How to be Successfully Unemployed Through Rental Properties

0:03Dustin welcome to living off rentals thanks for having me on Kirby I really appreciate you having me on I love just sharing with people how man rental properties have literally just changed my life for the better so I just yeah thank you so much for having the show absolutely no it's it's an honor to have you here and just to provide a little bit of background for the listeners today so Dustin is the host of two very successful podcasts Master passive income and successfully unemployed he's also the author of several books how to quit your job with rental properties how to quit your job with passive income and successfully unemployed so I'm kind of noticing a trend that really should resonate with with my audience here so and you've got a very powerful story for how you kind of got into this so

0:51I'd love to you know hear a little bit about that and and kind of you know what the Genesis of you know this this kind of lifechanging Lifestyle was when and what kind of brought you into it yeah so when I was 37 years old I was blessed to be able to quit my job but I hadn't grown up always thinking that I would ever actually do that I was always taught just like most people we go to school and we're taught okay you go to school then you go to college and you get a job you get a career and you eventually retire when you're old and then you live the rest of your life on your retirement I was always taught that and so I was always working towards that but at the same time I was always entrepreneurial so growing up was really entrepreneurial I had a newspaper delivery I'm basically a

1:40Paper boy so I had my bicycle with bags and I grabbed the newspapers and throw and bang the garage doors with the the newspaper and everything like that so I did that I also had a graphic and website design company I also had a skateboard manufacturing business I even had a pizzeria and a convenience store and other businesses because I was always entrepreneurial but I didn't know that there was such a thing as passive income and then I started I bought one rental property and I was like Yay this is great like I don't do anything I still make money that's great I should get more but I kind of put it off so from there I was still working a regular 9i job and so I gotta tell you this one quick story that really just catapulted me into really making sure that I'm going to do this business real estate investing business and so when I was working my job I was working for the County government in California for one of the counties there and

2:28Regular 95 job sat down at the desk every single day I was doing it work and so my wife and I started having kids after we got married and then after we had our fourth child I went on to paternity leave and so we went I went on paternity leave that's where the dad stays home with the mom and bonds with the baby changes poopy diapers all that good stuff and then after I get back that same week on a Friday at 3:30 in the afternoon on that Friday I get a call from my bosses bosses bosses secretary like the top dog and she calls me and says hey Dustin would you please come to the boss's office and I said sure then I hung up the phone and I stopped there for a second I sat there in my chair I realized so I started thinking why would they be calling me to their his office like this isn't normal this is weird like what could they be calling you back after

3:18You would think they would have done that Monday or Tuesday but no it wasn't so as I'm sitting there I'm thinking about one or two months prior that there had been some rumors or some Rumblings going on that there potentially could be layoffs in the county because the whole County was getting low on money and I immediately shook that off I like no way I have so much seniority I've been here for I 13 14 years now I get raises all the time I have plenty of seniority so I shook it off and I got up and started walking down the hall now Kirby as I started walking out of the hall each step felt like they turned my feet into lead bricks and the hallway even though it was short seemed like it got longer and longer every single step that I took because the weight of Poss POS L losing my job was really Weighing on me like like the world was on my shoulders and as I get

4:06Past the hallway I turn the corner and I see my B my boss's door is closed I see his secretary she's looking at me and sheepishly she says Dustin would you please have a seat and I say sure and I go have a seat and she's consoling me with her eyes and kind of just being as polite as she can because she knows everything that's going on I know nothing about what's going on and as I'm sitting there I'm thinking about all this time building up this potential quote unquote career here working at the county and then started thinking if that gots taken out gets taken away from me what does that take or mean for all the my life that I just spent working here then I started thinking about oh my goodness I got my wife and my four kids if I can't feed my family does that make me a failure as a father does that make me a failure as a husband

4:55Failure as a man providing for his family well as I'm sitting there Kirby I'm noticeably like really the weight is starting to come on my shoulders even more much more so my forehead's getting all sweaty my hands are getting all clammy and then the door to my boss's office opens up and out walks a cooworker a lady with a piece of paper in her hands and she's noticeably distraught noticeably upset she's not necessarily crying but you could tell her world has absolutely been rocked and as she passes by me my boss says Dustin would you please come into my office so I get up I go office and I get laid off and remember this is the government nobody gets fired or laid off from the government but I did and so I start walking back to my office and I sit down at my desk I got two

5:43Weeks left and I realize two things right then and there Kirby number one I need to get another job I need to be able to provide for my family I don't have enough money to be able to do that and so I was blessed praise the Lord to be able to find another job in the same county in a different department the Sheriff's Office work in it there blessed be able to work there work there for another I don't know five six seven years and so work there did great then the second thing sitting there in my desk I realized that I needed to make sure this never ever happened to me again and that I made sure nobody had the power to do this to me again so right then and there I realized that I needed to make sure that my value was no longer in my job see now what anybody would ever ask me and everybody gets to ask this question what do you do and so I would always answer the question well I work for the county I do it work but

6:32What they're really asking you is what value do you put on yourself now I was putting it on my job and I know most people do that but what you and everybody needs to listen or watch this that we need to realize our value is not in our jobs our value is in ourselves mine comes from my God my family and myself and so from right that then and there sitting in my chair I said no longer will I ever say that I work for whatever my job I'm going to say I am an investor because I knew that's what I needed to do I just didn't realize or didn't think that I could do it necessarily I didn't have the Catapult the Catalyst to get me there when I got laid off that catapulted me into realizing my value is so much more than anybody could ever pay me and so everybody listen is you need to realize this your value is so much more than anybody could ever pay you and the reason why you could know this is

7:20They're paying you just enough to keep you working without quitting but not so much that's taking money out of their pocket you realize this because the reason why it's called a job is it's a j o it's an acronym for just over broke we're always living just over broke now I'll round out the story to share this I started working with the another County department blessed really really well over there started buying property after property after a property telling everybody as I was an investor after 20 30 properties I realized oh my goodness even though I'm making $75,000 a year here I'm losing money and so I went into my boss my new boss's office great boss and everything I handed him a two weeks notice layoff notice jokingly I just said boss I'm done I don't need to work here anymore he says Dustin what are you gonna do and I said I'm not going to do anything I got rental

8:09Properties I literally don't need to work and as I was walking away from my last time my job and I work in downtown Fresno it's about a mile and a half walk to get to my car because I don't want to pay for parking I've walked this walk a thousand times but if you contrast this walk from the short hallway that I walked when I got laid off where I had Le bricks for feet this walk that my last walk to my car even though i' done a thousand times I felt like I was walking on clouds because I knew I would never ever need a job again and that's all because I built my business in real estate investing and now had so many properties where I literally had all of my expenses accounted for and they had enough money to save for investing enough money for traveling enough money for everything and then I kept building my business from there so you probably got a lot of questions so

8:57I'll I'll pause that story there I do have a lot of questions actually it's a great story and what a what a powerful point or I guess transformational point in your life where where you're sitting there you know and you're losing your livelihood knowing that you have kids at home I mean I think a lot of people kind of find themselves in that position or dread you know Finding themselves in that position and so at that point you made a decision that you're going to redefine who you are your identity and then you're also not going to be reliant on a 9 to5 anymore luckily you're able to find a a new job to bridge the gap but I guess a couple questions out of that so what were the next steps once you decided that

9:46You were going to become no longer be reliant on on the ninet to-5 I think a lot of people have that realization but they don't know where to go from there and then also further down the road how did you decide when it was time to cut the cord because that's another area where I get a lot of conflicting information some people cut it too soon and you know they they have to go back to work and they're it's it's a problem for them other people have a small fortune that they've built and they're still like petrified to to leave their nine to-5 so if you can kind of answer both of those I guess I guess it's two questions at once so I will definitely I love those are those are terrific questions and I'll answer the F the last one first and if I forget the first one remind me but the the last one is so I

10:34Waited until I literally was like oh my goodness what am I still doing here like I can't believe I'm that I got I an extra like two years because it's hard to leave that W2 job you think it's secure because it comes every two weeks or so but like my life shows it's not secure it's it literally be taken away at any time but even though I was like oh man it's is hard but here's what I did I wanted to make sure that I had all of my expenses covered I wanted to make sure everything was covered because I had a wife and four kids I couldn't just up and leave but I will say though that the sooner you leave not saying you should not saying anybody should jump ship or leave any anytime sooner but here's my thought I should have left much sooner here's the reason why you're spending let's say 40 50 60 hours a week building

11:23Up somebody else's either business or organization or whatever you can use that much time to make money to provide for your family if you just need to figure out how to make your mortgage payments and buy for food and all that sort of stuff you there's a lot of ways to do it that's why I have successfully unemployed that podcast that I have it's just a passion project of mine I interview great people who have many different ways side hustles to writing books or whatever to make money to provide for themselves and their family but not work a job and so there are so many ways to do it so if you can quit sooner rather than later I would say you would look back and think man I wish I would have quit sooner I look back now and say man I wish I would have quit a year maybe two years sooner but here's one thing that I did as an investor I knew that I needed to get a mortgage so I had I had a bunch of properties and I was bundling four properties together into one loan

12:11And if you think about way Banks think they don't like it when you quit your job in the middle of getting a loan and so I was like oh man I gotta I gotta stay here another six months to get make sure I get this mortgage all right I did that so I literally stayed another six months working even though I I should I would have quit but I needed that mortgage so that's another thing that went through my mind as an investor I wanted to make sure that I was getting the financing that I need so once you quit it usually takes about one or two years for your income from your properties to really show on your taxes to be able to get loans in the future because all banks really care about is that they make their money back and they look at your history to prove that you can pay that money back so if you can prove that you can pay that money back you can I can get loans now I plus I get business loans now so I don't even really worry about my personal loans now all that to say when you're going to be quitting your job my suggestion

13:00If you're a real estate investor get all of your financing done as best as you can foreseeable before you quit so that's that's the answer to your second party question what was your first question I think I forgot it already it so the the first question is is what the the point or what I guess what were the steps you took once you had that realization that I'm no longer going to rely on a 9 to5 and I'm going to build my own life what were the next steps you took to start to to do that because I know it's a it can be a cumbersome process yeah so here's the first thing well I'm GNA tell you how I did it and this is the wrong way so I'll quickly give you the broad overview of how I invest in real estate the wrong way and then you won't do this so back in 2006 is when I first started investing and

13:48The way that I invest in real estate is I started investing in well I lived in California but I realized oh my goodness I could not buy if you remember 2006 California prices were skyrocketing rents were low so I knew if I bought in California I would lose money I would not make money in passive income so I flew to Ohio of all places found a a realtor and a property manager put them together and I said hey let's let's have you manage the property because they were both had a pulse and they said they could do it turns out she the my property manager started stealing from me in like six months it was horrible and if I would have given up there I would not be where I am today but I knew this business could work and should work and absolutely would work if I did it right now that's the wrong way that I did I just found two people and said they were but the right way is to build the business first now this is what I do in every new area

14:37Of the country that I invest I invest in Texas Ohio and Arizona now I have students that literally invest all over the country as well but we built the business first so when you ask what are the steps to actually quit that n9i number one we need to build the business but before I get into building business this is how we make sure that we have enough money to quit the job I knew that if I bought one property that made me $250 a month that would be $3,000 a year in passive income that's without working all of us would think oh man $3,000 extra a year that would be fantastic now if you had 10 properties that made you $250 a month that's $2,500 a month in passive income that's $30,000 a year 20 properties that's $5,000 a month $60,000 a years without working you just

15:25Keep doing the math you just keep growing but that's the minimum I have some properties are making me five six s $800 a month in passive income that's money making without working I did the work one time building the business buy the property and now it works for me without working and if you see the in the video in the background of my kids I'm going to give these properties to my kids I'm going to teach them how to do this as well so that was my idea and we could definitely get into build the business but I'll I'll pause I'll pause everything I'm sharing to say that that's how I did it I Knew by buy one property equals x by buy 10 properties equals this and 20 properties equal this just knew I needed to scale the business got it yeah no that makes sense that makes sense I think tactically some of the questions that that people have for me A lot of times is you know while while I'm working my ninet to-5

16:14How do you do this like H how do I I I've got a job that I gotta go to during the day a lot of jobs don't support your your side entrepreneurial Endeavors because they want you to be there for the rest of your life so so like what would you just work nights and weekends how would you start to to build this so if anybody has the idea that they don't have enough time to do this well I'll tell you what my life was like at the time when I was building this business so number one I had a job regular you know nine-to-five job definitely a regular nine-to-five job working for the County government I also had a business that it was a convenience store at the time and so I would get to my convenience store at like 5:30 in the morning open up the store make sure everything's good get the employees going then go

17:02To my job at 7:00 then after my job I would go to back to the store make sure everything's good count the money close everything out by nine o'clock get home and then I had four kids at the time and so I was doing that at the same time what I would do in my lunch breaks in my but break times my lunches and my braks or anytime I literally Spar or if I'm driving to and from my house whatever it might be I literally took every waking minute and I said everything I sacrifice now money I sacrifice where I don't go out to dinner or I don't go travel time that I sacrificed now is going to pay off dividends in the future it's delay gratification that I realize was going to be the best thing for me and so I said if I put in the effort now and foro little sleep forego like I

17:50Love Arnold Schwarzenegger's word for sleeping well if you if you are working so much just sleep faster like well that's what I'll do I'll just sleep faster and so that's what that's what we want to do is we want to make sure that every single waking moment like I sto watching TV I stopped going on Facebook I stopped wasting time on things that literally did not do me any good for my business and so this is what everybody soon you started thinking my goodness I have this this and this well more than likely you're going to be able to find some time but yes you're right Kirby there is a lot of there's a lot of things you need to do there's a it's not easy but it's simple this whole process of building the business or getting starting a real estate investing business it's simple like the process is simple it's just XYZ it's not complicated but it's not easy and

18:39What I love to share with all my students and everybody that I really just give this away I want to share with people that you can do this now here's what's interesting Kirby I can I could literally teach anybody how to invest in real estate but I can't get them over that hurdle to realize that they can do it to put their time into actively doing it so just like that Catalyst for me was losing my job that said I am not going to let any more time be wasted watching TV playing video games whatever what I even forent things that I really like like let's say fishing or golfing or I said no I'm not going to do that because I knew I'm gonna have so much more time in the future once I quit my job to do all that stuff so like I said when I was 37 years old I literally quit my job and now I go to golfing two three times a week I'll go fishing whatever I want I literally can do whatever I want so it was the delayed gratification putting

19:27It off and following just step-by-step process and yeah so I'll pause everything there but that's how I did and that's what I suggest for everybody yeah I agree I agree I think a lot of people will hear that and say well that sounds like a terrible life like you know you're you're delaying all the these you know things that are that are the reason for living you know but it's it's temporary like you said you know you've go to there's no you can't make a substantial move in your life and you've got to give up good to get great and so I agree with let me share this if somebody if somebody's thinking this that's a terrible life now number one tomorrow's not guaranteed us obviously like we know it's a proven fact 100% of the people die and so tomorrow is not guaranteed and on top of that does it does

20:16This sound like a horrible life where you literally work for 40 years of your life for somebody else then you retire at let's say 65 years old you're you know you work for hours a week for 40 years of your life retire when you're 65 years old and then retire on 40% of your income does that sound like a great life to you no I'm literally 37 years old now like I said for 10 years maybe nine 10 years yeah it was rough but I worked my tail off now when I was 37 years old I've had the best life I traveled so in 2019 when I quit my job I took my family to Japan we went to Japan for a six week trip I took my dad as well we drove 1,200 no almost 1,500 miles around the island of Japan on the left hand side of the road for six weeks who does that well I did and then in

21:04Two 2018 we went to Europe 11 different countries on a six- week trip with my wife and four kids and then 2019 was it 2020 no 2019 sorry I'm kind of get the years mixed up 2019 we went to the east coast drove from Florida all the way up to let's say Washington DC in New York for a four-week field trip we homeschool our kids so all that to say what sounds like a worse life literally working your entire life and then maybe dying that would be horrible or living till you're 65 and literally not having much life left or energy left to really do anything or money exactly yeah it's such a such a change in mindset and I I think you know one thing that I noticed when I was because I I invested full-time really creating a job for myself flipping properties until

21:53I got into rentals but when I first got into rentals I was also offered a job at a nonprofit I was passionate about so I came on the leadership team as I was building my rental portfolio and I was the CFO of a nonprofit and the thing I noticed as you start to think differently than most people who are in a nine-to-five and and build something of your own that's supporting yourself you carry yourself much differently at your work too so you know you're in this job that maybe you're not passionate about or maybe you are but you can make your own decisions a lot easier you know you're not beholding to a a boss you know when you show up to work you're kind of like you know I'm here because I want to be here and it's a totally different approach than that mentality of kind of living in fear that one day you're going to get the call from your boss's boss like you

22:41Did and all a sudden you know you got the the pink slip and and you're out on your own you know and you got to figure it out from there so I agree with you I think it's totally worth some sacrifice up front to start to put the pieces in place and then it it pays off in the long run Big Time absolutely yeah yeah so I'm curious you mentioned that you're in three different markets so how do you invest now how do you advise others to invest like how how did you pick these markets and what do you what types of properties are you buying so if you remember at the very beginning of the show I told you that I was more entrepreneurial in general like I just have an entrepreneurial sense and so when I started building started investing in real estate I really imp implemented the

23:30Business mindset entrepreneurial mindset into real estate investing now what you're going to hear not from me but from other people that either teach this or say they teach how to invest in real estate I would say don't listen to them but what they're going to say is what you do is you find a property you run the numbers to make sure you're going to make let's say $50 or $100 a month a little bit of passive income then you're going to hope for appreciation or they say Oho that's gonna appreciate so you're gonna make some money then you find somebody to fix it up you know rehab it then you find somebody to ma to rent it out find a tenant then you find somebody to manage the property well in my opinion that's almost all backwards it's literally silly what they do and they also tell you that property is your business no that's all backwards what we do and here at Master passive income this is what I teach and this is how I do in my business all the hundreds of students that I coach what

24:18We do is we build the business first no matter which city we're investing in no matter if we live in California invest in let's say Texas or Arizona or wherever if out of state it doesn't matter we build the business first and this is what it looks like and I'll give you an example of what building the business first what an example looks like so if you're going to start a convenience store you're not going to lease a space open the doors and put a box of candy bars in there and hope to run a business No in fact you'll go out of business in two seconds no what you're G to do is you're GNA build the business first you're gonna get the gondolas those are the shelving units that everything goes on you're going to get the countertops the fountain machines the cold storage the cash register the bank accounts the employees you're insurance too you're going to get everything in the business before you buy any inventory once you have that set up

25:07Then you buy the inventory same thing with real estate investing you build the entire business and every piece of inventory is a piece of property so like I said your property is not your business your business owns inventory so you build your business and then you get your inventory you buy one piece of real estate run rental property you put that in as a piece of inventory you buy another one you put that in as a piece of inv inventory that's how we scale the business so well and that's how some most people lose money and can't scale because we don't look at it like our each property is our business no we build the business first and then we put our inventory into the business got it okay and and how long does that process take I mean is it like years that somebody's building a business and then they buy a property or a couple weeks

25:55Or what what is it typically yeah I love that question so I found well if you're doing this by yourself like if you're just trying to you know research online and listen to some podcasts and stuff it's going to take longer just because you're trying to piece this all together but if you have somebody like Kirby showing you how to do it or myself or somebody they're showing they're G to you know streamline lots of stuff so for my students what I found when I'm coaching them usually by month one they're learning they've learned how to build a business because here's what's crazy Kirby so I give like in my podcast Master passive income my YouTube channel it's literally just I don't interview anybody it's just literally me teaching how to do this real estate investing stuff it's like 20% as much as I give it's only 20% of everything that you need to know to build the business the rest is in my courses and coaching everything but I just don't have enough time to give away everything so what I do is I teach everybody

26:44In the courses and coaching that I have and it usually takes them a month to digest the rest of all that content then the next month once they're they got that understanding in the education next month they're building the business usually by the second month month is finished they have the education and the business built usually by the third month they having deals sent to them because that's another part of the building business is we have other people send us deals and also another part of the business having other people lend us money their money private money all that sort of stuff and so we build the business so that by Third month we're hopefully having deals flowing in and we have money ready for us to invest so I would say usually we should be putting in offers by the third month at least my student that's how my students are got it yeah that makes sense and what everyone

27:32Defines deals differently I like asking people on this podcast you know what's a deal to you because it's it's so different for for different people so for you then what what what constitutes a deal what are you what are you going after or what are most of your students maybe going after as well I love well two things number one three things number one I don't invest for appreciation appreciation is great but I'm going to hold on these properties if you see like like you said the kids in my background this is gener generational wealth I'm literally going to be passing this down hopefully they're going to be passing down their kids because we just make passive income we just don't work and we make money another thing is what we invest for is for passive income so we don't invest for appreciation we do invest for passive income so what a deal looks like is $250 a month in passive income at the minimum I have some properties making me five

28:21600 like I said $7 $800 a month in passive income in fact the homes that I bought in 2006 that were kind of shaky back then rentwise now their rents are literally doubled I'm like this is great I like this is I so good anyways the last another thing the third thing that I I would share is we love cookie cutter homes we love buying cookie cutter homes and what I say cookie cutter homes is those are the homes that everybody either wants to rent or buy we love those we want people both so I love being proactive in my business see when you're reactive I'll get to cookie code in just a second I love being proactive when when you're reactive you have two options you have bad and worse when you're proactive you have lots and lots of more options that's why we build the business first and so in looking at the cookie cutter home we want lots of buyers and lots

29:09Of renters this is what a cookie cutter home looks like three bedroom two bathroom we can be okay with a one bathroom if the area the entire city have like older homes have only one bathroom it's okay but we want three-bedroom minimum we never go with the two literally never go with the two-bedroom four bom it's just a lot more square footage we don't need to worry about that one it's okay but anyways so three bedroom two bath 1,200 to 1500 square feet and hopefully a two-car garage but that makes us a $250 a month in passive income once you get to like you know above, 1500 square feet that's extra painting that's extra carpeting extra toilets extra every extra everything we don't want that so we want cookie cutter homes $250 a month and a cookie cutter home nice yeah and and it's funny because those

29:58You know it doesn't sound sexy you know like everyone wants to sell people on you know got to do multif family and buy 100 units or more or you got to you know buy a luxury property or something these are like you know like gray like boring type properties but you know if you I'll take those all day long exactly yeah you find people who have gotten really wealthy in real estate over the years and this is how they're doing it you know it's just adding another one of these to their their portfolio and having the great systems in place so so how do you you mentioned that you don't manage them but how do you manage your managers how how do you know number one that they're going to be a good manager because everyone I talk to says that they are and they're a lot of times they're not I agree

30:46Yeah and and then how do you manage them going forward when you're in a a remote location yeah so that that's a perfect question because that's what when we build a business the first person that we find we don't find Realtors that's usually one of the last ones we find usually people try to start with Realtors but the last one is always Realtors we find but in our business we find our property managers that's the number one person on our team the number one employee that even though they're not NE technically employees or contractors they're our managers they manage our business so I found more often than not you're going to find people who call themselves property managers who just dabble in it they're not actually property managers or real I I've been told I say realtor wrong it's not real Ator it's realtor but so Realtors who got slow in

31:35Their selling of homes or buying of home or helping people buy homes so I say well let me just do a property management because just it's probably the same thing no it's 100% not in fact I have a lot of students say hey I found this realtor who's also a property manager I'm like whoa whoa whoa whoa pull the brakes on those are two totally different personalities a realtor is excited about showing properties and a realtor is sorry a property manager is somebody that's excited about managing taking care of on a monthly basis realtor wants to get in and out make money quick in and out real property manager wants to stay in liking it too like this it's very very crude example a police officer if they're in patrol car they're going around patrolling and they find a bad guy and they put him in the jail that's like a realtor realtor the property manager is like the

32:23Corrections offic it's inside the jail keeping them there two totally different personalities so it's hard to mix them so you're right finding a good property manager is one of the hardest things this is the when people say that this business is hard it's not that it's not simple it's very simple this whole process is simple it's just XYZ just follow these steps and you'll do well but it's not easy because you have to find the right people and what you're going to find is that you're going to call let's say five property managers and they're probably not going to call call you back for some reason more more than likely they just they have their name on Google or something and they say they're a property manager but they did that two years ago and they realized oh it's tough I don't like it and they stopped it but the number's still there or something else happened but you're going to call property managers you're probably

33:11Not going to get a call back so here's what I do what I suggest for all my students when you're building business we find the right property managers and we interview them we don't send them an email for the interview we don't text them for the interview we call them on the phone and interview them now you're not going to say hey property manager I'm interviewing no you don't want to say that you basically just have a normal conversation and see what services that they offer how much they charge things like that and I have a whole laundry list of questions that we go through for all my students we go through with all the property managers all the questions that you should ask and all the answers that they should give that they're good and so as we're going through those we can weed out bad property managers very very quickly number one they don't call you back that's a bad property manager if they if with if they don't have your sorry if you call them and they don't call you back

34:00Before they have your money if they're bad at communication before they have have your money imagine once they have your money how bad it's going to be like ah I don't need to call this guy I already have his money I'm not g no you want to have somebody that competes for your business it's hard to find these property managers so here's what I like to do if you're going to interview and call up five different property managers and you get one that calls you back call five more you and if they don't call you back call five more if they don't call you back call five more the last thing you want is to buy a house because remember like I said all the people who teach you how to do this wrong they'll say find a house run the numbers buy it and then then then and then if you do that you're GNA buy a house spend let's say 30 $40,000 your you your basically your life savings have a property that's costing you money and mortgage you can't rent it out and then on top

34:49Of that add insult in industry or insult to in injury there you go tongue typ adding that on top of all the money you're losing you're now having to do the work now with losing money might as well do all that work now before you lose that money because what we're doing is we're hiring experts who are on the ground Zillow is not an expert realor.com is not an expert any website is not an app is not an expert who are the experts those are the people that are literally working there on the ground property managers wholesalers inspectors plumbers roofers Realtors all of them are the ones that are the experts and here's the thing I go to and this is I suggest for everybody if you're going to buy a house you let's say you find a good property manager you've already done it

35:37Right you found a good property manager then you find a house then you ask property manager let me ask you a few questions number one will you manage this house well if they're not going to manage it don't buy it number two how much can I rent it for well then I could figure out all my expenses then I could rent it for this much well that difference if I have a difference of $250 or more passive income then great I can buy it then what's the likelihood of my tenants you know being able to rent it out what's the vacancy Factor you're going to be able to ask all these questions because these experts are in there more than likely you're GNA say oh man I know that property in fact I have a property right around the corner it's renting for $1,200 so we could probably depending on how it's fixed up inside about $1,200 well great that is expert information so absolutely you need to make sure you find the right property managers and if you don't find the right property manager keep looking and

36:25Keep looking and keep looking this is by far like I said I had my property manager steal money from me it was horrible you don't want that and you don't want to add insult injury I think I said it right that Time insult injury by having a property losing you money and have to find a property manager yeah absolutely I I wish I would have heard this advice prior to buying an 11 unit property I bought in Indianapolis many years back and we we rehabed the whole thing got a great deal on it you know I thought this this property is going to kill it rehabed it and and I while we were rehabbing it then I was looking for property manager and of course they all tell you they're they're great I hired and fired the first one before we're even done with the the rehab because they literally just

37:14Did not do a thing to be proactive you know I was expecting I'm done with the rehab you've got tenants lined up and they didn't even consider it so then hired the second so we went through four property managers until finally I was like this this thing is killing me and and it should have had it been close by you know or I would have gotten a great property manager to start with it would have been a killer deal but I I finally just offloaded because I was like it's just the stress is not worth it yeah so yeah it's it Property Management I think people under undervalue how important they are and like you said having them in in advance I would have done so many things differently on this property because they know the area they I was just kind of guessing

38:02At it so y and you're right so what's interesting on my YouTube channel I put out videos on everything in real estate and so my least watched videos are the ones on property managers and I'm dumbfounded but the ones that are watched the most are how to get money to buy them how to find the deals all that sort of stuff but the property manager ones they they tank they don't do anything I'm like my goodness you guys are missing like the whole thing if you do this wrong sell me your property I'll buy it from you and I'll do it right yeah exactly I'm curious so you mentioned you have you have four kids I have two little ones myself I have a one-year-old and a four-year-old and and you mentioned you know generational wealth what what are you teaching your kids about money and investing at this point because

38:51I think that's another thing that people wonder about a lot yeah man that's fantastic question question so my oldest is 13 so I've 13 12 not 11 yet 10 and eight and so I'm currently teaching them and I've taught them from the very beginning the value of money so they don't get allowance I I personally believe it's a privilege to be in this family and so Daddy has to work to mow you know mow the lawn and all that stuff I don't get paid for that so we have to anyways they don't get an allowance when they do make money so we homeschool actually I'll take that back my wife homeschools I have the easy job of Mak money she has the hard job of homeschooling the kids and so when we homeschool let's say they have four books a semester you know math reading blah blah blah anytime they finish a book that's their job right now they get paid when

39:39They finish that book or if they you know birthdays or Christmas or something like that they get money so what we do right then so I'll get to real real estate investing in just a second but we've taught them from the very beginning the value of money so number one they don't get allowance number two they have to use their money if they want to buy anything like we go to arcades or or buying arcade hey Daddy can we you know can we have a quarter go like no you got your own money like oh man that's expensive I'm like I know it is so you got to realize that but here's what we do anytime they get any money we split it up and we I've taught them from the very beginning how to percentage wise take out money so from the very beginning let's say they make $10 you know every time they finish a book they get $10 so 10% from the very beginning goes to God so we get go to church so we had them they literally put their own tithing envelope and

40:27They give that to God next 50% of the total goes into savings we literally have a savings account now they've been buying silver because they see Daddy buying silver so like we do that but we save we put yeah we put that money away and they when we have in the savings account they're like hey Daddy how much money did we make this month oh you made 20 cents like oh yeah we made 20 cents so like great but for you know for an eight-year-old it's great so that's what we do but also what we do we don't leave them the rest of the 40% 20% goes to Mommy to pay for food electricity bed sheets whatever it helps them realize just because you're alive you don't just get to make money there's responsibilities that you need so 10% goes to God 50% goes to savings 20% goes to Mommy they get to spend however they want the rest of the 20% and so over time

41:16Their savings has grown their giving obviously has done really well and so also helping the family they realize that they have to provide for things at the same time if my kids become like when they're 20 years old and they're like man I used to say 50 ah 50% a month that's a lot I'm going to go down to 25% that's so much better than I ever saved I saved zero so it's I'm getting them off the block okay now getting to real estate investing this is something that you you brought up just a bit ago it was the idea you didn't say this but the idea came to my mind was like a a get-rich quick scheme this is not a getrich quick scheme if you're wanting that go someplace else this is a get wealthy plan this is a plan to get you wealthy and to be generational wealth where I would literally give these to my kids in fact they're all businesses I could literally put them as

42:04CEOs and owners of the business so what I'm doing now I'm so on top of that you can also see how I'm definitely not I'm making sure they're not going to be brats and Trust fun babies so they're they definitely know the value of money but I'm also teaching them how to build businesses how to invest in real estate by walking in through the entire process and so what's great too obviously I've already built a business where I coach people out invest in real estate so they're literally going to have all this and they're literally going to have Daddy coaching them one-on one personally but here's another thing I if you guys see my shirt I I love the word successfully unemployed now if you think of why you go to college why do you go to college you only if I offend people I apologize that it's offensive but this is my perspective this want to be with my kids you only go to college because you need you want to get

42:52A better job you want to make more money at your job that's the only reason why you go to college maybe get a little better education I yeah that's fine but you're going to be paying $100,000 like well if Daddy's going to be paying 60 70 $100,000 for your college I'm not going to pay that if you're smart enough to go that's what I'm telling my kids if you're smart enough to go to college you're smart enough to pay for that yourself but if you want a loan of $60,000 I'll give you a 0% interest loan for $60,000 to buy your first rental property you make all that passive income you pay me back my money and then you it's a win-win so I'm teaching them I'm not here's the thing this is what I do with all my students too is I teach them how to fish I don't want to give them a fish I mean it's not like I want them to keep coming back to me I want to teach them so I like hey Dustin I'm done learning from you I've done it twice now I'm like good go on

43:40Your own then just let me know how you did because this is all I want so now that I qu my job this is like well I need something else to do and I really love teaching people I love serving and so like hey let's combine them both so that's what I'm doing with my kids is I'm teaching them how to build businesses how to invest their money how to be wise with their money all that combined yeah I think and I think that's a great distinction between you know teaching somebody to fish and and giving them a fish you know I I have that same experience I work with people to get their first vacation rental and a lot of times people come to me and say hey here's an address what do you think of this deal and I'm like no that that's not that's not how you learn you know I you'll need me 60 years from now still telling you what I think of that deal instead here's a calculator put it into the calculator show me the comps that you use tell me why

44:29You think it's a good deal what is the what are the positives and negatives about the deal and go through it that way and it sounds like you do the same thing with with your kids in in the same type of manner and with my students so I yeah no keep going I just want to quickly inter interject or add to yeah I do those exact same questions to all of my students what is the passive income what is your property manager I I literally ask questions to help them to think more rather than me just telling them yeah exactly and and that's how like you said you all of a sudden they've got it then like you do it a couple times and and they don't need that assistance as opposed to you telling them the the the answers to the test or whatever you know so so that's great I I think I I it's great advice for people who are who have kids of their own and you know obviously if they're they're two years old it's there's

45:17A a level of teaching there you're not going to say analyze this property but but you can start to implement some of that stuff where they can see that the way money works and the way investing works and I think the percentage is that's awesome your your wife's like the IRS you know taking 20% that's awesome death and taxes nothing there's only two things guaranteed death and taxes yeah exactly I'm always curious as to people's goals as they evolve and this is your last question I don't want to take take too much of your time but you know initially obviously you had the that transformation transformational moment where you know you were laid off from your job and you realize that that's not the route you want to go

46:06And you wanted to build a life of your own so you got then several years later to a point where you could quit your job live off passive income but obviously you know you're not going to sail off in the sunset and live on a beach like you know Margaritas get a little old after a while so so what how did your your goals evolve over time and and what is your your new goal like what what's what gets you out of bed in the morning and what are you working toward I really appreciate the question so I'll start with my original goal so when I was 26 or 27 years old I read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad and Robert kosaki said his goal was to retire in 10 years or be a basically quit his job in 10 years I said you know what that's a good goal so I made that my own goal so in 20 I was 26 or 27 I probably

46:54Was 27 I told myself if I even if I don't have the businesses built or I wasn't ready I'm going to quit so this is a deadline like this is a drop dead deadline I better be done by this praise the Lord I've been nine years I was able to quit so I was able to quit it before the 10 years was up and I probably should have quit two years earlier but oh well now what the goal came after that was it was rather interesting so the first goal was substantial or tangible 10 years be able to quit my job that was Tang done check then after about two years of not having any goals I was like man this is boring like I need something to strive for then I made a monetary goal of making a million dollars year in Profit just from all my businesses combined and then after about a year of doing that I realized this is boring like

47:43That's not a drive for me but the reason why I picked it was it was tangible it was like okay here's a check I can get this number but then I realized I literally had no drive for that at all it's not something that drives me like money is not something that drive me and so here's something that really resonate with me so I have a friend on mine he's actually in my Mastermind he shared with me this that in life everybody wants to eventually have these four legacies built in their lives number one is a money Legacy now a money Legacy obviously have enough money to do whatever it is that you want number two is a Time Legacy enough time to do whatever it is that you want number three is a relationship Legacy so first you have to have the money to have the time and then time to have the relationship the third one is a relationship Legacy and

48:31So after I quit my job I already had the the money then now I had the time then with the time I also had the relationships because I had time to develop in the relationships now after that once I realized that million dollar a year was just boring to me I just didn't care at all the last service Legacy or the last Legacy that I I knew what I needed and he res he shared and it resonated with me was the service Legacy how many more people people that I can serve because I had enough money I didn't need to worry about money time I didn't need to worry about time or I had enough time and relationships like my relationship I'm blessed to say relationship are really really solid that I now have time to serve and now like Jesus said in Acts Paul the sorry Peter says Jesus also said that it's better to give than receive and I found the more people that I serve the more people that I teach how to invest in real estate the more people

49:20That I serve at my church I I lead aana it's where we memorize verses I have like 200 kids I lead aana Olympics when I was little so I'm awesome awesome yeah so I lead I lead the aana at my church and so I'm serving there I'm I'm trying now to serve as many people as possible because I realize that as I serve more my life gets better other like people's lives get better but it's because I had the foresight the delay gratification to take care of the money issue the time issue relationship issue now I can focus on service and I'll tell you what it I can every property I buy I provide great housing at a really good price I usually try to keep them right rents if not a a little below rent so people stay in there longer all the businesses that I build I try to help it to

50:08Be service oriented showing people how to invest in real estate one of my students started literally investing in December of 2019 remember 2020 March February March is when coid hit and so people might think oh it's the worst time to invest no no no he did fantastic in 18 months he literally bought 22 units TW wow TW sorry 11 duplexes 22 units and he's making like six or 7,000 a month in passive income that's amazing in 18 months and he's still doing fantastic and honestly he even asked me the question hey did you ever feel like you weren't building the business fast enough I'm like dude shut up you're doing great you destroyed my time on you're doing great but yes I would say yes sometimes you start feeling like that anyways long story short to add all back up now my goal is to serve as many people as possible and I would like to see 500 people coming through

50:56Master passive income and showing them and having 500 success stories right now I probably have like I don't know 50 or 60 success stories my goal is to get to 500 success stories of people buying and building their business buying properties and building their business yeah that's that's awesome and it's super interesting that that response because I just I don't know if if you've heard of Ryan holiday he's big in the stoicism he wrote the obstacles the way he's he's just a super talented author he just has a way of really putting things so you you can really understand it and he's a big student of stoicism and he he was just talking about this on a video I was watching where you know people he he was asked about you know goals and and how people a lot of times tie those arbitrary numbers

51:45Like he talked about the million dollars to their goals and it's like where did that million dollars come from it well it probably came from you heard somebody else say they made a million and it seemed like you know a cool goal but there's really no real like meaning to that million dollars like you said it was like well I was pursuing it but what what's going to change in my life when I get to a million dollars you know so his his goals are to be at the top of his game you know as an author like that's what he loves doing still you know 10 years down the road or 20 years down the road it's to figure out what it is that drives you not not necessarily A lot of times it's not your nine-to-five job it's like something else and become the best there is at that and be able to continue to do that and he's like that's what leads to

52:34To success it's not the monetary stuff or or the and I think very similarly you kind of laid out those four buckets of your life and I think if you're at the top of your game and those four buckets and you can continue that's a a life well- lived so that's that's great I I appreciate you sharing that I don't want to take any more of your time how so I I know you mentioned that you you have lots of students you you've changed many lives at this point if somebody is interested in working with you how do they get in touch with you or what's the best way yeah absolutely so I definitely have my podcast two podcasts Master passive income podcast and a successfully unemployed podcast you can check out both of those but I also have a real estate investing course I just want to give away for free I want everybody to see if they can do it and that they can do it so if you text the word rental re

53:23N t a l to 33777 rental to 33777 I'll literally send it to you for free it'll show you how to find an area of the country and invest how to build the business first how to make sure you're making $250 a month in passive income and even how to scale the business to where you're growing and eventually being able to quit your job I just want everybody to to get that plus you can also check me out on YouTube Master passive income as well also that free course can also be found on my website masterp passive income.com forfree course it's all one wordre course course but yeah you can find me all those places but I'd love to help anybody out this is just something it's really fun hopefully my energy comes across because it's just so much fun for me to share with everybody how do this yeah I I agree with you so much and and it's a great podcast for anyone who's looking for a a a good podcast on

54:12On rental property investing or or passive income you know definitely check both of them out they're both great podcast and YouTube channel so highly recommend thanks a lot for for taking the time today and and sharing so much wisdom thanks a lot Kirby I appreciate you have me on