Ky Logue  0:50  

Hey, what's up? ODAAT nation, super excited to have my friend Dustin singer on with us today. Dustin, thank you so much for joining

Dustin Singer  1:02  
us, man. Yeah, for sure, man. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I appreciate

Ky Logue  1:06  
you, man. So for the people who don't know, who is Dustin singer.

Dustin Singer  1:11  
So I am a real estate investor based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I am married with two kids. We've been doing. My wife originally did real estate with me for a little bit and then beginning. And once the kids came along that changed things a little bit. But we've been in the business for about going on for years now.

Ky Logue  1:35  
That's awesome. And now Are you do you like Seth virtually to where you're ingesting? In Pennsylvania? We're yeah,

Dustin Singer  1:43  
we're just in Pittsburgh? We do. Okay. Yeah, we do a little bit of virtual in our surrounding counties. But other than that, we're pretty much just in the Greater Pittsburgh area.

Ky Logue  1:56  
Awesome. All right. So how did you first get into real estate? And what were you up to before that? And how did you first get into it?

Dustin Singer  2:03  
Yeah, so I, the job that I had the W two job that I had before this. I was a commercial carpenter. I was working in the union in Pittsburgh. And my wife and I had kind of always been obsessed with HGTV and fix and flipper. And I forget a lot of the name of the shows now. But you know, we used to watch all those shows. So we kind of just decided one day, hey, let's let's give this flipping thing a try. And I flipped two houses in 2019. On the side while I was working full time. And then actually, probably one of the best things in hindsight ever happened to me. I got hurt at work. I threw my back out like really, really bad. Yeah, it's like wheelchair bad. Wow. Yeah. So we it was kind of like one of those defining moments where it's like, hey, we started doing this other thing here. It's working. We're making some money off of it. So let's make it work full time, because I didn't have much of another choice. You know, at that moment.

Ky Logue  3:08  
Right. That's awesome. Man. That's who you had asked me. I heard but it's cool. You had that. But that's awesome, man. So yeah, I know, when I first got started, no, see, I didn't really have a ton of money or experience. Do you have any of that stuff coming in?

Dustin Singer  3:23  
No, no, we knew, like, other than watching shows, which, for most people that are in the game, now they're totally unrealistic. We knew hardly anything. I had probably between the two of us $10,000 in savings to our names. And I'm gonna just wing the first one. Yeah. I hear you on that man.

Ky Logue  3:47  
And the debt very hard. That first one got it worked out well, or did you guys get on that one?

Dustin Singer  3:52  
So we were we were working 80 hours a week. 40 at our regular than 40, you know, nights and weekends working on this house. We had purchased a foreclosure off the MLS. Through a real estate agent. I remember walking into that house the first time I'm like, Man, I think we made a mistake. I don't know what the hell we're gonna do with this. But you know, we slaved away for actually all summer all summer 2019. We were working in that house together. I had a couple buddies helped me as well. We hired a few contractors. And for four months. You know, we're in there working. We actually the real estate agent that we bought the house with brought a buyer to us before we were even done. And we closed like, I mean, I'm literally finishing up stair treads and we're closing like later that afternoon. Oh, yeah. So we made a decent chunk of change on that. And at that time, it was like life changing money, right, like half half of my salary for the year. So I'm like, Man, there might be something to this. Yeah, for

Ky Logue  4:59  
sure, ma'am. It's not so cool, you can really make so much money in real estate and it's crazy. Anything you would just like half of your salary in this one deal. Yeah. So what happens? So you say, did a couple before you got hurt at work? Or how many flips did you do before that happened?

Dustin Singer  5:14  
We did. Two to actually, really one I got hurt when we were maybe a couple of weeks into the second one. Which that taught me real quick how to hire contractors, right? Because I couldn't, you know, we did all the work ourselves more or less on the first one. The second one I had started to, but because of the back issues, it was just there was no way.

Ky Logue  5:43  
That makes sense. So what what was that? Like? What you walk us through that? You know, you're hurt from where it can't? Can't have? Yeah, you know, can't do what you're used to doing for work. And you kind of just go all in?

Dustin Singer  5:53  
Yeah, I really had to watch because they were they were following me around or spying on me to make sure that I wasn't doing anything. Yeah. So it was, it was definitely probably one of the most challenging times in my life. I didn't get paid. My at the time, my wife was still working a full time job, and she made decent money. So that obviously helped. But we were used to living off of two incomes. And our bills reflected that. Yeah, so all of a sudden, you know, one income or half of our annual salary together, was completely gone. I wasn't getting a weekly paycheck. You know, as everyone knows, it's in this industry in the real estate industry, your cash conversion cycle on flips is usually long, right? It could be up to, you know, six, maybe even nine months, depending on you know, what's going on. Right? So it was definitely a challenging time financially. We had definitely, like maxed out credit cards, had a hard money loan on the property, we're paying that monthly payment. By the time we got paid on that second one, we were like down to the wire on a lot of our savings and credit card limits.

Ky Logue  7:10  
Yeah. That's crazy, man. So did that that second one, did that get you caught up? Or when he got

Dustin Singer  7:16  
us caught up? I think we made about 20,000 on that one. So not the best flip. But not terrible, either. Right. But between those first two, I had made my entire carpenter salary for an entire year. So it was like almost like a reset button. And that gave us the nest egg to be able to start treating it more like a business. And we started doing marketing. Actually, I think so the second one we bought as a referral is a real estate agent I knew knew someone that was selling a probate property. And I just went in there and we bought it. We didn't start doing actual marketing until after that property was done. So those first to kind of just fell in our lap. Right.

Ky Logue  8:04  
That's cool. That worked out. So well. What have you. Yeah, so what was it like since then, you know, what do you guys do? And now? Yeah, so you went all in, you got, you're kind of in a tough spot, and you got out of it. And so what would happen after that?

Dustin Singer  8:18  
So the first year in business I, off the top of my head, I can't even tell you how many deals we did wasn't a ton, yet. Maybe 10 total. Now at the time, we weren't really wholesaling. These were all deals that we were buying in house and rehabbing. I knew about wholesaling at the time, but didn't really fully understand it, or what purpose it served or, you know, whatever you want to call it. So we did, you know, however many more flips that year. And actually, I haven't done a bad flip until this past until 2022. A lot of a lot of people got got hurt pretty badly. Yeah. So we did really, really well on quite a few of those that we did that first year. And it kind of gave us that momentum, and even more of a nest egg to be able to kind of double down on some marketing. And you know, I think 2020 21 Which was the following year. That's kind of when we started wholesaling. And seeing that, you know, a lot of people talk about like, we're in the business of sales and marketing. We're not really house flippers, we're real estate investors. So we're marketing to all these off market properties, trying to acquire these properties. And now we're able to put them into different buckets as far as wholesale flips. And then of course, you know, the natural progression, we started getting interested in rental properties. So now we have all these different exit strategies that are that we're creating. Based off of doing this, there's marketing, and even at this point, I still really had no idea what I'm doing like Looking on it, you know, the numbers that we track now and what we do now versus what we were doing then it was just like, hey, let's throw something at the wall and see what sticks. And it worked. I mean, it all works.

Ky Logue  10:14  
Yeah. 100% Yeah, I feel like a lot of people get stuck with that what works best, but I mean, it all works if you're gonna do it, and some does work better than others and, and figure it out as you go. So, what are you doing differently now? That you, you know, from what you're doing then or with? What's the biggest changes? You think?

Dustin Singer  10:30  
So we we've doubled our gross profit every year since we started. Last year, we hit over that million dollar mark. Nice. I would say the probably one of the biggest things that's made a difference in my life is like personal coaching and masterminding master minding. We went to anyone that knows like Mark Ferguson, he's out in Colorado, we went to his art we had done maybe three flips. At this point, we went to his office, I paid $4,500, to spend two days with him, and kind of learn about his business and what he was doing. And that was like our first introduction to a mastermind or seminar type event. Actually, no seminar, I hate that word. It's like a negative connotation for me. But we went to that, and I'm like, okay, maybe there's something to this, you know, networking with these other people, and, you know, seeing what everyone else is doing. And, you know, you and I are in the same mastermind together for the past year, and I'm in a real estate specific one now, and just being able to be in a room with other people that are ahead of you on the path. I mean, light year progression, right? Light Year. So that's, um, that's a lot of the changes that we made last year was just being around some of those people, and dialing in on KPIs and dialing in on, you know, sales strategies, and exit strategies, and kind of just putting everything into, you know, keep feeding that bucket, to just be able to get more efficient and scale at the same time.

Ky Logue  12:16  
Right, that makes a lot of sense. So what are the KPIs you guys track most often? Or which one do you guys think are most important?

Dustin Singer  12:24  
Um, we are, our operating system is built on monday.com, like similar to Asana or Trello. So we have everything kind of split into her department. So we have KPIs, we track for finance, KPIs, we track for sales for marketing, a couple admin, kind of just one off KPIs. Definitely, at the beginning of the day, the marketing and the sales, 100% they drive the entire business, we could be terrible. rehabbers. But if we're buying right and marketing, right, we're probably still gonna make money, right? Because that's where it all starts. So you know, our main ones are like the normal pipeline, like gross leads to net leads to quality conversations, to appointments to offers the deals. It's our typical sales pipeline. You know, in marketing, its return on adspend cost per deal. You know, what's producing the most net leads? Right? And then our average revenue per marketing channel. Those are what we have found to be kind of the most important KPIs in our business.

Ky Logue  13:38  
Ya know, there's some great ones for sure. Yeah, like that. You're not also just tracking, like, how many deals you get. And but how big the deal sizes from what Shannon? Was he That's smart?

Dustin Singer  13:47  
Yeah, we used to do that. And, you know, it gives you a limited picture, obviously. And there's levels to it. But as you kind of want to get a little bit more efficient. Dow and you had to dive a little bit deeper into those numbers, for sure.

Ky Logue  14:00  
Yeah, for sure. So what how big of a difference is it been for you since you started tracking the numbers and tracking the KPIs?

Dustin Singer  14:09  
Well, last year was like a $600,000. Gross Profit differences is a pretty I think we did like 400 ish, the year before that. And then last year, we were pretty close to one and a half right under it. And I'm considering gross profit, like revenue minus cost of goods sold. So that doesn't include marketing and office expenses and things like that. But that's kind of our net profit profit number for all that. Which I think is a lot of how a lot of real estate companies gauge their their gross profit kind of in the same way.

Ky Logue  14:45  
Yeah, for sure. So are you guys doing still mostly flips out or do you have more whole sales and flips or both?

Dustin Singer  14:52  
We are. I probably have the numbers somewhere but I would say if I had to take a look As we're like 75%, wholesaling and then 25% in house rehabs out of those in house rehabs, I would say 25% are flips and 75%. We are, at least up until lately have been doing the burr strategy. So times have changed a little bit with interest rates. Yeah. But that was working really, really well for us for for all of 20, the end of 2021, and pretty much all 2020 2022.

Ky Logue  15:32  
So what do you what do you guys did differently now?

Dustin Singer  15:36  
We're kind of, we're back to kind of looking, you know, the initial thought process or goal was to start to build some wealth. Flipping and wholesaling is great, until you get that tax bill at the end of the year. So the rentals obviously, help offset that when depreciation and things like that, but we're kind of with increased interest rates. It's becoming a little bit harder to get, you know, our cash out refinances done at the at the prices that we need them to. So we've been looking kind of back to basics of what's going to get us the best ROI right now at this given point in time. So not that wealth building is not important. But at this moment, you know, cash becomes very important too, as well, in my opinion.

Ky Logue  16:23  
Yeah. 100% Yeah, we've been slowing down and flips and do more wholesales. And I said, Yeah, but yeah, we yeah, we took an L on I think the one I was telling you right about at the mastermind with the plumber, and we had all this issues. And yeah, losing money on athlet. And then we're like, oh, we're gonna focus more on wholesaling. So walk us through you said, so you didn't lose on the single flip until last year? Because the first time?

Dustin Singer  16:46  
Yeah, I mean, from a gross profit number. We didn't technically lose. We had one, it was probably the worst deal I've ever done. We bought a property for like 160, we put 185 into it. We thought it was going to sell all day long for 45 500 would have been almost a six figure flip. And by the time the VRI on the retail sale and what we sold it for. I think we netted on it. Maybe like 425 428 Somewhere around there. So we walked away about 20k. Net. But you know, for people who've been doing this a while, you know, once you take marketing and everything else out of that, right? There's not much there. And for $185,000 project, we held that thing for nine months. It was That was painful. Yeah. Glad to walk away from it in the green, but that one was painful. And then we had another one. This was a virtual mistake. Actually, I bought this house totally sight unseen. We had an inspector walk the property. It was a cape cod, which is like the one and a half story. I don't know if you guys have those in Texas. Hopefully not.

Ky Logue  18:00  
I don't think so. But yeah, I'm familiar.

Dustin Singer  18:02  
Yeah. The bedrooms were freakishly small. And we went to go, you know, I walked it the day before closing, I'm like, Oh, my God, I overpaid for this place. Yeah, it's too late. Pull the trigger. Throw it on the market. What happened? is exactly what I thought it would happen. No one liked it. Bedrooms are too small. We walked away, I think gross profit like 4k in the positive. So that one was definitely after marketing expenses, commissions and everything else. That was a slight loss. So we walked away last year, not too bad. Parked a little bit of money in some rental properties. But I can still fucking buy a renovated property for $10,000. Right? So still win for me?

Ky Logue  18:50  
Yeah. 100%. So with your rentals you? Do you manage them all yourself. He's a property management company.

Dustin Singer  18:56  
Unfortunately, we still manage them all. We have 21 single families and two Commercial Investments. I was we're fairly dialed in on a lot of automations and processes for the property management. So I do have a virtual assistant that helps out with a lot of the paperwork in the backend stuff. So it's really it's not that bad. When we first got into it, I saw what the numbers look like if we gave the property management fees to a property manager. And it just seemed like it wasn't worth it. Right.

Ky Logue  19:31  
That makes sense. Yeah, the fees are high. And I know a lot of people have bad experiences. And to us, it's hard to find the right one and go through all that. But how much time do you think it takes you to manage them yourself?

Dustin Singer  19:43  
If we don't have any turnovers? I mean, we're probably talking two hours, three hours a month. That's really Yes. Yeah, yeah. No, it's not bad at all. If it's if there's a turnover, it just, it kind of depends. We're actually we're trying to at the moment bring in an in house agent for We're going to start making offers on MLS properties again. And they're going to do some of our dispo. And then they're also going to assist in leasing as well. So, as a up until now, I've been doing most of the leasing showings myself, which is like my least favorite thing to do in the world,

Ky Logue  20:21  
right? Yeah, that makes sense. So how big is your team?

Dustin Singer  20:28  
I've recently lost a few people. So we're we're down to two to VAs and one acquisition and myself. We had a an in house office manager, as of recently, and we also had a project manager, the office manager went out on maternity leave, she decided not to come back. And then we did lose a project manager, which is been a huge pain for me. Personally, I hate construction. Right? I hate it with a passion.

Ky Logue  21:01  
Yeah. So So why do you hate it for everybody listening?

Dustin Singer  21:06  
Ah, maybe because I used to do it. I don't, it's almost like I wish that I didn't know anything about it. So I could just totally put it in someone else's hands. But other than like HVAC and some electrical stuff pretty well versed on a lot of construction. So it's, we're, I think we do a fairly good job of managing. I just I hate the day to day of dealing with contractors and vendors with materials and things missing and things break in and people scratching floors. And it's if you're going to rehab it's it's a ride as Yeah,

Ky Logue  21:48  
yeah, a lot of headaches for sure. So if someone was just getting started, they want to get in real estate. You since you both what would you recommend? I know most people don't do flips, they watch a TV show, do you think flips is the best way to start anything wholesaling.

Dustin Singer  22:01  
Um, I might actually have maybe a non mainstream opinion on this, I actually think doing a flip is really good experience for someone just getting started. And I say that because as a wholesaler you almost have to buy even deeper than what a flipper would, right? Because you have you have to make a fee on top of it. With wholesaling, you have to be really, really good at sales and marketing and some people that's not their strong suit. You can kind of hire people out to do construction for you. And they may be good, they may be bad, it'd be very, very difficult to hire someone sales and marketing right off the game, right. So it's, if you can get a good deal, it's a little bit easier to buy off the MLS, buy from a wholesaler, get a referral, get something from a networking event, you know, whatever the case may be. And then it allows you to learn your numbers to do want to get into wholesaling, you have a realistic idea of wow, this actually cost this not this. You know, you get a sense of ARV and things like that. Yeah, for sure.

Ky Logue  23:09  
90. That's a great point of view. Because yeah, I think you we did overwhelming both sides when we lost not even with still losing money on that one. We did pretty well in our flips last year, like overall. But yeah, it was looking back and like God probably would have made more if I just focus on wholesaling. But like you said, it was good education was great. And what about hard money loans work and I learned, you know, what the whole process is like for the end buyer. And, you know, again, rehab, and I made a bunch of connections with title companies and other people too. So I think that if that makes sense, because then I feel like the biggest issue is most new wholesalers don't know their numbers. So once you find out how quickly money goes, you're gonna get better those numbers.

Dustin Singer  23:46  
Yeah, hopefully.

Ky Logue  23:50  
For sure, and that's great. So what do you think you mentioned, you guys do a lot of marketing, which marketing channels working best for you guys now.

Dustin Singer  23:58  
So we we started off with direct mail, which seems to be the most popular kind of when people are starting off. And it works. Well, you know, we were hitting tax delinquents, and doing a lot of probates. In fact, the majority of our business was probates for quite a while. And I couldn't really tell you what happened at some point we just decided to get into inbound marketing. So digital inbound marketing, we kind of dropped off on the direct mail for no specific reason and solely focused on SEO, PPC, Facebook ads. And we've been doing that for strictly a little over a year now probably fed PPC running for about two years, but we've been solely digital for like the past year ish or so. That being said, it is getting a lot more expensive as of recently for those marketing channels. So we are looking back into doing possibly some direct mail and cold calling again. Kind of a big believer in the omni channel marketing, where you know, if you can hit someone with a call a text, a mail piece they can find you easily online. You're just going to be able to capitalize on more of those leads that you're marketing to.

Ky Logue  25:19  
Yeah. 100%. Now, I love that. Yeah. So, yeah, pretty much what we're doing. Yeah. So we're doing like a lot like SMS and voicemail marketing. We do that. And it works pretty well. And then we just have phone calls people that are interested. And it's, I find to be more efficient than cold calling. I mean, cold calling works great, too. But yeah, I think like we said before, whatever, you know, it all works as long as you do it.

Dustin Singer  25:43  
Right. Yeah, no, I definitely. I mean, tried all of it. And it produces results. Some of its easier than others. And some of it's cheaper or more expensive. Just kind of depends on what route you want to go. Right.

Ky Logue  25:58  
So for going back to like for someone who just wanted to get started in real estate, are there any books you'd recommend or websites or courses or anything for them to get into to learn real estate?

Dustin Singer  26:07  
So we were almost obsessed with everything bigger pockets? Yeah. In the beginning, I mean, I would attribute the least 70% of my knowledge, probably to bigger pockets. So we were diving into the forums, reading the blog articles, we read a lot of their books, for anyone that's wants to learn about rental properties or managing rental properties. Brandon Turner has a couple books that are amazing for that. Jay Scott is another BiggerPockets guy, we read his book, the book on flipping houses and the book on estimating rehab cost. Those were like our cornerstone foundational pieces in the in the very beginning. And obviously we've built on a lot of this stuff, but as an as an entry level kind of getting into it. Yeah, those books were amazing. For sure.

Ky Logue  26:58  
Yeah, they do a great job. Yeah, it's the same for me just went super into the podcast and found the blog. And yeah, it's, there's a lot of I don't think, as many people know about the blog, but there's a lot of good info on there.

Dustin Singer  27:08  
Yeah, yeah, there is. And they're releasing what I I'm not so much into it anymore, but they release way more information than they did you know, four years ago. They've really gotten or grown a lot over the years.

Ky Logue  27:20  
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So yeah, one of the big questions I ask everyone that comes down, is, you know, the podcast is one day at a time. So I believe if you can win the day tomorrow is gonna take care of itself. What are some of the things you do to win today?

Dustin Singer  27:35  
So when I'm on my game, normally at the gym at 530 Lately, I can in fact, Brian, who you've had on this show, he will be busting my ass right now, because I haven't, I haven't. I've been slacking lately. But um, you know, when, when, when I'm on my game, I'm at the gym at 530. I do like to read at least 10 pages of a book, or listen to an audible almost every single day. I've been trying the meditation thing lately is very, very hard for me, it's really fucking hard.

Ky Logue  28:08  
Yeah.

Dustin Singer  28:12  
I'm not the type of person that can sit still very easily. So it's kind of like, you know, my mind is all over the place, I want to jump on a laptop and do something or whatever the case may be. But you know, the other big thing too, and we kind of already brushed on this is kind of like being present or active in my in my groups. You know, whether that's some local guys, and I'm going to a text chain with that we're keeping each other accountable, kind of busting balls a little bit. Or one of the mastermind groups like making sure that I'm attending those meetings and getting on those calls. Because those are kind of like my, you know, reset periods where I'm able to kind of walk away from what's going on in life. And listen to other people's struggles, how I relate to it, and then bring it back to what's going on with me.

Ky Logue  28:56  
That's great. I love that. Well, man, I appreciate you coming on. And I got a bunch of great info. I'm sure the audience did as well. What's the best way for people to get in touch with you or follow you online?

Dustin Singer  29:08  
So Instagram is Dustin Buys Houses handle. My email is also Dustin at Dustin buys houses.net If you want to reach me directly, cool.

Ky Logue  29:22  
Awesome. Well, thanks again for coming on, man. I appreciate it.

Dustin Singer  29:25  
Yeah, thanks, man. Hey,

Ky Logue  29:26  
this is ky. Thanks again for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate you. If you could do me a favor. If you can. Make sure to like and subscribe to the show and share it with someone that you think would benefit from the podcast. Let's spread the word. Let's grow that nation that Hey, keep winning one day at a time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai