New Member Mike Dugan Makes $25K Flipping Land
Jack Butala: Mike Dugan, a new and incredibly successful member of Landacademy.com, is a data base developer, and business intelligence programmer from Grand Rapids, Michigan. He's dabbled with traditional, single family residential real estate in the past, but he's currently focusing his efforts on making money with rural land investment through his company, Availableland.com. He's been married for 28 years, and has six children. Wow. We'll skip all that other stuff. How does that go with six children?
Mike Dugan: My wife's been a homemaker for a long time. She bears the brunt of the work, honestly. First four were natural, and then we had a gap, and the last two were little girls adopted from China. Yes, it's been a fun journey with that. We have from age 30 down to age 6 right now.
Jack Butala: That's what I was going to ask you. Can you [inaudible 00:00:59] all the stats, like their names, their birth dates, and their ages, all in a row? And then do it backwards?
Mike Dugan: Not so much.
Jack Butala: Because I have one kid, and I really don't know when his birthday is.
Mike Dugan: Yeah. Social security numbers, [inaudible 00:01:15] I think I have all those memorized.
Jack Butala: That's why you're so good at this.
Jill DeWit: I love it. Are you in Grand Rapids, Mike?
Mike Dugan: I am in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Jill DeWit: I forgot that detail. What's the weather like, right now?
Mike Dugan: We had an awesome break. Halloween was awful, rainy, and cold and miserable. Then the next day it broke, so it's sunny, we're in the 70s now, got those nice leaves on the tree, just great weather that's supposed to last for maybe another week, and then the not-so-good stuff is probably going to start happening.
Jill DeWit: Got it.
Jack Butala: Jill's whole extended family is from Grand Rapids.
Mike Dugan: Oh, I didn't know that.
Jill DeWit: Yup.
Jack Butala: Jill, yeah, you still have family, don't you? Down there?
Jill DeWit: I do. I still have family, a. And I do have family there. Yes. Yes, in Grand Rapids and, in case you're listening, my favorite aunt and uncle are in Byron Center.
Mike Dugan: That's awesome.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. They're two of our four listeners.
Jack Butala: Mike's got six kids, so we have ten, now.
Jill DeWit: Oh, we have ten listeners. Great.
Jack Butala: Mike. Like alluded to, I wanted to have you on the show, and thanks again for the last minute thing, I see it in success plan, reporting incredible results. First of all, how did you find Land Academy, and what made you decide to kind of go down the path with our program?
Mike Dugan: I think it's, basically, I've always thought there was money to be made in real estate, and I kind of, as my biography alludes to a little bit, dabbled with the single family residential with very limited success. Nothing to show about at all, and actually got a little bit of a black eye, and a couple transactions that made both my wife and I skittish about jumping into anything like that again. I kind of knew that there was money to be made, but she was very tentative, and hesitant to even talk about real estate-type stuff again. I think, probably a year or so ago, I think I had found my way under the bigger pockets forums, and started just trying to see what people are doing, how people are making money, and that seemed like a very legitimate,