Seth: Hey folks, welcome to the REtipster podcast. This is Seth Williams. Today's episode is episode 216. You can find the show notes for this episode at retipster.com/216.

In this episode, you're going to hear a live interview that I did with my friend Dustin Heiner of masterpassiveincome.com. We actually recorded this interview at PodFest. It's a conference for podcasters. We did this in Orlando live in person, but the interesting thing about this podcast is that it had these little podcast booths set up that we could go and sit in and record and just see each other face to face. But unfortunately, there were a bunch of people in this room and a lot of people were talking over us in the background and created a lot of background noise.

And as a result, the audio quality actually wasn't that great, even though it was supposed to be great. So I just want to go ahead and apologize up front. The audio quality you're going to hear in this conversation is not as good as it normally is. Kind of sounds like we're in a tin can and I kind of sound like my nose is plugged the whole time. That's what my editor had to do to try to silence all that background noise. So it's still a great conversation. I hope you enjoy it. And we're going to dive into that right now.

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Seth: Hey, everybody, what's going on? You're listening to Seth Williams of REtipster.com and Dustin Heiner of Master Passive Income. So Dustin and I are hanging out at the PodFest conference in Orlando, 2025. It's a conference for podcasters. And you have two podcasts.

Dustin: Yeah, I got two totally unrelated podcasts.

Seth: Would you consider yourself a YouTuber or a podcaster? Or both, maybe?

Dustin: Yeah, I mean, both. But I think the YouTube thing is what I've tried harder and spent more time on.

Seth: So I don't know. It was like two years ago, maybe even longer, maybe three years ago. I sent you a quick message. I'm like, dude, your YouTube is awesome. Your videos are really, really good but then you have two podcasts now. You have one YouTube and two podcasts. It's interesting, like once you develop the skill set and just the knowledge base of how to do it, like it becomes exponentially easier to do it again even if it's totally unrelated. It's like, hey, I can do that. The average person can't or won't do it, just like buying your first house or buying your first piece of land. Once you do it, it's like you've proven to yourself that it's possible and you're not scared. Yeah, you're gonna be scared but you're not gonna be as scared as that first time, like hitting record for the first time on a podcast or, you know, sending the first offer to somebody or sending your first direct mail.

It's scary and nervous, but just like riding a bike. You get used to it. It's like, it would almost be a shame if you didn't do it again, because it took you so much work to get first base. Like, why not keep going to the next one?

Dustin: Well, I know that my listeners from my podcast, the Master Passive Income podcast, yours is the REtipster podcast. You have Storyland Podcast. You coach people on how to invest in land. I coach people on how to invest in single-family homes. Start thinking, how are we going to take this conversation? Because we think of our audience and what they want to hear.

Well, this is what we've learned at PodFest. People come for the content, but they also stay for the host. They stay; they want to keep listening to the host. And this is so amazing. So I put on an event for my community and I bring my friends like you and other investors to come speak. We have more people coming to see you at events. And you and I have even been at conferences that other land investors, they're like, "Hey, I'm here and I'll be here for like an hour at this one restaurant or something. You want to come hang out?"

People fly just hanging out with you for like 30 minutes. Amazing, man. It's amazing.

Seth: But yeah, it's crazy. Let me ask you—those people that do that, obviously they're land investors or they're investors that want to connect with you. Do some of them or most of them come from the podcast? Most come from YouTube, like they found you on YouTube? Did they find you on a podcast or maybe a combination?

Dustin: Yeah, I think it's a smattering. It's a little bit of everything.

Seth: Yeah, I almost wonder because a lot of times when these things happen and we come together, I only spend like a few minutes talking to each person, but I see them all talking to each other. I almost feel like that's where the real value is. It's like, look, there's this community of other people doing the same thing. It's really cool. They probably find me from all kinds of different places.

So the Storyland Podcast, my kids love it. They really, really love it. I don't let my kids consume lots and lots of media. And so when they listen to the podcast, they're still kind of young at heart too, because we don't let them just watch and consume anything. And so when the new Storyland episode comes out, they're all excited.

Dustin: Yeah. You're like one of the early adopters. When I first started talking about it, you just totally dove in. It was awesome to hear that your kids were liking it.

Seth: And yeah, it's a ton of fun. And it's kind of weird because I can just make this stuff up. Like, there's kind of an endless supply if I have time to just make up stories. And it's cool to see that people like it.

Dustin: I can't do that. I literally do not have the creativity to create something. Now, if I forced myself to sit down and do it, I probably could. In fact, my kids would ask me before Storyland came out, "Hey, I want you to tell us a story." I'm like, you're asking the wrong guy here. Daddy doesn't do that. Maybe I'll tell you a story that I know of in the Bible that I've read or something like that.

Seth: On that note, of all these different things that we do, you know, I've got multiple different endeavors. You got the same thing. You know, when I think of you, I think of Master Passive Income, Successfully Unemployed. And each of those things has its own YouTube and podcasts and stuff. You've got REWBCON, which has really turned into a big thing. You've got your rental properties, which is where it all started.

Which of those things is the most impactful? Like, if you were forced to only do one of those, what would be the one that you'd say, this is the most worthwhile of everything?

Dustin: So the Real Estate World Builders Conference is terrific. We connect so many people. I've seen so many lives change from it, but it would not be here if it wasn't for this one other thing. Master Passive Income, all the coaching; we got thousands of students now becoming successful investors, buying real estate, graduating, like playing Monopoly. That's great, but it would not be here if it wasn't for this one thing.

And I know YouTube is not doing much. Yeah, I do get people coming in and watching YouTube, but if it were one thing, it would have to be the podcast. Master Passive Income podcast, number one, I put the most, I would say, passion into it, but it's like, it's what I really enjoy doing. But I also put passion into it. And I really try to help and educate people.

And with the Master Passive Income podcast, it's literally 90% a solo show. You've been on at least four or five times, a lot because we're friends. And I was like, "Hey, let's bring you on, see how you're doing."

And so the podcast, because as I wrote a blog article, I would see the analytics a minute, maybe a minute and a half. They stay looking at my stuff and then they're gone. I do get some people that want to connect after that.

But YouTube. Let's say I make a 12-minute video literally teaching. If you want to do X, Y, and Z, they might stay five minutes, maybe six minutes. I know yours is probably better analytics, so you're really good at it. But the podcast, let's say 100% of the people start. 30 minutes later, whenever the podcast episode's done, I absolutely have 80% of the people still listening to the episodes. And I'm like, man, that's 30-plus minutes or longer. I'm helping somebody that they're staying.

So let me back it up while someone steps. So REWBCON definitely came from the podcast, the conference, the clubs that we have, and the coaching that we have. But that all started with my real estate investing, even the podcast; like everything centers around my real estate investing and how I invest in real estate.

And it kind of grows and adapts. I started with single-family homes and bought enough properties where I didn't have to work anymore. Was a successful employee, started the Master Passive Income podcast and the Successful Employment podcast. But I realized that if I keep all of my work, time, and effort focused around my investing, as I grow, I have grown into multifamily, like commercial real estate.

Then that content starts coming out. And then we start helping people in that regard. And so everything centers around my real estate investing because that's where I make my money.

Now, I do make money through coaching and stuff like that. And I asked my wife, I said, "Hey, honey, we got plenty of money coming in. Should I coach people for free?" And she said, "No, you better not. If you're going to do that, don't do it. Just stay home and homeschool the kids with me." And I was like, that's valid.

Seth: Yeah, that's the thing about coaching is I think a lot of people don't understand. It's actually kind of a costly thing for the coach. When you consider the time they put into it, what their time is worth, and also how many years and what they had to go through to have the knowledge that they can then deliver through coaching. There's a lot that goes into it. I think a lot of people don't necessarily see that. They just see a big, expensive price tag.

Dustin: Well, just like you bring in somebody who does HVAC, heaters and air conditioning and stuff. If you get somebody that does HVAC to come into your house to fix your HVAC. Well, you can't fix it because you don't have all the years doing it, the education, the experience and the history doing it.

So you're not just paying for that hour coming in. You're paying for all the past history just like a doctor. The doctor, he sews you up like you say you cut yourself and you get stitches and stuff. You're not paying for those stitches specifically as well as the hour or 30 minutes. What you're paying for is all of his extensive history and experience to get to that point to be able to take care of anything you need.

And so that's what's interesting about coaching. I've literally spent my life doing this, and I've lost so much money doing it the wrong way. So here's the thing. It took me about nine years to eventually become financially independent. I probably lost 50, 60, 70, just thousands of dollars doing it the wrong way. I would gladly have given up that $50,000 or $60,000, paid somebody that would help me, that would make my nine years turn into three or four or five, like shorten the time. It's fast-tracking.

And so that's something that's interesting for me is my students, like it took me nine years. Cost me a lot of money. The School of Hard Knocks costs a lot of money. But my students are doing it in like three, four, or five years because we fast-tracked it, just like your students. I mean, I know some of your students. I'm like, wow, that person's doing really, really good because they had somebody help them to get that leg up.

Seth: Yeah, totally, man. So you got not just the Master Passive Income podcast, but like a whole network of podcasts, which has been kind of a big “Aha!” moment for me. I just never thought about that, about having several related podcasts all under one roof. What are all the podcasts now?

Dustin: Yeah. So honestly, it was out of necessity. So I'll answer your question, but I'll get to the reason why it's out of necessity. So there's Breakthrough Investor, Charles and William, my students who are coaches. I was like, you need a podcast because people need to learn from you too. We have The Passive Income Life with Zach Zimmer. He is just like me in investor status, meaning we just make our money through real estate. And he's teaching advanced investing, note investing, and all that sort of stuff. We have Real Escape, a kind of play on words, Real Escape Investing podcast. That's Terrie Schauer. She's up in Canada, so if I have any Canadian students, I send them up to her and vice versa. She sends people down here. We also have YouTube Passive Income. I have a good friend that teaches passive income on YouTube and he's great. He wants to be a part of it.

Then we're also creating the Master Passive Income Español because there's a lot of Spanish-speaking people and I have a student who's doing so well and wants to be a part of it. But it came out of necessity and what it really was, I knew that people wanted to learn other things other than single-family homes. Maybe they want to learn Airbnb. Maybe they wanted to learn about apartment complexes, whatever it might be. And I personally did not want to coach those things.

Seth: Why do you want to talk about those?

Dustin: I don't want to talk about multifamily because I don't feel like I'm an expert. I have a couple of them, but at the same time, they're better people.

We also have one more, the MPI Multifamily podcast, where it's all about commercial real estate investing. And it was out of necessity because I had so many people wanting to learn more, but I'm limited and I don't want to teach that stuff. So I just grabbed people that said, "Hey, I want to be doing what you're doing. I want to help people." I said, "Hey, here's what we can do."

And that's how it started, out of necessity, because people wanted it. I wasn't going to do it. So let's bring other people in. And now they're the experts, too.

Seth: Yeah, that's awesome. I think REtipster is easily poised to do this. In fact, we're shouting about it that REtipster is a lot about land. I mean, I think people obviously go there for land. There's so much more in there. That's not just land.

And I think the only thing that's needed for you is to have some other people around you. It's kind of like with me, like you've stayed there at the B&B, but there are seven of us and so staying there, you see how it is; you get the right people.

Dustin: Let me ask you. Do you think that there's somebody, one person, inside of your audience now, either a student or an audience member, that may have something to offer?

Seth: Absolutely. I've already plotted out like four different podcasts we could create. They just kind of go down different angles. I mean, maybe that has to do with land investing, maybe not. But I know there's definitely interest in our audience about these things.

So it's like one of the first things on my list when I get back is to start exploring that and talk to those people and say, "Hey, do you think you'd like to do this about this topic?" And some of these people I have in mind, I'm almost positive they would say yes. Others I'm not totally sure about.

But it's just a great idea, though, to leverage the existing audience and a lot of the expertise that I don't necessarily have. I have some but like, they're way smarter than I am so why not let them?

Dustin: Yeah, and somebody listening to this might be thinking, well, what would they have to gain? Are they going to get paid? Like, what do they have to gain? But I kid you not, just by being around you, they're going to have so much to gain just because, "Hey Seth, this is what I'm going through." You might help me out real quick. "Oh yeah, we're friends. Of course I'm gonna help you out."

That's what I do with all my people. But at the same time, having an awesome REtipster podcast elevates them up so fast. Like my podcast, Master Passive Income, I have an audience and my audience is basically shared with all the other podcasts. We share with everybody else and that elevates the host up tremendously because they now have their own audience, but it came from me. They didn't have to build it up from the ground up and now they're looked at as a better investor.

Now they're looking as their network grows and so honestly, like, if you were to ask me, "Hey Dustin, would you want to do it?" I'd really have to think about maybe I might want to be a REtipster because that would elevate me even more and so anybody thinking like, "You know what? I might have something to offer." Man, you get so much in return by being around people that are doing it.

Seth: Yeah, for sure, man.

I am curious about the rental property investing stuff. I know you started this many years ago now. The market was different. The world was different. Like me, you've just been doing this for a decade-plus. How has that changed? Like when you think about people getting into it right now versus the way it was when you started. Like, is it harder? Is it easier? Is it just different?

Dustin: It's just the numbers are different. It's the same level of ease or hardness.

It's really a simple process. It's not easy, but it's simple. It's not complex. And the numbers are just different. Prices are higher. Interest rates are different or higher. You need to work a little harder to find a good area that has a good price-to-rent ratio. You know, you hopefully buy the house for a little bit lower, rent it for more so you make passive income, and make cash flow every single month.

And so what I've seen in the changing is people that want to be investors; they feel like they're out of the market because prices are too high, interest rates are too high, all that sort of stuff. Well, it was very easy back in 2010 and 2012, when it was really just stumbling on a house and making money. But when you're at, I think, it seems like the top of the market, it's much harder.

So you have to do investor-type stuff. You got to get on the wholesaler's phone list. They're going to call you, "Hey, I have a property. You want to buy it?" You have to go direct mail. I know in land, you guys do lots of direct mail, which my people can learn from. Very rarely do we direct mail because we have wholesalers. They are the ones that do all the work.

Most people, and I did, I had a job. I didn't have the ability to just constantly be talking to sellers and sellers. If a wholesaler, and if you don't know what a wholesaler is, somebody who finds a seller and then they find a buyer and they put them together and they make money, kind of like a realtor, but without a license. Well, if a wholesaler came to me and said, "Hey, Dustin, I have this property. Would you want to buy it?" I'll look at it. I don't care if they make $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, or $20,000. I don't care if the property I buy makes me money in cash flow and I'm not overpaying.

I'll give you an example. Let's say a going rate for a certain property is $150,000. Well, if they get it for $60,000 and they mark it up $20,000 and I'm paying $80,000, I'm in $100,000, but it's worth $150,000. I'm like, I don't care. You did a great job. You got the price low. You're getting paid for what you want. So the only thing that's changed is the numbers, but the simplicity has not changed. It's harder to find because there are more people that are investing and people that don't know how to invest are investing, sadly enough. They listen to the TikTok and Instagram gurus and say, "Oh, I could buy an Airbnb for $800,000 and make a full-time salary by renting it out." Sadly, you're going to get hurt.

One quick last thing I'll say is if somebody's going to the Airbnb route, it's totally great. But just realize how saturated everything is. 80,000 Airbnb or short-term listings in Arizona. So if you're thinking, I'm going to buy an Airbnb in Arizona, I'm like, it's so saturated.

So those are the number one things that I've seen. But one quick last thing. People might say interest rates are so high. My goodness, that's really hard. I'm like, no, it's not. Because I don't pay my interest. I don't pay my taxes. I don't pay my mortgage. I don't pay for repairs. I don't pay for my property manager. I don't have to get a job to do that. My tenants pay for that.

So I have the rent. I make sure my expenses are lower than that. That's my cash flow, that difference, before I buy the property. And then when I buy it, I make sure those expenses are paid for. You know, it comes in rents and I pay it out to everybody else.

Seth: Yeah. Just talking to Zach Zimmer and he's talking about the rent-to-own strategy. Do you ever do that?

Dustin: I have probably about seven properties that are rent-to-own. And a big reason why I did that was this is at Youngstown, Ohio. And I would not recommend anybody invest in Youngstown, Ohio. I would not say, "Hey, yes, this is great." This is where I first bought because I had no clue what I was doing. Very economically depressed.

At the time, I was buying homes for like $12,000 back in 2010. Now they're worth $50,000, $60,000, which is great, good appreciation, but I still make cash flow. So I do the rent-to-own on properties that I don't want to own in 10 years. Just like Monopoly, you trade up and eventually get to better properties.

And so now those properties that are, let's say, cash flowing 500 bucks a month, a thousand dollars a month, or whatever it might be. If doing rent-to-own, it's great that I don't have any expenses because I tell the new, hopefully owners, but the tenants, I say, "Think of me like the bank. I'm just the bank. This is your property. If the furnace goes out, that's your responsibility. The roof goes out; that's your responsibility. Electricity, if you want to paint it, whatever, just let me know. You're not going to be painting it purple or pink or something like that because it's my property still."

But the rent-to-own strategy is terrific because you have no expenses, but you have all the income. And if it's properties you don't want to own in 10 years or however long, 15 or whatever you turn it, then you can put that money into something else and you have huge cash flow.

Seth: Yeah. It sounds like with the rent-to-own route, even though they have the ability to own it, most of the time they don't end up on it. It's kind of a small percentage that actually makes it to that point. I know; it's just pretty fascinating talking about it.

By the way, listeners, if you haven't heard that, I'll include a link to Zach's interview beneath this here.

But yeah, it just got me thinking a lot more about maybe I should do something like that. I mean, I'm not really looking for rentals at this point, but the whole rent-to-own path, the fact that the property management load is a lot lighter because of that potential owner.

Dustin: Yeah. So on those properties, I don't have a property manager. I think I'm using apartments.com. It was Cozy. Now Apartments.com bought it. But I would probably use a company like TurboTenant, just for the collection of the rents and also for finding tenants. Those work out really, really well.

But yeah, I love not having expenses. That's a really big deal, not having expenses. Now you don't have the property for however long the term is, but yeah, ongoing you don't have any ongoing maintenance to pay for a property manager or all that sort of stuff.

Here's one quick last thing too. If, like Youngstown, it's very economically depressed, well, if everybody's a renter, nobody cares about the neighborhood, so the neighborhood just keeps going down. If people own it, they actually have pride of ownership, and they want to take care of the property. Does that make sense?

Seth: You were talking a little bit about TurboTenant. What property management software do you use these days? I hear about them all the time. I get them to reach out and be on to promote them, which is funny because I don't really talk much about rental properties anymore. But what do you think is the best one out there right now?

Dustin: The one that I've seen that I like the most, because there's quite a few, only brings up the other ones, but TurboTenant has been pretty good. They've been pretty good. They've been growing and building out their system and they have a leasing tool. So if you're going to be doing your own property management, which is what TurboTenant would be for, it's like a wizard that you walk through, answer questions, and it creates a lease, an actual lease for you. And then you just click a button and it emails to them. I think DocuSign, I'm pretty sure, sends it back to you. So simple. And they have lawyers that have every single state, creating a lease for that state.

Seth: Like wow, yeah, that is nice and they handle tenant screening, rent collection, and all that stuff.

Dustin: Yeah, the tenant screening, I mean, they just do a background check on the tenant. They also check for evictions and all that sort of credit. But in the end, it's all on one screen, which is really good. They've also got the accounting-type software too. They've been really, really good. I've seen them put effort into things like Apartments.com; they don't put any effort behind their property management. It's like basically a dead thing; that's basically what Cozy used to be.

Seth: Yeah. Yeah. It is amazing, though. I don't know why any landlord or rental owner these days would not be using something like that. Like the software out there, there are so many options that make it so much easier than it used to be with all the rent collection stuff.

Dustin: The only thing that I would say, the reason why I don't use it on all my properties, is because I hire property managers and they have Buildium or big software and property management software that they take care of everything because I don't want to property manage. I really, really don't. I love not working. I love passive income. That's why I have Master Passive Income: because I want to do other things that manage my properties.

And when I buy the property, I don't buy it unless the property manager I've already vetted says, "Hey, would you manage this? How much will it rent for? What's the clientele like? All that sort of stuff." If they say, "No, I won't manage it." Then you don't buy it. You don't waste your money because it might be in a bad area.

In fact, some people have said, "Yeah, I tried to find a property manager and they said they wouldn't manage it because it'll get shot in that area." I'm like, then I'm glad you didn't buy it because then you would have a liability, not an asset.

So that's for me. It's like, first I focus on getting a property manager, but if one turns into a rent-to-own, or I've owned it for a long time and I can manage it myself because, like, "Oh, my house in Phoenix, I had that as a midterm rental." That's where you rent it for 30, 60, or 90 days. Traveling executives, you make a lot more money than long-term. Give you an example: $2,100, I could rent as a long-term property, but I'm getting $3,500. But you got to remember, you get more expenses, electricity is in your name, Wi-Fi or the internet is in your name, things like that. So I'm probably making about $600, maybe to $800 more by doing the midterm. And I don't have to worry about short-term, which is leases changing over. So I have that one property, a midterm rental. And then with that, I bought a new house to live in. That is paying my mortgage on this next one, which is great because less than that was free and clear.

But that's what I love about real estate: you can trade up. So the Phoenix one is paying for my one in Tennessee, where I live now. We're going to buy a new house and move into that one. And that Tennessee house is a short-term property. It was already rented short-term. That's going to pay for my new house. So it's boom, boom, boom. And then just keep doing that over and over again. This is one of many strategies.

Seth: Yeah, interesting. How much time does it take you to run your rental property business each week or month?

Dustin: I would say probably about 30 minutes a month.

Seth: Okay. Yeah. That's just like what? Checking financials to see what happened. Make sure the check got in my bank account. Like, okay, I got the check.

Dustin: Look at the statements; see if there's anything going on. Because even though you try your best to find a really good property manager, they're like your quarterback. If you don't have a good quarterback on your team, it's going to be bad. So I keep my best property managers, get rid of the bad ones, and find a good one. But then you just look and make sure that they're doing everything you want them to do. But just by looking at the statements, that's literally all you need to do. Did rent come in? How are the expenses? And then put it away and go back to doing other things. That's honestly how I was able to build Masterclass of Income, REWBCON, the Real Estate World Builders Conference, and all that sort of stuff. And podcast, talk to great people like you and make new friends because I didn't have to focus on my business.

Zach, on the other hand, is the one thing I'm trying to help him. So definitely everybody should go back and listen to Zach's episode. He's been investing for a long time, just like me. But at the same time, I was trying to help him. I said, You know what? You have your rent to owns and you manage those yourself. He says, "Well, three quarters of the year, I don't do much. But what about that one quarter of the year? You're doing a lot. You have an active work, getting tenants out, getting new people in, all that sort of stuff. Why don't you hire somebody, a property manager, to make sure it gets done?"

He's like, "Well, let's say 40 properties. I'm going to be out $5,000 a month. That's $60,000 a year. I can make that." I said, "But if you think about it, to scale, your time is the limiting factor. You don't have enough time to get to 80 or 100. If you got to 100, you don't have the time personally to get there so you're gonna be stuck at 60 and then you're gonna be busy all year long. How much better would be to take that 60 grand, bake it already into your expenses because you know I'm gonna pay for this before I buy it and then you hire an entire employee so he lives in Akron. $60,000 a year for somebody lives in Akron is really good money. I mean that's great money and you can have a full-time employee the entire year doing work for you and then you can continue to scale your business."

Seth: What do you think is your unfair advantage when you think of all the stuff you've done, the success you've had with rentals and Rubicon and Mass Passive Income? Can you think of anything that you're really good at that the average person isn't? And sometimes I think it's really hard to even identify because to you, it seems normal because it's you. But can you discern or think of anything like, I've done really well because I'm good at this?

Dustin: Let me ask you that in a reverse way. Can you think of anything that I have? Because I can see what you have. But I'm like, oh, I don't have that. But do you see anything in me?

Seth: Yeah, totally. I think you're a really strong leader. You're really good at leading with confidence. You're a really good networker for sure. Like just the fact that I get texts from you once a month or something like that. And I'm one of how many hundreds of people you know. You know, like, you just don't hesitate to reach out to people for help. And in doing that, you're also letting them know, like, "Hey, I'm here to help you too."

Like, I don't even think to do that kind of stuff. Like, I'm much more prone to working in a silo, which is not really that healthy. And you also think big. You don't let little things and doubts hold you back; you just kind of almost assume it can be done until you're told otherwise. Like all these things combine to make a heck of a superpower.

Yeah, there's probably more but that's just off the top of my head, man.

Dustin: Thank you, that was fantastic; it made me feel very encouraged. And then for you, what I'm seeing is how diligent you are. Like, I'm pretty diligent but you're above and beyond. And then seeing the detail, and it's not just detail, because I'm pretty detail-oriented. The preciseness, the quality of the YouTube videos and you're teaching people, like, you get right to the point. You cut out things that don't need to be there, all that sort of stuff, but you're so focused and that's something that I admire, like, man, look at what you built—REtipster. Like you say, "No, I'm gonna get this done. This is gonna be the best quality."

Would you consider yourself a perfectionist?

Seth: You know, maybe in some respects, I mean more so than the average person, I think, yeah, maybe.

Dustin: Because it seems like you don't put out anything; it's just like, "Oh, he just threw that out there." It's like, no, I intentionally made sure this was ready. And Seth's standard of ready is like high quality. And if it's ready, you put it out. Like, I'll record something. I say podcast interview and I've even uploaded it and I forgot to cut out the intro or, like, the chatting. "Hey, what's going on? So how do you pronounce your name?" I forgot to edit that out.

Seth: Yeah. Like a lot of the videos that I make, I try to make them evergreen in nature. I don't want what I'm saying today to be irrelevant in 12 months. Sometimes you can't get around that; that's just how it is, depending on the subject matter. But when I'm making stuff that's evergreen, I think to myself, okay, this video is going to be watched by thousands of people for years into the future. When I think about it that way, it's like every little dumb thing I said in there that doesn't need to be there; it's now multiplied by thousands of times. All these people are having to listen to me drone on about stuff that doesn't matter. I go maybe even too far sometimes, where I really try to like and just make it a super lean delivery. It doesn't always work. So that's just sort of a mindset I go into it with.

Dustin: That's great. So let me take that in the same direction, but ask in a different way. So thousands and thousands of people are going to be out there. Like, once it's on the internet, it never gets deleted. It's always there. But what about Luke and Nora? I assume everybody knows your kid's name. But what are you going to do that's going to help Luke and Nora to have your level of success in, let's say, life too? But like business, you have real estate investing. You also have REtipster. What are your thoughts on that?

I'll quickly give you what I've been doing while you're thinking about how you're going to do that or you are doing it. My goal was to help each one of my kids before they turn 17, so when they're 16, to buy their first rental property. Now, getting a loan is going to be really, really hard. So obviously, it's a benefit that their dad is there. But I'm coaching them. They're going through the exact same thing that all my students go through. The course, they're learning all that sort of stuff. They do have their own savings. Like, Ellie just bought her first property. And it should cash flow about $250 a month, which for a kid, that's great. And she has saved up $2,000, which is not enough for a down payment. But you got me as a dad. So I'm going to do the things I can to help.

But I said, "Hey, Ellie," and this is true for all my kids. We have five kids now; we're very blessed to have five amazing kids. "All the money that you make in passive income, you can't spend it." That's the one criterion or term that I have: you can't spend that money because if you're smart and you do what I tell you, we keep that money in there, we save it and you make other money outside and then we buy another property.

Let's say we buy one property a year at minimum. You're 16 now; by the time you're 26, you're gonna have 10 properties, making you a minimum of like $5,000 a month. Do you have the fortitude and the delayed gratification, self-control to be able to do that? She said yes. I'm like, okay, we'll do that. So every single one of my kids is going to be doing that.

So, loaded question because I gave you what I'm doing. But yeah, have you thought about how you're going to help Luke and Nora to become successful?

Seth: That's a great question. I feel like I have not thought about it enough and I think my excuse is that they're still pretty young. They're like eight and ten years old, but I mean, it's probably the perfect time to start.

Dustin: You're gonna blink and they're gonna be... I already feel like I've blinked and they were like babies yesterday.

Seth: You're there now.

Dustin: Well, we've been listening to your kids for a couple of years now as they've grown. Or my kids—they feel like they know them.

Seth: Yeah, I think part of it is I pay a lot of attention to, like, the strengths that I perceive them both having, and they're both fairly different. Like Nora, she's very creative, kind of a social butterfly, and just a ton of fun to be around. Luke is very detail-oriented. He would probably make a great accountant, for example. So very different kinds of strengths. So in terms of trying to steer both down a career path, I don't know. I don't want to say you need to do land, or you need to do a self-service, or you have to run over. I don't know what they're going to love.

But I think more generally speaking, Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter years ago wrote this book, Rich Kid, Smart Kid. And I don't hear about it a lot, but I listened to it a couple of years ago. There were a lot of big takeaways I got from it. And one of them was that as parents, we need to be really careful about controlling our children's perceptions about how smart they are because the school system judges them on a very narrow criteria. And it's very academic. If they do badly on a test, it's like, okay, the message is undone.

Dustin: Yes, exactly. I felt that. Everybody knows.

Seth: And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Everyone is a genius at something. Just because you don't measure up to that standard does not mean you're going to be very successful at something else in life. So just kind of, when I see them struggle at anything in school, and I haven't seen them struggle much yet, but if that does happen, it's helping them understand this is not the end of the story. There are so many other things to life, and this is not the way to perceive yourself through that one narrow lens. But I think just in general, like the basics of financial literacy.

Dustin: Oh, yeah.

Seth: And just like Rich Dad, Poor Dad type stuff, like the asset column, the liability column, stuff that's not taught in school at all. Like at the very least, they get that and understand, like, do you want to be wealthy? Spend your life buying assets. Like, don't throw it at things that lose money. Just that kind of essential stuff. And I think as they get older, that's when I'll probably start looking a lot closer.

Like you want to go down the rental property path, let's get into that. What age would that be though? Because you got a plan now, because they're totally great. I mean, I feel like 14 is when you're like right on the cusp of being an adult. I mean, two years from then, you've got your license. 100 years ago, people were getting married at 14. So what do you think is a good age? Like 12?

Dustin: So obviously teaching and principles very, very early. In fact, I would suggest, if you don't mind me making a suggestion, having them play the Rich Dad Poor Dad cash flow game. Cash Flow for Kids to start and after about, I don't know, a dozen times, my kids were kind of bored with it because they know how to do it now. One person would be thinking, "Well, they learned how to game it." I'm like, that's what life is or that's what business is. It's like, it's honestly it's a game. You just have to figure out how to play it well. And as soon as you figure that out, it's going to be fine. Finances, you just got to figure out how to do it right. And so they successfully did that. Now they play Cash Flow, the actual Cash Flow, which takes time.

Okay, so if you're playing the Game of Life, it's a different board game. If you get the doctor, you're like, "Yeah, I'm a doctor; I make a lot of money." In Cash Flow they would pull the doctor like, "No, the doctor!" Because with high income come high expenses, because most people spend the money that they get. And so my kids even said, "Hey dad, can we just take out that doctor as being an option? Everybody hates it." Like, "Well, yes, go right ahead.” Whoever gets a doctor, they're just destroyed.

But anyways, a small suggestion would be you can never start too soon with small principles of saving money, being charitable, giving, and having responsibilities. And then Rich Dad, Poor Dad, the kid's Cash Flow is really helpful because it leads to the income column and the expense column.

Also, one quick thing that I also do, ever since my kids were born, is every bit of money that they get, we teach them financially like a principle. Half of it goes into savings, like 50%. So they get $10, and $5 goes into savings. And they don't touch that for maybe buying a car or buying a house. Like, it's 10 years, 15 years from now. And then 20% goes to mommy to pay for responsibilities. Like, "Hey, you don't just get money. You have the responsibility to pay for food and electricity, all that sort of stuff." And then 10% goes to charity, goes to giving. If you want to give it to church, give it to God, however you want to do it. And then the other 20% they get to spend. And so that teaches them at the very, very young age.

And I know now that it's worked so well, they'll have, let's say, 50 bucks to spend. They'll go to Walmart and they look at the toy aisle and they'll be like, "This is not necessarily garbage, but how much they're wanting me to spend, it's going to break really quickly. It's not worth it." And they put it back. And my son said to me, "Dad, I'm mad at you. You and mom taught us too good. We don't want to buy anything because we know it's going to fall apart. We know it's a waste of money." I'm like, praise the Lord.

Seth: Do you think if you could steer your kids, each one of them individually, down a certain career path or real estate path or whatever, would you do that? Or is there an element of, like, "I'm going to teach you the basics and then you need to figure out for yourself what's going to work best for you"?

Dustin: So I'm going to say it this way, and it might make some people irritated or upset, but how I see it with my kids, nobody cares about my kids better or more than me. Nobody loves them more than me. Nobody has the same morality that I want them to have.

And so that's why we homeschool our kids. So my kids are learning how to play the piano. They're actually getting pretty good. But I would hear people say, "Well, hey, Billy, little Billy," like another family. "Do you like playing the piano?" "No, I don't really like it." "Okay, you don't have to do it anymore." No, I don't believe that. I say, "You are playing the piano." Of course, they want to go play Xbox, Switch or whatever. Or they want to go play video games, be it on the internet. "No, you are going to do this. This is what mommy and daddy are telling you to do."

And so getting them... so you have to push through something that's hard, number one. But number two, thinking about real estate or making money or whatever it might be, I give them the principles. Like right now they see if they buy one rental property, it makes them 250 a month. That's three thousand dollars a year and a 16-year-old; that's not bad to not work.

And so what I am doing is if they don't want to learn, they're still going to learn. It's part of our homeschool curriculum. Just like you're still going to learn history at a public school. You're still going to learn. No, no, this is your curriculum. This is what you're going to learn. You're going to learn financial education. You're going to learn how to invest in real estate. And then if you, in the future, choose to not do it, that's on you. But this is a curriculum that you have to go through.

And then one quick last thing was in pushing them in a direction, like my boys, I'm helping them to learn that learning a trade—electrician, plumber, something like that—is going to be so amazing for you. You're not going to be spending $50,000, $60,000, or $100,000 going to college or university. They're going to pay you to learn how to become an electrician. And they're going to make so much more money. And nobody else is doing that. Both people are retiring, trying to get rid of businesses because they don't have anybody taking over it. It's such a great path.

So that's how I view my teaching them how to invest in real estate. But rental properties by far, helping them get their first one and if they don't want it anymore or if they don't want to continue, that's on them.

Seth: Yeah, interesting. I know in your personal career path, so you used to work; it's like a government job, kind of a desk job, a white-collar thing. During that time, you had started to buy rental properties. You eventually stopped. I forget, did you get laid off?

Dustin: Yeah, I get laid off. Yes. After our fourth child, I get back to work after paternity leave for like two weeks, you know, staying home. On a Friday, I get a call like, my goodness, you know, I just had a fourth child. He laid me off. So yes.

Seth: Yeah. So, like, knowing how it works for you, like that career path of going to college, getting that kind of job, and getting around our properties, here you are today. What if you've been told back then, "No, let's do trades instead?" Do you think that would have been the right decision for you? Like, do you ever wish, "I shouldn't go into college, I should not have gotten that white-collar job, I should have become an electrician instead"?

Dustin: I had two different paths because my dad was a contractor. So I actually did framing. Framing builds the entire house, but they make the least amount of money. It's the electricians. It's more dangerous, you know, plumbing; they make a lot more money. But my dad was a contractor and he did not encourage me. He didn't say, "You know, keep going in the trade because you beat up your body," especially if you're a framer. He wasn't an electrician. He wasn't a plumber. He wasn't somebody that was more like HVAC, like technical. And so he didn't encourage me knowing now realizing that, man, you make so much more money. If you are an electrician or a plumber, you can even have your own business and set your own hours, and your ceiling is, you know, building a business. I would much rather have gone to that.

Then I was taught by my parents to get a career and work at the government. You're never going to get fired. Go this safe path. But then I learned the hard way. Safe is not true. There's no such thing as safe. In fact, I got laid off after I had our fourth child. So in the end, it's not that safe. So I don't know if I would have listened, but me teaching my kids, I'm like, "You know what? This is the path that I wish I would have gone." So I guess in the end, it's something that I wish would have happened to me and then helping my boys to understand.

And also the girls, the girls, my wife's teaching them how to be good moms, how to cook, how to take care of the kids and all that sort of stuff, managing the household. And so the boys are out providing and the girls stay at home. And that's like my wife's a stay-at-home mom. So she would love to see our kids be stay-at-home ones as well.

Seth: So be clear. So you wish you would not have gone to college and you would have been an electrician?

Dustin: Yes. Well, no, let me take that back. You can never, at least I don't think anybody could or should say, "I wish this didn't happen because my life would have been different." I'm here because of the path that I took, and I'm blessed to be able to now share with my kids because I've learned, I do have some business skills because I got a business college degree. I've applied some of those.

In the end, I'm looking back now and it's like, would I have gone into real estate? I might not have. Like buying real estate. I might have just kept building an electrician business. I don't know. But right now I'm blessed that this is where I'm at. But I'm grateful for everything I went through because that made me who I am.

Seth: Part of what I'm asking is I know I had a very similar career path to you. Went to college, worked in a not a government job; it's a very similar kind of environment. But that was part of what enabled me to do what I ended up doing and getting into land, starting REtipster, you know, and ending up where I am today. If I had become an electrician, which is a very hands-on, active job or out in the field, you can't just, like, take a break, get on the computer, and write a blog post kind of thing. I wouldn't have been able to do what I'm doing now.

So I don't know; it's weird. Like, it makes me wonder if, like, maybe there's opportunity in any direction you go or if it's like there's an actual benefit to doing the college path. Even though, like the career, like the nine-to-five job, that's not really what you're going for. It just sort of carves out a path that lets you use it as a stepping stone to get something further. I don't know.

Dustin: I think in the end, whatever path somebody takes, as long as they have the desire and I guess determination too, because somebody might go to college and never invest in real estate, never invest in land, never do any of that stuff. And I say, "Man, you're missing out," but there are plenty of people like that. So everybody has different paths. And if they want to invest in real estate, they need to get around people that are doing it. Like they need to continue to listen to REtipster or my podcast, Master Passive Income. They need to continue being around people, going to meetups, and reading blog posts. If that's your goal, then you need to put time and effort towards it.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has a really good saying. Somebody would tell him something very similar to this about lifting weights. If you want a success and you're thinking, "Well, I have a job. I have a wife and kids. I have X, Y, and Z. I'm not going to be able to spend the time to learn how to invest in land or buy real estate. I don't have the time to do it." Arnold Schwarzenegger's answer is, "Well, sleep faster. That's all you got to do. Sleep faster."

I'm like, because we all have 24 hours in a day. We all have different situations, scenarios, issues, problems, or whatever it might be. But we also have different benefits or things that are beneficial to us that we can utilize to help us. Because if you focus on the negatives, like "I don't have, I don't have, I don't have. Well, Seth did this. He had the sit-down job that he could do X, Y, and Z." And if you focus on what you don't have, then you're going to keep not having. If you focus on what you do have and say, "How can I then change this to benefit me and make this be my strength?" You're going to figure it out.

Seth: Yeah, it's a great point, man, because everybody does have something. Because like we were talking earlier, like your super strengths and my super strengths, like we all have these things, but it takes the discernment to figure out what those things are. Okay, now that I know them, how do I leverage those? Because the average person doesn't have that.

Dustin: Absolutely. And like, let's say for Master Passive Income, I know we do not have the quality control, the focus, the diligence, even though I have those things, but I'm more big picture. And so lots of things that aren't 100%, but I'm like, it's good enough. Let's get it out there where you're like, "No, good enough is not good enough. It has to be right."

And so my wife is 100% that same way. She's like, "No, if it's just not perfect, I don't want to do it or we shouldn't do it." And it helps. It's a balance and we, you know, we're both Christ followers and we know that the body of believers, we all have different gifts and for somebody to say, "Well, it's easy," that most people have heard that introverts maybe not, but it seems like introverts can be envious of extroverts because they look like they're having fun but I can be completely honest and say extroverts also have big problems too, like things happen, just like introverts have negatives, extroverts have negatives.

And so what I found is that if you're an introvert or extrovert, you need to lean into whatever it is, not just like an extrovert, always being out with every single person or an introvert, always being inside and not being like my brothers. Like, you guys are very, very similar. Is it definitely an introvert? He loves working on his business. Like I asked you, "What's your favorite thing to do?" "I like doing my business." I'm like, "Wow, that's awesome." My brother's the same way. And so we all have different gifts. But if we lean on our gifts and make those strengths as opposed to, "Well, I don't have, I don't have," then by leaning on those strengths, you're going to make those be super strengths.

Seth: Yeah, man, for sure.

Dustin: REtipster, like, I genuinely want to know. I think REtipster is poised to just grow. I mean, let's say take over Bigger Pockets or something. It can grow. But honestly, the limitation is you just like me. My limitation is me. Everybody's limitation is ourselves, the people around us. But like, what would be your—I don't know if you have it—but like, if you can make up right now a five-year vision, where would you like to see REtipster in five years?

Seth: Yeah, that's a good question. I feel like I'm actually having a lot of light bulb moments here at this conference we're at, but I think I definitely have to do a better job of leveraging other people, which is like, it's not that I haven't done that, but I think maybe I need to selectively pick the right people, get the vision, and they just don't need as much oversight because they're just doing it right in the first place.

And I think I just struggle at looking at the world through that lens. I'm not even looking for it, but it's totally there. I can think of at least five or six people off the top of my head right now that would be great to work with. So I think it's just understanding you're limiting yourself, Seth, by just making everything kind of pass through you. There's only so far you can ever get with that. I am doing some of this, but I think there's a ton of room to do a lot more of that.

So in terms of a five-year vision, it would probably be leveraging other people. And frankly, I've never been great at five-year visions. For me, it's more like six months. Where is this going to be then? And part of that, I think, is somewhat useful because the world and the internet change so much in five years. It's almost pointless to think of what the world's going to look like five years from now. But yeah, I think it would be leveraging the strengths of other people to grow this far beyond myself.

Dustin: Yeah, and I found too that if you focus not on either money or dollar amount. Let's reach this money or the amount of money or let's say we need to start a new podcast and that's the goal. Well, you're missing out on both of those. You're missing out on what's the real reason why we do it: the people. If we miss out on who we're trying to reach, what we're trying to reach, like the audience or whatever, then we miss out on the bigger purpose because if you miss the people, then there's no point in doing it.

So what I love to do, and I'm not at all good at five-year plans like, "Oh, in five years I want to have this." Honestly, I didn't even know I wanted a conference. I kind of thought, "Oh, it'd be cool to have a real estate investor conference that I would want to go to." Most of them are sales pitches and run to the back and I hate those. So I created the Real Estate World Builders Conference because it's the opposite of that. We're a sales community helping people kind of like FinCon, where you and I met. That wasn't even on a radar, but it came up and I'm like, "I like that idea. Let me talk to a few friends who have conferences and see if I can pull it off." And then I talked to even more people. You were literally the first person I called and said, "Hey, this has to do." And you said, "Yeah, I'll do it. I'll be there." That gave me the green light. Let me move forward.

So five years? No, I honestly don't have that ever. But in the meantime, every single thing that I try to do, like I want to write a new book. So I have four books. I want to write a new book, but the book's going to be about mindset. So yeah, from zero to, let's say, 100 properties, I have all that content. I have the books. I have the podcasts and all that stuff for that. But from nothing to ready to get to zero, I don't have that mindset. You're stuck and you don't even know what's out there. Like limiting beliefs to having an abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset. I don't have something that helps people get out of themselves. And so I'm like, I want to write that. But it just came up. It's not like in five years I want to have this next thing.

But with that, when something does come up, like six months from now, like, "You know what? I can do that. Let me devote myself; get it done." But here's another thought too: it goes to the idea that a project, let's say a project, writing a book, is going to take as much time as you give it to take. Meaning if I want to write a book and I say, "Okay, I want to launch it by June of 2026." Well, it's going to take that entire time because that's how much time I give it. But if I say I want to launch it by June of 2025, which is only five months away from now, it's going to take that much time. I'm going to have to move a little faster and work a little harder. But it takes that time. And so if you say, "Okay, in five years, I want to be here." Well, why don't you start working on that now? Does that make sense?

Seth: Yeah, absolutely.

Dustin: And so with REtipster, getting more people around you, you asked me the question, "Well, what happens if somebody does something wrong on a podcast that's with you? What do you do? Like they say something wrong or they say it in a different way." I don't know. I'll figure out when I get there. When it does happen, well, number one, I don't bring people around me that I don't like being around. If I don't like them, it's just like, well, it's probably me. There are other people you could work with, other people I can work with.

So that's number one. Number two, people I can trust. Number one, I can trust because I've seen them. Number three, they have a similar vision or the same vision direction that we want to go. Number four, they're not driven by money. Number five, they have a similar type of morality as well. So those are the main things.

But at the same time, let's say there was a hiccup and something bad happened. Well, we'll figure it out then. And you also asked me, "Well, if somebody goes off and does the exact same thing," I'm like, "Well, I make my money through real estate." So it's not like somebody starts their own Master Passive Income. I'm going to say, "Hey, how can I help you?" So I guess the abundance mindset, because if you have a limited mindset and scarcity mindset, then you feel like the pie is so small, you have to fight for it. Well, if you only focus on the small pie, you may be missing a bigger pie that is out there for you. Like, let's say, you know, REtipster, you focus on land investing. Well, that's a small pie. I mean, admittedly, you know, it's a small pie. Rental properties are bigger than land, but it's still a small pie compared to short-term properties, apartment complexes, storage facilities, and so much more. So instead of fighting over this little pie, let's make your pie bigger, where it encompasses many more things, and you have other people to be a part of it.

Seth: Yeah, totally. That makes sense to me. That's awesome. Any other big initiatives you're working on right now? Like anything people ought to know about?

Dustin: Yeah. REWBCON’s coming up, but is there anything you want people to check on? REWBCON is definitely on the top of my mind because it's April, so we're three months away.

Seth: By the way, this is rewbcon.com. Yes. Yeah.

Dustin: R-E-W-B-C-O-N. So like REWBCON, Real Estate Wealth Builders Conference, all abbreviated. But yeah, so with that, I've had people come to REWBCON. It's a three-day, once-a-year event, live in person. And I had lots of people say, "Do you have monthly meetups where I live?" I always say, "No, I don't want to do that. I don't have that." But also because I have so many people wanting to be around everything we're doing, they are now starting or it's a part of our company, the Real Estate Wealth Builders Club.

So these clubs are actually monthly meetups that are bringing investors together in those cities. So they come to REWBCON and at REWBCON they're like, "Man, I'm connected with these people. I want to meet with people monthly." Like, you know, because if you're in church, you go to Christian camp or you go to an event, you're like, you get on a high. Tony Robbins, you get on a high, you get home and life starts getting in the way.

Dustin: Well, what we want REWBClub to be is obviously you're going to have a high, but let's keep you going. Let's not let you stop and let life get in the way. So REWBClub, it's actually kind of fun. R-E-W-B-C-L-U-B, REWBClub.com, same thing. But it's just another way to amplify the message that anybody can invest in real estate. And my main goal is to help 1 million people to invest.

Seth: The REWBClub thing, do you have certain people or moderators like, "Hey, you're going to be the person in charge of leading this club meeting," or do you just kind of have them get together and whatever? Who knows what happens? How do you organize that stuff?

Dustin: I have to trust them. Just like being a host. It's a little less of a barrier to get in to become a REWBClub host.

Seth: So you do have an actual host?

Dustin: Oh, yes. You are responsible for leading.

Seth: Correct. Okay. 100%. The host does it.

Dustin: They're usually connected, either as a coaching student or came to REWBCON and they see the value and the vision of it and they see that hosting is more than just, let's say, getting a paycheck, which they don't get paid. But like, you know, it's not like a job. It's a benefit to hosting RubeClub because people are going to see you as a better investor. But yes, it's organized in a sense where we make sure people are networking. We bring speakers in. We make sure that we have, you know, hopefully some sponsors that are going to be good companies they can work with and connect them with each other. So yeah.

Seth: How many of these REWBClubs are there?

Dustin: Three. Yeah. We have Charlotte, Phoenix, and Colorado.

Seth: And these leaders that you choose, are they from your audience, I take it? Or like, you handpick them or something? Or how do you?

Dustin: Yeah. It's handpicked. We have some people that want to start one in LA. Students of ours or audience members of ours will eventually get there, but we don't want to grow too fast. And in growing, it's like there's expenses and there's logistics. And we're still investors. We're still investing in our stuff. And so just that many more things, we're growing. Lord willing, we're going to have most major cities as best as we can in five years. That'd be great. If there was a five-year plan, Group Club in most major cities.

Seth: Awesome, man. It's a great idea. I wonder if there's a version of that for the land investing world. I don't know if there's enough of us, but I know in the bigger metro areas, there probably is that kind of thing. Even if it was just eight or 10 people, that's enough to get enough people together.

Dustin: How about you? Other than finding the right people, they would want to lean into YouTube more because your podcast is really getting a lot of people listening to that. Anything that you're planning?

Seth: Yeah, so I've been partnering, or at least exploring partnerships with a lot of new people, which is something I've never really done that much of. I've always been kind of gun-shy about partnerships. But I've been realizing after finding the first great partner that I've ever worked with in the storage business and how well that's gone, it's opened my eyes to, like, this is actually huge. If you can find a good partner where they carry their weight and they truly make it better, they're so good, you'd have a hard time doing another thing without them; that's a major asset. And it just enables you to do things that you would normally never be able to do by yourself.

So I've been exploring partnerships with that through different software companies and some things that are already established, like coming into an existing entity and others where we're forming a new thing. But that's probably been the biggest initiative I've been working on and will continue to work on in this coming year, just seeing where those go. I think most of them will pan out. Not all probably will but yeah, it's just been an exciting new thing that I've been doing.

Dustin: That's so cool and you're seeing that you are the limitation, just like me. There's always so much time in a day for you to do anything and if you could multiply yourself, then that'd be great but we can't. But it's getting the right people. One small little suggestion and idea is in any partnership, just figure out what the exit strategy is beforehand, like just in case. "Hey, everything's going great right now. We're all happy. Let's decide how we buy you out. How do you buy me out when things are happy?"

Seth: That exact issue has always been one of my biggest hangups. And we were able to figure it out really well with the self-storage facility. But that's probably the biggest component of all these things. It's like basically planning that divorce before the wedding. If things go sideways, if we just have a change of plans, if people change, whatever, how do we get out of this thing with the least possible damage so that we're all okay and there's some kind of trigger we can pull to get out if we have to?

Dustin: Like with all my podcasts that we have, seven podcasts now, if any one of the hosts says, "Man, I want to go on my own." Like, "Great, how can I help you?" Because I've already made that in my mind, like that's my exit strategy, is I'm just going to give. Again, because I make my money through real estate and this is just fun and if they can help people. My goal is to help a million people. Well, if I help them, then they will be a part of that helping million people and it's part of my vision.

Seth: Would you just shut those podcasts down then?

Dustin: I don't know. More than likely, though, I would probably do the show play repeats and just re-upload the show. I would do that and then try to find another host that would want to host that show. It's still an asset. I own the podcast but it's still an asset. But I'm gonna help them as much as possible even on the show; let them promote their new thing. I'm like, "Absolutely."

And I found, even though a scarcity mindset would say, "Oh man, don't do any of that stuff. You know, just keep everything to yourself." I found I get such better returns—not the right word, but like I benefit more by giving more than people that leave or there's like, "Man, that was so terrific. I want to help." Like we're not competition. It's like, "I'm going to cross-promote. I'm going to go back and give it back to you." It's like when you just only solely focus on yourself, honestly, it gets lonely. And I don't like that, obviously, like I said, I'm an extrovert, but at the same time, I don't want anybody to ever look at me and say, "Man, that guy's a jerk." That's not what I want.

Seth: Oh, man. That's awesome.

Dustin: Oh, and I love, love the seven or eight videos you did on the building of your self-storage. I mean, it's a documentary. You should sell it to Netflix.

Seth: Yeah, that was a ton of fun to make. It was one of those things. It wasn't the reason I did it, but it was a small part of why I thought building one might be kind of fun is because I just knew there would be a ton of great stuff that I would learn. It was a ton of stuff to just talk about. And I was right. It was a great experience. And I love the idea that you're documenting what you're doing. You're walking the process. And I still remember you having the locks that didn't line up. So you had to drill and all that stuff. Like, I don't know. He would never have thought of that.

It's funny. I didn't even learn this until after the fact. But the reason that was happening was because we built the slabs on a 1% incline because the whole lot was slightly slanted. You almost can't even see it with the naked eye, but there was a slight slant to it. So those doors that would go down, you know, the latch on one end would be like literally lower or higher than the part of the other end. So just tons of random stuff to learn. Yeah, it was a lot of fun to make that.

Dustin: Before we go, because we were talking last night at our Airbnb with seven guys, super fun. But the question came up, like, "If you need to make a million dollars right now or this year, what would you do?" And you said, where they boil it down, "Well, I'd start calling up self-storage facilities all over the country and see which one would do self-financing." Can you explain that?

Seth: Yeah, for sure. You can actually do this with land too. It might have worked faster, honestly. Like if the goal was just to make a million, period. The reason I said self-storage is because that's sort of my ultimate destination, kind of where I want to go in the end. So yeah, you basically just get a list of all the self-storage facilities, which I can get fairly easily in any part of the country.

Dustin: And when you say easily, service or...

Seth: Yeah, so StorTrack, S-T-O-R-T-R-A-C-K, is the service I use for this. It's actually amazing. They specialize in self-storage and they can get you this information way easier than if you're using DataTree or some of the data servers. So I would just get their numbers and start calling them and just saying, "Hey, you know, I see you have the storage facility. Do you have any interest in selling?"

Dustin: Can we role-play? I want you to be Seth and I'll be me, the storage facility owner. And I'm not expecting your call. The reason why I want to do this is because when my students are looking for property managers, they say things that are newbie things that property managers like, "Oh, great, there's another newbie. They're not going to do anything. I'm not going to work with them, blah, blah, blah." And so what I tell them is, when you're looking for property managers, you don't sound like a newbie. You want to know what an investor sounds like? Well, I'm an investor. This is what I do. "Hey, property manager. I'm an investor. I'm looking for a property manager to manage my properties in this area. Tell me about your services." Straight. I didn't validate myself. I didn't put any classifications or whatever. I just put them on the defensive. But that's what an investor would do. But I've never bought a storage facility. I've never done direct calling. But how would you do it?

Seth: Quick disclaimer: I've not actually done this. Well, you've done it for land investing. I'm just saying, like, I'm not saying this is the way to do it. It's just how I would do it. And also, this cold calling idea, it's very time-consuming. But the reason I'd be doing it is because somebody has a gun to my head saying I need to make a million bucks next year.

Dustin: Could you hire a VA in the Philippines?

Seth: You totally could. They wouldn't do as good of a job, but you could do that. That's real play. Ring, ring, ring.

Dustin: Hello.

Seth: Hello. Is this the owner of Pioneer Self-Storage?

Dustin: Yes, it is.

Seth: Awesome. Well, hey, my name is Seth. I'm looking at acquiring some storage facilities in your area. I'm an existing operator and have one that I built. It's been going really well. I'm looking to expand. I saw you have this property. Tell me a little bit about it. Like, how long have you owned it? When or why did you buy it?

Dustin: Yeah. So I bought it eight years ago and no, I'm not necessarily interested in selling, but if the right deal comes along, then I probably would. It rents really well. We're 95% occupied and whatever else. But yeah, if it's a good deal, I might.

Seth: Sure. I'm curious, are you very plugged into the local self-storage world? Do you know other facility owners who might be interested in selling?

Dustin: Oh, I know because we talk and we kind of randomly meet somebody because not many people do storage facilities. Yeah, I know a couple of people.

Seth: Yeah, well, I'd be happy to get together sometime, talk more, and just talk shop about the storage facility business. If you ever are interested in selling, just know I'm in the market right now. I don't know if I will be a month from now, but right now I'm ready to go. Happy to take a look at your thing and run some numbers. I don't know how much you're willing to share with me in terms of your occupancy or how much revenue you're making, but that's part of what would go into my ability to formulate a good offer for you. Yeah, I mean, if you're at all interested in seeing what I could do, I could send you an offer today if you want. But even if not, I mean, if you want to just hang on to my information, I could stay in touch with you and check in every now and then. Would you be okay with it?

Dustin: Yeah, absolutely. You never know what's going to happen.

Seth: And whenever we would hang up, if the answer was no, I don't want to sell, and this happens all the time, I just talked to somebody two weeks ago who wanted to win more than it was worth. It wasn't going to happen. But at that point, the next step would be sending them a little handwritten letter every six months or so, something, just to follow up. Just kind of keep them in your mind or keep you in their mind so that when they finally have a reality check and realize it's not going to sell for the price they want, they remember you and call you first.

Dustin: That's awesome. Because that's something, as we were talking, the question came to me: what would I do to make a million dollars a year? My answer was, I have other investors with me that would want to invest in a larger commercial property, whatever, apartment complex, storage facilities, like commercial. And I have two particular people in mind that would be general partners with me on two separate deals. And man, I was like, I would love to be in a self-storage business. I just don't have a deal. We have the money; we have everything; we just need a deal. I thought, why am I not doing this? Obviously, I have all my other businesses, but I'm like, if I could help other investors to invest money and get a property for our family, why don't I do that?

Dustin: So that got me thinking I need to do that. Yes, so I'm not making a hundred percent commitment because with REWBCON, you know, the conference and everything, it's a lot of work, but it's on my radar. It's like I would love to get a self-storage facility, and one of the people I told you about last night would be a general partner. We were going to buy a place, 12 million cash, so yeah, I don't know if we need financing; just pay cash for it.

Seth: I'm okay. That's awesome. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Dustin: That's the great thing about being at a conference or being around people. We get ideas and we help each other and that's why everybody listening, you definitely need to be at the Real Estate World Builders Conference. It's such a genuine community of people that want to help each other and you get questions like that, and you're like, "Man, that really is like light bulb moments and you get friends."

Like we met at FinCon, another conference. I've met lots of people at conferences because in my immediate circle of friends or people where I live, none of them invest in real estate. So you got to get around people that invest in real estate. That's what the conferences are or local meetups, like you need to go to be around the people that you need to be around.

Seth: Yeah, for sure. Sweet, well, if people want to check out Dustin, what... MasterPassiveIncome.com, correct? Or the podcast?

Dustin: YouTube, just search Real Estate Investing on Apple Podcast and you'll see. Yeah, Dustin's show probably. Then also Instagram too. I actually like Instagram. I might get $35,000 now. That's pretty fun. And then it's just another touchpoint to connect with people. But the Dustin Heiner, T-H-E, Dustin Heiner. And no, Seth, I'm not that arrogant being the only one, but it's the only handle I could come up with.

But yeah, so The Dustin Heiner on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok are the same thing. But yeah, it's just fun being able to connect with people and things like that. I hated social media until I really started understanding how powerful it is to connect with people. Then I'm like, "Okay, it can be a good thing."

Seth: It's interesting. Because I've got those things in my life too where it's like, "I hate this, I hate that, I don't want to think of it." I wonder if that's maybe an unhealthy way to look at it. Because you're just saying, no, you're shutting it down. You're not exploring it any further. Maybe with like most things. It's like, I don't hate it. It's just something I don't understand about it.

Dustin: Yeah. And then we got the REtipster. Everybody should be checking on the YouTube channel. If you're not subscribed to the REtipster YouTube channel, you need to. It's so much great information.

Seth: Now, I'm just going to throw in a quick plug here for the Storyland podcast. Please. Just because it has nothing to do with anything we'll be talking about. So if you have kids aged 4 through 12, maybe even older, have them check out the Storyland podcast. It's a podcast I started making for my kids years ago. We started adding music and sound effects to it. I made a few episodes of Dustin's kids as the main characters. They love it. And it's a ton of fun. And I'm quite sure your kids or the kids you know are going to love it. If they don't love it, then just don't tell me. But if they do love it, let me know.

Dustin: Yeah, and follow them on Instagram. Storylandpod? Is that...

Seth: Yeah, Storyland Podcast.

Dustin: Okay, but then you'll see when the new episodes drop, but my kids absolutely love it. Like, my oldest is 16 and she's a little getting almost to where she's like, "Okay, I'll just listen," but definitely, like, the 15, 13, and 11-year-olds eat it up. "Oh, new episodes are out!"

And there was a time you weren't putting out for a little bit, like a month or two; you might be busy. My kids will, "Call your friend! Tell him another episode!" Like, "Well, I'm sure he's gonna work on it."

Seth: Yeah. Yeah, man. That's the trouble with all this stuff, like finding time to look for storage facilities and land and finding time to do stories. It's like all this stuff takes time. And there's only so much time I have in a week to do it all. But I guess that's the time discipline thing.

Dustin: Well, that and getting other people around you, other people around you that can help lift the load. And like one quick last thing with getting people around you, whenever I've hired anybody to put Indeed or found somebody on Craigslist, they're never a good fit because they just want a job, which is fine. Which is fine, but if you have a community like you do, I guarantee you say, "Hey, I'm looking for somebody who does marketing. Here's a form to fill out, you know, if you're interested." I guarantee you're getting a lot of people, like if you even say, "I need somebody to help edit." You're going to find lots and lots of people. So we're blessed to have a good community of people around us, and that's an untapped market of help for us.

Seth: That's a great idea, man. I kind of knew that but for some reason I haven't always done that in the past. So it's like that should easily be the starting point every time. So it's a good reminder.

Dustin: In the intro of the podcast, I'm gonna have to tell everybody we almost stopped like four times, so just keep listening because, you know, I could talk forever. Just keep going and going.

But Seth, it's been a great chat with you and great hanging out with you again at a conference and event, staying in the same Airbnb and having a great time.

Seth: Yeah, man, I had a great time. Thanks for letting me be part of it and yeah, I'll talk to you next time.