Mastering Passive Income: How To Be “Successfully Unemployed” Through Real Estate Investing With Dustin Heiner

Foreign this is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for panties on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now, here's your host, CEO of We close nodes, Scott Carson. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the nutculture show. As always, Scott Carson jacked up here for you guys today. And on this episode, I know so many of you out there are looking for passive income. That's the thing that really unites us all. We're looking for passive income to leave our jobs or to have a better life or retire spouses or kids or just retire yourself. And today's episode is an expert and investor who quit his job at 37 years old with financial freedom passive income from his real estate investing. He's also a coach. He's also the creator of an amazing event that we'll talk about that you probably will want to circle on your calendar and look at attending. You know me, I love talking about planning for next year early and it's this time of year in the fourth quarter, you got to be planning for next year. So I think you get a lot from this episode. Who am I talking about? Well, he's the man, the Myth, the legend, Mr. Dustin Heiner out there. What's going on? Dustin, how you doing today, buddy?

Man, I need to talk to you every single day. I feel so pumped up now. I feel like so excited. I feel like, oh my goodness, like I'm ready to take on the world, Scott. So, man, I'm really blessed. Thank you for so much for having me on the show. I love real estate investing because it's not necessarily real estate, which is great, don't get me wrong, but it's what it affords me to do in my life. I literally don't work for somebody else. I like the term successfully unemployed as opposed to retired. People said, well, what do you do with your life? Well, I changed it to successfully unemployed because I found another way to make money to provide for my family without working that dead end job, that just over broke job. But then, you know, I go to the gym, hang out with my family, drink coffee, then come on podcasts and talk to great people like you. But thank you so much, Scott. I really appreciate you having me on the show.

You know, I'm available for events, bar mitzvahs and birthdays too. So if you need Anything. Appreciate it. I'm always glad to do that. No man, it's good stuff.

Yeah.

I like to say that I'm successfully unemployable now from being an entrepreneur for over 20 years now. That's the thing is so many folks want to make that leap or want to figure out a plan, especially now. So more than ever in the world and want to find some way or another. I mean we see the birth of so many side hustles. People want to do stuff that they try they aren't successful. What made you successful? Maybe you can spend a little bit time and talk back to what you did and kind of the plan you put in place, because that's the biggest thing that we like to teach is if you're working, that's great. There's nothing wrong with having a job. But if you want to go and be successfully unemployable, you got to come up with a plan of action and a Runway to get there, right?

You absolutely do. Now I'll explain to you how I really got started investing and I'll tell you a quick story of what like shoved me or catapulted me in to become a real estate investor. So we have all been taught, and I was taught this exact same thing. We're all literally taught. You go to school, you get good grades and you take those good grades and you go to college, you get in thousands and thousands of dollars into debt and and you take that piece of paper, they give you a degree and you go and shop around to different companies and hopefully get a quote unquote career there, work 40 plus years of your life and then hopefully retire on what you managed to save that entire time working that just over broke job. Well, I'm doing that exact same thing. In fact, I got the most risk averse job you could ever think of. I was in California at the time working for the local county government, doing technology for local county government. So that's California is not going away. Government's definitely not going away as well as technology. So most risk adverse but at the same time following that type of path. I've always been entrepreneurial, so when I was young I had a newspaper route. You know, that's where you're riding a bike and throw newspapers at 5am and banging them on garage doors waking people up. I had a graphic website design company, a skateboard manufacturing business, a pizzeria and a convenience store. Like literally started these from the ground up, but always was following that path of the quote unquote career. Well what happened? I saw I bought one rental property and I bought that one rental property and I started investing back in 2006, and I got that first check from my property manager. After everything's done, it was 317. I remember that literally in my brain, $317, I realized this is amazing. Like, I didn't work. My property worked for me. Other people did the work too. I made money in passive income. Well, I knew I need to be an investor. But you know how it happens. Life started getting away. My wife started having children. So we have like literally in the background, you can see if you watch this on YouTube, we have four kids. And I'm blessed. Now my wife's pregnant again with our fifth child. But life started getting in the way. And by the time we had our fourth child, this is the story of what really shoved me into real estate investing. So we had our fourth child and I went on paternity leave. You know, that's where the dad stays home with the mom, changes poopy diapers and all that good stuff. And, well, I was bonding with a baby. Then I get back two weeks later and I get back to work. And on a Friday in that same week that I get Back to work, 3:30 in the afternoon on a Friday, I get a call from my boss's boss's boss's secretary, like the top dog. She says, dustin, would you please come to the office? I said, sure. And then I hung up the phone. I thought, why in the world did they call me the office? Like, this isn't normal. And I've seen plenty of movies. Friday at 3:30 in the afternoon is not a good sign. And I started remembering a couple months before I went on paternity leave, there was rumors or some rumbling going on there could potentially be layoffs in the county. And I immediately shook that off. I said, no way. I've got 12 plus years of seniority here. My boss is thinking, I do a great job. Shook it off. Well, I get up out of my chair and I walk down the hallway to my boss's office. Now, Scott, this hallway is not very long. In fact, it's kind of short. But every single step I took, it felt like the hallway got longer and longer and longer. And it felt like my feet became lead bricks because the weight to potentially losing my job was starting to rain down on me. Well, I get down the hallway, turn the corner, and I see my boss's door. His door is closed.

And.

And I see a secretary there, super sweet, nice old lady. And she Says, dustin, would you please have a seat? And I go and take my seat, and she's trying to console me with her eyes and sheepishly grinning at me because she knows everything about what's going on. I know nothing about what's going on. Well, I go and I take my seat, and I sit there and I think about my life. If I get laid off right now, if I lose my job, everything that I work for that I was told to follow, did I just waste my life doing this? And then I realized, oh, my goodness, we just had our fourth child. If I can't feed my family, what does that make me As a father, as a husband, am I a failure? As a father, am I 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 are just 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's not necessarily crying, but you could tell her world has been devastated. Her world's been rocked. She passes by me. My boss says, dustin, would you please come in the office? So I get up and I go into his office, and I get laid off. And remember, this is the government. Nobody gets fired or laid off the government. But I did. And the reason why I tell the story is because of the two things that I realized. Well, I took that layoff notice and I go back to my desk and I sit down, and I realized the first thing was I need to get another job. I need to provide for my family. So I was really, really blessed, praise the Lord, to find another job in the same county, a different department, was not having the same money issues. So, check. Got that done. Then sitting in that chair, just getting laid off. The second thing that I realized what I need to make sure that this never, ever happens to me again. I need to make sure that nobody has the ability to take away my ability to feed my family. So right then and there, I realized, anytime anybody would ask me the question, well, Dustin, what do you do? You know, we always get that question. I replied, like everybody, I do my job. I do work for the local county government, doing it well. When we answer that way and I realize this, I'm projecting out to the world that my value that I put on myself comes from my job. No, my value doesn't come from my job. My value comes from my God and from myself and from My family. So right then and there, because I knew I needed to be an investor, but life got in the way. I said no longer would I ever let life get in the way. I started telling everybody I'm going to be or so I am an investor right then and there. And so it so happens that 100% of my money comes from my job. That that's now my part time job. I am a full time investor. So fast forward the story started. Buying rental property after rental property after rental property, each one making me $250 a month in passive income from every single property. Eventually I had 30 plus properties and I realized, my goodness, even though I'm making $75,000 a year here at this job, I'm losing money working here. So last part of the story, I went to my new boss, good boss, and I worked there for a few years and I said, boss, here's your layoff notice. Like I'm laying you up, you know. We laughed and he said, dustin, what are you going to do? I said, I don't have to do anything. I own real estate, it works for me and I make money passively. So the last part of the story, if you remember that hallway that got longer and longer and longer where my feet became like lead bricks. Well, I walked from my office to my car a mile and a half, every single way, both ways. I've done it a thousand times. This last time I felt like I was walking on clouds because I knew I would never ever need a job again. And everybody listen to this. You need to realize that you will never be paid what you are worth. What you are worth is worth so much more than anybody could ever pay you. And this is how you'll know your boss is paying you just enough to keep you working without quitting, but not so much money. It takes money out of their pocket. If they paid you what you were worth, they would go broke. And so instead of relying on somebody else, which I believe is now more risky to work for somebody else because they could take that job away. It's so much less risky where you put the value in yourself. Like for me, real estate investing, investing in apartment complexes or hotels or notes, but we are making our money passively, continually. And so what I decided to do was take the money and now invest that money. And with that I now have 40 plus hours of my life back that I now have five businesses because I have time. I love building businesses. And all these businesses make money. They're streams of income, but they go into my river of income, which is my real estate investing. So I'll pause the story because you probably got plenty of questions there.

Scott well, it's a great story and I love that because I think one of the biggest things that people realize is the more senior you get and the more you make, the bigger the target on your back is when layoffs come around, it's no longer about the best man. It's about do the numbers work and can we replace somebody who's been the company for 20 years as me, who's been in the industry for two months and save 50% of the salary and income? And it's the bottom line. I mean, that's the thing that I think so many people don't realize because they're like, I've had, I've heard people, oh, yeah, I work for the state, I work for the government. I'm safe, great benefits. No, it isn't. It's indentured slavehood, basically, in a lot of cases out there now, be wrong. We're not talking to those that are listening to the show that love what they do. You love what you do. It's a different story and you're doing it. It's totally fine. We're not telling you to do that For a lot of folks, People don't like what they do is what is the hope of owning a business? 95 of people want to own their own business. It means they want to control their own schedule, their own life and their own income. Right, Dustin?

Absolutely. And what I found is if you want to work your job, then that's totally fine. My goal was to be financially independent, so I had the option to not work my job. I didn't care for my job very much. In fact, I just got tired of it doing it for 15 plus years and I was like, I'm just done doing it. But it's the option that financial independence, financial freedom gives us. If we want to work, then absolutely, please work for a job. But here's the thing. Like, I love serving at my church. I love serving in general. So Now I have 40 plus hours of my life that I have my option to do whatever with that time that I want. And so now if it becomes an option to work, then you could literally dictate your life around that. But it's having that financial security, that financial independence that comes from being successfully unemployed and having passive income because I don't have to work one hour and make an app, make money. Like, I don't want to do that anymore. In fact, after Reading the book Rich dad, Poor dad, which opened my eyes, like, there's such a thing as passive income. What in the world? From that point forward, I thought, you know what, I want to quit my job in 10 years. So I was 27 years old when I read the book and I said, I'm going to quit my job in 10 years. Just like Robert Kiyosaki did. And I was blessed at 37 years old, had enough money coming in from all my properties. And then now, because I literally have 40 plus hours of my life back then, I have options to do whatever. If I want to go to work, I can. If I want to build a business, which is what I love doing, I build businesses and then hire awesome people, do the work. If I want to go serve in my church, that's the biggest thing about having passive income is you now have options with your time. If you, if you just want to spend it with your family, then do that.

Now thinking back to that time that you got laid off and that we're lucky enough to stay there, that's an eye opening. Not everybody always gets that second opportunity to, oh, I need to put some stuff into place. Right. How long did it take you from the time that you were first laid off to the time that you said, hey, C Leia, take this job and shove it? What was that time frame? And can we kind of dive into kind of maybe some of the things that you put into place or your plan of action to get you to where you wanted to go?

Yeah. So it took me about four to five years from getting laid off to actually getting to. Actually, I take that back. It's probably closer to six years because I remember it at the time I was ready to quit, but I didn't because I was getting financing on a few properties to pull the cash out. Banks don't like it when you quit your job, so I had to wait a little longer. So what happened was, so I started investing back in 2006 and the process to get to where I am now was not at all how I got started. So I'll quickly share how I started got, but then I'll also share with you the process to scale your business. Now anybody could just buy one rental property. Anybody can do that now to scale it 30 plus properties, 40, 50 properties and more. It takes work. It's a business you gotta build. Now this is what I was doing. So it was back in 2006, I was watching TV late at night. One of those late night infomercials came on the guru said, hey, we're coming to your town. We're gonna have a free seminar for you. And I said, that's awesome. I went to that. I'm so excited. And it was all hype, all sales pitch. And they said, now run to the back and go give us money. And I was like, I ran to the back and I gave the money. It was for a two day seminar. And this two day seminar was more hype and more sales pitch. Then they said, run to the back. It's $80,000 for this course. Another course is a hundred thousand dollars. I didn't have the money, so I took what little they taught me and I did what they said. And here's how I started. But my property manager started stealing from me within six months because I didn't do it right. I did what they were telling me to do. I didn't do it the right way. So I'll quickly tell you the wrong way, this and now, but quickly you'll forget that. Jump right in the right way. So the wrong way. This is what guru is saying. Find a property anywhere in the country, run the numbers, which means make sure your expenses are lower than your income from your rents. But they say, remember this is 2006. They said, just break even on that. Make sure you're getting appreciation because you're going to love appreciation. Well, we know what happened 2008. Everybody got it crushed. I didn't want that. I wanted passive income. So I don't invest for appreciation. In fact, all of these properties, I will literally give them to my children and as generational wealth and I'll teach them how to do this. So they say, don't worry about passive income, but you get 50 bucks, it'd be great, but you want appreciation. Then they said, spend thousands of dollars to buy the property, then spend thousands dollars to fix up the property and then find a tenant in there to pay you rent and then find a property manager. Well, in my opinion, that's just about backwards. I did that exact same thing and my property manager started stealing from me within six months. Now if I would have hung my head and say, well, this doesn't work. No, it's proof that it doesn't work. Well, I wouldn't be here today, but remember I said, I've always been entrepreneurial in my life. I've started many businesses. And then I said, you know, we approach this from a business mindset. If I were to start a business, would I just grab the first person off the street and have them manage my Property. No, I wouldn't. So this is what it looks like. And you'll hear me say this all the time, my podcast or my coaching, I say this all the time. We build the business first. And this does for anything. Note investing to real estate, to any business. We build the infrastructure first. So this is what it looks like. Let's say you're going to start a convenience store. Candy bars and soda machines and all good stuff. Well, you wouldn't sign a lease on a location, open the doors and set a box of candy bars on the ground. You wouldn't do that. You go out of business in two seconds. But what you would do is you would build the business first. You get the gondolas, the shelving units that all of the candy bars go on. You would get the countertops of cold storage, bank accounts, cash registers, insurance, employees, everything in the business before you buy any inventory. Once the business is built, then you buy the inventory and you put it into your business. Same thing with real estate investing. We build the entire business where we find the property managers, contract inspectors, plumbers, roofers, realtors and more. Everybody in the business. Once that's set, that's when we buy the property. And one quick last thing, because I know you probably have lots of questions. The reason why I was able to scale my business and not go bankrupt and not go broke is because I had the business and I had experts on the ground doing all the work for me and making sure that I did not do it wrong. How much worse is it if you would call up somebody and you say, hey, property manager, I own this house on, let's say, number one Happy Street. Will you manage it? They say, no, I won't manage it because I'll get shot there. Well, you no longer have an asset anymore. You have a liability. How much better would it be if you build a team? You called the experts and you say, hi, expert property manager, I'm looking to buy this property, number one Happy Street. And they say, no, I won't manage it because I'll get shot. Well, then you don't buy it. You don't go through all that hassle. Instead, what say you bought number two Happy street, whatever, a different address. And they say, you know what? I am an expert. They're going to say that. They're not going to necessarily those words. They're the experts. So they say, well, this is how much you could rent it for. This is the vacancy factor. This is the type of clientele you're going to get. This is how much I'm going to rent it for all that sort of stuff before you buy the property. So that is how I now scale the business because I stop doing the wrong way and then I figured out the right way, which is building the business, getting the experts then to buy the help me to buy the right properties and they make sure I don't screw up. And that's how I scaled to 10, 20, 30 plus properties.

Yeah, it's so true and so smart. Most people, they go to the local area, they take a class and like, oh, I can do that all myself. I can buy it, I can rehab it, I can list it for sale. I'll do the open houses myself or I'll go and find the, the tenants. Oh, then I'll screw up because I'm going to save money, not run a credit check. I mean you totally are setting yourself up for failure when you do not arrive. We do the same thing in the note business. I had get your servicing company, have an attorney, know where, what state you want to buy in, what markets you want to buy in before you just go buy anything willy nilly. Now I gotta ask you a question just because I know you call the Phoenix area home, correct? Is that where home is for you?

I do.

Were you buying rentals all in Phoenix or buying them all across the country? What was your market? Kind of.

Yeah. So I lived in California in 2006 at the time, and remember 2006, prices were skyrocketing, rents were still really low. So I knew I could not invest there. And so what I did was I went to Ohio of all places, found a property manager, found a realtor and put them together. And so far now after building the business, after my property manager stealing from me, I did it right, hired slowly find the right people. But Ohio, Texas and Arizona is where I actually know. Let me take that back. Also Missouri as well. I have, I love Monopoly and so I'm blessed now because you know, Monopoly try to get to hotels. Well, I'm blessed now where I invest in hotels as well, which is great. But Ohio, Texas and Arizona and Missouri at the moment right now, good stuff.

I was thinking like, man, if you bought, you were writing stuff in Phoenix during that 2008 to 2010, it was like a atomic bomb went up. I can remember when we were buying stuff, distressed debt, you know, 300,000 houses were being sold for like 30, 40 grand from the bank in a lot of cases. So it's good to know your markets. I mean I love, definitely love Ohio. I think the Buckeye State is one of the most undervalued markets because rents are higher compared to the cost of real estate in a lot of cases. And of course Arizona, Texas are very landlord friendly states as well too. For the most part.

That's key. Landlord friendly, good point.

Exactly. Now, when you teach people how to do this as well, obviously talk about putting together or looking at where you want to get to. We've talked about putting the team together, but most people have some sort of income goal or they need to replace their income. What are some of the things that you teach people or share with them that they need to be putting in place to reach those goals? Is it budgeting their time frame, trimming their fats off a little bit, or adding more time to their work schedule? What's some of the things that you like to teach people out there to achieve success maybe faster than they expected?

Yeah. So we'll start with the money aspect and then we'll also change my mindset. So the money aspect for me, I asked my wife, how much money do I need to bring in from my properties to cover expenses. I remember the number, plain as day. $4,200. You know, mortgage, food, insurance, like all that good stuff. I said, okay, forty two hundred dollars. Then I realized if I buy one rental property, that made me two hundred and fifty dollars a month in passive income, like literally, I don't work, I don't do anything. In fact, a lot of people have read and heard of the four hour work week. It's a book, good book and all, but the premise is change your life. So where you can only have to work four hours a week. Well, my opinion, working four hours a week is for suckers. I don't want to work four hours a week. I don't even want to work four hours a month. I maybe work 30 minutes a month on all my properties because I have the business systems, procedures and processes in place. Now getting back to the numbers. So If I bought one property at $250 a month in passive income, that's $3,000 a year without working. Remember, I hire experts, they do all the work. 10 properties is $2,500 every single month. $30,000 a year without working. 20 properties is $5,000 a month, $60,000 a year, just keep multiplying from there. And remember, this is the minimum. I don't buy a property unless I make a minimum of $250 a month in passive income. That's some. Back in 2006, 7, 8, and all the Way up through everything, I make more, I make double, if not triple that amount. Because over time, market rates go up, rents go up, appreciation. Like there's so many great things about properties. Now with my students, we help them to understand, okay, if your goal is become successfully unemployed or successfully unemployable, if that's your goal, we need to have that number. And we also need you to have you obviously get out of debt. That's going to keep digging you in a hole, which is not good. Increase your income by, let's say, trying to get a raise or getting a side hustle, which I love doing side hustles. In fact, that's how I scale my business so much faster. I will also say I was figuring this out on my own back when I first started. There weren't any podcasts on this. There was very few coaches. In fact, the coaches were charging a hundred thousand dollars. I said, that's just ridiculous. Now days, there's so many other great things. Like my students, now they're quitting their job in two and three years because I've literally helped them to fast track it. Just like you, Scott. Like, we have done it before. We've know all the pitfalls, we know the landmines, know how to jump over the hurdles. And with that, we help you to fast track the process. And so you're either going to pay with your time or your money. I'd much rather pay with my money because time is the one commodity you can never make more of, you can never earn more of, you never get any more of. If you can pay with your time and fast track it, my goodness, like, how much better would it be if you could quit your job in 3 years as opposed to 40 you years? So all that to say, what I do with my students is help them to get financially stable, investing and then scaling their business. That's the big thing I love. Like if you already, if somebody already has, let's say five properties and they're like, man, how do I get to 30? Well, it's actually so much easier than you think. And that's something I love to show everybody how to do.

Yeah, it is. Once you've closed on that first one, you've learned a lot from it. But if you have the teams, your time to close on a property and the probability is going to exponentially grow over time because you're not the one hand to manage everything. Because we all know that's why I always say it's just not roi, it's rot. You've got to get a good return on time versus just return on investment. Because yeah, you can make some a ton of money, but if you average it out, what you spend on, you're making less than what you'd be making at McDonald's. Flipping burgers. You didn't do anything good there. You lost money, really, for the most part. One of the things, how are you buying your properties? Are you buying off the mls? Are you doing subject to deals with interest rates being at where they're at? I'm assuming you're not buying traditionally and getting bank financing, a lot of these stuff. So what are some of your favorite ways to buy real estate in those markets?

So actually, I'll add to it. There are two things that are the most popular. My podcast to YouTube channel. Like the most popular videos and podcast episodes are how to find properties and how to fund properties. Now, I will say that's what people want. What they need is how to manage and how to continually grow the business. But let's go and answer that because that's literally what I always ask, because I know that's where our audience goes now. First, how to find properties and fund properties. There are so many ways to find properties and fund properties. Think of it like a tool belt. You have a tool belt with a bunch of tools all over you if you're working around the house. Well, this tool belt is filled with other people, other ways, other processes to actively do this. Let's just start with finding properties. I use, obviously, realtors, the mls. Those are great. I also love using wholesalers. I do subject to deals. I do direct mail, I do phone calls. I do talk to wholesalers where they send me deals. Other investors, even title companies, send me deals. Property managers, like, I have so many people, so many ways to get properties that deals are not a problem. In fact, a lot of my students, when they first get started, like Dustin, I can't find any deals. I'm just looking on the mls. I'm like, well, there's more things. We have to utilize these tools that we have in our tool belt to get these properties or get these deals in front of us. So that's one. So there's lots of way I could definitely show everybody how to do that. The second thing is how to finance the property. Same thing. It's a bunch of tools in your tool belt. Now I get students to say, dustin, I have, let's say $40,000 or $20,000, whatever, this much money, should I use it to get financing? Or like as a down Payment or should I use it to get another property somehow other way, like with private money. Or they always use these ors. Like should I use this or this or this? My opinion is no, don't get that out of your brain. It should be more of an and. Because let's say. Well, actually, I'll tell you this. I've literally done 15 different ways to get financing for my properties. In fact, one of my most popular YouTube channel videos is the 15 different ways to get financing. I'll quickly go through just a small list. I'm off the tip of my head. So obviously all cash. And you could refinance, pull the cash out, buy another property. Again, private money, hard money, signature loans. You can just go into a bank and say, give me an unsecured line of credit. They say, great. Home equity, line of credits, home equity refinance. Let's see, portfolio loans, commercial loans. I've literally done all these. And here's one, even a very advanced strategy. I've even used a credit card to cash out and then buy a house. I literally did that. And because I know my business, I knew I was going to make money every single month. Even with those payments, I knew without a shadow of doubt I'd make money. But here's the thing. All these 14, 15 different ways to actively do the financing, they're all creative ways of piecing it together. Let's say you need what you're buying a property. You had a bunch of people send you deals. You eventually boil down to one great, well, I need financing whatever the deal looks like. Let's say you take private money and your home equity line of credit and you also get a mortgage and you might need like some private money, like some family member. These are creative financing. You're piecing all these together, like four different tools to get this one job done. And it's not nearly as hard as you think. We just need to learn how to implement it. And here's the fun thing. So, Scott, you and I in our businesses, we know exactly what to do and we can share with our students, everybody options on how to do this. Like going to show you all the ways to get this done. You pick what's the best for your risk tolerances, your goal setting and all that sort of stuff. With that, we give them the fast track version. If you're going to go this route, this is what's going to happen because we've already done it. And so everybody, if you have done something before, it makes it easier for you because it's like, oh, I've already done this. And what's fun with all my students that I coach, I have hundreds, if not thousands of students now that I coach. When they buy the first property, it takes a good while, maybe one or two months of working with me. At the most, two months. But the second one comes so much faster. Like, literally like a week or two weeks later. In fact, one of my students, he's been trying for, like, five years to invest, started working with me, and then within a month and a half now has six properties and he's closing on more. Because once you have the business built, it's a system. You just got to keep moving forward. Does that answer your question?

Totally answers the question. You definitely have to have an open mindset, because so many people right at Satan, it's almost drilled in their heads working for a job that you can only do this. You can't do this, or just stick to your lane. You can't do this. So it's a. It's a process of breaking those shackles to have that open mindset that there are so many different opportunities, ways to find deals, so many different opportunities to raise capital or to fund a deal. And of course, what you don't know, you don't know. But you need somebody there to guide you along that process, to open up those strategies or those solutions to your issues that you're dealing with in buying or selling or financing, right?

Absolutely. And those solutions just like, let's say you go to college now. I think college, in fact, I think it's a waste of money. Personally. My kids, I'm not going to pay for them to go to college. I literally have a YouTube video where I blew up my college degree. I got some tannerite, Got literally gasoline on top. Because tannerite, just by itself, if you were just looking at it from a video, it doesn't look very impressive. But the fireball that came that blowing up my degree because I want to prove to my kids said, I will literally, I found my degree. I was like, I will literally never use this ever again. I don't need it at all. I blew it up now with that, what I realized that college is good for some people. Like, I'm not knocking it in general, but like, if you're a doctor, engineer, like, if you need it, absolutely. But it's not necessary now for me, with getting the idea of now, I'm making now passive income. I'm now trying to make my money work for me, my assets work for me, whatever it might be. And Even utilizing other people's time. I love the return on time. So when I create a business, I'll give you an example of another business I created. You mentioned a little bit earlier is the Real Estate Wealth Builders Conference. I have a conference, I want it to be all about community, the opposite of those sales pitch, you know, run to the back. In fact, you'll never see that. And if you do, I'm going to kick somebody's butt if somebody ever does it, because it's my business. But I created this business all about community, all about investors helping each other, 50 plus of my friends getting together, coach. But with that, I hire people to actively run that business. So now every business that I create is now all about passive income, making sure that I am actively making sure that it's running, but other people are doing the work. But if we have that perspective now of how do we then take our time and best utilize our time to make passive income working one time, get paid over and over again. I absolutely love being able to do that. So I think, especially with investing in notes, in fact, I'd love to have you on my show. We definitely need to get that set up to where you share about notes because it's all just another way to make passive income to free us up to have more options. And so like with our students, giving them all these options and fast tracking them to success is by far the best thing. Because if you're going to pay for college, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars might as well pay for a coach that's literally done it. It's going to hold your hand through the entire way and then you get success. Instead of a piece of paper that says, hey, you accomplished going four years plus years of giving somebody money and sitting through what they told you to do.

Yeah. Go through four to five years of school and then go to the workforce and try to find something that's not going to pay you enough to pay for your student loans in a lot of cases. I mean, it's just we got people with MBAs here in Austin, Texas that are waiting tables because they can't find anything. So it's definitely, I mean, the whole education system needs to be revamped. It's definitely distressed in a lot of ways, but we'll talk about that later on. That's a whole different rabbit hole right down there for you. I wanted to ask you when you were talking with your wife, because a lot of folks out there, they have spouses that are maybe pseudo interested. They like the idea. But A lot of times the spouse is maybe not supportive. You know, how supportive was your wife when you started off with. And I guarantee she's 100 on board now. But did you deal with any struggles in that facet of having to get your wife on board? Explain what you were trying to do, trying to accomplish?

Absolutely. In fact, her mom was a stay at home mom, her dad was a school teacher. So they were the most risk adverse people ever. And so after we got married, we were married for like six months. And I said, hey, honey, I read the book Rich dad, poor dad went to that seminar, said, honey, can I take the money that you saved? Because I was never taught to save. I was taught not to go into debt, never taught to save. Can I take all the money that you saved? I think it was like $15,000 that you saved your entire time. And now we're married. Can I take the money, invest in real estate. Oh my goodness, those are fighting words. So it was really tough trying to help her to realize that we're going to make money. Now what's really interesting, because I love this question, I had so many students or people listen to podcast, they would ask me the question, dustin, how do you get your spouse involved? And so what I literally did, I interviewed my wife because I put on my show, like the interview is so successful because it just really helps two dynamics of people who, one's more risk averse, one's more aggressive, and we balance each other out, we help each other. But what I had to do with my wife was to actually prove to her. Not prove, like, I need to get her approval, but I need to show her that this is actually possible. She wants to make sure nothing's going to get lost. And so I literally walked her through the process, how we're going to manage it, how we're going to make money, all that sort of stuff. But getting your spouse on board is not that easy if you don't know what you're doing. Now a lot of my students, what's actually really fun, I'll have a lot of students, they'll say, hey, Dustin, like I was able to convince my wife or my husband or my spouse or whatever, I was able to convince my spouse because I said, I have a coach that's literally going to show me how to do it, to not do it wrong. And he or she, they listen to the episodes and they get it. Now, as long as they now have you that they're or, sorry, I have you to help me, then I can invest. I'm like great. That's what. Because that's why I put out that episode, because I got that question so many times. But what it really comes down to is it's the fear of unknown. And that's not just for our spouses, but even for ourselves. And I get a lot of people that have they call analysis paralysis too many options or too many deals. They just don't. They're in their head. Me being a third party, like literally done it before, number one, but a third party saying I'm objectively looking at at it. So like outside of the whole entire process of looking at these deals, I can basically bring my expertise as well as my fresh perspective and say this was good, this is bad, or this is what I would do, this is what I would not do. But getting somebody on board with you, it's really helping to get the fear of the unknown out of the way. And that's honestly through education. That's why you and I both have our podcast. My podcast, the Master Passive Income Podcast. I think we've been doing our podcast just as long, which is fantastic. I love meeting other great podcasters that's been doing as long as I have. And with my podcast, it's all about just giving and just helping people to realize that everyday people, regular everyday people, that's like your next door neighbor can do this. In fact, I try to share, but with people like, I'm just your next door neighbor, just think that I've done this. I'm not driving these fancy cars. I'm not flying in these amazing planes and everything. In fact, I'll say this, I live in Arizona. I moved from California Solar house moved to Arizona to be closer to my wife's family. Well, we had a rental property here. It's 1250 square feet. Well, they were moving out. I said, well that's quickly, let's just move into there. We're still living, it's been like a few years now. We're still living here. We're going to buy something as soon as something happens with the prices, which will eventually come down in my opinion. But, but all that to say I'm a regular everyday person. Most people would not down my street, they have no clue. You know, I'm fairly wealthy and I don't want to be where I'm flaunting it anyways. All that to say getting somebody else to actually get into investing, either with you private money lender or your dad saying, hey, I want you to invest with me. It's getting that fear of the Unknown out of the way and proving that it's absolutely possible. And you and I are obviously success stories and, well, as all of our students.

Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I think a lot of it too is I like to ask, well, what have you done or what have you not done in the past that's got your wife or spouse thinking that? Because I often find that people that start something, then they quit or they start something quit or they don't, aren't truly invested in that strategy. So they give up before any marketing or any fruition of the seeds that they're planting has grown. You got to give things time. We live in such a instant gratification, no patient society. Now you've got to realize, hey, this is not a get rich quick, this is a build wealth over time strategy. If you're looking for get rich quick, go scratch the lottery tickets, the idiot taxes, I like to say, but if you want to build wealth, this is going to take time. You've got a coach, somebody who's been there, is going to hold your hand, be that safety net and you've got a team where you're not the only guy going out there and rehab. Because so many people, especially I mean like raising capital to talk with family. Our family members and friends think of us as Scott the IT guy or Dustin the banker, or they know what we've done. They identify us. They don't understand that, hey, no, we're evolving. We're growing into something different than what we've been before and then going there. And I also like to say the first check again should be a shut up check to your spouse. The first profit you give, give it to the spouse, say, hey honey, I made this. Go, go have a date to spa, go play golf. Just shut up about, complain about things. Right.

You know what's funny? That first property, it took me so much effort and time to get my spouse on board, my wife on board. And the second property didn't take as much, but I still had to really pencil everything out by the time I get to my 30 plus properties. Actually, I came home one day and I said, hey, honey, I just bought three single family homes in a duplex. And she goes, okay, good, because she knows the business works because I proven it out.

Right? Exactly. Now let's talk a little about the conference that you put on Real Estate Wealth Builders Conference. How long has that been going on? And talk about you shared a little bit beforehand. But I want you to share with our audience kind of the passion behind that yeah.

So I love investing in real estate and I love connecting with people, I love meeting people. Now you and I go to a conference called the Financial or fincon, the financial content creators conference, where we meet a lot of people that are great people in its community. And so I've been going there since 2017. I go every single year. It's a reunion every single time. It's so much fun. And my business grows. And then I thought, you know what, I've got a lot of people in my audience. From my coaching students to my podcast YouTube channel, like social media, I've got a lot of people in the audience. I'd love to connect them, but I did not want those. And I'll be completely honest, a lot of conferences you go to right now that are in real estate investing, it's literally a sales pitch. And they say, now run to the back and go spend money. I hate that. I didn't want that. And I said, maybe I can create a conference that's the opposite of that, in fact, like a fincon, which fincon is all about content creator, like creators coming together, but people coming together. I said, I want to create something for investors, bringing investors together, all about helping each other, all about building a community of investors. So what I did was actually my students were asking, you know, where we get on zoom calls and we're all friends online. They said, well, we want to meet up. I said, that's a good idea, but let me see if I could do something a little better. So calling a lot of my friends who have their own YouTube channels, you know, influencers, they have their own students and everything. I started calling all of them and said, hey, this is my vision. We all want meetups for our people, but it's so much work to put those on. How about I do all the work, we bring all of our audiences together, meet with everybody and then we have a fantastic type party together. So fast forward, it's called the Real Estate Wealth Builders Conference, three day conference, where it's all about helping people to invest and connecting with these experts. We have 50 plus experts, investors that are literally, we're all bringing our audiences together. And with that, the goal is to help you, the individual person, to become a better investor to scale your business. If you haven't even started, we're going to show you how to do it. If you're wanting to scale, we have the right people for you that are basically not selling. But if you want to work with us, please go right ahead. We're there for you. So that's the vision. And now we've added. This will be the third year this year, so 2024, it's going to be in March 14th through the 16th and 2024 in St. Louis. Super pumped about this location. So central to everybody, people flying from all over the country.

It's a great location. I mean, I've been down St. Louis, spent a lot of time there. The. That's a great location. And I was talking to somebody else that you've got to do the ghost tour that goes around there too, because there's a nice.

Totally.

Because it's such an old historic building. But it's a beautiful hotel, beautiful location, great conference center. Yeah, sorry, I just had to share that with you. I'm excited about your event, so.

Oh, absolutely. And the hotel that we're at, I picked this one because, you know, in March there might be hopefully some spring breaks and Easter vacations and stuff. Well, I picked a. It's like a mini theme park because it was an old like train station, Grand Central Station type thing and they Hilton refurbished it into a hotel and theme park. So I'm bringing my family, everybody's bringing their families. But it's all about like my vision was just creating a community, not necessarily a conference. A conference is great. That's where we meet and get together. But all year long everybody's working together and every year everybody comes back. It's like a reunion. Coming back together, seeing how you've been successful, talking to other people. Oh, this is working for you. Oh, maybe I can implement that into my business. And then at the same time, we invest in all types of asset classes. So I invest personally. My bread and butter is residential, four units and below. Love those. I do those in my sleep with that. I also wanted to invest in, let's say hotels or let's. Mobile home parks or storage units, facilities or airbnbs. I, I wanted to have all these ways to invest and I want to bring the experts together and expose my audience, expose all the attendees to all these great ways to invest in real estate. And these are genuine people. In fact, there are a lot of people that actually want to speak at my conference, but it's my conference. I'm guarding the community from takers, from people that in fact, somebody asked me recently, oh, I want to come speak and I'll get this out of it. And I could tell it was all about them. I was like, I didn't invite them, number one. I didn't tell them reason why. But the big reason for Me is I want people who are just givers. The reason why I do this, in fact, I love so I have membership where I coach lots of people how to invest in real estate. At the end of each coaching call, they thank me. They literally say, thank you so much for spending the time to coach us how to do this. They literally even say this. We're. Even though we're paying you money, you're giving us your time. You don't have to be doing this. We really, really appreciate that. And I love that because my passion now is so I make my money through real estate investing. All of the streams of income going to my real estate investing, which is. I love that. But my passion now is no longer to quit my job. My first goal was to quit my job. Now my second goal actually an immediate, I made a goal to make a million dollars a year in all my businesses. And I'll be completely honest, Scott, I was so bored. It was a deterrent. Like it was, I'm not driven by money. And I was like, ah, I don't really care about this goal. But now I changed my goal to be focused on people. Now it's to help 1 million people to invest in real estate or become financially independent. And my podcast, due to the conference, to my coaching, all this is just iteration of my way to reach out to many, many people, showing them how to invest in real estate. Just like coming on the show, I just literally just want to give all this stuff away because I feel fulfilled in my life when my students invest, when they buy their property or quit their job or, or somebody comes to the conference, Rubecon, or the Real Estate Wealth Brothers conference, and they connect with somebody and they start investing. I feel fulfilled in my life because now I'm serving other people.

Well, I totally echo that. I think the most successful people in today's real estate educational stuff have that in mind. They want to help people. There's this old guard of what's in it for them, not what's in it for the students, but now in today's world, with podcasts and YouTube channels, there's a wealth of information out there. It's not so much about, oh, what's in it for me? You got to keep in mind what's in it for your clients. If you have a certain leadership mindset, first and foremost, you'll get taken care of because you're helping people. And as we all know, every rise up to the top, all boats rise, increase with rising tides out there. And so that's the you Know valuable thing. Did a little research before I reached out to you guys and stuff like that. I was like, this is a guy who's got a big passion and a big heart, Dustin. Big heart hire. You got to have that there for. You're tagged there for. But that's the important thing. And I agree. The same thing. When you bring people together that are like minded, it's about building communities, building a network. Because you have so many folks all across the country that may be by themselves, they don't have that, those warm connections to reach out to. I think we all get bogged down by what's going on in society, negativity and news. Having a community, something you can reach out to that are like minded, who can help you get over those, help you get through those narrow times or help you even find deals or funny deals. I'm sure you've got a million folks that are basically working together on deals or funding each other deals or bird talking and sharing resources at these events that you're putting on, correct?

Absolutely. And that's the goal, is to create a community. It's like everybody network together. We have so many different events. Like party wise, like let's just network. Let's just help each other out and also grow in mindset too. So we have keynotes that are all about mindset and growth and we have breakouts, 50 plus breakouts that you pick and choose what you want to go to. And these breakouts are all about real estate investing. So we want to help you as a person to be whole as well as an investor to be whole and then get around the exact same people that you need to be around. And it's such a blessing to have a community that I can reach out to. Like as an investor, I'm like, oh man, I know this person. Oh wow. There's just. Even though they're an attendee, I could reach out to them because we can help each other out.

Exactly. It's so key these days. It's great. Like minds think alike there brother.

Absolutely.

The best way for folks to learn more is it Rewind be con.com like real estate wealth builders rewb.com re type rewb con.com is the website for the event. It's March 14th, 15th and 16th. That's in St. Louis right around spring break for you guys out there. Got discounted tickets here right now. Go to the website, check it out, get RSVP for it. It's a great event to circle your calendar, especially the first quarter of the Year. So many people want to do things in January and February. Get out there if you want to do some bigger things this year. This is a great event to look at, attending and expanding your community exponentially for your warm market and stuff like that.

Oh, and I love. I want your audience to come and how about I give them 10 off just because they listen to your podcast? So what I could do, if everybody use the promo code podcast, just use that promo code. I'll know you came from Scott's podcast. And I just want to help people. But yeah, R E W-B C-O-N.com you can definitely go. We want to be there. It's just a community. And if you don't mind, I could also share with everybody a free course that I just teach how to do all this investing. Is that okay?

That's totally right. Yeah, go right ahead.

Awesome. Yeah. So another way that you can learn how to invest in real estate, literally expand on everything. I have people that just from getting this free course, they invest in real estate. If you text the word rental, R E N T A L rental, the 33 7. Super simple rental. The 3377 7. I'll literally give you this course, show you how to find an area anywhere in the country to invest, how to build the business, how to scale the business to quit your job. You can even go to master passiveincome.com forward/free course. Masterpassiveincome.com forward/free course. You can even find me on my podcast, the Master Passive Income podcast. And I actually like getting DMS on Instagram. So if you want to reach out to me on Instagram, the Dustin Heiner. T H E Dustin Heiner. And no, Scott, I'm not that arrogant to come up with the Dustin Heiner. It's the only handle I can come up with, but the Dustin Heiner on Instagram. But it's so fantastic. Just literally helping people. Just like you and your show. But I really appreciate you having me on.

It's been great. We could talk for hours about this and I think people would have to laugh because you and I both get excited and our volume goes up and you can tell somebody's passionate about something when they talk fast, excited about stuff. That you really see that true leadership and that true servant mindset shine through when you want to help people and making things happen. That's. That's what we need more of in the world today. Definitely in real estate today. So thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for sharing your successfully unemployable unemployed story with us and your passion for helping people, Dustin.

Thanks, Scott. I appreciate you, man.

All right, guys and gals, that's going to wrap it up for this episode. Check out the event, check out Dustin's podcast. We'll put all those links in the description there, especially do the free course for you as well to take advantage of it. Hopefully we'll see you in St. Louis, but make sure you use the code podcast to get your extra 10% off. That was really nice that Dustin do for us. But go out, take some action. Ladies and gentlemen, learning is great, but if you don't take action, you're never going to grow and never accomplish your goals that you want to exceed. And then when you do, that's when we'll see at the top.