Stocks and Crypto dipped big, but a House is still worth a House

Speaker 1: [0:02] Welcome to the collecting keys real estate investing podcast with your host, Mike DeHaan and Dan Austin. From wins, losses, horror stories, and tactics for optimizing your business, Mike and Dan take a real uncensored deep dive into the ins and outs of running a full time real estate investment and wholesaling business.

Mike DeHaan: [0:26] What's going on, everybody? Welcome to episode eight of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast coming off after after thanks.

Dan Austin: [0:35] Hold on.

Mike DeHaan: [0:36] I'm sorry. Gonna interrupt that here so you can slide. I don't know if we can slide your collection of keys out of the way. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry.

Dan Austin: [0:45] We hey. We are the collecting keys podcast. I just

Mike DeHaan: [0:47] you know, I need to get a

Dan Austin: [0:49] wall, a mural of keys.

Mike DeHaan: [0:51] Yeah. So that's a landlord problem right there. Yeah. You need you like, a room. Like, have you ever I've seen, like, a couple guys. They, like, flex that if they have, like, a pretty large portfolio. They'll have, like, a key room at their office where they have, a giant, like, pegboard just full of keys.

Dan Austin: [1:07] Yeah. Yeah. That's a a good flex. I move towards lock boxes, but I just have those as spares just in case. Right? But they're obviously unorganized right now. It's just a pile. So Yeah. Who knows what they all go to. But, like, the lock box on the house is usually pretty good, but then what happens is some contractor loses it and you're screwed.

Mike DeHaan: [1:27] Yeah. Yeah. Right. That's true. Yeah. You'll never I mean, you'll never figure out what all those go to. Are you, like, gonna go to every property with that whole bundle and just, like, try every single one and see what works?

Dan Austin: [1:37] No. See, some of them are well organized. Like, these have you know, I've got, like, the little thing with the address on it. Right? And some of them, you know, some of them are decently organized. It's just the other ones that I yeah. You're right. Some of them are going to the garbage. I used to have even more than that, but, you know, my daughter likes playing with them. So I keep some of the loose ones around.

Mike DeHaan: [1:55] Yeah. Do do you think it'd be beneficial to swap everything over to, like, the the smart locks? I mean, act I mean, would. Right? If you think about it, it's kind of expensive. Swap everything over to like the smart locks and then between tenants, I mean, you can just basically swap out the key code. You don't even give them keys. You just give them like a new code. Yeah. And then when they leave a new one comes in, you just generate a new one. Then Then I mean, have to go to the property. Then you send in the cleaner that way between them, you send in the handyman. You can even I wonder if you could even do it like we're having a walkthrough. Here is, you know, if you wanna walk through like on Saturday, here's your thirty minute window. Your code is this, and it expires after thirty minutes. So that way you know who's in and out in case everybody messes up your property.

Dan Austin: [2:41] Yeah. You know, I mean, like the we use the I I like I like quick set smart key stuff, but we use their on our Airbnb's, the digital ones that can you can hold up, like, 250 codes, which I don't know how many locks you can have on their app. We've got two. The challenge that I've I've kind of thought about, especially with Airbnb's is like, if the batteries run out? You know what I mean? So you maybe that pair with a lockbox for the tenants to be able to access, but then you're kind of losing security with your lockbox. If, I don't ever give tenants like lockbox codes because I don't want

Mike DeHaan: [3:17] to go

Dan Austin: [3:17] and change it after they've had it. Right. I've got, I've got one code for all of our properties. And so it's probably not the most secure way to do it, but if we have a contractor that we fire, I always have to change, which is also a pain in the ass.

Mike DeHaan: [3:31] Well, it's probably even less secure, though. That's also the same as your PIN code for your debit card. The

Dan Austin: [3:36] only it's the only thing I remember. Car.

Mike DeHaan: [3:39] You have your car, truck codes

Dan Austin: [3:40] exactly the same. Oh, yeah. Yes. That's the truth.

Mike DeHaan: [3:45] Yeah. But yes. I mean, for for Airbnb, that's no brainer. But I wonder even not for, like, long term rentals. I mean, why can't we structure it the same way? Right? Instead of having to do the open house BS process, we can just give people like a temporary code that only lasts a short period of time.

Dan Austin: [4:00] Yeah. You know, and I I was actually talking to Sam Barr about that. He that's what he has on all those properties. And then he has all those things you just said, hey, the cleaner gets a code. This person, they all have different unique codes because then you can just change that one person's code. And so he does like remote everything, you know? And so it's definitely it's worth it's worth doing, I think, as we scale.

Mike DeHaan: [4:24] You should look into that. Cause I mean, is any look right? Like if you have to change the locks or anything on it, what does that cost like a 100 something bucks?

Dan Austin: [4:33] No, it would cost The one we buy is, like, I think it's, like, around $200 and then paying a guy, you know, $50 to go change it or whatever. So it's an expensive endeavor. The one thing I'd be curious about is, you know, when don't

Mike DeHaan: [4:45] when you have the one you're talking about, though, that's that much.

Dan Austin: [4:48] Yeah. If you just I guess if you just got because yeah. That's true. So the ones I want for Airbnb are connected to Wi Fi. Right? Because I wanna be able to know when people are accessing or not accessing. So for a regular one gosh. I don't know, though, actually, if with, like, a hand punch, if you could actually do, multiple different codes. I'd I think you might have to have a smart one.

Mike DeHaan: [5:09] Yeah. So yeah. The the smart one. Then I wonder if you get ones that are tied to, like, cellular.

Dan Austin: [5:15] Yeah. And you can probably pay a fee.

Mike DeHaan: [5:17] Yeah. I don't know. Maybe if one of

Dan Austin: [5:19] our listeners knows, they can hit us up and tell us the best way to do this because as you know, we're troubleshooting on on the podcast.

Mike DeHaan: [5:25] You know?

Dan Austin: [5:25] Yeah. I don't you know, it's, hard to find time to figure this stuff out, but you if you do, it's like you unlock a whole another two hours of your week or whatever when you can find ways to automate shit.

Mike DeHaan: [5:34] Yeah. That's always the challenge too. I mean, also, think that those sort of things are why people say, you know, like residential real estate isn't scalable because there's, you know, all those facets to it. Right? But I'm like, I don't know. Does it really have to be that different than having a a large apartment unit if you, you know, you can organize it the same. Oh, I lost you. Where'd you go? I'm back.

Dan Austin: [6:03] That was weird.

Mike DeHaan: [6:07] Yeah. Sorry about that. With the Internet connections all day here today, James is in the meeting this morning. He's having a hell of a time with his Internet. So yeah. I mean, you know, if you structure it with, like, the same sort of infrastructure, I don't understand why it can't be the same as having, like, it all in a singular apartment, like a singular building. Right? I mean, honestly, if you have 40 single family units, all which have their own process and you have like part management in house, is that really that different from having an apartment complex? It's funny. I wonder if you could even sell that on like a cap rate basis because it is like a full portfolio similar to how you would sell like an apartment complex.

Dan Austin: [6:47] Yeah. Yeah. Can. I've looked at some deals like that where it's basically like Oh, really? Yeah. I was looking at a few years ago, a student rental portfolio right by mine. And of course, he was selling them at, like, a four cap. So it just didn't make sense for what I needed to do. But it was, I mean, a great, great portfolio of, like, 10 quality properties in a great neighborhood. And so on that yeah. Sold it as and they listed it on the MLS actually as a portfolio. He wanted quite a lot. I think it was like, he won like 3,000,000 form or something like that, which was actually back, you know, few years ago. Like a reasonable price. But then at that time it

Mike DeHaan: [7:21] was You're worth 8 now, dude.

Dan Austin: [7:22] Right. At then, I mean, it's still a four cap now, but at then at that point it was like a four cap too, but yeah. Anyhow, yeah, that's kind of how a lot of folks do it. I was actually listening to a podcast where they're talking about a guy like that's how he, he actually markets, and looks for specifically portfolios and and kind of review and the way he was talking about his reviewing process was looking at him as, you know, anything else, any other asset. Right? You're gonna look at the the cap rate and all that sort of stuff. But because he's marketing to, hey. 50 houses. I wanna buy your 50 houses. Right? Mhmm. So and then he flip flips them, wholesales them to other people.

Mike DeHaan: [7:59] Oh, okay. So, like like,

Dan Austin: [8:01] it doesn't is that on, like,

Mike DeHaan: [8:01] an individual basis or as, like, the whole portfolio?

Dan Austin: [8:04] The whole portfolio. Like, he has investors, and he basically goes out and finds folks like us that have, you know, medium to large size residential single family portfolios and maybe mixed in with some small, you know, apartment buildings and all that. And then basically, he but he's not wholesaling in the sense he's just collecting a brokerage fee on each house as he sells them into their his investor pool.

Mike DeHaan: [8:25] Oh, yeah. So actually selling each house individually, but, like, selling the the package as, a whole. No. But he's not selling, like, the entire package. That's

Dan Austin: [8:34] a good question. He made it sound like he was. He was selling it all as a package, but the way he instead of trying to collect a wholesale fee, he was you know, which is which could change or I can grow or shrink depending on your investors. He was just saying, I just want a 3% fee on each of these properties or the whole portfolio in general. Gotcha. Which I felt like he's leaving a lot of money on the table doing it that way, but he seemed to be happy with the system.

Mike DeHaan: [9:02] Yeah. So, Yeah. I mean, not the end of the day. Right? Like there's never a perfect way to do it. I was actually having that conversation with, one of my, my gobros from go buns this morning, where he was looking at this deal and, you know, he's talking about like, he's not sure it's gonna be a perfect burr. Is he sure he wants to do it, all that sort of stuff. You know, basically like, I think a lot of people, you know, they're worried about leaving money on the table or worried about something being perfect. So they don't pull the trigger. And that's the greatest way to just not do anything ever. Right. Right. That's like saying that I'm gonna, I'm gonna hunt for my dinner, but I only wanna eat unicorns. Right? It's like, you're never gonna eat anything. Right? So I know and even like in our our in Ryan's group, like in our mastermind and stuff, there's so many people that won't do it because they I mean, I freak our our main competitors in town. I talked to them and they said they won't keep a property if it's not a perfect burr. Not if you can't perfectly refinance out all of their money, they won't keep it. And I'm like, well, you're missing up on so much upside. Imagine all those properties that you passed on two years ago. If you bought those now, you guys collectively collectively would have, you know, millions and millions of dollars more wealth and cash flow. And you wouldn't be writing fat checks, the IRS, or we should be able to appreciate all that.

Dan Austin: [10:18] Right. Yeah. It goes

Mike DeHaan: [10:19] back to, like, I think

Dan Austin: [10:20] that comment I made last week. It's like, you an are you an entrepreneur or are you just an investor? Right? Like, if you feel like you're a real estate entrepreneur, but you're limiting because you're only looking at one metric, I mean, that's just, in my opinion, just investing in, like, one niche that you're gonna do, and that's bird deals. Right? And if you're just looking for the perfect bird deal, to your point, you're missing up on other opportunities, many other opportunities. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [10:45] Exactly. And then people get caught up on that, which, I mean, I guess if you're exactly right. If you're not doing a lot of transactions, you obviously wanna eat the most bang for your buck. But obviously, because we have the ability to generate more capital at like a decently rapid rate if stuff's coming together, we can be a little bit more loose with stuff. Yeah. If you're looking at that land deal and be like, we're unsure if we're gonna be able to assign it, which we were able to get it assigned over the weekend. We were like, oh, worst case, we'll just buy it and then like figure it out. It's only $20. It's like, well, it's kind of a fucked up mentality because that's a lot of money.

Dan Austin: [11:15] Yeah. Mean, mean, when it's it's not that hard to make $20 in our business. Right? But also, yeah, it is a good chunk of money. I mean, we first started out, we would've been like, oh, no. No way. Let's not even do this.

Mike DeHaan: [11:29] Man, remember remember the first assignment we ever got? It was, $7,500, and we were, like, high fiving. Yeah. Yeah. I worry in the in the front yard of that Coza property, like, leap around. But, yeah, we did it. Yeah. You know?

Dan Austin: [11:41] We boy, have we come a long way.

Mike DeHaan: [11:45] Right? No. No kidding. Not anything like that. I'm like, goddamn it. It's, like, that's, like, disappointing. I know. Yeah. But I know it's funny. I was going over stuff with our this was like the economy as a whole right now. And the world is such a weird freaking place right now, but I'm all it was also reinforcing to why I like real estate stuff so much because, you know, see, I'm sure you saw what the market did last Thursday and Friday Yep. After the new Omicron variant. I know. And also too, I'm just like, where do they come up? They're gonna keep picking random ass names. Like, please, like, have some sort of order to it. I know. I don't if you're you've probably never watched Futurama, but

Dan Austin: [12:27] I used to.

Mike DeHaan: [12:28] Yeah. There's like you know the evil aliens, they come from Omicron Perciate? Did. That's like the only thing I could think of.

Dan Austin: [12:34] I did not remember that, but that's funny. Well, it's like here was my initial instinct. I was like, it came out of South Africa. A lot more weird shit comes out of Africa than just this. Right.

Mike DeHaan: [12:44] I know. Just nonstop. I mean and you know, that that like, just like a whisper that in the news and then markets start tanking, you know, and people start to freak out. And, I mean, kind of the weird spot that we're in is I feel like it has been, like, short term trading across, like, cryptocurrency and stocks, especially, like, in the past little bit with, like, all the GameStop and the AMC stuff has now been drilled into the financial society. So now there's like this badge of honor where they're like, Oh, I'm holding the dip. Like I'm buying the dip. Oh yeah. You know, and whereas I feel like in the past, everyone was like, Oh, my retirement's going away. Need to panic sell. Right. And that's like what leads to a lot of the big recessions. But I feel like now with how easy it is and how cheap it is for people to make their own trades and also too with the abundance of, as many people as have struggled over the past couple of years now, There's a lot of people that have done extremely well and are sitting on lots of cash. They're just waiting for every opportunity to buy like that. You know, but I was thinking about that and I was like, it's really interesting because I don't know what it would take to trigger a major sell off, you know, like a major stock market recession like we've seen in the past, you know, because even if there's like a like a a big critical thing that happens, it's all people ready to buy. Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [14:10] You know, but at the same time, the one thing I do like like that, that's what scares me about it is you don't know. And it's impossible to really predict. The one thing that I can know about real estate is even if the real estate values go down and like, you know, inflation goes crazy and our dollars now worth nothing, a house will still be worth a house Right. At the end of the day. Yeah. You know, and there's still people that, like, need homes and especially who are buying at a discount, you know, and we have this cheap debt that we can use to do other things with. You know, I it's weird, like, looking at it as, like, the currency is, you know, like, having that hard asset that's always gonna be worth what it is, whether or not, like, relative to everything else that's good or bad, at least it's still a house.

Dan Austin: [14:52] Yeah. Yeah. There's always like the population isn't shrinking across the world. I mean, maybe even some countries it's, you know, declining, but like, there's always going to be more and more people, medical advancements keep people alive longer. There's less and less land available. And how you're right, a house is still house and it's still needed. And like, there's, you know, part of it's just a ton of money. There's a lot of money available right now. And so people are consuming more. It's obviously driving up inflation. And it's and so like, if I thought about this this morning while was working out, it's like, man, if, you know, if we lost 40% equity in our properties overnight, what would that look like? It's like, that's a huge swing. 40% equity. Right? We're talking housing crisis stuff. Right? We'd still be okay.

Mike DeHaan: [15:36] Yeah. Well, even then, like like, the thing about real estate is not liquid enough that can necessarily happen. You know? If you're trying to sell

Dan Austin: [15:44] is what matters. Or if you're if you if you're that guy that is or that investor that is buying bad deals. Yeah. And you lose equity. You don't now know now you've reduced one of your exits or one of your, you know, abilities to create cash flow. But if you have heavily cash flowing properties, regardless of amount of equity in it, you have room to play, unless you're getting some weird loans to where, you know, they can call your loan and now you're now you're trying to sell it and you're underwater. Like there's some weird stuff there. Right? But if you're making like reasonably smart decisions, because lending is getting good lending has been pretty easy since I've been, you know, buying rental properties. Right. It's not, I haven't been having to get some of these hokey loans and they're underwritten, you know, decently well, from my experience. So like, yeah, I agree. Real estate definitely seems to be a great place to be. Again, because like, if you do have, you know, if, if you're owning, you own Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency and it loses, you know, 40% overnight, like you've literally just lost that it's, you know, and if you need to sell it, you can't. Right. And so you have, and you don't know in the future on that sort of stuff, what it looks like when it comes back.

Mike DeHaan: [16:53] Exactly. Right. But this house is still gonna be worth a house. Yeah. You know? And and people, you know, like like I said, I'm not really sure what what'll spur that in stocks or crypto or whatever, but I mean, it could still happen. I remember holding all my my crypto stuff back in 2018. It's funny. I was actually looking at my on my Coinbase account. There's like, you know, the all time performance you can show. And it's far enough out now that the big crash that happened in twenty A eighteen little blip. Is literally just like one pixel. It's a straight line all the way down. Yeah. Because it happened over like a few days. Yeah. My portfolio dropped like 80%.

Dan Austin: [17:27] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [17:27] Yeah. You know, and it it it's funny because I was looking at it and I was like, oh, did I like sell a bunch of stuff or something? And I was like, oh, no. That's just it tanking. Right. In, like, you know, seventy two, ninety six hours, whatever it was. You know? And it's like, that that could happen. Right? Like, why did it happen back then? I don't know. No reason at all.

Dan Austin: [17:45] Yeah. Like, because The grand scale thing is just a blip in time. Right? And I think that's where it goes to

Mike DeHaan: [17:50] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [17:50] Investing for the long term. And, you know, there's quite a few pundits out there and people that are trying to forecast the future and the crash, the next coming crash, and that's how they make their money. And it's like, you know, nobody knows what the future holds. And so, like, just make the best decisions you can for today and keep investing consistently and keep buying the deals that make sense in today's market. And over a period of time, you'll be okay.

Mike DeHaan: [18:16] Yeah. For sure. One and one, think, also the biggest thing as well is, you you make money when you buy, just like we've always talked about in real estate or, you know, or in stocks, like you don't necessarily want to buy it at top of the market, you know, unless you really, really believe in it over like a long term horizon, even then you also you want to buy Tesla, Right? You wait until Elon Musk goes and like, you know, sends a dick pic or something on his Twitter and talks to each other. Right. And then Yeah. And you go and you buy at that point, you know people are gonna bid it back up again. Yeah. Exactly. Right? But now it's it's interesting place to be right now, but I don't know. I think I think the I I it's funny. I was listening to this other podcast over the weekend. It's a it's a fitness podcast. It took a lot of economics on there as a mind pump podcast. And they were saying, you know, is the everyone always keeps saying like, this is like the weirdest time in human history, which is like a lot of this sort of stuff. And they were docking out. Is it actually or is it just because our communication loop is now so short? Because it's so easy to, you know, learn new things like, you know, something happens, new Omicron variant in Africa, we know about it in like an hour. Right.

Mike DeHaan: [19:29] Right? Imagine like in the forties that happened. It's like, you know, a week and a half later. Right. They're like, oh, shit. This thing happened over there. You know? And and they also pointed out too. They're like, well, is it the weirdest times? Like, what about in the forties when we were in like a world war and there was tens of thousands of people being killed in combat on like a daily basis? You know, I think that that's probably a stranger, more alarming time if you look at the big picture versus the stuff we have going on right now. Second connection issue for the day, both got kicked off right there. Apparently, I don't I I think this is the CIA not liking us talking about the economy, Dan.

Dan Austin: [20:09] I agree. Yeah. Either that or it's just telling us we need, like, a proper studio with, like, fiber Internet connection. This is crazy. Oh, shit.

Mike DeHaan: [20:18] But, yeah, anyway, as I was saying, was one of the guys was pointing out back when, you know, the world wars, which was, you know, in a lot of our grandparents' lifetimes still, you know, and tens of thousands of people were being killed in combat on, like, a daily basis. Right. It's like that's a slightly more alarming time than what we're going on with right now because that was a completely human element.

Dan Austin: [20:38] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [20:39] But, know, my father-in-law was in town this past weekend for Thanksgiving. He sent me this video. He's he's he's an interesting guy because he's like he grew up on a branch in Montana. By all intents and purposes, he should be like an extreme republican type, but he's not. Like, he's very much like middle of the road and just like super intelligent. And he sent me this video. When he does that, it's always I always take it a little bit of grain of salt because you never know quite what you're gonna get when your father-in-law sends you something, you know. It's like, well, they about to be dropping some like, you know, systematic racism in here. Like like, what are we talking about? But what it was is it was an interview with this guy. He was a defector from Russia. And this was on, like, some news channel in, the eighties. And he's basically breaking down how the Soviet Union was taking all these steps and had been through, like, the sixties, seventies, and eighties to basically destroy the American culture. And like, you know, like the very specific details about how you start by infecting the brains of like the young and you like ruin a whole generation and those people get into power and all sorts of stuff. And it's shockingly relevant.

Dan Austin: [21:57] I'm sure it is.

Mike DeHaan: [21:58] Video that's now 35 years old. You know, you can go through it like it it's so relevant to the point that I'm like, is this fake? Right. Because it seems way too close to home.

Dan Austin: [22:09] Right? Maybe it's a deep fake that Russia created to create

Mike DeHaan: [22:13] the situation. We'll see. And that's the thing.

Dan Austin: [22:16] You don't even know. You don't even know.

Mike DeHaan: [22:17] Yeah. With with with what he's talking about in the video, I'm like, well, is this part of this whole propaganda you're just Exactly. You know? And there's there's some Russian dude that's like, hey. Hold my beer. Watch this.

Dan Austin: [22:26] Oh, man. It's like,

Mike DeHaan: [22:27] you know, I'm gonna create propaganda about the propaganda that's gonna think our propaganda is larger than it is.

Dan Austin: [22:32] Some 13 year old dude in his parents' basements in, like, turkeys or something like that.

Mike DeHaan: [22:37] Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Dan Austin: [22:38] But, yeah,

Mike DeHaan: [22:38] I'll I'll I'll send you the video. You can check it out.

Dan Austin: [22:41] Yeah. I'll check it out.

Mike DeHaan: [22:42] Put it on the show notes too in case anybody wants to check it out. But, I don't know, man. Super. Just a weird

Dan Austin: [22:49] Yeah. I try not to think to end of the world. Right? Like, I just think, you know, I can only figure out what I can do today, and that's to keep investing and keep growing because, you know, my the thought in the back of my head's always been, like, earn my way out of problems because regardless of what you care about, like wealthy people have, have to deal with less problems than the average middle class or low income person. And so, if you just keep making right steps consistently every day, like you're gonna, you're gonna keep growing and hopefully you, you know, I might not own an island someday, but if I had to, maybe I could. Well, I mean, I think

Mike DeHaan: [23:21] that is a valid point, right? Cause if you look at who usually gets bit when stuff goes sour, you know, it's not typically the hyper rich unless they're doing something pretty illegal or super risky. And it's not typically the poor, because the poor will get, you know, taken care of by the government traditionally, unless you're in like countries where they don't do that and they only do the hyper rich, right? Like, you know, when I was in Egypt, Guinea, October, talking to some of the local people there, they're like, you know, yeah, so there's basically the 1% and there's everybody else. Yeah. Like there is no middle class in Egypt, which is like trademark of the royal country, right? But, you know, so either you wanna live real simply and be on the poverty spectrum and not need a lot or you wanna be wealthy. And I think if you just try to avoid the middle class as much as you can, as difficult as that is. But, you know, at the end of the day, you gotta, like,

Dan Austin: [24:17] I don't know, do whatever

Mike DeHaan: [24:18] you can to sort of escape that. And I think looking at it being in the upper class, that's definitely more fun than being in the lower class.

Dan Austin: [24:25] So it's a little easier. Right? Honestly.

Mike DeHaan: [24:28] Right. You still have problems.

Dan Austin: [24:29] Like, you still deal with, you know, family issues and health issues and all that sort of stuff, but, like, you know, you just have a few less problems.

Mike DeHaan: [24:37] Yeah. Exactly. Right. At least at least you can generally know where your next meal is gonna come

Dan Austin: [24:40] from. Exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [24:42] But yeah. I don't know. It's I mean, it's it's interesting because I know in in GoBundance too, you've seen this where there's a lot of very successful people and they like fixate on the end of the world stuff and they worry about it so constantly.

Dan Austin: [24:54] Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [24:55] And it's like, I think it's important to be cognizant of what you need to do to help deter that. But at the same time, if you let it kinda be what your obsession is, that gets pretty unhealthy pretty quick.

Dan Austin: [25:08] Yeah. Yeah. It seems like if you have that feeling, but at least you're still doing all the right things to enjoy life today and you're still making business decisions as long as that as if that wasn't going to happen, I think you're okay. But if you're, like, rearranging your life and, like, spending money on bunkers and shit, like, you might be going a little extreme if you're if you're hindering your growth or hindering your your your family or your livelihood because of it. Yeah. And that's where it turns into a cult.

Mike DeHaan: [25:34] Exactly. Right. Oh, you become one of those weird conspiracy people. Right. Yeah. Like, the the QAnon. What were they doing in was it in DC somewhere? I I don't know. I don't I'm not afraid which city it was. But they were all there waiting for John F Kennedy's son or brother or some shit to show up. A guy who died, like, forty years ago. One of the Kennedy's who was gonna was going to show up and reclaim the White House for Trump. Wow. And there was, like, literally people that were out there for weeks because some dude, like, posts, you know, the QAnon person who has been a per he he was an individual who came out from one of the forums and admitted he started as a joke to basically take advantage of these stupid people.

Dan Austin: [26:18] Some left wing troll that's just like, this would be great.

Mike DeHaan: [26:21] Seriously. He he did. He, like, felt bad about it and came out with all the stuff. And then something came up in their circles that one of the Kennedys was going to come and reclaim the White House for Trump. And, like, hundreds of people went and were, like, camping out in this area waiting for him.

Dan Austin: [26:38] That's great.

Mike DeHaan: [26:39] Wow. Like, what who it's like, oh my god. That makes you a little bit worried for society. But yeah. Fascinating. Alright. Well, there's our political podcast. In case you can't tell, we're pretty middle of the road and don't really care about anything. So but you got any good lessons learned this past week, Dan?

Dan Austin: [27:00] Gosh. It was, you know, holiday week. So it was a little little weird, but I had an It's, you know, really about, like, developing employees and, like, finding, like systems that you, you know, we're constantly always in in real estate. You're always talking about systems because everybody wants to be able to do the four hour work week or pull out and like, you know, have their their business run efficiently. And there's like two types of employees. There's like the one you hire to build your systems, which is like typically a higher rate, you know, and they have some skill sets and they're good at that. Yeah. And then there's others that can operate within a system and do really well. I definitely feel like on the property management and on the, construction side of things, I've been trying to get people to help build the system or thinking of it in that way where really, I just need to give them the system and, and keep them to it. Because those employees typically, at least the way that we've hired really aren't the kind of people that can build a system or that you can trust to build a good system. And so thinking about it in that sense, you know, for other people out there trying to do the same thing is recognizing when it's something, when it's a system you can build and you're going to pay somebody less to operate within that system? Or is it a system that you can't build because you don't have the skills and you need somebody to do it for you and you're gonna have to typically pay them higher and they're gonna have higher expectations for a future, within the company?

Mike DeHaan: [28:23] Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that's super valid and I've sort of come with that as we've, you know, I've built up the acquisition side as well as, you know, systematizing things that need to be systematized. I mean, and that was one of the mistakes we made with our first acquisitions manager as well was we were paying her like she was going to be building the system and then found out she was not capable of doing so. Right. You know, that was just, so that ended up with her paying, us paying her too much for the role that she had and became more of a headache than anything else. And now with our new team, we've adjusted that or we're paying more appropriately to be the operator and not the person at the top. But, know, which I mean, we do have more experience now to be able to build that a little bit better. I think that is critical. And then, you know, it's like, down the line we bring on a COO or something like that, that's gonna sort of run the ship or, you know, our, let's say one of our employees right now steps up to that role, like what does that look like? And then what is the appropriate way to pay that person and sort of structure that job? I mean, it's like, it's almost like getting middle management in place, right? At that point, But you want them to be more what's the right word? Not, like, necessarily middle management, like a like a giant company, but have more of, a leadership role Yep. While still also making sure that they're, you know, staying within their bounds, I guess.

Dan Austin: [29:43] Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's one of the yeah. It's like, I've seen other other companies be successful hiring kind of that, you know, maybe call it an operations manager or whatever, where they get a person that has that skill set to build systems. And I, you know, I think the ideal situation is where you are, you know, owning and running your business. And then you get to pick the things that you're passionate about and like to do and enjoy doing. Once you get to that level, then you can hire those other people to do either system building. Maybe you're just like a salesperson. You just wanna do sales. You're really good at it. You could give a shit about systems, which you know you need it. You can hire that like high, high powered, higher paid individual. That's like, love building systems. I'm gonna tear it apart, you know, process engineer type folks and build that for you so you can do what you love. Yeah. Right? As it goes to doing everything in the company when you start out where, you know, you're doing everything. Right? Yeah. And so it's really challenging and just recognizing which employees are capable of building systems and which ones are not.

Mike DeHaan: [30:45] Mhmm. Yeah. You know, and that's just personality types too. There's a lot to that. But, you know, because at the same time, you know, you say the stuff that you don't wanna do, outsource it. It's like that who not how method. Mhmm. I don't know who read that book, but, I mean, it's the same sort of like people Dan Sullivan. Employees. Is Dan Sullivan wrote that Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So people who are your employees have the same sort of stuff. They're gonna have the same things that they like to do and they don't like to do. And just because they're not an entrepreneur per se doesn't mean they're exempt from that. True. Good point. That's important to consider. Yeah. Cool. Alright, guys. Well, thanks for listening. You can follow us on socials at collecting keys podcast. I meant to get more stuff done with the website this weekend, and then I failed to do so. But collectingkeyspodcast.com is where that's going to be here shortly. And then you can follow me directly on Instagram at Mike underscore invest. You can follow Dan at investor man Dan. And anything else I need to say?

Dan Austin: [31:42] No. I think that's it. Hit us up in the DMs if you figured out the solution for the key collecting problem we have. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [31:51] Do that. Yeah. And then, yeah, subscribe and, give us a review or shoot us a message. Let us know what you think, and talk to you guys next week. Alright. See you. See you.

Speaker 1: [32:06] Thanks for listening. Please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and check us out at collectingkeyspodcast.com for tips and guides on starting your own real estate investment and wholesaling business.