Jeremy's Year in Review & Next-Level Goals

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Happy New Year's! It is the Short-Term Rental Pros Podcast. It's your host, Jeremy, and the last couple of weeks have been absolutely crazy—um, you know, kind of life-changing.

Today, I'm going to fill you guys in on not only the last couple of weeks, but really kind of go over, uh, the last year: 2023 goals I had at the beginning of the year, what I've learned, you know, different things going on—the landscape of real estate, short-term rentals, and business.

Uh, what I'm just going to tell you guys is what I see as being the most important things to think about going into next year, whether it be in short-term rentals or just business and life. So, I'm really excited for today! I think it's gonna be a really great episode for you guys.

If you listened to the last, uh, last episode—it wasn’t last week—because the week prior, Patryck and I were in Joshua Tree. Actually, right after we filmed that episode, I proposed to my girlfriend, who is now my fiancé. She said yes, so now she is my fiancé.

To let you guys in a little bit: we had a cameraman there to film the podcast. Actually, when we went there, we didn’t really talk about actually filming the podcast. We just wanted to have—you know, I wanted to have a cameraman there to capture the engagement and the surprise.

But I knew it was the middle of the desert, so if a cameraman were just to have, like, showed up willy-nilly with no cover at all, then my. Kate would not have been surprised at all. She would have seen it coming.

I say "out of right field," but she would have seen it coming out of the barren desert. Fortunately, we had the podcast cover. So thank you guys for enabling that cover.

But we actually did a podcast because we wanted to wait until the sunset happened. We had probably about, like, 45 minutes until the sun was going down—and kind of that moment to get on my knee.

So we did it! And I appreciate Patrick for bearing with me and kind of helping with that cover. Because what was really important to me was just that surprise—surprising my girlfriend.

I mean, you know, we’ve been together a while. We’ve been friends for a really long time, and we’ve been talking about this. So I didn’t want her to, like, anticipate it. I wanted that moment. And we got it.

So, if you guys listened last week, you—without knowing about it—were actually part of my engagement! Maybe that gives a different context for last week, thinking back to it. Because we were definitely a little—like, I was literally just looking up at the sun, trying to gauge when it was going to go down over the horizon while talking at the same time.

I will never forget last week’s episode. It was very special. I’m thankful because that day, Patrick showed us a bunch of his properties, which again made that surprise happen.

Otherwise, you know, if I was going to tell Kate, “Hey, we’re going to the middle of the desert just to, like, you know, do nothing, just go on a walk in the middle of Joshua Tree,” she probably, again, would have seen it coming.

But under the guise of, “Hey, we’re gonna go look at a bunch of Airbnbs. We’re gonna check out the properties. We’re going to do a podcast on top of boulders at one of the properties in Joshua Tree,” she definitely did not see it coming.

So if you guys didn’t listen to last week’s episode, or two weeks ago's episode, check it out. It’s definitely one of—again, very memorable. 2023 as a whole was also an extremely memorable year for myself, for many reasons. Honestly, so many—it’s hard to even list them all.

First of all, this podcast: I started this in, I think, April or May. I really just wanted to be able to share different thoughts, ideas, strategies, and kind of keep a historical log of what I’ve got going on and timestamp it.

Honestly, I had no intentions or projections. I didn’t know that a single person would even listen to me or care to hear what I had to say. But folks have been tuning in. I look, and I appreciate it. I mean, you guys have been tuning in, you’ve been coming back.

I’ve been reached out to a good bit with, “Hey, we’re listening to your podcast. We implemented something that you talked about specifically, and it has helped us.” And that is beautiful. That is amazing.

We’ve also had folks join our, you know, mentorship through listening to the podcast—and have already had great success, life-changing growth with their portfolio. So it’s awesome.

Ultimately, what I want to get into today is kind of goals I had last year: whether it be the podcast, my short-term rental portfolio, BNBCalc—kind of where I was last year, what happened throughout the year, what I learned.

What I want to gear that towards is talking with you guys about: we need to set our goals for 2024. If we haven’t already, we need to be crystal clear. We need to write down what our goals are because that is the only way to progress—if we have a North Star in mind.

So, what is our North Star for 2024? We’re going to get into that. What I did, actually, because there’s so much to go over, is I used Chat GPT to create a list of things—or actually more so to organize the direction of this week’s podcast.

Because I want to talk about my personal goals, personal growth, and business growth. I wanted Chat GPT to give me an idea of what they thought the best episode list was.

So, we’re going to do that. The first thing Chat GPT wanted me to talk about is my personal highlights for the year.

Um, and I want to get into, you know, after that, kind of like going into my why, which I don’t think I share enough with you guys—like why I’m doing this to begin with.

Because that’s something that’s super important for you: to understand why short-term rentals? Is it because you love short-term rentals? Totally great. Is it because you have a lifestyle financial freedom goal in mind? Is it for others—you know, you want to provide things for your family?

Uh, for—I mean, in my case—being proactive about my future kids. I don't have them yet, but that is something that I want to get into. So, personal highlights: uh, in 2023, I got my first pet. It was a cat named Jean Pierre. And, uh, growing up, I had a pet turtle, so not a very furry friend.

Uh, getting a cat and really taking responsibility for an actual animal—no offense, uh, no offense to Erica, my turtle—but, you know, you just kind of drop the food in the, in the, uh, in the, in the aquarium and he eats. Whereas Jean Pierre is a little bit more intensive and high maintenance.

That being said, when Kate and I—uh, we went to Europe in September. My high season ends in September, so last month I wanted to celebrate a successful summer. Kate wanted to blow off steam and go on a nice vacation, so we did that.

And there's a lot of cats in Europe, so we got the idea to get a cat—and we did. So, love you Jean Pierre. He might be in the room with me; I can't see him at the moment. But that was a big, big, big change.

Beyond that, in the last week, I got engaged to my best friend—so that's big. Uh, I've never been engaged— engaged previously. I have a fiancée now, so that's all new.

And if any of you guys have, you know, um, wedding advice, plans, ideas, thoughts—I’m all yours, because I know nothing about any of that. And, uh, that's going to be its own process for sure. But all this happening, all this kind of life change, has really got me thinking. And, you know, I'm 27. I turned 27 years old in November.

But one of, like, the things that I think about a lot—that I'm trying to be proac— proactive about in, you know, the next few years—is just being able to create a life where I can consistently be there for my, uh, eventual kids.

For context, when I was growing up, my dad—uh, he's worked at the same company pretty much my whole life. For the early 15 years or so of my life, he was a consultant who would travel five days a week to clients for his company.

So that meant him leaving 5 a.m. Monday morning and getting back 5, 6, 8, maybe 10 p.m. Friday night—and being exhausted when he got back. And then having, you know, Saturday and Sunday to hang out with us, come to sports games.

But, honestly, a lot of times, he would come to the sports games, and he would fall asleep—to be honest—just because he was so exhausted from, you know, an intensive travel work schedule.

So, I mean, first of all, I’m super appreciative of my father for that. By doing that, he’s enabled me and my brothers and my sister to pursue our dreams and ambitions. Uh, we were able to play sports when we were kids and not have to think about, “Oh, like, you know, can I afford basketball shoes?”

Granted, you know, we—I'm not going to—definitely, I would say a middle-class upbringing. But we were able to pursue our passions, and that was largely thanks to my parents. And then, especially my dad just really putting himself, his health, and his happiness on the line in order for us to, you know, kind of go after the American dream in pursuit of happiness.

So, I’m eternally grateful, and I will be. And I’ve learned a lot of lessons from him: hard work, uh, determination. And I want to be able to be there, you know, for my kids when I have them. Not there yet—this isn't, uh, this is by no means something that's immediate.

But when eventually I do—you know, when we do have kids—I want to know that, hey, I don’t have to, every Monday, wake up and leave and only see my kids one to two days a week. And then be extremely tired those one to two days.

I want to be there seven days a week most weeks, and I want to be very present and active in their lives. So, that being said, how do we create a life proactively that is able to do that? And I think short-term rentals is that way.

Uh, again, that lifestyle freedom allows you to do what you want to do. So, that's—that is what I want. So, that drives me to work hard, uh, ahead of time. So, that is like a high-level goal.

Also, you know, health—super important. My dad had heart surgery this past year. Uh, there's no—or in heart operation. I don't, um, I think it's called like a-fib. Uh, so I don't know if surgery is the right word. But they, they shocked his heart to get it going, beating right.

And definitely, you know, I think, you know, his health is so important. And, you know, we’re, we’re all talking to him about taking care of himself first. But I do think years and years and years of so much stress, uh, lack of sleep—all that—probably put a strain, put a strain on him.

So, being healthy is super important. I just got back from the gym. I'm gonna, you know, I’ve set my alarm clock early in the morning, go to workout classes first thing—pretty much—in the morning and really prioritize health and wellness. And I think you guys should prioritize that, too.

Uh, well, I feel like sometimes it's easy to get, like, bogged down in the day-to-day. You know, I got to get XYZ done. I'm setting up another house, you know. Oh no, like, this house—something came damaged, and the replacement is going to take a month out, a time—a month to get there.

You know, the stress of, oh yeah, over Christmas, having to call the police on one of our guests. Uh, having, you know, multiple guest issues, and honestly kind of like a stressful week. But then putting everything in context of, like, where were you, you know—where was I a couple years ago, and where am I now? And, you know, relative basis—damn, I’m pretty happy where I am.

However, that doesn't mean I'm not going to be proactive about going where I want to be. So, Christmas week—you know, one of the busiest weeks of the year as a host. All of our properties are booked, which is good in the sense of, you know, those Airbnb payouts coming our way, uh, deposits, whatnot.

However, flip side being: in the winter, people are actually in the house a lot more than the summer. In the summer, you know, most of my properties are kind of like vacation areas. Um, even if they're not, a lot of times in the summer, you're active. You're going to do some sort of activity. You're not really in the property.

Whereas in the winter, in the midst of Christmas, it's a lot of families—big families in homes together. So they're in every room, they're doing every little thing here and there on the property. Any issues that can be found will be identified.

So, definitely had issues, uh, this Christmas. You know, had a guest questioning the air quality of one of our houses and claiming it was terrible. So we actually had to get an air test. We literally had someone come take a sample of the air, bring it to a lab, and got the result saying the air was completely fine.

Because otherwise, I'm sure they would have tried to get a full refund from Airbnb—and Airbnb would have given it to them. So, having, you know, a state-licensed air tester come—I’m not as worried about that.

Uh, we had a guest who partied at one of our properties and then wouldn't leave in the morning. So, had to call the police to get them to come make them leave. They smoked inside the house, so had to get a smoke remediation service to come and spray.

The next guest told us, “Hey, heads up, it smells a little bit like, like weed and smoke.” So, had to get them to come back after that guest came. Uh, the guest that just checked out—so the second guest following the partier—did not mention anything about the smell. So hopefully, they got that to go away.

But, yeah, more houses this year, which means more Christmas guests, which in turn means more problems. Or—I don't want to say problems, but, like, more situations. Um, you know, I'm ha— my virtual assistants, I think—I think early on in Christmas—they were not doing as good a job of taking care of these things, and I had to step in.

But I think towards New Year's, uh, seeing how I dealt with a couple of the situations, they learned and responded. And I'm happy with, you know, how they performed over New Year's. But that's definitely a big thing for me in 2024—empowering my team, where I don't have to be, you know, as hands-on in kind of like, quote-unquote, emergency situations.

I'm sure I'm going to want to know. I'm gonna want to be updated. But hopefully, it’s, “Hey Jeremy, this is the issue. This is how we're dealing with it,” versus, “Hey Jeremy, this is the issue. We're not sure how to deal with it. Can you—like, we're expecting you to deal with it.”

So, having my team take initiative and make my life easier is a big goal for 2024. So, we’re going to get into our business growth of this past year. What I want to do is—I actually want to show you guys. So, for y’all who are watching on YouTube, I’m going to show my screen.

If you guys are listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, I’ll kind of walk you through it. But what did my portfolio look like this year?

So, sorry, I have my pricing on for one of my properties. Uh, but what I'm going to do is—I'm going to show you guys my PriceLabs for every property I have a sync on, which—other than a couple of my properties—is pretty much my whole portfolio.

Uh, I do have a couple on another PriceLabs account, but I'm just going to show you my main one. So this year—or, sorry, this last year—I did revenue of $1.18 million in short-term rental property revenue.

Uh, what does that mean, or how does that compare to previous years? I had, uh—looks like my July, so my July was best month ever. Had $161,000 in revenue. June was $143k, and August was $136k.

Uh, September was actually a very good month this year—$140 grand—whereas my lowest month was January at $54,000. How does this compare to last year? Well, year-over-year, I was up $224,000. How does that compare to the previous year, 2021?

So, in 2021, I more than doubled the portfolio. I went from, you know, July doing $76,000 to July doing 158 Grand, and then this year, July doing 161 Grand. Uh, I went from September doing 58 Grand to last year doing 122k, to 2023 140k.

So, I grew a crap load between 2021 and 2022. However, thinking back to what my goals were for 2023, it was not to double my short-term rental portfolio again. I needed freedom, and I needed freedom through short-term rentals—that was my goal.

Uh, I wanted to leverage other people's properties to get that freedom. However, my goal in 2023 was to buy my own property for the first time. Every property I'd done before that had been a partnership property. So, I purchased it with other people, with investors, or I managed it for other people, which was awesome.

That enabled me to quit my job. That enabled me to do this full-time. However, this year, instead of, you know, going balls to the wall raising capital to do more properties like I did in 2022 and 2021—rather than really growing out my management portfolio—I said, "Hey, I want to keep the properties I have. I want to systematize them, make it so, you know, it can be something that is less on me, and have a team who can step in.”

And I wanted to focus on other things. Um, I want to buy my own property, which I did in May. Uh, honestly, I was so happy. That was like one of the biggest achievements that I've personally felt—was like not needing to partner with anyone to buy a home.

That was great because, in 2020, three years ago, I tried that, and a bank laughed at me. They weren't going to give me a loan for a variety of reasons. I didn't have enough credit history. I didn't have enough W2 income history.

So, by, you know, showing performance in 2021 and 2022, having revenue for my management business, having revenue for my boat business, I was able to get a loan in 2023 to buy a house.

And I’m going to do another one. Actually, the last one I bought, I bought with a partner. Uh, that honestly was more—my partner just wanted to do it, and someone I wanted to work with for a while. A good buddy who was kind of with us, seeing everything going on back when we started in 2020.

So, other than that, I want to grow this year again through my own properties. If I do a partnership deal, I want it to be something that's so big and badass that, you know, I can’t do it myself.

But I want to—if I can do it myself. The benefits, uh, the tax advantages to buying short-term rentals yourself is just so immense. And I want to also, again, continue focusing on growing BNBCalc.

So, that by itself has been a whirlwind of a year. BNBCalc, you know, has grown a good bit in 2023. I think we, like, quadrupled. Uh, granted, it was our second year, so it's not that hard to quadruple from pretty much nothing.

But we, you know—we have a couple thousand, or almost, I think, 2,000 monthly paying subscribers now, which is, you know, not huge. Uh, but it’s still crazy to me. I get messages all the time from our users, get feedback.

We do listen to our user feedback a ton, and we just launched a new version a few months ago that was pretty much entirely based off our user feedback. So, we’re going to continue doing that in 2023.

Uh, definitely some headwinds that we’re facing on the startup side. There's, you know, less transactions now than there had ever really been—there's been in, you know, 20, 30, 40 years in real estate.

So, there's less people buying properties. There’s less people underwriting and running the numbers on properties. So, definitely some things we’re trying to figure out in order to keep growing. But startups are hard, guys. It’s like one of the things I’m learning—and that I’ve learned before in previous experiences.

Startups are not easy. You’ve got to make good decisions. Uh, software products especially have bugs, have issues, have churn. You know, people might use it, might love it, but then they say, “Hey, you know what? My priorities have changed.” And then they come back, you know, six months later and start using it again.

But you don’t know if they’re going to come back. So, churn is when a software customer stops being your customer. Uh, and with our business, it's definitely something that, uh, is difficult to get down all the way.

We’re not going to be able to get it down all the way. So, how do we reduce it as much as possible? And the way you do that is—we make as good of a tool as possible, and we listen to our customers in order to make it, uh, more helpful and ultimately stickier.

So, I’ll keep you guys posted this year. As for goals with BNBCalc, we want to get into working with, like, realtor associations—kind of more like wholesale customers where maybe they get a discount but they have 50,000 people part of their association.

So that, you know, that’s something we’ve been recently starting to have conversations about. Those are long sale cycles, so hopefully by 2025, I have some updates there. And, um, yeah. I guess just listening: how can we make a product that, you know, more people want to use—and that they want to use more?

Ultimately, you know, the pricing of our product is, in my opinion, pretty low—pretty affordable. Um, but, you know, like, the way to make a big profitable business is to have—if someone’s willing to pay $1,000 for something, you need to charge $1,000. So, we got to figure out what are people willing to pay $1,000 for that works within what we’re doing, and build it—and then have them pay for it.

Easier said than done. So, yeah, that’s been an interesting game. And, ultimately, you know, if you look at my chart—or what I showed you guys—the revenue of why 2023 I was 20% up on 2022, uh, or maybe like 25% or something.

Whereas the year before, I was up 100%. So, I would say BNBCalcl is a big reason for that. It took a lot of my focus and energy this past year. Also, I started working with other people and coaching, uh, pretty much at the end of 2022. And I had a full year, and I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours working with my mentees. And I’ve had amazing, uh, amazing experiences doing that.

Definitely very rewarding. Also cool to see: how can I scale things that I’ve learned and how I look at things, and implement that in different parts of the country, different types of properties—and then working with different types of people from all backgrounds of life.

So, that’s been a cool experience.

We have, I think, like, honestly, I would say, like, we're probably one of the smaller, like, mentorship programs—which is cool because I actually, I really know every single person in my program, like, very well.

And, um, but, like, we have a very, very, very high percentage of people with listings—like, extremely high. I mean, I see, like—not to, like, throw shade at, like, people I follow on, like, social media—but, you know, I know they have, like, 1,500 people in, like, their program for the year or a thousand.

And then they're like, “We had 90 people get listings this year,” like, wow, like, we feel so, like, blessed, or, you know, we’re so happy. And I'm like, damn—you telling me you had 8% of your program, like, got a listing? That is—I mean, that's, like, nothing.

Like, for us, it is very high. I mean, I would—I would say, if you're listening to this and you're in the program, like, give me your number, but I—I think, like, definitely well over half have gotten their first listing.

And they get them—you know, we get them pretty quickly too. Um, so I'm excited to see, you know, in 2020, I—I—I would say, we—I’ve put a bigger emphasis on building co-hosting businesses this year, and I'm going to continue doing that.

I just think it's the perfect time to build a co-host business. You have things going for you. Vacasa, these big property managers are shedding clients like the plague, and their loss is your gain.

And there's no risk. There is no risk to a co-host business, property management business. The only thing you're risking is your time. And I would say, as a coach, personally, like, I take risks. I am personally a risk-taker, for sure.

I started a boat-run—I used my life savings on a boat-run business when I was, like, 23. Um, I put everything, all—I put future earnings, uh, because I got paid for the boats prior to actually completing the service.

Whereas on Airbnb, you get paid once, you know, a guest is actually checked in is when you get paid. For the boats, I just got a boat booking for next summer—for six days, I don't know, $2,300 bucks—that's going to be in my bank account Monday.

So, when I was 23, I used that funding to invest in buying and arbitraging properties. So, I—I essentially invested money I did not have technically because I hadn't actually completed the service.

So, I'm a risk-taker. I will say that. However, I—I do feel like stomaching, like, other people's risks is something that I find more personally challenging, which is, I think, like, a self-awareness thing.

Whereas I like co-hosting because there's no risk. There is no risk. There's only reward, and the timing is good for it. It doesn't matter if, for instance—in South Florida, for example—like, I think short-term rental demand has went down since COVID. And I have two properties in South Florida, so I’m seeing this firsthand.

Rental revenue is down since COVID highs. Uh, it's probably back to 2019 levels or up from 2019, but the inventory has probably doubled in the last three years. So, if you're doing arbitrage, you might have the numbers, and all the comps may have told you 130, and that would have been completely true based off the data.

Uh, but now it’s, you know, it’s lower than that. AirDNA is refreshing the comps at 120. Switching my camera here because it just died, apparently. So I’m on my webcam now. But arbitrage, you know, there are risks. Um, I mean, I obviously voice what those risks are. But co-hosting—there’s none.

You know, the house making 130 versus making 115—if you're at a 20% management fee, your take-home difference is negligible. Like, literally a couple, you know—if you're making 130 a year, that is a $26,000 annual management fee. At 120k a year, that is a $24,000 annual management fee.

So, whereas in arbitrage, it might be from you making 20–30 Grand a year to making 15 Grand of profit—co-hosting, it's 26k to 24k. So, negligible difference. So, I'm going to keep—I'm going to keep talking about co-hosting this year. That's going to be—I'm gonna have a lot of guests on, talking about co-hosting.

That's gonna be something that, I mean, I'm still growing. I had a conversation—I only co-host in markets that I'm already in. Uh, I know how to, obviously, get new leads and new markets. That's how I got to where I am.

Uh, but that being said, I'm excited for this year. I think it's a great year for co-hosting businesses all around. And next, what I want to talk about is kind of just, like, market trends that I'm seeing. Um, and actually, prior to that, talking about BNBCalc—we are building a co-host calculator.

So, 2024—year of growing co-host businesses. So, gonna build a co-host calculator. 2023 market trends—what are things that we saw?

Uh, we actually saw two things in regards to regulations. We saw certain places create rules—New York City, namely, being one of them, Dallas, Texas, being another. And then in many places, we saw the states fight back—the state judiciaries telling the localities, “You actually can't make rules. You are stepping on your citizens' rights.”

Dallas, Texas, is a prime example of that. They made short-term rental regulations, and then the state shut it down. So we're actually seeing that more and more. I—I'd say, like, early in the year, we were seeing, like, a lot of new regulation. Whereas latter portion of the year, it was actually more states siding with individuals and their right to do what they choose with their properties.

So, I think in 2024, we're going to actually see more of that. Uh, we're going to see more state governments telling local areas, “Hey, you're not allowed to tell your citizens what they can and can't do.” So, we’ll see how that folds out.

I want to talk about challenges that I had this year. Definitely this year, I felt a little bit overwhelmed. Uh, you know, I have—I still have my boat rental business. It's actually funny because I was telling—I was kind of recapping my goals with my fiancée for 2022, and one of them was, like, kind of, uh, “offload the boat rental business” was a big one.

Because that was a very, like, manually time-intensive business for me. I talked to a lot of our customers, and I said, “I can't do that this year.” So I hired a UNCC intern—shout out to Nico. He's actually joined us on the BNBCalc team as well, and he led things in regards to the boat business this year, which was awesome. And he's helping out already with next year.

So, that is a big, uh, big thing. But getting Nico onboarded and teaching him was definitely intensive. And doing that combined with the houses, combined with the software—it was a lot. Definitely, in 2023, I—I, at times, I definitely felt very, very overwhelmed.

So, in 2024, I want to build out our team more and just kind of think about: what am I uniquely good at? What's Jeremy—what can Jeremy be the best at versus, you know, Jeremy's doing everything?

So, I'm trying to be thoughtful and hire where it makes sense in the new year. So, that was a challenge for this past year—just keeping my head up. Head up above water. Not—not in terms of, like, financially or anything like that, but just in terms of, like, crap, I got to get so much done, and it's overwhelming.

But this next year—what are some portfolio review and goal setting? Sorry, guys, I'm literally going through this list of stuff Chat GDP gave me.

Which—one thing I think is AI is going to be—I know everyone says AI is going to be huge, so I want to tell you where I think AI, at least where I've seen so far, like, it has impacted me the most.

But definitely, like, I feel like offshoring—so getting folk from different countries to manage your businesses, or, I think, for some people, even do their day jobs. AI is going to make that a lot easier.

Because, for example, folks across the world generally are not as good at writing in English. They're not as good at speaking in English. However, with Chat GPT, with language models, they can, from a writing perspective, you know, get almost as good as an American can pretty quickly.

And I think that—let's say someone abroad may have been 40% as good at doing an American's job or a Westerner's job two years ago. Now, they're 75–80% as good. So, something I—I want to lean into is, like, working with folk from other places. Productively, efficiently, and helping others do the same.

Industry predictions—so, there was a report from AirDNA a couple of weeks ago about demand and supply of short-term rentals in the U.S. 2021-2022, demand jumped. Supply did not jump as much.

2022–2023, supply went through the roof. Demand did not go up as much as supply. 2024, it looks like demand is accelerating. Uh, the economy, the outlook, is actually pretty good right now, and supply is not going up as much as it was, but it still looks like supply is going up higher than demand.

What does that mean? Well, again, co-hosting, you know, don't got to worry really that much about supply and demand when you do co-hosting.

B: Differentiated products. I'm buying what I’m calling "Mega properties," meaning just insanely amenitized. That doesn't mean luxurious properties but things that just completely stand out from everything else.

Uh, that means, you know, more yard games. I'm doing a movie theater in the newest property, you know, adding every potential amenity that is going to make yours stand out from every other property in your area.

So, supply goes up—don’t compete with the supply. Be—uh, what's—what's the saying? Be a... not an army of one—holy crap, why am I drawing a blank on this? It's like a competition of one.

I don’t—whatever. Differentiated products is what I'm going after, uh, on properties that I acquire in 2024. Also, some other industry predictions: I think that over time, and we're going to start seeing this in the next, like, 5, 10, 20, 30 years, but right now, we've got a lot of baby boomers who are retiring.

And we're also going to have, you know, a large transition of wealth from our older generations to the younger millennial generations. But I think it's also going to be a transition of businesses.

Succession. I don't know if y'all watch the TV show Succession, but we're going to have a lot of that playing out in real life. So, with that being said, I think that those who can buy businesses, who know how to buy maybe even main street businesses and who are good at it, are going to have a great, like, once-in-a-generation, more than that, like, once-in-a-hundred-year, opportunity to buy businesses.

So, I'm not currently buying a business, but I think if I’m trying to position myself 5–10 years down the line, it'll be to not only grow new businesses but how do I buy legacy businesses? So, we're going to see more and more of that over time.

How does that pertain to short-term rentals? Well, property management businesses. There are a lot, there's a lot. There are thousands and thousands of property management businesses across the country.

My friend Patrick, who was on the last episode, has bought one, and he's in the process of buying two more. So, he is already seeing this start to play out. And through him, and learning about what he's doing, I’m seeing it as well.

So, stay tuned for that. But yeah, guys, I hope y’all liked this episode. Next episode, I’m gonna actually tell you guys about my goals for 2024—like exactly what they are. This is kind of more recapping on 2023.

So again, again, my goals for 2023: With the boats—it was high, go higher, kind of go higher-retire, so to speak. Uh, like hire someone so it wasn’t my full-time thing. With the houses—it was grow through buying my own properties, which has been amazing. It’s also been hiring a team of virtual assistants who can help manage that business.

With BNBCalc— it was growing. Honestly, I couldn’t really make a goal because I had no freaking clue. Anything. I didn’t know a damn thing. So, it’s hard to make a goal when you literally have no clue what you, you know, uh, you’ve never been through something before.

Personally—I’m engaged. That’s not—that wasn’t a goal at the beginning of the year, but that happened. I’ve got a cat. Um, you know, unfortunately, my younger brother’s best friend passed away a few months ago, who I was also actually pretty close with as well.

So, it was important, uh, for me to be able to kind of step up and help him out more. Just, you know, last night, he was with us for New Year’s. Uh, you know, I—I—I hung—I hang out with my brother before then, but definitely feel, you know, I want to make sure to step up and be supportive, uh, during his time of need because his, you know, literal childhood and current best friend died tragically.

So, for me, it’s been important this year to be there for my family. My older brother is going to go to Iraq in March. He’s in the Army. So, you know, yesterday I talked to him: “Hey, can we hang out in February? I’m going to Bozeman, Montana, to go skiing. Can we—can we hang out before you leave?”

He told me no, pretty much. He said he’s going to go on vacation with his girlfriend. But whatever. Either way, you know, I want to be there. I have the flexibility to be there, so I want to be there. I want to be there for my family—that’s super important for me. I think I did a pretty good job of that in 2023. Definitely want to do a good job of that in 2024.

So, I hope you guys—this was kind of a personal episode talking about my, uh, different goals and whatnot. But I want you guys to actively really have a clear definition for what your goals are for 2024.

I’m gonna do the same thing. I’m gonna write down pretty specific goals, and I’m gonna tell them to you guys. And you guys are going to hold me—hold me responsible for accomplishing what I say I’m going to do.

So, as always, I appreciate you guys. Please give this episode everything five-star because that’s how it finds more people. Share it with someone who’s trying to get into short-term rentals and wants actually, like, a real—a real view of what it is, what it looks like, and how to succeed at it in 2024.

And as always, guys, stay tuned for the next episode of the Short-Term Rental Pros Podcast.