Build Wealth Like a Pro: Essential Coaching for Aspiring Agents

John Harcar (00:02.007)
OK, hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and I’m here today with Dustin Hoog. Hope I said that right. And what we’re going to talk about with Dustin is, besides his experience and his time in business and in real estate, we’re going to talk about how he’s helping real estate agents really discover how to build wealth through real estate investing. Remember, guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers.

Dustin Hoog (00:09.176)
Close.

Dustin Hoog (00:23.874)
Yeah.

John Harcar (00:29.017)
I mean, really all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their business. You know, we’re providing the tools, the resources and the community to grow and scale the business you want, I mean, helps you live the life you want. Dustin Mann, welcome to our show.

Dustin Hoog (00:43.692)
I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.

John Harcar (00:46.329)
Yeah, I’m excited to talk about kind of how you’re helping the agents build wealth through investing. think, you know, a lot of agents lack a little bit of that knowledge, and it can do nothing more than help them. But before we dig into those weeds, why don’t you tell our audience about your background, right? Your journey in business and real estate and kind of what brought you to today.

Dustin Hoog (01:06.542)
Yeah, perfect. First and foremost, I’m a husband, I’m a father, I’m a coach, I’m a realtor, and I’m an investor. So I live in here in the Midwest in St. Louis. I’ve been an agent since 2013 and we started investing in 2017. But I would say my business started many, many, many years before that. When I was 23, I bought a bar and failed miserably at that. So don’t do that.

John Harcar (01:13.541)
You

John Harcar (01:33.581)
OK.

Dustin Hoog (01:35.822)
But I started how so many other investors got started and that’s because someone gave me the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Yes.

John Harcar (01:43.095)
Okay, there’s my question already answered. Like, I love to ask people like, how did it start? Was there a relationship you have with someone doing real estate or was there a book? the

Dustin Hoog (01:55.438)
Well, it’s interesting. That book is what made me buy the bar. And I grew up in the bar scene because my mom ran one for people and everything like that. So I always wanted to run one. And I have an aunt and uncle out in California. They are business people. They own stuff. High, high level MBAs and things like that. They gave me the book to almost talk me out of it. And it changed my world forever. And that’s when I went into the bar and I didn’t start investing in real estate. I mean, that was…

John Harcar (02:14.522)
Mm-hmm.

Dustin Hoog (02:25.39)
Shoot, that was 2005, 2006, and I didn’t start investing in real estate until 2017 after I became an agent, after I was doing lending in 2009, great time to be a mortgage person by the way, and then finally got my license in 2013. And then started investing in 17 off another book and a funny story about this book. It is called Hold, H-O-L-D by Gary Keller.

John Harcar (02:29.356)
wow, okay.

Dustin Hoog (02:54.582)
And I was coaching real estate agents at the time and I brought that book home. I gave it to my wife. We knew millionaires were created by real estate. I joke because my wife read seven pages of that. She said, let’s go. And we’ve never opened the book since. So it was pretty powerful seven page true story. And I’m a reader, but just we haven’t read that.

John Harcar (03:11.544)
Really?

That’s

Wow, that’s awesome. So I’m just curious, you when he when he had the bar, why did it fail? mean, I mean, you obviously had some experience. What happened?

Dustin Hoog (03:26.65)
I was a 23 year old kid in my hometown of 5,000 people. So yeah, I just failed miserably. Everything about it I was doing wrong. I had a lot of fun. But it should 100 % be illegal to own a bar when you’re 23, especially in your small town where you grew up in. So not only is everybody that walks in your friend, but their parents are your friend and their aunts and uncles are your friend. And it’s, yeah. So I…

John Harcar (03:38.853)
Mmm.

Dustin Hoog (03:56.118)
I’d prefer to be on this side of the bar now, is how I’ll put that.

John Harcar (04:00.075)
Awesome. what if you read, did you read that book before you got your real estate license?

Dustin Hoog (04:07.182)
No, I got my real estate license in 2013. I was, no, Rich Dad Poor Dad was before the bar. So that was in like 2005. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Hold was when we became an investor.

John Harcar (04:10.551)
Okay, and then you read Rich Dad Portrait.

John Harcar (04:16.731)
Okay, got it. Okay, okay, now I’m putting it together.

Got it, okay. So when you got into doing the agent stuff, like what were some of the struggles you had there? Like what were some of the things getting into the business that you kind of ran into?

Dustin Hoog (04:31.948)
Yeah, so my first year in business, I was part time and I was working, selling, advertising for what most of the kids won’t understand, but Yellow Pages and those old phone books. I was selling ads in there and it was a great job. But it was also, you could see the writing on the wall, obviously. so, but I was still, I did very well my first year part time. And then I was recruited to the number one team in St. Louis.

John Harcar (04:41.988)
Yeah

Dustin Hoog (04:59.63)
but I had to leave my very secure, very high paying job to go into real estate full time. That was December 14. I went to my then fiance and said, hey, I know we get married in nine months, but this, I want to quit my very secure job and go sell real estate full time. And I did, and she supported it.

And I went on that team for a long time and learned a ton with that team. realized I was more my own person than I was working for him. And I probably had a lot of growing to do. But I went back to a small brokerage that I ended up being partners with for a while. And I just put my head down to the nose and I worked. I mean, I was on the phone every day calling expireds, calling for sale by owners. mean, doing it all. Hired a coach when I couldn’t afford a coach. That obviously helps tremendously.

John Harcar (05:25.401)
Awesome.

Dustin Hoog (05:54.56)
And then from there, it kind of took off. And then I was recruited from another large brokerage to start being their coach, to coach all their agents. And that’s kind where my coaching career started in 2015. Yeah.

John Harcar (06:07.673)
What are some of the things that agents are not doing, right? That they should be doing to really set their business up for success when they kind of get into the field.

Dustin Hoog (06:18.21)
Yeah, great question. First and foremost is treat it like a business and treat it like you have a boss still. know, everyone, investors, agents, lenders, everybody gets into this business because of freedom. Well, I’ll tell you what you’re looking for really is flexibility because the only person I know that’s truly free and I know a lot of wealthy people, but the only true person I know that has freedom is that homeless guy on the corner. He truly ain’t got to worry about anything, but you will.

John Harcar (06:44.047)
Yeah. He ain’t got nothing to worry about,

Dustin Hoog (06:46.638)
Exactly. But you want flexibility. You want to be able to go pick your kids up when you can pick them up. But you still have responsibilities, right? So I try to change that. Like you want the flexibility, but to do that you have to show up and you have to put in the work. So I always look at you need to treat your goals as your boss. Because that’s who I have to answer to is the goals I’ve set for myself.

John Harcar (07:13.317)
Goals as the boss. There’s a good nugget guys, write it down. All right, awesome. What else? Like what are some things that, you know, just because I know we’ve always had a lot of realtors on here. It just seems like we’ve done some of the demographics. What are some other things that can just maybe kick them out, kickstart their success that you coach?

Dustin Hoog (07:14.978)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Dustin Hoog (07:30.2)
Yeah. So number one, treat it like a business. Number two, your database is everything. Communicate. Well, A, have a database. That’s a huge one. Like, let’s keep track with a CRM and a database and manage that database because that should be your first hire. Here’s nugget number two. Your first hire is your CRM and your CRM can be worth thousands and thousands of dollars every year, but you have to treat it that way.

John Harcar (07:58.757)
tremendous.

Dustin Hoog (08:00.232)
have to treat it that way. With the follow-up, with everything like that, you have to stay in touch. Real estate, I don’t care if you’re on the investor side or you’re in the agent side or both, real estate is a belly-to-belly, face-to-face business. You have to go talk to people.

John Harcar (08:17.156)
100%. And I couldn’t agree more. mean, you can learn and study all you want, but if you’re not talking to people, you’re not going to get the business. So you have this hold book, right? What is the hold book about for folks that don’t know about it?

Dustin Hoog (08:30.796)
Yeah, so it’s just buy it holds, right? It’s just simple rental property. know, he went over, you know, cash on cash return. He went over, you know, 20 % down. It’s interesting because I don’t do anything that what that book really talks about because after I got into investing to prolong the story a little bit, then I found my first Ria. I was invited to one.

And it was, I remember it was October of 17 and it was an absolute drug to me. Like I remember sitting in there, cause I thought I knew everything there was to know about real estate. I mean, I was coaching agents for a living and I knew nothing when it came to this. And I’m seeing these people that are making a lot of money.

John Harcar (08:52.954)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (09:05.092)
Right?

Dustin Hoog (09:12.77)
don’t look like they’re making any kind of money. They’re not showing it off, they’re not buying, always joke, they’re not buying, go out and buy their brand new white Lexus because they had a big commission check. They’re just doing it and doing it well and having fun. Like I like this. So we won, I put that in air quotes, a free coaching consultation with that club’s coach.

We went there, my wife, my son, and my son at that point was nine months old, he’s eight now, and we signed up and we never looked back. And since then we’ve had 75 single-family rentals and we’ve flipped over 100 properties.

John Harcar (09:50.949)
Okay, you made another perfect point, which guys, here’s another nugget. Being in the room that’s bigger than you, that’s better than you. If you didn’t do that, do you think your business would be where it is now?

Dustin Hoog (09:57.582)
100%. 100%. Yeah. Yeah.

Dustin Hoog (10:05.334)
I don’t think I would be an investor if I didn’t do that. I mean, it was literally just going to that and realizing what I was missing first. And I’ve been able to be in a lot of different rooms and a lot of different masterminds that honestly, if they would have really known me, they probably would have kicked me out. Like I didn’t deserve to be in these rooms. Yet every time I’ve walked away from one of those rooms.

John Harcar (10:22.341)
Right.

Dustin Hoog (10:29.546)
I became a better person, a better business person. Hell, a lot of times a better husband, a better father, a better friend. Like you can learn so much from the room. You can learn so much from the people in the room. Right? That is a huge, huge thing that I have to put into my life every year.

John Harcar (10:43.183)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (10:48.259)
Yeah, and I love what you said. It’s like the guys that that make a ton of money that don’t look like they make a ton of money. I mean, these are the people these are the operators that you don’t see on Facebook, but posting all this stuff. These are the guys that go about their business yet have millions and millions of dollars. So that’s awesome. That’s a great story. So what was your first purchase? Was it a duplex single family? What was it?

Dustin Hoog (11:04.387)
Yeah.

Dustin Hoog (11:11.854)
I’m a single family guy, still have the rental to this day. Well, the first, I’m gonna say the first rental when we got, when we became investors. Like I had one before that, that I did the traditional route, didn’t know what I was doing. But the first one, 200 St. Nicholas, still own the house today. It was an amazing burr deal. You know, we bought it, we put $12,600 into it. Man, would I love to find a rehab for that anymore.

John Harcar (11:39.683)
Yeah, I was about to say that’s a lipstick if that. Probably not even a lipstick right now.

Dustin Hoog (11:40.302)
It’s just… Yeah. And it was,

In a praise so high, we were able to pull extra cash out, which that’s harder to come by these days. And what I always liked about that deal, and I use that in a lot of case studies and a lot of things I teach, but that deal is, I think we netted about $312 a month cash flow. Okay, not huge, but pretty good. Perfect bird deal, got all of our money out. But I was also able to pull out $9,000.

That $9,000 paid off the car I was driving. So that saved me an extra $372. So the cash flow was really almost $700 from that one deal.

John Harcar (12:27.981)
Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, it’s cool that you still have it too.

Dustin Hoog (12:29.486)
And that’s, and I love that deal. Yeah. And I’ve probably pulled out. Yeah. I’ve probably pulled out 60 to $70,000 out of it and different refinances and different lending and opportunities and things like that since we’ve owned it too. So it’s, it’s been a great house.

John Harcar (12:46.789)
Is that your main strategy, Burr? Or, I mean, are you fix and flip? What’s kind of your main exits?

Dustin Hoog (12:52.526)
So we do both. It’s always burr or fix and flip. I mean, I’ve had some turnkey rentals and stuff like that, but we, I’m more of a rental guy, yet you got to pay the bills and sometimes you got to flip some houses to make some money. Right. So we do that, especially after we had our second child and the crazy COVID world, my wife left corporate America. So she’s in our business too. So we got to have some income coming in. know, rentals are for wealth flipping is for income. I believe you should do both.

And you can do both with the right strategy and blueprint in place.

John Harcar (13:27.341)
Yeah, yeah, it’s all about systems and processes, you putting that all together. So what is there a specific criteria you have where you’ll want to hold it versus do a flip? I mean, does it have to have a certain amount of cash flow? Is that to be a certain amount of profit for a flip?

Dustin Hoog (13:43.118)
Yeah, not necessarily, especially now, you know, we’re trying to refine systems as we go and things like that. And certain times are better than the others. But, you know, we always look at it. It’s what do we need right now? That’s a big one. Right. Do I need income or do we have enough income and we can do the rentals? I don’t like huge, huge mortgages and huge in our area, you know, over $250,000 on rentals. Just because when that’s vacant, it’s so much more expensive.

John Harcar (13:55.503)
Yeah.

Dustin Hoog (14:10.95)
So, kind of the cheaper one, sub $200,000, we’ll keep as rentals. Anything over that, we’re probably going to flip, especially because that’s just a really good market in St. Louis.

John Harcar (14:23.417)
Yeah, that’s true too. It does depend on where you’re at. So, okay, so you said you’re in St. Louis. Is that your only market or are you in any virtual markets?

Dustin Hoog (14:25.72)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dustin Hoog (14:33.676)
Nope, this is our only market.

John Harcar (14:36.709)
What does your team look like right now?

Dustin Hoog (14:37.154)
Yep. My wife and I, an office manager, we have a few GCs that we sub out and then my stepdad works for us full time as kind of a jack of all trades. Contractor, handyman, babysitter, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yes.

John Harcar (14:49.444)
Nice.

John Harcar (14:53.229)
Well, what Aaron run or whatever needs to get done. That’s, that’s, very cool. Keep it in. And so you have a small operation. You don’t have a big, you know, a big, huge team. And that’s awesome.

Dustin Hoog (15:02.178)
Yeah, no, my wife focuses on the houses when we buy them after we own them. I buy them and sell them. They’re her babies in between. And then I focus a lot on coaching. Yeah.

John Harcar (15:14.757)
Okay, how many coaching students do currently have?

Dustin Hoog (15:17.634)
Right now we have 14 one-on-ones here locally and I do that, I probably do about 12 to 14 a year because my program lasts a whole year when we get them on their feet, probably do two whole deals with them. And now that’s expanding going nationwide with all the agents. And we have courses that we can, you know, a community as well.

John Harcar (15:35.813)
Got it.

John Harcar (15:40.005)
Very cool. And you’re coaching agents to invest.

Dustin Hoog (15:45.55)
Correct, yes. Yeah, we had…

John Harcar (15:47.905)
Awesome. So let’s talk about that.

Dustin Hoog (15:51.778)
Yeah, are so many agents, yeah, so many agents that didn’t know the world of investing and I was one of them. And once I found out that this new world of investing is like, well, if I know how to invest in real estate, I can also be a better agent. And because I can help a seller several different ways now.

John Harcar (15:52.732)
no, I- I- I-

Go ahead, go ahead.

Dustin Hoog (16:14.934)
It’s just tools in my tool belt. If I want to keep it, if I want to sell it, if I want to wholesale it, if I want to fix it, or if I want to list it on the MLS for the most amount of money they can get, I can now serve people at a higher rate because I know the investing world. And I can also serve me and build a legacy because I don’t want to always work for buyers and sellers.

You know, I might not want to be called and said, go show a house at 8 p.m. on a Friday, which I don’t do that anymore, but I definitely don’t want to continue doing that, right? So it’s, I want to teach people that there’s so much you can do when you stop thinking of yourself as just an agent and start becoming a real estate specialist, because that’s when you can do so much with real estate.

John Harcar (16:42.117)
He

John Harcar (16:57.505)
And I think you nailed it on the head, the real estate specialist. mean, that’s how you have to be. it’s not even just being a real estate flipper anymore. It’s not even being a real estate agent or a real estate wholesaler. I mean, you got to better serve your agent or your client. got to have, like you said, the tools in the tool belt. Why do you think so many agents are maybe not against learning investing, but just like have that?

Dustin Hoog (17:15.48)
Yep. Absolutely.

John Harcar (17:24.855)
stigma in their mind about real estate investors or that type of the deal.

Dustin Hoog (17:29.922)
Yeah, and I almost push back a little bit on that. I don’t think they know it. didn’t, I sold, I was selling real estate for a long time. And you know, you all watch the HGTV shows and that’s truly the only glimpse of you get of investors. You didn’t understand where they were finding it. You don’t even, I had no idea what a wholesale deal was until I bought my first one. Right? Because agents aren’t taught that. Hey, your license definitely doesn’t teach you that, but.

John Harcar (17:51.077)
Right.

Dustin Hoog (17:56.184)
your brokerage doesn’t teach you that, or at least the majority of brokerages don’t teach you that. And I feel it’s because the brokerage doesn’t make money on it. So why would they go teach it?

John Harcar (18:08.335)
True.

Dustin Hoog (18:09.804)
So that’s my mission. I think when people learn it, they want to do it. So that’s my mission right now.

John Harcar (18:15.205)
Okay. So it’s more of the education piece of having more people aware, I guess you could say. Okay. So if you got someone out there that’s listening, another agent out there listening right now and they want to add investing into their repertoire, what are a couple pieces of advice that would set them up for success? Outside of calling you, what kind of things would set them up?

Dustin Hoog (18:23.116)
Yeah, absolutely.

Dustin Hoog (18:37.016)
Yeah. Of course. Find your local meetup. That’s a big one. Go to meetup.com, look for real estate investment associations, you know, and go find these places to go sit where other investors are. Because that one meeting, it was the third Thursday of every month, I spoke at one last month, but that one meeting changed my life. And I would be go on to say it changed my children’s life.

You know, my eight year old has four of his own rentals. My five year old has one of her own, right? It’s a legacy builder. Yeah. Now, so what we do is we open up separate LLCs and we earmark those houses for them. But that’s what, to me it’s safer than a 529 college plan. And I know it. I can see the house.

John Harcar (19:12.921)
Really?

John Harcar (19:28.133)
for sure. Right.

Dustin Hoog (19:29.518)
And when it’s vacant and needs to be painted, guess who gets to work at it? So I get to teach them some work ethic by working on that house as well. Yeah.

John Harcar (19:40.235)
I love that. That’s a good dad hack.

Dustin Hoog (19:41.73)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And they pay me to manage it, which is fun too.

John Harcar (19:49.605)
That is very, that’s very cool. If there’s some folks on here that are listening and they want to reach out to this, say maybe they’re in your market and they want to learn more, maybe have you coach them and do all that stuff. What’s the best way for people to get a hold of you? How can they reach out?

Dustin Hoog (20:04.312)
So it’s just my name.com, DustinHogue.com. There’s a place you can schedule a call with me right on the calendar there or go to any of the social medias. You can look up Dustin Hogue. You can also look up the Wealth Building agent in any of the social medias as well.

John Harcar (20:20.715)
And you sent me a lot of that stuff. So I’ll put it on the show notes. Guys, I hope you took some good notes. There were a ton of good nuggets in there. That’s something that, this is an episode I think you need to replay a couple of times just to catch it all. Dustin, man, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming on here and dropping the knowledge. And guys, I hope you enjoyed it. You guys have a good one. Cheers.

Dustin Hoog (20:25.39)
Yeah.

Dustin Hoog (20:37.518)
Absolutely, thank you. Appreciate it.

Dustin Hoog (20:44.44)
Thanks guys.