Welcome! So, what's this all about?

Pop into this 30 minute episode, allow me to introduce myself and explain the purpose of this project. Construction and real estate, yes but entrepreneurial mindset regardless of your industry.

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

What is up everybody? It is Dylan King. Thank you so much for listening in, looking in, whatever platform you are on. I truly appreciate it. And honestly, I hope that you by the end of this episode, this is my first episode, get something out of this, or at least say, hey, something here is going to resonate with me because this is episode one. So the reason why I wanted to start this is I have quite a few little facets going on in my professional career. I always have ideas. I've been an entrepreneur for years. Um, and I'm undergoing a rebrand. Got together with one of my friends who does social media for a living, and we were just kind of brainstorming. I started feeling like I had a lot of different things going on, but I needed a way to organize them. What's up, adult ADHDs? Holla at me. Um, but I had so many ideas and I felt like everything was going so good, but I wanted to get everything kind of under one umbrella because it started almost feeling overwhelming that I felt like I was doing a little bit of this here and a little bit of this there. And what I mean by that is I am a local licensed and insured general contractor here in the state of Louisiana. Never thought I would be a contractor. We'll get into that whole ordeal in another episode about how I got into this realm. But right now, I started off as a GC in 22. I got my license. And since then, I started another LLC, partnered with one of my friends, did um our first flip project, and then I have made a few different offers on homes that I wanted, or actually, people approached me to see if I had interest in purchasing their homes that they no longer wanted because of just different different reasons. They didn't want to go through the MLS process, whatever the stressor may have been for them to still have their property. And I did, I've made four, maybe five offers, two or three of them were subject to, and then the rest were seller financing options, and they didn't work out, and that was fine. But in that time, I made another LLC to protect my say rentals that I was possibly getting at the that point. So, what I'm trying to say is as a GC, we are DM King general contractor LLC. When I did our flip, we were King Me Flips. When I thought I was getting some rental properties with when I was making offers, it's King Me Properties. Now, King Me, where does it come from? Why? Like, kind of sounds a little cocky, I guess, if you don't know me. Um, but it actually started off as the hashtag for me and Missy's wedding, and Missy came up with that actually. I thought that was like really clever. And after, you know, I mean, me and Missy have been married over 10 years now. After that, we kind of just like I guess let it go, and we quickly had to come up with our general contracting company's name, and I'll get into why for for a second. But I am huge on branding, I love a good brand, I love good merch. Uh, and I blame part of that on having a uh I had a gym for nine years, it started off as a CrossFit gym, and if you've ever done CrossFit or anything like that, you're buying the gyms shirts, you're buying the gyms, hats, all that stuff. So got really into branding throughout that era of our life. Me and my wife owned Flambeau Fit for nine years. I said it started off, I think the first six years, we were a CrossFit gym. So um we were all into that community in that in that lifestyle. And whenever why we had to quickly pick our general construction name is because we actually had I I'm the qualifying partner. So in Louisiana, I don't know if it's exactly the same in other states. I'm gonna assume it is because it seems like it's the way that it's it's regulated, but I was the one that took the general construction test past, so I am the qualifying member, so I can have as many LLCs and as many GC companies as I want, as long as I am on as a member, because I'm the qualifying member that says, like I've participated in a past in this regulated standardized test. So we had partners and they were not pulling their weight. Um, which thinks they were really good friends of ours, our kids were friends, like we took a few vacations together, you know. So it it was definitely a bummer and not really what I wanted. Like, I'd still be partnered with these people today because, like, yes, I wasn't making 100% of the profits that we are now, but at the end of the day, like they really got my foot in the door, and I really appreciated that. Anyway, they were not pulling their weight, like I mean, I wasn't getting any help. They were supposed to be handling the jobs, and I was supposed to be like the face front for the customers, um, handling all the paperwork, all the permitting, license insurance, kind of all that stuff, and um they were going to handle navigating the cruise on site and materials on site, and I ended up doing it all. We talked to them and it kind of went radio silence. So, you know, if I'm going to do everything, then profit-wise, like I'm gonna make everything anyway. So we already had jobs, we were home suite home builders at first with the other couple, and when we started moving forward, like thinking we were going to separate from the couple and create our own LLC, um, we really didn't have time. We were we were already on site at jobs. I was pulling permits for another job that we had lining up. I had estimates out there, customers were communicating. I'm pretty sure I got all the jobs that we had estimates out for. Um, and the reason why we were able to do it is because yes, I was home sweet home as the company, or or all four of us were, you know, them two and me and Missy, my wife. And um, you know, we all four were, but all of these customers were actually friends, family, or referrals from those other friends, family jobs that we had gotten. So all the initial contact was really with me directly and not the company. So I was legally allowed to keep these jobs. Um, but because we were already in process with so many gigs going on, we did not have time to sit down and be creative and me and Missy say, like, what do we want our brand to be? Like, what do like when you know we're driving past or like we're putting yard signs up in in front of houses that we're working on, you know, big renovations, etc. We didn't have time to do that. It was we need an LLC and we need to switch our insurance, and like we have to let the state board know. We gotta like do all of this stat. So with no time to think, I was like DM King, general contractor, right? Dylan and Missy, like b-da-da-da, like that was it. Um, and we're rocking and rolling, and it was fine. And I don't necessarily feel the need to change the name because obviously I did that once, which we actually dissolved that one because of the partnership, but we did that once. It's a lot of paperwork, um, it's a lot of hoops, and it we just don't feel like going through that again. But now with our flips and eventually our properties, we ended up being like, Man, we like King Me. It just resonates, you know. Like I said, it comes from our wedding day hashtag, you know, that feels meaningful. I have to have meaning, I have to have meaning and purpose in everything I do. Uh, it drives me anyway. So I like the origin of it, I like the ring of it, I like that it seems catchy, and I also like that if you as a customer want us, me, my company, to come in and renovate anything for you, man. I want you to feel like we gave you like a royal treat, right? Like that we changed your space and it's something that makes you feel more successful than the kitchen you used to walk into. That your new master bathroom makes you feel like luxurious. So, like, I also feel like it resonate resonates with with the message I want people to feel, the feeling I want people to feel when we are done their renovation. So here we are, we are rebranding, we are now known as King Me Collective. That is going to be the hub for everything that I do professionally, but that doesn't mean we are gonna get into some things personally because everything I do, like I said, pretty much has meaning. It's gonna come with some sort of past purpose. Um, and we're definitely gonna get into some woo-y stuff too, because my friends know whether you're one of my friends, then you already know. If you're not and you're just like tuning in here, one awesome, appreciate it, love that. But you're gonna learn I am wooey, it has to have meaning, it has to feel right. Um I think mindset is a huge, huge part of any entrepreneurship. So that is rebranding. So on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and even our Facebook handle is Kingme underscore collective. Now on Facebook and on Google, my construction company is going to remain DM King General Contractor LLC for the foreseeable future. Like I said, I think one, I don't mind having those as separate entities. Uh, GCs in Louisiana cannot have a DBA, which is a doing business as, because of like insurance purposes, etc. So we don't feel the need to rebrand that, but our handles everywhere are King Me underscore collective, and I hope you give us a follow. And um, yeah, we're gonna be along for the ride because I've wanted to do this, a podcast, for quite some time. I had one small one with a friend years ago. We would kind of just talk about everything that life really had to offer, but now I've really streamlined. I know I say like I have a lot going on, that's why I'm doing this, like the construction, the flips, the properties, and even the wholesaling. I work with an awesome company, it's called Home Buyer Louisiana. It's a team of six people. Me and Missy were number five and six that were hired a year ago this month. So we're like actually super excited and proud of that. The team is amazing, but it's teaching me another side of like real estate realm. And before you turn this off and you say, like, I'm not in the real estate realm, I'm not in the construction realm. Are you an entrepreneur? Do you want to be an entrepreneur? Uh, do you have thoughts that the career you're in nails like not gonna get you where you want? Um do you want to side hustle? Or do you want to see like how your mindset can can change your life? How it can affect the way you think about yourself and the confidence you give yourself to walk in rooms you're you don't really know much about. Does it, are you wanting to explore something new and you're scared to be the new person? You're scared to go in the room and know the least, you're scared to get in conversations with people who have been in the game of whatever you're interested in and sound like you don't know what you're doing. Well, guess what? Everyone started not knowing what the shit they were doing. I mean, I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing sometimes, but that's going to be the beauty of this podcast. Is my goal is to not only get into stories of things that have happened and taught me lessons and lessons that I have learned, but I really want to encourage others to try new things. I want to encourage you to step into the rooms that you're nervous to step into. Um, I want to especially normalize the fact that not knowing everything is okay, and appreciate that and realize that like we are all still learning because industries change, standards change, codes change, um, economy changes, haircut design changes, what people want in fitness changes, what styles, etc. People like in construction and rehabs change, the type of loans that are out there change. You know, I love being an entrepreneur. I did hair for 10, 12 years, maybe a little bit longer, like straight out of high school. So I did hair for that long. I worked at a Nevada salon in a mall for six of those years. Then I worked or five of those years, then I worked for the very first year, and then I went back, I think for two years after, to a pretty big local name here. Um, and then after that, you know, differences, whatever. I mean, if you've left the job, you know, right? Like sometimes it's just time for a change. Left that and actually went to booth rental, which really I became my own boss at that point. I was in charge of like whatever um whatever tools I needed, whatever, what am I thinking of hair products I needed. I was in charge of my booking, I was in charge of my scheduling, I was in charge of my pricing, all this stuff. So I think that is really where I started like feeling like an entrepreneur. Because before I was like, I'm a hairstylist, super customer service. I was like number one in like sales in our um in our in the big Aveda mall that I worked at, I was always competing to get those top sales because then you got your better commission that way. Um, but yeah, so I feel like when I stepped out of mainstream mall and like that bigger local name I was working for, when I stepped away from that and into booth rental, where I was really like naming anything that goes. Like I was my own boss. That was my step into entrepreneurship. I don't think I like super saw it that way, but you know, learn that's really when Instagram had just come around. So I was like learning what it was, learning what hashtags were, learning all that stuff. So I don't even think they had like Instagram stories yet. Did they have that in the beginning? I don't know, but anyway, so you know, I was really having to find how to market referral systems, coming out with referral systems. Um, and then me and my wife opened up a CrossFit gym and really, really jumped into entrepreneurship. The day we were painting, I was painting the walls in the gym before we opened. Missy walked in and was like, it's positive, like I'm pregnant. And it was like, this is no longer sink or swim. Like we are tread, we are at least treading this fucking water, you know, because it's not just us anymore, like this has to work. So we put all our eggs in that basket. Um, I was still doing hair on the side. I actually had a spare room in the gym, uh, it was like a garage gym, and I had one small office room with air conditioner, and I put a shampoo bowl in there and turned it to a hair salon. So when Missy was coaching, um, I was doing hair or on Saturdays after we had like a one-hour class on Saturday mornings, I would go in there and cut hair for like the rest of the afternoon on Saturdays. So the hustle has been real, y'all. But so keeping my hair to keep us uh clients to keep us afloat, and honestly, I felt really bad for like even telling my clients I wasn't gonna cut their hair because they had been with me for over 10 years, a lot of them, you know. Um, and then we opened the gym and that was super fun. Man, we met like amazing people, we still keep in touch with a lot of those people. Our memories like are irreplaceable. Our kids grew up like just around fitness, which was amazing, and I love that. They think working out is fun, and if that's all that the gym gave to me, the fact that my kids think that working out is something fun to do, worth it, hands down. Um, and now here I am with owning my own general contracting company. Started off with one small crew, we've turned into you know a decent crew that's full-time for me, and a second crew that was part-time, and actually they are my second dairy crew is turning into my second full-time crew, which excites me, makes me a little nervous, right? Because the thing about business when it grows, like when we started getting coaches at our gym, when we, you know, now we're growing into more steady jobs where like I'm having two full-time jobs, the pressure to keep the business continuing stays on you. Um right, I knew I needed to keep members at the gym to pay the coaches because they were changing their availability at their other part-time jobs or whatever, their other careers, they were changing their availability because they gave us a certain availability on days that they could coach. So I can't turn them away on those days because everyone relies on income, you know. Um and then in turn here, like I don't know if any of you are contractors out there, but if you don't keep your crews busy, like they're they can find another contractor very easily to go work for. So, you know, I had this one, I need to stay busy over here in the construction company because one my household needs to run, but also my crews, like they are relying on me, and now we are having a second crew jump on full time, and they have you know, two jobs already have retainers paid in their lined up on the schedule, and we have others that we are that in their bigger, bigger jobs, permitted addition type things. Um, so I mean, I think I know for sure we're good for like the solid remainder of 2026, but the pressure's never gonna go away now, right? I love it, I think I thrive in it, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't stress me out. Uh I'm in therapy every other week, so and when I joined therapy, it was more for like personal emotional reasons, and my therapist has been absolutely amazing and has really helped me through things. And at one point we were sitting in a session, kind of being like, Well, I think we've like I think I'm at a good stage now. Like, I think we've solved it, and I really was like, honestly, can I just stay on your books? Because with everything I have going on, like I know business is gonna ebb and flow, I know the stressors are gonna ebb and flow, I know good situations are gonna happen along with bad situations that are, you know, really gonna kind of make me freak out. And it's been great to just keep therapy, even though I feel like I am in a good place personally, emotionally, keep it just that way I can keep my thoughts in order and have a third-party person that is not in contact with is that is not biased, right? Like it's not friends, family, it is just someone to help me organize these thoughts, feelings, and stressors that I'm going to come along with, and that's just something that we need to accept. Um, but what we do, so we do general contracting. I started a new build. I know that's like so random, right? Well, so I worked for my friend's gutter company, and that really kind of got me into how many layers there is to construction. I would go out and meet the customers. I've always been customer service for his gutter company. Obviously, he had been handling all the crews and the materials and and stuff like that, but he didn't want to deal with the customers, so that became me. And you know, it taught me how many little questions I need to know. Is this structure 10 feet tall? Is it 12 feet tall? Like, is this structure 20 feet tall or is it three feet tall? Like uh how many linear feet? Like how many linear feet do we do we need a downspout? Is there a weird bow in the building where we need like an elbow on this downspout? Like just all those little things, and then I got to be on a lot of construction sites while we were pricing out jobs for new new builds being done by other contractors at the time. So kind of got into that. And when I got my license, we started a new build. Um, we actually started with building my house, so we built my house. I kind of subbed it out myself, but I wasn't a licensed GC yet. I had another contractor put his license up, he would stop by, answer my questions if I needed, but essentially I was self-contracting it. Started here, loved it, like loved it. Man, when the sticks go up and you're there in the morning, and the sticks when the studs and the framing, and it's golden in there, there, and the smell of it, that is just awesome. Like, I love that. That is when I my my imagination just starts going crazy. I love that new build process. Um, did that one, did one to sell, sold it, and then my in-laws actually moved next door to us and we built their house. Um after that, the market changed, and I got like really nervous. Like it was really hard to find like a lot in building materials because it was like after COVID, and then also after Ida. It was like a within like the two year time frame after that. Um it really didn't make sense to do new build for profit. Anymore after that. The numbers were just like getting so tight. House new houses were sitting on the market, etc. So we moved on to just doing renovations for customers. And we've been slammed. There was one in a half week where I think we ended a job and we had the other job on contract, but it was during holiday time, so they just wanted us to wait. It's in four and a half years. Like that's amazing. That's that's amazing. Super grateful for it. Very thankful for it. Like there's just like no other way to explain it. And going from like a hundred and something dollar gym memberships over here a month that like ebbed and flow literally every single month to contracting money, like has been such a relief. And like, yeah, I'm not afraid to talk about money. I know a lot of people are like, oh, I don't want people to like know how much money we make or how much money I don't make or how much things cost. Like, I don't care. I cannot stand that people are afraid to talk about money. How do we expect people to get better at money, have a better understanding at money, and not be shy to ask questions on how they can become better with their money unless we just freaking start talking about it. And I think getting into the real estate world has helped me with that because we're talking numbers all day, and you have to be like, I can afford it or I can't afford it. It makes sense for me, it doesn't make sense for me. I have that down payment, I don't have it. Like, like it's making me more comfortable with talking about money, and I was already on my way to doing that as so far as personal finances, but I think being in a realm where people talk about big amounts of money comfortably, not shy, not ashamed. That's the biggest thing. Because I was not raised with a lot of money, so we were also raised that the people who had like big money, like how nice for them, like, but that wasn't us, and I'm totally getting away from that mindset. So I was already on my way there, and you know, being in rooms with like genuinely kind people, not only trying to do better for themselves via real estate investing, but like trying to well, not trying, not being slumlords and giving their tenants homes they can drive up to when they pick up their kids from school and be proud of and be like, this is the home I can provide for my family, like has really showed me you can be a good person, have money, and do good for others. Like it can all happen. So um we have we went from the new constructions to the renovations, which has been awesome because, like I said, with the King Me name going on, it's like I really want people to feel like we leave them better off and we leave them more confident, and we leave them feeling like um they're in a home that they deserve, they work hard, you know, that they they love their kitchen they get to cook in, they love the entertainment wall like that they get to share family times with. They love the relaxing space that their master bath or master suite like has become. Um, and working with home buyers has really shown me how whole it's a wholesale, right? It's a real estate wholesale company, and it gets a bad rap, not the company, but wholesaling in general, because you do have shit people out there, you have shit people being like, I'm not paying you that, like like giving people like dirt money, um, just that way they can profit more. But the amount of deals that we have worked, and it has gotten down because of tax liens or um code enforcement fines, that it has gotten down to where like we did that whole wholesaling process for a hundred bucks, a thousand bucks. There's six people on the team. You know, now I'm not saying we haven't had bigger spreads, but I'm saying it's been amazing working for this company because I feel like this is the company, especially with me speaking out loud about it, my co-workers speak out loud about it, our founder, he's awesome, um, speaks out loud about it all the time because we can demyth the issues within the wholesaling industry. Now, are there still bad apples out there? There's freaking bad apples out there everywhere. Um, but we do it with people in mind first. We do. We don't give them less than they deserve. We give them what we can. That way we can turn around and get their property sold to investors, and these investors can make their profit. So we make whatever spread we can on their price and the other price, but we're giving it, you know, to an investor who's one, he's doing well for his family because he's going to flip it or rent it and he's gonna create wealth over here, but he's also revitalizing that property, which is bringing value of the the neighborhood back up, right? We're getting like um, you're giving someone an opportunity to have a house that they can afford that's in good condition and well taken care of, a house they can be proud of. And then over here, you're helping this person out of foreclosure. Like you're giving them as much as they can as you can to one, get them out of foreclosure, get them out of like these codes with like we have the ability to get the attorney work done when they have like issues on their title. If it's you know a house they inherited with um other heirs that like they don't contact, like we help them make contact. So we do a lot of legwork that these people feel like they don't have the resources for. We give them as much cash as we can, and look, they have to agree to it. If we give them the number they don't like, then the deal's not gonna happen. So it's like they have the right to tell us no. We're not like forcing them, you know. So we have all these realms going on, but it's all in real estate industry, you know. As a contractor, it makes me better because I can say, you know, this renovation is gonna push your house like above like the value that's of the neighborhood around it. You know, I mean it is up to each person, doesn't matter, but like if it's someone I have a perfect example. I have a couple, they quoted us out last year to renovate like their kitchen, their master suite, turn they have like a weird like hallway that's a laundry room, and then it has almost like a utility bathroom because it's not like a guest bathroom, it's definitely almost like a storage room with a bathroom in it. And they quoted us last year to renovate it, but the husband's contract was coming up at the end of the year, so they held off. Well, they restart they re-signed the husband for his work contract here, so they're staying here another three to four years. So now they feel like the value is there to go ahead and renovate the house how they want it because they're gonna be here at least another three or four years if his contract doesn't get extended again, and now they're willing to put the money in the property, like things like that, you know, and they were able to say, like, if they were gonna be here just till the end of 2025, then putting like a 30-40k renovation in it doesn't really make sense for them because they're not really gonna stay here and enjoy it for that long, but now they are, so now it makes sense for them. And you know, they asked me if like the neighborhood was keeping up with it, and it is because we actually did a huge renovation, like two blocks from them. Um, we actually quoted them at the time we were working or two blocks around from them, and they just hit us back up and we're starting that job soon. So, anyway, welcome to the King Me Collective podcast. I'm super excited to get this going. I've been wanting to do it, I've been having so many ideas, and I just didn't know where to put it all. If anyone would care, then maybe no one will care. Maybe it's for me. Maybe this is just gonna hold me accountable accountable, you know, to stay knowing my best, to stay as informed as I can so I don't get on here and like feel silly, but also at the same time, I am a person that is I don't know something, like I just admit I don't know it because like I don't feel like I have to know everything. And if I care enough about it, I'll go research it and figure out that answer for myself and to share it with others. Um, so you will find everything in one hub now to do with real estate. Like I said, I finished my first flip, we sold it in February, and I am currently under contract for my second flip, but it is my first time going to flip a wholesale property, which means we don't get uh like a official inspection, no proper inspections on it. You just kind of gotta go in with your own eyes and your own test, do your thing. Um and I'm really excited, I'm really excited because I know it's gonna teach me a lot, and it's going to teach me not only as an investor, but as a contractor. It's gonna teach me more numbers, uh, it's gonna teach me things to expect by finding things I don't expect. So I hope that even if you're not into real estate or construction, that you find something useful in this podcast and that you get motivated to step into those rooms that you don't know because I've only been real estate investing for like a year. Because when I did those new builds, one it was for my house, it was for my in-laws' house, and the other one that we did new build to sell, I wasn't thinking like an investor. I literally was like, I want to build my construction brand and show people that we can do new builds and they'll hire us to do their new build dream homes. I did not think of it as real estate investing for myself. So, really stepping into this mindset, it's pretty much been about a year, a little over a year. I've been like researching podcasts, books, etc. But really, just about a year have I like really stepped into it because August last year, and it's August right now, I bought our first flip with a partner. Um, so a lot can change in one year, but you got to put yourself out there. You gotta step into those rooms, ask the questions, don't feel silly being like, I'm new here, I'm I want to learn. People admire that you admit that you want to learn. No one should be saying, like, I know everything. Because we don't. Markets are changing, prices are changing, styles are changing. Like I said in the beginning, things always change, so there's always something to learn. So get out there and learn it. Um and be on social media. Like, maybe some of you are like, hell no, I'm not gonna do that, and that's fine. Like, if that's not you, I've never been shy to be, I've done public speaking, I've done advocating, you know, all that stuff. So I'm not shy to be here on social media, but I'm gonna let people know what I'm doing because maybe we can partner one day. Maybe you need a contractor for something one day, but like, how will I come to your mind if I'm not out here telling y'all what I do? So I'm out here to be out here to share what I know and to normalize that I'm still learning, and y'all are gonna learn with me along the process, and I hope that inspires you to not feel like you need to know everything and to continue learning. So, this is our introduction. This is what the podcast is gonna be about. I'm very excited. Um, I don't really have like an aspiration to be the biggest or the fanciest podcast. Like, this is it, y'all. This is gonna be me just talking to y'all. I'm uh aiming to holla at y'all once a week and just give y'all a catch up of like what's going on during this week, what happened to me in the previous week, things I've learned, um, and events coming up. So, thanks for tuning in. Share it, like it, subscribe, and I will talk to y'all next week here on King Me Collective.