How to Achieve Financial Independence Using Real Estate With Dustin Heiner

21:40That's what 30 million customers have been coming back to Zazzle for over 20 years to find. Right now, save 25 % on your first order at Zazzle.com. That's Zazzle.com. Make it z-amazing. That is incredibly inspiring. And I think one of the best things that you did overall is when you felt the pain of kind of getting laid off, and luckily you like started to invest, you know, early on and we're trying to kind of create some financial freedom early on. But when you felt that pain of getting laid off, you realize very quickly, I need to focus on the things that I can control. And I think that's one of the most powerful things that someone can do is once they realize they focus on the things that they can control and they became a full time investor and became a part time, you know, worker for the county or the city.

22:22And I think that's one of the most important things that you can do is taking control of your life. And so once you got started there, you began investing in real estate. So what are some of the kind of the steps and things that you did early on? How many properties did you have when you kind of left your job? And then what are some of the steps that you took in order to try to scale that portfolio?

22:41Dustin Heiner:Yeah, and you use the key word is scale. So most people can buy one property, maybe two or three, but to scale, you have to have a different perspective. For me, when I first got started, if you remember, I said at the very beginning of the show, my property manager started stealing from me within six months because I had no clue what I was doing at the very, very beginning. Now, if I would have let that stop me and just hang my head and said, oh, it just doesn't work, I wouldn't be here today. But what I did realize was that other people had done in the past, I just need to figure out the right way to do it.

23:11Dustin Heiner:And remember, I shared how I started businesses in the past. So I realized, my goodness, I was approaching this from the wrong way. In fact, this is 2006. And so instead of TikTok, there was these infomercial gurus that would come on TV late at night. Hey, we're coming to your town, free two-hour seminar, all hype, sales pitch, run to the back. It's normally a million dollars. Anyways, I got suckered into that. And so I started doing what they were telling me. Well, essentially makes sense, but it's actually wrong. I'm not saying they're not investors. I'm just saying I've learned as an investor to do it right.

23:41Here's the right way to do it. So the right way is not following the Instagram or TikTok gurus that just tell you to do stupid things, but this is the right way to do it. The right way to do it is you build a business first. So when I realized that my property manager was stealing from me, I realized that I did not do everything I needed to do to start a business that could run itself. When I talk about building a business first,

24:03Dustin Heiner:is we don't want to be just an investor. Like we invest our money in stock market. We just put our money there and just, well, obviously hope and pray that it goes up, but you're trusting that this company is going to be doing worthwhile stuff to make the stock rise. Like you just kind of set it and forget it. Real estate's not like that. What we need to realize is we don't invest for appreciation. Like I don't care if the value goes up. Like it's not how I invest. When it does go up, it's great. I take the cash out in a tax-free loan and then buy more properties. That's how I scale, that word scale comes up.

24:33Dustin Heiner:But the only reason why, or yeah, only way that I can do this is because I built a business that then owns inventory. And let me show you how that works. If you're going to start a convenience store, that's, you know, candy bars and soda machines, all that good stuff. Well, you would not sign a lease on a location, open the doors and set a box of candy bars in there 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. Those are shelving and it's all the candy bars go on the countertops, cold storage, bank accounts, cash registers, insurance, employees, everything in the business before you buy any inventory.

25:08Dustin Heiner:Then once you have everything built and the business built, that's when you buy the inventory and put it into your business. Every property that I own, I have 30 plus properties now. When I quit, my job is around 19, but I have 30 plus properties now. And then I also have two large apartment complexes, total of almost 800 units. But every piece of property that I own is a piece of inventory that my business runs. Now, one other quick thing that I have to share, because a lot of people, when they invest in real estate, and this was back in 2006 when I first started investing, everybody was saying, you better buy now because if you don't, you'll never be able to buy.

25:42Dustin Heiner:And they're saying that right now, which I'm not saying there's gonna be a crash. I'm just saying, I've heard all this before. I've been since 2006. Well, it eventually did crash and I bought a lot more properties. But here's the amazing thing. No matter if the market goes up, if the market goes down, or if the market goes sideways, I make money because I invest for cash flow. Now, the appreciation will be there. Remember, every 15 years, real estate doubles. It'll go down, up, down, up, down, up. But because I invest for cash flow, if the market goes up, I make money down or sideways. In fact, I make more money if the market crashes.

26:14Dustin Heiner:Let me tell you this because I want you to jump in, but I got to share this one quick last thing. When you build a business, you have cash flow coming in. Sadly, in 2008, when everybody was getting laid off, fired or whatever, they were losing their homes, which is very sad, very sad for them. But, well, they had to foreclose. But instead of owning their homes, what does that do? The demand of real estate for rentals, it's skyrocketed. So I made more money because rents went up because there were so many more people wanting to rent my properties. And so because of that, what I suggest, in order to do it right, And then in order to scale to 10, 20, 30 plus properties, we build a business first.

26:51Dustin Heiner:We find the experts. This is key. We find the experts. And I do this all different states. I got to jump in quickly say, I don't do this in my own area. I invest in Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Tennessee, and Indiana. And everywhere that I go and all the thousands, I coach thousands of students now how to do this. What we do is we build a business no matter where we are. And we make sure we hire the experts in those cities and states that we invest in. And we hire the experts. Who are the experts? Property managers, contractors, inspectors, mortgage brokers, roofers, plumbers. You think of anybody in realtors, obviously I'll put them in there, but they're one of the last ones.

27:26Finding the property is easy, is really easy. What we want to make sure is we're going to make money every single month. And that's through property management, maintenance, contractors, plumbers, roofers, and handymen, all that sort of stuff. But does that make sense? Like we want to build a business and make sure the business is making

27:41Dustin Heiner:us money and hire experts to do all that work. And I love that because really overall, what you're doing is you're creating a system. This is why you don't have to work so many hours in your business because you're putting that system into place and then you're allowing the system to work. And so I want to talk through this system and how you're kind of doing this because I think it's really, really important for people to understand that real estate isn't just wander out and you go find a property and see, does that property actually cash flow more than the mortgage? No, you probably lose money if you were running the numbers that way.

28:07And so this is something where you are systematizing this entire process and you don't even have to invest in your local area, you can invest out of state. So I want to kind of dive into some of these things that you are doing, because I think it's really, really important. So if we're starting off and we're trying to think through, okay, I'm going to do this too. I want to replace my income with real estate. And I want to be able to have this financial freedom that Dustin has. Dustin accomplished it early on in life in his mid thirties. And this is a really, really powerful thing that I want to test out too.

28:32If they wanted to build that business and they first wanted to build out their team, how would you kind of coach them or have them look at this in terms of building out that team? Would this be something that you would go out and try to, you know, find the property manager first? Would you just try to find those deals first and then find the property manager? Or how would you think about that?

28:48Dustin Heiner:Yeah, let me give you the step by step of how I coach everybody. So actually, I'll start it this way before I get into the step by step. What most people think, and I did this every single real estate investor or people that want to get into it, we realize that we're missing two things. But honestly, these two things that I'm going to tell you, you're gonna be thinking, oh, yes, I'm missing those. But I would also, what I'm helping you to understand because I'm an investor. I've coached thousands of people now how to do this. These are the easiest parts of the investing. The first two or the first one out of the two is people immediately start thinking, I don't have any money.

29:20Dustin Heiner:I don't have any money to invest. Well, I kid you not, I've used at least 20 different ways to get financing, creative financing to get property. So when you think about money being your problem, I don't have money, I have bad credit, all that sort of stuff. Trust me, that is not the problem. Your problem is lack of options, your lack of knowledge of all the different ways to get financing, or I like using the terms access to capital, capital meaning money, doesn't have to be your money, you work for 30 years to save up your life or life savings to buy your first property. No, so that's number one is funding.

29:55Dustin Heiner:And we can crush that. I'll help you to crush that. But I want to jump into the second one that most people also jump right to. I don't have any deals like I get money to buy the deals. that's number one. Number two is how do we find the deals? I kid you not, those are the easiest parts. And on my podcast or my YouTube channel or whatever, those are usually the highest downloaded or highest viewed is because people immediately write to that. But the harder part, which you started asking the right question is number one, how do we find the right area to invest? But number two, how do we make sure that we're making money every single month that our property manager is not stealing from us, that we could continually make money over and over again.

30:32Dustin Heiner:And so the reason why I wanted to bring that up is to crush those that we will definitely jump into those, meaning how to get financing, easy. Trust me, I'll take care of that. And how to find, trust me, I'll help you take care of that. But then, now that we got that covered, those are easy, done. Put those out of your brain. Now we got to figure out where we invest and how do we make sure we get the experts. So this is a step-by-step process. Once we got those first two out of our brains and we're not to think about it. First, we got to figure out where are we going to invest? Because just like any business, you have to figure out what's the best market for your type of business you're investing.

31:06Dustin Heiner:Now, here's what I do. I help my students find a great state and then we narrow down to the city. Remember, we got to find a good location that we're going to build our business. I'll give you a couple examples that are great right now. Memphis has been really, really hot. Birmingham, Alabama is really good. But just think about like Midwest. Midwest has been just lower priced homes, higher priced rents, which are phenomenal. So we're finding a city. We narrow down from the state. We narrow down into the city. What I look for, what I teach all my students is we look for inventory. How many properties in a city that we can continually scale our business?

31:43Dustin Heiner:If you find one property in one town that has like five people population, more than likely that's only one property you're gonna be able to buy. more than likely, you're not going to find any property managers, very few contractors. Like, it's going to be really hard to do business. But if you find a big city that has lots of inventory, which means you're probably going to have lots of people that want to rent your properties, a lot of people that want to manage your properties, property managers. So first, we start with the inventory in the cities. Like I said, Memphis is really good. Birmingham, Alabama, Atlanta has been decent.

32:14Dustin Heiner:Ohio, Ohio has got some great places. Indiana has some really great places. But okay, we find a city that has good inventory, lots of properties that we would want to buy, give you quick cookie cutter type home that we love. Three bedroom, two bath, 1200 to 1700 square feet, not too small that families don't want to live there, not too large that you're going to have extra walls to paint, extra toilets to fix and all that sort of stuff. But you're going to get great rents for those. Once we find those a good city that has good properties, then we stop looking for properties, meaning those properties probably won't be there by the time we get done building the business.

32:47Dustin Heiner:It might be sold, but at least we know this is a good city. Then we start building a business, finding the right people. I'll start with, or how I always tell my students, we interview multiple, many property managers. That's the quarterback of your team. I don't want to manage my properties. I've got 30 plus single family homes. I got apartment complexes. I don't do any of that work because I want to hire a good property manager, contractors, plumbers, roofers, inspectors, mortgage brokers. Like you think of anything in the business, we do all of that building. We find the right people first before or we buy the properties.

33:20Dustin Heiner:Does that all make sense? It does. And I think that is a huge portion just to get started is to think through, okay, well, we need to... What you're saying is true. That's the number one question that we get whenever we talk about real estate too is, hey, how do I find deals? Which is why I wanted to have you on here because I think you are better at this than most people out there is finding deals, finding that financing, which is really important, which getting creative in real estate is one of the most powerful things. And then we're building out this team and working on this team. And I think one thing that you're noting here is that you're trying to choose a location.

33:47It doesn't have to be your local area. That's where I think a lot of people get stuck too, is they think, okay, my local area, you know, everything is expensive in this area. All the houses are, you know, maybe there's some bigger houses in their area and they just can't figure out exactly where to invest. But you're kind of breaking the mold there and showing, hey, you can invest out of state. You can find these additional locations and we need to build a team surrounding this so that we're not spending all of our time. So even if we have a full-time job right now, we can utilize this team. This team is helping us manage these properties, especially since we don't live in those locations.

34:17And so as we go through this and think through this, how are you kind of like analyzing these deals? And how are you kind of thinking through that process? What I love about this is you have the mold of house that you want to have in place. And this is kind of how I invested in real estate too, is I had these very specific parameters. And I almost felt like sometimes my parameters were too specific because I was looking at some of these deals. And then all of a sudden, some of the deals that I should have bought, I didn't buy because they didn't fit in my little mold here. And so when you're kind of analyzing deals and looking through this, you know, how do you figure out, hey, how do these deals cash flow?

34:45Number one. And then two, kind of how do you choose your properties? Because you said it's a lot easier to find these deals. So are you looking like on Zillow? Are you looking off market? Or how are you thinking about that?

34:53Dustin Heiner:So let me tackle it in a couple of, I guess, segments or parts. So we'll jump into the finding the deals like Zillow or something like that. You just asked that question, but then we'll jump into the first part of it. So honestly, in finding deals, I find deals. Actually, let me say it better. People send me deals. I don't find the deals. The deals come to me. And the reason why since 2000 and what, when I first started 2006, I started telling every single person that I'm a real estate investor. So everybody knows me as a real estate investor. And so guess what? If somebody has money that they want to invest, they might call me up.

35:25Hey, Dustin, you want to invest some money in real estate? Can I invest with you? I'm like, okay, let's talk about it. So because people know me as an investor, just like if I wanted to become a famous singer, if I don't tell anybody that I sing and if I never practice singing, I never do anything, will I ever become a singer? Probably not. Instead, what I do is I tell every single person that I'm a singer right now.

35:47Dustin Heiner:Like I said, I tell everybody I'm an investor. So every single person I meet, either another investor, a property manager, Facebook groups, you name it, everybody in the cities that I invest know me. So they send me deals. So realtors will send me deals. Wholesalers, those are people kind of like realtors. They find the deals and they want to send me deals. I've had property management companies send me deals. I've even had title companies send me deals because, hey, this one fell through. Would you want it? And so I'd look at it. So the number one thing is, if we're going to be an investor, we want to have multiple ways that we get financing or finding properties.

36:23Dustin Heiner:We want everybody to be sending us deals. Now, we also do, I've done direct mail where I send postcards. If you own a home, you've probably seen it. Hey, we buy houses for cash fast and all that sort of stuff. Or you see the bandit signs of the ones on the streets and everything like that. Well, I've done those too. Those get people to call who might not normally be interested in selling, but like, you know what? I might want to sell. Or, oh my goodness, I'm getting a divorce. I want to stick it to my wife. I got to sell a fast. Let me get it. That's happened before. Crazy things have happened.

36:51So in finding the right properties, what we do is we tell everybody that we're an investor and they send us deals. Now, if I'm going to find properties on my own off-market, meaning they're not on the MLS, which I buy properties on MLS, I buy properties off-market, all these sort of things, there are many ways to do it.

37:07Dustin Heiner:But the biggest one is if you're going to remember anything, tell every single person that you're an investor, every person you talk to. So does that cover the finding for you? It does. And I think that is super helpful because it's one of those things where you just got to have that megaphone out telling everybody that you're an investor. And a lot of times deals will start coming to you. So I think that's perfect. Awesome. Now let's start talking through the other part. A lot of people tell me, well, Dustin, how in the world am I going to be investing? I can't drive there. I'm not going to fly there every time the toilet gets broke.

37:36I'm like, yes, you don't want to do that. You want to hire the other people because your time is so much more valuable than spending it flying someplace to fix a toilet or something like that. So we're talking about building a business. Before I get into building the business, what I want to do is quickly jump into the financing that helps people to realize why we do financing in order to scale our business. So let me quickly explain what it looks like. Because you also asked, how do we make sure we get financing for financial independence? So what we do is we calculate all your expenses. So when you're trying to figure out, is this a good deal or not?

38:09We calculate all of our expenses. That is mortgage, taxes, insurance, property management fees. In fact, one quick thing, side note, some people ask me, Dustin, how do you

38:19Dustin Heiner:afford a property manager. I don't afford a property manager, meaning I don't have to get a job to pay for my property manager. I make sure that expense is paid for before I buy the property. So you add up all those, even vacancy factor, like how often will it be vacant? Well, 5 % of the year, I might be vacant. So let's add that in there. Repairs, capital expenses, like if a roof goes out. So you add all expenses. Most people wouldn't tell you this or they don't think to do this, but there's a thing called Profit First. Well, Profit First is a great book. I was doing this back in 2006 because I said, I do not want to buy a property unless I'm making X dollars in passive income cashflow every single month.

38:56Dustin Heiner:So this is what we do. Just like all of your other expenses, your cashflow, how much you want to make, you do not want to guess. I hope I'm going to make a hundred dollars. I hope I'm going to make$50. No, no, no. We make sure that's an expense line item. Just like, you know, your mortgage, let's say it's a thousand dollars. you put your expense of your profit or your cashflow. I want$500 a month. So I make sure that that expense is in there as well as all the other expenses. And then I can rent it for more than all of those expenses. Then I know I'm going to be doing well. Now you might be, some people might be thinking, well, Dustin, how do you do that with, you know, long-term properties?

39:34Dustin Heiner:What I like to share or tell all my students is we do buy and hold, not necessarily 12 month leases. We can do 12 month leases, but with buy and hold, we're gonna hold on these properties perpetually. In fact, my kids, you can probably see them in the back if you're watching this on YouTube. I have four kids there in my picture, but I have five kids now. I'm gonna give all these properties to my kids, like literally generational wealth, giving it to them. But what I do is I make sure that it's cash flowing from day number one, making me$500 a month, every single month, that's$6 ,000 a year. Now, if you want financial independence, I love that.

40:10Dustin Heiner:It's just easy arithmetic. Like I'm not that smart more than likely you listening are much smarter than me So five hundred dollars a month at one property is six thousand dollars a year Ten properties that is five thousand dollars a month sixty thousand dollars a year twenty properties is ten thousand dollars a month One hundred twenty thousand dollars a year more than likely every single one of you listening You're going to be able to quit your job if you had twenty properties at one hundred twenty thousand dollars a year in passive income So what I love to do when I analyze deals, I make sure that all the expenses are covered and then make sure that expense of passive income or cash flow is in there.

40:46Dustin Heiner:And then it's covered as well. So we will do long term, short term, midterm. So short term, you know, Airbnb, VRBO. We do midterm, which is 30, 60, 90 days, traveling executives, you know, businesses and traveling nurses. We also do co-living. Co-living, you rent out per room. That is going to explode. Trust me, it's going to explode. Co-living is going to be really amazing because your house is so unaffordable for most people. And younger people don't even want to own the home. So that's what we do. We buy and hold long-term, short-term, mid-term, and even co-living and give these to our kids.

41:17Dustin Heiner:But we make sure we're making cash flow every single month. All the 30 plus properties that I own that are signifying me home, I still own them. I've only seen one of them before I bought them. All of them, literally, I just have other people send me pictures. I don't go to them because I don't need to. I hire the experts. They're the ones that do all the work for me. And I think that is just one of the most powerful parts is having those experts in place so that you don't have to do the work. Because I remember when I first started, for example, and we could talk through this. I know we're going to do a second episode just so everybody knows where we're going to be doing some coaching stuff and going through this.

41:45But when I first started, one of the things that I did is I was the sweat equity partner. So I had partners who were cash partners and I was the sweat equity partner. And when I would do deals, you know, I would be getting all the phone calls. I would be getting all the tenant phone calls and kind of working through this process of, you know, hey, my toilet is, you know, flooded. I got to go over there and figure out a plumber, like in the middle of a Saturday night, middle of the night. And so there was all these different things that I do know. I knew I could have a property manager in place, but in this situation, I was the property manager because I was the sweat equity partner for these deals.

42:14And so it's one of those things that I love to hear kind of some of the parameters that you have in place. And you're focusing on your time because your time is the most valuable asset that you have. And so getting that time back is what the entire goal is. Now, one thing that is very interesting to me is that you have these parameters around cashflow stating, hey, I want$500 per month. Because I think one of the big misconceptions for a lot of people is they think the only way I can invest in real estate right now is either making$100 to$200 per month in cashflow. And if one thing goes wrong with my property or I have to replace my air conditioning unit or something along those lines, all my cashflow gets wiped out if I did not plan for some of these things.

42:50And so for a lot of people out there, that is a hurdle that they try to kind of get over or they can't get over a lot of times when they're thinking about investing in real estate. And so are you finding deals right now that have that$500 per month cash flow? And is it because you're investing in out of state or how are you thinking about that?

43:05Dustin Heiner:I'd say yes to both. So you can find in certain areas, obviously. Somebody living in San Francisco, it's going to be a little bit harder. New York City, you know, it's going to be a little harder to be able to buy these properties and get good cash flow. But at the same time, well, let me say it this way. A lot of people ask me, hey, Dustin, interest rates are high, prices are high, it's a bad time to invest in real estate. My suggestion or my opinion is it's never a bad time to invest in real estate, meaning you do not wait to buy real estate. You buy real estate and then you wait. Just over time, you're going to make more and more money.

43:39Your mortgage gets paid off, which is amazing, as well as you make all that cash flow. You get all the benefits, the six different ways I told you make money in real estate.

43:47Dustin Heiner:So there's never a bad time to invest in real estate. There are only bad deals. So if interest rates are high and prices are high, you're still gonna find bad deals. They're still gonna find good deals. If interest rates are low and prices are low, you're still gonna find good deals. You're still gonna find bad deals. My suggestion is, and you've mentioned this just a little bit ago, that your buy box or what you were looking for was a certain direction or a certain way, and then a deal would come that you should have bought, but you weren't really looking for it. I get students all the time say, Dustin, I have X, Y, and Z.

44:15Dustin Heiner:Like I have this much cash. This is what I'm looking for. should I do this or this or this? And all the students, they have that in their brain, like the word or. I'm like, no, it's not the word or. You need to get that out of your mind. It's not or, it's and. Meaning you look at every single deal that comes your way. Because if you're dead set, I'm going to buy a duplex. That's what I'm going to buy. I know I'm going to buy it. And you pass up deals that are going to be fantastic home runs. Well, you're messing deals. So what we do is we look for deals that are going to be cash flowing us and making sure we're making passive income.

44:48Dustin Heiner:Now, right now, what I'm finding is that, yes, it's harder to find these deals. Back in 2010, oh, my goodness, you could trip and find a property and make a lot of money just because it's a different market. I think eventually we might come back to that. I don't think it always goes up. In fact, when people – I remember in 2008, they were saying, you better buy now because if you don't buy, you're never going to get to buy. Prices are only going to go up. Well, I've heard that before and they're saying that now. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. But I don't wait to buy real estate because when you do, just imagine if I stopped in 2008.

45:19Dustin Heiner:Oh, I'll just wait. 2009, 10, I just kept waiting. In fact, one of my students started coaching with me in 2020, like right when 2020 happened, COVID happened. And he was like, should I wait? I'm like, I wouldn't. I would keep buying. That's what I'm doing is keep buying. Well, in three years, he now has 29 units. He's just been doing a great job scaling, getting private money investors, is all that great doing really great job. But what we do is we make sure we build that business. When we build a business, we get financing to buy the properties. And let me share it this way. One other quick thing.

45:49Dustin Heiner:I don't invest for appreciation. I invest for cash flow. Let me give you an example what it looks like. Let's say you can buy and sell a candy bar all day, every day. You can buy it for 50 cents and sell it for a dollar. Well, you would think, how can I buy more candy bars? Because I know I can make 50 cents every single time. What you would not do is buy it for a dollar and hope in six months or two years or however long that you're gonna sell it for$1.50. No, you wouldn't go into business. You go out of business. Like that's what we need to do is realize when we become quote unquote investors, we're not necessarily investors.

46:20Dustin Heiner:We're business owners. When we're an investor, we set it and forget it. Don't do that. When we're a business owner, we're investing for cash flow. So if you can buy a candy bar for 50 cents and sell it for a dollar, you're making 50 cents every single time. Now, the great thing about real estate investing, let's say you did not even have 50 cents. You didn't have that 50 cents to buy it, but it cost you 25 cents to borrow 50 cents You're out of pocket 75 cents. You still sell it for a dollar You're making 25 cents every single month. That's why I love the term becoming an income builder So we're business owners and we build income into our lives.

46:51Dustin Heiner:So we have cash flow coming in every Single month so that all of our expenses are covered That's why I love the term successfully unemployed because I used to tell everybody I was retired and they would have this puzzled look, like you're too young. Like, what do you do with your life? And I realized that, oh, I got to change it. So my wife helped me come up with the term successfully unemployed, meaning I found another way to provide for myself and my family without working a J-O-B that just overbroke job. And now I just hang out with my family, talk to great people like you and don't work a job.

47:23And that's, I love that term. And you always, every time I see you have a shirt that says successfully unemployed, which I absolutely love because I think it's your kind of go-to slogan too, which is fantastic. And I want to kind of wrap this specific episode up with one last question, because I think there's a, there's a tactical thing that we can look at here, because this has been so incredibly valuable and I'm really excited for people to hear this one. And I guess if someone is deconstructing their life and they're looking at their income and how much income they have coming in, how can they think about, you know, replacing their income with real estate?

47:53The math seems pretty simple. So you said, Hey, I'm trying to cashflow$500 per month. You kind of reverse engineer this. How would you tell them to kind of think about this and put together that plan.

48:01Dustin Heiner:Yeah, for me, the plan came when I asked my wife back in, I think it was like 2006, when I was seven-ish, I said, hey, honey, what are our expenses? Like, how much does money comes out of our pocket every single month? And I remember the number, plight as day, it's like, it's ingrained in my brain,$4 ,200. Back in 2006,$4 ,200 is what we needed for mortgage, insurance, you know, for family food, and all that sort of stuff. I said, okay, if I bought a property, each one making me$500 a month, and I just went through the scenario. So, you know, at 10 properties, then I have$5 ,000 a month. My expenses are covered.

48:33Dustin Heiner:Now, here's one key thing. Let's say you're sitting here and you say, I need$6 ,500, Dustin. Well, okay, well,$6 ,500, we just work our way backwards. We figure out how many properties that we need in order to get that$6 ,500 in cash flow. Now, but here's the key thing. This is the reason why I say it was key. When somebody buys their first property, more than likely they are going to do it wrong. and they eventually become a quote unquote property management landlord slash landlord. Like they manage a property. They're so worried about the property. They're the ones fixing the toilets. It has to be in my area.

49:05Dustin Heiner:I have to know everything about what's going on with it. And then they get to two or three properties. And then they start thinking, oh my goodness, I don't have enough time anymore. Then they get to six, seven properties. More than likely, somebody that goes that direction of being a mom and pop, I like calling them a mom and pop landlord, they start pulling their hair out because they don't have enough time. Well, you said this at the very beginning. how do we scale? How we scale to where we have financial independence, where we could get that $6 ,500 every single month in passive income is we need to scale the business by having other people do the work for you.

49:37Dustin Heiner:So instead of being a mom and pop where you're saying, oh, I'm trying to save money. Like I want to quit my job. So I'm instead of paying for a property manager, I'm doing the management by myself. I'm like, oh, in the end, you're going to be paying it one of two ways, paying for somebody else's time or paying with your own time. And that's the most expensive commodity you're going to spend is your time. So what I suggest instead, if you've been listening to what I've been telling you and you do what I've shared with you, where you build the business, you get the experts doing the work for you and even find mortgage brokers or private money, you get other people that are going to lend you money, then you can scale it because you have other people running your business, you have other people funding your business, and you have other people sending you deals.

50:15Dustin Heiner:And then you can scale because what you don't want is be where you have three, four, five, six properties, and then you're pulling your hair because you're doing all the work and then you're going to give up. I've had a lot of people give up and sell me their properties, which I don't want that to be you. I want you to do it right the first time and then be able to scale. I think that is the most powerful lesson of all is having the ability to scale by making sure that you have other people and you have these systems in place and you have these parameters in place that kind of help you be able to do that.

50:39Well, Dustin, we're going to do a part two, you and I, where we're going to talk through some tactical stuff and coaching and all that kind of stuff. But if somebody is listening right now and they want to find out more about you and everything that you're doing right now, let them know where they can find you.

50:50Dustin Heiner:Awesome. Awesome. So my goal is to help a million people to invest in real estate. Can I just give everybody a free course completely for free? Absolutely. Awesome. So I want you to invest. Like I said, my goal is to help a million people to invest in real estate because I make my mind through real estate. This is just fun. Hopefully you can share. It comes across. I just love talking about this stuff. So get my real estate investing course completely for free. You could text the word rental, R-E-N-T-A-L. Rental to 33777. rental to 33777 or go to masterpassiveincome.com forward slash free course, all one word forward slash free course.

51:26Dustin Heiner:Get it. I've had so many people just get investing just by that. You can even find me on my podcast, the Master Passive Income podcast, which Andrew, I'm going to have you on talking about all your real estate. So just like your show, that show, my show, Master Passive Income is a solo show. I rarely do interviews. It's me just coaching, just teaching. I've been doing this since 2015, 2016, a couple of million downloads now. So it's really fun for me now. So check out that podcast, YouTube as well. But one quick thing, I've actually been having a lot of fun on Instagram. And so I'm at 240 ,000 followers now on Instagram.

51:57Dustin Heiner:I've done it all organically. I didn't buy any, no bots whatsoever. All organically, but you can find me on there. The Dustin Heiner, T-H-E, Dustin Heiner. Reach out to me, say, hey, I listened to you on Andrew's show and I'd love to chat and help you out as much as I can. But man, Andrew, it's been great. You have amazing questions and I can't wait for part two. This has been absolutely incredible and so valuable to us as well. So we'll link all of that stuff up in the show notes down below so everybody can check that out as well. And Dustin, thank you so much. And I'm pumped for part two.

52:47if we made$15 bills. But it turns out, that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months, $90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms.