The Entrepreneur DNA - From Homeless to $40M Roofing Company and Angel Investor | Dustin Gutkowski | EP12

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Dustin Gutkowski's journey from homelessness to angel investing sets the stage for us sharing our stories and insights. We cover everything from overcoming challenges to building successful businesses through meaningful connections. There's a strong emphasis on mindset, taking risks, and the importance of investing in people for leadership and business success. Social media's role in business, productivity, and wealth creation is also explored, alongside personal anecdotes illustrating the power of intentionality and perseverance in achieving goals. Overall, it's a motivating and insightful discussion on navigating the entrepreneurial landscape with authenticity and purpose.   Follow Dustin on instagram - @dustingutkowskirr Listen to Daily Mind Medicine - dailymindmedicine.tv   The #1 training and coaching system to launch, grow, and scale your investing business! 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞: http://www.thescienceofflipping.com   Turn cold real estate leads into engaged motivated sellers on auto-pilot using the power of A.I! 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞: https://www.rocketly.ai/   Have a question? Ask me anything at https://www.askjustin.ai/     𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧: After graduating from UCLA in 2003 with an English degree, Justin went directly into business for himself. He has never had a W-2 job. In 2005 he got into real estate by co-founding a brokerage in the Northern California area. Quickly he realized that being a realtor was not for him.   In 2007 he got into real estate investing full time. 16 years later, Justin has flipped well over 2600 properties, accumulated millions in rental properties, and is an active investor to this day.   His success in real estate led him to start The Science Of Flipping podcast and education company, where he has coached and mentored over one thousand aspiring and active investors.    He is a nationally recognized speaker and is on a mission to educate as many people as possible on becoming a successful dynamic real estate investor.     𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑷𝒓𝒐𝒔 𝑯𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝑻𝒐 𝑺𝒂𝒚 𝑨𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝑱𝒖𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒏:    “Justin is one of the best trainers in this space. He really gives everything to his tribe.” – Brent Daniels (TTP)    “Justin’s ability to connect with people and help them understand what he is teaching, is unparallelled” – Kent Clothier (REWW)    “We have been in the trenches flipping homes in Phoenix for over a decade, he is one of the best to do it.” – Sean Terry (Flip2Freedom)   

What is up, Entrepreneur DNA family? Welcome back to another podcast. Guys and gals, I have a guest right now that I am thoroughly, thoroughly impressed with. This man went from homeless to now angel investor in some of the biggest brands and names that you all are using, drinking, eating right now. Dustin Gutkowski, what is up, dude?

How's it going, man? I appreciate the intro. Man, this is fun for me. We were just talking about how everything leads to people. And within an hour of us talking, we're exchanging people's contacts and opportunities each other's have. I mean, this is the epitome about what this is all about. All people is crazy. We literally got on FaceTime for you and the guy's like, oh, I got seven houses for you.

Yeah. Like that. Done. So let's talk all about you right now if you don't know this man make sure you go follow him right now what's your instagram handle dustin gutkowski rr come on you got to follow him because if you want to make some real money and become an angel investor which is where the real money plays then you're going to want to listen and pay attention to this podcast this is everything for you first and foremost how old are you right now 41 come on you're old i'm old i know

dude i'm old bro i was getting up there it is yeah it's weird how the the difference in time right like i don't actually feel for i'm 42 i don't really feel old i'm running and gunning um but it's this weird dichotomy of life now where you're like taking care of your parents and older family but you're also raising children you're like what is going on right now it's a weird time i i don't know it's good or bad but uh so i don't know my real dad like i don't know his name and then my mom's was a drug addict and like like i don't i don't know i haven't spoken to her in years and so it's uh it's it doesn't bother me sure but it's i'm just kind of it's just focused on the family man wife and kids and so. And so, you know, is it, I guess, sad to a degree? Yeah, kind of, right? You probably want that relationship with your parents. But I haven't had to deal with some of those, you know,

you know, I have friends now that ask away. It's like, of course, and I'm like, man, I kind of don't have to deal with that. But you've had to deal with the whole life of kind of not really having that same kind of connection, right? So it give or take right and that alone is inspirational i mean we're starting out this podcast hot already because i think everyone out there has some level of a story i don't think i know right whether it's your dad your mom my childhood right out of alcoholic parents i woke up in the back of a car in the middle of the night in an alleyway because they were busy drinking you know what i mean stuff yeah but everyone has that that like it may not be that extreme but there's different levels of of the stuff that we all carry around day to day and it's our choice right i mean at the end

of the day i got to create my life you got to create yours and i think you did pretty damn well for yourself i appreciate it man yeah you have to it is your choice but we spend most of our life like blaming everybody else right and i did that for a long time like victim mentality yeah and when i started taking control of it is when everything changes we just talked you're not drinking don't drink i mean you're really taking life serious you want to go for the big boy play and i respect the hell out of that because i've told everyone i'm going to be a billionaire in real estate and it's not a flex or anything like that it's because i want to create the life that like the most i got out of it yeah right and if i land halfway to my goal i'm all right right i land a

quarter in my goal i'm okay but my point is i want to play all out and so things like that like making those minor commitments you're not drinking anymore you're focusing on business you're traveling a lot making the hustle which leads to where i want to go with this is is the people yeah right i mean your team reached out to me you said hey i with this is the people, right? I mean, your team reached out to me. You said, hey, I think this is going to be a great opportunity for them to connect, get on this podcast. But that intention is largely why you've been able to build the businesses you've built, how you've gotten to become an angel investor.

We were just talking about how you're in with Mark Wahlberg, Jerry Rice. I mean, you have names on your Rolodex that are just ridiculous. Yeah, but it it came from people the craziest story actually our production crews here too yeah um he dropped it off and it kind of came full circle the other day so the the guy that i just introduced you to is number one guy but rogers healy big time uh realtor in dallas right like the realtor i wanted to connect with them um when i first got into roofing and i was a nobody right nothing burger sure uh nothing burger nothing burger i was a nobody man like and you great you get these

messages like let's connect for coffee and i don't even drink coffee you know it's like let's go to lunch i don't want to go to lunch with you i don't even know you why would i go to lunch with you but you want to connect with people though because people is the most important thing right like really who you align yourself with and i i believe like who you align yourself with says everything about you like if you think that your circle's a bunch of idiots then you're an idiot because it's who you are they represent you really 100 and uh i had met him years ago at a party but you know obviously there's nothing there and uh but he made a statement a long time ago at that party he said i was the first realtor on social media this was back in the day like this is well this is probably 12 15 years ago yeah so he was going

heavy on social media uh we talked about it on the podcast that day but he had a he had billboards around the city he says rogers healy is my homeboy billboards dude it was wild and uh but when i was in the fitness industry i went heavy on social media like not just posting workouts but posting like hey come in this is how you lose 20 pounds like trying to target the average workout person sure to come into the gym to sign up not like bodybuilders or fitness anything like that and i had a ton of success with it yeah and uh so when i got into roofing i was like man i'm gonna do the same thing and what better way to connect with people that are in real estate because if you sell a home yeah it has a bad roof call me so i'm like i can't just reach out hey you want to go for coffee so for about a year man i

just studied everything this dude did like what he liked to eat what he like what he was into and the thing that i found was he had literally the world's largest music collection this guy has like this is the realtor realtor yeah he's got hotel california he's got a pool house in the back of his house 2 000 square feet of nothing but autographed memorabilia on every inch of the wall like the craziest stuff from the craziest people so i was like music's a connection yeah i love music or whatever we got to find a way to connect so i found out he was born and raised in corpus texas and so corpus texas there's a Tano band, our Tano singer, Freddie Fender, right? It was like huge. So I found an autographed record, bought it, Elton John, because you can't really miss Elton John, you know? Sure. And we took it to the office and I

wrote him a note, just said, hey man, I just appreciate all you do. Like I watch your stuff on social media years ago. You said this, it's really cool what you're doing, man. Just keep crushing it. Like like love it man and just said thank you for all you do like didn't say I wanted anything because I really was like man this guy's doing a lot and how many people tell him thank you and so uh one of them actually dropped it off at his office like I didn't even go and I think it was like two days later man I get a voicemail and he's just like hey how do you know this like how do you know these artists like you got to call me back like this is the most thoughtful gift I ever got so we afterwards we you know we talked and he was

like hey man the Freddy Fender concert was the first concert my grandma ever took me to it was how I fell in love with music so we've been connected and we became best friends and he's got me introduced into all these different different investment opportunities and uh it obviously helped with the roofing and not but overall the business man the business is actually secondary he's literally one of my best friends like it's we you know talk every day yeah and so it just goes back to man it's not what you do it's who you do it with that's it it's all about people and there's those little connections man of being able to align yourself with the right people can just you can speed up your time from where you're at to where you want to go just by aligning with the right people but instead of trying to take value from people man just give

the value first and if you do people are going to want to be around you because you're giving with no expectation in 100 and so it was crazy man you said something that hits so hard it hits so close to home for me is it's not always about the immediate gratification right we meeting today for the very first time we're gonna rip this podcast immediately we're already connecting each other with different things and i just bought a home in you know austin all these different things that can go down but it's about the long-term vision of this relationship what can dustin and justin new new album by the way yeah what can we go do together in the long term and that's what it's always going to be about.

Unfortunately, people want immediate gratification. What can you do for me now? How can I get paid now? What's in it for me right now? But they don't have the long game in sight, right? They just have the quick win and then turn and burn. It is a detriment to most entrepreneurs to live their life that way because they're not willing to go through uncomfortableness now so they can live like no one else later yeah they don't have

the same thought that you and i do right yeah they don't i was laughing about this earlier with somebody and he made a comment he said i'm a creature of habit i said man that's a bullshit excuse he goes what do you mean i said uh saying you're a creature of habit is just a way of selling yourself that you want to be comfortable. So when somebody pushes you to do something uncomfortable, you go, I don't want to do that because I'm a creature of habit. Right. Well, that's literally the definition of being comfortable is you keep doing the same thing over and over and over. I was like, you have to push yourself to be uncomfortable all the time.

And if you're not, you're not going to grow. You're not going to do anything. You run a massive, massive roofing business right now. How much are you guys doing in a given year? Last year did 40 40 million yeah that's that's not half bad yeah it's not bad yeah yes in four years in four years you started this thing four years ago yeah you know up to 40 million and uh 40 so we started november november 23rd of 2019 why then covid hit in february march yeah. Bro, it was terrible. You said something like life made yourself uncomfortable.

I was actually doing something else. We weren't supposed to open until February. We were like putting everything together. And, you know, you get those spidey senses. I think entrepreneurs, their intuition is what makes them great. I had this intuition that we need to go now. Like, it's all fucked up. None of it's going to be right. We're going to make a ton of of mistakes but let's go now and uh i said let's just do it so i called up my business partner said man let's just start tomorrow

and he's like why i said look i'm getting deals i'm just ready to go man let's just do this i'll take it on we had no website we had no office we had no we had no business but we had nothing yeah and uh we did and it was crazy because you think back at that let's say covid had hit in february we're supposed to start we probably wouldn't start it because you've been like let's see how this goes the world shut down yeah and uh so it's it's those decisions made of being able to be uncomfortable put yourself out there could change your life dude it done is better and perfect so you just call on your partner say we're going i don't need a website i don't need you door knocking you get in that account you get in that first check it creates confidence certainty this works i don't

need it now you'll get it but i don't need all that other shit just go do and it is something most entrepreneurs want to be perfect all set up i need the office i need the computers i need no fucking generate revenue just go just go right and you're gonna fuck it up along the way while you're doing that a lot like you said but just go man right um so you have this massive roofing company but where does that stem from why get into roofing four years ago i was in the fittest industry managing health clubs which like has no lakes at all whatsoever and uh i saw people having success in roofing and like it was a huge industry especially in Texas and I was actually in Michigan at the time I was up in Detroit which I love Detroit by the way like

Detroit gets hated on it's beautiful it's too cold for me but it's great for sure and I told my wife one day I was like man these dudes are killing it in roofing and so for me I like to look at what's the problem and can I provide a solution and if I can't provide a solution I don't want any part of it well I saw in Texas in W west uh there was contractors had a bad name so it's like man let's take the same type of like service and fitness where you know somebody comes in 40 pounds overweight man and like i used to love when those people came in because they were insecure intimidated and he wants to make them feel like they're at home like and don't worry about that dude over there that's lifting heavy he's probably more insecure than you yeah

let me show you how you can get there and so i loved being able for people to see that and in fitness when you go let's just say like we love shoes if you go to the store right now and buy shoes we buy and we walk out we're happy right fitness you walk out with a receipt and a promise i'm gonna get in shape but there's nothing you get. So with roofing, it's kind of that same thing because you don't need a roof until you need it. And I was like, man, we could come in and provide like a better name for people. Let's treat them right. Let's make sure they don't have the worst stories. Let's not rip people off. Let's make sure they get good service. Let's protect them and their families and let's treat them like, you know, we would. So I told my wife, I was like, I want to do roofing.

She's like, what the fuck is wrong with you? a lot right and uh she knows like the thing she always says she goes man the craziest thing about my husband is he believes the crazy shit coming out of his mouth like he thinks he can do something he's delusional he'll he'll get it done what is steve jobs delusional uh they have a saying about steve jobs like it was the delusional mentality or whatever they say about him that's why he was who he was and why apple got there and pixar and all these things is the delusion that he kept telling himself it can't happen yeah right if you read the steve jobs book his autobiography about the glass that they needed for all the apple stores yeah it was gonna take months or whatever he was like no we'll have it in 60 days they're like no no way this is going to take six to nine months no no we're going to get it done and it happened right and it's just like

and that is part of a small part of when you start to win on a big level you have to have some delusional desires beliefs that are just bigger than everyone else's yeah and you got to believe it you got to believe without seeing it you just got to go and say, fuck, I'm going to go win. Yeah. It was, I saw something Simon Sinek said the other day, like leaders have the ability, their vision is so clear. It feels like it already happened. Yeah.

It is. And I'll see like memories pop up on Facebook when I was like, you know, three, four years ago and just running my mouth, like we're going to do this. And then now it's true. It's like, cause I really did believe it. Like I, I remember sitting in a owner's meeting in my our partner for year two we did three million for year one and our goals they you know they're like five seven let's go up 20 i was like we'll do 10 they're like dude

you're crazy i was like yeah but we'll do 10 in our second year they're like there's no way here's this and we did 10 in our second year like like what and it's because i believe that we would do it and uh and you know obviously i was not along for that journey but my guess is you put a lot of work to get there every man i said so when i i did when i got into roofing i actually worked for another company for about 10 months so i i moved back to d, knew nothing about roofing, started working for another company. And what I realized was I was the problem, not everybody else. I had all these big goals and dreams, but I was trying to push them on other people. Like, this is your company.

Let me tell you how to run it type shit. And that's just not good for any entrepreneur. And now I see it. I have a great ability to work with people. I just can't work for people. Got it. It's just what it is. Yeah.

So a few months in, I was like, man, another it's not them and it's me yeah i need to do my own so that's where it stemmed but when i opened the company i told myself for two years i'm going to work seven days a week i'm not going to take any days off uh and i'm not like let's say how your wife feel about that i had to be honest with her. Right. Because I was working this corporate job, making really good money. And roofing was a disaster at first. And I told her I need to do my own. And she hates it. She hates when I'm gone.

Yeah. But it was like, look, I will never be able to be a good father or a good husband to you if I don't chase my goals and dreams. And part of that business is you're chasing storms to some extent. So we don't. So I actually made a conscious decision, like all these, I call them roofer bros. So all roofer bros see a storm and they just run out and chase it. Yeah. And for me, I don't want to be away from my family. Sure. I have about two, three good days in me and I start, like I'm done. Yeah. And I couldn't imagine going spending two or three months away from my family to chase money.

Money's not a motivator for me, so you can't entice me with money. So when you're like, you go make 500 grand chasing a storm. I'm like, I can make 500 grand here. I don't want to go. And so we made the decision to build a true brand in roofing, not to storm chase. And so we wanted to, you said billion dollars. It's funny. I keep, oh, billion dollar brand, billion dollar brand.

The RR will be a billion dollar brand. I don't need to storm chase. I'm that good. I will be a billion dollar brand. I don't need a storm chase. I'm that good. I try to be cocky, but I don't need a storm chase to be successful. We're going to do it in our backyard. Now, if there's a storm within an hour or two of DFW, absolutely, man. We'll go down there and chase it. I'm not going from Texas to Nebraska to chase a storm.

That's right. I'm out. I'm not doing it. And I don't want to put our team in that position because I'd be a hypocrite to say, well, I don't want to be away from my family, but you go ahead. It'll, you know, nah, man, I don't want to do that. Hey, by the way, if you're an entrepreneur, if you do hard things, big things, a friend of mine, Taylor Welch has one of the best podcasts out called daily mind medicine. If you want to supercharge your thinking, your resilience, your problem solving, everything from how you do more and get more done to how you handle failure. You know this, but your number one asset is your mind. Bar none, nothing else compares. The reason

I love this podcast is because it's only three to four minutes long, so I grab my cup of coffee and I get my mind right every morning. You should absolutely check this out. Go to dailymindmedicine.tv or just look on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It's like a nootropic for your brain. Enjoy. How do you go from being an employee to someone else's roofing company to running a 40 million dollar a year roof i mean there is so much between day one in four years how do you bridge that like what have been the hurdles for you to grow find the right people have the right

pay structure like what does that look like? No, but one, I think you touched on it earlier. You said everybody wants the short-term results, right? You've got to have a long-term goal. Otherwise, you're going to be enticed by the short-term results. So you have to have an end game in mind. And maybe it's not retirement, but for me, I want to be a billion dollar brand, right? So what do I need to do to get there? And everything else that comes up now, it's just part of it. And I believe, I posted about today, we don't have problems.

We just have opportunities. So when something comes up, it's not a problem. Opportunity to solve the issue. That's it, man. You said something that I don't know if you've been watching me, but you have to decide what you want, which is a billion dollar brand.

And then you have to decide who you need to be to get what you want. That is one. I know it's two parts, but it's actually the first pillar of success that I preach on this podcast hard. Because in my true opinion, you're echoing it. If you can't decide what you want, then you can't decide or figure out who you need to be to get anything. And you're just going about trying to just make money and make as much as you can't decide or figure out who you need to be to get anything and you're just going about trying to just make money and make as much as you can of course but there's no direction to that there's not they what do i always talk i actually i reverse it i say uh which is the same

it's i go you can't figure out what you really want until you know who you really are sure right and that's and i think it's crazy it's like if you watch a lot of successful people that's what they talk about knowing what they really want and it is I think it's crazy is like if you watch a lot of successful people, that's what they talk about. Yeah. Knowing what they really want. And it is. How could you know what you want if you don't know who you are? You get this pre notion of I want to be a millionaire. But why? Money doesn't solve your problems. Right. It solves a few paying your bills, but it's not going to make you happy. Right. You have to know who you are. My whole life I ran and I probably the exaggerated version. I ran from who I really was because I was I was scared to unlock those doors and those demons that are there sure they were scary so i

ran from them what i didn't realize every time i ran from they just got bigger so i could never really face them yeah and uh but i didn't know who i was and when i found out who i was i started to understand who i wanted to be and who i was and then it was an evolving door and so it was it was setting that long term of man here's who i want to be and here's what I want to do yeah and everything that comes up from now and then I just got to solve the problems for it and it's got to be congruent to what you want and who you need to be that's it yeah and then I go in there so many times we go like we want to be a billion dollar brand right we have to go we go what can I do to become a billion dollar brand and I go no no it's not what it's who can I align with become a billion dollar brand right we have to go we go what can i do to become a billion dollar brand and i go no no it's not what it's who can i align with become a billion dollar brand

who can i network with to be a billion dollar brand who can i help to go along with me like there's going to be people who are going to to take me up but who am i taking with me and the reason i think that's super important is i think the life that i'm living my mentor is my business partner and uh he was my boss in the fitness industry and i laugh i'm like he was my phil jackson yeah this dude i was always like a top revenue writer everywhere i went top producer but i was a train wreck man like absolute hard to deal with you know sure like show up best sales people are the hardest to deal with the worst yeah yeah the worst and shout out to my sales guys.

You guys know exactly. You're tough, bro. They're all. I could give you my top 10, and they're all train wrecks, but they're my train wrecks, and I love them, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I want to help them be better. And, hey, man, he talked to me like nobody else had talked to me.

Yeah. But he genuinely cared. And this was 12 years ago. So the last 12 years has been in my life. And I remember getting so frustrated with them that it was kind of like the phil and kobe story i quit the company that i worked for where he was there and then i went and worked for these three four five other leaders and it was like wow man i took i missed when i had yeah and i told him one day i'm going we're gonna work together

yeah he's like i don't know man because and so i knew in my mind i was gonna have to create a company that he could come work with with me so when we started the company you look at his his journey he was so light years ahead of me at the time like when i met him he was a he was a rvp literally top five in the company he was running 100 plus locations i was a sales guy we were 100 levels away from each other and now i'm his boss yeah right and he's my business partner but i've made that guy a multi-millionaire so that's why it's so important that you bring people up because you could have a protege on your team right now who has more talent than you that could be better than you is going to do amazing things and if you treat treat him like shit, when he goes on and makes,

does amazing things, he's not going to take you with him. And so you always want to obviously network up, but you want to make sure you're bringing people up with you. And I don't open the company. I was like, look, man, I don't care what we do, but we're going to take care of people. We're always the people first. We just talked about that before we started recording it.

Like the key. So I told you that I'm going to do a keynote speech about good to great and the linchpin to me is people and you were just like yeah man because it really is and i don't mean just and i say this a lot pay to play right yeah pay to get to the table that's above your table or at the table that you want i firmly believe that but what i'm talking about is all encompassing taking care of the kids that are trying to grow with you taking care of the guys that don't know that are total messes they're totally out of whack like really invest in people and the good will always come absolutely right and so there's no way you can run a 40 million dollar your business while having massive energy effort resources time pouring into people talk

about that talk about how people made the impact for you. Yeah. So, you know, first couple of years, like I said, I was seven days a week and I made a schedule for myself eight to eight. Like I would never be in the house at 8am and never be home at 8pm like ever. And that was six days or seven days a week. And, you know, you said the wife, it was tough, but it was the commitment that I'm gonna sacrifice you know what i want now for what i want most that's it and um i knew that i had to invest in people and i knew that they the whole saying lonely at the top it's only lonely at the top of your dick and you don't take anyone with you because it's not lonely for me i'm always around great people so i don't understand that notion and you can't help everybody you know that But you got to see something in people because it does.

You're crazy. It takes one person in your life to believe in you. That could change your life. Totally. And when I meet someone, you know, they got it or got the great attitude. You want to take them to the top. And so what I would do is install, you know, 80-20 rules that, you know, 80% of your revenue comes from 20%. And so when you find those people that maybe don't have the skill set, but they have the right attitude, you put them in different buckets.

And it's not being naive. It's like Michael Jordan got treated differently than Steve Kerr. He got treated differently than Scottie Pippen. And people were like, well, you treat people differently. Well, yeah, because he's a superstar. It is what it is. And if you want, if I have, if I'm going to give you attention, I want you to i don't want an roi on it but i don't want to waste my time talking to someone that doesn't care that doesn't even want to put

something with it so i made the decision day one i'm going to invest in people and so when i found someone that had that right attitude i would literally be with them 24 hours a day seven days a week and i think the leadership component comes down to caring it was like i would text if you work for me like hey man how are you doing today yeah i'm gonna get my sales up just i'm not talking about sales man how are you doing and i would i would i think we always look for what's wrong as leaders you know man we're like oh he messed up he did this i try to look for what's right yeah so when i saw opportunities for you doing a good work i wanted to like reward you for that man great job to do things to over like oh it's like with your kids. If you want them to do more

good things, just overreact to the good things they do. And that reaction, they're like, oh, I'm going to do more of this. So I did the same thing with our employees. And when people started doing the right work, I overcompensated them because why didn't I was going to treat them well, you know, do events for them, give them gifts, whatever it meant, give them my time because they felt, you know, the accolades, but then overcompensate them so good luck trying to recruit them they ain't going anywhere they're the highest paid they're the best treated and then we painted that vision over and over of like hey man don't focus on where we're at let's focus on where we're going and i told them if we do xyz i'll give you this and when we did we carved off 10 of the company and i gave

stock options to people so now we have people tied in like they're an owner so we ever sell this thing or take on a big private equity company they're going to get paid yeah and so we have guys on the team right now that'd be multi-millionaires if we sold today and that's crazy it's crazy but they don't why would they go anywhere they wouldn't yeah exactly so they would focus on them well and you you're even talking just about the employees right i mean so i did something similar in the sense of I've had a guy with me now. He's my general manager. We were just talking about it.

Yeah. I gave him 30% of everything I buy. That's awesome. It's a big number. Yeah. It's one person. That's not the whole team. He gets the whole thing.

But do you think he's ever going anywhere? When I'm buying two to five homes every single week, and I'm buying three apartments already this year, and I ain't going nowhere. Exactly. No. Right? But it's because I want what's best for him at the end of the day and i can only have so much so if i go

create a massive number then he gets his piece he did the right thing it allows me to do cool shit and hang out with cool people and that kind of stuff right it forwards me life but attaching the people to your bigger vision is really important spending time with people is really important but the most important thing that you said without saying it is your intention behind it what you do with your time and putting intention with other people taking them to lunch paying to play and then when you're in the room what are you doing what are you talking to what is your focus on if you're doing this and you just paid 30 grand to be in a room with somebody like dustin or justin and you're there why did you why did you go you want to hit the cloud on social media what do you do yeah right is is intention with the time that you are given is everything

um and pouring into people will help you get further faster than ever before if you had to do it all again it got stripped away from you what would be the one thing that you'd focus on out of the gate and it doesn't have to be people so i don't want that to be i literally want to say if this all gets stripped away everything you've built yeah it all got it's gonna be your focus yeah besides the people right because that's it is a say cliche but it is uh just focus on sales man just doing shit like i'm just i remember when we started first of all i was scared to death like people are like when you're scared yeah bro like of course i had a pregnant wife i always the best timing it's so i have a so i have a one and a half year old maybe two time i have a pregnant wife that we had no money right i was driving uber eats

to pay our bills at night so when i got off at eight i'd have i was driving uber eats to pay our bills at night so when i got off at eight i'd have to go drive uber eats with my family i had no office i started roofing company uh and we're sitting at chick-fil-a for breakfast me and my son he's barely speaking and i go connor what do you want to do today and he goes let's just go work dad it was the craziest thing and the light bulb went off and i was like yeah let's just go work and so if it all got stripped away people like if you worry about losing it all i'm like no man because i just go to work again yeah and you go out there and you just do because you know people want it like you said they want it to be perfect they want the fancy office and what would i do i just go back to work like i go back to work and hustle because it's the speed kills an entrepreneur if

you get out there and you're first, you're going to win. If you're Uber, you're bigger than Lyft. Exactly. Now, Lyft has a marketplace, but Uber was first. Exactly. So there is ground in that. So when you want to know what to do, instead of sitting around thinking about it, just speed up your reaction time from thinking to do it.

That's it. And that's what I do. I would literally just go back and go, okay, let's go to work. Let's just go knock doors again. Or's go whatever our industry is maybe we're knocking digital doors whatever it is and just go back to work and you just said digital doors what i was going to say you said this without saying it with your answer you'd focus on social media and so would i 100 yeah and why people so it all keeps coming back to people because it gives you eyeballs to know what you are doing again if you lost it, maybe you wouldn't go back and roofing.

Let's just say you go to a different vertical. You would use social media as a platform to show everyone what you are now doing new. Let's just call it the music industry. Set up the studio. I'm doing this thing. I'm having this new band come in. They're recording a thing. You record yourself.

You talk about it. You would leverage social media so you get more eyeballs because if you get more eyeballs, you meet more people. More people want to be a part of the world and this big ecosystem starts to revolve again people don't use social media now the way like you just talked about how you were doing it as a fitness in the fitness industry four or five years ago think about what that helped you like the what's the word i'm looking at projection trajectory trajectory jesus christ trajectory that you went on i'm gonna make the argument a lot of that had to do with the people that caught eye of you caught wind of you understood what you were doing how you're doing it

and here you are however many years later yeah uh so we we have three i hate saying core values because i think it's crap like people put up on the wall they're like these are core values and they don't follow them right uh but i would say our maybe three principles that we stand on is uh first of all deal space the bills without sales there's no company like you have to sell or don't get a twist i don't care what you're in people like why i'm not in a sales industry i'm like what are you in like you have so if you're working a hotel if you don't sell rooms you're out like every industry you're in to sell so deals pays the bills um the second thing is social media you have to organic to be on social media and just the 33 30 like who you are your family like what you're into 33 work and like your hobbies whatever right and you have to post because you could be the best

realtor best musician best content creator best roofer doesn't matter if nobody knows you nobody can use you and so posting it and i saw that man like when i first got into roofing uh you know you knock doors you're gonna knock doors and you can only knock so many doors a day and so and i fell into the trap of posting just to post because people tell you post on social media yeah and by the way like i hated social media i i think i'm on like my third or fourth Instagram. I just started one like last year. The new one I have is last year. I'm on multiple Facebooks because I would delete them because I just didn't care. But I saw them like, wait a minute, if I go knock doors, I can knock like 75 a day.

If I make one post, it gets 100 views. That's more than I door knock. And we get it so twisted. We want to always say and or. So I would say, hey, Justin, if you were in roofing, if you go ask the roofer bro right now what's your what do you do and they'd say well you got a door knock and you'd say okay door knock social media realtor partnerships which one they'd go well I'm gonna door knock well why not do all three yeah why not door knock and social media and and so I started changing on my content and I started trying to be specific, like

target a realtor, target somebody with a leak, target an investor, target, like I got specific, like nobody just wants to see me on a roof. Yeah. Hey, it's dusted on my roof. Like get out nerd. Like who cares? Right. It was like, why am I on this roof?

And what value would a homeowner see by me on this roof and taking care of somebody and then showing my kids showing what i'm into and i remember i posted one video i was posting for like six months i didn't nobody liking it it was the wildest things because i lived back four years ago and it'd be like my wife liked it probably because she had to yeah because i tagged her because i had nobody else to tag we didn't have a company yet and uh like one of my family members or something like there's no likes and i did it for like man five six months and i was like this is a waste of time and one day i posted like a video actually like authentic and sure i got three leads from that video in one day and i was like in tears like this is the greatest thing i just changed your life you know yeah and i was like wow man

social media is the key because while i was knocking doors i was creating content yeah i was like why not do both yeah like and it it did it it we we became 40 million dollars last year because of social media i could put it on it i'll put i'll put half of our business minimum yeah is because of the content and social media because even if you don't get deals from it, imagine if you and I were sitting here and you had to go look at a roofer and there's a bad name or a contractor and you go Google them and they have four reviews. You go to social media, they have one post this year and the last one's from like November of 2023. You're like, who are these guys? You go look at a company that has, we have plus reviews five star on google in four years we have

20 000 plus followers on on facebook not that the followers mean anything but we have two to three pieces of content every day you can see our faces you can see who we are you can see the brand so you can find us so if i'm a customer and i'm fearful something going wrong do i trust a guy that's got 900 reviews and all this social media content so if something goes wrong i'm gonna be able to find him yeah or the guy that's chucking a truck that has nothing they're gonna go with the people that has the brand in the social media oh i mean this is everything people again you know it's interesting i always bring up my dad in these stories because he's a sales guy he sells insurance yeah does not fuck with social media. But frankly, I have to lend him money because he can't make enough money.

Yeah. And I said, dad, you just got to get on social media. You will find clients there. All of your competitors are on there. I don't care about people, what people eat. I don't care about little kittens. And I don't care, you know, like dad, you're not using it right. It goes back to intention.

Yeah, you can scroll through social media look at all tits and ass you want i get it i mean it's everywhere right but if you actually have intention with what you post and what you're doing i only follow people who are like-minded people that i believe could be leveling me up like i don't follow like if you look funny enough if you look at my instagram search bar it is jay's and it is Rolexes and or Audemars. It's all I care about. I don't care about the girls. I don't care about, because when I post, it is about business. So the only thing personally I'm looking at are things that I care about, but really it's about Dustin or all the other people that I want to follow. I want to be a

part of my world and have intention behind it. then because of that when i post about real estate flipping homes buying rentals buying with none of my own money whatever it may be it draws the attention of like how do i do that yeah so then i have a coaching program to teach people yeah i love when people are like we have our employees all the time i'm not a social media guy i'm not on there and I go pull out your phone hey you know iPhones you can see people's usage yeah so when you go to their general and you see how long they're on there and these guys are on there three four hours a day on social media crazy and I'm like you're a consumer you're not a creator and that's why you're broke that's it because you're just looking at other people's stuff imagine if you and when you go in the room and there's people the average is

two three hours a day like it's it's so think about that a day a day like go to your iphone and look how much you're on social media like people are on there insane and i feel like i'm gonna do a test i feel like i'm really good i do not i'm not like very voyeurist don't call your face because the cut okay so where do you go you go to general general and it's like settings like useless time it'll have like your screen there maybe it's not in general maybe it's not in general oh it's just when you go under settings it's it's a display or screen time right there under general screen time under there you'll see it right above general oh above general yeah it's right above oh screen time so my whole phone that like the entire i'm on for five hours a day with everything was that just today because you can click on week

and it'll tell you your daily average rate so when you so i spend most of my time on text messaging same so two hours a day yeah two hours a day. Yeah, two hours a day. And you thought you said there's only two hours. Think about that. And you're below average. But what you're doing is, but now what I would challenge is you go to your content, you're creating and you're posting and probably replying to people. Oh no, I'm sorry.

Daily average, 34 minutes. 34. So I guess a week is two hours. Yeah, I know. I'm like two hours a day i know it was a fucking two i'm like two hours a day but you're probably but you're probably creating i am creating and i am posting but still 30 so daily average 34 minutes it's crazy that people are on there non-stop but yet they're not they're just consuming content they're not creating it so so what is national average on daily

we felt like when i every time that i see you on it's always two hours plus pretty so i'm 34 minutes i knew i was less because i don't do a whole lot of voyeur stuff but i'll post right like i'll post when you and i are here and i'll do that so they count all that shit but so again i think anyone needs to rewind this last 10 minutes or so because i think this conversation about social media really needs to be understood here. I don't have the biggest, I don't have 10 million followers. I don't think you have that many, you know, but what you're trying to do is gain eyeballs. You said something that really hit home here. And I want everyone really, really to listen to this. I think this is really, really important

is you spent the better part of six months posting every single day and getting two people to like it. And on the, the you know start of the seven month you made a post you got three clients and that is usually a part where people don't understand again immediate gratification they think they should post they can should get a client yep you might post for six months you might even post for a year you get nothing but it's when you start to get that momentum people start to see you that that ball ball starts to roll yeah but just like gary v i mean i just have adopted that like you just post consistently no matter what doesn't have to be perfect with intention and your end result of why you're

doing it will hit one day or another right and you're gonna whether it goes viral or whatever it may be but if you don't post you don't go out there and get it and it goes back to a little bit of what i preach which is like people don't ask for what they want anymore they just expect it to show up like they're entitled like i just want a million dollars i want to live in dustin's neighborhood well how many hours are you working are you working eight at eight for seven days a week for the two years straight sure aren't you're not listening you're not living in dustin's neighborhood yeah. Yeah, they want it all. Now, I had a conversation with a sales rep a couple months ago. He's like, I got to get a part-time job.

It makes like 80 grand a year. And I'm like, for what? Again, because now, 80 grand, if you're not making six feet, you have to make over 100,000 to make it. And I said, what do I need to do? I said, let's walk through your day. Because usually, look, man, if you don't have the prize, it's because your process is broken. So let's walk through what you're doing.

This guy was working four days a week, right? He was actually working about three to five hours a day. So we looked at, he was only working 24 to five hours. So I said, I want you to Google the national average. Because we always think average. What's the average home size? We accept average. That's why everybody searches what average is. So said search what like average household income is households that's two people

and it was like 64 grand or 66 or something like that right and i said now i want you to google what the average work week is he's like 40 hours what's your point i said so you don't even work the average but you're expecting to make more i said you don't sound how delusional you sound. And you're going to go get a part-time job when you have a part-time job, right? And he goes, well, you know, I think I need a side hustle. I go, you just fucking need a main hustle. You're working 24 hours a week. You need to change what you're doing, man, because you're asking to have a side hustle.

The side hustle is only going to distract you. You need to have a main hustle, right? And so what we found was he wasn't putting in the hours you want. I said, now let's go to your social media. What's your social media? You're posting like once every two or three days. Yeah. Who is going to find you?

Because when I'm sitting around, never in my life have me and my wife sat here and go, hey, you know what? Let's call up Justin, his wife. Let's go roof shopping this Saturday. It's a fucking terrible idea. I don't want to do roofing and I'm a ro roofer you only need a roof and you need a roof and so if you're not posting and bringing value i'm not going to remember you when it happens and so you're not bringing value you're working part-time and you're complaining about where you're at i'm good you you think it's just going to show up how are you going to make

250 000 a year because i i have this i feel like my life changed around eight over 250 sure i felt like when it started allowed me to invest we talked about um and i'm like how are you going to make 250 what does it take do you know how many roofs you need to sell do you know how many days i can promise you it's not four days a week for 25 hours yeah you're not going to get to where i want to be and i don't think people realize once you start working like 60 70 70, 80 plus hours a week, man, I was working like a hundred. My life, I felt like I got five times better even though I was working double because the compound effect, I was learning things so fast, so much experience that

when you were working 40 hours a week, even though if was only working 80 i felt like i got five times better than you because i was able to do so many things and learn at a fast pace and skill level that it just compounded what i was doing yeah and as i was able to get better faster on the flip side if you're only working 25 you're going to get worse if you're not really growing right it's like sports and it's a great analogy you think kobe became one of the best because he practiced one time a day? No, he was doing three, four. It was a mama mentality. And he got that much better than everybody, then nobody could catch him.

Because even if they worked out four times a day, he was still working out four times a day, man. So I think it's a huge thing of people just feeling entitled that it's going to happen. So let's talk about your angel investing. Again, you go from homeless to now being an angel investor in many of the brands that we're all aware of. We talked about GoFuel. GoFuel. Are you allowed to talk about some of these? about your angel investing again you go from homeless to now being an angel investor and many of the brands that we're all aware of we talked about goat fuel go fuel are you allowed to talk about some yeah so go fuel some of the people i can't but go fuel um uh free rain coffee yeah um

the cole hauser's and that yellowstone if you watch that yeah uh go fuels jerry rice liquid death which is which is killing it uh it was because of relationships that i built yeah and i i realized that money wasn't a motivator to me i'm not enticed by money i'm probably enticed by two things shoes and disney trips i love taking my kids to disney it's there you go our thing love that but uh i wanted to create generational wealth yeah and. And to me, like, you know, I like some nice things, but buying, I don't need five cars. Yeah. Like, I literally, I have a personal car. It's a 67 Lincoln Continental.

There you go. Side doors. Stay out. Air ride. I rarely drive it. I have a work truck. Yeah. I don't have a real personal vehicle.

Yeah. I don't drive, like, I don't have any of that stuff. I don't have a Rolex. I don't have any of that stuff man um because i wanted to use that money to invest because this is what i found you're making 250 let's just say you're making 250 i'm making 250 well you're not gonna you can live a good life but you're not gonna be rich yeah and think about your lifestyle that let's just say you're going to save 50,000 a year right 10 years you say 500,000 well how long you're gonna be able to live for that if you're spending 100,000 a year 75 yeah if you retire you can live 10 years comfortably if you're lucky right I'm like

that's not going to do it for me so I have to create other income so what I what I thought my mind was how can I make money without it taking my focus off what I'm doing? Yeah. So it was investing. And what happened was I was investing, just say five grand, man, you know, 15, 20, 50. Well, if I invest, let's say 50,000 in your real estate, and then in two years it returns 150,000. Well, I just got paid an extra 150,000 that year. So now let's say I'm doing that five, 10 times in a year for two or three, four years, I'm going to eat shit. I'm not going to make the same amount of money I was making, but in three to five years, now I went from making 250 to 500, 750 without doing anything extra. Then I can use half of that money to save half of it to reinvest. And now I'm just repeating the

cycle. And that's how you start creating generational wealth and making your money make money. And then you double, triple your income. So instead of going out and buying that car that you don't need, but invest in an up and coming company, right? That's going to give you a decent return in a few years. And now your money is truly making you money. And now you're making generational wealth, not just living paycheck to paycheck or thinking you're saving money.

And I have this fear. This is my fear. It sounds weird, but I don't want to be a Walmart greetereter dude when i'm 65 70 years old every time i walk in there i see those people yeah and i'm like dude that's someone's grandma grandfather having a walmart greet because we didn't plan our life accordingly and then you look at people and they're like i got 10 grand saved up yeah and i'm like what happens if you're retired today you're gonna live off 10 grand yeah we were like naive that we're gonna like just all this is gonna appear and i start thinking about that man i think about that end game all the time what does that look like how do you get those opportunities how do you get the

the people so yeah so uh uh rogers healy my guy he owns morris and seager they're an investment company and just i was always giving right and he he says like you're my biggest, you're my friend that gives the most. And one day he called me up. He's like, would you ever be interested in investing? And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. I was, this was the first real, real one. I had done it, you know, by reaching out to people previously,

like working up my money. Yeah. Just close my house, don't get fed. And one day he reached out to me. He's like, hey man, I have these opportunities. Would you be interested? And I was like, yeah. And the first time I ever did it,

when I wrote, I felt at the time, real money was a $25,000 check. I was sweating. I was scared to, when it left my account, I was like, can I cancel this? Like, I don't want to do it. I was like, this is the worst. And, and now it's been life changing. Right. And it puts you in different rooms too. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, man, it's just the people right it was literally all boils down to people and we want to over complicate it and make it like what's the three steps to getting ahead in life there's not man it's fucking the same stuff everyone talks about you know the work hard self-discipline crap but it's people bro if you know the right people they're gonna

help you get to where you want to go that's it if you don't and it's the same thing if you're connected with the wrong people they're gonna bring you down but listen you did a couple things with seely and i don't know him i know of him you were a giver you got your way in the door because you bought him a gift that was more thoughtful than anyone else you didn't ask him anything for it you just gave said thank you for doing what you're doing then when you did get your shot you were intentional with your shot yeah you stuck around you offered more value you had intention to stay in his world that world led to an investing opportunity which probably led to the other three or four or five that you've done i mean you're a part of some like i love liquid death i drink as much as i love soda water so they just have a great product right uh goat fuel my man jerry rice like it's

just i can't get enough caffeine and energy throughout the day so dude it's so impressive to hear when someone goes from the homeless to an angel investor that's not just saying you've made money like you're on a place where you're a big investor right you're not just owning a roofing company like you're you're your business card says investor yeah that is a game changer that is how the big boys are the big boys right you name an uh a name like the Rock or Mark Wahlberg or any of these names, please believe they're a part of some companies that are really big, and this is how this whole world starts to turn.

Yeah, I think I'm wearing, I'm not an investor in this, but Mark Wahlberg Municipal. Municipal, are you? I'm wearing a municipal shirt. I love the shirt. Shout out Mark Wahlberg. Yeah, I'm wearing a municipal shirt i love the shirt and i shout out our walbert yeah i'm uh wearing a shirt it is man it's uh it's you know the brand and it's it is different man like we were me and my wife were talking about this today we were we were uh on the phone and she

was like i'm just so proud of you know i love you like appreciate that and she's like it's just crazy like we didn't have enough money to pay rent our credit cards are maxed out like you know six seven years ago and she's like hey you were living on a park bench when you were 14 like i don't know what that's like it was just homeless right yeah what do you do and how'd you get here and i think it's don't lose sight of where you came from so many people are like i don't want to go back to the past i do every day man every fucking day i think about where i came from because i never want to go back there and i think about all the struggles i've been through and i'm like i don't want to make that same mistake and and even

when you get in those rooms with people because we all know man you know you have two or three friends that they only hit you up when they want something yeah right and they're users and they only ask for shit and we don't like those people but yet we still do the same things yeah it's like you you want people to give to you and you hate when people take, but yet you only take from people and you think people don't notice it. And so when I create these relationships, man, I do, my intentions are always to try to give. And you know, people will take advantage of you, but I'm like, they didn't because they lost because now they've burned a relationship with me and where I'm going, you're going to want to be a part of that. So if you think that short-term win on me,

you lost in such the bigger picture, I actually feel bad for you. I don't take it personally. Like, oh, I'm not, you hear it. I'm done giving to people because I got burned. Not me, man. I'm going to keep giving. Just guess what? I'm not going to give to you anymore.

That's right. I'm going to give to somebody else, man. Like, look, opportunity is not lost. It's just giving to someone else. So I'm just going to keep giving, but to other people. That's a great way to wrap up this episode, bro. If you guys like everything you heard and saw, make sure you are following Dustin.

Where do you want him to go find you? If you look Dustin Gutkowski, it's easy to find. I think I'm the only Dustin Gutkowski in the United States. Spell your last name, bro. G-U-T-K-O-W-S-K-I. On Instagram, it's Dustin Gutkowski, R-R. Facebook, YouTube, you can find it. So I appreciate it, man.

He's a real one. He's a real cool dude. Happy to have you on this episode, dude. This is going to be fire. I know it for sure. Appreciate it, man. Thank you. Appreciate you guys.

See you on the next episode. Entrepreneur DNA. Peace.