Natalie Palmer on Running 10 Condos in One Complex

Quick Summary

Concentration is the whole argument. With 10 condos in one complex, Natalie Palmer ran the portfolio on one contractor, one handyman and one cleaning crew, and the volume gave her room to negotiate. Her cleaner charged $105 when quotes for that size ran $125 to $150.

The catch is seasonality. Big Bear paid her in summer and winter, then went quiet in the shoulder months, which is why she wanted a second market with opposite timing. If you're weighing the same bet, check the seasonality in your market before you double down in one spot.

Key Points

• She co-hosted 10 condos in one Big Bear complex and ran them like a boutique motel, with centralized laundry, one contractor, one handyman and one cleaning crew.
• That volume moved the cleaning rate. She paid $105 per cleaning in a market where $150 was normal for a unit that size and $125 would have counted as a steal.
• Her handyman would leave another customer's water heater to take her call, telling that customer he'd be back in two hours, because 10 units is too much business to risk.
• Rural hiring stayed hard anyway. She was on her fourth or fifth cleaner, and applicants kept needing a cousin or a neighbor to drive them to the job.
• Of the 50 units in her complex, roughly 25 sat mostly vacant as second homes and about 10 held long-term renters, so the competing hosts were few and mostly self-managed.
• The first year of her summit made $204,000 and spent $201,000, for $3,000 of profit. Year two did better, though she cited a statistic she'd read that conferences take five to seven years to become profitable.
• She argued a 300-person event is easier to run than a 30-person one, since some speakers refuse anything under 300 attendees and a software sponsor like PriceLabs needs far more signups than a lender does to justify the spend.

Full Transcript

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Jeremy: Welcome to the Short-Term Rental Pros Podcast. Today, we are in for a treat. Natalie is a bada*s in the short-term rental space. She is the host of the No Vacancy Podcast, which is one of the biggest and best pods there is if you're into this niche content.

Natalie, thank you so much for coming today. Tell us, how did you get into short-term rentals?

Natalie: Thank you, Jeremy, for having me. We just finished recording my podcast, having Jeremy on as a guest. You can go listen to that one too if you just want more of the Jeremy and Natalie show.

Jeremy: You want the full day. We'll just rip it all day, 24 hours in a row.

Natalie: Let's do it.

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Natalie Palmer. Like Jeremy said, I'm the host of No Vacancy, the podcast. I'm also the co-founder of Level Up Your Listing Summit, which is a women's short-term rental summit every year in March in Scottsdale, Arizona.

My background is that I co-host 10 properties. What's unique about my situation is the 10 I co-host are all condos in the same condo complex. We really operate them like a boutique motel. Laundry is all centralized. I have one cleaning crew. That's just been the way that we've scaled up and been able to do things really, really efficiently with just 10 units and only a couple of key players on our staff, like one contractor, one handyman, and one cleaning crew.

Jeremy: You like that freedom. That's what I say when I see some people getting the short-term rentals. They're like, I bought five houses in five states and this isn't as simple as I thought it would be.

What are the benefits of centralizing these operations in not even one location, but one building?

Natalie: Literally one condo complex. It's so easy. Issues happen from time to time. If we've ever had a problem where the heating unit blew out in one unit, chances are I've got another one of the 10 that's open and we can move guests. Even things like that, the same way that a hotel, if there's a problem with one room, they'll move you to another.

I know the boutique motel space is becoming trendier and trendier for short-term rental hosts. That is definitely a goal of mine. I would love to get into the boutique motel space, but I think until then, following this kind of model from a co-hosting perspective, it's such a good way to get in and practice those centralized operations without having to full-on buy a motel and renovate the whole thing. You're just picking up co-hosted units.

It's so easy to grow that way too. I've never done any marketing. I've never sent a flyer around or anything. We started by owning one of those condos and operating it. We were just crushing it and neighbors started to approach and say, hey, I listed my place on Airbnb. It's barely booked, but I see guests coming in and out of yours back to back. What are you doing that I'm not? Could you manage my place?

It's all been organic word of mouth. Anytime that a new investor buys in that condo complex, I know all the realtors in the area and they always say, oh, are you planning on using this as an investment? Here's Natalie's contact info. You want to call her. She manages all the top Airbnbs in this condo complex. From a perspective of growing and scaling and operating, it's been so, so easy to do it that way.

Jeremy: That's awesome. Scale, or having the systems in place, is a lot easier when you're scaling in a single location. I was actually with Patrick when Natalie and I met at Patrick's STR Nation conference. We'll give Patrick a little bit of a plug here.

I'm personally a believer that a 25 property property management business is a great place to be in life. Obviously, you want to have good properties and all that stuff, but you can get that quote unquote freedom that you saw and other people talk about so much, but also it's not constant. I mean, yeah, you deal with stuff, but it's for the most part not constant fire drills or anything like that.

There are fire drills. When you get up to 50, 100, I think there are those fire drills, at least the people I'm networked with. I'm friends with a lot of people. I know what their businesses are like. I know what their operations are like. And I know what you don't see on Instagram is the constant BS that you need to deal with.

I did tell Patrick that I feel like if you're in one spot, which he has 100 in Joshua Tree, it's like being in 50 if you're across multiple locations. Would you agree with that characterization that managing in one place is twice as easy as scaling in multiple places?

Natalie: Absolutely. Absolutely. And the one downside is I do think that there's value in diversifying, right? Big Bear, where I operate, very seasonal market. So I have very, very profitable summers and winters. And then my shoulder seasons, there's no income coming in, even though I have 10 properties I manage. So I would like to replicate what I've done in a different market with opposite seasonality, maybe like a desert market or something. So that's the one downside.

A couple of years ago, they were really pushing some strong regulation in Big Bear. And if that had passed, luckily it didn't, would have wiped out my entire portfolio. So there is definitely a benefit to diversifying.

But there's so much to be said for, once you figure out a market and you understand that you've built the relationships with cleaners and stuff. I mean, I can get a pest control person. That's another thing too, is how quickly we can get issues resolved. I don't have any full-time employees. They're all independent contractors, but take our handyman, for example. He will literally be in the middle of fixing someone else's water heater. And if I call him, he drops that to come over because we have 10 units. We give him so much business that he's like, I will answer your call every time and tell this person, I'll come back in two hours when I'm done dealing with this. Which maybe sucks for the other guy, but it's just so helpful to be able to give people that much business.

We've been able to negotiate a lot of discounts in town. We're right next to a paddle board and a kayak rental shop. And they give really steep discounts to our guests because we do bring them so much business having that many units.

Another example, typically for a property of our size, a cleaner in Big Bear would charge, I'd say like $150. If you found someone for $125 to clean a unit of our size, that would be a steal. And we negotiated, we pay our cleaner $105 per cleaning, just because it's so easy for her to come and go start laundry in one unit, hop over to the next one, start laundry there, load the dishwasher here, loop back around and move things to the dryer and all of that. So there are a lot of benefits that come from your economies of scale.

Jeremy: Absolutely. And I think Big Bear, you'd consider that a rural market, right? It's kind of similar to your philosophy of how you, like markets you pick.

Natalie: We're about two hours from LA, OC and San Diego. So drivable from really, really populous counties. It is more rural, but there's a huge industry with the ski slopes there and the lake makes it a good summer destination too.

Jeremy: Got it. But in terms of vendors, you would consider, because the way I think about it is there's rural markets and there's urban.

Natalie: In terms of vendors, we are definitely rural. I will say this. I love the people of Big Bear. Genuinely, it is some of the kindest, hardest working people, but I will share a funny story that any other Big Bear host will relate to.

For the longest time when we were hiring cleaners, we're now on like our fourth or fifth cleaner. It's been a struggle. But for the longest time hiring cleaners, it was so weird because I'd have so many cleaners that would say, oh, I would love to do your places, but I just have to figure out how to get a ride over to start the day. I need my cousin to drop me off or my neighbor to come drop me off. And it happened a couple of times and I didn't think much of it. And finally, it was like the fifth cleaner. This has happened with contractors too, that are like, I'd love to be there, I'm super reliable, but I just need somebody to drop me off and give me a ride.

And then one time we had our painter over, he was painting the exterior of the building. And I mentioned this and I was like, yeah, it seems like no one in Big Bear can drive. What is this about? And he was like, yeah, they all have DUIs. It's like, oh my goodness. Okay. Got it.

Again, I adore the people of Big Bear. I genuinely mean that. They take so much pride in their hometown and they're all really good skiers and snowboarders and just love to live there. But from a hiring standpoint, there are some stressful moments.

Jeremy: But I think you kind of have an operational moat when you operate in a place that's, frankly, like, so I'm in some more urban markets, like the houses I'm in in Florida, outside West Palm. If we have an issue, let's say any electrical, any plumbing, anything. It's Florida, crazy stuff happens all the time. So even any of that, we can get someone over there in like 20 minutes. That might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but probably same day. If it's Thanksgiving, Christmas, we could probably get someone there. Even someone we've never talked to before.

At Heiko, at the lake where I started at, that is not the case. When I was starting, you had to beg people to come out there, especially at unopportune times, weekends, holidays. But now that I've got eight properties there, and it's people who I've done business, return business with, I've referred people to, they'll come. At this point, you have that relationship.

So I guess, would you see operating in a rural market and having scale there as a moat?

Natalie: Yeah. I never thought about it that way, but that is a really, really good point. And that's actually been a huge selling point for us to sign clients. I'll tell them, you can try and do this on your own. But if you come under our management, I have all of these relationships already. I'll tell them what I just told you, that I can negotiate a better cleaning price for you, that if there's an issue with your unit, I will get a handyman or contractor there at the drop of a hat. They know us and they like working with us.

I've never put it in terms like that, that it's a moat, but you're right. It is a very good kind of barrier to entry for other people to join, because there are people in the condo complex that are just solo managers. I want to say there's probably, our entire condo complex has 50 units, and I would say like 25 of them are mostly vacant. It's second home owners that just don't want anyone there when they're not there. Another probably 10 of them have long-term renters. And then of those remaining ones, it's either I manage or it's a self-managed owner.

And I look at the numbers. I pull AirDNA data and those other ones are just not as profitable. A lot of them have to block off nights between every stay because they can't get a cleaner there to do same-day turnovers. There are a lot of logistical issues to hiring vendors in a market like that.

Jeremy: Absolutely. So yeah, I really am a firm believer that if you're able to... And for me, people are like, oh, well, what if, quote unquote, oversaturation. Oversaturation in rural places, if you're investing, people like me at this point won't come there. Or people who even buy more than I do or launch more properties than I do, maybe the small institutions, funds that are out there, they're staying the hell away from places where there's operational difficulties. They're just not going to go there. So I don't feel like... I bought a house in Western NC. And it's, again, same situation, out there in Bumble crap. Sylva, North Carolina is technically the town.

But what I want to get into now is, you're a person with many interests. Obviously, you operate yourself, but you also host... I'm going to first go into the more related to this podcast interest, but I'm curious about the other interest too that I've found out about you. But we're going to go to the first one, which is conferences.

I just hosted a 30-person mastermind seminar this weekend in the office that I'm literally in right now. We hung out here like 8.30am to 6pm, had five different speakers. It was great. Got a little heated. It's very, very hot in New York right now. But then we went to the rooftop down the street, and we had a nice little sunset happy hour. A lot of fun there. Brought in a lot of short-term rental business owners like Post GPO, Mount, Arthur at StayFi. They just happen to live in New York for whatever reason, I guess myself with BNBCalc. So had the community come in as well, really with the emphasis on network. My network becomes your network is how I like to look at it.

But that was 30 people. I think you do like 10 times that, like 300 people.

Natalie: Yep.

Jeremy: How the hell do you do it?

Natalie: It was tough. Okay, back to the economies of scale conversation. In a way, I honestly think doing the 300-person conference is easier than the retreat. There's actually a book called 10x is easier than 2x. I don't know if you've read it, but it touches on this exactly.

I co-founded a women's short-term rental conference with Tatiana Taylor Tate. She's based in Vancouver. We have the Level Up Your Listing Summit every March in Scottsdale, and it's for 300 people. I will say from a perspective of getting sponsors and stuff, it's so much easier. Even certain speakers, there's so many people that we reach out to to speak. There are so many speakers that will literally tell you, oh, we won't show up to anything with less than 300 people. A lot of these bigger name speakers have standards.

Same with sponsors. It's one thing for, let's say a lender, right? A lender could come to one mastermind of 30 people. If they get one client from that, they're going to make their investment back from sponsoring it. But somebody like a PriceLabs, where it's maybe what, $20 a month subscription.

Jeremy: Like a BNBCalc.

Natalie: A BNBCalc. They need a ton of signups to make those sponsorships worth it.

So in a lot of ways, I do think that the 300-person event is easier. We're also able to kind of negotiate better rates with caterers and bartenders and just different vendors like that, because we are bringing so much business. But it's definitely a big undertaking. It takes us like six months to plan. So not to discount it, but yeah, there's a lot of areas where it is easier.

Jeremy: Well, and I think people, when I talk about conferences, people are like, I can't believe they're charging $400 for a ticket. What people don't understand is those who are putting up the conferences are shelling out huge amounts of cash, like tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, or even some in the industry, millions of dollars to make it happen. And they don't even know they're going to make that money back until the week of.

What's that like, taking that risk on that front?

Natalie: I want to share our numbers, but I don't want to without consulting Tatiana first, because I don't know how she'd feel about it.

Jeremy: Own a friend. Own a friend. Let's get her in here.

Natalie: You know what? Here, I'm going to drop the numbers. And if you have to cut this out, Jeremy, later, then I'll check with Tatiana.

Jeremy: We'll bleep them.

Natalie: Our first year of putting on that conference, we spent... No, here, I'll tell you first. We made $204,000.

Jeremy: Okay.

Natalie: $204,000 from our first conference. Super stoked about that. We spent $201,000.

Jeremy: So you netted three.

Natalie: We profited $3,000, you guys. Woo!

Okay, the margins on conferences are so, so, so thin. I'm happy to report that our second year, we were more profitable than that. And I think it'll only go up from here now that we kind of have a name in the industry and some traction behind our event. But first time events, I even read a statistic. I think they said that it takes five to seven years for conferences to be profitable. So after we read that, we're like, okay, we actually accomplished a lot by not losing money year one.

But it is so expensive to put on. And there are other conferences in the industry, too, that I know have much smaller budgets than we do. If anybody wants to go and look at our website and check out our gallery, I think you'll see why we spend so much money. It's just levelupyourlistingsummit.com. If you go look at the gallery, you'll see how much money we spend on all of our installs and sponsor booths and stage design. It's very, very branded and immersive and experiential. And a lot of other conferences don't do that.

But I think for us, we had that discussion that as short-term rental hosts, we didn't see any conference in the industry that reflected the values we have as hosts, with hospitality and design being front and center. So it's just something we really pride ourselves on. And I think that there's a lot of value in these other conferences that just focus more on the networking. I think that that's great at the end of the day. But we just felt like, as hosts, we talk so much on stage about how you have to have these great amenities and provide experiences. And we weren't seeing that reflected in the conferences we were attending. So that's just one thing where we're like, whatever it costs to put that vision forward, we're going to fork out the money for it. It's worth it to us.

Jeremy: And your audience, and I love that you've niched in. I mean, Patrick, STR Nation, I'd say it's heavy on fun. It's optimized for fun, which is networking.

Natalie: Yeah, they have a great VIP yacht party that they do. Lots of fun networking around that. It's a good time. It's in San Diego. You can't not have fun in San Diego.

Jeremy: Exactly. People go out to karaoke after. I go out one night with my jet lagged. But in the next night, I'm dead. If I speak, especially then like that after, I drink a lot of coffee so I can be really attentive. And then I crash right after.

But I've seen the social media that people put out from your conference. I think the funniest thing I saw, I remember Blue. Bridget and Blue both went to your conference.

Natalie: She was one of our speakers, yeah.

Jeremy: And there are guys there. Let's, I don't know.

Natalie: Yes. Men are welcome.

Jeremy: Okay. Or maybe not. Maybe not.

Natalie: No, they are. I think what it was is everybody says niche down, niche down, niche down. That's what everyone talks about. So in our first year, we really were like, what's going to differentiate us? Let's make it a women's focused event.

And year two, we actually had so many women email us and say, I'm debating between your conference and another one, but I'm only going if I can bring my husband. He's begging to come with me. Is he allowed? So of course we made that option available. And I think we had like 10 to 15% male attendees this year. But the difference is I think they're coming on our terms, right?

So we don't want anybody there... the thing we always say is it's not like a d*ck measuring contest of, I've got a hundred doors, how many do you have? The conversations at our conference are more focused on, hey, I have to fire my cleaner today. And it is the most nervous I've ever [inaudible] So I'm very willing to learn and share advice. We would love to have you.

Jeremy: Excellent. I see it in my head now that we're talking about it. And it's in the desert, you know?

Natalie: It's in a warm, warm weather place. It's in Scottsdale.

Jeremy: And I just see Blue with his skinny, cut, skinny jeans on and his cowboy hat wearing pink. Am I wrong? Am I wrong with that's what he was wearing?

Natalie: No.

Jeremy: I see it in my head.

Natalie: I think that that's a very accurate depiction of what happened. And yeah, Patrick, he owned it. The guys who get it, get it. And they are totally welcome. Jeremy, you can come next year if you'd like.

Jeremy: I was like, this looks like fun. I just need my spouse to, because she has to be the one who brings me to come, I guess. Or maybe if you give me an invite, I guess maybe that's different.

Natalie: You're invited. Let's go.

Jeremy: All right, beautiful.

So I guess what are the benefits of hosting these events, kind of really being the integrator, or integral glue, of this community that you've created?

Natalie: Oh, are you asking from a personal, like for me personally?

Jeremy: Yeah. So we talked, you made three thousand dollars, and you probably spent three thousand hours to make three thousand dollars. Maybe one hour, maybe next year, probably was better the next year. And I'm sure it'll be better and better moving forward. But again, what are the other benefits beyond potential upside profitability, profitability upside?

Natalie: Absolutely. And that's one thing, I think after year one, Tatiana and I were both pretty depressed, I would say. When all was said and done and we made three thousand dollars for three thousand hours of work, there was definitely moments where we're like, we're never doing this again. What the heck? That was such a waste.

But the doors that it opened for us after, and just so many opportunities. I think the credibility that we got in the industry and the name recognition behind it. I've cultivated so many relationships because of that. It's so cool to say that all these sponsors and amazing brands we had supporting us, I'm friends with the CEOs of these companies now. And now, with my coaching program and my students, it's like if they have a question about, I don't know, one of these tools or softwares, I'm like, oh, you need help from AirDNA. I can call their CEO and have him come talk to you guys. It's really cool to have those relationships. So that's definitely a huge perk of it.

But I think just the most fulfilling part is seeing the attendees and what's come out of them, hearing stories of, I came year one and now I met my partner and now we're going in on a glam site together. That's so cool. It's just very rewarding to see all of the fruits come out of that.

Jeremy: Absolutely. And I really just had my first experience with that this past weekend. I was super stressed. I mean, it was so logistically, it couldn't have been freaking easier. I literally did it in my office and our event was a lot of pressure on my rooftop. But people were flying in. And this past week, all the flights were effed up, too.

And this is going to actually lead me into the next part we're going to talk about. But it was super stressful because I actually didn't even know people were going to be here. And I was like, all this effort. And if the chairs are empty, then I can't blame people for literally their flights getting canceled, delayed, and an international computer outage. Obviously, I can't.

Natalie: It's funny you say that, that it was stressful for you seeing flights get canceled, which it is for sure. But I remember actually year one, the most stressful moment for me was people started tagging us, like selfies on the plane or their view over Scottsdale, being like, arriving in town for a love affair, tagging us. And I was like, oh, fck, they're here. That was so scary to me, that people made their flights. I was like, oh, sht, they're actually coming. There's no backing out now.

So it's a lot of pressure. Knowing people took that time, paid babysitters, coordinated whatever they had to, got time off of work to come and spend a weekend at your event. It's a lot of pressure.

Jeremy: Yeah, exactly. And one of the speakers we had, Frederico Zimmerman, who I believe you know pretty well. He was flying in from Spain, which I didn't even know, because he lives in upstate New York. So I was like, oh, Frederico, come drive down. He's a beast, so operationally savvy, such a smart guy.

But then he told me, text me. Actually, how I found out about this outage was him sending me a WhatsApp like 4 a.m., like, hey, man, my flight's been delayed, canceled, Microsoft Excel is down. Which I had barely just woken up. I woke up at five or six and I was like, wait, what? Microsoft Excel is down? What? How does that affect your flight? I totally did not get it at all. Then learned about that whole thing, that whole conspiracy. Conspiracy. I'm going to see what we're going to talk about in a second here.

But also I was like, d*mn, speakers also coming a long ways. John Bianchi came down from Canada, Patrick came from California. So it's both sides. You have the speakers, you want them to speak to people, too. And then you have the people who are coming and they want to make sure the speakers are there as well. So I was like, well, if Federico doesn't make it, someone might be annoyed because he's coming from Spain.

But what I realize is, just if you put the right people in the right room together, it's going to be freaking awesome. That is kind of what I figured, from the second you had like four people in the room together who have that shared interest, shared experience. And a lot of times we're kind of siloed. This is a specific world. I go out in New York, I'm not, I don't talk to people about short-term rentals. If they ask me what I do, whatever, I'll say real estate, software, whatever. I keep it high level, but you don't get into the nitty gritty. But when you have the right people in the right room together who have that same passion and flair, it feels really, really good.

And I'm like, even if five people were here, if five people made it with that same shared energy, it would have been epic. So that was kind of a realization for me. And that was the first day. So that was like Thursday or Friday, five people were there. And then Saturday was a full day. Five people, just people came in early and I did podcasts with them. But that was really reassuring when I was like, oh, even with five people in this room together, this is awesome. Sure, I want everyone to make it. And people, I'm sure people came because they saw other people were coming, the little intricacies. But getting the people there, there's a huge value of getting the right people in the right room together. So doing that at a massive scale is impressive.

But yeah, Natalie, Patrick was telling me about some of your other interests and intrigues. And I think what's cool about short-term rentals, I don't know if you would agree with me or not, but it's a business that you can scale and then you can frankly automate. That's the whole thing. That's why people get into it. And it seems like you've really optimized for that. And once you have that, you can pursue other interests, other passions. You can give time and energy to other people. For me, that may be starting a software company, might be helping my fiance with what she's doing for a living. It might be helping friends and do their businesses. I like businesses, I don't know, frankly. But for you, it seems like you got a special interest that you want to devote some more time into.

Natalie: It's so funny Patrick told you this. So yeah, I'm in the works of starting a second podcast. Nothing to do with short-term rentals or real estate at all. Purely just a passion project.

But I was workshopping this idea with Patrick on the last night of STR Nation before I left San Diego. And Patrick is just one of the nicest guys ever to have in your corner and such a hype man. And as I was describing the concept of the show, he was like, yes, you need to do this and you need to have merch and you're going to get this and this and get this person as a guest.

Natalie: Just the biggest hype man ever. And then, Jeremy, when we started recording, you're like, so Patrick tells me you're starting a new podcast. So he's already out there seeding for me, which I really appreciate.

Jeremy: But that's what I'm doing today, too. Let's keep it going.

Natalie: I don't have a name for it yet, but the concept is going to be that I want to interview conspiracy theorists. This is in my free time. You guys, I just love to read about, what, the moon landing faked, JFK assassination, Bermuda Triangle, Area 51, all of it. I just consume that stuff with so much vigor. I don't know. And I don't know. Should we really get into this?

Jeremy: Well, what happened last week? What is this whole couple thing?

Natalie: Well, there's two things that happened.

Jeremy: A lot of things have happened. We'll start with the more friendly one, maybe being the whole in power Internet outage. What are your thoughts on that one? Or that one's not as spicy. We had Biden drop out and we had near assassination.

Natalie: Yeah, these two are the juicier ones.

Jeremy: Those are, we're starting, we're starting small.

Natalie: All right. Okay, to be honest, the power outage, I haven't spent one minute looking into. The other two have just consumed me way more intently. So sure.

Jeremy: Yeah. So what happened there? Let's go. Just tell me. It's okay. This is a safe zone. I want to hear it. I want to hear. Give me the scoop.

Natalie: Okay, safe zone, you guys. I don't want to call anyone out. But if anybody thinks that Trump staged the assassination attempt, I have beachfront property in Arizona to sell you. Why would he want to be shot within an inch of his head? It grazed the top of his ear. Okay, explain that one to me. I'm a conspiracy theorist. I am. That one, you're not going to get me on board, especially with a shooter who didn't make their JV shooting team at their high school.

He's going to trust... He wants to win so badly. Don't get me wrong. Trump came out looking like a bada*s from this, that photo, iconic. But you think he's going to trust his life in the hands of a 20 year old who couldn't get on his JV shooting? Give me a break with that one, okay?

But absolutely, the Secret Service, CIA, FBI, one of these three letter agencies knew something. Absolutely. Why did nobody get him down from the roof? I mean, he was up there. He was spotted 26 minutes before a bullet ever went. He came and he put the ladder up against the building the day before. And then that morning when they're canvassing before the rally, nobody came and took the ladder down. What? It makes no sense. He was up there for a full two minutes. People were pointing at him, telling the cops, why is this guy up here? And nobody did anything.

Jeremy: Yeah, the only caveat I could possibly give, and obviously we're finding out more and more, and you could say gross negligence on the behalf of our security services. And to me, it's like, okay, well, if it was extremely gross negligence, who's getting fired? Who effed up?

And the only thing you could possibly say is somehow they thought, because apparently I think I heard, I'm not as into conspiracy theories, but I'm into just trying to understand things or see what's going on. But apparently, obviously that was the one spot that someone really could have. The only elevation target within a couple of hundred yards. It's the one spot. And apparently that building itself was like a police hub or something. It was a base, so to speak. I don't know what they call it in this industry. But then maybe they thought, okay, if that's our hub, the person on the roof must be police. I could get someone thinking, okay, the guy there with a sniper has to be on our side. That is the only way I could possibly wrap my head around the fact that they saw this person, was that they just assumed, yeah, of course there's a sniper. That's one of our spots. We're supposed to have a team there.

Natalie: I do buy that. And I don't blame the local police at all. I think it was the head of the Secret Service, Kim Cheadle, okay, who her previous position was head at PepsiCo. And what gave her the credentials to have this job? But her specifically, she said what, that they didn't put anyone on because it was a sloped roof.

Jeremy: Yeah, I haven't heard her say that, but I've heard someone say that she said that.

Natalie: I'm like, yeah, but the other roof that the counter snipers were on was more sloped than that one. Make it make sense.

Jeremy: Yeah. I mean, it's like if you're going to come up with an excuse, at least make it a good excuse. I guess the Secret Service only has so many personnel and I know they have to get local police to come out and help. I get that. That's totally fine. Logistically, sure. It's a big operation. I get that. Maybe they somehow aren't in great communication and they think the other one's doing something they're not doing. But yeah, that excuse, what?

Natalie: And I don't blame, I don't make it very clear, I don't blame local police at all. And I don't blame any of the actual Secret Service agents that ran to cover Trump. I don't blame any of them. That's too many people to be in on a conspiracy.

What I think more likely is that there was just someone. Okay, this is where I keep going to. How did this little 20 year old punk, how did he know that this was the opportunity to pull this off? There's rallies all over. And if you look at the drone footage of where that rally was, there was two buildings with roof access. One had counter snipers on it and one didn't. And that's the one that this shooter was on. How as a 20 year old do you even figure out where all the rallies are, which one is going to have an opportunity like that, which one is going to just not have Secret Service scope at that location?

My gut tells me that somebody way up at the top, I don't know who, somebody. I don't think that they gave him the gun and told him to go here. But I think that maybe they saw that this kid was on certain chat rooms or something researching how to kill Trump. Apparently, they said that he had been playing a first person shooter game and simulated killing Trump in that game. And I guess that one time somebody commented something that said, oh, awesome shot. And he replied, wait till I do it for real.

Jeremy: Oh, my God.

Natalie: So something could have happened where the intelligence agencies were tracking his movements and somebody saw, oh, this kid, he maybe lives near Butler, Pennsylvania. I actually don't know where he's from, but we can drop him. So here's a blueprint for if you're going to do it, how you do it.

Jeremy: Yes.

Natalie: Right? I mean, people get catfished all the time, all the time. We have police officers and stuff pose or go undercover. It'd be very easy to have one person high up in the security detail who had access to check this guy, what he was doing, surveil this and see the opportunity and drop little nuggets like, oh, I heard he's going to be in Butler, and just pose as some regular gamer on this platform. So I don't think that they gave him the gun or anything or told him where to go. But I think that there were steps not followed to let it happen.

Jeremy: Yeah. And apparently, well, because I think obviously when something like this happens initially, everybody's head goes out to, all right, it must have been someone who just didn't like Trump. And it's probably political, probably doesn't like his stances on certain things, or maybe he's a devote follower of the opposite ideology and he's felt encouraged by the rhetoric of the opposite ideology to do something extreme and drastic. And I think that everyone's head kind of went to that, and I think that's kind of fair.

But then I feel like what's came out, which honestly, who knows what comes out, this is an insane situation. But from what it appears is that he actually had information on both of them. He was looking up Biden's whereabouts and travel. And he was trying to clue in on Trump's whereabouts and travel. So if that's the case, and you have someone who's feeding information along the way, which, yeah, it doesn't really make sense to me how you could really pull this off as a 20 year old. The one spot. Maybe it's giving him too much credit or not enough credit, I don't know.

But if the aim was to just do some crazy sht and just essentially make an order, right, that's what would happen. I was literally thinking the next day, I'm like, dmn, what would have happened if he was successful? What would today be like? I'm here in New York City. Am I sitting here on my computer? Or is the power on? Is the power working? Does the water work? What would people have, just moved on with their lives and lived another day? Or would have, I don't know, I just have no idea. So what a pandemonium happened. And was there a concerted effort just to make crazy pandemonium happen? Which I think is possible.

I mean, you see with Cloudflare, the DNS goes down, and Microsoft Azure goes off, and now flights aren't happening, and people can't get through customs. It doesn't take a lot to really make the world go crazy, or maybe not function. I don't know. Things are very, very intermingled and entangled right now. And if you cut off one part of the machine, I don't know what happens.

Natalie: Yeah, no, it's crazy. And it's crazy to think about. And I think you kind of start going through a wormhole. I admittedly did that myself, and especially was refreshing my Twitter every hour, every two hours, trying to just see what new information.

Jeremy: Mine was every five minutes. So props to you.

Yeah, but also you have to look and be like, all right, there's the total bogus that's put out there. And there's actually things that are real. And that's, I think, one of the big issues we face as a society, is certain things find their way to the top. And those things that find their way to the top are generally absurd and completely just made up. Whereas the things that find their way to the top that are true might take a little bit longer.

But yeah, I guess a lot of people, part of me was thinking, I think a lot of people just go on with their lives. I was at Dumbo House on the rooftop with the pool. I wasn't in my office at the time. I was hanging out. I was actually just asking one of my... I met with my friend to ask him if he wanted to be a groomsman for my wedding. So it was supposed to be a meaningful day. And I was sitting there and beautiful f*cking sunset, insanely beautiful sunset. It was happening at like six and the sunset was a little bit thereafter. And we were sitting there talking about it, me, my fiance, my friend, and the people next to us weren't. They weren't talking about it at all. I didn't hear anything out of them. So I'm like, do people just, are we, does it not even, do most people not even care? I don't know.

Natalie: I mean, what's nuts, I feel like that day, for me at least, it was one of those 911 days, like you're gonna remember where you were when you heard the news.

Jeremy: I was looking at the Freedom Tower. I was literally looking at a view of the Freedom Tower.

Natalie: Oh my God, yeah, okay, so, yeah, and...

Jeremy: Not on 9-11, on that day. I just happened to be...

Natalie: No, I know, I know, what a coincidence, though. But yeah, that's totally what I thought of, is like, oh my God, I'm gonna remember, in 30 years, telling my kids this, moment in history that I remember where I was and my emotions about it and reaction and everything.

And what's nuts, though, to think about is, 9-11, right now, you can get your news from so many different places. I feel like we're very, it's part of why we're so fragmented and divided, I think. Whereas 9-11, everybody who just had the morning news on, the morning it happened, immediately, whatever channel you were watching, it cut to that. There was no way to not know about it. And here, I feel like, for some people, the assassination attempt was on a Saturday. There were probably so many people who disconnected over the weekend and got into work on Monday. And people were like, oh, so what do you think, what happened? And they're like, what happened? They didn't know for two full days.

Jeremy: That's crazy. Yeah, and I remember asking a couple people around me, like, yeah, what do you think would happen? And they're like, I don't know, we're in New York. Some people would come into New York and, like, Civil War. And I'm like, Civil War who? Civil War what? How do you do a Civil War? Where do you go for it? There's no, like, America. Sure, if you look online, there's two opposite teams. But it's not like, what was it, 1861. It wasn't the whole South versus North situation.

Natalie: I've been thinking about that, too. Yeah, there you had very clear lines, North versus South, right? And now, everyone's integrated. My neighbors on opposite sides of me have a different political affiliation than I do. And I'm friendly with them. But if there was a Civil War on political lines, what would happen? Would they turn on me? I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think that, I'll give people more credit. With the opposing team, we're friends. I have family members that are on a different side. Are we supposed to go attack each other? I don't know what that's even going to look like.

Jeremy: And I think at its core is no. I don't think Americans are doing that. I think they did have a pretty good response after, saying, we don't do this. This is not something we do in America.

You could definitely argue, yeah, why a 20-year-old... I'm not trying to get into political-ness, that's not what this podcast is about. But yeah, if you want to make the argument that a 20-year-old should not easily get access to an AR-15, this is definitely a case in point for that argument. But I would say generally most people do not want to go around shooting each other in this country. It doesn't matter what happens, people don't really want to do that. Obviously, there's inner cities and stuff like that going on. I'm not trying to get too deep there.

But yeah, so this conversation as a whole is brought to you by short-term rentals and the fact that on a Monday at 3.35 p.m., we can kind of shoot the sh*t on this conversation topic. And our boss isn't like, Natalie, get back to work. Stop talking about these...

Natalie: Go produce more widgets, okay?

Jeremy: Yeah, exactly.

Natalie: Well, speaking of, is that what you did? Did you still produce widgets?

Jeremy: No. Because we actually are building a...

Natalie: Are you? Are you producing widgets?

Jeremy: Well, BNBCalc is making a widget, like a software widget that you can put in the website and get someone's name, email, and address. I forgot to talk about that on your podcast, crap. I don't know, put it in the show notes or something.

Essentially, a lead gen magnet. If you're a property manager, someone goes to your website, they're curious about how much their property can make, rather than them filling out the form and you sending back an email or calling them at some point, you get automatic response with some limited data, but some data on seasonality and how much you could expect your property to make. Sorry, I don't know if that's even the widget reference you were talking about at all.

Natalie: Oh, no. No, what you were saying, right? We don't have a boss breathing down our neck to just go produce something. It's very cool to have this flexibility and be able to think about, I don't know, and research these topics. And yeah, that's what I research in my free time. If I'm not doing real estate or short-term rentals, it's all these different wormholes. And once you get into one, it's like, wait, JFK assassination, now that spurs false flag events with Cuba. And now you go down that whole wormhole. It never ends.

Jeremy: Yeah, and the crazy thing is, a lot of it, there's a truth to so much of it. So you do uncover things. And then once you've uncovered things, it's like, crap, can I look at things the same way now?

Natalie: I know, and that is what I will say. For me, the biggest takeaway from this assassination attempt is, whatever side you're on, I have yet to meet a person who thinks that a 20-year-old shooter just showed up and took a shot. I don't know anybody who believes that, right? People are either saying that Trump's campaign staged it, which again, I think that's moronic, but okay, some people are saying that. And then there's people saying that the CIA was in on it, Secret Service was in on it, that this kid, he was in a BlackRock commercial, so maybe he had ties to some.

Jeremy: Oh yeah, that was so funny.

Natalie: Right, but I don't know anybody. The big conclusion for me from this whole thing was that everybody now is questioning authority. These agencies, we just don't have trust in them at all anymore. Whichever side you're on, you don't trust the information coming to you.

So to get back to, I'm starting another podcast, which has nothing to do with short-term rentals. This is just purely for fun. But what I wanna do is have on a conspiracy theorist every week on a different topic. And so I would love to interview a flat earther. I am not a flat earther, but I think a lot of flat earthers get really written off as being crazy. And I think that maybe there's, if they feel as jaded about that as I do about this situation, I feel bad that a lot of people haven't gotten a fair shot to have their thoughts aired out and people just write them off as crazy.

I would love to just sit down with somebody and be like, explain it to me. Tell me why you think the earth is flat. How are the moon and the sun and everything gravitationally going around each other if the earth is flat? I just wanna hear you out, human to human. And I think that there's a lot more we have in common with the people that we've written off as crazy than we're different. I think there's more we have in common than not. But once your eyes are open to one of these things that might not be true, I feel like you start to question everything else.

Jeremy: I need to put you in contact with my aunt Jodi. She's very...

Natalie: Aunt Jodi, I wanna meet her.

Jeremy: Very successful. Well, she's technically my aunt's best friend, but I've known her my whole life. So I'll just call her Aunt Jodi for all sakes and purposes. But yeah, she's successful. She has an essential oils company, which is like, essential oils in themselves might be a conspiracy, if they work, don't work. But she's written books on essential oils, like a thought leader in that topic. And she has her freedom through her small business. And through that, she's conspiracy theorist through and through. Admittedly, I don't really understand her conspiracy theories. They're so out there. They're like lizard people type stuff that I couldn't even tell you what they are because to me, at least...

Natalie: That's what I would wanna know. I've Googled before, like why do flat earthers believe what they believe? And you can't even find that information. And it's just, I don't know. It's sad to me that these people really believe in something so passionately and they just can't get a fair shake for it.

And I think what's interesting too, let's quickly, let's just go there because we already are. We're here. Vaccines, okay? Vaccines. A lot of times, I feel like growing up, I always had the image in my head that anti-vaxxers were these uneducated, just hick rubes who didn't believe in science or anything. And if you actually look now, people who are anti-vaxxers and aren't vaccinating their kids, it's wealthier classes, it's celebrities that aren't vaccinating their kids. And lower class people are vaccinating across the board. They have to, to put their kids in school.

I'm not making a stance on vaccines, okay? Don't get me wrong, but it's so interesting that people who are wealthier and might have more access to information are the ones that view things differently. RFK Jr., right? He's huge on the anti-vax movement and he comes from so much money. His family is just legacy in American politics. He would have the resource to research that stuff and question it, but still somehow our culture is writing off anti-vaxxers as just these uneducated idiots.

And again, I'm not making a stance on vaccines. I just wanna have these conversations with people. I think this is a lot of our division. I think that if people just, instead of using a pejorative, like, oh, she's an anti-vaxxer, but if you actually ask somebody, why do you think that? I think we would find a lot more common ground with people.

So that's the concept of the show. If you're interested in this, there's no name yet, but it's coming out soon. This is my passion project I'm working on on the side.

Jeremy: Yeah, so we have the No Vacancy Podcast and now we have the No Name. The No Name Podcast. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. No Name Podcast. Do you like that? Do you like that? Are we going with that name? The No Name Podcast.

Natalie: I think that's cool.

Jeremy: I think that was a good idea. I thought of that.

Natalie: I think it's good. It's all right. You'll get royalties if we land on that name.

Jeremy: Yeah, beautiful.

All right, well, and yeah, just my takeaway of this is that everyone has their hierarchy of needs. And I think the first thing people are looking for is food, shelter, and safety. That's the first thing. They get that. Then what are they looking for? And then maybe that you have a job, but you actually want one that you're passionate about. That's maybe the next level of the self-actualization. All right, you've got a job you're passionate about. Well, now you actually want a way to free up your time to do other things. If that's where you are, that's where I think we're both believers that short-term rentals and whatnot is a great, great thing for that. All right, now you've gotten that. What do you want to do with that time? And it's totally okay to do whatever the hell you want to do. If you want to talk conspiracy theories, that's f*cking awesome.

And I want to give you major kudos for realizing that's something you care about. And I'm excited. I know Patrick's a big accountability source for you here, but maybe I can be accountability partner and say, send it. I'm sure you're going to make something great of that passion. I'm a firm believer in you. And I think I alluded to this on your podcast, but when you're with someone or talking to them or a part of their journey at the beginning of it, and you're a supporter and an encourager at the get-go, it's really, really meaningful once it actually becomes something along the line. So maybe we're doing that. Maybe that's happening right now.

Natalie: I already like the name idea. I already like the name idea. That's a good one.

Jeremy: And that ties in, No Name. You don't want to label people or give them names or pejoratives, right? Kind of works both ways.

Natalie: Exactly. It's not taking a side. It's not taking an opinion. It's not anything. It's just a place to have conversations and hear things from people. And if someone has...

Jeremy: I'll give Jodi credit. She has thought so much about all this stuff. Honestly, if you could listen to her, she probably has very compelling arguments, if I'm going to be completely honest.

Natalie: Yes, that's what I want to hear. And it's so sad to me how we just write off an entire population as crazy. And it's something that people are so passionate about. You could have, I don't know. I don't know where I'm going with this. But yeah, there's just the amount of time that people research and stuff for something that they care about, just to be told, oh, she's a loony. She's a lunatic. It's so unfair. And I think if you just heard people out and brought them to the table, you could convince them or be convinced the other way.

Jeremy: Yeah, I think it's unfair that a lot of people are getting the short end of the stick or just being labeled when they're just passionate and want to learn and question. Well, I'm excited for you to give a voice from these marginalized individuals.

Natalie: Conspiracy theorists.

Jeremy: Exactly.

Natalie: The thing is, I wouldn't even say I'm a conspiracy theorist. I love to research and I do go into things with questions, but I do believe the moon landing happened. Maybe after I interview a moon landing truther, I'll change my mind. I don't know. I do believe the earth is round, okay?

Jeremy: You can be convinced, all right.

Natalie: But I'm open-minded. I could be convinced.

And I'll end on this point because this is a real estate podcast. As I do research conspiracy theories and I love this kind of stuff, I will say real estate brings me so much joy. I think that we are living in a time that the world, you don't know what's real. It is hard to question. People investing in crypto, it's like, what even is this? It's kind of this ethereal thing. Can we really rely on this? Even the stock market, it's got a good history, but really you're putting your money in something and just hoping that it performs the way it has in the past.

And real estate is something to me that, as I question the world and look at these different topics, it feels just so tangible to own and have something and know that if sht hits the fan and the grid goes down, we have other properties we can go to. We have resources. We have things that we could sell if we needed to. We have places that we could put up our friends and family. I guess that'll be the way I tie it in so that the people still listening aren't pssed that we didn't stick to real estate on this podcast.

Jeremy: Well, my takeaway is maybe I need to get some shelter Airbnbs. I will pay a premium if you have a cellar in there.

Natalie: Anyone have a bunker?

Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah, bunker. Yeah, sure. Bunker, that's the word. Beautiful.

So yeah, folks, you wanna stay in tune with your journey, short-term rental, other interests. How can they find you?

Natalie: Find me on Instagram at Natalie Palmer. Whenever this new podcast comes out, that's where I will announce it. And my current podcast, No Vacancy, the podcast, which does not get this off the rails, you can also find that through my Instagram. And if you'd like to attend Level Up Your Listing Summit in March in Scottsdale, you can also find all of that through my Instagram. Everything is linked through there, Natalie Palmer.

Jeremy: Beautiful. Well, thank you guys for joining me as normal today. I think this was maybe more interesting or a unique conversation. But as always, stay tuned to the next episode of the Short-Term Rental Pros Podcast.