Austin Hill: The Entrepreneurial Engineer Turned Investor
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE ON:
Growing up as the son of an entrepreneur, Austin has been exposed to various businesses his whole life. He had started lots of businesses and had a ton of great ideas for businesses along the way. Looking to build streams of income and pursue a path of financial freedom, Austin, along with his brother, turned their attention to real estate. On the show, Austin shares his success and failures as they've worked to grow their real estate business by investing primarily in Alabama and Pennsylvania. He also discusses how they've begun to work with investor partners as a way to scale and grow their business more quickly.
In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:
- When businesses fail, you can learn a lot about handling rejection, reiterating and moving forward.
- A very important trait for success is being willing to take risks.
- Before moving forward on a property, it's important to understand what your goals are.
- Momentum is key.
- For those looking to passively invest, it's important to have great data to share with them to help them make a great decision.
- When looking to partner on flips, know what value you bring to the table and what you're looking for in your partners based on what they bring to the table.
- You can find good deals from wholesalers.
- Creating a win-win scenario with investors can work well because you are truly helping them solve a problem.
Timestamps
0:00 - Intro of Austin’s career
1:23 – Getting into Real Estate
5:52 – Overcoming Rejection
6:39 – Working with his brother
8:45 – Properties in Alabama
13:23 - Seller Financing
17:28 – Predicting Future
19:38 - Speed and Scalability
27:57 - What the future holds
31:41 - How to find Austin
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Full transcript here:
Mike Swenson
Welcome to The REL freedom podcast where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together.
Mike Swenson
All right, welcome everybody to another episode of The REL freedom podcast. And today we're talking about real estate investments like we do often. We've got Austin Hill here. And Austin is going to share his journey. he partners with his brother on real estate investments. He's an entrepreneur at heart. They've gone through a few businesses together before they got to where they are today in real estate. He's originally from New Hampshire currently lives in Colorado, and then they've done real estate investments in Pennsylvania and an Alabama got a duplex in Colorado.
Mike Swenson
And so he's working on building his investment portfolio works with finding partners who want to lend money, so he can have as many investments as he can with as little of his money as possible. And so we're going to talk about how he does that. So overall, just a really great story of somebody who's right in the thick of building it and growing it, learning as he goes. And he's happy to share his his struggles, his triumphs and everything in between. So welcome to the show. Austin, we're so excited to have you here
Austin Hill
Hey, Mike, I'm stoked to be on. Thanks for having me.
Mike Swenson
Why don't you just share a little bit about your background and how you got to getting into real estate?
Austin Hill
Yeah, so I came from an entrepreneurial family, where my dad always had owned his own business. He was the sole employee the whole time. He still does it on the side, but he was essentially installing file cabinet systems in Hampshire. And once computers got invented that really hurt the business. Yeah. So you know, my brother, and I got a good firsthand look at running a business. And, you know, just because of my dad's relationships he had, he still has a business today, even despite, I mean, who uses file cabinet systems now, courts, courts, maybe doctors. That's it. Yeah.
Austin Hill
So we started out and got good, just framework grown up under him. And from a young age, I always wanted to start businesses. So I'll run through them, I won't have to, you know, bore everyone with all the businesses but high school I did landscaping, started my own landscaping business. And then I invented a helmet that with a couple of friends that was going to be the base was a hockey helmet. And then you can use attachments to make it into a lacrosse helmet and a baseball helmet marketed towards youth athletes. That was going to be millions of dollars to get off the ground. And I thought it was a stupid idea. So we ditched that one, but it was good to get through that and go through a product all the way, get a logo, form a business actually develop a business plan. It was good, you know, that was in high school in college.
Austin Hill
Then after college, started a business with my brother and another friend called the buying platform. This was a tech startup, the whole concept was to create, I always always called it match.com. But for small businesses. So if you're a small business, and you're trying to buy something, let's say a golf course trying to buy fertilizer, you can log on to our website, and you get matched up with other golf courses buying the same fertilizer. And then you guys can combine your buying power and go to bid with much larger volume of purchase. And you'll save money that way. That was probably a billion dollar startup. So we gave that one a solid amount of time, about two and a half years, we ran that my brother left his job, we split our salaries to get it going off the ground and never got a customer we got, we got one customer on there.
Austin Hill
But learned a lot, still is a great idea. I think someone should do that business. And then really all through all of that it led us to real estate, which the whole concept of starting your own business to me is kind of like a professional sport. If you're if you're in the game, and you're on the team, even if you're the worst performer, and you own your business, if you're if you're running your business, you're going to be much more well off than someone else who has their own, you know, is working with a corporate job or something like that. And that's kind of that's always been my mindset.
Austin Hill
So I tried to start as young as possible in getting there, knowing that it would take not one, not two, but probably three or four different businesses to get there. Because everyone always hears businesses fail on the first go round. So that meant just start a bunch of them. Yeah. So that's where we are. And we came across a few great mentors along the way and are by no means are we killing it in real estate, but we're pretty stoked out to be where we are.
Mike Swenson
Well, I think it shows number one traits for being successful is you're willing to take risks, right? You're willing to bet on yourself, because you believe that you guys can come up with something. And yeah, if the business fails, you've learned a lot about yourself, you've learned a lot about handling rejection, reiterating and moving forward. So there's a lot of valuable lessons there for for figuring things out, versus somebody who's like, Hey, I just want to check into this job, collect my salary, you've learned a lot, and this is all education that you're now applying in your future businesses as you go.
Austin Hill
And I shouldn't know i I'm an engineer as well. So I was doing all this while I had a job. And you know, just trying to get there and I've left my job last November, allowing me to do real estate full time. But But yeah, rejection is definitely a thing that you come to terms with in real estate or just in general life, but I know the listeners here you're on podcast, but Mike can see me I'm, I'm a strapping young man, you know, with long hair and I've just haven't been rejected too much from a, you know, a dating standpoint or anything. So I had to go to business to find my rejections.
Mike Swenson
Yes. Yeah. Those folks watching this on YouTube can see your your beautiful eyes and your nice hair, your flowing hair.
Austin Hill
I didn't know we were on YouTube. Yes. Then if you're listening, you got to check it out. Yeah,
Mike Swenson
that's right. Go to YouTube and check out Austin. So yeah, yeah. Let's chat a little bit then about getting into real estate. So you know, you're you're working on these other businesses. You're working your job. Your brother's working his job. How did you guys get into investments?
Austin Hill
Yeah, so my brother was in Toastmasters. Which are you familiar with Toastmasters? Yep, the public speaking organization where you essentially it's just a bunch of people, it's probably like 20 bucks a year to join. And you can join your local community and give speeches, Table Topics, all types of different things, the goal to become better at public speaking. So my brother was doing that. He's kind of a wild guy. So he was giving a lot of like, pretty funny speeches. He was treating it more like stand up comedy, I think. Yeah. But anyways, he got some good friends in the Toastmasters group and one of them guy by the name of Brian Elwood, who is a realist was a real estate coach. He's moved on to coaching and coaching coaches now, actually.
Austin Hill
But he really became good friends with my brother never really talked about business with between the two of them never did, they just weren't good friends and go to the bars, hang out, just good buds, go golfing. And eventually, they started talking a little bit about business like, hey, you know, what do you what do you do? And Brian, at the time, was starting up his coaching business. So he welcomed my brother and I to join, really as kind of like a trial run, he would coach us up. And I give a lot, a lot of credit to Brian, he was he was a great mentor and taught us a lot. So his whole really what he what he did, and he owned over 100 houses.
Austin Hill
And it was all about 12 houses to freedom was was kind of his Montra do the burr strategy 12 times you get about $300 a door monthly that puts yet at about 3600 bucks per door or per month. Yep. And that's enough money to cover your basic expenses. So that was kind of how we started seeing that. And being the entrepreneurs, you know, we see real estate as a an avenue to other businesses as well down the road.
Mike Swenson
Did you start by looking at properties in Pennsylvania, or did you start in Alabama?
Austin Hill
We started in Alabama. Okay,
Mike Swenson
why Alabama? Talk about that journey a little bit.
Austin Hill
So we started I think it was late 2018. Just like, you know, learning about real estate and whatnot. And finally got to the point probably late, early 2019 of buying a house. So we looked in different markets. We were torn between a couple of different ones, but we thought Huntsville Alabama at the time was just popping they had FBI had just announced that they're going to be moving 5000 employees down there and making it their headquarters. Honda had put another 4000 person plant down there. And there was a couple big time like we always laugh but like Top Golf. Yep, they do. They do their homework. So if you see like a smaller sized city with Top Golf odds are that that's probably a spot that's projected to grow pretty well. Yeah. Oh, that's
Mike Swenson
interesting that you said because I was I was talking with somebody who had a franchise I can't remember what what industry they're in but but one of their ramifications is they wanted to be near a Starbucks because They knew that a certain amount of foot traffic comes to Starbucks. And if you're in the same complex as a Starbucks, I just can't remember what the business is off the top of my head, but but they're then going to be more likely to come visit us, you're essentially mooching off of the client drive of Starbucks. So that totally makes sense. Like, you know, if top if top off, does their research determining where they're going to put their locations? Yeah, certain businesses can benefit from all the r&d that these larger companies put into site selection. Yeah. Huntsville, Alabama, cool.
Austin Hill
Huntsville, Alabama. And this was pre COVID. You know, everything was sunny and perfect. Which it still is and always was, but we didn't anticipate COVID data. So we went in, and we bought up our first property didn't go actually go to well, which was a single family or multifamily. We were buying a single family that was going to be had the framework for a duplex. So we met with our contractor, we actually flew down man, our contractor, he was a good dude, we met him and his team, like, Alright, let's do this. He gave us quote for about 30 grand. We gave him I think $5,000 up front to start it never heard from him again. And never like literally never once again, did you return a phone call. And this guy turned out to be an ex con. And we just didn't read it.
Austin Hill
He came off as a good guy, he had a house that he was renovating. So someone, he does do some business somewhere. But basically, when we went to find another contractor, because we were still excited about the property we had purchased, we got quotes for 80 or $90,000. So he was way off on his estimate, probably realized it and just walked out with the money for one lesson learned that we already knew that was an engineering and actually was a contractor. So don't put too much money down initially with the contractor with vendor selection did not make that mistake. Yep. But I would say if you're out of state, or don't truly walk the property with the guy, maybe get two quotes or three quotes, lessons learned on that one, we ended up selling it, we bought it for such a good value that we actually were just about breaking even after all the fees and everything.
Austin Hill
Then we bought a few more down in Huntsville, we did a seller finance deal where we we had to bring 20,020% to the table on three properties. And we found another investor to cover that 20% It was a friend of a friend, we had just asked a bunch of people if they knew anyone that was interested in passive income through real estate, so we locked in a deal with them, he covered the 20%. And then we're able to buy three houses in seller financing with really $0 down. And each
Mike Swenson
were all three properties owned by the same person, or it was three different owners.
Austin Hill
It was the same person, it was a yield, they'd shot us. And if I could go back and talk to myself, I would have bought more, you know, that Wolf of Wall Street line, like, the only thing you're going to be saying is I wish I bought more. And I wish we did because COVID happened soon after that. And the market went nuts. So that specific market in Huntsville, we saw properties double and triple in value we had. So that really was able to skyrocket our real estate career from there.
Mike Swenson
Can we just talk about the seller financing conversation quick, because I know a lot of people are gonna have questions about this. How does that conversation go with somebody because I hear so many people say I'd love to do seller financing, but I don't know how. So kind of walk through what that discussion looked like for you.
Austin Hill
It was actually my brother who initially had the conversation, it was a property manager who owned a ton of properties. And really, with seller financing the biggest goal and I built this spreadsheet that kind of forecasts what the projected cash flows would look like. But break it down into terms where you have a percentage up front, ideally zero, but usually you'll pay something up front. And this person typically owns the property outright, so they don't have an actual mortgage. And what you're doing is you're treating them like the bank.
Austin Hill
So instead of me going to get financing, I'm just going to be paying you seller over the course of whatever term we decided. So in this case, it was a five year term that we had with them 20% down, and then we just manage it where the monthly payments were less than probably about 75 to 50%. I like to stay in that range. And they go over the monthly rent roll again. And that allows you to cash flow on it immediately once you get in the property. And then you have a balloon payment in the end.
Austin Hill
So the biggest thing with the balloon is that you're either buying it at a discount, or that you're confident in the appreciation that will go or a combination of putting aside the rental income. So we had a combination of that we were had a separate account where we were putting in a lot of the rental income that we'd be getting. And that was gonna be our plan. We never even ended up getting to the five year term because we just they tripled in value and we sold them.
Mike Swenson
So that's Huntsville. So now you're you're out in Huntsville, you've essentially cashed out.
Austin Hill
Yeah, I would say for now. And then really, the market got pretty hot. It was a good time to buy when we got in. And then it got to the point where the numbers didn't make sense. And we're just big cash flow, guys, we're not sitting on a huge chunk of change or anything like that. We don't come from a ton of money. We're not really playing the appreciation game. We're more of cash flow, and then hope the appreciation comes.
Mike Swenson
Okay. So then you guys turn turn your gaze to Pennsylvania.
Austin Hill
Yeah, we turned our gaze to really Pennsylvania, Indianapolis. And we did do my brother did I think, one I think he did one wholesale deal in Colorado, I bought a duplex here in Colorado. But then most of the focus got shifted towards Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And Pittsburgh, for me, it was a market, I did a ton of research. And originally I was going to do Tampa, Florida, and got in there for about a month and was looking at a lot of deals and just didn't like the ratio of rent to what the actual investment would be.
Austin Hill
So then when I started looking at other markets and whatnot, and great way to look it just hop on a Facebook page, you know, from whatever town you're looking at. And Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, just the numbers were pretty, pretty awesome. From what I was seeing, you know, you can get into a property for I just got a duplex sent to me yesterday $105,000, it's going to be cost to get in there both currently rented for 1600 bucks. That's great. So that's a killer deal. And I just heard it yesterday. And I was the luckily to be the one the first person to hear about it. The guy just texted me. And I'm looking for an investor partner right now to lock it in. So we're just trying to get as many deals as coming in and turn it in and burn.
Mike Swenson
So your strategy is you're looking to partner with investors, more than likely probably more passive investors, essentially looking at okay, I've got, I've got capital, I don't know what to do with it. And so I I've always wanted to invest in real estate, maybe you don't want to learn how to talk about maybe the the profile type of person of what you're looking for to help partner with you on these properties.
Austin Hill
Yeah, so I am an engineer. And I think Mike, I share with you that that spreadsheet that I had built, I really kind of look at myself almost like a, like a real estate weatherman. You could say, I have a model, what the deals are going to look like in the future. I'm not predicting the future, as far as what's going to happen to the markets. But I know if I have a specific property and I lock it in at a specific price, what should happen over a 1015 year term, five to whatever term. So I really I took that spreadsheet, and I've been able to find other people who are looking to passively invest. And I'm looking for really anyone that is a accredited investor, the people that we typically see are people that have some sort of remote experience in real estate that want to put their money in it.
Austin Hill
They don't necessarily want to be involved in it, but they have enough to pick out what deals they want. Which is pretty cool. Because if you're investing in some real estate fund, you don't know the specific properties you're buying, right. But if you're working with someone like myself, I'll hop on a zoom one on one with you and share you you know, this model I have like the deal I just mentioned, I have it already in the spreadsheet where I can show you, you know, name a month, and I can show you what your return should be at that month. And these people are able to look at those deals one on one and say,
Austin Hill
Yeah, I want to do this one, I don't want to do that one. And typical investment we're looking for. It varies, definitely varies. We're looking at a seven, seven units right now, that would be 15 doors. And that investment we're looking for is about a quarter million. But other ones we're looking at, I'm doing a deal where we just were closing on Thursday. That was $20,000 for the investor to put into it. And he's gonna get probably about 30,030 to $35,000 back in three to four months.
Mike Swenson
So he's getting right, I mean turn.
Austin Hill
Yeah, and you know, a piece of me is like, Oh, awesome. Why don't you just do that? Like, why don't I Why do I bring an investor and just keep his money? And really, it's because it allows us to do a lot more. We just bought one two weeks ago where we didn't bring in an investor and we covered more of the downpayment and you just can't do though is all the time, you can't be continuously dumping out your money and getting it back. Eventually, I'd like to be at that point. But we're where our stages are now we find great deals, and bring in people who have the money to get them. And it's worth, it's worth sharing the pie that way.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, speed and scalability. And as you're, you're bringing the acquisition to the table, because you can find a good deal. And yeah, you don't want to be limited by Hey, my cash is tied up right now, what you want to be able to do is say yes, to every good deal that comes along, you just have to line up enough partners to say, okay, you know, let's just say I've got 1010 partners here, and good deal comes my way. Okay, this partner just invested in the last deal. So now I'll look to this other partner, or each of them have also different criteria, different things, they like investing in different types of properties, maybe certain locations, too.
Mike Swenson
And so I know, at least for me, the investors that we work with, I always talk about how I'm kind of like a little bit of a matchmaker here, where you want to match up a right fit investment for the right person. And so yeah, you know, you and your brother want to just be able to say, yes, how many can I do and not be held up by the money? And yeah, as the pie grows faster, you're going to be able to take advantage that versus saying, hey, my cash is tied up right now, I have to say no to this next investment, because I can't I can't fund it myself. Right?
Austin Hill
Yeah, yeah, we're really we're just trying to look at every deal. What is our limiting reagent? What is it going to be? That's going to slow us down? And then really, that's what we just try? It's kind of how we've been growing our business, just what is it that's gonna slow us down? And then how do we get that out of the way, and what's the next one, the specific numbers on this one deal that we're closing on? Probably Thursday. So we're getting into the house for $24,000. And we're going to be putting in about $55,000 worth of rehab. And it's, it's pretty good rehab, you know, there's, it certainly needs a little bit of foundation work needs some, we're knocking down some walls, look, we're basically we're doing the whole home improvement type of deal, like, alright, if we cut this wall down and take these floors out, move the door over here, knock that wall down all that jazz, but it's not me doing that it's my contractor.
Austin Hill
So I was with my contractor actually flew in to Pittsburgh, met with him. And we talked through this whole thing, and got that lined up. So once I had the numbers, we're in it all in $75,000. So I brought in financing on my end, where I financed 90% of the purchase and 100% of the rehab. So really, I was only looking for about like, after closing costs and everything, it was about $9,000 that we were gonna have to put out of pocket, which we looked at the option we could do it. But we decided talking about scalability, instead of tying up that money for X amount of time. We wanted to bring in an investor partner, so we did that he covered the closing costs. And then our business we need to keep running as well, we can't, we're not making money on this transaction for three or four months.
Austin Hill
So we had to, we had to bring in a money partner also that was able to give us a management fee. And really, it works out where he was able to give us a fee up front, cover the down payment. And then he's a 5050 partner on the flip with us. So he's gonna get his money back real quick. We're gonna get you make a good amount of money. We got our money up front and on the backside. It's just about creating Win Win scenarios. Really.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. And then that allows that allows you to to be able to go pour more money into finding more and better deals as well. Because that's, that's essentially the oxygen here of what you guys need is to find great deals to put in front of people that they're going to say yes to. And so that's where having a management fee, or being able to keep that oxygen mask on so that the next deal that comes up is an easy yes. For the investor versus that's kind of where you could be limited in the future to from a scalability perspective is finding those good deals. So you need to invest invest in Legion, right?
Austin Hill
Yep, exactly. And we've got that, you know, we run our own marketing. That's how I sourced the deal that I had there. wholesalers, certainly you can you can find good deals from them. But I think a lot of both, you know, the deals we've done recently are all through ones that we sourced directly. Yeah, it's also nice when you're just talking with a seller and you're not a wholesaler, and you're like, hey, I will buy this property at this price. And you gotta walk them through what your numbers are. But we're you're not slapping another wholesale fee on top of it, you're able to really compete probably more than your average person could with with what you're willing to pay, just because you're cutting out the middleman.
Mike Swenson
So how does that conversation work with a seller here just just to give people not going too deep into the weeds but you know, you get a lead somehow from a seller looking to sell kind of what are your main points that you're covering in that initial account? conversation with them.
Austin Hill
Yeah, it's all it's it's different every time. But the main goal is to understand what their goals are. And it's all about asking questions, I try to keep it where I'm asking questions and keep them talking about 75% of the time. Anyone who's talked to a bunch of different people, you got to keep them focused, because you can be talking to people all day long and get nothing accomplished. But if you're asking pointed questions and set the parameter, where I've got about half an hour right now to do this call, it can go so many different ways.
Austin Hill
But typically, you're trying to uncover what their true reason is for selling. You know, if they've clicked on one of my ads, there's a reason they did, why is that down to a core? Like, what they might not even know sometimes why they clicked on it, is by asking enough questions, eventually, you'll get to that implication of buying their house, like, how is this going to truly help you. And by driving that in, it almost gets them excited to sell it. And not arbitrarily like, you're not you're not like swindling them or anything, you're being truthful, you truly understand what their goals are, and you're providing a solution for them. So they get excited about it.
Mike Swenson
And I think that's one of the things that sometimes people don't understand about working with investors is you truly are helping them solve a problem. You know, if if people want to list on the the MLS, it's because they want to maximize time they're okay with people being in their house, and their house is in a condition that is probably worth having people come in. Sometimes people don't want people in their house. You know, COVID is a great example of that. I ran across a seller who has a grandchild in their home that was just born two weeks ago.
Mike Swenson
And he's like, Look, I'm sorry, not not willing to risk having strangers come in my house and and have my my first grandchild be susceptible to picking up an illness from people coming in the house. So that's real, right? And yet, the timeline is they're looking to sell. And so you're you're providing a solution, you're helping them. But they don't want to list on the MLS, they don't want people to come to their house. So you're helping them out?
Austin Hill
Yeah, absolutely. And I think you know, it's always a trade off. Try to be as upfront as possible as well with them. The reason that you're selling more than MLS is because those people aren't trying to make money off your house, you're able to sell to a family who's really excited about living there and whatnot. And whether it's a flip or a buying hold. From an investor standpoint, you just got to be real with them. Like, what, I'm not going to live in this house, I'm going to try and make money off of it. But we got to come to a win win scenario where you can feel comfortable about the price that you're selling it for, and I'm gonna still, you know, make make money on it. Try to be realistic to you know, you're not making crazy amounts of money.
Mike Swenson
So what, what is the future hold then. So now you guys are picking up steam? You've got investors that you're working with you've you found some great properties. So where where would you like to see this go here moving forward in the next couple of years?
Austin Hill
Mike, I'd say we're going bigger. We're going bigger, we're trying to get into the multifamily game. Where we're gonna we're at we're already starting to look at him. But we're looking at anywhere between probably 25 and shoot 200 units. I would be interested in getting into where the SLP deals we probably would be I call it SLP. But we're we're bringing on a money partner. It's easier with the multifamily. Honestly, it's this exact same process is this small, 20,020 $4,000 house, it's just you're making much more returns. There's no economies of scale. Exactly, exactly. So it just makes more sense for us to go down that route.
Austin Hill
And really, our end game is to get to that point where we have passive income as well as a good network of this built up real estate, it's funny, it's a lot of heavy lifting in the beginning. And then it gets easier. You have the contacts, you have the relationships, you have the processes, you have all the contracts, everything is is kind of done for you. And you're able to, you know, allocate your time elsewhere. So my end goal, what I studied engineering was to be just really renewable energy. I think that that's still a huge focus of mine and should be for, I think the world, but it's not talked about enough still. There's a lot of other things going on. So I understand, but it's going back into that and this is getting deep here. But if you look at I was working in corporate America, and I could have worked 2030 years than a VP or shoot even as CEO after a 30 year span and climb the corporate ladder, and maybe could make a few calls See changes or a few different changes, you know, as far as running the company.
Austin Hill
But if I can get my own wealth through another avenue real estate investing, and then being an investor in the small startup companies and whatnot, that are renewable energy, I think that's really where you can actually make true changes. So that's kind of been my reason for my why you could save why real estate.
Mike Swenson
that's great. And to see the journey that you've been on the different iterations that you've gone through, do you know the number off the top of your head between flips and holds and that kind of stuff, how many properties you guys have done?
Austin Hill
It's not a crazy amount, I think it's like seven
Mike Swenson
And selecting the right ones can really matter. And you've obviously now you're building up momentum. You've got more irons in the fire, bigger deals, more deals, it's exciting to see it just keep chipping away, and it grows and grows and grows and you build momentum and find more partners and and keep going.
Austin Hill
Yeah, yeah, momentum is key. I mean, we did those deals in Alabama. And then COVID happened. We were kind of sad a little bit. We're like, Okay, what do we do here. And then we saw the value is going up, we're able to sell them. And now we're kind of like, I was able to leave my job. retool. And now, you know, our volume is going to be one, hopefully one to two deals a month we're working for.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on and sharing your journey. I know there's a lot of people that are aren't willing to take the risk, you know, maybe see the problems that can come up versus the rewards. And you're just a great example of you and your brother just continuing to press on, move forward, get better, and grow. So excited to see where the future takes you.
Austin Hill
Yeah. Now we're ecstatic to be where we are. And I appreciate you having us on Mike, if anyone does want to reach out to me, I was joking earlier. I do have like social media and whatnot, but it's not really from a business standpoint. So you have an email, and I'll see it. [email protected]. So austinhill.smi
Mike Swenson
Well, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your story. It's exciting to see you build and grow and you guys are going to kill it in the future.
Austin Hill
Thank you very much.
