Strategic Growth in Real Estate Investing: How to Reach $1 Million Profit

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] When you're a small business, the sort of general term people say in business is like to hire slow and fire fast. I think that honestly, when you're a small business, you're trying to grow aggressively, you need to hire fast and fire faster. What's going on, guys? Welcome to today's episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast. Today is Wednesday. This is the Mike and Dan show. And if this is your first time here, this is the show where we teach you to make massive income, not just passive income with your real estate investing business. My name is Mike DeHaan. I'm here with my co host here, Dan Austin. Hey. And on these Wednesday shows, we dive into real estate investing business and whatever else we feel like for that. But day, week, month, hour, whatever timeframe we're currently living on hour. Sometimes it's hourly if stuff's getting a little bit hectic. Yeah. But, yeah. And it was funny, beginning of the year though, man, it's funny, like the people kinda rip on like the New Year's resolution thing, which I do too, honestly. Think New Year's resolutions are kinda for chumps. Like, you should have like New Year's goals.

Dan Austin: [1:08] Are you kidding me? No, I wait three hundred and fifty days after I failed in the first few days of the year to set my next year goals.

Mike DeHaan: [1:15] Yeah, right. Well, mean, some people are gonna say 75 hard, I did like seven hard and call it good. You know, was like the average person. Seven's good.

Dan Austin: [1:22] I mean, really, you think about it, that's a lot of work.

Mike DeHaan: [1:24] It's a holy number, dude. It's the Lord's day. But yeah, so I was big in having like goals and making your clinical resolutions be like your action steps to do whatever you're gonna do in like the first quarter, as opposed to trying to look for a year, because who knows what the end of the year is gonna be. Yep. But it's funny, the entire team came in after the holidays and started getting after right away which has been good. And then I feel like as well, just as a business as a whole, we've accomplished a ton in the first little bit of the year here. You know, I got a cold calling team, stood up in like seven days. Basically SMS was kind of on the brink. It is still kind of on the brink. So I was like, need to swap my marketing, went and posted some listings on Upwork, got a cold calling team, stood up and operating. Currently it's the second day that's been active and we already have seven leads. It actually look pretty promising too. So that's pretty awesome. We got a couple transactions moving. We've had a couple closings. Overall sales team numbers are looking really solid. Marketing started to tick up. It's always like that first period of time I think after the break it just feels like it's extra productive, like people are hyper focused. So it's been fun to

Dan Austin: [2:29] Yeah, I mean really don't, what I've learned is like don't sleep on how productive you can be especially in that first part of the year, for whatever reason, like you said New Year's resolutions are for chumps or whatever you said, but like, the idea is there's like these defining marks, like January 1, for whatever reason, just in The US, for example, we kind of slowed down the last couple weeks of the year, you're maybe not as focused on business because you had a Christmas one of those days, a New Year's, whatever you're doing, right, there's like this demarcation of the first of the year, taxes, everything on the P and L before that is done, it's history, you

Mike DeHaan: [3:01] can't change it,

Dan Austin: [3:02] right? And so, you're fresh, and like, we did the same thing last year. You and I, that's one thing we've done since the beginning, and I still have some of our early, like, picture block paper we put up on the wall of like, here's our goals for next year. Like, as far as like, what are we going to do, what part of the business are we gonna grow? And like last year we hired our business coach January 1 essentially, and hit the ground running, and like literally, just in that first quarter working with him changed where we are trajectory. And I feel like now, having gone through that last year, we understand what we needed to know back then, and now it's time to take it to the next level. Like we're already hitting the ground running, standing up new profit centers, like you said, we've got the cold calling team going, the dispositions team we're building out now, and it's like we're so

Mike DeHaan: [3:43] much faster out of the

Dan Austin: [3:44] more experience we've gained, it's really fun to see. I just say don't sleep on the progress you can make from that day one, January 1 till the end of the first quarter, because that's what really does set you up for like a badass year when you look back.

Mike DeHaan: [3:58] For sure. And it's funny, guess, as we've been kind of divvying stuff off, then the business and deciding what we were each gonna work on as we're trying to sort of scale some new things out. It's been a good testament I guess for me about what, how much of a learnable skill entrepreneurship is, and kind of like leadership is, which I didn't understand a few years ago when we got started. And like a lot of people in our scale community are kind of going through the early phases of leadership and hiring a lot right now and stuff takes them a very long time. You know, we can go and we can bring on four cold callers, build a team in like six days pretty much. A lot of them they'll spend a month trying to find their first virtual assistant. And it's because there's this level of confidence that comes through, A, when you have more expendable income to That helps. Spend on a team member if they don't perform and they fail, that helps a ton. But also understanding how to relay information and set expectations makes it so much easier for those first people to come in and be successful, that it's easier to just like jump in and be like, yeah, we need to bring someone on for this role. We know when you're a small business, the sort of general term people say in business is like to hire slow and fire fast.

Mike DeHaan: [5:11] I think that honestly, when you're for a small business, you're trying to grow aggressively, you need to hire fast and fire faster. That was one of our big things that we dove into in Keyes Con. And so being comfortable to take the leap, find the person, qualify them, and let them learn through not only their failure, but also sometimes yours trying to establish that system. And then build the system while they come in and try to figure it out.

Dan Austin: [5:36] Totally.

Mike DeHaan: [5:37] You know, think so many new entrepreneurs, if they are trying to stand up a part of their business, they wanna be an expert at it. It's like really you need to understand the gist it, and then bring someone in that's going to work on that system 20 fourseven, and then just tweak and refine it for them, make it better, and then if they end up leaving, just it'll be better for the next guy, because you just learn from them being the owner of it.

Dan Austin: [5:56] Right. Yeah, think you're making a lot of good points there too, about just that maturity of business, and like taking those leaps, because really fundamentally, like, you can't learn anywhere near as much if you're not taking action, like you can't listen to a group coaching call, like you know, we do, like that helps. You can't listen just to podcasts, you can't just read a book on, especially leadership, like that stuff is really hard to teach. You can teach some fundamentals, but putting it into practice and putting it into your own like, your own form of how you are, is the best way to do it, right? So you gotta take action.

Mike DeHaan: [6:28] Basically.

Dan Austin: [6:28] I will say, there's like a little bit of a nuance to this, and on our coaching call today, was a fascinating conversation, one of the guys brought up, was like, listening to this mantra of like, your time is so valuable, delegate everything and hire all this stuff out. But there's like a point where you get, you kinda earn that right. If you're going from like entrepreneur, like solopreneur, or side hustle, grinding it out, building something, like your time really isn't that valuable at that point in time, like, you should be kind of putting in the effort because nobody's gonna work as cheap as you work, which is free, and nobody is going to have the skills that you have for free, and nobody's gonna be as dedicated in the mission, right, for free. And so I just thought that was a great like, thought process for me as he was talking about that, is like, you do kinda sometimes have to cut your teeth, and then you have to be willing to not be the expert and pass that off to somebody who can do it as, you know, 80% as good.

Mike DeHaan: [7:22] Yeah, and it's kind of great thing and the terrible thing about social media, right, is it gives you access to high performers Database. And the people that have been very successful in business and you can engage with them, can hear things that they say directly to you as a content consumer. And I guess for context what the member you're talking about came up on the coaching call today, was he was talking about how they they got into the delegation thing a little bit too aggressively too early and they didn't even know how to build a team or run leadership, they kinda got bit. And the issue, you know, like I'll go back to the social media thing I was saying is, the great thing is you can get access to those people. The bad thing is, they are projecting information and content that probably is not relevant to you, to be completely honest.

Dan Austin: [8:07] Yeah, it will be at some point, just not right now maybe.

Mike DeHaan: [8:09] Just not right now, you know. It's it's like the different business advice they give, you, you know, you should have a certain amount of dollar per hour for yourself, you should delegate every single thing that you're not good at, that you don't know how to do. Like that is true when you kind of have understanding and you have a certain level of resources of leadership experience, and that's what those people do now, but they didn't do that when they were getting started. They aren't successful because they did that. They evolved to that because they got successful by working their ass off. It's kinda like the same thing as all the business people that talk about their crazy morning routines where they have their ice baths.

Dan Austin: [8:43] Oh, yeah, baby.

Mike DeHaan: [8:43] And they do their meditation and they have their planners and whatever. That's not why they're successful. They have the ability to focus hours every single morning on all that shit because they got successful already.

Dan Austin: [8:55] They earned it. They earned it.

Mike DeHaan: [8:56] They're already rich. Yeah. They can do whatever they want. They they can have their

Dan Austin: [8:59] They're rich enough to own an $8,000 cold plunge and a $15,000 sauna, and like whatever else, you know, like they have in their home for their which is amazing. That's what you should aspire to, but that's not what got them.

Mike DeHaan: [9:11] Yeah, you know, and it's the same thing with a lot of business advice that's out there, whether you're listening to, you know, Cody Sanchez or the Hot Mozy's, and all these different things. I will say, this is one of the really big reasons I like Alex and Leila Hermosy a lot, is they are very on the nose about like, they went through that business growth like not that long ago. Yeah. You know? And they don't try to hide that, right? And one of the big things that I like that aired not too long ago was on Lula Hermosy's podcast. I don't remember what hers is called. But she gets overshadowed by Alex a little bit. He's a much stronger personality.

Dan Austin: [9:43] He says she does all the work, he gets all the credit. That's like his, that's what he says all the time.

Mike DeHaan: [9:47] Yeah, know, they've even spoken about that openly. But she had a thing, she said, you have no business to be removing yourself from your company until you're making less, until you're making more than like $5,000,000. Right? Which I think is totally valid. She's like, otherwise you don't have enough meat on the bone in your company two x's, what are gonna go make a passive $100,000 a year? Like that's cool, but then you're one bad decision away from your entire business collapse.

Dan Austin: [10:08] Or one key person ruining your business because you're not giving them proper oversight.

Mike DeHaan: [10:12] Yeah, exactly. So just interesting sort of argue that. It's been fun to, as you've been working with the scale group though, sort of seeing people come into that. It's funny, we started this brand and that group as like kind of a wholesaling off market generation kind of focus, but now as we've sort of found our core members, we found our voice getting more into the business development, like how to actually build a team,

Dan Austin: [10:36] honestly where we can add the most value too.

Mike DeHaan: [10:39] And it's fun because like, if I'm being honest, I don't really care about wholesaling real estate. Like it's our means to an end at this point. It's a widget, right? It is. And it's how we made our first batch of money. Mhmm. It's you know, how we started the business, it's now the business that we run, but building that entrepreneurship skill, I'm now very confident that if you and I decided to go and start a deck building business that we could do, use the exact same skills and do something that was exactly the same. That would actually be an interesting experiment as we continue to grow this business and we get it more optimized, know, we're looking to bring in a couple higher level people to help manage it. Should actually do that as like a test, like go start like a completely different business and see how long it takes us to get to a million dollars.

Dan Austin: [11:23] Yeah, think that's actually a valid thing because the way you're talking about this, when we're talking about wholesaling, you know, it's not the why, it's the thing, know, it's the widget that we're selling, and we learned this too the hard way, is also from our coaches, like, all businesses are made up of marketing, sales, operations, finance, HR, like finance and HR, and all that other googly stuff into one. So, four elements of your business. And so, if it's a business you can market for, and it's a business you can build a sales team, there is no reason that if you're building a decent sized wholesale business that relies heavily, because we're heavily reliant on marketing, and heavily reliant on sales, like that you can't go and replicate that in say, a deck building business, a roofing business, solar sales if you really wanna get slimy.

Mike DeHaan: [12:06] Nope. You know what I mean?

Dan Austin: [12:07] Like, I want a shirt that says, instead of Elliot, whatever that guy's name is, want it to say something really like my name, just be Dan.

Mike DeHaan: [12:15] Wait, where did did the shirt come from?

Dan Austin: [12:16] A ball like that guy?

Mike DeHaan: [12:17] I know you're talking about, I hate that guy, that guy's a prick. There's a guy that's like, if you don't have a six pack, can't work for me, that guy.

Dan Austin: [12:23] Yeah, that guy, yeah, but he wears a shirt, like his brand is like Elliott, and so he has these like tight shirts, he's pretty in shape, and it's just Elliott, so I'm gonna get that and say, Dan, and I'm gonna be monstrous, just talking about sales.

Mike DeHaan: [12:33] He's like the skinny jack dude, right? He's one of those guys that he for sure. He couldn't really put on a lot of mass if he wanted to. Like, I bet he's a good athlete, I bet he's like strong because he trains. But he's also that guy that like had a six pack when he was seven. And it's like, good for you.

Dan Austin: [12:48] Right?

Mike DeHaan: [12:48] Right. Like, you've kinda always

Dan Austin: [12:49] Yeah, been just naturally lean, yeah. Anyhow, but the point of this being is, you can, if you wanna go start a business, which most all businesses, I don't know a lot that aren't this way, are scaled through marketing and sales, and if you can craft the skills of building those teams, you can kinda replicate that. Now, there's different like, expertises, and different restrictions, and different rules, like business rules around like how you can scale some of these businesses, and it's really hard, but you can, like I always say, you can kinda wheel your way to a $100,000 in profit, but a million is where the scale gets gets tough. It is. And that's where I think you have to craft some expertise in the business that you're working in, but really, as long as you're good at scaling, marketing and sales, you can get a long ways.

Mike DeHaan: [13:33] You can, yeah. And you know, you can get to, like I think that if you figure out the gist of this business, you can get to 1 to $2,000,000 relatively simply with like a small team, but you're probably gonna be working a lot. It's gonna be one of those situations and we know a lot of guys like this, guys and girls, we've met several girls like this as well, is they have this operation, they're very involved with it, but

Dan Austin: [13:55] it's built in a way

Mike DeHaan: [13:55] that they can't really step away. And that's not really where you wanna be, right? Like that is a difficult sort of position to be in and you've created a job for yourself, it's just very profitable but every people will burn out. And then also too a lot

Dan Austin: [14:08] of the

Mike DeHaan: [14:09] times when you have a business like that, your burnout starts to reflect on the other people that are working like dogs in your business that are also gonna burn out. They don't even have the upside of business like you do. Right. And if they leave that's when you get into trouble. Mhmm. You know, this is one of the reasons we've seen a lot of great investment business, a lot of great wholesalers that have come through, had this meteoric rise, and then basically just fall off a cliff. Because they either burn out and fail, the key person on their team decides like, can go do this myself, I'm gonna work this hard, as opposed to working like a dog for you. And they have no systemization in place. And one of the big things I think that came up, we talked about on the call today, which I think a lot of new people try to figure out is like, when you start bringing people into the business, I think us as human beings who wanna build a relationship, we create roles like for the people that are first in those roles. Yeah. Right, or like you know, so we have John that comes and work for us, how can we make sure that John is successful? Well, John has goals and ambitions and everything just like you do. His goal is not to work for you for the next thirty years. I mean, sometimes you find that person but more often than not. Instead, what you need to do is you need to use John to help figure out how to create that position for your business so that when he leaves and freaking Larry comes in and does his job, he can now do a better job at John's job than he did before.

Dan Austin: [15:28] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [15:28] Right? And that's how you build an organization. Is you use the people that are in those, I was gonna say use people, you should use people. You allow the people that are in those roles to craft and refine the role for your business so that it can be done by anyone that fits the skill set and characteristics of that of that occupation.

Dan Austin: [15:46] Yeah, what I also kinda what I hear, what you're saying is, like all too often, when it comes to like people trying to build the role around that individual, is they look at the individual's like strengths and weaknesses and and they get this like pre, or like this misconception of like, what the role needs to be, because, oh, this person's not tech savvy, so I'm not gonna have anything in my tech stack around acquisitions, like that's stupid. Don't craft based on the skill sets of the person you have in that role, here is the role, here's the expectation, the tasks they're gonna do, expectations and the processes they're going to follow. Now, let them refine that and find the kind of the holes in your system, that the next person coming in is set up, that's a, there's a new baseline for where the person can leap from and springboard from.

Mike DeHaan: [16:29] Yep, for sure. And you know, it takes backs to get there, I think the thing that people really struggle with, is that's different for everyone. Yeah. So many of us went through the standard school system where we are taught that there is a right and wrong, and unfortunately

Dan Austin: [16:43] Right, pass fail.

Mike DeHaan: [16:44] Yeah, like with entrepreneurship, it's as much of a creative endeavor as it is a logical endeavor.

Dan Austin: [16:49] You know what, I'll go even one level deeper on that, of like, a big part of it is, we all, most of us don't have the patience to get from That's true. To go down the journey. You need to recognize that likely, that first person you're gonna hire is not going to be here in twelve months, twenty four, thirty six, or however long that timeline time horizon is. Mhmm. And in reality, for you to find that rock star, it might be three people in two and a half years, it might be three people in six months, but we don't know what that timeline necessarily looks like, and as we get more experience, we get better and that timeline gets shorter for different parts of our business, but in reality, I don't know about you, I'm an impatient person and going into business, my time horizon for wanting things was so short. So short. Now, I think on a lot longer time horizon.

Mike DeHaan: [17:37] Absolutely, yeah, mean, most people they're pursuing financial freedom, or they're desperate to leave their job, or they're, you know, desperate to make a million dollars, or whatever that is. And you can't really rush it, like realistically. Sometimes you will get lucky and they have these big rises in income that we're all saying, that's great. But you're completely right, that person that you bring in, people that originally start with, they're not gonna be with you if you go too far down the track. And even more so if they are a high performer because they're going to see the opportunity that you as a small business owner have and they're gonna want that themselves, You know, and that's why it's so important to not build any part of your business for a specific person, build it for a role, use that A player to make it as valuable of a position, as strong of a position to systematize as possible. And that way, you know, when they do leave, because they will, someone will give them a better offer. You know, even if you like give them equity in your company, you give them, you know, profit sharing, all the things that people try to do, people will ultimately leave. And you need to make sure that you are able to recover from that, so it doesn't completely cripple you.

Dan Austin: [18:37] So Yeah. Yeah. Business becomes more of a true operation at that point, you become an operator and recognizing that people aren't going to be as dedicated to your business and they, like you said earlier, they have their own goals and their own missions, and if they show up and they realize that whatever that alignment that they thought they were getting with you isn't there, they're gonna leave, or they're gonna have different external factors that influence them. Mhmm. You know, they're gonna have family situations that change, and they have to move away, or they have to change jobs, or whatever. You're an operator at that point, you just have to deal with that, and recognize that when those things happen, your processes and systems get stressed, and you get a little bit better every time they get stressed.

Mike DeHaan: [19:15] Yeah, I think that's another thing too, is a lot people don't handle stress very well. That unfortunately is part of it. Especially people that have been like corporate W two for like a long period of time, and don't really know what stress is.

Dan Austin: [19:25] Right,

Mike DeHaan: [19:25] yeah. I think that's, like I really think that's why most people can never leave and be successful. Like when they say like, I'm just not an entrepreneur, it's like really you just don't handle stress well.

Dan Austin: [19:34] Right. The unknown is challenging. The unknown is Right? That's the stressful piece, right?

Mike DeHaan: [19:37] Yeah, mean, I like stress, mental toughness. I think honestly that's a big reason that you see a ton of people that are super into fitness, that end up starting successful businesses, they're used to putting their body and developing mental strength. Same thing you see a lot of high level athletes or high level military operators, like you just had the episode with Tim Carole who now has a very successful business. Right? That it's because you've developed that mental toughness at a young age, and so now being able to deal with the ups and downs of entrepreneurship is easier as opposed to the person that went to the prep school, went to the college, like, they got really stressed about their social life and grades and all sorts of things. But realistically, the downside of that is very limited, like honestly. Mhmm. If you're you can get kicked out of college, it should be a devastating thing for people, but honestly, you got into college, it's kinda hard to get kicked out unless you're completely negligent. And this is coming from someone who was on academic probation for seven out of eight semesters that I was in college. Right? Like all I had to do was You're dumb. It was just do a little, like give a little bit more fucks and I would get through it.

Dan Austin: [20:42] Yeah. Right? I'm so lucky that I went to college later in life because I would have been eight out of eight. Don't think I would have, I don't honestly think I would have got through it. So I'm impressed that you of all people got

Mike DeHaan: [20:51] Well, especially you knew me back then, right?

Dan Austin: [20:53] Yeah, did know you.

Mike DeHaan: [20:54] And it wasn't like I didn't necessarily care, like I did, I just didn't try

Dan Austin: [20:59] very No, yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [21:00] You know? And I would just do the bare minimum to get by. But, so, but point being, you know, they don't really develop the mental toughness to be a successful entrepreneur that has to come through an exterior factor, or through experience, by trying and failing entrepreneurship, is not a very fun thing to do.

Dan Austin: [21:14] Yeah, yeah you're right, there's a lot of things in life that create that stressor, sports as a youth is a really good one, because there's failure, like you're never the best, right, you fail. One thing I've learned about myself about stress is, although I'm not like, I guess, immune to it, one thing that I have this cycle that where something stressing out, you might not even know you stress it out, get one good sleepless night and you wake up and you're like, none of that shit really matters. Yeah. The sun's out, you're like, this is not that bad and then you go on your day and you figure it out and you keep going. I'm sure a lot of people can kinda relate to that because you do, you get built up with this anxiety and stress about something that's subconsciously bothering you and it seems to come out in the middle of the night at 2AM while you're laying in bed, and then you just like have a restless night, walk away the next day ready to roll.

Mike DeHaan: [21:56] You know, it's like progressive overload and building up tolerance, right? Like I used to have kind of sleepless nights with some of the stress I was in, especially when I left my W2 job, you know, 75% of my income, I was trying to get into real estate, we were spending all this money that we didn't necessarily have, trying to flip houses, we were doing all this bullshit, right? And I used to have these sleepless nights and I would be super worried about making these payments, especially the first flip I had that was starting to go sideways. They didn't have any sort of online processing. So this fucking lending company dude, I had to write a check for $2,937 by paper and nail it every single month. Right? And I would like, they would send me the invoice and I would have to like, it would just hurt my soul every single time. Right. And that that was you know, super stressful period. But after a while, you get to a point where you just have more of that, more of that, more of that, and you think that you know what stress is, then you really know what your ceiling is, and then you get to a point where you're just like, nothing's really that This bad

Dan Austin: [22:54] is not that bad.

Mike DeHaan: [22:54] Yeah, and that's like the thing, we work with our we have some of these deals that go sideways, or like we had our $580,000 subject to loan called, they call the do you want to sale, we're just like, well that's just another thing that we have to deal with I guess. Like literally my heart did not change one bit, I did not lose a wink of sleep, it's just another part of the game and that's how it works.

Dan Austin: [23:16] Just just what you gotta do, you gotta face those ups and downs.

Mike DeHaan: [23:18] I've heard the same thing about people that have larger business about getting sued, like the first time they get a lawsuit they get, we haven't been, have we been sued yet? I think we've been threatened.

Dan Austin: [23:27] We've had a dozen threats it seems like.

Mike DeHaan: [23:29] Yeah, haven't actually been sued, but I've heard that a lot of people say it's like the first time you get sued they're like, you know, super worried about it kinda consumes their life, and after you've operated a large operation for a while it's kinda just like, oh, just let the figure it out, it'll be fine.

Dan Austin: [23:42] Right, yeah. Well what are you gonna do, right? There's nothing you can do, you know what I mean? Other than like maybe operate more ethically if you're doing some messed up shit.

Mike DeHaan: [23:49] Well that's the thing right, if you're not running an ethically challenging business, you're not doing stuff, you shouldn't have anything to worry about, if you did end up some laws around using media that you aren't supposed to, which I know was one of the ones that we had.

Dan Austin: [24:01] Yeah, had a couple of those.

Mike DeHaan: [24:03] Yeah, if you have a transaction where someone had another claim to title that you didn't necessarily know about. If you were like truly ignorant and you weren't malicious with stuff, typically the way out is relatively simple. Know? Right. But if you had bad intent, then you probably should be stressing because you're gonna get

Dan Austin: [24:19] Yeah. Because you're a bad person.

Mike DeHaan: [24:20] You're a bad person, exactly.

Dan Austin: [24:22] You deserve it. But those are the people usually actually filing lawsuits ahead of time.

Mike DeHaan: [24:26] Yes. Yeah, I know. Suing the sewers. Suing the sewers, yeah. Just immediately with come emotional distress that your wife had or your daughter because you had to sell her car. I don't know if that lawsuit's not how those actually work, but.

Dan Austin: [24:41] Me neither.

Mike DeHaan: [24:42] Anyways, yeah, no, it's been fun, just working on that, see how it's coming together and starting to plan for more of our partnership markets and then starting to turn up here again in Spokane, which I'm super excited about.

Dan Austin: [24:55] Yeah, we crushed some shit around here

Mike DeHaan: [24:56] I know.

Dan Austin: [24:57] Coming back in hot.

Mike DeHaan: [24:58] Yeah, our local market here, paused it a little bit We built out our partnership program and doing our virtual stuff over the last like year and a half. We're gonna start turning up against the way the economy is, think 2024 is gonna be a really strong year for off market investors in general. We've accumulated a lot of cash that we wanna start putting to work, and we have good systems in place to have ground properties up here. So just preparing to start that up again. And, you know, it's a funny market because like, there isn't a ton of operators, like there's one operator in general who we're not really big fans of, and they're starting to build a really bad reputation for themselves. So we should be in a pretty good place to come in with our developed resources and operations and just sort of see what happens.

Dan Austin: [25:40] And there are high ethical standards.

Mike DeHaan: [25:42] I mean dude, like it's that hard, just don't be a dick and just tell people the truth. You'd, why lie to people to make some money, it doesn't matter.

Dan Austin: [25:48] Yeah. Don't be a liar, don't try to make a quick buck off of people, like think about this, where you're gonna be at with these people in five years, like if you make decisions based on that, always gonna do okay. Yeah. I'm excited to get back into it, know, you know as well as I do, I love to buy shit.

Mike DeHaan: [26:02] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [26:03] And so, buying some stuff will be a lot of fun, I think, going into 2024. Think you're right, it's gonna be a kick ass time to be in the market if you're prepped and you've got the skill set like we do to really hit the ground running and just like take it to the next level. Because, I don't know, it's just like not a perfect storm, but there's just a lot of opportunity, there's a, anytime things get weird and tight, it shakes out kind of the people at the market that should never have been operated. Mhmm. And so, it kind of like, it's almost like a, you know, like a wildfire, they say, sometimes it's good for the forest, because it burns down a lot of like the little stuff on the ground, and it allows the big mature trees to really grow and really sink their roots in, and so that's what it is for like the operators that end up staying around and staying in the games, you just have a stronger root system ready to rock and roll.

Mike DeHaan: [26:44] Yeah, mean, that's key to any successful endeavor, right, is who stays in the game the longest. Like if you stay in the game and you take action the longest, you'll be the most successful. And when a bunch of people are forced out of the game through financial hardship, interest rates destroying their one and only business model, all of a sudden it creates opportunity for those people that are a little more adaptable. So yeah, I'm excited. Start doing some local wholesaling here. Maybe a couple of wholetail stuff is you know, looking decent. I don't think we have any interest in doing like larger flips anymore. Let the construction people handle that. But just Yeah. Buy some buy some multifamily, especially right here. We got a lot of duplexes, triplexes, things like that.

Dan Austin: [27:22] Yeah. Definitely would love to crush some of the multi family game around here, picking up some small stuff because there are still a lot of small operators that run it here. The big stuff is really hard to get a hold of, anything large, but that mid tier of stuff is great.

Mike DeHaan: [27:35] All the bigger stuff is owned by the local real estate mafia families.

Dan Austin: [27:39] There's a couple people, yeah, that's about it.

Mike DeHaan: [27:41] I don't know, I'm assuming other small towns have that too, but here in Spokane there's like what, probably four or five different real estate families that own like everything. Mhmm. And they're just known for their like rundown properties, bad sort of business practices. If you go like the property management companies they own are usually really poorly regarded. So, you know, but they hold on to everything.

Dan Austin: [28:03] The big one in town is, know, like if you're local and you listen to this podcast, the Douglas family, like I you always hear stuff about think the unique thing about us is like, can go to like any big metro, right? Yeah. You're gonna see like huge REITs investing, buying, you know, $400,000,000 properties all day long. Here in Spokane, don't have a lot of that going on, but we have one family that is basically a giant REIT. Mean, they're worth billions of dollars and they never sell anything. Yeah. Right? The dad just passed away actually like last month. Yeah. The guy that started it all, and he's been what rumored to have never sold a property. Doesn't? And so they just buy, buy, buy, so they own like a good chunk and have developed a good chunk of our town, which is in general, the greater areas like 600,000, 700,000 people. Yeah. And they're also in other markets across the West Coast, so they're massive, right? But to be localized with such experts in a smaller market, they're able to capitalize on the commercial, the residential development, I mean they do big time stuff, 400 unit apartments all over the place, bigger, bigger than that too, and so, it becomes harder for mom and pop to actually operate against that if you wanna scale into any larger development

Mike DeHaan: [29:06] stuff. Yeah, it's almost impossible because, I mean, not only they own the property, they also own the processes and the people associated with it.

Dan Austin: [29:12] Exactly, yeah. If you drive around Spokane where we're at and you see like large tracts of land available, it's been vacant for years and years, they own it.

Mike DeHaan: [29:20] Yeah. Yeah. They own like everything. I'm trying to look up right now what exactly their stake of everything is. Estimated Spokane Holdings is over $1,000,000,000 in value Mhmm. Just in Spokane. That's freaking insane. Mhmm. Which includes commercial buildings, post office, post offices, homes, apartments, everything. Yeah. Just need to style middle of December.

Dan Austin: [29:42] Every town though that I you talked to, we've talked enough for investors, they always do have kind of like that gatekeeper for that and and good for them like that. They're the gatekeeper or whatever, you know, Like, Chip and Joanna Gaines, I would imagine, like, down in, where are they at, Waco?

Mike DeHaan: [29:56] Yeah, it was at Waco.

Dan Austin: [29:57] Okay. Bet before they were even famous, like, I bet you didn't mess around, like, they just did everything, They did. Like, you get to a certain scale and you kinda get that, you get your reward.

Mike DeHaan: [30:06] Yeah, before they were famous, Chip and Joanna would just roll up outside your house and Chip would come in and break your kneecaps if you were

Dan Austin: [30:12] Right. Just like going to the tax auction, buying tax liens, or kicking people out of their house, this, I don't know that this is true, I don't believe it, but I saw his book, he has a book, what's it called, Capital Gaines, with their last name is Gaines, I was like

Mike DeHaan: [30:27] Oh my god.

Dan Austin: [30:28] Nice dude, I was like, I wanna read this book because I bet you, like I've seen a few episodes of their show, I bet you he's like a solid dude, I feel like he's cool.

Mike DeHaan: [30:35] Yeah, I mean like they're legit, know, you can't can't hate on like some of the other people out there who obviously don't have that much going for them and even though they do stuff for TV, like they earned the right to do that.

Dan Austin: [30:48] Yeah, for sure. They're beyond that.

Mike DeHaan: [30:50] Yeah. It's not like they're just like the person that I don't know was the pretty face and like put in front of that opportunity.

Dan Austin: [30:56] Right. So you know who's another solid dude is like as far I don't know if he's like a good dude. Like I'm just saying like like a legit operators torque from that show Flip or Flop.

Mike DeHaan: [31:07] Oh, yeah. From he was he he's in San Francisco or something, isn't he? Or is he?

Dan Austin: [31:11] He's down in Southern California. I think he's like LA County area. But like he's like actually like a pretty big time operator. Like he's not just a pretty face.

Mike DeHaan: [31:18] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [31:19] Like if you actually hear his background story. Yeah. So like he's he's done like some legit stuff.

Mike DeHaan: [31:23] Oh yeah, yeah. Well I mean down there you have to. Right. Right, because I mean it's an area full of fakers, Orange County. Right. People started to see through that very very quickly.

Dan Austin: [31:33] Well it's kinda funny like looking back, because I saw that show like way before I became an operator of real estate, but now looking back on it and knowing enough dudes in LA and like Southern California that are like trying their best to do deals, you have be damn good because he was doing some deals down there, whether they flopped or flipped, I don't know but like, it's hard to do deals it's in funny, Southern California.

Mike DeHaan: [31:53] So I just Googled him, I also looked up Chip and Joanna and you know what the reoccurring theme is with like most of these people that get this big? They started doing real estate like so long ago, like 2008, 2009, when Nolan was doing it. And sure they caught the, we increased the market ourselves perfectly, but they also started the game when everyone said that they shouldn't and they have stayed in the game since then. Longevity. Yeah, for all of those people that are successful, there's so many people that barely got their feet wet, never got started, did it for two or three years and then quit, and they've been doing it for fifteen years. And I think, I friendlyly believe if you do anything for fifteen years, you can be pretty dang successful unless you kinda suck at it, in which case, you know, you should have probably figured that out ten years earlier.

Dan Austin: [32:40] Right, hopefully every year you're building on top of that, like that's why I love that quote, can't remember where I got it from, but it was like, in this case, like do you have fifteen years of experience, or one year of experience 15 times?

Mike DeHaan: [32:50] Yeah, that's so huge, yeah.

Dan Austin: [32:52] Have to grow every year, and like actually learn from your mistakes, and keep moving on, and like, we've made mistakes and we've learned from it, we've adapted, we've overcome. We didn't get out of the game, like when we've lost money, kind of stuck it out, not that we've had like major losses, but like we've just had to adapt and overcome.

Mike DeHaan: [33:07] We've had a couple big losses.

Dan Austin: [33:08] Losses that would take out average people.

Mike DeHaan: [33:09] Yeah, 70 something thousand dollar loss I think is our biggest. You've had a couple what thirties and forties. I mean it comes with the territory right? Just having more wins to offset that. But I mean and the funny thing is too, it's not like we've intentionally committed to this business. I mean, we've talked about quitting and doing other things like all all the time.

Dan Austin: [33:26] No, dude. Yeah. Yeah. We have talked about quitting.

Mike DeHaan: [33:29] And honestly, think it just comes down to laziness. Don't wanna go start something else.

Dan Austin: [33:34] That sounds like moral at this point. Right? For real, Jesus. You're absolutely right, like I, hey, I've got, I'm dedicated, I've got a committed path here, like Yeah. Path of least resistance at this point.

Mike DeHaan: [33:44] Yeah. So, anyway, so now it's just, it's just all of this shit. Alright. Well going into q one, if we get to the end of the quarter, what do you think would be like, yes, that was a successful first quarter?

Dan Austin: [33:57] Oh, I already looked at that.

Mike DeHaan: [33:58] I mean, looked at that. Just think about it right now. That's you know it's a good thing. The that we're working on, right? So for me personally, I don't wanna say end of the first quarter, I'd say the end of like middle of February. I want our cold calling team that I've stood up to be fully functioning in all of our market, all of our markets and I wanna be getting at least one lead per day that's a quality in every single market. So that's basically 19 leads a day from four callers. Don't even know if that's possible or if that's reasonable, but that's my goal that I wanna shoot for.

Dan Austin: [34:30] I think it's a fair goal, honestly, by mid February that's pretty aggressive, but for Q1, if I was to actually just like look at it, kind of at a macro level, at Q1, like the different businesses, I would definitely like to have already started doing deals here back in Spokane, wholesaling our own properties again, and with that also having our dispositions, processes and like, things like in like done, so that we are actually doing wholesaling for other people as well. Wholesaling for clients on a flat fee basis, like have that already running and doing deals for people at that point in time. As well as like, looking for other opportunities in other markets where we're not even operating, like I don't know that we need to do that in Q1, but like that's where like my envisioning that being a bigger, bigger opportunity than just us.

Mike DeHaan: [35:13] Cool, I like gas, totally doable. Yep. Treat. So, Right on guys. Well, there are little plans there. We'll keep you guys updated, you keep us accountable as we go. So Yeah. Awesome. Let's

Dan Austin: [35:22] do it.

Mike DeHaan: [35:23] Well, thanks for listening everybody. We appreciate your time on this fine Wednesday. You should give each Dan and I a follow on Instagram. I'm at mike underscore invest, Dan is at investor man. Dan, I have a bunch of content we've been posting recently around a lot more business oriented stuff and what we're working on. Actually, I'm getting ready to provide a reel about steps that I did to make that call center in like six days, seven days. Don't know, was like Tuesday to Monday, that's six days. Right? Mhmm. I have a little reel coming out for that. You can check it out. But I'm at mike underscore invest. Dan is at investor man. Dan, go ahead and shoot us a follow, send us a DM, let us know what you think. And we always appreciate working with people. Well, besides that everybody, thanks for listening, and we'll talk to

Dan Austin: [36:01] you next week. See y'all.