Leveraging Partnerships to Scale Faster

Quick Summary

Jeremy Werden outlines his journey and strategies for using partnerships to expand his short-term rental (STR) portfolio and other ventures. He highlights the importance of collaboration, networking, and strategic thinking to overcome resource limitations and achieve rapid growth in business.

Key Points

1. Value of Partnerships: Partnerships provide access to resources (money, expertise, connections) that individuals might lack, especially in the early stages of a business. Aligning with like-minded, ambitious individuals accelerates growth and opens opportunities for scaling.
2. Strategies for Growth: Jeremy leveraged creative financing (e.g., DSCR loans, second home loans) and built relationships with local banks to secure funding. Partnerships were also used to share expertise, reduce costs (e.g., involving a lawyer as a partner), and diversify skills within projects.
3. Networking and Learning: Attending conferences and engaging in mastermind groups facilitates learning, networking, and collaboration, which are essential for business growth. Sharing knowledge on platforms like social media positions one as a domain authority and builds trust with potential partners and investors.
4. Adapting to Challenges: The STR market has evolved since the pandemic, demanding higher operational standards to succeed. Jeremy stresses the importance of continuous improvement and adaptability.
5. Lessons on Alignment: Partnership success depends on shared long-term goals and values. Misalignments should be addressed early to ensure smooth collaboration. Open communication and flexibility (e.g., buyouts when goals diverge) are crucial for maintaining healthy partnerships.

Full Transcript

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Good morning! It's Jeremy Werden. Today, I'm going to talk to you about leveraging partnerships to scale faster.

When I started in the STR game, I did not have a lot of resources. I did not have money, really did not have expertise, and I needed other people—not just financially but also for resources. I needed other people's skills that I could then, you know, combine with the strengths that I had in order to grow my portfolio much quicker.

If it had not been for partnerships, I would not be sitting here right now. I don't even know if I would have above two or three properties—if any, honestly. Because, really, you know, I was 23 years old. A bank was not going to give me money. You know, people were not going to take me seriously until I had a track record.

So, I needed other people to help build out my first listings, my initial portfolio pieces, and get it to where others would trust me.

I'm going to break down how I think about partnerships, how you should think about partnerships, who is a good partner for you, whether a partnership is something you should be interested in, and exactly how we structured all of my partnerships for all of my different businesses.

Before I get into that, this past week I was at STR Wealth—a huge summit in Nashville, Tennessee. There were a thousand Airbnb hosts there, and it was a lot of fun. So, I want to kind of give you guys my takeaways from that conference—things I learned, things that myself and other hosts are seeing out there, and really what my takeaways were.

First of all, it was a lot of fun. The STR space is full of great energy, great people. I think, you know, thinking about it, it's a hospitality business, so people get into it who like creating these experiences for other people. That's just gonna naturally, you know, bring together a unique subset of people who are just positive, fun-loving. You know, we had a great time, I'll just say that.

I think the people who put on the conference—shoutout to Bill Faith and Mike Shogren—they did an incredible job. They made sure that it was:

Fun, Informative, and Honest.

You know, I think those guys are straight shooters. I like them a lot, and I'm excited to go back next year. If you guys want to go to the STR Wealth conference, let me know, and I can help get you guys a ticket.

Avery Carl was one of the speakers there. She's probably one of the top short-term rental realtors and the founder of the Short-Term Shop. She was amazing. It was great to meet her. I'm actually going to be on her podcast in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned for that.

They definitely want a bigger conference next year. You know, there were a thousand this year; they're saying next year it'll be like three or four thousand, which is awesome.

Beyond the speakers, a lot of people that I connect with through social media were actually there. It was like my first time meeting the Karwells in person. I talk to them—I feel like I talk to them all the time. I've been on their podcast a couple of times; they've been on mine. I love them—they're awesome, they're super cool.

Sarah and Emily—it was my first time actually meeting them in person, which was great. I saw Michael and Jill Alfonse, who I've actually met a few times because Michael's from my hometown, and Jill is as well. So, it was cool catching up with them.

I also met the Real Estate Robinsons and some other folks, like Ryan, who's a CPA. I hung out with him a bunch. He taught me a lot about accounting, taxes, as well as other things, so I'm excited to collaborate with him moving forward.

I went there with the Changs—Michael Chang on social media. He's from New York as well. I'm actually gonna be on his podcast tomorrow. But it was super good, you know, traveling with them and hanging out.

Sunrise Homes, Emmanuel Pani of STR Secrets, and the Airbnb Data Guy, John Bianchi—Bianchi, sorry, I always butcher that—were also there.

So, great all-around. These folks have a lot of data. Obviously, the Airbnb Data Guy has a lot of data on Airbnb, but also, you know, they all have their own portfolios. They're all seeing different things.

It was really cool to just compare notes:

• Where are you looking?
• Where are you buying properties?
• Where are you doing arbitrage?
• What are the margins like?
• What are the numbers looking like?

For example, if you're buying a 500K house in that area, how much do you expect to make? What are some insights you have on specific markets?

I feel like I really know about as much as anybody on where the top players in the space are putting their money. And that's because going to these conferences, networking, having some beers—you know, people get a little bit more honest with their data and insights.

So, definitely, uh, I'm not a big drinker, but at conferences, you know, it definitely serves its purpose.

A little side note: I have a stress fracture in my foot. I ran 32 miles last weekend—an ultra marathon. Next thing I know, I'm at a conference for three days, standing on my foot that I just pushed to the brink. And, yeah, it turns out I had an MRI yesterday. My foot's not looking so good, but we'll be back in a couple of weeks. I'll be back on the basketball court.

So, back to the conference. What I've seen is that there's just a huge range of folks in the space. The conference had people, you know, with one property or those who want to get into the game, all the way to, you know, folks pulling in seven figures such as myself, to even people way beyond me, pulling in several million dollars a year.

My findings were that the people who are actually pulling in several million dollars a year—not that long ago, they only had one property. This is a really cool space where you can literally go from rags to riches extremely quick.

I'm an example of that, but there are also so many other examples of that, even people who, you know, have been doing it a little bit longer, and they're just leagues beyond myself.

So, I think that was a really cool theme—that all the speakers started with one. A lot of them started in 2015, 2017, or 2019. Like, it wasn't folks starting with vacation rentals in 1975. You know, it's all relatively recent.

I just really think it's a cool and exciting space where, if you do things the right way, you can succeed extremely quickly.

However, caveat: A big topic was that many feel things are harder than they were before in terms of short-term rentals, Airbnbs. There is kind of an agreement that, during COVID, things were super easy.

Even, I think, Bill said that someone could put a porta-potty on Airbnb, and it would do well. I think everyone kind of agreed with that—that during COVID, times were good. I mean, in the sense that you didn't have to be a good operator to do well. You didn't have to take professional photos. You didn't have to have a killer Airbnb listing. It was just pretty freaking easy.

So, the ones who are adopting, the ones who are continually improving themselves, improving their listings, improving their properties, improving their operations—they're doing better than ever before.

I would say, for the most part, I fall into that category. Our properties—I mean, I have 20, 25 listings now—and most of them are doing better than they ever have before. But that's because I'm a pro. I don't eff around. Like, this is a business for me.

Every day, our operations, our properties, everything we do gets better, so we're going to do better every year. Barring some crazy cataclysmic event, we're going to continue moving the ship in the right direction.

The other pros—the ones who are pulling in millions of dollars a year—same for them. They're doing better than ever before. They're adopting. They're learning new strategies. They're doing things differently than they did before.

You often hear "survival of the fittest." I think there's a lot of fit ones, so a lot of folks are going to do well and survive. But the days of just sitting there and the money coming in on your phone without doing anything at all—or being good at this—those days might be in our past.

So, my main takeaways:

STRs are a fun space. This is great people. Conferences are amazing. I'm definitely going to hit more. I'm going to another real estate conference next week. Hopefully, my foot is feeling better.

But, yeah, if you guys see me at any conferences, let me know. Come up and say what's up. It was really cool to meet a lot of people or see people come up and say, "Hey, Jeremy." And, honestly, one of my big takeaways was this:

I look a lot shorter on social media than I am in real life. People would come up to me, they'd kind of give me a glance, like a once-over, and go, "Are you Jeremy?"

And I'd be like, "Uh, yeah." And they'd be like, "I always thought you were a lot shorter."

And I'm like, "You know, I'm 6'3". It's not like I'm seven feet tall. I'm not a crazy height."

But I would kind of come back and ask them, "How tall did you think I was?"

For whatever reason—I don't know what it is—I appear short on social media.

So, that was a takeaway: I need to make myself appear taller. You know, because I pride myself on my height. I played basketball growing up. That's important to me.

I don't know how I'm gonna do that, but just for you guys listening—I am six foot three. I've got a long wingspan. Now, let's go back to our regularly scheduled programming.

So, great conference. If you want a ticket, let me know.

Also, another takeaway was this:

The value of masterminds. Just putting yourself in the room with people who are successful in whatever you're trying to do. Pretty much everyone running the conference, a lot of the speakers, had their own mastermind program.

Along the board, it was:

"Hey, we've all done masterminds ourselves. We invest."

Some, like Mike Shogren, said he invests six figures a year in his own masterminds that he's in.

For them, that has been their accelerator to success.

Just putting themselves in the room with people who have accomplished what they're trying to accomplish expedites the speed at which they're able to do that.

So, a lot of folks there were in different people's masterminds. I would talk to them about their experiences. I have a mastermind, so obviously, I know my mentees have been having great experiences.

That being said—whatever you're trying to do, if there's a big theme—if you're trying to do something, or you want to accomplish a certain goal, and there's someone who can get you there quicker.

It's worth it. It's worth going for it. It's worth surrounding yourself with the like-minded folk.

So, again, if you guys want to go next year, let me know. It was a really great experience, and, you know, I take away so much data that I can help my peers, my business partners, and my mentees attack new markets.

Uh, I just have an inside scoop on more things, which is great.

So, let's talk about partnerships.

I want to kind of give you guys a little bit of a visualization as to where I was three years ago. It's March of 2023. I got into the short-term rental game in March of 2020. I was 23 years old. I am 26.

At the time, I was pretty much living paycheck to paycheck in New York City. Then one day, my boss texted me—this was a week or two into COVID, so honestly about right now, three years ago—and said, "Hey, we're, you know, this is obviously an unexpected time. We need to conserve cash. Your salary is cut effective immediately."

For me, my legs were taken out from under me, and I needed—not wanted, needed—to do something. You know, I had my back against the wall.

I wasn't happy. I was only gonna feel happy once I knew I was going to be in control of my life, my well-being, and ultimately my financial freedom. So, I started with short-term rentals.

Initially, through boats as well as managing and renting other people's properties. I was doing the co-host model, where I would just manage an Airbnb, manage a home for a homeowner, and take a percent of gross revenue.

Then, when the situations made sense, I would do the arbitrage model, where I would rent and re-rent someone's property. By doing this, I was able to build a track record. I was able to build credibility.

I was posting on social media during this time about my experiences with the boats as well as the houses. I didn't have any following. I had no following—it was really only my friends at the time.

I would start posting about what I was doing during COVID, and a couple of friends reached out to me and said, "Hey, Jeremy, I see what you're doing. We'd love to get involved. We'd love to help you. We'd love to see if we can grow with you."

I wanted to own real estate—that's always been my goal. Since I was a little kid, the idea of owning real estate has been a really, really cool idea, and I wanted to make it happen.

But I couldn't go out and buy my own real estate. I tried. You bet your tail I did try.

I tried to get a loan from a bank. I went to a bank—I actually went to a bunch of banks—and they kind of laughed me out of the room.

Uh, I did not have two years of W-2 history. I didn't even have a lot of credit history. I got my first credit card at 21 years old. A lot of the time, to get loans, you need five years of credit history. So, I had no means of getting financing to purchase properties.

Did I say, "Alright, I've hit a wall, I'm not going to get over this wall," or did I say, "Hey, I can figure out a way to work with other people, to partner with those who can get me through this wall"? I did just that.

Folk reached out to me. I would talk to them. I knew what my limitations were. I knew what my strengths were. I knew how to do Airbnb at this time. I knew how to do short-term rentals. I had a track record—even if it was only a couple months of a track record. I had a track record.

I had an Airbnb account. I had great reviews. I knew what I was doing, and I could show that I knew what I was doing.

What I didn't have was the finances—whether it be cash myself to go out and purchase entire properties, or the financing from the bank.

I did not have credibility in the bank's eyes. I did not have the W-2 documentation that they require to get a loan. So, I partnered with others.

I would bring in investors, which largely, my initial investors were friends—honestly, other folk in their 20s, and also some friends-slash-family.

Whoever, you know, at that time—again, I did not have a huge social media following. It was mostly friends and family.

I would go out and be creative and start buying properties. To this day, I have purchased eight properties. I have bought eight different houses, of which not a single one of them, to this point, has been financed solely by myself.

I can't even—I actually tried again. I've tried multiple times to buy a house by myself.

As recently as putting an offer down in October of last year, the bank, when they went to official underwriting—so they actually gave me a pre-approval—when they went to official underwriting, due to a technicality, my loan was rejected.

I don't need to get into that exact technicality, but even to this point, I'm now 26. I have built a seven-figure short-term rental business.

I have tax returns that have all this money that my businesses are making. But, due to essentially the way I structured my holdings company, and only having one year of a return for my holdings company, they couldn't qualify me for two years.

They need two years of tax history. My holdings company had one. Technicality. I could not buy a house. So, again, 26 years old. I'm an owner of eight different properties, but none of them are solely owned by myself.

That will change this year. Once I do my taxes, I will be in a position to actually buy my own real estate without needing partnerships.

But that being said, I didn't just say, "Hey, I'm 23, I'm gonna wait until I'm 26 to get into the game, to start owning real estate." I said, "I'm gonna figure out how to do this now."

So, again, I did not have a lot of cash to begin. I did not have a means for financing. I wanted to buy. Not only did I need OPM—other people's money—because I did not have a lot of cash, but I needed OPF—other people's financing.

No bank was going to give me money. I didn't have a credit card until I was 21. I applied for a loan and got rejected because of the length of my credit history.

So, that was the situation I was in.

The way I did it was I started learning all I could about loans and financing. I stumbled onto this concept of a DSCR loan—a debt service coverage ratio loan.

Essentially, if you could prove to the bank the property was going to make money and cover its mortgage, they wouldn’t finance you based on, "Oh, you're Jeremy Werden, a 23-year-old with no track record who can prove you'll pay us back."

Instead, it’s, "Hey, this property is going to be a cash flow machine, and because it's going to be a cash flow machine, it's a good loan, and we're going to write it."

I needed to convince the banks that a property would make money. The way I did this was a combination.

I now had a portfolio of co-host and arbitrage properties, so I had data points that I could give the bank. I’d say, "Hey, we're looking to buy this property here. It's a four-bedroom lake house. I manage a four-bedroom lake house, and this is how much money it's making. Because of that, I think they're very similar, and it'll make the same amount of money, if not more."

I had to create financial models for the banks.

At the time, I used spreadsheets. We created a pro forma financial analysis spreadsheet that detailed all the revenue and expense items and gave the bank an idea of exactly how much cash this was going to generate.

It gave the bank an idea of, "Hey, is this property going to be profitable? Is this a good loan for them to take on?" We were very professional.

We created PowerPoint presentations. It wasn’t—you know—we did not look like kids. We looked like a legit business. We were able to partner with local commercial banks at 23 years old to finance the purchase of short-term rental properties.

So that was pretty cool.

There are national banks that are probably easier to partner with. However, they don’t give as good terms as the local banks. We needed to convince banks that we knew what we were doing, that we were credible, and that we were going to be good partners for them moving forward.

A lot of times, with local banks, it’s about building relationships. We appeared professional. We took calls with all the bankers, introduced ourselves not just as investors but as real human beings. We connected with them on a personal level. We even took our bankers out to hockey games.

We literally bought one of our banking relationships tickets to go to a Carolina Hurricanes game. No strings attached—just, "Hey, we appreciate you. You know, we're young. We understand that we're young, and it's really, really meaningful to us that you're trying to figure out how to make this work—not even on a business level but on a personal level. We're super appreciative that you are here to help us grow."

And just a tangent:

If you’re young and looking to get started, you don’t have a 10-year track record in whatever you’re doing. You need folk to buy into you. It’s going to be hard. Obviously, you can position yourself as professional as possible, as credible as possible. You can know what you’re talking about, which is super helpful.

But ultimately, someone is trusting you. Someone wants to help you out. They might be financially incentivized, or whatever it may be. But don’t diminish the importance of relationships.

Relationships are everything in business, especially when you don’t have leverage yourself. You need other people. I needed other people. I still need other people.

To this day, and for the foreseeable future—even decades from now—I’m going to value the importance of relationships. Early on, banking relationships were super important. Financing was important.

We were able to convince the banks that these properties were going to make money. I was able to convince other people that the properties were going to make money. Honestly, the banks needed to go to their investment committee and have proof and documentation that something is a good investment—especially these local banks.

The national banks have specific guidelines. A local bank says, "Hey, Jeremy from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and his 23-year-old buddies are doing this business. We think this will be a good long-term relationship for our bank." That’s the way local banks think.

So, I had to provide the banks with a lot of documentation. As for other investors—to be honest, I didn’t. They just trusted me. They saw what I was posting on social media. They wanted in.

I still provided them a lot of documentation because, you know, I do a lot of underwriting on each deal. Also, a lot of my friends and colleagues have backgrounds in finance, so it was a fun project to come up with all these models and things.

But my point is this:

If you start doing something, and you post about it, and you become a thought leader, people trust you. If you’re looking to raise money, start doing it. Do it on a small scale. Whatever you’re trying to do—if it’s Airbnb, or you want to buy houses—start doing arbitrage. Start co-hosting properties.

Start posting about it. Say, "This was my experience with my first booking," and folk will follow along your journey. They’re going to see you grow. It could even be in a short period of time, but you’re going to become a domain authority.

If you’re looked into, then raising money becomes so much easier than if nobody knows what you’re doing to begin with.

So, tangible tip:

If you’re looking to raise money, start posting on social media for whatever you’re doing.

So, my friends reached out to me. I raised money largely from friends and family. One thing that was helpful is, again, I could literally be talking to a friend, meet up with them, tell them what I’m doing, and they’d say they’re interested in investing with me.

I’d go, "Whoop, I got an Airbnb booking," and they’d be like, "Whoa." I’d show them my phone and say, "Wow, another booking came in. Here, check it out." I would literally show them on my phone, show them the app, and they’d go, "Holy crap, this is cool. You’re legit."

The first properties we purchased were a huge learning experience. To this point, we have purchased eight. I want to tell you how we structured some of the deals. Just for context—no two deals are structured exactly the same.

I think folk have a tendency to think, "Oh, how exactly do you do things?"

Honestly, the way we did the first deal was not the way we did the second deal, and it was not the way we did the third deal. Every deal is different for a variety of reasons.

When I started, I wanted to do as simple as possible. I did not want massive legal fees. I did not have the money to pay for massive legal fees.

I had some friends—uh, actually from social media—who were doing some deals at the time and raising external capital. They had a really complicated LP (limited partnership), general partnership structure with a waterfall—pretty complex financial engineering.

Their legal fees were, you know, forty or fifty thousand dollars for an eight-hundred-thousand-buck house. I’m like, "Holy crap, I don’t even—I don’t have nearly that amount of money to invest in the house, nevertheless to invest in a lawyer."

So, we had to make things extremely simple and also cost-effective. What did I do?

One of my first partners on my first deal—who did I partner with to save on legal fees? I partnered with a lawyer. We got a lawyer in the deal.

Why? To save on legal fees.

So, yeah, one of our first deals had a lawyer. The lawyer came in and helped with the operating agreement and the structure. And, you know, one of my points is, you want to partner with people who are going to help you do more of these moving forward.

I knew I needed a legal partner. I was 23 years old. I’m not a lawyer. I don’t want to go to law school—that’s the last thing I want to do. So, a lawyer helping us with this first deal was going to help us do more moving forward.

On one of our first deals, the lawyer—along with friends—came in.

Honestly, to be frank, I had a lot—even though I only had like 2,000 followers on Instagram at this time. Now, I have well over 100,000, but at that time, there were like 20 people reaching out, wanting to invest with me in properties.

The ones I actually invested with were ones that I thought had ambition and motivation to do more moving forward.

Also, they were folk who could be on a loan with me. They had a good financial profile—they had good jobs—and they helped the bank feel comfortable giving us money.

The partners I did early on:

One of our first deals had six partners. We had our lawyer partner and four other folk.

Since then, all eight of the deals I have done have been with four of them. Not every time; it’s not all of us every time. Maybe I’ll do a deal with one of them on one house or two of them on another.

That was definitely one of my requirements, I need to be investing with people who will help me grow this business. If I’m going to raise money to do this, the folk I raise money from need to be ones that I will do future deals with.

They’re going to help me. They’re going to help me grow this business. And they’ve done just that.

Three years down the line, that was my requirement early on. I’m only taking your money if I think you’re going to help me do more of these in the future.

Fortunately, my foresight was spot on, and now we’ve done eight together.

So, again, you’ve got to figure out what people and what resources you need to accomplish your short-term and long-term goals. What partnerships do you need to build specific to your situation?

At this point, we’ve done local commercial loans to buy houses. We’ve also leveraged second home loans. The way we do that is, one of my business partners takes on the loan individually. They buy the house as a second home loan.

Then, we have an agreement between us—an operating agreement or a joint venture agreement—and after a certain period of time, the property title gets transferred into an LLC that myself and my partners own.

So, essentially, we leverage my partner’s financing.

Again, we were 23 at first. I did not have two years of history. My buddies did not have two years of history. But a year later, we were 24, and, yeah, my business partners now had two years of W-2 history and were able to get loans.

So, we did just that. Rome wasn’t built in a day. We started with commercial loans because that was the only option. From there, we started doing second home loans.

We’ve bought—I think maybe—five homes with second home loans and three with commercial loans. Something like that. So, we leveraged second home loans and other people’s financing to further scale the portfolio. Really, I’ve even done arbitrage partnerships.

I have my own arbitrage portfolio. I have my own co-hosting management portfolio. But I also, with one partner, have an arbitrage business.

Reason for that? At this point, I don’t want to be, you know—I mean—it’s just a good business partner. We both have strengths and weaknesses, and to scale a portfolio faster, it made sense to partner.

So, I have a business on one of my two arbitrage businesses. In one of them, I have a partner.

Also, BNBCalc—my software company—I have a co-founder. We are 50-50 partners. He’s great at engineering, great at coding. I knew what the product needed to be. I know this space. I’ve been doing deals in this space for several years now.

I know the tools and resources that need to be built to help myself be better at this game and help other investors become better at this game. Parker—he’s a savant.

He’s so good at engineering, not only from a back-end perspective but also from a user experience perspective. Making something that people actually want to use and that people are using every day is his specialty.

So, it’s a privilege to partner with him and grow with him as well. We’ll see where we take that. You know, ten years down the line—or maybe three years. Given I started Airbnb three years ago and here I am today—three years down the line—we’ll see where BNBCalc is.

If you guys aren’t signed up for BNB Calc, check it out. Best tool for pro forma financial analysis in the game.

Ultimately, if you’re doing a partnership, the things you need to consider are your strengths and weaknesses:

1. What are you good at?
2. What are you not good at?
3. How can someone else fill the gaps?

For BNBCalc, for software development, at this point, I can’t sit there and code for 10 hours. My ADD is crazy. I’ve got too many things going on—with the houses, with the boats. I can’t sit there and code.

Now, Parker has even hired other developers to help him code faster. Future growth and ambition:

For me, I don’t want to partner with people who lack ambition. If it’s a passive investor, and they’re giving me money at terms that make sense, that’s one thing.

But I want to do more and more deals. I know I need other people. I want to do more and more companies, more and more deals. For me, having partners with future ambition is super important.

You don’t want to partner—if you have grandiose goals—with someone who’s lazy and says, "Alright, I want to do this one house. I want to put money in my pocket, and that’s it." That’s cool. If that’s the case, I’d rather have them be a passive investor. You know, they either get bought out or, you know, they get their income, they get their cash, and that's it.

So, you want the right partnerships with the right people that match your future goals. That's super, super important. You need to be aligned. Everything needs to be straight up. So, I told you guys that, you know, early on, one of the deals was a lawyer.

I partnered with a lawyer. They were investors, which was great. Got the property set up, you know, did the documentation, the operating agreement—made it all kosher.

A year in, we weren't as aligned. It was just, naturally, we weren't as aligned. I'm a believer in, you know, you should improve the property as much as possible early on to maximize its value and maximize its earning potential. I'm a believer that's super important.

Whereas, you know, someone else might be, "Hey, I want to maximize cash in my pocket today. I want to make as much today. I want as much cash. I want returns. I don’t want, you know, capital improvements in properties. I want cash in my pocket."

And if that's the case, you're not necessarily aligned. So, we bought out. Which was totally cool, you know. You have that conversation.

"Hey, I think that we need to be doing this. You think you want this. All right, how can we marry those two things together?" So, bought out this partner.

Gave them an incredible one-year return. I'm pretty sure we gave them a 60 percent cash-on-cash return in one year. That same year, the stock market crashed by 30 percent.

So, if Jeremy’s giving you 60 and you would have lost 30 percent in the stock market, effectively, I mean, it’s an insane investment. So, everything was good. All good.

If you're going to have partnerships and you realize your goals aren't aligned in the long term, have that honest conversation. Have it as early as possible. And, you know, hopefully, in our case, the properties are doing well enough where we can buy them out.

That’s what we did. Bought them out. So, make sure you're aligned with your partners. That’s just going to smooth your mutual growth into the future. I hope that gives you guys a pretty good basis for thinking about partnerships.

I explained a lot of my partnerships early on—how I thought about things, how I think about things moving forward. Don’t use, "Hey, I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough resources. I don’t have enough money," to keep you from getting into the game.

It could be Airbnb. It could be short-term rentals. Or it could be another game. But I just don’t want to hear that excuse. If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine. If you don’t want to set yourself on a path toward financial freedom, cool. Nothing’s wrong with that. Just be honest with yourself.

But don’t use it as an excuse, guys. Because there are seven billion people in this world. And whatever capacities you may lack, someone is there to pick up the slack for you. Someone has those skills. Someone has those resources. Someone has that time.

You just have to go out there, find them, and partner with them. So, today’s been all about scaling via partnerships. Again, super important for me, and I hope you guys had some positive takeaways.

Yeah, that’s it. That’s it for today. I hope you guys enjoyed. Next episode, what I’m going to talk to you about is all of the different Airbnb strategies.

So, I’ve co-hosted to start. I’ve done arbitrage. I’ve purchased properties. I’ve raised money from investors to purchase properties. And I’ve done glamping. I consider those the different Airbnb strategies, and I want to talk directly to you about the pros and cons of each of them.

So, stay tuned for that episode.

Hope you guys enjoyed today’s episode. Stay tuned for the next one. Have a great day!