Unlock Wealth: Financial Cowboys Journey from Blue-Collar to Success

Michael Stansbury (00:01.184)
Hello everybody and welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Mike Stansbury from Phoenix, Arizona or in the Arizona area, Dustin Howard. Dustin, how are you, sir?

Dustyn Howard (00:13.876)
Doing great, how are you?

Michael Stansbury (00:15.32)
Great sir, thanks for coming on the podcast. Real quickly, gotta tell you a little bit about our sponsor Investor Fuel. Investor Fuel, help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their businesses to allow them to build the business they’ve always wanted and allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. So Mr. Howard, you are the financial cowboy over there in Arizona. Tell me, how did you get? Tell me about your origin story, man. Tell me what you were doing before you got into financing and real estate and all that stuff. What did life look like for you?

Dustyn Howard (00:49.844)
Yes sir, I came from a blue collar family. Went to school to be a welder. Did an apprenticeship for welding right out of high school. Worked that for a while. Went into business for myself. Welding, building horse stalls, bunch of arenas, barns, stuff like that for people. Did that for a couple years and then we decided we wanted to go on an adventure and move across the country. So we moved to Oklahoma and

I got a job in manufacturing, working shift work, 12 hour shifts, day and night shift. And then we decided to move back to Arizona. So I transferred back out here with that company. And then from there, that’s when I found out about the financial industry, financial services, being able to help people protect their money and grow their money. And so I explored that option and got into that.

Michael Stansbury (01:47.7)
Okay, well cool. So you’re just getting started. was entrepreneurship something you mentioned blue collar? Growing up, what kind of blue collar businesses or trades did your family do?

Dustyn Howard (02:03.4)
Yeah, so my dad’s always worked in mills, but poor plants, being a mechanic. But he’s always been in and out of business for himself also. He had a logging company. So I got to help him with that, learn how to log and run equipment. And then also I have it whenever I was like, I think four or five, I had my mom help me make a business card.

It says the cowboy on it. Yeah, seeds are planted early. just, you know, set on there just whatever you need. Yard work, weeding, mowing, watering, whatever you need.

Michael Stansbury (02:35.36)
Right, the seas were planted early.

Michael Stansbury (02:47.818)
At four, you were like, hey, I’m gonna go, don’t need to play with Legos or anything like that. I wanna go mow lawns and weed whack and all the things.

Dustyn Howard (02:53.128)
Yeah.

Dustyn Howard (02:58.11)
Yup, exactly. Get that money to buy some toys.

Michael Stansbury (03:01.506)
That’s right, yeah. That’s really cool. So that was planted early. so, yeah, so a lot of different things. And you mentioned logging. I’m always interested in how life twists and turns. And what did you learn from logging and watching your dad? What are some of the principles that you learned from maybe his work ethic and things that you’re taking to what you’re doing today?

Dustyn Howard (03:27.666)
Yeah, well…

Dustyn Howard (03:31.518)
Just a lot of hard work and no matter what you run into, always just keep going and keep learning. Never stop learning because he was always in and out different things and always adapting and overcoming.

And so that kind of goes into like the leadership aspect of it, right? Being proactive and adaptable. So instead of average and rigid. So I that from him.

Michael Stansbury (04:00.717)
Yeah.

Dustyn Howard (04:03.2)
Especially like logging, like you’re always having something go wrong. Equipment breaking down or running into the big logging company that hired you, having to put a pause on it because they’re running out of money and they gotta wait till they get paid so they can keep you working. And so it’s just, you just gotta keep going no matter what you’re doing.

Michael Stansbury (04:07.725)
yeah.

Michael Stansbury (04:25.004)
Yeah, so it’s funny, I was at a sawmill, believe it or not, this morning, checking out somebody’s operation. And they weren’t doing anything except making pallet wood. The big machine wasn’t running. They were just doing pallet wood because the money dried up for the big stuff that they were doing, but they were adjusting. They were like, well, we can’t run this operation today. We sent these guys home. We gotta run this today.

It’s a constant adjustment in life and you know, you always, sometimes there’s pivots to be made. And so one of the pivots you made is, you know, from being a blue collar to financial services, what, what interests you, how did, how did that pivot happen? Kind of walk me through how you made that transition.

Dustyn Howard (05:11.444)
Yeah, so how I made the transition was just that I’m always continually trying to learn new things. And through that, I came across financial services, being able to help people grow and protect their assets, especially like blue collar. Being able to help them get a retirement plan, help drive their retirement plan vehicle.

and then making sure that they don’t outlive their retirement because I’ve seen that a lot in the blue collar industry. And so when I actually started studying this, I realized that there’s this whole financial services and what we do is just like exponential, like wider range of things that we can do. And what I did forget to mention earlier was I was a real estate agent for about three years. And so that’s where I was able to help.

Michael Stansbury (05:45.677)
Mm-hmm.

Dustyn Howard (06:09.566)
tie this into helping real estate investors. Because I worked with some real estate investors through fixing flips as an agent and bringing them some wholesale type deals. And so once I learned that I could do that with it, I’m like, man, I really can help a wide range of people here. And I want to be able to help everybody with that and be of service to people.

I really felt like I could be a lot of service to people through this. So it really…

Michael Stansbury (06:40.876)
Okay, and how are you helping real estate investors with with with financial services? What kind of services are you providing?

Dustyn Howard (06:48.018)
Yeah, so we got some plans that have tax advantage growth, so tax free growth, that they can be their own source of capital. They put their money in it, put their profits in it, then they can withdraw it on a policy loan. And then just like instead of maybe going out and getting hard money to put their down payment down, however they’re gonna put their down payment down, they can withdraw out of their own policy.

as a death benefit being the collateral. So, and then when they go to refinance or go to do whatever, they can pay themselves back at their time instead of at the hard money time or at their banking time. And they’re paying themselves back the interest instead of somebody else.

Michael Stansbury (07:36.6)
Yeah, it’s a beautiful thing to have that compounding as well. Well, cool. Well, so that’s interesting. A lot of people are using hard money lending, but if they have the capital and they can put it in this type of system, they can utilize it to help fund their deals, help capitalize their deals. So Destin, what other services are you providing right now? What is something you’ve helped somebody recently tell us a kind of an anecdotal story?

Dustyn Howard (07:42.195)
Yeah.

Dustyn Howard (08:05.894)
Yeah, so just some people that have worked in even the blue collar industry are getting into like real estate where they’ve built up a 401k and we kind of help them look at that whether that makes sense to kind of if they’re going to get into real estate investing to withdraw that.

and then to put it into one of these policies so they can access it, even though they are taking a little bit of a penalty, but that’s not fitting their goals of what they want to do, what they aspire to do. So we help them withdraw that, put that into one of these policies. And then depending on how fast they want to access it, we can put it into a couple of different policies, let it grow for a little bit. And then when they got their 20 % down to

go and put that down and they can withdraw and go put it into one of these houses so that they can start building their real estate portfolio and buy it. So we just helped a client do that and they had about hundred grand and we withdrew it for them and they put it into there. They’re going to let it grow for a year and in a year they’re going to access that and go start buy doors.

Michael Stansbury (09:08.846)
and their wealth, yeah, sure, yeah.

Michael Stansbury (09:25.39)
I like it, I like it. So Justin, what does life look like for you there in Arizona? What’s your family look like? What do you guys do for fun? You mentioned you’re a cowboy, do you actively get out there and rope and ride? What is the deal? Is it just a gimmick or is it for real?

Dustyn Howard (09:40.594)
Okay.

It is for real now I wouldn’t call myself a full-blown cowboy because I’m not out on the ranch Working cows every day and I believe that’s that’s what a real cowboy is. You know, they’re out there working the cows and Riding a horse every day, but we do we have horses. We have six horses Road bulls for about eight years when I was younger for about 12 to 20 21

And I grew up doing that rodeo. My wife, Bail Races, we just last night went and took our son or daughter over. They rode sheep and rode calves. So we practiced riding our horses all the time. And then I got my wife. We’ve been married for 11 years. And I got a daughter that’s six and a son that’s three. They both got one each pony that they ride.

So yeah, so they would.

Michael Stansbury (10:41.208)
That’s awesome. was just reading something. don’t know if this is true or not, but barrel racing is the only one of the only sports that women just dominate with the horse that, you know, man can’t do what a woman can do on a horse with barrel racing. It’s just, it’s interesting. So that’s, that’s really cool. So that’s, that’s the, your kids are going to grow up right, you know, around all the, all the animals and, and, and that’s, that’s living. I love it that you’re, that you’re doing it they all have a pony. can’t get, it doesn’t get better than that.

Dustyn Howard (10:48.776)
Mm-hmm.

Dustyn Howard (10:53.512)
Yeah.

Michael Stansbury (11:10.862)
That doesn’t get better than that. So cool. with your real estate investing yourself, do you do any real estate investing personally or fix and flipping Dustin? What’s that look like for you?

Dustyn Howard (11:12.176)
Yeah.

Dustyn Howard (11:22.964)
I have not gotten into it yet. I have done a couple deals myself, just on like house hacking, where our first deal that we bought, we bought it in Durant, Oklahoma, and we just lived there for a couple years and was able to fix it up, add value to it, and then whenever we were deciding we needed to move on, we were able to sell it, make a little bit of profit on it.

We stayed out of the market for about a year, waited till the interest rates went down. When they got down to that 3%, we found a house that we wanted and we bought it. And then same thing stayed in it for a couple of years. We were able to buy a, it’s a three bedroom, one bath in Bennington, Oklahoma. And that house had pretty much been remodeled. So we bought it at like 250 K and then

and it had 18 acres with it. And so we bought it, got that 2.75 % interest rate on it, stayed in it for two years, added a bunch of stuff to the property as far as horse facilities go, remodeled the bathroom, just kind of some small things to add a little bit of value to it. And then when we exited it, instead of selling it as 18 acres, we split it into two. So we,

had a nine acre parcel with the house and then a nine acre vacant land parcel and that was able to get us about 30-40,000 more in our profit.

Michael Stansbury (12:59.0)
Beautiful, I love stories like that. That’s a great added value. And I love folks that take on the house hacking and to, you know, that just sets your family up long term, especially as you’re a growing family. Never buy at retail. Always house hack if you can. So that’s really good stuff. All right, so you buried the lead. You rode bulls from 12 to 21.

Dustyn Howard (13:14.418)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Stansbury (13:26.22)
just recreationally, professionally, or what’s that all about?

Dustyn Howard (13:30.864)
Just amateur. When I was 12, we were kind of hanging out with my sister’s friends. They’re a little bit older and they’re always asking me, when are you gonna get on? When are you gonna get on on these full-size bulls, you know? And of course, me being 12, hanging out with them, thinking that’s so cool. So I was like, I gotta get my parents to let me do it. And they’re like, well, if you wear a helmet, you’ll be fine. I said, all right, so.

Michael Stansbury (13:31.981)
Yeah.

Dustyn Howard (13:59.378)
My first ride, that was tough. I got on a bull and he threw me into the fence and kicked me into the fence again and bruised my ribs all up. So they made me get on another one. They’re like, if you don’t get on another one, then you’re gonna be scared for the rest of your life. I was like, all right, so got on another one right away and after that I was hooked.

Michael Stansbury (14:18.688)
Alright.

Michael Stansbury (14:23.534)
See, it’s always this, it’s always like, how does one do three things? So how does one first decide they’re gonna like high jump ski, like ski high jump, like do that? How do you do that for the first time? How do you get on a bull for the first time? You just answered that question. And those Red Bull commercials where those guys are flying through the air on those wingsuits, how do you do that for the first time? That’s what I always ask myself is like, when do you go, yeah, yeah, I’m gonna jump from this cliff.

get on this wild animal, or just feel like I’m gonna get a set of skis, go really, really fast, and hope it doesn’t go terrible. And maybe I just need to do a little research on how people do that. But it sounds like the bull thing is the most dangerous thing to start. I’m sure you don’t start off like, whoa, those Red Bull guys with the rain suit. There’s gotta be some sort of.

Dustyn Howard (15:00.296)
Yeah, I can do it.

Michael Stansbury (15:19.198)
know,

Dustyn Howard (15:22.772)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I’m pretty much because there’s nothing really compares to it I mean you can get on a bucking barrel all day. You could get on horses, whatever But there’s nothing that compares to like actually just getting on and going

Michael Stansbury (15:36.558)
Yeah. And so you did that for nine years, recreationally, what’s great is you did it for nine years and not one time. did it a few times. Well, cool. Well, I tell you what, so Dustin, if somebody’s in the Arizona area, so Dustin, where can people find you at online? What does that look like? If somebody wanted you to hear about the Financial Cowboy and the financial services, how does somebody get in touch with you?

Dustyn Howard (16:04.082)
Yeah, they can reach out to me on my number, which is 928-240-1880. And then just all my social media handles are Dustin Howard. And then we work with a company called Real Financial.

They’re the broker for us. We’re just like a real estate agent. We’re just $10.99 into them. So they help get us access to all the different things. But real financial, they help us. then again, Dustin Howard and 928-240-1880. You can call, text me, whatever you need. And email is Dustin at TheFinancialCowboy.com.

Michael Stansbury (16:48.088)
Alright, well Dustin, thank you for that. It was great to hear your origin story and kind of what you’re doing in the area to help people in the financial services arena. Folks, thanks for watching the Real Estate Pros Podcast. If you want to reach out to Dustin, the information is below in the show notes. Thanks for watching. Like and subscribe. You guys know what to do. We’ll see you next time.