What the TOP Real Estate Investors are currently doing, Not everyone should "Buy a Business," Here Comes The Accelerator Program

Dan Austin: [0:00] It's when everybody's talking like about nothing happening, it's like that's the time to learn a skill because for two reasons. One, what you said is you're prepping for it to have that skill when the paydays are ready, you know, when people are starting to actually move things fast and you'll be ready for it. And two, it's like, this is like always a good time because it's harder to learn, but if you can learn it, you can do it in hard times and good times.

Mike DeHaan: [0:30] What is going on, guys? Welcome to today's episode of the Collecting Keys Real Estate Investing Podcast. Today is Wednesday and we have the Mike and Dan show. And if this is your first time here, my name is Mike DeHaan, and I'm here with my cohost, Dan Austin. And on these Wednesday shows, we talk about real estate investing, business, and whatever else we feel like for the week.

Dan Austin: [0:52] What do you feel like? That's the question. How do you feel?

Mike DeHaan: [0:55] I'll set myself. I don't know because I know it's it's such a weird time just in real estate period because I feel like like macro level, like real estate news, there isn't like a ton of things going on. Like everything's kind of focused on like interest rates and stuff like that because they keep going like higher and higher. People have like stopped talking about a bust because it obviously hasn't happened. Total transactions are supposed to be down, in some places they are, some places they aren't. It's just kind of a lull everywhere. And then business wise as well, typically coming out of August getting into like the beginning of the school season, all that sort of stuff. It's always a bit slow as a business. Like we found this this particular period historically to be pretty slow for us over the years. So Yeah. We're just kind of in like a, I don't know, refocusing phase I guess, trying to figure out how to keep improving our processes and and doing everything else as much as we can internally. Great.

Dan Austin: [1:53] Yeah. I don't know. Was I'm always like hopeful, you bring up the the market stalemate, which I feel like we've been talking about since the beginning of what, 2023? Like, it's just been like this weird like Yeah. Slow down, and nobody's freaking out, but like, everybody has lost the money they're gonna lose, at least unless there's other shit going on. Right? But like

Mike DeHaan: [2:12] Well, the multi family people are gonna start losing it

Dan Austin: [2:15] here soon. We haven't gotten to the commercial space yet, but for the single family, like all the flippers that were gonna go to you have kinda gone to you. Mhmm. We took our licks. A lot of people are carrying things over, and it was funny because it was like a slow train wreck. You're like, damn it, I know I'm gonna lose money when I get this flip done. Yeah. Let's just get it done. So there's a lot of that through q one, and a little bit more kinda drug out maybe into the beginning of q two, but now it's just like everybody that's still operating's like, I'm I'm making money. I wish it was easier like it was back in 2022 when I could caulk everything and throw it up on the market, and you know, renting right now is a pain in the ass, like it takes more time. It takes. Rents are depressing. I was

Mike DeHaan: [2:50] gonna say, like rental properties in general are just rough right now to even be buying with interest rates. Like you have to be They're so hard. Buying things on seller finance or on just like such obscenely good deals that you don't care that you're getting it at an 8% interest rate on the long term.

Dan Austin: [3:04] Right. So it's yeah, extra hard to buy those, and that's kinda why everybody's exclusively kind of flipping, like the market is being moved by investor buyers that are basically wholesaling into flippers or flippers that are buying things to flip and sell to retail people. But my point in bringing that up is like in the background, like earlier this year, when JPMorgan Chase dropped a billion into real estate, Warren Buffett recently acquired in home builders, I don't remember how much he invested, it was 400,000,000, I believe, into US home builders, and so there's these background investments going on in home building, and when I say JP Morgan Chase dropped that billion, it was in new construction turnkey rental properties, and so there's some of those larger, somewhat of a drop in the bucket for those investors, those big banks, but large investments into the new construction, and so then you're like, well, why is Warren Buffett dropping 400,000,000? Like, so there are these plays that you're like, do I just need to wait and see? Like, when is this gonna happen? And my thought is that there's probably just gonna be a great upswing for, you know, home builders and new construction stuff going into next year as interest rates do inevitably kinda come down a little bit, and with that, a lot of people on the sidelines are there ready to buy and that inventory always goes faster than used houses. Nobody wants to buy a used house when you can buy a new house.

Mike DeHaan: [4:26] Yeah. I mean, I do think that there's going to be a, like if the interest rates come down, there would be another pretty good real estate surge again. Primarily because we have so many of these, you know, investors, know, us included on this, that are doing things to accumulate cash, that are waiting for the next buying opportunity. Mhmm. Right? And that like all the big names that we know right now, they are not necessarily buying properties right? They're either selling off properties because their return on equity has dropped, and so they're selling it to the more like, I don't know, casual investors that aren't actively running real estate business, aren't trying to build very large portfolios. Can still sell things to those people relatively easily, And so if their return on equity is getting poor, we're in the same boat too, start selling some properties, get some cash, working on flipping properties, working on wholesaling, working on whatever every other business people are doing right now. A lot of people are getting into like general contracting and things like that with their flipping crews. Mhmm. And if rates do come down, there's gonna be a bunch of money that's just like waiting to pounce, and it's gonna be ready to Random. You know, start buying again. Right? And I think that's a great sort of thing if that does happen, you wanna be the person that has deals and has a pipeline because tell you why when all the money suddenly comes out of board because I wanna start buying again, if you have like a surplus of leads, especially looking to wholesaler to things like that, it's gonna be so easy to start selling deals again. Right.

Mike DeHaan: [5:53] It came with like 2021 all over again where you could sell stuff at such obscenely high prices So easy. To other investors just because it was like the flavor of the month, right? Everyone was trying to get into real estate back then. Totally.

Dan Austin: [6:04] Yeah. And now is the time to learn the skill.

Mike DeHaan: [6:08] Honey.

Dan Austin: [6:08] It's when everybody's talking like about nothing happening, it's like that's the time to learn the skill because for two reasons. One, what you said is you're prepping for it to have that skill when the paydays are ready, you know, when people are starting to actually move things fast and you'll be ready for it. And two, it's like, this is like always a good time because it's harder to learn, but if you can learn it, you can do it in hard times and good times.

Mike DeHaan: [6:32] Yeah, absolutely. It's really easy to

Dan Austin: [6:34] do anything in good times if you're ready to rock and roll, but it's the hard times if you can figure out how to operate a business, any business in any market, if you can figure out how to operate that when it's tough, you're set for success.

Mike DeHaan: [6:46] You can't fail on those. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I know it has been interesting to just like watch the shift in interests I guess, as real estate has sort of come up and out of favor, you know, especially because it's been just kind of flat and it's actually like requires work now. You can't just like buy a house with ugly carpet on the MLS and fix the carpet and sell it for $60,000 more anymore. No. You cannot. I mean, like, with the Internet age, stuff always goes so fast, and there's always like the current, like, get rich quick scheme. You know? So 2021, it was real estate. And then I guess, you know, same time with crypto was like the biggest thing. 2022, I don't even know what it was at point. Think that's when we were starting to get into like the sub two. Yeah. You know? And like, that's the rise of pace, Morby, and all that sort of stuff got massive in 2022. Now the biggest one that freaking drives me crazy is like the Cody Sanchez, like, buying small business thing, which is absolutely a valid play. Right? So, you know, there's such a great case to be made by all these people that talk about all these retiring baby boomers that have businesses, they haven't optimized, that don't know what the retirement plan is, and for savvy entrepreneurs to come in and buy these businesses. But the thing that freaking drives me crazy, is just like with every other, I guess, sort of like fad that comes in, is you end up with these people.

Mike DeHaan: [8:05] Right? Who are like, they're always they're always like young white dudes. That's just like the MO of like the finance bros. That's the everyone knows these guys. Everyone has this person through in their circle.

Dan Austin: [8:15] Yeah. I don't know.

Mike DeHaan: [8:16] I you you don't. Yeah. Sorry. It's me. Those are

Dan Austin: [8:19] fluent investors like yourself.

Mike DeHaan: [8:22] But the people are trying to get to that point. Right?

Dan Austin: [8:23] Yeah. I know. I hear you. I hear

Mike DeHaan: [8:25] And, you know, and they're like, I need to start buying businesses. You know? And I was like, I know that I work as like a as like a $60,000 a year job. I was waiting to see here what job goes. No. I I was trying to think something. There's like $60,000 a year job where I have zero management responsibilities, and all I do is I send four emails a day and I fuck around all day, and I've decided that I need to buy businesses. So I'm gonna go and try to figure out how I can become in charge of 35 other people with literally no experience doing that. And there are people that are like, actually making moves, and they're like, oh, you know, it's really easy to get an SBA loan, did you know that? Gonna go submit an LOI on this plumbing business in my local market, and then it's so simple. You just find the guy that's been there for twenty years and you make them the manager and then you make money. It's like if it was that freaking simple

Dan Austin: [9:15] Seems simple.

Mike DeHaan: [9:15] Right? Like, no, it's And it's just such a frustrating things. See that everywhere. And one of the biggest red flags for me, it's kinda like when you meet like a random real estate investor and they're like, I have you know, 600 units, and like you look at them, you're like, no you don't, you find out they're an LP, and they're Yeah. Full of Right? The big red flag for me is when you see someone like post something about how they're looking to buy businesses

Dan Austin: [9:41] with an s. With an s. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [9:42] And like, you've never run one business. Why are you trying? Why are you deciding you need to buy multiple like right Yeah.

Dan Austin: [9:49] It's like I'm in search of laundromats and storage facilities and a, I don't know, cell phone store.

Mike DeHaan: [9:56] I know. I appreciate the hustle culture that kinda like it just exists amongst people right now, know, and people wanting to like make a difference with their life. But it's led to this really weird thing where all these people just kinda like, they get in these little circle jerk groups, they don't actually do anything, and they're like, my goals are to flip three houses this year, and buy a small business, and to buy a self storage facility, and to buy a freaking Airbnb in the Catskills, and to like do whatever the fuck downs. And it's like, if we all just collectively decided, like, call each other out on this and just said, hey, dumbass, just focus on one thing, we would all be more successful. Right? And not only that, but like all those different like asset classes and, you know, different parts of just like business and the economy in general would probably be better if you wouldn't have like millions of people that are one foot in and one foot out and kinda just making everything freaking complicated for no reason. Honestly.

Dan Austin: [10:53] There's a I mean, there is there's a lot like to be said too about just idiots getting into any asset class and you know, there's idiots in real estate. Fortunately, most of them became syndicators, and so we didn't have to deal with too many of them. Let's be honest.

Mike DeHaan: [11:07] Just call them out right there. I mean, you're not wrong.

Dan Austin: [11:09] Yeah. Well, a lot of them were.

Mike DeHaan: [11:10] But you're completely right though. So if you go back two years ago, that was the same thing, is where you had the person that had never done a real estate transaction in their life. They lived in like a one bed, one bath studio apartment, and they had their basic job, and they're like, you know what? I need to start buying, you know, mobile home parks between 10 and $15,000,000. Yep. It's like, come on, bro. What are you thinking? It's like, well Brandon Turner says that his biggest regret is he didn't go big earlier. Right. It's like, but he means that he didn't go big after he'd done like 20 deals? Not like Yeah. On the first one.

Dan Austin: [11:40] Not the first one in a lot of them. Yeah. That's exactly what it is. The process that they learn is sound, right? It's like go and find a property, go raise money, and then stabilize and operate it. But it's like all of those things are really hard to do properly. Mhmm. That's why there's not people out there that are just doing it all the time, like OGs, like they're very tactical in what they're doing, and they take time to get these deals, otherwise they'd be the ones buying all these shitty deals that you're slinging to your, you know, mom and telling her to, you know, take money out of her retirement account to put into this deal. Right? Right? That was always a challenge, just running into those types of people and saying, gosh dang, like when is this bubble gonna pop in? A lot of it has actually for some of those guys because they're not doing anything and they're incentivized by acquisitions, there's no acquisitions going on, and then the big one's probably gonna be twenty twenty four ish, twenty twenty five ish when a lot of that commercial debt, the ceilings lift and they basically have no more rate locks on whatever their debt was at or rate ceilings, I should say rather, and they're going to be in trouble or they need to refinance for whatever reason and their debt is gonna be twice as expensive. Yeah. And they're gonna

Mike DeHaan: [12:41] be completely wrecked at that point.

Dan Austin: [12:42] Back to the small business thing, there's people going in there to your point trying to buy businesses and if there's people that are employed there, managing people is incredibly hard. If you have no skill in that, like that's a learned skill, so if you step right into it, granted if you're a manager, you have a business already, or maybe you're even a senior leader in a business, you know how to read a P and L, maybe you've managed a P and L before, you're definitely more educated than the average person joining these groups and paying, you know, thousands of dollars to learn this skill. Because if you show up and you don't understand how to What is even a good profit margin for your business, right? Most businesses honestly are in like that 10 to 12 to 15% on the high end profit margin. So think about that. And there's a lot of small businesses out there that appear to be doing well, but they're really not doing that well. So if you go in there and they're the the difference is you have these old timers that have been running the baby boomers who are there ultimately taking care of the people who are employed there first. Mhmm. Like that as a business owner, as a leader, that's a really important aspect of your role. So you come in and you realize there's no freaking margins, and now you have these people that you don't care about, they don't care about you either.

Dan Austin: [13:49] Now you're just kinda coming in and it's like wrecking it, you know? You're just like screwing this business up, you don't know how to lead people, you don't know how to take care of people, you don't realize that the margins aren't that great. You've learned it in your economics class, your accounting class, somewhere in your undergraduate and you think you know it, but it's really freaking hard.

Mike DeHaan: [14:04] It is. And I think the thing that really worries me about that old trend is, you know, like back in 2021, when you had kinda ignorant people getting into real estate, you're really kinda setting yourself up for weird situations. Right? The problem is when you have someone that's ignorant that's now going and buying this business where you're in charge of 30 people, you're affecting the lives of 30 families. Right? Yeah. At that point if you don't know what you're doing. So it gets pretty irresponsible. And you know, not that don't think people should pursue it, I think you absolutely should do that if you're something you're interested in. But just understand that there's a level of expertise that you don't even know that you don't have. Right? If these kind of different businesses are things that you wanna get involved in, you know, or you wanna get involved in like buy business or doing things like that, instead of working at whatever your $60,000 your job is, go and work for like a private equity company that buys businesses and learn the Or go and like work for a business that is like the business that you're looking to buy, so you can at least know what you're gonna be getting yourself into. Right? Yep. And I think it's kind of the problem with the instant gratification sort of mindset that we have everywhere is people are always just trying to cut the line and not realizing that there is a learning process and there is downside risk on all these things.

Mike DeHaan: [15:19] And, you know, not only for you, but for the other people that are involved in the process. And I don't know. It's just been like one of the biggest pet peeves that I've developed because it just seems to be everywhere on social media, and in the different, you know, Facebook groups that we're involved in. Even high level ones like GoBundance, there's like people in that that are have a 7 figure net worth just because they owned, three properties in San Francisco that they bought in like the nineteen eighties or that they inherited. And now they're like, I'm a business owner, I'm gonna go and buy Yeah. Buy a business. And it's like you've never actually done a business activity in your life. Just been in a fortunate situation. Yep. And I don't know. Maybe I maybe I'm just being a dick. I have no idea. It's just the thing that drives

Dan Austin: [16:00] you crazy right You got three peppers of spice right now. That's for sure. Right. A little spicy. I don't disagree with everything, although to your very first comment, which it's a very valid strategy and I do think that there is Mhmm. A really good value in owning a business. And one from scratch is incredibly hard. So if in theory you could buy one, that would be way better. And if you can buy a good cash flowing business, that's even better because now you're buying cash flow, and as you and I have always said, business income is the way to build wealth. Mhmm. Right? Like, real estate is how, like, we got to where we're at in a sense of a long term thing, but to have, like, true wealth to invest in real estate quickly, like, business income's gonna get you there. Cash flow from your rental properties is not going to compound fast enough, so you need to have this active performing income where you're out there and doing it as a W two job is one way, if you own your business, there's just many tax advantages and there are just many other advantages to just being able to scale your income and not being limited by your salary because you really can grow business income as big as you want really. Yeah. I mean it's all going back

Mike DeHaan: [17:08] to that massive income versus passive income You know, and that's It's something that I think a lot of people have a limiting belief about, right? Yeah. And this is one of my other current pet peeves that I see a lot is these people that you know, have relatively low incomes, you know, $60.70, $80,000 a year, which is like decent income, but like big picture, it's not awesome. And they're focused on things like tax benefits and stuff like that. Right? Where they're like trying to I mean, I've literally met people like this who are like, oh, I need to like figure out how to set up this real estate or like make these investments so that I don't have to pay taxes. Like, don't make any money yet.

Dan Austin: [17:43] Yeah. Trust me, you're not worried about it. Your effective tax rate's probably like 12%,

Mike DeHaan: [17:46] if that Exactly. Don't even worry about it. Go and learn to make money, and get to the point where you're worried about that 6 figure tax bill that you're gonna have, then you can deal with it. Right? Yep. And people like to find these things to just like Yeah.

Dan Austin: [17:59] You're better off paying when you have a low low tax rate, you're better off paying the taxes and taking full ownership of that money as opposed to trying to put it out in a distance, because your tax rate will never be lower than when it's below 6 figures, to be honest, right? That is a great place to be paying taxes, to be honest. That's like one of the issues I have

Mike DeHaan: [18:16] with like four zero one k's is people, they heavily invest in four zero one k's, and they always sell the tax advantages on these four zero one k's. It's like understand when you give a four zero k, you are giving a loan to the four zero one k company to do whatever they want with that money until you're 65 years old. Yep. Right? Even though they'll put it in stocks or whatever, whatever they tell you they're gonna do, they're gonna do all sorts of feather shit with it because you're not gonna get it for thirty or forty years.

Dan Austin: [18:38] Yeah. Tax advantage accounts have advantages. Right? But they're usually not that great. And so if you think about it, your money's locked up kind of, right, for until you're old, and then when you get to a certain age, and they're like, no, you have to take it out and so we can get our taxes out of it. So then they have minimum distributions where if you just had mutual funds outside of an account where you've already paid tax on the principal going into it, you can do whatever you want, buy and sell those anytime in your life. And so, there's pros and cons to both, but yeah, if you're stuck in that mindset of like, I have to invest in my four zero one k because it's a tax advantage, well, is it? Yeah. Especially if you're in a low tax bracket.

Mike DeHaan: [19:13] For sure. And it'll save you like a little bit for that year, but you can, if you have full control of that money, you could go and you could 10x that in the next year.

Dan Austin: [19:19] Totally.

Mike DeHaan: [19:20] Right? Or a 100 x it even, right? Totally. If you learn how to you know, multiply that money with this another thing.

Dan Austin: [19:26] If you learn how to buy businesses.

Mike DeHaan: [19:28] Yeah, right. If learn how to buy businesses. But no I mean just the whole thing to that though is the management piece, I don't know why it never gets fully talked about in that conversation. Honestly it's kinda like with the whole subject to you fad, where no one ever talks about like the liabilities that the seller carries with They just like to pretend like it doesn't happen, and they like to pretend like every seller is a good candidate for it. And it's like, no. Yep. Like a little old lady who like actually needs to have credit to be able to get into her old folks home or an apartment is not a good candidate for a subject too. Right? No. But same with this, the buying business stuff. I don't ever hear a lot of conversation around the person management piece of it. And the one way that it usually gets brushed aside, like I said before, is they'll always be like, you just find the person who's been there the longest, you make them the COO, and then they run it. What happens if that person leaves? Like, do you know how to run these people? And I can tell you from experience, as someone who has built a business and has now built a team, like a pretty decent sized team, we have 17 people across everything, right, across the podcast team and the investment team.

Mike DeHaan: [20:29] And it's hard to do even when you know the business, let alone when you don't know the business, I can't even imagine.

Dan Austin: [20:36] Yeah. Talent growth and talent acquisition is probably one of the hardest parts of a business. It is. Absolutely. You know, otherwise we'd have a COO that's running the business.

Mike DeHaan: [20:45] Yeah. I mean, it's it's absolutely the hardest part. And then even once you are able to find that talent, keeping that talent engaged and excited, and like wanting to work for you, is a hard thing to do. Yep. You know, it doesn't just happen by magic because, I hate to break it to you, but most people don't necessarily want to work for you. Right? Like like most people work because they have to because they get a paycheck and there will be places that they enjoy working more than others. But I think you can go to 99% of people and they would rather just be rich and not have to come and work for

Dan Austin: [21:14] you. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [21:15] Absolutely. You need to make it worth their while to be there.

Dan Austin: [21:19] Yeah. I heard a

Mike DeHaan: [21:20] There's some different ways you can do it, but that's that just never gets addressed at all and I I don't know why.

Dan Austin: [21:25] No. I agree with you. To to pull the thread a little further on your point of people wanting to work for you versus not, like I heard a good quote today on a podcast which was like, you know, money doesn't buy happiness, but poverty doesn't buy anything. Yeah. Right? So people have to go to work, right? And so, it's your duty as the owner and the CEO and the leader to make it a great workplace, It doesn't necessarily mean that they want to work for you specifically because like, you could have a this goes a talent acquisition. You have to find people that fit into your culture and fit to your needs, and it's really easy to do that, like, wrong. Mhmm. So it gets really difficult to create that environment where everybody in your company is actually working together as a cohesive team and working for a greater mission, in the sense of like, I need to make some money here, but I like having an employee, an employer, an employment that keeps me focused on this thing. And in real estate for us, it's been a great opportunity for people that wanna come work for us to learn real estate. Like, we have that advantage. Right? Like, there's not too many people that are like, I wanna go work at a laundromat to learn about laundromats. Yeah, right.

Dan Austin: [22:28] There might be some, like I have no idea. Just it seems like that's probably not the place to go do it. Like, but real estate, like you can offer that bigger, larger goal where even like large corporations, like really all you're learning is a skill to be a better employee for somebody else. Because that's why you're going there, right? And like these large huge, you know, multi tens of thousands companies, right? You're you're learning to be in that environment.

Mike DeHaan: [22:49] I think you go to those for the perks. I don't think, I don't know how many people like love to work at companies like that.

Dan Austin: [22:53] No, that's why I'm saying the perks, but like I guess, when you're there to educate yourself and learn, you're not educating yourself to learn to do something personal, where coming into a small real estate business, if you wanna learn how to buy houses, flip houses, all that sort of stuff, go work for an investor like us Is it? Or a company like ours, and then you take that outside of that work. In the future, get to take that with you. Our staff, like, we want them to take that with them. Like, when they eventually move on, they're not gonna work here for a hundred years, I hope not. Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [23:21] You know? Got it. I really hope not. I hope this business will go for a freaking hundred Exactly.

Dan Austin: [23:26] I'm on a I'm on time. Like I'm on a clock here, man. Can't

Mike DeHaan: [23:30] I I don't have like that weird like legacy thing that a lot of men seem to have. Where they're like, I need to have legacy left, I don't give a shit. Yeah. Like I don't know. I wanna do stuff like, you know, if I have kids I hope that they'll do okay. But after my kids, their kids gotta figure it out. So my friend And

Dan Austin: [23:48] to be honest, once you die, like, and whether you believe in God or not, like, mean, it's Who gives a fuck? You want your family to be taken care of once you die. I mean, does it really anything Doesn't after that.

Mike DeHaan: [23:59] Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [24:00] Like Anyways Can we talk about the phone call I was on right before this? I'd love

Mike DeHaan: [24:04] to talk about that situation.

Dan Austin: [24:06] When we talk about business and partnerships and how to make a shit ton of money.

Mike DeHaan: [24:10] I listened to three phone calls like before this. You had one with an investor down in Texas that we're talking to. Mhmm. You had one with a contractor. He made a slightly off color joke that maybe hit. I made an off color observation. It didn't really hit very well. And then you had one with one of our current existing partnership program members. So which one did you wanna talk about? Because I sat here for like forty minutes and let's do a bunch of shit.

Dan Austin: [24:33] Gosh. Yeah. What do I wanna what one is more important?

Mike DeHaan: [24:35] So I guess what what led you to that? Like what what which which conversation did you wanna talk about?

Dan Austin: [24:40] Well, let me step back for a second. I will say on that note, while we're talking about this, like how we're talking to our investor partners and different, I was talking to a contractor and all this stuff. The key to that in talking about business and being successful is communication. A And 100 like, we're talking, we made a connection through another person, we needed, we were looking for a buyer in Houston, and we made a connection to another buyer through a personal relationship. So, yeah, sure, I'll send you that contact, we're on the phone with them immediately, like Mhmm. Awesome. Like, that's how you be successful in business, especially in this business. But, what I wanted to talk about was our partnership that we have, the guy was talking about his numbers and his net for the year and where he's going, because this is like, to me that speaks to, the reason why I brought it up, not out of left field, is it speaks to the true value of business and business relationships, and how the income can be almost limitless because you're in control of it as a business owner. Yeah. So, I will just start this off by, if you don't know what our partnership program is, it's where we partner with other investors in other cities all over the country, and we basically run the front end of their business, we find all the good deals for them, and then we take a small fee when we wholesale to them, and they get all the upside.

Dan Austin: [25:56] So we run the marketing and sales? Marketing and sales. Essentially, we get you a contract for the pricing that you want, and then we give it to you for a small fee, and then you do whatever you want with it. And so that's kind of been a lot of our focus on our partnership, as we've grown that and realized the value of these partnerships of people, because that's how we grew our business successfully locally in our hometown as well. And so we were talking to him and so far this year through, I'm guessing it was through August, he's already net net 313,000 in his bank account from his That's pretty safe. From wholesaling. Does not include, he's got a 50 k profit coming in from a flip, doesn't include all the listings he's getting from referrals, because when you're marketing, doing direct mail marketing to people, if you think about this, realtors do direct mail marketing too, They're direct mail, they're doing marketing, and so some of the leads we get inevitably don't work out as cash buyers because they have no distress, it just happens, and they call and you're like, can I list it? And boom. So he's been doing that as a real estate agent over there, so I just wanted to talk about that because I think that is crazy awesome in his part. And the reason why he's that successful is because he's busting his ass and he's taking it serious as a business owner.

Mike DeHaan: [27:07] Yeah. And that's been something that's really cool in general. I mean, not even just with him, but even the people that have come through our normal instant investor program, is how honestly simple it is. It's not easy, but it's simple to make very legitimate money when you have a pipeline of deals, which isn't that complicated to build. Honestly the hardest part's the sales. So the thing with like our partnership programs, we take care of the sales and then you just have to worry about the monetization part of it. But I think that everyone that we that we have that comes in and actually does the work that we've prescribed them to do, we must we are at about a 100% success rate, honestly. 100%. The only people that fail are the ones that come in and around and don't know what they're supposed to do.

Dan Austin: [27:52] And don't do it. Our guarantee is if you come in and you do all the steps we tell you to do, and you and you put really effort into it, you'll make money. I guarantee. Like, I don't know how you want it.

Mike DeHaan: [28:04] It's impossible not to, honestly.

Dan Austin: [28:05] And it's impossible not to, and we can say that now having personally operated in dozens and dozens of markets across the country, all the way from really high end markets to just low cheap markets, and also working with tons of people on this and observing how they'd follow the system and just do it and just execute it. It's not complicated, just follow the system and and heavily it works out. Mhmm. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [28:27] And it's like even going through that experience not only ourselves, but also just working with other people, it just is always still mind blowing to me how few people like take shots. Right? Or like how many people think that in order to be successful, have to have like the next crazy thing, you know, or they're like, they're have this such limiting belief. I mean, even on on like Reddit, I'll always see these posts of like, I follow the entrepreneur subreddit, and they'll be like, I don't understand how you're supposed to start a business when every business idea has been taken. It's like just go and Yeah. Copy You don't even have to be

Dan Austin: [29:02] the best one, just copy them.

Mike DeHaan: [29:04] No. Yeah. We've met people in like especially the wholesaling space that are terrible at their business. Right. But they are consistent with the process, they figure it out, over the course of a couple years, they make like a million bucks. Their outlook on life is now 100% different than if they did what they were probably suited to do before, which was like, I don't know, work on 40 or $50,000 a year job in like a very basic company because they don't have a degree. They don't have any skills. Right? They just kinda like were going through life, and now all of a sudden they've been able to figure out like this marketing and sales, and like how to identify opportunity in real estate, which the great thing about real estate is, you know, there's a lot of calculators out there to be able do stuff. There's a lot of tools. It's a very established industry. There are people all along the way to help you with the process. Right? That's educator, whether that is, you know, a lender. Right? There's lenders to help you buy whatever you wanna do. There's other investors that are happy to help you out. There's title companies that help you do all the hard shit. Like, it's not hard. Yeah. It is meant for you to make money. There's a ton of people that want you to make money so that they can also make money.

Dan Austin: [30:08] Right. And it's only hard when you try to do all the latest and greatest fancy bullshit that people are catching, You know, you talked about Sub two earlier, like, that is an incredibly hard tool to employ in off market real estate. Like, it's super hard. First of all, you gotta find people that you know how to execute on, then you have to get a seller that that actually can understand it, and then you have to figure out how to do it. Right? It's incredibly hard.

Mike DeHaan: [30:28] And then

Dan Austin: [30:28] Like, don't over complicate it. Use it when it makes sense, but Yeah. That's like the get quick rich with no money kind of scheme. It's like, don't worry about that. Just go with the old fashioned methodology. Just show up every day and do it the do it the way that you're seeing other people do it. Who cares if there's five wholesalers in your in your city? Hundreds in some cities.

Mike DeHaan: [30:48] Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, there there really is. I mean, I've even heard about people having these wholesale meet ups in some of the big metros and literally a 100 plus people will come to that.

Dan Austin: [30:56] Yeah. Was just on the literally with a guy in Houston who's marketing in Jacksonville and I was like, oh, so are we.

Mike DeHaan: [31:01] Yeah. Right. I'm like,

Dan Austin: [31:03] so are we. Know what And I it's like, okay, like there's, I mean, it's just there's so many people, right? Like there's there's just enough opportunity in anywhere, and like, that's what I always think about, is like, well that's why franchises do so well. Right? Like you get a business system given to you, and there could be, know, what I don't know, like a Chipotle, right? There's that's a franchise, think, restaurant. There's so many Chimotas in Spokane. There's a lot of other franchises in Spokane outside of Chipotle. They all seem to work.

Mike DeHaan: [31:28] But the challenge with things like franchises, right, is they require massive capital investment to be able to do it. And and you know, also too, you look at franchises, they will always want you to have some sort of business experience because what they don't want you to do is you don't want you be that guy That's making $80,000 a year and decides they need to buy a small business. Yeah. And he comes in and doesn't know what the hell they're doing. Right. Right? So they they kinda have that. And then the thing that I like about, you know, the the off market real estate game is, you know, all the success that we talked about. You can do that as like a one or two person operation. You don't need to have a big team. You don't need to have like a huge bank account, right? You just have to have a process and a commitment to yourself that you're gonna do what needs to be done in order to be successful. Yeah. Right? Just a roadmap for you. How much

Dan Austin: [32:13] money do you need though?

Mike DeHaan: [32:14] Realistically, what I tell people when they hop on a call with me to talk about the instant investor program, I typically tell people to have between 30 or $40,000. Right? Which I understand is not a small amount of money. And that's why you guys, like, pay SmoreB with the sub you have taken off because they're like, you don't even need that. Like, I'll just all you need is $10,000 to give to me for my course. And then then I'll I'll get you there. Right? Which is a bunch of bullshit. But like realistically, if you're gonna run like a proper marketing sales system, 30 or $40, if you don't have that, you need to save your money, you need to work side hustle, you need to like spend that time learning skills, right, do anything you can to make that initial nest egg. And then from there, be willing to commit it to yourself. That's where like the whole s and me 500 comes into. Right? You're going to invest that money into yourself and your your business, and you can get $10.30, I mean, 100 x returns on that initial investment if you're smart about it.

Dan Austin: [33:09] Yep. Yeah. I'll I will be a devil's advocate what you're saying a little bit. It's like, yes, what you just said is the way to start your business and be ready to scale and do it properly. Yeah. You have more time, you can still get out there and do shit, it's just way harder. Yeah. You have to give up time and time is very precious. So like technically speaking, you could go around and just door knock everybody in your neighborhood until somebody wants to sell you their house. And you could door knock and door knock and give them 70% ARV minus repairs, cash offers, all day long, and you'll probably lock some shit up, and you'll get good at door to door sales. Right. But that could take you months of doing that, when you could just, you know, have like what we're saying, save up your money and go right into these other systems. Maybe we should do like a like a course on how to do this with no money without being an idiot.

Mike DeHaan: [33:57] With no money without being an idiot. That's problem is is we've never really done that. Can start it with some money from our engineering job.

Dan Austin: [34:03] No. I know. But there's the lower cost ways of marketing. Right? And so what we do, the way we set it up is that you can have some passivity in your in your lead generation. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [34:16] Absolutely. What you should do if you're serious about it, we have our new program that we're actually, but for people that wanna take it a little more seriously, which is our accelerator program, which you should be able to see the basic information, hopefully, by the time it's because our our developers are working on it, collectingkeyspodcast.com/launch. But this will be our first take. We want to find 10 investors, right, that either have a small business or they're looking to be making like real money in twelve weeks, right, instead of having to go through the entire learning process themselves. Yep. And what we're gonna do is we're launching this on 10/01/2023, and we're going to be taking 10 investors up to the end of the year. We're going to be running your lead generation for you. It's basically gonna be like our partnership program, but we're going to make you do your own sales so that you learn that process and you take your life to do all of it, but we'll do all of your lead gen, we'll be able to all of your systems. We're gonna give you extreme accountability. And at the end of those twelve weeks, if you are not making like serious offers on property, on properties, right, we'll give you all of your money back to jump into it.

Mike DeHaan: [35:21] And, you know, you can walk away and go and tell everyone we suck because I'm 100% confident that in those twelve weeks, we can get you to the point where you're taking some very, very serious shots on goal. Okay. So that is the newest thing that we are bringing to you guys. So you can go to collectthekeyspodcast.com/launch, and you will be able to learn about our accelerator program. And this is going to be our way that every quarter, we're gonna end up with 10 badasses, then they go out there and take the world by storm, and then the rest of their life's gonna look completely different after that.

Dan Austin: [35:49] Totally. And the cool thing about it is is we're literally only going to, like we're limiting it to 10 people. We're not going above that because we want to have like people to have direct access and really get the most benefit out of this. So it'll be like a small cohort of like, special forces kind of training, right? And then, the cool thing is, is if you're a true badass and you really do want to like, go to the next level, then you'll be able to apply to be in our partnership program once you've gone Not through that whole everybody gets selected for our partnership program, we're pretty specific about that, but if you go through that accelerated program and you're crushing it and you're loving this, there's no reason why you can't apply for the partnership program and really take it to

Mike DeHaan: [36:30] the next level. Exactly. Yeah. So should be good. So anyways, click the keys pockets.com/launch. Go check that out and we would love to see if you would be a good fit for it.

Dan Austin: [36:39] So

Mike DeHaan: [36:40] Yeah. Cool. Right on, guys. Well, I think that's a wrap for the show there. Go check out that link. Go to kisspodcast.com/launch and apply for our accelerator program. And we would love to chat with you and see if you're the right kind of candidate that we're looking for. Again, like we said, we're limiting it to 10 people. So, you know, if you miss out, sorry. But it is what it is. Yep. We'll get you we'll catch on the next quarter. Maybe we'll keep our our running list for everyone that supplies for it. And then outside of that, you should give us a follow on Instagram. I'm at Mike underscore Invest. Dan is at investor man. Dan, go ahead and shoot us a DM. Dan has been turning up the Instagram content recently. He's actually had some pretty good videos going out there too.

Dan Austin: [37:17] I've been crushing it as they say. I think that's what they say. I was crushing it.

Mike DeHaan: [37:20] You've crushing it. You've on a roll for like two weeks. See how long it it continues. But see if you can if you can get a

Dan Austin: [37:25] whole month. Tune in because you never know what I'm gonna say. That's the thing is I'm not as polished as Mike. You're gonna get the real raw, Dan.

Mike DeHaan: [37:31] Yeah. Right. It might be off pillar. Yeah. I'm saying it might be. It's don't get banned. So, anyways, guys, go to the following Instagram there. And besides that, we appreciate you all. We'll talk to guys next week. See y'all.