00:01

Welcome to Episode Four of Season 15 of the Growing Empire Show. Today I'm here with my special guests Dustin Heiner. Dustin quit his job just over broke when he was 37 years old by investing full time in real estate. He is the founder of master passive income and successfully unemployed and became one of the leading real estate rental property experts. Dustin wrote his first book How to Quit your job with rental properties, which quickly became a best seller. And then he began helping others on how to start investing in real estate rental opportunities. He is the host of several investor seminars, he offers courses and coaching for real estate investors getting started. And I think that you will find essence energy and commitment to the industry very uplifting. So make sure you stay tuned.

00:47

Welcome to Growing Empires hosted by real estate entrepreneur and trusted Investment Advisor Jennifer de Jesus. Growing Empires provides insight to building wealth through passive income producing real estate investments for those who want to build and manage a more profitable real estate portfolio.

01:07

So welcome, Dustin, to the growing empire show. I'm so glad that you're here.

01:11

Thanks, Jen, I really appreciate you having me on the show. Yeah, I, I am a real estate investor. I love investing in real estate. It's, it's more about what it affords me to do in my life. You know, I go to the gym in the morning, hang out with my family, come on podcast and talk to great people like you. So I appreciate you having me on the show.

01:29

That's awesome. Yeah, I'm really excited to talk to you today. So we're gonna kick off this episode with you sharing a little bit about your background, where you come from, and, you know, how did you get into real estate investing?

01:41

Yeah, totally. So well, just like everybody, I was taught from the very beginning to go to school, get good grades, and then take those good grades, you go to college, university, and hopefully, get a degree but you get in 1000s and 1000s of dollars into debt. And you take that piece of paper that they agree they give you and then you go around to different companies and try to actively get a job and a career quote unquote, and then you work there 40 plus years of your life, and then hopefully retire at 6570 years old, and live on what you manage to save that entire time. And I call it working a just over broke job working just over broke. And so I'm doing the exact same thing my entire life, but at the same time, I've always been entrepreneurial, you know, starting companies and things like that well in when I was 13 years old, I had a newspaper out, you know, not a lot of people know what newspapers are anymore. But I would ride around my bike with newspapers, throw them at 5am bang them on garage doors, waking people up. I even had a graphic website design company, skateboard manufacturing business and a convenience store and a pizzeria built them all from the ground up, but the same time working my dead end jlb Well, here's what really kind of shoved me into becoming a real estate investor. I bought one rental property in 2006. And I realized, Oh, my goodness, I bought one property and that property works for me. And I was making I think and I remember the the check as plain as day because my first check ever $317 That was how much I made from this property. I was like, oh my goodness, I need more of these. But then you know what happens? Life really started getting away. And my wife and I started having kids 123. And here's what really shoved me to become a real estate investor. I put my life on hold because we started with kids working at Dead End j ob and then my wife had her fourth child. And when my wife had her had her fourth child, I went on maternity leave. And I was working a nine to five desk job working for the local county government in California, the most risk averse job I could ever think of. I got that job, work in their nine to five desk job doing IT technology. So the most risk averse So California not going away. government's not going away. Technology is not going away. So I'm working this risk averse job, but I go on a paternity leave. And then two weeks later, I come back to work in that same week that I go back to work, I get a call from my boss's boss's boss's Secretary like the top dog. And she says Dustin, would you please come to the office? And I said, Sure. And this is Friday at 330 in the afternoon, and I sat there for a second I said, I've seen plenty of movies. This is not a good sign. I was also remembering a couple of months before I went on maternity leave. There was some rumors or some rumbling going on that there could potentially be layoffs in the county because they were running low on funds. And I immediately took it off. I said no way. I've got so much in you already got the most risk adverse job ever. So I shake it off and I get up and I go down the hallway to my boss's office. Now, this hallway isn't very long. In fact, it's kind of short, but every single step that I took, it felt like the hallway got longer and longer and longer and it felt like my feet became lead bricks because the weight of everything potentially losing my job is starting to crush down on me while I turn the corner. I see my boss's door his doors closed. And I see a secretary they're super sweet, nice old lady and she says Dustin Would you please have a seat and she's consoling me with her eyes kind of sheepishly grinning at me because she knows everything about what's going on. I know nothing about what's going on. So I go, and I take my seat. And as I'm sitting there, I'm thinking about my life. And I think about my my mom, my family. If I lose my job right now, I realize, Oh, my goodness, everything I work for that I was told to do, that I just wasted my life doing that. And then at the same time, oh, my goodness, if I am not going to have a job, how am I going to provide for my family? Does that make me a failure as a husband, as a father trying to provide for his family? Well, as I'm sitting there, my hands get all clammy, my forehead gets all sweaty because the nerves of everything's crashing down on me. Well, the door to my boss's office opens up in all walks a lady, a co worker of mine, with a piece of paper in her hands, she has noticeably distraught notice will be upset. She's not necessarily crying, but you can tell her world has been rocked, and she passes by me and my boss's Dustin, would you please come to the office. So I get up and I go into his office, and I get laid off. And remember, this is the government, nobody gets fired or laid off from the government. But I did. And the reason why I tell the story is because of the lesson that I learned. So I take that piece of paper, and I walked back to my desk, and I sit down and I realized two things sitting there. First thing, I need to get another job, I need to be able to provide for my family. So I was really, really blessed praise the Lord to find another job in the same county, a different department wasn't having the same issues that this department was. So check, got that job. Now, sitting in that desk, just getting laid off, I realized the second thing, I need to make sure that this never ever happens to me again, I need to make sure that nobody has the ability to take away my ability to feed my family. So right then and there, I realized I knew I needed to be an investor, but life got in the way. So right then and there. I said, I'm going to tell everybody, when everybody asked me that question, we all get this question. What do you do? We would always reply, just like I do reply with my job. Well, I'm basically projecting the value that I put on myself, as in my job, no, my value doesn't come from my job. My value comes from my God, and myself and for my family. So right then in there, I told everybody, I said, I'm gonna tell everybody now, I am an investor, it may so happen that 100% of my money because my job, that's not my part time job, I am a full time investor. So fast forward the story. I started buying property after property after property, each one making me a minimum of $250 a month in passive income, eventually at 30 Plus properties, and I realized, Oh, my goodness, I don't need to I'm, I'm literally losing money working here at this job. So the last part of the story, I went to my new boss, great boss, and I'll, and I went up to him, I gave him a piece of paper. I said, boss, I'm laying you off. Here's your might Two Weeks Notice, you know, we jacked or laughed and joked around a little bit. And then he said Does somebody can do, I said, I don't have to do anything. I own real estate. It works for me without me even working. So the last part of the story, I went to my car, I walked in my car every day, a mile and a half walk every single day to and from I've done this 1000 times, this last time walking to my car, a mile and a half, I felt like I was walking on clouds, because I knew I would never ever need a job again, as opposed to walking out a short hallway, my feet became like lead bricks, I was walking clouds. And here's what I realized in my walk home. And everybody. This is the reason why I'm telling the story. So hopefully you realize this, your boss can never pay you what you are worth, your boss is paying you just enough to keep you working without quitting, but not so much money that takes money out of their pocket. If they paid you what you're worth, they probably go broke. So what I needed to do and what we all need to realize is that we are worth so much more than anybody could ever pay you. So what I decided to do was take my life into my own hands, build a real estate investing business, I have 30 plus properties, making me a minimum of $250 a month I started in 2006. Now, I'm blessed to never need a job again. So I'll pause the story because you probably got plenty of questions.

08:58

No, this is fantastic. I appreciate all the background. This story's ironically, very, very similar to my story of how I got into investing and how I got laid off and what that meant for me and my family at the time. So unfortunately, there's far too many people in this world that I think, share that same story. But I think the difference really is that change that happened inside of you where you said, you know, I'm gonna go get a job because I have to write a second job. But I'm going to make sure this never happens again. And I as well have found real estate investing to be that path to give me that independence and freedom that I desired. So I think that that, you know, has been really, really good. So today we're gonna talk about financial independence, which is obviously very important to you and very important to me as well. We're going to talk about real estate investing is that mean to that financial independence and then more specifically about how you got to a point where you were able to retire early, essentially, and create your wealth from your real estate investing. So Let me just back up a couple of steps here, you'd said that you started investing. Was it 2006 That I kept that correct? 2006 Okay, and you were still employed at that time, right? You were doing kind of on the side. So how did you actually make that first step? I think that that's one of the hardest things for people to do is how, you know, you've had your mind set on, I'm going to do this. But how did you actually navigate doing it while working a full time job?

10:25

Great question. And, yeah, so I knew that I needed to do something to become financially independent, and not have somebody else hold my job, you know, a paycheck, work one hour get paid for an hour, I knew that was holding over my head. And so when I bought that first property, it was the hardest one to bind for everybody. Like I coach hundreds of students now how to invest every time. And it's, it's not difficult to do it, and you know what you're doing, but the fear takes over for me. I was in California, I was in Fresno, California is where I lived, and was trying to invest in my area. But at 2006 prices were going up, up up. So what I actually here's what really what happened to me. Everything that I did, I did it wrong. And then I learned the right way. But here's what I did. Most people seeing this. So in 2006, I was watching like late night TV and late night infomercial games on came on to channel says, Hey, we're coming to your town, these quote unquote, real estate gurus, we're coming to your town, a free two hour seminar. I'm like, great, I want to learn about real estate. So I rushed over that to our seminar, all hype, all sales pitch, it was horrible, all sales pitch for their courses. And they say it's normally a billion dollars. But it's $1,000 today, run to the back and go get signed up, I ran to the back, and I signed up for their two day seminar, that and I paid that money that two day seminar was literally the exact same thing, hype and sales pitch for their $80,000 courses. 100,000. Of course, it was horrible. But what I did do was take what they little the little bit that they told me how to invest in real estate. And I took that and I did it. And my property manager started stealing from me, within six months, it was absolutely horrible. Now remember, in 2006, they were talking about appreciation, they here's what they let me quickly give you the wrong way that they told me. And I did this, but then I quickly figured out the right way. So here's the wrong way. So they said find an area anywhere in the country, and you find a property and then you run the numbers. You know, running numbers basically makes your expenses are calculated mix, your income was over there. They said make sure you're making $25 a month or $50 a month in passive income. But you'll get appreciation. That's what you're investing for which I'll pause this and say I don't invest for appreciation, I invest for passive income for money every single month, I will literally give these properties to my kids. So I don't care if the value goes up, it's great. I'll pull the equity out with a loan and buy more properties. But this is generational wealth and creating. So getting back to the wrong way. And I'll quickly tell you, this is wrong. And I'll show you the right way in just a second. But they say run the numbers, you'll get appreciation, then you spent 1000s of dollars to buy the property, then you spend 1000s dollars to fix up the property and then you find a tenant and then you find a property manager to manage the property. Well, my opinion that's just about backwards. Like I said, I did that exact same thing. And my property manager started stealing from me within six months. It was horrible. But what the right way was in member I've always been entrepreneurial or you know, the idea of building businesses, I would have hung my head when my property managers are stealing from me. If I would have hung my head and said this doesn't work. What was me? Well, I wouldn't be here today. Because I did know that is has happened in the past, like people have done real estate investing. So what I decided to do was approach this from a business mindset. So that first one, it was very, very hard. Get back to your original question. That first one was very, very hard. I got a little bit of education, that education helped me to get over that fear. But then at the same time, it was bad education. Let me quickly share with you the right way to remember forget that runway. Here's the right way. And Jen, since you are a property manager, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So the right way is building the business before you buy any property. So the easiest part is buying the property. The hardest part is building the business so that it runs itself. And here's quickly what it looks like. As we're building a business. Think about a convenience store. You know, a convenience store has candy bars and soda machines all good stuff. Well, you would not sign a lease on a location, open the doors and set a box of candy bars in there on the ground. You wouldn't do that you go out of business in two seconds. But what you would do though, is you would build the business first you get that gondola so there's a shelving unit sell the candy bars, go on the countertops, cold storage, bank accounts, cash registers, insurance, employees, everything in the business before you buy any inventory. Same thing with real estate investing. We build the entire business. I love property managers, I love contractors, wholesalers plumbers, realtors I love everybody. I build a business with all these right people and then I I might inventory the Guru's will tell you your property is your business. No, no, no, no, I am an investor, I'm a business owner, my business owns inventory. And my inventory happens to be real estate, because I have a business now that runs itself. That's how I was able to quickly scale to 30 plus properties and quit my job within five to six years. But that first property helped me get over the hurdle to realize that it's really not as hard. It's not easy. It's just simple. If you know how to start a business and run a business, and then make sure you're making money every single month in passive income, you're more than likely you're gonna go down the right path. That'll make sense.

15:37

Oh, absolutely. That's fine. That's fantastic. Actually, that mindset is very interesting, because you're so right about that you have to build your network, right? Because unless you are the master of everything, which nobody actually is, right, you've got to, you've got to have your contractor, you've got to have your property manager, you're going to have your real estate broker, you're going to have your title company and your attorneys. I mean, you need a team, right. And whether you choose to employ those people or whether you choose to bring them into your network or partner with them, you're going to need an army of people to make sure that you can truly be successful in investing.

16:13

You episode will continue in just a moment.

16:16

As an investor, we know it's important to stay on top of market trends and real estate opportunities that add value to your portfolio. We also know that having a trusted source of reliable information to help you stay a step ahead of other investors is critical to your success. If you're interested in having these types of resources, as well as access to me and my team, I invite you to join the Empire Investment Club, a free service, it gives you an easier way to make sense of today's and tomorrow's real estate opportunities. As a member of the Empire Investment Club, you'll get access to relevant resources and investment focused experiences such as live interactive webinars, market trend presentations, and investor socials designed to equip you with what you need to succeed. So whether you're an active investor, passive investor, a combination of both, or just starting out the club is where you'll get what you need to build a portfolio you love to join, just head over to Jennifer to hastings.com. Sign up, and we'll see you in the club where everyone's on a journey to becoming a better investor. So what was that first property that you bought? Was it a single family? Was it a multifamily? What was

17:19

it? Yeah, great question. So I was in California, when I first started investing 2006, I realized I could not buy a house and make passive income because the prices were just skyrocketing. rents were still really low. So I literally flew to Ohio, of all places, just found a city that I flew into. And the first property was a single family home. i And here's the funny thing. So gentlemen, I got married, and I didn't have any money. I was taught by my parents not to go into debt, which was good, but I was not taught to save. My wife was taught to save she had like $15,000 to her name, we got married, and I said, we got married like six months later said, Hey, honey, can I take all the money that you saved and started investing in real estate in Ohio far away from us? And so I was really blessed where she said, Yes, so I bought my first single family home in Ohio. And that was the first property that I saw passive income was actually possible. And then from there, I literally recycled my money. That means I bought the house. And then with the equity that I had, because I'm an investor, I buy lower than it's worth, I have equity plus I fix it up, I make it worth more. I pulled that cash out in a tax free loan, and then bought another property and then did that again. And again. And again. I utilized that $15,000 over and over again. Plus I also borrowed other people's money, I love utilizing OPM other people's money, but I just kept recycling that money over and over and over again, because I had a business that now business all we got to do a scale is have the business running, and then just buy another piece of inventory. But yes, it was a single family home since I bought a since then many single family homes, duplexes and higher I even been blessed. I've always played Monopoly growing up, I always want to get in hotels. And so this last year, I got to invest in hotels. So I have hotels in my portfolio, which is a blessing but with all the properties and the hotel, that passive income is what my family feeds all right, when I feed my family with those passive incomes, but yes, I love single family homes, in fact, single family homes, they're so simple when I say single family, four units and below. So you know, five units above is multifamily. So residential investing, it's bread and butter. It's like like a cookie cutter type homes. It's my bread and butter. I've done it so many times and coast coach like literally 1000s of students now how to do this, that it's actually simple if you just know the steps and how to do it.

19:41

Sure. So you went from one property to how many Where do you where do you stand today? How many properties do you have?

19:47

30 something. Okay. And then then the hotels that we have as well.

19:52

And then the hotels? And are you now investing with other people do you have do you have other investor partners or are you doing any kind of syndications or anything like that?

20:03

Yeah, so I, I love coaching. I honestly I really love helping people I have so many people say, Hey, can you start a syndication so we can invest with you and like, I don't want to do that. Cuz honestly like all the properties that I own, my wife is my partner. And so we have our property together. But now I do invest in other syndications like other people, other investors that I know well, that I trust that they know what they're doing. And that's the big thing about all these businesses from multifamily to residential, literally, you hire experts, or you invest in the experts who know what they're doing. So all the businesses that I create, I literally have five businesses now that make me money, real estate's just one of them with that, I hire experts, and I allow them to do the work. So for me, when I buy a residence, like a single family home, I make sure the property manager is the right one, I that them, I like if you're gonna start that convenience store, you're not gonna get everything built in the grab somebody walking down the street, say, Hey, you got a pulse. Coming here at being my manager of my money, my business, my inventory, my customers, my employees, you're not going to do that, you're going to hire the right property manager. And Jen, you being you know, having all the businesses you have, you would understand, definitely understand, it's the people that help you to make sure that you're successful. I don't want to be the smartest person in my company. In fact, I want to employ everybody that is much smarter than me so that they are using their, I guess zone of genius or their expertise to actually help them make money and make me money as well. So I love investing in single family homes. It's just cookie cutter, like I said bread and butter for me.

21:42

So you started investing, you used it to quit your day job, right? And now your real estate career just took off because you've got you know, your master passive income and successfully unemployed coaching programs, right? Am I correct on that? So like coaching programs? Correct. You have a book, at least one book that I know of very successful book, and you do podcasts? So at what point did you say, you know, I'm gonna, I'm going to navigate out of maybe just buying the properties myself, too. Now I want to share all my knowledge and all the things that I've learned, like, how did you make that transition? And what what kind of propelled you to do that?

22:23

Yeah, yeah, I love that question. And the reason why I love that question is because it's about what my passion is. And so what I suggest for people is not necessarily follow your passion. But when you have the ability to have 40 plus hours of your life back, imagine, and I love the term successfully unemployed. If you become successfully unemployed, you literally have 40 plus hours of your life back to do whatever it is that you want to do. I personally love building businesses, and I love helping and serving people. So now I'm don't get me wrong, I'm still an investor I am that anything that I do in my coaching, anything that I give to my students, it's literally Hey, guys, this is what I'm doing in my business. Let me just pass it along to you. And so because I had so much extra time that my wife started saying, Hey, you're playing a lot of golf, you should start doing something a little more helpful for things, you know, for our family and other people. I said, okay, so fast forward. What happened was, I realized that people were asking me, Hey, Dustin, I see that you don't work a job, you invest in real estate, can you teach me these are just friends and family members and people like that. And I started coaching them one on one, this was back in I don't know, 2014 13, something like that. I started coaching them one on one, and I realized that I enjoyed it, it but it took a lot of time teaching people one on one. And I thought there's got to be a different way with 40 plus hours of my life. Let me figure out so anyways, fast forward, I wrote a book, I have number of a few books now. As well as coaching and courses, and a podcast and YouTube channel. I even created a conference called The Real Estate Wealth builders conference. It was literally last weekend. It's annual, it's an annual conference, we go back and forth between east and west coasts. But the real estate what those conference is another business that I created to serve people, anything that I do in my real estate investing, which that's what I am, remember, I'm a real estate investor. I just love to share this with people. And like I said, when you ask about syndicating and things like that, I'd have students saying, Dustin, I have money, can I just invest in your deals and like, I don't really want to do that, you know, I get I appreciate that. But I don't want to do that. Now. Also, they would say Hey, how come you don't do turnkey type of things. You buy a property, you build it and then we'll just buy it from you. You make money. I was like, I don't really want to do that. I just really enjoy serving people where they are learning how to fish as opposed to meat giving them a fish. So because I have 40 plus hours of my life back, I can do what I love which is helping people and bringing people together which my conference and Real Estate Wealth builders conference in the podcast, that everything is all about giving and helping more people because I have the time and the ability to do all that because I I'm successfully unemployed.

25:01

That's so awesome. Thank you for listening to part one of our two part segment with Dustin Heiner. Dustin's commitment to education and knowledge for investors is second to none. And I hope you join us for part two as Dustin and I resume our conversation. So until next time, take care.

25:21

For more information about how Jennifer can help you plan, develop and manage a strong real estate investment portfolio, visit growingempires.com.