Dustin Heiner: How To Make Passive Income And Retire Early

Welcome to the Scaling Success Stories series!

If you’re new to this series, I ask online entrepreneurs questions regarding growing and scaling their business.

This is the series description:

You can get your fill of online business tips by reading the other interviews on the Scaling Success Stories page.

Interview with Dustin Heiner from Master Passive Income

It was my pleasure interviewing Dustin, founder of Master Passive Income, the blog that teaches people how to be able to quit their job by investing in real estate and rental properties. Dustin shares the strategies that he used to quit his job at the age of 37 with enough passive income to be financially independent.

Check out what Dustin had to say to my questions!

1. Why did you start an online business and how does your passion still drive your business’ growth today?

Since 2007, I had been working really hard investing in real estate so I could quit my job.

Year after year, I was buying more properties and growing the business. As time got closer for me to actually quit my job, I started telling people what I was doing and how I was doing it.

Many people were asking me how I did it and wanted me to coach them to do the same thing.

About a dozen friends and family members later, I realized that there had to be a better way than just me coaching and teaching people one on one.

I needed a way to reach more people with this great information on how they can quit their jobs by investing in real estate and starting an online business was the perfect solution.

Nine years after I started investing in rental properties, I was blessed to have enough properties and enough passive income coming in every month to quit my job.

Now, I will never need a job again and have financial independence and financial freedom because of the passive income that I make from my properties.

The entire goal of my online business is to help people, guiding them to financial freedom with real estate rental properties.

Obviously, a great side benefit of this is that my online business makes even more money for me that I can then invest back into real estate.

As the online business grows, my reach for investing opportunities grow as well.

Many investors find me because of my online business and we work together to invest in even more properties. So there are many great reasons why my online business is a great benefit to me, as well as to the people I help.

2. At what point did you realize that your business was “taking off” and that you could really make money from it?

After about three years of doing the online business as a hobby, I realized that I needed to put more effort into helping more people. That would be with creating online courses as well as one-on-one and group coaching to help people get past the fear of investing in real estate.

Originally, I just had my blog and a few best-selling books on business that made me very little money.

It was when I created a course to help more people — that is when the business really took a turn to make money.

On top of that, I started the Master Passive Income Podcast which really increased the amount of exposure I had to customers.

An added benefit that cannot be overlooked is that a podcast really helps your personality to come through. People either love to listen to you or hate listening to you so they either keep listening or turn it off.

I found that my coaching business and course really took off as people began to realize how much I cared about them and the passion that I have for this business.

It was very fulfilling when I realized that this online business was more than just a hobby. I felt as if all of the hard work for the last three years were paying off and now the business was doing well.

Each time I sell a course or start coaching someone, the money they receive is a validation of all the hard work that I put into the business. And it is now paying off very well.

3.  At what point did you realize you were living the life you wanted to?

Since I already quit my job because I had passive income, my life was fantastic. I didn’t need to find a job, I had plenty of money, and did need to worry about bills.

Another huge benefit is I didn’t have anybody telling me what to do.

The one part of me with not having a job is that the drive to produce something wasn’t being fulfilled. That drive has definitely been taken over by the online business.

Now, I have something that takes my creative abilities, the value that I bring to the business, and benefits many people all at the same time.

I get so many emails and comments from people sharing that they have changed their lives because of what I teach and how I teach it. That is the most rewarding part of my business.

4. One of the biggest fears of outsourcing is trusting the people you hire to run your business the way you would. How did you overcome this and where did you find the right freelancers and employees to help you grow your business?

Part of my nature is a trusting nature so getting over that wasn’t hard for me in general.

My wife, on the other hand, is not as trusting so it took a lot of work for both of us to get the point where we could hire people for our business.

Because of our real estate business where I invest thousands of miles from where I live, I’m forced to hire people to do the business.

This may be an automatic business owner with employees, contractors, etc. that run the business without me.

With the online business, finding people to outsource parts of my business is not a fear that I have. The only concern I have is that I don’t waste money on people who don’t know what they’re doing or can’t fulfill the role that I require of them.

For me, what I like to do is talk with other business owners that would refer me to people that fulfill the roles that I need.

I heavily rely on references and prior work experience for me to hire somebody.

I will take a chance on someone who has no experience but they’re not going to get paid very much if anything at all. If they want to work with me and learn, then we can go from there.

If they are good and are worth what they want to get paid, then I will pay them.

I currently have three people working with me on my online business and many in my real estate rental property business.

I only work with people that I actually like to talk to.

If somebody has a personality that differs from mine where it’s hard to have a conversation every time, then I usually don’t work with that person.

Life is too short to work with people that you don’t, or can’t, get along with personality-wise.

This is not saying anything negative about them, it’s just that I choose to work with people who have personalities that are encouraging, trusting, and other great characteristics of good employees.

5. A common myth is that as you grow and scale your business, you have to sell your soul to make money, especially when you venture into paid advertising. How do you debunk this myth in your business?

I don’t agree with the thought that you would have to sell your soul to make money and grow your business.

I’ve grown my business just by helping more and more people.

I made thousands of dollars without any ads at all and will continue to do so. That is not saying that I will not do ads. In fact, I just started looking into online ads to help reach more people.

The perspective that you need to have is that your whole goal is to serve other people.

One way to look at it is if I don’t reach as many people as possible with this amazing message that they can quit their job with rental properties, then I am doing a disservice to many people who need to know this information.

So basically, I am being selfish by not serving more people.

And one way to serve more people is to get the word out about your services through ads.

The big key is to take the focus off of money and put all the focus on serving more and more people.

I give away so much free content on how to invest that my students love working with me because of how much I know and how much I give away for free.

That is not to say I give away the barn for free, everything that I give away for free is 10% of what they need to know because there is so much to learn about investing.

6. Why do you think most people fail to grow their businesses and what advice would you offer them to keep pushing, despite all the setbacks?

I personally believe that marketing and getting the word out about your business is what is going to help your business grow.

If you rely solely on Internet search engines and word-of-mouth, then you are not going to be able to do very well.

The more people know about you, the more people will know about you.

Your business is all about exposure and exposure can be linked to marketing or networking.

If you don’t market your business or network with others who then can share your business you are in a have a hard time growing it.

I suggest networking with as many people as you can. Get on other people’s podcasts, write for other blogs, work with influencers to get your name out there. You need to do anything you can to serve as many people as possible.

7. How important has niching down been (no matter how hard it hurts) to your business’ growth and profitability?

I am a fan of niching down but only so much.

My business is all about real estate rental property coaching and online courses and books.

If I would niche down any farther than that, I would really limit the number of people that I could help.

So, when you think about it, the real estate coaching business is huge. There are so many different ways that people teach real estate investing. Everything from flipping houses to wholesaling to tax liens to tax deeds, etc. and each one is a lot to learn.

If I didn’t niche down to just rental properties, I would be to broadly focused on all of real estate.

Doing that would be detrimental for my business and distract me from what I am truly good at which is rental properties.

8. What do you attribute your success to and how do you explain it? Do you think the same strategies will help you reach your next monetization goals? Why or why not?

I think success comes from hard work, determination, and a desire to serve people.

The more people I serve, the more money I make. I make their lives better and they reward me by giving me a little bit of money.

Hard work is something that you need to push through when you realize you’re not making money and there is still an end goal that you are going to achieve. You will eventually be making money but it takes a lot of work to get there.

It took me three years before it really started making any money in the business and now, I’m very blessed to have a successful online business.

Wholeheartedly, I do believe that doing the same thing I have always been doing, which is serving more people, will allow me to reach my next goals.

Business is all about serving people, and the more people you can serve the more money you can make. And the more money you make the more proof that you are serving people well.

9. To scale, you really need to have a systemized business. What steps have you taken to build those systems and how do you optimize them?

Putting processes and systems into place is crucial to make your company more efficient and smoother.

It also helps you to make money even faster because you are able to allow the system to work as opposed to you working.

I personally love having systems do the business for me rather than me doing it.

Having online systems like shopping carts, membership portals, sales funnels, email newsletters, affiliate tracking, etc. are all things that must be a part of your online business. When I set these up for my business, sales and traffic increased dramatically.

The system that I personally use, and I’ve used many, is Kartra. It has everything I just mentioned and more wrapped in one software.

Think of everything like ConvertKit, ClickFunnels, shopping cart software, affiliate tracking, membership site, etc. all wrapped in one for a fraction of the price of what you would pay for all these together.

I used to pay for all those different pieces of software which was costing me $500 a month. Now for a fraction of the price, I am able to have all those things work seamlessly together.

Because of this, my leads are better tracked and engaged, my students are better-taken care of, and my time is freed up to do the things that I want to do. The system runs itself and I just sit back and relax.

Without this system in place, I would be working almost all the time on my business. But the beautiful thing about systems is that once you have it set up it continuously runs without you.

10.  If you could speak face-to-face with yourself when you first started your business, what pearls of wisdom would you impart?

I would strongly encourage myself to create systems in my business as well as create my online course and podcast much sooner than I did.

I would strongly recommend doing those things in year one or two of the business rather than year four as I did.

Another huge thing would be to continuously serve your audience. Don’t try to serve yourself, just serve your audience. In doing that, you will benefit them and they will take care of you for doing so.

About Dustin

Dustin Heiner is the founder of MasterPassiveIncome.com which helps people quit their job by investing in real estate rental properties. He reveals his real estate investing business and rental property strategies that he used to quit his job at the age of 37. With passive income and monthly cash flow, Dustin is now successfully unemployed and is financially independent and retired from his job early. Dustin shares this knowledge through his best-selling books, online courses, podcast, and blog.

Conclusion

Thanks for participating in my series, Dustin!

As you can tell, it’s NOT EASY growing and scaling an online business, but there are some things you can do to aid you in the process.

Inspired by Dustin?

Now, it’s your turn!

I assembled the Scaling Blueprint to show you how to…

• Outsource Effectively
• Systemize Your Business
• Shatter Your Revenue Goals

After working with six-figure and seven-figure clients, I know the difference between how they function.

Let me help you start scaling successfully.

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Cheers to future success!