From $100k a Year to $100k a Month (While on Vacation) w/ Mike Dehaan

Mike DHA, what's going on, buddy

on man. Can't complain been busy sort of portion of the year right now, the economy going sideways. Everything's just interesting right now, not good, not bad. Just of trying to wait and see what happens. Kinda like everybody.

Just another week in paradise, man, another week in economic paradise, what do you, what are you making of all this man? What are you seeing with all this? I know today we are recording conventional single family interest rates are over 6%.

Yeah. Which is interesting, it, yeah. Like that is pretty crazy. Everyone's been saying how the things have been going up. Oh, if you go back three, four years ago, that's, these rates are still comparable to what we're buying. People were buying single family homes on back then. But, I think that this is now definitely getting much higher than it was not long ago, but I think a lot of it is speculation because was it this week? I think that the feds are pronouncing a new, they're making an announcement on the rates. People are projecting it to go up. So I think some of it might be defensive on the banks. Yeah.

It's from my perspective, it's so yes, we've had higher rates before and people were able to make deals. But it's more so the speed of increase. Yeah, that's concerning, we eventually the music had to stop and we had to start going up back to reality. But they just were like, Hey, yo, let's zoo right up. So obviously buying real estate right now is people are still buying. There's still deals. But I think that the ramifications of this will be seen more so where it'll be more normalized a year from now. Because then we'll see the prices start to reflect the rates and oh no. What

do you. Yeah I think you're completely right there. It's just anytime that there's a change in the economy or the world status where people freeze at the start, because a, they're told to be fearful and then B, because there is some element of uncertainty, but then as they get acclimated to the new norm, The new general conditions, then they'll start to open up again. Just like when COVID started, if you go back to when COVID started those first, month and a half. I remember sitting in my, with my wife and being like, are you like allowed to go outside? I don't remember. I was gonna go to the gas station. We do. There's like this whole process where we'd go and buy groceries and then, you'd go and you'd come back and you'd like, wipe down all your groceries to make sure you safe. But then after a while, you're just I guess it's, you don't need to do that. I guess we can start living a little bit more again, we can start doing all these things. And then, I looked at that was what last, that was March of 2020. Last June, we were out connecting with family loosely again and that sort of stuff. So it just takes a couple months to get over that was the current living condition, that was the current situation of the world. And you just needed to. Grow and accept that and then start to live your life again, the same thing will happen. Anything economic it's gonna be the same sort of situation. Economy's gonna go down. It's happened before, no one that is really, younger people, I guess who aren't around for the recession. This is probably new for them, but even then, like I was just starting college when the recession started, so it doesn't really affect me. And so those of us that are. Low thirties and younger. We know that it's happened. It's been the first time, but we're also relatively adaptable, I think. And then older people saying their first rodeo. Yeah.

And also there's a bit of recency bias to the negative from 2008, I think, because that was like a once in a century crash. And everyone's just casually assuming that we're gonna wipe out all of that all over again. And that's what happens when a recession hits. That's not the case, like things slow down, but that was like a, you had your stock market crash back in the 19 hundreds and then. Black Fri. Now you have, 2008 in this century and yeah, I'm sure in another century there will be something else. Of course there will be, but yeah, any anyway, so let's go back a bit then on that note, when you were leaving college you go to oh work at Boeing, correct?

Yeah. So did a couple different jobs, so I started going the traditional path, went to college. I got an engineering degree, parents very proud, went along what everyone would consider to be setting yourself up for success. Got outta school. I had a couple different internships in school that I did, trying these different jobs. I left. I went and worked at Boeing. Had a super solid career there. You're a union engineer. I was working on the assembly line for the wings systems and going into that, I remember when I got that job, I was super excited. And even when I walked in the first day, there was like, all. The old guys that are in there that are like Boeing lifers, like slapping on the back, yeah, you've made it and all that sort of stuff. And literally by the end of my first day, I was like, oh man, I've made a horrible mistake. Really? This is not for me at all. I knew it right away, even though I was in denial for that, for about the first six months or so, but. I knew really from the very first day that it was gonna be a bad fit and, but I stuck through it. Yeah. Just you've seen office space, the movie, it's literally that the whole, when you imagine working at Boeing or like some of these large engineering companies. You think you're gonna be doing experiments or doing something exciting or anything. But this was, it's just a cubicle farm, and engineers there for the most part are just glorified project managers. You're just pushing paper. You're not doing anything actually creative, especially cuz it's so highly regulated. And on top of that, like the managerial system is structured in terms of how they require meetings and approvals and things like that. That every day you were having meetings that prepped for the preparation meeting for the meeting that you're gonna have, so it was just this never ending tier of nonsense.

You need to cover sheets on those TPS reports.

Oh dude. Yeah, exactly. And then there would be dumb stuff like you would have to drag out the projects for the certain schedule. It because you had to meet the, basically the hourly time requirements of people on the floor. So you'd have to make sure that the project dragged out as long as you needed to. So let's say you had a project that you could realist be, do in a week. You would have to make it take three months, because that was what. Was the requirement for the project, it was meant to be a three month project, but then what they would do is they would make you do this. And then they would be like we've fallen behind now. So you're gonna have to work weekends. We're gonna pay you overtime, but you're gonna have to work weekends. I know. But there's, that's completely unnecessary if we were just allowed to do things on an appropriate timeline, but you're making us drag it out just for the sake of semantics. And it's just, oh,

this is It rings true, man, because I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum. I was from a sales organization, but for the sales organization, what they would do is you would have reps that would kill it in territory. And then, so the upper level management would say, oh my God, you're killing it. You're murdering it. Obviously, if we add more reps, We will have more of this and then they add more reps and they take away your territory. And now all of a sudden in that same territory, that's the same size. You have four people and you have less territory. And then all of a sudden nobody's killing it. And then they come to you and they say, what happened?

Yeah, what's wrong. Yeah. And

you're like, Tim over here just got hired at another Dame and he took half my territory because I was killing it. And corporate America sucks, that's our consensus on this podcast. So what did you do next? My

friend. Yeah. So I was. I was at Boeing. I was super miserable. I was decided that I needed to, try something else. So I was out in Seattle area. I moved back to Spokane, which is where I live now, where I went to school. Got a different engineering job thinking, new company, new something else, same sort of thing. And I was just like, this isn't for me. I need to not do this. At that point. I was was 26. I was making, low six figures in a low cost living area, like Valenti intents and purposes. I had a great setup going on. But I just can take it. So I just, one day I guess I went back, like we're reflecting back on it. I took a trip to Hawaii with my wife. And actually my now business partner and we were sitting in our hotel one day, looking down at people at the pool and there's all these dudes on their laptops. , I was reading the four hour work. And I said, what if he could be like these guys down here, but instead of working all day, like they are, we could just work for an hour and make a thousand bucks. And then just hang out in Hawaii for the rest of the day, and that was like my pipe dream. It was like, if I could just work for an hour in Hawaii and make a thousand bucks and then just, not have to be tied to a corporate setup or whatever. So I spent that was about six months before I, I quit my w two and I spent a lot of time researching financial independence and this whole concept of building these businesses that had time freedom. So I started, dabbled with stuff before I quit. But then finally, the end of 2017, early 2018, I was like, you know what, screw, I just can't even take it anymore. So I just walked and I just quit my job January, 2018 with no real plan. All I knew was that I wanted to figure out how I could have that lifestyle. And I was willing to sacrifice my six figure income and basically all of my financial security to do because I was just so desperate to get out of that. So you burned the ships. So I burned the ships, I burned the ships without any, direction at all. So almost I was building a parachute on the way down for sure.

And at this point you had not done any real.

No, no real. Yeah. So you know, now I have a real estate investment business at that point. My only exposure to real estate really. Was that my now business partner, who's also one of my best friends from college. I had lived in a rental of his, when I moved back to Spokane and he was explaining to me how he was gonna use it as like a student rental and all this sort of thing. And honestly, my opinion of it at the opinion of it at the time was like, damn, that sounds like a lot of work. I don't think I wanna do that. Sure. So real estate wasn't even on my radar. For the first little bit after I quit. So once, like when I left, I got into everything from drop shipping eCommerce. I was looking at different like coaching businesses that I could do remotely. Anything that, you know, basically every. Guru spits on Instagram. That's what I was. Everything possible. Yep. Yeah. Trading options, you name it. I got, I started working for a startup. I taught myself how to code and I was like, cool, I'm gonna work for a startup and build a software company cuz that's something that can be a location, independent, all that sort of stuff. And then only after I got into business and I started reading different business, folks, books and wealth building books, real estate stuff, coming up over and over again. So I was like, okay, I need to give this a good look. So that's when I started to dabble a little bit, but I still didn't wanna do any work. That's the main driver of everything was I wanted to work as little as possible, which is funny. Cause I'm not like that now. But back then, I was just. Catalyst from the corporate world.

But it gives you a little bit of an edge that, because if it's the opposite. So it's especially in tech, right? So it's I've got a guy that I know that's built, Hundreds of millions of dollars of tech companies from the ground up, he's an angel investor. And he said, like he said, more people need to focus on how to do less.

Better. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, which has always been my view. And it's funny, my, my wife, she makes fun of me now. She always says that I'm like a professional exploiter, like in terms of like gaming exploits, because like I always find the workaround way to do something. That's very. Atypical that's as efficient as possible, and that's, I don't know why I've just always been wired that. But yeah, so I've approached that with business and I started getting into real estate, like a little bit, I exploring it and dabbling with it. And so what I initially did, I was like, okay, I need some cash flow. Like I'm gonna buy some properties, get some cash flow. So I had a corporate 401k, which was pretty decent from working at Boeing for a number of years. So I was like I hate my attachment to the corporate world. I'm gonna completely liquidate my corporate 401k, pay all the fees. Like I don't even care. I want nothing that's tied to me in this corporate world anymore. So I liquidated it and I bought two rental properties, actually just around the corner from where I, I was living at the time. And they were like these new build single family homes, and all intents and purposes, like not an ideal real estate investment for somebody who's trying. Start out and doesn't have a lot of liquidity. They work out great now cause I bought them in late 2018. Yeah. And they've grown in value an incredible amount. But at the time I was like, did the math and I was like, okay, cool. So I can buy these. My monthly payment will be $1,200 a month. I'll be able to rent them for 1500. I'm gonna make $300 a month per house. This is easy. I can go and park this money into these single family homes. What's Catholic. Yeah, exactly. It didn't didn't even think any of that. Mattered. So I was just, jumping into it with no parachute pretty much. And just building on the way down as I tend to do. So I got, I started doing that and then sure enough, I was able to rent them out and started getting a little bit of mailbox money coming in. And then I started to get the bug for it a little bit. So I was like, okay, I need this money coming in. How can I keep doing. At that point, I didn't have any more capital. So I just ti taken literally all my potential liquidity. My 401k has put in these two houses and I was like, okay, so now we need to find people with capital. So that's when I started networking, going to meetups using other people's money, that sort of stuff connected with some people bought a duplex that they basically lent me the money for on that one. I did a, basically a bur. So bought it as a fix upper off the market. Me and my wife, we did the Mo bulk of the work on that one ourselves. We were like at this duplex, YouTubeing how to do everything on our phones. Like, how do we install showers surround? How do we, lay flooring, you name it, we were doing it in this duplex. Just figuring it out. I've been there about, yeah, spent a few months doing that, refinanced out, paid off our investor. And then I was like still need more capital. So then I kept working with that same investor and we started flipping houses. So I basically, I was the hustle at that point, even though I didn't wanna do any work, I was like, this is what I gotta do to start generating that capital. So it's 2019 started flipping houses, flipped a few houses that year with this money partner end 2019. I said, I wanna buy more rentals, but everything that was coming up, like the opportunities were getting further and farther between right. To buy stuff at a discount. So I started Looking at how can I find things off market right. And at the time I'd connected with a lot of people that were wholesaling and things like that. And I would meet these wholesalers and I'm like, this guy's no smarter than I am. Like, I can figure out what he's doing. So I just started learning about wholesaling and then I ended up joining a wholesaling mastermind and that kicked off what we do now. And I guess you wanna flash fast forward, way ahead at this moment. Now we're wholesaling in nine different markets and I have 17 different employees 17 employees across all those markets. It escalated very quickly. Yeah. Since we were talking about it and me and my business partner, we started. We actually got our first deal at the beginning of may in 2020. So just over two years ago and it was just us as a two man show. Now we got 17 employees and we crossed our 100th transaction last week. So it escalated very quickly.

Okay. So in 2018 you from Boeing. From 2018 to 2020, you're just doing like a hodgepodge of different stuff. What was your income even like just enough to barely

roll. Yeah. Yeah. So 2018, I was trying anything that I could to try and figure out a form of income or business to make money. I was working as a weight lifting coach at a CrossFit. Like in the evenings I did that, basically three hours a day, five days a week sort of thing. Then I would drive for Uber. And so I think in all of 2018, I made 28 grand, like not a lot 2019. When we started flipping houses, I made more so it didn't make a lot. I think my total net on the year was right about a hundred grand for 2019. So Valentine's purpose. I was happy with that at the time. Yeah. That

kind kinda back to your homie of

stasis. Yeah, exactly. But it was a lot, it was a lot of work and it felt like a lot of work, especially compared to W2 job. And then yeah, from there, 20 20 20. I made about two and a half times that. And then 2021, we had our first six figure month in our whole selling business. It was about, yeah, just about three years after I quit my job. I went for making a hundred thousand dollars a year to making a hundred thousand dollars in a month. Boom. There's

the podcast

episode title. yeah, there you go. And that was, I was on vacation too. I'll add that, which was even better. So I'm

gonna put from a hundred K a year to a hundred K a. In parenthesis on vacation. there you go. There you go. Yeah, I love it, man. Okay. That's awesome. So let's talk about some of the bottlenecks that you found when it comes to your wholesaling. Cause we were talking a little bit off mic about that, and I think that's an interesting way that you went about scaling that up. So let's talk about you and your partner. And you're doing some off market, maybe talk about some of the off market strategies you're doing as well for lead generation

and kinda the growth. Yeah, for sure. So when we've done, for lead generation, we've done everything under the sun kind of at the same time as well, like we'll at any given time in like our local marketing where we'll have cold callers, we'll have a team texting, we'll have direct mail going out. We'll have some PPC going on, everything that you can find out that people do to generate leads. We do that. And there's our main competitive advantage is we have a little bit of strategy to it and like how we target. Different people based off of their potential motivations, like determines what form of marketing they'll receive. And then we're also extremely brand heavy in our business. Somebody gets a mailer from us. We're not like these wholesalers that are hiding behind some weird website that looks like a, made for TV ad like a Billy maze ad. Like some of those will look super scammy. So freshly made website, it has our photos on, it has a lot of things. So people can see that it's us, and they can talk to us directly if they want to. So as we were building that out, with Spokane and north Idaho, isn't a huge market, like total population between the two areas that we're in that are right next to each other, about half million people. And we reached this point of critical mass where we were maximizing. Basically the potential for our marketing dollars, where it was turning to be diminishing returns. So we got to a point where for every marketing dollar we would spend, our ROI was getting less and less. So we said, cool. So we basically peaked this market. Let's start looking elsewhere. So we started doing so virtually. So we originally started doing it ourself over in the, in Knoxville, Tennessee down in like the main sort of hot areas down there that we had just looked general data and seeing that those are the good places to. We found that the challenge was, even though we got worth of these different places were good neighborhoods. We didn't know. We'd never been there. I'd never spent any time there, so no boots on the ground. Yeah. We didn't have any boots on the ground really. And even if we did have boots on the ground, we were their competition, right? Yeah. A lot of them, they weren't gonna give us full information. So we are relatively successful down there. We were able to do a couple deals. We had a flip down there. We did a handful of whole. But then we had just this constant problem of not knowing the true situation. And also not having any trust with the buyers based down there. We were trying to sell these deals. We stepped back from that beginning of the year and started to regroup. And we started to expand again with the thought of why don't we find the key buyers in all of these different markets or find somebody who wants to be a key buyer in a market, and we can partner with them. We can scale the system. We already have the market system. We have the sales teams and all that, and they can basically be our buyer. They can be our market. So we started dropping into these different markets with people actually that we met in GoBundance. But then it came up into a situation of. We need to wholesale it to make as much money as possible, but they're like I don't wanna pay you with $35,000 wholesale fee. Like the whole point of this arrangement is that they're getting great deals, but we also need to make money on our side . they wanted to flip it, they want a more prop for themselves. They wanna keep it as a rental. It's like, how does that look on the back end? Are we gonna be like on a title, on title with these people? I have no interest in holding ones, Z twosy properties all over the country as like a reside. Single family investor, right? Sure. We pivoted back from that again and we said what if we had these partners instead of them? Instead of like us expecting more of the upside on the back end, what if we asked for some money from them right on the front end of it. And they can have all the upside on the back end. So we started basically becoming a wholesale as a service business. So now what we're doing is they can have their target market. They pay us a monthly fee to basically run the entire, to build the whole system and operate it with our sales guys and our marketing systems and everything. They cover their own marketing costs. And then as leads come in, we manage everything. We have the sales guys that are flying up with the leads that are doing the whole process. And then once we have a signed around contract, we can bring it to them and say, Hey, here you go. Here's your signed around contract. Now they can do whatever they want with. And all we ask for on the back end is a basic $5,000 wholesale feed, mainly just to cover commissions, but they can take that and they can reassign it for 50,000. They can buy as a rental. They keep it as a flip. They can do literally anything they want at that point. And they have all the upside after it's signed around and we do all the work. So what that does on our end is that allows us to scale our system, which is really what we're good at without having to. All of the market knowledge in these different markets or all the risk of outlaying all the marketing dollars. And it allows our key buyers to grow their portfolio and their opportunities without having to build the whole system that we've spent the last two and a half years building.

Okay. Where'd you come up with the five grand, because honestly that seems that does seem low that sounds like a completely advantageous, set up for the

buyer for sure. Y yeah, so the five grand really is just built into ours, our car staff's commissions to cover the deal. So it's what we found. People are willing to work these deals for it has their commissions built into it. Cause we have, a sales guy. A anion manager, a lead manager and a transaction coordinator, and all their commissions are basically built into that. And then we have just a small profit for the business. That's built into it on the back end as well. And 5,000 bucks was basically that number. And it's easy for people to have upside on that regardless of the price points of the market. And then, so

even with that small of a margin as a business profit, you're still able to capture six figures

a month. So that was after. So the six figures a month we made in our own wholesale business from wholesaling deals locally. Gotcha. Which we still do on a regular basis. So this like on that one though, so the bulk of the money that my business makes is on the management fee that we charge. Okay. Typically charging about $5,000 a month management fee for basically the whole deal. So that's where my business makes money for just basically having the system, putting in all the work on a month to month basis to run it. So if you went on to it let's say that there was someone that had a $5,000 marketing budget and they were getting one deal a month. That deal would real estate cost about 15 grand. So it'd. $5,000 for the monthly fee, $5,000 in marketing, $5,000 for the wholesale fee on the back end . Talking to a lot of these people in more expensive markets where wholesalers are charging 35, 40, $50,000 for a deal they're still coming out, net $35,000 on top of it, as opposed to paying that wholesale 50 grand, in fact, even better, they can become that wholesale that's charging that large wholesale. because, they're now the one with the opportunity, which is really what everybody wants.

Okay. So yes. And then now you can be able to scale, you said you're in 19 markets.

We're in nine right now. Nine,

nine. Yeah. Awesome. So what, where do you see that going? What's the vivid vision for this because now you've got yeah. Proof of concept,

right? Yeah. Yeah. So actually one, one of the slight change we're making to it right now, as we've been going and starting to pitch it to people. It's been easy. It's been an easy sell, as you can imagine, especially with GoBundance people who want, yeah. I'm over here scratching

my head. I'm like, why don't I do it? I don't even do wholesaling. I'm like that sounds interesting.

Yeah. But we've had a lot of feedback, which is interesting with people that are. Smaller operators and are more inclined to put in the hustle, one to put in the hustle and they're not necessarily wanting the full sales package. So we're basically building out a three tiered system where there's gonna be one cost for us to just run the entire marketing system and build out. Basically take the, run a marketing system, take in the leads, pre-screen the leads. And then a client can run with them. However they want. We're gonna have a middle tier, which basically we run the marketing system. We do the lead management. So we basically schedule appointments. And then the client is the one that just goes and does the sales like the hard sales, and then we're gonna have the premier version, which is what we're currently running, where we do the full sales, because that was an interesting thing, was as many people as wanted the full sales. Side of it. We had a lot of people that were like I kinda like doing the sales, really or I already have sales guys. I don't wanna lay them off. So our thought was, what if we just provide a lesser version so that their sales guys can focus on the high value conversations and now have to do the BS of chasing leads down and scheduling their own appointments. And we can provide that at a cost that's much less than having to bring on a full-time staff member to do that.

Okay. So where do you wanna take this? So you wanna take it, do you see yourself having like buyers in every single state? Are there markets that you're trying to stick away from? And I guess the better question to ask would be what is your criteria for a buyer?

Yeah, so that, that is a great question. And that's adapted and evolved and realistically our criteria for a buyers. We want someone that. Either is established as an investor in that market. So they're going to be able to move product or actually execute on these deals that we get, because that is the biggest issue that we have is if we have our guys working off commission and this actually happened in one of our markets. We got seven deals in the first two weeks for one of our clients. And they were not they were not equipped to handle that. Like they did not have the buyers list built out. They did not have the connections to close that. So then we have our sales guy over here. Who's Hey, I just made seven deals. Why am I not getting seven commissions? It's our buyer couldn't perform. So one of our criteria is we want them to be either a established in, whatever they're trying to buy, or be able to find wholesaler find buyers for wholesale deals or they have to have extremely specific buying criteria and, like a strong. Guarantee that they're gonna be buying things that hit that criteria. So basically then what that allows us to do is either pinch down the opportunities we're finding them, or when we know that they're gonna be able to execute. If like we're getting more broad stuff, if they're not as specific on what they need. Ideally they, we want them to be local to whatever market that they're wanting us to market in. Just so that. They at the very least can go and verify these properties if needed. And we're not ending up in a situation where they're trying to ask us a lot of questions and we're trying to get someone out to these properties. When they don't necessarily know anyone there that creates a weird sort of dynamic that is challenging to deal with. But I other than that, like it's pretty open. We've been, Residential properties. We have one client right now. We're doing industrial stuff for down in Southern California to orange county of all places. And we've been getting a lot of leads for him. Really he's been, yeah, he's been doing great. So we're thinking about bringing on some commercial stuff. I think the only markets that I would be slightly hesitant on would be some of the really expensive, almost like irrational markets like Austin, Texas, I think would be an extremely difficult market. Do this model in, just because you say this won't work in

San

Francisco. Yeah. Yeah. Bay area would be super hard. Some of these places like that, where traditional marketing, I don't think will work. Great. And you probably have to have more of a network to find and do opportunities there. I just don't think we would be a good candidate for, but in an ideal situation, we'd love to have a market in every state that's been. Our view of it, just because a, I think that it's definitely possible. And B I think that's a good, selfish brag to say that we wholesale in all 50 states.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That should be the goal yeah. In Puerto Rico for the hell of it. Yeah. Yeah. What's your buy box look like? Do you have specific buy box that you use as your blanket criteria when you're looking for wholesale deals or do you default to the. Individual buyer in that market to what their buy box

is. Yeah. Yeah. So we work with whatever their buy box is because that's really what we're doing is providing them the service to find the deals that they want. Okay. Yeah. Like we have some of our buyers who are looking in kind of higher tier markets and their, like their criteria, they said is they want 85% of retail value. They're looking to do Airbnbs. So their cash flow, potential's a lot higher. And they're not as concerned about renovation costs because of that. They obviously don't want a huge project, but as long as it's 85% of retail, that's what they'll go. They only have some of our people that are flippers and they're like, I want it to be 65% of the ARV minus repair costs. Because that's how much money they need for it to be worth it. If people don't have any interest sorry, any interest, they don't have any specific criteria. We typically just go off the traditional 75% of after repair value minus repairs. And that's what we've had success with in most markets.

Okay. Awesome. What's some advice that you can give to someone that was in your shoes before maybe not call it 2018, like driving an Uber around, but maybe 20, 19, maybe they started flipping some houses and they're like, eh, I don't really know what's next. What's some advice you can give to someone that's just fed up with corporate and they're looking to make that jump to have a six figure month.

Yeah. So I think one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of people make when they're in that period of their life is they go, they think to themselves, what do I wanna do? And they try to figure that out. And goes back to the old boomer saying, follow your dreams. If you love what do they say? If you,

they love what you do, you never work a day in your life.

E exactly. And so people focus on that. But in reality, that, that can be true, but you have to earn that for most people, right? You kinda have to get into a position where you're allowed to have those sort of jobs or opportunities. So I like what I focused on is what do I want my lifestyle to look like? And what's the quickest way for me to get to that. And for me, I found that was real estate because there's massive income potential through flipping and wholesaling houses. There's passive income and wealth potential through buying rental properties, especially when they're at a discount and there's the ability to make it passive because once I own these properties and they're stabilized, I can plug in a project manager. I don't have to think about 'em again, so that checked all of my boxes. If I wanted to make good money, I wanted to have passive income and I wanted to be able to travel and do whatever I want without having to be dependent on the location. So for me, that sort of fit the lifestyle. And then the crazy thing is once you have a lifestyle that you're trying to. It's relatively easy to like, whatever's gonna get you there, especially once you have traction. Yes, because you have something that's

pulling you there. You're not being pushed there. You're being pulled there because you see this grand vision and it's pulling you. Oh, man. I love that. I just interviewed Cody BGAN I don't know if you know him over in GoBundance, but he has a lot of land deals in Texas. Okay. And he had a framework. It was called B a F it's belief action. What was it? Belief, action. Faith. Yeah. Belief, action, faith. And he was like, first you have to have the belief that it's possible. And then you have to do the action part. He goes, but you can't J and then you have to have faith that the action's gonna work. But you need all three parts of that. Machine to produce something because a lot of people I agree with the fall. If you work, if you love what you don't work a day in your life, but you're right. That's earned, how many things did I go through that? I freaking hated. How many things did you go through? The reason that you were able to get into real estate is because you were where your feet were at your Boeing job, but tucking away money in your four. You weren't constantly looking, one, one foot out the door looking for the next thing you stood, where you were. And you're like, okay, cool. No more next. And then you were all in on flipping and then now you're all in on wholesale. So it's earned, man. You're completely right. Completely, right? Yeah. You can't just be like, ah, I'll just sit here and it'll come.

Yeah, which is what most people do, they're like, I'm gonna go live the van life and I'm gonna go cruise around and find myself and this whole thing. And that's cool. If that's your thing, but then honestly you're not allowed to complain about how don't have any money you're not doing financially well.

I completely get what you're saying. As we finish up here, man, talk a little bit about your podcast.

Yeah, for sure. I guess end of 20, 21, me and my business partner, we started a podcast called the collecting keys podcast and it's a, basically a real deep dive into what it's like to actually run a full-time off market investment business. One of the things that people don't understand about particularly off market real estate invest. Is how little of it's actually about the house. And how much of it is about solving people's problems and going through these incredible nuances of just the kind of people that you're marketing to when you're doing this kind of business . So we get into a lot of those details. We tell stories like about how we had a tenant. That got kidnapped from one of our closings, about some of the hoard house situations that we've done about how we broke up. We found a like underground sex trafficking ring that we had to get involved in breaking up, just like really crazy stuff that, some of it's funny, some of it's tragic, but it's the reality of the business. And one of the things that we've found is we've, worked with different people on stuff. Especially now we have a group coaching program that we're doing through that we advertise in our podcast. And as we go through it, we find so many people, they don't have the what's right. You like the Gusto to navigate these issues. Sure. But if you wanna make real money in this business, that's kind what you have to do. Ghana are the days where you just send out mail and then. Really cordial people call you back and they're like, yeah, sure. I'll sell my house at a 25% discount just because it makes sense. Like to them, everyone has so much equity. The only people that are selling the house at a discount are ones that come with a lot of baggage. And that comes, there comes a lot of nuances with that. We dive into that on like how our system runs, how our business runs and how, if you there's something that interests you and you wanna pursue really how to go about doing it the correct way. So you can actually be effective and you're not just spending a bunch of money on marketing.

I love that, man. And where else can people find you?

Yeah. So best place to connect with me. So if you go on my Instagram, it's at Mike underscore invests. That's a great way to shoot me a DM on there. I love to chat with people. And then besides that, if you go to collecting keys, podcast.com, we have a couple freebies we give away on there. And if you go and grab one of those, we have a five step guide to start generating off market leads. We have a deal calculator. We have a basically checklist that we use to underwrite properties. And if you go grab any of those things, then I'll have your email and then I'll reach out to you. So your choice. Sweet.

that's your choice. I love it, brother. All right, buddy. I appreciate you coming on man, long time coming, and it's been a good one. I appreciate it. And everyone, this has been Brian and Mike with the action academy podcast. Sign it off.