Podcast 74. Build Your Real Estate Business First with Dustin Heiner

Average Joe Finances:
0:00

Hey, how's it going everybody? So today's guest is Dustin Heiner and Dustin is the rental property expert, and founder of masterpassiveincome.com being successfully unemployed at 37 years old by investing in real estate rental properties. He's now on a mission to help people quit their job and never have a job again, he also helps his students build successful real estate investing businesses all over the country. Through his work at masterpassiveincome.com and rentalpassiveincome.com, Dustin Heiner has become the leading real estate property expert. Dustin started master passive income at his home in 2015 while being a full-time employee. Married with four children owning and operating two other businesses and being a full-time investor. He's very passionate about his mission to help others become successfully unemployed and never need a job again. In 2015, Dustin wrote his first book, how to quit your job with rental properties, which quickly became a bestseller. From there. He began his new business, helping others to invest in rental properties and quit their job. Since then, Dustin has helped countless numbers of people start investing in real estate rental properties. Even if his students live in very expensive cities, he shows them how they can invest all over the country. Dustin, what an awesome background. You're doing so much stuff and it just, it boggles my mind. Just reading through your background here, man. It's super cool. It's a pleasure to have you on. Thanks for joining me.

Dustin Heiner:
1:29

Oh, man. Mike, it's my pleasure. I thank you so much for having me on. I just love talking with great people like yourself, but then also just sharing how real estate has literally changed my life. And I love real estate, but it's not necessarily just real estate because it's what it affords me to do with my life. I could play with my kids. I can go to the gym whenever I want, I literally have to work a job. So I really appreciate you having me on the show.

Average Joe Finances:
1:50

Yeah, absolutely man. Okay. So I gave a little bit of your background there and just some of the massive things that you've done since 2015, six years and you've made such a huge impact. So I'd like to know let's go beyond that scope. So if you could just go a little bit more in depth and share a little bit more about yourself and your story, like, how did this get started?

Dustin Heiner:
2:12

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So what really came out of w I've always been entrepreneurial business mindset type of person growing up. I've always been entrepreneurial. And on top of that, basically when I was 13 years old, I had a paper route. It's where you ride your bike with news papers. You'd throw it, bang the garage doors and wake people have 5am. So I did that growing up. I also had a graphic of website design company. Also had a skateboard manufacturing business even a pizzeria and it convenience store. Like I was always entrepreneurial, but at the same time, what I realized now, looking back, I'm looking back now. I didn't know this then, but those were all just extra jobs. Like even though I was creating a. I, if I didn't work an hour, I wouldn't get paid. So I had to continue to work. So what I also did was I bought one piece of real estate. I bought one rental property. It was a 2006. I was living in California, but I wouldn't know HIO. And I bought a property in Ohio. And then it started making money in passive income. I thought this is great. I needed buy more of these. I didn't necessarily, but then I also had a regular job, nine to five jobs sitting at a desk. I basically worked for the county in California. It was a county in California that I was working at technology, just doing technology work nine to five. But I got to tell you this quick story, Mike, about how, like basically what catapulted me into becoming an investor. Even with doing all these other things. I was still, working a, I call it a J O B that just over broke job, still working that just over broke job. And has my wife had a kid after kid? I forget we had four kids and after my fourth child was born, I went on paternity leave. Paternity leave is where the dad stays home and bonds with the baby changes, poopy diapers and all that sort of stuff. And then it goes back to work. So I'm off about a week and I get back to work and that same week I get back. I get a call from my boss's boss's secretary. Like the top dog, I get a call from the secretary says, Hey, Dustin, would you please come to the boss's office? And I said, sure. Then I hung up the phone. And then I sat there for a second and I thought. I wonder why they would be calling me to the office like this isn't normal. And as I'm sitting there, I started thinking back maybe one or two months before I went on paternity leave, there was some rumors or some rumblings going on that there could potentially be layoffs in the department. I said, I immediately shook that off. No, I have so much seniority. I've been working here for 15 years. I was taught growing up as a kid, you get. You get good grades, you go to college, you get good grades. Then you get a job. You worked that to for 40 years. So that's what I was taught. So that's what I was doing. So I, I shook it off. Then I got up and I started walking down the hallway to my boss's office. Now, Mike, this hallway wasn't very long, but every single step I took, it felt like that hallway got longer and longer. I felt like my feet became lead bricks because the weight of everything started coming on my shoulders. That my goodness, if I lose my job what's going to happen to me and my family. As I'm walking down the hallway, I turn the corner and I see my boss's door is closed. And I see a secretary she's looking at me and sheepishly, she grins and says, Dustin, would you please have a seat? And so I go over there and I sit down in the chair and she's consoling me with her eyes because she knows everything about what's going on. I know nothing about what's going on. And as I'm sitting there, my hands get all clammy. My forehead gets all sweaty because. It starts to Dawn on me. This is probably the time that I get laid off. And what, like all these years working a quote unquote career, is that going to be all wasted and taken out from under me? What does that make? If I can't provide for my kids, I don't can't make money. Then I can't provide for my kids. What does that make me as a father? Does that make me a failure as a father? Does that make me a failure as a man being able to provide for a family, his family failure as a husband? As I'm sitting there, the door opens up to my boss's office and out walks a lady, a coworker. She has a piece of paper in her hands and she's noticeably distraught, noticeably upset, but 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, which you please come into my office? So I get up and I go into his office and I get laid off and remember, this is the government nobody ever gets fired or laid off for the government, but I did. And so I take that layoff notice and I walked back, that's short hallway to my desk and I sit down there and Mike, I realized two things right then and there literally sitting right there after I just got laid off. Notice two things I realized. I need to get another job. I need to be able to provide for my family. So I was really blessed. Praise the Lord to find another job in the same county, a different department Sheriff's department was great. Did I.T. work for them? Really good job. So I did that for a number of years, but in also the second thing that I realized, and I want everybody who's listening to this or watching this, you need to realize this. That your value is so much more than anybody can ever pay you and sitting right there. I realized that now what I would always do at reply, most people do this. If somebody asks me the question, Dustin, what do you do? Basically? They're asking you the question, asking me the question. What value do you put on yourself? I would always just reply. Oh, I work for the county. I do I.T. work. But that sitting that right then and there, I realized my value is not in my job. Everybody needs to realize this, your value is not in your job. Your value comes from yourself. My value comes from my God. It comes from myself and my family. And so right then and there I realized no longer will I ever say that I work this job. That's my value. No. Now I will tell everybody I am a. Investor. I invest in real estate. It may so happen. That 100% of my money comes from my job. That's now my part time job, I am a full time investor from that point forward. I bought property after property. After property told everybody I was an investor and six, seven years later when I was 37 years old, I had 30 plus properties. I, even though I was making$75,000 a year at this good job, I went into my new boss's office and I gave him a layoff notice. All right. Basically gave him a two weeks notice. He said, boss, I'm done. I'm not going to be, I don't need to work here anymore. He said, Dustin, what are you going to do? I said I really don't need to do anything. I have real estate. It makes me money without doing a thing. And so Mike, I got to write up the story. That last day that I walked away from work. If you remember that, that long, a short hallway, that felt like it got longer and longer, my feet got I walked home or walk to my car from my job, the law that a job for the very last time, it's a mile and a half walk. I'm pretty frugal. So I didn't want to pay for parking it's in the downtown Fresno. And so I'm walking this walk and I felt like I was walking on clouds because I knew I would never, ever need a job again. And on top of that, my value now is in me. I can now make my destiny. Nobody can ever pull the rug out from under me or make it so that I can't feed my family. So I want everybody to realize this your value is so much more than your boss could ever pay you. And you can know this because they are only paying you enough to keep you working without quitting, but not so much money that takes money out of their pocket. So once you realize that the world is open to you, so I'll pause the story right there and let you ask questions. Cause you probably have some questions.

Average Joe Finances:
9:14

Yeah, man. So actually I was I was sitting here taking notes as you were going. And the, one of the biggest things that I felt like, I felt so much anxiety, as you're telling me about the part where you had to walk to your boss's office and then sit there and like how it felt forever. And one of the things I wrote down here is you sat there and you had to wait for your fate. It's that's just wild, man, even though you knew what was coming, but not quite until you go into the office to find out. And, but that entire time, just that anticipation of, the unknown, but known man that just sitting here, listening to your story, I'm sitting here getting anxious oh my God, this sucks.

Dustin Heiner:
9:51

But here's the great thing. Let me, I'll quickly add you. I definitely want to get to your point. I'll quickly add that this was the best. One of the best things that ever happened to me, because I realized that this catalyst that got me to become an investor, that's where I'm at today is because of this. And any time anybody gets laid off, we need to look at this. And I forced myself to look at this as an opportunity. This is something that I was, we think our job is guaranteed, but it's literally not. In fact, I worked for the government, like I said, I got fired or laid off. And so with that, nothing's guaranteed. You want to look at what, any, anything that comes negatively. Looking at how you can make it into an opportunity and change your life.

Average Joe Finances:
10:32

Absolutely. Yeah. Nothing in life is guaranteed except for death and taxes. And you can mitigate taxes.

Dustin Heiner:
10:38

I love, I look depreciation and real estate. That's my favorite things.

Average Joe Finances:
10:41

Absolutely. So there was something else you mentioned as you were given that, that background in your, the origin story here, right? If this, if you were a Marvel character and one of the things you said is where does your value come from? And I thought that was super important. Like probably one of the biggest things you said, and you had mentioned how, your value comes from yourself, your God and your family. And, having that, I guess that higher view, that higher level picture of where you want to be and how you want to live your life is something that you were able to use as a catalyst or a motivation to push you towards this, this mindset of changing your entire life to get to the point where you didn't have to be employed anymore. And I feel like you've manifested it right. Because you were walking around. I'm an investor, I'm an investor. I'm an investor. As you kept acquiring more and more properties until it became a hundred percent reality that your investments are now funding your lifestyle. So that's really awesome, man. You just walked around and said, Hey, I'm a full-time investor. That's my new, I don't want to call it a job because at this point you're not going to be just over broke. But this is my new field of expertise. This is my new career. That I've built for myself and I don't have to rely on an outside entity. I don't have to rely on a boss, to ensure that I'm going to get the food on the table for my family and the money that I need in the bank to take care and pay my bills. Absolutely awesome, man. So what a, what an amazing background. Now as you're going along in this so you were 37 years old when you got to the point where you said. I'm going to go give my boss the two week notice and, let them know I'm firing them, like it's time to move on. So as you're doing this right you're on this journey in financial freedom and you started investing, like you said, you bought that first property back in 2006. So that was a single family home right? Now has any of that evolved? Do you still buy single family rentals or have you change it to multi-family or commercial properties or anything like that? What does it look like right now? The picture of how you're investing.

Dustin Heiner:
12:46

I am an a, basically. I'm a real estate investor. So whatever real estate comes by, that's a good deal. That's going to make me money and here's the catch or catch the key is passive income. I absolutely don't care about appreciation. It's great when it comes. But here's the great thing. I will not sell my properties. In fact, if you could watch these my kids are in the background. I'm literally going to give my properties to my kids. Now. I love residential homes, four units and below, but also just like monopoly. You buy land, you build properties, you start collecting rent. So you grew up to a whole. Same exact thing we want to eventually get to where we have multiple doors, which is another, like a multi-family because things are spread out. You have a lot more economies of scale. You'd make a lot more money, which is fantastic, but there are lots of different ways to invest. It could be commercial. In fact, I was actually really close to buying a commercial property, like three months before I was the coronavirus happened, March of 20, 23 months before I was really about ready to. I'm really glad that they were asking way too much, that it pulled me out of buying that commercial property, because it would've just been bad after that. But anyways, long story short, I invest in whatever comes, but I love residential homes and that, four units. Because it's so simple now here's the thing that I do with my business or with how I invest and what I'd love teaching everybody else. Mike, when it comes to residential homes. So personally I build the business first. Remember I'm always, I've always been entrepreneurial. I love business. I love creating processes and systems and all that stuff. And then I also want to make sure I make money. So here's, what I love to do is I build the business first. Now other people teach you how to invest in, let's say residential homes four units and below they'll say what you do is you find a property. You run the numbers, make sure you're making, I don't know, 50 to a hundred dollars a month. Cause you're also gonna get appreciation, make a little bit of passive income. Then you find somebody to fix it up. Then you find somebody who said lease it or to be a tenant. Then you find a property manager and they always do this in my opinion, almost backwards. That's not the way we invest. And I'll give you example of what it looks like to build a business. So I built the business first. If you're going to start a convenience store, we all know what a convenience store is. It, you open the door, there's, candy bars and soda machines and all that sort of stuff. If you're going to start a convenience or a business, you're not going to open the doors, sign a lease, and put a box of candy bars inside there, and hope to run a business. In fact, you'll go out of business and today. No. What you would do though, is you would build the business first. You get the gondolas. So it was a shelving units. That's what they are that you put the candy bars on countertops, cold storage, fountain machines, employees, bank accounts, cash registers, insurance. You'll get all of this before you buy any inventory. Then once your business built, that's when you buy the inventory and put it in your business, same thing with rental properties or. Residential homes before units and below we build the business first and then every property that we buy, that's a piece of inventory that we put into the business, as opposed to looking at our property as a business, your property is not your business. Your business owns inventory. And that piece of property is that inventory. So what that looks like is quickly go into it, your property managers, your inspectors, your contractors, your roofers, your plumbers, your even your realtors. I put realtors more last because they're a dime a dozen. And if you're a realtor and you'd get offended by that, I apologize that you got offended, but I still hold to it. Realtors are a dime, a dozen. I love wholesalers as well. Wholesalers are probably some of my favorite people. They get deals for me. I pay them a little bit of money, just like you pay realtors. But I get fantastic deals are really low price. But what I do also is I build the business. I make sure everything's done first and on top of that, I make sure whatever city, anywhere over the country. In fact, I invest in Ohio, Texas, and Arizona. I have students literally invest in all over the country. The Midwest is really good. Getting the Carolinas is really good, Florida. These are really good areas of the country to invest. And what you do is you make sure, just like if you're going to build a convenience store, you're going to make sure that you can buy inventory. If you can't buy the candy bar, you can't buy the sodas. Why would you build a convenience store business if you can't get the inventory? So the first thing you do is you make sure there's inventory in that city, right? Types of homes, three I, my, my favorite three bedroom, two bath, 1200 to 1500 square feet. It's the type that everybody either wants to buy or rent. And I buy that as long as it's inside of, has good inventory. Then I build the business inventory in the city. Then I build a business, buy inventory and keep putting in a business. That's how we scale the business so much easier than, a mom and pop person that says I'm a landlord. I have one rental property, or I have five properties. I manage them all myself. I find the tenents. I do all that stuff. You basically create yourself a job. I, and Mike you'll appreciate this. A lot of people have heard and read the book four hour work week while working four hours is for suckers. I don't want to work. I don't even work 30 minutes a week, maybe 30 minutes a month. And that's all I do is I give, get to my property management statements, make sure everything looks good, then set it aside and go back to play with my kids or do you know, playing golf or do whatever I want. And so the reason why I'm able to that is because we built a business. We put in systems and processes to make sure that it runs the way we want it. And then we let our employees basically our experts on the ground do all the work.

Average Joe Finances:
17:56

Yeah. I love that. I'm just sitting here writing down a few more things, but

Dustin Heiner:
18:00

I just answered, I answered way more than your original question. If I could just do single family.

Average Joe Finances:
18:05

Dustin. It's fantastic, man. You, one of the things you're talking about is, you built your team first, right? You build the business first and no matter what it was that you went to, whether it was single family, rental properties or anything else, you made sure you had the systems and processes in place, like you said. So that. It truly becomes passive income because a lot of people, they'll get into real estate and they're trying to do everything themselves just to save a few bucks. And they get themselves to the point where it's Hey this isn't passive. And I'm doing a lot of work just to get, $50 a month. Yeah. Or just to get $150 a month after all my expenses are paid. But you looked at it from, the 30,000 foot point of view instead of being right there on it, saying, okay, from up here, I can see everything and I need to put people here, and get all these people in the right place before I eat. Start this before we even take that next step and push go. So I think that's super important. One of the things I've been learning as I go, because I started on my own like you were talking about like most people do. And I've noticed as I start to get more involved in things, I start outsourcing more things. So I hired VA's to do specific tasks, like even for my podcast, too. So I don't really do much with my podcast. I recorded the content and I send it off to my editing team. And I have a VA now that actually does like all of my social media posts and all that other stuff. When I'm on social media, it's, I'm on my personal pages and sharing a couple of things, but I'm usually sharing what my VA has already shared on my business pages. That has been like a huge lifesaver, at least on my end. So I can attest to that, that by outsourcing and building that team. Oh my goodness. How much easier it's become for me to continue doing this? Because we talked to off camera a little bit and all my listeners know already, I'm active duty in the Navy and everything. And that takes a lot of my time. So I don't have all the time in the world to sit here and try to, edit and do all these other things and still invest in real estate and still be active as a realtor. And I wasn't offended by what you said, because realtors are a dime a dozen doesn't it's true. It's true. And, you got to fight for your business. But at the same time, you have to be realistic with what it really is. So anyways, so as I'm building everything, I needed help, I needed to build a team and that's one of the things that's super important. So as I'm getting ready to retire and I realized I'm going to get a lot of this time back, I could start investing my time in more important things like my family and things like that. So we're all pretty excited for what this next chapter is going to look like. And I love what you said, Dustin, about how. You work about 30 minutes a month and you're sitting here Hey I look at what's going on. I look at, our statements and what do we have flowing? And then I pass it off to the team. They take care of it and I go hang out and play with my kids. That's what being financially free is all about. That's what having this passive income is all about. And the fact that you sit here and you teach this to other people is just, it brings massive value to anybody that's in this community. And one of the things that I've found about the real estate investment community, just as a whole, since I got into it, 96, 97% of the people in this community are just so very giving. Like they're not afraid to help other people reach their hand out and say, Hey, follow me. Let's do this. And that's one of the things I love about it and networking with people. And that's one of the reasons why I started this podcast. I get to meet awesome people like you and network with awesome people like you and get to ask you the questions and pick your brain and ask you the questions I want to ask you. And it's just a massive value. And I get to share this with my listeners and they get a better understanding of the guests that come on the show and what they're doing. So a really awesome stuff.

Dustin Heiner:
21:43

I definitely want to add to that. Cause you're a hundred percent. So when I first started investing as was 2006, I didn't know what I was doing. I just pieced it together and eventually figured it out because I said, I know it's got to work because so many people have done it in the past. So I'm going to figure it out. I eventually figured out, but also figured out on top. It's hard going it alone. And you don't have to, like you said, Mike, if you get I will say there's a pretty pop quote, unquote popular. I won't use his name. I won't use this thing. I don't want his name. I don't want to get it to get me upset, but he's very popular and he's a salesman. Basically. He says he invest in real estate, which I'm not saying he doesn't, but he even has a conference that's huge. And like thousands and thousands of people go to this conference, but it's all a sales pitch. It's all. This is what the conference is basically. All right, guys, you invest in real estate investing real estate investment real estate. Now run to the back and go get me 20 grand out of your credit card. That's not the way it should be. In fact, if you get to know people like Mike and I were also commenting online, offline other people that we know in a space where we're coaching and sharing with people, how to do this. There are so many people that are givers and it's so much better when you have a community of other people, other investors, because ideas or even passing on deals or other investors, like I have a lot of people that want to invest. And so I have a lot of students Hey, let's connect you. And so if we help, as we help each other out, we actually build ourselves up. Instead of thinking it like a competition. Oh, I would, I used to always think, oh, I don't want to tell anybody where what city I'd invest in, because they might start doing that. And then there's going to be competition. I won't be able to buy the properties. It doesn't work like that. It literally doesn't. In fact, I have students that are all investing all over the country and lots of students invest in the same cities, but they're not competing. It's, there's so many properties out there. So it doesn't matter. Now on top of that, I love, so I was mentioning to you, Mike I'm also creating a conference, so this. I was talking to a friend of ours. His name is David Pere from military to millionaire. And I was talking to him. I said, you know what? My community wants a meetup. They want to get together. And I was thinking, does yours? Oh yeah, my mine does too. I said how about I put on a conference for everybody? All of our friends, like I like 20 plus people let's all get together and just help each other out. I'm only rental properties. I'm not syndication. I will not teach that. I would love to give money to people who are syndicators. I'm not going to teach that, but there are other people that are, but all back to what you were saying, it's so much better when we work together, helping each other out and it makes investing more fun and you get accountability, you get people that help you out. And yeah, the real estate conference it's called real estate wealth builders. And as I was thinking, I was like, that's what. We're building wealth for ourselves and we're helping each other out. So I just, I had to pick it back up off that, because in this community, people are givers. Now you will find takers. And those takers you're like, oh, let me just stay away from you. You'll feel like that. And you know who they are, but the people that are givers like you Mike just being able to give on this podcast, we also get returns. Like we get a lot of good things in return, like meeting great people or potentially getting investors or getting new people in our audience all the time. But as long as we're helping each other out, it just, it's like a rising tide raises all boats. Let's just go ahead and do that.

Average Joe Finances:
24:46

Absolutely. A hundred percent. Just like you said, too, you know what we're doing here, building wealth, right? You see it in my background, it says, build your wealth, control your future. And that's one of the things like you don't need to build wealth to be like filthy rich and have the yacht and all that stuff. And just be like, the typical. I guess what people picture as a millionaire or billionaire. Wealth can be a multiple of things. Wealth can be your health, wealth can be your family. Wealth can be the free time that you get because you no longer have to work. To me being financially free and financially independent, Dustin is probably the most important thing that I can achieve with what I'm doing with my investments and being able to share that with other people, to give them that freedom, because that's what it is, right. It's you're trying to gain freedom because if you want to take that free time let's say you're not married with children and you want to take that free time to go make more money. Cause you. Filthy stinking rich. Guess what? When you get your self to the point where you don't have to go to work anymore, all your expenses are covered. You can take all that time to brainstorm and think about how to scale and keep growing and growing if that's what you want to do. But the beauty of it is the freedom that you get once you're able to quit your job and quit your nine to five. So that's absolutely awesome.

Dustin Heiner:
26:02

On top of that, when you're building wealth. I love the fact that I can literally and will literally. My properties to my kids. Like you, if anybody, most people have a job and you realize that you cannot give your job to your kids. They have to be up. They have to apply and get selected as well. But also once you have the real estate, it frees your time up to do other things, building more businesses I can. And will I have four or five properties now or sorry, businesses now, plus. I can and will build my kids up in the business, whichever business they want to be a part of. And that literally give it to them. I literally can give them like all my real estate, all the businesses, any cash, like I'm now looking at what can I build now? Because I literally could just sit around and play golf all day and, do whatever I want, but I'm like, what can I build now? So they could give it to my kids. That's the future thing that you're allowed to do when you don't have a job that you can start thinking of bigger picture things, because you're not so grinding for somebody else.

Average Joe Finances:
26:59

Yeah, absolutely bigger pictures is the key thing. And you're at the point now it's Hey, you're financially free. And you got yourself to this point now where you're like, Hey, it's time to start thinking a little bit bigger. Let's think generational wealth. Like I want my kids, I want my grandkids. I want them to want for nothing. But at the same time, like the way I feel about that too, is I want to give the world to my kids. But at the same time I want them to earn it, I don't want to hand them anything on a silver platter

Dustin Heiner:
27:22

because it'd be trust fund babies.

Average Joe Finances:
27:23

Exactly. Cause then they wind up growing up like Paris Hilton and all that stuff. And it's just a mess. You don't want to build a world like that. But what you want to do is build a world where they have the freedom to go out and live and enjoy their life. If my kids want to travel the world, I want them to do that. It's, if they want to go to college, then Hey, go to college. I want to be able to just say, Hey. It's paid for, it's done, if you want to get married and buy a house and all that stuff and live that typical dream life you can do that because, you'll have the freedom to do so because of what you know, I'm trying to build right now in this lifetime.

Dustin Heiner:
27:57

Mike what's, your what's you're doing is you're also using delayed gratification and that's something we should be teaching our kids. Delayed gratification is so much better. Cause what's interesting is when you buy one property, that's for what I do and what I teach you buy one rental property. It makes you $250 a month. So I was on another podcast and they said that's not that sexy. It's not like you're making a million dollars in one pop. I'm like, yeah, it's not, but here's the thing. We're delayed. We're using delayed gratification, but here's what you look at one property, $250 a month. That's $3,000 a year in passive income without working 10 properties though, once you scale the business, that's$2,500 a month in passive income. That is, we have $30,000 a year without working 20 properties is$5,000 a month without working$60,000 a year in passive income. And it just scales from there. But here's the great thing though, because people might be thinking, I remember one of our look just few minutes ago, we were talking about what if we didn't have enough money to pay for property managers? We're scraping by just it's so hard. The reason why it's not hard is because we built a business, but then we also account for all the expenses. So here's, what's interesting. And you'll definitely get this Mike. I don't pay my taxes on my properties. I don't pay my mortgage. I don't pay my property manager. I don't pay my insurance. I don't pay anything. My tenants pay for all that. And on top of that, I make money in passive income. So what it really looks like it's super simple. And in fact, Mike, you're much smarter than me, more than likely everybody else listening to this and watching it is as much smarter than me. It's really simple because like numbers go in my brain and they flutter away. It's just sad. But here's what it is. It's addition, subtraction, a little bit of multiplication. All you do is you account for all your expenses. I just explained them, mortgage taxes, insurance, vacancy factor, things like. We can show you how to do it, Mike, and I can show you how to do that, but you add up all the expenses and then you talk to your property manager. Never. We build a business first property manager. I'm looking at this house. How much can it rent for? Let's say your expenses are a thousand dollars and let's say your property manager comes back. You can rent it for 1,250. That difference is $250 in passive income accounting for already taxes, insurance, property manager. So you don't have to think, oh man, I got to cut into my profits in order to pay for my property manager. No, we've already accounted for that expense. And on top of that, we're making$250 a month in passive income. So if, as long as we're doing that, we're focusing on making money for ourselves so that we don't have to work that job because my whole goal, the biggest goal for 10 year ago after I read rich dad, poor dad, when I was 26, I said Robert Kiyosaki, didn't 10 years, I'm going to try to do it in 10 years, 37 years old. I was able to quit my job, but I said, my goal is to not work for somebody else and all I needed to do, like you said, a little bit earlier, I was thinking in big picture wise, I wanted to develop my life. And see where wa where I wanted it to be, and then work my way towards they're using delayed gratification, buying property after property, I knew how much expenses I needed to get to. I needed to get to, I think it was like $4,200, right around there. 4,000, $200 a month in X to cover my expenses, just in passive income. I beat that in three or four years, and then it took me. I D I was just nervous, even though I know your job is not guaranteed, you could get fired. But just leaving that W2 job, it's a little harder, plus it's easier to get loans and stuff. Anyways, once I realized, oh my goodness, I'm wasting my life here. I can make so much more money on my own. I quit. I never looked back. I'm so much more happy that I can because now I'm literally creating business after business. I'm getting people, great jobs and giving people great homes to live in at a good price, good affordable price, all this combined. What we'd like to start as you have, let me give you something I'm rambling, but let me give you one more thing. There's four legacies that we want to leave in our life. Number one is a money legacy. So money legacy, basically we have enough money going into our pockets so we can buy whatever we want. Now with that money legacy eventually comes the second legacy, which is a time legacy. So the money legacy goes into time, legacy, where you have enough time to do whatever you want. You don't have to work that dead end job. So you have money. Then the time then with that time comes the relationship legacy. With the relationships that legacy you're building with your parents, that you don't talk to ever, or your kids that you don't even get to be there for the little league games, let alone coach them. So now you develop that relations, that legacy. I'm very blessed now, after working with delayed gratification, working so hard to get to where I'm at, this is the fourth legacy that we all should strive to get to. That's the service legacy. Now you have the money legacy leads in the time legacy, time legacy leads into the relationship, legacy relationship, legacy leaves into the service legacy. Now I've found the businesses that I create, the properties that I buy, the things I do to serve more people. Like master passive income where I literally teach people. I just get my podcast is literally just me teaching this, my YouTube channel. Like I just literally give it away. I found the more people that I serve, the better my life gets the better. I feel like man, this person just bought a property because of what I shared on my podcast. That's awesome. Because I'm able to serve more people. My life gets better. Other people's lives get better on top of that and I feel better and I make more money just because I'm serving more and more people. So that's something that I love that I have the luxury now, because I fixed that. I find I get finished or figured out how to get that money legacy. Then everything goes in line. And so as you're thinking forward, big picture, how do I get to the service legacy? And everything goes in line with that.

Average Joe Finances:
33:19

Dustin. Yeah. That's, that is a great way to look at it. The four legacies and how they tie into each other. Absolutely love that. So I have to ask you something though, right? So since you've been doing this for a little while now, and you've got a really great system in place. So what is something that you've learned that you wish you knew when you first started?

Dustin Heiner:
33:40

So as far as systems or things in general.

Average Joe Finances:
33:43

Just investing in real estate in general, just, to, to where you are now, what is something when you first started, when you said, Hey, I want to get into real estate. I want to invest to build this legacy or build up these four legacies. What is something that, you know, now that you wish you knew when you started.

Dustin Heiner:
33:58

The biggest one by far is building the business first that's by far, because I had thought just like all the other gurus tell you, you find a property, you make a little bit of money and passive income and then no, that's backwards. We make sure we can build the business. We have inventory. Like this is literally like one on one coaching. What I do with my students let's find an area anywhere. Let's find new area that has good inventory. Okay, great. Types of homes. We're going to buy a price of what we want to buy types of tenants that we have price of rents, everything fits the inventory wise. Great. That's pause. Looking at probably. Because we are not probably not going to buy them because we got a lot of work to build a business. This is the hardest part that all my students they struggle with, or at least it's the slowest going because in building a business, you're interviewing property managers, you're finding wholesalers, you're interviewing realtors. You're making sure that you have the right it's home inspectors. You're doing all this. To build the business. Once you build the business, then you can then buy the inventory. And so what I did from the very beginning is I followed what everybody else said, but that was the wrong way. Don't do it the right way is to build the business first and then only then once your entire business built. And here's a big key. If you think of football, your number one players are quarterback. Your property manager is your quarterback. And here's, what's really funny, Mike. So I have a YouTube channel. It's literally just me teaching how to invest in real estate. The worst watched videos are how to find a property manager, how to vet the property manager, how to anything about property managers. It's not fun. It's not sexy. I would be quote unquote, the use the word sexy. It's not exciting. The exciting ones that people love are how to how to be a, make, how to make a million dollars or, how do get, finding how to find the properties, how to fund or get money for the properties. Those are the ones that people just gobble up, but the ones that they need. They don't watch, like those are the worst watched ones. So what I will say is that what I would tell myself from the very beginning is build the business first find and hire interview, take a long time interview the right property managers. My first property manager literally started stealing from me within six months. It was horrible. And I was if I would've got deterred and said, oh, it doesn't work. The property manager stole from me. I wouldn't be where I am today. So I'm persistent. Obviously I keep pushing forward. That's another huge key. But it's building the business first, knowing how to build the business so that it could then run without you, because all the systems that you put in place, and then everybody, all the experts on the ground are already doing the work for you.

Average Joe Finances:
36:19

Perfect. It's funny. I kind of already knew the answer to that question when I asked you that, but I wanted to make it like official, because that really is huge Dustin, like you're saying like, we started the same way. It's funny because I did the same thing where you know I read that famous purple book, rich dad, poor dad. And I got into him like, Hey, I just need to get in. I just need to get in like that. My, my whole focus was just getting in real estate, I didn't care, whatever it takes, let's do it. So I did, and I didn't have any systems in place and I got my first property and I'm looking around like John Travolta in pulp fiction, like what happened? Yeah. Definitely a very good point to make. And especially for somebody who's a newbie getting into it right now and they want to start investing in real estate. They haven't started yet. Hey, go build your team first, go build your business. And then do it. And once you have all the systems in place, it's going to be a lot more, just, off your shoulders and you can take that step back and just let it happen. But it's, it is super important. Like you said, though, make sure you're interviewing. So you get the right people. You don't want to have the wrong person, that job, like you said, you had the one guy stealing from me for six months. That can absolutely derail you really quick. And for somebody who's just getting started if if the passion isn't there yet, which it will be the longer you put it into it, but if it's not there yet, that could deter you to just walk away from it and you could really be giving up on something great. So being persistent is also very huge. So speaking of somebody just getting into this, cause on my podcast here, we talk about beating debt and then getting into to real estate. So one of the premises is, to get rid of some of that consumer debt. So you have money to invest in real estate. So let's say we have somebody who finally paid off their credit cards. They're sitting in a pretty good spot. They have some cash that they want to get involved in real estate. Do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to somebody just getting started today?

Dustin Heiner:
38:11

Yeah, 100%. I would say that a lot of people think that the way to buy a real estate is to find a mortgage broker and a realtor and put them together and buy a property. That is one of so many ways to actually buy properties, everything from finding properties to funding properties. In fact, I have you on my YouTube channel. I even have a video where I go through 14 different ways that I used to buy properties and not just like I got one mortgage and bought a property, or I got a private money lender and got a property or hard money lender and got a property. I literally have combined all of these, like a mortgage, private money, hard money, and a signature loan to get to. I make sure as an investor here's a big thing as an investor or entrepreneur or somebody who's on your own. You're a problem solver. And so let's say your first problem is I don't have a business, figure or fix that problem by building the business. Next one. Next problem. I don't have another property. I don't have a property to buy you. Fix that by finding the right people to send you deals. I literally get deals all the time in my email. It's fantastic. I literally just wake up the morning, drink my coffee and just look through all the properties that people send me because they know I'm an investor. Remember that very beginning. I told everybody, I told you that I told everybody now I'm investor. Now everybody knows I'm an investor. So they keep sending me properties to buy. So that's the next problem. The next problem after that is. Like I said, I'm finding properties are so many ways you're gonna have so many people, wholesalers, realtors, other investors, even title companies, sending me property managers send me that's. Those are ways to get properties the next way. Or next thing that you're gonna run into roadblock is I don't have money to buy the property while there are, like I said, 14 different ways, at least in one video that I literally created to show all that. We figured out how to get this to work. If a mortgage doesn't work well, maybe we talked to the seller about doing seller finance, or we talked to, maybe our uncles and aunts and other people in our family and see if they might be able to lend us money, talk to your bank and get a signature loan. And here's an advanced strategy. I even used a credit card to buy properties and I knew I was going to make money. So don't get me wrong. It's I would say it's like I said, it's the best strategy and not everybody should do, but because I knew my business. I counted everything. I was like, this is a cheap loan. Let's go and buy property. So that's the biggest thing he did

Average Joe Finances:
40:18

that too, man. So I ain't going to lie. I use the, I cashed out, took out some cash on a credit card. Yeah,

Dustin Heiner:
40:25

absolutely. That's the biggest thing is just realize there are so many ways to do it. Don't get pigeonholed or just think it's one way. And then also listen to it to Mike here, listen to average Joe finance, like you want to be learning and then you'll figure out there are so many ways to do it.

Average Joe Finances:
40:39

Absolutely. And not just average Joe finances there's plenty of great podcasts out there as a matter of fact. My next question for you is do you, besides your own, do you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast?

Dustin Heiner:
40:54

So I'll give you definitely my favorite books. So rich that poured out, like I already talked about. That's probably my second favorite book. My very first favorite book would be rich debt and our service richest man in Babylon. Now richest man in Babylon is written by George S Clawson, I don't know, 50, 60 years ago, but it's super phenomenal because it's a fiction story. Teaching financial principles. I absolutely love that. And the big reason why is because it has, I implemented the things that are taught inside there. I saw my life change, just like the main character in the book. I was like, oh my goodness, this actually works. And then obviously with rich dad, poor dad learning about passive income building businesses, real estate, coupled those two together, my mind was blown. I was like, oh my goodness. I was. Go to school, get good grades, go to college, get good grades, get a hundred thousand dollars in debt. Get good grades and they get a job and spend the last 40 years to pay off the debt and hopefully retire with whatever's left over. That's a bad idea. In fact, I quit my job when I was 37 years old, even though I'm retired, I called myself successfully unemployed. I'm not retired, like just, lounging all day playing golf. I love creating businesses. I love helping and serving people. So yeah, that's absolutely, for me, it's all about serving people and making sure that as I'm getting better and better in life, I'm bringing people along with me.

Average Joe Finances:
42:08

But when we first started talking, you were talking about going out and playing golf. So now I'm kidding. Hey that's one of the beautiful things is that you, you have this time now to go out and do those things. Like you can go hang with your family, you can go play a game of golf or you can go, whatever you want to do with that free time and the freedom it's because of what you built with your business. That is absolutely huge. And you cheated on that question because you gave me two books, but that's fine. Both great books, right? So richest man in Babylon and rich dad, poor dad. So if you guys have not read that yet, let me go check those out.

Dustin Heiner:
42:35

Let me add one more. I'm going to cheat a little bit more. Here we go. The second. So I love this book and this goes along to what we were, you and I were both talking about community and we're networking and getting around other people. It's how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. Absolutely phenomenal book. Literally I've read at least a dozen times. It's so insightful. That helps you to realize the more people use. This is where I learned it. The more people I serve, the better my life gets and how to serve people and make sure that they realize I'm serving them at the same time, they're going to come and reciprocate. So how to win friends and influence people. I just had to throw that one out. Cause it goes along with what we're talking about.

Average Joe Finances:
43:12

I love it, man. I'll let you, I'll let you throw that in there because that's super important, because as we talked about before we even pushed the record button too. Building a network and just getting connected with other people, especially for somebody who's new and just getting involved in this. Hey, go to a local real estate meetup, go meet people that are doing the things that you want to do. Go surround yourself with people that are doing more than what you're doing, because that's one of the things that's going to help you accelerate and take your business to the next level. And that's absolutely huge. Speaking of taking your business to the next level, I know you have a conference coming up in Phoenix, so I want to give you some time to talk about that, but also, Hey, people listening to the show are like, Hey, Dustin's putting out some really awesome nuggets, golden nuggets of wisdom. And we want to know more about him, his podcast, his website, the book that he wrote. So please man, share all of that stuff with our audience so they can know more about you like your website, social media, anything like that? What do you got going on?

Dustin Heiner:
44:14

Thanks Mike. I really appreciate it. And actually I love just sharing people, showing them how to do this. So I actually have a free. I'd love to just get it for free. If you text the word rental, R E N T A L to 3 3 7 7 7 rental the 3 3 7 7 7. Or you can go to masterpassiveincome.com/freecourse, all one word master passive income.com forward slash free course. I'll literally give you my free course leader showing you how to find an area country to invest. How to scale the business, how to make sure you're building the business first, how to make sure you make it$250 a month and how to do it right. And quit your job. So I'll get that to you. But yeah. So yeah, I have my podcast. You can literally just look up master passive income. So Dustin, Heiner a master passive income for the podcast, my YouTube channel. I'm putting out extra stuff, content, literally just showing you how to invest in this stuff. But also I'm super pumped and I'm glad you reminded me. So I mentioned this a little bit, but my conference that I'm putting up. So I have so many friends that like influencers, other people that we know. And I said, Hey, let's just get all of our communities together because we're all givers. We're going to be bringing people that are givers as well, because they gravitate towards us. Let's bring us all together and create a conference. So it's going to be a March 10th through the 12th, and it's going to be here in Phoenix in 2022. And it's going to be in downtown Phoenix. It's super popular could probably have about 400 people. I already have 20 speakers, like literally awesome investors. Everything from syndication to multifamily, which is obviously the vacation, but Airbnb, single family homes midterm rentals, all this sort of stuff, like literally even land investing. I'm bringing up all of us together, bringing all of our communities and say, Hey, let's just have one huge meetup. Bring everybody together. So it's real estate wealth builders conference. If you go to REWBCON. Obviously abbreviate our rewbcon.com. You can see everything there. You can get discount tickets. Actually, Mike. What I can do is I can give all your audience of $50 off if they want to come. I'd love to have them. I would you mind if I gave them a code? Let's just use the promo code MIKE. If you type in the promo code, MIKE, that will give them $50 off for whatever ticket they buy. Would that be cool?

Average Joe Finances:
46:18

Yeah absolutely

Dustin Heiner:
46:19

Let's do it. Okay. I'll make sure that it's they type it up the code. Mike, you'll get credit. I'll give you some kickback for it because you're awesome. I appreciate you having me on, but yeah, I just want everybody literally I've paid a link to on my website too. That'll take them right to your course. Awesome. Thanks, man. It's been great. I just, I love sharing with this sub. It's just so much fun. Getting to meet, greet, meet great people like you and just brainstorming on how we can do this business better. That's why I love instead of playing golf, which is golf is fun. Don't get me wrong. I love playing golf. I just played golf this morning. I'm horrible. But when you're in Hawaii too, like I'm in Phoenix as a golf Mecca, but Hawaii has got some good golf courses too, but man it's just so much. When you work with other people network with, meeting people like you, Mike is just so much better. Cause it just makes life so much better. Investing gets easier.

Average Joe Finances:
47:07

It gets easier when you build your network, another podcast I listened to called a Weiss advice, which is really awesome. The biggest thing that he says when he starts to show is your network is your net worth. And I, 100% believe that. And like you had mentioned earlier, because of the network that you've built, you've you get deals all the time in your inbox. I get inbox deals all the time. I'm always getting emails with things that are coming up like different syndication deals that are coming up and everything. And that's one of the beautiful things that I've been able to build just with this podcast. And I'm not telling everybody, Hey, go out and start a podcast because it's not right for everyone. But go out and meet people, go out and network, and I guarantee you, you're going to find somebody that can help you take it to the next level. Even with these other things Hey, go take Dustin's free course. That's my favorite price free. Go check that out, check out his website, go check out his podcast. It's things like that, that just add massive value to the community. Dustin. I want to say thank you for everything that you do for the real estate investing community and just in general, helping people take it to the next level to become successfully unemployed. Absolutely love that, man.. I genuinely appreciate you taking some time on a Saturday to have this conversation with me.

Dustin Heiner:
48:19

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

Average Joe Finances:
48:22

All right, man. Hey, had a lot of fun. Aloha from Hawaii.