What to Do When Your Leads Dry Up

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] Real quick before we jump into the show, we created the collecting keys podcast to be a real estate investing podcast that is created by real estate operators for real estate operators. And we want operators everywhere to know what it really takes these days to be successful in this business rather than all the fluff that all the other content creators and podcasters out there make. And so one of the challenges with this is that it's challenging to grow because most operators are too busy out there working. Right? And they aren't always learning or actively seeking new learning material. And so if you could please share this show with any fellow operators who know, you know, you can text it to them. You can post it on your socials. You can leave us a good review that you then share somewhere. That would be amazing. But really, whatever, it really helps us continue to get excited to create content, and it will also help you because everyone that you expose us to will get better as a real estate operator and close more deals. So if you could do that for us, it would really need a ton. And, otherwise, we appreciate you guys, and let's get into this episode. The industry is so different now from, like, four years ago. It's not just about, like, calling people and having a silver tongue and closing deals anymore.

Dan Austin: [1:14] I haven't told you my new Instagram algorithm. Have I? What? It's about it's people eating. Have you seen this? Have you seen this trend on Instagram or social media? No. Ugh. It's a great one.

Dylan Koch: [1:26] Our algorithms aren't as screwed as yours is, bro.

Dan Austin: [1:29] People eating? I'm gonna start sending it to

Dylan Koch: [1:31] you. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [1:32] What is it like? People eating it? No limbs, like eating with nubs? Like What

Dan Austin: [1:36] the fuck? No. Here's what caught my eye. I'm scrolling, and I see this, like, Jacob's Java cup, which is a local coffee shop here, and then all of a sudden this chick gets on, and she's like, what I eat in a day is a fatty. And then she drinks out of the coffee, and she's like, this one's gross. So she's like, went and got another one, and it was another local. So was like, oh, I was sitting next to my wife. Was like, check this out. This girl's like from Spokane. And it was just Harry wolfing down food all day.

Mike DeHaan: [2:01] No way. She's from Spokane. Oh, man. That's why it caught

Dan Austin: [2:05] my eye. And then that from that point on, because I looked at it, I watched the video, now it's like you like these, which I don't mind it, it's kinda funny. And so then I just got a few of those.

Mike DeHaan: [2:15] But anyways, guys, what's going on? Welcome to the collecting keys real estate investing podcast. This is the show by real estate operators for real estate operators, so you can make your business better in this ever changing market. To your first time here, I am Mike DeHaan here with my cohost, Dan Austin, and a Hello. Welcome back after a long time to Dylan Cook. Welcome back.

Dylan Koch: [2:39] Feels good to be back in the booth.

Mike DeHaan: [2:41] Been out for been out for four weeks. And on this show, we like to dive into things that are working for our business in the current times, and then also just talk about the macroeconomic state of real estate everything as well while Dan's fucking sending an email while we're to start recording. So we're clickety clacking. This is gonna be a joke of an episode, I can tell already. So, Dylan, welcome back. Glad to have you here. You had family emergency. Is your hairless cat okay? That's the real

Dylan Koch: [3:09] question. Yeah. By the way, no one really DM'd me, so thanks Our for that,

Dan Austin: [3:13] listeners are not engaged, so shame on you whoever's listening to this that didn't DM, Dylan. Yeah. Yeah. How did you know about it then?

Dylan Koch: [3:19] For the audience. I listened to the own episodes, but for the audience

Mike DeHaan: [3:22] Good for you.

Dylan Koch: [3:23] I did FaceTime them from the vet hospital. Not a hairless cat, but for our dogs. So

Mike DeHaan: [3:28] Yeah. You did like you were going to, like, record, and then all of a sudden the vet walk in, you're like, oh, I gotta go.

Dan Austin: [3:33] I gotta go. My dad's here.

Mike DeHaan: [3:37] Sort of felt like.

Dylan Koch: [3:38] I mean, as the last four weeks have kinda progressed, I'll just, you know, talk about my business real quick if you guys don't mind. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Honestly, January and February are gonna be penciled to be, like, my one of my top two months ever.

Mike DeHaan: [3:48] Nice. Wow.

Dylan Koch: [3:49] So still on pace for, you know, the million dollar a year, hopefully. And a lot of these were two different sellers at three properties each that I'm working like package deals on. So that's six deals out of the 11 that are coming from two different people.

Mike DeHaan: [4:03] And you found your name for your book, your like small entrepreneur book, and you wanna fucking have a jerk off whatever group like they do, the million dollar a year. That's a great like book title Yeah. Yeah. Barnes and Noble.

Dylan Koch: [4:14] You're right. I'll write that down.

Dan Austin: [4:16] I was thinking he should post on social media how he's looking to buy portfolios of properties.

Mike DeHaan: [4:20] Oh, there you go.

Dylan Koch: [4:21] There you go. That's a good idea. Or just like that be the the list that you target, this multiple property people.

Dan Austin: [4:27] Yeah. It's your specialty. It's your niche.

Mike DeHaan: [4:29] Yeah. For your million dollar a year, bro. There you go.

Dylan Koch: [4:31] One thing that we talked about in the in our scale community though was I was trying to reverse wholesale a deal. Right? And I got the lead, came in, talked to the seller. I didn't have it under contract yet, but I had a buyer in mind. So I took the buyer with me. I was like, hey, this is preliminary what we talked about. If things check out, you know, are you good here? And did the walk through. Everything went well. Made the offer to the seller, and he verbally accepted, but never signed it on the dotted line. And so that ghosted me, which happens in this business. Yeah. About two weeks go by, I finally get him back on the phone, and I learned that he's under contract with the buyer that I brought to that house. Nice.

Dan Austin: [5:07] That's awesome.

Dylan Koch: [5:08] Yeah. And so I immediately called the, you know, my buyer, and I was like, bro, like, you know, what the fuck's going on? And basically, like, threatened to ruin his reputation as a buyer in in our market. And long story short is I was gonna make 15 on assignment. He's still gonna pay me the 15 k, and now we're all good now. But it just goes to show, I guess, you know, I had trusted this guy up until this point. And I have sold him deals before.

Dan Austin: [5:30] So I would've increased the price, man. I would've held him hostage a little bit.

Mike DeHaan: [5:34] Oh, totally.

Dan Austin: [5:35] Yeah. What an asshole. Actually, would've collected the money and then blasted him.

Mike DeHaan: [5:38] That's what I would still do if I were you is, I mean, don't do business with him again.

Dan Austin: [5:41] What a dirtbag, dude. Is he really a dirtbag? Like, give us more context because you make it seem like it's all okay. I would not be happy about that.

Dylan Koch: [5:48] Yeah. I mean, I've sold the guy houses before.

Dan Austin: [5:52] And I feel like this used to happen a lot more, and nowadays, you don't see this happening very often because I think people it's more professional, and people are less unethical. So to see it, it's weird.

Dylan Koch: [6:02] I think it's he was desperate to do a deal. And I think he thought the numbers were tight or something like that, which they kind of were. I mean, I'll give him that, but it doesn't give you the excuse to do that. Like, you negotiate. And he tried to negotiate after the fact, Dan. He was like, who do it for 7,500? Was like, fuck no.

Dan Austin: [6:17] No. No. Loser.

Dylan Koch: [6:20] I don't know. That's just a lesson to people out there is like, just be careful when you're trying to reverse wholesale and to even people that you probably already know.

Mike DeHaan: [6:28] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [6:29] Well, you

Mike DeHaan: [6:29] know, I'm a firm believer. I think it's Maya Angelou quote. It's once people shows you

Dan Austin: [6:33] show you who they really

Mike DeHaan: [6:34] are to make them show you a second time.

Dylan Koch: [6:36] Yeah. That's a good point.

Mike DeHaan: [6:37] I mean, this is something that is such a shockingly rare thing, I would say, in, like, the new entrepreneur and, like, small business space Mhmm. Is they keep going back to people that have ripped them off. Yeah. And Dan and I see this all the time because Dan and I, obviously, we have the show. We're pretty ruthless. I'll shit call out people. I don't give shit. And we have so many people that are in our circle that are like, yeah. They kinda like stole money from you last time, but this you know, they didn't mean it.

Dan Austin: [7:01] They were sorry. They said sorry.

Mike DeHaan: [7:03] Yeah. Like our current business partners, they have like this huge falling out with their previous business partners, and they're still like they're just like homies. They like hang out. They like talk to each other. Yeah. I'm like, would never talk to that person again.

Dylan Koch: [7:13] It's like cheating on your wife or like some of your wife cheating on you and then going back to her. This doesn't make sense.

Dan Austin: [7:18] Right. And and the only reason you're sorry is because you got caught. Right? That's that's why it always comes that you want resolution because you got caught, dude. That's what it comes down to. You're still an unethical person.

Mike DeHaan: [7:26] Bro, it's like it's like your wife cheating on you and then you go in and playing golf with the dude that fucked your wife. Yeah. Know. It's ridiculous. This

Dylan Koch: [7:33] is fucked up.

Dan Austin: [7:33] Yeah. That's there's a name for that, I think, called cuckold cuckolding.

Dylan Koch: [7:37] You would know that.

Mike DeHaan: [7:38] Yeah. That's a army ranger thing, Dan. You'd know all about that. That's probably also part of your Instagram algorithm.

Dan Austin: [7:43] Definitely.

Mike DeHaan: [7:44] But, anyways, I'm glad you're able to get a resolution on that though, Dylan. I'm glad you're having a good a couple months to get kicked off. What's your deal flow? How many deals you have signed around? Or are you

Dan Austin: [7:54] gonna be

Mike DeHaan: [7:54] closed at the end of the month?

Dylan Koch: [7:55] As long as the ones that two are closed next week, so that'll be 11 through the first two months.

Mike DeHaan: [7:59] Awesome. That's great. Nice.

Dylan Koch: [8:01] Five and then six. Sweet. Beautiful. And then there's four others in escrow that I'm still either trying to find a buyer for or working through a title issue on one of the other ones.

Mike DeHaan: [8:13] That is the name of the game right now. We have so many just like messy freaking deals with title,

Dan Austin: [8:18] gross title issues. Yeah. Title and sellers.

Mike DeHaan: [8:21] Yeah. Dan Dan's a professional shit solver right now.

Dylan Koch: [8:25] And honestly, lot of I think I have, like, seven or eight offers out too that for whatever reason, man, I just can't get these people back on the phone to actually sign the dotted line, which is super frustrating.

Mike DeHaan: [8:37] Soon as you get, like if you're actually able to actually find an acquisitions person I know you've been trying this forever and you failed a bunch of times because apparently no one in Cincinnati wants to work, you're gonna just crush it, dude. Like Yeah. Yeah. I feel like you always have these kind of pending deals that are probably closable, but you're also just a business owner that's balancing everything else.

Dan Austin: [8:57] You're doing a 100 different things.

Dylan Koch: [8:59] So two things with that. I'm re interviewing people. I'm down to the final two candidates, so I'm gonna make a decision by the end this week.

Mike DeHaan: [9:05] I'm excited for you to invite them to our scale sales training and them not show up again.

Dylan Koch: [9:08] No. That they'll show up this time.

Dan Austin: [9:10] That's part of their interview. Is that part of their interview? Like, see if they show up on time? Yeah.

Dylan Koch: [9:13] Actually, I should. That's a good idea.

Mike DeHaan: [9:15] You should. I'll, like, haze the shit out of them. Like, yeah. It must be a total day.

Dylan Koch: [9:19] So actually, no. This is good to talk about because the two candidates, one is local, has tried basically a whole saying on himself, but realized it's hard. Has done a couple deals, but basically wants to likes a steady income. He's older, married.

Dan Austin: [9:32] Yeah.

Dylan Koch: [9:33] Because I'm offering two k flat plus the commission.

Dan Austin: [9:35] Yep.

Dylan Koch: [9:35] The other one is a young 20 year old that lives in Texas. But he's like a mutual friend of a friend, but he seems hungrier. But I almost feel guilty where if I bring him out here and it doesn't work, he just moved across the country. Right? The other guy is probably the safer bet.

Dan Austin: [9:50] Oh, you're gonna have him move.

Dylan Koch: [9:51] Yeah. No. He said because I want my person to be boots on the ground too.

Mike DeHaan: [9:54] Yeah. Okay. Mhmm.

Dylan Koch: [9:54] And he said he'd be willing to do that. So pitching it back to you guys, you got the guy that's probably hungrier, but doesn't know shit about real estate, young guy, or the safer guy who knows where it sits at real estate, knows the game. But, you know, kind of a toss-up there.

Mike DeHaan: [10:10] What's your current lead, like, backflow? Like, how many leads do you have in the system? Like, you look at like your warm leads and shit, like, is it, like, in the thousands? Low thousands. Yeah. Low thousands? Cool. Bring in both of them.

Dylan Koch: [10:22] Oh, man.

Dan Austin: [10:23] That's gonna be my answer. Was like, what if you hired both of them and then keep the best one?

Mike DeHaan: [10:26] And what I would do instead of having that kid move across the country, seriously, pay for him to come out and stay for a month, bring both these guys on. If he doesn't like it, he can go back to Texas. Go back home. Right? Then you're not making him make this big commitment. It'll cost you realistically, what, $3 to put him into a Airbnb or some shit. Get him in your system. He'll work out. You'll know it. You'll know in the first three or four weeks. As someone that has hired and fired a lot of people, you will know very quickly if they're gonna be good or not. And as soon as you have like a little pit in your stomach of like, I don't know if they're that good, they're probably not. Just shaking them. And then you can see which one of them performs well. And what I would recommend is you bring them in, you have them start going through your old leads, because that will actually show their hunger. Yep. Right? If they're gonna have to actually work for them and if either of them kinda goes, I don't really wanna do this, you'll know that in the first two days.

Dylan Koch: [11:19] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [11:19] Yeah.

Dylan Koch: [11:19] Yeah? Yep. You're probably right. That kinda hurt to say, but you know, you're probably right.

Mike DeHaan: [11:24] That's what I would do.

Dan Austin: [11:25] Just investment in your business. I mean, we've done that before where we're like, man, we got two really good candidates. We can't pick between the two. Like, fuck it. Just hire both of them. Because to in my opinion, that's cheaper than hiring the wrong one. Totally.

Dylan Koch: [11:35] Yeah. Yeah. When you rephrase it like that too.

Mike DeHaan: [11:38] When when you only bring in one, you're going to give them the benefit of the doubt because you just invested your own time. You have a sunk cost bias in that versus if you have options. Right? It's a lot easier to pivot. And I will also say to you that if you have two people that come in and they know that they are competing against each other, one of them will typically wash themselves out because they'll be like, this is not for me. We have had that happen several times. Totally. And realistically,

Dan Austin: [12:04] if you hire one of these people in six months, they're not gonna be there anyways. Exactly. So it's like, don't feel bad that you have to maybe let one go in six months because the other one is just so much better. Like, it's gonna end up happening anyways, probably. So at least if you have two, now you're prepared to let somebody go in six months and you still have the rock star, or, you know, worst case scenario, they both don't work

Dylan Koch: [12:23] Yeah. And I the way I try to view a lot of these deals is what is the worst case scenario, and Yeah. I waste a couple some time and a little bit of money.

Mike DeHaan: [12:31] Yeah. Exactly. But the upside is significantly more than that.

Dylan Koch: [12:34] Yeah. Yeah. Taste and measure.

Dan Austin: [12:36] Best case scenario is they both kick ass, and now you have two acquisition manager, you just keep marketing.

Dylan Koch: [12:40] And now I do do to spend a fuck ton of money on marketing.

Mike DeHaan: [12:43] Yes. Totally. Right? But I mean, they're getting you a five to seven extra on your ads, man, who cares?

Dylan Koch: [12:48] No. Yeah. No. You're not wrong.

Dan Austin: [12:49] Or maybe one of them maybe one of them actually ends up being a pretty good dispo person and you transition to that. I mean, there's so many options. Right? It's like, you just don't know what you don't know at that point.

Dylan Koch: [12:59] Going circling back just a little bit, the 11 deals that we've, you know, have slated for the first two months, a lot of that too is because I think I have the assistant. You just mentioned that I'm doing all these things. She's taken a lot off my plate Yeah. From transaction coordination, property management, utility, like, anything like that.

Dan Austin: [13:14] Nice.

Dylan Koch: [13:15] Mhmm. I've been more times on the phone talking with sellers, which I think contributes to that.

Dan Austin: [13:19] So much more helpful. Does so does she did you have like a bunch of SOPs that you gave her, or have you just taught her as as she's gone?

Dylan Koch: [13:26] Ton of Loom videos, honestly. Yeah. To be honest, not a lot's in writing anywhere. But Yeah. A lot of Loom videos that shows, you know, what the processes are and that kind of stuff.

Dan Austin: [13:35] Sure. That's helpful.

Mike DeHaan: [13:36] Cool. Growing it pretty well. But yeah. I mean, I don't know. I think that if you legitimately think they're both good candidates, you have to give them both a shot instead of, like, action the wrong one. Like, that was actually Al Tremozi bit talking about, like, flying them out there and putting them in, an Airbnb. He talks about how they do that with any employee that they're thinking about making them relocate because they're like, it's not fair to them to make them relocate if they're not gonna work out. And, realistically, the trade off for you on downside versus upside of that is gonna be massive. Because also too, you could move to Cincinnati and be like, I'd rather stay in Texas. I hate Mhmm. The snow and this weather. Yeah. And that's important because they have sixteen hours a day where they're not working for you that they need to enjoy.

Dylan Koch: [14:19] Yeah. Cool. I mean, here we go. Even though I missed four weeks, this was well worth

Dan Austin: [14:23] it.

Mike DeHaan: [14:23] There go. For a free mentorship with Dylan on the ClickUp News podcast.

Dylan Koch: [14:28] But I mean, moving like increased marketing costs, I know you guys have had some, I guess, frustrations with Yeah. Your your mailing.

Mike DeHaan: [14:35] Yeah. We we talked about that a little bit last week, and I talked about how currently, my parents in who live in Bozeman, Montana, they don't even have, like, regular mail carriers there right now. So if they wanna receive mail, they have to go to the post office. It's still going on, and I guess now that they found, like, some part time work, so they'll get mail delivered, like, maybe once a week. Mhmm. Or, like, sometimes, like, you just never know. But if you want consistent stuff, which is important during tax time,

Dan Austin: [15:00] you gotta go to the

Mike DeHaan: [15:01] post office, pick it up. And we had a on our scale call yesterday, we were talking about mail results. And pretty much across the board, everyone has had issues with getting mail delivered. And, you know, there's a few different situations with that. So I know there's the weather piece with winter, which has been causing issues throughout the the Midwest and the South. There mail houses in the Midwest. That's part of it. But there's also this whole Doge thing, right, where they're cutting all the federal workers. Mhmm. Dan found an article yesterday after we talked about our skill call with them basically having extended, like, a bonus to federal workers at the USPS if they opted to retire and leave. Like senior employees. Like senior employees. And I don't know if you guys ever been to a post office, but they're kind of all senior employees.

Dylan Koch: [15:50] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [15:50] Right? Yeah. So I don't know what percentage of them took that, but I would imagine that insignificant. But then the interesting thing is, Dylan, you said before I show you, I'm not gonna put the names on a blast, but you used a different mail house, what, a week ago, and those have gotten delivered. So I'm trying to figure out if it's like our timing with our batch for everything has been poor Because, like, we are currently waiting for mail to come in that went out at, like, the beginning of January. Right? But that also is kinda lined up with a lot of these cuts and different things. So I don't know. The big learning lesson with this is how important it is to not have such a huge, like, marketing risk or, like, a single channel risk, I guess they call it, in your business. You always have to have backup plans. Mhmm. Because despite our lead generation being really, really poor over the last two months in terms of direct mail, we have been able to get some online leads that have been doing pretty well. We've gotten some referral leads from agents and from other wholesalers, which we'd be able to make some money on. We have the benefit of the fact that we have six years worth of leads in our system to, like, kinda dig through, and we've pulling stuff out of that. So we're able to make money, but that will eventually run out.

Mike DeHaan: [17:01] So we're kind of, like, facing a time crunch to figure out, like, what our next legion opportunity is gonna be.

Dylan Koch: [17:07] And if you don't stop that continuous marketing, it's just gonna like, once the the old ones do hit, and the ones that you just sense are hitting, like, simultaneously

Mike DeHaan: [17:16] Yeah.

Dylan Koch: [17:17] It's like, now your staff is overwhelmed with, you know, the opportunities that come in, which is a okay problem to have, but everything kinda gets thrown off balance there for a little bit. Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [17:25] It does. And and currently, what I said, we don't have a big team because it's basically us and our other partners that run the sales side, and that's kind of it. And we have a lead manager. If this situation happened back when we had a big team, it would have been really weird because we would have had, like, 15 people that were sitting around doing nothing. Versus, like, right now, if we get overwhelmed, I don't know, we'll probably just be dropping the ball on a few, but I would rather have that problem than being ice cold. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [17:50] And I think too, also, as another note of what you should be doing in these times is, like, having more tools in your tool bag of how to get the deal across the finish line, like, milking what you have. So when you don't have these leads, okay, well, what are the next tier down leads that maybe weren't traditional wholesale deals, but might become a flip for you or innovation? Or can you just go back to and negotiate harder with them Mhmm. And not being a one trick pony, not just on the marketing side, but on the operational side. Because if you're fighting to get one deal a month, and that's like you're just fighting for that every single month, and all of a sudden you're not getting any fresh leads, you're not gonna be doing well. You're gonna be tapping out on your money and your funds because you're gonna have anything coming in. Yeah. Because you don't have anything outside of your one trick.

Dylan Koch: [18:34] Yeah. I think even when I was at the beginning of doing this and I needed to generate revenue, I mean, couple of things is if you have any software or CRM, like list stack it, go to ones that are on the top of the list, and just fucking cold call people. Right? Yep. Just do that. That's for one. And then if there's ones that are close, right, like you've talked to people and you're like, hey, I need to get this a little lower. I'm a huge fan of doing like, basically, like, reverse wholesaling, but like finding the cash buyers around there that bought in the last two years in a point five mile radius. And I just sold a deal the other day that they own on the same street, and they know they're overpaying, but they don't care. Because they like the street, and they want another place right there. Right? And so I'm not gonna find another buyer that's traditional in this sense. So now you're kind of you're mix and matching and finding opportunities when they're not there.

Mike DeHaan: [19:21] Yeah. Totally. I mean and that is 90% of the business right now is that opportunity recognition. Right? And understanding real estate well enough to do that. You can give me about thirty six seconds. I just wanna share our SCALE community with you. So SCALE stands for scaling cash flow assets, leverage, and equity. It is our exclusive community for real estate operators looking to take this game seriously. In the community, you'd hang out with myself, Dan, Dylan, and other operators around the country who are all working to be the best in their market. We realtated a survey, and every single member said that the community had directly contributed to major growth they experienced in the last twelve months. On top of that, you get all of our processes around marketing, sales, building a CRM, and you even get preferred relationships with Lowe's and different financing slash lenders so that you can get your deals 100% paid for without a headache. So if that sounds like something you're interested in, go to collectingkeys.com/scale. Let's see if you're a good fit. I actually had a call yesterday with an old friend of ours who's been in the industry for longer than Dan and I have. He's kinda one of, like, our first mentors. And he hit me up, he's like, man, I'm really shuggling right now. And so I got on call with him, just quick Zoom, and we're just talking about everything that he was working on. He's like, guys, I don't understand. He's like, I got tied up in like some of these larger deals.

Mike DeHaan: [20:33] He's doing multi families. He was doing these different things, and he's trying to get back into flipping houses. He's like, I'm doing all the same stuff. I'm just not. I feel stupid. I just can't figure it out. And I was like, bro, the industry is so different now from, like, four years ago.

Dylan Koch: [20:44] Uh-huh.

Mike DeHaan: [20:45] And I was like, it's not just about, like, calling people and having a silver tongue and closing deals anymore.

Dan Austin: [20:50] Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [20:50] Right? Like, all the different kinds of lead generation have been so commoditized. Any Joe Schmo can go even if you wanna send direct mail, you can just go pay fucking 200% per letter for REI print mail or whatever it's called, and they'll do all the data and shit for you, and they'll send it. You're paying out the ass for that. But if you're somebody who's only trying to do five deals a year, right, you can do that now. You know? So not everyone is able to do that. If you wanna go and hire a cold calling or a marketing company, you can go and you can find a whole army of VAs that have experience cold calling for other wholesale companies that no longer exist. You can hire a cold calling company. You can do PPL companies and literally just give them your credit card, and they'll sell you leads that they per chem like are exclusively for you for $300 a person even though they're selling them to fucking everybody.

Dylan Koch: [21:38] I've had that.

Mike DeHaan: [21:38] Right? Yeah. Exactly. But, like, every kind of lead generation now is so easy to just, like, get. The only thing that I would say is really important to stand out, and this is what I said to him, is having two things, and it's a brand Mhmm. Where people can actually, like, see you and see that you're legit and know that you're not a crook. So we've really made a point of trying to build out a professional presence for that reason. And then also having, like, craftiness, right, and enough knowledge around real estate to recognize opportunities that are mutually beneficial. And a lot of times right now, that isn't always wholesale. Right? That is isn't always getting a discounted deal. It's doing innovation. It is, you know, working with the seller to wholesale with them. We've done a lot of these recently where we're like, I understand you want that money. We can't get you that price. If we can get you that price, are you willing to pay us, like, basically, like a a brokerage fee almost? But it's

Dan Austin: [22:35] like almost like an off

Mike DeHaan: [22:36] the books thing. We've had several of those recently that we've done where they fully know that we are working to find investor buyers even though it's not us. And that's more beneficial than like, yeah. I'm gonna give you a contract and then just like try to find someone. Just like being super transparent and really approaching things from a collaborative manner with the seller is so so important right now. 100%. I don't think a lot of OG people understand that.

Dylan Koch: [22:57] And the one thing you alluded to is like the brand adjacent stuff. So like what I mean is like, if someone if you send them a direct mail piece and they Google you, and you do have the website, you do have the BBB rating, like that increases your response rate in your direct mail. That increases your likelihood of doing those deals. The biggest wholesaler in this market does TV ads and PPC. That's it. And they'll do over $3,000,000 top line. Wow.

Dan Austin: [23:23] Yeah. That's pretty good.

Dylan Koch: [23:23] So they get so many leads just from those two things that Just branding. Do anything else.

Dan Austin: [23:27] Yeah. That makes

Mike DeHaan: [23:28] sense. The biggest wholesaler in your market only has 3,000,000 top line?

Dylan Koch: [23:32] That I know of. Yes.

Mike DeHaan: [23:33] How big is Cincinnati? How big is the city?

Dan Austin: [23:35] Medium price point is probably pretty pretty low.

Dylan Koch: [23:37] Price point is like $2.50 to 300.

Dan Austin: [23:39] Okay. So higher than I thought.

Mike DeHaan: [23:40] Yeah. But like I mean, that's like Dallas though. I mean, and Billy and Tara down there do like 8,000,000 a year.

Dylan Koch: [23:45] I think we're much smaller than DFW, and they market to more than that.

Mike DeHaan: [23:48] That's my point though. Yeah. So how big Cincinnati people?

Dylan Koch: [23:51] I mean, I don't know if I could Google it. So like is it

Mike DeHaan: [23:54] like a million people or is it less?

Dan Austin: [23:55] Well, I think the other thing with the argument of like how to do this and why why he's failing is like sellers are different sellers today than they were. They're more educated, they're more sophisticated. If you're like wholesaling, even when we first started, but like even before that, like some of these sellers just there's like, oh, I need a cash buyer, get what is this? They're like, yeah, oh, that sounds way better. Now they know they've had experiences, they've they've seen the advertisement from the big guys in your town, they understand the process, and so they're actually a little bit more, they they understand there's competition. And so they are going into it more educated and have the ability to negotiate better. It's really what it comes down to it.

Dylan Koch: [24:33] I can't remember the last time I had a conversation with someone that didn't have already talked to somebody else.

Mike DeHaan: [24:38] It's constant. Right? And not only that, but a lot of them don't even know what wholesaling is. Totally. They're like, are you gonna wholesale my house? Yeah. Yeah, dude. We literally had a seller on go that asked us, are you guys wholesalers? And then he said that his son had shown him videos on TikTok and was like into that. So like they were fully aware of what we were doing. Yeah. Yep. Right? And you're gonna try Mike pretend, Mike, that's not you? Just like, yeah. Like, we might. I don't know. Like like sometimes we buy places and as we wholesale them, it all depends.

Dylan Koch: [25:03] Yeah. Exactly. To answer your question, Cincinnati population's only like 311,000. Cincinnati MSA is 2,200,000.

Mike DeHaan: [25:10] Oh, wow. Wow. That is big. Bro, you you have that market primed for the taking for top guys only doing 3,000,000 a year.

Dan Austin: [25:17] You could do it, Dylan. Why? You could do it. You could do it easily.

Dylan Koch: [25:20] I don't know if I want to do it.

Mike DeHaan: [25:21] But Good point. Valid. Yeah.

Dylan Koch: [25:24] It's true.

Mike DeHaan: [25:24] So then just more money, more problems.

Dylan Koch: [25:26] Yeah. No. I mean, I think just going back to what you guys are saying, like, the brand stuff, and I don't know how do you guys feel about TV ads, but I feel like they get the 4AM people who are sitting in their living room chair. That's like that's when the ad runs, that's when they call, and they're probably not on anybody else's list.

Dan Austin: [25:45] So I'll say this that I think it builds brand very strongly. Like, I think it's that with radio ads, billboards, all that stuff are going to People, you're in everybody's living room. So the last, I don't know, few weeks around dinner time, I've had the TV. Like, we have YouTube TV streaming, so it has like local channels. Turn it on, and we get one of our competitors, like, at dinner time. Like primetime ads in our market. And so to me, I mean, like, I don't know if they're playing at 4AM too, they probably are. But they're getting out there and a lot of people are seeing it, and because of that, like, everybody's just one person away from a cash buyer, cash seller, I mean, rather. And so, like, it's just that big brand, and I think it works.

Mike DeHaan: [26:26] Yeah. It does. I

Dan Austin: [26:27] do. It doesn't it's hard to directly correlate it. Yeah. You gotta still get in, like, something in their hands. Maybe they're gonna Google you. Maybe they're going to get a a mailer. Maybe they're gonna get a, you know, some some Google Ads. You know?

Mike DeHaan: [26:39] Yeah. Well, I think where people tend to get a little, I'll say, hesitant with those is it's hard to directly know if that brand marketing is, like you're saying, is directly leading to leads. Mhmm. Right? There's almost like two kinds of marketing you have to track. And like that brand marketing is almost more like an overhead item. Like, it's going to be very hard to know how many people chose to call you because of their radio ads or TV ads. They might not even know. Right? They could have, like, gotten a letter from you, and the reason it stood out to them is because they've been hearing you on the radio or they've seen you on TV several times. But they chose to call you from your tracking number on the letter.

Dylan Koch: [27:17] Yeah. Right. So that shows up in your direct mail KPIs, not anything else.

Mike DeHaan: [27:21] Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So so it's really hard to track it that way. And I think that that's why, like, if you're starting and you have, like, a small budget, that kind of marketing probably isn't like, like, the media marketing probably shouldn't be your focus. Like, I'd say it's hard to know exactly who you're getting in front of and to track its success. Yep. But if you're in a period where you have some extra revenue that you can put aside, like we're currently running radio for this reason. And I will tell you where on the seller side, I'm not sure how beneficial how beneficial it's been, but it has been productive on the buyer side. Table here is We've had a lot of people that have mentioned that, and people like kinda win our circle. We've only had, I think, one lead that said they specifically called us because they heard us on the radio. But if they don't tell us that, we have no idea. Right? Yeah. I guess you could send up like a landing page, you know

Dylan Koch: [28:07] Yeah. I know.

Mike DeHaan: [28:08] Back at homebuyers.com/radio, but that's extra steps that also reduces the likelihood of them even following through with contact.

Dan Austin: [28:15] Mhmm.

Dylan Koch: [28:16] Yep. Oh, 100%.

Mike DeHaan: [28:18] Yeah. No. It's it's interesting. I mean, that's all part of building like the pipeline. But I will say that when times are slow, if you are an established company, having that stuff is really important, cause it will make you stand out from everyone else that is also slow when you're competing for a smaller bucket of leads. Yeah. I don't know. We'll see. Big picture stuff, Dylan. What are you seeing like economy wise since you're the person who had to read that? How are feeling about real estate as a whole?

Dylan Koch: [28:41] Yeah. So I guess two things that we'll touch on briefly is one that Zillow, like, guess downgraded their twenty twenty five pricing predictions to one point plus 1.1% on a national level, when it was 1.6. So it's like a half a percent down from what it was a month ago.

Mike DeHaan: [28:59] Yeah. Yeah.

Dylan Koch: [29:00] Right? And again, that's nationwide, so you take that with a grain of salt. But Zillow is probably the most incentivized company to say that real estate's awesome. Right? Like, so

Dan Austin: [29:08] Yep.

Dylan Koch: [29:08] Them being 1.1 is kinda like, you know, are we really there to me? The other thing, and this is gonna be a little bit long winded, but and it's not a political podcast by any means. But Trump has his cabinet members. Right? And they were talking about a Mar A Largo accord. And for anyone who wants, like, historical significance, the Federal Reserve was in founded in 1913. Bretton Woods in 1944, that's what put the dollar on the gold standard. Nixon shock in 1971, that's what took us off the gold standard. And the Plaza Accord in 1985, which was like devaluing the dollar relative to other currencies. He's basically looking for something that's bold and brash, something along these same lines. Right? To do in his political campaign. And his theory is that, hey, the trade imbalance has been or has been imbalanced for a long time, and I don't want American taxpayers to pay for it anymore. So he what him and his cabinet members are proposing is a 0% treasury bond for a hundred years, and basically forcing central banks to take it in lieu of protection in, like, everywhere. Military protection. Right? For, the the naval academy, you know, across the seas or And why would you do that? Right? Like but in theory, it makes sense because now we're it lowers our debt burden by a lot. Right?

Dylan Koch: [30:25] We don't pay interest for a hundred years. Someone else is buying it, and all they get is military production. So what does that do? Right? What does it do for real estate? What does do for markets? It helps with liquidity, because now we don't have to buy our own debt. Someone else is buying it. And it'll probably weaken the dollar, which also helps with liquidity, because now dollar denominated countries look better relative to The United States.

Dan Austin: [30:48] Mhmm.

Dylan Koch: [30:48] All in all, if this goes through, which I can't put a probability on that, it would probably be more of a headwind for all asset prices, including real estate.

Mike DeHaan: [30:57] All you Bitcoiners are fucking just jerking around. Yeah.

Dylan Koch: [31:00] So they did they did mention part of that. You wanna get into, like, the sovereign wealth fund, the tariffs also mentioned in this. But really not a lot of people are talking about a 0%, a hundred year duration treasury bond that other countries are gonna have to buy.

Dan Austin: [31:12] So let me ask you this. So then you're saying that would be a headwind. How can you explain that to me for from the market standpoint?

Dylan Koch: [31:18] Sorry. If I said headwind, I meant tailwind.

Dan Austin: [31:20] So if can Okay. Tailwind.

Dylan Koch: [31:21] Increased liquidity, decreased dollar, are both usually relatively good for assets.

Dan Austin: [31:25] Right. And one of the benefits, and I'm just I'm thinking out loud here because I don't quite I've I've know some of this, but not a lot of it. So the idea being too is he can't, like he, Tramp, or the his cabinet or the government can't control the interest rates that the Federal Reserve sets, right? They they can't directly he can't tell Jerome Powell, you need to drop rates, because that's really what he wants ultimately. Right? To move the money, is to get money moving, is to get those raises. So this would in turn affect like the ten year treasury notes.

Dylan Koch: [31:53] So the Fed is what controls like the price and amount of money. But the fiscal sides of Congress, the treasury, they can issue any kind of duration that they want too. Right? So they're basically they can create the set of thin air. Right? The hundred like these hundred year bonds. I guess if you're saying how this affect the ten year, it would have more appetite. Right? So, like, instead of buying this a hundred year one, we'll buy the ten year one, which usually they're inversely correlated. So yields would go down, prices would go up. So the more people that buy it, the yields would typically come down. Right? So that is kind of the their train of thought. Right? How can we get more people to buy the ten year to get yields lower, which gets mortgage rates and borrowing rates lower?

Dan Austin: [32:34] Yeah. Because the the Fed has dropped rates, but mortgage rates have not followed suit. And a lot of people talk about the ten year treasury rate being the cause of that.

Dylan Koch: [32:43] Just think if you're if you're the the Fed and you wanna issue a $100,000,000,000 of bonds. Let's call them ten year bonds. But you only have 90,000,000,000 of buyers from either foreign countries, US banks, whatever it may be. Who has to buy that 10,000,000,000 difference? It is the Federal Reserve. They're literally buying their own debt. And they so that means that there's not a lot of demand for those bonds, which means yields have to go up to hopefully increase demand. Right? So now they're basically, how can we increase demand for the ten year to try those yields down? Does that make sense?

Dan Austin: [33:14] Makes sense, sir. So their way

Mike DeHaan: [33:15] of increasing demand is basically saying we're not gonna protect you if you don't buy this. So it's fucking blackmail.

Dylan Koch: [33:20] Yeah. I mean, kind of. It's kinda playing hardball.

Dan Austin: [33:22] It's blackmail. Doesn't really cost us anything because we're already spending the money to protect people. Right?

Dylan Koch: [33:27] Yeah. I guess the the game theory here is like, okay, what if you're one of these, you know, NATO nations, you're like, well, I'm gonna ask China. I'm gonna ask Russia to protect me instead. And now he can just be like, okay, well, now you have a 50% tariff against all imports.

Dan Austin: [33:38] Right. Right. Right. Interesting.

Mike DeHaan: [33:40] Yeah. The challenge with all these sort of things that they do, where they're like, it's gonna weaken the dollar or whatever, you know, and cause inflation and these different things, it still doesn't solve the fundamental issue that the average consumer will not be making more money. Right? Like, dollar is not gonna be worth anymore at that point. Well, the question is, do they need

Dan Austin: [34:00] to make more money, I guess? Why would they need to make more money in this scenario?

Mike DeHaan: [34:03] Why? Because if assets and everything get more expensive, all the corporations going to reduce their prices? Because their number in their bank account, the amount of money that they have will stay the same. They're not gonna suddenly get a 20% fucking raise. Right. Right? So what we will see and what we have seen in other countries that have done shit like this is we will see a massive increase in the poverty rate in The United States. We will see 50 to 60% of people that suddenly cannot afford anything. We will see a reduction in The US the average US person's power, it's like spending power nationwide. And at a big level, over a hundred years, is that worth it? I don't know. And none of the people that are making decision are gonna be alive, so they don't really care.

Dan Austin: [34:44] So is the argument because I I guess I don't understand it because I guess I was going down a different path. So your argument is, are you talking about terrorists driving up costs, or what Dylan said is driving up costs?

Mike DeHaan: [34:53] Well, so basically, if the stuff that Dylan talks to leads to an increase in asset prices, leads to a reduction of the value of the dollar, which lead to inflation, they have to print more money, the dollar's different things. Right? Most people are gonna be majorly negative negatively affected by that.

Dan Austin: [35:07] Yeah. I guess the way I would understand it then is that those actions would decrease inflation. And sure, you're not as an individual gonna make more money, but as inflation goes down, now you're basically not going down either. Like, your wage stays the same, and so now you can afford more more purchasing over a period of time.

Dylan Koch: [35:24] So the I just wanna clarify something. And that this is one big pet peeves when you hear, like, financial pundits talk. Inflation, if it's positive, is a rate of change number. It's Right. Meaning that prices are just going up or down slower. Prices don't go down unless it's deflation, which usually happens in recessions or depressions. Right? And so there might be a scenario where they know, you this has been talked about, but it's not politically favorable to say, hey, we're purposely gonna cause some pain bring prices down short term, and and hope for a long term game. Everyone just kicks the can down the road because that's what the incentives say to

Mike DeHaan: [35:56] do. Mhmm.

Dylan Koch: [35:57] Right? So to Mike's point, you know, typically, what we're talking about is good for asset holders, which is people who already own assets, who are getting wealthy. The the wealth divide usually does get a little bit bigger. But at some point, there's things called these fork turnings. I don't wanna get too off track, but they happen every eighty to a hundred years, where there's this political movement, populism increases. The last time this happened was around the forties post World War two where world trade kind of changed. So are we seeing some of this happening now, I guess, is the the thing that we need to ask ourselves.

Mike DeHaan: [36:24] Probably. Yeah. Especially because the entire cabinet right now is the ultra wealthy.

Dylan Koch: [36:31] Yeah. And are they gonna do something that hurt their own bags? Probably not.

Dan Austin: [36:34] That's true.

Mike DeHaan: [36:34] No. Exactly. They're gonna they're gonna do stuff that's gonna strengthen them, and they're all the asset holders. Mhmm. But the 200,000,000 Americans that don't really hold assets or have like one asset, they're the ones that gonna get fucked.

Dan Austin: [36:46] Right? Maybe. I don't think so.

Mike DeHaan: [36:48] I do.

Dan Austin: [36:49] That's a doomer point of view. You're basically saying that America as it stands will end because of some of these policies. I just don't think it will.

Mike DeHaan: [36:55] I'm not saying it'll end. There are plenty functional countries that have a lot of fucking poor people. Yeah. Right? I'm saying that the quality of life in terms of like the American dream that we have will be majorly reduced over the next fifty years, and same for the previous fifty years. You've seen this in South Africa is a big country. See this a lot. You've seen this throughout European countries.

Dan Austin: [37:14] Yeah. But Right? America, dude.

Dylan Koch: [37:15] I I do think there needs to be some kind of

Dan Austin: [37:17] South Africa. Nobody's comparing America to South Africa.

Mike DeHaan: [37:20] South Africa is a really interesting country because there are people there that are highly educated, that are very successful in their own country, but they're spending power because they're in a very corrupt government and they've had these inflationary things that they've done there. It's not worth anything nationwide.

Dan Austin: [37:34] They don't have any deep water ports, they don't have any really major things that they can offer the world as far as production and natural resources. They're not an oil producing country.

Dylan Koch: [37:44] A lot of the problems that I think we're we're seeing today, and problems, I mean, like the populism, the wealth divide, like some of the culture stuff, doesn't come from the past four years, doesn't come from the last ten years. It's decisions that have been made for decades that are just not kind of coming to the top.

Mike DeHaan: [37:57] Since like the seventies, for sure.

Dylan Koch: [37:58] Yeah. Right.

Mike DeHaan: [37:59] Yeah. Totally.

Dylan Koch: [37:59] And so I think that's important to point out. And the fact that the The US is the world reserve currency, and we can print our own dollars, we are in a better position than every other country by default. If you're another country and you're you run your currency in dollars, but you can't print dollars, by default, you're at disadvantage. Right? Yeah. So the whole system is kind of fucked, to be honest. So but no one knows what it looks like on the other side of that. So I know we're going like a little tangent here, but

Dan Austin: [38:24] Well, we're in like I I guess it would be like unchartered territory every single year. Right? Because everything's changing in a way that it's like so hard to forecast it. And I guess my point in like the whole doomer thing is like you can look at it from a negative point of view or you can look at it from a positive point of view of, like, is it really going to end what I have and what I'm doing? And if you don't have

Mike DeHaan: [38:42] that, then you're you're good. It's not because you're already rich, dude. I'm talking about, like, people who don't have that.

Dan Austin: [38:48] Yeah. But I mean, but on the scale of, like, wealthy people, like, I'm comfortable, but I'm not anywhere near what most people that you would call that I would call wealthy rich are. Right? Yeah. People that have a $100,000,000, they're kind of rich these days compared to the billionaires, the people that are actually good.

Mike DeHaan: [39:06] The $100,000,000 people are closer to people getting food stamps than they are to a person worth 1,000,000,000.

Dan Austin: [39:10] This is true.

Mike DeHaan: [39:11] Yeah. Oh, that's just math. Yeah. Totally. You know? So it's tricky to say. I am generally bullish on, I don't I'd say, like, the western economy and world just because I feel like there's been enough bullshit that's come around. And like you're talking around, Dylan, we see that cycle where the sort of, like, populist movements come in. You know, we have that in the forties. The Gilded Age is like a big time in the late eighteen hundreds, right, where there was a very small portion of the population that controlled a ton of wealth. That's when, like, the concept of, like wage slavery and, you know, unions and all those sort things started because there was abuse of power in that period of time. And there will be some kind of situation that happens with that again. What that looks like, I don't know.

Dan Austin: [39:49] Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [39:49] But I do know there will be some massive changes that happen over the next four to five years. And those outcomes, I do not think they will be good for most of us.

Dylan Koch: [39:57] The way I'm looking at really my investing philosophy, and I think how the audience should look at it, is increase your skill set, try to make a fuck ton of money, and put that money in hard assets, which is real estate. Obviously, there's precious metals, other things that you can invest into as well. But even high class stocks. But the first thing is make more money first.

Dan Austin: [40:17] Make more money and invest that money.

Mike DeHaan: [40:19] And no one can take away your skill sets. Right? Exactly. You're totally right. Just like people have had to flee countries if they were educated, if they knew how to hustle, they could go to other countries and they could figure it out. That's why there's so many immigrant stories of people that have come to The US, and they were like a doctor in Iran during the Arab Spring, or like in Asia or whatever, and they came here and they got a job. And sure, their family had to sleep on a floor for with their eight kids for the first twenty years, but then they were able to piece something together versus everyone else who just got completely screwed.

Dan Austin: [40:48] And I I guess the closing point on that would be that if I was going to be somewhere where shit was gonna get crazy, it'd probably be America.

Mike DeHaan: [40:55] I mean, maybe. I don't know. It's not a bad place to leave for sure.

Dan Austin: [40:58] I don't wanna be in China.

Mike DeHaan: [41:00] Definitely not be in China.

Dan Austin: [41:01] Or Russia.

Mike DeHaan: [41:02] Yeah. Or

Dylan Koch: [41:03] I guess England where you get you get arrested for saying mean things online.

Dan Austin: [41:07] So No. That's Germany. That's definitely a German thing though. They've got it passed. Yeah.

Dylan Koch: [41:12] Yeah. And you'd be canceled so fast. You'd be you'd be behind bars.

Dan Austin: [41:15] I know. Within minutes. Just, like, unintentionally too. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [41:19] Alright. Well There you go, guys. Very split decision. But, yeah, who knows?

Dylan Koch: [41:24] Well, that's good. Alright,

Mike DeHaan: [41:25] guys. Anything else to wrap up? I feel good about it.

Dylan Koch: [41:28] No. I think I'm good. Good to be back.

Mike DeHaan: [41:29] Welcome back, Dilpil. Alright, everybody. Well, thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed that. Welcome back, Dylan. Glad to have you back on the show, and share this with anyone that wants to hear three more white dudes talk about real estate and biz on the Internet. So thanks, everybody. Talk to you guys next week. Thanks for listening, everyone. If you want more from us, you can shoot us a follow on Instagram. I am at Mike underscore Invest. Dan is at investor man. Dan and Dylan is at Dylan underscore does underscore deals. Choose to follow and send us a DM to let us know what you think of the show.