Strategic Real Estate Investing and Maximizing Cash Flow with Direct Bookings with Bill Faeth

Quick Summary

Bill Faeth, a thought leader in short-term rentals discusses strategies for real estate investing and maximizing cash flow through direct bookings. Jeremy and Bill talk about real estate investment strategies, selecting profitable properties, leveraging direct bookings, and actionable marketing techniques to optimize revenue in the short-term rental industry.

Key Points

• Invest in properties that fit both cash flow and appreciation goals.
• Research markets in depth, focusing on supply, demand, and unique opportunities.
• Avoid market saturation and consider underperforming or niche markets with growth potential.
• Owning customer relationships is vital for long-term success.
• Effective marketing includes listing optimization, off-platform advertising, and automated follow-ups.
• Mastering direct marketing can elevate properties to outperform market averages.
• Co-hosting provides a low-risk entry into property management.
• Focus on high-revenue properties to maximize effort and profitability.
• Build trust with property owners by demonstrating clear strategies to improve revenue and save time.
• Regularly audit decisions to ensure they contribute to long-term objectives.

Full Transcript

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Jeremy: What's up, guys? This is Jeremy Werden and the Short-Term Rental Pro Podcast. I'm here with Bill Faeth, an absolute thought leader, as well as a guy who's just really, in my opinion, leading the pack into the future of the short-term rental space. So you guys are going to want to tune in here, listen to Bill's background, how he got to where he is today, and he's going to share a lot of very tangible information with you that will help you either start or grow your short-term rental business.

Bill, thanks for coming on.

Bill: Yeah, thanks for having me, Jeremy. I'm really excited to talk some shop with you today.

Jeremy: Awesome. So yeah, Bill, can you just give folk who don't already know who you are a little bit about your background, how you got to where you are today in the short-term rental world?

Bill: Yeah, I think, like with most people probably my age, that we were into real estate prior to the boom of 2020 during COVID, I started with long-term rentals. I was 22 and bought my first duplex in Bakersfield, California, with my winnings from literally my first year playing professional golf. And just manifested through real estate.

I found out about short-term rentals in 2012 when I was at City Council in downtown Nashville fighting Uber regulations. I was in the ground transportation space, and I kept seeing these bills just about as often as the bill to try to shut Uber and Lyft, the app-based limousine companies, down. We'd start seeing short-term rental bills that were coming through too, and that's what piqued my interest.

Literally, I was having a meeting with a City Council person about our bills, and he was writing a bill for short-term rentals. I asked him about it because I owned a couple of condos that I had LTR in here, and that was my first foray into short-term rentals or even understanding what it was.

I was never—I’ve never been—a vacation rental guest until I got into this educational space. And even at that, I don't like staying at short-term rentals. We can talk a little bit, and the reason is the lack of consistency. I'm a huge JW Marriott guy. I'm a JW Marriott and Hilton guy, and I love the consistency that happens in hotels.

I don't like the inconsistency, and I've made it very public because I live a public life; I document everything that I do. I've rented some pretty ridiculous $10,000–15,000-a-night properties around the country to host my mastermind in, and every time, we're so disappointed because that bar—that expectation—is set so high, right?

So I think that's one thing that we need to try to really achieve: consistency. That's something that I've built my guest brand on, I guess, is really trying to build consistent experiences across the board as I've rolled out my portfolio since 2015.

So I switched everything from LTR to STR in 2015. First place, Estes Park, Colorado; second place, Destin, Florida; and now I'm in Montana. I just put another property under contract in Montana yesterday. I'm in Alabama, down in Gulf Shores, Fort Morgan; up in North Carolina, Banner Elk, Beech Mountain.

So I've strategically learned from my business partner in my glow golf business to try to get two to three properties in each market—not necessarily for scales of economy, because that really doesn't work in trying to negotiate better deals with handymen and cleaners, but just from an ease-of-operation standpoint. And now, I own and also have a co-hosting management business as well.

Jeremy: Gotcha. Now I like how you say that's the ease of logistical operations. People always ask me, they're like, "Yo, why didn't you enter X market or Y market? Or what's the best market?" And I say, like, you know, at this point, I'm already in five or six. They're good markets.

Sure, I could probably put a pin on a map in a specific area and say, "This one is the best place," so to speak. But when you already have the infrastructure in a local area—like Montana, for instance—I'm assuming there's not that many legitimate operators there, and folk would probably be scared to enter a market like Montana. I'm assuming it's more rural, correct me if I'm wrong.

Bill: No, I think you're spot on. But here's what people do: they follow me into markets, and they follow other info—I don't like the word influencers—but I put a property under contract in Kentucky just six weeks ago, or whenever it was, and literally as soon as I announced that I was investing in Kentucky, Ton Boer, who's my agent up there, and she's awesome. She just got throttled—87 people within 24 hours reaching out to her. I just got a text message from Tyler Coon. When I invested into Banner Elk, North Carolina, I said, "Dude, do not share this publicly. I need three or four months to—I’ve had $150 grand left on a 1031. I got to buy another property, get this cleared out, then we can go ahead and make that announcement."

And it's one of the biggest things that frustrates me because people really need to invest property to property, not even market by market, and definitely not influencer by influencer. We all have different wants, needs, and expectations going into a market.

So I have made it abundantly clear that I invested as a lifestyle investment into Whitefish, Montana. I had looked all over—from, we were talking about Jackson, the Teton Village, the Alpine area, up to West Yellowstone and Bozeman—for two and a half years. And I think people would be crazy if they're going into that market strictly from a financially driven decision unless they're within five miles of the entrance to the West Glacier National Park entrance.

People don't really think about all these dynamics that go into picking properties. I told you before we started—it's a pretty arrogant comment—I believe I'm the best property picker that I've ever seen. And it's a combination of data evaluation, value-add, and deep research.

I'll just give you a really quick example, Jeremy. All my assets at the beach were in Fort Morgan, Alabama, prior to COVID. Lower cost, lower hosting, lower reviews—easier. So I brought kind of the 30A, the Seaside hosting mentality to Fort Morgan. That was about 15–20 years behind. Golf cart stops, paddleboards, coffee bars, ridiculous communication, high-end linens—just all this luxury stuff into an old, tired market.

Then I shifted all of my assets out of Fort Morgan into West Beach, and even my Mastermind members thought I was crazy. What they didn't know—and it's taking place next week—is that Jack Edwards Airport was turning into Gulf Shores International. And I follow City Council meetings, I follow regulatory components, I'm looking for that deeper research to move. If I'm going to move millions of dollars, it's not just because I see a better property; it's because I see a better long-term future.

Jeremy: It's funny, yeah. We had Tyler Coon on, actually—I think the last episode that aired was me and Tyler talking. And we talked about how everybody moves into Destin, Florida, and all of a sudden, prices go up. It's oversaturated, and then everyone's looking for that next spot.

And he—I think what's cool about him and his brokerage is there—I know you talked about Kentucky, so maybe we shouldn't talk about the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. I'm assuming that's probably where you looked in Kentucky.

Bill: Yeah, I think it's a great market. I think it's one of the few remaining year-round markets because of the weather and the attraction to the Bourbon Trail.

But I'll go back to Tyler for a second. The only reason I invested 18–19 months ago into Banner Elk, North Carolina, is because Kenny Bedwell, founder of STR Insights, found a hole in the market. At the time, there was nothing large that was being served, meaning 14 guests and above. The market was almost vacant, and the handful of properties that were there were shitty. Like, literally, the average host was 4.4 stars. Everything was outdated—what I call Golden Girls.

So I went, and I invested into Banner Elk. Bought my biggest property I've ever purchased for a single-family home, and it was $1.6 million. I’ve absolutely crushed it.

The problem is, Jeremy, is then I spent that extra 1031 funds going into Beech Mountain. And that's when I announced that I had invested into that market, and so many people followed me into Beech Mountain. The level of rehabs and design and just everybody stepping up their game—Tyler told me there were like 480 properties that transacted.

And I know how much money I made him, following people, following into the market that we tracked—him and I together. And a lot of people are selling now. I'm selling; I'm getting out of the market because so many people followed me into it. It is saturated.

The only way to compete—because everybody has leveled up their game—is to compete on price. I've got Mastermind members selling; I’ve got co-hosting clients that are selling. I created my own private group. I'd say 20 of the people in the private group are selling because there's just not enough demand in that small of a market.

And that's the reality of what's happening in our space now. So we have to be very strategic in that deeper research when we're picking a market. And then, most importantly, I want people to know: you don't invest into a market, you invest into the individual property.

Jeremy: I think you touched on a good point there. So I think a lot of—yeah, obviously, I see this in my comments and questions online: "What's the best market? What's the best market?" It's like the top question. You probably get asked it all the time too.

Bill: Yeah.

Jeremy: But when you break it down—and the way at least I see it, so I'm curious the way you see it—is it's really the right property in a market with good fundamentals. And fundamentals are just supply and demand. Like, you just want a market where the demand is going up over time and the supply is not exceeding that.

It's really a simple math equation. You look at the Gatlinburg, Tennessee's, and yeah, you probably look at obviously Beech Mountain and Banner Elk like that. You can just clearly see—obviously look at AirDNA—that equation's messed up. The numbers aren't there. But in most of the country, the equation is still there.

Bill: It’s the average that’s messed up, right?

Jeremy: Yeah.

Bill: So if you're up here, it's what my Mastermind members call the Mastermind 30. We do benchmarks every month, right? And they outperform the 90th percentile of AirDNA as a group by 30–31%, and it fluctuates.

So what's really important is that if you're going to be average, you shouldn't be investing into short-term rentals today. If you're going to be able to stand out from how you evaluate, how you pick, how you renovate, how you design, how you amenitize, and how you market, then you can ascend past that 90th percentile.

And I think people aren't honest with themselves, right? So you—I look at Gatlinburg as exactly like 30A, right? If you go into Gatlinburg, you got to have the indoor mod pool, which is 100 G's. You got to have a $50,000 minimum into your two-car garage game room.

If you're not willing to do that, it's not—it's one of the few places where proximity and views aren't good enough anymore, unless you're at the top of Ober and the gondola passes right in front of your house, right? So I think that narrows down the type of investor that should go into that market.

And that's where people aren't real with ourselves. We lie to ourselves all the time. You lie to yourself, I lie to myself about whatever. The problem is, when we're investing, we better be brutally honest.

John Hodge, the bank whisperer, and I talk about this all the time, and we have a saying: "Don't tell me your story." If you have to tell me a story about your property or about why you're investing, and you can't just hand me a performa and make a financially driven decision, then you should not invest in that property.

We've never seen a story tell us, except for somebody that knows really what they're doing, about how they're going to take a property that's doing a hundred grand and turn it into 150. That can be done, but you better be really good at knowing what moves the needle in that individual market.

So we hear, "Should I be pet friendly?" Yes, in certain markets. No, in other markets. Hot tubs are not even an option in the mountains anymore—they are mandatory. So that additional price of $10,000, $12,000, $15,000 has to be factored into your purchase price if it does not have a hot tub.

The interesting thing, I think, is the Gatlinburg market. The strongest, consistently most performing bed count is a 2-2 for cash-on-cash for cash flow. Everybody invests; everybody wants the six, seven, eight bedrooms. But if you look at the consistency over time—and this is where Kenny Bedwell's data comes into play, right?—the rock-solid bet is that a two-bedroom, two-bath in Gatlinburg is going to do between $47,000 to $55,000 with almost no fluctuation.

It's almost impossible not to do $45,000. It's almost impossible for somebody like me to come in and push that to $65,000 on a 2-2. So there's like an off-market deal right now with six 4-2's. It's going to do $300,000 like clockwork, right?

So the question is, can somebody add $10,000, $15,000? Or if they did nothing—what I call like the Dr. Dennis "set it and forget it"—and just build your listings and never do another thing, can they still do $45,000 to $50,000?

And I think, Jeremy, that's one of the things that I see is people don't analyze bedroom counts on demand. They just look at the market, and they look at either single-family, multi-family, boutique hotel. They're not really breaking it down by two bedrooms, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and above. And that varies market to market.

Jeremy: When you say—I'm just curious—what would a 2-2 in Gatlinburg run you right now, or six of them, if you're buying a portfolio?

Bill: I'm not going to comment on this individual deal because this is something that's in our war room that will be taken down on Wednesday. But I think you're looking probably around 300K.

Jeremy: Oh, wow, okay.

Bill: Roughly.

Jeremy: Because I was just—I don't know why—just off the top of my head, I was thinking Gatlinburg in general. Just everything's pushed north there. 1-1's, even like little mini cabins…

Bill: $300,000–$400,000. I can tell you this deal is under $400,000 each, and it's probably slightly above $300,000. It'll be under contract before.

But those are the types of deals. That's like a consistent, safe deal that somebody could invest a couple of million bucks into, generate $300,000. Is that the $200,000 per million or $100,000 per $500,000 investment that I'm looking for? No.

But is it a consistent property that can yield $125,000 to $140,000 a year in EBITDA, or cash flow for those of you that don't know what EBITDA is? Absolutely, it is.

Jeremy: And what is your current equation looking like? So obviously, people talk about interest rates all the time. I feel like, from my conversations with those really leading the space, they don't really talk as much about the particular interest rate.

But really, if I'm going to put $800K in, I want to make $150K. Or do you have a specific kind of

Bill: $100,000 for every $500,000 to $200,000 for every million dollars. That's very challenging today, though. I'm happy if I can spend a million bucks and get $175,000 at the interest rates today.

And I'll tell you right now—and it may shock people—I'm in the most aggressive buying mode I've ever been in my life right now. And if interest rates go up even more, they've settled right where I'm getting, right around seven percent today.

I don't advise people to be aggressive if you don't have any money, you don't have savings to back up your purchase. Don't borrow money from Mom and Dad. Don't do hard money and these 10% interest rates on DSCRs with five-year prepays—those scare the sht out of me, right?

But I can go do a conventional; I can go get a commercial loan with really good rates for today at seven percent. It gives me way more buying power. I just put my second property in Montana under contract. That should be around $1.7 million. It's new construction even, and I'm under contract at $1.465 million. It'll be done the first part of August.

There is no question once it's done—it's in a municipality that is highly regulated. I can get an STR permit. The CCNR supports STR permits. That's gonna most likely bring that value to $1.75 million, $1.775 million the day that I close, and probably $1.8–$1.85 million once we furnish.

So those are some of the investments that I like, and it's in a very strategic location. Can I get 20% cash-on-cash, 30% cash-on-cash on that property? No. But as you get into these higher-value deals, cash-on-cash comes down.

So there's this kind of $1 million to probably $1.2–$1.5 million mark where your cash-on-cash kind of goes down, but you're generating more cash flow, right? And I think—which is more important—I think a lot of that depends on where you're at in your investing lifeline.

For me now, it's much more about cash flow, and I'm looking at cash flow over a 10-year period, not a one- or two-year period, right? So there's no question in my mind, if I can sustain my creditworthiness, manage my debt-to-income ratio (my DTI), that probably sometime within 36 months from today, I should be able to take this seven percent interest rate and get it down to five.

And so I'm actually factoring in that equation. If I take the loan balance and get that down to five, what's the difference in the increase in cash flow? I'm analyzing those things on my performa today when I'm looking at these long-term holds.

Jeremy: Actually, Tyler and I touched on this. He obviously works with a ton of investors, like yourself being obviously a big one, also being one that probably led to him getting a little bit more clients.

So everyone has different considerations. Some folk—at this point, when it was crazy to me when I first heard that people buy STRs purely for tax benefits—when I heard that initially, when someone said that, I was mind-blown.

Because for me, it was all cash flow. Like, cash flow is what got me out of my job. Cash flow allows me to live the life I want to live. It wasn't tax benefits. But now I'm curious—where you're at now—is it also tax benefits, like buying to do the whole cost seg? Is that kind of a big factor for you?

Bill: I think you better have probably $25–50 million plus net worth to only buy for tax benefits, right? Ryan says it very well. I never advocate for buying just for tax benefits unless you're that wealthy, right? Because then you end up compromising the cash flow, compromising investing into strong markets that have good appreciation values over a set period of time, whether it's three to five years or ten years.

I look at really two things. I am not choosing properties ever based on cost segregation benefit. I'm choosing properties based on a combination, and it's about 85% cash flow. That's my net income, folks. That has nothing to do with gross revenue. I could give two shts about gross revenue.

And just so you guys know, gross revenue includes cleaning fees; it includes taxes. This bullsht of running a business and thinking, "Oh my God, I have a coffee shop, and you know what? I'm not going to factor in the cleaning fees that I have to pay for that outside cleaner to come in and clean my coffee shop at night." Every dollar you generate through an STR is gross revenue. Ryan would tell you the exact same thing, right?

So here's the deal. Number one: 85% for me is going into net income. How much net income—real cash flow—can I generate off of that property? The second part of it is appreciation. The cost segregation is the bonus—that's the cherry on top, right?

But the only time that you should do a cost seg is if you know you're going to hold on to that property. So I have a large portfolio of properties that I own. About 30% of those properties—the debt, right—you can look at either the number of properties or the debt that I have.

I've cost segged them, I've 1031-ed them, and I even have one property still that has a DSCR on it, right? So if I'm going to use 1031 funds, like I did in Banner Elk, I know I'm going to hold on to that property.

So I did do a DSCR through the lender. I got a strong rate on it, like I think 4.85% when I bought it. 40-year am, I don't know, what is it? Yeah, 30-year note on a 40-year am. So my cash flow is significant.

But the one thing that I'm doing is I'm looking at the appreciation on that property based on the investment that I will make post-close—the ARV. But I'm also being disciplined enough to where I'm escrowing my own principal.

That's something that there are a lot of people—a lot of the DSCRs—since Chris Ledwich, at the lender, kind of pioneered it and introduced the 40-year am on the 30-year note, interest-only. We can't make extra payments; we can't pay down the principal because that would trigger the prepay.

So you need to be disciplined enough to be able to go in and escrow your own principal on the side. So I do that.

Jeremy: Not to cut you off—is that for the depreciation recapture when you sell it? Is that kind of to protect yourself in case you need to sell?

Bill: It's what I like. I like the flexibility of having an interest-only loan. But I must have the discipline to be able to save my principal payments. So people don't understand—most people don't know my strategy.

So I used to be the Robert Kiyosaki "let's leverage," and if I was your age, I'm going to be much more aggressive in leveraging debt. I just turned 50 last week. I'm retiring in less than roughly five years, so I'm trying to go more towards the Dave Ramsey side and pay down my debt.

My wife and I do not touch any of the income that we make off of our STRs. We reinvest into the properties to keep them brand spanking new, and we pay double or triple our mortgages. If we have that one DSCR loan we can't do that, so I'm taking that Banner Elk, which is a $285,000-a-year property, which means I typically operate at about 40–45%.

So let's just say $140,000 net. We're putting every penny of that—we keep about $40,000 in operating costs for that individual property for carry costs—we're putting every penny back into paying down the mortgage.

Since I can't pay that, I'm actually putting that into a money market account that's yielding 4% return.

Jeremy: Okay. So essentially your evolution as an investor—short-term rental investor—initially was more swing-for-the-fences, so to speak, and now your priority is not having a large debt load so five years from now you can go eff off. Or what is your—just, you're gonna tell us—what is your goal, I guess, next 10–20 years?

Let's start with swing for the fences. I don't know what that means. So I didn't have the money that, when I started in 2015, that I have today. I saved for three years—$127,000—for my first down payment on a $630,000 short-term rental.

And I've built my entire business out of cash flow. One of the things that I did do, starting in February of 2020—even really before COVID started, but that's when we already were seeing—I’d sold a house in Fort Morgan to move towards West Beach and Gulf Shores.

I was able to sell about seventy-five thousand, seventy thousand dollars higher than I'd anticipated. I bought a property in East Beach that literally we—my wife and I—were on day three of setting up after close, and somebody came and walked through the property and offered to buy it.

And I, if I remember correctly, I think I paid $535,000 and sold it for $670,000. Was it $625,000? But we were coming into spring break, like March and April. I said, "Okay, we'll do that, but we're doing a 60-day close so that way I could keep the rental income."

And I—don’t owe me to this—but I made like another $40K on rental income and then sold it for $95,000 or $100,000 more than I paid for it. Well, then I rolled that in to buy another one. And then I did.

So basically, I flipped nine properties in 13 months just in Gulf Shores. By the time I'd sold that property, things were heating up. The market was appreciating at three to five percent a week—not a month, not a year.

Jeremy: This was into 2020, 2021?

Bill: Exactly. So I went in—I had the best agent down there, Deb Wood. She's retired now. She was incredible. She was the most trusted. She got me off-market deals, kind of like Avery does now for our war room for the super team. Having those connections is insane and what you can do from an investing standpoint.

So I built up my cash through cash flow of my own properties that I would buy and hold, but also I did some flipping, which I'd never done before. But there was one key thing—it was like, "Get in, get it done in a week."

That was always the goal, and it was tough for me and my wife because we did a lot of the labor. She's a designer; she would procure. We've got two kids, soccer, all that type of stuff. But we would buy a property, we'd get in, seven, eight days—done. List it, rent it, sell it, repeat. Rinse it, buy it, close it, furnish it, design it, sell it.

The one thing we didn't do was any construction. So what Deb Wood had taught me were these retail flips: paint, flooring, appliances, furnishings, designs—as quickly as we can—so that way we can generate rent through the summer.

So I pretty much had doubled my existing portfolio as we went into April, May, June, and July. And in the middle of July, when everything was still hot, is when I offloaded everything. Then I really started leveling up to the bigger properties that I would hold, if that makes sense.

So there's a lot of ways—there's not just one way—to make money in this business. I leveraged my wife's ability as a really good interior designer to add really quick value to those properties.

Jeremy: And did you see a premium because you were selling them as effectively turnkey short-term rentals?

Bill: Yeah. There's a guy—he was in my Mastermind; I guess he probably wasn’t then—named Brandon Thompson out of Atlanta, who was a house flipper, and he was just getting into the short-term rental space.

I'll never forget—it was actually in Fort Morgan. We bought a—what was it?—a 4-4-2 for $429,000. We painted—it was white—we painted black trim around the windows, the post, the eaves. I didn't even put in new flooring—just new furnishings, painted a little bit inside, a couple of new appliances.

I think we paid $429,000 and sold it for $625,000, like literally 18 days after we'd closed. All-cash deal. Done.

And we did a lot of those types of deals just to where we could build up our cash so we didn't have to use our own money and then go and redeploy. By the end of the summer, we were buying million-dollar-plus properties.

Jeremy: At that time, I tried to—I call it the velocity of cash, so to speak—that was the quickest way to turn your cash, like turn one dollar into two dollars, two into three. And now you're parking that cash, so to speak. It's still gaining in value, but it's not as much about recycling it.

Bill: I've hit all of my financial goals. One of the big things is—if you remember my session I did about building your outcome at the STR Wealth Conference, a 45-minute session—it takes two days for me to teach somebody, like at our Couples Retreat or when we were in Montana.

And I learned from my mentor. If you remember that first day, I don't know how many people were paying attention, but I almost started crying on stage. I got to introduce John Bairdon, who was sitting in the front rows, retired, and he's the one who introduced me to building out a life plan, right?

And I built this whole planner off of it, where I hold myself accountable daily. I grade everything I do, but most importantly, I've defined retirement. That's a definition, and even when you're at your age, you should define what retirement means to you.

It will change many different times. Set a date, because if we don't—if we can't keep score, whether we're 20, 30, 40, or 50—on what that end game is and define it, then what are we really working toward?

If we do not have the ability to make sound decisions without that goal in mind, we're just aimlessly running through life fcking chasing money. And I was doing the exact same thing when I went through my first 23 startups without really intentional purpose behind it.

Once I got that in 2015, that's when everything in my life absolutely changed. And it's interesting—I got into STRs right as I met John. I got him to share my first Mastermind that I was a part of.

I don't know if you've ever heard of EO, the Entrepreneurs Organization, but I left that to start my own called Spark, because we all need this spark in our life. And John gave that to us.

So I had financial and life goals. A lot of people look at church and state—they want to separate business and life. It's the work-life balance. It doesn't work that way. It's together. You cannot separate it.

If you're going to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to manage it right. So it's everything that comes down to how much time I spend with my wife, how many times a week we have sex, how much time we spend without phones with our kids, coaching—and we audit it every single Friday.

Every Friday, from noon to four, me and my wife go to lunch. We go through and audit all the decisions that we made. I mean, I just put this $1.4 million property under contract yesterday—she hasn't even seen it yet.

We're discussing it now, but we'll audit that decision on Friday. Did we move the needle closer in the last seven days to retirement or farther away? And when we have that accountability together—for those of you that are coupled up out there—it makes a huge difference.

Jeremy: So your wife, she's obviously involved in the—maybe she doesn't know about this property I've got under contract yet, but in your previous ventures, have you guys always been partnered?

Bill: We've been a team since the day we got—even before we got married.

We started Wild Bill's Texas Smokehouse, our restaurant in California, even before we got married. I was a college golf coach; she ran the restaurant, and I ran it with her. We expanded quickly, we sold, but we've been in business together.

We are true life and business partners and best friends. We've been married for 25 years. We've never done anything independently. We're best friends. She knows every single thing that goes on.

I used to protect her and not share the bad stuff, like when I'd have to rob from our savings on a Wednesday to make payroll and then wait for the credit card transactions to come back in the following Tuesday and then pay it back.

Now it's an open book, and we talk about those things every single week as we audit our success for the week.

Jermey: Okay. Because, yeah, I just wanted to bring up a point—something I've seen, and I'm constantly—this is, I think, one of the things that's cool about the short-term rental space. It's so new. And what I'm seeing is, relative to other businesses, you have a lot more husband-wife duos.

There's just a natural fit between the husband—I don't want to make generalizations here—but maybe one of the couple running the numbers and then the other one designing. So earlier, you said that she was a huge designer.

Does she have an interior design background, or is that just something that she's taken upon herself to learn and get good at?

Bill: She doesn’t have a background in anything, she has an AAA degree. I'm a college dropout. We've learned how to do everything on our own through experience and through life.

We were in dropshipping and e-com. I had my first exit before I even met her, when I was 24—before anybody knew what dropshipping would be.

Jeremy: Yeah, I was gonna say, dropshipping what 26 years ago?

Bill: It was dropshipping in 1992 and '93. And then I sold that company to Venus Swimwear. We started—we've been in the restaurant business, we've been in the ground transportation business, the real estate business, technology—you name it, we've done just about everything.

Family entertainment was our biggest business. So you learn how to run a business, you learn from your mentors, you learn from people like Reginald Booth, who was—I call him the half-a-billionaire. He was worth $500–600 million and was our business partner in Glow Golf and the second franchisee in Pizza Hut.

That's how I learned how to not just create a P&L, but to understand P&Ls and balance sheets—from him. And I went through my first 13 years in business without understanding that. Even like my first real business outside of selling T-shirts with my mom was my golf professional career.

And I made 320 grand in my first year after dropping out of UCLA my freshman year. I'm 19 years old—that's a lot of money in the early 90s when you're 19. And I literally just was the guy that would put the receipts, because my best man in my wedding was a CPA.

"Dude, you got to bring me your receipts," and they were in a freaking shoebox, you know? And then, when I saw this ledger, my partner Reg in our Glow Golf business would handwrite on an old-school pencil ledger. We didn't have QuickBooks and that type of stuff back then.

And then he taught me how to understand it. And I think financial literacy is something that fails our country because we don't really teach financial literacy in high school. And that's something that probably needs to start in middle school or junior high and move into high school.

You really have to go into business in college to understand financial literacy. So, if somebody's going in and they study English or become a doctor, there's a lot of professionals—a lot of doctors and dentists out there—that don't know anything about financial literacy. They don't know anything about investing.

And that's something that I've tried to bring to this industry from my experience, how I've learned, and how I built some pretty good-sized companies—over $30–50 million a year, 700-plus employees—and tell them why I hate it and why I really focus on small business and why I'm running my portfolio the way that I do.

Like, people don't join my Mastermind Journey because they don't want to be held accountable to submit their benchmarks, which is really their P&Ls, by the 10th of every month, because they're too fckin lazy.

And if you're too lazy, why the hell would you invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into a business if you're not going to have an intimate relationship with your financials? It's reckless, in my opinion.

And all these conversations, like that last 45 seconds, all started on Clubhouse in 2020. And I was the black sheep back then. A lot of people, especially your age, are looking to co-host, looking to arbitrage, looking for quick bucks.

I think there's a lot of advantages to investing in the long term if you are financially literate and you understand, you know, what I call the "back office." The back office is the biggest point that most people don't understand.

If I go bankrupt today, I don't have time to recover. I got a daughter going to college in a year. I have another one four years behind that. I'm supposed to retire in five months. If you went bankrupt today, you have time to recover from that, right?

So, the investing strategy—and I think the life management strategy—is completely different. And this is what John Bearden told me when we had our first meeting with him.

We had a guy in his 20s. We had nobody in their 30s. And then we had people in their 40s and 50s. So, we're in the group, and financially the most successful were the guys in their 50s.

And so, us in the 40s strive to be where those guys are at in their 50s, right? And Tyler, who was in his 20s, he's like, "I don't want to be like any of you mothereffers because I'm doing a hundred million. Forget you guys with these small $30–40 million dollar companies."

And so, we started that eight years ago. Guess where Tyler is today? He's just broke $60 million, because he got that roadmap over that three-year period that we had this Mastermind together.

Jeremy: Either he's in the dumpster, or he's on top of Mount Everest

Bill: He's not—he's in the middle right now. But he's ascended farther than any of us, besides him, believed, right?

And I think that's the thing—our limiting beliefs. People let people get in their head. It's other people's thoughts that turn into negative self-talk for us, and that's what ends up holding us back, as we start believing that negative self-talk.

I'm fortunate that I worked with a sports psychologist named Dr. Bob Rotella when I was young, in my late teens and early 20s, playing golf. And he taught me the power of self-talk.

And you think about what you think about before, when you're laying in bed before you go to sleep. Usually, there are dreams that correlate around that. And I'm not into this whole Tony Robbins stuff, but I believe that we can manifest outcomes by how we think, how we visualize, and how we talk to ourselves.

And it's evident when you play a sport like golf. It's really simple—if anybody plays golf, you don't have to be good or bad. If you look at the tree, or you look at the lake, or you look at the sand trap, and you're trying to avoid it, you're going to hit it in there almost every time.

But when you pick out a target, and you focus on it, and you visualize striking it right at that target, it leads to an immense amount of success.

So, I think I visualize—I’ve used that same visualization as I've gone through my career. And most importantly, I made it abundantly public. On that Kentucky property, I would have never bought it. I didn't buy it. I would never put it under contract if I didn't have that visualization for what that outcome is and know how to calculate that to revenue and net income.

Jeremy: So, my question—so, you talked about, obviously, you like working with folk who can buy, who have that—I want to say they are later down their journey. But if you're going to compare it to someone in their 20s, you talk about folk doing co-hosting and arbitrage to get started

I guess what would you—what would be your recommendation for someone earlier on in their journey, in their 20s? Maybe they have a few thousand dollars saved up, but yeah, they don't have the means or the creditworthiness to go out and buy even a 500K home. What would you recommend for them?

Bill: Yeah, I'll tell you a funny story about that, Jeremy. Number one, before I tell you the story, it's definitely not arbitrage.

I think arbitrage is the riskiest investment that we can make because if you only have 10 grand and you're going to go sign a lease—even if you can follow Sean's methodology and what he teaches and get a month or two free to generate some cash flow—and you have to spend $6,500 to basically furnish that one bedroom or that economy apartment, you don't have room for scale.

And it's risky because you're blowing through all of your cash or at least 60 percent of it. So, I'm a big proponent of co-hosting over arbitrage. You don't own anything in either realm, right?

So, why would you want to spend 50–60% of your cash if you only have 10 grand to your name or 20 grand to your name, when you can much more easily co-host? Because at the end of the day, you get to pick your property.

There are a lot of underperforming properties out there—probably about 40–50 percent of the properties. That's a huge number. Think about that, just in... That's about 5–6,000 properties in the Smokies. That's about 7 or 8,000 just in the Gulf Shores, Orange Beach, Fort Morgan—or you pick any of these markets.

I just released a reel on my Instagram today about how the markets that people should be targeting for co-hosting are not these apartments in Dallas or in Nashville or Philadelphia or Orlando or wherever it is. Why not go to the freaking beach, or to Aspen, or Telluride, or someplace that's super high dollar?

And I use the example of like Whitefish or Big Sky because I filmed this when I was in Whitefish, Montana, last week.

Anybody that knows how to market and price optimize, that can halfway eloquently speak to another human being, can identify underperforming properties by doing Avery Carl's "enemy method" on Airbnb and Vrbo and be able to get in contact and reach out to them.

Just go to the county assessor, pull the records, use the LandGlide app, message them through Airbnb—whatever it is to get in front of them. But if you can show them the path to be able to make more money and spend less time—those are the two problems that you have to solve if you are a co-host.

The owner wants to make more money and doesn't want to put any time into their property. So, if you can show that to them, if you can hand them the case study of how you're going to do it—they're never going to do what you can do.

But the number one thing is, you need to know how to market. And for marketing, for me, it's listing optimization and off-platform marketing: email, Facebook ads, social media, text messaging. That's all you need—that's really the four cores that you need to be able to be successful.

So, a funny story is—I think it was December 8th or 9th—literally a 26-year-old from Southern California reached out to me. I think he lived in Pasadena, and he was trying to get co-hosting deals in Joshua Tree and Indio. He was staying away from Palm Springs.

I had about an hour-long conversation with him. It was like nine or ten o'clock in the morning. Actually, it was probably nine o'clock my time, seven o'clock his time. He didn't want to do the call. I said, "Dude, I don't have any other fcking time, and it's going to be for free. Get your ass out of bed and call me."

And he called me, and we started talking about co-hosting. And he's like, "Man, I really wish you would put a course together."

So, I spent the next nine and a half hours, when I got off the phone with him, right here, putting together the ultimate co-host masterclass. That is the most comprehensive thing.

At the end of the day, if you can find a property, build a case study, and most importantly, you got to know how to do off-platform marketing, you can crush everybody else. Throw in a little bit of listing optimization, a little bit of pricing optimization manually on top of PriceLabs or Wheelhouse, and you'll be good.

The acquisition of co-hosting customers, in my opinion, is the easy part if you know what to do, and it costs you zero except for time. Arbitrage is too much risk for me.

Jeremy: So, when you talk about co-hosting versus arbitrage: Arbitrage, it's like buying in a sense where you're running the numbers, you're analyzing deals.

Bill: You're not buying, you're renting. You don't own anything.

Jeremy: But still the math equation—it's still a math equation. With co-hosting, it doesn't matter. Your downside's limited—you know you're getting it…

Bill: It absolutely matters. So many people don't value their time, and they'll take shitty deals.

They go get that one-bedroom apartment that's gonna do $40,000 a year, and they're making $8,000. The same amount of time and skill set and thought process goes into making that $8,000 as it does to take a property that's making $200,000, or you're going to take from $150,000 to $200,000 a year, and now you're making $40,000.

So, when I started—and this is one of the tenets in my masterclasses—I started with a $100,000 minimum. So, I'm going to make $20,000 at 20%. I take two or three.

I knew I never wanted to have more than 10 properties, and unfortunately now I have 13. But then I went to $150,000, then I went to $175,000. Now I'm at $200,000 minimum. I have to make $40K to take on a property, and it's got to be equitable for the owner. I've got to be able to make the owner at least $50K.

What most people do is they take on too many properties because they get sold by all these co-host guys that are selling masterclasses and courses. And I do the exact same thing. That it's about the number of properties—zero to five hundred, zero to a hundred, zero to fifty.

"Hey, I just—my student just closed 27 properties!" Who gives a fck? The reality is, how much money are you making, and how much time are you investing? Those are the only two things.

Because the same thing for you to scale that business is the same thing for me to scale my own portfolio, except I've got to have cash to go along with my own cash and credit to go along with my own portfolio. We only have so much balance.

It's why I'm just totally against these huge businesses. I also don't believe there's going to be a huge market to sell. A lot of people that are doing the arbitrage thing and the co-hosting and the management thing think that private equity or hedge funds are going to come in and buy up their portfolios.

Ask Sonder about that. Ask Vacasa about that. Go in and look at what happened to The Guild, and all of those have either struggled or failed within the last nine months—or are failing right now.

And those guys are not coming in because they know they can go acquire their own properties and then hire people to learn how to do that, to put them into place.

Jeremy: Yeah, and you also don't physically have, like you said, you don't own anything with arbitrage. And transferring—I think, yeah, people have the notion that they can transfer their leases. That's something that's super easy to do, and it's just not the case. Ninety-nine point nine percent of leases are non-transferable.

Co-host agreements, though, on the other hand—which I think is unique—and there was a ton of M&A in co-host businesses or vacation rental management businesses in the last few years. The market for that has definitely dried up a bit.

Bill: And actually, look at the struggles that Vacasa is having right now. They were the leader in M&A and buying all the small mom-and-pop 50-property to 150-property companies around the country.

And they just got removed. They're probably—they've already been removed, or is that in a couple of days…

Jeremy: delisted from, uh

Bill: Exactly.

Jeremy: Yeah, they're getting close.

Bill: I think it might be next week they're going to get delisted, and they're going to be on pink sheets.

Jeremy: Yeah, which is crazy. But the point is, there actually was M&A in co-hosting and vacation rental management. Arbitrage, never. I heard the last deal to buy someone's arbitrage portfolio was like 2019 from an institutional buyer, and it just didn't go well.

So, if your goal is to exit, if you're thinking co-hosting or arbitrage is that quote-unquote "get rich quick, build a business, sell it off," it has to be vacation rental management. That's just the only option—the only way you're going to be able to get acquired.

My personal—the way I see it is, co-hosting and arbitrage are completely means to an end. Like, I'm only taking co-host deals for me if they're lucrative.

Yeah, like bigger houses, a place I already have an operation in. I actually own a boat rental business. The only place I co-host is because there's some, obviously, synergies there. I can rent a boat to my co-host customers or my guests, whereas that's an additional income stream.

Or, for me, I do arbitrage, but I cherry-pick. Like, for me, I'm arbitraging a big house that's going to make serious cash flow—not these little dingy one-bedroom apartments.

I think your point is, yeah, you have five, ten thousand dollars. And what do folk who do that go after? The one-bedroom apartments. They try to arbitrage the one-bedroom apartments.

And the inventory of one- to two-bedroom apartments has just boomed, but it's gone up a lot. And, in my opinion, the one- to two-bedroom apartments—you're competing with hotels.

You don't have a differentiated property or differentiated product. Whereas I'm assuming yours are extremely differentiated from hotels. You talk about all the things you're providing.

So, if someone could arbitrage your house—obviously, you're not going to rent it to them—that could be a serious cash flow machine if someone was in your situation for whatever reason and wanted to.

Bill: Yeah, there's a lot of people that are in that situation because they have shitty property management companies, right?

A prime example—the last co-hosting account I took over, I started on January 1st of this year. Six-bedroom, four-bath beachfront property in Gulf Shores, Alabama, half a mile down from my number-one producing house.

I'd never met the guy. He just said, "Hey, I joined your group. I see what you're doing. Do you have any room to co-host?" I said, "Depends. Let me know about it. Send me the link to your property."

And this property did $180,000 a year in 2022. And I know I can do $300,000-plus, but I quoted them at $245,000. And I said, "I'm going to charge you the same thing that your previous management company did. I'm going to do $245,000, but I need a $50,000 budget so my wife can redesign everything inside.

"Give me $25,000 this year, $25,000 next year—we're cool with that."

We put it to work the best that we could, you know, and I started co-hosting. We're on pace to do $330,000 right now, going into the season. That'll escalate probably to $360,000–$370,000 by the time we're done.

And I took him off a seven-day, Saturday-to-Saturday—even for a high-demand property—and moved into my 3-2-1 strategy. And I increased rates across the board by about 21 percent.

So, easier to book, faster wins to keep the client happy—they see the progress on what's happening. And one of the things that I would recommend all co-hosts do is that, especially when times are good, send a forecast.

So, I believe in tracking, right? Track from the day that you started. For me, it's annualized—we started on January 1st. And just track at the end of every month when you send an invoice.

So, you see, "Hey, we're at $220,000—or, let's just say, $120,000 a year to date—we're tracking to do $185,000. We're at $67,000 to date. We're tracking to do $190,000, and the goal was $85,000."

So, that kind of goes back to that lifeline. We need a goal to achieve in everything in our life—whether it's retirement, whether it's revenue for a client, cash flow for a client, whatever that is.

So, we should add those as co-hosts into our reports. Just a little co-hosting tip today.

Jeremy: Okay, and talking about tangible tips—so, a 3-2-1 strategy. Thirty-second pitch—what is that?

Bill: It's for properties that are not booking. I told people to start doing this on April 1st, specifically at beach markets or any markets that are seven-day or five-day minimums. Move to three days on the weekends, two days on weeknights, and then have the one-night gap.

But raise your pricing on Saturdays, on the weekends, and on the two days to where you're gonna pay for the additional cleanings, because you got to add at least one a week—possibly 1.5 or 1.75.

It gives more flexibility for people to be able to book. People that only want to stay five days aren't going to pay for seven. People who only want to stay for three or four aren’t going to pay for that additional fifth day and leave it sitting there. It’s just not the way that we work. There’s remorse, there’s FOMO with that.

And then you use that gap day on the three and the two. If you have a gap day in mind, it typically ends up on Wednesdays. So, you go in, raise that by 60 percent, and then you discount it by 50 and sell it to either the person checking out or the person checking in to get a late checkout.

And I’m not talking like a noon checkout or one o’clock—let them check out at five o’clock in the evening so they get a whole extra day on the beach.

Almost every property is getting, "Hey, can we check in early?" Yeah, you can. So, what I do is I say, "You can check in early up until two, 100 percent free. After that, it’s 250 bucks to 300 bucks if you want to check in at noon, or I can do five, six, seven hundred bucks if you want to come in starting at midnight."

And then they say, "What if we paid the 700? Is it possible to come in four or five o’clock the previous night?" You know what? I’ll bonus that to you. So, it’s about positioning and selling to them.

But that’s also key, that when you have that gap day, whether it’s a one- or a two-day, that you start selling that about two weeks in advance. That way, you have enough time to give time to the people on the other side to go back and forth.

And it’s a first come, first serve. So, I have that set up in Hospitable to send out automated messages if there’s a one-night gap. It goes to both the checkout and the check-in at the exact same time.

Jeremy: Got it. So, you essentially try to create that day gap?

Bill: I’m creating urgency.

Jeremy: and then you pin the two people against each other: "Hey, heads up, you have the opportunity, but someone else also has it."

Bill: It’s like, "I know you’re going to want an early check-in." I know like 92 percent of our guests are asking for early check-ins. And then, on the flip side, 92 percent of our guests are asking for late checkouts:

"Hey, I just want to get ahead of the game and let you know we do have an open day. If you want to book down to the 50 percent discount, I’m also sending this to the person checking out. I’m also sending this to the person checking in."

Languages like that—it just allows them. I’m not creating them on purpose. I’ve only ended up with four through the entire summer, from Memorial Day to Labor Day so far.

But that’s one of the reasons that I’m raising the price by 60 percent and then discounting 50 percent, so I still have an additional 10 percent delta.

Jeremy: Beautiful. That was—if you guys write all that down, replay—that’s incredibly tangible. And another thing I wanted to touch on, because you, in my opinion, are the direct marketing—I don’t want to use the word "guru" or "influencer," but guy—I’ll just use "direct marketing guy."

If you could just quickly say, direct marketing 101: how do you get bookings off of Airbnb? Why should you get bookings off of Airbnb? What, like, what would you share?

Bill: You want to own your customer. If I’m going to sell glass cases, I want to sell them on my own website. I want to sell them at billseyeglasses.com. I don’t want to sell them on Amazon because I don’t own the customer.

It doesn’t give me the ability to bring them back. So, if anybody knows anything about the unit economics of business, the whole goal is to extend the lifetime value—what we call LTV—of a customer.

So, I use StayFi at every one of my properties. Arthur Colker, you need to start putting me on commission, buddy. I get nothing for saying this from Arthur—I love him, I just love his product.

I use StayFi. I have bigger properties; it works when you only have four maximum occupancy or six. You can do it even at a one-bedroom apartment. It’s the same cost, essentially, as buying a Google or an Orbi router—it’s like 100 bucks.

So, what that does is StayFi captures them, and then I zap that, using Zapier, right into my MarketMySTR.com account. And then I have automated funnels that are scheduled.

Including, and those funnels are, email, text message, and video that go out to them. So, it allows me the opportunity to increase the lifetime value. That’s extracting more money out of their wallet to entice them to be able to come back.

And I can email them. I set up my funnel one time in MarketMySTR, and then it just goes out to them automatically. So, I do the same thing on Airbnb and Vrbo, and I actually create lead magnets that go out, that I use on social media and even in advertising in my markets for people as well.

Jeremy: And you said MarketMySTR—for... You just launched this platform, and what, everything you just talked about is pretty much what it does in one place? Or what’s the 30-second elevator pitch on MarketMySTR?

Bill: Number one, it hosts all of your properties for your direct booking sites. So, if you have something like—I use OwnerRez—I can take their direct booking widget, drop it onto the direct booking page, and they can book right then and there.

Right, so it eliminates the need for a full-blown website. You don’t need to spend two thousand, three thousand, four thousand dollars.

Unlimited properties, unlimited sales pages, all your email marketing—get rid of MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, Constant Contact. Text messaging—get rid of SimpleTexting, that cost me 99 bucks. CRM—build full funnels.

And you basically—social media management and scheduling and analytics. Live chat to go onto your direct booking pages, which increases conversion by 30 percent. All of that’s included in the $97-a-month plan.

Now, if anybody knows what HubSpot costs—I was customer number 33 at HubSpot in 2007. When I quit Hub, I was spending over $4,000 a month.

But if you just take MailChimp, Leadpages, SimpleTexting, or Pipedrive—not even Salesforce, a basic CRM—you know, and all the other stuff, you’re going to be at four to five hundred dollars a month.

So, I’ve got a tremendous partner, Jeremy, that has allowed me to bring this to market for $97 a month. That’s our host package.

Jeremy: Yeah, I was about to say, geez, all those integrations. I’m assuming you’re not building your own email system. Maybe you are, I don’t know.

Bill: It’s all under one roof. Yeah, and that’s... Yeah, that’s what makes it—that’s what simplifies everything. So, you’re not bouncing back and forth between tools. And then for $197, you get all the automation, and I’ve already built templates for you—so over 350 templates.

And you get my personal marketing and direct booking templates that are inside of that. We’re adding some other stuff, like email templates and everything that’s already written for you as well.

And that's in the Super Host program—that's only $197. And then the customer support is just off the chain. Live trainings every Tuesday and Thursday, 24/7, so it's pretty crazy.

I feel really great because I am a marketer. I built all my companies on the backbone of marketing. I'm a ClickFunnels guy, I've been a HubSpot guy, I've used SharperSpring, I've never used Infusionsoft, I think it’s called something else now. I don’t even know what it’s branded as, but it’s scary for a lot of people to have to hodgepodge all of these things together, right?

So, we built it specifically for short-term rental hosts to simplify and give them the ability to market. Most of them don’t because they don’t know where to start, and they don’t know how to manage it.

Jeremy: Okay, so someone who's looking, they just go to MarketMySTR.com—that's the domain?

Bill: That’s it. MarketMySTR.com.

Jeremy: Beautiful. Guys, definitely check it out. Just to put context—like, a hundred dollars, if it's $100 a month, what's Airbnb's—what’s their—what's their direct fee? It’s—or their fee is what, 14% to the guest and 3% to the host? So, 17% to 20%-ish overall.

So, if you think about that, if you did even $100 divided by 0.2, that's like a $500 booking. Obviously, you're saving your guest money, you're also making more yourself. But in this game, there is a huge amount of money lost through these OTAs—through Airbnb, Vrbo, and those sites.

So really, if it's something you're not doing already, it’s something that you should be doing. Whether you do it through a rental agreement that you just send them on paper and make them sign, or PayPal—you know, however you do it.

Obviously, you probably want to automate and scale it, and check out MarketMySTR, the direct booking platforms. But it's just something that, over time, you know, that's just going to add up to thousands, tens of thousands, over a lifespan, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So really, thank you, Bill, for bringing that to their attention.

Bill: Yeah, regardless of what platform you utilize—Boostly, MarketMySTR.com, HubSpot, whatever—the most important thing, as a business owner that I’ve learned in my 31-plus years, is building our email list.

It’s the most valuable tool that we have from a sales and marketing standpoint. And that’s why I’m a huge fan of StayFi as well, because it just—it throws fuel on the fire. You can go five to seven times faster than just getting that one email from the booker.

Jeremy: And StayFi is—for those who don’t know—it’s the Wi-Fi where just—yeah, how does it work? Logistics?

Bill: It’s just like Starbucks or a hotel, where you have to—you have a splash page: Bill’s STR. And then you put in your first name, last name, email address, and that’s how they gain access.

So, all the guests have to sign into it as well. For those of you that think that’s an inconvenience and guests are going to get pissed—never had one complaint. You have to do it on an airline if you want to get access to Southwest or United Wi-Fi.

You have to do it at Starbucks, you have to do it at JW Marriott, Hilton, Best Western, wherever it is. It’s very commonplace today.

Jeremy: And you’re providing it complimentary. I stayed at a Weston the other night, and it was like, unless you’re a Marriott Bonvoy member, you’ve got to spend like nine dollars. And for me, honestly, getting my credit card out and doing that just pissed me off.

I didn’t want to even take the time to do that. That’s not—it’s not like the nine dollars doesn’t matter…

Bill: It’s the—it’s the normal Bonvoy member.

Jeremy: Yeah, that’s what—I looked into it, I was like, "Nope, I’m not doing it." I’m not doing it.

I’m an Airbnb guy. I know you don’t stay at Airbnbs, but I pretty much strictly—unless it’s just like me and my girlfriend, I’ll probably stay at an Airbnb. But I digress there.

So, Bill, what I’d like to share at the end of these is, what separates the pros from the amateurs? Like, if you’re just gonna share something tangible—because, yes, in this game, a lot of people are killing it, doing really well, and some folk—they get in, and they maybe see something online, they watch someone’s video, and they follow somebody somewhere. And the next thing they know, they get in a little bit over their head.

But what separates the pros from the amateurs in the short-term rental game?

Bill: I’d say there’s really three things. Number one is having a business plan before you go in that you can follow. And business plans are just for our own exercise—it’s not like you’re handing it to a bank or anything.

But really having a plan going in of why you’re getting into this, why you’re buying an individual property, how much you plan on making out of it, how much time you’re going to have to invest, and what are the risks.

Number two is really the property evaluation. I see people that can pick properties well are the ones that set themselves up for success.

And then number three is marketing. Marketing is the biggest separator, in my opinion. I’m able to take on co-hosting clients because I would never buy these properties that are average 50th to 75th percentile properties—like within AirDNA—and turn them into 120%, 130%, 140%.

And a lot of it’s because of the marketing. There’s a lot of components that go into this business. It’s not just set it and forget it anymore.

So, have a business plan, learn how to do the true deep analysis on how to purchase a property or rent a property or co-host a property, because you need to know how to do that—whether you’re arbitraging, co-hosting, managing, or buying and investing.

And then three, you really need to invest into your marketing skills. Marketing is the one that moves the needle most, I see, Jeremy, after somebody has already purchased a property.

So, you’re not just relying on Airbnb and Vrbo. We want to own our customers and own our own outcome.

Jeremy: Okay. So, it’s really front-end—do your work on the front-end. Make sure you analyze the property, make sure you have a business plan. And something I think that I’m taking away from Bill is more the life planning.

I will say that every property I look at, I underwrite it. But in terms of my life—I don’t know. I don’t know what 30 years from now—I gotta figure that one out, maybe, or see how everything I’m doing fits into the greater scheme of things.

Bill: Start on a daily basis right here, my friend.

Jeremy: Guys, for those of you guys—oh my goodness—for those of you guys looking, he’s got a paper planner. Jesus I didn’t even know these things still existed.

Bill: Hold yourself accountable. It’s the Bill Faeth Success Planner—not available in stores, everybody. But this is what fundamentally changed my life—that way I can audit every day and audit with my wife on a weekly basis.

Jeremy: Pen and paper. Stick to the basics. Bill, thank you so much for coming. Where can—you know, if they don't already know you and know what you’ve got going on—where can everyone listen and find you?

Bill: Bill Faeth 73—that's F-A-E-T-H, Bill Faeth 73 on Instagram. Bill Faeth everywhere else on social. I'm on TikTok, Facebook.

Probably my biggest value driver—get into my Facebook group, Build Short-Term Rental Wealth. We have a Facebook page, we’ve got all the socials, but my Facebook group on Build STR Wealth—that's probably the most valuable digital component to be in.

Jeremy: Yes, the Facebook group is great. I’ve been in it for a couple of months now. And also, yeah, your conference—where can they find it? Bill has the best.

I haven’t been to everyone’s conferences, but I would say I really enjoyed STR Wealth. But yeah, where could they find information if they want to physically meet up in person and want to know more about the conference in Nashville?

Yeah, it’s the strwealthcon.com. It's the STR Wealth Conference. It's the largest STR-specific conference in our industry. We sold out in three weeks last year. We're tripling the size of the venue.

Jeremy: It's a little bit bigger this year.

Bill: We're going to do 3,000 people this year. We've tripled the size of the venue. We’ll triple the size of attendees.

I have a lot of cool stuff. Daymond John from Shark Tank, FUBU, and real estate investor is one of our keynote speakers. We’ll be announcing another one in September that’s even bigger than The People’s Shark, Damon John, believe it or not.

But we just really try to value education—all facets: co-hosting, investing, long-term planning, all this stuff, marketing. We're going to have a couple of new tracks. It'll be in Nashville, February 5th through the 8th. February 5th through the 8th, right here in Nashville. strwealthcon.com.

Jeremy: And guys, I will be there, so when you're there, come and let’s hang out because it was a lot of fun last year, and I’m sure it’ll be next year as well. Awesome. Yeah, thanks so much for coming, Bill. Until next time.

Bill: Thank you, Jeremy, appreciate you having me.