in and also all the large clients that I get to work with. We're dealing with big, heavy hitting private equities and some of the largest companies out there. We see the systems that they have in place to get to that level, And it's not like on the mom and pop flipper level. It's well beyond that. So that insight is basically every person that I talk to through Scale Virtually will let me see under the hood to what they're doing because I have to solve problems for them. I'm like a business therapist in that way. Tell me what your biggest challenge is and tell me how you got here.

Sean Connolly: [21:05] And I'll I guess to figure out what they are and aren't doing to solve that problem for them. So it's just it's really I have a natural curiosity about things. And if I'm gonna do something, I always go to the deepest level on making sure I'm doing it as well as I can. That's just the methodology that we've adopted as a team. And I have to tell you, I owe all the service delivery. This is one of the most incredible things. So I just had a client that I talked to yesterday and he's like, Sean, I can't believe the service from your company. He's like, the VAs you provided me are some of the best members of my team. Everybody loves them. They're completely part of what we do as a company. Like, invite them to our meetings.

Dan Austin: [21:47] Mhmm.

Sean Connolly: [21:47] They run things for us. And the other thing that he said is, I've been in the franchise business for thirty years is what he said. And you guys use systems and processes better than anybody I've seen. And I'm in that business. He's like, I didn't know what I needed until I met you guys with what we were trying to do. He had a property management company. He said that he was trying to take his, I think it was his maintenance department from 30,000 a month. In eighteen months we had him do 150. He said in the next twelve months they're gonna do 500. And it's due to the systems and the personnel that we put in place. He started with two VAs. He's hiring his third. And he said he expects by within six months, he'll have three more added on. The growth of his business. So that's what gets me excited. As you can see like Yeah. From an energy level standpoint, I love helping people grow their business. My leisure reading is all business books. It's what I love to do. So that is the thing that when I get on the phone with a client and they're like, Sean, you changed my business. Not only do we change people's business, but we actually transform their their life. Because you guys know it. We end up in that situation where we're consumed by our business. We're doing the day to day grunt activity and we can't see the big picture of how to get out of it until someone kind of takes our hand and shows us how to do that. We can put the system in that'll do that.

Sean Connolly: [23:10] And I hear every single client that I talk to, that's the story I get to hear how they hadn't had a vacation in five years and now they wanted their first vacation. Their VA's handled their email for them and everything went smooth. And now they're having breakfast with their kids. I just had a client the other day said his wife said that we saved him from a divorce because I

Mike DeHaan: [23:31] see. There you go.

Sean Connolly: [23:32] He wasn't spending any time with his family. But once we put the systems in place, he started having more time to spend with his family. And that was the number one catalyst to him having a better quality of life. So I myself personally was hospitalized three times with chest pains before I started putting systems in place. They got me out of that rut and got me into this new frame Got it. Where I'm focused on building systems and aligning it with the right people.

Dan Austin: [23:58] Yeah. You're coming from a point of like, of experience and having to deal with this. Let's make a point of clarification too for the listeners. So, Sean, you run a $50,000,000 real estate business. Scale virtually is a different business. Can you give us like a like a two minute like background on like what that business actually looks like today?

Sean Connolly: [24:15] Absolutely. So Scale Virtually, the team's been doing it for the last thirteen years. We were just nominated by the Chicago Tribune as one of the best places to work for us. So just imagine that guys running a virtual staffing company

Mike DeHaan: [24:27] That's fantastic.

Sean Connolly: [24:27] And getting ranked as one of the best places to work for. They said we had some of the highest marks they've ever seen. What we try to do is create a win win win for everybody. We want to create a win for our clients first and foremost, for the virtual assistant as well. We want to pair them with a good client, but we want to set them up for success. So what I have found in my own experience, and I'm hoping you guys can relate to this, is as an entrepreneur, when I was trying to grow, this is probably my twelfth company. When I was trying to grow my first couple companies, the only thing that stopped me from growing is being able to afford the next hire. So we solved that problem because you can hire labor for 50 to 70% less than you normally could. You can hire three people for the price of one. But the problem is if you don't have the right systems in place for that person to be effective, a VA will not be effective. That's why we develop dummy proof documentation. And systems are really what are the defining part of what we do. So some people would say scale virtually, that's a virtual staffing company. We're actually way more than that. We're like an outsourced COO that's going to come in and take a look at your business and transform it by putting the right procedures around each and every part of your business, the right handshakes between the departments.

Sean Connolly: [25:42] All the things that get lost in a lot of small businesses, we put those in place so that everybody's working on the real problems in the business and not the ones that are created by chaos because there's no structure in place.

Mike DeHaan: [25:55] Yeah. Awesome. That's great. Going back to the real estate side. So it's very interesting to me that you've grown as much as you have only buying from foreclosure, like like from auction. Like that's something that I imagine Chicago being a huge city has made that possible. But like for us, for example, for the past, what, four years, we've only been direct seller. Right? We've always been that way. We haven't even had the option to buy from auction because we kinda started right before COVID and auctions went to zero.

Dan Austin: [26:23] Yeah. Yeah. We still don't even have auctions really. I mean, here and there.

Mike DeHaan: [26:26] Yeah. So how have your systemizations gone with like the direct to seller portion of it? The marketing's relatively easy. It's the sales cycle that's very challenging, And this is something that we always talk about at like our business boot camps and like in our scale community and stuff is that like, we have the black swan with the direct to seller sort of business, where every single seller is different. There's always some sort of personal situation, some sort of financial situation, they're kind of an irrational person. Have you been able to sort of systematize the sales process the same way? What are your secrets? Because we're trying to fix that out.

Sean Connolly: [27:06] Well the secret right there is I don't have all that figured out, and I had I don't have enough experience in it because I've only been doing it for about six months. But the secret is my new secret to success is I hire the best, and I have them come work for me This is that already have that experience. So that's what I'm doing. The two guys that I hired are exceptional at what they do. You've met, one of them, he's already done before I even hired him, he had already done over a 100 deals. Wow. So it's not like I was bringing out a rookie and figuring out the system. What I've been able to do with him is not only take I've been able to bring the learnings that I've had from other people with the daisy chain of offerings that you need to have with the systemization of the marketing that is to follow. Part of what I got with the company was all the marketing that was to follow. But to your point, that challenge with we just had two deals that we had them under contract and we thought they were gonna go well. And then the they came back to us and wanted to retrade a little bit and we're holding firm. And you guys know the deal. Some of those people are gonna come back and some of them aren't. In terms of systematizing that though, one of the things that I'm building within scale virtually is a lead gen model that'll take you through how to generate the leads, what your marketing needs to look like, how what the scripting needs to look like when you get on the phone with them, and then all the follow-up. Like, if you need the second part of the business would be like transaction coordinator and all the the subsequent pieces to the business, that's something else that that we're developing right now.

Sean Connolly: [28:35] And the cool thing is within six months, we have two organic sites. We have two paid search sites. We're doing hundreds. I think we're doing close to 300 leads a month right now. And some of these sites aren't even off the ground. The organic sites are gonna take a little bit longer. But I've seen really high returns on what we're doing and we're a little specialized. I think we make a little more money than the average guys. I've seen everybody making, you know, two to three x on their on the leads that they pay for. I'm trying to get really granular on how I'm generating those leads at the most efficient price point. And then I'm trying to get really granular and honor dispose of those So then maximizing the profit. So what I mean by that is like, is it right for wholesale? Is it right for takedown? A lot of times what I I'll give you one of the challenges that we had when we started. In my market, we're used to making $50,000 a deal. So we were getting leads in and they were only worth 7 to 10. We were like, should we even waste our time on those? Well, you actually need those leads to pay for the market. So I had to reteach my team how to think about them. Because they they weren't thinking about that.

Sean Connolly: [29:43] The other thing is if you're buying from PPL providers, it's making sure you have a good scrub process in in place. Yeah. You know, that was a good learning lesson for us on the first thirty days as well.

Mike DeHaan: [29:52] Yeah. That makes sense. So all your lead generation's online that with the direct to seller

Sean Connolly: [29:57] stuff. Yep. And I will tell you this, margin wise, it's way better. You know, the reason for that is I have great negotiators. So that's a key part of it. But I'm actually as part of my business up through Skilled Virtually, I'm working with a number of other coaches and they're guiding me on how to improve my sales process overall. Because I wanna build the best one in the business so that we can you know, if we choose to go national with it, we can join we can go into a new market and establish the right processes and procedures, not only from the marketing strategy, but also from the sales strategy and then build out the construction teams to do the dispose. Yeah. I feel like I don't know about you guys, but no one is screaming that Chicago is gonna be the mecca of real estate in the next ten to fifteen years. Actually, usually quite the opposite. We had a great year this year, but I'm trying to find those markets that everyone's chasing like Arizona, Texas, Tennessee, the Carolinas. Those are Florida. Those would be the ones that we choose to move into next. But I feel like the market needs to soften a little bit on pricing before it really makes sense. And to your point, Chicago is such a huge market.

Sean Connolly: [31:05] Like there is a lot of auction properties here, but the auction properties, and this is perfect, that we pivoted to doing the direct to seller model because the auction property margin is pretty much gone.

Dan Austin: [31:16] I bet. Yeah. Too many players.

Sean Connolly: [31:18] I don't know what's going on. It's been terrible in the last six months. I used to close like two out of 10 deals. Now I'm closing one out of 25. The numbers are just and the margins are way lower. They're just not the same as they used to be. I feel like there's a lot of newbies getting into the market that are buying things that don't really know what they're doing. Yep. They can't really punch the ground what's going on.

Mike DeHaan: [31:42] We're seeing that a lot, especially because people, like, have an aversion to the direct to seller stuff because it is generally expensive to run, or at least it feels that way, especially when you're new. Hey. We really appreciate being a listener of the collecting keys podcast. Did you know that we also are on social media and on YouTube? Should go and shoot us a follow on those as well. You can find both Dan and I on Instagram. I am at Mike underscore invests. Dan is at investor main Dan. You can also find short clips from the show at collecting keys podcast on Instagram. And if you wanna see our faces talking while you're listening to the show or you wanna check out some of our crazy animated adventures we've been putting together into some funny little web cartoons that sort of show the crazy stories that guests tell on the show, then you should go over to YouTube and check out the collecting keys channel. Shoot us a subscribe over there. It really helps continue to grow our audience. We really, really appreciate it. Anyways, enjoy the rest of the show you guys. We appreciate you all. Do you know what your typical cost per deal is with your online?

Sean Connolly: [32:38] The typical cost per deal, I think right now, we're probably between the 3 to $5,000 range.

Mike DeHaan: [32:43] Yep.

Sean Connolly: [32:44] That's across different marketing strategies right now. I haven't dialed that into the level that I need to. You know, the paid search stuff that I just started doing, we were using display as well. We're cutting that out. There's certain optimizations that we're making that I'm sure we're gonna cut those costs down soon.

Mike DeHaan: [33:00] Nice. That's industry standard. Like, everyone that we have on this show that we know is a legit operator, they kind of fall in that 3 to 5,000 range. Usually, the higher end if it's like a more expensive market with larger margins, and then on the lower end if it's somewhere where houses are like, okay. Right? And they're just turning shit tons out of them. So that makes sense. And then it's just fascinating to me how you're talking about these different websites with like the online lead gen. Like, you're I know you come from that background, but you do that at a level that I've never heard before. Usually people, they kinda get like these basic websites with like singular forms. They run, PPC ads and Facebook ads, and then they claim to have these results. And that's like what we've tried. We've talked to people that have done that, I've always been a skeptic. But so I guess like, just just dive into that a little bit, because that is a unique thing that you're doing. You say you have these free sites versus like these paid sites. Like what does that even mean?

Sean Connolly: [33:53] So by the way, I have a lot of expertise in this space. I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing organic websites in my previous career. And I was in the most competitive verticals that exist. So I was in for profit education, mortgage, and insurance. Those are the three biggest funders. So you needed to be at the top of your game if you were gonna compete in those spaces. And what I learned throughout my career there is the page that they land on, the way that you optimize, the way that you do the data collection, every piece matters. The time in which to call a lead. The call centers that we would sell leads to would be calling they'd have a thousand people in a call center and they'd hit the lead five times within ten seconds of it hitting their data. Wow. When I had to decide who to send a lead to, we had a 100 variables that we would calculate within a nanosecond to decide what schools we were gonna present that the person would choose from. So I'm just giving you an idea of the level of sophistication. So when I saw what was going on in this space, I started salivating because I saw how poorly the websites were built, how bad the marketing was, how bad the follow-up piece was. And whenever I get into a business, I call on all my top 20 competitors. I build spreadsheets out on what they're doing right, what they're doing wrong.

Sean Connolly: [35:11] That's how I'm able to gain best practice on what my my competition assume. That's what I've done. So I've actually figured out what best practice is. And now that's how I'm building the websites and I'm building the and we're building the the cadences through how we're dealing with things. So

Dan Austin: [35:26] Yeah. That's fascinating.

Mike DeHaan: [35:28] And you're right. Like, this has always been a big thing I've laughed at with real estate investors is there's, like, such a crazy gap between like real estate investors or real estate people in general and like their understanding of fundamental technology. That a, they there's so many things that have never improved. Look at an MLS in like a basic market. Right? MLS is like the worst software that you've ever used. Right? And then on top of that, you always have all these different tech platforms that come and are sold to real estate investors that are the worst software that you've ever seen, but people eat them up because they have stupid buzzwords, know, like AI AI. Or it's on the blockchain or it's tokenized or whatever. And they like the the product for what they're pitching doesn't even make sense. But the real estate investors are just like all over it because they don't understand basic technology. Right? Not tech savvy.

Sean Connolly: [36:21] Yeah. I'm so glad you pointed that out because even in my space, there's companies that have AI at the end of their name. And then I go up to them, I'm like, so what do you guys do with AI? And they do nothing with AI. Put it in their name get the attention of people to talk. Like, yeah, we're working on it. Everybody's working on it. There's nothing really functional that they do at all with it. And it's just it's a sneaky marketing technique.

Dan Austin: [36:47] Absolutely. It

Mike DeHaan: [36:48] It is. And real estate investors understand the difference between like AI and like a software algorithm that is just doing something that's systematically generated. Right? It's completely different. Absolutely.

Sean Connolly: [36:58] I will tell you, we actually do use a lot of AI in what we're doing. So my executive team went over to the AI conferences to figure out what we could be doing for our clients and to the way we build our process, to the way we do a lot of different things, to the way we do our marketing. There's a lot of iteration that we're leveraging AI to do to really help the clients that we work with. So I'm happy to say we're an AI company. We do leverage it though.

Mike DeHaan: [37:24] Yeah. So I guess to bring all this sort of full circle to the systemization stuff that you do with Scale Virtually, what do you think for like, are like the most important things that people should look to, I would say like optimize or outsource or like with from your perspective when they're starting to grow. So like the person that's trying to go from one deals a month to five deals a month is very different from the one who's trying to go from 15 to 50. Right? Do you already think the fundamental needs are the same or are there different things that those people should focus on?

Sean Connolly: [37:57] Great question, Mike. So the first thing, first thing that anybody should do is hire an executive assistant. Every coaching program I've been in, and I've been in a lot of them, the first thing that we do is we document all the things that we're working on and what's taking up our time and what we could possibly delegate. Because if you can't get the think time back to strategize and building a bigger vision for your company, it's never gonna happen. And you're also caught in the weeds of doing work that you get can get somebody to do for $10 an hour. When you're trying to make 500 to $1,000 an hour, that's not gonna happen if you're doing the $10 knot work. And I will tell you, personally, I'm a control freak when it comes to that perfectionism. You've gotta let that go. So the way that you let that go is you build the system that would mimic the way you would do it and you teach someone that exact operational procedure on how you would do it and you work with them every day. Once you do that and you create the second you, now you've got a lot of power because now you've got time back to start building a bigger business, okay, and start thinking about a bigger vision. And once you execute that one or two times, it becomes much easier to do that through different positions in your company. You'll start seeing how, okay, this is what I could do here, this is what I could do here. So an example would be, when I started property management, first it was with a PM assistant, but then the company got big enough where I needed a PM assistant. I needed a leasing assistant, right? So then you deviate the roles and they specialize, but then they back each other up as well in case one is out.

Sean Connolly: [39:30] So I would say hire an executive assistant is number one. But in order to set them up with the success that you want for your company, take the time. And I know it's not easy and if you're not good at it, give us a call here at Scale Virtually. Take the time to build out the way you want it done. If you do that, that's literally 95% of the battle.

Dan Austin: [39:53] That's incredible advice. Mike and I started out this year too. We actually hired a business coach at the beginning of the year to and and help us build out this concept of what a company looks like. We didn't know what we were getting into as far as building systems. But I would say most of 2023 is that's what we were doing, was trying to build out systems. I don't think we're great at it yet, but I mean, from where we were, which was just us doing everything random, not delegating properly, not managing it, not writing down a process, like to now, I think we've gone a long way, I can still feel like we have a ton of growth. There's so much to gain in this area of business.

Mike DeHaan: [40:28] Yeah. Well the big thing that we did Dan is we hired someone to do the actual like labor part of that which is the hard bit. The documentation part? The documentation which helps. And now the challenge is getting people to follow it and not just like stray from the path all the time. There's a management challenge which is completely different.

Sean Connolly: [40:45] So you hit on a very good point. That is the feedback that I get from a lot of people. We have a secret sauce that makes that happen. Okay?

Mike DeHaan: [40:53] Okay.

Sean Connolly: [40:53] And, you know, having operational procedure, I'll give you a tidbit. Well, you design your KPIs and your performance around that and it's built into meeting cadences and people have to talk about it. That's how you can get that piece

Mike DeHaan: [41:08] done. Mhmm.

Sean Connolly: [41:09] That's why, like, for us, whoever is not good or doesn't know the system they need to create let's be honest. If you've never created the system and it's something new to you, how do you think you're gonna create a good system?

Mike DeHaan: [41:19] Got it.

Sean Connolly: [41:20] Why wouldn't you go to the person that's already built something that's close to perfect, You know, that's working at a very high level. That's what you should be seeking out to do.

Speaker 3: [41:28] Yeah.

Sean Connolly: [41:28] That's something we can help you build. But you guys you guys nailed it. Having operational procedure without people leveraging it, you have to make sure that people are accountable to to utilize

Mike DeHaan: [41:38] it. Yeah. Absolutely.

Dan Austin: [41:40] Yeah. And I think a tough gap for people, and it has been for us, is you hammer out that operational procedure, but then writing out the KPIs that feed that. Mhmm. Because sometimes, I mean, you can make you can make anybody can make KPIs, but if you're not measuring the right shit, you're not gonna get the right results.

Sean Connolly: [41:55] Here's the other thing too. I've gone down the road of doing KPIs down to the most minute level. Keep it three to five Mhmm. You know, per position. Three to five is really all the human mind can focus on. If you're doing more than that, you should be probably delegating it to another person because you're just setting that person up for failure. How many times do we get overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that we have going on? We're trying to take it on all at once and really nothing's getting done.

Mike DeHaan: [42:21] Right? Yeah. Just to give people something actionable on that. Do have an example of, like, some good KPIs you said if you're trying to make it just three to five for, say, like a a sales manager, like an acquisition manager on your team?

Sean Connolly: [42:33] Yeah. Well, the sales manager should be looking at his cost per lead. He should be looking at how many leads are going to each rep per day. He should be looking at their contact rate. He should be looking at their close rate. Those would be the ones that I would look at. And I would also the thing that I am interested in learning more about is, like, who's a really good negotiator and who's not. Yeah. You know, like, so how much margin are they able to build into each deal? That's how I would look at those KPIs. But I can tell you, me trying to model out, because we're trying to go to 10 people by the end of the year on the acquisition side. Our goal is to be at six by the middle of the year. And I'm thinking calibrating. I've already calibrated the 100 leads per person. And if they're working a 100 leads and they can get ahold of 33% of those and they can get to closing 25 of those. Now we're in a really good situation. Right? And that's how I'm gonna model what we're gonna build moving forward. Sure.

Mike DeHaan: [43:28] I guess the sales guys as a whole, like the actual closers are you looking at? I mean, obviously, their number of deals signed is a big thing. Right? But there are a lot of variables outside of that that are kind of outside their control. Like, technically, that person can call 500 people and none of them will answer the phone. Especially when you're going direct to seller, those are the kind of nature of the people that we're dealing with. So what metrics you look at there?

Sean Connolly: [43:52] I wanna give two variables that I think are just really, really important. Number one is your speed to call. You could set them up for failure right away if they're not calling immediately. And they should be calling from at least we call three times and we get it right away. Out of the gate, boom, boom, boom, hit it three times. The next thing that I would focus on is the follow-up. Majority of all businesses I deal with fail, because they do not have a follow-up process built up. And even if they have one, it's not good. Yeah. And there's no way to check if it's being followed. You know, these automations that are in place, that's great, but how many times are you calling that person? So the shifts that we've made is we call for the first seven days, then that transitions over to a VA to call. You know, like if we haven't

Dan Austin: [44:39] been able

Sean Connolly: [44:39] to make it happen in seven days, it's gonna go to the VA.

Mike DeHaan: [44:42] Yeah. I love that. And that's that's such an underrated comment right there. So this is something that we preach a lot as well because our typical practice, we need get the guys to follow it every day, but what their expectation is that they call them basically twice a day for the first seven to ten business days, right? And then after that, they go to the VA, they go to our cold follow-up team. But so many new people we see come into this and they're like, I call them twice and don't answer, what drip campaigns are you guys putting people on

Dan Austin: [45:07] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [45:07] That are gonna get them to respond? It's like nothing. You gotta to your stupid drip campaign.

Dan Austin: [45:13] Calling them once a week for two weeks is not gonna get anything.

Mike DeHaan: [45:16] Yeah. For sure.

Sean Connolly: [45:17] The other thing that I would look out for is if your if your number's flagged for spam. We've had that happen Like, so anything you can do around that same thing with your email. These are things that like people underestimate are how important they really are to be the successful conversion. When you're in lead generation, this is what I've learned. Every percentage increase that you can get, you need to be fighting for. Because that's gonna lower your marketing cost, that's gonna make you more competitive. And if you're not doing that and your competition is, that's why you're gonna be out of business if you don't keep innovating and getting better

Dan Austin: [45:51] that way. Absolutely. Absolutely. Especially with sophisticated operators like yourself coming into this space historically, even when Mike and I started, there wasn't a ton of sophisticated operators in off market real estate space, and now people are moving in. We've had to up our game immensely just to stay operational. Absolutely. People that aren't doing that, you're right, they're just, they're not gonna be around.

Mike DeHaan: [46:10] Mhmm. Yeah. It's rapidly changing, know. It's it's I think that for so long, a lot of people got sophisticated on the flipping and renovating side because that was very tangible. You can hire a crew, you can like, you know, manage a construction project. But as you're saying, as the auctions are getting tighter and tighter, the reason that they're getting tighter is because more people have figured out the renovation real estate side of it, how to systematize it. But the lead generation and the closing side is still kind of, you know, it's definitely getting more competitive but it's much harder to build out. It's much harder to theoretically understand. But as that starts to get tighter and more competitive as well, it's going to continue to get more challenging. So it's it's super important to be like up to speed with all those things.

Sean Connolly: [46:55] Think you make a really good point there, Mike. I mean, having been in a lot of different businesses, this isn't easy. No. This is extremely difficult to be a great operator from a construction standpoint to also being a great operator from a sales and negotiating standpoint, and then a lead gen standpoint, that you gotta be very multifaceted to be competitive in the space and be extracting the most amount of margin out of these deals. And it's gonna take a while to cultivate those skills. We've been doing this for eleven years, and we're adding different components all the time. It's just it's not easy. So it's a long road.

Dan Austin: [47:30] Yeah. I'm glad you say that because Mike and I have said that to ourselves for a long time. Like, this is a tough business to be good at.

Mike DeHaan: [47:36] Yeah. Yeah. Well, the crazy thing is is, I mean, if you look at how quickly most people go in and out of this business because it is challenging. Like Dan and I, we've been full time on this for over four years. We're veterans at this point, honestly. Like so few people stick around for more than like two years even on on four. And then we we guys like you have been around for over a decade. You're like the elders in the in the industry at this point, man. You're like the the wise man on the hill. Everyone's like, wow. So well, very, very cool, Sean. I really, really appreciate all the the detailed discussion. We're coming up on time here, we're going to dive into our end of show questions. So we have the same three questions that we ask everybody that the show. The first one, which is the crowd's favorite, is what is your craziest real estate investing story? And this can be a big win, it can be a big loss. Only rule is you're not allowed to talk about finding a corpse in a property because we've had that a couple of times and it's just never like that

Dan Austin: [48:30] great of a story. Just kinda depressing. And I'm sure you found some.

Mike DeHaan: [48:33] Yeah, I'm sure you It happens. It's part of the game.

Sean Connolly: [48:36] Okay. Well, I'm gonna think about this one. I I think there's I have the bad stories. That's for sure. So anybody who doesn't, I have several. I'll give you one of those. So bought it at Hartley Building and, took it over and then found out my security guard kind of a funny story. My security guard sees the light on in the 2nd Floor. Goes in there. Two people are getting it on, And he's in my apartment with two people that are getting it on. He's like, what's going on here? And they're like, we're renting this apartment. What are you doing here? And he's like, I work for the owner. You guys are not supposed to be here. And they're like, yeah. Well, the landlord, mister Johnson, who's the guy who hadn't paid me anything, who lived on the 1st Floor

Mike DeHaan: [49:21] Yeah.

Sean Connolly: [49:22] Had rented out my apartment on the 2nd Floor and basically allowed them to stay there.

Mike DeHaan: [49:27] So So what?

Sean Connolly: [49:28] That's that's actually happened. And by the way, I've seen a lot of crazy stuff being in Chicago. I bet. I will tell you, this is just from a modeling standpoint, a great story. I got a call about a deal that was a 25 unit brain brand new construction deal built in 2020. And the it was going into bankruptcy. And there's a fight between them. The the parents bought the son's note on the property. There's a family squabble and foreclosed on their son. Nice.

Mike DeHaan: [49:59] Oh, damn.

Sean Connolly: [50:00] And the deal the deal is worth about 6.5 to 7,000,000. Wow. And we're putting it we're looking to put it under contract at 5.6, and it's due to this strange thing.

Dan Austin: [50:12] Yeah. So the kid had a note from somebody else and the parents bought it and now we're foreclosing?

Sean Connolly: [50:16] Their family is like a a local powerhouse. They have a lot of big commercial property and they went in and they they knew the lender and they bought the note and they foreclosed on.

Mike DeHaan: [50:26] Savage. Man.

Sean Connolly: [50:27] Everything they can do to disrupt. So that's the first time I've ever heard of anything like that.

Mike DeHaan: [50:32] Oh, wow.

Sean Connolly: [50:32] But we're hopefully gonna have a benefit from it.

Dan Austin: [50:35] Yeah. Good for you.

Mike DeHaan: [50:36] Nice. That's like some like big boy pushing people around there. Yeah. It's like, I'm gonna find anything I can to just make your life hell with that.

Sean Connolly: [50:45] Definitely. I'm curious to know what the son did that made him that mad.

Dan Austin: [50:48] Something to piss them off enough to what? Spend 5,000,000 or 4 however much the note was for to to get back at him.

Sean Connolly: [50:55] Yeah. I don't think money was an issue with what they were trying to do. I do use just being vindictive.

Mike DeHaan: [51:01] That's crazy. Or you know, there there probably is some like roundabout way that they're approaching it or or something where it's gonna be actually beneficial for them to do it. Right? I like everyone on on all sides that's gonna report a loss or like gonna allow them to reduce some of the taxes or something like that. I always assume that when there's families that are doing funny things Mhmm. It allows them to come out ahead some way. Like there's like a big billionaire sort of real estate family here in Spokane. And one of the things that they'll do is basically own the land and lease the property that's on it separately to the land. And then that way when the person

Dan Austin: [51:40] Yeah. They'll lease the land to create what we're saying. They'll lease land, but build like

Mike DeHaan: [51:43] a $100,000,000 apartment building on it. Exactly. And then when the guy died, which was very recently, they basically gave up the land and the property that was on there just like Sheriff now was a fixture. Right? And so they inherited the land value, the sons did, but not necessarily the property value, but they got the property because it was a fixture on the land now. Wow. Right? So they basically didn't have to pay any taxes on this $100,000,000 property because there was no cost basis. It was like technically leased, but when he died, it became a fixture. Those are the kind of things that those multi $100,000,000 families do to start the

Sean Connolly: [52:22] It's like you hear about air rights and what they do around that too. That's how Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [52:26] Known areas.

Dan Austin: [52:27] Gets crazy with that.

Mike DeHaan: [52:28] Yeah. Yeah. I like to think

Dan Austin: [52:29] in your deal, Sean, the kid just didn't show up to Christmas where he showed up to Christmas with a stripper and mom is pissed.

Mike DeHaan: [52:35] Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. So awesome. Alright. Second question. What is the number one tip you would give to a small time real estate investor looking to take their business with Nexla?

Sean Connolly: [52:46] The first thing that I would do if I was getting in the game is you wanna find the best person in the space of doing it and then go and learn from that person whoever it is. Offer them your services for free for six months or whatever it is to figure out a way to work within the business. I've actually had people join my team that way who've like met me at different events and said I'll for you for free. I just wanna learn from you. And they've turned out to be some of the best people we have on our team. Awesome. You know, that is the number one recommendation that I would have. And the other would be as soon as you can get that executive assistant, do it. But the thing is a mentor, the amount of learning that you will gain within six months to a year of just seeing how they conduct themselves. Yeah. People discount is they they look at real estate as like just doing a transaction. What I'm always trying to do is learn a model. I'm not trying to do a transaction. I'm trying to learn how to build a business that's going to endure and it's got all the working pieces in it that are working right and it's gonna enable it to scale. That's what you'll learn from a really good entrepreneur.

Dan Austin: [53:47] Yeah. Great advice right there.

Mike DeHaan: [53:48] Yeah. Underrated thing. And it's funny, people will spend $200,000 to go to school to, you know, hopefully learn something, but they won't spend $50,000 to hire a mentor that is actually doing what they wanna do. Yeah. You know, it's always a funny parallel.

Sean Connolly: [54:04] And Jeff, wanna commend you guys for coming up with the scale community and what you guys are doing there. Like, that's the other thing that I would highly recommend. Join a community like Mike and Dan, the Swords, the scale up community, where you can learn from other industry veterans for how you can really scale your business. Because the greatest learning that I can tell you that I've had, and I have a lot of experience, is just sitting in those rooms and seeing other ways to do things and having people get up there and tell you some of the big mistakes that they made and some of the big wins that they made. There's just so much learning that happens. So communities and education like what Mike and Dan provide are instrumental. I am I've been through a ton of it, and that is what I credit a large part of my success to.

Mike DeHaan: [54:44] Awesome. Yeah. Appreciate that, Sean. Thanks. Yeah. Cool. Alright. Last question. Where can people find you, follow you, and reach out to you?

Sean Connolly: [54:50] Absolutely. If you need to find me, you can go to scalevirtually.com. And that's my calendar there. My email address is sean, sean,@scalevirtually.com. That's s c a l e v I r t u a l l y. And guys, thank you so much for having me on today. It's been a blast. Love talking real estate. Happy to do it anytime.

Mike DeHaan: [55:15] Yeah. Likewise. Sean, really appreciate it, man. You dropped some incredible knowledge on this episode. Thanks so much. And you guys you guys definitely go and check out scalevirtually.com. Send Sean an email. In case you can't tell, he kinda knows what he's doing. Just a little He's probably one of the more impressive operators, entrepreneurs we've had on this show. So don't be shy. Reach out to him. That's why people come on these shows, because they want you to engage. So go out there and and see what he has going on. So awesome. Well Sean, thanks again for coming on the show, man. We really appreciate it. Everybody, thanks for listening. We'll talk to you guys next week. See you all.

Sean Connolly: [55:47] Thanks, guys. Thanks

Speaker 3: [55:50] for listening to Collecting Keys. Drop us a five star review on iTunes and send us a screenshot to Mike@collectingkeys.com for your chance to receive a free collecting keys t shirt.