DIon and Mike - Robin Hood Real Estate Sumit Live

Indiana, that agent is going to send you the best deal you've ever heard of that every single local investor passed on for a reason. So if you're going to invest at a distance, trusted boots on the ground is everything. So that— and I mean, think of the level of trust where you think that person is going to come to your funeral and they're somehow tied to the industry— property manager, um, contractor, handyman, agent. I looked at it a very different way. I prefer to invest in the expensive market. I will have less units, but my cash flow is better with less transactions. I, I call myself the lazy investor because I was working full-time. I have— I'm a single parent with 3 kids. I didn't want to invest and create another job. I wanted to invest and create income. So if I invested in Gary at an average cash flow of $300, $400 per door—

when I start out, what I look for is $250 a month in straight profit, very low cash flowing properties.

So instead, I invest here. I have 16 rental units on 7 properties, and the cash flow is about $17,000 a month after everything. So it takes a lot less deals, but the discipline to save up the down payment to wait and find that great deal. Well, I'll close on one every 2 years. He's getting 3 or 4 a year, so he's going to scale much faster. Kind of like Christian and Cody's strategy, where the end goal is different. So if your end goal is a larger portfolio, there are different strategies to get there. My goal was the least number of units with the highest cash flow. Like, I have 16 right now. I'm probably going to buy another one because this is a terrible problem that you're all going to have. The money piles up, you have to do something with it, right? But at some point I might sell some properties and pay off debt, so I might have less properties but more income. Whatever we get to the, um, we're going to do a thing where we cover a couple of different things with our strategies, but I have a paradox. I'm going to ask if anybody's heard of it here, but this is a paradox that's keeping most people stuck in their job., and it stops most people from reaching financial freedom. Is this thing working at all? Okay, good, because I can't tell. Um, does anybody here— raise your hand if you've heard of the region beta paradox. Okay, my 6th grade teacher is going to be very happy that I figured out a way to use this. The idea behind this concept, and this is what keeps people stuck in a job that they don't like, keeps people stuck in living for the next paycheck. The region paradox— the easiest way to explain it is if you live in a house and you want to go buy something from the store and the store is 4 blocks away, you might walk. But if you live in a house and you want to go to a store and the store is a mile away, you're probably going to drive. It's going to be easier. You're going to drive, you're You don't have to carry your stuff back, it's going to sit in the back of the car. So the paradox is, ironically, you will make it to the store that is a mile away faster and easier than the store that is 4 blocks away. Most people stay in their job, don't pursue financial freedom, don't try to add that next cash-flowing asset because their job doesn't suck enough. If you hate your job, you will find a way out. If you're okay— I liked my job. I worked 4 more years than I needed to before I retired last year because my job was okay. I was trapped because it didn't suck. If you hate your job, you're going to find a way out. So right now, if you have a job that you've worked very hard to build a life, you don't need to escape, and you're comfortable going to work and you're looking forward to that next paycheck, that's the paradox that's stopping you from doing the thing that it takes to get the next investment. When we say something like house hack, I, I've done this in the BiggerPockets, um, um, what do they call it, not accountability group, something like that. It's an accountability group. It's exactly what it is. Somebody brought up the idea of, you know, getting started in real estate. I suggested house hacking and they said absolutely not, there's no way we can do that, I have a family. And then they described house hacking as their strategy because the thought of doing something that you've heard of— house hacking, we think There's two versions of it. One is reduce or eliminate your largest expense. The second is to use owner-occupied lending to get properties. So they can't share property, they don't want to have somebody living on the property because they have kids. So what their plan was is to buy a house with owner-occupied lending, live there for a year, rinse and repeat, and get some rentals. That's house hacking. You don't even have to share space. But the idea is the person, when they heard house hacking dismissed it because their life doesn't suck enough. They don't want the financial freedom enough. They're not trying to find a way out of their current situation. So when somebody says, how many rentals do you have? What is your cash flow goal? I think the question to ask is, what are you willing to do to get what you want? Because every time you look at something with that region beta paradox is, this is comfortable, You've probably seen the meme, like, the greatest dream killer ever is the paycheck. You work for the paycheck because it's comfortable. If you can recognize that when you're not taking action, when you don't take that 20 to 30 minutes a day to actually look at the MLS listings or look at your mailer responses or take and do the work that it takes to actually find that next deal, you think, today I'll just skip it because life doesn't suck enough. I'm not saying this to you specifically, but it's going to sound like it. Your life sucks if you have to work. You can choose to work, but if you have to work, life sucks. You don't have freedom. And so the goal with this real estate investing is to have that freedom so that you don't have to work, and then you can choose to. I mean, Mike's going to be retiring from law enforcement. I retired from law enforcement, from working completely. I spent the last decade decade running a CDL school so that I could play World of Warcraft. Like, that's my job now. What are you going to do when you retire? When you reach financial freedom from real estate and you no longer are going to be a police officer?

Yeah, so, uh, as Cody loves to so eloquently put, you know, we become a police officer, you just get accustomed to being shot at. And I said to myself, how am I going to fulfill that need for adrenaline and have bullets winging over my head? I'll invest in Gary, Indiana, so my tenants can What? So that's all? Yeah, so that's how I'm gonna fulfill that need. Um, but what am I gonna do? Yeah, I'm gonna spend more time with my kid. I'm a single dad, got full custody of my son. It's just him and me. So yeah, I want to— as he's 6 years old now— play more soccer with him, do more fighting with him, things like that. All the good stuff. So, but you need time, especially in my job. Just this year I've been shot at a handful of times. I'm not gonna get lucky forever, so I need to figure out a way to get out of the game and do something different sooner rather than later. And That's my plan. Spend more time with my kid, manage my real estate, attend cool events like this, and meet cool people like all of you. That's what I'm gonna do and what I want to do.

Every time before this second that I've heard him talk about after law enforcement, he's talked about being a realtor.

That's too—

my bad, I'm sorry. No, no, that's okay.

I'm gonna move to Florida and get a real estate license, house hack, buy condos, Airbnb it, and yes, have a real estate license.

Right, so some of us are broken, and even after reaching financial freedom, they're going to be thinking of other ways to make money. I'll play World of Warcraft for you. I'm not above it. Everybody here realizes that we're here missing the debut of Diablo 4, right? This is the weekend.

I don't know if there's any gamers here, but they laughed pretty hard at that, so I'm gonna bet that these two know what we're talking about.

Tony would be here. Tony works for Blizzard and does that. So in order to find the right strategy that's going to work for you, it's really important that you pick your end goal. With, uh, so we have a really good community of people here that can help you. We have Michael Zuber from One Rental at a Time who has these books here where we each brought them. We each bought one of these books. I brought this because of a— I want to return a favor on my YouTube channel. This is for leaving all the comments that you did there. I appreciate each one. Mike's probably going to give his away for the best question that we get after we wrap up and go to questions. Or insult. Or insult.

You got it, guys. You got jokes, you get a book, right?

So how many people here are gamers? Okay, so you might get this. Everyone else, I'm gonna try. When you play a video game, the idea is— so like MMORPG, first-person shooter— the idea is you look at how you want your character to end up and then you reverse engineer the path to get there. Real estate is exactly the same. Do you want a massive portfolio that gives you a beyond financial freedom number where you can do stupid things with money? Christian and Cody, Math the Lumberjack Landlord, their strategy. I would suggest it. If you want the lazy path to financial freedom, that's what I do. It's going to take 10 years. I think the average person can reach financial freedom in 10 years or less, even if you're not starting from the best position. I want to invest at a distance— Millennial Mike is the source that I would go to for that. Okay, so the idea is, until you pick your end goal you're going to spin your wheels and get two things that happen to new investors, if there are any new investors here. Shiny object syndrome. You're going to hear about every different way of investing and how that it can be successful, and if you dedicated all of your time to that way, you would be successful. But 5 minutes later, you're going to be thinking about something else you heard. And the other thing is analysis paralysis. So before I wrap up, and I want to get to that part of, um how you get your tenants to ask you to raise the rent, which makes it a lot easier to find cash-flowing deals on the MLS.

It's made my life—

so all my deals are from the MLS. No creative financing, no mailers, no going to— this is an overshare. So I'm a pirate minister. I marry people for free as long as you're okay with me showing up as a pirate. And I get to go and file the marriage certificate, right? And I've always thought this is the best source of properties on the planet because it's also the place people go when they're filing for divorce. Don't do that. That's not a good— it's not a good place to do. It's just every time I'm there printing the papers, I'm like, wow, there's a whole bunch of people here that want to get rid of their property. So hopefully you're thinking of questions if it comes to how to invest while you're working full-time and maybe while you're like a single parent, super busy, or if you have young kids and you could be a couple of me, super busy. If you want to invest at a distance. But is there anything you wanted before we get to the blended credit?

Um, yeah, the question that I always like to ask: how many people here own a rental property? That's actually a pretty good amount. Looks like a lot of people here are already killing it. And so how many people don't own real estate, any real estate at all? Okay, okay, so we got— maybe it's like 30% don't, 70% do. We just want to know who we're talking to because people are at all different paths of their journey. And something that I've come to realize is whether you haven't bought anything or you've bought your first one or you just closed on a triplex or a 12-plex, whatever they closed on yesterday— congrats Cody and Christian— uh, you still always get that feeling of like, oh, I'm stuck because I want the next deal, I want to keep going, until you get to be the lazy guy who's just done. But like, so if you're feeling like stuck, what do I do next? I'm not sure what strategy should I employ. Yeah, shiny object syndrome, we'll talk about that, but it's normal for everybody to feel stuck. I closed on a triplex yesterday for my 13th unit, and I'm already like, oh man, I gotta find money again, I gotta find another deal again, I gotta go talk to all these people again. So you kind of get those emotions in. We want your questions so we can help you get to whatever your next step is. So please think of good questions. He's going to explain a cool strategy here. Come up with some good questions, and, uh, and yeah, we're looking forward to it.

Okay, so before I talk about this thing called the binder strategy, there, there are 6 steps that we take as investors. Your 13th and 14th rental, the first step is learning how to save. And almost everybody makes the mistake of thinking that means you spend less. Learning how to save is how do you figure out how to increase your income— overtime, side hustle, cash-flowing assets, learn a skill that's more attractive to your employer for a promotion, or most likely in today's climate, change companies. If your income comes from W-2, you're going to get a bigger raise by changing companies than you will by staying at the same company. The second thing is work on your credit score. No matter where it's at, we should always be trying to improve that. What you're going to see as an investor on Credit Karma is not what the lender sees. Lenders will tell us that you want at least a 740 credit score for the best lending options.. But what we see on Credit Karma can often be 30 to 40 points above what the lender is going to see. So your goal, even though you're going to hear 740 everywhere, every source you go to, should be at least a 780 so that the lender always sees that 740. Third step, talk to a lender. If you don't know what your options are, you won't know how to reverse engineer your path to where you're trying to go. And that might be that you don't— you can't borrow money. You might be Christian, Cody, Caleb, Chuck— the three of them, before they could buy beer, had dozens of units by going, oh, so I can't borrow money, but I can have the sellers carry this. It might be a DSCR loan, it might be asset-based lending, it might be VA owner-occupied, whatever it is. But until you talk to a lender, don't waste an agent's time by trying to talk to a realtor before you have talked to a lender. The fourth step is pick that strategy. Now that you know your lending options, you're working on the— that, that saving and credit score is something you can do consistently for, for years before you buy that first rental. So that's something you work on today. Now, fourth step, when you pick that strategy, it has to be one that you will get you to your goal, that you can figure out how to do, you have the bandwidth for and you know that you'll be able to stick to it. Like, I'm super lazy. There is no way that I could do what Christian Osgood does because they develop relationships with sellers and they don't, they don't approach them with the sales pitch of, hey, sell me your properties, right?

They're—

they have a brilliant way of doing that. I'm— I was working 50, 60 hours a week. I had to literally talk to an agent, set up an auto search, and make offers, and that was the amount of work that went into real estate. So you have to know what you can handle to know that you're going to be able to stick to your path. The fifth thing— fine, we're 5 steps into real estate. This is when you talk to an agent. I use at least 3 agents. All my searches are set up on the MLS, and even if I was a realtor with access to the MLS, I would have at least 3 other agents searching for me because searching on the MLS is nuanced. And I've been doing this for over 10 years, and in a decade, my agents have one time ever sent me the same deal in a 24-hour period. So to set up those searches, figure out if it's going to be mailers, checking out county court records, using the websites that Christian and Cody talked about to find the owners of LLCs. Then the 6th step, actually look at deals, run the numbers, and get good and get that skill. Because there's 4 words for you: confidence comes from competence. The better you get at running deals, the more likely you're going to be confident in your ability to make offers. One strategy that I like to use when you're brand new— so not for the people who own rentals, but those people that are brand new, they don't have a rental yet— find an investor, ask them if you can have the address to their property and you want to run the deal to see what your cash flow would look like and what your yield would be. And then just tell them, how close am I? You don't have to share their exact numbers, but they can tell you something that you don't know you're missing yet, because knowing the data is going to make it easier to learn that skill. So those are the 6 steps to get started. Here's this thing called the binder strategy. So I'm sorry for the people who've heard it before, but it never hurts to hear it again. And I'm gonna— this is the abbreviated version. I just spent $10,000—

stupid—

to make a course on this for free. So the course is free. So if you go to sign up for the course, there isn't going to be a charge. But the idea is this helps tenants because it stops tenants from being kicked out of their house, and it helps landlords. Because what's the one thing that we get the most flack for? We're all greedy, we all jack the rents up, we kick people out of their places. So this strategy started because I was looking for properties on the MLS, and most properties for sale on the MLS, the owner is older, tired, not taking care of it, not doing upgrades, has been ignoring the tenants. And has made the number one mistake that landlords make. Can anybody think of what the number one mistake is? They don't raise the rent. So I did a 2-year study because I was getting close to retiring, and I was actually terrified. I think there are people who own properties, right? There are people who used to own properties. My real estate has given me freedom. I don't have to work anymore. What could happen to me where I wouldn't own properties anymore? So I was trying for years to find those owners, couldn't find them, because all of these kind of gatherings, it's BiggerPockets, One Rental at a Time, it's people trying to grow their portfolio. It's not people who used to own one. So I found them in the Choose FI groups. So if you're in the Financial Independence Retire Early groups, the Choose FI, they're mostly stocks. So some of them used to own rentals, and I asked everyone across the board Some people went through, you know, death in the family, divorce, you know, the problems, major health concern. There was a few people like that, but there was across the board, every single person who used to own rentals didn't raise the rent. So as a landlord, if you own rentals and you just raise the rent, you're a jerk. Everyone will hate you. They'll put it on social media. You'll get flamed. So I want to buy properties, and tenants live in fear of somebody buying their property and then kicking them out, raising the rents, and they can't afford it. Or not kicking them out and raising the rent and they can't afford it, so then they have to move. So what I do is I call this strategy the binder because it's actually done with a 3-ring binder. You're going to take— and it can be done through email and through text, but it's had the best result with a 3-ring binder. I go on to Zillow or Redfin or realtor.com, and I print out the front page of the binder is the property itself. So this is information that the tenant can also look up. It's going to have the sales price that you paid for it, you know, a month or two later. It's going to have the current estimate, the Redfin estimate or the Zestimate from Zillow. So it points out to the tenant that this is the price that your insurance and your taxes are going to be based on. So that's how I present that information, but the tenant doesn't care. So this is something that most landlords don't understand. Tenants Don't care about your expenses. Doesn't cross their mind. If they— if you— if they cared about your expenses, a paid-off property and a property with a mortgage would rent for different amounts, but they don't. So your expenses don't mean anything. The reason I point this out is to show the tenants that I'm being transparent. I am showing you information you can look up too. The next page in this binder is a map of the area with the rentals that are for rent that are the same. Same number of bedrooms, whether it has a garage, a pool, a shed, anything that has an amenity, make sure that it's the same. So don't, don't show apples and oranges. You want, you want to say it's exactly the same. And then every page after that is those rentals and what they're renting for. You are educating the tenant what would happen to them if they moved out. This is what they're going to be paying. So an example is I purchased most of my properties in between Tacoma and Olympia here in Washington, and most of the rents on a property that I purchased is somewhere between $800 and $1,000. Probably hasn't been raised in 5 or 6 years. The area average rents are $1,500 or $1,600. Imagine if I was an owner and I bought the place and I went in and I said, hey, I'm going to raise you guys's rent to $1,400. What do you think the tenant would do if they went from $800 to $1,400? Move out, complain with the state, try to move out, try to find a place, right? So what I do is I show them this and then I slide the binder to them. I bought the property where the rents were $800 to $1,000. It would be a 10% cash-on-cash return if I was making maybe $1,100 a month in rent. So I would be happy with $1,100. Give the binder to the tenant and ask him this magic question. Phrase it just like this: what do you think is fair? How many tenants have been involved in the process of setting their rents? Probably never, right? Unless they're looking for their place, that's the one time they get to choose. I've never had a tenant go, well, if the average is $1,500 or $1,600, well, let's go $1,500, right? They're not stupid. They would move to a better place that's brand new, fixed up, or something for that. But I've never had a tenant say, I'm paying $800, I would like to pay $800. Every single time so far with those numbers— and the bigger numbers, it's actually a bigger increase— the tenants have asked for over a $300 a month increase. So the last ones that I did, they're now at $1,416 both sides of the duplex. It's a lot easier to find cash-flowing deals on the MLS if you're confident in your ability to not have a tenant turnover, not have to do a rehab, not have to displace a tenant, and your rents are going to go above where you would like them. And then the tenant is happy. So that is called the binder strategy. This works on Section 8. You're probably not going to take a binder and go and meet with the counselor, but I had Thurston County told me they would pay $1,800 for my rental. That was the cap on this rental. I showed them comps for $2,300 and $2,400. And I said, look, I'm not even trying to go that high, I just want $2,200. So that rental is at $2,200 now. So even the housing authority accepted that. Now that doesn't mean it's going to work in every county, because I don't want to name them on, you know, like on purpose, but Pierce County, Washington sucks, and I will not own any properties with the Section 8 program there. But in Thurston County, I have good luck. So your county is ran by either the housing authority or a nonprofit, so you want to get to know them and see if they're good to work with. That's the binder strategy. And now we are ready for questions on investing at a distance or how to reach financial freedom if you're super lazy. Thank you for reminding me that that's the next step that I usually talk about. So my primary use is I buy a property— there's actually two things. Thank you. For asking that question. I usually wait 2 months to do the strategy because if you close on a property, you did not get to vet those tenants, and I don't know if I want to keep them. What if, you know, you don't know their credit score, you don't know their work history, their income? So for those 2 months, I get to do a couple of things. The first thing— I remember to put all this in the course— so, um, the first thing is I'm going to fix the place up. I'm going to do 3 things that I do on every rental— 4 things, I guess. The inspection report tells you what to fix, the major things. But I put in coded locks so there's no keys to upgrade for my Class C rentals. I put in motion sensor LED exterior lights to improve the safety of the place, and it reduces the expense for the tenant because it's LED. And then I actually asked the tenant— my, my first agent told me never do this, but I do it on every single property. I asked the tenant If you owned this property, what would you fix? My agent was afraid they would say, well, I would add a bedroom, or I would pave the driveway. And it's never been that. Every single time it's been something simple, like I would like a screen door, or the fan replaced, or the sink with a taller sink so I can wash my pants. You spend a couple hundred dollars and now the tenant knows you're going to take care of the property. So doing those minor fixes makes the conversation go a lot better. But after 2 months, since I didn't get to vet those tenants, I actually understand if they're going to hit the 3 things that matter to me. Do they pay their rent on time? Do they call me for super trivial things? And do I get noise complaints? If those 3 things aren't a problem, then I'll do the binder strategy. And so that was the primary use. And then myself, some tenants I would leave their rent there for years, uh, and then sometimes every other year I would do a 5% increase. But you want to watch the market for black swan events. In 2020, we had an eviction moratorium and a pandemic, and rents in Washington State went up 30 to 40% across the board. So I went and did the binder strategy with my entire portfolio, and I just said, look, there's been this thing, my expenses, here's, you know, insurance— which tenants do not care about your expenses— but I said, this is why we're having the conversation. And I showed the recent comps at 30 to 40% increase. My smallest rent increase that my tenants asked for in 2022 was 20%, and the biggest one was 28%. So my income, which I was projecting at $168,000 in profit for 2022, hit $203,000 because I had a 10-minute conversation with 16 tenants who are happy because they didn't get that 30 or 40% rent increase. That's how that works. Were those tenants that you just handed the binders to, have you done that with them previously, or these new? Okay, so this was a repeat for every single one of them. Yes, that was— yep, they knew, they knew I showed up with a binder.

So, right, exactly. Don't, don't refer to them as that on their YouTube channel they might watch.

But it had been a few years. I didn't go in every year and use this strategy.

So when you execute the strategy and you have this conversation, it's only at that point—

luckily I put this in the course too. So I have a lease with me that has the next 2 months at the same amount and a blank spot for the 3rd month, because there's a, there's a psychology to this. And I was trying to do the abbreviated one. These are great questions. So In Washington state, if you're going to do a rent increase, if you're in Seattle, you have to give 6 months notice. But for the rest of the state, you have to give a 60-day notice, 20 days if you're not going to renew. So you need to know your local laws and how much time you have to give. I don't say that to the tenants. There's no reason to say I need to be legal here. What I do is I say, okay, so we have the conversation, they have suggested a new number, I've agreed. I have had a tenant suggest too small a number, and we're having a conversation. I say, well, that does seem fair for you, 'But compared to how far you are from the average, is that fair for me?' And then they suggested another number. So it's an ongoing conversation. I have a video coming out with two people whose tenants suggested too big of an increase, and both of the landlords said, 'Well, $1,600 sounds great. Let's go $1,450 because I'm not comfortable with that big of a jump.' Imagine how happy those tenants are that, that they suggested a number and the landlord said, 'Oh, that's too much.' So I have the lease with me because it is just a verbal agreement, and I have had times where I leave the binder, I wait a couple of days. I don't need to do it right away, it's not a rush. I want them to make an informed decision and be happy after the encounter. But I have the lease there in case they come up with a number we agree to, and I say, okay, so we— you were at $8,000, you've suggested $1,460. I agree, this is a great number, you're getting a good deal, you don't have to move. I'm not making as much as I could if you moved out, but I don't want you to have to move, so we're both happy. Next month stays the same. The month after that stays the same. The cadence in my voice, I say it just like that to let them realize they mentally decided this was the new amount, and they're thinking next month. And then, wow, this, this landlord is actually giving them 3 months to mentally prepare for this. I don't go, I'm actually doing this because there's a legal reason that I have to. I'm just saying, look, it's going to take you 3 months to get ready, get your balance, you know, your, your budget ready for this increase. And then we sign the lease, and then away I go.

Sounds to me like you're just a master manipulator. You're siphoning off the surplus value of the working-class people, Dion.

Kind of a parasite. I think you misspelled salesperson.

Okay, so, uh, yeah, I was gonna say, so I have a question. Has anybody here ever, you know, looked at cheap, low cash flowing properties in the Midwest and thought to themselves That looks interesting, right?

Some people—

oh man, even Cody back there, look at that. So, but like, so, so then, okay, for everybody who had their hand up, why didn't you buy one out there? Maybe you did actually. Somebody, why didn't you buy one? Okay, anybody else who didn't buy one for any reason? My man, right, right. Okay, who is anybody here Bought at a distance, like they live someplace?

Yeah.

Where'd you buy? Ohio. Okay, that's a popular spot. Where do you live? Okay, nice. I would— I lived in that area for a number of years. Cool. Uh, so you bought in Ohio. How many properties do you have out there?

5.

And have you bought those over the last couple years?

Okay.

What, what got you over the hump to convince you to invest in that area? I'm from there, so I kind of knew the area already.

Sure.

I knew the house was cheaper there, so I figured if I could get more units, I would be able to basically buy more with my budget. Yeah, that's real smart. And when I talk about investing at a distance, one of the first things I usually tell people is, hey, are you familiar with any markets? You're in Mill Creek, you're from Ohio. I'm from Grand Forks, North Dakota. Most people have never heard of it. There's like 7 people that live in the state. Nothing there. I was talking to Aaron and he was from South Dakota.

I was like, bro, why are you living in South Dakota?

No offense, Aaron, you look great. But anyway, so I said to myself, do I want to invest where it's -60 and the air feels like it's stabbing your face? No. Uh, so, you know, but then I was like, but there's perks to investing in the Midwest where I grew up. It's much cheaper. But I didn't have that, uh, the familiarity with that local market like you did in Ohio. But that's a really smart reason to do it. And what other people said about, I don't know who I should have as boots on the ground I don't know the type of relationship that I've had, or probably more importantly, how do you form those relationships, right? Who can you trust? Making— you trust your mechanic down the street, okay? So how are you going to trust a property manager, your contractor, your roofer, um, real estate agents, wholesalers? There's so many people that it's very intimidating, and it's difficult to say, all right, I'm confident enough to pull the trigger. Uh, and so that's why, as we talked about earlier, what got me over that hump for me was having a mentor. My friend Mark, who's in law enforcement— Dion was, I was— anybody else here military or law enforcement?

Military?

Yeah. So there's like a special bond between people who've been in the military, people who've been in law enforcement. We've all embraced the same kind of suck at some point. It's not fun. And so you just kind of have that bond. So this guy I meet, and the reason I bring this up is because what we're doing right now is we're networking. But virtual networking is an underrated superpower that you should develop. I met him online before I ever met him in person. We only lived 30 minutes away from each other. Every single person that I have met in Indiana, I met them for years prior to meeting them in person. My mentor, who I talked to 4 or 5 times a week for the last 5 years, I have still to this day never met in person. So there's a lot you can— this comes from playing World of Warcraft when I was growing up, and you go home, you log online, you spend all day talking to your homies, and you would create your internet friends, and everybody would make fun of you. And I didn't have as cool of in-real-life friends as I did internet friends. But then I realized, wait a minute, I can make internet friends that aren't just related to a stupid video game. I can make internet friends that are related to an actual real-life thing like investing in real estate. I was like the second interview on this guy's YouTube channel ever. We had no subscribers, like 2,000 subscribers, and his video quality was terrible. And now he's got like one of the number one or two selling books for real estate investing. And I finally met him in person in November of last year after years of being his friend. So to tie this all together, if you want to invest at a distance, I think it can work for you. You have to learn how to virtually network because you need to build those relationships. And we could tier it out. And what's the most important person to have on your out-of-state investing team? That's a long conversation. But don't diminish or minimize your ability to actually generate a legitimate, real relationship with someone, even if you've never met them in person. You can do an awful lot on Zoom calls and an awful lot in the comment section of a YouTube video, of an Instagram post, of a Facebook post. My man, what's your question? Sure, yeah. And so the question for the cameras was What are you presenting to the person across the table? How do you make it an equivalent exchange of value and stuff like that? So they're interested in— so the first thing I would say, I don't know where Cody went, but he's probably the one, right, who would say you don't necessarily have to pitch it like you need something from them. If you just establish a relationship with somebody and a friendship, eventually, back to the manipulation aspect of it, they're going to feel like they have to help you out because you're, you're friends. So my mentor, Mark, commented on the YouTube video I did with this guy, which got, you know, 12 views or something, you know, like no views, right? He just commented on it and I responded and we started chatting. Oh hey, we both are in law enforcement, like real estate. So we started chatting, we started being friends and talking. If you talk to enough people, eventually you're going to start to develop real friendships and relationships. And it didn't have to be something like, well, you mentor me, then I'm gonna do something for you. It was just a genuine friendship that was born out of shared similar life experiences and that were both in law enforcement and things like that. So yeah, you can try to present like a tit-for-tat type of system. Personally, I don't think that's, that's the way you should go about it. Um, I played sports, I've had coaches and all these types of things. The person who's actually going to coach you up and teach you and take you under their wing, probably not looking for any more of a return on their investment beyond being happy that you are successful and that they get to have some sort of claim in your success. And so my advice to you is talk to as many people as you can. I have had deals brought to me from people who follow me on Instagram. They have no profile pictures. They have like an Indian accent. I can barely understand him when he sends me a voice message. I talked to the guy for like 6 months and then one day he's like, did you see this deal? That's the best deal I've done so far. Like it was an— and I was like, no, He like sends me the link on Facebook. But because I had taken the time to talk to this dude who constantly asked me questions that I could barely understand, I felt bad. I was— I had to ask him to say it again. And I talked to this guy for like 6 months. And then one day he goes, oh, I was just surfing Facebook and I found this deal. Did you look at it? And it's like $29,000 house that needs $20,000 of remodeling. Now it's worth $130,000. You do the math on that. It's pretty good. I was like, thanks, bud. What's your real name so I can thank you in my YouTube video later? Because I've just been calling you REI Learner for the last year that I've chatted with you. So yeah, so don't, don't underappreciate the relationships you can make with totally average regular people who seem like they have nothing of value to offer you, or you maybe have nothing of value to offer them. You would be amazed at what you can do just by talking to people, building relationships with owners who now want to sell or finance you hundreds of units. Thank you, right? Like, that stuff can happen to all of you.

Okay, and we have 30 seconds to wrap up to stay on time. Oh, so So I'm going to wrap this up in 30 seconds or less. Okay, how many people here like real estate? How many of your friends or family want to talk to you about it? Okay, so as an investor, when somebody reaches out, here's the last bit. If you're looking for that, what can I bring to somebody that's going to help me, be specific. If you walk up to Mike or me and you go, hey, tell me about real estate, that's real. But if you walk up to Mike and you say, I want to invest at a distance, how would I do that? You're a little more specific. So if you see somebody online at a mastermind, find out their strategy, learn a baseline of information, and then ask them questions about it. Sometimes ask them the wrong question because people don't like to talk, they like to disagree.

And we're done.

Thank you. I really appreciate it. I don't know if you remember, but it was like before even I was doing this, or I sent you a message about your views on whether or not— I probably gave you the Grant Cardone answer, and I'm still investing here. Where they don't like it. Hey, I got you in the action. Oh wait, not that one. Got some action shots.

Nice. Yeah, got a quick one for you. Yeah, so when you're approaching the tenants, are you approaching them from, uh, I'm Dion, the landlord, the property manager, or the binder guy? Like, how are you presenting yourself?

Because I'd imagine you want to be anonymous, right? I'm the new owner. Okay, so I just say that and I go, but I have a couple of partners. I don't have to run any big decisions that way. If I have to say no, I'm not a bad guy, right? Yeah, so I do. But I always say because they can go to county records and they can see your name, they can go to, um, llc.com that he talks about. You're the owner of any LLC, so anonymity doesn't help. Yeah, but just so you don't have to be the one that says I can't say that, I have to check with my partners, I'll get back with you.

I mean, that's a stupid one. Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah, deferral of responsibility to a degree.

Exactly. Yeah, they don't have to know my partner is my cat. Or my kids' cat, or the— right, or the neighbor's dog or whatever, right?

Yeah, I love it. Okay, yeah, I mean, that's great. Yeah, because you're still in the live stream. I'm standing right in the camera.

Yeah, you should turn that off because I was going to share all kinds of illegal stuff that would get me sued. Nice work. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, cool.

I respond to everybody.

A little much today, but yeah, that's why I was hoping this— me and Mike aren't trained to keep it close enough to where you can hear us.

Yeah. Oh, I'm just—

oh yeah, so where do you have stuff? The first encounter, uh, Lacey, someone, you know where Austin's Mushroom Farm is? I'm