What is Financial Freedom Anyways?

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] Hey guys, before the show, I wanted to take a second to talk to you about our instant investor program. The instant investor program is our group coaching program. And it is an eight week program with the goal being to have you talking to motivated sellers within the first two weeks. Believe it or not, you don't have to be the person that's out there overpaying for investment properties and competing with everybody else on the MLS. You also don't have to be one of those investors that flushes 1000s of dollars down the toilet on ineffective marketing methods. To talk to motivated sellers on regular basis, all you need is an effective marketing system. And we will give you the system that we have been using for the last two years, as well as a weekly call, where you can sit in with us and other investors and just be a part of a group discussion while everyone works to optimize and grow their businesses. At the end of the day, our goal is to create a like minded community of people who not only are trying to grow as real estate investors, but as people and as business owners, so they can go and take the knowledge they learned from us and use that to change their lives just like Dan

Mike DeHaan: [1:05] and I have been able to do.

Mike DeHaan: [1:06] So the question I have for you is, do you really want to keep sort of standing by and waiting for these opportunities to land in your lap? Or do you want to get started right now? And if you're ready to jump in and start changing your life for the better, go to instantinvestorprogram.com and book a call with me, and we can hop on a call and see if the program's right

Mike DeHaan: [1:24] for you.

Speaker 3: [1:26] Welcome to the collecting keys real estate investing podcast with your host, Mike DeHaan and Dan Austin. From wins, losses, horror stories, and tactics for optimizing your business, Mike and Dan take a real uncensored deep dive into the ins and outs of running a full time real estate investment and wholesaling business.

Mike DeHaan: [1:49] What's going on, everybody? Welcome to episode 23 of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast. We're on the cusp of a lot of things right now, Dan. I can feel it.

Dan Austin: [1:59] Yeah. It's good timing.

Mike DeHaan: [2:00] I like I I felt like you've saying this every week, but we're, like, literally on the cusp now because we've started putting some things in motion.

Dan Austin: [2:07] We've been saying it every week for two years. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [2:10] Right. You're you're not wrong. It's like, oh, I feel like we're about to start having some legit success from this, but I will

Dan Austin: [2:17] I will say I will say it's it's not that we've ever not done good. Well, I'm not gonna even go there, but like, it's just, you know, all the pops haven't been as big, but there's a steady growth. And we've had some big pops, but not like massive pops. And I think we're feels massive.

Mike DeHaan: [2:32] It it does. Yeah. I mean, any say that, but I mean, we've had some big

Dan Austin: [2:36] big Oh, we have.

Mike DeHaan: [2:37] Sort of mixed in there. You should but usually, they're like the unicorn deals that are larger than you expect them to be. It's funny. We always saying that. And I think that's also why it's super important though to be tracking your your numbers and everything because it's easy to be saying that all the time. And, you know, we can joke that we're always saying that because it always feels like that. But if you track everything, you can look back and say, oh, actually, there has been some success there. You know? It hasn't just all been smooth.

Dan Austin: [3:02] There's been a lot of there's been a lot of great success. Think you and I just have larger visions. And so we're always looking for that larger vision to come to fruition. And it's like this it's happened quite quickly, but it's also still when you're impatient is not fast enough.

Mike DeHaan: [3:16] Totally. Yeah. Well, when also too what happens I think this is really common in real estate space, especially if you've been in it for this last little while where, you know, if you bought property in the last, like, four years, you're doing pretty freaking awesome right now. You know, everyone is, on top of the world that's been accumulating, especially if you've bought in volume. But as you sort of reach those initial goals significantly quicker than you realize, that becomes like a moving target. And it's like, it's easier to say, I'm going to the next level or the next level or the next level. And at some point, this is something that I think about a lot is what does enough sort of, like, look like. Right? You know, not that I would say we're there at all because, I mean, we're not living, like, extremely comfortably off of our business without having to work a lot. Like, we definitely have created a job right now instead of, like, a business that prints money, which is fine. But, you know, I I look at some of these people, especially in the GoBundance community and the entrepreneurship community, some of that sort of stuff, who they I don't wanna say they, like, settle, but they get themselves to a point where they're just like, this is good. This is what I need. And that slightly fascinates me because I'm always like, aren't you bored? Like, are you, like, are you just, like, balling that hard that you can entertain yourself endlessly with stuff without necessarily needing to grow? But I I know I've that's something that ever since I got into the whole financial freedom, like, fire movement, you know, way back when, like, the goal was always, oh, I'm gonna make $4,000 a month, and then that's, like, gonna cover my expenses and I can just retire or whatever.

Mike DeHaan: [4:51] But then once you reach that surprisingly quickly, it's like, what what the hell are gonna do with that time? I'm not gonna sit around and play video games all day.

Dan Austin: [4:58] Right. Exactly. You get too bored too quickly, and you need you need a mountain to to climb. Right? Maybe, you know, you have you go through different seasons in life, and so maybe that's when you go be a professional bodybuilder or whatever you're into. I know you like to work out. So, like, you know?

Mike DeHaan: [5:13] Yeah. I mean, was that always has been one of my goals as, like, a passion project is, you know, I wanna get wealthy enough that I can go and I can open, like, a gym and, like, a fitness business and not really care if it's successful and just, like, have it be, like, my passion project. Right? Because I love that. But I also, you know, I I used to work in that a little bit on, like, the side, and I've studied the business a lot. And when I originally quit my job, my goal was to kinda go into that business, you know. And as I learned about it, I realized how incredibly difficult it is to make it in that business unless you're like an extreme personality or you're like an extreme level of athlete. You're extremely gifted. And I'm not necessarily that person, especially on that side of it. Like, no one's gonna look at me and be like, I wanna be exactly like that guy.

Dan Austin: [6:00] You're you're not the you're you're kinda like liver king, dude. You resemble that guy. Throw out a big beard and, like, just get these abs that are bigger than my biceps. I need another

Mike DeHaan: [6:09] ten years of juicing to get to that level.

Dan Austin: [6:12] Yeah. He does juice carrots, doesn't

Mike DeHaan: [6:14] he? Yeah. I don't think he does because all he eats is is raw. Yeah. Like, raw animal Testicles

Dan Austin: [6:19] and and and

Mike DeHaan: [6:20] liver. Yeah. He's weird. Yeah. You know, the point being, I guess you get to a certain level that you can have those passion projects. That's fine. But, I mean, I I guess, I don't know. Does your perspective on that differ since you have a kid and another one on the way? Because, like, obviously, for me, it's just me and my wife right now. So I would definitely get bored, especially because, you know, she likes to work. Like, we're gonna just, like, go travel. Am I gonna go do the live in a van down by the river thing, which is so No. Yeah. Just fascinating with millennials right now.

Dan Austin: [6:52] Yeah. I I think I I well, I just know my personality. I would still need that mountain to climb. I would need something to work towards and it wouldn't just be, like, I don't know, like getting really good at a hobby, like that just would not interest me. Because like I have a lot of hobbies and like I get good enough at them and like I don't really need to be the pinnacle of that hobby. I just, you know, like I excel and I do good. I'm like, new hobby or something like that. Sometimes I wish I had that one thing that I'm like, oh man, I just love doing that every single day. But I know within like three or four years of starting a hobby, I'm gonna be, I'll

Mike DeHaan: [7:23] still do it. Right? Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [7:24] Like mountain biking is a good example. Like, don't do it. Like, used to do it all the time. And now I'm just like, I love doing it, but I'm like, I don't have to do it. But I think for me, yeah, it would it would definitely be taking the opportunity to just spend more time with my family and kids and all that sort of stuff because you only get so many years and it's not eighteen. It's not thirty years with your kids. It's like, four or five where you get there, like, where the they're the like, my daughter right now in this world loves me and cares about me more than anybody. I mean, because that's all she knows. Right? Like, you never you don't get that unconditional love even from your spouse. Right? Like, it it exists, but when you have kids, it's different. And so you might as well take the opportunity to cherish that. So that's probably what I would I would do. Spend more time doing that stuff and having more adventures with them. So

Mike DeHaan: [8:09] Yeah. For sure. But even then, you said it right there. Right? It's only four to five years. But I guess, you know, you could technically pause stuff for four to five years and then Yeah. Start something up again if you're in a good financial spot at that point.

Dan Austin: [8:21] Yeah. And I wouldn't pause anything. It would just be that I would organize it in a way that I could I could have it suitable to my lifestyle. Yeah. You know, as as opposed to what you think about in your typical American, which is go to work for spend forty to anywhere between probably forty and sixty hours a week focused on your work as a W two employee, and then get some level of sleep in there. And then those two or three hours a day with your family, and then maybe on the weekends, you rush to do things with your family because you have, you know, only so many hours in a week. That's kind of the model that I think is just kind of silly. It kind of sucks.

Mike DeHaan: [8:57] Yeah. It definitely does. I mean, it and especially these days because people end up in so many ultimatums with weird things like, oh, I'm gonna pay for childcare, but the childcare is gonna be so freaking expensive. I might as well not even work. Like, one of the parents might as well not even work anymore because it comes out to scratch zero. It's, you know, a detriment to the kid's development at that point. But yeah. I mean, I think if you can be in a place where, you know, financially and work life balance wise that you can do that and you'll still be getting further ahead financially without having to sacrifice everything, I think that's kind of the golden goose for a lot of people. But still, I mean, like you put it, you gotta have that mountain to climb though. Like, on that, that's kinda like a I don't know. Maybe this is my ignorant if you're not having kids. This feels to me like walking in a prairie. You know? It's like it's like, sure. It's beautiful, but you're not actually gonna like, you know, you can enjoy it for the moment, but then it's not gonna, like, necessarily elevate you. I don't know. Maybe that could it may make me sound super ignorant. I'm also I'm very close with, like, my direct family, but I didn't necessarily grow up in, a kid's family, you know, where everything was around the kids. Like, when I was growing up, my parents, we kinda did stuff to accompany them and what they were doing. Like, they they did a lot of stuff for us, you know, like supporting us doing sports and activities and those sort of things.

Mike DeHaan: [10:12] But a lot of the time it was like, oh, hey. They wanna go to travel somewhere? If it doesn't make sense for the kids, then kids are staying home with a nanny, and they would go for, like, two to three weeks at a time and, like, just do stuff. Right? Or even on, like, a regular basis. Like, we spent a lot of time with a childcare person. And, you know, I think there's a lot to that. Like, my parents were in a position they could afford that. But also too, I think back then it wasn't nearly as expensive as it is now Right. To do things like that. Like, I mean, I remember our nanny would come and stay with us, and she, had a job, you know, and we would go to school, and then she would just come in, you know, pick us up after school and was basically like our parent.

Dan Austin: [10:47] So you

Mike DeHaan: [10:48] I don't even know what compensation and stuff looked like for that. But

Dan Austin: [10:51] Yeah. Well, it's definitely probably easier as as you get your kids get older to do stuff like that too. I don't think you should at all, like, give up your life because there are some people that take it extreme where they give up their life for their kids. And I think I don't think it's like a bad thing. But then I think it sets poor expectations for your kids and also sets poor expectations for you later in life of like, what do you do now? Mhmm. Like, you gave everything. Like, you should sacrifice all that sort of stuff is good for your family, but you should still also have a good relationship with your spouse and not, like, have your relationship as your kids as a conduit for a relationship to your spouse, which you see a lot. And it's hard not to do that because kids take a lot of time. And you also, you know, shouldn't just only devote everything to that and not have some personal, like, got to grow the other gardens in your life. Right? For you personally, you got to have hobbies and all these sorts of things for you that are only you that is not necessarily involving other people.

Mike DeHaan: [11:43] For sure. And I think that is one of the most misunderstood and untalked about things in the entire space is that self development and being comfortable doing things for yourself in almost a slightly selfish way. You know, because you see that everywhere people are doing all these things for their family and all that sort of stuff, which is awesome. But at the same time, that doesn't lead to a healthy individual situation. You know, we're all individual beings at the end of the day. We all have our own wants and needs. And even if you wanna put everything first for your family, you should. But, you know, things go awry, you know, your your kids grow up, they move on, you no longer have relationship with your wife, you know, your wife decides that she doesn't wanna be a part of whatever you're doing and you have nothing for yourself, that's when you get into a really bad situation.

Dan Austin: [12:30] Yeah. Yeah, man. Wife, spouse.

Mike DeHaan: [12:32] There's probably some females that do this. This go both ways. This isn't just for dudes.

Dan Austin: [12:35] Yeah. Hey. We're we're pretty cool about that. Like, if it's a, you know, same sex marriage, whatever, you know, I don't care.

Mike DeHaan: [12:41] Or or if or if it's a wife that's out there hustling.

Dan Austin: [12:44] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [12:44] You know? And that's one of the big things too. Like, in in our marriage, my wife, I'm I'm always encouraging her to do things for herself to, like, development and to, like, you know, you have your friends that you wanna do stuff with. That's fine. Like, I don't have to be included in that. Like, seriously, you know, you can go and enjoy that. Or, like, she's doing her own career development. She's doing her own stuff. Not because, like, I they think that, you know, we're gonna break up or something, but purely just because I think it's healthy to have a selfish thing that is only about you. And that's where a lot of your personal growth comes from and like self satisfaction as well.

Dan Austin: [13:18] Yep. That's great. You're getting ready to do some of that, aren't you? Tomorrow?

Mike DeHaan: [13:21] Yeah. I mean, yeah, we're going on a on a trip. Then this is kind of the the nice thing I think about building a team in a remote business and having a business partner who's willing to put up with my shit all the time is, you know, we we get

Dan Austin: [13:34] a Scalivanting. Yeah. We get

Mike DeHaan: [13:37] to travel a lot, but that's kind of the compromise, I guess, I'd make with myself for working pretty much every single day while we're home is Mhmm. I like to travel. So, yeah, headed off to Costa Rica tomorrow. Gonna be there for a week. And it's I mean, what's kind of funny, we're like experiencing enough travels at this point that we don't make like a lot of plans. Like, we pretty we pretty much know that we're going to Costa Rica and we have our accommodations booked, which we just booked like two weeks ago. And we're like, cool. I guess we'll just figure it out once we get there.

Dan Austin: [14:06] Yeah. That's sometimes the best though. You get like a little bit more. It's like the candid photos, you know, at the wedding are always better than the professional photos. You're so right. You just you just have more of an adventure, which sticks with you a little bit longer than, you know, having every little detail plan and you're rushing to get to one place or the other. And, like, some days you're like, you know what? I'm on vacation. I'm traveling. I don't wanna do shit today. Like, let's chill out and just stay around town here. And then other days you're like, hey, let's go and surf in Costa Rica. 100%.

Mike DeHaan: [14:31] Yeah. I mean, the prob probably the best not necessarily the best. I mean, like, it might be the best. I've done a lot of cool trips, but one of my favorite trips that I've ever done was me and my my wife went to Iceland, and we literally had no plans. All we knew was we were gonna go to Iceland, and we were gonna get a camper van sort of thing, which was like a little work truck with, like, a mattress in the back. And we and we were gonna just drive around the whole thing. We're like, we knew it was 800 miles, and we had a very loose idea about how far we had to go each day. And besides that, we just, like, landed in Reykjavik, and we're like, shit. What do we do now? So I guess we'll figure it out. And we just went. And it was such an awesome experience. And, you know, we would just go, like, where we would stop would depend on the weather, you know, kinda how we were feeling, like, you know, what we wanted to do if there was, like, hikes or stuff that we wanted to do that was in those areas. And it was just awesome. You know? And the the downside of that was what you can expect in the last couple of days. Were like, damn, we gotta start booking it because Right. We're not where we need to be. But, so we missed out on a couple things on the very end, but it's still an awesome experience.

Dan Austin: [15:34] Yeah. Great adventure. You you got a great wife that will allow you to sleep in a, back of a truck with a mattress.

Mike DeHaan: [15:41] Hey. That that quip I made before about the, not wanting to do the van by the river life, she would 100% do that as long as her dog could come along.

Dan Austin: [15:49] Yeah. You're the bougie one.

Mike DeHaan: [15:51] Yeah. Oh, totally. Yeah. I I won't I won't deny that for one second. So cool. But, yeah, lots of stuff going on. It's funny. Was thinking about it this week. I know we talked last week how we were having kind of a slow week. I feel like it's still a little bit slow, but we're kind of on the precipice of things starting to pick up. But then I was looking at the month too. It's like, man, it's been a slow month, but we still have three signed around deals for the month of March. And this is also why it's important to reflect on your data because, I mean, in the past, having three deals in a month, dang, it's pretty freaking good. Popping. We're sitting yeah. We're sitting in a good spot right now. Yeah. The three deals are ready. It's only the second week in March. I mean, we got lots of opportunities that could come together over the next little bit. So it's always it's always perspective, just to make sure

Dan Austin: [16:37] that you're

Mike DeHaan: [16:37] analyzing and you're reflecting on that stuff. But yeah, so we're launching in a couple new markets. Looking at Chicago area, it's outside of there's a bunch of places we're starting to market to. We're looking at some places over in like the East Coast and the South, that we're not like firm firm on yet, but we have some pretty good idea that we're going to be doing that here shortly. Right now, we're just in the process of growth. And it's a very different deal from when we started where we're just like very real estate focused. And now it's like how to build a business and how to build business systems. Right. You know, and as our we're doing that, our needs for education and process and everything has started to adjust. So, you know, we're working with a business coach, potentially coach, maybe. I'm not really sure what, like, the total relationship's gonna meet look like, but we have a go we have a GoBundance guy who's I've been connecting with, who has scaled a large business, who we're we haven't I mean, he's booked ninety minutes with us today with his staff included. So I'm not sure what the conversation is gonna consist of.

Dan Austin: [17:40] I'm kind of excited to see. Saw that. Was like, where who are all these people?

Mike DeHaan: [17:43] Yeah. He's bringing the team, man. Like, he wants to have a serious talk. Like, because I gave him the initial pitch a couple weeks ago, and he just, like, kinda shredded me. And he's like, bro, he's like, the way that you're operating this business is not gonna grow well. He's like, you're the you're the choke point in this, which is fine. I mean, it's true. And I think any small business sort of deals with that. And then his basic response was, oh, let's meet next week. I'm gonna be he's like, send me a total outline of your business. Let's meet in a couple weeks. I'm gonna bring my entire crew and we're gonna pick it apart and we're gonna go. I love it.

Dan Austin: [18:17] Yeah. And I feel like, you know, the the the difference is like our business is really great for what we're doing. Like, how we're operating now, like, as far as systems. Yeah. Obviously, we can always optimize and make it better towards more of a, I don't know what you'd call it, kind of, you know, just hands off business. But when you're trying to grow nationally, like, think that's a whole nother ballgame. And we're talking about launching two more markets and probably a couple more by the end of the year. That, you know, just you and I talking about it, you're like, oh man, so we're going do what we're doing here, but then do that in all these other markets. And it just gets, it could get it. You can see how fast this could scale out of hand, even just the accounting of it and just all the backend systems you have to have to run a business and scale those can no longer be like, oh, we'll figure it out. It's like, we should probably figure it out now.

Mike DeHaan: [19:01] Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And the the way that we were running that we have been running it is great for, you know, anyone that wants to do stuff locally, or like even in like a couple markets and run a small career. I mean, you can make it solid living doing that you can have I mean, more importantly, you can have the opportunity to buy properties at a super awesome discount. That is what we're telling our people in our instant investor program all the time is, it's funny. As people have as you started that up, we had our first sort of like full week this week, which I feel like was had a lot of good traction. Like, we had our meeting yesterday, people are definitely starting to get a lot from the content and they're starting to engage, come with good questions, all that sort of stuff. But one of the tones, which I think is maybe on us, is people are getting that they need to, like, set this thing super huge in order for it to work, which isn't true. You know, this is what I said to everyone yesterday is that if you want to take the systems that we've established and that we teach in the instant investor group, which is literally our business playbook, you can do that as working a full time job, doing it part time if you just want to have the opportunity to invest and, like, build a better retirement or, like, know, some additional income for yourself without having to overpay for properties, or whether you want to do it as, a small time operation that becomes your full time income, you know, and you kind of want to be a one or two man show doing that.

Mike DeHaan: [20:22] It's infinitely scalable on like a local level. And it's only, you know, or like a couple markets level. It's only when you wanna go like big, big that you're gonna run into the other problems.

Dan Austin: [20:31] Yeah. Yeah. These issues are scaling. That's how you and I started. Right? Like, hey, we just wanna buy rental properties. We're trying to buy cash flow. And let's just do this on the side, this wholesale business on the side so we can buy more properties. I mean, that's kind of that's how we started. And then we just quickly realized that we could scale it locally. And we did. And we decided to go much bigger than I think either of us could have envisioned in the beginning. And now we're going 10 x ing that than we thought we ever would have, because why not?

Mike DeHaan: [20:58] Yeah. Exactly. And and and we came from

Mike DeHaan: [21:00] a place too where we had a

Mike DeHaan: [21:02] little bit of financial reserves and stuff like that. I think that's why we approached it with the realm of we want to buy rental properties, because we both had okay incomes when we first started. You know, I was doing the development stuff, good hourly rate as a contractor, you know, you're working your job, making a good salary. And then as we started to grow that, we're like, we want to invest in real estate to have additional income. But buying these properties off the market doesn't make sense. So let's go find them. But then, you know, as we got reminded, as we jumped into the first project, we spent so much money on the first couple of projects that we bought that all of a sudden it was completely hamstringing our marketing. Right? Mhmm. And I I think it's funny too because for some people that's fine, like, because like, cool. I got my project for the year. I'm gonna save money for the next one. But so I think that was where the climb in the mountain and both of us kinda got stirred because we were like, why are we stopping this? Like, we see the income opportunity. Like, how do we how do we escalate that? And that's how we got more into the wholesaling and the flipping and all those sort of situations. Right.

Dan Austin: [22:08] Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. There and there's just I don't know. When you see opportunity in front of you, it's hard for me, it's hard to not take advantage of that opportunity and grow something. And and you and I both have an entrepreneurial spirit where we do wanna run a business, and this just turned into that pretty quickly for us.

Mike DeHaan: [22:23] Yeah. Exactly. I gotta stop saying that too. Someone pointed out that I say that a lot and I'm trying I to not do say exactly all the time. I'm putting myself on blast right now because it freaking drives me crazy. So if you listen and you say, man, he says that word a lot. I know. It's my filler word. I'm trying to not do it.

Dan Austin: [22:39] I didn't even hear it. What's your filler word?

Mike DeHaan: [22:41] Exactly. That's what I say all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Jud Jud, our our guy, he was like, I had any feedback. Try to say that last. And now I think about it, and I think I have dialed it back, but it still slips out.

Dan Austin: [22:52] Every time I ask I'll call you. Yeah. I guess I talked to you enough. I'm just like, yeah. Of course, you said exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [22:57] Even hear it. Yeah. Yeah. That it it is interesting how it just sort of goes from one to the next. And that's why I always really sort of emphasize with people that you need to just jump in and start doing it. And this is what I've said to people in our group as well, is just start marketing. And when you start talking to people, you'll know pretty quick what you want this to look like. Just based off of how you handle the wide range of conversations you're gonna get from sellers when they call in, like the first person that comes in and is super nasty towards you, which will happen, if that kind of breaks a piece of your spirit, this probably isn't for you.

Dan Austin: [23:33] Or you need to hire somebody else's spirit to get broken.

Mike DeHaan: [23:36] Totally 100%. Or you or you or you need to be understanding that you need to outsource that, need to be willing and able to take on staff. But at the same time, not everyone wants to do that. Right? It's like everything else. You kinda have to, I don't say, try before you buy, but you gotta, like, try it before you commit. You know? It's like if you're gonna get into mountain biking, I highly recommend that you, you know, go and try it before you start labeling yourself as a mountain biker, you know, in the general community. Right?

Dan Austin: [24:06] Yeah. Rent a bike first.

Mike DeHaan: [24:08] Yeah. Right. Yeah. You know, or or start with, like, a appropriate budget for that first bike, you know, before you go and spend, like, $14,000 on the sickest bike that you can Yeah.

Dan Austin: [24:18] I mean, or you just aspire to. You're like, hey. I'm I'm a mountain biker and you aspire to that brand.

Mike DeHaan: [24:23] I mean, there's you're you're not wrong. Honestly, though, like, you're if you're that committed and you just wanna fake it till you make it, I also think there's something that can be said there Yeah. On the investor side. Yeah. Definitely. If you if if you just go in and you have the ability to just start spending huge money on marketing, you will get a lot of opportunities, and that will be an extremely fast education.

Dan Austin: [24:43] Right. Well, that's what I I do like to when I'm coaching and mentoring, like, new new investors that haven't done anything. I'm like, well, first thing you need do is you need to start telling everybody you're an investor, and you need to start hanging around with investors. So that is kind of like the fake until you make it. And, yeah, you're gonna catch a little bit of shit for, like, being that that overeager guy saying he's an investor, know, you hadn't done anything. But the minute you do a deal and you turn something that's shitty into gold, people will call you an investor. They will they will respect you. It doesn't matter if it's like the most experienced person in your market, the biggest player, or just another, you know, peer of yours. But like if you go and buy a deal from a wholesaler and it's kind of a janky deal, but you make it work and you make some money, or you gain experience, you've just got a thousand percent more respect from that community. Now you are an investor and now people will bring more deals to you because they're like, hey, this guy can turn shit into gold. Yeah. He's willing to put the hustle in. They're willing to commit. I think it's just

Mike DeHaan: [25:34] a mindset thing. Totally. And even on the marketing side too, if you're, you know, you go and you send one thing of mailers out or you do, like, one round of cold calling, whatever you're trying to do, and then you quit, everyone's like, yeah, that's what I thought. Like, you can't

Dan Austin: [25:48] do You're like everybody else. You're just like everybody else. Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [25:50] Everyone else. There's so many one, like, sort of one shot people that go through this business. But if all of sudden you're the guy that's, you know, the guy or girl, you're the group that is sending multiple batches, you're pursuing things, you will have opportunities. And tell you what, and I say this from my own personal experience, there's like certain people that I get mailers from for my deals. And I get like one off ones all the time. There's ones that I start to see, like, three or four times in a row. I'm like, okay. Now I'm paying attention. Like, you're obviously trying to do something, and that sets a different precedence. And now I know if it's somebody that I don't know and I meet them in the wild, I'm gonna view them very differently than the one who just sent me one thing whose name I probably don't even remember. Right. So the the commitment's super key, and I I think, like you said, they're being around other investors. That's the huge value in joining a group, honestly. I know, like, places like BiggerPockets say, you know, go to a Ria, do all you know, a real estate meetup, do all those sort of things, connect with realtors. Honestly, I personally think that's a waste of time looking at just like the modern state of things because that becomes like a social club.

Mike DeHaan: [26:54] But a lot of the people from our experience don't actually do anything at those meetings. Like, they're there to talk about real estate. It's whereas joining a group, you have people that have put money on the line in order to learn a system, and they have made a commitment to take action. Like, once once you sign up for a program, you know, you're paying money for it, everyone in that group is committed. Like, no one no one's gonna go and spend $5,000 and just be like, never mind. But everyone can go to a once a week Ria meetup and literally the next day or even in the car home, forget everything that they talked about there.

Dan Austin: [27:29] Totally. Yep. Yeah. That's some it's more of a social club for sure. I think as a new investor, I'll still caveat that with at least you can find some of the players there, but you're absolutely right. Nobody's not necessarily going to commit to you. But when you're in a group like that, like, everybody's taking massive action, and they're trying to do the same thing, and they're trying to work together to get to that common place. And so you're gonna have so much more value of people, like peer to peer network within that group.

Mike DeHaan: [27:53] Exactly. Yeah. I should did it again right there, motherfucker.

Dan Austin: [27:56] Exactly. Anyhow, let me, before we close out, I would like to at least give a positive update. You know, we've had some property management, I don't know, problems recently. But I feel like with the negative, there's always a positive. And we have a eight unit under under management that we just bought, what, December last year?

Mike DeHaan: [28:15] Yeah. Was it was like last year. Was it like thirtieth or something?

Dan Austin: [28:18] Yeah. Was actually like the last day we could close the last year. Anyhow, got a message from our PM saying, you know, that he was able to rent one of our units. So I guess to step back, we bought it, like the rents were like $4.95, like pretty low for that area, that market. Nice little two bed, one baths. And I think we were hoping what, like 700 and that we had slowly like, okay, we'll raise rents and all that. So we just decided to pull the band aid off and we got our first vacancy and the guy rented for $7.50. We told him 700 and he's like, got you $7.50 on it. I was like, heck yeah. You know, like that is awesome. And so, you know, by the end of the summer, if people don't move out, but they're going get rent increases basically to $7.50. I mean, that value add, I mean, what is that $250 a unit? And then the next thing I just looked at the water bill, it's like $800 a month. And we just figure out how to kind of reduce that through the tenants. I mean, that value add on this thing is gonna be crazy. And I will eat crow because I was a little worried that we're buying this building. You and I have still not seen it. That has nothing to do with it. Sight unseen has nothing to do with it, but just the location of it, the the where it's at. It's a pretty rural area.

Mike DeHaan: [29:21] But

Dan Austin: [29:21] Yeah. I think it might be good.

Mike DeHaan: [29:23] I mean, there's people that wanna rent rural areas too, man.

Dan Austin: [29:26] I believe that. But it's yeah. Yeah. I just I I need I needed some coercion, I guess.

Mike DeHaan: [29:31] Yeah. I mean and and the big thing I'll say in defense of that too, it's a rural area, but it's a eight unit apartment complex. It's not we bought a 35 unit apartment complex in a rural area. Eight units, like, you can find you can find eight people in a bar in a rural place that, like, probably need somewhere to live. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It'd be better if there

Dan Austin: [29:48] was a bar upstairs or something. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [29:50] Oh, there you go. There there's the value add. I wonder if we if we get rid of one of the units and we turn it into, like, a brewery.

Dan Austin: [29:57] Oh, there you go. Yeah. They like that. It have to be cheap beer though. None of that might be brewable shit.

Mike DeHaan: [30:02] Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. So when I say brewery, I mean, we brew like PBR or something. Yeah. Exactly. We label it as a brewery. It's just it's just like Coors Light on Tap. Yep.

Dan Austin: [30:12] Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. No. I do think though, I mean, just to, like, step back a little bit. I mean, what if you haven't been involved in, like, multifamily or anything like that, being able to increase the NOI is really where the value is at. And so typically, what you see is rental increases paired with cost reductions. Right? And so then your NOI or your net operating income grows, and then whatever cap rate the appraiser in this case, because we're gonna bur it, believes that would be a market a good market rate for a cap rate. Divide divide your NOI by that, and that's your value add. And so we're definitely looking at a pretty pretty fat value add. I mean, what are your estimates when we initially bought this thing?

Mike DeHaan: [30:49] So when we initially bought it, I had the as is value at, like, 700 based off of what I estimated for caps. We bought it for $4.75, and we've done literally zero work to it. So, I mean, fixed up, I think I had a a $7.50. I think I only ran numbers at 700, and I think at 700, I had a value, like, $9.70. So at $7.50, it should be over 1,000,000.

Dan Austin: [31:09] Yeah. So that's just amazing. We'll definitely be able to burr this bad boy.

Mike DeHaan: [31:12] For sure. And, you know, for us, it'll be because we have a private investor that helped us fund it, and it'll be finding the sweet spot of, like, what we pay them off for versus we get the cash flow that we want versus maybe pull out some extra that we can use to go and apply other places. Yep. It'll be

Dan Austin: [31:26] a balance. It'll be a math equation we'll figure out, and we'll we'll share it once we're there. I think we still got, I don't know, four or five months before we're ready to finalize the numbers and actually get it closed out. But

Mike DeHaan: [31:36] Yeah. Well, I think we have to season it for six months before we can do a refi on it. So are they are they all at $7.50 right now? Or just the No.

Dan Austin: [31:44] I mean, the the the rent increases have gone out. And so he said he hadn't had anybody move, like, saying they're gonna move out, but that person already said they're gonna move out. And so he released that one. So the rent increases are out. Yeah. I mean, I would assume, say ninety days, whatever the rent increase thing is. And so that's why I said, four or five months before we're done with our rent increases, and it's been hit that six month seasoning.

Mike DeHaan: [32:05] Sweet. Yeah. That'll come up here pretty quick, starting March. Cool. I like it. And then aside from that I mean, from our oil disaster, which we've already talked about a ton, everything else is getting dialed in. Our property manager in house, Judd, is getting it figured out. I'm starting to feel good about those systems here. You're getting some quick turns on a couple empty places. Yeah, man. I like that's not like I'm excited for that side to finally be kinda, like, stabilized. Because I think that's been kinda, like, the biggest thing is we've been balancing that with all of the acquisitions and flips and everything else. But I feel like we're right on the cusp of being able to kinda set all that and forget it and just collect some mailbox money for a little bit, which will be first time for us jointly since we've always been fixing up rental properties for as long as we've had them.

Dan Austin: [32:53] It continues to grow and then you're trying to use, like, your capital to grow it and all that sort of stuff, and you've got carry costs on it when you're doing two birds at once and all that sort of shit. So yeah. Yep. So

Mike DeHaan: [33:03] right on. Let's get out of here. And you guys listening, if you are interested in our instant investor program, we are off to a hot start right now. We got a bunch of investors in there that have come in or starting to take action. People are starting to get there. We just started it March 1, now the eleventh. When we're recording this, we're gonna have some 100 people dropping mails and having pretty sick opportunities here. So I'm excited for those to be coming through. But basically, it is is it is a turnkey process that we teach you how to build a business that's exactly the same as ours. It means pretty much our entire playbook for our business. You have a bunch of do it yourself videos on there that you can go and build out all the systems. And then we meet once a week to answer questions, present new stuff that we're working on, just sort of help each other out and build a little community. And our goal is basically a national community that's all building off the same processes so we can learn and grow together. We got people from locally here in Washington to the Midwest, to the South, all over the place. So pretty diverse group. And, yeah, if you're interested in that, go to instantinvestorprogram.com, book a call with me, and, I would love to chat with you and sort of see if you'd be a good fit. Aside from that, you can follow us on socials on Instagram at Mike underscore invest. I'm also now on TikTok at Mike underscore invest three. Hell, yeah. So that's a stretch for me.

Dan Austin: [34:23] But, you know,

Mike DeHaan: [34:25] if you're a TikTok guy, you can find me on there. I couldn't be normal Mike invest because there's another guy that does, like, stock and day trading things. Dork. I know. Right? But follow me at Mike underscore invest on Instagram, and you can follow Dan at investor man Dan. And besides that, go and subscribe and give us a five star review. We're starting to get some reviews, Dan. We should talk about those at some point. Oh, yes. We have a handful of five star reviews on iTunes, is actually pretty dope. Nice. Heck yeah. Cool. Right on. Alright, you're on the spot. Send us off.

Dan Austin: [34:57] Okay. I don't got anything. Sorry.

Mike DeHaan: [35:00] This is still see, so my thing is gonna be the exactly. You're just gonna be that you never have

Dan Austin: [35:05] a listing off. Let's go. This is investor man Dan and Costa Rica Mike signing off. See y'all next week.

Mike DeHaan: [35:12] You're gonna start stealing from David Green just making up fake nicknames. Know. Yeah. Exactly.

Dan Austin: [35:16] I haven't

Mike DeHaan: [35:16] even listened

Dan Austin: [35:17] to that podcast in a while. I should

Mike DeHaan: [35:18] I haven't I haven't either. Not since Brandon Turner left. Yeah. It's bleh. Anyway, alright. Thanks, everybody. See you next week.

Dan Austin: [35:24] See you guys.

Speaker 3: [35:26] Thanks for listening. Please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. And check us out at collectingkeyspodcast.com for tips and guides on starting your own real estate investment and wholesaling business.