We Left Our 7-Figure Homebuying Business

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] That business has, like, 20 x since the beginning of this year. Having that virtual environment where you can get sick like that and just, like, you know, you might be less productive unless you're doing something.

Dan Austin: [0:13] You could get something done.

Mike DeHaan: [0:14] Or like in my case, you know, I had a child six days ago, and I don't know. I'm still able to work and have completely flexible schedule.

Dan Austin: [0:22] I can hear your child right now. Can you hear

Mike DeHaan: [0:24] the background? There might there might be just some new, we'll call it audio texture.

Dylan Koch: [0:27] We'll,

Mike DeHaan: [0:28] it's it's gonna be it's gonna be in the background of podcasts from time to time.

Dan Austin: [0:33] Yeah, dude. Tell your wife to feed him, dude.

Mike DeHaan: [0:35] He's hungry. I know. She's neglecting him down there. What can I say?

Dan Austin: [0:38] I think he's much better. Congratulations. You now have child. What's been your number one epiphany, Mike? Sorry to throw the loop for

Mike DeHaan: [0:46] Having a child so far in the first six days?

Dylan Koch: [0:49] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [0:49] Nah. That's alright. We can skip the intro. Like, nobody nobody cares about that.

Dylan Koch: [0:52] We fast forward through that anyway.

Mike DeHaan: [0:54] Like, I do on most podcasts I listen to.

Dan Austin: [0:56] Welcome back to another episode of the collecting keys podcast.

Mike DeHaan: [1:00] Yeah. So, yeah, my wife had a our first child last Friday, so as of recording, like, six days ago. It's always tough because it's my I don't really come from, a family with a lot of kids, so I don't have a ton of exposure to, like, other, like newborns. But he's been extremely easy so far. And so I would say like my main epiphany is that if you are a prepared person, you know, and I've been very intentional about being able to make money and having like a flexible schedule and kind of like a flexible day to day. The transition actually hasn't been that challenging. I mean, the sleep thing's always tough, but that's kind of like inevitable. And even then, we're fortunate that my wife and I are we're on kind of the same page where she's kinda just like running with a lot of that. But then, like, the trade off is during the day, like, I'll hang out with the baby for a few hours. She can catch up on sleep. But it's funny. Both of our parents came and visited in the past week, and

Dylan Koch: [1:54] I think both sets of parents

Mike DeHaan: [1:55] were very surprised at just, like, how put together we were and how organized we are. Because, like, honestly, it's not that big of a deal so far. I think it'll be tougher when he's kinda moving and more active. But for right now, I don't know. I always hear people talk about how unbelievably hard a child is. And, again, I only have this one singular experience, but it hasn't been that bad.

Dan Austin: [2:16] Yeah. You're in a good spot, though. You're in a you're in probably sleepy baby phase.

Mike DeHaan: [2:20] I think so.

Dan Austin: [2:20] What you should do is to complicate it as add to.

Mike DeHaan: [2:23] Yeah. For sure. 100%. I can totally see that. But also too, like, my wife and I, we communicate well. You know, she doesn't work. She she like is like has her art stuff that she does. She doesn't have like a job that requires her time or has any expectations ever beyond that. So there's no, like, mental baggage. Yeah. I was saying that's a thing too. If people are, like, leaving a job to go on maternity leave, they're, like, taking leave from that, and they're, like, working up until, like, the day that they give birth. Mhmm. There is, like, a mental transitionary period to get out of that.

Dan Austin: [2:50] Oh, sure, dude. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [2:52] It's Right? Whereas, like, my wife has been able to spend the last, like, month and a bit just preparing for

Dylan Koch: [2:59] My wife and I were both pharmacists, like you literally have to physically be at the store. Like, it would have been a lot harder Yeah. Than what we do now where she's worked from home and obviously I had the flexibility of the business. It would have been much more difficult. But you like you said, Mike, it's we were intentional from the beginning about all of

Mike DeHaan: [3:15] it Mhmm.

Dylan Koch: [3:15] From decisions made years ago. And I think that's what people need to hear.

Mike DeHaan: [3:18] Totally. Well, also too, I think just being personally more mature. I mean, I'm 34. My wife's 32. We're like adults. Right? It's not like we're 24 and had a kid, and now we're, like, dealing with the FOMO of, like, all of our friends out, like, doing stuff. They've kind of already done a lot of shit. You know? And so it's not, like, that big of a deal to slow down a little bit and just focus on this. Honestly, the most clutch thing has been being able to move forward and just, cancel pretty much every meeting that I didn't wanna have over the next couple weeks.

Dylan Koch: [3:47] That's been so awesome.

Mike DeHaan: [3:48] I've had some people that are like they'll, like, reach out and, like, wanna have calls, I just go, no. I just had a child, and nobody's ever gonna argue with you on that.

Dylan Koch: [3:55] Yeah. No. They they can't. They can't.

Mike DeHaan: [3:57] So I just cleared my calendar for, like, the next month except for, like, work stuff or, like, stuff like this that I wanna do. And that's been super, super nice.

Dylan Koch: [4:04] That's all. Honestly, too, like, when newborn ish and, like, you're gonna come up on Thanksgiving and then Christmas, like, it kinda slows down a little bit anyway. So that's good timing.

Mike DeHaan: [4:14] But welcome to collecting keys, guys. Real estate show. Talk about family business and, you know, actually being an entrepreneur that has a lifestyle as well as just, I don't know, hustle grind even though that's not as sexy of a thing. I always feel like with real estate stuff, it's always either people that are obsessed with, like, too much balance or it's, like, completely opposite, which isn't, like, realistic.

Dylan Koch: [4:34] Yeah. There's no middle ground. Yeah. Well, there might just be no middle ground on the media platforms. Right? Like, bad for you. That you can't really like I have a great work life balance. Yeah. And that's pretty much into the discussion.

Mike DeHaan: [4:45] Well, most people, like, if that's their message, it's because they don't do fucking anything. And that's what they're trying to sell you. They're like, this is my work life balance. I wake up at six. I work for thirty minutes. Then I wake up my kids, then I feed them, then I take them to school. Then I hang out with my wife, then I hit a workout, then I do whatever. Now it's 03:00. I check emails again, and now my day is done.

Dylan Koch: [5:05] Well, the one thing I'll I'll steal from Brandon Turner, which I like this back in the day was, it's not work life balance, it's work life balancing. You're gonna have different seasons of, okay, you know, this season it's work more.

Dan Austin: [5:16] And

Dylan Koch: [5:16] other times it's seasons it'll be family more. As long as you're not work balls to the wall all the time, I feel like that's perfectly okay.

Mike DeHaan: [5:22] For sure. Yeah. And then if you're you know, don't necessarily have like the daily challenges like that, I would always like the old Tim Ferriss sort of mantra of having like what he would call mini retirements, where basically you work very, very focused and intensely for a period of time, but that allows you to take a extended period of time off regardless what that means for you, whether that's like thirty days, sixty days, ninety days, whatever. You just kind of need to get yourself into a position where you can do that and it doesn't disrupt things or, you know, put you into a bad spot.

Dylan Koch: [5:52] Especially in this business because, like, you can burn out quick. I've been on the edge a couple times. Like, you gotta you gotta take the gas off the pedal sometimes. But Yeah. It's the worst in this business too just because the the lows are

Mike DeHaan: [6:04] so low and the highs are so high, And you never really know, like, when they're gonna come. Because you can have, like, eight highs in a row. Right? And then one low and then eight more highs in a it's great. Or you can just have a low for an entire year, and you just don't even know that you're ever gonna get out of it. But you just kinda have to keep beating your head against the wall.

Dylan Koch: [6:22] Keep grinding. I walked two houses today, and both of them are in the top five grossest houses ever been.

Mike DeHaan: [6:29] Well, that's fun.

Dylan Koch: [6:30] Which is like surprising for the same day. Right? Like, so the one I was like, I literally came home and I took a shower, then I'm going back to another one as soon as this podcast is over.

Mike DeHaan: [6:38] Yeah. That's gross.

Dylan Koch: [6:39] See how that one is.

Mike DeHaan: [6:40] Those are the worst. Is it one of those ones where you get out and you can like smell it on you? Do you can just like smell the air from the house?

Dylan Koch: [6:46] Yeah. I didn't even wanna get in my car. I'm like, I wish I would have spare change of clothes to change into. Yeah. That's gross.

Mike DeHaan: [6:52] There was one I went to, and I, like, touched, like, something in the house. And I got, like, hives.

Dylan Koch: [7:00] On, like, my

Mike DeHaan: [7:01] floor on. And I I didn't know if it was, like, bed bugs or whatever, but, like, I could, like, see them, like, spreading. And I was, like, so afraid to, like, touch anything, because I was like, I don't wanna, like, put it on my car. So I literally, like, I drove home, like, with my arm up like this. Like, watching, like, the hives, like, spread down my arm. Like, some kind of, like, like, scarab disease from the mummy, you know. I could, like, see it, and I was, like, didn't wanna spread it. Then I get home, and I was, like, make sure my wife didn't come near me because

Dan Austin: [7:28] I didn't

Dylan Koch: [7:29] wanna Yeah. There are times where I've gotten undressed in my garage because I'm like, I don't wanna bring this shit in.

Mike DeHaan: [7:34] Goddamn it. And you're thinking this, people live in that. They're like in that every day.

Dylan Koch: [7:37] Yeah. That blows my freaking mind.

Mike DeHaan: [7:40] They're immune, dude. They're like the one that's immune from the cordycep virus. Like, they just left in the field. It's not so bother

Dylan Koch: [7:46] Well, it's like the gradual thing. You know, you can give yourself snake snake venom, like, very gradually till you build up a tolerance. They start off clean, and then it gets dirtier and dirtier and dirtier.

Mike DeHaan: [7:54] Yeah. That's a very bold assumption. I think half those people, they move into the house, and then just it turns into filth, like, a week later.

Dylan Koch: [8:02] Good news is I I don't know if I'm shooting myself in the foot when I'm doing some of these, but one of the ones I walked today, I brought a buyer with me, which I like to do just because it makes the logistics easier. But and they they're gonna buy it. So I already have it signed. Like the deal's easy. But I also know at the same time that if I were to mass market this deal and send it out, I could probably get $510 more. But I'm taking the easier out on this one and just like because this one has tenants in it. And so I'm just like, getting back through would be a nightmare. I know this buyer will close. So I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer there, but it's what I'm doing.

Mike DeHaan: [8:39] When you reach a certain phase of business, which you're definitely at, I think that there is a opportunity cost for the effort, right? That you need to take into consideration sometimes, especially if you've been, I would say like busier or if you've had more periods of uncertainty. Sometimes you just need to take, like, the guaranteed win as opposed to trying to squeeze out five or 10 more and then putting yourself into a period that you might not get that. I would say that's like a defensive play, which is totally valid. Same thing applies if you're super busy and if you're trying to do, like, six or eight deals at the same time and you're a small shop and you're just like, I just need somebody to take these so I don't have to worry about it anymore. Sure. You're giving up money, but that's, like, always a good example of I would say there's kinda two constraints that are can be showed there. If it's like the first one where you kinda need the easy win to pay your bills, there's probably a little bit of balance that you need to figure out just in terms of, like, your finances and your cash flows. But if it's the other side, if it's the time constraint to get those done, it probably should be to bill out your team and process a little bit better.

Dylan Koch: [9:36] Well, Angie is the buyer's buying these with tenants in place. So that's going be her problem.

Mike DeHaan: [9:41] Nice.

Dylan Koch: [9:41] I would have to probably buy them, get the tenants out, clean it out, and then sell it. I'd probably just solicit at that point. So you're looking another probably sixty days before that, you know, cash converts.

Mike DeHaan: [9:53] At least.

Dylan Koch: [9:53] Yeah. At least. So I don't know. That's the route I'm taking on this one. And it's a good buyer, so hopefully we'll sell her more deals in the future.

Mike DeHaan: [10:00] Yeah. Perfect.

Dylan Koch: [10:01] So I went to this coffee shop after I showed these places today. And I was kind of just like dinking around in RE Simply. And I went into the dialer function. And I don't know if I've known this for a while and just ignored it, but there's an inbox part of the dialer. So my my lead manager's role, when she's done with her task, is she's supposed to cold call out the dialer. And so I went into the dialer, and I had over 1,300 unread messages, like past calls, past text. And I'm like, what is this? And I started, like, going through some of these replies, and I'm telling you I'm not on through, like, three pages, which is only 30 of the responses. And I bet there's $50 that we this didn't account for. Because some of the responses range from, obviously, take me off the list, stop, go fuck yourself, to like, can you stop a foreclosure? How much are you offering? Yes, I need to sell. I was going to list it. Like, this response is like that. And it's like, I'm sitting there. I'm like, oh my god. But these responses are two, three, four weeks old. Yeah. And so I'm just like, fuck. And so I'm starting to go through them all and, like, push them back and push them to my acquisitions, guys.

Dylan Koch: [11:08] So I'm hoping we can still turn some of these into deals. But for anyone that's out there that did the same mistake I did, which ultimately is my fault, use that as a learning experience.

Mike DeHaan: [11:16] Yeah. Well, I think it's the important lesson there is to make sure that you I mean, you're obviously dropping voice mails if people are responding like that. Because, like, when we've traditionally cold called, we haven't done that. So you're dropping voice mails. Are you sending texts? Or, like, why would they be responding with, like, how much?

Dylan Koch: [11:31] She does leave a voicemail.

Mike DeHaan: [11:32] Yeah. Okay. So I think that the big lesson is to make sure that at the end of every day, if you are giving some kind of like call to action or prompt, that you are actually checking for responses to that. This is my biggest knock with, like, every sort of, like, CRM or phone system. A lot of it's because the 10 DLC stuff that came around. It's really hard to get, like, reliable, like, responses or notifications, things on text messages, especially when it gets convoluted with everything else. Ari Simply is notoriously bad for that. I really like Ari Simply as a platform for the business, but the texting notifications and different things could definitely use a lot of work, especially in that regard.

Dylan Koch: [12:09] Well, that's the thing. There is no notification. It just shows up in the inbox like that.

Mike DeHaan: [12:12] There's no notification at all? Like, there's nothing that goes out?

Dylan Koch: [12:15] No. Like, even the bell icon that's all right, there's nothing.

Mike DeHaan: [12:18] Nice. That sucks.

Dylan Koch: [12:19] Yeah. You just have to go into the dialer and assume and then go through. And so even if you know you called the same 50 people, there's not even a good way to filter through that by going when they called you back. So that like, yes, the needs work, but still.

Mike DeHaan: [12:31] They're like the perfect example of a software company that was just like just grasping at new stuff to try and get people interested.

Dylan Koch: [12:41] To make it an all in one CRM. That's what they want.

Mike DeHaan: [12:43] Yeah. Instead of just getting really good at, like, one thing. Because they've had so much dumb shit they've done over the years. They've had that. They've had, like, the driving for dollars thing. Like, nobody fucking uses that. Right? And then they're they're trying to get into, like, the data game, but it's, like, so limited. But it, kinda tries to force you to use some of, like, their data. I'm like, just don't. Just be like a a Kanban CRM system. Keep the price cheaper, like and then integrate with other companies. It'll be way better.

Dylan Koch: [13:07] Remember when they tried to charge, like, a thousand dollars a line for blue text messages or something dumb?

Mike DeHaan: [13:13] I think they can still do that if you want

Dylan Koch: [13:14] I'm not doing that.

Mike DeHaan: [13:16] You just gotta be one of the smooth brains that think that that makes that much of a difference. Like, it doesn't make any sense. But I don't know. There's always people that are like, oh, you can absolutely get better response rates with that. That just tells me that you kind of suck at what you're doing. Like, if you really think that that's going to be the game changer in your business is having blue text boxes.

Dylan Koch: [13:32] The one thing in the in the dialer, though, is you can see on one of the columns of what like lists or tag they are. And a lot of them are like, you know, foreclosures or stuff like that, because we cold call that list a lot. Yeah. And so I guess I'll report back on how many of these I can end up saving or how many probably by this point are going to go to somebody else because they've been so delayed on getting back to them.

Mike DeHaan: [13:53] For sure. But well, you know, you live and you learn, but it's at least you won't do that again in the future, and there's plenty of people in Cincinnati.

Dylan Koch: [14:00] Yeah. That's true. Yeah. And more of a hurt coming.

Mike DeHaan: [14:03] Yeah. How are doing over there, Dan? Mister Silent Sniffles.

Dan Austin: [14:06] No. I don't give a shit about blue text messages texting at all because Mike and I are out of the game, so we don't really care if he's gonna lose Goddamn. Yeah. I saw I just saw your message.

Mike DeHaan: [14:17] I wasn't sure if you wanna talk about that today. Yeah. We officially last I just was it last week? Yeah. Last Thursday, we officially stepped out of our home buying company.

Dan Austin: [14:26] Well, just tell people the honest truth. That's big news.

Mike DeHaan: [14:29] That is big news. I know Dan just fucking threw that out there. I was like, I feel like we should have a have a conversation about that, but that's fine. You know, we we sort of have built this platform around our wholesaling and flipping business, our backyard home buyers business. And then last Thursday was the day before my wife was supposed to have our kid. I we were kind of looking at schedule changes and kind of the way everything was going. And we had a decent lull in that business just because we had deals closing out and we had just accepted offers on some flips and stuff that we had. And we decided to just pull the cord and and move on mostly because our lending business has been doing so well, and that's taken so much of our time. Like, that business has, like, x since the beginning of this year now at this point. And it just no longer made sense for the, I would say, the effort and the financial risk that existed there when we can do our our lending stuff and have significantly less risk, less overhead, more opportunity, and just the momentum was was moving that way.

Dan Austin: [15:28] The context of that too is is when Mike and I scaled down our national brand. As you know, Dylan, we brought on partners to run the day to day for us here in Spokane. Mhmm. And it was quite evident, know, Mike and I, when Mike talks about financial risks, we are the financial benefactor of that situation. And so, you know, taking some asymmetrical risks of our finances and we're not, you know, a 100% control of it because we do have partners. And I think the timing was really good with our lending business scaling up. And the reason why we took on partners was so we could scale up the lending business and keep doing that. And it worked out great actually, as far as timing goes.

Mike DeHaan: [16:05] Yeah. Well, I think one of the big lessons that we learned as well with that, so we had a multi partner, there's actually four partners in this thing. And the challenge with that comes when you have partners that come from a different background, different sort of like levels of entrepreneur and leadership experience. And they very much came from a environment where they were within the business more and hustling a little bit more. Whereas, like, we've been in, like, the manager role for years and years. And so that's a very hard dynamic to run with because, like, we just weren't, like, aligned on a lot of stuff. And their kind of goals with the business were more around a lifestyle business. Whereas for us, it kinda came down to, like, why is this taking any of our time and requiring us to get loans and buy flips and do stuff where we could potentially lose or spend money on marketing where we're not working it appropriately, it's going to be a waste. And when they wanted to have like the lifestyle piece of it, you know? But also too, like, because so many people, you don't necessarily have like the resources, just like hire staff to to fill in a lot of the spots. And so there would be gaps in, like, acquisitions and the dispo and the project management stuff that just didn't really make sense. It was kind of out of our control. Whereas, you know, there was a a difference in what the outcome was gonna be. So, yeah, we just decided to to pull the plug. So, yeah, we are officially out of the home buying game actually as of tomorrow, October 3.

Dan Austin: [17:24] Yeah, man.

Dylan Koch: [17:25] So what happens if some of these mailers come in that you probably have already sent out?

Mike DeHaan: [17:29] That's a great question. And so we're ironing out those details. Our Blue Spam right now is that so the basically, the next six months, any stuff that we've sent out previously, we have it all set up for tracking through ours. Simply, if it comes through, that they closed, Dan and I are gonna make 20% of the revenue on that. And so that will go up for the next six months. After that, it's fair game. You know? Go forward into the spring. If somebody calls from something that went out, like, this past summer and now it's eight months old. Cool. They get it. That's fine. So we'll basically be the benefactor there. Dan and I are also we spent a hell of a lot of time building out the collecting keys brand and the Google reviews and everything else with that prior to partnering with them. And so we're actually selling them that brand as part of the split. So they're gonna be

Dan Austin: [18:16] The Backyard Homebuyers brand.

Mike DeHaan: [18:17] Yeah. Yeah. Buying the Backyard Homebuyers brand and everything that kinda comes with that, so the full infrastructure and everything. And then, yeah, like, the deals that we have in progress, will just split our standard 25 across the board. But all the stuff that they close after this coming Friday, they'll get the lion's share of, which is fair.

Dan Austin: [18:33] Moral of the story, Mike and I get asked a lot. Like, how are you guys such good partners? How do you do this? We're not partners. Mike and I are good partners, but we've had a lot of partners over the years like different. We've tried it all. And not that not that this was a bad partnership, you know, with our they're they're our friends before and after and they they'll continue to be. I will say just because I'm a dick is there's definitely a massive misalignment in work ethic. And so I think that creates issues. Mhmm. But other than that, it's just like, I don't know. We somehow have figured out how to work really well together. But this was like our what fifth or sixth partner group of people.

Mike DeHaan: [19:07] Yeah. And various things. And various things. We've a lot. Yeah. Which is funny because like in hindsight, we never really needed that. I think what it was we were typically looking for bringing on partners, there was people that had a skill that we didn't have, but it wasn't a venture where we didn't quite have the resources to hire like an a player yet. And so you try to bring someone on to be like a partner for that role, but it just has never worked out very well. You know, and I think one of the reasons you and me work out is not long term.

Dan Austin: [19:36] Yeah. Just not long term. It's like we like in this one, it's a we financially gained and benefited from the previous one where we had a couple of partners with our cold calling company when we and we sold that. We financially benefited. It's like, yes, to a certain point. And then I think what you realize or what we've realized is like, is the scalability of what we want, like the effort that we're gonna put into this worth it. Right? Because if you bring on partners, the ideas is that they're going to take on the lion's share of that. You would bring on a partner that's an expert in that area, so they could take on that. And then if they can't reach, you know, the aspirations of the business, then it's like, okay, maybe it's time to to cut ties and, know, take our gains now before they become losses.

Mike DeHaan: [20:15] I would say, like, the big lesson for people is anyone you're looking to partner with, make sure that you're on, like, the same financial playing field and that you guys are in a similar financial position because that does cause issues if certain people are more financially stable than others. Because, like, what happens is if you have people that, like, need draws from the business, say, when other people don't, that does take away from the ability for the business to grow, which is very challenging. That's one of the reasons, honestly, that our lending business has done so well this year is Dan and I, we did not take any personal pay from that company since we started it well over a year ago until this last month in September. That was the first time we ever took money from that business. So we've been working on it essentially for free. We'll collect interest on our money, but that's not really like a ton. That's more of like an investment, but points and fees and everything all rolled back into it. So the first time we've made money on it in probably sixteen to seventeen months to work for free for a year and a half. And then also make sure that your your visions and goals for what you're trying to do are actually aligned. You know?

Mike DeHaan: [21:13] And if someone has things in their schedule and their day and, like, their sort of ideal life that just doesn't necessarily align with yours, it's always very easy when you're starting out to be like, oh, yeah. That'll be fine. We can compromise on that. Just don't do it. Like, if you're not, like, 100% aligned with what things are gonna look like, just don't even bother because it will end up causing issues down the line. You know? And that can be you guys both wanna be able to all your partners wanna be able to have, like, a flexible schedule where you can play golf, travel, do whatever to your family. That's fine. You know? Or you wanna all be grinding. And that's like kind of the expectation is you're gonna be just like working super hard. Just make sure that everyone's at least on the same wavelength with that. That'll be really, really huge.

Dylan Koch: [21:52] Yeah. I mean, I've had two failed partnerships, and it's kind of the same thing that you guys were talking about. And you can start aligned, but then it's it's kinda when you you can grow out of that alignment. Mhmm. And that that I think was happened to me both times.

Mike DeHaan: [22:05] If you are a real estate wholesaler and flipper and you want to be around other people that are looking to grow and expand your businesses in this ever changing economy, then you need to check out our scale community. Go to collectingkeys.com/scale, and you can get all the details there. But long story short, we are a small tight knit little group of serious real estate entrepreneurs that are looking to really make massive income and not just passive income to this ever changing economy. So if real estate wholesaling flipping is kinda your thing, go to collectingkeys.com/scale. You can book a call with me in there if you want. I'd love to see if you'd be a good fit. I think that's a really valid point, Dylan, is partnerships, think, very rarely go on forever. You know? And it is okay for you to outgrow partners, for you to outgrow staff members. There's a I think it's a Leila Hermozi or Alex, one of them. That's like, the person that gets you to 1,000,000 probably isn't the person that gets you to 10. Right? And the person that gets you to 10 is definitely not the person that gets to a 100. And that's a really important thing to realize. Right? Is it gets very challenging because you develop these relationships. You kinda go through stuff together. But at some point, you will eventually reach a position where it just doesn't make sense anymore. I know it's Alex. He has this story he tells a while back.

Mike DeHaan: [23:21] He goes about one of his, like, early early partners. And everyone's like, oh, yeah. It's fine. You know, you'll get whatever the business. Like, I won't really care because I make so much money. He's like, yeah. You say you don't really care until you're writing them a $500,000 check every month for doing fucking nothing.

Dylan Koch: [23:33] Yep. I'm like, yep. Yep. Percent. But it can't be purely monetary either. It can like, it Because can't once you guys actually get the money, then we could all probably not work as hard as we do. Right? Like, from a financial standpoint, but we still do it. There's gotta be some love of the game in that. Like, and I

Mike DeHaan: [23:52] Of course.

Dylan Koch: [23:52] I don't know. I think once people, like, are money hungry, then they get the money, then they're not hungry anymore.

Mike DeHaan: [23:57] Yeah. And everyone's, like, threshold for that is different. Yep. And with some people, they reach that and they're good. Whereas I would say if you love the game, like you said, they're dumb. When you reach that, you wanna get better at it. Because, like, I could very realistically not work for the next, like, very long time and be fine. But I love it. You know? And that's one of the reasons Dan and I, we've chatted at this a lot. And it's like, one of the reasons we get along so well is that, honestly, we don't have like a ton of hobbies that are like time consuming. Right? And so what do we do with a lot of our time if we're not like, you know, doing sort of family stuff is we're working. You know, we're striving to be better and do stuff. And we that's what we like to do. You know? And there's a lot of people that just aren't like that, and that's fine. They might enjoy working, but it's not something they spend all their free time doing. Whereas, like, I do. Like, my my hobbies these days are working out, which takes me forty five minutes to an hour a day. I play pickleball once a week, and I like to play disc golf when the weather's nice. And then, like, know, I'll go on, like, a ski trip once a year. Like, that's it. Like and then I like to travel. But the thing with the traveling stuff is, you know, Dan's been my partner as I've done trips all around the world.

Mike DeHaan: [25:04] I am very, very rarely disconnected when I'm traveling. You know, I will be on a bus in fucking Thailand answering Slack messages because that is what I like to do. That is how I'm passing the time while I'm traveling through the middle of nowhere in transit.

Dylan Koch: [25:17] I wanna look at the poverty around you.

Dan Austin: [25:20] Yeah. It's honestly ruined me for other people that when you're trying to do business with them, they're like, well, sorry. I'm traveling. I can't do anything. I'm like, that's not true. I know Mike was in Africa signing documents on properties that we were selling. Like I'm sure you could figure it out. The internet Literally. The internet exists everywhere.

Mike DeHaan: [25:35] Yeah. I

Dan Austin: [25:36] know. I would add to this conversation too because another thing Mike and I have talked about in relation to to like the hobbies and stuff is, and you see it a lot in Go Bunnings too, I'm sure Dylan, is people get like this over like, over obsession on like, I have children, I need to never work. And I need to spend every waking moment with my children to be the best dad ever. And like do all these things outside of I don't know what it is, like just outside of the ordinary that I think gets too extreme. And with that, their business suffers and then they they keep repeating these mantras like, well, what else are we doing this for? This is why we do these things. It's like, absolutely.

Dylan Koch: [26:13] My un a popular opinion with that, Dan, is that there is it's a cop out statement for their lack of Yeah. Accomplishments.

Dan Austin: [26:19] There you go.

Dylan Koch: [26:20] Like

Mike DeHaan: [26:20] 100%. I so firmly agree with that too. You know? And, like, there are so many successful people that are fathers. And I and I would say that there's definitely a level where you have to give and take, but that level is realistically not achievable for those people. Like, those are like the Elon Musk. Right? Like, the people or the people that have, like, $100,000,000 companies. They're CEOs, and they're traveling on their jet everywhere because that's what they gotta do because they're very corporate. But if you're running like a standard business that's doing 1 to $5,000,000 a year, which is very achievable for most people, you can have so much balance in that. Like, honestly, it's really not hard. It just means that you're a poor worker. You're a poor manager. You don't know how to hire. You don't actually know how to be an entrepreneur, which is fine. But, like, don't pretend like it's because you need to be present for your kids or that's why you're doing it.

Dan Austin: [27:07] Don't unselfishly put that on your kids.

Dylan Koch: [27:09] Yeah. Of course. And plus your kids should see you work. They should see you be diligent. They should see you be productive. Mhmm. I could go on my soapbox all day about that.

Mike DeHaan: [27:17] Totally do. Like, they they need to understand that, yes, sometimes you do have to make sacrifices to go and be productive. And that's okay. That is a part of life.

Dylan Koch: [27:28] Not to change too quickly. When do you guys start? How long were you in the home buying business, off market business?

Mike DeHaan: [27:33] So it's gonna be almost exactly so we started in 2019 in November. This time? So right now it's October 2025, almost exactly six years.

Dylan Koch: [27:43] I mean, that's a long time in the off market space. It really is.

Mike DeHaan: [27:45] Totally. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I'll get our final, like, deal counts. That actually would be interesting to look back at, what our total, like, stats. I wonder if you can do, like, lifelong KPIs, Dan. And we we've got we've jumped across a couple different systems. That would be tough. That would actually be really interesting. Let's see if I can piece that together.

Dylan Koch: [28:00] That's why you track everything in Excel sheet. Right.

Dan Austin: [28:02] Yeah. Mike and I, not only have we done it six years, we've done a lot in that. It's like I feel like our wholesaling years are like dog years, know. I feel like we've done like fifty years worth of stuff just because we've tried so many different things. Like gone after, tried to scale it this way, scale it that way, this partner, that partner, gone nationwide, started cold calling texting company. You know, we just did so many things. And they all worked out actually pretty reasonably well.

Dylan Koch: [28:26] Well, the thing for entrepreneurship and what I if I'm gonna pat you guys on the back, it's one, the work ethic that we talked about. Mhmm. But two, it's resourcefulness. Just being like, can figure this out. And if that's a trait you need to have in this business, not, oh, I know how to do it.

Mike DeHaan: [28:39] Totally. And when you're early on in any endeavor, basically just saying yes all the time is such an important thing. Whether it's yes to a seller appointment, whether it's yes to answering a phone call, whether it's just to meeting a new buyer for coffee or they're, you know, you're making an offer. I think so many people, they get focused on trying to, like, optimize or, like, having a calendar or schedule all these different things early on. It doesn't make any sense. And, like, this is always something, like, with a handful of the scale of people that we've come through that have been, like, new new. And they're like, oh, well, I was gonna go walk to that.

Dylan Koch: [29:09] I just

Mike DeHaan: [29:09] don't know if it's worth it. I don't think that they're gonna accept the offer that I need to be at. Like, well, how many houses have you walked so far? Two? Then the answer is yes. You should go walk the house just to get your reps in. You know? Or just like like answer the phone calls. People will be like, man, that person called back. They were angry. I don't think I'm gonna call them back.

Dylan Koch: [29:25] I'm like, you have to call them back. Yeah. Call them back and then insult them with your offer. Of course.

Mike DeHaan: [29:30] Like, that that's the game. Right? And, no, it's like that with every business. You know? Even like with our our lending and stuff, we've learned so many lessons with that. Like, well, do you lend on this? I go, sure. Let's take a look at it. And then we get into them like, actually, no. We're not gonna do that. Changed my mind. But we didn't even get the opportunity to analyze it and have a discussion and have an educational experience if we would have said no right off the bat. And I think that one of the problems when it comes to like business advice and like business media news is there's so many people that are, like, very seasoned entrepreneurs or very successful that have this mental masturbation sort of data or, like, like, quotes or whatever that they pass down through their audience that isn't applicable to 95% of people. So much stuff around, like, efficiency and, like, you know, the best entrepreneurs say no to everything that doesn't matter and all this kind of stuff. That doesn't fucking mean anything.

Dylan Koch: [30:21] It's like, know your dollar per hour is like, bro, your dollar per hour is fucking nothing. You don't have to pay this

Mike DeHaan: [30:25] Yeah. Right? Yeah. And just just because you sold, like, one deal one time and made, like, $5 in thirty minutes, that doesn't mean that your dollar per hour is now $10,000. Right? The time to get to that was very, very significant.

Dylan Koch: [30:39] I guess that's a catch 22. By the time you're a big enough influencer to have an audience, you're probably too big for the people you're trying to resonate with that are at the beginning. I never even, like, would have thought about that. But

Mike DeHaan: [30:48] Of course. Well, I think that's where a lot of people, like, sell out and kinda lose their way. And that's also why you should be extremely skeptical of people that continue to pander to that newbie over and over and over and over again. It's because eventually they're going to, like, if they are successful, they will lose touch with those people, at least they should. And if they're not very successful and they're staying on there, you probably don't wanna learn from them anyway. Because I was just

Dylan Koch: [31:10] gonna transition to Tai Lopez. No. Well, no. That's good. That's good. Yeah. But I still subscribe to the Bigger Podcast Podcast, even though I haven't listened to an episode, I don't know how long. But here's the title from the latest one. You guys like this. How to invest in real estate on lower income 50,000 or less. And my initial thought is fucking don't.

Mike DeHaan: [31:27] Don't do it. Right? God.

Dylan Koch: [31:30] Like, I didn't listen to podcasts, I don't know what I don't know what they said. But, like

Mike DeHaan: [31:34] What bullshit? What what do you think that they're pitching in that? I think it's it's either gonna be an FHA loan house hack into a multifamily, or it's gonna be like, you gotta do, like, a co living or, like, some bullshit that whatever's the fucking buzzword.

Dylan Koch: [31:47] There has to be the, like, house hacking thing. You have no discretionary income to do anything else, so I don't know.

Mike DeHaan: [31:52] I don't know. There's so many, like, little get rich like, I'm gonna say get rich quick things. Like, these little, I don't know, scammy things they're trying to do like that to get him for less or have higher cash for the co living one's so bad. Our good friend, he's really into co living thing right now. He's doing great with it. He likes it. Dude, I just can't get behind this. He literally posted a Instagram photo the other day, and he's like, here's this new coliving property that we dropped. And he's like, ample parking, and he had a sky view. And it's in, a cul de sac, and he, like, has a little drawing of all the cars going all around the house, all around the cul de sac, around the block. I'm like, fuck that, dude. You're fucking ruining that neighborhood for everyone there. Like, why?

Dylan Koch: [32:28] Why would you do that? I give him shit about it all the time.

Dan Austin: [32:31] Dylan, let me ask you this. What are the economics on this? Is he cash flowing on a thousand bucks a month and ruining a neighborhood?

Dylan Koch: [32:37] I mean, maybe. I mean, according to him, the cash flow is great. And I believe him. Like, Eric's not dumb. Like, knows he's smart. But like No.

Mike DeHaan: [32:43] He's such a smart guy.

Dan Austin: [32:44] Yeah. Is it enough to bring a child molester into the cul de sac where there's other kids living there?

Dylan Koch: [32:48] I mean, my answer is no. But that's a subjective That's

Mike DeHaan: [32:51] subjective. Such a a great philosophical question. You know? How much cash flow to you is worth it to make life worse for everyone else around your property? Yeah. I don't like that. You know? That can be section eight. That can be, like, having these co living things. It can be like you're doing the so the sober living.

Dylan Koch: [33:09] That's what all the local people say about Airbnb. Totally, dude.

Mike DeHaan: [33:12] Yeah. Airbnb, like, yeah, the the Oxford houses. Yeah. I take a bunch of meth heads. Oh, but they're clean. No. They're not fucking clean. You're just not catching them getting high. Come on. They're still shooting up around the kids that are riding bikes.

Dan Austin: [33:24] The risk is too high. The risk is too high.

Dylan Koch: [33:26] Well, and like from the philosophical standpoint, sure, we can make that argument. But two, all your business, like your cash flowing machine could change with the stroke of a pen by somebody.

Mike DeHaan: [33:36] Of course.

Dylan Koch: [33:37] And so like, just make it a traditional rental. Everyone's still gonna need a place to live. Like, that's not going away. I don't think tech is gonna you know, these three d printed homes or the ones that you buy and, like, fold up and then it's a house. I don't know what it is anymore, but I don't think that's happening. Full foldable. Completely portable.

Mike DeHaan: [33:54] I when I go camping, just bring my whole house with me. I just

Dan Austin: [33:57] fold it up.

Mike DeHaan: [33:58] Yeah. Exactly. Someone can do that. That would be a a big idea. Like, you buy one house in your life. It's like an RV, but it's like a real house. And so then when you wanna move to, like, your next a new town, you just, like, fold it up and, like, bring it with you.

Dylan Koch: [34:10] I'm literally thinking, like, Harry Potter shit

Mike DeHaan: [34:12] right now. Like That's that's what I would imagine. Yeah. You, like, press a button. It's, like, electric blinds or something. You know? It just kinda, like, shrinks down.

Dylan Koch: [34:19] I guess transitioning to the lending business. I know that you guys are doing this full time now. So is there a I guess with winding down the old business, does your objectives for the lending business now grow? Like or does that remain unchanged?

Mike DeHaan: [34:32] I mean, it grows for sure. But like, I'm gonna say, like, the objectives were already there. The decision to step away from backyard homebuyers was driven by the momentum and the goals that we have with the lending business. Like, honestly, I would say the biggest sort of thing, like a confidence booster comes from when we went to this this big conference in Newport Beach at the end of August. And we met like all the who's who's in the lending world. You know? Bigs names were there, all the CEOs, everything. We met a lot of these people, and we're like, there's no reason we can't be these people. There's dudes like us. And especially since we have, like, a marketing and sales background, we already have a huge step up on a lot of them just because they don't understand that. Right? And a lot of them just come from this position where they kinda just throw money at everything, and then it works because they're rich. And if you do throw enough money at stuff, it does produce a return. But we're bringing, like, hustle and working on optimizing our systems and, like, doing things in a way that will allow us to be significantly more efficient with a much smaller team. And already, we've started up with some of these different funds and and different things with the connections that we made down there.

Mike DeHaan: [35:38] I mean, I called them yesterday, they're like, yeah. You've, like, in the last thirty days, you've become, like, our biggest loan provider. Right? Just like it's been thirty days, and we've done that just because we know how to find business, and we have connections, and we have a unique skill set that doesn't exist in the industry. And so I think that it's very possible that in the next eighteen months, we do more revenue in that business than we did in our wholesaling flipping business combined over the previous six years. Like, seriously.

Dylan Koch: [36:07] Wow. That's a big number. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [36:09] Yeah. The momentum's there. The industry's there. It's a very challenging industry, would say, to get into if you don't have experience. We've been able to kinda cut the line just because we do have a track record that a lot of these hedge funds like with the the brand and everything that we've done up to this point?

Dan Austin: [36:27] I think that you you touched on it, Mike, and I'll just summarize the competitive edge we have is there is no hustle in this business in the private lending space. It's literally No. Rich dudes or rich hedge fund managers that make a connection with one person to do their work. And that person likes to wear shiny shoes and is like, I'm a private lender. I have a $100,000,000,000 fund behind me. I mean, you just bump into there's so many people like that. I mean, that is the vast majority of the industry. So having a little bit of hustle and then understanding the borrower's perspective, which most of them don't because they're coming from the finance side as opposed to the flipper side, which helps. Understanding what our client wants. So it's just like, oh, simple.

Mike DeHaan: [37:04] And it's fun. Like for us too, it's a it's a fun business just because we, I don't know. We've been a borrower so many times that we know the stuff that needs to be better. And so it's very easy for us to, I would say, identify some of the problems these other companies have and just we can't promise we won't necessarily have those, but we can damn. We'll try to improve them on our end. Right? So

Dylan Koch: [37:26] Well, from the even on the end of that, like, I just got my first loan service through, like, you know, the person who ends up servicing the loan. It was pretty seamless process. I like the platform. I like the UI.

Mike DeHaan: [37:36] Cool. Yeah. We're gonna keep on optimizing that. So but, yeah, that was kind of like our news for for the month, I guess. But, yeah, I'll I'll see if I can get our our lifetime KPIs together for next week. That would actually be pretty interesting to go over. But, yeah, doesn't affect anything necessarily for collecting keys or the podcasting like that. It's funny. I've had several people actually ask me that since this has always been a wholesaling and flipping focused show. But we I mean, we've been slowly moving towards just, general real estate anyways with this for the last, like, year. So, yeah, still a little bit different focus for us. Mhmm.

Dylan Koch: [38:08] Well, cool, guys. I'm I gotta head to this property, so let's wrap it up and Cool.

Mike DeHaan: [38:12] We go. Good luck. Awesome. Sounds good. Alright, everybody. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you guys next week. See you. 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.