The 2-Week Test That Tells You If It’s Time to Pivot

Dylan Koch: [0:00] Parmozi is always like, just do more. Do more for a long time over everybody else and you're sure to win. That's true.

Mike DeHaan: [0:07] Yeah. Put put those put those glasses on Twitch. No.

Dylan Koch: [0:10] I'm not

Mike DeHaan: [0:11] Now we gotta be able to call you grandpa Dan.

Dylan Koch: [0:14] No. Those are readers. Those are the screens.

Dan Austin: [0:16] It was like a habit. I didn't mean to put them on. It's like habit. I put them on, like, goddamn it. But it's like they're blue light. My eyes have been twitching staring at the screen so much.

Mike DeHaan: [0:23] Well, you got the intro, so put them on. Nobody will notice. You'll be fine. You're gonna be like Kart Kent. No one will even know that's you. Right. They won't even know. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to collecting keys. I am Mike DeHaan here with my cohost, Dan Austin and Dylan Cook. According this on New Year's Day, and, I don't think you're hungover, Dan. I know you get hungover from, like, you know, not sleeping well because you're old.

Dan Austin: [0:47] I had a few cocktails last night. Watched the CNN New Year's Eve show with, Anderson Cooper and, Andy Cohen. Yeah, I guess I am old.

Mike DeHaan: [0:56] Yeah. I mean, yeah, you watch, like, network TV. That's, like, the most that's probably one of the most boomer things that you do.

Dan Austin: [1:01] I know. I still have YouTube TV.

Mike DeHaan: [1:03] Oh, YouTube TV.

Dan Austin: [1:04] Yeah. That's what

Mike DeHaan: [1:04] you do now because, you know, the cable companies are at the same price.

Dan Austin: [1:07] And Yeah. It is. Yeah. I like it. I don't watch it ever. That was the first time I've watched TV, actual TV. Like, I've watched Netflix and stuff like that probably in probably since last New Year's.

Mike DeHaan: [1:18] Yeah. It's funny. We haven't had TV for a long time. We just have all the streaming services. It's the same amount of money. But basically Yeah. It's $1,000,000,000. It's just less ads. And when I'm home was home for Christmas, my parents will watch TV. The amount of, like, commercials is insane. Like, I can't believe that I used to watch them on, like, a regular basis. Yeah. You know? And then what's funny is there will be some of the shows that you can, like, stream, and the time on Netflix will be, like, thirty eight minutes. But that's an hour time slot on the freaking TV, dude. That means there's, like, twenty two minutes of ads.

Dan Austin: [1:50] Yeah. You just get yours on Instagram, dude, when you're scrolling. You're like, oh, there's another ad. There's other

Mike DeHaan: [1:54] there's another influencer peddling some bullshit. But that's at least, like, targeted for me. That's not like Flomexo

Dan Austin: [2:00] Oh, I know.

Mike DeHaan: [2:01] For you know? It's targeted for your age. Yeah. Under circulation. Exactly. Appendage is currently suffering, you know, like That's hilarious. But if I start getting those targeted ads on social media, I guess that means it's time to hang it up.

Dan Austin: [2:13] Yeah. TV, like generalized, like TV, like network TV is garbage though. Like, I mean, you really think about It's and it's mostly, I guess, if I go to someone's house and, like, they have something on, I don't I don't think people watch shows. It's just mostly news or sports. And so you go to their house. It's like MSNBC, you know.

Dylan Koch: [2:28] ESPN is something that's on at our house. Yeah. Or the baking chain off. My wife is watching TV.

Dan Austin: [2:32] The baking yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [2:32] Yeah. Mean, our parents pretty much watch sports. Like, that's where, like, the local

Dan Austin: [2:35] I like soccer on.

Mike DeHaan: [2:36] My dad's a big football guy even though I'm not. Yeah. He gets

Dan Austin: [2:39] Who's his team?

Mike DeHaan: [2:40] He doesn't care. He he likes players.

Dan Austin: [2:42] He likes the best.

Mike DeHaan: [2:43] So, like, my mom went to USC, and so my my parents have always sort of watched USC football.

Dan Austin: [2:48] Big Pete Carroll fan.

Mike DeHaan: [2:48] Yeah. They were big Pete Carroll fan back in the day. I mean, like, during, like, the dynasty era for sure. Yeah. But, like, my dad will get into, like, players. Okay. And then he'll, like, sort of follow whatever player, like, whatever team they're on.

Dan Austin: [3:00] That's my my father-in-law is kinda like that with he has his teams. Right? Because you grow up like, for him, he grew up in Chicago, but, like, he had like, he knows the all the players on different things. Like, he gets into that stuff.

Mike DeHaan: [3:08] I get that. I mean, like, with Gonzaga basketball, you know, I always see, like, the Zags. But then when, like, the good players come through and go to the NBA, we'll have more of a vested interest if there is, like, a team in the NBA final that has, like, three Zags on it than if it's just some random team. Right. I don't give a shit about that team the rest of the year. But, you know, now it's like, well, the Thunder's in, you know, game six. I'm like, okay. What kind of care now? Because they have three Zags in their starting lineup.

Dan Austin: [3:29] Right. Yeah. I went to that Zags game and I saw, what's his name? Damn it. What's the dude that's legit? I can't and I'm just blanking on his name. I see the picture in my face.

Mike DeHaan: [3:36] That's legit.

Dan Austin: [3:37] It's cool.

Mike DeHaan: [3:38] Adam Morrison.

Dan Austin: [3:38] Like, the the

Mike DeHaan: [3:39] He's in the NBA. Could be anybody. Stockton.

Dan Austin: [3:42] Croatian? Is he Croatian? No. Sebonis?

Mike DeHaan: [3:45] Sabonis. He comes to the games a lot.

Dan Austin: [3:47] Yeah. He was, like, literally just, like, three seats away. Like, across the aisle, three seats away. Was damn. That

Dylan Koch: [3:51] dude's Yeah.

Dan Austin: [3:52] Just as big as he was in college.

Mike DeHaan: [3:53] He must have some family connection here or something as well because he's at the games pretty often.

Dan Austin: [3:57] They retired his he definitely has got family connections.

Mike DeHaan: [4:00] I mean, look at

Dan Austin: [4:00] the Eastern European population here. Yeah. He knows some people. He's got a flooring store here too, think.

Mike DeHaan: [4:07] Do they really? No. He could've convinced me.

Dan Austin: [4:10] Sells cabinets on the side, man. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [4:12] But, anyways, 2025, I think wrapped up pretty decent for all of us. Lending business had a very, very strong finish to the year, which is great. I know we talked about where your kind of stuff kind of finished out as well, Dylan. But you had one of the conversations that you brought up here, Dylan, I think would actually be a pretty good one to jump into going into the New Year. So I feel like it's pretty decent conversation around setting goals and, like, quote, unquote, New Year's resolutions or whatever people wanna call them. But you had when is the right time to dig in, not give up, make it through hard times, come up on the other side versus knowing it's a sinking ship and it's better to get off the ship entirely. Sometimes picking the right boat is the important factor, I. E, let's see, buy and holding real estate anytime from 2009 to '21. Sometimes entrepreneurship is just recognizing opportunity. And I feel like that's a good sort of conversation to go down for this one just because at the core, when people make New Year's resolutions, new year, new them, that's really what they're trying to do. Right? Is they're trying to figure out what things in their life they feel like are not working and how are they going to improve them. You know, whether that's in business, whether that's personally, whether that's in their marriage, their finances, their health, whatever.

Dylan Koch: [5:23] When your people are doing these New Year's resolutions or goals, what they'd say and I know this is advice that's been given before. It's like, make them specific. Right? Don't just say, I wanna be healthier. Right? I have like a weight goal or I wanna work out three days a week or whatever it may be. Make sure they're specific, you know, on time, measurable, and all. I think they're SMART goals is the right acronym for that. And the the second half to that is like, it's just, you know, with my own business, I'm kinda asking those questions to myself is, I even said in last week's podcast, like, I don't wanna be doing this next five years, but this business is hard right now. And is it hard for what reasons?

Mike DeHaan: [5:54] Sure.

Dylan Koch: [5:54] And is it better if now that I've had these improved skill sets, an increased network, a better financial position, just look at other avenues and paths versus just doing the same thing over again? Whereas I still have the confidence that I know if I stayed with it and just probably worked harder or took a couple new angles here and there, I would probably still be successful. But is this how successful do you wanna be, and is there an easier way to do that? I guess a synopsis is lesser input, greater output. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [6:21] Yeah. I mean, so when it comes to making that decision, right, and, like, sort of looking at the big picture, I think the most challenging thing for people is to be truly subjective about it and not, like, emotional. Right? Because everyone, they are faced with adversity, I feel like especially in if you're coming off of a period where things felt easier, the adversity always, like, feels a little bit harder. Mhmm. You know? Mhmm. It's easy to have, like, an emotional response to whatever and and make rational decisions. Like, that's why most people are not successful is because they face their first bit of challenge, and their initial emotional response is to quit, do something different, fall off the wagon, whatever. Right? When you're new new, it's really hard to get past that because you don't have what I think is really important. And I think that that's data. Right? But when you're an established business owner, you know, if you're listening to this, you've probably owned some real estate, you're probably flipping houses, wholesaling, have a business, whatever. The real estate thing you need to do is look at your data over the most recent period of time, right? Like whether like the time that you think was challenging versus the time that you think was things were going better. And just make a decision on is the data actually showing that things are worse, or you just feel like it is because you feel like you're having to put in more hours. Right? Like, is your return on ad spend actually lower? Is your profitability actually lower?

Mike DeHaan: [7:42] Are you doing less deals? Why do you think that is? And is this a you problem, or is this an industry standard problem? You know, I think that this is also why it's really important to be networking with other similar tiered and like minded people, whether this is in online communities, whether this is in mastermind groups, whatever, you need to kinda know what's going on. Because if you just go and look on social media, what you're gonna see is you're gonna see either people's highlight reels or you're gonna see, like, you know, their one win of the year or you're see people that are full of shit. Right? You're gonna see, like, dumb shit like Josh and Tiffany Hyde posting that all of their sales guys get, like, eight contracts in their first month. I'm like, fuck. That's so truthful. Because that's what you get fed because that's what the social media algorithms wanna show you. What they don't tell you is that of those eight contracts they get, seven of them get dropped because they're trash, and so they actually only get one. And if you can connect with, like, real business owners and see how your data compares to theirs, that's how you get, like, a realistic view on the health of the industry. And then you can decide if it's a you problem or it's an industry problem. When it comes to bigger and better opportunities, I would say that a lot of that comes down to preference. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [8:51] And, like, kind of what your opinion is of bigger and better. Because if the best opportunity that you're going to have in the short term is always gonna be what you're already good at. But if you look over something like a five year time horizon, real estate is honestly a pretty challenging industry if you wanna make, like, big money. Yeah. You know, if you wanna make, like, tens or twenties of millions of dollars, real estate is a hard business to produce that in cash. You can make that in equity. Right? But, like, there's very, very few people that do that as real estate people. You know, where you actually you're, like, rich. You're not just, like, wealthy.

Dylan Koch: [9:26] Mhmm. The other I guess, the thing I you and Dan, your opinion on is too is, like, what about the maybe the few percentage of people that, like, they're kinda killing it. Like, they're doing well, but they also wake up. You're like, I don't wanna fucking do this today. I don't wanna do this any day.

Dan Austin: [9:40] Yeah.

Dylan Koch: [9:40] You have weeks of that in a row. Right? But you you're still making good money. There's just no the intangible side, there's no fulfillment. There's no happiness that comes with it. There's no joy. That's a very subjective thing to try to measure.

Mike DeHaan: [9:53] Yeah. And that goes back to the whole cheesy notion of, like, what's your why? Yeah. You know? And like, why are you doing it? But also, I would say this has really become apparent to me as Dan and I have moved. We sold out of Backyard Homebuyers. We moved towards a lending company. I personally haven't experienced this quite as much, but sorry, Dan. I'm gonna put you on the spot. I have seen this in you, the change in your temperament and, like, your excitement and just, like, general mood and energy now that we have focused on the lending business where I know that you are more interested in that industry, we have momentum in everything else, right, versus the real estate business that felt like a dead end with where we're at, that is something that is very, very real. And that matters a lot because it makes it a lot easier to be going through the grind and doing the hard things when you don't hate it. You know? And I think that there's there's always like a novelty piece when you do something new.

Dylan Koch: [10:46] Sure. You're, like, kinda just starting, getting it. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [10:49] Oh, yeah. If you're being successful at anything, it's fun. Right? Especially when you sort of start out, but then that wears off and then you're less like, oh, this success isn't what I'm really after. And I think for me personally, and and I don't know where you guys coming at, but I have a feeling. It's like, I don't know any of us that got into real estate to be real estate people for, like, ever. And there was, like, something else. Like, real estate was a way to do it, and maybe real estate was supposed to be the thing that gets you there. But it's like, when you look back, what actually drew you into it? It was like, oh, this idea of passive income or this idea of leveraging debt to be able to build wealth quicker than you could have. And we did it at all of us entered the market at a time when it was that was the opportunity

Dylan Koch: [11:29] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [11:29] More so than than the stock market when you don't have lots of cash. I mean, about it, like none of us could have built that same level of wealth just investing in stock market because we didn't have the cash upfront.

Dylan Koch: [11:39] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [11:39] Right? You have to build that level of of wealth to be able to do that without something like real estate because of the leverage piece, and there's a lot of benefits of it. I think a lot of the benefits have been oversold by gurus of why you should get into real estate. And it's just the draw people in to buy shitty deals or buy their courses or whatever.

Mike DeHaan: [11:56] Which is where they actually make their money.

Dan Austin: [11:58] Where they make their money. That's where they're making hand over fist money.

Mike DeHaan: [12:01] Mhmm. Yeah. Like going back to one of my mentors said several years ago, like on that note, I think about this quote a lot and I really like it. I repeat it pretty regularly is I went to a mastermind with him down in Austin and he started it up on the board he had. Real estate is not the thing. Real estate is the thing to get you to the thing. And I think that's so true for the vast majority of people. That's one of the reasons you don't see a lot of people that have been flipping houses for ten years. People either crash out or they make their money and they move on to something else that has a higher velocity of money, right? That has more enterprise value, that is easier to hire for, that's easier to scale. There's less variables. Less variables, less downside risk. If you look at real estate in general, the downside risk that exists both internally and from external factors is pretty nuts, honestly. Right? Like, internally because the debt that you have to take on to do every project, you're gonna do it at scale. Unless you have millions and millions of dollars, you have to take on debt to buy every house. Right? And then the external factors of not only the housing market, like, a literal sense, but also what is the sentiment around real estate, right, from the public, from the banks, right, from your investors, from your buyers. Yep. You know?

Mike DeHaan: [13:12] And all those things affect your profitability, what your holding cost is on everything, how possible it's gonna be for you to refinance or exit your hard money debt. Mhmm. Right? Because, like, even if the general public thinks that real estate's, like, fine, but all the banks are like, oh, we don't know what's gonna happen. We're gonna tighten up all of our restrictions. You can't pay off your hard money, and you're screwed. Yep. Yep. You know?

Dylan Koch: [13:34] I mean, just appraisers, lenders Yeah. Contractors, title companies, insurance people, material costs. Like, I could list up probably 20 things that are just things that you cannot control during your own deal.

Dan Austin: [13:44] Mhmm. Lot of inputs and one output Yeah. Which is you exiting.

Dylan Koch: [13:48] Yeah. And, like, all of those would be like, me and my buddy that's here always say the one time, like, the hardest part of real estate is relying on other people.

Dan Austin: [13:54] Mhmm. Totally.

Dylan Koch: [13:54] But you have to. There's no way around it. You can't personally fix every house you wanna do if you're gonna do 10 houses. This

Dan Austin: [14:00] is true.

Mike DeHaan: [14:01] I always sort of go back to the notion. I think real estate is an amazing business to make your your first bit of money. Mhmm. But once you kinda have that, you need to decide if the struggle is still worth it to continue trying to make that same amount of money. Right?

Dylan Koch: [14:13] Yeah. And this is where the whole argument is. Hormozi is always like, just do more. Do more for a long time over everybody else and you're sure to win. That's true. But also, the other side of that is when do you know, like, okay, kill that, take that behind the barn and shoot it and try something

Dan Austin: [14:26] else. Right.

Dylan Koch: [14:27] And like, you're still stacking those skill sets. Like, you're still you're still in a better place going to option b because of your experience with option a, but it's just like when you get off the horse. I don't know.

Dan Austin: [14:38] Yeah. I think the the answer to that is is if real estate is gonna be your thing or you're gonna stay real estate adjacent Mhmm. Which is probably a good idea. Because if you if you've ran this business for three to four years at any solid level and like, you know, paid your bills and fed your family, like, you have a really good skill set. So it wouldn't be a bad idea to stay adjacent as opposed to going and trying to start a brick and mortar something x y z. But going into something that can be more systematized and where you can truly hire yourself out of, like, the wholesaling business, like, Mike and I have tried it. I know Dylan, you're kind of in that process and you've done it a lot, but there's a certain level that you can't take yourself out of it because the reason why your company has been so successful is because of you as the individual. Super hard to replicate. So the answer is, do you go back out, shoot it out back or what? I think it's you gotta transition to something if you want to stay relatively close to real estate. Maybe that's becoming a developer. Maybe that's becoming a builder, which a lot of guys do. Maybe that's becoming a lender. Something.

Dylan Koch: [15:32] Some people start construction companies.

Dan Austin: [15:34] Some exactly. Because you you have a great skill set. And and I'll talk about just briefly one of the guys one of my good friends is really focusing in 2026 more so on, like, a turnkey using a skill set to market to and find and using his crews. He's a really good systems guy. He basically can run a construction company. And so his focus is moving away from just being a fully integrated, like wholesale flip buy buy hold guy to how do I bring in more income and revenue through my other connections, which he has connections with guys that want some tax benefits in real estate. So how does he, how does he bring them in and then essentially run a construction company, a turnkey company, which is more systematized. And the cash on cash return doesn't need to be 30% like some of us want, you know, or infinite. Right? It could be 12 to 15 to 18, which that's a great transactional pace to be in with that ROI.

Mike DeHaan: [16:23] Totally. Yeah. And what I think the important thing there is figuring out so if you're gonna just make real estate adjacent, you're gonna not, like, move away from real estate company? Figuring out which part of that business that you were successful in was the part that you actually liked and being able to just find something that focuses on that piece of it. I know you're talking about with that. And I remember him posting on social media and and meeting with him last year in at the GoBundance event in Snowbird. And a lot of the stuff that he gets, like, fired up about was, like, he would be, like, designing, like, a kitchen layout that was, like, efficient for his rentals on his computer. Right? And so so, like, making the transaction to The systems. Yeah. Having a system sized renovation thing, vacation, and then the current home, that makes sense. Like, for me, that's that would suck. I I don't give a shit about the house look like.

Dylan Koch: [17:08] Yeah. That would suck a lot.

Dan Austin: [17:09] Yeah. That's not your part.

Mike DeHaan: [17:10] Right? But like the construction side, like, don't go and try and be a construction guy if you didn't like the construction piece of your real estate business. Just like if you really, really sucked at, like, the marketing piece of your wholesaling company and you hated that, don't go and try and start an ecommerce company. You're going to hate it. That entire business is marketing.

Dylan Koch: [17:27] Yeah. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [17:28] Right? And I think it's important to sort of look at like the big picture and understand that business in general is like very broad. Right? But the different tiers of business, marketing, sales, systems, creating an offer, whatever, they're all kind of the same. And once you know what piece you really get fired up about, you can take that and you can find an industry or business that best aligns and allows you to do that the most. And it doesn't feel that heavy. So even for us right now, what I like doing, like leading a team. I like piecing together systems that create efficiency for us to have a higher velocity of money. And so for the lending business, what's great is it's very easy for us to hire people that have experience. You know, we have a processor starting here on Monday that has, like, twenty years of experience in the industry. Yep. You're never gonna find someone in the wholesale business that has twenty years of experience. It's gonna be an employee.

Dylan Koch: [18:19] Absolutely not.

Mike DeHaan: [18:20] So we can hire good team members, and I spend most of my time figuring out how to piece together the back end stuff so that we can be as efficient as possible with going from lead intake to quoting price to the sales team, pushing it to the processing team, and then we can try to close it out.

Dan Austin: [18:34] Which I will say like that skill set alone is somewhat unique because I don't know a lot of people that have it, which is literally just taking and putting systems and connecting them together. Because what happens is eventually that happens for a business that grows.

Mike DeHaan: [18:47] Right?

Dan Austin: [18:48] But it what business owner is gonna be good at marketing sales and operations all really well? Like very few. And so you're gonna be good at one of those and you're gonna suffer by having to pay additional labor or an additional inefficiencies to have those systems. And I'm not saying you need to systematize your business to the tee because some of it's just gonna be Google sheets. Right? And that's okay. But that that skillset alone helps. I think that's one of our advantages as a business is we can go from zero to a 100 so much faster because we don't need to hire all these people and all these handoffs between people

Mike DeHaan: [19:16] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [19:17] Becomes inefficiencies, mistakes, problems. It's like, no. Let's use a system to do that, or let's have a way to track it so that Mike or I can watch it and view it. Because if you can't see what your team's doing when you're in a virtual company, it's near impossible to scale.

Mike DeHaan: [19:29] Yeah. And you have me who's perfectly okay being the nerd that, like, spends the weekend writing scripts that actually, like, pulls the data from Right. Our sales system to push it into our our loan origination system. Right? Totally. But I like that cause I'm a fucking dork. Right? That's just who I am. You are.

Dylan Koch: [19:44] Yeah. But you're a dork with money now. I'm a dork with money for sure.

Mike DeHaan: [19:47] You know? And and because like to your point, Dan, that's what allowed us has allowed us to scale pretty quickly and get a decent velocity of money going in all of our businesses. Because even going back to like, the wholesale business when first started it, one of the reasons we were able to ramp up pretty quick was because I really geeked out and, like, focused on how do we have efficient data for marketing. Mhmm. For a long time, dude, for years, I remember we would talk to people and, like, our cost per deal versus, like, our profitability was, like, insane compared to people. Mhmm. We'd be getting, like, eleven, twelve, fourteen percent. And it was because I was enough of a nerd that I was going to the spreadsheets and making sure that all of our data was good. Know, we're doing the ROS. We know all those other things that the average business owner is not gonna do. Yep. But that adds up. And then if you get, like, big enough, you can outsource that. You can hire someone to build your your back end processes. So when I actually I was listening to a an Alex Mosby podcast, and he was doing, like, his, like, call in thing. And somebody was saying that basically what they do is they offer, like, system development for bigger businesses. And he's asking him why he charged all sorts of stuff. And he's like Alex is like, yeah. You're not charging enough. And he goes, how much should we just pay those guys to, like, do our CRM integration?

Mike DeHaan: [20:54] He, like, says to someone off camera. And the guy's like, 30? $40,000 what we just pay these people for a month worth of work. Wow. Right? And so you think about that. Like, what it takes for a small business to be able to afford someone to come and, like, build a CRM. And I guarantee you who they paid $40 to was probably just, like, some dipshit with, like Salesforce integrator. Yeah. Some Salesforce integrator with, like, some Indian VAs, like, when you put it together. Yep. But it's $40 is what they charge because they can't because that's what the value is to the companies that they're chasing.

Dan Austin: [21:21] And here's the thing is you can't do that as a small business owner. So how do you do that efficiently without spending $40? You gotta be able to do these pieces because there's not enough hours in the data to do everything manual.

Dylan Koch: [21:30] Well, that goes back to the endpoint input thing. Like, I could look at all the data, and I could if I said, okay. I wanna take my wholesale business and do 7 figures net profit. I know all the inputs to get us there. Yeah. That wouldn't be the problem. The problem would be the execution and who you have to hire and bring on for that. Right. Right? Like, that part to me is the harder part than just figuring out what the answer actually is or what the inputs are.

Dan Austin: [21:51] Sure. Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. And that's a hard piece of control.

Mike DeHaan: [21:54] It is. And and I think in, like, the wholesale business especially, the inefficiency that you get at each phase is so massive. Mhmm. Because like realistically, your transaction volume for the team that you need is relatively small. Like in terms of like transactions per person. And then I think one of the hardest things about like wholesaling and flipping real estate is your lead measures, your cost per deal, your marketing costs, everything else can be the same, but your profitability of each deal varies so wildly much. Mhmm. You know, like, you can have a cost per deal of $4,000. That deal could make you 6,000. It could make you 60,000. Yep. You don't know. But you know that your input's gonna be the same every single time. And so that's why you see, like, these huge fluctuations. That's also why it's super suspect when you see some of these people that are building out these, like, huge businesses and they're doing, like, you know, a million dollars a month or whatever is you don't know what their input costs are. Yeah. Because, like, if they're doing a million dollars a month, but they're spending $900,000 a month on marketing

Dan Austin: [22:53] Doesn't matter.

Mike DeHaan: [22:54] Right? It doesn't matter. Like, it's it's kind of a pointless thing. They might as well just spend 9,000 or 90,000, like, you know, a $100 or

Dan Austin: [23:01] whatever. Yeah. That's the whole argument of, like, scale within the wholesale flipping business because there's a sweet spot. Dylan, I would say you're probably in that sweet spot Mhmm. Where your profit is your profit percentage is still high. Yeah. Because you keep going, then you have to add in additional labor, additional systems, and your profit margin gets degraded. So say you double your revenue, but you also double your operational costs, you've got the exact same amount of profit.

Dylan Koch: [23:23] The wholesaling business is almost opposite from, like, the business that you want with the high enterprise value because the the SaaS businesses, they write the code and then they have 80% margins.

Mike DeHaan: [23:32] Right. Right?

Dylan Koch: [23:33] Like, this is you have all the same inputs, but your margins get lower. No. They have to. There's no way they get bigger as you scale.

Mike DeHaan: [23:38] Totally. Totally. I mean, I think that's that's the beautiful thing about it though. That's why it's a business that's great for making your first batch of money, is you can be like a one person hustler and make $304,100,000 dollars a year easily.

Dylan Koch: [23:50] Oh, yeah. Kinda sounds like we've been, like, racking on or, like, shitting on wholesale real estate. It's changed my life. Don't get me wrong. These past, like, four years have been, like, great. But we'll see what the next, you know, four or five years are.

Dan Austin: [23:59] This is my opinion. It's a get in, get out business. And when I say get in, get out, it might be five, seven, eight years, or it might be ten years. Like that might be your get out phase is ten years. But for Mike and I, what would you say as far as wholesalers, it was what? Five years? Five years. That was our get out, which I think for us was probably reasonable. We did a lot of different stuff in that timeframe, but you could build millions of dollars of wealth and great income and set yourself up as a business owner. And Mike and I hired a business coach several years ago now. Was like marketing, sales and operations. Like every business has marketing, sales and operations. Once you fundamentally understand how those connect, you can essentially replicate that. And like we talked about earlier, maybe it's to a real estate adjacent business. So if you want to continue to be an entrepreneur and you want to continue to grow, but you want to transition out of like the hustle of the wholesale business, there's a way to do it. You just got to understand you have to market for your business, what that looks like. You have to sell your product, and you have to complete the order or do the operational phase of that business. Like, that's fundamentally all it is. Simple.

Mike DeHaan: [24:56] Totally. And I think to the original point of the conversation, it's not necessarily that we're shitting on it. It's like, how do you know if it's time to move on to something different? It just comes down to look at the data, decide if you're being emotional about your current situation or if subjectively things are challenging. And then also be realistic about, like, how you feel about it. If it feels like it's a drag, you know, and there's only, like, certain parts of the business that you like and you find that you're neglecting other parts that you don't, see if it's worth making a change. And then you just have to decide if you're actually, like, not liking it anymore or you're just burned out and you take a break. Yeah. That's also possible if you just give yourself the ability to go on vacation for two weeks. Yeah. You won't make any money for two weeks, whatever, and you come back and you're like, oh, I actually feel good about it again. Mhmm. But if you leave for two weeks and you're like, man, I'd never wanna go and do that again, then you probably need to figure something

Dan Austin: [25:44] Yeah. Probably. Yeah. That's a good pivot time. Yeah. That's a good time to think about pivoting.

Mike DeHaan: [25:48] Yeah. Absolutely. Cool. Alright. So wrapping on that. So I have no prep for this. I just thought about it right now, but I feel like we need to do this because it is the first of the year. I need one extreme prediction for 2026.

Dan Austin: [26:01] Oh god. Don't have extreme?

Dylan Koch: [26:03] It could be any prediction?

Mike DeHaan: [26:04] It could be any prediction. Yeah. It it doesn't have be housing related. It can be whatever. I want something that, like and it doesn't have to be realistic. We should we should, like, take bets. Like, what's, an a crazy thing that you think will happen? I got this. I was listening to this, comedy podcast I listened to. One of the guy's predictions, they did this. And my guy's like, I think one of you is gonna get divorced this year. Oh, boy. They were like, what? Like, everyone feels like, I hope not. Wow. Like, that's not an anyone's thing. He's like, I don't know. I just feel like that's gonna happen.

Dylan Koch: [26:30] Mine will be, Nancy Pelosi gets indicted for insider trading.

Mike DeHaan: [26:33] Oh, that's a good one,

Dan Austin: [26:35] actually. Really? Yeah. Here's my this is not my my prediction, but this is my prediction of what will happen because this is funny you said that, Dylan, is not a single politician will go to jail or have consequences for anything they've done related to Epstein, related to trading, related to politics. None of them. The Somali thing in Minnesota, nothing will happen.

Mike DeHaan: [26:54] No. Of course.

Dan Austin: [26:55] Not a single person. There's zero consequences. We'll forget about it. In 2026, we'll be talking about some other scandal, and nobody will go to jail or face consequences.

Mike DeHaan: [27:04] Yeah. It's all just like, what can we do to fill the news? That sort of stuff. I think that's a tough one, Dylan, because I feel like if even though she's like the ultimate enemy that, you know, within the the Democrats for the Republicans, If she goes down, like, there's a ton of people on both sides of aisle. They're gonna be like, what does that mean for us? Because they're doing just as wild shit.

Dylan Koch: [27:26] Sure. But she's just the the most blatant one. Like, I like, if there's a target, like, that has to be the easiest target.

Mike DeHaan: [27:32] Or is she the scapegoat? I don't know.

Dan Austin: [27:34] I will say this. She's not the only one, but she is the most blatant obvious one.

Dylan Koch: [27:38] But I feel like all the other politicians would be like, okay. We'll rat her out as long as you'd like to swipe our stuff under the rug.

Mike DeHaan: [27:43] No. But the problem is you go after one that then has to be the next most blatant one, and they're gonna be so gonna be them.

Dan Austin: [27:49] Here's what I believe when it comes to stuff like that. A lot of politicians are lawyers, and they understand precedents. So if you go after one and you set precedents, that means that precedents can be used against anybody that has even any inkling of insider trading. And those guys are smart enough. They're not gonna set precedents. They will protect their own. They do that.

Dylan Koch: [28:07] He said off the wall prediction. I gave you one.

Dan Austin: [28:09] That is a good prediction.

Mike DeHaan: [28:09] That is a good prediction. That's a

Dan Austin: [28:11] great one. Just because you want it to happen doesn't mean it will.

Dylan Koch: [28:13] Yeah. Oh,

Mike DeHaan: [28:14] yeah. That's a good one. I think mine is I think that this year, just with the way stuff has kind of gone, one of the big gurus it's kind of broad. But, like like, a Pace Morby, a Grant Cardone. Right, one of, the big, big names, one of them will go down. Mhmm. I feel like we are due for one of, like, Brian Pineda. Like, one of the ones that every sort of real estate person knows is going to go down because we're due for one of the big names to get their head cut off. We've already sort of seen that with some of them last year. We had Tai Lopez. Right?

Dylan Koch: [28:48] Tai Lopez and Matt Onofrio have to be the biggest that I can think of off the top of my head.

Mike DeHaan: [28:51] Yeah. Matt Onofrio, though, I wouldn't even necessarily call it a guru because he didn't like, we know that because we're in that circle. Like, if you go talk to the average real estate person, they're gonna know him. A lot of people are gonna know Tai Lopez.

Dan Austin: [28:59] Yeah.

Dylan Koch: [28:59] Yeah. That's true.

Mike DeHaan: [29:00] Cardone. But I feel like one of them is finally going to get busted for something sketchy is gonna go down.

Dan Austin: [29:06] It won't be Grant Cardone. He's partnered up with Eric Trump, and so he falls into the circle of will not go to jail or face consequences.

Mike DeHaan: [29:11] Absolutely. Eric

Dan Austin: [29:12] Trump? What whatever one of the Trump brothers is. Don't remember that one.

Mike DeHaan: [29:14] Jimmy. Jimmy. Frankie. Trump. No. Was Jeff. Donald.

Dan Austin: [29:18] Yeah. Whichever one my wife says she thinks is an alcoholic.

Mike DeHaan: [29:21] All of them.

Dylan Koch: [29:22] That could be any of them.

Mike DeHaan: [29:24] Have you seen his, like, paper thin hands and his tremors? That's definitely alcoholism, bro.

Dan Austin: [29:28] So I believe Trump's not, like, himself as a non alcoholic because there's enough, like, validation that he's not. He's many things. But, I mean, it skips a generation, so his son probably is.

Mike DeHaan: [29:36] I think he has fucking syphilis from all of his promiscuous behavior.

Dan Austin: [29:40] Syphilis? Nah. They were all too young to have it. Bryce. Oh my Well, my off the wall prediction is that nothing will happen from the Epstein files, and I have stood solidly on that. Nothing will come of that.

Mike DeHaan: [29:55] So, like, define nothing.

Dylan Koch: [29:56] Dan was in the military. Dan's in the Dan's in the Epstein files. That's what I heard. Right? I

Mike DeHaan: [30:02] only went there 10 times.

Dan Austin: [30:04] Just it was what we did. That's what we did back in the nineties. You on the security detail. No. Zero will happen. No. Yeah. Yeah. I just watched it. Zero zero things will happen. Like, nothing. And I've been saying this since they said they're gonna release him, since Trump was running an office saying that they've said nothing's gonna Not a single person will go to, like, jail, not a politician.

Mike DeHaan: [30:23] What do you think it would take for something to come from that?

Dan Austin: [30:27] There's not enough. There's not enough. There's not enough things to give.

Mike DeHaan: [30:30] Like, there has to be some level where you think eventually something would, like, turn over. Like, why I think it gets tricky is is they could literally have, like, video of these people committing the heinous acts. Right? And people would say that it's AI.

Dan Austin: [30:42] Here's the problem with this, right, is we're in a place. I don't think this is just America. Think that there's a lot of this worldwide, but we're in a place to where if we're like, in America, we're a two party system. Right? So no matter what you say, you'll downplay your side's efforts in this Jeffrey Epstein thing. Right? Like the Trump people like, oh, Trump had nothing to do with it. He very well maybe didn't. I truly don't know. I have no idea. Like, I can't even believe any of this shit coming out. Right? But there's lot of pictures of him with Jeffrey Epstein. Right?

Dylan Koch: [31:12] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [31:12] Are those AI generated? There's enough people saying that are on that side will be it's not that big of a deal. It's like, it's okay for for my side to do it, but not your side.

Mike DeHaan: [31:20] I don't think that that is a two side, like a two party argument. I think that

Dan Austin: [31:25] I think it is. 100%.

Mike DeHaan: [31:26] Mostly the red side says that. I I think the democrats you could have fucking Bernie Sanders. You could have Obama. You could have anyone on there, and the democrats would want them to go down.

Dan Austin: [31:34] No. Not true. Percent. Not true.

Mike DeHaan: [31:36] Yes. It is.

Dan Austin: [31:36] I don't think that's true at all.

Dylan Koch: [31:37] I think

Dan Austin: [31:38] it is. You think that if there's a a democrat that's like, I don't know, Bill Gates who's been he's definitely a 100% Epstein. His wife fucking left him when that shit came out. They're not saying anything. Mhmm. Because he's he's a big donut.

Mike DeHaan: [31:50] Yeah. They are. You're just not in the circles, dude. Like, people want the average person, and I mean, people who think it's who's left, they want everyone that's involved in it to go down. 100%.

Dan Austin: [31:58] I will stop the argument right here. The Biden administration had the files, and they didn't release them. That's my Trump card.

Mike DeHaan: [32:03] I know.

Dan Austin: [32:03] That is 100%.

Dylan Koch: [32:04] No pun intended.

Dan Austin: [32:05] Sure. Nothing will ever happen. Everybody's involved on both sides. And I think the general public will either turn a blind eye or won't fully admit it. And I what I'm not saying is like it's one or the other. What I'm saying is like, generally speaking, the mass of the Democratic Party, the mass of the Trump Party don't care.

Mike DeHaan: [32:22] Like, you're talking about, like, the high level people, like, the the politicians themselves? No. No. Not the followers.

Dan Austin: [32:27] I I would say both. I would say, generally speaking, if if it came out that Biden was on the Epstein file, and I'm just using him because he's the most recent Democratic president. I don't believe he was. If it came out, they would still be like, yeah. Whatever. Just like if Trump is on it, they would be like, yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [32:42] Whatever. I think every Democratic voter would want him to go down. 100%. Like, the people the politicians, elected officials wouldn't.

Dan Austin: [32:50] Okay. So if they had yes. If they have actual evidence, like footage, I'm talking about what it is right now, like pictures of Trump. There's not gonna be anything more than that.

Mike DeHaan: [32:56] No. But here's where it goes different is there are red side voters that are dismissive of Trump being in that.

Dan Austin: [33:03] 100%. Yes. Yes. It's stupid.

Mike DeHaan: [33:06] You know, or, like, being involved or they're in denial of being involved. If any of, like, the big democrat darlings were on there, the democrat votes would want them to go down as well.

Dan Austin: [33:15] Nope. I'll believe it.

Dylan Koch: [33:16] We'll agree

Mike DeHaan: [33:16] or disagree on that.

Dan Austin: [33:17] We're gonna 100% disagree on this because I'm not emotionally like, I am a middle of the road moderate, and I see Yeah. Clowns on both sides of it, and I think it's bullshit. I think it's stupid. And I strongly believe that nothing will happen up

Mike DeHaan: [33:29] The point for that is is because the actual decision makers that have to pursue anything are equally as entangled in all the bullshit. You're right. So nothing will come from it.

Dan Austin: [33:36] Nothing will come from it. That's my off the wall prediction. And I've been saying that forever. It's not a conspiracy.

Mike DeHaan: [33:41] Yeah. I think so. And then big market sentiment, just really quick, we'll go lightning round. Where do you think housing is going to go in 2026? Up or down?

Dan Austin: [33:49] Slightly up or flat?

Dylan Koch: [33:50] I'm gonna go slightly up as well.

Mike DeHaan: [33:53] I think it's gonna be averaging straight flat across the board. Straight flat. I will say it will be up or down less than half a percent nationally Yeah. In terms of valuation.

Dan Austin: [34:03] And here's why I say slightly down. I still think there's enough sentiment of, like, not enough housing, this, that. And I think the economy is going to kinda just, like, truck along again in 2026. So I don't think there'll be any reason for anybody to sell or any know, there's gonna be the markets like Florida and and Austin, which we saw, I think, will kinda stabilize. So I just think it'll be Yeah. Slightly up. There's nothing that's gonna make it wanna go down. There'll be local markets that are down. I think so. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [34:27] But average average, I think, we'll see much the same. But cool. Well, right on, everybody. Well, happy New Year. Thanks for tuning in to listen to us rant about whatever the hell we talked about today. You guys have a great start of the year, and we'll talk to you guys next time.

Dylan Koch: [34:38] See you. Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [34:39] This episode is sponsored by Sir Lenzelot LLC, also known as SLA Capital, which if you didn't know, is Dan and I's private lending company. So, yes, we are sponsoring our own show, but what you're gonna do about it? It is our private lending company that offers hard money and DSCR loans to real estate investors of all types. So you can be a new investor, an experienced investor. You can be buying flips. You can be buying rentals, whatever. We can do everything. And not only that, but the rates that we offer are just as competitive, if not cheaper, than pretty much every other company out there. So whatever big company you've been working with, bring us their term sheets, and I guarantee that we can probably beat it. We have the same connections they do. We just don't have all the overhead and middlemen. So if you wanna come and check us out, go to slacapital.com/keys, and I will know that you came from the show. And by seeing that you came from here, when you get the closing, you will save $500 on your first loan with us. So slacapital.com/keys, we would love to fund your next deal. Thanks for listening, everyone. If you want more from us, you can shoot us a follow on Instagram. I am at Mike underscore Invest. Dan is at investor man. Dan and Dylan is at Dylan underscore does underscore deals. Choose to follow and send us a DM to let us know what you think of the show.