Title Company Drama, In Person Masterminds, and Making $10k in 1 month FAST

Dan Austin: [0:00] What's the difference between them and you? Well, they're probably smarter. They're not smarter. No. In fact, the average person is definitely not smarter than the rest of the world because they're average.

Mike DeHaan: [0:08] If if anything, I'd say we're dumber because we just don't take no for an answer. We just keep charging through bullshit. Right. Exactly. What is going on, guys? Welcome to this episode of the Collecting Keys Real Estate Investing Podcast. Today, it is Wednesday, and I am your host, Mike DeHaan, here with my cohost, Dan Austin. And on this Wednesday, Mike and Dan Joe's, we talk about real estate investing business and whatever else we feel like for that week. So I will preface this by saying we are doing a little bit of a prerecord because I am leaving the country. So if there's something super relevant in the real estate space that happens in the middle end of August that we don't talk about, because we didn't know about it when we recorded this, so I apologize ahead of time. So, you know, life happens even though we do this show three times a week. Believe it or not, some of them are sometimes months old by the time they come out. So it's what happens if you have a plan, you have other shit to do.

Dan Austin: [1:08] That's news to me.

Mike DeHaan: [1:11] It actually gets kinda bad because we'll have some of them. I mean, we still have some that we recorded like

Dan Austin: [1:15] But Mike and Dan shows are like pretty those are pretty hot off the press.

Mike DeHaan: [1:19] Yeah. The Mike and Dan shows we do do week by week if we're in But some of the interviews, I mean, I had some that I haven't released that we probably should reschedule those people on. Just because like, by the time it came, you know, it was due for their episode to come out, a, our business was completely different. B, their business was completely different because they're also small entrepreneurs. And c, all of our tech had changed. So we would have had like episodes with good sound quality, and then we would have just been going back in time to a really bad one. I'm like, we can't do that.

Dan Austin: [1:50] Yeah. You can't go backwards.

Mike DeHaan: [1:51] It's like if there's a new episode of a TV show, but it's in like four eighty p, all of a sudden, season four, you know, or episode four, And season

Dan Austin: [2:00] then the don't know how to act yet.

Mike DeHaan: [2:02] Yeah. Right. It's like their first time, but it's partway through the entire series. It doesn't make any sense.

Dan Austin: [2:08] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [2:09] But it it's yeah. No. It's I've thought about that because some of those people, they did legitimately want their episode to come out. And so if you hear this and you're one of those people, I apologize. We'll we'll get you back on here eventually.

Dan Austin: [2:21] Very sorry. Yeah. We went through a rash of recordings, what, six, eight months ago? Or we just did a bunch.

Mike DeHaan: [2:26] We didn't know what we were supposed to do. All all everyone said when we started doing recordings, because if you're also very new to this, we went almost a whole year with no interviews, where it would just be me and

Dan Austin: [2:36] Dan, I'm That's us talking.

Mike DeHaan: [2:38] I'm amazed that we did that for so long. Like, I think about how we kinda have to prep for this show, how tricky that is. But when we talked to different people, they were like, oh, schedule a ton of interviews, and just get them all in the books, so that way you don't ever have to worry about And having to schedule someone last we did that, and we had like, well, we're booked out for like six months, I think we did too many.

Dan Austin: [3:02] Yeah. I think we did too. Was getting kind of exhausted

Mike DeHaan: [3:04] for a just doing like

Dan Austin: [3:05] Two days and

Mike DeHaan: [3:06] stuff like that. Two days, like four days out of the week. Yeah. I don't know. We take big action.

Dan Austin: [3:11] I think what they probably meant was like book up every week to have a recording for six months so that you don't have to worry about it, not book all six months

Mike DeHaan: [3:19] for Well, the thing was though, we were trying to get ahead of it because I was going to Africa for a month.

Dan Austin: [3:24] Oh, that's right.

Mike DeHaan: [3:25] Yeah. And then we were going into the holidays, and you never know what that looks like. And so we were trying to like plan ahead as much as we could. And I don't know. I think the key to doing anything successfully is you have to take massive action towards it, realize that you will probably do something's wrong, you just learn for next time. That's fine.

Dan Austin: [3:42] Totally. Yeah, we're all about taking massive action without any thought through it. Just jump into it. Head Head Get after it.

Mike DeHaan: [3:50] It's funny, we had a meeting with the GoBundance CEO. So GoBundance is this higher net worth kind of, I I don't know, it's like used to be higher net worth, now lots of people have this net worth. But it's like an entrepreneurship group, and we had a meeting with the CEO today who came and talked to like our local tribe, and we were talking about how to set up business structures and all that sort of things, because our business, have added the podcast, we have our wholesaling business, we have our instant investor coaching program, and everything's kind of mixed together.

Dan Austin: [4:21] Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [4:22] And so I was asking about like, how do we, you know, look at bringing incentives for employees, and all this sort of stuff. And he made a comment that I was actually very flattered by, because I told him it was an absolute mess. He's like, I would rather it be a mess than you to be someone that's trying to get it so perfect before you start that you never actually do anything.

Dan Austin: [4:37] There's a lot of truth behind that. That's like all of our businesses too. We'll figure out how to do that later, we'll just actually start monetizing and creating value right away.

Mike DeHaan: [4:45] Well I think it's such a valuable comment, that's where most people get stuck is they do the legwork to start a business, and this is a big thing in the Instant Investor Program where I try to get people to be marketing and talking to leads as early as they possibly can. Whereas like That's why we

Dan Austin: [5:01] called it Instant Investor, instead of like, hey, build your business, build your brand, do all these things that don't really matter

Mike DeHaan: [5:07] before Exactly. Market

Dan Austin: [5:08] Right? Like marketing is what makes money in

Mike DeHaan: [5:10] this business. Yeah. And and the thing is, people get so tied up, and exactly we talked about, like the brand, and like the business name, all sorts of things, but they don't even know if they wanna do the business yet.

Dan Austin: [5:19] For sure.

Mike DeHaan: [5:20] Yeah. And they like, especially in the off market real estate world, I don't think people realize that you're signing up for a very exhausting business where you're gonna be talking to weird colorful people. Right? You're gonna be pulling your hair out. You're gonna be calling people 19 times without them answering, and then the twentieth time they answer, and they're your best friend. And you have to be able to perform and close at that moment. And a lot of people don't have the gusto for that, but they like the idea of the big checks and the buying discounted assets. So why would you go and make, you know, I don't know, red bucket properties, and you get your logo off Fiverr? Red The whole thing, and you build your website, and then you call the first person, you're like, well,

Dan Austin: [6:00] this is not for me. I just You're like, I don't like talking to these people.

Mike DeHaan: [6:03] Yeah. Just This is hard work. The first person told me to go f myself, so I guess I don't wanna do this anymore.

Dan Austin: [6:08] Yeah. A lot of people too, it's like they worry super a ton about their brand and the name of the company. I'm like, first of all, unless you're trying to take over an entire local market, you're gonna have TV, radio, every type of marketing, so you're trying to be omnichannel and just be the brand name, which is quite challenging and I don't know if it pays off, most people aren't gonna care what your company's name, so don't name it something that means something to you. Because nobody they don't care that it means something to you. Yeah. You gotta name it for Red Bucket Properties or something that's at least like they see it, they're like, oh, okay. That's easy to say. Don't name it something super hard to say.

Mike DeHaan: [6:42] I well, you just wanna say that a lot too where people are trying to make like puns and like different things. Anyway Which

Dan Austin: [6:48] I think some of the puns are good. What's dude's name in Kansas City? Baby Back. Baby Back Rehabs. That's great. That's awesome. That's catchy. But trying to throw in your kid's name with a birth date in there, all this weird stuff is don't do it. Yeah. Just don't do it. Just roll with it. Just be like like, oh, we started out INW properties.

Mike DeHaan: [7:07] Yeah. That was it. Which was terrible name because there was also because I mean, yeah. So INW stands for Inland Northwest, and we thought that that was a common term. But people would all the time be like, what does that stand for? I'm like, you freaking live here. You've never heard the term the Inland Northwest before?

Dan Austin: [7:21] I know. I know.

Mike DeHaan: [7:22] Anyway, point being though, taking massive action is the, you know Massive and perfect being fully prepared that you're gonna screw up, you're gonna waste people's time, you're gonna waste your time, you're gonna waste money, and just accept that that is all part of the investment process that you are making to build your next big thing. Super important. And I think for some reason, and I'm not sure why people have this shiny object syndrome, like classic traditional school has given us like the fear of failure because you don't really have the ability to learn by failing in school. So much. But it's the probably the biggest thing that I think prevents people from any sort

Dan Austin: [7:59] of success. You know what's that's the frustrating thing actually is the concept of these like limiting beliefs and being afraid of failure. I think this is super cliche, but the but really back to on the limiting beliefs is huge. Trying to talk to folks that haven't made the leap to entrepreneurship or to start their first rental property or to flip a house for the first time, you have people like Mike and I who are talking about it very publicly, like how you do this, how can you successfully do these sorts of things. There's just a ton of information out there. You could YouTube how to do everything on flipping houses, getting into real estate, entrepreneurship. Mhmm. But there's this limiting belief of like, oh, can't do that. Well, why? And I was actually just talking to a close friend of mine about this, and why can't you do that right now? Well, these are the reasons why I can't do that. I could lose a ton of money doing this, I don't have the time to do this, all these things where it's like, those are all limiting beliefs, because there are people in your exact situation doing that. What's the difference between them and you? Well, they're probably smarter, they're not smarter. In fact, the average person is definitely not smarter than the rest of the world because they're average.

Mike DeHaan: [8:58] If anything, I'd say we're dumber because we just don't take no for an answer. We just keep charging through bullshit. Right. Exactly. Yes. We were dumb enough to try things

Dan Austin: [9:07] Yeah. Over and over again. The other cliche is like, you don't fail unless you quit, and that is super true though. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [9:14] I know, it's an interesting thing. I mean, look at you, throwing in the mindset stuff. You should go and write a book.

Dan Austin: [9:18] I know. Well, yeah, I was just having that conversation, I

Mike DeHaan: [9:21] was just like, man, that is so limiting. So limiting.

Dan Austin: [9:24] I'm gonna write it and I'm gonna get a foreword by Brandon Turner.

Mike DeHaan: [9:26] Yeah, right. Get a foreword by Brandon Turner, but Brandon Turner's actually your neighbor, it's a different Brandon Turner. Right, it's a different Brandon Turner, totally. It's a very common name, I'm sure there's plenty of them out there. You could give it a really snazzy name, I don't know. What was something that would just be, you see so many names that I'm always like, with books, I'm just like, I get it from the title.

Dan Austin: [9:48] I would call it matter undermined. That's actually pretty good, because that like kinda makes you think,

Mike DeHaan: [9:54] but you always see these other ones, and like I understand what the book is about, and I got the gist of it literally just from reading the title.

Dan Austin: [10:00] Yeah. Yeah, the who not how example you've given before, yeah. Okay, read that title, I'm good. Yeah, or like the way

Mike DeHaan: [10:06] to say The Die With Zero or you know, just saw this other one on social media. I have no idea who this guy is, but he was friend of a friend kind of a thing. And he just wrote a book that's called like The Two Hour Vacation Test. You wanna guess what that one is? It's a business book. No, sorry, sorry. Not the two hour, the two week vacation test. You wanna guess what that one's about?

Dan Austin: [10:28] Is this about taking a vacation for two weeks for somewhere you might wanna live?

Mike DeHaan: [10:31] No, you're close. So it's about taking a vacation for two weeks and see if your business fails, and that's how you know if you are too involved in your business. Oh.

Dan Austin: [10:40] Oh, so sorry. I was thinking down a different path. You are. But now that I'm

Mike DeHaan: [10:43] in that context It makes perfect. And I have no idea that was good book. Don't know if this guy is, so if I just shit on somebody's friend, I'm sorry. But I just thought it was

Dan Austin: [10:49] funny when I saw it.

Mike DeHaan: [10:50] Yeah. But either way, when it comes to learning new things, we need to apparently start a mastermind to teach title companies how to do their fucking job. Yeah. Because we are in I cannot and and we have a lot of transactions right now, to be fair, but I haven't in all of our years doing this, coming up on forty years now, which is crazy, I have never been, seen such a disaster with so many title companies just cannot figure out how to do anything on time.

Dan Austin: [11:24] It's a communication issue. Upset when you try to ask them about stuff.

Mike DeHaan: [11:29] The thing that's crazy though is you're right about that. And and like, it's not like we're trying to do really fast complicated closings. All of our stuff is thirty to forty, forty days sometimes. No. You know, we get them the stuff plenty early. They kind of have their direction. They know we're going to assign the contract. We connect them with a buyer. Everything's looking good. And then all of a sudden, three days before closing, they're just like, sorry. We can't do it. I'm like, why? Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. And we we've had a dozen deals get extended multiple weeks recently.

Dan Austin: [11:58] Which is wild.

Mike DeHaan: [11:59] It just doesn't make sense. And the thing is when you're doing this off market real estate, seller sellers are freaking weird, man. They get very sensitive to stuff like that.

Dan Austin: [12:07] Yeah. Most of the time, they're the ones that have problem on the closing table. Lately, it hasn't really been their fault. No. It's been the title company specifically's issues. Yeah. Which is wild.

Mike DeHaan: [12:15] And I don't know why. It's like it's like literally just them not doing their work at all. Is it summertime transactions? Because we're in the

Dan Austin: [12:21] dog days of summer and people are like, well, I'm so tired of not working all summer that I don't wanna work.

Mike DeHaan: [12:26] This is how slow title companies are right now because the market's slowed down. So I signed for a deal that we sold yesterday, and literally when the lady called me to book the signing appointment several years ago, I'd be like, okay. Cool. So I only have time on Thursday between 08:30 and 08:45. Like, you have to come at that window because we're fully booked. But she called me, she was like, whenever you want. I have nothing going on tomorrow with

Dan Austin: [12:48] We're wide open. Yeah. So you know they're not understaffed right now with deals. Yeah. I think it's just they're caught up in the chill mode. I really do. And then I do think some of them just don't know what to do. They just don't know how to do these things.

Mike DeHaan: [13:03] But the problem is we're working with people that we've done deals with before, and they've all just like I know. Maybe this is like slow COVID. You know how they said that the vaccines were gonna start rotting everyone's brains? Maybe this is the start

Dan Austin: [13:15] of it. I didn't think about That's actually possible.

Mike DeHaan: [13:19] So it's all Bill Gates' fault. That's what I think. I'm gonna go tweet about it. Or no, don't tweet. Do I X about it? What am I supposed to do now? I don't remember.

Dan Austin: [13:26] That's why I don't get that. I just use threads now.

Mike DeHaan: [13:28] We'll still use that? I thought that

Dan Austin: [13:30] was I God don't X anymore.

Mike DeHaan: [13:32] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [13:34] I mean, makes sense though, and I think Mel Gibson's gonna get wrapped up in this somehow too. Right before Oprah does,

Mike DeHaan: [13:40] then Oprah will be next. Yeah. No, but for real, the transaction piece of this business, I mean we've even brought in staff and stuff to help with it, and we have a general process around it.

Dan Austin: [13:50] Yeah, we have a very robust system. We have a very robust system around transactions, because at any given time we have 20 plus properties in escrow, right? And always new ones going in and out, whether that's canceling or closing contracts, right? So always have fresh deals and things closing, and so we have a transaction coordinator specifically who has a very robust set of policies that she follows to make sure that the title company can't forget about our transaction. Yeah. Like her job essentially is to once we get into escrow and all the paperwork is dialed in, is to make sure the file that we have for that property is always at the top of their stack. Yeah. By saying, hey, can I get an update on this? Hey, I just wanna make sure we're clear to close. Hey, do you need any documents from

Mike DeHaan: [14:31] the seller right now? Maybe that's the problem is we're just like pissing them off.

Dan Austin: [14:34] I definitely know we are pissing some of them off.

Mike DeHaan: [14:36] Definitely Well, know. They would give an update, everyone. Because here's the thing that always pisses me off too is we'll get to like a week and a half from closing, and the seller calls and is like, I've heard nothing.

Dan Austin: [14:45] Yeah. Yeah, that's a problem.

Mike DeHaan: [14:47] And I'm like, I'm on my way and then we'll call back. I'm like, oh well, you know, we left them a voicemail that they needed to call us back and then they didn't. I'm like, you just called them one time two weeks ago? Like what is your problem? Doesn't make any sense.

Dan Austin: [14:59] Yeah, of course. It's silly. Yeah. We have definitely several that should have been closed this week that probably We have an interesting transaction, so this one will be fun. So this is a good one for some education too. The one we're doing down in Tennessee, that'll be a double close, but it's probably going to be a double close with two different title companies.

Mike DeHaan: [15:18] Yeah. So let me let me give the frame for why this one happened. So Yeah. Off market lead to a distressed house on a piece of land. Okay? Seller was immediately skeptical of us, which is very common, you know, doing direct to seller. We're coming in with kinda like the Yep. We'll pay cash as is, whatever. There's a lot of bad actors in the space. So they were immediately skeptical. And so we sent her a contract. They decided that they didn't like some of the verbiage, particularly around our inspection clauses and those sort of things, which is fine. But then here's what gets funny is they're like, okay. So I will feel more comfortable if my realtor does the contract. K? And then the realtor sends over a contract with the write in verbiage that is a word for word the same as our contract. They didn't cut

Dan Austin: [16:03] and paste anything.

Mike DeHaan: [16:04] They pretty much did. Like, is literally the same. Same low earnest money, same everything that we have. I think the only difference was that they wanted to use their own title company. Okay? Which is always a little bit weird because we purposely choose title companies that are investor friendly. And, you know, they like are familiar with us and our process and our buyers and those sort of thing. Yep. And the thing that makes this really tricky in Tennessee is that there's now a lot of legal things around wholesaling and assignments that if you don't close-up the right way, it doesn't really vibe. And as a result, a lot of title companies are not willing to do it. And also too, we don't necessarily want to alert this seller that we are signing the contract. Right. So we are doing, Dan, as you were saying there with the double closing.

Dan Austin: [16:47] Yeah. So because which we don't usually care about using other deals, title companies, all that sort of stuff, but there are problems and hoops that you kinda have to explain to them. That's why we like to use our title companies. But the issue is is that the sellers, they want us to be the end buyers, right, which we technically are the end buyers, but we are marketing as a different company than the end buyer entity, right? But they don't understand that. So if we're assigning from Backyard Homebuyers, which is our marketing brand, to XYZ LLC, they're gonna be upset. Because like Mike said, they are skeptical, they wanna know that we're buying it. So we have a contract with Backyard Home Buyers with this person. So because of this situation, we don't wanna close the same title company on a double close, which typically would happen is they would close one file, and take that money and transfer it over to the next file, and essentially pay that previous debt off, or pay whatever loan you had off if you got a, say, a hard money loan on your acquisition, and then they would just transfer all that over to the new file. So it's basically a purchase and sale agreement between us and the seller, and then another purchase and sale agreement between us and our end buyer.

Dan Austin: [17:52] Right? Yeah. That's easy, but we're going to do that two title companies. Because we don't want that title company to alert the sellers of this transaction the way it's going, again, just trying to avoid that conflict, because we know sometimes it happens. So we're going to have to go to another title company, essentially run two closings concurrently, two purchase of sale agreements for the same property concurrently at two title companies, and then once one closes, we can now transfer over and close the other one probably the next day.

Mike DeHaan: [18:20] Yeah. But the stuff that gets weird is the second one, we don't technically own the property while they're doing all that work. So it has to be someone that kinda gets that. Right. You know, and understand what's going to happen, which is a little bit nuanced. And so then what we'll have to do is have to bring the funds to close and then to sell it immediately afterwards and look at the payoff. So we'll own the property for like, I don't know, a few hours hopefully, but maybe a little bit longer.

Dan Austin: [18:42] I'm gonna guess it'll I'm gonna guess it'll probably be 24 to 70 because the other title company will need to get recorded documents for the county, and we'll probably find out that that county is super slow down there and doesn't record except for every Tuesday afternoon or something weird. Every

Mike DeHaan: [18:57] Tuesday afternoon. There are those nuances. I know. God, it just never

Dan Austin: [19:01] So that'll be a fun one we can talk about and see how well that's probably one of the more complicated closes we've orchestrated for a seller that's somewhat reasonable.

Mike DeHaan: [19:09] Yeah. I mean, that's the thing too, is the lady is pretty reasonable, which is a plus side, so it should be, you know, straightforward. It's So

Dan Austin: [19:16] it must be a good deal Yeah. I mean, to go through all these issues.

Mike DeHaan: [19:18] Well, think it's a getting at a pretty steep discount, it's like an abandoned house. And so our he's one of our partners that we're selling the deal to down there. And there's major upside if you like make the house nice because it's on acreage. It's in like a green strip area. And then, you know, it's like it's in the South, so Tennessee is sort of the South, I think it is. Yeah. It's, you know, one of those, like, plantation era sort of houses, which should be pretty cool.

Dan Austin: [19:41] Yeah. South of the Mason Dixon Line. I think that's how you can consider south. Right? I don't even know where the Mason Dixon Line is.

Mike DeHaan: [19:47] I have no idea, but I'm sure there's people there that like get some beef about it. They're like, you know, people that are in Southern Georgia are like, Tennessee is not the South, you know? Yeah.

Dan Austin: [19:55] Well, so Mason Dixon Line is basically the bottom of Pennsylvania. So, yeah, here's

Mike DeHaan: [19:59] the South. Pennsylvania. So is Ohio? Yeah. Is that the South?

Dan Austin: [20:03] No. No. No. Well, it might jog over there, but I'm looking at this map. And I mean, West Virginia is below the Mesa Dixon Line. It would like bumps up to it. Obviously, that's where it is on the map. But like and I would consider that very, very South. People from Florida, if

Mike DeHaan: [20:16] you say they're from the South, they get very offended. They do not like that at all. No.

Dan Austin: [20:20] Yeah. You can't say that about Texans either.

Mike DeHaan: [20:22] Texans, are they too far over? What's the North South limitation on that?

Dan Austin: [20:25] Or the east to west you mean?

Mike DeHaan: [20:26] Oh, yeah. That east to west, yeah.

Dan Austin: [20:27] I would consider Texas because you don't have a South Central. You just call them the South.

Mike DeHaan: [20:31] They're also just Texas.

Dan Austin: [20:32] And get West West Texas though, you're like, oh, that's Southwest. That's just desert flat rocks and dust.

Mike DeHaan: [20:38] There are also just, you know, Texans. That's their whole thing. I've never seen so much blind pride over something that makes no sense in my entire life.

Dan Austin: [20:45] Well, you do live adjacent to North Idaho.

Mike DeHaan: [20:48] That's true. North Idaho is even worse because

Dan Austin: [20:51] because they wanna be Texas.

Mike DeHaan: [20:53] Yeah. They wanna be Texas. In North Idaho, literally half the people moved there in the last eighteen months. Yeah. Because of blind pride. Yeah. Exactly. So that's our current dilemma though is this transaction situation that we're dealing with. And I'm curious to hear how other people deal with it too. So if you have a good strategy for how you handle volume transactions, you should shoot me a message on Instagram mike underscore invest because like Yeah. It's such a reoccurring thing, know, and and like that we we had it dive. Yeah. And I don't know what's happened over the last two or three months, but it's just turned into an absolute freaking nightmare.

Dan Austin: [21:25] Yeah. Timing, it's the moon cycle I think is part of it.

Mike DeHaan: [21:29] Yeah. Because we're now in like a Capricorn cycle. I don't know what that looks like. I have no idea.

Dan Austin: [21:34] Yeah. We left Cancer, we left Cancer, now whatever's next, Gemini or don't know, those are the only two I know.

Mike DeHaan: [21:39] You might know better than me. I have no idea. So besides that, we have been busy preparing for KeyzCon, which I'm super excited about.

Dan Austin: [21:48] Yeah. It's gonna be a blast.

Mike DeHaan: [21:50] Yeah. It's gonna be super fun. So we are doing our first in person meetup for this one. It is exclusively for Instant Investor members, and we are going to be doing a deep dive into their businesses. And hopefully, by the end of it, they will all be boarding a rocket ship to explode into the New Year. So Yeah. You have this sick house that we rented down in Scottsdale that we're gonna be putting on the That place

Dan Austin: [22:13] is badass. That's like a basketball court in there. A pool.

Mike DeHaan: [22:16] The house sold for like $4,800,000 like six months ago. I don't know what the situation is we got it for pretty cheap on Airbnb, I think primarily because they just launched it on Airbnb. Maybe we're one

Dan Austin: [22:28] of those bulls that got like the 30% discount for the first booking or No

Mike DeHaan: [22:31] seriously though, I'm pretty sure that's

Dan Austin: [22:33] I think so, you're right.

Mike DeHaan: [22:34] That's what happened because they only had like three or four reviews and they've only had a So few stays it's a sick house, we're bringing in a chef and we're gonna do some awesome masterminding and different stuff. It's a funny thing, because we've been to so many of those events. And when you really start thinking about stuff that's been good at past ones and stuff that kinda hasn't, and then you try to orchestrate things yourself, it's so difficult to figure out how to frame things in a way that are universally helpful and not just like what you selfishly wanna do, you know?

Dan Austin: [23:11] So true. Yeah. And it gets you out of your element because it's easy to get kinda caught up, the like limiting mindset or the limiting beliefs, going back to that. Uh-huh. It's like, you're sitting in your office, typically, even when you're running this locally, you're running this business virtually essentially, right? A lot of people have one to two to three people in the business, So you get kinda stuck in this box that you're putting yourself in, and then when you get out of that box and you go and see other people that were putting themselves in the box, the people that were working through the same problems, you're like, oh, okay. So this is common. It's not unique to me. And then on top of it, you build a network of people, once you meet somebody in person like that, that you kinda go through this shared suffering, like where you guys are sharing your problems, and you're working through issues together, you now have a person, the next time you run into an issue, you're that much more comfortable picking up the phone and calling like, hey man, I remember when we were in Scottsdale, we were at that meetup, and you were talking about blah blah blah and your follow-up systems. What did you do to fix that?

Dan Austin: [24:03] Oh, let me share it with you. Now you kinda have that network right there that's and it just seemed way more valuable than before.

Mike DeHaan: [24:10] Yeah. And there's something about that mutual interests when you have a deep dive with people like this where you build really strong friendships in a really quick time. Like Aaron Beale, when this episode comes out, he'll be you guys probably heard him on Monday. He'll either be this Monday, if you don't know who I'm talking about, he'll be next Monday. But I met him the first time at a meetup, like, couple years ago, and he instantly became one of, like, my best friends. You know, I'm being conversed on a very regular basis since then. I've only seen him in person, like, three times ever. But it's just like there's something about getting in a local environment where you are singularly focused on the same thing, you have similar ambitions, you have similar goals. Like, a lot of the social awkwardness of meeting people just doesn't even exist. Yeah. Right? And I mean, think about that meetup we went to in Florida a couple years ago, and the groups of people, because you're all driven by the same business, same goals, are so weird.

Dan Austin: [25:04] You have a common base that you already talk about. You don't need to have the small talk to introduce each You have a common topic to talk about your business.

Mike DeHaan: [25:11] Yeah. And it just starts it right away. And I mean, remember hanging out there, and it was you, and it was me, and it was Drew Wiard who you guys heard talk about cash flow several months ago. If you haven't heard that episode, you should definitely check it out. I'll put the episode number in the notes below. And we were hanging out with this dude, Uchenna, that's like this huge ex collegiate

Dan Austin: [25:28] Baby back rehabs.

Mike DeHaan: [25:29] Yeah. Baby back rehabs football player. And then we have like couple other people, like a little older. There's like some women that are like of various age groups. And like, you were to look at us from a distance, think that we're like some really weird corporate party because there's like no no similarities between anybody. None. Yeah. But, you know, the funny thing is is those are some of the successful people most successful people that I know now. And from Mhmm. From a a distance away, you never would

Dan Austin: [25:53] have guessed that. So. Totally. And a big difference, besides the fact that those are driven people that tend to get attracted to these types of events, without that event could have been a pivotal point for many people, becomes a pivotal point in their business, where they were able to turn something around, or they were able to finally get the rocket ship off the ground.

Mike DeHaan: [26:11] They

Dan Austin: [26:12] have the set of tools to do that, but having that interaction, and that also just focus, where all you're looking at is your business without any other distractions, and focused on you, and how you can take your business to the next level, something about that just does not accelerate that spark that you need to do it to get to that next level.

Mike DeHaan: [26:30] Yeah. Absolutely. And I and I think that, you know, people go to these meetups and and different things, and sometimes I think people don't do it correctly, and they don't capitalize on it, and the only reason it doesn't become a rocket ship for some people is because they do it passively.

Dan Austin: [26:45] And

Mike DeHaan: [26:46] I guess a big piece of advice I'll give to the instant investor members who are attending, who will probably listen to this, is when you go to these events, go there not only to learn, but really to try and give as much as you can. And that's where you really start to create value, because there's a funny thing about when you start giving to people, they feel inclined to give back to you. It's a responsibility. It's a responsibility, right? It's like a social thing and that we all all of a sudden your world will open up with new opportunities, people will start to give you their ideas about what you're working on. And all it will take is one or two pieces of advice that you'll get from somebody that you probably weren't expecting to get that can literally change the course of your entire life. And I think a big thing on top of that as well is when you wrap up those events where most people, they kinda shoot themselves in the foot, is they have no post event plan for any sort of outreach or any sort of implementation of what they learned. And I always tell people that within the first twenty four to forty eight hours, you should follow-up with the people that you had a good connection with, shoot them a text, email, phone call, whatever, and then take your action steps from that event, which if you're coming to KeyesCon, we will be helping you set up those action steps. And make a schedule and a plan for how you're going to do them right away and start them literally the day you get home. I don't care if it's a Saturday or Sunday and you're exhausted, if you're gonna go, you need to get home and hang out with your family, do it on the fricking plane.

Mike DeHaan: [28:15] Even if it's just you sitting with a notebook or a Delta Airlines napkin, just start writing down the shit that you're gonna do.

Dan Austin: [28:21] And

Mike DeHaan: [28:22] doing that, that exercise alone will make all the money that you invest in, all the time you invested in that event, be 10 times more valuable Totally. Than if you had just gone there as a passive consumer.

Dan Austin: [28:33] Yeah, that's super valuable advice because so many people, especially if you've worked in corporate America before, they really just see those events when your company sends you to a corporate event. They see those as a place for them to get drunk, gorge themselves, network a little bit, and then go home. Mhmm. And they don't have anything to take back. And a big part of it is for most people, they don't actually, and the corporate America, have the ability to take what they learn in a conference and implement that in their company anyways, because that's got through so many layers of management.

Mike DeHaan: [28:59] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [28:59] When you're going to a company conference like this, where it's your company that you're that's funding you to go, everything's on the line, right? And so, you have to at least show up thinking, I'm gonna take one thing. Even if I picked the wrong event or whatever, and I showed up, and now I'm at the basket weaving event, how to grow a basket weaving business, but instead of keys gone, you went to the wrong one, you can probably still take something, so take something from it, right? Take one thing from it, and like I said, everything's online, it's your company, so you get to go home and implement it right away, which is super cool. Yeah. Right? That to me is the coolest part about it, and you get to see the immediate results from implementing that thing you learned, and you connect it right to that time, and you spent with, like you said, one person where you're giving, and then they just gave back to you, and it's that one little Sometimes it's just like a nuance in how they say something that you already know.

Mike DeHaan: [29:46] Yeah. You're so right. And there's like little things you're just like, why did I never think about it that way? But that just completely changed my worldview forever. Mhmm. So, you know. And here's the thing is doing that, it is work. It does take intention. It is a lot of times uncomfortable, especially when, you know, you enjoyed the after party on the last night and you are a little bit hungover and you're getting on the plane or you're hitting the car or whatever. But you need to have the discipline to put in that intentional thought and additional time to just gather everything. Way, I'm super excited about it. That'll be fine. I'm getting pumped right now.

Dan Austin: [30:17] It's always talking about it.

Mike DeHaan: [30:17] I'm like, yeah. Let's go. Yeah. It's gonna be cool. So if anyone does have an interest in KeysCon though, we do technically have one spot still open. By the time this comes out, it'll probably be gone. You should still hit hit us up on Instagram anyway and maybe we will we should have like a contest or something. We should like open up one spot for like a not instant investor member.

Dan Austin: [30:37] That would be kinda cool actually. Yeah. I could get on board with that.

Mike DeHaan: [30:40] Yeah. Maybe we'll figure it out when we record our next one. We can I'll do something silly. Remember we talked actually, remember we talked about doing this a while back, the $10,000 challenge?

Dan Austin: [30:50] Dude.

Mike DeHaan: [30:50] About who can figure out how to make $10,000 in one month. Yeah. Here's what we're gonna do. I forgot about that. Here's what we're gonna do. We'll piece this together in September when I when I'm back. But we'll do like the $10,000 challenge. So the rule is that you have to make $10, not doing something that's within your main business, right, or in your WT or something like that. You have one month to do it, and the first person that does that and sends proof about what they did, make me a video, do whatever, We'll bring you to Keyes Con. I'll I'll buy all your stuff. I'll buy your tickets and everything.

Dan Austin: [31:24] Damn. But they'll be $10 richer. I mean, come on.

Mike DeHaan: [31:26] Exactly. They'll be in very net positive at that point. Yeah. And also I know that no one's gonna do it because everyone's gonna be like, that's too hard.

Dan Austin: [31:33] Yeah, to

Mike DeHaan: [31:34] make 10,000. How would you do it if I said you had to make $10 over there, you know, in the month of September, but you couldn't do I already have a plan. What's that? You already have a plan? You can't can't do real estate, it can't be with our business, it has to be something that's completely different.

Dan Austin: [31:47] Would not be with our business, be totally different. So here's my plan, hear me out people. So, I came up with this plan this summer. So earlier this year I did a big renovation on my backyard. Did a bunch of stuff to it, including building a new deck, like a backyard deck. It was pretty sizable. I got quotes all over the place, like all the way up to like 120,000 just to build my deck. And it's not that big of a deck, so don't think it's this massive deck. It's, you know, mid 30 foot by 15 feet or something like that. Anyways, I kinda was like, I'm not gonna pay a 120,000 for that. So I called our contractor that we have that does our rehabs on our properties, all that stuff. He came out, did a bunch of work. Anyways, long story short, what I figured out was all I have to do is create a website, like a Google business account, right, and then get a person to design the postcard. I'm gonna send postcards to our zip code where we live, which is, as Mike has self proclaimed, an affluent area, where people can pay money for decks like that. And then all I have to do is get one person to grab that mailer, pick up the phone, and have somebody answer it, a VA answer it, whatever, schedule a booking, send our contractor over there to give us a quote, give me the quote, what it's gonna cost, and then I'll add $10,000 to it.

Mike DeHaan: [33:02] I mean, there you go. You should actually do this. I wanna see. You do it, and I will buy your tickets to Keyes con, Dan.

Dan Austin: [33:09] Oh, thank you. That's so sweet of you.

Mike DeHaan: [33:11] First class? Yeah. First class, of course. I don't fly in the back of the bus anymore.

Dan Austin: [33:16] That's my plan, right? I could eat, right? Go get Mike, our contractor, and mind you, he is not in our business, he doesn't work for us anymore, like he did, but he's the guy that we have good relationship with, he's done tons of renovations for us, we're not flipping houses right now, or have any major well. We might have him do some renovations, we'll see. But, yeah, just go get that quote, and then essentially arbitrage that. Yeah. Because I'm not gonna do it. Like, can't build the deck. He can though. Yeah. And he has a price, and then the customers have a price that they'll pay, and so I'm just gonna arbitrage the difference between that. And you might ask, well, why didn't he just start a deck building business? Absolutely. He probably will after the first time as he figures out that I made all the money, but he's also not the kind of guy that wants to start a business. Mhmm. He's already told us that. He just wants to do his thing and renovate houses like he does. He does like lake homes for people now, that's kinda what he's doing, he's loving it. He's up on a lake in the summertime remodeling people's houses. Yeah. He doesn't wanna do anything more than that. So if I show up and say, hey, give me a bid on this, he has no problem doing it. I love it. Let's do it.

Mike DeHaan: [34:17] That sounds like the Keyes contractors. I don't know.

Dan Austin: [34:21] There you go. I like that. Keyes contractors. Anyhow, if I can think of that, my little brain can think of that immediately, based on a problem I was trying to solve for myself, I guarantee you there's people out there that can solve thousands of problems. And the limiting belief is that, well, if it was that easy, a contractor would do it. Absolutely, are contractors doing it, but there's also contractors out there that don't want to market, they don't want to run appointments, they wanna have to do the sales part of it, they don't wanna actually have a business, they just wanna work for themselves in quotations, and just show up and be able to do their thing. Same thing with why wholesaling works, because there's a lot of people out there that don't wanna run the systems, that don't wanna market to people, that don't wanna walk through dirty houses and all that sort of stuff, and so all those people are called realtors, and everybody else is wholesaler. And so there's everybody just carves out their niche of the business because there still are people that won't do it. Perfect.

Mike DeHaan: [35:12] I love it. It's a great place to finish right there. Awesome. Well, Dan just gave you the idea, guys. I'm sure that you all have, you know, upper class neighborhoods where you live, whether or not it's your neighborhood or somebody else's neighborhood, where I guarantee you could do this exact same thing. It's really not that hard to make money.

Dan Austin: [35:26] If somebody does it, use my here's my thing, use my business model. Yeah. Do what I said and we'll give you a free trip to Keys' Con.

Mike DeHaan: [35:32] There you go. Yeah. Prove it right. Awesome. Well, thanks for listening, everybody. Hopefully, you got some good value out of that. And seriously, if you've solved the freaking transaction problem, please, for the love of God, send me a message on Instagram Correct. At underscore invest, and tell me the secret because it is driving me crazy. Send me a message there. You can hit up Dan at Investor Man, Dan. And you should also share this podcast with anyone who finds it interesting. And I think maybe we should bring like the reviews thing back because we haven't done that in a while.

Dan Austin: [36:00] Yes. We've got some new shirts that we can hand out. I'm wearing one right now. We do. Yeah. I love this shirt. It's actually one of my favorite shirts now.

Mike DeHaan: [36:06] Yeah. We have a couple different Collecting Keys shirts. We have our basic one, and we have a Big Dan energy shirt. We have an I'm looking at Jets shirt that you can see Dan wearing on YouTube if you check us out there. And so if you leave us a five star review on iTunes, and you take a screenshot, and you send it to me on Instagram, I will send you a free shirt. I think we're at, like, 50 something right now. I will do this up until we get to 70 reviews. So that's 14 opportunities, I guess, to to get this So does us a big favor, really helps us grow the show, and you get a free shirt out of it as well.

Dan Austin: [36:37] So let me ask you this before we go out. Sure. If I want to give the podcast a five star review, don't I just go into you're on iTunes and you listen to it on podcasts, isn't it? Like, do you I don't even know how to do it. Do you know how to do it? Have an Android, so no, I don't. Well, that could be a hiccup for some people. Maybe next time we'll give some instructions on how to do it.

Mike DeHaan: [36:56] Yeah, can do it on If it's easy for you. You can do it on Spotify too. Spotify also helps. Some people send Spotify reviews. But the iTunes ones are the ones that make us rank the most because that's like the most used platform.

Dan Austin: [37:06] Yeah. Go buy an iPhone and then specifically give us a review.

Mike DeHaan: [37:09] Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [37:09] If don't have one.

Mike DeHaan: [37:10] Or just do it on you can do it on iTunes as well.

Dan Austin: [37:12] Oh, on Apple Podcasts online. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [37:14] On Apple Podcasts. Yeah. So anyways, guys, do that. It helps us out a ton, and we appreciate you all. We'll talk to you guys next week.

Dan Austin: [37:20] See y'all.