The In's And Out's Of Building Wealth By Investing In Realstate

20 houses generating $250 of cash flow per month equals $5000 passively! Wanna know how to build this kind of portfolio? Today's guest, Dustin Heiner, reveals the secret other real estate coaches don't teach you that actually makes this possible!

Dustin Heiner, the founder of Master Passive Income, Real Estate Wealth Builders Conference (REWBCON) and Successfully Unemployed.

He is a real estate rental property investor who was able to make enough passive income from his business to quit his job when he was 37 years old.

We cover why building a real estate business is a must BEFORE even buying your first rental property and disclose parts of the United States that are hot areas for rental investments.

https://masterpassiveincome.com/freecourse

Text PIE to 33777 to receive your FREE pdf of 5 Ways to Earn $5000 with Passive Income

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Tags: #passiveincome #rentalincome #realestateinvesting #cashflow

Lindsay:

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode here of the passive income examiner today, bringing you another amazing guest as always. That's the mission. we have Dustin Heiner let's see, what is, is it successfully unemployed the name of your business? Cause I see that on your shirt.

Dustin:

yeah, I have a couple of different actually quite a few businesses when you become successful unemployed. When I was 37 years old I quit my job and with that, I have so much more time to build other businesses. So my main business is real estate investing. And then from there, I had lots of friends and family members asking me how they, how I invest, and then asking me to teach them. So I started to master passive income. That's where I teach and coach and just give away free content on how to do it. Then I had so much extra free time that I created successfully unemployed, which is another brand that I have. It's basically a passion project of mine interviewing people who have become successfully unemployed in so many other ways. Cause I love real estate, but that's just one way. There are so many other ways. So I just interview everybody who has become successfully unemployed. And I have a few other brands as well that makes me money because I have so much extra time because I was able to become successful unemployed.

Lindsay:

Awesome. Okay. Well I'm glad I asked, so tell us a little bit about yourself and your story and kind of how you got to have so much free time.

Dustin:

Yeah. So, I really appreciate having me on the show. I love talking about passive income and, I love real estate, but it's, mostly what it affords me to do with my life. Literally not after work a job, being able to play with my kids and do whatever I want. So like I said, I quit my job when I was 37 years old and I call a job at J. O. B. an acronym for JUST OVER BROKE because you're living just over broke as you're working for somebody else. And then I found out about passive income. So I've always been entrepreneurial in my life, just growing up. I had my dad, he was entrepreneurial. He had his own business, my mom and he got divorced and my stepdad also had a business as well. So I kind of got that understanding of, you know, having a business.

Dustin:

So when I was, uh, like 13, I had a newspaper route is where you get newspapers and your bike and you ride around and you throw in my garage, Gores and bang. 'em 5:00 AM waking people up. I even had a graphic, a website design company, uh, GRA on top of that skateboard manufacturing business, a pizzeria, a convenience store, all built up from scratch. And I built those up. But at the same time, I was taught just like everybody was taught or is taught that you go to school, you get good grades. Then you get those good grades and you go to college and you get in thousands and thousands of dollars into debt. And then you get more good grades and you take that piece of paper that they give you, it's called a degree and you go and hopefully find a job, quote, unquote career in whatever company that somebody else started.

Dustin:

So I was doing that at the same time, cuz I figured that's what I was taught. That's the right way to go. So with that, I was working a regular nine to five job, you know, working for the county government, a county government in, uh, California nothing fancy or anything. And then I, with my businesses, it wasn't really making me a ton of money. And then I bought one or two rental properties. And you know, once you buy real estate, it starts making you money passively. And I thought, man, this is fantastic. And I knew I needed to become an investor, but life gets in the way like, like for everybody, life gets in the way. So I'll tell you this quick story of what catapulted me into becoming a real estate investor Lindsay. So my wife and I, so I'm working a regular nine to five job as I said at the county doing it work.

Dustin:

And my wife and I started having kid after kid. Eventually, we had four kids and once my fourth child was born, she, you know her name's faith. She's a beautiful little girl holding her, in my arms and I go on paternity leave. That's where the dad stays home with a mom changes, poopy diapers and you know, bonds with a baby and all that great stuff. And so I was off for about two weeks and then I go back to work, remember my nine to five sit down job. And that week that I get it back to work, I get a call from my boss's boss's boss's secretary. Like the the top dog. I get a call from her and she says, Dustin, would you please come to the office? And I said, sure. Then I hung up the phone and I sat there for a second and I thought, my goodness, why are they calling me the office like this isn't normal?

Dustin:

And I've seen plenty of movies. Like if they're gonna fire somebody, it's gonna be at three 30 on a Friday. They're like, well, no way. I immediately shook that off because I realized, or I was thinking, I have so much seniority here. I've been here 12, 13 years. My bosses get me raises all the time. They think I do a great job. There is no way that it could possibly be me. So I get up and start walking down the hallway to my boss's office. And as I'm walking, I start remembering that there were some rumors there, some rumbling going on about two months before I went on maternity leave that there could potentially be layoffs. So that started weighing on me. Now this hallway wasn't very long. In fact, it was kind of short, but with every single step that I took, it felt like that hallway got longer and longer and longer.

Dustin:

And it felt like my feet became lead bricks because it was weighing on me that this could potentially be the time that I get laid off. Right. I lose my job. Well, I make it through the hallway and I turn the corner and I see my boss's door. His door's closed. And I look at his secretary and she sheepishly. She kind of grins at me and kind of consoling me with her eyes and cuz she knows everything about what's going on. I know nothing about what's going on. She says, Dustin, would you please have a seat? So I go and I take a seat in that chair. And as I'm sitting there, I start to think about my life and what I've been told. Like we're all told to get a career with, you know, gonna school and all that sort of stuff. And I thought, my goodness if I get laid off now, was that all a waste of my life.

Dustin:

And then I thought, wow, if I can't feed my family, what does that make me as, a father? Does that make me a failure as a father? Does that make me a failure as a husband, as a man, trying to provide for his family? Well, as I'm sitting there, my hands get all clammy. My forehead gets all sweaty because the nerves of everything are just weighing down on me and crushing me. Well, the door to my boss's office opens up and out, walks a lady, a coworker of mine with a piece of paper in her hands. She is noticeably distraught, noticeably upset, not necessarily crying, but you could tell her world has literally been devastated. She passes by me and my boss says, Dustin, would you please come into the office? And I get up and I walk into his office and I get laid off.

Dustin:

And remember, this is the government nobody gets fired or laid off from the government, but I did. So if it could happen to me, it can happen to anybody. So I take that layoff notice and I walk back to my desk and I sit down and I realize two things sitting there. And then in that, uh, just after getting laid off, the first thing I realize was I need to get another job I needed to be able to provide for my family. So I was really, really blessed. Praise the Lord to be able to find another job in the same county, a different department, they had money that they could hire me really blessed and didn't skip a beat. That was great. But then sitting there in that chair, I realized the second thing, and this is the reason why I tell the story. I realize that I need to make sure that nobody ever has the ability to take away my ability to feed my family.

Dustin:

And I need to make sure that this never ever happens to me again right there then. And there I realized whenever anybody would ask me the question and everybody gets this question all the time, what do you do? They'd say, Dustin, what do you do? And I'd say, well, I work for the county. Then I realized sitting there, I'm putting my value and myself in my job, my value doesn't come from my job. My value comes from myself, my God, and my family. And so sitting there, I realized I no longer what I tell anybody, what I do for my job as my value. I realize now I needed to become an investor. Cuz remember I wanted to be an investor, but life got in the way I stopped becoming an investor. And so right then and there I started telling every single person that I met when they asked me what I did, I started telling 'em I am an investor.

Dustin:

Now meso happened that 100% of my money comes from my job. That's now my part-time job. I am a fulltime investor. Fast forward. The story started buying property after property, each one making me $250 or more in passive income from every single one that I bought after five, no five, or six years, I had enough properties where all my expenses were covered by them. And I realized, oh my goodness. Even though I'm making $75,000 a year here at this job, I'm losing money. So I'll round the story by sharing. I went to my new boss and a great boss and everything and I gave him a layoff notice. I said, boss, I'm laying you off. You know, jokingly of course. But I gave my two weeks' notice. He said, Dustin, what are you gonna do? And I said, well, I don't have to do anything.

Dustin:

I own real estate. That makes me money without working. And so I'll round up this story by sharing with you remember that short hallway that got longer and longer and longer that I walked to my first boss. Well, I walked away from my job. That's a mile and a half walk cuz I was working downtown. I didn't wanna pay for parking. So I've taken this walk a thousand thousand times. I felt like I was walking on clouds because I knew that I would never ever need a job again because I had real estate that would, that makes me money without even working. And from that point forward 37 years old. Now I'll never need a job again. So I'll pause the story cuz you probably got plenty of questions.

Lindsay:

Oh, man. Well, I mean, I've been over here thinking like fully MOS, if we didn't even go any further into the details of what you're doing this alone is an amazing episode because I think it's something that so many people, it's one of those things that may, I'll just be real candid. I think it's one of those things that people are aware of, but haven't articulated in their own life and that is especially becoming prevalent with COVID and how many people are, how TTY tenuous, I think is the word I'm looking for. Um, our jobs are how, how precious that is. And you're right about that, that identity, you know, it's like when we get laid off, the worst part about it is the, I don't know, mental bashing we do. Was I not good enough? Absolutely. Was it this? And it has nothing. If we are getting our self-worth from within, from God, from our joy. Right. Rather than from our job and what other people think of us, it wouldn't matter. We'd be like, all right, peace on something else.

Lindsay

So I just think that is such an empowering moment to have that and to be able to be blessed with that at such a young age and then to get inspired, to do something about it. And then you took action. I mean, those are the three steps, right? You have the awareness, you had the idea, the clarity, and then you took action. And if everybody just followed that, listen to Dustin's words, get your inspiration, get your clarity and take action. You know, we could wrap it right now and it's a good one.

Dustin:

Well, absolutely. And totally agree. I could have sat there in my chair and just said, what was me? And literally just hung my head and not do anything and literally just waste away. I could have done that. In fact, I did feel that a little bit. And then I realized, no, I have a family that needs me. They need me to support them. And then as I realized that it was upon me to take care of my family, then I realized I needed a plan and I already had the plan. I just now needed to work on that plan and be diligent. And here's what I did. I realized that I could eventually replace my income and cover my expenses from real estate investing. And then I realized that I was, I, I let life get in the way and we all do and it's fine.

Dustin:

It happens. But if we let that stop us, and here's a quote, I love the quote. I didn't realize it until it actually, happened to me. So it's not if you lose your job or get fired from your job, it's when, and I realize, man, I, went to work for the government. Like I said like I went to the most secure that I thought was the secure type of job ever. And then I got, I lost that job, but here's the thing that we all need to realize. And this is for me a lot. I, so I coach a lot of people on how to invest in real estate. And a lot of people say it's risky to invest in real estate. I'm now from this point of view, being a real estate investor, I have 30 plus properties. Now I'm all making me a minimum of $250 or more.

Dustin:

I'm realizing now that it's a lot riskier to work for somebody else who can literally take away your ability to feed your family. And I thought, my goodness, it's so much risk, riskier to not invest in real estate. And here's the thing. If you invest the right way, just like, if you start any business the right way you're gonna do well, you just need to know how to do it. And that's what I love to teach. Everybody is like, Hey, this is how I did it. X, Y, and Z basically step by step how I did it and how you can do it. Now. I've literally coached hundreds of students either. so they have either, you know, bought their first property, jumped in the second, third and fourth, which is fantastic. And then being able to quit their job, it's just, you need to know where you want to go and then keep moving forward. Mm-hmm

Lindsay:

a hundred percent. I couldn't agree more. And it doesn't. And like you said earlier, it doesn't matter if you choose real estate. I mean, real estate is one strategy, which we're gonna talk about today. But I mean, and even if you had multiple strategies, I mean, you clearly do. Now you put yourself in that position because of your time. Now you have an online business, you have coaching, and you have multiple streams of income that are producing. Ultimately that's the ideal. I did it. I did it really recently. It was like, how many passive income streams should I have? It's like as many as you can, like, why do we need to limit ourselves here?

Dustin:

let me add one thing to that. So I love passive income streams. In fact, I was just talking to my wife the other day. I was like I said, honey, you, I, we just get money every single day from every lot and everything from our real estate to affiliates, to coaching to I have. So we have so many different ways that money comes into our lives, which is a blessing. Now here's the thing that I've realized on top of that for me. So income streams are fantastic. I first believe that we should go after now, income streams were great. Don't get me wrong. I'm saying there should, we should go after income strings. But all of my income streams flow into my river. I have income river, which is my real estate. So all the money that I get from every single business goes back into my river of income, which is coming from real estate. And that's what, uh, blessed me to be able to quit. My job is because I had that river of income coming in. And then on top of that, I had so many other streams that kept feeding into that river. Does that make sense?

Lindsay:

Yes. And I agree with you. In fact, I was just talking to somebody. I can't remember who, cause I talked to quite a few people, but I was saying how, you know, if you listen back to my podcast and I don't know how much of the podcast you listened to before you came on, but the first year was very real estate oriented. In the second year, we've been really keeping it online, and business-oriented. And you're actually the first real estate guest that I've interviewed this year. The reason for that is.

Lindsay:

Well, and here's my belief. And I got started with real estate too. That's how that's actually where most of my passive income is coming from, but when I started, so, um, I would say that for people who wanna leave their nine to five people who are just getting started, people who maybe think that real estate is risky when maybe it is maybe they don't have the credit or the down or whatever, um, start with building an online system that ultimately you use to invest in real estate. I mean, I am a huge proponent of that because, and especially in the United States, oh, I remember I was talking to a friend of mine in, he lives in Bali and he was saying, and, this guy is an automation king like I call him the automation king, like, he is everything about passive income when it comes to online business and he owns beachfront property in Bali. And he was like, you know, I own tons of acres. He goes, but I kind of feel like it's, what's the point. It just costs me a lot of money. And I thought, well, that's odd. I said, from the United States perspective, you know, owning real estate rentals, especially it offsets us in taxes like so much, it's such a benefit, but it's not like that in other countries. It was interesting to me to hear that. I don't know, just random food for thought,

Dustin:

But no, I never heard that. Yeah, but America, you okay on top of that and you would know this Lindsay because you're an investor. We make money in six different ways when we buy just one rental property. So the first way is passive income. We calculate our expenses. We make sure we could rent it for more expenses. My suggestion, when I teach all my students is $250 or more in passive income. That's to feed your family, all that sort of stuff. So that's one passive income. Another one is equity capture. We're investors. We're not gonna pay top dollar or above, or even at market value, we're gonna buy it for less. So we capture equity. So if you buy it for, let's say 150,000, but it's worth 175, then you capture $25,000 in equity. We also know forced appreciation. You know, you put some paint on it, put some new flooring in, put a little money into it.

Dustin: (16:37)

It'll be worth more. So hopefully you put in five grand, and it'll come out worth it. Maybe $20,000 more. So you capture $15,000 of equity. We know market appreciation just over time, the market's gonna go up inflation and whatever, it's gonna go up. Another one, as you said, Lindsay's tax benefits are amazing. If nobody is, if you've never experienced depreciation on your taxes, it is so amazing. I love depreciation. That's one of many tax benefits. The last one, and I love this almost as much as passive income, cuz I, I feed my family off the passive income, but this one's fantastic. So I do not pay my taxes personally. I don't pay my mortgage. I don't pay my insurance. I don't pay my property manager. I don't pay for repairs. I don't pay for all that stuff. My tenants pay for that. Now the so happens.

Dustin:

The money comes into me and back out to all these bills. So with my mortgage, if I buy a house and I put money down and I buy the house, I still have principle and interest that I need to pay, but it's not me that pays it. The tenants pay for every bit of that. So if I own it, let's say if I get a 30-year loan and after 30 years it's paid off, I have the asset, but my tenants paid for that. So many great. And this just scratches the surface of how amazing real estate investing is.

Lindsay:

Yeah, no, that is so true. And, and you know, when you look at it, like how many people can say that they own property free and clear and more importantly, how many can say that? I didn't pay for it either.

Lindsay:

You right? Think about it. Cause I mean, when your tenants are paying it down, you're not, you're just really just taking the extra and using that to pay your own personal mortgage. If that be your food or whatnot. Yeah. I mean, that's the benefit of, of real estate. So let's, let's dive into it a little bit. Let's, let's go into the system. As you mentioned early that, you know, you kind of have a system now, right after your first deal, you, how many it took, you said you have 30 houses, it took you some time to build up to that over time, obviously. So what is your system? Yeah, let's, let's kind of talk about that. So people kind of have a visual for, yeah, not just one, one property, but let's talk about becoming successfully unemployed through real estate. How would you do that?

Dustin:

That's totally, totally. So here is what actually let me quickly share the wrong way to do it, which is what I did. I started, I started in 2006 when I first started investing, I listened to those quote-unquote gurus. So then I'll quickly give you the wrong way to do it. And then I'll give you the right way. So in 2006 ish, right around there, I watched one of those, you know, late-night infomercials, Hey, we're coming to your town, it's a free seminar. We're gonna, you know, you're gonna for free teach you how to invest. Well, basically it's a sales pitch. So I went to that. I didn't know, I didn't know anything about this. So I just went and I went and it was a sales pitch for, Hey, now run to the back and go give us thousands of dollars under your credit card.

Dustin:

And you know, it's, it's discounted, it's normally a hundred thousand dollars, but it's discounted a thousand dollars. We're only taking the first thousand people. So I did that. I ran to the back, excuse my credit card. And then I went to this two-day seminar that they had. And it was basically another sales pitch for more either courses or coaching or whatever. It was like $40,000 for real estate investing $50,000 for flipping $20,000 for whole selling or all these different things. And I'm like, man, if I had that much money, I just learned from the school of hard knocks, I'd buy my own property because I didn't have them so fast forward. Now here's what they told me to do. And this is the wrong way. Quickly, over really quickly, the wrong way you look, hear it. And then you'll be like, oh man, they do say that.

Dustin:

And then hopefully forget it cuz you don't wanna do this. So they told me invest anywhere in the country, find a property. Now I, I will say I invest all over the country, so that's not the bad thing, but this is what they tell you find a property anywhere in the country and run the numbers, which means make sure you make a little bit more in passive income, $50 or so, but you're gonna get appreciation. You're gonna love appreciation, which I'll pause this and say, I absolutely don't invest for appreciation. I love appreciation. Don't get me wrong. But this is generational wealth that I am building. I'm literally gonna give these properties to my kids. Like if you could see the video, I'm literally gonna give these properties to my kids. So appreciation is not what I invest for, but that's what they say is run the numbers.

Dustin:

Make sure you're making a little bit of money in passive income. Then you're going to get appreciation. Then they tell you, to buy the property, spend thousands of dollars to buy property. Then you spend thousands of dollars to fix up the property to get it rentable. Then you find a tenant and then you get a property manager to manage the property. Well, in my opinion, that's literally just about backward. We don't do that. In fact, that's what I did. And the first property that I bought my property manager started stealing from me within six months cuz I found a realtor and a property manager and I put 'em together and she started stealing from me. It was just, it didn't work out well. And the reason why is cuz I was following what other people were telling me. But then I said, well first if I would've stopped there and said, oh it just doesn't work.

Dustin:

I wouldn't be here today. So I knew it worked. I just had to figure that out. Now if you remember, I said, I'm very entrepreneurial. So I, I love business. And I, I said, let me approach this from a business perspective. Let me approach this as building a business and then buying property. This is actually, I'll give you a quick example of what it looks like. If you're gonna start a convenient store, you know, it can be a store at candy bars and soda machines. You're not gonna sign a lease on the location, open the doors and set a box of candy bars in on the ground. No you wouldn't do that. You'd go out of business in like two seconds. What you would do though is you'd build the business first. You'll hear me say this all the time we build the business first.

Dustin:

Those, those shelving units that the candy bars go on. The countertops, cold storage, fountain machines, bank accounts, cash, registers, insurance, all these other things in the business. Before we buy any inventory, we make sure we have somebody to manage the business before we buy any inventory. Once that business is set up, then we buy inventory and put it into our business. Same thing with real estate investing. And this is how I make my business automatic. And I'll quickly go into it. Well first I'll share, that a lot of people have heard of the book. The four-hour workweek. It's a good book, but I don't wanna work four hours a week. In fact, I find working four hours a week is for suckers. I don't even wanna work four hours a month. I maybe work 30 minutes a month on my real estate because I set up the business and I just have the property managers send me the statements.

Dustin

I look at the statements and make sure everything's good. And put it back aside and go back to playing with my kids. Now what we do here at master passive income, how I teach my students is we build the business. First. We do everything in the business and then we buy an inventory. Now the gurus will tell you you buy one property. That property is your business. No, no, no, no, no. We own a business. And that business owns the inventory. So we build the entire business and then we buy one property. That's gonna make us $250 or more in passive income from every property. Then we put that into our business and that's how we can scale the business because we have other people doing the work for us and I'll quickly get run through the first people. In fact, I'll, I'll give you a little more of like one-on-one coaching.

Dustin:

What I do with my students. The first thing we do. And remember we invest all over the country. The first place is we find, or the first thing we do is find a good city that has good inventory, the type of properties we wanna buy at the price, right? The price range that has a good amount of rent that we can make $250 or more if you go to San Francisco more than likely, it's gonna be really hard to do that. So you don't have inventory now there are properties there, but that's not inventory for your business. So what we do at let's say Midwest, a lot of my students invest in Midwest, down to the Carolinas and to Florida. A lot of great, great properties there for a little lower in price mid let's say a hundred thousand dollars, $150,000. Now if you live on the coastlines, yes, there are properties that sell for a hundred thousand dollars and there are still great properties.

Dustin:

And remember, you're not buying this for you to live in. You might be thinking, I don't wanna buy a hundred thousand dollars. I wouldn't live there. Well, think about this. If you own a convenience store, you may not even care to try or taste all of the candy bars that you buy, but your customers do. Your customers want those candy bars just because you're not gonna eat. 'em doesn't matter. Same thing with real estate investing, you may never live in that property. You may never even care to visit that state. In fact, we invest in states. We've never literally stepped foot in, but that doesn't matter. Other people will. So as long as we find that the city has a good inventory, here's my suggestion. Three bedroom. This is the cookie-cutter home that we love to invest in ones that either people want to rent or people want to buy.

Dustin:

So that's, that's the cold, the goal that we want. So three bedroom, two bath, 1200 to 1500 square feet. We don't want it too small where people wouldn't wanna live in. We don't want it too big where there are extra walls to paint, extra toilets to fix and all that sort of stuff. Cookie-cutter-type home. And then we find the right price range. For the inventory that has the right price range, we would make $250 or more passive income. Then we build the business around that city. We start finding the property manager's first step. And here's what a lot of students do. They jump right to, Hey Dustin. I found a city and I've already got five realtors sending me deals or sending me properties. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop, stop, stop, stop realtors. And finding deals are last that's way down the line.

Dustin:

We wanna build the business first so that it can run itself. Deals are gonna come. In fact, realtors are happy to send you deals, but you're putting the cart before the horse. What we wanna do is find the right property manager and remember where my property manager started stealing from me. Well, the thing is, when you're building a business, let's say that convenience store analogy. Again, you're not gonna grab somebody off the street. Hey, you got a pulse. You come and manage my business, manage the inventory, manage all my money, and talk to the customer. No, you're not gonna do that. You're going to interview these managers. Now imagine if you followed what the gurus had said, which is, you know, the whole wrong way. And then you buy a property and then you try to find a property manager and every property manager you call says, man, there's no way I'm going to manage that property because I'll get shot there. You know, I'm not gonna, there's no way I'm gonna work there. Then you no longer have an asset anymore. You have liability because you don't have anybody to manage the property. So that's what we look at is building the business, and finding the right people to work in the business. And then we buy inventory that we put into our business. Does that all make sense?

Lindsay:

Yes. And I have a question. I see, I raised my hand I didn't even realize I'm like, oh, Hey. Um, cause I was thinking on that note like you're absolutely right with everything you're saying, I would never do a rental as the landlord. And I think one of the biggest things that turns people off even about real estate is I don't wanna be a landlord. I don't wanna deal with people. That's great because there are property managers who do it all day long. They know the laws, and they know how to talk to people. They just they're. I a hundred percent agree with you. The question I have though. So, you know, I'm in Idaho, let's say I wanna invest in Tallahassee. How do I know that I'm working with somebody reliable and reputable? Who, I mean, pretend I have no experience dealing with people. I don't know what quiet questions to ask. You know, that kind of stuff. Like what do you do too, so to speak your property manager seems to me like the most important person you need to have on the team that you can trust. All right. Totally. I mean the title company is probably second, but that one is Nuro UNO. So what do you do to find a good property manager?

Dustin:

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's, that's brilliant. And what we do is we interview just like we're interviewing employees. If we have a regular business, we're going to interview them. That's how we find them. Now here's the thing you wanna find experts and you're well, I'll get, I'll drill down to your question of like how to like what we should ask and all that sort of stuff. And a lot of people, when they start investing, they get stuck looking at places or websites like Zillow. Zillow's not an expert. Redfin's not an expert. Truly is not an expert. Who are the experts? Is there, there are those people that are living there on the ground who are literally doing business every single day. Those people are the experts and the expert would be like, you, you call your property manager. This is what I do all the time. Hey, property manager, I'm looking at this property.

Dustin:

Here's the address? Tell me about it. How much can I rent it for? What type of client tell am I gonna get? And will you even manage the property and a good property manager say, oh yeah, I know that area. In fact, we were trying, I had a property right around the corner from there. We were trying to get 1200 for it. We couldn't, we could only get 1100 Zillow was the same 1200, but we couldn't get, we only can get 1100. Oh my goodness. That is gold. Like that's the information you need. Now. Those are the experts. Now what we do when we build any business and hire employees, even though they're contractors, consider them employees, what we're doing is we're hiring and we need to interview them. Now, as far as what to say, what questions they ask, like all my students, I literally have a big, long list of 22 questions that we should ask our property managers and the answers to what they should be saying back to you.

Dustin:

And so with that, what we do is we interview a property manager. Now texting is not an interview. Email is not an interview. If you can get 'em on a zoom call, that's great. But more than likely, they're too busy for that phone call. Those are interviews. And my suggestion is to interview and this is what I did not do for my first property. You know, the first property manager that started stealing from me did not do my interviews. I did not build the business first. Now what we do is we want to interview them multiple times and call as many property managers to interview to make sure that you find the right one, because you're gonna find out. And like I said, I have that big laundry list that helps of, of questions that help students. And here's the, here's what I few keys that I look for in property manager.

Dustin:

I have a number of property managers now. So we look for obvious trustworthiness. We wanna make sure that when we're talking 'em on the phone, most people can get a somewhat idea. If somebody's like, you know, shady just from talking on the phone or if they're, they, they sound out like they know what they're doing. Like they have an experience like they're they want to help you. If they're givers, as opposed to takers. When you talk to one person on the phone for, let's say 10, 15 minutes, you're gonna get a somewhat of a sense. But at the same time with that, you want to interview them more than one time because anybody can sound great on the phone once. So trustworthiness, we call them two or three times before we actually hire them. And the reason why is because we wanna make sure what we know as we've talked, two of these property managers are consistent.

Dustin:

So that's one trustworthiness. The second one for me is big time because I live in Arizona. I don't wanna fly to any state. I don't wanna do anything. Communication. That's a huge level. So trustworthiness and then, uh, communication. The big question that I always ask every property manager before I hire them. What is a reasonable turnaround time? When I call you on the phone or saved you a text, cuz obviously I've already hired them. So it's like a question, Hey, what's about this property. Um, or send you an email. What's a reasonable amount of time for you. When I try to reach out to you to get back to me, I personally believe 24 hours is that's absolutely reasonable. If you are taking 2, 3, 4 weeks or day or days, if not weeks to get back to me, then that's very, very telling for me because this is how I feed my family.

Dustin:

I don't want my property manager to not call me back. And here's a big tip. I'll give everybody when you are hiring a property manager when you're interviewing them, they are basically like you are their customer. The tenants are not their customer. You as the owner of the property are their customer. Now, before they have your business, if they don't call you back or if they're taking forever and they kind of blow you off, imagine how bad it's gonna be when they have your money. If they have your money, like, oh, I don't wanna talk to this person. Boom. They're just no, not ghost you, not, I call you back. We don't want that. We want to talk to people as we interview them, the trustworthiness communication, as well as experience we ask for references, Hey, can you gimme one or two references of other landlords that you currently work with?

Dustin:

I'm not gonna take up most of the time. There might be one or two minutes, just see how you're doing, uh, with your, your business. So those are the three main things, among many other things. But those are the three main things that we look for in our property managers and calling them and interviewing them multiple times will help you to really figure out who is the best one. And then from there, let's say we've called six different property managers. We have an order like, Hey, the first one we're gonna go with that's our number one rank. Then a second one. If the first one falls off, we can call it the second one. So we have all this homework done so that we could always be prepared. If anything happened in our business.

Lindsay:

I love that. That's really, really valuable, information. I mean, it is hard. I think that's actually one of the hardest things and, my brain just went in like a million directions. Hold on. let me recap. Yeah. Well from well

Dustin:

Your hundred percent is the hardest. That is the hardest part.

Lindsay:

Right. Well, and because right now, a lot of people that may wanna get into real estate, they're looking at the housing market in their area going, there is no way that I could invest here. I mean, unless you get super lucky and find somebody who's desperate to sell, which at that moment, most of them can just put it on the market in the worst condition and still sell it. So what do you do? Right? So you have to start looking bigger. You have to look across the globe or country or whatever, bigger than your, your neck of the woods. And then that's when everybody kind of puts the brakes on because it's like, well, I don't know anybody over there. I don't wanna have to fly out there and go scouting properties and talking to people. And holy smokes, I've heard of this thing called virtual investing. And I've kind of even been wondering that myself, like, what does that even mean? Who can really buy a property side and scene? And I've seen people do it cuz I'm in some investor clubs on Facebook. People literally going by pictures and Google, which to me,

Dustin:

I bought 30 of them. Yes. I bought 30 plus properties now without even seeing in fact, the first property that I saw, I flew out to Ohio where I bought my first property, the very first property I I've ever saw. I bought it. It, I still own, it still makes me money. But from that Foy port, I'm like, Nah, I'm not flying anywhere else. Right. Pictures are fine. And the experts are great. Like inspectors, inspectors are your best friends, insurance agents, mortgage brokers, realtors, and property managers, like they're gonna do all the hard work for you. Now. It is a little hard to get over that trust factor that, you know, like the risk factor in your, in your mind, like, do I wanna take the risk and trust these people? Well, if you do, you're gonna find out that if you do it right by interviewing, finding the right people, it's really gonna help you to be okay with having properties that are, you'll never see. I, I won't probably see any of my properties cuz I don't care to, other people will and I have other people managing them.

Lindsay:

Yeah. See, and that's, what's so valuable about what you're saying about creating the business. That's kind of what I was leading up to is I think, you know, people who are scared need to understand that there, there are ways to do it. Don't just let it stop you by looking around you and saying, oh, there's no way. Or I'll just wait a few years till the market crashes. I mean, that's fine, but why not already have, you know, three or four properties that you can leverage to buy something, you know, when that market changes or whatever, you know? So there's many ways to do it.

Dustin:

Yeah. I thought back in 2017 that the market, I was like, man, the market's getting high. It's probably gonna correct sometime soon. And obviously, I was wrong there. And if I would've stopped buying, then I wouldn't be where I'm at today. And my students I've coached so many students I'll give you an example here's one. That was, it was amazing because it was right before the coronavirus, you know, March of 2020. So he started one on one coaching with me and his name's Benjamin. And we started in December of 2019. So you know, three or four months before the coronavirus hit, which just did a lot of damage. Um, he started coaching with me in 18 months. He bought 11 Duplex is 22 units during the coronavirus. And now he's making I think seven or $8,000 a month in passive income from each or more from all these properties combined.

Dustin:

And so now if he wants to quit, he can, but he likes his job. So he's still working and buying even more properties. But if you would let your, uh, if you're scared or if you're worried, if you let that stop you, then you're not gonna be able to move forward. In fact, I had a student, I'll give you a quick example of another one. So, um, actually funny enough, another Benjamin California, he's a PA it's funny. Uh, he's a pastor and he didn't have a lot of money saved up, but he had his home that had a lot of equity in it and he knew eventually he'll retire. He wants to invest and still serve in his church and wanna be a little more financially stable. And he said, Hey Dustin, I have equity. Can we use that? I'll give you fast forward.

Dustin:

What happened? We took his home equity. He got a line of credit on his house, his personal residence, a line of credit. And then we built the business first so that he can then have experts. Then show him which right are the right properties and all that sort of stuff. Fast forward. He bought his first property. Now he's since bought two and three more like he just keeps growing. But with that, he uses home equity to buy the property. He bought it for, I wanna say $72,000 total. And with that, he's making $312 or something like that in passive income, like over, over two or 50 S which is a minimum and it re uh, um, sorry, it appraised for a hundred and like three, a hundred, $2,000. So like 30 grand more than what he bought it for. And so now we are in the process of refinancing that property.

Dustin:

Cuz remember he paid cash for it. It just came from his home equity. So he's gonna get, a 75 or 80% loan. So he might even pull out $80,000, put five grand or so in his pocket, and use that other 75 to pay off the home equity line of credit. Now he has a rental property. That's making him, I wanna say it's probably close to like that's $312 in passive income. And now he still has home equity that he paid off. That he can do that again, mm-hmm he's and he basically doesn't have any of his own money in this deal, in this one property, none of his own money. So fast forward, you don't let things stop you. There are ways around doing this. And that's what I love showing my students is that there are so many ways to do this real estate investing business. As long as we know how to do it, we have somebody that's done before that can show us you're gonna be successful.

Lindsay:

Well, I have to say, I've talked to a lot of people and I have my own experience in real estate. I've been to those seminars. I've signed up for those programs. I get what you're saying. And you're a great teacher. I mean, you're really, I can tell that you're a very thorough teacher. You take time to make sure somebody understands, but you also help hold their hand, which is personally the thing that I see missing in so many real estate training programs is that they just wanna give the bear information and let you go scrape and SCR and figure it out and then come beg them for help so they can take part of your deal.

Dustin:

The I you're a hundred percent. Right. And I, I really honestly, I really appreciate you saying that and I'll add one little quick thing to that. So as I was doing this, remember I had friends and family members coming to me cuz I didn't know I wanted to teach this. And like, I didn't know, it was fun for me, but it absolutely is a huge blast for me. But I had friends and family members coming to me and say, Hey Dustin, can you show us how to do it? And I would do it like one on one, but I realized it takes so much time to do one-on-one. Everybody has great questions, they're beginner questions, but they're good questions. So I wrote a book that was the first thing I did. I wrote a book. I said, Hey, read this. And then when it answers your big inner questions, then I can help you one on one fast forward to now what I love doing is making sure that I'm coaching people along the way.

Dustin:

Cuz of what I was doing with the book, podcasts, YouTube, and all that sort of stuff, I had a course. I was selling courses, but I, I don't necessarily need the money at all. I have all my real estate coming in and what I realized was people were buying the course and 20% of them were finishing it. And I was like, I was so bummed out because I didn't make it just to make money. I wanna help people. So what I did was I implemented one-on-one coaching and group coaching. So one-on-one coaching costs more because it's my time. And my wife said, Hey if you're gonna be giving your time to somebody else, you better charge for that. If not just don't do it, come hang out with us and help us with the family. And so with that, I realized one-on-one coaching is a little higher than most people can afford.

Dustin:

Um, and so I started a group coaching, much lower price. They get all the courses and all that sort of stuff because I found it's so much more rewarding for me. When I see my students become successful, it's not the money it's like, man, look at them, succeeds. And now literally have on any group coaching call, I'll have like 20 students on the call at one time and helping them each and every single one. It's just, that it's such a blessing and I'll quickly add one more thing, Lindsay. So my first goal was when I was 27 years old, I said, I want to quit my job by the time I'm 37. As I said, I was blessed to be able to quit and become successful successfully unemployed at 37. Then I said, I need another goal. I just need a goal just so I can have something to achieve and reach.

Dustin:

And so I told myself, I wanna make a million dollars a year from all my businesses. That's my new goal. It's not necessarily the money. It's the quantitative goal. Like I can hit it. And I know when I hit it, but I kid you not Lindsay. After about a year, I was so bored of that goal. In fact, it was like a deterrent I didn't want to do cuz it's not the money that I cared about. Then I realized my goodness that's that goal is not making me do more sacrifice to actually move forward. So I changed my goal. Now, this is literally my passion. Now my passion and my goal now is to help 1 million people to invest in real estate and help them to do it. And so from that, with my, you know, free podcast and YouTube channel, like giving all the stuff away, as well as I even started a real estate conference, it's called the real estate wealth builders conference. It's we meet it's, it's a gathering together. We meet in Phoenix. Uh, once a year might do east coast next year, fast forward. Now we had 250 people there at that conference. That's just on my way of helping a million people to invest in real estate because I found the more people that I help in general having good properties for them to live in teaching people, how to invest in creating products, that all that sort of stuff. Right? The more people that I help, the better my life gets and the better everybody else's life gets.

Lindsay

Oh, well thanks for including me. And part of that, like sharing your message here on the podcast so we can bless people together. I

Dustin:

Love that. Exactly.

Lindsay:

It's all, it's so true. Like I feel that way too, when I help 'em build a business, you know, and, or like they have a passion and they feel me a call to, you know, share their knowledge in some way. I know that they're gonna make a, a difference in somebody's life. And like I'm a little piece of that that gets to go with that. So I totally get that. And that's just absolutely that is totally rewarding. Okay. So where can people find you? Uh, where would be the best place?

Dustin:

Yeah, absolutely. Now actually I do have a free course that I just love to give away showing people everything we talk about. Do you mind if I share that?

Lindsay:

Uh, uh, OK. Yeah, of course. Are you kidding?

Dustin:

Oh, I appreciate it. So yeah, I just love showing I'll literally give it to you. Everything I've talked about and then some like literally outline, find the area of the country to invest how to build the business first, how to scale your business to make money so you can quit your job. If you text the word rental, R E N T A L to 3, 3 7, 7, 7 rental to 3, 3 7, 7, 7. I'll literally give it to you for free. Or you can go to master passive income.com/free course, all one-word slash-free course, and I'll give it to you. And then I also have my podcast, a master passive income podcast where it's lit. I rarely do interviews. It's just me teaching how to do this, investing my YouTube channel, my articles, and all that sort of stuff. But I just love helping as many people out as possible.

Lindsay:

That's so good. So good. Well, thank you so much for being a part of this. Um, do you have any words of wisdom for those people who might just be kind of, I don't know on the fence?

Dustin:

Yeah. So one thing that struck me when I knew about your podcast, I found out about your podcast. I was gonna be on it like, oh man, I love the idea of passive income. That's like my favorite thing is passive income. I realized charting an hour for a dollar or however many dollars. Let's say you're making a hundred dollars an hour. That doesn't matter. Because if you it's not good enough, your value is so much more than anybody could ever pay you. And this is how you'll know this. Your boss is paying you just enough to keep you working without quitting, but not so much money. That's taking money outta their pocket. So when you start getting paid for the value that you bring by being an investor, starting your own business, whatever it might be, you're gonna get paid so much more than your ever worth. And I realize that now my goodness, thank God I quit that $75,000 a year job. Now it makes so much more money because all my real estate makes me so much more money. So everybody needed to realize your value is so much more than anybody could ever pay you.

Lindsay:

So true. I love this. Thank you so much.

Dustin:

Absolutely. Lindsay, thank you so much for having me on the show.