Why You Shouldn’t Diversify Your Investments (And When to Start)

Mike DeHaan: [0:01] 95% of people that are entrepreneurs should probably just go get a job. This whole the construction jobs thing, people act like it's I don't know what other people do. Like, we've used Kianvi and all the other big companies a long time ago, and their processes were so monotonous to get everything approved. And now it's actually pretty streamlined. But it is amazing the level of pushback that people have. I'm just like, no, you need to, like, actually send us photos showing that you actually did the work, I don't know why.

Dan Austin: [0:29] Yeah. I don't get it either, man.

Mike DeHaan: [0:31] You know what it is? It is people I mean, it's always the same kind of borrower where we kinda, like, squeeze them through because they had shitty credit, and the deal was kinda like meh. We know deep down that what they're doing is they're trying to get money so they can go and pay off their other lender. Because also too Exactly. I don't know about you, Dan, but it is the March 6. Have you noticed a suspicious uptick in requests this week for renovation funds? You're absolutely right. Everyone's gotta pay their hard money loans.

Dan Austin: [0:56] Everyone's gotta pay their hard money loans.

Mike DeHaan: [0:57] Because they're all getting cooked right

Dan Austin: [0:59] Yeah. So true.

Mike DeHaan: [1:00] What's going on, guys? Welcome to collecting keys. We got no Dylan today. So it is just me, Mike DeHaan, and Dan Austin Who? Talking to you about business and real estate and money and stuff.

Dan Austin: [1:12] And collecting cash flow.

Mike DeHaan: [1:13] And collecting cash flow. Yeah. I didn't get a single DM about rebranding the show.

Dan Austin: [1:18] Fine, guys. That's because they don't like it. They don't like the name,

Mike DeHaan: [1:20] dude. No. They they have no ideas for the name. And the funny thing is is, like, last week's episode actually did, like, really well. So Really? I know you nerds freaking heard it, so no one reached out to me at Mike underscore Invest. Come on.

Dan Austin: [1:31] Just fucking text him. He'll be happy if you do it.

Mike DeHaan: [1:33] I know. Dude, so on the straws the straws competition we were talking about with with these flippers. And literally, I I don't just email it just as as a startup. Same guy who requested a draw, like, apparently weeks ago, which also doesn't make sense because his loan closed two weeks ago, emailed in and said, where's my draw? And you said you didn't actually submit it. And now he responded and said to the different email saying, is there someone who can give me a call? I've tried calling a ton and obviously emails aren't dependable. It is twenty twenty six. I understand that there's this whole sort of stigma that real estate people suck at technology. Don't be one of those people.

Dan Austin: [2:10] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [2:11] It's not that freaking hard to learn how to just like use a singular system or like respond to an email. Or who is he calling? I don't even know.

Dan Austin: [2:21] I don't know. This you know what? We're in a customer business now. Customer facing business.

Mike DeHaan: [2:26] Well, the the funny thing is is like, you know, with the whole premise of collecting keys when we started was to talk about like crazy wholesale stuff, crazy salary, all these different things. We're now removed from that. The experiences that you have, I think in every like service sort of customer biz that you're talking about, is kind of the same. Where the different problems and stuff, like they're not quite as crazy as like you know, having, a meth head that's, like, lives with a bunch of wild animals in their house or something. But, like, the irrationality of a lot of customers is very much the same.

Dan Austin: [2:58] Yeah. It's because they work with meth heads.

Mike DeHaan: [3:00] They work with meth heads. They're getting they're getting a contact high from going to the the crack house

Dan Austin: [3:04] and the drinking We there we were there once. I know.

Mike DeHaan: [3:07] Know. But it's funny. I was talking to our sales team before this, and we've had a quite a few issues recently. We we talked about this. I think it was last year on the show with borrowers that, like, have no money. Mhmm. Right? And it's crazy to me because And poor credit. Yeah. Poor credit, no money. And they'll have like a track record sometimes and they're coming through. And the the situation that always baffles me and so also the this conversation started with my sales team because they were like, do you think that our liquidity requirements are excessive? And I said, no, I don't. And that's because when Dan and I were in the throes of, like, buying houses, like, we had our real estate business, that was the exclusive thing we're doing. We never faced that problem because we understood that, yes, you should account for when the roof now needs to be done and that wasn't in your initial budget. Mhmm. And so you can't get additional renovation funds. You gotta pay for that. Yep. We had to account for, like, stuff sitting on market longer than we expected. You know, there was all these different situations. We had to account for so we always had cash, we never faced liquidity issues. And I don't know what it is with people, but it seems like so many people, their way of trying to get out of their liquidity problem is to buy another house. Yeah. Because they think that the profit from that house that they can't actually afford is gonna give them more money for future houses, but it's like very backwards way of thinking.

Dan Austin: [4:25] Yeah. Right? Yeah. The challenge is is, you know, it's a very slow way to make money. Like, you're better off if you're having a liquidity crunch, like going and like selling stuff or like Exactly. Getting a job because it's a six month turnaround time if you're lucky.

Mike DeHaan: [4:39] I

Dan Austin: [4:39] know. And these people are submitting their liquidity positions, which is all the money they have. And it's like, I know you gotta eat. So are you now eating off of my draw money that I'm sending you? Are you financing your cheeseburger?

Mike DeHaan: [4:51] And that's exactly the point. Like, we literally had somebody today that they, like, needed, like, $22,000 to close the loan. They have, like, 25,000. And there was an argument around, well, they have enough money to do the loan plus pay a few months of interest. Why is that a problem? To your point, that's all of their money. Yeah. How are they gonna pay for their life? Are they homeless?

Dan Austin: [5:11] They got a credit card payment. They've got a truck payment. They've yeah. What what path? Mortgage.

Mike DeHaan: [5:16] Are they eating at the soup kitchen? Like, what are they doing?

Dan Austin: [5:19] I don't Yeah. And like you said, if something happens during your renovation or you find out that the sewer's collapsed and it doesn't function, which is not uncommon, and it's $8, where are you gonna get that money?

Mike DeHaan: [5:30] Or even in your life

Dan Austin: [5:32] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [5:32] If you're that extended and all of a sudden your freaking car needs a new tire, you hit get a flat and you gotta buy a new set of tires, you don't have enough money for that. You you shouldn't be buying a house. You should go get a freaking shop.

Dan Austin: [5:43] Yeah. Go seriously. Seriously. Do that. Get a commission job too where you can make big fat commissions. Go sell I just went, I just went and bought a car yesterday for my wife. Like those dudes are doing all right. Go sell cars. You could hustle money doing that. I mean, I wouldn't want to do it, but No. Somebody should. Somebody should.

Mike DeHaan: [5:59] I don't know, man.

Dan Austin: [6:00] I think we've gone full cycle on the on the real estate and entrepreneur thing and being a business owner. And for some people, you know, getting a job is actually a pretty good idea. Absolutely. And then flip houses on the side.

Mike DeHaan: [6:12] Yeah. I would say like 95% of people that are entrepreneurs should probably just go get a job.

Dan Austin: [6:17] Yeah. You know? You're struggling, man. Why struggle that hard? It doesn't have to be that hard.

Mike DeHaan: [6:21] Well, not only that. Like, they're not good at it. Yeah. And they don't proactively try to be better. Yeah. You know, I think that's the bigger thing is, like, there's a learning piece to entrepreneurship. There's a long period of time where, yeah, you're not good at it. You don't make a lot of money. That's whatever. But, like, it kinda, like, calls to you. But if you're not like a growth minded person that, like, you remember that the last time you did a deal, this was the thing that went sideways. Or like, the last time you got a loan from us, these were the things that we asked for, and you come to get another one and you still don't have those things. Yeah. I'm like, come on, dude. You're like, you're literally not growing and learning at all. You're just an idiot. Like, you're just like, you're in the same place. You're still in like a hamster wheel Yeah. But you're also not making any money. And the funny thing is is all those people, they always say like, oh, I don't like kinda where I have to be tied down to a job. I don't like how I don't control bank loans or things. These people still don't have that because their liabilities are so massive, and their return on their time is so low for how much of a mess they create.

Dan Austin: [7:18] I think they're just lazy sometimes. I think so. You know, part of it. Like, yeah, you you want all the perks of doing it, but you're not doing it. So Yeah. You don't want the downsides of a job, which is like, you know, you gotta, like, show up.

Mike DeHaan: [7:29] Yeah. You gotta, like you can't play golf on Thursday afternoon. You know what I mean? There's a lot of people that are like that too, where they're they literally don't have any money and, like, they struggle and hustle six and a half days a week. But, hey, they play golf on Thursday afternoon. That's all that matters to them.

Dan Austin: [7:42] Sounds terrible.

Mike DeHaan: [7:43] You know, that's it's true though. And there are several people I can think of off the top of my head that we know that are literally that.

Dan Austin: [7:49] Yeah. 100%. Or they struggle like half a day a week and then golf three days a week.

Mike DeHaan: [7:53] Yeah. I think what always gets everybody is then you also have that person who likes to pretend like they have a lot of money. Oh. You know? Yeah. They just kinda like spend it willy nilly on stuff. They talk a big game. They like they try not to pay taxes. Here's thing. If you don't make any money, don't worry about not paying any taxes. You're not paying any freaking taxes anyway.

Dan Austin: [8:10] Don't worry about taxes. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [8:11] Just fucking pay them.

Dan Austin: [8:12] It's pennies. Yeah. And honestly, tax loopholes are meant for rich people, not average not average people. They're just not. They're not meant for average people.

Mike DeHaan: [8:19] Yeah. Yeah. If if you were ever one of those people that would like back when we were all getting started as adults, and you would use TurboTax, and you didn't know what any of the settings were, and you would just kinda like fuck you would just fuck around with the numbers until it said that most amount you get back. If you're if you're that person Yeah. You probably don't need to worry about taxes.

Dan Austin: [8:37] Yeah. Just pay them. If you're doing that right now if you're using TurboTax right now, it's it's likely you don't need to worry about it. And I'm not shitting on people because we've all done it before. We've all been there. You gotta start somewhere, but just don't worry about taxes. You know? Worry about taxes when you get a bill and you're like, oh, shit.

Mike DeHaan: [8:51] Yeah. Totally. When you've made enough money that your account reaches out to you and say, hey, your quarterlies are $85,000. When your quarterlies are now your your old starting salary, then you decide to worry

Dan Austin: [9:02] about taxes.

Mike DeHaan: [9:03] That's a good match.

Dan Austin: [9:04] Golly, dude. Yeah. And then you can be a lender.

Mike DeHaan: [9:08] Yeah. Then yeah. Yeah. And then when you really wanna be a jaded prick, yeah, just go be a lender and you control all the money for everybody.

Dan Austin: [9:15] Hell yeah, dude.

Mike DeHaan: [9:15] So anyway, I'll get off my high horse. I guess one thing I ran out with that Mhmm. Whatever you're doing with your business right now, it probably sucks. Like, there there's probably parts that absolutely suck. I guarantee, you know, there's some shiny object in another bitch like, man, that sounds so much better. That also has things that suck exactly the same. That also suck. And there's just always sucks. There's that there's actually a really great or mosey clip of this. I said, I think sent it you, Dan, a couple weeks ago, where there's this lady. She was talking about whatever business is. And she goes, well, I really like, like, the coaching. And she's like, well, why don't you like what you're I was like, oh, it's just hard. It sucks. And Alex goes, well, who are the coaching guys in here? Does your business suck? And they go, yeah. He goes, there you go. It all sucks. Every business sucks. You just kinda have to deal with it. And that is so true.

Dan Austin: [9:55] This actually brings up a good point because you have and I don't know, and this will be a good question to answer, is how do you know that you just need to quit versus you need to suck more? Because it's like one of those things, right, where it seems from the outside very clear, but when you're in it, it's not that clear. It's like a business owner. My wife is actually coaching a business owner here in town and there's financial struggles, right? It's like when you're selling a product that loses money, selling more of that product means you lose more money. But you think for some reason you could work your way out of it. It's like, no, no, no. Got a structural problem in your business. You're losing money on your product. So if you sell more, you literally just going to go more into debt, right? It's not always that straightforward. In the real estate kind of business, things are a little bit different because you're not usually selling a single product, right? You might be a real estate agent. You might be a loan broker, you might be a flipper, wholesaler, whatever. And you're working your ass off and you're doing all the right things, but you're not making progress, right? In some senses, it's like, just keep going. Just keep going, right? You gotta keep going. You gotta keep you right there at the gold. But as you and I found out, I mean, we, I would say took it to the next level and there's people that have done way, way, way better than us in the flipping wholesaling.

Dan Austin: [11:07] But I think we did a pretty good scalable operation. And maybe we were right. We were right above the gold, so to speak. But as we switched to lending and gained more alignment, like then it was like, I really do feel like we just got to keep going. For

Mike DeHaan: [11:21] sure. Yeah. So I guess to answer your question, whether to quit or to keep going, I think there's kind of two pieces to that. And we've done this with multiple businesses, right? So we had our flipping and wholesaling business directly that we sold last year. We had our franchise that we spent, you know, which is all through collecting keys that we grew and focused on and built out. So that was if you guys have been around for a while, we had our scale community. We had our franchise that we were building out, which was like this partnership program that you probably heard us talk about on here. We basically shut that down. Right? We had a Simply Leads cold calling company. If you guys were around for that little period, we had that that we really heavily focused on for, like, six months that we sold. Yeah. Right? So all these things were stuff that we put time, money, and attention into. And so the real estate company we sold, the Simply Leads lead generation company we sold, the franchise, we spent like $200,000 and just shut that bitch down. Yeah. Like, didn't do anything with it. And ultimately, I think on all of those, the decision was made off of two things. Right? One, it was like the financial sort of momentum that it had. So to your point, like, we knew that growing it was going to cause money loss or it was gonna basically be like a net zero. And if we looked at, like, our fundamental KPIs, we could sort of project where it was gonna go, and it did not make sense for us to do that for the other opportunities that we have. Mhmm. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [12:48] So that's a big thing. This is also why it's so important to track your business KPIs and, you know, your revenue projections over the month, how much work you're putting in, all sort of things. So there's the financial piece. The other piece is the, I would call it, the psychological or emotional piece. Where like, if it's a business that you hate selling the product, you hate being in the day to day and I mean, like, actually hate it. Not like something where it gets hard and you're like, oh, it's a pain in the ass, but then you still wake up and you get to work. But like, you know you have to work on it. You will do anything to avoid working on it because it, like, it just eats your soul. You should probably find something else because it's not sustainable long term.

Dan Austin: [13:23] It's not sustainable. You are at burnout factor for sure

Mike DeHaan: [13:26] Totally. That case. So I I think back to like when we first started our our wholesaling business back in, 2019, 2020. Right? That first period of time, it was so hard. Yeah. Right? We made no money. Like, all of the financial measures I'm about were were down. Like, just basically lost $35 if we made anything. But I still liked it because we had the momentum of, like, the leads coming in. We were having conversations. So we knew it was there.

Dan Austin: [13:49] Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [13:49] And so even though we were making nothing, it was very easy for me to work twelve hours a day. What the hell I was doing for those twelve hours, I don't remember. Because, like, if I look at it now, it was so incredibly inefficient, but it was still, like, exciting. Yeah. But then things like the franchise, when we got to that, by the time we shut it down, we were trying to, like, sort of, like, pre sell these parts and stuff. It was horrible. Yeah. I hated, like, pitching it. And then also too, we the problem is we would, like, know despite who these people were, some of people that were coming. Like, we knew they were gonna fail.

Dan Austin: [14:17] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [14:18] They sucked at what we were gonna be asking them to do, but we needed their money. And so we'd have them come in. I just, like, didn't like that style of business. And same with, like, the Simply Lead stuff. Here's the thing with everybody that sells you a lead gen business, guys. If you'll notice, a lot of them used to do real estate and now they sell lead gen. Yeah. It's because they're really good at like getting the phone to ring, but not actually in converting those leads. And a lot of times, because the leads aren't that good. And so when you're selling a lead gen business, same thing as like our partnership. They know that most of you are gonna suck and not close their leads. You're gonna cancel in three months. I guarantee you that they have like an average churn in their market that's probably like three to six months, and you are now a statistic to them. 100%. They know you're gonna be gone in four months. And so they're trying to like find more so that doesn't happen.

Dan Austin: [14:59] Yeah. And that goes for any business. Right? All about just getting that getting as much money. And if it costs if it's a churn rate every three months, you just gotta make sure you're profitable with your product for three months of subscriptions.

Mike DeHaan: [15:09] Exactly. Right? And if anything, that makes it worse because now they know you're only gonna be there for three months. So, they are gonna give you a reduced product because it's cheaper for them, and they're gonna squeeze as much money out of you as they can in that very short period of time.

Dan Austin: [15:21] Yeah. And one thing that I as you're talking, I was thinking and reflecting that where we had these businesses, I would say outside of the psychological piece and the financial piece, but like when we talk about like the cold calling business, which we didn't start, that wasn't the intention, but it turned into that. And then our most recent like partnership and things like that. Anytime where we were trying to put that key, those key people in place to help operate that business, they seem to be not good at that And I would say, sure, it's a person in a position thing, but it's also like, we hadn't built the business to the point to do that. And we weren't going to because we didn't love it. We weren't call center people. Like, it worked great. Like we were using the call center for our business. Was vertically integrated. Cool. We started selling it as a product because we could, all that stuff. But then you realize, you look back like, that's not where I want to be. And now that I can't get this person to operate for me and I have to do it, I don't want to put in that effort. And so if you think about that, and I bring that up because you have all these, all these dorks out there that are like, I'm going to buy a business, put an operator in place. It's like, you might be able to, but the chances are really slim because you just got to go in there and there, there's just no way around it.

Dan Austin: [16:30] You got to do twelve hour days and build your business and grind through it and figure it out, understand the nuts and bolts, especially you're starting from scratch. But if you're stepping into an existing business and you want to scale it, it's the exact same thing. You just have to deal with old habits now.

Mike DeHaan: [16:44] Absolutely. Right? You know, and I think the the contrary to those couple ones where just kind of like don't love it, is like scale. Well, I loved running that group for the years that we did. It's still around as like a free group, whatever. But mostly it's just like old members, we just we just hang out, you know, every other week. But, like, that was so fun. We put on like the couple events.

Dan Austin: [17:04] I loved it. Yeah. It was awesome.

Mike DeHaan: [17:05] It was awesome.

Dan Austin: [17:06] Being around cool people, good people, all that stuff.

Mike DeHaan: [17:08] Cool people, our vibe. Like, that was something that I love to do. And so I really wanna try to grow that. The problem is once you learn in that space, that's the example of the financials just not making sense. You know? Because we're trying to run it and grow it. And when you have like a mastermind, those sort of things, try to build $5 a year. It feels cool when they pay you $5,000, right? Now you have them for an entire year. What you realize very, very quickly is how many actual transactions that needs to be per month Yeah. To make it actually accumulate real money is hard. Right? And in this sort of space, in like the education space where there's so many gurus out there that are selling like bullshit, because I kind of our whole mantra with scale was that we were operators first, and that was like a side thing that we did. We were never trying to be full time gurus.

Dan Austin: [17:54] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [17:54] And we we stayed focused on that the entire time. The problem is is the full time gurus have a much better sales pitch. They have a much larger platform. They are more than happy to tell people what they wanna hear to get them to swipe their credit card. Right? Whereas, like, we were more upfront and honest, which is always our platform. And would you believe it? That doesn't convert people very well.

Dan Austin: [18:15] Doesn't convert. Well, then what you have to do is you have to deliver the product, but if you're going to keep growing it, like you said, you have to have this monthly growth. Mhmm. Then all you're doing is focus on bringing in new members and you're not actually providing value to your members.

Mike DeHaan: [18:27] Totally. You know? And and not only that, but you will eventually start to get these members to come in that you know are gonna fail. Yeah. And you have to make an ethical decision like, well, are you gonna take their money even though you know they're gonna suck? And when you're in the position to grow business, the answer is yes. And as soon as we transition to that, the quality of the community started to drop. Yep. Just because we were bringing in members that were not performing or they would come in and they would say like, hey, what's up? And like the Slack channel, they would just disappear. You know? And then all of a sudden they're going to be like, well, this doesn't really work, these sort of things. I'm like, well, it does. You're just not doing doing the pieces of it. And I can say with confidence of the core members we had, probably like, what, 30 ish members that were like, really like engaged, came to the events, doing stuff, getting after it. I think pretty much every single one of them has like, left their w two. Mhmm. Is a full time real estate investor, makes more money now than they've ever made in their life. Yep. We have, like, people that came in that were, like, a waitress and, you know, other And now and now they make, like, three hundred, four hundred thousand dollars a year.

Mike DeHaan: [19:25] Yeah. Like that's incredible success. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [19:27] Like real, real growth. And it's because they committed to it.

Mike DeHaan: [19:30] Yeah. They committed to it, you know? And I think the problematic thing when it comes to like those kinds of businesses is you need to be honest around if the time that it takes you to run it is actually worth the financial outcome. Right. You know? And for us, that was unfortunately the decision that we had to make when we kind of moved away from it was even though it was fun for us to run, it was no longer producing any money. And then also too, the thing with those kind of, like, educational groups is people graduate from it after a while.

Dan Austin: [19:57] You want them to.

Mike DeHaan: [19:58] You want them to. Like, if if people don't graduate, like, you have these different groups where people are still showing up for the fundamentals, like, three years later, that means you're trash. Yeah. Like, ideally, in in twelve months, the people shouldn't need you anymore. Yeah. You know? And they can hang around because they like the community and hang around with you and whatever. But if they are still, like, hanging on your every word, figure out what do next, that means you're a bad teacher. Yeah. Especially in this space.

Dan Austin: [20:20] You're not giving them enough to educate or learn.

Mike DeHaan: [20:23] But that's also the model for a lot

Dan Austin: [20:24] of these

Mike DeHaan: [20:24] people is they do that so that people stay around and they, you know, pay another year tuition.

Dan Austin: [20:29] Yeah. Well Yeah. We tried our hand. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [20:31] But lending's better, though. I like for me, I I I like the industry. I get excited to work every day. The financial metrics really line up with us. And I think just with how we've sort of found the pieces that we both individually like about business, I just think it's like a better fit. Yeah. But I can also say that if we tried this business five, six years ago when we started, that wouldn't have been the case. Mhmm. You know? Because we didn't know what we wanted yet. So you you kinda need to, like, try different businesses, try different, like, roles within your business to see what actually sticks with you and what doesn't.

Dan Austin: [21:02] You do. Yeah. And that's I think that's where you do have to continue to ask yourself. Like, am I doing the right things? And if you are, are you doing enough of them?

Mike DeHaan: [21:10] Yeah. And be honest with yourself.

Dan Austin: [21:11] Yeah. I'll just continue to contend like you've got to. You just got to put in effort. There's just I don't understand how otherwise you could be super successful if anything, if you're not putting in the effort. I guess there's some industries where maybe in a sales industry where you're kind of, I don't know, like medical sales, maybe you can make a shit ton of money and not really work that hard.

Mike DeHaan: [21:28] You need to work hard initially though. Yeah. Right? Like you always do be like so medical sales, especially for the ones that make real money, those typically people that are in the operating room. Like there's like a high level of clearance and training and stuff that you have to get. You have to build that client list. Yep. There's that very heavy initial load

Dan Austin: [21:43] on it. Yeah. Or like, I guess another one would be like, financial management, like where you're managing people's money. You gotta build that book. But once you build a book, you can play a lot of golf. Totally. Right? But people see that, they see that person at the end of it, and they're like, I want that. Mhmm. And they don't understand why they can't get it. And it's because it's like you didn't see the decade before of that hustle and that grind, and and just trying things and failing and keeping going and just working late and just putting it in.

Mike DeHaan: [22:09] Well, it's because people get impatient. And the reason they they get impatient is because they're typically coming into that mindset from a position of trying to escape a life that they're unhappy with. Mhmm. Right? And when you're sort of desperate to get out of your job that you hate, you know, where you live, like, you wanna be able to travel, whatever, it's very, very easy to, like, chase get rich quick things or, like, to think that you're gonna be the exception to that ten years of hustle like you talked about. Mhmm. But the reality is that's always going to be there no matter what. You know? Yeah. Like like, even a lot of the people that did really, really well, you know, holding, like, real estate that, like, had w twos and things like that through the the 2020, 2021 boom. The thing is they still put themselves in a position before that where they even owned that real estate. Yeah. And so if you if you didn't do that, you didn't get lucky, you didn't fucking I mean, I guess the only exception is if you were a lucky gambler, you bought $10,000 worth of Bitcoin, you know, a long time ago, and that's now worth several million dollars. That's just straight luck, and that also happened. People also win the lottery.

Mike DeHaan: [23:12] Yes. You know?

Dan Austin: [23:14] You're right.

Mike DeHaan: [23:14] But you can't force that.

Dan Austin: [23:15] Sometimes timing and luck are right on people's side, and that's okay. Yeah. That's the exception to the rule.

Mike DeHaan: [23:20] Mhmm. Totally. But, you know, there's also those people that got lucky, and then they cash out. And now what do they do? It's not even like what do they do with their time, but they don't know how to make money. They have no actual control of their income. Yeah. You know? Because if you end up with a 3,000,000, $4,000,000 gain, you sell that, you now pay half of it in taxes, you have $2,000,000, you're 35. That's awesome. Eventually, that money's gonna go away. That's not enough to live for the rest of your life.

Dan Austin: [23:45] It's not a good spot. It's a worse spot to be in.

Mike DeHaan: [23:46] It really is. Especially like with inflation and everything else.

Dan Austin: [23:49] You've got I'm not gonna call it easy, but just say you got a good chunk of easy money came to you. And if it wouldn't come to you easy, you still don't have enough to stop. But you also can like, take your foot off the gas if you wanted to. You're in a weird spot. $2,000,000 at 35 is a great spot to be in if you continue to have full throttle down. An amazing spot to be in. But if you don't really have the tool set to grow beyond that or the desire, kind of at a terrible spot and you're probably miserable.

Mike DeHaan: [24:15] Yeah. Probably. It's like that quote from Succession, like nephew inherits like $5,000,000. No. Like, that sucks, dude. That's the worst amount. You're too rich to care, but not rich enough to stop working. Exactly.

Dan Austin: [24:26] Yeah, dude. You have the first taste of fuck you money, but you can't really say fuck you to everything. You can say fuck to some people, but not everybody.

Mike DeHaan: [24:33] Yeah. Especially, like, depending on where you live, if you're that person. You're probably one of the wealthiest people that you know, like in your direct circle.

Dan Austin: [24:40] Oh, for sure. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [24:41] Right? And I think that makes people complacent as well. Because you can realistically you don't have to worry about one on, a day to day basis. But the problem is every single time you swipe your credit card, you're whittling away at your savings or that your gains because you have no income that's gonna basically

Dan Austin: [24:54] replace it. Gotta have income.

Mike DeHaan: [24:56] I don't know. I think the one thing that everyone should focus on is just learning how to make money Yeah. At any level. And it can be, like, hustle nature, learning how to make it, being willing to do it. You know, even if it's like you're hustling, you're doing stuff hourly, you have, like, small stuff that you do that you can like charge money for. I don't know, whether like you have like a previous skill or like you build websites or you freaking can help people move or whatever. You know, like that's the most important thing. And then just decide how you want to utilize the more of like soft skills, like the the internal stuff that you develop from that to scale it if that's something that you wanna do.

Dan Austin: [25:34] Yeah. I tell people right now, like, you know, we ask, we go, what would you do if you had this money? Or like, are you investing? How are you investing? I literally don't invest in anything except for me and my business right now. Like I have Mhmm. Enough money to invest in things. Yes, I have some stocks, but I'm not actively buying them. I have real estate, I'm not actively buying it. I'm not really looking for crazy upside investments. And I take that to like this point of, you know, people talk about diversifying your investments. And honestly, that doesn't really matter. If you're in your twenties and your thirties, it's not that big of a deal because you don't have enough to diversify really anyways. And so what you're gonna be doing is you're taking like, it's like death by a thousand cuts, and you're getting okay margins on your money across a bunch of different asset classes and you're not gonna ever get the big upside. And when it comes to your time, same thing. It's like, how are you diversifying your time? If you're trying to do ten, twelve different things in a week that are like separate, you know? Like I'm not talking like family time and gym time. I'm talking like, Oh, I'm gonna go side hustle this. I'm gonna do this.

Dan Austin: [26:37] I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna know, you're just running around and not all of those things are in alignment. You're diversifying your time and going to have average results. If you want mega results, you need to spend your time and your effort all in one place. And if you're worried about I don't mean you need to go spend money investing in yourself. How I'm doing it is I am accumulating my extra cash. I'm not worried about buying real estate. I'm not worried about buying stocks. I know exactly what returns I'm gonna get with those and they're gonna be fine. What I'm worried about is having capital and liquidity available to invest in my own fund, in my own business as needed, having excess cash flow to support my lifestyle if needed. That's what I mean by I'm kind of like singularly focused. As I've done that, I've really done that for the last two years, but really this last twelve months, it's like things have gone up and up and up and up faster than they ever have.

Mike DeHaan: [27:26] Totally. That focus piece is so important. You know? I don't think people understand how much faster you can go when you eliminate all the noise. You know? And I hear people, like, say this kind of shit all the time. Like, you know, where the kids say lock in. Right? Yeah. They say that as, like, a short term thing. Talking about lock in for like months or years, where literally you do nothing else but focus on that singular thing. Yeah. Give yourself five years. The amount of gains that you can get is like unbelievable.

Dan Austin: [27:54] It is.

Mike DeHaan: [27:55] You know? And to your point, like, instead of diversifying your money and focusing specifically on being having it available to invest yourself in your business, if you have like a million dollars, right, as an example, and you did nothing with it for five years, it just sat in a checking account and it just lost value, quote unquote, to inflation. Right? That absolutely happens. Totally can deny that. But then at year five, you're able to make a move with that money that produces $2,000,000. You just made a 20% return over the Which past five

Dan Austin: [28:24] is amazing.

Mike DeHaan: [28:25] Right? It's amazing. And I guarantee you that that is more doable than trying to like move a bunch of stuff around to get a projected 20% return every single year.

Dan Austin: [28:34] Right. And you didn't even mention the downside risks that you avoided for those five years.

Mike DeHaan: [28:38] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [28:38] And also the just like effort it takes to deploy that to have it deployed in a diversified way and all that other bullshit that comes along with it psychologically. Yeah. So it's a real thing.

Mike DeHaan: [28:48] Yeah. And like an example of what that could be is that you could use that million dollars to buy like a commercial asset that has $1,500,000 of upside. Right? And, like, there's equity that you're able to make the day that you buy. Right? It can be using that money to invest in some systems and some new team members that allow your business to produce an extra 1 to $2,000,000 of revenue. Right? That you're gonna be getting the bulk of that if you build it correctly. Right? There's so many different things that you can do to basically force returns on your money that isn't like quote unquote, passive. And then I think there's a place for that passive kind of investing, but it's just like, at the end of the day, I think that the long term sort of growth investing like that, again, is for people that are already wealthy, if that is your goal. If you're somebody that, like, you just wanna, you know, you wanna be wealthy younger in life, it's a giant waste of time for you to do that. Don't buy into this pitch. A lot of people say, like, when you're 25, 30, and they're like, well, if you put this in the SP five, and this is how much you'll have when you're 65. But when you're 65, that money's gonna be worth way less.

Mike DeHaan: [29:51] And who gives a shit

Dan Austin: [29:51] at that It's not gonna be as fun to spend it.

Mike DeHaan: [29:54] Totally. And, like, if if instead you can use that money right now and you can use it to make a few million bucks over the next ten, twenty years. Right? And then you start investing that new $3,500,000 nest egg when you're 40, it'll probably still be worth the same as 65 anyway. Yeah. Like, it doesn't matter. It's math. It's math. But either way, it might goes back to my my main thesis I've had for a while, whereas the one thing you should just invest in is yourself and just learning It's how to control true.

Dan Austin: [30:20] Unless you suck, you better improve really quick. Yeah. Sometimes you do suck. Sometimes people make bad decisions. Everyone sucks sometimes. Well, you start out sucking.

Mike DeHaan: [30:28] Yeah. I mean, you gotta

Dan Austin: [30:29] put in the effort. You gotta figure it out.

Mike DeHaan: [30:30] Mhmm. If I had to talk like, before, back when we first started our our wholesaling business, the amount of work that went into, like I think we did our first year, like, 17 deals. Yeah. The amount of work that went into that was insane. Yeah. I don't know what we were doing. We just sucked at

Dan Austin: [30:47] it. Yeah. We just yeah. And we weren't we weren't good at business. We were trying to figure things out. You're worried about things that don't matter, which is the truth. Especially early on in the business, like in that business, all you should be worried about is talking to people. That's what it comes down to. Going out and talking to sellers, getting in front of any real estate agents you can, going and talking to buyers. That's really all you should be doing. Like, you don't need anything else outside of that. We were probably trying to do too much. We didn't know how to talk to people very well. We didn't know real estate very well, and then we had to learn it and figure it out. And then that compounded into something else, and that compounded into something else. And even if we looked back and we made scratch on all of that, it all compounded experience into what we can do now where I think our best skill set now is quickly saying no to things. And then identifying kinda like that lane we just need to stay in and and do that. Right? That comes from hiring and firing people. That comes from looking at investments, looking at opportunities, looking at borrowers coming in if we should actually do a deal with them instead of having this like, you you kinda alluded to earlier, running from something, you're running towards something when you're doing that, you can lock in and kinda focus on on the singular thing.

Dan Austin: [31:51] I we're very focused within our business, within the lending business, but then our industry, but then within our business, we're pretty focused, would say. Yeah. Totally. We don't really mess around with shit. People come to us with weird stuff, we're like, nah. Sorry. Sure. We could make a ton of money out of it. Nah. It's not our thing.

Mike DeHaan: [32:05] Yeah. Literally all the time. You know, people ask me about like buying houses, different things. I'm like, nah, I have no desire to do that. You know, we we literally had an opportunity to buy like a really solid flip from somebody in our network, their mom's house. Yeah. You know, it was a great deal. Like it's a house that we 100% would have flipped years ago. I was like, I I was like, I'm not buying that thing. I was like, we'll help find somebody. And sure enough, we found somebody to buy it, and now we're doing a loan on the deal. Worked out great.

Dan Austin: [32:27] Yeah. Exactly. Like, it's yeah. Nah. Not gonna do it. Sorry. It's easy no. Mhmm. I think that's important. 100%.

Mike DeHaan: [32:34] Alright, everybody. Well, thanks for listening. You guys have a great rest of your week. Oh, we made it the whole time. We didn't even talk about bombing Iran. So we'll, we'll see that for next week.

Dan Austin: [32:41] Oh, man. We'll wait till Dylan comes back and he starts out politics again.

Mike DeHaan: [32:44] Yeah. Yeah. There you go.

Dan Austin: [32:45] Dylan doesn't know he can't swing. He's a he's a swing state guy. He doesn't know which way to swing.

Mike DeHaan: [32:49] I don't think anyone knows how to win. I don't think there's anywhere to swing with this whole fucking disaster.

Dan Austin: [32:54] There's no winners ever anymore. We're all losers. Sorry.

Mike DeHaan: [32:57] We're all losers. Yeah. Anyways alright, guys. Have a good week. We'll talk to you guys next time. See you. This episode is sponsored by Sir Lenzelot LLC, also known as SLA Capital, which, if you didn't know, is Dan and I's private lending company. So, yes, we are sponsoring our own show, but what you're do about it? It is our private lending company that offers hard money and DSCR loans to real estate investors of all types. So you can be a new investor, an experienced investor. You can be buying flips. You can be buying rentals, whatever. We can do everything. And not only that, but the rates that we offer are just as competitive, if not cheaper, than pretty much every other company out there. So whatever big company you've been working with, bring us their term sheets, and I guarantee that we can probably beat it. We have the same connections they do. We just don't have all the overhead and middlemen. So you wanna come and check us out, go to slacapital.com/keys, and I will know that you came from the show. And by seeing that you came from here, when you get the closing, you will save $500 on your first loan with us. So slacapital.com/keys, we would love to fund your next deal. Thanks for listening, everyone. If you want more from us, you can shoot us a follow on Instagram. I am at Mike underscore invest. Dan is at investor man. Dan and Dylan is at Dylan underscore does underscore deals.

Mike DeHaan: [34:08] Choose to follow and send us a DM to let us know what you think of the show.