The #1 Reason Your Business Shouldn’t Copy the Competition

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] What is going on, Collecting Keys fans? Welcome to today's Friday Focus episode. You are back with me today, Mike DeHaan, and I am back from my little hiatus for the last month. So I have been traveling around Southeast Asia for the last, like, days. And, yeah, I just got back, so I'm getting reacclimated. So you probably enjoyed a lot of episodes over the past few weeks from either Dan or Dylan individually or them together, and that's because I was kind of off the grid more so than I was expecting. But, yeah, my wife and I, we did thirty days. The little group trip around Southeast Asia. We did Northern Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and had a really, really awesome time. It was a very active trip. The longest we were in any spot was for two nights. And so we were moving a lot. And with the time difference, I was significantly more disconnected than I was expecting from my business. But the great thing is because I built out a team and systems and I've been doing this for a little bit, the business operated as usual, and I came back with more money in my bank account and more deals closed than when I left. And that's ultimately what my goal was when I left my old w two and got into business.

Mike DeHaan: [1:08] So, you know, I guess mission accomplished because this was my my second month long trip that I've done in the past couple years. And, you know, won't be the last because that is really my drive for life is to have that time frame to be able to go and travel and do what I want. So that that I don't know. What do people do? What gets them excited? Everyone has their own thing. But for me, traveling is kinda like my thing. Anyway, on this Friday, folks, episode, I wanted to kinda talk about the general market conditions that we're seeing and some things to sort of, like, watch out for that I'm seeing people, I don't know, promote sort of, like, false success and some of the, like, back checking that I've done on people that are promoting how super special and how their secret techniques that they have right now, while the universal opinion is that the market is generally very, very slow. And I'm doing this episode today because, you we're when this one comes out, it'll be a couple weeks after the election coming up through the October to early November period, basically, universally, with our business, with all the scale community members that we have, with other different investment and wholesalers that I've connected with, it has been a very, very, very slow period. Like, I'm talking about, you know, 25% of the lead response, very few signings compared to previous months.

Mike DeHaan: [2:28] And overall, it's been just kind of like a dud, which sucks. Right? But, of course, when most people are in the dumps, what happens is you have the people that are the shills and the grifters who come out, and all of a sudden, they change their messaging that they are now full of the biggest secrets and they are super successful. Everyone else is sucking. And that should be a red flag because they're trying to get you to to take advantage of your misery and have you give money to them. Right? Or to position themselves in a position of power when realistically they shouldn't have that because they're kinda full of shit. And so with this one, I just wanna sort of, like, give some examples so that you can go and back check these yourself if you've been seeing it. I'm going to look at kinda like one of the larger influencer groups, and then also one of my local competition here who was firing some shots over the wall at my sales team to kinda get in their head. And so I had to go and and back checks to confirm with my guys that, you know, we aren't actually doing terrible compared to them, that they're just kinda liars. And so the first one that I saw, this and was actually brought to me by a few people on Instagram, which I appreciate. I'm at Mike underscore Invest. I always love some good banter, especially with people that know that I like to talk shit about stuff. Keep bringing me the drama from other people. You just DM me at Mike underscore Invest, and I'd love to, you know, bring some of these things to the show because I like to just call out the BS ers.

Mike DeHaan: [3:47] But it was the results driven Josh and Tiffany high crew, and they have been really leaning into how successful they've been in their current yearly numbers. And one of the things that was brought to my attention was this post where they had they had advertised that they're gonna be doing 206 deals this year and $2,000,000 in revenue. And so if you do the quick math, that comes out collects $6,400 a deal, whatever it is, which is pretty small, below the average from what I see most places. But then what was funny is someone pointed out to me that three days before that, they made a post on their group about how their average deal size is $15,000. Right? And so all of a sudden, very quickly, you can see that their maths are not mathing. Right? They are making a post about how many deals they're doing that is mathematically contradicting with how profitable they are saying they are simply three days earlier. Seventy two hours, guys, get your numbers straight because it's so easy to call BS when your things just aren't lining up right away. And there's a couple other things they posted in there. But point being, there's just, like, a lot of red flags to show that the general community is kinda struggling. If someone comes out and says that they're doing really, really well, you should probably go and just verify. And Josh and Tiffany, they're snakes anyway. I've had a lot of beef with kind of on Instagram over the past little bit. So just be cautious of everything they say, especially if they're trying to ask you for money.

Mike DeHaan: [5:07] K? So that's kinda like the large example. And then with the local example, so after we had, like, this really slow period, one of the guys on my team, he had, like, a lunch or coffee or something with somebody from a competitor, and they basically came out talking about how unbelievably awesome they've been doing for the last little bit. And some of the things that were said were red flags to Dan and I, and some of the specific, I would say, details that they've given in the past have been less than truthful. And so it kind of, you know, gotten my guy's head a little bit, and they were sort of, like, looking at the bigger picture, trying to figure out why we were kinda struggling a little bit over the last little while. And so I decided to do some digging around their actual close rate to see how many deals they're actually getting done versus how many they're kinda just throwing out there, which may or may not even be deals that they have interest in. They haven't even signed contracts on. I have no idea. So I was going through, and I went back a couple of months just to sort of, like, see what their track record was. And I went back to August and September and basically went through and manually looked up every single deal that they had sent out for dispo.

Mike DeHaan: [6:15] And then I had looked up in the public record to see if it actually sold, who bought it, what the price was for, and any conditions of the sale. Lo and behold, I found out of all the deals they sent, less than 40% of them actually closed. The vast majority of them either hadn't transacted at all, but it hadn't been sold by the seller and nobody bought them. A handful of them had been picked up and bought by other people, and I could tell that because the price that they were bought for and the people that were listed on the transaction on public records were different from the company in question. And then the rest of them were ones that they did very obviously complete the assignment of. You could just tell by the price points that were on each side as well as the timelines of it. It just lined up. And so there's obviously a little bit of room for error there. It's not perfect. But point being, they're out there promoting their massive success when realistically, 60% of the success that they're promoting is not even happening. Right? And understanding this business, right, there's a lot of positioning. There is a lot of, like, BS that you can kinda spew out there because people only see the front end of the deal. People don't see the back end of the transaction, the stuff that goes through escrow, the closing that actually happen, unless they do some digging, but they do see all of, like, initial marketing, the initial peacock, and the initial talking that happens. And so if you have people that are around you that are sort of, like, promoting, they are doing something great while you're suffering, understand that the vast majority of people in this industry over the last six to eight weeks have had a pretty quiet period, and it's just the nature of the market, the election, the nature of the economy, things like that.

Mike DeHaan: [7:50] And so don't let people get in your head or get concerned that, you know, you're doing something wrong or that you need to massively change your business model because these people are doing something that they claim to be super good, when realistically, you just need to go do some manual checking and see if they're actually legit or they're just kinda talking out their ass. Right? And the point being with this is it's a very dangerous thing to be comparing your business to other people and to be making changes based off of data that other people are providing or things that people are saying, which may or may not be true. Because what'll happen is it'll take you off the path of doing the things that you know have worked for you in the past and that theoretically should work continue to work for you in the future. Right? Things in business don't typically go to zero. They will slowly trend off. They will have, you know, challenges and hiccups along the way. But if you have direct mail systems and campaigns, you've had sales system and campaigns, you've had marketing systems and campaigns that you've done in the past, they will more than likely work for you in the future. And if you have somebody that is telling you that those things no longer work, you need to do something else, that should be a red flag that they are not being entirely honest about what they have going on.

Mike DeHaan: [8:55] And so what I don't want to happen to listening to this show to get, like, playing the comparison game where they're now thinking they need to uproot their entire business, try to do something completely new going into the future, and then all of a sudden, they're, like, taking massive step backwards because they're completely sabotaging themselves without even realizing it. And so I would say the the bill perk up that we've seen since the election has ended after having a very, very slow October and a very slow beginning of November, doing the same sales and the same marketing that we have been doing for years now. In the last ten days, we've signed eight deals. K? So we literally went from being a big goose egg for a while to signing eight deals in ten days. All of a sudden, we're back in business, you guys, because we didn't try to alter anything. We weren't comparing ourselves to everybody else and trying to do what they were doing. We played our game. We did what we were good at. Ultimately, we're coming out ahead. And even though we had that little down period, that is the balance for the time to your absolute crusher. Right? There's always gonna be peaks and valleys in business. There's nothing you can do about it, and so it's important to play your game and not worry about everyone else's. One of my favorite quotes, I see a quote from Conor McGregor.

Mike DeHaan: [9:59] I don't know if he said it first or if it was somebody else, but it's losers focus on winners. Winners focus on winning. And it is so important when times get tough that you focus on yourself, you focus on winning, and you focus on doing the best at what you know how to do. So that way, you can continue moving forward, and you're not trying to, like, predict the future or trying to predict things or or recreate the wheel when it really doesn't make sense for you to do so. Anyways, guys, that is my Friday focus for today. So don't listen to haters. Focus on yourself. Do what you know is going to work for you. And if you do kinda get, like, weird vibes where people are saying things that seem to be heavily against the trends in the industry, they're probably full of shit. It's very easy to back check people in this business because, you know, everything tends to be publicly recorded in one place or another. You just need to know where to look. So if you have any doubts, just go digging. You will probably be very surprised at what you find. Thanks for listening, everybody. Please share this show with anyone who's interested in real estate or has a real estate business. Our goal with this show is to get in front of as many people as possible and talk real real estate business and not the BS nonsense that has been the plague of the real estate industry forever. People are selling false streams. They have unrelatable success stories. They were the beneficiaries of the circumstance of the market in 2021, but we wanna talk to people that are doing the good fight or growing a business regardless of the economy and are trying to be true real estate professionals. So share this show with anybody you know that fits that box because it's the way that you can help them grow, and it helps us keep growing the show as well.

Mike DeHaan: [11:29] So thanks for listening, everybody, and we'll talk to guys next week.