Why Does No One Want To LEARN Anymore?

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] What is going on, guys? Welcome to today's collecting keys Friday focus. If this is your first time to the collecting keys network, this is the show where teach you to make massive income, not just passive income with your real estate investing business. My name is Mike DeHaan. And on these Friday Focus episodes, we do a little bit of like a deep dive into something that either Dan or myself has been thinking about over the last week. Sometimes we do this as like a monologue style. Sometimes we do this as like a deal case study with members of our scale community. But really, what we do is we like to just make this be a nice short episode to give you something to think about going into the weekend. If you're not familiar with who I am, you can follow me on Instagram at mike underscore invests. And I guess my kind of claim to fame, the story that I tell on every other podcast that I'm a guest on, is about how I left my high paying w two job without any real plan back in 2018. And I went from being a corporate engineer, making very good money in my late twenties to working at a gym, driving for Uber, trying to figure my life out. And now I have started a multi 7 figure real estate investment business that buys, flips, and wholesales properties around the entire country. Done about 450 transactions so far in the last, what, four and a half years since we officially started working together, Dan and myself. And, yeah, it's become a fun little endeavor for us. And this podcast now is kind of a passion project and a fun thing that we do to sort of bring our knowledge and information out to the masses about what it really means to run a full time real estate investing business that is doing a lot of deals and not just talking about doing deals on the Internet.

Mike DeHaan: [1:35] So on this episode today, I'm actually going to talk a little bit about a project that I have been working on. I actually started working on it about a week and a half ago. And it is a little like, it's like side project or something fun that I kinda decided to do on a whim as a result of something that my assistant actually suggested, where he, you know, he also put together a lot of my social media stuff. And he, you know, helps me come up these real ideas and different things for for Instagram and and short form social media. And we were having this great conversation. He said to me, he's like, you know, I feel like every time I talk to you, Mike, that I learn a lot. He's like, but we need to figure out how to make your knowledge, like, better for short form content. Because every time we do a reel, I feel like it's just so bad compared to the stuff that you actually have to say. And so I thought I well, I was first off, I was offended. And then I thought it was funny because I also agree with him. And so I was trying to think about some more long form stuff that I can do. And ultimately, it landed on. I'm gonna do what stay at home moms apparently should do and start a little like blog or newsletter that I'm going to run kind of in tangent to collecting keys, and have it be something that will be more of like my voice. And just because I am a sort of over the top person when it comes to how I tend to commit to things, I decided that I'm gonna be crazy. I'm gonna make it a daily newsletter that is three to five minutes read, right, three to five minute read time.

Mike DeHaan: [3:04] So super short, and will be a combination of real estate news, musings, you know, lessons on the things that we have learned in the business, and just, you know, get a little bit more of like my distinct flavor on sort of my fuse on the world and the real estate space. And so I've been doing this now for, I guess, the time this released, about two weeks, and the response has been, like, overwhelmingly positive. And so what I wanted to do on this episode is actually read one of my posts that I did last week, which I had like almost 30 people either reply to or reach out to me on Instagram about. And I was like, apparently, this hit home with some people. And so I guess people do actually like what I have to say on this long form content. So if you want to check out the blog yourself, you can go to mikeinvest.com. Just like my Instagram, which that Mike underscore invest just minus the underscore. So mikeinvest.com. You can subscribe to it there. The web page is kind of ugly. I'm a designer, just putting your email, and you'll be getting these little three to five minute reads in your inbox every single day. And yeah, it's been a fun little endeavor so far. And so I wanted to dive into this one post that I made that got a really good response because apparently, was stop provoking to people. Alright, so the title of this is why is no one interested in learning anymore? And it is a weird observation that I've had over the past few months.

Mike DeHaan: [4:20] It's something that I've been contemplating for quite a while, and then it kinda just like sort of came to, I don't know, would say fruition, like the full thought process about like why exactly is this happening. So it goes, hey, everyone. I recently made a post in my scale community and on my Instagram at mike underscore invests, asking for feedback on a few changes we are thinking about for the collecting keys podcast. And one of the most common things in people's responses were that they wanted more, quote, actionable content. I started diving deeper with everyone trying to uncover what does actionable content actually mean, and how do you provide it. And some real responses that set sort of common themes were, I want to hear more specifics of exactly what people do for marketing, not just like, well, we do direct mail. It would be great to hear more from folks who give the specific details on how they built their business and not just the theory behind it, and sort of like other things along those lines. As I read those, I reflected back on calls I've had with scale prospects. Scale is our coaching community, by the way, or guess our our real estate community. I say it's coaching, but really it's more of like a member led community at this point.

Mike DeHaan: [5:30] So calls I've had with our scale prospects, low level questions I regularly get from newer employees, and questions I get DM'd on Instagram all the time. And then it hit me that no one actually wants to learn anything anymore. They want to be told what to do so they can attempt to copycat other people's success because that's what they think is gonna make them successful. I mean, I guess, fundamentally, if you look at the American school system, it makes sense. They don't differentiate learning from merely memorization. But the literal definition of learning is the acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience. And everyone is wanting to skip that experience part and suddenly just magically have the knowledge. I'm trying to determine if it has always been this way, and my observation is just a sign of me making one step closer to being a curmudgeonly old man, wondering what's wrong with these kids, or if this is officially the new state of human beings. I don't see hope it's the first one because a lost desire to learn is a major problem that will handicap anyone who has any hint of ambitions at all. The thing is in business and in life, you kind of have to have experience to make anything work.

Mike DeHaan: [6:40] You can't copy everything to success. If it was as simple as copying, everyone will be rich, fit, and happy, but of course, that is not the case. Back in the bigger pockets days, when you heard someone talking about, say, direct mail marketing on their on that podcast, that would light a spark in you to go out and seek more knowledge. It would force you to go and dive into a Google sort of like search hole. Right? And start trying to figure out how to do direct mail. You know, does it actually work? How do I even begin to, like, understand that process? How do I do it where I am marketing and trying to invest? And you would just sort of go down this path of, you know, how do I do this direct mail that this person on bigger pockets is speaking of? And now people go, oh, they didn't give me the exact copy, and the cadence, and the exact strategy? Then, dang, that wasn't actual oh, no. That was a complete waste of time. I don't wanna listen to that person anymore because they didn't tell me exactly what to do. Right? That's not right. In order to actually build anything or be successful, you have to try things and fail. You have to struggle with your understanding, and you need to want to quit, but grind through. Without all that, it doesn't matter how much actionable advice someone gets. As soon as things get hard, they'll blame the knowledge giver and not know how to fix things for themselves.

Mike DeHaan: [8:00] What are your thoughts? Is this something you guys have noticed as well? Or am I truly just entering my grumpy old doo dears at the seasoned age of 33 years old? You can respond to me here or DM me on Instagram at Mike underscore Invest. Have a great Memorial Day, everyone. So that was a little preview. And like I said, I had, like, literally over 30 responses. If you listen to this and you already read that, and you're responding, I didn't get back to you. I apologize. Like I said, it vastly exceeded my expectations of how many people were going to react to it. And I promise I I still really appreciate you being a fan. And hopefully, will get caught up in those at some point. I just got a lot of stuff to do, and 30 people is a lot. Like, between the DMs and the the email inboxes, it got pretty crazy pretty quickly. So, anyways, I talk about stuff like that. I have my post I a post call this week, or I'm about multifamily real estate versus single family, and why I think multifamily is for chumps. I had some other stuff around how to actually still find passive income in real estate in this economy. I have some different pieces around virtual real estate investing and other things involving how we built up that business. A whole medley of stuff, and truly kinda just whatever is really striking a chord with me during that day that I decided to write, which usually I'm writing about one or two days ahead of the posting schedule. So pretty relatively recent.

Mike DeHaan: [9:18] Anyways, if that's something that interests you, go to mikeinvests.com, And you can subscribe there. And I would appreciate you following along. Also, if you want to watch me do more cheesy reels, and try to continue to figure that out, which three years in the making, I've had a couple hits, I gotta say I had a couple of this past week that I got into like the $4,050,000 dollars $1,000 $4,050,000 to a range. So sometimes it's clicking, but other times, it's just so cringey. And so I apologize for that. But you can follow me on Instagram. I'm Mike underscore invest there. And that's easiest way to also reach out to me directly by sending me a DM. And besides that, guys, share collecting keys with all your friends, subscribe, go and download a bunch of episodes. It really helps us push up in the rankings. And I appreciate you guys listening. Thanks so much. And we'll talk to you guys next week.