Wholesaling Real Estate in the Metaverse?

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] Hey, guys. Mike DeHaan here. And before the show, I just wanted to take a moment to talk about our most recent partner, Ballpoint Marketing. Direct mail is a common way for people to start marketing for off market deals, but standing out from all the other investors out there is never easy. That's where Ballpoint Marketing comes in. Ballpoint marketing allows you to send actual pen written letters to your marketing list. They legit have warehouses full of robots using ballpoint pens to write your letters. This comes along with all the smudges and pressure points of a handwritten letter, which gives the same effect as if you had written them yourself at your kitchen table. If you go to ballpointmarketing.com, you can use our code m d five, and you will get 5% off your next order. 5% might not sound like a lot, but when you're sending thousand dollars of letters like you need to be doing to get deals, that will add up very quickly. For example, if you're sending $5,000 of mailers next month, that's gonna be $250 in savings. Anyways, go to ballpoint marketing dot com and use our code m d five. That's m like Mike, d like Dahan, and the number five for 5% off your next order. Thanks, and enjoy the show.

Speaker 2: [1:02] Welcome to the collecting keys real estate investing podcast with your host, Mike DeHaan and Dan Austin. From wins, losses, horror stories, and tactics for optimizing your business, Mike and Dan take a real uncensored deep dive into the ins and outs of running a full time real estate investment and wholesaling business.

Mike DeHaan: [1:28] Alright. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to episode 11 of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast. You're coming up right before Christmas here, 2000... Well, years of 2021. Concept of time over this past, like, few... I don't know, few months, year and a half is, like, has been so fucked up because there's been several times where I've been like, that only, you know, like movies stuff like that only came out in 2019.

Dan Austin: [2:01] Yeah. Right? Two years ago. Three years ago.

Mike DeHaan: [2:04] So long ago, but then also have had the opposite effect. We're like, oh, that movie's pretty recent. Oh, actually it came out in 2008.

Dan Austin: [2:10] Right. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [2:12] Not really at all. Yeah. And I just have no idea. What's like you

Dan Austin: [2:16] try to... I I just try to gauge it now by, like, when we brought a pop... Bought a property. Right? Oh, like, that was before the duplex or that way, you know, like... Right.

Mike DeHaan: [2:25] Yeah. Even even then, you know, we have that stuff. And and there's there's times where I'm like, I don't know if, you know, next week is 2022 or freaking, you know, June of whatever next year. Right? Like, it it just all all over the place. But how's how's stuff been going, though? I think you've been you've been all over the place where our business always goes where the acquisitions side is really busy, then I'm kinda slamming. And then once the acquisitions all come... Sort of come together, you sort of pick it up. She takes... We're taking over all of our projects.

Dan Austin: [2:58] Yeah. Yeah. It has been busy. You know, we're, like... It's kind of interesting, like, how... Like, you're right. It does. It's like the the the head of the whatever animal whips the tail kind of thing. And so that's where we're at. We finally just finished up a couple projects too, which is cool to go live, on both Airbnbs this month. So that was cool. And then we... Yeah. We're starting to flip. And so getting all that stuff ordered and ready to go. And, you know, we typically order all the material package up front. We know what we use. Right? We're pretty standardized and all that sort of stuff. But, getting our contractor lined out out there to start cutting up the floor for for new plumbing. So that's really cool. And that that project's... We're hoping for six weeks is what he's quoting eight, but he says he thinks he had done a six. So that'll be sweet for the layout, for the extensive amount of work we're doing on that project to add the square footage. I'm gonna be pretty pleased. I'll be happy if we do eight, but if we get six, I'll be super jacked. If And we get that whole thing

Mike DeHaan: [3:56] in eight weeks, that's freaking fine. You think about some of the other projects we've done. Looking back a couple years ago to, I don't know, the 6th Ave Duplex and the other rehabs, which are kind of similar size in terms of they're going down to the studs. And those things took, like, five months.

Dan Austin: [4:14] Yeah. Poor poor contractor management. It's poor contractor management. And and not just us managing them. It's them it's them managing their own time. Right? And we fortunately are at a point with our contractor that we give... We have enough work to keep him busy. And if we don't, we find something for him because he's not in house, which at this point, he might as well be. Right? Yeah. As far as keeping him busy with everything we do. And so we just have enough. And I mean, we can't benchmark 6th Ave because I think that's the first and hopefully the only time we'll ever renovate a house with a tenant in it. That was crazy. If you look back at it, stupid. I mean, we made the right move. It's paid off. But the situation of how it was when we bought it, you had to renovate it so that the poor the poor disabled girl didn't get water on her face every time they flush the toilet. That was terrible.

Mike DeHaan: [5:04] That was a really bad situation. That was like the definition of scummy landlord, right? Where, you know, they... What they had... I think the refrigerator worked, but none of the other appliances worked. The upstairs bathroom didn't work or like when they tried to use a shower flush the toilet up there, it would drip water onto the bed of their disabled daughter who was like bedridden. I don't remember what she had, but she basically had like deformities where she had what she did she have no legs or super tiny legs. And like, you

Dan Austin: [5:32] know, it was like a...

Mike DeHaan: [5:33] Kinda like normal arm. But yeah, was... She was she was she's very cognitive. Like, it's funny out of everybody at the house. It was it was kinda weird because like if you ever had a question about structure with like a lease or like what situation was, you go talk to her. Right? No one else in the house knew what was going on, but they were all well bodied. You know, it was very odd. Spoke perfect English as Hispanic family, and she was... I mean, the younger kids kinda spoke English pretty well, but, you know, they were, like, probably nine and 12.

Dan Austin: [6:07] It was great. Remember remember Jose? The chubby little kid. He's like Got

Mike DeHaan: [6:12] you. Do stuff

Dan Austin: [6:13] for, like, $20 around the house.

Mike DeHaan: [6:15] I know. Just helping him, like, take out trash and stuff. No. I was... And then... Well, then the wildest thing to me about that whole deal was the house was literally unlivable, but they were still living there, you know, major water issues. None of the windows were sealed. So every time the wind would blow, there was just like a freezing cold draft in there. Mhmm. You know, they could use one shower, which was also basically collapsing. We learned when we started like doing work on it and the whole thing just like opened up inside the walls. Yeah. You know, like I just... Everything about it was terrible. And we went and we fixed the thing up and then they're like, see you, we just bought a house in all cash and they just moved out.

Dan Austin: [6:57] Right? Did not expect that. I know.

Mike DeHaan: [7:00] Yeah. I agree. We were like, oh, yeah, we'll get it livable and they'll just stay there for a couple years. No. They just were like, See you. Thanks. Thanks for this. We lived in this law for ten years and went and bought their own home. Like, Well, that's awesome. Good for them. But, you know, then it was an extra $60,000 in rehab that we weren't expecting to have to spend right then. Right.

Dan Austin: [7:17] Exactly. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [7:19] There was no way we were gonna be able to rent that thing in the condition it was in.

Dan Austin: [7:22] Oh god. No. Just the smell alone from all the grease on the walls.

Mike DeHaan: [7:25] It was bad. Yeah. Right. Yeah. God. The grease and the chickens and the goat. Was there a goat? I think it might have been a goat at one point.

Dan Austin: [7:32] I'm sure I'm sure there was a goat. You know? They're probably having... Like, that was probably the spot in Spokane for cockfighting. Like, they'd go down there in the basin with all their chickens.

Mike DeHaan: [7:40] And I mean, you're probably not wrong. You're probably not wrong, man. But not... They had a lot of chickens there. It still smells down there. We went, like, baking soda, the entire thing covered all in plastic. Nope. Still farm down there. Yeah. Creepy ass basement.

Dan Austin: [7:57] That's so great.

Mike DeHaan: [7:59] But... Yeah. So I'll be good, though. Six weeks. Yeah. I mean, now we're going into the problem where we're turning stuff too quick, man. I mean, now... So we gotta sit on hard money for no reason.

Dan Austin: [8:09] Right. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [8:10] I can sell it, but Yeah. We dive into that. I mean, I I suspect what's gonna happen, especially with the numbers that we have so far is it's gonna have potentially a perfect bird deal. And it's gonna cash flow pretty well. I mean, even though it's in a condominium, there's an HOA fee. The HOA costs only like $800 a year,

Dan Austin: [8:27] you know, and... Still highway robbery. Highway robbery. Right.

Mike DeHaan: [8:32] Right. For... I mean, exactly. What the hell is the HOA even do that it let the property get into the condition it was in when we bought it? Yes. Nothing. Yep. So, I mean, it's like every HOA, honestly. Yeah. But even though I I posted that on Facebook, I made a joke about how HOAs are useless, and my mom commented. She saw that. It's not a fair comment. Not all HOAs are used. Because I'm like, mom, you live on a freaking golf course.

Dan Austin: [8:57] Yours is Right. Yeah. That's a little different. I saw that. I I knew what you were gonna say. I I thought it was funny. I laughed because I knew how you... It's like, oh, is Mike gonna do it? Is he gonna respond to his mom in Facebook? Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [9:09] And I and I did. I just could pull

Dan Austin: [9:11] I never did it because

Mike DeHaan: [9:12] you do what I would do.

Dan Austin: [9:13] Just ignore my mom.

Mike DeHaan: [9:14] Yeah. That's funny.

Dan Austin: [9:16] Oh, man. Yeah. That's a tough one. Like, I've already thought about it. Like, the the biggest challenge on this one will be once we wrap up is like, do we just keep it? You know? Not that that's a bad choice, but it's like, we got multiple exits on it like usual. And it's probably gonna go super well. And we're like, well, shoot. You know? That's, you know, maybe another $500 in cash flow. You know, pure cash flow after every... All the set asides and everything, and it's not a bad deal.

Mike DeHaan: [9:39] I know. It's really not at all. I mean, and also too, I like that one. Like, if you look at it from an actual structural standpoint, that'll be one of our best properties just from my bones standpoint, you know.

Dan Austin: [9:50] Yeah. We got some better ones. Aren't in the weird duplex condo situation.

Mike DeHaan: [9:55] Yeah, for sure. But yeah, you you look at that thing, we're not gonna have any weird structural stuff that's gonna come up for the next couple of years. There's like a lot of other properties we, you you're like, you're never quite sure when they're like a 100 years old.

Dan Austin: [10:05] Yeah. We definitely have a few 100 year old properties that we've had to fix. But, like, I think, like, yeah. Like, Frederick's a pretty solid... That's a good house, good single family that's, you know, built in the fifties. So it's it's pretty sound. This one was what built in the seventies, so it's pretty sound. Mhmm. Yeah. So... Yeah. You make

Mike DeHaan: [10:23] you can make a little bit prettier. Plus, it's just like a standard rental style property. You know, as somebody that, like, you know, moves in there with the expectation of it is what's gonna be with a rental is not to be like extremely nice. But if it is, it'll go a long way. Quiet neighborhood, decent school district. You know, even with it being like a kind of duplex hatched the other unit. It's kind of funny because when you... You can obviously see it from the outside with how the backyard is spaced with a huge backyard. Yeah. And the inside of the property doesn't feel like a duplex.

Dan Austin: [10:56] No. It doesn't. It's weird. It has like a has like a quarter of an acre just for the backyard of that one unit. Yeah. I didn't even think about that because, yeah, there is a fence or something between them, isn't there?

Mike DeHaan: [11:06] Yeah. There is. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [11:08] Like, a full fence. Yeah. It's like maybe we should throw an ADU back there. Honestly, with

Mike DeHaan: [11:12] the way there's money going... Yeah. I mean, and there's road access. What if we could? What if we could section it off? That'd be sweet. Should be looking at that.

Dan Austin: [11:20] I definitely think if we can buy the lady next door, that would be sweet at, like, a decent price. That would actually be

Mike DeHaan: [11:27] a good move. Yeah, we should just buy the whole thing, establish our own HOA unit, sell them off to everybody, and then we can collect $800 a year.

Dan Austin: [11:34] Right? Yeah, seriously.

Mike DeHaan: [11:36] Let's do it. It's not hard, but yeah. Yeah. So that... That's cool. I don't know what's coming up. Then, yeah, the Airbnb's have been going shockingly well. I... To both both times... Yeah. I know. Both times as they've launched, I've been amazed at just how quick things have started getting booked. Like, we launched our new one on... Was that Saturday after we texted back and forth and you're like, I don't think I wanna launch it yet. It's not quite ready. You posted it and then, like, ten hours later, we got a booking for an entire month.

Dan Austin: [12:05] We have two month long bookings.

Mike DeHaan: [12:07] I know. And one of the ones I was looking at it, it sucks because if you... Because we had, like, the first couple booking discount. The dude is saving, like, $800.

Dan Austin: [12:17] Well Because I And he get... He... So we've got the long term stay booking. Airbnb recommended 57% discount. I was like, no way. So I put 20 thinking I was being cheap. And then we got the first three bookings were 20% discount, which they recommend to get your first three bookings, three reviews. People are happy for the price, all that stuff. No. This two Yeah. Right? Yeah. He got a great deal.

Mike DeHaan: [12:42] Yeah. And what... It sucks. Right? Yeah. See, he's getting that... He's booking that property for, like, significantly less than, like, long term market rent.

Dan Austin: [12:50] Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [12:50] As one of those, well, I mean, I guess we just kinda have to eat that. Like not much we can do about it.

Dan Austin: [12:55] Yeah. Lesson learned. Like I was thinking about it from like the making sure the property itself is dialed in lesson learned, get your fricking pricing dialed in before you do anything. Cause we're, we're eating it in the shorts on both of our properties, even though they're cash rolling, like they're fine. They're not optimized at all. They're not optimized at all. And the problem is when you got two, we have all of February and March now completely booked with two guests. So that's two months out of the year that we're underperforming already off the bat. So that's yeah. Lesson learned there. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Mike DeHaan: [13:26] Yeah. Well, we March we saw us room. She she booked what three weeks.

Dan Austin: [13:29] Yeah. But there's already there's already the first week of March is booked.

Mike DeHaan: [13:33] I that by that dude, the one that got it in February.

Dan Austin: [13:36] No. Was there another one now? Yeah. I I could... I'm... I might be confused, but I thought there was somebody that booked it the first week of March, and then there's a three week booking after that.

Mike DeHaan: [13:48] Oh, shit. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I know it's... Yeah. It's weird. It gets like a different system. So you almost have to, like, gamify it too. Like, yeah. I can tell there's gonna be some experimentation. Then also, it's gonna be figuring out the ideal price to be getting the most bang for your buck with probably like less visits, then you get a little bit less wear and tear in your property. Mhmm. Yep. You know, and like less sort of like random costs for materials, things like that. So when you think about it, if you can ink like double your price, but you have half the stays, that's not gonna be the same, but you're gonna have less potential risk.

Dan Austin: [14:24] But... Yeah. Exactly. I think that's probably where ideally you wanna be. Right? Is optimizing to where you can be 50% vacancy, but have the exact same profit as 100%.

Mike DeHaan: [14:34] Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And I'll be... We'll have to... It'll be interesting to sort of get that calculator all built out as we start putting that together. Mhmm. But she has very sort of learning our costs and things. I mean, the one thing I can say is I immediately recognize the potential with it. Right. How much money we can make, especially if it's... Because like, I was kind of nervous when first started it because we have... There's like a lot of Airbnb's here. And I was like, well, how are we even gonna find ours? Apparently, it's really freaking easy.

Dan Austin: [15:00] Yeah. I love how you say you're kind of nervous because I say I was nervous. Like, dude, this thing's gonna cash flow like a hog. And I'm like, alright. Yeah. I I... Yeah. I believe you. Like, let's do it.

Mike DeHaan: [15:11] Well, you know, I don't know. My... I come from the belief of other people say that, and I generally like to think that we're smarter than a lot of other people. Maybe a little self centered there, but I mean, I don't know. We're doing okay. I think also too, the big thing is both the properties, they look great. The photos look freaking awesome. You know, we did a... We're a professional designer to get them all furnished. We got professional photos done. And I mean, that makes all the difference. When you look at like a lot of our competition in the same neighborhood, it's very obvious that someone bought it. And we're like, oh, I'm gonna Airbnb this, but I'm so cheap. I don't wanna pay someone a couple $100. Go take photos. And there... And that place looks like shit on the list.

Dan Austin: [15:56] Cell phone pictures that are just Yeah. Terrible lighting. Yeah. I I agree. I think just the photos alone and having, like, I don't know, cute furniture or, like, whatever type of vibe you're going for is, like, a thousand times, like, per thousand percent increase in your value.

Mike DeHaan: [16:11] Oh, absolutely. You know? And it's like a one time cost. Mhmm. That's not a lot and then it's gonna get you more bookings guaranteed. Yeah. Exactly. But yeah, get... I can see why people get addicted to Airbnb though because I said this the other day, it's kinda like a little endorphin rush when your phone goes off and actually, I got another booking. You know?

Dan Austin: [16:29] You're Oh, dude. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [16:30] See see the money, like, instantly right there. Yeah. Because get... Getting rent checks is cool. It only happens once a month. You can make Yes. Less money on Airbnb, but you're getting it, like, every three days.

Dan Austin: [16:41] Oh, dude. Sometimes, like... Yeah. We got a barrage of, like, bookings around Christmas to the point to where we have somebody checking out, like, Christmas Eve morning, somebody wanting to check-in Christmas Eve night and leave Christmas day, and then somebody wanted to check-in the day after Christmas, which our cleaners, like, there's literally three days of the year we don't work, and Christmas is one of them. And so it's like, it's a problem because we need to cancel it, but you can't be eligible for super host status if you cancel. And so I haven't heard back from those folks yet. So we're... I'm hoping I can get... Avoid canceling it. And it's crazy because Christmas is right around the corner. So you gotta figure it out.

Mike DeHaan: [17:20] You might be spending your Christmas out there, scrubbing toilets. I mean, I'm not gonna be here. I'll let you know. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [17:25] Yeah. I don't I don't think I'm be here either. I think I'm be sick that

Mike DeHaan: [17:28] day. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But... Yeah. So I know. It's a bit interesting new adventure there, but I I like the potential. And, I mean, I kind of put on my one sheet where you went through goals with my GoPod for GoBundance that I think it'd be cool to own something like that and like more of a destination. Now that like, we kind of have it going, it doesn't seem like it's that difficult, you know, and we gotta find like kind of a, an up and coming destinations everywhere that everyone thinks about or has ever been spoken about on like bigger pockets, something like that. It's just so inundated.

Dan Austin: [18:04] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [18:04] Oh, People outside of the area buying stuff. Like, how many people from freaking Washington are buying things in Smoky Mountains, Tennessee?

Dan Austin: [18:12] Like How many people from everywhere? Everywhere. I've never been there.

Mike DeHaan: [18:15] I have no desire

Dan Austin: [18:16] to go there, but everybody's talking about Smoky Mountains.

Mike DeHaan: [18:18] It's because they have... You know, they had that one dude. I I just wanna... Follow him on Instagram. I even know his name. Who, like, was like, oh, I bought all these vacation rentals over there and now I make all this money. So everyone's like, well, I can't think for myself, I'm just gonna copy what that dude does.

Dan Austin: [18:31] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [18:31] Let's go buy the coffee in the same area.

Dan Austin: [18:33] I mean, I'm I'm not informed on that area, although we do market adjacent to the Smoky Mountains in Knoxville. But, like Yeah. I've a just got

Mike DeHaan: [18:42] plus for a vacation home over there.

Dan Austin: [18:44] No. No. But, I mean, I just... I had looked at some of them and, like, I'm an outdoors person. I like doing stuff outdoors, but they're quite literally cabins Yeah. Just in the middle of the woods. I'm like, what? I don't know. I guess people don't get, you know, peace and quiet. Maybe we're lucky here in the Northwest where it's easy to get out of town and, like, spend the day in, the woods. Very peaceful. Maybe East Coast is not the same.

Mike DeHaan: [19:05] That is true. That mean, that is something that's pretty special to hear. I mean, the Northwest in general is you can drive not that far in any direction and be by yourself. Yeah. You know, even compared to when I go home to Montana. Remember Montana used to be that way, like Bozeman area Lots of parts of Montana still is, but you go to, like, the cities. You go to anywhere within a reasonable driving distance of Bozeman, you're out now out there with 50 to a 100 of your new best friends. You know? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Friends that you want are the ones that you're stuck with because you have to go to same summer

Dan Austin: [19:34] camp. Ones with all their Patagucci puffies on and they're

Mike DeHaan: [19:37] hiking and like... Yeah. Exactly. Right? And they're like... I mean, one of last times I was over there for the summer, we're gonna do this hike with my in laws. We literally roll up and there's like a dude with freaking cones directing traffic for where to park. I was like, I remember coming to this hike when I was a kid and you you had like park like often the trees because there was nowhere to go. Now they have like a paved lot and they have like Disneyland style parking. You're like, oh, I'm in like sea lot. You know? Freak on a steep hike. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [20:06] But the the metaverse is gonna change that. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [20:10] Yeah. That... And that is the real topic is we are launching a new mastermind course, how to wholesale metaverse real estate.

Dan Austin: [20:19] We're gonna wholesale NFTs and whole... And real estate. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Mean, that's gonna be

Mike DeHaan: [20:25] a thing at at some point in the future, though. Honestly, if you think about it, right, like, you get these people that are buying real estate in the metaverse right now. There's gonna be people done with the hell they're doing and are overpaying for it. And then it's like, okay. So you just bought this space because, you know, you bought Ethereum number of years ago, and now you have a $100,000 worth of Ethereum, you know, a couple $100,000 worth. You only buy this metaverse lot for $200. And you're like, yes, you know, I wanna... Right. I'm I'm so happy I made this decision. And then a year from now, when you realize you made a big fucking mistake and your metaverse Ethereum lot is only worth, you know, $30 and no one wants it, you know, we'll happily come and buy it from you for $12 and then sell it to somebody for 20. You're looking for a discount.

Dan Austin: [21:08] So here's here's my question. So I hear a lot of people buying stuff like NFTs in, like, Ethereum. Is, like, the only currency you can use in the metaverse, Ethereum, or can you use Bitcoin? Can you use other coins?

Mike DeHaan: [21:20] Oh, you're showing you're showing a lack of knowledge here, Dan. No. Yeah. So they they... Like, you you can buy them with everything. It kinda depends on what blockchain the the metaverse is built on.

Dan Austin: [21:30] Oh, wait. So there's multiple metaverses?

Mike DeHaan: [21:33] Yeah. There can be basically infinite. Right? And so that... That's actually one of the the use cases for a lot of the different companies. Right, is they're they're building their metaverses that utilize their blockchain. Right? And they'll have like different, you know, different sort of themes or or or purposes, like use cases form. And then they'll use their own coins within those. So... But I'll be in a lot of them are built on Ethereum. Like Ethereum is sort of described as like, it's like AWS. Right? You build, you know, your own blockchains on top of Ethereum. But, you know, you know, like a lot of cryptocurrencies are Ethereum, but Ethereum is not necessarily those coins, you know, does that

Dan Austin: [22:17] make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [22:19] Yeah. Yeah. It's like it's like how websites now are built on Amazon Web Services, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Amazon like owns that website. By the same time, you know, if Amazon decides they're gonna make an update or shut everything down, that kind of fucks everyone up. So that's also the risk with like Ethereum, right? Is, you know, if they do a big upgrade to like Ethereum 2 and your coin isn't on Ethereum 2 network, then that can basically screw up your entire thing. You so then it kind of comes down to, you know, everyone says it's decentralized, but, like, is it really though? You know, if there can be changes to, like, the base of it and it kinda fucks up your whole thing, it's like Yeah. It's not that consistent. You know? I don't know.

Dan Austin: [22:59] Well, I guess, like, because it's so decentralized, even, like, like, you talk about AWS and, like, all that, the cloud and stuff like that, but it gets taken down super fast and it wrecks the world. Like, if AWS did? Yeah. Like like like cloud computing is kinda similar, like, they try to decentralize all that stuff. Not like blockchain, obviously, is trying to decentralize even further. But if there's still a bottleneck within that system, it doesn't matter how decentralized you are. There's still a little

Mike DeHaan: [23:27] bottleneck that can take it down. Well, yeah, I mean, they even have that now, like, especially with the transactional fees associated like the gas fees, they're associated with Ethereum are ridiculous. So if you want to do a, like a, Ethereum transaction right now, it'll cost you $700 because the gas fees are so high. You know, like if you want anybody, you can send like a stupid low amount of money and all the gas are kind of the same and charge you $200. Like you want to send somebody NFT right now? Like I was thinking about my sister in law's boyfriend. I was gonna get him something for Christmas. And, you know, he's like... He's a young dude, know, we... He's been involved with the family for a while, like official part of the family yet. And I was like, what's something like casual I could get him that would basically be entertaining to me, and then nobody else would get it. So there's like this internet GIF that reminds me of him and it's this dude from like North Dakota. And his whole thing is he goes like, you know, I'm just gonna send it and then he just like fucking sends his snowmobile off these huge jumps. So I was gonna try and make that GIF and turn it into an NFT and give it to him. And this is like a a bait inside jokes or thing.

Mike DeHaan: [24:33] Right? Just stupid. Yeah. And I was like, but to transfer it to him would cost me $300.

Dan Austin: [24:39] Oh, boy.

Mike DeHaan: [24:40] So was like, was like, screw that. Not not worth it at all.

Dan Austin: [24:43] No. He's not he's not even in the family officially. That's that's like Sorry.

Mike DeHaan: [24:48] Sorry, Ryan. You're you're not getting that NFT anymore.

Dan Austin: [24:51] No, man. $20 limit, dog.

Mike DeHaan: [24:53] Yeah. Yeah. Right. You You you you can make it for pretty cheap, but, you know, send it over. It's a stupid thing.

Dan Austin: [24:59] That's great. Wow.

Mike DeHaan: [25:00] So... Yeah. And so that's like a big part of it. And then, you know, obviously there's like the the software side of it as well, you know, when... As things get updated. Because basically how it works is that there's all the different, you know, people that are operating at all the miners. If they're gonna do a software update, they basically have to all agree. And the ones... This is what happened when Bitcoin forked a number of years ago, remember when they became out, when there was Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash became a thing. It's because half like half of the people didn't wanna update to the new Bitcoin. So all those old, all the people that sell in the old version, all of what they were doing turned into Bitcoin cash. Right? And that became its own separate blockchain. Okay. And now they're now it's a fork, right? It's a complete like like a complete split. And Right. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [25:53] I get what you're in the currency.

Mike DeHaan: [25:54] Right? But now technically, everything that operates on the the Bitcoin blockchain, which is nothing, but things that were operating on that would no longer operate on Bitcoin cash, or they only operate on Bitcoin cash or on Bitcoin, they wouldn't operate

Dan Austin: [26:06] on both.

Mike DeHaan: [26:06] So same thing happened with Ethereum. You know, so if they split it in two and people don't want to update the new one, now there's like two versions of it, Then what happens when like people stop mining the old version, all stuff just goes away. I think that's kind of the issue is people like they don't trust the government, they're gonna instead trust a bunch of fucking nerds in their basement, you know, or or in their giant industrial facilities, mining all this shit who are only doing it because they want to get rich off of their fiat currency, which they apparently don't believe in, then why the hell they trying to make so much of it?

Dan Austin: [26:39] I know. Why do they want it so they can sell it in... Yeah. Fiat. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [26:43] Makes no sense. It's ridiculous.

Dan Austin: [26:45] Goddamn keyboard warriors. That's your clan over there. Pretty much.

Mike DeHaan: [26:52] That's how I do it. You know, it's just a it's such a weird time right now because, like, shit like that's so big and people are so anti government, which is understandable. But then, you know, there's just like, I feel like, you know, being openly anti government is just like the new cool thing. Whereas I feel like in the past, if you did that, were kind of like, you know, people would kind of disassociate with you a little bit because you know, you're like, Oh, John Lennon. Like, hate the government. But Yeah. Yeah. You know, I don't wanna openly do that. Now you have Elon Musk just straight tweeting at every person that even comes up against Just just burying them in the dust. Like that that exchange you have with Elizabeth Warren, where she posted an asinine thing because he was voted Time Man of the Year. And she posted something like, Oh, I wanna make Time, why don't we make the Time Man of the Year someone who doesn't freeload off of others or something ridiculous? Just like, you obviously don't understand how business works, Elizabeth You know, the guy has built these huge corporations that, you know, have provided massive opportunity for other people, the people that work underneath him that do very well for themselves. Yep. Started from nothing and from fricking South Africa. Right.

Mike DeHaan: [28:03] You know, it's not like from some, you know, rich family and just like leverage that. But yeah, he he... She retweets the time article, tags him, and he responds to her. And I think the wording was like, you remind me of when I was a kid, and I'd go to my friend's house and their mom would just start yelling at people for some reason. You know,

Dan Austin: [28:28] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [28:30] Yeah. And then then he made then he made a point of pointing out because he just sold all that stock, after after he tweeted at Bernie.

Dan Austin: [28:38] Oh, god. I forgot your... I always forget you're still alive. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [28:42] I was here still alive. And then and then he's like, you want me to... He's here, you want me to sell $13,000,000,000 worth or whatever? Yeah. He's like, sure. I'll do it right now. And he did it. And now he was tweeting back Elizabeth Warren. And she was like, he's like, in case you didn't know, I'm about to pay more tax than any American ever has in history. You know, oh, he said, don't spend it all at once. Oh, wait, you already have. No shit. Love it, And amongst all like, you know, I feel like free thinking entrepreneur type people. That's like the coolest thing someone can do right now.

Dan Austin: [29:16] Yeah. He's like the the coolest, like, f u in America right

Mike DeHaan: [29:18] now for most people. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I know. Which is which is funny because, you know, he's one of the rich people in the world. Like, if you look at his sort of financial position and what most people kind of... A lot of people kind of stand for with their sort of anti establishment, anti billionaire sort of views, He should be, like not sort of held with that high regard, but it's kind of hard not to when he's just like, still such like a real person.

Dan Austin: [29:47] Right? Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [29:48] It's not like Jeff Bezos, who's in like a similar financial state, but he's just like, Oh, I'm just over here on my $180,000,000 yacht, just, you know, keeping the peasants away. But, yeah, it was it was that was telling can't remember it was somebody was telling me about one of the billionaires, not Bezos, but they have like a $100,000,000 yacht that has like 200 staff that operate it. But the guy doesn't like the staff around. So he bought another like $40,000,000 yacht, which is where the staff sleeps. And he had both of them modified with heliports so that the staff could help... Could get on the helicopters from his yacht to go to their yacht to sleep for the night so he can party on the boat without them having to be there. And then when he's ready for breakfast, he just, like, flies them over from their yacht to his yacht.

Dan Austin: [30:47] I mean, honestly, when you're that wealthy, it makes sense because you might be wanting to do some weird stuff you don't want the staff to, you know, be

Mike DeHaan: [30:54] I know. Right? Yeah. Like, going to Epstein's Island. That's what they Seriously. Right? From?

Dan Austin: [30:58] And we're gonna reroute here. Let's leave the staff out in the ocean.

Mike DeHaan: [31:02] Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Make them over there so they can't see where we go. Goddamn. No. Thanks for getting asinine. We're such a weird... It's such a weird space in the in the world right now. Like, business finances, especially to, you know, there's something I think about on such a regular basis. There's this huge anti wealth sort of anti money movement going on right now. Because there's such a huge class discrepancy, you know, which is a classified which is very apparent and obviously a major situation. But the thing I struggle with is never been easier to make money in the history of mankind than right now.

Dan Austin: [31:40] Seemingly, you know? Seemingly easy from all the side hustles that you can just do. I mean, did, what do they call it? The, the great resignation this last year. I think a lot of people did realize that they're like, you know what? I'm not getting ahead doing the corporate life. So I might as well do my own thing. Even if I break even to where I was at corporate in the corporate world, but you have the freedom and, and the ability to think and do make your own decisions.

Mike DeHaan: [32:02] Exactly. Right? I mean, you know, you you look at like... Well, I don't know what average salary is United States these days. Let's say it's like $50 a year, $50.60 grand a year, which probably about par. And if you look at all the states, know, Washington's a little bit higher than that.

Dan Austin: [32:14] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [32:15] But if you go and you get some side hustles, you work like a part time job, you know, maybe you get

Dan Austin: [32:21] like

Mike DeHaan: [32:21] one or two, like sort of higher income events per year where you like you flip a house or you, I don't know, you get one higher ticket client to pay you a little bit extra for something. How easy is it to make $5,000 a month? Honestly, it's not really difficult. I mean, you know, you're gonna have to work hard for it to get to that point where it's sort of on autopilot and you're able to do it on a regular basis. But it's not like way back when before like the internet, or honestly, think the biggest thing has been the mass adoption of this kind of exchange. Right? You know, you're at your house, I'm at my house. You can now do these things remotely. I mean, even two years ago, how weird was it being on video chats with people?

Dan Austin: [33:03] Yeah. Never. You never did it. Unless...

Mike DeHaan: [33:05] You know

Dan Austin: [33:06] what I mean? Like, very rare. Yeah. And that... Yeah. I think it's... I think it has a lot to do with, like, also, like, the idea of just, like, crowdsourcing and, like, using the leverage of a crowd, whether that's from something like an Airbnb or, like, actually, like, crowdsourcing funding or doing that sort of stuff and the Internet. And this way that we're interacting has become so much more commonplace that it is more people are more comfortable. I mean, think about it, like, we bought a house and flipped it in a complete devastate never went there with with people. We partnered with people that how many times did you interact with in person?

Mike DeHaan: [33:40] One for, like, a total of, forty eight hours. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [33:43] Right. But but you would probably say that you're friendly. Right, with him. You pick up the phone call. Right? And so that relationship is built. That trust is built. And you don't have to be, like, grinding it out every day with him to make money. Yeah. It's a pretty interesting concept.

Mike DeHaan: [33:57] And not only that, but our take on that was, you know, what $35,000 for a couple months of work, you know, and that's not really that far off in the $50 that I mentioned just before. And that was one deal. Yeah, you know, It's like, yeah, mean, if you put in, if you sort of put in the legwork to figure it out, which now is easier never to, because you can learn anything on the internet via YouTube, or via, you know, honestly people like us, right, who are kind of doing it, or just putting stuff out there. You you can just reach out to people and you'd be surprised at how many people are willing to work with you and teach how to do stuff. Might cost you a little bit of money, but at the end of the day, people will scoff at paying someone $1,000 to learn something. It's like, but they don't scoff at paying university $100,000 to get a four year degree. That's gonna, you know, tie it down to a desk. He gets you a pretty low earning wage for the first number of years of your life.

Dan Austin: [34:51] Yeah. Well, and like, and there's like, I'm thinking about it. There's a couple of ways to make money, like transaction, like couple types of transactions. If you simplify it, there's like some some really low end transactions, like you're gonna go sell burgers to somebody, or you're gonna go sell a widget to somebody and it's cheap. And your cost production versus profit, like, the the profit is just less per widget. So you need to have quantity. So you need to be really good at marketing and using online platforms to sell things to people that way. Or you can just do a handful of really big transactions, which happens to be real estate. Right? Mhmm. I'm that there's some pretty smart dudes out there that are individuals like flipping cars, which would be like the second most expensive thing people buy. Mhmm. But from a standpoint of why real estate, you know, kicks ass is that you could do three or four of those transactions where you don't even have to be at the property, or you could be at the property. It doesn't matter. And the amount of time it takes you to do that is way less than working two thousand and eighty hours a week for your $55,000 $60,000 corporate salary or whatever, whatever your average income is across the country.

Dan Austin: [35:55] Yeah. You know, it's like we're talking about we're starting a we're starting a flip or we did, and we've engaged a contractor, put the material package together, and there'll be some checking in and checking up and doing some things here and there making decisions, but it's not forty hours a week. Yeah. Right? You know, it's me at at, you know, 06:00 at night making sure that the materials are gonna be on-site tomorrow. Right? It's, you know, me on a Saturday swinging by and checking in on the contractor's work. Like, yeah. He... Okay. He did what he said he's gonna do.

Mike DeHaan: [36:23] Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Dan Austin: [36:25] I mean,

Mike DeHaan: [36:25] some what time? For sure. And we and we built up to that efficiency. Right? And starting out, you know, it's a lot of work. But even then, if you gotta put a lot of work in on that property on the first one, you do in a year and make a $100,000, I guarantee you that was still probably a better time than sitting and stole a shop that you hate. Yes. You know, and just sitting there watching the time tick by and waiting for your next paycheck. Because also too, let's be honest, even if net, it's same amount as your salary, you get in one fat check, that's definitely feels way cooler. It does just go yeah. It's just like with Airbnb, it's like, maybe we made less money this month, but it kept it hit me when I didn't expect it. So it was much more exciting.

Dan Austin: [37:02] Yeah, yeah, exactly. The people at bank think you're pretty cool when you come in with it.

Mike DeHaan: [37:07] Right. Know that one of one of my flips I did, I lost money on it, but I got a $112,000 check, a $112,100 something thousand dollars. And I got it printed out purely so I can hold a six figure check-in my hands. First one, you know, and I went to the bank and they're like, wow. What do you do? I was like, I lost $25 on this.

Dan Austin: [37:28] I take my money, and then I lose some of it. And then I bring a little

Mike DeHaan: [37:31] bit back. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But, hey. You you think I'm cool bank teller that makes $45 a year and would be a perfect fit for this conversation that you should

Dan Austin: [37:38] know

Mike DeHaan: [37:39] what else to do if you hate that choice. But I

Dan Austin: [37:42] don't know. My bank tellers always seem to be happy.

Mike DeHaan: [37:44] Yeah. They have to be.

Dan Austin: [37:45] Friend... Friendly. Customer service.

Mike DeHaan: [37:47] They're one requirement.

Dan Austin: [37:48] That's true. Alright.

Mike DeHaan: [37:50] Alright. That's a good place to wrap up. Any quick lessons learned, Dan?

Dan Austin: [37:56] No. Not not this week other than price your Airbnb properly before you go live.

Mike DeHaan: [38:01] Yeah. That's a good one.

Speaker 2: [38:02] Would say...

Mike DeHaan: [38:04] Yeah. I would say, hey, make sure that you learn the system before you entirely trust the system. Right. And whatever that is, whether that's, know, buying properties, you know, learn how an escrow system works before you just expect the escrow company to do it right. Learn how a lending process works. We expect the lender to it right. Learn what a contractor needs to do before you just trust a contractor, just go ham on your property. Learn how to use fricking Airbnb before you just turn it on and see what happens. Otherwise, all those things will cost you money if you don't know what's going on.

Dan Austin: [38:32] Yeah. I mean, that was my lesson learned last week was figure the system out. And I think we generally did, but the more we're learning about it, like, you can't know everything ahead of time, but the more we're learning about it is just how critical months out of pricing. Like, I'm worried about like the next month, not three months from now on that. And it's like, should, you know, price appropriately and expect those sorts of things happen because the Internet works. It's a magical thing and people find your property quickly and book it.

Mike DeHaan: [38:58] Yep. Yeah. They do. Surprisingly quickly. Alright. Thanks, guys. That's it for this week. Again, my name is Mike DeHaan. You can find me at mike underscore invest on Instagram. You can find Dan at Dan... Was it investor man Dan on Instagram. Go ahead and hit us up a DM. Check out our website collectingkeyspodcast.com. You can download our ebook, which is the five steps start generating off market leads. Something new for this next week. If you have listened to us and you have any specific questions you want to answer, go ahead and send me a DM or send Dan a DM and we will chat about it on the next podcast. Besides that, everyone, this is last thing you'll hear before Christmas. Have a great Christmas and we'll have one more for the New Year's. And, yeah, thanks, everybody.

Speaker 2: [39:46] Thanks for listening. Please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and check us out at collectingkeyspodcast.com for tips and guides on starting your own real estate investment and wholesaling business.