Isaac Eck: former cop running two Airbnbs in two states

0:00 this is an in-dept interview I recorded with one of my students Isaac and this isn't one of those interviews where you only get a high level overview we dig into every detail of what Isaac did to succeed so you can apply it yourself I used to record these interviews for a pay membership but they just become too valuable to keep locked up so I've been releasing them on my channel if you're new here my name is Preston I've been in real estate for 7 years and my portfolio is worth over $15 million and I make $400,000 per year in net profit for my airb bees this latest DET interview is that behind the scenes look at Isaac's 2 airbnbs him and his wife are both passionate about real estate and hosting which is why they decided to pursue Airbnb in this video we pulled back the curtain on his approach to winning over landlords who have failed with airbnbs before and how he furnishes stunning airbnbs without blowing the budget we're also going to talk about the reverse guest training tactic that he uses to qualify for super hose faster and to get more bookings we're also going to go into a whole lot more so let's dive into it all right we got Isaac here um Isaac e is that how you pronounce your last name yes awesome so you know you obviously you've been crushing it while you know before you've even you know joined the program right it took you a couple months to get up and running but for those of you that don't know who you are let's kind of start back on you know how you guys started what your background is and then we'll take you from there sure yeah well first of all Preston thanks for having me on I'm excited to be here and share my story and how I got here so my name is Isaac I'm from Florida have a background I went to business school I have a business management degree and then I decided to be a uh cop so I did a cop was a cop for a couple years and then um

1:18 I got married and um in March so a year ago actually this month and my wife and I decided that we wanted more than from our life than just the the 9 to5 and so we both had a passion for real estate and and we both have a passion for hosting people so we thought Airbnb would be a really cool combination of the two and I had been following your YouTube channel for a while we signed up for the workshop you know listen to all the facts that you were presenting and how you all laid it all out and um we decided to purchase the course and that was in August love man let's talk about you know you and your wife cuz I think a lot of the students in the in the community they have a significant other they have this you know partner they're doing this with so was this something that you had to get her on board or was it something that you guys both knew you wanted to get to um so can you talk a little bit about that Dynamic yeah um this is something we both knew we wanted to get to and so it wasn't really me convincing her it was more us deciding to do it together which is I think a unique scenario I think a lot of people maybe don't have that privilege they're trying you know they're both have the same goals but different ideas of how to get there and so we both are very on board with the same you know same page and um so much so actually that so bought the course in August and in November I was able to uh quit my job and she got an opportunity to do she's a nurse and she got an opportunity to do travel nursing and so that kind of freed up my time with the the money that she

2:35 was able to make through travel nursing and freed up my time to solely devote my time to the business so she was very supportive throughout the whole entire process of you know how many hundreds of phone calls I made and still was like you know it feels like it wasn't getting anywhere she was you know just keep trying very very encouraging so um we make a great team and I'm very blessed and thankful for her and so we're going to do a little teaser you have two properties up now you know one of them's doing great one of them's not kind of Performing where you wanted to but we're going to talk about you know what you're doing to get to the point where you're going to be able to hit those projections you had but we'll do that in a in a little bit but um so let's kind of talk about this was your very first business venture I would imagine right um I've kind of been entrepreneurial minded since I was 13 I fell in love with reading Rich Dad Poor Dad books Robert kosaki and so when I was 13 I had two gumball machines I had one at a bowling alley and then one at a uh like a office and so that's that's kind of where it started for me I was very interested in passive income and and those kind of things but kind of just you know always interested in business but never actually followed through since that Venture you know so I was I played tennis growing up so I would teach tennis lessons but that's not the kind of business that I wanted and so this is my first real Venture since 13-year-old Isaac with his vending machines got it to yeah it sounds like you had that bug from an early age and obviously that's kind of something that I see a lot of entrepreneurs people that are successful that they they kind of

3:53 wired that way and obviously you know there's nothing wrong with a 95 if that's something that brings you Joy and you like that routine of it cuz I know like for for example my brother like he's completely opposite of me where I'm always wanted to be you know start my business slinging Pokemon cards when I was younger he's always been like I just want to go to college get my Master's Degree and just you know just kind of write out the next 40 years but um so it's interesting that you know you kind of had that entrepreneur Spirit even when you were younger yeah I think I've always had a a drive to do something maybe different I think that's maybe also what Drew Drew me to being a a cop for a while um kind of something different something it's not 9 to5 even though you're there 40 hours a week it's 12 hour shifts and you get a little bit more free free time so I think I was always driven by wanting to be the captain or whatever of my own life and my own time and so you kind of have that in a way in a public service profession but it's not to the degree that you want so I I I just got tired of saying oh I work that weekend or I can't go to this birthday party I work that weekend and so I knew I wanted to change and kind of reignited that entrepreneurial spirit that I had since 13 yeah and you can relate to this too cuz my wife was a respiratory therapist you know similar to your wife as a nurse and on paper it sounds great like oh you only worked 3 days a week and you know 12-hour shifts and then you get the rest of the week to do what whatever you want but in reality you need like 2 days to recover and then the the schedule's always all wonky so you know if we want to go on a trip we

5:11 had to always leave early or we could only go for a couple days just because of her schedule and I think that's really when that pain started in settled in when we were working 95s of trying to like figure something out and that I feel like that was a big Catalyst to kind of pushing us forward as well but um it's interesting you know kind of similar backgrounds there yeah and with the the longer shifts it's great you get that you know you work 3 days a week but you're working 12 hour shift so you have backtack days like you said you need a day to recover or you get home and all you want to do is eat sleep eat and sleep and do it again you know so that freedom is nice but it's still not I think what a lot of people crave to have that whatever I want to do when I wake up to this morning you know yeah 100% I'm sure a lot of cops and nurses are are not in the heads just because people are like oh you only work three days a week like get over it but you know if you don't know how like physically demanding that type of type of Labor is but um anyway we can talk about that forever but let's kind of shift gears a little bit from market research side talk about you know kind of what your process was for finding the market and then finding that first property that you you know you listed um so let's talk about that yeah so initially it was you know trying to find attractions I thought I thought about attractions where I would want to do you know like what you know obviously I'm from Florida something in okay Beach you know and then it just it's really expensive and so I just started kind of broadening my horizons and I went you know all over the country looking at different horizon or different attractions started looking

6:28 at Savannah started looking it like Arizona Scottdale Phoenix Grand Canyon areas things like that so any major attraction I was very interested in and I either ran into regulations early on that was not something I was anticipating at all and so the regulations kind of forced me to narrow my search a little bit and then I just started thinking of like where am I comfortable doing it and so I ended up in uh Birmingham Alabama which is where our first property is I went to school for a year up there and know the area have a bunch of friends and people that I consider family up there that are willing that were willing to kind of help me out and so that's where I started um I was comfortable with the I knew the attractions I knew the area it's not the most booming of markets but it still offers enough there that made for a pretty good market for my first one yeah and I think that's something that a lot of I I noticed a common theme right A lot of people are like you know I've heard of students that say you know they have no idea about Miami but they've heard people love to go go to Miami so they're you know gung-ho about it they do the research and they're like well why don't I just go back to like what I know and so you know perfect example here you know the attractions you kind of have that unfair advantage over people would never been to that market cuz you kind of know those little you know hidden pockets and things to do there not saying you have to do that cuz we you know there's a process to you know really get intimate with the market even you've never been there but you know it's a common thing that I've seen from students is you know they first are like okay let's go here you know New York or California or Miami and then

7:45 they kind of hone in and they're like well this Market over here it's it might not be as sexy as you know one of these big markets but they can offer me just as much uh cash if not better than some of these other places with less regulations so it's interesting that you went there around as well yeah and if you know that area like kind of like you're describing you know the the places to eat you know like your your welcome book it's all about the experience so if you have a detailed you know welcome book like we do at our Birmingham property where there's a few really good restaurants that are only privy to Birmingham you know and so you can highlight those and guess feel like okay I'm actually staying with a local quote unquote you know that knows the area and feels comfortable with it so I think that's pretty important at least for your first one and then obviously like you said there's a process to do it without even being there but for your first one for my first one getting my feet wet into the business I wanted to be comfortable I was able to reconnect with some people that I went to school with and it's been a great experience awesome man yeah we we we'll go over all the boots on the ground team here in a little bit how to find that even if you don't have you know friends or college friends again there's a process for everything we're just you know kind of talking about Isaac's experience here let's so let's talk about okay you found the market and then let's talk about how you found the properties and then your experience with cold calling landlords I think that's something that a lot of people you know start to like tremble in their in in their shoes when they hear a cold calling but um let's kind of break it down where you know how did you find that first property and then your experience talking to that landlord yeah

9:01 actually so the property in Birmingham is kind of a unique situation because I knew when I was looking at like airdna you look at the percentage of different listings and so those of you who don't know airdna is a software that compiles short-term rental data over the last 12 months and onward and kind of gives you a snapshot look at that market so Birmingham for example has about 47 plus per of their listings is one-bedroom apartments basically and so I knew very quickly that one bedroom was not going to allow me to stand out so I kind of went bigger went home I chose was a five bedroom I I saw that that was 4% of the market I knew that I would be able to cater to large groups and so that kind of narrowed my search down real quick so I found one it was actually listed as a four bedroom and I called the landlord I was like this looks great I ran some of the numbers and I called the landlord and he goes oh yeah that sounds good I was like wait what cuz I my experience was you know going through like answering all their questions and he's like oh so you want an Airbnb it and I was like yeah and he was like okay that sounds good he's like I do charge $100 more for that Arrangement so it went from up 100 bucks on that and I come to find out that the property is actually previous the previous tenant was arbitraging this ziga property so that was kind of a unique I didn't have to really convince the landlord he just kind of already understood the system had a decent experience with the previous tenant and was pretty interested in gung-ho about letting me do it so I didn't take a lot of convincing for the first one but I will say I was prepared you know I did how

10:19 many calls before that to get get my easy yes but doesn't always happen like that but yeah yeah so it's interesting a couple of questions that I'm sure people have so the first is how many calls did you did it take for you to get that first yes a lot I I don't know if I would have a number I I got a lot of yeses but that was before my like process would kind of hone down so I would get yeses and I would just kind of like you're saying L Lord Outreach I think is something that people you know analysis by paralysis they they don't want to mess up and so I just kind of jumped in and just started talking to people and answering their questions and if I didn't have the answer I'd acknowledge that and um so I got a lot of yeses and then the more I dug into the market or the regulations or the numbers it just wouldn't make sense so this wasn't my first yes but it was my first like green light full green light for Willing landlord limited regulations and a decent market and that's a huge Pro tip guys like a lot of people think they have to run all the numbers they take an hour to you know plug all the numbers in dial in all the comps they call the landlord they're like no not interested hang up you just wasted an hour uh doing research right so our process that you know we you know go through is you know just pick up put up a bunch of properties in a spreadsheet and just start calling right cuz that's the only way you're going to get better and then you can always even if you get an answer you know yes like Isaac has done plenty of times before he got his first you know solid one you know if the numbers don't make sense then you just save yourself a ton of headache right and a lot of people are like well what if they do say yes you just call them

11:35 back and Polly say hey sorry the numbers aren't going to work unless you're you know willing to lower the rent which they usually aren't and that's kind of how you go about that process yeah I had a couple of those one market I was looking at is Indianapolis and for those of you guys in the short-term rental game or looking into it it doesn't have any regulations there but it's a pretty saturated market and so I had two actually potential deals there that both landlords said yes and I reran the numbers and it was $1,000 for you know cash cash flow which isn't bad but for my first deal I was really looking for 1,500 plus I know 2500 is like the golden number but for me to get my feet in the door I was comfortable with 1500 plus and uh so I just kept moving but yeah like you're saying there's nothing wrong with hey it doesn't work out yeah you know you you you just get experience it's like going on a a job interview just for the practice you know pick up the phone and call it's you get a yes or a no you're practicing 100% that's that's the key right there the other question that I had that I'm sure people have is okay you know you heard that this place was getting arbitraged before so maybe like the question maybe it didn't but you you're probably thinking okay why why why did this other person that was arbitraging it and decide to Let It Go did that ever come up or did you ask the landlord you know that specifically just curious on that that's a great question that was one of my first questions when he said yeah she's doing that now and he actually wouldn't rent it to me unless I saw the property so I was able to actually walk through it with her setup and so I was like why is she not continuing this so I actually

12:53 reached out to her on Airbnb we had a phone call and she said she's like there's nothing wrong with it she's like I just don't an Arbitrage anymore and so I'm going to take Capital she she has a bunch of properties that she all purchases and she said she tried the Arbitrage and didn't really like it for one reason or another and so yeah so she just kind of moved on but she said she's like it makes good money so that was kind of my once I found out I was an Airbnb I was like she's losing money it's a big like red flag for me but the more I dug into it it was actually more more reassuring and then I actually found it on airdna so in my search on Zillow it was listed as a four-bedroom but she had it listed on Airbnb as a five-bedroom so I had kind of I missed it I guess in my search so I went back through and looked at five bedrooms and found it saw what her you know Revenue was and all that so that became my Baseline for my projections for this year and that's people don't think that that one bedroom makes a difference but it can make a huge difference especially in a market where most inventory let say are three bedrooms or two bedrooms but if you're able to get that four or fifth bedroom then you know people are going to filter by that even if you have the nicest place in the world people you know that filter by how many guests you know they want to go with they're they're going to miss your listing so typically more heads and beds more revenue and it sounds like you kind of got that but um yeah you okay so you w walked through it you you know kind of got comfortable and another thing that's interesting that you mentioned is like she's like okay I'm not interested in Arbitrage anymore I always say I

14:10 recommend 99% of people go through Arbitrage first just because it's way less risky way less Capital intensive but everyone's in different parts of their Journeys right so like I started off with Arbitrage but now I only purchase properties just because I need more of the tax breaks that come along with it and all the other benefits of owning real estate but the reason Arbitrage is so important for most people is because they don't have that second source of cash flow coming in from any other Investments and that's why you know that Arbitrage is that lower barrier to entry where you can start building up that cash flow and then obvious obviously the ultimate goal is to now go and purchase these properties which it sounds like that investor in particular was focused on now yeah I mean there were some other interesting things she was mentioning on the phone I'll leave those out but um she the way I like to look at it kind of like you're describing is like imagine if you have you know if you or want to get into real estate investing to purchase a property which very very difficult to find anything for less than $200,000 now depending on the market and you're just going to long-term rental you know longterm you're going to spend 40,000 on a 20% down payment and maybe cash flow 300 bucks maybe whereas you can take that same 20,000 and put it into a singular property and generate $1,500 or more in cash flow I think that's the beauty of this method the bridge method is to kind of jump start like you're saying people into real estate investing to generate that cash flow to then purchase so it's kind of like stepping stone yeah 100% you know

15:28 talking about like finalizing agreements it sounds like the landlord already had you know experience with that so you know we can kind of you know skip over that um so now let's talk about uh the furniture aspect of this so this is kind of an interesting one where they already had the furniture so did you purchase some of it from her how did you go about you know kind of Designing and staging the property here yeah she uh she would took everything out so the only thing I actually did buy from her was the uh Smart Lock Smart Lock and then two Smart TVs that were already at the property so I bought those from her but that was it so everything else was empty when we came in there so if you look at our listing that all my wife's design so she loves doing that she has a pretty good eye for it I like to think and uh she did a great job you know we work together for it and come up with color schemes and things and we always joke that she buys it and I build it so yeah you want to share your screen and actually show people the listing and that we can kind of talk through some of the design so this is the property in Birmingham so we we'd like to highlight the outdoor picture first so these are the first five photos obviously the outdoor pictures we found in some of the listings because it's such a historic area they were all focusing on the exterior which is why we kind of have this one here here but other than that we felt like we could stand out a little bit by offering you know an outdoor space and amenities which some of them have they're just deep in their listings so we wanted to put that kind of front and center in it for those that don't know you know design the menies like the experience that you're going to be you know giving to these guests is super important um and it's also really

16:45 important to be able to you know kind of show that showcase that through your photos so just kind of pay attention to that and you know you guys have done a great job with this so if you want to kind of talk about a little bit about your thought process as you were setting this up yeah I'll highlight a couple of them of our faite parts of it so the the kitchen I think looks great he already had this so we didn't really do too much to it but we wanted we can accommodate 12 people at this get at this Airbnb and so in the dining area we've got this table that's actually convertible so that you can turn this into a pool table ping pong table as well as the dining area that you see here so our kind of goal for that was there's a a six-bedroom unit right like literally two doors down that's listed on Airbnb and they do compared to last year they did $50,000 of more Revenue than this property did and so they have like you know they have arcade games they have a a little speak easy they just have way more amenities than the previous tenant did and so we were trying to accommodate because they can sleep 16 we able to sleep 12 so we were trying to kind of offer these amenities that would maybe take a little bit of their business because we're offering these you know the the ping pong and pull table that was kind of our strategy mainly for this one is to kind of make it you know like if if there's 12 of them why would they spend $100 more to go stay at that place with the same amenities than they could stay at ours so that was kind of the strategy and then the the rooms pretty standard for just you know what you

18:02 would expect Adam and Airbnb you know we got different you know we got a queen Twins and then we have we go to IKEA a lot so this is our cool little live you know it's fake plants but it's our live wall that I think kind of just offers a unique little space that people don't have at their own house so those are kind of our favorite plot spots and and then we got some custom art this is at the top of the stairs some some custom art Birmingham this Skyline and then three famous monuments and places to go see when you're in Birmingham we tried to make it a little bit more amenity focused and then kind of unique some of the decorations so I know you mentioned Ikea for this particular property how much did you roughly spend on you know the furniture and all the all the amenities and stuff I actually have a whole spreadsheet I could pull up if that's beneficial yeah let's do that so this is room by room total cost we spent on this one is1 18,000 roughly six you know that number and then we have it all separated room by room so we actually because we were able to go there physically so we were there for 2 weeks and we furnished it we actually did get some things on Facebook Marketplace my wife is pretty good at finding them and messaging she was just spamming messaging everybody we found our couch you know a couch typically a good sectional is like at least two grand we found ours for like 800 bucks I think this how much we found it for yeah 850 so we tried to just keep track of everything but what's interesting about this one is we spent 18,000 and then the estimated so this is like my pre

19:19 calculations we estimated you know1 18,000 to furnish so we we kind of were pretty close on this one we hit the mark pretty well I think with our budget but definitely if we didn't get the couch on Facebook if we didn't get some of these things we probably would have pushed closer to 20 23,000 because of some of these things so I don't think I understood that going in like I have my you know cost per bedroom estimates and things like that but going in I was not expecting certain you know expenses obviously like your property is a little bit bigger right five bedrooms so obviously the price going to be a little bit higher and all depends on the market depends on how many bedrooms you're looking after of obviously if you have a bigger house it's going to be a little bit more to furnish but um staying within that 20,000 budget for a five-bedroom place is on L pretty pretty do good yeah we did a pretty i' like to thank it at least yeah you guys I mean you guys obviously did great on this we'll talk about the numbers here in a second but it's kind of talk about you know how far is this from your property like did you guys set this up remotely let's talk about like actually getting everything set up for this property so we decided to just drive there and do it ourselves we had a kind of unique situation with my wife's job her contract ending and on our way to the next one we were able to stop in Birmingham furnish this one we were there for 2 and 1/2 weeks I think all in and you know that some people might think that's a long time but I personally severely underestimated how much goes into setting this up so I was

20:36 you know like we were waking up at 6:30 and awake until at least 11:00 working on this so you know long long days I mean it was super fun probably one of the most fun times that we've done together is Furnishing these houses but it's it's a it's a lot of work you know so I know there are ways to do it remotely and you know if you have a little bit more time but we were trying to you the day our leas started we were in there and then so we took two weeks to kind of make it how we wanted and then we were out of there yeah and obviously you all it depends on your availability your strengths like for me you wouldn't be I wouldn't be caught dead with the hammer just because I terrible at that kind of thing so I'd rather pay someone to do it and again there's ways to do a remote and that's kind of like what I proba you know teach a lot of you know our students on but you know sounds like you guys had had a blast and you guys have the skills to do it so you obviously you know you can you guys did a great job obviously with with this setup yeah and and then let's talk about the boots on the ground team right like the cleaners the handyman and all that now you're not physically there so you obviously have to fight you know team a reliable team to handle all that stuff so who how did you find your cleaner your handyman and those types of people so my cleaners for this property and the other property I use a website called turno and uh you just kind of reach out to them you put the job out and then they bid on the job so that's how I found them and then I you know I phone interviewed a few of them kind of asking them what their cleaning process was like so that's pretty straightforward you know Finding comparable I wanted this cleaning fee like I was getting quoted pretty

21:53 expensive obviously it's a huge house it's 3,000 ft so I was getting quotes pretty high and our competitor's cleaning fee was like 170 so I knew I wanted to come in under that because we're smaller so I knew like if somebody was kind of shopping around and they were meticulous with seeing the cleaning fee they would see that so ours is you know under that cuz we wanted to make sure we could keep it but our cleaners are fantastic she's great communication and that's what I look for the most I think if if I'm messaging you if you if you bid on a job and you don't respond to me when I'm asking you for a phone interview like to me at least I'm not going to waste my time interviewing you because you didn't respond to a job that you bid on so she was extremely responsive I could call her you know right now if I had a problem and she'd answer or text me back you know so she's extremely communicative which is I think huge for this business I was going to say that's the most important thing I look for for cleaners you know especially if they bid on the job and if they take longer than you know for me I like if they respond you know any later than 12 hours then they're usually almost a nogo I've never had a cleaner workout if they took taking longer than that and I know you might sound unreasonable but we're in the hospitality space right where things have to get done quickly and communication is the number one that we look for in a cleaner so and that's kind of in line with everyone else I've talked to about that as well yeah and then our handyman is a buddy from college he's great his name is Josh He willing to kind of go over there help me out with random stuff he helps me out

23:10 with the ring cameras I had some issues with that early on and he's he's great he wants to help and I pay him pretty well I like to think so it's kind of a win-win for everybody I get to work with people that I trust I think that's one thing that maybe freaks people out a lot is who do I hire you know these people that you're just you know on Thumbtack looking up you don't really know what they're about you know but I knew this guy for a couple years and trusted him so I have no problem with him being in the property and helping me out with things so that's that's another I think benefit like we were talking earlier with being in your backyard if you can't be in the city that you personally live in then be in a city where maybe you can develop that trust with somebody that you already know there yeah and I like to first of all the cleaner is the most important person on the team and so once you find a solid cleaner then they usually have a network of people that they can refer you to like handyman electricians plumbers just because they're going to put their reputation their name on the line by referring someone and so that's we've had really good success fting our handyman and other people through that method as well if you don't have you know someone that you know in the market yeah referrals are huge because like you said their their reputation and they if they're going to refer somebody they're not going to just refer Joe Schmo you know they're going to want their to refer somebody that's actually going to do a good job so all right so let's talk about you know kind of your the software that you're using the pricing the guest management all that stuff just because you know a lot of people think that they have to be really be in the weeds the day-to-day of it and basically this turning into another full-time job and

24:26 so obviously we use software to mitigate all that and to streamline a lot of the operations side of the business so what are some of the tools that you're using to automate your business yeah well now I utilize this software but it's funny early on I would we would get a booking and I'm I'm like scrambling to respond within like five minutes or something you know and so I don't know why it took me so long to set up these automated messaging and you know just the price labs and hospitable is what I use but uh it's it's great now I get to just look at my you know oh we got a booking great and I don't have to scram and type out a text message or something you know thanks for booking you know it just little sent it so that those kind of automations are huge and again those are not things that I thought about when we were getting into this you know so organizing their personal codes for the smart locks like that's just automated you know I don't have to think about that so pretty great I I don't spend a whole lot of time managing them other than communicating with cleaners and the guests when they have special specific requests and as long as you check your phone occasionally and you see if anybody messaged you you're pretty in the clear yeah for sure I know I tease this at the beginning but let's talk about I think their second prop you said it's not living up to what your projections were so what were some of the reasons you you think that you they're it's not performing the way you wanted to and how what what steps are you taking to be able to get to those projections yeah so it's a pretty seasonal Market to begin with it's in Northwestern Arkansas and so that's one

25:44 of the the downsides to kind of like we've been talking about being in your backyard I've been to Arkansas one time so found the property kind of almost accidentally ran the numbers looked at the market but it's very seasonal it's on the lake I'm okay with the seasonality as long as we're getting you know bookings are different but I'm significantly underperforming the market right now so ways we're kind of trying to triage it is there's a hot tub that is not working so that's one huge amenity for that market you know a lot of the top competitors they have hot tubs they have pools and so we're trying to I'm working with a local company getting that fixed should be up and running in the next couple weeks so that'll be huge once that is up and running then I'm going to retake photos wasn't thrilled with the photos we got we we always do the professional photography but some are better than others so wasn't thrilled with her work it wasn't horrible it's not bad I mean I can show you the listing but it it's just for what we wanted to highlight we want a little bit better and and I love our the way our first listing turned out with the photos there that's the second one and then just a little bit more color I think in the living room would kind of make the first couple photos stand out a little bit it's a pretty colorful listing throughout because it's you know we wanted to go right on the on the lake wanted to kind of pop color-wise so every room is pretty colorful except for the living room so we think the last little detail is just get some more color throw pillows and put out there kind of make that pop a little bit more and obviously you know

27:01 projections are one thing and then once you kind of start getting into the weeds and especially when you go into a market that's more seasonal you have to kind of bake that into your numbers as you're projecting it out because you know maybe you're launching in the middle of winter where it's completely dead and so you have to factor that in to your startup costs or you can even negotiate with your landlord on maybe some rent credits while you know you're kind of you know ramping up or you know another strategy that you can do is maybe go live a month before the peak season so like if your peak season starts in June then you want to go live by mid so that way you don't have to come out of pocket as much so there's different ways about this but when you pick this Market in particular you it sounds like you had that seasonality in mind so did you anticipate kind of being slower to start off and then wrap start wrapping up or like you know what was kind of your thought process there yeah definitely anticipating being slower you know definitely anticipated coming out of pocket a little bit more this month is so last month we had one booking you know and obviously it's February last month in Northwestern Arkansas where there's snow everywhere so people aren't traveling to Lake but this month we're doing pretty good we've got three bookings this month and pretty close to breaking even for the month with two open weekends left so we're hoping for you know a couple more bookings to kind of like at least make us Break Even this month but um you know we're starting to get that traction get those five star reviews and hopefully become a guest favorite all of those things kind of change your place in the algorithm for

28:17 Airbnb so we're kind of hoping for that plus all the things I mentioned beforehand of like the the hot tub's going to be huge we have a pretty nice looking outdoor space and then to add the the hot tub I think it would be huge amenity kind of pushing the revenue up a little bit yep and then it sounds like peak season just summer got a summer vacations for that market yeah we've already got I mean June and July are profitable months already with some booking so looking pretty good on that standpoint but getting to there you know trying to not have to do like a personal cash influx for the business you know like last month we had to feed the business a little bit more than we kind of anticipated all in all I mean we we've had a great time doing it and we like that property a lot we did a lot of cool things there push our limits for what we were comfortable with but I think out pretty well yeah and a lot of people don't like to talk about this but like worst case scenario right let's say you know you get a 12 months worth of data right you have a full you know year under your belt and the numbers aren't what you're projecting or liking it's much easier to get out of a lease than it is to get out of a mortgage again that kind of goes back to the Arbitrage model where I prefer that for 99% of people especially if it's like their first you know Endeavor in real estate or business uh just because there are way less risks involved but I mean it sounds like you know what you you you're kind of like on the path to optimizing and being able to be successful and the aggregate for the year and we you know we'll Circle back here in a year to see how how that's performing but um sounds like you guys are on the right track

29:33 yeah we uh I mean I was looking at it this morning I think there's a large variety so a couple of the comps in that market have a pretty big swing like one of them is doing 110,000 in revenue and other's doing like 62 that's like a $50,000 swing so even if we come in below 62 let's say 55 we're still in the green maybe not making our money back you know like our initial investment but at least like the the expenses of the you know to operate it we're not losing money so then kind of like you're saying we can either make the decision to continue with that you know and hopefully it picks up towards the end or we can take that furniture into another property cuz that's that's like the assets of your business it's not the property itself it's the furniture it's the amenities when you're arbitraging when you actually own then it's the property and the location but for us it would be easy to just like you're saying pick up and move to another lease then kind of stick it out yeah 100% all right so for for this part here in Alabama what what are the numbers look like profit for last month or even this month where you're kind of projecting on them so last month I can pull it up here last month we lost a little bit of money I had a plumbing issue which kind of so I have it broken down here all my guests for the month and then I have the the expenses so total income 4823 total out 4845 $22 in the whole basically this month we still have an open two open weekends in March sorry one open weekend in March we're already at 1,800 in the green pretty good you know amount of

30:49 listings or uh bookings here same for April so we're doing pretty well on on that one that one's kind of carrying our business but uh is what it is yeah and you guys went live in January of this year right yes yeah so that's why you know that that one's in the red just because obviously you're going kind of ramping up but typically most most markets and it sounds like this Market's the same the summer months is when like the peak season kind of starts ramping up right yep so we had we went live end of January I think like 20th January 20th or something and uh we got a literally a last minute booking here so that kind of we were so excited it's like our first book G it popped up on our screen you know so yeah that's why this one's in the whole you know the lease started January 7th and I guess we we were live a little bit earlier than that but yeah so then February was a good month and we were just excited to kind of break even and not have to feed that one and then now yeah now now we're looking pretty good for the projections for the year and my anticipation is to hit like 74 kind of to match the previous listing I think you know like I said we offer more amenities I think if we can hit 80 85 I'd be pretty happy compared to the the 125,000 that the neighbor's doing if we're in the middle a little bit I'd be pleased yeah for sure obviously you're you know kind of trending in that right direction already uh which is awesome let's kind of talk about you know some of your objectives here for you know the rest of the year so what's kind of your goals regarding your properties you know profit all that stuff yeah so I mean trying to you know

32:07 like I said troubleshoot the Arkansas property keep Alabama we're now a guest favorite so that's helpful we in theory if I'm understanding it correctly will be super host by April 1st that's when they do their quarterly evaluation so that'll help and change our place of the algorithm as well trying to look at between both properties trying to hit like 140,000 in revenue and then that would translate to about a 60 to 75,000 depending in net profit for the for the business as a whole that's the the goal for the business we're trying to expand to one more Arbitrage property within the year and then hopefully this time next year we will be looking to purchase our our second property nice love it man and so I know you kind of you know teased it at the beginning I'm sure PE people are curious so you you know you were a cop you know you quit that job what was the reasoning behind you know quitting the job there and you know it sounds like obviously you had a lot of faith in this business model and you guys are doing great well was kind of like the reasoning behind that if you are comfortable sharing that yeah has nothing to do with the profession people always ask me that like did you hate it and I say no I loved it it was it's a it's a very rewarding profession but I was very early on into it so I only did it for a couple years so as far as a pension goes I didn't really lose much by leaving and uh my wife had this opportunity to do travel nursing which is one of her dreams and now we're able to live in different places as we're you know as we're working in different places so that was kind of twofold of it

33:25 and then we were able to budget and see the numbers make sense to actually even start this business I know it's I think you asked me earlier on like how' I hear about the you know the Arbitrage model and stuff but I actually saw the other day in my Zillow messaging because I would just watch your shorts and your YouTube videos kind of explain the process but I had no idea what it would even take to do it and so I would I would just message I was looking back I was like man that looks so stupid I would just message these hosts or these people's properties on Zillow like hey like I have a proposition for you and like like I don't even know if that property would be profitable let alone I didn't even build a relationship with the the Lord so I was like you know just cringy at my old self but that was the start of kind of trying to I had faith in the the concept at least early on and you did what 99.99% of people don't do and that's taking action taking that knowledge and then just putting yourself out there and you know now you got two properties you and your wife are traveling and you know you're able to do this fulltime which is you love to see it right and so obviously you know you've been in this for a few months now so what is your family think about this like were they skeptical like how you know what what are their kind of thoughts on this old business model and this new venture for you guys yeah they're they're pretty supportive actually when you kind of sit down and explain it to them and when you especially believe in something you kind of exude that passion and that knowledge of it because you study it if you're passionate about something you're going to study and know the answers so I think my mom is a big influence in my life for

34:44 for like entrepreneurial thinking she kind of you know hey read Rich Dad Poor Dad when I was 13 and you know so when I would bring it to her she's like it makes sense if you can generate cash flow then so that's kind of what she thinks and then my wife's family is also pretty supportive of me stepping out and starting our business it's all around pretty supportive and I have a few friends even from the Sheriff's Office where I was working that are pretty supportive I was talking to a buddy the other day and he was asking about it and super excited for me said the listing looks great so it's it's cool to have that support from people which isn't always common you know you get people that say oh that's crazy that'll never work Airbnb bust you know all those fun things so as long as you do things right like those are T those are real things but setting yourself apart and continue to try to strive to be head of the competition is what will allow you to be successful in it yeah 100% all right so to wrap this up what would you you know what advice would you give to your younger self or you know just to someone that's looking to start their own business what would you say to that person uh yeah I always tell people this being a cop they always tell you to have a strong why that you do something as a cop you walk into a lot of unfortunate and unpleasant situations and can weigh pretty heavy on you so you have to have a a strong reason for why you're why you're doing it and so I would say the same thing applies to business if you have a strong reason and not that the reason is you know I just want to be rich like that's a reason in of itself but having like a a reason to be to be financially free and I heard on a

36:02 podcast the other day like always ask yourself why so if you want to be financially free ask yourself why if the reason is to spend more time with your wife and kids then ask yourself why and and follow the why until you really get down to the deep meaning of what your motivation is I think that's super important love that man well excited to see you know your continued success and all the success you've had so far appreciate you coming on and sharing your the intimate details of your business I know a lot of people are uncomfortable about about this but thanks for being an open book you know the wins and the loss is I think it's going to help a lot of people absolutely thanks for having me on I enjoy yeah okay thanks man talk to you soon have a good one if you're tired of watching others succeed with Airbnb and you're serious about building your own business me and my team can help you make that happen if you're interested click the link below to apply for a free consultation we'll set up a time to chat about how we can work together to build your airb business and scale to $10,000 per month and Beyond this isn't a sales call or anything like that on this call what we're going to do is we're going to ask you some questions to really understand if this real estate model is going to be the right move for you you can ask any questions that you have as well the link to applies right below in the description all right with that being said we'll see you in the next video