The Story of Mike DeHaan

Speaker 1: [0:01] Welcome to the collecting keys Friday focus.

Mike DeHaan: [0:10] Hey, guys. On this episode of the collecting keys Friday focus, I am sharing an interview that I recently did on the tribe of millionaires podcast. I did this interview back in May of this year, but it just came out this past week. I've done a lot of interviews over the years, but I just feel like the way that Jamie leads this conversation allows for my story to create a lot of learning opportunities, and different insights that could be very valuable to other investors, whether you are just getting started, or you're looking to scale, or you want to build a business similar to how I have. And also too, if you've never heard my background before, I do think that it is generally interesting to some people just sort of how I got into this because it is a little bit of a wraparound way. So anyway, guys, go ahead and give it a listen. And if you enjoy it, the tribe of millionaires podcast is really great, and I recommend you guys check that out. Aside from that, if you enjoy the collecting keys podcast and you wanna continue to help us grow, please go ahead and leave us a five star review on Apple and also share this podcast with anyone who might find it interesting. Seriously, you have no idea how much that helps us. Besides that, go ahead and keep an eye on the collecting keys website, collectingkeyspodcast.com.

Mike DeHaan: [1:18] We have some pretty big announcements that we're gonna be releasing here very soon regarding some new programs that we have coming out, as well as some different offerings we're gonna have for you guys is if you wanna learn from Dan and myself or work with us in some capacity. On the website right now, we have a little subscription for me. You can get an ebook. So go ahead and grab that, and then it will automatically put you on our email list for when we start to make announcements about some of the things we have coming up here over the next couple weeks to about a month. So go check that out. Besides that, everybody, thanks so much for listening, and enjoy the show.

Speaker 3: [1:51] This is the tribe of millionaires podcast from GoBundance. The tribe of healthy, wealthy, generous people who choose to live epic lives. Listen Tuesdays for featured guests and Fridays for GoBundance member spotlights. But listen always to hear how our guests have grabbed life bidding. Now here's your host, Jamie Gruber.

Jamie Gruber: [2:21] What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. We're here live in Miami at the GoBundance Global Conference, and I've got a GoBundance member next to me, Mike DeHaan. He's a real estate investor. He is a jump without a plan entrepreneur. He's out of Spokane, Washington. Don't call it Spokane. I don't know who the hell called he gave me this warning before, don't call it Spokane. I'm like, who calls it Spokane? But we'll we'll explore that, I guess,

Mike DeHaan: [2:43] a little bit. Well, it's you know, Gonzaga University's there. They have a pretty decent basketball team. So every year in March Madness, it's all over ESPN. Even though they've been in this room for fifteen years now, they still say it wrong

Jamie Gruber: [2:55] every Gotcha. Single Spokane. Yeah. Yeah. Also the host of the Collecting Keys podcast. So Mike, welcome.

Mike DeHaan: [3:00] Yeah. Thanks, Jamie.

Jamie Gruber: [3:01] Love it. Yeah. You might hear some background noise in here, and I apologize. We're in a we're in a live podcast room. If you're watching on video, there's other podcasts happening over there. So apologize for any background noise, but we this is this is live TV, live live podcasting. So, Mike, let's go back a little bit. So you're in Spokane today. That's not where you started. Yeah. Give us a little bit of your backstory, where where you're from, and take us through now.

Mike DeHaan: [3:23] Yeah. So I grew up out in Bozeman, Montana. So, you know, sort of a rural area. Bozeman's super popular and trendy these days, but back when I was growing up there, was a farm town. Like, remember when the first department store came there, which wasn't that long ago. I mean, I was 10, and now, you know, I'm 31, and now it's a sort of a mecca where tons of people go Yeah. To buy their large vacation homes and go skiing, go fishing, do all that sort of stuff. So grew up there, went through high school, sort of traditional path, went to Gonzaga University in Spokane, got electrical engineering degree, sort of, you know, struggled through school. Wasn't really my thing, but I went through kind of with a mindset that when I graduated and I went and got a job that, you know, I would enjoy life more around. I'll start making money. That would be cool. Parents are super proud. So go through, jump right into the workforce. I graduated in 2013. So it was kind of after the recession had really gone through, so getting jobs was so easy. Yeah. You know, especially as an engineer, I had picked the litter when it came to jobs. I decided to move out to the Seattle side and started working at a consulting company. I was there for about a couple years, didn't really like it. I decided to seek a job that was more of like a bucket list job or like a dream job for a lot of people.

Mike DeHaan: [4:37] So I started looking at places like Amazon, Boeing, you know, larger companies that people sort of seek from all over the world. I ended up getting a job at Boeing, which was realistically impossible to do. I got very lucky with the whole process. Basically, they told me that there were four fifty applicants for the job, they interviewed 50, and they hired three, and I was the ones that got hired. Wow. So something that a lot of people were seeking. Right? And I will always remember the first day that I walked into that Boeing building. I was so excited. I walk in, I get to my desk, I see the cubicle jungle, the fluorescent lights, and I was like, damn it. Depressed. I made a horrible mistake.

Jamie Gruber: [5:15] That's crazy.

Mike DeHaan: [5:16] Yeah. So instantly I realized that I had, you know, I was in a place that I really shouldn't be, but I had the golden handcuffs at that point. You know, I was making really good money. I was 26. You know, my total compensation package was about $120,000 a year. Mhmm. And, I mean, that was that was a of money.

Jamie Gruber: [5:32] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [5:32] You know, you can do a lot of stuff with that back then. So sort of was struggling through it, was dealing with it, and then the real turning point for me actually was in 2016, my father had a stroke, and it was kind of like a freak thing. He was always in really good health. He had a hemorrhagic stroke and had a brain bleed and spent six weeks in the ICU. And during that time, me and my wife, we actually traveled down and lived out of the hospital with my mom, and it gave me a lot of time to sort of reflect on life and what I wanted that to look like. But the real kicker was everyone, you know, my boss, everyone knew the whole life situation, how close I was to my family. And then for the next six weeks, Boeing proceeded to call me every single day and basically said, hey, what the hell are you doing? Why aren't you at work?

Jamie Gruber: [6:13] No kidding.

Mike DeHaan: [6:14] Right? And they, you know, forced, like, threatened me with disciplinary action and they let me go and all this sort of stuff because I was there, I basically said, Screw you, I don't care. So anyway, that whole situation, he had a very long recovery. He's doing great now.

Jamie Gruber: [6:30] I was gonna go crazy.

Mike DeHaan: [6:31] Yeah, he's doing very well now. Like, you'd honestly never know. But he had to have brain surgery out of all this sort of stuff, put me into a spiraled state of depression that I was in for probably about the next two years. In that period of time, I got married, even though my wife admitted that at one point she was debating not getting married because of the Yeah. State that I was Sure. Yep. And then, you know, we I got took a different job, moved back to Spokane to work at a local utility over there. And then after a year of that, it was, you know, my fourth job at that point. And five years as an engineer, I decided this isn't for me. And in January 2018, I just jumped and just quit and just said, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'll figure it out. Wow.

Jamie Gruber: [7:12] You know,

Mike DeHaan: [7:13] and I'd been able to make good money for those couple of years, I had some runway. And I basically just left and decided I was gonna go and find myself.

Jamie Gruber: [7:19] How much runway? I'm curious.

Mike DeHaan: [7:22] So if we had no income, probably about five months, six months. Yeah. I did have a backstop of, like, a four zero one k that I had built up that was pretty significant

Jamie Gruber: [7:32] Sure.

Mike DeHaan: [7:32] If I needed to pull on that, but I would recognize the fees. But, you know, I had cash saving about five or six months, and then my wife had a job that we were able to live off of for the most part. So that made it a little bit easier.

Jamie Gruber: [7:42] Wow. So you leave. What's the first thing you do?

Mike DeHaan: [7:45] So my original intention when I left, I've always been into sports and fitness, and I used to moonlight as like a weightlifting coach. So my original thing was I'm gonna go back to school, I'm gonna go and be a physical therapist. I want to help people learn how to be healthier. So I left, went and started school to do my prereqs to go to PT school, worked in a PT clinic, which was part of the process, for about a month, and was like, F this, I'm not doing this. So I completely just shot it. And then so after that, we were like, you know, was kind of lost, and I was like, I just need to sort of get out of my element. So my wife, we decided to pull on our savings and go to New Zealand and do probably the most financially irresponsible thing at the time, which is go travel around New Zealand for a month. But that that whole trip, I have family down there. You know, I gotta, like, see different sort of, like, lifestyle and culture that's still Western. But have you ever have you ever spent any time in New Zealand or around New Yeah. Zealand They have a very different view just like on the world, you know, and on life and things like that. And even though even if they live kinda humbly, a lot of them have a view that there's just like more out there to experience and explore. Sure. And that sort of motivated me to get into entrepreneurship so I could have that freedom. And I could go and do more with my life than just be focused on work, which is kind of the traditional path you

Jamie Gruber: [9:01] see question for you? I mean, you said it's financially irresponsible thing. I guess that's debatable. But when you made the decision, was there any sort of like I mean, we're gonna do this. I don't know that we should, but or was it like, okay. I guess we will. I'm just kinda curious. I feel like I feel like the greatest things in life happen when you follow something that feels authentic

Mike DeHaan: [9:19] Yeah.

Jamie Gruber: [9:19] Even if it doesn't seem practical. Was that where you were, or was it like, I wasn't gonna do this and thank God kicking and screaming, I was dragged to it? I'm curious. Was it an authentic thing, or was it a mistake?

Mike DeHaan: [9:28] It was purely authentic. And, I mean, I've always kind of been someone that follows that authentic nature, I guess, a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, when we made that decision, I mean, we did have the perfect excuse to go because I have family down there, someone's getting married. I'm like, cool. We'll just, like, go there, and we'll make a whole thing of it. Yeah. Right? But it was never really, like, a question or a concern. And, like, the view that I always had was worst case scenario, I can go back to being an engineer. If I need to have a valuable degree, know I'm hireable. And that was the last thing I ever wanted to do, but I did have that as a backstop because I knew that that was a possibility. Yeah. Yeah. And then also as well, guess the one bit of comfort I did have is I've always sort of come from, like, a hustle mindset Mhmm. Where I'll just, like, figure things out. Yeah. You know, regardless of what happens. So, like, even when, you know, I wasn't making any money for that first period of time, I was still working as a coach. Was I driving for Uber. I was doing whatever I could to, you know, taking odd jobs from people. Like, somebody would post on Facebook, like, hey. I need $50.

Mike DeHaan: [10:23] Someone come help me move a fridge. We're looking for, like, a high schooler. And then rolls in this 30 year old guy that's like, want $50. I'll help you move the fridge.

Jamie Gruber: [10:30] Sure. Right.

Mike DeHaan: [10:31] You know? Like, whatever it was. I

Jamie Gruber: [10:32] would just

Mike DeHaan: [10:32] do anything to just scrape it by.

Jamie Gruber: [10:34] Did you have that as a kid? Do you as you look back now so I love the I love the story of you said a couple of things that resonated with me because I didn't realize it. I I wasn't okay with it until, you know, recently. It was like, I hated school. Yeah. I thought it was pointless. I I my my objective was to get through. Like, I never I may have said this before on this show, but I've never understood or I never understood when people would say to me, like, gotta c minus. I'm like, yeah, which means I passed. I passed something that you said I needed to in order for me to go through whatever this is. Mhmm. I don't really care what my grade is. I'm never gonna use English literature in my life ever. So I really didn't care. But back then, I was like, oh my god. I'm a bad person. That was what I was conditioned to be, it never resonated with me. So I love that. And then you talk about walking in to cubicle. What do you call it? The cubicle?

Mike DeHaan: [11:16] The cubicle farm. Cubicle farm. Martian life. Yeah. Yeah.

Jamie Gruber: [11:19] It's cool. Excellent life. Yeah. And it is, man. It's sad. Right? What do you think about for us? At least it's sad. That's sad for everybody. But did you have entrepreneurial tendencies as a kid? If you go back, did you, you know, start the landscaping company and hire a bunch of people like some folks did? Did you ever did you display any of this, or was it later in life?

Mike DeHaan: [11:35] So I did in, like, a different fashion, you know, like not in like a practical way that it was actually viable for making money. So growing up, I was very sort of introverted. I didn't have a lot of friends. I spent a lot of time playing online video games.

Jamie Gruber: [11:49] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [11:49] And I would do things in those that were entrepreneurial. Like I would find like the hack that I could generate more gold. That's why I would like set up systems to do that. But I wish I had done it, like go start the landscape company. Could have gotten something tangible And from instead I created all this internet money that's not worth anything.

Jamie Gruber: [12:06] But you were it's like paper trade.

Mike DeHaan: [12:07] Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much.

Jamie Gruber: [12:08] You you figured out a way. Yeah. I we had a my parents used to buy VHS videos. So were you are you even VHS? Yeah. It was a DVD when you were growing up.

Mike DeHaan: [12:15] Oh, no. VHS.

Jamie Gruber: [12:16] A little bit of VHS. So we had, this wall of VHS videos. And I remember my I also grew up in a very rural centric household. Like, you know, there's only certain things you can and can't do. But I remember thinking because people would want my friends would wanna watch these videos. Like I should rent these. I could rent it for a buck or $2 or whatever. And my father's like, well, if you do that, you have to pay royalties to the the to the, you know, whoever creates the videos, the the what are they called? The studios. You have to pay I'm like, oh, oh, okay. Like, back in your box. Back in your box. Right? Like, don't do that. But it's funny you say that, like, nothing ever came of entrepreneurial endeavors I had

Mike DeHaan: [12:48] Yeah.

Jamie Gruber: [12:48] But I had the mindset. Mhmm. I look back and I think of, like, that and some other things where I had the mindset to do it, but then it was sort of, you know, you gotta you gotta play by these certain rules, so don't. Right? So don't. Yeah. Wow. All right. So you quit your job, you go to New Zealand, it unlocks you. Tell me from there, what happens next?

Mike DeHaan: [13:04] Yeah. So, you know, I got really into basically the concept of financial freedom. You know, I read The Four Hour Workweek. That's kind of the book that I attribute to changing my mindset.

Jamie Gruber: [13:14] Big book.

Mike DeHaan: [13:14] Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that sort of got me thinking and opened my eyes. And I just started dabbling in different things. You know, the biggest thing I was looking at was what would be a scalable business. You know, what would be something that I could do location independent and I could travel, do all sort of things. So I got into this mindset that I wanted to be in startups, tech startups. So I taught myself how to code. I basically locked myself in my basement for two months and taught myself how to become a web developer. Wow. That was a whole endeavor. But basically I went through that, got my first job at a blockchain startup based out of Chicago, started working for them and I was like, what am I getting paid? And they're like, no, this is an early phase startup. You don't make money, you get equity, right? Which just means you get nothing. Yep, yep, yep. So I was like, Okay, well, that's not ideal. Was like, This is taking all of my time now. I no longer have time to do the other side hustles I was doing. I need money from somewhere. And I was like, Real estate, rental properties. That's a passive income thing that's talked about in different books. Sure. You know, I'd been listening to Bigger Pockets and those sort of things, so it was familiar. And I was like, I need some rental properties, so how do I find some?

Mike DeHaan: [14:21] And I was like, well, they always talk about finding fixer uppers, doing all this work. I like, I don't want that. I want easy real estate. And in the neighborhood that we lived in, there was a new development going up, it's little single family homes, and I kind of met the builder through like a friend of a friend, and I said like, oh, what are those houses selling for? Is it $200 apiece? And I was like, that's great. I can afford those if I liquidate my $40.01 k. And I was like, I'll pay like 20% in penalties. I was like, but then I'll make, you know, passive income from these rentals. So I liquidated my four zero one k, put down my down payment on these two turnkey rental properties, and I was like, perfect. So let's see, my monthly payment's gonna be $300. I can probably rent it for $1,600. I'm gonna make $300 a month per property. Right? That's it's easy. You know, I wasn't accounting for any sort of vacancy, maintenance. I didn't account for the taxes properly. Basically, I accounted for nothing.

Jamie Gruber: [15:13] I love this.

Mike DeHaan: [15:14] So I just I basically just bought these houses. I remember I bought them, closed on them, and I, like, post them up on Zelle. I'm gonna get tenants. Two months basically go by, and I don't have any tenants.

Jamie Gruber: [15:24] No kidding.

Mike DeHaan: [15:24] I'm like, oh, no. Yeah. What have I done now? I'm like, do I sell the houses? Like, I have to drop my rent? I have to start figuring this whole thing out. And then I actually ended up getting very lucky because what happened is a state group that happened to be driving to the neighborhood or something, they saw that the house were available on Zillow, they called me and they're like, hey, we are at this group that we do state sponsored housing for mentally disabled adults. So they are, like, you know, kinda like lower functioning people, usually a lot more wheelchair bound. They have full time care. It's like they're not, like, you know, drug addicts or anything crazy. It's a a class neighborhood. Like, we need homes for these people that are wheelchair accessible. They're both ranchers. They check their box. And, like, we will pay you premium rent if we will rent if you'll rent to us, and we'll do it on a three year lease. Mhmm. And they said a three year lease with the option to adjust. And I was like, well, that's great. How about for $2,000 a month? I said, done. I was like, awesome. So right there, I started making actual money out of just pure luck Right. Because I was in that position to do so.

Jamie Gruber: [16:24] Yeah. I oh, is it so there's there's parts of your story here, right, that I love. You're so countercultural, and I freaking love it. My working definition right now for entrepreneurship is defiance.

Mike DeHaan: [16:35] Yeah.

Jamie Gruber: [16:35] So, you know, anyone would say to you, you don't liquidate your four zero one k. You're gonna pay too much in penalties. You're gonna lose money. You don't go to New Zealand for a month when you're you know, how are you gonna support yourself? You know, you're not making any money. You don't buy houses without doing these, you know, this analysis or, you know, doing more research or whatever. Right? But you did all of this stuff.

Mike DeHaan: [16:51] Mhmm.

Jamie Gruber: [16:51] Right? Because it felt like the right thing to do, and it was for you, you know, the way in which you were able to achieve what you were trying to achieve, which is start to build passive income. You've mentioned luck a couple of times. I don't know. I'm sure there's I know there's always luck involved, but the action you take, the action you've taken feels like it creates these opportunities for you. You know? I always say this on the on the real estate side. Whenever somebody's like, you know, how do you get started? It's like you buy. If you think for a second that you're gonna plan out and underwrite a property so perfectly that it's gonna do exactly what you say it's gonna do on on a on a piece of paper, once you buy the house, it's gonna smack you in the mouth somewhere, somehow, some you know, like you said, I didn't plan for this, the other. My first two burs, I was off by half on the rehab cost. It was literally twice as much as I planned for. We're still standing, right?

Mike DeHaan: [17:40] Exactly, yeah. And I think that's kind of the realization that you come back to is, like, one of my really good friends is actually my business partner. I remember when he was first dabbling in real estate before me and I would ask him all these questions, he would say, The worst thing that happens is you got to spend more money. Yeah. You know, realistically, like, you know, especially in the real estate world, in the residential real estate world, it's relatively forgiving unless you are just completely negligent on something or you made a really bad decision. I mean, you're not going to lose everything. You might lose some money on a deal. You might lose some equity. But honestly, if you're able to hold it for a long term, you'll be fine. And so I always kind of had that mindset that what's the worst that could really happen. Sure. And that just sort of helped get over that hump.

Jamie Gruber: [18:21] I love it. I love it. Mean, really, know, again, you don't want to go bankrupt or anything like that, but the worst that could happen is that. You you have to have a reset. Sucks It for a while, but you know, you learn and grow. Not that you're aiming for that. I had this discussion the other night with a couple of guys. There's like a 24 year old guy there who's here helping with the event, and he was asking about it. I'm like, dude, you're 20 like, do whatever. Like, take every risk you possibly can. You can go bankrupt twice between now and 30 and still be a child. Right? I mean, you're 31. Do you feel any different than when you were 22?

Mike DeHaan: [18:50] No. You know? Not at all.

Jamie Gruber: [18:51] When you're 22, think 30 is adulthood. It's like, no. 40 is not either. I'll tell you right you hit 40, 43, 44, 45, you'll be amazed at how you feel no different than you do right now. It's crazy.

Mike DeHaan: [19:00] I mean, my dad, my dad's in his mid seventies, he's had a He's had a most incredible life. I do a whole podcast and do stuff that he's done. But even now he's like, he said that he doesn't feel any different than he did when he was in his twenties, it's just his body's older.

Jamie Gruber: [19:16] That's it. My mom says the same thing, still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I'm 71 years She's old, like, I still don't know what I want to be. She doesn't feel a 70 year old other than physically. But yeah, mentally, emotionally, whatever, you're always gonna be there. And we might come back to your dad if we have time because you just, that was very Yeah, made my curiosity spike a little bit. All right. So, well, one thing, I maybe you mentioned it, but there's the distractions in the room are kind of getting to me here, but the tech startup you had equity in. You do have equity in that?

Mike DeHaan: [19:43] Oh, it it went belly up. What belly up? I I didn't I got nothing out

Jamie Gruber: [19:45] of You got nothing?

Mike DeHaan: [19:46] Just just experience. Well, yeah, I got I got experience, and it was my first view actually into entrepreneurship and the value of networking. Because we were early phase. It was a lot of effort that went into growing it. We went to conferences and all sort of things. And as I was connecting with people, it was eye opening to sort of see what people were doing. It's like coming to an abundance event. You start to see where people are finding their way, where they're making money, that sort of like drive to hustle and grind and get things done. That was my first true exposure to that on like a large scale. So that was really invaluable even though I didn't make any monetary.

Jamie Gruber: [20:20] No. It's it's experience is is just as valuable. What does it look like today? Portfolio wise, what are you doing? Kind of take me to present day with with everything.

Mike DeHaan: [20:27] Yeah, absolutely. So after I bought those properties, decided I to do a different path. I needed more money. So I I burned a duplex shortly after that. That was late twenty eighteen. 2019, I was like, I gotta start flipping houses. I need more money. I didn't have any money to flip houses with, so I basically partnered with a local investor that had money. Mhmm. I went and facilitated all the work and, you know, basically, the definition of using other people's money. Right? They funded the whole thing. I did the hustle. We split it fifty fifty. First house I flipped, I spent four months on the opposite end of town driving back and forth, and four months doing it, and I made $4,200. Wow. So the biggest waste of time for the monetary policy a month. Yeah. Exactly. I I guarantee you I spent more on gas. Yeah. But, you know, that was the education in doing renovations and project planning that I'd never had before. So ones after that were successful through 2019, bought a couple more rentals. And then in end of twenty nineteen, it was starting to reach a point where with how aggressive I wanted to be with my buying, recognized realtors weren't finding deals, wholesalers were scraping all the profit, and I was like, I gotta find deals myself. So, again, I didn't really have a huge amount of money at this point.

Mike DeHaan: [21:41] So I approached my business partner. My now business partner, who's also my best friend from college, he had a very high paying job, I was like, hey, you wanna invest? I wanna invest. We should do this thing. I'll build the system basically to find our own opportunities. You help me fund it, and we'll just build this business. Right? And our initial goal was to do we wanted to buy 50 properties in ten years. Okay? You're right. That sounds fine. So fat like, started it. COVID happened, ups and downs. 2020 was weird. Figured it out. Anyway, so as of right now, we have a full off market wholesale flipping investment business. We've been operating this since early twenty twenty, so about two and a half years now. We have 10 employees. We're about to do our hundredth transaction. Wow. It's a lot faster than fifteen, ten a lot faster than ten years. Our rental portfolio is sitting think, currently at 48 units.

Jamie Gruber: [22:33] Wow, man.

Mike DeHaan: [22:34] And by the time this comes out in June, some of the closing, have should be about 60 units Amazing. Across a bunch of different portfolios. So, yeah, so that's where our current business is, and we're operating in five different markets right now.

Jamie Gruber: [22:46] Is your friend still working?

Mike DeHaan: [22:48] He's still working at his W-two. Mean, by when this comes out, I'm not sure if he will be still. He's debating on leaving at some point. Sure. But he has a high paying job where realistically he's in a position where he doesn't have a lot of daily responsibility. Yeah. So he's making good money and he spends most time working on our stuff. So it kinda makes sense. Yeah.

Jamie Gruber: [23:06] Yep. Just ride it out as long as he can, I guess?

Mike DeHaan: [23:08] Right? Exactly. Yeah.

Jamie Gruber: [23:09] This is the the business partner you have now is a college friend. The first business partner that you mentioned on the flip that you made $4,200 on was a local investor. So how did you tell me talk about that because I I think that's a that's a block for some folks. Like, well, I'd love to, but I don't. And what you did was found Mhmm. The partner. Right? You don't have money or you don't have experience or whatever. Found a partner with that. How did that come to be? How did that conversation happen? How did you propose it? Just walk me through that a little bit.

Mike DeHaan: [23:32] Yeah. So it came to be honestly from connecting with them on BiggerPockets first, just on the forums, and found out that they were local. And we met up at a local meetup, And, you know, we just kind of hit it off really well. And it was one of those things that I think they could sense that I was hungry and I wanted to get things done, and we built some good trust. And it just came from that. I mean, ultimately, it came from my involvement in the community because I had been active in their meetups at that point. You know, I had been actively bidding on products and actively trying to do stuff. So when they came in and were looking for someone to help facilitate doing flips, there's people there that were willing to vouch for me because I'd been around. So I kind of had that brand, my personal brand established locally to sort of get that credibility. Even though I hadn't actually done many deals yet You were showing. I was showing up, and people knew that I was hungry and that I was, you know, educated and willing to figure things

Jamie Gruber: [24:27] Is he or she still in the picture today in any of your business now?

Mike DeHaan: [24:30] I actually haven't talked to them for a couple years. We had a flip that was active when COVID started that went kind of sideways, particularly because they panicked, we had to kind of panic sell it, and we ended up losing some money that they were pretty sour about. But it, you know, it ended on not the best terms, but it is what it is.

Jamie Gruber: [24:46] Sometimes that happens in partnerships. How did you structure that first partnership? Was it fifty fifty on on profit, or what

Mike DeHaan: [24:51] was that? It was just fifty fifty. You know, they basically took all the risk, and then I did All most of work.

Jamie Gruber: [24:57] Did you physically do the work of the floor? Were the general contractor for subcontractors?

Mike DeHaan: [25:02] Yeah. So I general ed most of the subs. I did do some work myself, especially when subs wouldn't show up or things would fall behind. So, you know, things from hanging drywall, doing flooring, painting. I mean, me and my wife, there was several weekends where we would be up there and we'd be looking at a YouTube video for how to install a shower insert.

Jamie Gruber: [25:20] Was going ask, did you have any experience with any of this stuff?

Mike DeHaan: [25:22] No, none. I literally never held a power tool. So I guess I'd use power tools lightly to do work in my own house, but everything else is just school YouTube. And I was like, I don't know, I'll figure it out or I'll find someone to teach me.

Jamie Gruber: [25:34] Wow, Wow, you just go, go, go. How is your business partnership structured now? Is it same thing fifty fifty on everything?

Mike DeHaan: [25:40] Yep. So we're fifty fifty. Yeah. And then how we structure our roles, I basically lead the sales acquisitions side of it and the dispositions on wholesale properties, on our wholesale deals. And then he manages the renovations, the project management, all that sort of stuff after we close, and he manages all of our rentals.

Jamie Gruber: [25:58] Gotcha. What is the if you don't mind, without getting maybe too granular, but the the crux of the system that you have, like, system that yeah. I mean, that's a lot of transactions no matter where you are, especially in this market, a 100 in a year essentially. Right? Yeah. What is the the like, you texting yellow letter campaigns? Is it some other kind of marketing that you're doing? Just give me kind of an insight into what you're doing.

Mike DeHaan: [26:17] Yeah. So it's kind of all the above. So we in our different markets, we try and we test different things and we measure our KPIs very explicitly to sort of see what's working and what's not. But the key thing, like most people when they start marketing for deals, they focus on the marketing. And really what it comes down to is the data and the follow-up process. Like anyone can go and start marketing for properties. You can go hire a cold calling company right now for $2,000 a month, and they'll call and, you know, you'll get leads coming into your system. So that barrier to entry is very low. Or say you wanna go order some postcards, you can go and order, you know, a bunch of postcards, send them to a list that you pulled off PropStream, whatever.

Jamie Gruber: [26:58] Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [26:58] And, like, anyone can do that. But the reason that we do deals and a lot of people don't is because of how we analyze our data and how we follow-up with different kinds of leads and different methods. So, like, we specifically target people that have you know, we stack our data, so we find people that have the most potential motivation to sell and we target them most heavily. But then what we really do is we spend time going into the back records of the different court and city systems that so it's not necessarily publicly available yet. And we manually scrape things like people that are going to divorce court but don't have a filed divorce yet. You know, people that are going to jail, like they're they're currently in court for some sort of felony or something like that. You know, people that have a bankruptcy hearing, but they don't necessarily have a recorded bankruptcy yet. So we do that to try and get ahead of the curve. And that's all available, but you have to manually find it.

Jamie Gruber: [27:55] Right? So just to be clear, you send out a 100 letters or texts or whatever you're doing. It's a combination of, and I know there's more than this, but you're going to be divorced, you're going to go to jail and these people call you.

Mike DeHaan: [28:09] Exactly, yeah.

Jamie Gruber: [28:09] And they say, Hey, yeah, yeah, I am about to go to jail, or we are going through a divorce.

Mike DeHaan: [28:13] Yeah, we do our marketing kind of coy. Like we don't let them know that we know their situation. Oh, and it's always like,

Jamie Gruber: [28:19] Hey, so you're going to jail,

Mike DeHaan: [28:20] Yeah, call right. It's always like, Hey, we like your house in this neighborhood. It's in our buy box. You want to excel? And then they call us. And it's always kind an interesting conversation because they don't know that we know they're

Jamie Gruber: [28:30] doing Right, was going to ask you, how do you navigate that?

Mike DeHaan: [28:32] Yeah, so we play it off very basically of like, Oh yeah, tell us about the house, sell sort of stuff, build that rapport with them. And then as you're getting to know them through the whole sales process, next thing you know, all their stuff's coming out. They're like, I got to sell in next two weeks. You know, I'm going to jail. Like, I need to be able to exit this before that happens. And that's where the opportunities come from.

Jamie Gruber: [28:52] Wow. Wow. How many touches does it take you typically to get a deal under contract?

Mike DeHaan: [28:57] Yeah. And I need to recheck that this year because we've exploded over the last few months. But last time I checked out at the end of last year, was about 17 touches.

Jamie Gruber: [29:06] 17 touches. Is this you?

Mike DeHaan: [29:08] No, this is my staff.

Jamie Gruber: [29:09] What's your staff look like? Local people, VAs, what is this?

Mike DeHaan: [29:12] So we're a completely virtual company. And so there's me and my business partner. We have a sales manager. We have three acquisitions managers. We have a couple of VAs, and we had until recently a lead manager based out of Central America. He quit this week, actually. But and he was basically the cold touch guy. So he would follow-up with people that we hadn't talked to in a while and

Jamie Gruber: [29:36] try to schedule them for I mean, VAs are one thing, but the people that are doing acquisition, your acquisition manager, your what was the other one? You have three was it three acquisitions managers?

Mike DeHaan: [29:45] Yeah, have three acquisitions manager that are all in commission.

Jamie Gruber: [29:47] Oh, and a sales manager you

Mike DeHaan: [29:48] mentioned. Yep, sales manager who he's a salary plus a commission. Yeah. And then our dispositions manager who sells all of our wholesale stuff, he has a base salary plus a commission.

Jamie Gruber: [29:57] Interesting. Wow. Wow. So you're just blowing up growing all of this stuff, which is incredible. Now you go into podcasting. Yeah. Collecting keys. Tell me about that.

Mike DeHaan: [30:06] Yeah. So one of the things that I've always found with real estate media is it tends to be very fluffy. Like, there's a lot of big wins. They'll be like, oh, you know, here's, like, the 22 year old that owns a thousand units. Things like that that, you know, aren't always relatable, and they sort of create this pipe dream sort of feel, which I don't feel is representative of the career, especially when you're doing off market investment. So we just started our podcast to talk about what it's really like to run a business like we do and also to talk about, the ups and downs, like how to scale the different marketing, like the crazy stories. We have stories of sellers that you wouldn't believe. We had a guy get kidnapped from a closing. We've had old women fight in houses that we're in, stuff that's just unreal. Jerry Springer like that. Yeah, honestly. So we go into those sort of weeds and what to really expect and how to make it in a business that honestly I think is more of an emotionally and mentally taxing business than it is anything else just because you're dealing with situations like, it's a people business. It's no longer a real estate business. You're dealing with situations that you never thought you would have to deal with, especially if you're in a position that you're even thinking about investing in real estate. Typically, it's a different social class than you're used to.

Jamie Gruber: [31:24] True.

Mike DeHaan: [31:24] And the stuff that comes up is crazy. So we dive into a lot of that.

Jamie Gruber: [31:29] It's kind of the raw underbelly of what you do, right?

Mike DeHaan: [31:31] Yeah, exactly. Our tagline, it's kind of a mouthful, we're still working on our brand, but we say we're the anti real estate podcast, real estate podcast.

Jamie Gruber: [31:39] I like that.

Mike DeHaan: [31:40] So we kind of lean on that a little bit and more just the true nature of what

Jamie Gruber: [31:45] That's a great tagline, man. I wouldn't work too much on that. That's really good. Like that. I mean, it's it stands out. Right? It's like anything. So that's great. It's great branding. Great marketing. Yeah. I love it. Alright. Well, we're running out of a a time, but let's talk about this. I I we spoke at the beginning of this that you and I chatted about a year ago, almost a year ago now, coming up on a year, about this coming into GoBundance. So tell me about your time in GoBundance, what's been great, you know, all of that stuff, what's been maybe a struggle, anything, whatever you wanna share about your time in GoBundance.

Mike DeHaan: [32:08] Yeah. Well, you know, the biggest thing with GoBundance, kinda like I said about the convention stuff I would go to for when I was in that crypto startup, just the connections that you make and being around people that kinda get it. Yeah. Because that was the biggest thing that I found when I started to find success. You know, I had the same group of friends when I was an engineer, through when I was making no money, through now where I'm making very good money. And as I crossed over that income threshold and I start started pursuing, you know, growing myself and trying to get to the next level just in life, all of a sudden, you don't have the same relationships that you used to. Mean, big reason I joined GoBundance was to find that. And one of the things that I found that's so huge is how we're all the same regardless of what's on our one sheets, you know, like at the core of it, right? Like we're all kind of the same people.

Jamie Gruber: [32:58] And 20,000,000 and a million can get together and add value to each other.

Mike DeHaan: [33:01] Yeah, very easily, right? And not only that, but they give each other the benefit of the doubt that they're expecting there to be valued at the idea.

Jamie Gruber: [33:08] Yeah, that's a great point.

Mike DeHaan: [33:09] I think it's the same mindset, same kind of individuals, and it's been completely invaluable.

Jamie Gruber: [33:13] Amazing, amazing. How about this event at Miami? Did you have an intention for the time here or like, what is this? What do you like to do at these events? This is your second one, I think you mentioned right in Park City here, but yeah, just kind of

Mike DeHaan: [33:23] give me some

Jamie Gruber: [33:23] takeaways on the event so far or what you intend to do at this event.

Mike DeHaan: [33:26] Yeah. So I went to Park City as well, and one of my intents for coming to this one was to sort of meet more people that were outside of my geographic area. It's Park City, very close to where I live. A lot of people that were from there are from Colorado, California, you know, places that are already very close. Didn't meet a whole lot of East Coast people.

Jamie Gruber: [33:42] Oh, gotcha.

Mike DeHaan: [33:43] So I was like, cool. Let's go see what the other side of the tribe is doing. I decided to come out here.

Jamie Gruber: [33:46] I like it all the way across. Literally, from one corner to the other. Right? You go from the top corner of the nation to the bottom corner of the nation. Yeah. But like you said, is, see, this is something we talked about before and I love this perspective. Like a lot of people would, maybe in regular life would be like, man, what a day long flights or whatever. The way you said it was, man, I left my house and eight hours later, I'm in Miami.

Mike DeHaan: [34:05] Yeah. That's crazy. Like the fact that we can even do that in society is unbelievable.

Jamie Gruber: [34:09] That's a great perspective. I love the mindset. Everything that you do, man, the action you take, the drive you have, the sort of like, hey, this is what feels right to do right now. I'm gonna go do it. And it's working for you. It works out for you. I think more people need to do that.

Mike DeHaan: [34:22] So Yeah. Appreciate it.

Jamie Gruber: [34:23] Where do people find more about you? Find out more about you? Is there a social handle, a website, anything you wanna share?

Mike DeHaan: [34:27] Yeah. So can find me directly on Instagram's the best. It's at mike underscore invest. You can find our podcast, Collecting Keys Podcast. Go follow us there. And if you're interested in any sort of off market real estate, check out our podcast for sure. You can get it anywhere that you listen to podcasts. And then something that we've actually been working on over the last little bit is we have a a little mastermind that we started. It's called the instant investor program. I love it. And, basically, what that is is it's a DIY video program, and then it's a year long membership to, like, our community. And our goal with that is to, again, get around the fluffy part of real estate. So don't come in and like, is how you create a brand, this is you do all sorts of stuff. Our goal is to have people be marketing and talking to sellers within the first two weeks, and they, you know, get a carbon copy of our business, exactly what we do, all of our processes that we spent two years implementing, they can just go and jump into it. Right? So they can just take it, copy it, start marketing, and they can be doing exactly what we're doing in a very short period of time. So, yeah, that's instantinvestorprogram.com. People can go and check that out there, and they can schedule a call with me if they want. And then our most recent thing, so we had a lot of people that inquired about the Instant Investor Program after Park City. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [35:38] And there was people that were like, I really wanna do this, but I have my other business. I just want opportunities that's like, can we partner up? Can we do these things in our own market? And they wanted us basically to market for them. And it got really messy. People wanted to buy rentals, do all this sort of stuff. So we actually launched our, what I'll call like, our Platinum Instant Investor Program, which we're calling Done For You Deals. So doneforyoudeals.net, you can find this. Basically, it's a for hire private wholesale business. Wow. So they go and they pay us, like, for our services, $5,000 a month, basically, is what our fee is, and then they cover their own marketing. But then we run the marketing, the sales, the acquisitions, everything. And they basically can sit back, run their own business, and then as we get contracts, we come to them and say, Here you go. Here's your contract. Would you like to buy this off market property that we got for you? Unbelievable. Capitalize from there. So

Jamie Gruber: [36:35] Jeez. Alright. We have to chat about something after this. But Yeah. No. This is incredible, man. Thanks for being on here. It's great seeing you. Yeah. Yeah. Appreciate you being here.

Mike DeHaan: [36:41] Yeah. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1: [36:46] Thanks for listening to this collecting keys Friday focus. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts.