Gary's Austin Airbnb strategy: amenities, guest targeting, and pricing

0:00 all right so in today's episode we're talking with Gary who is a former marketing executive at companies like eBay and also Chegg he since then shifted his Focus to Airbnb and has been absolutely crushing it so we're gonna talk about his strategy behind each property what his non-negotiables are we're also going to Deep dive into his pricing secrets and how he's able to capture the highest amount of Revenue as possible he's making over 30 000 a month in cash flow from his portfolio you're not going to want to miss this one all right we're live so we got Gary um here in the house he's been absolutely crushing it uh some of the listings uh you know just looking on his for his airbnbs are just awesome and just kind of textbooked of how you should be sending them up so excited to be having this conversation with you Gary hey Preston how are you you're good man so let's just kind of get right into it so if you want to tell us about your background you know maybe what you do for work and oh we'll take it from there all right sounds good so my journey right so I started in Tech so um my background has been in marketing and operations I was working for eBay for five years and then check many of you probably heard of check education startup so I was running the marketing team there I was laying us all the way into 2017. I have after that I did a lot of marketing Consulting as I mentioned before most of my work has been in marketing advertising operations and stuff like that and I really got into real estate investment probably when I first got my house back in 2006 so I did a lot of construction did a lot of Renovations and luckily enough my best friend since

1:18 elementary school or middle school has been in kind of in construction since 2005. so me and him have been doing projects you know since all the way back to my 2006 or so forth right you know when doing that I got really interested in doing construction but origami really interested in in your Airbnb businesses you know I started traveling around the time that I was at eBay and check did a lot of traveling and actually started booking places on Airbnb probably my first booking was I would say 2013 2012 or so so over 10 years ago that's when I started started actually staying at other people's houses right and just looking at kind of like looking at people's characteristics like their own homes right because I think Airbnb started when people were actually actually renting their own house out right so more like you know they would rent the house out and they would leave for a few days stay at their house right you know one house actually stated in Helsinki you know that guy was was was Finnish and he had a lot of the same taste that I have I like the same speakers the same decorations and you know it was such a like a like a closing environment he was we were friends we were pen pals we're still pen pals and friends to this day but we actually never met each other I only stayed at his house stayed in his bed and so forth right and I got really interested in Airbnb so kind of morphing that construction background and then that sort of Airbnb desire and also the desire to kind of do construction and actually make things look really nice then it really got me into Airbnb probably my first sort of Airbnb listing was about 2020 right so I started

2:37 dabbing into Airbnb for about three years now and um you know using my marketing skills using my construction skills and also using sort of that that you know the desire to to make something look nice and also you know sort of me traveling to so many different places kind of made me into kind of like my personality made it really really interesting to be in sort of full-time doing Airbnb and doing um you know property management and property investment that's right back currently gotcha no thanks for the background so clearly you kind of seen from all Market Cycles dating back to 2006 and you know into that you know financial crash of 08 you know kind of leading up to now so you've kind of seen you know Airbnb from its infancy literally to you know where it's at today um I know you know your shirt says home Collective so is that your property management company or what does that a company do yeah this is my home this is my property management company so most of our properties right now is in Austin so not only do I you know own all properties but I also do some action for some of our investors most our investors are from the Bay Area all my properties right now that that's in Austin is is all on Airbnb so you know we do our own management we do the the construction the the renovations the design all the way down to you know sort of setting up the place right so putting in the furniture and stuff like that awesome man yeah and uh your listings are awesome we're gonna get get into those here in a little bit let's talk about your very first property so let's talk about you know how did you find it

3:54 you know why Austin as well you know what are some of the reasons that Drew you to that market so let's start there with your first property yeah so it's fine right so my my partners at the current construction business here in the Bay Area is you know we together saw an opportunity in Austin this was back in 2020 you know sort of right right after covet hit right where you know sort of people there's a lot of uncertainty in the construction business a lot of uncertainty in their real estate business and what we started seeing was there's a lot of houses in Austin and a lot of people started traveling not traveling outside of the US but traveling inside the U.S you know Austin is a is an interesting place right because it's right in the heart of of the US you know when they first started before Silicon Valley a lot of people saw Austin us not only as the sort of the mid sort of Silicon Valley but a lot of companies actually were moving there even before coming into San Jose or the Bay Area and me being from the Bay Area I really saw a little Austin is very similar right you know you have a lot of people moving into Austin from many different places a lot of tech companies you know eBay is also there right like you know I have one property that's walking distance to eBay in Austin which is funny enough Apple campus is really close to a couple of my properties so there was a lot of sort of the tech side that's awesome that's very attractive and to be friends with you you know one of my number of rules about you know Airbnb uh property management is is or investing is really trying to go into a place where I enjoy living at

5:12 and Austin is one of those places I could totally see myself moving to like I mentioned before the tech background but also just just the just the entertainment value of Austin right so they have a really you know pretty downtown there's the domain area which is very up and coming and they also have obviously the lake in the outdoors right so it's a place where I love to travel to and the place that I saw a huge opportunity because of all the tech investment that's being in that property or in that area yeah I think that's an overlooked aspect of it right because a lot of people were you know chasing the returns obviously wanting to make this a side business or you know full-blown business but you know they're out the other aspect too like because we have properties where we like to travel to and we've done that we've done a family vacation at one of our properties in Arizona it's cool where we can just kind of create memories you know for in our family of course the cash flow is good as well but I think that's an overlooked aspect of invest into airbnbs and funny enough me and my wife were talking about because we've never been to Texas but we want to go and obviously Austin's higher on our list so definitely going to be staying at one of your properties when we're down there no Austin is a lovely place right and I think to to add on to that right so back in 2020 so my partners and I were like okay let's you know awesome book's very interesting right because we saw a lot of people moving in there pre-covered and even during covert and the housing the numbers made sense right so when you look at sort of the property value sort of the return on the investment from

6:28 just air DNA data looking at Austin it made sense in that in that case and also also adding on the fact that I enjoy going there right so another interesting story is you know during my travels when I was sort of when I left chegged my full-time job and doing consulting and in between that doing you know working with my friend on his Construction Company you know my wife is actually from Europe so you know she moved here right up after covet and going to Austin was sort of one of our first sort of uh uh sort of sort of vacation here in the bay in in the us because we couldn't get out of the country right so we went to Hawaii we went to to Austin and she just loved Austin right you know I have a I have a two and a half year old baby so when she first went there um you know she wasn't she wasn't born yet but when we were able to go there you know after she was born even my baby daughter really loves kind of like like environment of Austin's running around a huge back to swimming pool and such but you know that's kind of like how I started getting the getting into the program imagine because I really wanted to to go to go travel there and I also see myself kind of taking a break when I go to Austin to see the properties like oh it's a vacation many vacation for myself kind of awake get it away from the family get away from the stress here in the Bay Area yeah so it's kind of interesting that you say that because I know a lot of people you know Joe Rogan is you know a huge advocate of Austin moving from California so you know it's kind of off topic a little bit but what what's like how was the Bay Area

7:46 currently from because obviously you hear a lot a lot of these headlines about that areas in particular and then you know everyone's kind of migrating shifting over to Austin and stuff so what's kind of from your perspective you know what's changed in the Bay Area and why do you feel like so many people are moving to you know say in Austin yeah so you know to be forever with you I actually had that conversation with my wife about myself moving to Austin right because when you look at the Bay Area um you know everything is so expensive now in the Bay Area and everything has been more expensive about the covet obviously but when you look at just even gas prices right I think it's probably probably about 40 percent even 40 higher or maybe even like 50 or 60 depending on what kind of gas you're getting compared to a place like Austin you know we're looking at you know five six dollars a gallon now in in the Bay Area um the houses here you know like when I was looking at a comparison you know my the houses that I you know the house that I have in the Bay Area would be probably about one-fifth of the cost of the same house in Austin right and we're also you know my house right now is probably about two miles away from Apple just like the house that I have in Austin and you're looking at you know at least seriously like about five to six x difference in terms of the prices you know I I always joke with my friends like I'm living in this really weird situation where you're not living in a really expensive place but I'm making money in in Austin where I'm paying you know High property taxes in Austin but I'm also not getting the benefit of the

9:04 no state tax in Texas because I'm paying state taxes here in California so I think that's where people a lot of people see right and with the change in you know thinking about people migrating to you know right now we're doing our interviews you know on on air and you know obviously you know we're hundreds or even thousand miles apart a lot of people are starting to work remotely as well right so uh that kind of eliminates the need to stay in Bay area where it's really expensive and if they move to a place like Austin it really makes sense right because if they're dialing in East Coast or West Coast they're kind of right in the middle it's it's interesting and it's something that I always thought about but I never really actually moved because I you know my family's here a lot of friends here and I kind of like the fact that I can just travel to Austin probably once or twice a month right now so that's what I'm currently doing nice love it you're clearly it could be a spokesperson person for for Austin and I'm sure they would love that too so I'm going to share my screen here real quick uh pulling up one of your listings so that we can kind of get through some of your thought process behind this so so this is one of your newest listings which is you know clearly just from the first few photos you've done an amazing job so let's kind of go through the pictures kind of get a thought process because you know I always preach all the time right your photos are going to be your main seller and the way that you organize because a lot of people don't really understand like what goes into making a Airbnb listing great in this particular case you know you've

10:20 highlighted and I totally agree I think like you've done picked the perfect picture to kind of really bring that person in that's scrolling through Airbnb and then you know kind of figure out more about your property so let's kind of talk about your thought process behind uh you know each of these photos yeah so a couple of rules that I have right so I I think number one rule that I talked about is really sort of enjoying kind of having really an Airbnb or a place if you're really going to Market this Airbnb you really want it to be some place that we want to stay at so either the city or even like in Austin right like if even if you pick a city that you like you really want to have that property to be something that you really you yourself would want to vacation in because you really want to put yourself in someone else's shoes right and then the second piece is really understanding your city right so you know just an example so Austin gets really hot so I think right now it's probably above 100 degrees here right now in the beginning of June and in July and August it might even get to 110 right so having a pool is like a main necessity in a city like Austin and in comparison if you're comparing the Bay Area having a pool might not be something that really someone looks for out of all the properties that I have in Austin every single popular that I'm getting now I'm really trying to Target something with a pool because that to myself is is understanding my city right because in that City people go to that city they're looking for outdoor space they're looking for a pool they're looking for a place where they can relax in 110 degree heat so that's the first piece right and also really

11:36 understanding kind of like what the key dates with the key sort of things that people go there for so the second picture I don't know if you can actually look at that but the second picture I actually created like like a on the that picture so I don't know if you can really see it but I actually had that custom made so there's a sign that says bad decisions makes the best memory and on the bottom it says Austin Texas right so I really want people to take a picture um under that so they can promote not only my property but also promote kind of the city in itself right so this third one is really like I've kind of already dived into it it's kind of like the the amenities right so people look for pools people look for pool tables right you know I decided to put a lot of arcades in there because you know then it can attract not only males but also on females but also males as well you know I I also also try if you keep flickering there's a lot of things that I also put into this right so the bed selection right so I really wanted to to get as many beds in this house as possible because knowing that there's a pool there could be some kids in there there could be adults so a couple of the rooms I made it I made sure that there's bunk beds for the kids there is you know full-size beds there's queen size beds there's king size beds so there's array of different places where people can stay no matter who they are if they're the adult they're they a teenager or even you know like a five-year-old they all have a comfortable place to stay at because now I'm trying to maximize for sort of the family stay as well and then the fourth thing that I really want to

12:52 look at is also the the guest selection so when you look at the property itself it is funny right because when you think about the pronouns right so people are starting to do this now so you know on your LinkedIn profile there's the the she the herd the he the him the day or the Dem right but on a property I also tries to to do that as well so in this property I'm trying to go after more the females because from my understanding right also from my experience males and females tend to like different things in their properties and they also have different behaviors right so this house is a little bit closer to the neighbors than that I would really like so that's why I made the fence a little higher when I redesigned the house so these are actually eight foot fence so that way the neighbors can't even see me even from a second floor but also I really wanted this house to be more female because I noticed that just from my previous experience female cells tend to be less Rowdy right they tend to be less you know play doesn't play music as loud it's not going to bother my neighbors as much and that works for this closer space so that's why for this particular listing I decided to put a lot more instagramable items such as that you know awesome neon light that you saw or even that one on the bottom right hand corner that sign that's also to kind of attract more the female uh sense right and even if you click on that picture there's actually a photo booth in this uh in this property as well that does polaroid pictures it's in one of the pictures

14:09 if you go to the next photo there's a Polaroid camera right there and there's a mirror that they can actually take a picture like kind of look at their themselves before they take these polaroid pictures so I really wanted to Target the female side and that's kind of like if you see a lot of the stuff that I put on there it's it's it's starting to get more sort of targeting the female crowd right and then the male is also you know some of the other listings are more male dominant right so I put more like sports games in there and for the males on the other side right even though they're going to be louder but to be frank we do they actually complain a lot less about is impressive you might be able to see this as well right so you know not to generalize or anything like that but a lot of times you know the the guys would be louder they might break things but they're never going to really complain about something that's broken whereas the the females if they see something you know as simple as oh the light doesn't turn on or you know they're missing a hair dryer you know you'll get a message and and you have to kind of deal with that right where the guys are probably going to even care at all right so so but this bigger house is more male-centric so you see this you know the grill the big sort of Texas style barbecue grill you know there's a pool table there's a ping pong table and the ping pong table you know so many people actually play beer pong there like you know I have a camera that that's on the exterior of the house I see people that come in and out and everybody most of the guys take advantage of that ping pong table as a as a beer pong table so that's this house is definitely more targeted towards the males of of of the uh the genre here so this one is a

15:28 second property that you're looking at this one is also in Austin North Austin so this one has been around since July yeah and quite interestingly enough I think the you know I think this actually is a really good segue into some my next thing that I do with my properties right so if you look at the check availability here on this listing this listing has been kind of fully on every single weekend for the whole summer all the way up until about October and that's when I was actually booked out since maybe I would say about February so starting in February it's been already booked out pretty much every single weekend all the way up into October and and you know I talked to a lot of people about this right A lot of my friends who also manage Airbnb a lot of my friends who who are investors right and and a lot of them were like well Gary maybe you're just underpricing it right but I guess one of the things that you know the fourth or the fifth key that I also look at is kind of like the pricing in the area so for this particular house you know because it has a pool because it has all these amenities I'm really also targeting people that are trying to book in advance so I actually have a theory with the pricing right so I always obviously use price laps you know a lot of times you know before when I first started in 2020 what I didn't see a listing get sort of booked maybe a week or two in advance I get kind of nervous and I start lowering the prices but what I understand at that point is when I start lowering the prices what I actually see is that the quality of the guest starts deteriorating a little bit let's let's take a step back right so so

16:45 My Philosophy has been more I lower the price at the beginning to try to ramp up book rates so everything gets booked out all the weekends get booked out and if they canceled or if so if so I have some extra dates left over then I actually try to increase the pricing at that point because what actually happens when someone's looking at my listing is that you know every being like gave me the the rare fine kind of symbol on the listing that people are looking for it but on top of that now I think a step backward I'm actually booking people that are booking in advance so I'm guessing those are higher quality because they are booking things in five months four months maybe six months in advance you know they're probably going to be more of the type that you can trust your house with right because they're not the procrastinator attack that they're really thinking about booking everything and funny enough like the people that actually book that much in advance even if they're doing Bachelor bachelorette parties in the same note they're also booking their events so they're not even staying at your house that often they're probably out of the house most of the time but they're very organized and they book Things super in advance and I'm also perhaps getting a lower price but what happens is that I'm pretty much set up and I know that they're going to take care of my house a little bit nicer than someone that's going to book last minute and I don't have to scramble and try to try to fulfill you know Miami dates as well so so that's kind of like the fifth thing right so it's a pricing like really understand the pricing so I talked about figuring out you know the dates and prices do that for you right so there's an important date in your area they'll definitely raise the prices for you but for me I really try to stay

18:03 away from the Smart Pricing because I always notice that there will be Smart Pricing just tries to get your place booked out and they'll lower the price and you can get it booked out and for me I rather have it lower in the beginning so people book it and then now my listing just shows like it's really rare and people really want to book it now yeah I was so first of all like rewind the last eight eight to ten minutes because Gary just put on a master class of like a pro Airbnb obviously you can tell from his listings and you know giving his insights his thought process so go rewind the past 10 minutes because that's a lot of good information in there but you know going back to your Airbnb Smart Pricing an Airbnb I was assigned to Airbnb Ambassador and they straight up told me like yeah our pricing tool is trash so don't use it and so if you what like basically what Airbnb cares about is they just want people to get booked at a really good price so that there's people that continually use the they continue to use the the platform but what they don't care about is you know hosts and how much they're making right so that's why you know use it you know I use it I you know tell every one of our members to use price Labs just because from my experience it is the best the most comprehensive tool the way you know pricing Works basically you know if you come here and try to click on a few I mean you're so booked out that gotta find some availability but basically you know what happens is if you start

19:21 clicking through different dates it's going to change the pricing based on so you look at change you know 100 less it's gonna change depending on you know the like the demand uh for that time period so you know price using some sort of pricing tool is going to be key if you want to you know maximize your Revenue yeah impressive if you don't mind go back to the other list because the other listing is much more fresh right so to the other listing I've actually posted up less than 10 days ago so that one with the uh with the staircase and that one I believe like every day I'm getting about one or two bookings and I'm starting to get the summer books out booked out too so I think June is pretty booked out July is going to get full out and right now the funny thing is the only thing that's really driving is is my super host status it doesn't even have the reviews yet because I only had one person stay so far it's only got one review for this property so the Stars isn't really even affected or even even on the listing and people are booking it seriously to your point just looking at the pictures right and probably because I'm a super host I think the prices for this one I could probably go a little bit higher and I actually think last night before I went to sleep I actually raised the so price price Labs that's like a base price right so the base price for this one I believe before was like 448 it actually raised the five 548 so I raised it by 100 bucks so now let's see if I get some more bookings right but I'm starting to get most of the the summer days booked out as well and that's right on this topic right so under I understand the pricing so you know I one one other

20:38 thing that that I really really stress right I don't know if you agree with me Preston is that I hate the monthly rentals I I really do I hate that I don't like the weekly rentals as well and another thing about Airbnb pricing is they always try to force you to do these sort of monthly discounts and weekly discounts and I just I hate it and I'll explain it in a second right so they would probably say like oh monthly discount should be like 35 off and then you know weekly discount they'll give you like a recommendation of maybe like 21 or something like that and for me I'm like no I don't want to give any of that because um one of the biggest reason is that when I find I mean I did this fine experience right so when people stay in my house for a month not only am I giving them a discount but a lot of times if there's something wrong with the house I don't have time to fix it and they would really get upset over certain things right so let's say for instance if a light switch isn't working and if someone is staying there for three days they might just tell you on the way out they're like oh by the way this light switch isn't working but if they're staying there for 30 days they'll be like oh my God the light switch isn't working and then they would demand you to fix it and in the end they might claim to Airbnb that Halo this light switch was broken and a bunch of other stuff is broken and they might even not want to pay you at all and try to get a reimbursement for the state for me you know for a lot of people that started starting with with these bookings I would strongly advise to kind of lower that rate me for me I think the weekly discount rate is is less than 10 and the monthly one is probably about

21:55 somewhere in the teens because honestly I'd rather just book it on every single weekend and just have someone stay there for four days and then get the same amount of someone staying there for seven days right if they're booking it for the whole and for me that I could you know if something goes wrong at least I know that they're like oh they're only passing by and they wouldn't make a big deal out of it right and president I don't really agree with me I mean what's your philosophy on the weekend yeah I think it comes down to you know what target audience you're trying to cater towards so obviously you know the way that you set up your listing you're going to be able to charge a premium to you know bachelor parties Bachelor parties and so on and so clearly like just from your pricing and also the way you set up your listing itself you're going to attract a different person a different sort of clientele versus you know let's say if you just kind of made it a little bit more Plain Jane where it would just you know none of the huge like amenities like a pool you know like neon signs game rooms that's probably going to attract more of uh you know someone that's interested in like a long-term stay but I do agree like though a lot of people think that midterm rentals or weekly rentals are great because now your calendar is getting booked up a lot of the times those are going to be the pickiest uh people because like you mentioned they're going to ask for hey like there's I like a Dust Bunny in the corner like I want the cleaning fee reimbursed I noticed there's a lot more things because they're actually going to

23:12 be living there for the next week or two weeks or three weeks and I remember we had a guest stay for I think it was like six weeks once and I mean obviously like for the most part they're a great guests and we got a lot of you know revenue from that stay but they literally wrote down like two-page document worth of you know items that we needed to change and like and obviously like I'm gonna take criticism well just because I want to have the best experience for our guests but 90 to 95 of the items on that document was just complete BS and just like I just I just I don't know how a sane person could like say those things but anyway so I I do agree with you but of course it's going to come down to your Market your property and all these other factors and of course midterm rentals you know longer term stays can be lucrative but yeah I I do I think I'm on the same page with you yeah and the cleaners hate it too because when they come into the house usually they exhausted pretty much all their supplies and on top of that they probably leave a bigger mess because they've been there for 30 days right whereas someone would be there for three days and then that cleaning is a lot easier and it's gonna be you actually really want your place to be cleaned multiple times in a month whereas once a month you're going to see a lot of issues right yeah and I think getting back to this fight so another thing about the um the property is also understanding the city but also that the

24:29 amenities too right so um for this for this listing essentially look at this right it has a swimming pool I think this actually house actually or it also has a sauna in it too right and also the jacuzzi and all that stuff and I think we were looking at I think president now you you and I were talking to one of the um one of the one of our members right and then her name was Lila and she had a house I believe near the ocean and then we you know I suggested putting like sort of this kayak there right and I think based on everything I was understanding your city you'll be able to put some of these amenities that fit your city and you really need to do that because at the end of the day right like I have some listings on here that that don't get as high as bookings because you know these houses get a lot of bookings because not only do they stay a lot of people but they also have really rare amenities such as the sauna such as the jacuzzi the pool The Immortal fit 15 people so when you look at it like even a big city like Austin there might only be a handful of places that that have all these amenities but if I take away a pool if I take away the jacuzzi if I take away the 15 people to only 10 people now you know the filter becomes very very you basically are in a competition with a lot more properties right so the property that we talked about with the with the boat you know if they can have that boat I think the boat is one of the options right so so that if someone actually was looking for a boat in that City then your house becomes that filter that actually is one

25:47 of the houses that has it so that's another thing you really want to think about is not to make a plain Jane house where you're in competition with thousands of other houses because there's no way you're going to get your house booked out that way so for me I really look for a pool look for these amenities not only because it fits my city but it also Separates Me from my competition and every city is different right so you know like I mentioned before I live in I live in the Bay Area Silicon Valley a pool here isn't very important and something that's really important here would be like a dedicated space right like if you had like your own private office with a bunch of computers bunch of stuff in there because people are coming in here for work so so if you have that that could be something that's attractive like you know attractive to someone else right um I think a place like Kissimmee or Orlando right so I have some friends who own properties there you know a pool becomes a very very important attribute there because obviously once again it's so hot but people that go there are for kids they're vacationing there and they want to have that pool so you know a pool in you know I was talking to a couple of my buddies who owned property in Minnesota you know our pool wouldn't make sense in Minnesota right so these are attributes that are are different amenities that might not fit in different cities so that's why you really have to understand your City to understand what the amenities will really drive up your bookings yes 100 um and you know obviously like the biggest theme there was just to do your

27:03 market research understand your market and then cater towards you know the right clientele as well you know a lot of great insights clearly you know you were very successful at your marketing career as well because I you're thinking about it in all the right ways um so kind of Shifting Gears a little bit so I know you know people are going to be interested obviously you know you have some killer listings so what's your current you know monthly cash flow from all your properties uh currently um so right now I have seven puppies that's currently live including this one I think it's going to be there's gonna be one more coming it's about eight so each one of them I'm targeting so so some of the big ones with a pool I'm trying to get a gross my target is usually about 10K a month on the gross so we need back into kind of like what that's going to net so probably a successful it's going to get you about five to six K positive in uh cash flow per month now for me I'm a little bit different I think a lot of students are doing more of the Airbnb average launch but for me because one of the reasons why I'm not doing everything I ever charge is because you see from the properties I'm putting a lot of investment into it and I really don't want to do the average and have the owner come in after two years or three years and take the house back right because the knowledge is basically be spending a lot of my design work and a lot of you know like as you see in this picture the staircase and and even that that drop ceiling on top of the pool table those are all amenities that I put

28:20 into the house so for me I tend to buy the house and or get investors to buy with me opposed to um to doing the everyday average and there's nothing wrong with doing everything we have a charge it's just that if you do it that way then you really have to be careful how much money you're putting into it because at the end of the day you might need to give that property back right and you can't I can't take away that staircase right I can't take that with me to the next place you know um so those are things I'm thinking about so in in short the answer would be every property you know the target range is about 5k for me per month so it's about 50 of the actual gross it's what I take home it's kind of like what I'm looking at and right now I'm trying to build awesome to be about 10 of those and then you know each City to have about 10. so my rule is once I get into Austin I want to automate I'm starting to automate it right so I have you know I use hospitable as my messaging tool right I use price Labs I use turno as the cleaning service so I'm starting to automate a lot of different systems and with that you go for one city I can probably get to 20 to 30 properties pretty easily and then once I exhausted that then I probably want to jump into the next city so I'm I you know the next city I might jump into is something like in San Diego right if I can still get into it with their Str rules changing that's probably the next place I want to get into or someplace like customer right because my daughter's getting older and she's going to want to go to Disney Disney I want to

29:37 see a company to Disney World Disney World right the one in Florida so you're probably going to want to go there Disney World that Disneyland in California yeah so and then also Anaheim all skirts of Anaheim where they can still do Airbnb I definitely want to those are my next areas so yeah 10K for the growth is per property and hopefully get about 5k is sort of after all my fees and after after everything is kind of like what I'm targeting love it man I mean obviously you're clearly you know where you're doing you're being very successful at it so um let's just you know a couple more things before we hop on off here so why did you want to join you know the program and you know what was kind of the vision behind behind joining so that you could you know obviously supercharge your growth but uh let's talk about you know why you wanted to join the program interesting because like President uh to be honest with you right so I've actually seen a lot of your other stuff even before they're giving me stuff right so a lot of the uh the credit card stuff right a lot of the uh because a lot of your short videos on on on Instagram and stuff like that so I see a lot of different things even before the Airbnb stuff and when I saw again I was like okay oh he's also doing everybody stuff so I really kind of want to understand what um what and I didn't go to to give you credit I think you do a really good job right you do a great job in providing information and it's very informative and I can totally see that you're doing it not for the money or for the fame but just doing it because you want to help others right and for me it's very similar to that

30:54 because you know I I had a pretty successful like marketing career right I was managing marketing teams and I really didn't get into construction or even get into Airbnb for the money you know I always tell my wife you know I'm kind of doing every because I used to like Legos a lot you know I used to play Sims a lot and I love marketing so I love the data aspect of it and I'm kind of combining everything to one right so I'm doing basically I'm playing real life Monopoly Legos and Sims all together and that's what I'm really doing right and I really wanted to kind of um join this class to enjoy this membership to kind of understand sort of what other people are doing in their in their respective sort of uh management I guess the investing careers and trying to figure out any any way we can share knowledge but in fact like just really try to help others right so you know if anybody has any questions feel free to add me on school feel free to message me I'm I'm an open book so I can totally help others as well right that's one of the kind of the main reasons and I think secondly is it's just really to learn from you and from everyone from others right because there's so much information out there a couple other things I've done so far is that you know there's uh there's there's always like real estate groups there's always like you know short-term rental groups even as simple as joining like Facebook or even meetups so I try my best to join those and if you see the local ones definitely join those as well right and you can kind of see other people with same same passion and same sort of

32:12 Interest issue right but this group is also very interesting because now I don't know if you notice but the first sort of few weeks when I joined I was so busy setting up this house I wasn't really like involved like I literally just had my membership there and I just sat there and I was like oh man I gotta finish this house I really have to finish this house so now that I have some more time I'm like okay now I'm gonna really try to figure out how I can help the community also try to try to be in more discussions right to help each other as well love it man yeah we'll definitely talk off offline to see how you know how you can get more involved because you know you have a lot of valuable insights just from this one conversation Alone um but yeah man to wrap this up so you know what would you have to say to someone that's you know kind of considering you know starting an Airbnb business um and what's somewhere does words of advice that you would give that gift to that person I think I think we mentioned it a lot right so I think really just try to get in front of other people that are already in the business such like such as the Facebook groups and meetup groups and even this group right and where you can just get a lot of just start being start getting some dialogue with it right because everybody has different experiences and there's no you know unlike a math equation right where there's a right I answer a wrong answer there's a lot of different perspectives and ways to do this and then to be successful in this business you know we mentioned some people do red habitrage and I'm not doing that and I feel like I'm doing I'm doing pretty well and somebody could be doing really well doing Arbitrage right so there's many different ways to attack this problem or

33:30 attack this industry you really want to just pick the brains of people that are already doing it and ensure knowledge and just try to figure out what what you can offer each other and then definitely be able to learn from each other 100 man well appreciate the time Gary um you know we we both have children around the same age two two and a half it's a super fun age you know going taking them to Disneyland just took our sun recently and I'm sure you know you guys probably gonna plan a trip out there soon too but um yeah super insightful thanks for the time and we'll talk to you soon see you guys later