Real estate enables financial independence; by Dustin Heiner and Sharad Mehta

In an interesting recent episode of the REsimpli Podcast, host Sharad Mehta and real estate investor Dustin Heiner explored the changing power of real estate investing, the pursuit of financial freedom, and the shift of human ambitions. This episode looked at how smart real estate investments may provide a nice place to live and everlasting wealth independent from financial independence.

Dustin Heer concentrated on the strategic advantages of retaining rather than selling real estate assets. Retaining assets, he observed, preserves wealth, tax benefits, and passive income—elements often lost in real estate transactions. Dustin’s investment strategy reveals hotels, apartment complexes, and private houses distributed throughout many states—Ohio, Texas, and Arizona. His approach stresses the significance of preserving property to enable continuous development.

Emphasizing the significance of operating a real estate business effectively, Dustin and Sharad both underscored They claimed that maximizing profits by cutting hours spent should be the aim instead of just increasing income by working longer hours. Developing efficient systems and processes took front stage in allowing this equilibrium.

Dustin also spoke about his efforts to educate his kids on property ownership and financial literacy, therefore tackling generational wealth. Encouragement of his teenage daughters to own rental homes will help to foster early financial independence and continuous wealth creation.

Dustin found a fresh challenge in finding purpose outside of his quest for wealth after he gained financial independence. Originally uninterested, he focused extremely fast on helping a million real estate enthusiasts. His businesses produced better when he switched from a financial to a service-oriented approach.

The conversation largely covered Dustin’s perspective on leaving a legacy via service. He stressed, real satisfaction comes from making real relationships and supporting people in their success. This service-oriented strategy encourages greater personal pleasure as well as more financial success.

Apart from real estate, Dustin has a well-balanced life with family time, travel, golf, and exercise. Reflecting the more general benefits of financial freedom, his passive income has given him amazing travel choices including terrific trips to Europe and Japan.

Dustin also spoke about how much different reading improved his life. Emphasized as the main roots of his attitude toward humility and service were the Bible and “The Richest Man in Babylon.” Dustin’s personal values find appeal in the humility and dedication of historical leaders such as George Washington.

For anybody else thinking about real estate ownership, Dustin offers a free course and uses his podcast, social media, and website. His drive to enable people in their financial route reflects in his commitment to providing knowledge and support of others.

It is advised of listeners to look into these concepts and consider how Dustin’s experiences and direction might influence their own goals and financial strategies. Sharad Mehta’s REsimpli system still has great benefits for everyone who is willing to enhance their real estate investment activities.

Watch on YouTube:

Transcripts:

Dustin Heiner  0:00  

Full, yeah, it’s, it’s how I really it’s the medium that I really love to use, absolutely.

Sharad Mehta  0:06  

Man, any questions you have about the podcast,

Dustin Heiner  0:10  

um, the only thing would be your audience. And I know you’re going to steer however is best way for for your audience. But yeah, so is there anything I should touch on, is there anything that’s, you know, standing out to you that your audience wants to hear?

Sharad Mehta  0:25  

I mean, these are typically the audience, residential real estate investors, wholesalers, flippers, some landlords, so just kind of whatever you can talk to that will interest that audience would be great. I could

Dustin Heiner  0:40  

definitely do that. So I do have a story. You know, usually you get asked a question, how’d you get started investing? I have a story that usually resonates with the audience pretty well. I could share that, if you don’t mind. Yeah, absolutely

Sharad Mehta  0:51  

jumped right into it.

Dustin Heiner  0:53  

Awesome. All right, let’s

Sharad Mehta  0:55  

go. Okay, let me just make sure you can hear me. Good, right? I

Dustin Heiner  1:00  

can. All right,

Sharad Mehta  1:05  

let’s go. 123, hey guys. This is Sharad with REsimpli, host of the REsimpli podcast, bringing you a very special guest on this podcast, Dustin. Heiner. Dustin, welcome to the podcast. How are you?

Dustin Heiner  1:17  

Hey, Sharad, thank you so much for having me. I’m I’m blessed. Things are going very, very well. I I love real estate investing, because obviously getting financial dependence is great, but it’s what it affords me to do in my life, right? I don’t work a job. I like the term successfully unemployed. And on top of that, yeah, I go to the gym in the morning, I hang out with my family, I come on podcasts and talk to great people like you. So Real Estate’s amazing, and it’s my vehicle to get to become financially independent.

Sharad Mehta  1:44  

Absolutely, man, I absolutely love real estate. I would not have the life that I do now if it were not for real estate investing. So Dustin, tell us about yourself. Where do you live? What kind of investing do you do? How long you’ve been an investor for? And also, you know, how did you get into it, yeah.

Dustin Heiner  2:01  

So I live, yeah. I live in Phoenix, Arizona. I didn’t start there. I was in California. Moved to Arizona about seven years ago, and I started investing back in 2006 so back in 2006 before the crash happened, I was living in California. Prices were skyrocketing, so I eventually bought in Ohio, of all places. Just randomly found a place in Ohio, started buying there, but eventually bought enough properties where I was able to come financially, I guess, successful, unemployed, but financially independent, because I now had rental properties that made me

Sharad Mehta  2:31  

money, awesome. So you picked Ohio as your market invest. Were you buying turnkey properties? Were you buying fix it up or putting money into them. Oh,

Dustin Heiner  2:41  

so here’s a fun story of how I got into it, but it’s also tragic at the same time, but it got me to where I’m at today. So when I first wanted to start in real estate investing, I was working a regular sit down desk job, and one of the most stable, secure jobs I could ever think of. It was working in California for a local county government, doing technology. And we know California’s not going away. Government’s not, definitely not going away as well as technology’s not going away. So I got the most stable, secure job ever. And then with that, I’ve always been entrepreneurial, you know, starting businesses that type of mindset. And so I, you know, I had a skateboard manufacturing business, had a graphic website design company, a cafeteria, like a convenience store. I started these businesses from the ground up, but I bought one rental property in my time. In 2006 I bought one rental property, and that one property made me money without working in Ohio. And I’ll get into the reason why it was tragic of how I got into it. The biggest reason why is my property manager started stealing from me within six months. It was horrible because I had no clue what I was doing. What I was doing. It wasn’t turnkey. I basically just found a realtor and a mortgage broker, bought the property and then found a property manager, and this is how I got into it. I literally watched in 2006 I watched those late, late night infomercials where they say, Hey, we’re coming to your town. These gurus come to your town. They say, we’re giving you a free two hour seminar, teaching on investment world. So I’m like, great. So I go to this two hour seminar, and I get suckered in to paying lots of money. They say, now it’s normally a million dollars, but it’s $1,000 a day. Run to the back and give us money. So I did that, and I went to their two day seminar. It was worse. It was hype and sales pitch for a $50,000 course, an $80,000 course. And I said I didn’t know, like how to do any of this stuff, but I don’t have that money, so I better do it myself. So here’s what’s really interesting. I figured out a way to do it by listening to the gurus. The Guru said, you find a property anywhere in the country to invest, make sure it has you’re going to get appreciation. You don’t even worry about passive income, you’re going to get appreciation. Remember, this is 2006 before the crash, and so you spend 1000s of dollars to buy the property, spend $1,000 to fix up the property, and then you find a tenant, and then you try to find a property manager. Well, my opinion, that’s just about backwards. I did that, and my property manager started stealing from me the six months. And the what I actually figured out was, because I’m a business owner, I. Literally figured out that the way that they told me was not the right way to do it. The right way to do is to build a business to make sure that the business runs itself. Now we could definitely get into all of how we do it. I now coach hundreds, not 1000s, of student people, how to invest in real estate, but we build the business, and then our business owns the inventory.

Sharad Mehta  5:22  

So you bought that. How did you I’m curious, how did you find out the property manager was stealing from you? Like, what was it that they were doing? Property Manager is very, very sketchy. Dub business. I own a property management company, and the only reason I started a property management company was because my property manager was stealing from me. So I’m curious kind of, what was your experience? Yeah,

Dustin Heiner  5:44  

the big experience started when I or how I knew that she was stealing from me was not or the numbers weren’t adding up on all the property management statements there were, I guess, item line items on the product management statement without receipts, even documentation, it was just a line item, even receipts that were just, they looked phony, they didn’t look real. And so all that came down to, I also talked to her, and before I realized she was stealing from me, she started another business. And this business I’ve heard, started going, you know, having trouble. And so I’m just piecing everything together, so many other things in there, but yeah, yeah, started taking money from here to pay for her business. But it was a big wake up call, because in 2006 when I first started investing, the technology was not like REsimpli was not around, or any of this stuff. I mean, Zillow basically barely got started, but oh, so with that, I literally figured out that we need to build a business, and in doing that, when you build a business, you’re not just going to hire anybody that’s walking across the street. No, you’re going to interview them, and be very particular on interviewing them multiple times, asking great questions that help them to answer your questions and the way that you need to know if they’re going to be the right fit for your business. Now we, the property managers are, are literally my quarterback. They’re the best reason why I make money and became financially independent.

Sharad Mehta  7:09  

Awesome, man. All right, so I want to find out, how did you so you own multiple businesses. You own a skateboard manufacturing, right? I did, yes, I used to do it. And then a graphic designing business, and then, then you were interested in real estate. What was it about real estate that kind of you gravitated towards it?

Dustin Heiner  7:32  

Oh, yeah. Okay, so let me give you the understanding of how I got there, because the biggest thing that happened to me woke me up, and I’m going to tell the story so that everybody listening, hopefully it doesn’t happen to so I’m working this sit down desk job, you know, nine to five technology desk job at the local government. And I bought one property, and that property started making me money. I knew I needed to be an investor, but life started getting in the way. My wife and I started having kid after kid, and eventually we had four children, and when my wife had our fourth child, I went on paternity leave. That’s where, you know, the dad stays home with the mom changes poopy diapers and all the good stuff, bonds with the baby. Well, after those two weeks, I go back to work, and in that same week, I go back to work on a Friday, at 330 in the afternoon, 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? I said, Sure. I hung up the phone. I paused for a second. I thought, Why in the world did he call me the office like this isn’t normal, and I’ve seen plenty of movies. Friday at 330 is not a good time to be called to the boss’s office. So I hung the phone and I thought about about three, four weeks before I went up paternity leave, there were some rumors or some rumbling going on that could potentially be layoffs in the county and the local government. This was in 2010 because all the, you know, so many problems in the economy. But I immediately shook it off, because I said, No way. I’ve got, like, 14 year seniority here. My bosses think I do a great job. No problems. So I get up and I walk down the hallway to my boss’s office and Sharad, this hallway isn’t very long. In fact, it’s kind of short, but every single step that I took, it felt like my feet became lead bricks, because the hallway got longer and longer and longer, and the weight of potentially losing my job was really starting to crush down on me. Well, I get down the hallway and I turn the corner and I see my boss’s door. His door is closed, and I see a secretary there. Super sweet, nice old lady. She says, Dustin, would you please have a seat? And she’s kind of sheepishly grinning at me, trying to console me with her eyes, 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 I sit there, and I start thinking about my life, if I going through this entire process, this what everybody told me, go to school, get good grades, go to college, get 1000s of dollars in a debt, work for a company or 40 plus years, and then retire at 65 years old and live on 40% of what you managed to say that entire time working. Well, if that, if I get laid off, I realize, did I just waste my life? Doing this. Well, at the same time, I started thinking, oh my goodness, does this make me a failure as a father, I can’t even provide for them. Does it make me a failure as a husband, as a man, try to provide for my family? Well, as I’m saying, my hands get all clammy. My forehead gets all sweaty because the nerves are just crushing down on me while the door to my boss’s office opens up and out walks a co worker of mine with a piece of paper in her hands. She is noticeably distraught, noticeably upset, not necessarily crying, but you could tell her world has just been devastated. She passes by, my boss says, Dustin, would you please come in 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 up from the government, but I did, and this is the reason why I tell the story. So I take that layoff notice, and I go back to my desk, and I sit down, and I realize two things. First thing, I need to find another job. I need to be able to provide for my family. So I was really blessed, praise the Lord, to find another job in the same county, a different department wasn’t having the same issues. Check got that. The second thing, and this the reason why I tell the story, sitting in that chair, just getting laid off. I realized that 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, anytime anybody would ask me the question, Dustin, what do you do? You know, we always get that question, I would reply that, you know, I work for the government, doing technology, I reply with my job, I’m basically projecting. And anytime we answer this question this way, we’re projecting out to the everybody that our value comes from our job. No, it doesn’t come from my it is my value does not come from my job. It comes from my God and from myself and from my family. So right then there I told myself, no longer will I ever reply with my job. I will now reply that I am an investor because I knew I needed to be an investor, but life got in the way. Now it may so happen that 100% of my money came from my job. That’s now my part time job. I’m a full time investor. So fast for the story. Started buying property after property after property each one. How about

Sharad Mehta  12:02  

you find out these dudes? How are you finding money for these

Dustin Heiner  12:05  

so there are so many ways, in fact, when I say so many, 15 different ways that I’d use to get financing for these properties. The very first property that I bought back in 2006 I used my wife’s money that she I wasn’t taught to save. She was so I took her $15,000 that she saved. We bought our first property, and I kept rolling those over, refinancing, pulling cash out, doing creative financing, private money, hard money, bundle loans, Portfolio loans, commercial loans, you name it. I did that, and that’s how I built it up to where I had 30 plus properties. And so last part of the story, as I had 30 plus properties, I realized I’m losing money working at this job, so I went to my new boss. Great boss at all. I said, Hey, boss, I’m laying you off jokingly. And we We both laughed. And he says, Dustin, what are you gonna do? And I said, I have real estate that literally works for me. I don’t have to do anything. So the quickly, last part of the story is I walked to and from my job a mile and a half every single day I worked in downtown. I’m too frugal to pay for parking. The last time I’ve done it 1000 times, but when I walked to my car for the very last time, I felt like I was walking on clouds because I knew I would never, ever need a job again. Just the opposite of walking to the hallway where I got laid off my feet became lead bricks because everybody listening, you need to realize that you are worth so much more than anybody could ever pay you, and this is how you’ll know your boss is paying you just enough to keep you working without quitting, but not so much money. It takes money out of their pocket. If they paid you what you were worth, they would literally go broke. So instead, My way was getting passive income by investing in rental properties. Could be short, medium or long term, or even co living, where you rented out per room, but buy real estate, and now each property makes me a minimum of $250 I literally have properties making me $1,000 a month in passive income, 30 plus properties. Now I don’t need to work ever again. Now we have hotels and apartment complexes and all that stuff. So I’ll pause, because you probably have lots of other questions. Strahd,

Sharad Mehta  13:57  

yeah, no, I absolutely love that, man, you’re actually the second person today that I’m talking to, where the big life event for them was getting laid off, and that changed the trajectory of their life. You know, sometimes when you’re in the moment, you have these feelings that you’re going through like, oh my god, this is absolutely the worst day of my life, but you always have to look at it as, okay, what’s the upside I can get from this, right? You don’t want to, you don’t you want to make that as your rock bottom, that you only go up from there. Don’t go you know, your thoughts, your mindset, will make you only go below. If you have negative, if you’re positive, you’re only going to go up from there. So thank you for sharing that, man, absolutely incredible story. Where’s the inspiration of successfully unemployed come from I’m very curious about, Oh,

Dustin Heiner  14:43  

I love that. I love it. So. Successfully unemployed. I started telling people that I was retired at 37 years old. I retired. And people were like, they were dumbfounded. Not like that. I did it, but more so, what do you do with your time? Like, it just seems like, you know, would you be bored? Travel and everything? Yeah, those are great. But I realized that it was people have different understanding what retirement means. Then when I say successfully unemployed, I realized that people either understand it in one of two ways, like, oh, shoot, I’m sorry for you being unemployed. No, no, no, that’s not what it means. So it starts, starts a conversation. But where it came from was, as I was quitting my job, I had so many friends and family members and coworkers asking me, How do I invest in real estate? And so I started teaching them, one on one. Fast forward. I eventually wrote a book called How to Quit your job with rental properties. Very straightforward, not a very creative title at all, but straightforward, so very to the point. So I wrote the book. And then as I was quitting my job, I learned so I wrote the book first, and then another two years, because I was kind of scared to quit my job, which I wish I would have quit earlier. But after about two years, I realized I learned so many lessons on how to quit your job properly, like, what do you do about insurance? What do you do about your vacation time, all that sort of stuff that I wrote a book, and my wife came up with the title because I was going to write something as straightforward as, like, you know, retire early, or something like that. But she came up with the idea of successfully unemployed. I said, I like that because I’ve heard of the term unemployable, but it comes across a little arrogant, because honestly, I kid you not, if Warren Buffett came to me and say, Hey, Dustin, I want you to pay me so that you can work for me, I’d be like, absolutely sign me up, because I will learn so much. I’ll be around the right people. I’ll be just connected. It’s just a much better thing. So I could work for anybody, but success when employed is showing people that there is a way to make money to provide for yourself and your family without working that dead end. Jo B is what I like to call it, just over broke job. Yeah,

Sharad Mehta  16:41  

no. Thank you for sharing that, man. And absolutely I do agree with you. Unemployable can sometimes come arrogant. That’s not the intent of the person you know. Their intent is, I think what you have successfully unemployed. So I love that, alright, so at this point, you’ve coached 1000s of students to be successfully unemployed, right? I want to ask you about the mindset, so you have this great insight coaching 1000s of students and not unfortunately, in this business, not everybody gets successfully unemployed, right? What do you notice? The difference? The biggest difference is between the people that actually are successful versus people that are not.

Dustin Heiner  17:24  

The biggest thing that I’ve seen, it’s not taking action. That’s not the usually people say that’s the easiest one is like, just take action. It’s not take action. The people that are successful act in the face of fear. It’s getting past the fear of investing could be fear of buying the wrong property, fear of losing money, fear of getting a lawsuit, whatever the fear might be, they get past that fear. Now how you get past that fear is not just taking action. It comes actually, we’ll stop and say fear comes when there is unknown or you’re unsure, or you don’t have the people around you there to help you get past these obstacles. So what I’ve seen is when people act in the face of fear that is one step moving forward, and the best way to get around that fear is understanding and knowing and having experience through other people so that you can actually move forward. Just like if I’m going to figure out how to buy a property. I’m not going to just try do it myself. I’m going to be around other people, let’s say realtors or wholesalers, or whatever it might be. And so what I found the people that become successful, they act in this face of fear, and then once they act in the face of fear, and they be because they understand it. Let’s say they got education, they got a mentor, they found somebody that just doesn’t they help them. Then they do that one time, and I kid you not so sure I’d like, as you said, I mean, I’ve had hundreds, not 1000s, of students now coach him how to invest in real estate, usually, before they find me, they are just treading water. You know, the term analysis paralysis comes in. They don’t know what to do. They’re so unsure and they’re fearful. But then they start, you know, a year or two years, and then they start coaching with me, like, literally, kid you not. This is what happens. They start getting with me and coaching them, and within a month, they’re already putting offers because they have somebody to help them get through that, that phase of fearness. And then they usually get closing on a offer within three, four months after we start working with them. But here’s the great thing, because you’ve done it one time, you now, just like riding a bike, you can do it over and over again. If you do it, like I said at very beginning, if you build a business that people send you deals. You have people that want to give you money. You have people that are going to manage your properties. You have the business set up that run once you have that first property, I kid you not all of my students, I would say all. That’s kind of that’s a brought 98% of my students. The second property comes within the next month because they built the business. They have a pipeline or people sending them deals. They already have the business of property managers. They already have the mortgage brokers, the private money. They’ve done all the work. So now it’s the inventory that they just got to buy, which is. The easiest part. People think that inventory or finding properties and funding properties are the hardest things. Those are the easiest things about the business. The hardest thing after that is how to make sure you’re making money consistently to become successfully unemployed. Yeah, absolutely.

Sharad Mehta  20:14  

And I think once you have a system and process that’s repeatable, that’s all you gotta follow. It just the first, very first property. And I’ve been in that situation where I bought the first property. I probably looked at 50 to 60 properties, if not more, before I pulled the trigger on first one. It was listed for 65 or 75 I offered 20, and I think the seller accepted. With 25 I would just, I mean, this is back. That’s awesome. And just like, I was being extra, extra conservative, but I was just making sure every day I was taking one step forward. I think that’s what it’s all about. Yeah. So

Dustin Heiner  20:54  

just like, riding a bike, like I said, it’s literally getting on, and if you fall, you get back up. You just have to put yourself through it. And I love that you put an offer that is so much lower than you would, most people be uncomfortable. And so what I tell my students, among many things, number one, we build a business. But number two, here’s a big thing, because I get a lot of students saying, especially even right now, interest rates are a high, prices are still relatively high. They say, Dustin, how do I get passive income? Because that’s all we invest for. I don’t invest for appreciation, because I will literally give these properties to my kids. If you’re watching this on YouTube, you can see my kids in the background. I will literally give these properties to my kids in generational wealth, because I invest for passive income and cash flow, I will not sell these properties. And so what I tell my students is, when they say, well, Dustin, how do you get passive income with these prices so high and interest so high, is I tell them, you need to put in, number one, lots of offers, but number two, you need to capture equity, which means you need to buy it for less than it’s worth. And here’s the rule of thumb, I tell my students, if you put an offer and you’re not uncomfortable, like I think they’re gonna be mad if I put in the software. If you don’t feel like that, then you’re offering way too much. You need to offer lower, because then you negotiate, just like you start. They start at 65 or 70. You offered at 20, and they eventually worked their way down to 25 which, back in 2010 was beautiful time to invest in real estate, but you’re 100% right. When we build a business, and we actually do business things like offer lower, try to make sure that we’re capturing equity, all that sort of stuff, then we become successful.

Sharad Mehta  22:29  

Yeah, I agree. And if you’re not failing, then you’re, in my opinion, then you’re not making progress, right? If you’re making offers and every offer is getting accepted, you’re offering way too much. I think you just like, the only way, I mean, only way to score is to take a shot. In our business, taking a shot is making offers. Just make so many offers and you’re absolutely right, like, you have to feel to some extent embarrassed, or feel like, oh my god, you know you’re cringing at you’re feeling bad for the seller, that how much you’re offering, and then crazy things happen. You don’t know what this seller situation is. All you can do is, all you control is, say, this is how much I can afford to pay for it. Do you want to take it or not? If they take it, great. If not, then you just move on to the next property. Yeah.

Dustin Heiner  23:18  

So do you’re not breaking their arm like you’re not sourcing them to sell it exactly, all they have

Sharad Mehta  23:22  

to say, all they do is just say no, and that’s it, right? You you’re not hurting there. I mean, you may hurt their feeling, but it’s not nothing, personally. It’s just what you can afford to pay for a property, and that’s what it’s all about. Do you still own all the properties in Ohio that you bought? Did you sell it? Yes. So

Dustin Heiner  23:38  

I’ve sold two. Wait, two, one or two. I think I’ve sold two. Um, one was a duplex. I think I sold another. No, I didn’t. No, it was a duplex. So I sold one of them. Wish I didn’t. Every single property that every investor that invests for rental and, you know, short term, midterm, long term Buy, buy and hold, they always wish they’d never sold. Because once you sell, you lose access to that capital that you have in that your equity, you lose the passive income, you lose the tax advantages, you lose so appreciation, like you lose so much when you sell. So I sold one wish I never did, but now I literally invest in five different states, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Tennessee, Missouri and Indiana. That’s six and then now I have apartment complexes, hotels and my own private, you know, personal, 30 plus properties now, but my bread and butter is residential, four. You did some below best financing that you can get, easy to manage. You can find lots of different property managers, so many great things. And there are different ways you can do short term, make a lot of money, a lot more. You know, headache in a sense, where you have more moving parts. But you could do short term, you midterm, 3060, 90 days, which are a fantastic way make more money. You could do long term, where you obviously 12 months. You can even do co living, where you rent out per room, which is a great way, another way to make money. And for me, I like 80% of my portfolio. Long term, you know, 12 months, because it’s fixed. I feed my family with this money, and the other 20% of my portfolio would be short term, mid term or CO living type of but, yeah, what I found is that when I replaced my ex my income and figured out how to get my expenses taken care of, oh, let me, let me say it, share it this way. One last thing, so when I first started investing, my wife was asking me, How soon will we be able to be financially independent? Well, I figured out what our expenses are, and I remember the number plain as day. It was $4,200 mortgage insurance, food and all that sort of stuff. Well, I bought one property that made me $250 a month in passive income. That was a minimum. I have some making me 1000 or more now, but minimum of $250 I thought, You know what? That’s $3,000 a year. That’s pretty awesome. Not a ton, but it’s good. But if I just multiplied it, if I had 10 properties, making me $250 a month, at the minimum, that’s $2,500 a month, $30,000 a year, without working. If I had 20 properties, that’s $5,000 a month, $60,000 a year, I can literally become financially independent. And if you have that perspective as it’s just multiplying, it’s just scaling your business. But the bigger thing is, before you scale, you have to have systems and procedures and processes in place. Like you said, Sharad, you have to have this business ready to take on these properties. And when you do, oh my goodness, you literally don’t work. In fact, one quick last thing, I just got I’m on a roll. So one quick last thing, there’s a book called A four hour work week. Great book and all, but the premise is, try to make your life so that you only have to work four hours a week. Well, in my opinion, working four hours a week is for suckers. I don’t want to work four hours a week. I don’t want to work four hours a month on all my properties. I maybe work 30 minutes a month on my properties, because I have other people, experts, doing the work for me so that I can go back to playing with my kids and travel the world and all the good stuff that I want to

Sharad Mehta  26:48  

do. Yeah, no, absolutely, man. It’s about scaling your business and putting in process it so you the business is still growing without taking more of your time. You know, if you’re spending 40 hours a week. Let’s just say you’re spending 40 hours a week making 100,000 it should not be that if you want to make 200,000 that you have to work 80 hours a week. The challenge should be, okay, how do you actually work less, maybe 2030, hours a week and make W income? That’s the challenge you want to come up with is, how do you work less and double your income. And that’s where you get creative. You know, just doubling your hours, making double money, that’s not as exciting, but doing half the hours, doubling the money, that’s the exciting challenge that you want to go after. And

Dustin Heiner  27:34  

I love the idea of working one time and getting paid over and over again, especially with one raw property. But here’s a big thing, just like you were saying, if you have, if you’re really fantastic at your job, and you make a ton of money, well, I’m old enough now, where I start thinking about, well, shoot, can I give my properties, my to my kids? Yes, I can give my properties. Can I give them my job? No, you can’t give your job to your kids. Now, if you own a business, you can definitely give it to your kids. If you own real estate, you can give it to your kids, anything tangible that is your own. You can literally give to your children in generational wealth. And on top of that, you can like, I’m literally teaching my kids. My daughter’s 16 years old. She’s on track right now to buy her first rental property before she turned 17. My son is 15, you know, yeah. So both of them by the time before they hit 17, they’re both going to own their first rental property. Now, obviously I’m being in there with them, coaching them, just like with everybody else, and helping them along the way, but they’re going to be doing this at such a young age that, Lord willing, they’re not going to need to ever work a job, or if they want to work a job, they work in my conferences. They work in my businesses, because I have businesses. And here’s a great thing with when you become financially independent, that’s just the start of the journey. It takes a long time to get there, but it’s the start of journey. Now what you if you become financially independent, you literally have 40 plus hours of your life back to you that you can then build more passive income businesses start connecting with more people and create more wealth for you. Because instead of making wealth for somebody else, you’re making wealth for yourself

Sharad Mehta  29:02  

absolutely, or you could do something else, something you know, like a hobby that you have, that you want it always wanted to do. It gives you, it gives you, like, freedom of time and money. I think that’s, that’s what people want. It’s freedom of time and money they want to be able to do what they want to do, when they want to do, and who they want to do with. I think if you have that, that’s that’s the ultimate freedom that people

Dustin Heiner  29:27  

so I love that thought. And let me add, this is what I’ve grown to. And I didn’t know this until I actually became financially independent. And as I became financial independent, I started to becoming very lazy. I guess I would say it or let me say it this way. So when I when I was 27 years old, I had my goal to quit my job when I was 37 years old, that’s like a deadline. It’s not even a goal, like, it’s a deadline, like, I’m making myself do it. I was blessed in 10 years to quit my job. That was my goal. But then for about a year to two years, I didn’t have a goal. I was just kind of floundering around. You. And I realized that I needed a goal. You know, goals are good to help you keep progressing. Well, I made this goal. Sharad, it was to make $1 million in all my businesses up in one year. That was my goal. But I kid you not, that was so the worst goal ever, because I was, I’m not motivated by money. And on top of that, I was bored because I didn’t need the money. It’s not like the money would be great. It was just a way to quantify if I reached that goal. But then I realized, and I switched my goal now to help 1 million people to invest in real estate. That’s my new goal. It’s now so I get out of bed excited where, as opposed to I wasn’t. I was like, this is kind of boring. Now I push myself to even reach further than I give you example, I created my conference, the Real Estate Wealth builders conference, and that was such. I literally had $200,000 on the line with hotels and everything for this event. And I’m blessed that it worked out really, really well. We’re doing it three or four years now. We’re starting another event called the multifamily wealth builders conference on commercial properties. But I would never have done that if it was just about money. I would just buy more properties. But now I’ve got 1000s of people come to my events. I have 1000 people, literally 2 million downloads on my podcast. My social media is getting up there too. But it’s all about, how can I now help more people? But here’s the great thing to add one more quick thing to it, because I’m helping so many more people. They are getting what they want, they’re learning, they’re making more money, they’re changing their lives. But I’m getting what I want, I want. I’m making, I’m making millions of dollars in all my businesses because I’ve switched now to helping people. So everybody, if you’re listening to this financial freedom, is just the starting point. Once you get there, now you’d be off to the races to where and I get one last quick point. So you want it to have a money legacy. You need to have money in your life to be able to afford what you want. That leads into a time legacy. So you have the time to do whatever you want, but you then that money leads into time tithe leads into relationships. You need a relationship legacy, build those relationships back up that you might have last and had issues with. Then that relationship legacy leads into a service legacy. That service legacy, I kid you not, when you live in that service legacy, that’s all you’re going to want to do. And I might, you might hear me say this right now, like the service legacy is where you want to live, and only live in and only do you might understand it, but I kid you not, you do not comprehend it. You have no clue what that means until you actually reach there. Because now I’m there, short, I know you’re there too. It’s now as much as many people as we can serve that changes our life. That’s only thing I ever want to do now, is serve more people. Yeah,

Sharad Mehta  32:39  

absolutely. And then money should never be the primary goal of, you know, whatever, if you’re starting a business, or whatever you might be doing. Yes, you want to have a certain, you know, financial goal that you want to get to support your family. But the bigger goal, they should not be money driven, because then you’re going to get up in the morning. I’ve been in those situation. I’ll get I’m, like, why am I doing this? Like, what I what do I need all this money for? I have, you know, I have plenty of rental properties. I have enough cash flow coming in. But once you make your goal more than money, money then just becomes a byproduct of the value that you’re adding. The more value that you’re adding, the more life that you’re changing, the more money you’re going to make as a result of it. But your focus should always be how much value that you’re adding to other people. So well said, 100 100% agree with that. Dustin, this has been absolutely incredible. I want to move on to our next segment of our show. Ask a couple of questions not related to business. First one is, what do you do for fun?

Dustin Heiner  33:35  

Oh, I do a lot of things for fun. Number one, I love working out. I literally lift weights five days a week. It’s Olympic lifting, SNATCH and CLEAN a jerk like you see in the Olympics. I do that for fun. I hang out with my family. I love playing golf. I go hunting. I do that stuff. But a big thing that we do as a family is I love as a family is we love to travel in 2018 right? No, 2017 right? After we quit my job, we went through six weeks through Japan, driving on the left hand side of the road. 2020, 120. 500 five,

Sharad Mehta  34:03  

Japan. Six, absolutely incredible. It was

Dustin Heiner  34:07  

phenomenal. And best thing I’d even talk to my property manager. I didn’t even worry about money. Just kept coming in. 2018 went to Europe, six weeks on 11 different country trip all through Europe with my with my kids, 2019, we went to the East Coast, went from Florida, drove all the way up, seeing all the sites, historic sites, all up to New York. And then just recently, we went to Japan again. Just two weeks ago, went to Japan again. We love traveling. That’s something that we love to do, but that’s that’s really I love being around my family, and I love doing things that helped other people.

Sharad Mehta  34:39  

I can totally see how energized you get just talking about family. So I can only imagine, when you’re around your family, you’re just bubbling that energy exactly what’s the one book that’s had the biggest impact in your life? It could be a business book, personal book, or one of each

Dustin Heiner  34:56  

so I’m going to give you two. And cheat number one the best buy. Far is the Bible. I literally read the Bible multiple times a day, and that’s changed me. Where, instead of being self centered, because the Bible says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble, well, I started thinking, well, if I that’s true, I don’t want God opposing me. How do I become humble? And how I become humble is considering others more important than yourselves serving other people, like Jesus said. So that’s where the service aspect came, and that’s changed my life. So that’s number one, reading the Bible, literally multiple times a day. I read it to my kids all the time. So number two is the richest man in Babylon. Love that book by George S Clausen. It’s a fictional story, but It cheats his principles about finance and investing. It’s absolutely amazing. It’s those two are the biggest ones that I would say if I were to read again, or suggest to read. Those two are the ones.

Sharad Mehta  35:47  

I mean, Bible is the number one answer on the podcast so far. Yeah,

Dustin Heiner  35:52  

what’s the best selling book ever?

Sharad Mehta  35:56  

So it’s only Yeah, it’s only obvious that it will be the number one answer on the podcast, if you could spend a day with anyone, dead or alive, who would you want to spend the day with and why?

Dustin Heiner  36:08  

Oh, obviously Jesus, that’d be number one. But we’ll move obviously Jesus is amazing, but move from that to thinking of something a little more pertinent, or like today, I’ve been really enamored with George Washington. So the reason why, you know people, oh, he’s a slave owner, all that sort of stuff. No, actually, he took care of his slaves really, really well. You might disagree. But one thing that was really amazing about George Washington, he was literally going to be made king over an entire new country, like they were going to make him king because they won the war against England. England England had a king. Everybody’s used to being a king or having kings. They wanted to make him king. And he said, No. He literally turned that down. And I think was the the King of France said, This man, George Washington, for giving up that is the most amazing man in the history of the world, because he was going to be king over this entire new country have everything, like lit and he gave it up because he wanted to go farm. He wanted to go have his life. He wanted to be so that everybody was free and had nobody over them. So George Washington is second to Jesus. I love to because he was extremely humble. Read the Bible too, but extremely humble to give up what everybody coveted was this king spot in this brand new country,

Sharad Mehta  37:23  

so I had no idea about that. That’s very interesting. Thank you for sharing that. I just And if someone wants to connect with you, learn more about your journey the coaching program that you have, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Dustin Heiner  37:36  

Absolutely. Do you mind if I give them a free course, but just give it for free please?

Sharad Mehta  37:40  

Yeah, absolutely. And we’ll put a link to it in the show. The show notes also. So go ahead. Awesome.

Dustin Heiner  37:44  

So I’ll give you a course to show you how to build the business anywhere in the country, how to scale it to be able to quit your job. So if you text the word rental, R, E N, T, A, O, rental to 33777, rental to 33777, or go to master passive income.com. Forward, Slash Free. Course, all one word for assess, free. Course, I’ll let it. Give it to you. You could also find me. I have my own podcast. It’s like 90% just me teaching. I’ve been doing this since 2016 teaching how to invest master passive income. Just look that up. Same thing on YouTube. But I’ve also been using Instagram quite a bit of getting good following. It’s a lot of fun. I love people reach out to me so you can follow me on Instagram. The Dustin Heiner, t h e, Dustin Heiner and no Sharad, not that arrogant. It’s the only handle I like to come up with. Everything else is kind of taken. So the Dustin Heiner on Instagram, reach out to me. I love just helping hang out with people, showing people how to invest in real estate. But I really appreciate you having

Sharad Mehta  38:36  

me on the show. Man, absolutely. I’m surprised you didn’t go for successfully unemployed on the Instagram. Or was it taken already?

Dustin Heiner  38:41  

It wasn’t taken. But I went with just my name, because, okay, yeah, but

Sharad Mehta  38:47  

okay, you’re building it like making more party you then, well, I have both.

Dustin Heiner  38:51  

I do have success, but the one, yeah, I guess if they follow me, then I could point them to master, passive income, successfully unemployed,

Sharad Mehta  39:00  

yeah, that makes sense, yeah. Dustin, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your incredible journeyman. It was absolutely inspirational. Thank you.

Dustin Heiner  39:07  

Thank you. Sharad, thanks. Applause.