What's Keeping Inventory Low, Musk vs Zuck, How to Not Be A Square Peg

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] For the month of June, every single market that we had had a significant increase in response from the month before. Mhmm. Which is interesting because Yep. That happens with us, and then I see all these headlines saying that the buying season officially did not happen because there was not a massive increase in, like, the retail buying market like you typically expect for the spring and early summer. But apparently on the investor side What is going on, guys? Welcome to this episode of the Collecting Keys Real Estate Investing Podcast. Today is Wednesday. That means it is the Mike and Dan show where I, Mike DeHaan, and my cohost here at Dan Austin talk about real estate investing and whatever else we feel like. And I'm doing good, Dan. Right? Off of a trip to Hawaii. It's always good to go there and unplug for a little bit. I say unplug even though I was up at 05:30AM on our kickoff calls every day. But there's just something about the island lifestyle that's rejuvenated, You you didn't unplug. Yeah. But it's funny. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [1:08] The island lifestyle is nice.

Mike DeHaan: [1:09] Yeah. Maui's such a funny place now though because I feel like it used to be I'll say somewhere that's kind of super ritzy, which I think is still in some parts, but the main tourist area you go to is just so commercialized now that it is just

Dan Austin: [1:24] It made it so the poorest could go now.

Mike DeHaan: [1:26] I'm not, you said it, not me. But it is now all walks of life compared to I remember going there like ten, fifteen years ago and it was like kind of expensive.

Dan Austin: [1:36] You know thing that kills me about Maui is like if you go out to do things, how like the locals, like that work at the places, like how much of a it's just a totally different pace of life. Like when you go to the cash register and you're checking out, it's like Oh, it did. Beep. Thirty seconds later Beep. Like, they're just like they just move slow. Yeah. Like, they're conserving energy.

Mike DeHaan: [1:56] Yeah. You know what I I find is really funny there? So there's a you know, we got my parents have a timeshare out there that they got like twenty five years ago back when like they first invented timeshares. And it's part of their like retirement thing is they go out there for like a month every year. And so we just go out there and and crash with them. In like the tourist area, almost all of the workers are like local people. Like bartenders, waiters, people at the hotels, they're all local people. My parents have found this restaurant that they really like to go to, which is kind of on like the other side of the island where people actually live. You go there, everyone working there is white people that obviously, that are like younger, that obviously like live there and grew up there. Really? So I'm like, are the hotels putting the local people in

Dan Austin: [2:40] the hotels so that it

Mike DeHaan: [2:41] feels more exotic? Or like, I can't, I don't know why it's like that. It was just a really odd observation that I made. Well, if it's

Dan Austin: [2:49] like the other places, which Hawaii is not a third world country, but like a lot of those other places like Mexico, like they're very sought after jobs to be in the resort because like that's where the most money's to be made. So maybe they've just got the

Mike DeHaan: [3:01] Maybe.

Dan Austin: [3:01] They've got the native hookup and they just know they know how to get in.

Mike DeHaan: [3:05] Maybe. I mean, of those people have been there forever though too. So like there's one of the bartenders at the hotel, timeshare, whatever it is that we stay at, that's been there for forty years working behind that same bar. That's freaking crazy. And Power Rifle's got a pension. I I hope so. Four zero one k.

Dan Austin: [3:21] Well, it's funny. You know what all the Yeah. What all the white people are that you say are working at this other restaurant, they're just people that are trying to run into Brandon Turner.

Mike DeHaan: [3:30] That's actually not Hawaii,

Dan Austin: [3:31] they're like, I'm just trying to run into Brandon Turner.

Mike DeHaan: [3:33] All these people were like 19. I definitely don't think that's the case. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [3:36] They definitely not the case.

Mike DeHaan: [3:38] Why is that a thing though? Such like a nauseating thing that we've seen on social media recently. It's people that are like wanna be So many people are like,

Dan Austin: [3:46] I'm in Maui, moved here.

Mike DeHaan: [3:48] And they're like, hint hint, they're like tagging him on their posts. They're like, oh, I'm at this beach. I think you were here once, like two months ago. I stalked

Dan Austin: [3:57] your Instagram. I saw you here with your kids.

Mike DeHaan: [3:58] Yeah. A funny preach. No. It's funny. It's funny. Every time I go somewhere like that, I have fun hanging out with my parents, and as I get older, it's something that I always value and try to make time for. But I tell you what man, after a week on an island like that, I get a little stir crazy. I'm like, you're so far from everything. Yeah. And one of the days there was a fire and it shut down the one highway. And so everything was just shut down. And I'm like, there's there's no like exit strategy or escape plan or anything here. Yeah. You're done. And then like, if you're there for like two weeks, you can do the entire island. It's not very big. Right? You can do everything possible there. It's not big at all. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [4:42] I was disappointed with their mountain biking when we were there together. I mean, was pretty epic, but at the same time, if that was it, come on.

Mike DeHaan: [4:48] No. Yeah. But so like, the mountain biking quality was terrible. The actual ride that we did down the backside of volcano was pretty freaking sick.

Dan Austin: [4:56] Right. Yeah. It was pretty yeah. It was a nice ride. Yeah. Not enough jumps backflip. No. We weren't doing backflips or

Mike DeHaan: [5:01] anything. Yeah. There's the single track was not built out very well, but that's that's definitely because we're the only people that did it like that whole year pretty much.

Dan Austin: [5:08] I know. Exactly. Down the side of a volcano was pretty rad actually. So you've done that.

Mike DeHaan: [5:13] Yeah. It was super cool. But yeah. Anyways, it was always good to step away and see the business operating and Yeah. Been pretty hectic as we've been going through the, you know, I guess the first half of the year finishing out pretty solid. But I think every single market is churning and we're closing deals right now. We don't really Everything had an increased response rate from the previous quarter. We're talking about that with our Instant Investor Mastermind group as well. About how literally every for the month of June, every single market that we had had a significant increase in response from the month before. Mhmm. Yep. Which is interesting because that happens with us, and then I see all these headlines saying that the buying season officially did not happen because there was not a massive increase in like the retail buying market like you typically expect for the spring and early summer. But apparently on the investor side

Dan Austin: [6:08] Those are a bunch of properties for sale.

Mike DeHaan: [6:09] Yeah. There

Dan Austin: [6:10] wasn't a bunch of listed properties though. Like if you think about it

Mike DeHaan: [6:13] like That's true. I look

Dan Austin: [6:14] at my neighborhood and I don't live in a very big neighborhood, there's one house for sale right now.

Mike DeHaan: [6:18] Yeah, that's true. Well, but then like all the news headlines like that are talking about still how we have low supply everywhere, whatever that means. But you know, they always say that we have low supply compared to historic times. But I mean, when that historically low supply has been going on for three years, we call it low supply. I know. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [6:38] Or is it just market norm?

Mike DeHaan: [6:39] It's just the niche of new market norm maybe as you because everyone always talks about the affordability of the real estate market. Well, you know what's going to keep the supply low? People not being able to afford other places to live. So they never sell.

Dan Austin: [6:53] Yeah. We're in a we've talked about this before. Like this, it's kinda on the retail side, it's a stalemate in in some senses, and it's because people aren't have the average person hasn't figured out how to exit their low mortgage. Mhmm. Because, I mean, let's be honest, if you were to go out and sell your house right now, what would you be moving into? Would you be moving into an equivalent or would your to get your same house, would it cost you more right

Mike DeHaan: [7:15] now? Exactly.

Dan Austin: [7:15] It would cost a lot more. Right. Cost you cost you a lot more, so you have to be in a downgrade situation where you are seeking to downgrade, but you're also still getting less for the value, if you Assuming you have an interest rate anywhere below 5%, which most people do, and so it's kinda tough, and a lot of people took this last run up, this last three or four years during COVID to maybe shift and move early into something that they wouldn't have otherwise done right away, just because of circumstances, but also because of historic low interest rates, people were also able to refinance, remodel their homes, refinance and buy the car that they always wanted, that they shouldn't have bought, do whatever, And so now they're kind of in place, and there is I've maybe accelerated some of that that would have otherwise taken five or ten years. And of course, we all know baby boomers aren't moving anytime soon. Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [8:02] Because they've got, what is it, $15,000,000,000,000 in wealth, and

Dan Austin: [8:05] they're not ready to shake that loose yet. Exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [8:08] Yeah. They're they're not moving and, you know, millennials aren't moving because most of us don't have any clear income, I guess. Allegedly, although I feel like we know quite a people that are doing well, but I also know a lot of people that just spend all their time bitching about they don't have any money.

Dan Austin: [8:21] Yeah. I don't know. It's kinda tough. It's all about who you surround yourself with, I guess. Yeah. I try not to surround myself with those people.

Mike DeHaan: [8:26] Yeah. Know. Always sound the same. Right? But one of the things I think is super funny is I still always see these articles about how the supply and I see this all the time. Supply is super low because of like investors and that sort of things. Like people posting this stuff on Facebook, how they're buying up like all the good houses. You wanna know one of the worst places for people to be like big investors trying to seek yield. Like the one of worst places they'd be looking right now with bank rates is residential properties. Like Right. With how expensive money is. Yeah. I promise. Supply is not low because investors are going and getting loans and buying all this all these properties. No. They could be buying it for cash, but even then, just with current rates, rental rates versus property prices, the yield isn't that good for most people. Man. You know, in most markets. So it's definitely not that that's driving it up. Think that's keeping the supply low. It just really comes down to people not wanting to move, people not being willing to separate from their living situation. Yep. And I think that's also too why it's so important to make sure that you're establishing your own pipeline of opportunities and that you're marketing to those people that are potentially going to have a reason to move, which is what we do when we market to people that have recorded bankruptcies, liens, vacancies, getting divorced, stuff like that. Because now it's what I was alluding to at the start was even though the retail market is down, according to the news, they never did have the buying spree. For all intents and purposes, R and D stuff has just been picking up aggressively.

Mike DeHaan: [9:54] Yep. You know, that should be an indicator there, right, of where should you be looking? Should you be looking at the mainstream market where apparently no one's listing anything, or should you be going directly to people that are potentially going to need to sell? It's a pretty easy opportunity there.

Dan Austin: [10:08] Yeah. I mean, you're absolutely right. There's there's definitely off market seems to be pretty awesome right now. Mean, we've got closings happening every week Yeah. For now, for the next several weeks. So, it's definitely going well, and you just have to get out there and find them. And looking when there's not a lot for sale, you're not going to be able to find anything on the MLS regardless, and that deals just aren't there. You can find maybe one or two here and there once in a while, but that's not how you build a business. That's not how you build a wealth is by basically hoping and praying that a deal will come by that you can you can establish yourself upon.

Mike DeHaan: [10:40] Exactly. Yeah. Eventually, you have to take the reins into your own hands if you wanna, you know, actually get anywhere with it. But I don't know.

Dan Austin: [10:49] For

Mike DeHaan: [10:49] sure. That takes work, though. People that want you to work. So if you wanna do work, call us. Yeah. Right. We can get you started. Now it has been cool though, because we've also as I was saying too, as I started to go, we've had several of our instant investor people really start to hit it out of the park too, has been fun to see. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [11:03] Getting some people with their first contracts, some people with some big wins. There's been a lot of stuff going on.

Mike DeHaan: [11:08] We have several people talk about leaving their w twos as well. Yep. Which is always fun and people are starting to be comfortable enough to make that step. And then, you know, we have our everyone getting ready for KeysCon that we're planning here in Scottsdale to be end of September, beginning of October. It'll be our first in person meetup where they're gonna we're gonna have hopefully 10 people come out and, you know, do a two and a half day workshop with us in Scottsdale. So if you're interested in that, should definitely hit us up too. It's gonna be a

Dan Austin: [11:38] lot of fun.

Mike DeHaan: [11:38] Yeah. I'm excited. Mean, it's such I I like going down there for that sort of stuff because it's so easy to find, like, decent residences for actually, like, a good price. Oh, yeah. That's a problem when people they're like, oh, we're gonna do a meetup in, like, I don't know, like Vail or somewhere like that. It's just so expensive, and it's hard to get to. But Yeah. Because someone decided many years ago that Scottsdale was gonna be where every bachelorette party went, they just way over built these McMansions.

Dan Austin: [12:03] That is the only trouble about Scottsdale, looking at some of the properties that we're looking to book, is that a lot of them are surprisingly set up just for bachelorette parties.

Mike DeHaan: [12:10] Or like conference. Yeah. Like there's sick houses,

Dan Austin: [12:13] but then like the decor is like all like Bachelor or at focused and like, Dang it. This might not work. We have men and women in the group.

Mike DeHaan: [12:21] Yeah. Right. Wait. What was the question? Mostly just dudes. So it's fine. But yeah, outside of that,

Dan Austin: [12:27] what else do we have going on, Dan? What's what's getting you excited right now? I'm super pumped for the launch of threads when Facebook launches this soon. As this episode airs, it'll have you'll have been able to sign up for it. This is just like the competing with Twitter. Another social platform for me to manage.

Mike DeHaan: [12:43] But like why though? No one needs this? No one's gonna use it? It's gonna be like, what was the Google social media thing they tried to do? Do you remember that? Did, oh, like was it Hangouts? Was that

Dan Austin: [12:54] it or is that a different one?

Mike DeHaan: [12:55] No. I think Hangouts is the video con that they do. Used to have they have like Google plus or like Google My Faze or something. I don't know.

Dan Austin: [13:05] I don't I definitely don't sign up for that. Who more data, more users, more advertising space. That's probably why they do it. And I think that the lizard

Mike DeHaan: [13:14] They shut it down. It didn't work because no one used it.

Dan Austin: [13:17] Right. I mean, that's but that's the goal for everybody thinks that they need to be in the space. Right? It's like, does everybody need to be in the cell phone space? Microsoft sure thought they did. Yeah. Right. And then they paid like, I don't know how many billions of dollars for Nokia, and then that didn't work. Shit. Yeah. That's true. So, yeah. But I don't know. But, yeah. I think it's because of

Mike DeHaan: [13:34] the lizard and I don't

Dan Austin: [13:35] know what Elon's what's Elon's nickname?

Mike DeHaan: [13:37] Does he have a nickname?

Dan Austin: [13:39] I don't know. He needs one because everybody calls haven't you seen those things about Mark Mark Zuckerberg being like a lizard or some shit?

Mike DeHaan: [13:45] Well, because he's got those really black eyes like a lizard and a completely soulless expression. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [13:49] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they make fun of, like, people like

Mike DeHaan: [13:51] to make fun of for that. Yeah. Because they're having their they're having their big fight here soon, which is going to be

Dan Austin: [13:56] The most disgusting thing that you could ever wanna see.

Mike DeHaan: [13:59] Have you seen that Chinese guy that looks exactly like Elon Musk? I haven't. You haven't? Oh, dude. Have to find I'll have to find this video and send it to you. I'll I'll share it on my Instagram.

Dan Austin: [14:10] On par for China. They just ripped off they even rip off our billionaires.

Mike DeHaan: [14:13] Dude, no. So there was this video and it's like basically a boxing match going on in whatever country. I'm assuming they're in China. But it's like this dude that looks exactly like Elon Musk, but is freaking like thick and is huge, fighting this dude that looks exactly like Mark Zuckerberg. It's freaking weird. And like, it might be AI, actually, like with their faces. I don't know. But

Dan Austin: [14:35] Alright. Let me pull this

Mike DeHaan: [14:36] up. The thing the thing is that's so

Dan Austin: [14:37] Oh, shit. He does look like him. Because Elon Musk does kinda have like like Yeah. I don't know, like squinty eyes. Not to be offensive, but like, yeah, okay.

Mike DeHaan: [14:47] He has like an atypical facial structure for a white guy. But it's just such a thing. But the thing that's fascinating to me is how much people get caught up in that sort of stuff when it's just like you're gonna have these billionaires that are out of shape. YOS Mark Zuckerberg does jujitsu now at a decent level. I'm better. They like decide they're gonna do this whole thing like they're freaking YouTubers like Logan Paul all of a sudden like that. I know. Like, what are you what are you doing? Is that Elon Musk's, you know, like, person he looks up to is Logan Paul. He's like, I wanna be like that guy. But yeah. Challenging other YouTubers to boxing fights for no reason.

Dan Austin: [15:28] Jesus. If you guys if our listeners wanna pony up enough, I'll fight Mike on live TV. I don't care.

Mike DeHaan: [15:36] Do it. That way we can have three people watch it. That'd be so great. They

Dan Austin: [15:40] paying though. Let's go roll, dawg. Come on. We gotta start training. We're have a fight. That's what we're doing in Scottsdale actually.

Mike DeHaan: [15:47] Yeah. Right.

Dan Austin: [15:48] Everybody's coming in to fly in to learn about real estate and watch Mike and I fight.

Mike DeHaan: [15:52] Yeah, so it'd be the final event at Keyes Conners. We're gonna have a big boxing Yeah, well it's actually gonna be like fight clubs. Rule number one, if it's your first time, you have to fight. That's everyone's first time.

Dan Austin: [16:02] Oh man, that's such a dumb conversation.

Mike DeHaan: [16:05] That's so stupid. Yeah, so beside that though, it's funny, we're in an interesting place right now with the business just because we've brought in so much staff and so many systems that it's like learning the management of everything has been such a challenging endeavor. Well, she's grown so quickly too. And one of the weirdest spots when you have a growing business, and I don't feel the same way, but I'm sure other people do, is when you end up with these miscellaneous tasks don't fit into anybody's job description Yeah. And twenty, thirty miscellaneous tasks need to happen on a regular basis. And they get just like, who does that work? I dunno. So you find like a random VA to do something on it?

Dan Austin: [16:44] I don't know because then it's like how do you come up with a job title for that? Yeah, right. And then also be like, oh by the way it's gonna change probably week to week. Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [16:52] Yeah, right. Well it's gonna change week to week, but then also too it's going to be like, I have so many different skill sets and things that are required with it too.

Dan Austin: [16:59] Yeah. Yeah. That is a that is a tough a tough situation. It's like, I would compare it to when you're flipping a house Exactly. And you're remodeling, you're like, who puts the mirror on the wall? Yeah. It's not the electrician. It's not the guy

Mike DeHaan: [17:12] that did the floors.

Dan Austin: [17:12] It's not the painter. Like, who does it? Like, have to have a trim out person.

Mike DeHaan: [17:16] Mhmm. And yeah. And they do all like hardware. Right? The doorknobs, the towel racks. Right? All all that sort of stuff. The hardware on the kitchen cabinets, know, what whatever it is. So you get a handyman in there to do that? Maybe are they gonna be like delicate enough to do it good? Or are they gonna just completely screw up your whole flip by doing it so poorly?

Dan Austin: [17:37] Right. Yeah. And the listeners will know that it's a challenge if they're the ones going in and doing it. Because everybody has had that point in their career of flipping or renovating houses Mhmm. Where the contractor's gone and you're like, oh, shit. Yeah. I guess I need to do this because nobody's gonna do it. Like, who do I find? Same thing with business when you're on the back end. You're trying you're like, okay. I've hired a salesperson, but now he's going to do this thing that's not really sales, but it's in

Mike DeHaan: [18:01] the sales department. Exactly. Yeah. Which, you know, offers like some sort of like thought process or some sort of like checklist or things like that. And it's like you give it to them, but it kinda goes outside the scope. There's something we usually tend to find is This is

Dan Austin: [18:12] a good point. We should schedule a point, which we already have on the counter. I was gonna say we should talk to our coach Steve about this.

Mike DeHaan: [18:17] On Tuesday.

Dan Austin: [18:18] I'm already ahead of having a live conversation here. We're gonna report back to everybody with what he says.

Mike DeHaan: [18:23] Yeah. It's just funny. But like, because when you have a giant company, this is why giant companies have so much redundancy, and they have so many people that bitch about going to work and working for one hour every single day, and then doing nothing? It's because they were literally intended to work that one hour every day. Yeah. Like, honestly. They had this small gap that they decided that they could budget 50,000 to $70,000 a year to have done, and you are that Yep. You're that square peg that's going in there.

Dan Austin: [18:51] Totally, you are the square You're the square peg. No, you're right though, because like, if you're, especially if you're in a publicly traded industry or a company, there's like, and there's maybe typical profit margins of 12 to 14%, or whatever it is for that industry and that company, and so the expectation is that. And so, as long as the CFO can make sure that you're getting a total 14% return on your investors' money Mhmm. They want to be able, they're gonna be able to hire people and plug them in to be super lazy, because now you're at industry standard. Mhmm. And once in a while, you you pop off an 18% a year, woo hoo, and then everybody gets big bonuses. But everybody, even they see Sweeter incentivized just to just to coast and ride it out.

Mike DeHaan: [19:28] Yeah. It's a weird thing. As I've gotten into this, you sort of realize how funny it is with business. And then looking back, like, how many big businesses, you know, they saw us with Twitter when you took over and it's like how much bloat they had in there that they didn't need. That exists in every single business out there that's, you know, even remotely that size. Which kinda comes with territory too because also too, I can say that from our experience, you kind of end up with people after a while that aren't really filling the needs of your company anymore, but they do like their couple of tasks and you keep them around. But then you're like, we probably could fire them and ask someone else to do their task. But you kinda like the person, like they're not hurting anything, they bring some culture, you know, and the next thing you know, it's been like a year.

Dan Austin: [20:10] Right. Yeah, well and that's I think on us, like for us, like in a smaller business, is like, okay, it's time to reevaluate your position, and it's like, what can we help you do? Because you also might hire somebody, especially if it's in like a situation where you're like building out something or building something, once thing's built and you move to operating that thing, that person who built it may not be an operator, they may not like that. They may wanna leave the company or find something else within the company to build, and you wanna be able to provide that to them, because there are like two different types of people. There's people that like to manage existing systems, there's people that to create systems.

Mike DeHaan: [20:46] Yeah, I mean, there's people that fit in small systems, people that fit in larger systems, and people that are in between. I think that's something else too that people don't always talk about with small businesses. I see this advice go around for hiring of like, if you don't, you know, you need to be hiring people for long term. That's what a lot of people will talk about is how you don't, you know, have this long term view with people. But if you have a rapidly growing business, it's highly likely the person that you hire when you're a team of four is not the same person you're gonna need when you're a team of 20. Yeah. Right? And we've seen this same iteration. Probably, I think we talked about this before too. We were going through our Slack and all the people that we've had, like 40 something people that have been in the team. And, you know, just under four years, like that's freaking crazy. But also too, you can look back on the team members that we've had, and I don't think there's anybody that is no longer on the team that I'm like, man, they would fit in so well right now. You know, honestly.

Dan Austin: [21:38] Yeah. Yeah. Like you miss them. You're like, oh no. Whoops. That was a bad one. Yeah. I don't think so.

Mike DeHaan: [21:43] Every single one, they've kinda phase out when when it doesn't make sense anymore. But people, for some reason, I don't know if it's like a loyalty thing, they don't like to understand it's gonna be turned over. Same when it comes to people's investments. You know, all these people say that like, if you're not if you don't wanna keep it forever, don't buy it. That's such a freaking immature way to look at stuff, honestly.

Dan Austin: [22:02] Yeah. Don't think that's very valid at all because you need to. I mean, you and I talk about this all the time, there's nothing in our portfolio we're ready to keep forever.

Mike DeHaan: [22:09] Totally. No way. Mean, I eventually, you're gonna run to CapEx items. Your return on equity is gonna be super low. You're gonna have other opportunities. Unless you're somebody that, like, literally your goal is to buy a bunch of assets and then just freaking coast and do nothing, sure. Then maybe you wanna keep it forever, but I promise you'll regret your decision after ten years, probably less

Dan Austin: [22:29] than that. Because definitely real estate for sure.

Mike DeHaan: [22:31] For sure, right? People say that about stocks, people say that about real estate, people say that about everything. But if you're somebody that actually has any sort of ambition, you have to understand the short term value, the middle term value, and the long term value that you expect. And there's always a little bit of speculation when you look long term. But if you don't have any sort of idea what those are, then you probably need to do some self reflection on like your whole financial picture and figure out what you actually want. Right?

Dan Austin: [23:00] Yeah. So Yeah. And that's tough too. That's challenging. I was actually just having a meeting with my GoBundance GoPod about that, doing my going over my one sheet, for those of that don't know, like that's where, you know, in GoBundance, a big part of it is setting your goals out, like what are your goals from financial goals to relationship goals, all that sort of stuff. And like, honestly, determining like where you wanna be at financially, like it's easy to say, oh, I wanna be a millionaire, but why? Like what is driving you towards that? And what about that being a millionaire you're trying to get at? And then you might realize, well, maybe I don't need to be a millionaire to accomplish goal x, y, or z. Yeah. You know? And so, there's just a lot of different things that you think about, and like understanding your investment goals and your whys is really key. And they change and being okay with them changing and adapting over time.

Mike DeHaan: [23:46] Yeah. It's very insightful. It sounds like you had some good self reflection on your one sheet. Would you like to share with the audience, Dan?

Dan Austin: [23:54] Well, it's just one of those big things like talking about I'll tell you one of the things that I'm not like super happy with, and I shouldn't say super happy with. Like, of the things that my initial goal from this year, I have not reached, I have not been on track, if you just looked at face value of the goal, which is increased passive income. Mhmm. Well, that's okay, right? Because we have been significantly increasing our active income through our business. Yeah. And because of that, we haven't been able to, as a partnership, balance increasing our active income at like a percentage of that, right?

Mike DeHaan: [24:26] Or our

Dan Austin: [24:26] passive income at a percentage of that. Like, it's just the focus has not been on that. And then if you look at it again at face value, it's like, well, why was your goal that? Okay, this is why my goal is. So is that still pertinent, or is that being accomplished in a different way?

Mike DeHaan: [24:39] Yeah. And it goes back to a lot of people believe they need to, if they wanna leave their w two, and I was one of

Dan Austin: [24:44] these people too, that you need to completely replace your active w two income with passive income before leaving. It's not true.

Mike DeHaan: [24:52] Yeah. It's not true at all. And and what I always challenge with that, that goes back to the what I've been preaching, I guess, the last few months is like focusing on making massive income over passive income. Mhmm. Because I I will honestly say that it is easier to make a million dollars, which if you make a million dollars, you probably can give yourself enough financial stability to leave your w two job. It's easier to do that than it is to replace a decent w two salary. Right. If you're making like $40 a year, you can replace that. If you're making like a $150 a year, that's a lot harder to replace. Yeah. $15,000 a month or whatever that is. Right. You know, you'll it will be easier for you to make a million dollars in revenue, several $100,000 plus in profit than it will be to replace that with passive income. Totally. Unless you unless you're buying like a sick Airbnb in The Smokies, dude. Yeah. All you need is two cabins, then it's easy.

Dan Austin: [25:41] God damn it. Well, you know, on this thread though, like the same conversation is like, okay, so say you focus on what Mike calls the massive income, and you're actively working in something active like a wholesale business, a flipping business, I don't care what's another active business. A car wash, you own a car wash, which I guess could be arguable passive.

Mike DeHaan: [26:02] You wanna wash windows. I paid someone $340 to come wash my windows today and took him and his buddy an hour. There you go.

Dan Austin: [26:09] I guarantee you didn't initiate that, did you? The washing windows? Or did you? I did. Yeah. Were you like, I really want white,

Mike DeHaan: [26:14] did you? Oh, absolutely. I was like, these windows are disgusting. I'm I'm in this construction neighborhood still, dude.

Dan Austin: [26:19] I know. Well, I just think about it because my wife does the same thing with she. I've I never look at the window and go, these need to be cleaned. Oh, really? I just don't.

Mike DeHaan: [26:25] I 100% initiated that for sure.

Dan Austin: [26:27] If I'm looking out the window, I just go outside and I'm like, oh, it's so beautiful. Idiot. You have a window washing. Whatever it is, that's your active income. Maybe you're doing it as a side hustle, and you take all that income and you kinda save it up as your capital bucket, and then you go and put it into a lending business, or whatever you wanna do that's really passive, like what you and I do with some of our excess holdings that we have in cash, and I'm like, this is pretty sweet, and yeah, there's some risk with lending, but if you are able to underwrite the folks well enough, which we do, if you're in the industry, you learn to, you meet people, you start seeing who the big players are, who the players that you can trust, who the players that operate the way you would operate, that you can know, like, and trust in the long term, and then all of a sudden, you're getting super passive income off of large active income. And so, if you weren't able to make a $100,000, and put it into a fund, basically what we do, we created our own fund, we put it in there, we pay ourselves a preferred rate just to ourselves, right? I mean, that income is a lot more fun because you're like, dude, it just shows up.

Mike DeHaan: [27:28] Yeah. Like You didn't think about it. Yeah, exactly, you don't have to do anything. And also too, if you can figure out how to hustle and make yourself a large chunk of money, that's gonna be probably significantly larger than it's gonna be if you're, you you gotta throw that into a function like that, than it will be if you go and get, save up and scrounge up and do all these properties and different things, which people spend a decade doing that, you know, staying out of w trying to be reserved. It's like, no. Just if you focus on making real money and then invest all that super, super heavily, and it could be in properties too if that's what you wanna do, but that will be just like a little bit more work.

Dan Austin: [28:00] Yep. Totally. It comes with that.

Mike DeHaan: [28:02] But you can replace your your income relatively quickly. I mean, million bucks if you're able to put it into a a fund where you're getting paid out 10%, which is not uncommon. That's a $100,000 a year right there. For sure. You know, and if can

Dan Austin: [28:13] do that How do you get to a million dollars? Well, that's that's always a

Mike DeHaan: [28:16] key question. Right? That's why, you know, if you flip 20 houses and make $50 in each one, you can do that. If you wholesale what would be 40 houses for $25,000, see, that's what's fricking doable right there. Say it like that. Right. A $25,000 fee on 40 wholesale deals, that is so much easier than flipping 20 houses to make $50,000 on each one, honestly. Yep. Totally. And that's like that's always why I sort of push people in that direction because the velocity of money is so high. It's like,

Dan Austin: [28:45] should I flip? Should I wholesale? It's like, I don't think there's value in flipping houses Mhmm. But there's a lot more value in wholesaling if you can run that business and operate it Yeah. And keep money flowing as opposed to like being stagnant. There is some art to learning the rehab systems and all that sort of stuff. It takes some time. But certainly that's why I asked that question, how do you get to a million? You could totally get to a million, and then set that up to buy properties. And I think the conversation, especially right now, is important because you and I, we still buy properties. Like, it's not like we're saying don't buy properties, and that that passive income is not worth it. And by the way, I think what it is is that that little bit of passive income per property is just not the most important thing. Mhmm. The equity buildup, the debt pay down, the leverage, all that is the important thing, where we all get locked in on I need to get $2.03, $400 per door, and get a 100 doors, I can, you know, make this much money. That's just one piece of the equation, but if you can understand that just getting more active income instead of just focusing on focusing on passive income in a time like now, where it's harder for the average person to get a deal, especially if you don't have a pipeline built, a wholesale pipeline that you're doing, then you'll make more progress than if you just sit on the sidelines, which is what a lot of people do.

Dan Austin: [29:53] Yeah. Exactly. Get out there, create an active business, a wholesale real estate business, market direct to sellers, and sell a shit ton of properties, and be ready to make passive income when you have a bunch of wealth.

Mike DeHaan: [30:03] Exactly. Now you don't wanna do like, something in real estate, those service business we talked about as well too, are one of easiest ways do it. I just did the math, so I paid that guy $350, come and wash my windows. He did, I would partner with them, so said we'd do it little bit quicker. But he was here for under an hour, and so he did 10 of those houses a week, he did that every single week for the whole year, it's a $182,000. Jesus. That's 10 houses a week. I feel like that's definitely doable. That's very doable,

Dan Austin: [30:26] and that's not even including if you picked up like a commercial account Correct. That wants you to do their windows once a week Yeah. On a regular basis. Exactly. You know, and then you

Mike DeHaan: [30:33] go and you hire someone to come and work for you and you pay them $60,000 a year, which is pretty dang good for a window washer. Right. And you're making a $120,000. And I know, I

Dan Austin: [30:43] don't know who your guy is, but the guy my wife brings in, he is a he's busy. I can't remember how many houses he says he does, but he does commercial accounts too. But he I think he was saying he does, I don't remember what it was. It was, five to 10 houses a day, somewhere in that ballpark, where enough where I was like, that's hard, that's like and he said he works seven days a week. Dang. I was like, that's like a lot.

Mike DeHaan: [31:02] Yeah. So he's making money, dude.

Dan Austin: [31:04] Yeah. He's making good money

Mike DeHaan: [31:06] doing window cleaning. So let's say you were at this 10 houses a day, you said?

Dan Austin: [31:11] It was a number, I can't remember, was somewhere between five and ten, and I remember it being enough where I was like, how do you physically drive around and do all? I was trying to do the math of my head if you were because our house, I think he was here probably a total of an hour, maybe an hour and a half, because have, he's gotta get up kinda high on some of these windows. And so like, I was like, if you did that, five houses, 10, and I was like, okay. Yeah. Okay. It was pretty tough math.

Mike DeHaan: [31:34] So I guess, so if you look at, say it does $300 per house, which I think is totally doable for five a day, and he does have for three hundred days out of the year, that's $450.

Dan Austin: [31:42] Yeah. You're doing right. And you know what his biggest supply is? His water. Water. Yeah. I bet. His water. Yeah. Water and like a little of soap.

Mike DeHaan: [31:49] And yeah. I mean, honestly, in gas. So that's probably his biggest expense aside of his own labor. Right. I mean, that's good. Taxman will take a good chunk of that because it's all active income, but either way, that's replacing most w twos if you don't mind that. If not,

Dan Austin: [32:01] if you invest it in real estate, take your excess of income, invest in real estate and get the depreciation, tax There you go.

Mike DeHaan: [32:07] You know, then back get involved in the real estate community. You can go and get connected with realtors, you go clean all the windows of all their listings. Their house looks nice and pretty. There you go. Honestly. Like, that's

Dan Austin: [32:17] find your own. Dude, you you ready to start cleaning windows,

Mike DeHaan: [32:20] Yeah. We'll we'll launch a new business right after this. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [32:23] Right? Right. Oh my gosh.

Mike DeHaan: [32:24] Right right right between our our door hanging company. If anything, that's like that's the kinda, like, boring business that Cody Sanchez

Dan Austin: [32:30] talks about all the time. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [32:31] There's nothing sexy about that except for the checks that you're gonna cash at the end of

Dan Austin: [32:36] the year. Totally. Right. And the systems are easy to build out.

Mike DeHaan: [32:39] Yeah. Very, very easy. Cool. Right on. Well, that's all we got today, guys. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy this show, please share it with anybody who might also enjoy it. You should also hit us up on Instagram and ask us about our group coaching, our mastermind program that we have. Because that way, if you get signed up, you can make it out to KeyesCon at the end of September. Yeah. We have some folks in there that are really making some awesome waves. There's no reason you can't come be one of them. We already have several people that are set to make close $500,000 this year off the deals they're doing. Legit. And these are people that were relatively grand at the beginning of the year. And now their entire life is gonna look different moving forward because they made that decision to come work with us.

Dan Austin: [33:20] So single decision change their life. Exactly. And their children's life. Yeah. So you can And children's children's life.

Mike DeHaan: [33:25] You can find information about that at collectnichespodcast.com or you can hit me up at mike underscore invest on Instagram or you can have Dan to at investor man Dan, but I'm I'm way more fun than he is. That's what they say. But anyways, Check us out there. And besides that, I appreciate you all, and we'll talk to you all next week.

Dan Austin: [33:42] See you.