Why Your AI Assistant Might Be Better Than Your Real Estate Attorney with Mike Higgins

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Mike Higgins opens up about his transformative journey from personal trainer to thriving real estate investor in Wisconsin, revealing the strategic shifts that made all the difference in his business. Far from just another "how I got started" story, this conversation delivers practical wisdom on maximizing profitability in today's market.

Want to know why some investors consistently snap up deals while others struggle? Mike and Corey break down the exact systems needed to evaluate properties in minutes rather than days - including how missing just 20-30 deals annually could mean losing $500,000 in potential profits. They share their specialized approach to selecting properties in the "sweet spot" price range that ensures consistent sales regardless of market conditions.

The tax advantages of real estate take center stage as Mike explains his favorite investment strategy: "legally not paying taxes." Learn how properties showing minimal monthly cashflow can still offset hundreds of thousands in earned income through strategic tax planning, making even seemingly break-even properties incredibly valuable to your portfolio.

Perhaps most fascinating is their deep dive into how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing their businesses. From AI-powered call bots handling seller leads to automated deal analysis and even legal document review, discover how a $20/month ChatGPT subscription might replace services you're currently paying thousands for.

This episode culminates with hard-earned wisdom about maintaining strategic focus in a field filled with distractions. As Mike candidly admits, "We could go from wholesaling real estate to opening a Mexican restaurant in Indiana because there's not a lot of them there." The ability to "stay the course" might be your most valuable skill as an investor.

Ready to take action? Visit wisconsindiscountproperties.com to join their buyers list and start receiving off-market deals or schedule a free consultation to break down how the numbers work in today's market. To connect with Mike, check him out on X @meetmikehiggins. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
We are back with another episode of the Wisconsin
Investor Podcast.
Again, as usual, I have anotheramazing guest today who I've
known for many, many years.
I'm excited to get into it.
But before I do, as I've beendoing recently, I do a little
commercial for WisconsinDiscount Properties, and so
today I don't have a specificdeal that I'm going to try to
give you FOMO over, but I amgoing to just ascribe to you

(00:25):
guys what kind of opportunitiesyou're missing in general.
So for the last couple of weeks,we've been putting out five or
six deals every Monday morning.
These are all off-market dealsto the Wisconsin Discount
Properties buyers list, which ismuch smaller than MLS.
So if you're trying to buy onMLS, you're up against a ton
more competition than whatyou're up against on our buyers
list.
But, with that being said, allof them are selling.

(00:49):
So what does that mean?
If you're not buying them,you're missing out on
opportunities because somebodyout there, somebody who you're
competing against every day fordeals, is snatching these deals
up and they're finding a way tomake the numbers work.
So, that being said, what we'reoffering are free consultations
to anybody listening to thispodcast that is struggling to
figure out how do people makethese numbers work.

(01:09):
Let's hop on a call.
We'll deep dive it with you andtry to see where maybe you're
missing some opportunities thatother investors are snatching up
.
So how to do that?
You can go towisconsindiscountpropertiescom.
Go to the contact us page, putyour information in and somebody
from our team will get in touchwith you and start having that
consultation with you, get youconnected to some of the right
folks who can help you move yourinvesting journey forward.

(01:31):
And if you want to be added tothe buyer's list and you're not
on it go to the same website.
Just put your contactinformation in on the front page
and you'll get added to thebuyer's list where you'll be
able to get access to thosedeals every single Monday
morning at 6 am as we have themAll.
Right With that, let's get intotoday's episode.
Today I have Mike Higgins.

(01:51):
Mike, what's going on, brother?

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Not much, man.
How are you?
I just screwed up my video.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
I see that.
I see that Perfect timing.
Perfect timing, dude.
You put your hand over it andthen boom, oh, here we are,
we're live.
So those of you guys watchingon uh youtube, you saw that
action, those you guys got mygreat hand.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
You saw my hand.
Yeah, hey, I just wanted to sayyou on your, on your commercial
.
You mentioned like they areselling and they are.
I'll just let anybody know.
I obviously corey and I are notbusiness partners.
We are not affiliated.
We are in the same market, buttheir team is crushing it.
They're putting out like Ithink like six deals last week,
six deals this week.
So, yeah, you, you really aremissing out yeah, yeah, just

(02:32):
well we, we'll talk.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
We had a couple episodes before this one's gonna
air.
We had a couple on here alsohomeschoolers and uh, they
brought something up interesting.
They they calculated how manydeals they projected.
They personally missed thatwere like in their buy box just
because they didn't have enoughtime to really evaluate them, or
anything like that.
Last year they figured probably20 to 30 deals and we did the
math on that.
If you're making, say you know,conservatively, 15 to 20,000 a

(02:57):
piece on those deals, I meanyou're missing out on a half a
million dollars.
I mean it's just hitting yourinbox every single week and
you're just missing out on thatbecause you don't have the time,
you don't have the lender setup, you don't have the team set
up, you don't have any of thatkind of thing set up.
So there's tons of opportunityout there.
People always say, oh, I can'tfind a deal.
It's like we're literallysending deals every single week.

(03:23):
Usually 15 to 20 is a prettygood rip on something.
You know it depends Everyperson's different right and I
look at, like, how big of aproject is it going to be?
I really look at my profit perhour.
That's more.
So what I look at is so if I'mgoing to make 15 or $20,000, but
all I have to do is make acouple of phone calls to some
GCs or whatever the case is, andlet them handle it.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
That's great.
Well, that's another good adfor here is like you can listen
to this podcast, you can go tothe RIA, you can go to the
events, and then a lot of peoplejust go home.
But go home and set thosethings up, set up the lender,
set up the contractor, set upthe buy box of exactly what you
want.
So then, instead of it takingfive or six days, when you send
out a deal on Monday and youneed to have offers by Thursday,

(04:03):
you could get a deal.
I mean, I think that thing hitsmy phone at 8 AM and you should
know by 830 if it's a good dealfor you or not.
Right so sorry, I didn't mean totake over.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
No, it was great.
Actually, one of the otherpodcasts I laughed the hardest
on probably I was crying at theend of it it was Andy Bame, so
if you guys haven't listened tothat episode, go back and listen
to it.
But I was telling him how Iwanted to set this process up a
few years ago so that somebodycould, instead of scrolling
Facebook while they're sittingon the can, they could evaluate
a deal and make 20 or $30,000 in15 minutes by putting an offer

(04:35):
in so they can watch the video,they can look at the inspection
report, they can run theirnumbers quick boom, submit their
offer and they can have it donewhile they're sitting on the
can.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Legs might go a little numb.
You should name this podcast.
Deals on the Can.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
Deals on the.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Can.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Maybe we'll go back and change it now.
Yeah, this is another episodeof Deals on the Can.
I kind of like the way thatrolls man.
Mike.
Enough about that, let's getinto you, buddy.
Let's talk like first of all,you've been in this game for a
little while, you as personaltrainer.
Mike, prior to real estate Mike, talk about when you got, when
you made that transition, whatgot you into real estate and how

(05:08):
long you've been here.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah, I think rewinding the clock uh, probably
I think it was 2015, end of2015.
I actually got my real estatelicense.
We bought our first house in2014, year before realtor that I
was with at the time I mean,rewind totally my dad's in
construction.
My first job was with my dad inthe summer roofing houses.
I was picking up shingles offthe ground.
I I got into uh, you know, wentto college, got into an outside
sales role, but always had thisentrepreneurial bug, kind of

(05:39):
like you, you know, was with adirect sales company, and then
you're always like taking jobsthat are kind of sales related,
because your ceiling is alwaysexponential and your floor is
very limited, so there's alwaysthis entrepreneurial bug.
We ended up buying our firsthouse, primary residence, in
2014.
My realtor at the time was likeman, you've got to get into

(06:00):
real estate.
So, 2015, I got licensed and myfirst full year.
I sold 31 houses while having afull time job.
Then I sold 44 houses the nextyear and decided that I would go
full time as a realtor, becauseI knew that buying real estate
is kind of what I wanted to doand I figured being a realtor
gave me a good option, anopportunity to understand my

(06:21):
market at a high level, which Ido still believe is true to this
day, but it's also kind of aslippery slope because, um, like
I became a realtor, whichwasn't the goal.
Okay, however, it was actuallystill a pretty good stepping
stone to get to the goal, andI'm still, you know, I guess the
other thing is like we're neverat the goal.
We always continue to change thegoals, so, um but that was kind

(06:44):
of the forte into real estate.
And then, you know, sold housesas a realtor, did a couple of
flips here and there, uh, with acouple of different business
partners like or I guess I'dprobably say joint ventures at,
you know, to be more correct onthe terminology and then end of
2019 kind of beginning of COVID,you know, or you know, march,
april of 2020, just decided togo direct to seller, kind of had

(07:09):
this thought of like, if I havea $100,000 house as a realtor,
I could list that house and,let's say, you give up 3%
commission on both sides of theproject or of the transaction,
you're going to make three grand.
Well, I also know that I can buya $100,000 house, I can put
$25,000 to $50,000 into it andsell it for $200,000.
So, same house, same project,same amount of effort really to

(07:32):
find the deal, and you can make$3,000 in one or you can make
like $25,000 to $50,000 in theother.
So for me that was like, oh,let's do more of that because we
have a big family, and the lastthing I wanted to do was go
show houses from 4 PM to 8 PM,write offers from eight to 10,
and then hope to God the offergot accepted so that I can make
$3,000.

(07:52):
Right, so that's kind of theyou know.
In a nutshell, quick down todirty the evolution of it.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yeah, talk to me about that.
Like when you said you, uh, you, you always wanted to get into
real estate, was it because of,like you said, you mentioned
first of all working on theroofs and stuff like that, but
what was like the money bug foryou, cause there had to be some
kind of financial thing thattriggered in you that was like,
hey, real estate's a great wayto go.
Did you do like what all of usdo and we read rich dad, poor
dad, and then you're like, letme get into it that way.

(08:20):
Or like, what was the spark?
That was like, hey, I want toget into this whole buying real
estate thing, before you startedto see the dollars and cents of
going direct to seller.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, I think I mean Rich Dad, poor Dad, definitely
had a a huge kind of impact.
I think it does with a lot ofpeople.
When you grow up in small townAmerica and don't really
understand, you know everybodygraduates from school, goes and
gets a job at the local factoryor, you know, goes off to
college and doesn't come back,you don't really know what you
don't know.
It's not taught in school.

(08:50):
I think the other thing that wasinteresting is growing up in
construction around houses,renovating homes kind of it just
seemed easier to me than maybeit does to most people, because
I grew up roofing houses, I grewup putting siding on houses, I
grew up renovating houses and itwas just that's the norm.

(09:11):
So when I look at a deal I'mlike, oh, I could buy that and I
could fix that up pretty good.
It's like for some people theylook at that and they're like,
holy moly, you rip an entireroof off and you put a whole new
roof on and I'm like you justgo buy shingles and take the
shingles off and put newshingles on.
It's not hard.
So perception, I think, was youknow, I think we are probably a

(09:32):
product of our upbringing a lotmore than we realize.
And lucky for me, luckyblessing or curse that was my
upbringing, so it seemed like apretty natural vehicle.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
Yeah, that's awesome.
So yeah, because you didpersonal training too before you
became a realtor.
Right, you were doing thenutrition stuff.
Anytime fitness, that's right,yep, and I had my studio kind of
real close to you guys, I think, where I was running my little
studio.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, that's where we first met.
I believe you would always comein to work out.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yep, yep, yep, before I'd go train our, our clients
up.
Yeah, awesome man.
So now are you, are you prettymuch so.
You have a business partner now, right?
Or how's your, how's yourstructure now at blue blue
badger homebuyers.
What does that look like?

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah, we're structured.
We're 50, 50 partners, don't?
You know?
Um, we don't always flip it.
There's so many differentstrategies and like we do
everything cause we're alsolicensed, so we have an in-house
realtor, so we've listproperties.
We'll know they propertieswe'll fix and flip, we'll hold
tail.
We're not very good atwholesale Like.

(10:35):
The reason we decided to go tofix and flip model is because
the um, the quantity of theleads that we have.
We don't have a lot of leads,but the leads we do have are
really good.
So you know, like, where somepeople will do a hundred, 200,
300 deals a year, we'll probablyonly do 30, but our 30, you
know, somebody will do a hundredat 10 to 15,000.

(10:58):
We can do 30 at like 40,000.
And um, so we, we just take alittle bit more time.
So that's probablypredominantly kind of our, our
main bread and butter.
Um, we have two constructionguys that work pretty like
directly for us and then we usesubcontractors for all the other
projects that we do.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
Okay, are they on staff or are they 1099 guys?

Speaker 2 (11:20):
Your construction Uh, 1099.
Um, everybody's 1099 here.
Okay cool, and so that's aninteresting conversation for
another day, that about havingemployees, etc.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
so well, we can.
We don't have to save that foranother day.
We can talk about that today ifyou want.
Like what, what?
Uh see where you go.
Well, let's talk about that,because I I think at our company
we have about 15 employees.
Some of them are virtualassistants, but the majority of
them are in-house, like in ouroffice in Green Bay.
They're all W2 employees forthe most part.

(11:52):
I have one intern right nowthat I think is 1099.
And then the VAs are.
They're VAs, so they're kind oflike 1099ers, but talk to me
about that.
So all of the folks that youguys have helping you are all
1099.
You have no in-house employees.
Is that by design or is thatjust kind of where you guys are
at currently in today's business?

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Yeah, I mean it's a little bit of both.
It was kind of by design in thebeginning, just because of the
nature of the business, bringingon a realtor that does all of
our listings.
They're with a brokerage,they're not really a W-2.
So like they're kind of.
That's why people get into realestate is because they don't
want to be a W-2, right.
So where you guys mightoutsource that to take action

(12:29):
and it's not like in-housespecifically, we kind of have
that under our umbrella, butthey're still W-9.
And then you know, subcontractorfix and flipping it's tough
because there's differentsubcontractors that we use but
we can't.
They were in business before wewere in business.
So to say, hey, you guys onlywork for us, they're never going

(12:51):
to go for that.
But on the flip side we try tokeep them busy enough where
we're priority.
And then we have two guys thatdo like they only work for us.
They don't have their owncompanies, they're just a couple
of handymen, a couple ofcontractors that were working
for somebody else and theyworked on a couple of our
projects and asked us.
So it's a little bit by design,I think.

(13:12):
Also the perception of W-2seems scary because for me you
don't know what you don't know.
A lot of people don't know whatthey don't know.
They, oh, you got to pay thisinsurance and that insurance and
you got this salary and thatsalary, and then you got workers
comp and what happens ifsomebody sues you, or what

(13:32):
happens if somebody gets hurt orthey have a baby and you got to
pay for that person and they'renot even there.
And so I mean it's probably notas bad, like most things, as
people think, perceive, it to bein their head.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Sure, yeah Well, 1099 is definitely the ideal way to
go.
You get out of a lot of thejust payroll tax.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
In general you don't have to pay payroll, but you
have less, like I'll do airquotes control If you're
listening not that we're inbusiness to control people.
However, you know you have astandard of business, I have a
standard of business and we wantpeople to adhere to that, and
the best way to adhere to thatis if you work for that business
directly.
Correct, yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, there's definitely pros and cons of both
for sure.
Yeah, I would say you're righton the aspects of just HR laws
in general.
I'm not an HR guy, right.
So right now in our business, Iprimarily wear the HR hat,
which is not a good thing, likeI should not be wearing an HR
hat as a salespersonentrepreneurial, you know,

(14:32):
maverick personality Likedetails are not in my DNA as far
as wanting or liking thosetypes of things like bookkeeping
.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
So if what you're saying is, if you want a great
work environment where rules aresuggestions and not necessarily
actually, you know, likeCorey's your guy I buy WI is the
place to go because he might,he might, things might slip
through the cracks.
That's right.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
Fine, that's right if you, if you like a little loose
environment, you come hang withus and you work for their house
, if you, if you want, you knowyou want to be buttoned up and
you want everything, uh, exactlyhow it's supposed to go.
You know, probably not,probably not the place to be,
probably not the place to be,but, uh, but as far as, like my
biggest fear, going into hiringour first person, I remember
Caleb Hayes.
For those of you guys thatdon't know, he owns a couple of
Keller Williams brokerages.

(15:13):
He used to have a prettymassive flipping business
himself and I think, mike, youprobably learned a lot from
Caleb as well.
But he was one of our earlymentors and I remember he took
us under his wing and we'd go inand meet with him once a month
and one of the first things hesaid is like you know, if you're
scared, you need to hire peoplefirst of all, or bring on, even
if it's 1099, you can't do itby yourself to get to the scale
you want to get to.
And if you're going to make ahire, just save up three to six

(15:37):
months of their salary and then,if they don't work out, then oh
well, you know it's not likeyou lose out on that money.
You just save it up and it'skind of sitting aside to touch
it.
And then we're like, well, howdo we even pay someone?
Like I don't know all the rulesabout paying anybody, like that
was my big roadblock, was like,how do I actually like
administer a payroll?
Like do I just write?

(15:57):
Do I write a physical check?
But then how do I do thedeductions for all the stuff?
And then how do I submit that?
And thankfully we are in theinformation era and there's a
lot of great companies out there, like Gusto is one that we used
originally.
Well, probably, we're actuallyprobably going to go back to
them for our company becausethey're very simple, it's very
easy.
You just put in their salary,you can set them up on if they
make the same thing every twoweeks, you just click, set auto

(16:19):
pay and boom, every two weeksthey do it.
They submit all of yourquarterly crap and all the other
stuff that I don't know about.
It makes it very easy forbusiness owners.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
So well, and I think one of the things that you said
but without saying is, findingsomebody who's done it before
you is like the ultimate cheatcode in you turn.
What I'll say is decades intodays where it took Caleb 10
years to figure out how tooptimize that system.
You guys learned it in anafternoon sitting with him, yeah

(16:52):
Right.
So then all of a sudden, yourlearning curve just went from 10
years to 10 hours, and now thenext person you can show that to
somebody else.
You know what I mean?
I he same thing for me withfunding.
Our first deal was, you know,like wayside green leaf Bank.
I think was at the time he wasdoing a lot of deals with and it
is wildly different for MikeHiggins to walk in there and say

(17:15):
, hey, Caleb wanted me to comeover and talk to you Cause I got
this property.
Here's blah, blah, blah Versusme just walking in off the
street saying, hey, I did acouple of deals and here's my
little brag book and uh, youknow, hopefully take a flyer on
me.
Like a direct referral is ispriceless.
So same thing with settingthings up is like they can.
Having somebody that's willingto help you can really compress

(17:38):
time for you, and so you knowyou're sitting there being able
to pay people year one versusyear 10, and just figuring it
out yeah, that's such a greatpoint and I think there's a
couple points to that.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
Mike, to your point to my point is networking events
are huge so, and there's tonsof opportunities across
Wisconsin to get involved innetworking events.
So there's the REI success clubwhich we run.
We meet on the fourth Tuesdayof every month.
Uh, in green Bay there's uh, uhWisco Ria's that you can go to
all over the state.
There's caffeine and cash flowsall over the state.

(18:09):
I know down in Milwaukeethere's a few other Ria groups
and some other opportunitiesdown there to uh get involved in
different meetups at differenttimes of the day.
But that is so huge becauseyou're going to meet somebody.
If you go there withintentionality and you actually
talk to people, you know justsit in a corner by yourself and
then dip out as soon as thetalks over, like the networking
is the piece to do, and justmeet as many people as you can.
Like you said, you can takedecades and turn it into days.

(18:31):
I love that, dude.
That was such a great littleline.
Hopefully we're going to usethat for one of our YouTube
shorts.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
There it is.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
That was money right there, but that is true.
We do that in our company.
So all of our employees thatcome in, most of them want to
invest in real estate, which iswhy they come to work for us.
And then, like you said, thoseconnections, like I'll directly
connect them to some of ourlenders and it just speeds up
their process.
A lot of times the lenders willeven tell us well, if they work
for you, I know they'reprobably good for it because
they got a lot of support aroundthem right.

(18:56):
So they want to know thatpeople who've been there before
are kind of wrapping their armsaround some of these people.
So that's so huge.
So, finding somebody or comingto work for us, just if you'd
like loose environment, you wantto get connected, you just come
work for us Right.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Hr is a suggestion, not a policy.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
I'll put that up as a sign in our office and see how
quickly I get sued by one of myemployees after I put that up
there, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
Let's not do that.
Let's not do that.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
Talk about.
So you are primarily fix andflip, right.
Yes, sir, Do you buy?
Do you guys buy and hold anyproperties, or is it all fix and
flip?

Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, so we will Um, a lot of times it's they're
primarily the properties that wecan burr out of completely or
they're going to be in a reallyreally good like spot.
You know um where we know that10 years from now it's just a no
brainer or it's a great schooldistrict.
Uh, last year, you know, out ofour I think, we held four
properties and then you know,flipped I'll say flipped air

(19:53):
quotes 30 deals.
So yeah, it's a little bit ofan inflow.
The thing about holding, I meanyou're not even in the
environment of interest ratesthat we're in right now.
You know it's not necessarilyonly we're not holding only for
cash flow, because if you'reholding for cash flow right now,
you're going to need about4,000 properties of cashflow
with and that's to your 4,000properties for $2,000 a month.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, you're going to make 4,000 a month, or 2,000.
Yeah, exactly, right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Um, but you know the tax, the tax purposes, like when
we roll over those properties,even some of our flips and stuff
.
They tend to roll from lastyear to this year where they
haven't been finished but wepurchased them and we renovated
a ton on them.
It's like the more propertiesyou hold, it's like you realize
from tax implications and taxpurposes it just makes sense.
So you have to hold a handfulof properties a year, otherwise

(20:44):
you can.
You can either hold your ownreal estate and you know pay
yourself, or you can not holdany real estate and you can pay
the government.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And one of my favorite thingsto do in real estate is legally
not pay taxes.
That's my favorite, my favoritestrategy.
People are like what's yourfavorite real estate investing
strategy?
I'm like legally not payingtaxes, that's that's it.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
It's a weird thing to get over, right, Because you're
you're in your grow upinvesting for cashflow.
You get started.
You're like cashflow, cashflow.
And then you realize that it'snot necessarily cashflow in the
sense of like $500 a month, butit's like, oh, this property
offset $300,000 of earned income.

(21:27):
That's still cashflow.
That $300,000 was still cashflow.
That three hundred thousanddollars was still cash flow to
you, right?
it just didn't come from thathouse, but in a backwards kind
of backdoor way, it came to youfrom that house, correct, right?
So the key is is you just gotto continue to do that every
year, right, and I don't know?

Speaker 1 (21:43):
yeah, it's the legal, legal way to go about not
paying tax yeah, and I love thatyou said that, cause I I I
always say this too like with um, with some of the apartments
that I bought early on.
I bought a couple of apartmentsin 2019 and 2020, I think it
was and for like two years Ihated them.
I was like these are so lame,like every time a tenant moves

(22:03):
out I got to spend 10 to 15grand to redo the unit and like
I don't make any cashflow, right.
And then, like two years later,I refinanced one of the
properties and I pulled out$240,000, which is tax-free as a
loan proceed unless you sell it, but it's $240,000 at the
moment tax-free and I was like,huh, well, I've owned it for two
years.
Divide that by 24 months.
I actually made 10 grandtax-free a month of cashflow.

(22:28):
It just didn't go into my bankaccount every month, but two
years later, there it wasbecause the tenants paid the
debt down on the property,appreciated when there was
240,000.
And I still had 20% equity init when I refinanced that thing,
so it was huge.
Now, talking about the taxbenefits, there's something
called cost segregation studies.
If you guys aren't familiarwith that, I'm not an accountant
disclaimer, but aren't familiarwith that, I'm not an

(22:49):
accountant disclaimer, but Iwill tell you it's the eighth
wonder of the world andhopefully this year we get to go
back to and hopefully by thetime this episode drops maybe
some of the tax codes will beput in place to go back to a
hundred percent bonusdepreciation, which is a whole
nother episode.
We had Jake Calwards from CLAon here a while back in one of
the early episodes and we brokedown cost seg studies.
So if you want to go back andlisten to that or we can, we can

(23:11):
bounce that.
But are you guys doing costsegs, mike, on your stuff?

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Uh, not, not yet, not right now.
Um, but I'm very familiar withit and it makes a ton of sense.
I'm just not sure you know ifwe're going to hold this for the
next 29 years, right, so it'sany of that recapture.
So right now we're not at apoint where the cost seg we need
it, because just buying theproperties and being able to
write off a lot of therenovation stuff that rolls over

(23:35):
is good enough to show that wedon't make any money nice with
the depreciation that we have.
But it's absolutely.
I mean, as the organizationgrows it, it makes a ton of
sense yeah, oh, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
Yeah, if you don't have to do it, that's great.
But the possibility to do costsegs.
What that basically means forthe audience out there is if you
make an active income, let'ssay you know you've got a, uh,
uh, one of the spouses, let'ssay you're a married couple, one
is a doctor, highly taxed, highincome earner and then you've
got to stay at home parent orspouse right, stay-at-home
person becomes a real estateinvestor per the IRS law and

(24:10):
standard and you can go lookthat up of what the requirements
are for that.
You do have to be activelymanaging or involved in the
business, so you have to beinvolved in it.
But then what you can do is ifyou buy enough real estate, you
can essentially wipe out all ofyour active income, meaning the
whole doctor's salary.
You could take a loss on thewhole salary and pay $0.
So again, going back to Mike'scashflow, even if you're out

(24:35):
cash flowing on the property,you're not putting a dollar in
the bank account every singlemonth, but you save whatever 40,
50% is of your doctor's salary$200,000.
That's your cashflow for theyear.
And then again, like you'resaying, mike, you just got to
keep buying, which is kind ofthe Ponzi scheme of of doing the
depreciation stuff is you gotto keep buying to offset the
next year stuff and the nextyear stuff.
But it's a it's a good problemto have, I mean buying more real

(24:57):
estate not a bad thing.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
Right, exactly, cause down the road.
It's going to be worthsignificantly more than what you
bought it for.
So, I always say you can looklike an idiot today and you
overpay for something and youhold it 10, 15 years, you're
going to look like a genius.
Yeah, I mean, I agree with youand I've never looked back.
I mean we've sold a lot ofproperties over the years and
there's not one property where Ilook back and think, oh, I

(25:21):
shouldn't have sold thatproperty.
You know like I always lookback at properties and think,
man, we should have kepteverything.
Why are we even selling?
Because market appreciation canmake even an idiot look smart.
It's like all these guys thatare guys and gals that are
walking around that boughtproperties in 2010, 2011, and

(25:42):
2012.
It's like, yeah, they I'm notsaying they're dumb, but timing
of the market and just havingowned real, that equation and
how smart they were.
It's just the reality of thissituation, right, 15 years of

(26:13):
owning a real estate asset,especially from 2010 to 2025,
probably the best 15 years thatyou could have ever owned real
estate so far and you, just thatperson is just lucky to have
been alive and been in asituation where they could
afford that real estate in 2010.
It's not like they had acrystal ball and were like, yeah
, from you know, this thing'sgonna.
It's gonna double in price from2010 to 2020.
Oh yeah, and then it's probablygoing to double again from like

(26:33):
no, they didn't have a crystalball, they just bought it the
right time.
But that's not to say youcouldn't buy something today and
in 2040, you could look likethe genius.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Well, when I remember , mike, when we were both kind
of getting started in this andyou cut out a little bit there,
your internet was out a littlebit.
So those you guys listening, ifyou heard that, that's okay.
I think I think we caught whatyou were saying there.
Mike, for the most part, gotthe most of the point there.
But what when?
When we got started back aroundthe 2016, I remember people were
like, oh, the market's too hot,it's going to crash again, it's

(27:03):
going to crash and then 2017.
And I did.
Actually, I did a presentationat one of the REI success I
think.
Back then we were running theWisco Rhea Green Bay group and I
did a whole month presentationon you know how to crush it in a
hot market and I just showedall these news clippings from
every year of like 2016, 2017,2018, 2019, 2020, every year
somebody was out therepredicting the market was going

(27:25):
to crash and the market was toohot and you can't make any money
in this because you'reoverpaying for properties.
And now everybody, now it's2025.
You're like, damn, I wish Iwould have bought more between
2016 and 2020 or up until today.
So, in investing, if you're inthe financial world, financial,
investing, stock market stuff.
There's some called dollar costaveraging, and so the key of

(27:45):
that is you just consistentlykeep buying.
You're buying the good times,you buy in the bad times and
overall, long-term you're goingto make money.
Right, it's the same thing inreal estate.
You just dollar cost average.
If you're consistently buyingevery year you're going to some
deals aren't going to be great,but long-term you're going to
look back and your future selfand your future family is going
to thank you tremendously in 15,20 years when they look back at

(28:10):
that property and go gosh, I'mglad Mike bought that property
when he did.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
Well and two, I think early on you look at every deal
as a standalone deal.
But at some point you have tolook at every deal as how it
fits your portfolio too of whatyou currently have.
And now I'm speaking from youknow, kind of starting maybe to
look at that.
And then also a lot of theoryand regurgitating what smart

(28:36):
people have said, because youknow there's some going back to
the cost segregation aspect orthe tax implications aspect.
If you look at a deal when it'syour first deal and say, oh,
this cash flows $35 a month,like not worth it.
But when you have, say, 10, 15or 20 properties under your belt

(28:56):
and you look at that and you'relike, oh, this cash flow is
only $35 a month but it's goingto actually offset a hundred
grand of active income for usthis year.
So the $35 of cashflow I meanit's not losing us money, it's
not really adding to thecashflow number.
But if you're looking at theholistic portfolio view, it
still makes sense to put thisproperty in, because that a
hundred thousand is now you knowit's it's $8,000 a month.

(29:20):
So not only is it $35 a monthcashflow, it's actually like
$8,035 a month cashflow becauseI just wrote off a hundred
thousand dollars in my activeincome.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
For sure.
Plus, you're not counting inthere the tenant paying down the
debt or the appreciation in themarket with that either.
So there's so many benefits.
You know one of the otherepisodes I did.
I did a little podcast where Ishowed some charts thanks to my
friends at ChatGPT.
With a $300,000 property and ifyou had no equity day one and it
didn't cashflow a dollar,what's your equity in five years

(29:51):
, 10 years, 15 years at a 7%interest rate?
And it was pretty interesting,on a 20-year AM schedule, there
was $106,000 of equity with a 7%interest rate.
With a 5.85% interest rate.
This was mind blowing to me.
You only had $110,000 of equity.
So the equity gain with theinterest rates where people are
sitting on the sidelines waitingfor the interest rates to drop

(30:12):
was nominal $4,000 after fiveyears.
You cashflow more.
You cashflow 200 bucks more amonth because your debt service
is lower, obviously, but theactual equity gain.
So if you're in this for thelong haul and you're sitting on
the sidelines waiting for ratesto drop, you're going to run
into two problems.
One, when rates drop evenfurther, you're going to have
more competition in the market.
So your price you're going topay.

(30:33):
It's consistently goes up about4% a year in our market.
You're going to pay 4% higherfor the property.
Plus, you're going to have morecompetition, which may drive
that price up even higher.
And now you've wasted all ofthis time.
You could have gotten the clockticking.
You could have started thatclock a little earlier to start
having that debt pay down evenfaster.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
So it's pretty interesting Speaking of your
friends at ChatGPT.
This is a new segment I'mrunning on your show called
Artificial Intelligence inWisconsin, and it might be the
one and only in a very shortsegment.
But are you guys finding a wayto use AI in the business right
now, or is it something thatyou're still figuring out For us

(31:15):
?
I'll give you kind of how we'redoing it.
It is we have a, an ai,basically like audio chat bot
type thing built into our crm soit can actually take calls for
us, like, say, if we are on acall or in an appointment and we
get a call, it'll automaticallypick up, and it's surprising
how good it is.
I did a post on my twitter, my xfeed, um with it interacting

(31:37):
and we've probably had it takeabout 10 to 15 calls right now
and only one has been hung updon't want to talk, so it'll do
a live transfer and everything.
It's awesome.
And then also we have it justanalyze data for us, just
analyze our spreadsheet oranalyze.
But I'm just curious with know,with the rage, right with

(32:02):
everything, are you guys seeinga use for it in your business
too?
Or, and what does maybe thatlook like?

Speaker 1 (32:07):
yeah, we're actually in development for our own ai
call bot person as well.
Um, we haven't launched yet.
We're still okay, stillrefining it and doing, you know,
mock calls to figure out whereit's broke.
But, dude, it was amazing.
I did a couple over this lastweekend and I recorded it.
The same thing.
I'm just amazed at theconversation it could have and

(32:29):
it messed up a couple of thingsthat we got to tweak, but
overall, I'm like this thing isunbelievable.
This can take calls.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Yeah, but it's like 80% good and it can take calls
and now you're not paying a call.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
you know what I mean yeah, 24, 7, this thing, no, 365
.
It's amazing so that we'reworking on, we use chat gpt now.
I pretty much use it anytime.
I have a question now I'm like,huh, I wonder about this.
I run it through chat gpt andI've it's amazing, it takes 30
seconds to analyze anything, anynew business, like I was
looking at adding on a couple ofverticals into our business and

(33:05):
I'm like I just run it throughchat.
Chat tells me good, bad or uglywith it.
Is it good, bad or ugly?
Breaks down the pros and cons.
I was looking at maybe startingnew construction in apartments.
It's like, hey, what if I justbuilt some apartments?
Here's the here's how muchcapital I have.
Here's what my plan would be.
Here's I'd want to burr thesethings after I stabilize and get
it all rented and all thisstuff.
And basically it was like no,it's not a good idea, you're not

(33:28):
going to be able to do it.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
I was like dang it, but it cost to build and all
that stuff no-transcript.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
So if you hit the deep research button on chat,
chat, GPT it's incredible.
I mean, it does way more thanjust a regular GPT.
I don't know if you have tohave the upgraded version we do
but it's incredible.
The other thing we're using itfor, too, Mike, is we uh, for
our callers, our in-housecallers, and for our people who
go on appointments with sellers,and our, our folks that you
guys talk to when you're puttingoffers in or whatever.

(34:06):
We have built a training inthere for each position and we
can send the transcript to chatfor that position and it'll
it'll grade the call and it'lltell people where they missed
opportunities and what theycould have done differently.
So that's a couple of thethings that we're utilizing it
for.
So that's awesome, yeah, but itsaves me.

(34:27):
I mean, I used to have to be theguy to listen to all the calls
and train our team all the timeand do all this stuff, and now I
don't have time to sit andlisten to.
We have five, five folks on thephone or on appointments, plus
my two people in our department,seven salespeople.
I don't have the time to sitand listen to all their calls
and go listen to all theirappointments with sellers.
So it's been a huge gamechanger.

(34:49):
Just to even give it's notperfect again, like it's 80%
good, but it gives them somelittle nuggets that they can
take away from reading thoselittle breakdowns of like oh
yeah, I missed that yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
I should have said that oh, I can add that question
into my next time.
And in a weird way, you're notthe bad guy delivering that news
either.
Right when it's like oh, thisis an objective chat robot
that's analyzing this.
That's like never wrong onanything.
So Corey's not the bad guytelling me how much I suck, it's
actually the robot.
So I hate the robot.
I don't hate Corey.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
Well, and what's funny is they try to argue it
sometimes, so we'll go pull thecall up, we'll go well, let's
listen to it.
Then let's see this little spotthat it's pointing out and see,
you know cause they're like oh,I said this or I said this.
Okay, let's go look at it,let's just go.
Man, it's just data, it's justwhat the chat I actually started

(35:40):
and this is you know.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
I mean I'm sure that there's husband and wives a lot
that listen to this.
I mean you've had some coupleson like for guests, but I
actually just I shared chat gptwith my wife, who we also
homeschool, like you guys um andeight months ago.
Maybe I was like april this iswild, like this is so cool, and
we know where ai was eightmonths ago.
Maybe I was like April this iswild, like this is so cool, and
we know where AI was eightmonths ago versus today.

(36:02):
Well, like two weeks ago I justtook my phone out and started
talking to it, because it hasbasically like conversational
instead of just typing ahead onmy phone or just talking back
and forth.
And April, my wife, was justlike whoa, this is wild.
So for the last two weeks she'sbeen like an evangelist for
ChatGPT to her mom, her grandma,her sisters.
I'm looking at, I'm looking onmy screen right now.

(36:24):
It's like home cleaning routine,all things, homestead, chicken
care verbs.
In a sense, she does that too.
So, like during the homeschool,hey, how would you give an
example of using a verb in asentence?
It's like OK, great, here'sboom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Meal planning is huge.

(36:44):
So there's moms out there thatare like hey, I, I, you know, we
know, stay at home, mom, is youknow 47 jobs under one umbrella
, if you want, kind of your ownassistant, where I mean I wish I
was getting paid from Chad GPTas an affiliate fee for giving
this commercial right now, butit is so helpful because we can
April, can meal plan in like 15minutes versus an hour and a
half now, right.
And you could also be like oh,can you make me the grocery list

(37:06):
but set it up in order of thelike, categorize the groceries
by specific areas in the grocerystore that I can be the most
efficient in my run.
It's like okay, great, here'sthe produce section, here's the
dairy section, here's the meatsection.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Oh my gosh, that's awesome.
Yeah, cause, I'm going to useit, dude.
I'm using that now If my wifeever gives me a list to go to
the store cause I end up justaimlessly Like it takes me an
hour, she's like I'll just do.
She always is like I'll just gobecause it takes you, dude.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
It's the best.
It is.
Yeah, start out using it asGoogle, like you said, and then
it'll morph from there.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah, health wise too .
So health is a big thing, right?
If you don't have your health,you got nothing.
None of this business stuffmatters, right?
So for me, I've been workingwith a trainer the last year
virtually you know they'resetting went into chat.
I was like, hey, chat, I'm 40years old, this is my goal, this

(38:03):
is what I like to do.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Can you make me a workout plan?
That's going to be under anhour for you know, four or five
days a week.
That's going to help me achievemy goal.
Spits out a workout plan, butyou still need your trainers.
You still need somebody to kickyour butt and make you do it.
But for this purpose, if you'rejust looking for a workout plan
, nutrition plan, meal plan,it's so easy to do.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
Well, that's the reason, that's.
That's what holds a lot ofpeople back, you know, is like
having that plan and I did thesame thing.
You know having some healthissues last year and whatnot.
It like I will oftentimes havekind of these post symptom, kind
of like symptoms.
I will freak out about it andthen I'll just literally go to

(38:45):
chat gpt.
I have it on my screen righthere is I've had numerous
half-hour conversations withchat gpt.
Yeah, acting kind of like as amedical professional or a
practitioner, I'll say, yeah,where it's like well, you're not
a doctor.
However, it's pretty dang smartand so far, everything that,
like my doctor has said, or thespecialist for the heart or the

(39:08):
neuro or anything Chet GPT islike those are the things you
should do.
So then I report back and I'mlike man, this is pretty wild.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
It is pretty cool.
I did actually this is going tobe kind of gross for some of
you folks, but I did a littlestool test recently, uploaded my
PDF of the stool test Cause Ihad no idea what the heck it was
mean Hit the deep researchbutton and then about 15 minutes
later, boom, everything youcould possibly want to know is
in there.
And then I met with thefunctional medicine doctor who
reviewed everything, exactlywhat chat told me.

(39:38):
It was awesome, awesome.
Now the functional medicinedoctor did give me a couple
other cool recommendations.
That chat chat just was kind ofanalog.
I probably could have got fromchat if I would have prompted it
more afterwards and had tobreak it down further, but it
was pretty incredible.
I know like, uh, I had zachmorgan on here recently.
He's using chat.
He built his own um dealanalyzer in there, so he just

(39:59):
uploads the details and itbreaks down the deal for him.
And that's something I want tostart doing as well, for our
team is just come up with astandard.
Here's our deal analyzer andchat boom, they just use it like
that.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, and it's like anything else it takes time to
build it on the front end, right.
But then it actually saves youa ton of time.
I mean, because how many dealsdo you guys analyze a week,
would you say?
I have probably 30.
30 deals a week, right?
So if you could build somethingthat maybe takes two hours to
build and the average, theaverage deal to analyze takes a
half hour, you know, it's like30 times 30.

(40:30):
That's 900 minutes.
If you could have that samething do in nine minutes, it's
like you just saved yourself aton of time.
And it runs through the samebuy box, the same calculations,
all the stuff.
You could do it on excel, butthis is just going to do it for
you.
It's.
It's kind of crazy.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
So yeah, and you could do it in excel.
Upload your excel and ask chatto build you a formula that it
would do it for you in chat andthen you save that as one of
your gpt's.
So when you log in and you'reup right, I think you have to
have the paid version for it.
But then you can go to my chatsand you just create a chat in
there.
That then it's just that youjust name it deal analyzer and
then every time you go in youclick that little deal analyzer

(41:06):
to run and then you run itthrough and boom bada, boom bada
bing.
But you can upload.
We've used it for legaldocuments we were trying to find
.
We recently wholesaled a condoin Oshkosh and one of the big
question marks when we werelocking it up with the seller
was are you able to rent thisright with a condo?
Some condo associations willnot allow you to rent it or
airbnb it right, it was on thewater in oshkosh.

(41:27):
So I mean great exit strategyfor somebody's.
Airbnb it if you can.
We just uploaded the condo docsin the chat and had it look for
anything in there that talkedabout renting, your short-term
renting.
Boom pulled it right up, said,said uh, doesn't.
It does allow what you knowshort-term rental or rental
online blue, blah, blah blah andthe kind of thing which

(41:47):
normally we'd have to sit thereand just like try to scan it
might miss.
It just uploaded the pdf and itread it for us.
It's incredible.
Legal documents formats likejoint ventures.
I put together a joint venturewith chat.
I don't know if I recommendthat legally, but I read it over
and I compared it to other onesthat we've had legally done.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
And it, yeah, but even if you don't recommend it
legally, here's the deal like,get started with it, because if
you go to your lawyer, theycharge by the millisecond, right
, and they always round up.
So you, they do one second ofwork, it's one hour charge, and
they always round up.
So you, they do one second ofwork, it's one hour charge, and
like it can at least get you ina place where you're way, you're
really close to having thisthing finished and it might take

(42:27):
them 15 minutes to actuallylook it over, versus an hour and
15 minutes.
So the other thing that I loveabout it is just, even if it
gives you a bad idea, a lot oftimes it's like we've all sat
and stared at a blank page, likewhat, like, what do we do?
Well, even if it gives you areally crappy idea, it's a
really crappy idea, sparks youto be able to come up with the
good idea that you were thinkingof that was already inside of

(42:50):
you, and it's way easier to dothat than it is to just look at
a complete blank page.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
So 100, or go to google and you got to try to
sort through a million differentlike not great results, right,
yeah, and it's you, know youdon't it's.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
it's a.
It's a really cool tool, and Iguess I'll get off the soapbox
Cause I don't know if it'sactually helping anybody.
I know that there's a lot ofpeople that listen to this, that
are kind of newer, thatprobably want me to tell them,
like, how to make a milliondollars.
Um, that's so seriously.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
That can be the thing , though that's what I think is
so powerful about AI, mike, andthat's why I'm staying here on
the AI thing with you, because,just using ChatGPT alone, just
think of anything that's holdingyou back right now.
If you're listening to this,what's keeping me from getting
started in real estate?
Oh, I'm struggling to findlenders.
Go to ChatGPT, hey, chatgpt.
I'm struggling to find lendersto get into real estate

(43:37):
investing.
I want to be able to use theBRRRR strategy, which GPT knows.
The BRRRR strategy.
Trust me, I want them to beBRRRR friendly, or whatever you
want to put in there for yourprompt.
Hit the deep research button ifyou want.
It's going to pull up peopleand at least, again, it might
not be perfect, but it's goingto get you started right, yep.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
Yeah, and it's actually a good point.
I mean, what holds a lot of newpeople back?
Like deal flow, lending help,right, because it's like, oh, I
need help to do this.
This is where I'm going to talkabout the AI is like I need
help with something, but I don'thave enough profitability in my
business to go hire somebody.
It's like, well, chatgpt Pro is$20 a month.

(44:17):
You could pay $200 also't.
You don't need that yet, butyou could have 20 a month and
literally have an assistant forevery aspect of your business
and a tool that you could buildonce and complete and reuse over
and over and over again.
And like it's only limited byyour imagination.

(44:40):
Truly, yep, yep, for sure, forsure.
Um, did I cut out again?

Speaker 1 (44:47):
A little bit.
Yeah, it's only limited by yourimagination.
That's what I heard.
It was a little perfect, it wasa little internetty, but we got
it.
Uh, mike, let's shift gearsquick as we start to wrap here.
What, what, mike?
Let's shift gears quick as westart to wrap here.
What do you see?
So you're in the NortheastWisconsin market, correct?
Yes, sir, yes, what do you see?
I mean, if you have yourcrystal ball right, what does

(45:09):
this next year look like for youand your partner at Blue Badger
, and what are you guyspredicting, as far as you know?
Is there anything you guys areseeing strategically that you're
going to be shifting gears in?
Anything?
Are you staying the course?
Is there anything our listenersout there should be maybe
keeping their eye on as thisyear progresses as far as what
they're going to be doing inreal estate?
What are you seeing out thereas you're pounding the pavement

(45:31):
every day and in the game everysingle day?

Speaker 2 (45:34):
Yeah, I mean right now, like you and I talked last
week, largely the short answeris stay the course, because I do
believe Midwest Wisconsininvesting is lower, lower, uh,
appreciation might be less, butyou're also, it's also way less
volatile, right?
So, um, I think it's the placeto send your money.

(46:05):
So if you're in California,you're in New York, you're in
Florida or wherever, like, sendyour money up here.
I'll gladly take it.
Corey will gladly take it, yeahfor sure.
But you know, our strategy hasbeen and will continue to be to
stick within the median, tolower, like low median price
point of our market.
And what I mean by that is like, say, if the average home sells

(46:25):
for $250,000, we want to beselling homes at $200,000 to
$250,000 when they're all saidand done.
Right, because that is for us,it's always going to be a market
that's going to sell, becausein a bad market, buyers at the
$350,000 level are going to comedown to the $250,000 level and
then also people who own$100,000 houses are going to try

(46:46):
to work up into the $250,000house.
So for us to work in thatmarket makes sense.
It might be less risky, wemight be leaving some money on
the table with otheropportunities, but it's worked
for us.
We just got to continue to deal,to to nail down deal flow,
because that's been a strugglefor us lately.

(47:07):
So we're trying to, you know,work on optimizing all of our
paid marketing advertising justso that we can get the at bats,
because we can.
Once we get the at bats, weknow what to do, like to make a
house look pretty, make it lookgood and give somebody a really
good product.
Our goal is always to be ifwe're selling a $250,000 house,
we want to be the best $250,000product in that market, because

(47:30):
when you're looking at ourhouses, we want you to be like
oh, that's a no brainer, I'mgoing to buy that house because
for $250,000, I'm getting anextra bedroom, a bathroom and
way nicer finishes, you know.
So that's that's kind of staythe course, and then, of course,
picking things up along the way, um, really trying to focus on
that.
You guys did a really good jobof this, uh, five years ago.

(47:53):
So I mean, I don't rememberexactly when, but when you went
away from the, we're going totry to do everything with deals
versus like we're a wholesalecompany.
That's it, and I think that wasone of the best decisions.
You guys I mean outside, lookingin.
I don't know the end workingsof your business.
I know we're in the same market.
We do this.
You know a lot of the same,like we're nuanced different.

(48:16):
We have a different exitstrategy primarily.
Same like we're nuanceddifferent, we have a different
exit strategy primarily.
But when you guys made thatfocus, I think that was probably
one of the best things that youdid for your business.
And that's what we're trying todo is just focus, like last
year, we were going to keep thisAirbnb for the draft, cause we
have the draft coming up nextmonth.
It's like, well, we actuallysuck at Airbnb, we're not good
at it, so let's just sell theAirbnb, take the profits and go

(48:37):
buy the next flip, right?
So, yeah, it's little decisionslike that, uh, and I say that
to say like, oh, we got thisfigured out, we know exactly
what we're gonna do.
It's a battle every day becauseit's like, oh, what about this
three unit?
Like, let's you know, let's uhseparate each unit, and it's
like, no, just freaking, do thething, do the thing that is dude

(48:57):
for us entrepreneurs and ourpersonality types.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
That is the hardest thing about real estate, I think
, is staying the course.
Like, as you're saying this,I'm like Mike's preaching to me
right now because I'm doing thesame thing in my head.
I'm like, oh, should I go buildapartments?
Thanks, chat, for telling me no, thanks for telling me that, no
, because otherwise I probablywould have started the process
years ago and then I'd be likewasting all this time.
And in general and in reality,we just need to be the best
wholesale company in Wisconsin,maybe in the country, and just

(49:25):
be.
You know.
That's needs to be the focusand the goal, right, and there's
other things that are going tocome along and we're going to
take a little piece of this anda little piece of finance deals,
but it is not our focus, right?
We're, we're, we're decent atit.
We know we and we know goodattorneys that can help us with

(49:45):
a lot of that stuff.
Now we have chat GPT who canhelp us with that.
But I'm telling you what, likeif you're out there and you are
listening to this and you aretrying to make a deal of every
single deal that comes acrossyour plate, you're going to
waste a lot of time and you'renot gonna be able to find a deal
.
So you need to be deal finders,not deal makers, right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
And going back to your apartment example like,
just because you're not going tobuild ground up apartments
doesn't mean you can't get inthe apartment game.
Like, if you focus a hundredpercent on your wholesale
business and you become great atwholesaling and your
profitability goes from, let'ssay, a million a year to a
million two, well, now you have$200,000 that you can put into

(50:23):
an apartment, let somebody elsebuild it from the ground up and
you invest in that apartmentcomplex.
Just be passive, right, yeah,and be passive, you know, cause?
It's like every little microdecision you make is going to
add up completely.
You know it's going to stackand stack and stack.
I mean brandon turner talksabout the stack, right, it's a
little bit different, where he'stalking about by one, than two,

(50:44):
than four, but every littleinvestment you make stacks on
top of the other one.
So, um, yeah, I.
I think that that is the, thatis the focus of this year and
needs to continue to be, and Iwould encourage the.
You have to get to a specificpoint for that, though, like in
the beginning, I think you andI's personality actually lends

(51:05):
favorable to us, because we'rewe're willing to try everything
and you kind of have to tryeverything to figure out what
the thing is, but then over time, as you're like, oh, this is,
this is the thing, then you haveto stop trying and you have to
go all in and then you can onlygo on to the next thing.
Once you have this thing, likeif you had I buy going, and

(51:27):
you're spending four minutes aweek on it and not in the
business every single day, Ithink that's a different story
100 while you're still activelyin it, trying to get it to that
point.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
it's probably let's not, let's just keep the
blinders on for sure here yeah,and that was last year, that was
my main focus like we need toget, we were starting to go the
wrong direction.
We had to step in.
So I stepped back into thebusiness full-time and took it
back over, started getting theplate spinning again full speed,
putting now some leadership inplace and some layers of
leadership.
So I can not not that I loveour business, that's not that I

(51:57):
never want to be involved in thebusiness, but I want to be able
to be creative and innovativeand be able to go out and look
for either other verticals thatare easy to implement or, um,
how can I make our team evenbetter?
So, being in it every day, I'mgetting caught in the minutiae
and the details.
If I can be above it a littlebit and outside of the
day-to-day stuff, I I can startto see some of the bigger
opportunities that may, may beout there, but I can't let it

(52:20):
get shiny object.
And now we're doing a newdevelopment somewhere else.
You know, like that's I want to.
I want to, but again, just lookat like, not not necessary,
stay the course.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
And I think we're.
We go from wholesaling realestate to like we're going to
open a Mexican restaurant inIndianaiana.
It's like, oh wait, this isbecause there's not a lot of
them there and there's a ton ofupside.
It's like we only see the goodand everything this is such a
huge opportunity.
You don't know, there's like nomexican restaurants in indiana.

(52:51):
We have to get in dude that'sso funny.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
We just got down to florida, to our place down here,
we road tripped it down and aswe're driving, like my wife is
doing her chat, gpt stuff andshe's working on her own little
business over there that she'screating.
Kids are all doing their thingin the back, so it's just me and
my thoughts for 10 hours, andevery town we drive through, I
was like, oh, we could open somefranchise here of this.
Like I wonder if there's afranchise that I could go buy

(53:16):
the franchise and start here.
I'm like no, no, wholesale,wholesale real estate.
But look over there, dude, it'sso funny, you nailed it.
That's exactly what it is.
It's a struggle, man.
The struggle is real every day,for sure.
Yeah Well, mike, we're going towrap here.
Buddy, I know we've been on herefor a while.
I know you, though we alwayslike to end with a little fun

(53:37):
question.
So what is your favoriteWisconsin tradition or place to
visit?
And the reason we ask this forthe you guys out there is, if
you're not from Wisconsin, asMike said, you got the
California money, the New Yorkmoney, whatever it is, and
you're like gosh, where can Iput this cash Right?
Well, I have a beer and a bratout there that's funny.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
Well, I told you my secret earlier and this will be
letting it out to the world twoof the most like wisconsin
things, and I'm going to talk alittle bit quieter in case
anybody's here yeah, and theyhear me, because I don't want
anybody in real life to knowthis we won't.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
We'll cut this part out.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
We'll cut this, yeah episode yeah, uh, two of the
most wisconsin things is playingcribbage and drinking in old
fashioned to.
I'm 37 years old and I've neverdone either, and so you're
talking.
Remember we went back to thefocus conversation of business,

(54:48):
my, my personal focus for theyear.
My goal is to have an oldfashioned and like not just not
like an old fashioned at this,like uppity bar type thing, like
I want to go to dive barNorthern Wisconsin and have
somebody make me the best oldfashioned.
So if you know where the bestold fashioned is like, let me

(55:08):
know, cause that'd be great.
And then also how to playcribbage, because I feel like
such a fraud.
I do feel like a fraud withouthaving done those two things.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
Yeah, I mean that's a first of all.
I want to commend you.
That's a pretty worthy thing tocome on here and that's a
pretty big man of you to youknow be vulnerable here with
everybody and and really letthat secret out.
So I appreciate you sharingthat live here again.
We will try to edit my editor'slittle little spotty, so I
don't know if he'll be able toget to it before it's like my
internet like mike's internet?
Uh, no, that's.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
That's uh very, very honorable of you to admit that,
mike and those are arguably thetop two of the top five things
ever in wisconsin too, maybe topten for sure do you know how
you could figure out how to dothose things and where to go?

Speaker 1 (55:51):
chat gpt 100?
Yeah, when in doubt, use chatgpt mike.
If somebody wants to get a holdof you, besides going on chat
gpt and asking how to get a holdof you, besides going on
ChatGPT and asking how to get ahold of Mike Higgins, what's the
best way for them to reach outto you if they want to talk?
Flips, wisconsin real estate,your journey.
There's a lot more we didn'teven get into today with your
health stuff.
I wanted to get into that, butwe're kind of past time here, so

(56:12):
anything-.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
Yeah, honestly, the best like on the socials.
I spend a lot of time on X, soif you go at meet Mike Higgins
M-E-E-T, my name Mike HigginsH-I-G-G-I-N-S that's probably
the word that's where I spendthe most time tweeting about all
things real estate I think Istill call it tweets posting

(56:33):
about all things real estate,and so I'm very, very, very
active there.
Obviously, you can reach out toBlue Badger homebuyers, but
you're probably going to get anAI agent trying to buy your
house from you, so it's probablynot the best place, unless you
want to sell me your house.
That'd be great, could be fun.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
Could be fun just to have the conversation, though.
Just mess with AI.
Yeah, it'd be fun.
Yeah, awesome Mike.
I appreciate it.
Man, it's dialed in and yourcamera's good and all the tech
stuff is good.
Normally you're spot on withthat, so don't judge Mike for
that today.
Okay, guys, he did his best,all right, and he's vulnerable
today, so give him a littlebreak, right you guys?

(57:06):
Thanks for tuning into anotherepisode.
This has been awesome, mike.
This one, I think, is going tobe a big hit for a lot of people
, especially that AI section.
I geek on AI all day, every day, so that's always fun.
If you're out there and you'relike, hey, chat GPT, where's the
best place to buy off-marketreal estate?
If it doesn't say Wisconsindiscount properties, you need to
train it and correct it.

(57:27):
Okay, otherwise, go towisconsindiscountpropertiescom
and just skip chat GPT.
Put your information in thereand you'll get added to our
buyers list and you'll get offmarket deals every single week.
And, like I said earlier, ifyou're sitting there going, hey,
I don't know where to start andChatGPT doesn't really help you
.
Beyond that, go to the page,just fill out a contact us piece
If you're not ready to startgetting deals flowing to you and

(57:47):
you just want to have aconversation first and see if
this whole real estate investingthing in Wisconsin is the right
thing for you, and we'll we'llhop on a with you and have a
little conversation.
If you got some value out ofthis.
Guys, this is the ripple effectA couple episodes ago really
hit me when we were talkingabout how this can really change
people's lives.
So if you got value out of this, you could be the one
conversation somebody needed tocreate generational wealth for

(58:08):
them and their families.
By sharing this episode, you'rehelping out those people in
your network.
So please share this, put it onyour socials, help us out, help
us get the word out and tuneinto the next episode.