These Market Traps That Are Bankrupting Real Estate Investors

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] This episode is sponsored by Sir Lenzalot 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 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, 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. If you are somebody that is trying to get started or you wanna learn or you don't have, like, money to kinda spend on your own stuff, the best way to get started is to go and work for somebody else.

Mike DeHaan: [1:03] That's like doing what you wanted to do.

Dan Austin: [1:06] One bit. Like, they don't exist for people like us even if they do exist. I'm not saying that things didn't happen. Do you think you just kept a file of this stuff?

Mike DeHaan: [1:14] Now what's gonna happen is they're gonna decide that they're a high security risk. They're gonna send out 33,000 or whatever pages, files that are all just gonna be, like, white lined over. So it's nothing. So they're all just blank.

Dylan Koch: [1:27] Oh, yeah. They're all redacted.

Mike DeHaan: [1:28] That would happen. It'll just be like the ultimate troll situation.

Dan Austin: [1:31] And here's the thing. They've already done that once, but my I will continue to stand my ground of, like, we've known about the whole Epstein thing for a long time. Biden had four years to release them. And you don't think that no matter what if they could have released them, they would have released them. There's no legal thing. Shit leaks from the government all the time. That's not supposed to leak. If they had something that would have put a cross, like a dagger through Trump, they would have done it.

Mike DeHaan: [1:53] And I think that's what makes it so interesting to everybody, Dan. At its core, that's why it's so interesting.

Dan Austin: [1:58] Exactly. And that's why because everybody's like, where is it at, dog? It's not coming. You're never gonna get satisfied.

Dylan Koch: [2:04] They're still typing them up. They're still making them up. Making their little adjectives

Dan Austin: [2:08] on, dude. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [2:09] Yeah. What's going on, guys? Welcome to the collecting keys podcast. I am Mike DeHaan here with my cohost, Dan Austin and Dylan Cook. And just to top off that part of the show on the FCN files, now that you say that, Dylan, just typing it up, I do now have this visual of you have, like, Trump and, like, Mike Johnson and all, like, the sort of reps, whoever, Pam Bondi, sitting on chat GPT, trying to figure out how to massage it so that it creates files that are, like, believable. But it's like, write a draft of the Epstein files that includes Hillary Clinton.

Dan Austin: [2:44] Yeah. And I get It's just like

Mike DeHaan: [2:46] They're like, no.

Dan Austin: [2:47] That one's too believable. Let's make this a little bit crazier.

Mike DeHaan: [2:50] And Chad GBT is like, what a brilliant idea. Why don't we go and add some more toxicity into the world? Just really reinforce whatever you're trying to do. God. That's probably exactly what they're doing.

Dan Austin: [3:00] Oh my god. It's we're never gonna be satisfied. This is an unsatisfiable situation. The American people can't be satisfied with this Because no matter even here, we're at a point in time, if you release the files and Trump is just like all over them, been diddling little kids, and it's just blatantly obvious, Half the country's still gonna be like, that's bullshit.

Mike DeHaan: [3:20] Totally, dude.

Dan Austin: [3:21] That's bullshit. And it happened. And if he's not in it, other half of the country's gonna be like, that's bullshit. There's no way that's possible. He definitely was dealing with little kids. Like, so we can't believe anything. Yeah. That's the way. It's an unbelievable situation.

Mike DeHaan: [3:34] You know, at this point, have you ever seen Donald Trump in person?

Dan Austin: [3:37] Me? Yeah. No. But he seems like a character in a simulation.

Mike DeHaan: [3:42] No. I haven't either. I'm assuming Dylan hasn't. How do we know that he is an AI at this point?

Dan Austin: [3:46] Oh, you know how we do know? Who did we have on the podcast that said that was it Donald Trump that signed his wife's boobs?

Mike DeHaan: [3:52] Well, that was Ryan who used to work for us because

Dylan Koch: [3:55] Oh, was Ryan.

Mike DeHaan: [3:56] Yeah. That's right. When Trump had that incident where he went to that pizza place and ordered a shit ton of pizzas and left, that was at one of our old employees' wife's dad's, so so I guess father in law's restaurants in the Midwest. Pizza place in the Midwest. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And his wife was all over Twitter being called a trashy whore because Trump signed her

Dan Austin: [4:17] breasts. Classic president.

Dylan Koch: [4:19] Totally. He's kissing babies and signing titties. Yeah. Oh, man. Gotcha.

Dan Austin: [4:25] Oh, man. Good times.

Mike DeHaan: [4:26] Well, anyways but with all those sort of things, I do always with the way the government stuff works, I always try to figure out what they're really trying to distract with with all those sort of things. I would say a lot of stuff I think that they've been trying to distract away from, like, kind of the Epstein situation because of, like, with other random things they've been focusing on. That's why you keep seeing Trump, like, call reporters little piggy and doing different things like that. It's purely just to try and, like, draw attention elsewhere. But economically, if you look at, the big picture, it's been a pretty rough November. I saw this, post, and it was saying that November is looking to be the worst month in the stock market, I think since 2008. I think it was, like straight up month or might have been November. I have to spot check that. A lot of stuff's down. You're seeing a lot of these big billionaires cash in on a lot of their stocks. I saw, what's his name, Palantir Boy. I know you know his name, Dylan. Peter Thiel.

Dylan Koch: [5:19] Peter Thiel.

Mike DeHaan: [5:20] Yeah. Was cashing in a shit ton of his Palantir stocks, all of his Nvidia stocks. Michael Burry of Big Short fame completely shut down his hedge fund.

Dylan Koch: [5:27] He's been losing money for a while.

Mike DeHaan: [5:29] He's been losing money for a while, you know, because it just doesn't make sense because he's a everything is going down guy. For some reason, it keeps going up.

Dan Austin: [5:34] When he said he's done his fund, he did not his Bitcoin fund.

Dylan Koch: [5:37] Michael Burry doesn't have a Bitcoin fund. I don't think

Dan Austin: [5:39] Oh, never mind.

Mike DeHaan: [5:40] That's a

Dan Austin: [5:40] different guy. Never mind. Yeah. Who's the guy with the Bitcoin?

Dylan Koch: [5:42] Are you talking about, like, Michael Saylor with the

Mike DeHaan: [5:45] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [5:45] Michael Saylor. That's what I was thinking. Not Michael Burt.

Dylan Koch: [5:47] They've lost a lot of money lately, but they didn't shut anything down.

Dan Austin: [5:50] No, dude. It's all it's all paper money, dude, though.

Mike DeHaan: [5:52] No. They actually have lost zero money because Bitcoin stays the same, Dylan. It's immutable, and that is the real value.

Dylan Koch: [5:58] Let's let's just go into something else.

Mike DeHaan: [6:02] Man, get you triggered. That's funny.

Dan Austin: [6:04] Yeah. How how is that? Should we be buying Bitcoin? That was my first question.

Dylan Koch: [6:08] I mean, I am. I'll put

Dan Austin: [6:10] that how stupid I am. This is how bad I am. So I've been buying a little bit here and there. Like, I continue, like, I bought a thousand bucks here, bucks here. And I accidentally bought a thousand bucks of Ethereum, and I like, fuck it.

Mike DeHaan: [6:18] I'll just keep it.

Dan Austin: [6:19] It's just like Whoops.

Dylan Koch: [6:20] Well, I mean, today is the lowest it's erased all twenty twenty five year to date gains as of today.

Dan Austin: [6:25] That's great, dude.

Dylan Koch: [6:27] Yeah. So, I mean, I I would be a buyer at these levels. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [6:29] It's a buy opportunity.

Mike DeHaan: [6:30] But overall, yeah, just things are looking generally poorly. And then

Dylan Koch: [6:34] Mike, not to cut you off, do you see the the BIS is not going to report the jobs data?

Mike DeHaan: [6:38] How can they not report stuff? Exactly. I feel like they should not be allowed to not report things.

Dan Austin: [6:43] They can't though, because they already said they weren't gonna weren't going to be able to. Right? Because of the government shutdown, they would be delayed?

Dylan Koch: [6:48] Because of the shutdown. But still, they adjust for all that stuff anyway. It's not like it's gonna change a month over month that much. Like, you would still know.

Dan Austin: [6:55] Gotcha. Okay.

Mike DeHaan: [6:56] The jobs thing is always tricky too. And so we're hiring for a bunch of roles in the in our lending business right now. And it was my current sort of conspiracy, I guess. I don't know if the right word. One of the reasons that, like, people feel like the job market sucks, when honestly it doesn't. Like, there's a lot of people that are hiring. Pretty solid. There's people that want to work. It's that the hiring process that we've all become sort of like accustomed to, going through Indeed, LinkedIn, whatever, is this generally terrible?

Dan Austin: [7:25] If you're trying to cold apply for a job, you're kind of effed. And it feels like if you're trying to cold hire for a job, you're kind of effed.

Mike DeHaan: [7:30] Dude, it sucks. Like it's such a shitty process. It's very expensive for the employer, especially if you're a small employer, to be going on and like paying the insane fees that some of these companies want. And like the way that they do it is stupid too. So like Indeed, as a good example, they'll basically make you pay per accepted resume. And so what they do is you go and you post your job. And so, basically, they are incentivized to have you accept all these resumes. But they know that people aren't gonna do that. They're busy, whatever. So what they do is they send you 400 applicants, and then they basically go, if you don't accept these within twenty four hours, we'll just assume that you accept them. We'll just bill your credit card $6,000. And so what do you do? You go on and you're like, fuck. I got an hour before I wanna go to bed because I have a small business. I've been working for eighteen hours today. And so you go and you select all and you delete them. So you don't even review them. Right? It's stupid. And then on LinkedIn, they basically make you promoted on a daily basis, and that's where I've been recruiting for these roles. And I think that I've discovered that basically until you spend at minimum a $100, they don't actually show your job to anybody. Right? Because I had zero applicants, both of our listings cross $100, and all of a sudden people start pouring in. But to make matters worse, they have this AI platform that you have no say in. You don't get to tell it what to AI for.

Mike DeHaan: [8:43] Like, say, read your job description. And what it does is it looks at all of the job applicants and it filters them. Right? And it will basically say like, these are not good fits. And it doesn't actually show you the quote unquote bad fits unless you click through like seven windows to find it. And then when you find them, wouldn't you believe it? A lot of those poor fits were actually great fits. And this is really me getting in the weeds. I noticed the ones that it tends to say are good fits are minorities, people of color, regardless of their experience level. K? And if there's like someone that's like a white individual that has twenty years of experience, literally in the field that I'm looking for, it will find a reason to put them in, like, the not a good fit category. It's really fucking weird.

Dylan Koch: [9:27] That's tough.

Mike DeHaan: [9:28] I will have, like, all these people of color that, like, have kind of similar experience, but not actually relevant that pop up in the highly qualified thing. And I'm like, what is happening here? Like, it doesn't make any sense.

Dylan Koch: [9:39] And the applicants have no idea either. They're just like, oh, I'm just like

Dan Austin: [9:42] I have no idea what's going on.

Dylan Koch: [9:43] I'm out there. I'm trying to get a job.

Mike DeHaan: [9:45] Totally. And and they're just going they'll put out 80 applications. Half of them, like, just go into the nether. Of the other ones, they go end up in somebody's inbox. They don't get reviewed because that person is under a time crunch to try to not have to pay for them before they get to review them. And then the rest of them, they are being accidentally discriminated or intentionally artificially discriminated against by AI. It's kinda wild. Because it is pushing them into a bucket where no one will ever see them. It's such a broken system, dude. It's such a fucking nightmare.

Dan Austin: [10:14] It is bad.

Mike DeHaan: [10:14] They say the job reports are bad, but are they when no one can actually get seen to get hired and the employers can't fucking find anybody? It doesn't make any sense.

Dan Austin: [10:23] It's so stupid. Yeah. I can't imagine there's a lack of jobs.

Dylan Koch: [10:25] Yeah. Or the employer is not getting the they're not getting the person that they would really want.

Dan Austin: [10:30] No. They they don't.

Mike DeHaan: [10:32] So and just to finish up my statement, so I feel like need to say this. I'm not saying there's any problem with the recommended people being people of color. It's the fact that they are lesser qualified people, and I just happen to notice this being a recurring pattern. Right? And then when I go and I look into the unsuggested people, the ones that are unqualified, I noticed that there is a similar pattern of the demographic of who those people are. And their resumes will literally be so one to one what I'm looking for, where they, like, worked for our competitors doing the exact job that we're looking for, and it will say that that person wasn't qualified for the position. It doesn't make any sense. But then someone that was like a credit analyst at a fucking, like, startup somewhere that is not even closely related to private lending in any way is somehow highly qualified, and I don't know why.

Dylan Koch: [11:14] Well, I do think your remedy to this was what? You just posted something on your own website. Right? And this, like, did, like, organic outreach instead of these platforms.

Mike DeHaan: [11:22] Correct. So yeah. Well, so what I did, I did what all millennials do, baby boomers, I guess. I went I bitched on Facebook how much it sucks, and people made a suggestion to go and post the listings on our own website. And I did that. And I have found that people that are more intentional about basically going around the whole process and applying that way do tend to be higher quality, which makes sense.

Dan Austin: [11:40] I don't know how you even just from the from the applicant sightings, how you actually can get a job. Because all the people I know that have jobs that are decently high paying at decently large companies, you know, the Microsofts, the Googles, Amazons, all those, like, big companies you hear about, like, the only way they got a job was talking to someone that worked there.

Mike DeHaan: [11:58] 100% dude. Like there's no way you

Dan Austin: [12:00] could even cold apply to those jobs on their website. So like the job market I mean, they'll hire and fire thousands of people at a time, any given time. You know, Microsoft might have 8,000 layoffs and people are like, oh, they're laying off 8,000 people, but they're hiring 8,000 too at the same time. They're just shifting it around. I don't know how you get those jobs without knowing somebody. Connections.

Mike DeHaan: [12:20] Like you get recruited through college. Right? That's the most common way to do it. So I closest example I have to that is when I got my job at Boeing. Okay? So I applied to that cold, and I somehow got in there. And people were marveled by that. I think it was very explicitly just because I had an electrical engineering degree at a time when there was nobody with electrical engineering degrees, and that was specifically what they wanted. My boss told me afterwards that there was 85 applicants for that job, and they hired two people. They did like 30 something interviews. And for some reason, they picked me who turned out to be the worst Boeing employee ever, so joke's on them.

Dan Austin: [12:52] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [12:53] But like the point is is like, that's like back ten years ago now. Now there's three, four, five times more people that are applying for that same role in a more automated process. Right? I bet you for that same position now, there would be 600 people that apply. And they probably don't interview any of them because their internal AI that they built goes, not disqualified. Sorry.

Dan Austin: [13:14] Now they're using Microsoft Copilot, the worst AI ever to help review their applications, because that's all that their corporate security department will let them use. Totally.

Dylan Koch: [13:22] Well, if you're listening to this podcast, you shouldn't even be looking for jobs. You should be your own boss.

Mike DeHaan: [13:27] No. You should go

Dylan Koch: [13:28] and work for me.

Mike DeHaan: [13:29] Work for me or Dylan. Well, what you should do you say that, Don. So I agree with that fundamentally. But I will say that if you are somebody that is trying to get started, or you want to learn, or you don't have like money to kind of spend on your own stuff, the best way to get started is to go and work for somebody else. That's like doing what you want to do. And I think that's one of the most toxic things. There's actually a great segue about this current movement of people that want to like buy businesses and do different stuff, is they don't really know what that means and the amount of risk that's associated with it. So what you end up having is you have these people that are unhappy, unemployed, Maybe they, like, did a quasi mini retirement. I quit my job. And all of a sudden, they decide that they're gonna go and buy a painting business, or they're gonna buy a plumbing business, or they're gonna fucking do something like a medi spa. Right? When they have zero experience in that industry, they've never worked in one. Maybe they were a client of one one time. Sure. Had my toilet fixed. I know how to run a plumbing company now. Right? And what they do is they go and they take on this asymmetrical debt that is very, very dangerous. And they think that they're gonna be able to figure it out. When realistically, what you should do if you wanna own a plumbing business, it sounds super lame because it would be, you go work at a plumbing company for a year, year and a half, learn how the business actually works, then you can try to buy one.

Mike DeHaan: [14:49] So at least you will know what the inner workings look like at a basic fundamental level.

Dan Austin: [14:52] Sounds boring. I don't wanna work as a plumber.

Mike DeHaan: [14:54] I know. No. Well, you don't have to a plumber, Dan. You have get licensed for that. You go be like an admin. You could go work in, the billing department.

Dylan Koch: [14:59] That would get rid of 90 of people that try to do this anyway.

Mike DeHaan: [15:03] Of course.

Dylan Koch: [15:03] So, I mean, it's honestly good advice.

Mike DeHaan: [15:05] Weed them out a little bit. Well and and something that is actually really funny, if you think about this, like, big picture, there's been all this flack against boomers about how they're kinda, like, hoarding wealth in their houses. And they want too much. The house is overinflated, all that sort of stuff. What I think is extra hilarious with this is if you look at how so many of these business acquisitions are going on that you're seeing in like this Cody Sanchez small business buying space, And a lot of people that are failing at it, which we know quite a few people that have failed massively, gotten into major debt, filed bankruptcy, all sorts of things. Oh, so bad. They're buying these companies from the baby boomer who knows their company's fucking bullshit. And they have some young whippersnapper that comes on.

Dan Austin: [15:45] I'll caveat that. I don't think it's bullshit. Yeah. Here's what I think

Dylan Koch: [15:48] it is.

Dan Austin: [15:48] I think people are stupid. I think they're good businesses for an owner operator that worked for forty years and built it.

Mike DeHaan: [15:53] For sure. And there's a lot of tribal knowledge.

Dan Austin: [15:55] Generally speaking, the owner that's selling it is the key player. And when they're gone, all their relationships go with it.

Mike DeHaan: [16:01] Yeah. Totally.

Dan Austin: [16:02] You know what I mean? And I think what also happens is they're like, yeah, dude, I make $300 a year here. I have zero debt because I built it without debt because that was a very common way to build a small People weren't getting SBA loans. These people go sign up for this SBA loan that rates them. They put a second position on their home that their kids they're trying to raise their kids in. They go and they have to pay 11% debt on this thing with a very short amortization period. Mhmm. And so that 300 k in profits is actually more like 100 k if they're lucky after they're paying debt service. And then they have a dip in sales when homeboy leaves because nobody wants to talk to your dumbass because you bought this business because you're a numbers

Mike DeHaan: [16:39] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [16:39] Right. I think that's more of why what it is. And I think the challenge with it is, is you have these businesses and the guys and gals that own them that are tend to be baby boomers or at retirement age, they're looking at it and they're like, why would I sell this business for anything less? Because I'll just own it for another year. Because generally for them, it's like no work. Right? I'll just own it for another year and make up that difference. Yeah. And I'll just own it for three years and make up because they're they're only trying to sell these for, you know, one to two to three million, but they're like, well, if I can't get that, why would I sell it for something that makes sense for you? And then Yeah. It either doesn't happen or the deal's really bad for the purchaser. Because also they don't have forty years of freaking experience in installing gutters on people's houses.

Mike DeHaan: [17:15] Yeah. For sure.

Dylan Koch: [17:16] We both know, like several people this has happened to. But I was literally at a Go Abundance event yesterday where a dude is a, like, a regional sales director, makes a 175 to 200 k a year. And he bought a, like, a behavioral health company. Right? But 350 k down, had an SBA loan, and it turns out that insurance is a big part of how you get compensated in behavioral health. Well, I guess the previous seller, when he sold his person with the license also left. So he hired somebody else to do the licensing, and they're like, hey, this previous person, the way that they were billing is illegal.

Mike DeHaan: [17:58] Nice.

Dylan Koch: [17:59] And they overflated their revenues by about three x.

Dan Austin: [18:03] Oh, no.

Mike DeHaan: [18:03] Three x? That's a Holy shit.

Dylan Koch: [18:05] Three x. Yeah. So it went from a company that was making like 500 k a year to almost losing 500 k a year.

Dan Austin: [18:11] That sucks. And how do you do that without knowing that? Or do you how do you do your due diligence on it?

Dylan Koch: [18:15] There was a lot of actually discussion around that. There was a lawyer there where you can get I didn't know this. You can get it's like forensic accounting of someone who's in that space eventually. It's like, you should have hired someone to be like, who else is in behavioral health that could tell you if this is legit or not? Right? Instead of just taking their word for it. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [18:31] Right. You should have hired a consultant. That would have helped. Yeah.

Dylan Koch: [18:34] But I mean, this guy, to the point, he went from multi figure 7 net worth to filing bankruptcy and he's fucked.

Dan Austin: [18:41] Isn't that crazy?

Dylan Koch: [18:42] Like, he's on the limb for SBA loans. He's got a second position on his side, kinda like you just said. He's got kids. He's got a wife, like, all from one decision.

Mike DeHaan: [18:49] Yeah. Those SBA loans, man, they don't go away. Those don't go away in death either. No. If he doesn't figure out how pay it off, his kids get a deal with that.

Dylan Koch: [18:55] Yeah. So, I mean, he's going after the seller or some, like, litigation to help get some money done. Like, I don't know if how viable that is.

Dan Austin: [19:02] Yeah.

Dylan Koch: [19:02] Right? Like

Mike DeHaan: [19:02] Yeah. But the thing that's kind of I was going to before with this is so there's like the house hoarding the wealth thing. I feel like this is another sort of pattern of the wealth being extracted from kind of like the unknowing. Right? There's this trend that they're able to capitalize on because they have these businesses, because they kind of like put in the work, or they're in the right place at the right time. Not there's anything wrong with that. It's just like there's this recurring issue that you see where exactly like you said, Dan, you have the forty year veteran that's selling their company to the 25 year old kid from Google that joined a mastermind or follows Cody Sanchez on Instagram and thinks they can go in and repay the same thing. And the business seller is just shameless on what they're gonna charge for it because you're right. What else could you do, though? Absolutely, dude. Totally. I'm not saying that that's like a a problem per se. I would say it just shows the difference in, I wanna say, discipline or, like, patience across the generations because, like, they know full well what it took to build that. Right. You know, they have no shame in basically sort of punishing the younger folks for that.

Dan Austin: [20:02] Well, it's like, hey. You gotta work for it. Right? That's their mentality probably.

Mike DeHaan: [20:05] So, like, I think about like that. There's this manufacturing manufacturing company company here here in in Spokane, Spokane, Dillon. They manufacture, like, it raw metals, Dan? Like all kinds of stuff. We went and met with those guys.

Dan Austin: [20:16] Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're a fabricator, a steel fabricator.

Mike DeHaan: [20:18] They're a steel fabricator. And like these guys, they're in Deer Park, Washington. And they do I'm sure that you've probably seen some of the manufacturing. Have you ever been in like any hotel, like anywhere in the world? They're sending shit to like Dubai, like Hawaii. They work with like the Marriott and all sorts of stuff to do all these really specific complicated metal things. What was the guy saying? They were one of like the the largest importers in The United States of whatever they were using that

Dylan Koch: [20:45] Of whatever raw material they need.

Mike DeHaan: [20:47] Yeah. Yeah. So Dan and I went up to meet with these guys, and it was funny. So there was the son who's probably, I don't know about our age, Dan, like late thirties ish. He's smooth talker, doing all stuff. He's doing cryptos, all these things. I believe he's a smart dude. He walks around the thing. He like definitely knows his stuff. And then there's the dad, you know, we've been trying to get them to invest money with us. And dad's like, I just don't understand how you can make money by doing nothing. He's like, if I give you money, how am I getting money back? It doesn't make any sense. You know? And this dude's like in his sixties. And I'm like, that is the generational difference in a nutshell in this boardroom that we're in right now. Right. You know? And he was so skeptical. Was like, yeah, you're gonna pay me 12%, whatever. He's like, that just doesn't make any sense. I don't understand why you would do that or how that would work. It's a scam? Yeah.

Dan Austin: [21:32] No. It's like, is this a scam? But, yeah, you're right. There it's a great generational wealth. It's like, you gotta work to your bone to make this money. And the only way to and and as an entrepreneur, I wouldn't classify this as like a generational thing, but for sure as an entrepreneur who's only been an entrepreneur or who started their own business where it's like, this is where and we're like this. Right? This is where I'm investing most of my capital is my own business because I'm investing myself and that's like an entrepreneurial thing. Yeah. And then you have the other son who's just like tons of energy, obviously clearly smart and like taking the business to the next level, but then has like these ideas of different ways to make money. And it's it's just more information at a younger age too, think has helped.

Mike DeHaan: [22:08] Yeah. In a good way and an incredibly bad way because you

Dan Austin: [22:11] have all these dumbasses who are buying these businesses back full circle in this conversation.

Dylan Koch: [22:15] Well, some of them are doomed to fail from the start, some of it is also things are kind of turning now in my opinion. Economy wise, you know, real estate market, equity wise. So like

Mike DeHaan: [22:26] Things are harder.

Dylan Koch: [22:26] It is harder now. But like, yeah, some of them were were doomed to fail no matter what. But Right. Maybe if they had an upmarket, they could have turned things around.

Dan Austin: [22:34] It's like telling like the chubby fat kid that they're gonna be the best athlete ever on the team. And you're like, they're gonna fail. There's no way. Like, how how is the chubby short fat kid gonna be the star on the basketball team? It's just not gonna happen.

Mike DeHaan: [22:45] Hey. Hey. But you know what? His parents wanted to pay the $17,000 for him to be on the team. So you're gonna take his money and you're gonna say, you got it, Timmy.

Dan Austin: [22:53] You can do it. His dad's got the name over the gym. You you gotta do it.

Mike DeHaan: [22:56] You can come and join my small business mastermind for $15,000, and I'll teach you how to buy a small business. Don't worry. I'm sure you'll be successful like everyone else.

Dan Austin: [23:04] You know what?

Mike DeHaan: [23:05] At the end of the day, at

Dan Austin: [23:05] least you'll have a good cringey Facebook post about how you tried and failed, the world is stomping on you, and it's not your fault.

Mike DeHaan: [23:11] Oh, dude. The worst thing about that is that this is so prevalent right now in, every sort of entrepreneurial group we're in. Everyone goes in and it's like, thank you for being so vulnerable, man. Like, you really worked so hard. Totally. I think it's great for people to share when they have issues, but also not if you have issues every quarter that you're sharing. Right. Like every, like, every month you get a new issue. Yeah. Like, like, if it's one time, it's like people thought you were like a rock star and you're like, actually, I'm coming out with this. I've really fucked up. That's gracious. I think that's awesome. But it's like, man

Dan Austin: [23:41] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [23:41] I'm still dealing with this. I started dealing with this back in '23. There's a trend here, bro. Like,

Dan Austin: [23:46] Yeah. Early reports came back out and still losing money every month. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [23:49] You know, it's like when someone gets divorced for the fifth time, it's like, okay, you know what? I think you're kind of an asshole. You might be the problem. Yeah. You might be the problem here, dude. Seriously.

Dan Austin: [23:57] Got me. That's hilarious.

Mike DeHaan: [23:58] I would say for me personally, because we've done we've been doing pretty well, you know, and even before we sold Back at Home Buyers, like it was going fine. Like we weren't ripping like we were years ago, but it was still profitable. And then our lending business is going very well. I personally have enjoyed this economy because there's so many people, and like not even just like in our own microsphere, but you look at like the big picture, lot of like the gurus and stuff that were out there, that have been exposed as being actually really terrible entrepreneurs who just were riding the economy. Right? They just owned assets, inflated their net worths. Now they're unable to cash in on it because their properties aren't selling. You know, they're underwater on their debts, all these different things. And I'm not necessarily cheering for that. But what I have appreciated is it has really shown like who was actually creating value, who was learning to run business, who was being a good operator, and who was all smoke and mirrors. And it's become more apparent, I feel like in the last like two months than ever before, honestly. Everyone's a genius in a bull market. Right? Totally, dude. And, like, and the funny thing is is you always hear that, but you don't really know who the geniuses are and who's gotten exposed until the bobble pops.

Dan Austin: [25:04] It is hard.

Mike DeHaan: [25:04] You're absolutely

Dan Austin: [25:05] you have suspicions. We we've always had suspicions on some of these guys, but you don't know. You know?

Dylan Koch: [25:09] In this GoBundance discussion yesterday, a lot of the talk was 2025 reflection then going into next year. And mine was, I'd be happy to do what I did this year next year. It's not even like a growth goal. It's like, because I see the way that things are, I'm like, I will be happy if I just repeat it. And I know going into, I guess, times like this where it is a lot slower, I have to be a better operator and owner and leader now just to do the same shit. And like, that kinda goes hand in hand with what you were saying in my opinion that some people won't be able to make that transition, and then they'll stop being in business. Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [25:44] That's the way the world works. Right? And like you said, Dan, there's there's a lot of people that we had suspicions about. Is there anybody that comes off top of your head that we thought was and Dan, you can participate in this too, that we thought was completely full of it that actually has surprised us? Like big names. Is there any that you were certain to call out?

Dan Austin: [26:05] You know, let me say this. The one guy that I have not seen, and I don't believe it yet

Mike DeHaan: [26:10] K.

Dan Austin: [26:11] That I have not seen completely fall from grace yet is Chris Krohn.

Mike DeHaan: [26:15] Did he ever have grace to begin with? Know what I Like, nobody listen to this.

Dan Austin: [26:20] That's the worst example. No. It's not. Listen to this though. Like, that guy obviously has a big media personality. And like I said, I don't believe this at all. I'm just saying from the visuals, like, there's been like public knowledge, like Pace Morby, like that's come out like huge. Brandon Turner's come out and said his syndications aren't doing as well as, you know, they'd hoped. There's a lot of these guys that is like-

Dylan Koch: [26:40] Tai Lopez, are you gonna say?

Dan Austin: [26:41] Tai Lopez. Tai Lopez. I mean, huge names, right? Where he's just kind of still out there as a grifter. And he's still like putting on this show and like doing his thing and nobody's talking about it. And it's partially because he's not that important. But like Yeah. At the same time, I mean, yeah, I don't see him go to jail anytime soon.

Mike DeHaan: [26:58] Well, the only reason I would disagree with that for my question is because I think we've called his bullshit. And I mean, I guess, has he surprised you? I think he's just doing the same thing. Okay.

Dan Austin: [27:07] I should say, I guess, surprised me in a way of like, oh, he's actually doing a good thing. No. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. But what I I guess surprising in the way that something he hasn't completely shut off his Instagram account because he got caught on a list of like child predators or like completely went bankrupt and got caught doing something illegal. Yeah. Like that part is surprising.

Mike DeHaan: [27:25] For sure. Yeah. He hasn't completely collapsed yet. Yeah. I don't think there's anyone where we were certain that they were doing like janky stuff that it turns out that they weren't and everything was actually legit. Like if we suspected that years ago, they they're either still kinda riding that line or they've completely collapsed at this point.

Dylan Koch: [27:42] It's the same people that are like, they're buying that house for that? I bid $30 under that?

Dan Austin: [27:47] Like Yeah.

Dylan Koch: [27:48] It's the same thing. It just takes time for that stuff to develop.

Dan Austin: [27:51] Yeah. The best part about it is is when you see those things like right in person, and then you talk to somebody else like, oh, man, I heard that dude just killing it out there. And you're like,

Mike DeHaan: [27:58] how Dude.

Dan Austin: [27:59] Is he killing it?

Mike DeHaan: [28:00] You know what I mean? You're like,

Dan Austin: [28:01] that doesn't make any sense. And then eventually, it doesn't make sense.

Dylan Koch: [28:03] You know what? You just triggered a memory for me. I was at a meetup in late twenty twenty three or early twenty twenty four, and I had a a business partner. And the business partner is talking to this to this guy, and he's like he basically said the same thing about me. He's like, oh, you better watch out for Dylan. He's buying too much too quick. And I was like, I took that as like a, I think I know what I'm doing. And I'm still here.

Dan Austin: [28:29] That's your new nickname, Dylan Too Much Too Quick.

Mike DeHaan: [28:31] Well, here's where you've been very, very smart. And there's a lot of other people that I think have been dynamic enough to do this is you weren't buying for the sake of buying.

Dylan Koch: [28:42] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [28:42] Right? You always had multiple exit strategies. You had a high revenue capability, right, through the wholesaling, the flips, other things. You have had a strong cash position, at least as long as I've known you. I mean, you have. And those are the things that people tend to ignore. Right? As they get over leveraged, they're focused on unit count. They're like, well, I got to buy every duplex. Because the thing is, is everyone that bought a bunch of properties in 2008, they're like so rich now. And so everyone that I am not keeping today is less money than I'm going to have in ten years. And that's only true if things go up. But The irony is you'd have more houses if you flipped your whole set of

Dylan Koch: [29:19] couple than if you've kept everything.

Mike DeHaan: [29:21] Absolutely, dude. Totally. And you generated money and you bought better stuff and you bought at better discounts. Like, your net worth would be so much higher. Because we used to get that too. I mean, if you go back to '21, Dan and I, we were buying like a house almost every week. And we would keep like half of them, but we were like super, super high transactions, something we were actually closing on. Like, I remember one time going to we're working with Lacey at that point, Dan, going to her office. And Lacey was like, what the hell are you guys doing? And I go in there, she she literally has seven closing packs I have to sign that day.

Dan Austin: [29:52] Pretty wild.

Mike DeHaan: [29:53] Right? It was just stupid. Right?

Dylan Koch: [29:55] And I bet of the people who've been in the industry for ten plus years are like, these guys are doomed. Totally. Right? Like, that that's probably what they thought. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [30:02] Yeah. But the difference is is, you know, a lot of them are transactional. We're generating a very high income off the wholesaling. And we've had several deals that have since gone bad that we still own that would have crushed us if all we did was stretch ourselves thin to buy more properties. We'd be fucked at this point. Right? But we have enough money that we can just kind of like deal with it, fix the house that's flooded four times. That's part of it. We were able to bail ourselves out of our sub twos that got called, you know, come up with $800 and figure that shit out instead of us going to foreclosure and them suing us and making us sell all of our stuff. Like, we've had our fair share of opportunities to fail. But because we had generated a lot of cash and we had a high income, we were able to deal with it.

Dylan Koch: [30:40] That was the lesson from the guy yesterday too, because he also like deals in mobile home parks. And he says he's the acquisition guy for his partners on mobile. I literally raised my hand. I was like, bro, go to the phone, find a mobile home park, wholesale it, make 2 to $300, and then like that'll solve a lot of problems. Revenue solves problems for almost everybody.

Mike DeHaan: [30:57] Totally, dude. And then there's a huge difference between revenue and equity and net worth. Right? And the people don't understand that, especially in the real estate space, things because people focus on the wrong things. And the problem is too, it's not even their fault. The problem is they, the idols that taught them about that, they just focus on what they focus on. They go and talk about like, oh, here's how rich I am. Here's what my cash flow is. Like, when was the last time you heard Brandon Turner talk about legitimately revenue that he's making?

Dan Austin: [31:24] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [31:25] Been a long time. I don't know if I've ever heard him talk about that, except for when he was on was that Ryan Pineda? And he talked about how he made a million dollars in a weekend when he launched Better Life.

Dan Austin: [31:34] That's pretty cool.

Mike DeHaan: [31:35] Yeah. But that's the only time he's ever talked about actually making money that wasn't long term wealth, sort of like sell the dream focused.

Dylan Koch: [31:42] I think he still gets money from his books and stuff, but, like, that's all. Like, we never know what that is or will know what that is. But

Mike DeHaan: [31:48] I can't imagine it's a ton. I mean, who reads books? Nerds?

Dylan Koch: [31:51] I'm nerds. Yeah. I mean, us years ago. So Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [31:56] That's true. Back before I had TikTok, bro. I used to read the books in sixty seconds on TikTok now.

Dylan Koch: [32:02] I think to help write out some of that too is all the Instagram people still are like, you know, real estate's great, business is great, do all this stuff, take the risk, bet on yourself. When in reality, from all of our circles, the general consensus is it's bad for a lot of people right now. Oh, yeah. We know how many wholesale shops that have closed up even within scale. Like, some of that's personal, some of that's business. And I don't know. I guess if you're an audience member and you're like, you're thinking about like, should I do this or not? Or if you just started and it's still hard, I will say like it is hard, but if you can come through the hard part, like with the systems and still make it through, whenever we get to that next turning point, like, you're gonna be a better position than everybody else.

Mike DeHaan: [32:42] Totally. Yeah. And that's the thing that sucks is, you know, you need to be willing to eat shit for, five years to get to that phase. But there's no no way around that, you know, in in small business. And that exists in all economies too, whether it's through, like, a Yeah. Learning process or anything. But just when the times are down,

Dan Austin: [33:00] it just feels incrementally worse. I just wanna say that, Books in thirty seconds was it Books in sixty seconds? Sounds like sounds like you're porn browsing history.

Mike DeHaan: [33:10] Sorry. I

Dylan Koch: [33:10] was holding on

Mike DeHaan: [33:11] to that. Sixty seconds? You're very generous, honestly. That's you're you're overstating bile out there. But I feel like it's a good idea for, like, a TikTok though. It's like, like, a TikTok channel. I don't I don't TikTok at all.

Dan Austin: [33:22] Should we use this platform to pitch our new messaging app that we came up with in Vegas?

Mike DeHaan: [33:26] I think that's a great idea. Here's our our idea that we had when we were in Vegas, Dylan.

Dylan Koch: [33:31] How many drinks were you in when you came up

Dan Austin: [33:33] with We were I think we're so friendly.

Mike DeHaan: [33:35] Okay. Zero. We we we were in the in the train at the Las Vegas Airport. Oh, yeah. We were, weren't we? Yeah. So we were gonna call it sir bets a lot.

Dylan Koch: [33:44] Sir bets

Mike DeHaan: [33:44] a And basically, what it is is so like you're sitting around watching like the sports game with your friends. And you can say, hey, guy. I bet you guys $5 that LeBron makes his next three pointer. And you can basically enter into the app, and then everyone, like, in your group friends can press the button. They all bet $5. And then if he makes the shot, then basically you decide

Dylan Koch: [34:05] who's basically holds it in escrow and, like, will distribute the funds. The app

Dan Austin: [34:09] basically becomes the bookie, and it kinda holds it. And you can either choose to participate, you can we could even make it, like, put odds in it and everything.

Dylan Koch: [34:16] I feel like there's regulations around this, but it's

Mike DeHaan: [34:17] a genius. But you're you're just doing it amongst your group of friends or like a bunch amongst all the strangers in the random bar that you're in in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I mean,

Dan Austin: [34:25] it sounds like a great

Dylan Koch: [34:26] It'd be like a Venmo thing. Right? Like, just but you put it there. Yeah. Yeah. You just put in

Mike DeHaan: [34:30] like a $100 and

Dan Austin: [34:32] So much fun.

Mike DeHaan: [34:33] I think that's a great idea.

Dan Austin: [34:34] I think I'm gonna pitch this to Elon because he owns a messaging app. I think I can get him to, you know, do that. And so I don't know. I'm gonna pitch it. I'm gonna go to Shark

Mike DeHaan: [34:42] Tank. Feel like a Venmo sort of interface. You can do whatever. You can be like, you know, I'm gonna bet $10 that I can get Dylan to go and steal a french fry off that girl's plate.

Dan Austin: [34:49] Right. Right. Can replace any bet you want.

Mike DeHaan: [34:53] Yeah. You put like a timer on, everyone gets notifications, like, you got two minutes to enter this bet. Right? And then you're like looking at your buddies, and they're like, yeah, you know, going. And then you, like, can place it. I think it sounds sweet.

Dylan Koch: [35:04] With my friends, what I would imagine is, like, you're passed out or whatever, your friend grabs your phone, bets some random bet with himself that he's automatically going to win, like, thousand bucks.

Mike DeHaan: [35:14] Well, I'm not friends with criminals, Dylan. So I wouldn't have a problem with that.

Dan Austin: [35:18] Hey. We'll have two factor authentication. You're gonna have to have face ID. I mean, all that'll get all those security layers will get added later, but we gotta get this off the ground first. And now if anybody sees this out there publicly, you heard it here first, and they stole our

Mike DeHaan: [35:30] Yeah. Well, and if anyone wants to come and build this for us for a 20% stake in our idea, go ahead and hit me up on Instagram. I'm Mike underscore Invest. I'd love to talk to you.

Dan Austin: [35:37] This is such a great messaging app.

Mike DeHaan: [35:39] Why do you keep thinking of messaging app?

Dan Austin: [35:40] How was it It's a group text. That's how it all is. Right? Because you say stupid shit in your fun group text. That's all this is. It's just a fun group text, but you just gamble.

Mike DeHaan: [35:48] No. You need a better interface. I think it'd be like Venmo where basically you get a push notification that, you know, Dylan has just placed a created odds on this situation, and then everyone has to decide if they're gonna participate in it or not.

Dan Austin: [36:00] But you have to be able to talk shit to each other. So there has to be a messaging component.

Dylan Koch: [36:04] Sure. You can, yeah, do that.

Mike DeHaan: [36:05] Yeah. Well, you you do it like a Snapchat where you have to communicate through, like, little videos that you go and, like, send to each other.

Dan Austin: [36:12] I'm down with that. I'm I'm down with some short videos. Yeah.

Dylan Koch: [36:15] I can only imagine, like, Dan's group chat with, like, his military buddies or even you. Like, I flying the wall and that shit.

Dan Austin: [36:22] Yeah. There

Dylan Koch: [36:22] there's some pretty wild

Dan Austin: [36:23] wild shit when you go

Mike DeHaan: [36:24] Mine's pretty tame sometimes. Depends.

Dan Austin: [36:27] Well I mean, we do say some fucked up shit.

Mike DeHaan: [36:29] Anyways, if you wanna hang out with me, Dylan, and Dan, and a bunch of other awesome investors, go to collectingkeys.com and join our free scale community. It's right there on the homepage. You can click join. It's free. Come and hang out with us in Slack, ask questions, talk shit to Dylan, or maybe, you know, beg Dan to help you on something. He'll tell you no, but I will because I'm a nice guy.

Dan Austin: [36:48] I'm very helpful. Don't even say that. I'm more helpful than you.

Mike DeHaan: [36:51] Sometimes. We'd love to see you guys over there. So just go to claykeys.com. Check that out. Besides that, guys, thanks for listening. We'll talk to you guys next week.

Dylan Koch: [36:57] Bye. See you.

Mike DeHaan: [37:00] 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.