Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - From Punk Rock to Real Estate: Avery Carl's Journey to Short-Term Rental Success

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Avery Carl, the dynamic force behind a thriving short-term rental empire, joins us to share her captivating journey from the small town of Starkville, Mississippi, to the forefront of the real estate world. Growing up with a chiropractor dad and a stay-at-home mom, Avery's family life instilled in her the values of hard work and resilience, fueling her entrepreneurial spirit. Her bestselling book, "Short-Term Rental, Long-Term Wealth," and a podcast that has surpassed a million downloads, have become essential resources for anyone looking to succeed in the industry.   We explore Avery's eclectic path, from college athlete to punk rock bassist, showcasing the unique experiences that have colored her career. Relocating through cities like Austin, New York, and eventually Nashville, Avery navigated the vibrant world of music and the hustle of bartending, all while carving out a new life in picturesque Tennessee. With her husband, a classic rock DJ, she embraced the opportunities Nashville presented, leveraging them into a thriving real estate venture.   Venture into the complexities of real estate investing as Avery shares her insights on market selection, property management, and navigating regulatory landscapes. With a strategically assembled portfolio that includes high-yield vacation rentals in top tourist destinations, Avery provides invaluable lessons from her own experiences. From the challenges of natural disasters to the intricacies of remote investing, this episode is a comprehensive guide for anyone looking to make their mark in the short-term rental market.   CHAPTERS    (00:00) - Escaping the Drift (03:32) - From College Soccer to Punk Rock (12:37) - City-Hopping Punk Rock to Nashville (15:26) - Real Estate Investing Journey in Nashville (23:18) - Remote Real Estate Investing Challenges (34:47) - Real Estate Investing Strategies and Lessons (38:31) - Short-Term Rental Investment Strategies   💬 Did you enjoy this podcast episode? Tell us all about it in the comment section below!    ☑️  If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford  ************* 💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.   ➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full-service title and escrow company.   ➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages.   *************   ✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:   Instagram ▶️ / thejohngafford   Facebook ▶️ / gafford2   🎧 Stream The Escaping The Drift Podcast with John Gafford Episode here: Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80gtZ4m4wl3DqQoJmK?si=2d60fd72329d44a9 Listen On Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/escaping-the-drift-with-john-gafford/id1582927283    *************   #escapingthedrift #averycarl #entrepreneurship #realestate #shorttermrental #investing #marketselection #propertymanagement #regulatorylandscapes #naturaldisasters #remoteinvesting #financialrisks #vacationrentals #tourism #marketanalysis #strategicdecisionmaking #entrepreneurialjourney #resilience #hardwork #familydynamics #musicindustry #nashville #punkrock #bartending #corporateenvironment #propertyacquisition #strategicreinvestment #highyieldopportunities #luxuryproperties #interestrates #tourismdependentareas #highcostofliving #dining #biggerpockets

I wasn't aware of money. I was aware of success and the freedom of being able to do what you want to do. So there was nothing that I wanted more as a girl growing up in small town Mississippi than to get out. And now Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Welcome back to the program, everybody. And again, the podcast that gets you from where you are to where you want to be.

And today in the studio, ladies and gentlemen, I've got somebody that has taken the short-term rental niche to a beast mode level, not just accomplishing for herself. I'm talking about somebody that owns 250 years or has acquired that with her and her investors and just has taken that Airbnb game to the next level. She is the author of the best-selling book, Short-Term Rental Long-T-term wealth. She's the host of her own podcast called the Short-Term Rental Podcast with over 1 million downloads.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the program. This is Avery Carl. Avery. Hey, thanks for having me. How are you? I love it. It's like, man, there's gonna be a sparkler or something going off with that intro.

Fireworks are pow, something going on with that. So let's get started with you, man, because obviously you are very driven in what you do. You don't reach this type of success without being driven. So talk to me about, I always loved the nature versus nurture kind of conversation. So tell me about you growing up, man. Tell me about that.

Okay, growing up, I grew up in a small town in Mississippi called Starkville, Mississippi. The only notable thing- Mississippi State? Mississippi State University, yes. Okay, gas- I was gonna say, Mississippi. The only notable thing Mississippi State, Mississippi State University. Yes. I was gonna say that's the only notable thing is a very crappy. Sorry, dad. SEC football team.

As I say that as my alma mater, Texas just got really embarrassingly whooped by Ohio State. Yes, they did. It was so bad. Should they have started arch manning? Should they have gone with arch in that game? I think they probably should have because you know, the other

other guy who I can't remember his name went to Ohio State and they knew everything about him because he he transferred from there. Oh my gosh, that's right. I didn't think about that aspect of it. Yeah, which is shocking that I didn't see that. It was obviously being from and it's funny that you you being from that part of the world obviously with you went to Texas, which was interesting, but let's talk about you growing up. So you

grew up in this small town. What did mom and dad do? My dad is a chiropractor. My mom is a stay at home mom. Okay, mom's a, okay. So dad, chiropractor. Is he one of the like, I can cure the common cold by cracking your back? Chiropractor, okay.

No, no, he's a let's, your neck hurts, let's straighten you out. Love that. Pretty straightforward. You know what I'm talking about? There's the voodoo chiropractors with the gongs and stuff. And then there's the the let me just straighten Yeah, so he's on the state board in Mississippi and I've heard some of those stories of like chiropractors presenting themselves as like neurologists

Yeah, like oh you have the flu I can crack your back and we can make you better. Yeah, that's a one that's me sticks the backs So growing up growing up where you were did I mean obviously dad's a doctor? That's cool. Mom's there, which I love that Yeah There was mom like the peanut butter and jelly mom or like all the kids would come to your house and she would, she was like, was she that mom? She was, she was. And still to this day is like, if when we go home

she'll make two separate dinners and be like, well, I made this, but also made this. So whatever you guys want, you can choose. She's like the ultimate, ultimate mom. Yeah. So here's an interesting question though. Cause I always kind of think about this with my daughter, right? Cause my wife, thank God, is the stay at home mom as well.

So we get to do that. It's what we decided we wanted to do when we had kids and she wanted to be the peanut butter jelly mom. Do you think that you being a woman, having mom as a homemaker, which is obviously a hard job, I'm not taking anything away from it, but that being her homemaker, do you think, how do you think that affected you as a daughter

growing up in that type of world vision, as far as you kind of went the other way and became power entrepreneur? So did that affect you or anything like that? That's a really great question. So I do think that I am a successful human because of the way I was raised, because I got a lot of attention from both parents

and my mom being around all the time. You know my dad was around all the time too but you know he worked and that's kind of a really big part of why I ended up being an entrepreneur because I did have the nine to five. I thought I had my dream job doing marketing for the music business in Nashville but I remember having a conversation with my friend. We were walking around a track on my lunch break one time, and I was like, man,

this is not gonna work for when we have kids, we just got married, and I was already thinking about, you know, the boss that I have is not somebody who's gonna understand, oh, I need to stay home because my daughter got sick, or, and it, I would have to spend eight, I mean, probably closer to 12 hours a day away from our future kids if I kept that job. So even back then, I thought finding a job where you could work remotely was the answer.

But the way, and we can talk about how I got into real estate investing later, but that's kind of the reason that it came about because I was looking for that flexibility. And now, fast forward this 10, 11 years later, we've kind of crafted our lives to where our kids have a two-parent stay at home experience. Cause I think that goes- Oh, I love that. Yeah. I think we kind of operate, I call it the family business model.

You know, it's not like I'm working my own job. He's working his own job. We've both built this thing. We both had separate jobs that we eventually both quit to do this. And now, and I think it goes the other way too. I think there's a whole generation of daddies out there right now who are like, oh wait, I want to lay down with, I want to lay down with our son all day while he's sick and let's watch, you know, they want to do the nurturing.

And it's not, not me, not me. When they were sick, I was like, take this one. Well, mine is- That'll come in when we need to talk about business advice, but us, yeah, wiping noses is never done. Oh no, my husband is like, oh yeah, sweet. Let's watch, let us, yeah, wiping noses is never a task. Sorry. Not my thing. My husband is like, oh yeah, sweet, let's watch Price is Right.

They've never seen Price is Right. Oh yeah. Dude, is there anything better than staying home from school, eating chicken noodle soup out of the can and watching Price is Right? Is there anything better than that? It's pretty good. No, it's the best.

It's just the best. So, obviously you were a good student because you went to Texas and did that. What was the first hustle you had as a kid? Like, were you, were you, were you aware of money in an early age? Is that something that was, you were driven by that? I wasn't aware of money.

I was aware of success and the freedom of being able to do what you want to do. So there was nothing that I wanted more as a girl growing up in small town Mississippi than to get out of small town Mississippi. I was thinking horse. I was immediately going to question with that and no, it was escape. I want to escape.

I wanted to get out of, I wanted to go to a big city. I can commiserate my town of C you grew up in a college town. I grew up 42 minutes from college town. So it was like 8,000 people in my own town. So I, I, I completely. So I completely understand that feeling of I want to get out of here. I desperately wanted to get out and athletics was my way out.

So I love that. Let's talk about that. So what'd you play? Soccer and I went to Texas on a soccer scholarship. Okay, cool. See, I dig that because I use sports for me, I love it. Cause my biggest fear is always raising worthless children. that because I, you know, use sports for me, uh, you know, I love it because my biggest fear is always raising worthless children. Like it's my biggest fear in life, right? Like I,

I don't like, well spiders too, but other than that, I don't, I'm not scared of a lot, but you know, when you have, when you're a fluid and you want your kids to, you know, like experience nice things with you, especially when we travel and do things like that. I mean, I don't stay at the holiday and motel and you're scared. Your kids are going to kind of wake up and be worthless. And I always found that when kids are affluent,

they don't have a lot of adversity. And I love sports as a way to build artificial adversity because it builds grit. Was that something that you were drawn to or your parents really pushed you into and what you kind of felt developed a love for it. What was that? They didn't push us into it. Although I will say my dad played college golf and then a little bit of professional after that. So there was definitely a, I think they wanted us to have something that we really cared about and worked hard at. And

they didn't necessarily care what that was. But you know, small town Mississippi, there is only sports and women's soccer at the time was not super mainstream. So they didn't know anything about it, but they were very like at every single game. My mom drove me two hours. The closest club soccer team was in Jackson, which is two hours away. So when I started getting really good

and taking it really seriously, she drove me to practice two hours twice a week to do that. So I think it does build grit and I learned through that the value or the feeling of, oh, if I work harder, then I reap the benefits of that. So, you know, if I'm just can jump, I was a goalkeeper. So if I could just do a few more squats, I can jump a little bit higher. I might make a save that one more college would be interested in me and I can get out of here. Cause I didn't want to like leave small town Mississippi and end up in small town Nebraska, you know,

out of the frying pan. No, I already lived in this town. I don't want to do this again. It was, it's just so interesting that would, especially when you, when you achieve, you know, a D one scholarship like that, that level, I had a Dave risky on the program, a couple of weeks ago, he's spent 11 years in major leagues and both his kids are in college on D one scholarships. And it was really interesting to hear from his perspective, how much you push, how much, how much you,

how much you lay back to reach that level of, of skill. Cause I mean, look, there's athletic ability, obviously you have to be born with, but a lot of that's, a lot of it's work. And to try to get a kid, you know, especially in this day and age of distraction, when the world's entertainment is at your fingertips in your bed and you know, you can play Grand Theft Auto

and mug people until three o'clock in the morning, it's hard to get a kid to be that interested in anything. So I think that's that says a lot about it's interesting that your dad was able to navigate that with you in a way that you don't look back at what he did at all and say you pushed because like Dave, he'd say my kids would say I was dick. They say there I was too hard about it. But so that's you know, that that's really interesting. So the soccer career was going well, was doing that.

You got through school in soccer. Did you have any aspirations to do anything after that with soccer? Did you know that was going to kind of be the end? Was there a goal for like the Olympic team and that stuff? Or was that just, I'm going to get through school and this is good. Or did you get to college and lose your mind a little bit?

A little bit of all of that. So I was on, I made the regional team that they pull the Olympic team from, but I never really got any further than that. And like halfway through college, it's like, it's pretty clear there's not a major league to go to after. It's not like being a college football player and you have something to work towards. And I started having some shoulder injuries, which I still have, which still aren't fixed. And also as a hobby, played guitar in high school and really into, was really into like punk rock

and went to work tour and all that. And so I also chose my college based on where I could play music and be in a band. Austin. Yeah. So it was perfect. So wait, so you're, okay, you're a D1, you're a D1 athlete in college and you're also playing in a band?

Yes. It's very opposite. Yeah. How would that work out? It only overlapped for about a year and somehow tours ended up not being during school. And then- So you were, you said that was the, that was the, so soccer was the ticket, but the music was the passion.

That was what you, you thought that's where you were going. That's what you wanted to do. Well, I don't think that I was delusional about it. Like I wasn't planning to be the next Aerosmith or anything like that, but I was having a really good time and I graduated the worst possible time to ever graduate and get a job

for a soft major like communication that I was, which was spring of 2009. So there were no jobs period. And so I was bartending. And I was like, well, you know, I guess I'll just keep doing this music thing, have a good time until the job market swings back around. I'll go get my master's or something and do that. So I toured all over the US, Europe, Japan had a really good time,

like really great early 20s. And then went back to school and got the real job. Did you get signed by label? Did you get signed by label a little tiny one? Nothing anybody's ever heard of okay, cool Look man, I love it back in the early 2000s I had a live music venue in Atlanta That we had just randomly just a bunch of people that wound up becoming very famous used to play there on the regularly. And it was always,

always my greatest joy to be friends with the guys in the band, especially after they made it big. It's always, it's still, it's still my greatest joy to be able to go to that stuff. It's great. Um, when did you move to Nashville? Oh, so there was a lot in between there. Um, so I lived in Austin for a while. Then I moved to New York for a gig. And what was the gig? I was playing bass with a guy named Ivan Julian, which is a really deep cut. You're only going to know who that is. If you're like super into seventies New York punk, he was

in a band called Richard Hell and the Voidoids, which was kind of like one of the first big punk bands anyway. You were playing punk. This is, you were like knee deep in this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. And I was bartending. So three happy hours a week in Soho making 90 grand a year. I got to ask one question. I got to ask one question. What was the look in your punk rock day?

What was the look? So it wasn't, it was nothing too crazy. So I had a little Joan Jett mullet. All right, cool. Or leather. I still wear a leather jacket everywhere, but I live in Florida. Leather jacket, skinnyett mullet. All right, cool. Or leather, I still wear a leather jacket everywhere, but I live in Florida. Leather jacket, skinny jeans, motorcycle boots.

All right. Cut off Iron Maiden t-shirt. Okay, cool. Nothing too crazy. No, no, no, nothing too crazy. Obviously you didn't get any tattoos where the judge can see them because I can't do nothing too crazy.

Okay, cool. All right, there you go. All right, right on. So you went to New York to play, continue to play punk rock. That must've been culture shock even coming from Austin to go to New York. I loved it. I always loved, I still love going to new cities,

but like New York is the center of the universe. It's so great. I love it so much. So I loved living there, met my husband there, and we moved to Nashville just because we were tired of the city. It was right after Hurricane Sandy, and we could not get out of the city

to even get away from it. The subways were flooded, and we didn not get out of the city to even get away from it. The subways were flooded and we didn't have a car because you don't need one. So we're just like stuck. And it was fun. It was like party central for a minute because everything was closed. But then all the restaurants started running out of food

and then the grocery store started running out of food. It got a little weird. Yeah, you're like, my neighbor is looking at me like they're hungry. This is not cool. I don't like this. Yeah, so we decided to go to Nashville because he was and still is just on the weekends,

a classic rock DJ on Sirius XM. Nice. And Nashville had an office for him. So we went on down to Nashville. Very cool, that's awesome. So where did you live in Nashville? So we lived in north of Nashville in a suburb called White House.

Okay, right on. Yeah, again, another great, great city that I, that I love. Some good friends of mine have a festival every year called the pilgrimage festival, which is in September, which is awesome. Love it. It's great. Um, that they're in not Parker, not Brentwood, um, south of Nashville, Q, everybody lives there. All the rock stars live there. Oh, Franklin, Franklin, Tennessee.

Greatest downtown of any small town. It's so funny, dude, coming from, you've probably experienced some of this too, because you come from this small town and all your whole life, all you want to do is get away from it. And then when you go to like a small town as an adult, now if you live in these big places,

you're like, oh my God, it's so cool. I love this. I can live here. But in reality, if you lived there in like five minutes, you'd be like, why did I move here? Yes, yes. I miss everything, everything about it. So you're in Nashville and you got a job in the biz.

What was the job? I was doing marketing for a music rights company. So if you're a songwriter, you have to sign up with one of these companies so that you can get paid your royalties when your song gets played on the radio. Okay. And how long did you do that? I had three different jobs in that field within about three years. I got put on a performance

plan on two of them, which means you're about to get fired because I'm not a good employee. That's where I was headed with this next. Yeah. So kind of got into real estate investing during that time. And that kind of ended up being my exit. Your pathway to it. It's so funny, because anybody that's ever a high level entrepreneur, we're all chronically unemployable.

Oh yeah. I was so terrible. You're the worst employee. Although I will say personally, like a fun fact, right? I've been fired in my life by two people. One of which was the AM room service manager at the Ramada Inn in Tallahassee, Florida.

Fuck you, Jeff, I still haven't forgotten you. And the second one is about to be the 47th president of the United States. That's the only two people that have ever fired me. So good company for you, Jeff, I guess. Still haven't forgotten about it. It wasn't my fault. Anyway, so yeah, you just, at some point,

you just look around and say, God, I'm just a terrible employee. Yeah, yeah. And I also looked at who my role models were and nobody in my family has had a corporate job like that. My dad has his own business, both my grandparents, both sets of my grandparents own their own businesses. And I'm like, oh, well, I've never,

this example was not set for me. Okay. So what year was it that you started buying a mess of properties? 2013. Okay, good time to buy. Yeah. Coming out of the crash, good time to buy. And you were buying in Nashville, right?

Yes, so it was kind of like by accident actually. What happened? Tell me the story. So when we moved from New York to Nashville, our real estate agent at the time was really trying to get us to buy in like the hipster part of Nashville that was appreciating really fast and telling us, oh, people are making $100,000 in appreciation in a year.

And we were like, oh, no, thanks. We're moving from New York to Tennessee. We want to be out in the country, no more neighbors. So we bought out in the country in White House, which is now no longer the country. Nashville has developed up there. But so we bought up there and didn't really think anything else about real estate.

And then we got married and we saved up a very small amount of money, but to us at the time, it seemed big, $10,000. And I was real into Dave Ramsey at the time. And- No debt, no debt, no debt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we had-

Don't buy that anymore, do you? No, no. So I was like, well, we gotta find something we can do with this $10,000. So we went to an Edward Jones office that was in the same building as my corporate building and went in and talked to the lady and she told us we did not have enough money

for her to bother with. And we were like, oh great, we're losers. So we started thinking, yeah. Well, thank goodness she did because otherwise we wouldn't be doing what we're doing. But we left with the wind let out of our sails and we're trying to figure out there's gotta be something we can do with this.

I got a question. I got a question. And this is something I think is important in your story because you guys bought your house before you got married. What was that thought process like? Cause that there's a lot of people that need to, did you structure that? Like how did you structure that deal?

If you could. There was no deal structured. There were no, he bought the house. He bought it. I was the girlfriend. Yeah. Okay. So when you say we bought our house, it was him buy our house.

Right. He did. And then once we got married, obviously that changed cause we still lived in the house. Of course. But no, I was, it was his house. Okay. Cause I see, and you probably now on the flip side of this coin, many years later, after being in real estate,

you see people that are domestic partners or whatever that go in together on a house. And it's like, okay, did we talk about the house before we bought it? Was there a plan? So I just, I just, when I hear that in a story, like I get it. And I'm just, if you're listening to this,

if you love your boyfriend, your girlfriend, whatever, whatever, if you're in love, dude, don't go buy a house with them unless there is a division of assets plan arranged by a lawyer ahead of time for what happens if you break up. 100%. Cause that house is going to survive whether you break up or not.

Yes. Unless you, unless you get somebody really crazy that burns it down, then the insurance pay, well, maybe insurance doesn't pay it off anymore. I don't know. Who knows if they paid off their fire. Anyway. I have had a, an apartment building burned down in the last year and insurance

did pay for it, but I didn't set that fire. Southern California was it? No, no. Good Lord. Terrible. Terrible. Anyway, so you get a house, you're moving along, you got your 10 grand, you what? And isn't it so ridiculous, dude? It's so weird. I'm gonna talk about that too because you walked into a place bright eyed, like excited to be there. Man, this is going to be the solution to our problems. And they look at you and they go, not good enough.

Yep. Yeah, it sucked. And, and how did you, and look, I don't even have to ask. Cause I know you felt defeated. You felt less than. Yep. You felt terrible when you walked out of that office. Yep. And the only reason I want to bring that up is because one of the first things

that I teach so much to real estate agents that work for us, right, is there's no such thing as a bad appointment. And if you're listening to us in your real estate agent, I'm going to, I'm going to teach you a lesson right now, which is if somebody calls you and they want an appointment with you, people know if their credit's bad. They know it's not a surprise. Nobody gets their credit report and they're like, oh my God, 520, how did that happen?

They know, they already know, but they're still coming in on a slim hope and a prayer that you can help them. So you have two choices of what you can do with that client when you meet with them. Now, some of the agents are so quick to try to pre-qual people and like, don't even meet with them because they're done. I don't teach that.

I teach that there's no such thing as a bad appointment. If you can get in front of people, get in front of people. And then if their credit's goofed up, man, you treat them with respect and empathy and you look across the table and you say, I don't care if it takes a year or five years, we're gonna get this credit cleaned up and if owning a property is important to you,

then we're gonna get you there. And in the meantime, if you know anybody else that wants my house, give them my card. And because you treated those people with respect, the total respect, they will refer everybody they know to you before they buy. So, but so many people in the financial services industry,

real estate, what you just said, do exactly what you just said. They just blow people out. Yeah. Do you carry that somewhere in the back of your psyche, that feeling? No, you know, I haven't, I only really think about it when people ask me why I bought real estate and it's because she told me we didn't have enough money. And I just thought, well, there's got to be something we can do here.

There's got to be something we can do with this. Yeah. And no, I'm grateful. I'm happy she did that because I would have given her all that very little money that we had and it would be sitting in the stock market. And we would have. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm grateful to her for sending us away.

Yeah. So she, so she did you a favor. Yeah, she did. So she sends you out, you're dejected a little bit. You got your 10 grand. At what point do you guys look at each other and say, maybe we should try to buy a house. I think we went to the bar directly after that. Fair, fair.

And we were like, man, what are we gonna do? And then we, I don't know if he brought it up or I brought it up, but I was like, remember, I guess I'm gonna tell the story like I brought it up. Remember Shelby, our agent, she- Always take credits, better move. He can't talk, he's sitting in here, but he can't talk, it's fine.

No, that's not him. That's not him? No. Oh, then we can talk about him. Oh, then your husband's at home. Yeah, he's at home. Oh, cool, then I'll listen to this later. I'll be like, fine, definitely take credit. Nobody's gonna take credit.

Yeah, I'll take credit. Who knows? So it got brought up by one of us that, well, what about those houses that Shelby was talking about? We didn't even know it was called real estate investing at the time. And we said, what if we buy one of those? We put a tenant in it.

So they're paying all the bills on that. And then in the future sometime, and we have kids that need to go to college, we can pay for their college out of that appreciation, it won't have to come out of our incomes will be these real estate geniuses. And we bought went bought a house on that premise. Luckily, that house cash flowed $1,000 a month over the mortgage, which is unheard of for a long term. So the

Well, here's the question. All right. So here's my first question is, did you guys underwrite this at all? Or do you just hope for the best? This seems like a good deal. We did some loose research. Okay, we looked on Zillow to see how much houses rent for in that market, in that area. Figured out how much the mortgage would be,

how much about we could get. And the rest was like prayer. Did you have to rent another house at all? We had to paint it and it needed new carpets. Okay, so like. Yeah, we got really lucky on that one because it had one owner, they'd recently remodeled the kitchen,

which is the most expensive thing to do. And their daughter was a new real estate agent and had listed it and she listed it with no pictures. And we happened to be right down the street from it when it was listed. So we went and drove by and we're like, this looks really nice. And we just offered on it before anybody else could see.

Thank you, real estate class of Wednesday. Thank you. Thank you for that, Neil. So you got in, did you buy it? I mean, obviously 2013, I mean, we were scorching buying stuff for the hedge funds. Were you guys able to buy at a decent margin? Did you walk into equity there?

Yeah, I think we, not a ton, because I don't think- But a little bit. A little bit, a little bit. I would say maybe like 25 grand, not a whole. Okay. They do that. It's that great position. It's going. And what, and do you remember what your interest rate, what is on that at that time when you bought it?

I want to say it was around four. We weren't at the, you know, it wasn't 2020 yet. Better known as the good old days five years later. So yeah, so you bought it there. You're cashflow in a thousand bucks a month. That was 2013. Yes. Cashflow in a thousand bucks a month. That was 2013, yes. Cash flowing a thousand bucks a month, which coincidentally my dream job that doesn't pay anything is music business in Nashville pays nothing. There's always an intern who will do it for free.

And that was about what I was making after all the deductions on my paycheck. Yeah, thank you music business class on Wednesday. Yeah, so I was like, okay, so I'm going to work, sitting in an hour in Nashville traffic each way, working for this boss who I'm hate who hates me. And this house is making a productive work environment. And this house is making as much money while I sleep. And so then we were like, okay, we need more of these. How do we do that? And so only then did we start

like listening to podcasts and stuff. I think really the only real estate podcast back then was Bigger Pockets. And there was no, the coaching and all that wasn't huge yet. So we just kind of had to figure it out. And we said, Okay, well, we've got a little bit of money. We got enough for like one down payment, what can we buy that's going to make us the most amount of money the fastest so we can buy more faster. And we landed on short term rentals. But we

didn't want to do it in Nashville, because Nashville was already like very anti short-term rental. But we'd just been on vacation to the Smokey's which Gatlinburg area about four hours East and we'd stayed in a cabin. Our friends had stayed in cabins and we're like, okay, well all of these are basically Airbnb's.

They're not being on Airbnb. They were on like big property management websites but somebody owns these things and that should be us. So we went and bought one again, there were no short term rental gurus. So how did you come up with a down payment for that one? How close were we, how close were we away from the revenue on this one?

And did you lever, did you start levering? At what point? I'll get to that. How did you buy the second one? We saved and worked extra. So Luke who was like live on the radio 12 hours a day, Ubered, like people would recognize him from the radio when he would Uber.

He has a very distinctive voice. So, you know, how humbling is that? Like you have this big public job and then somebody's like, oh, you're my Uber driver. That, that, that, that, what you just said is the difference. That is the line that most people that will never, never have an immense amount of success are willing to travel over.

Cause they're not willing to do, they're not willing to take the step back in the eyes of their peers that is required to take 10 steps forward. Yeah. So listen, dude, I mean, look, if you learn nothing else from this today, I mean, you're gonna see where this story lands,

which is wild, how big this portfolio is. And they were driving Uber to make it happen. Like, shit, like it doesn't happen by accident. No. So he swung his pride driving Uber, you saved your money, bought the second one. Yeah, saved our money, bought the second one. And we thought we were gonna have to get a property manager

because it wasn't done at the time. There were no Airbnb gurus. There's nobody posting on Instagram every day about how to do it. And the property management split back then and still in a lot of the big vacation rental markets like that was 40% of your gross because Airbnb was just kind of coming along.

So they had a total monopoly on this. So we're like, no, no, we need that 40%. We gotta buy some houses. So we're like, no, no, we need that 40%. We got to buy some houses. So we figured out how to manage it ourselves remotely on Airbnb and just kind of figured that out over the next year, took every penny we made on that and bought another one. And that ended up being five properties

over the course of about a year and a half. During that time, I got my real estate license and it kind of segwayed me out of my job. I got my real estate license. Um, I did not want to be a real estate agent. I was like, what was the point? What was the goal of the real estate license? Um, I kick the commissions on the deals. We buy back into the deal. Well, that was part of it. The other part of it was that my husband is a New Yorker and he is can be

abrasive. He's very direct and he was embarrassing me in deals. And I was tired of apologizing to agents saying like, oh, he's not really me and he's just a New Yorker. So you got your real estate. I've never heard this and I've dealt with thousands of agents. I got my license because my husband was embarrassing. Now look, my wife does a lot of what she does

because I'm embarrassing, but she's never got a real step-up. That's pretty good. Never taken it that far? That's pretty, no. Maybe I've never taken it that far. Maybe I need to take it further. I don't know.

To get her to dance. My wife is gonna get an MBA because I'm annoying. This is gonna happen. Perfect. I love the way this is working. I could be annoying. I have no problem doing it. So, so you guys get the second one in the Smokies.

Now, talk to me about managing that remote, that first property remote. Like, talk me through that. Okay, it is so much easier to do today than back then. There's so many tools to make it easier. But back then, we found a cleaner and a handyman. And there were no Facebook groups to find these things back then.

So we went to, we would sit at the gas station that was like off the main parkway, headed out to where all the cabins are. And we would wait to see a guy who had like a handyman sticker with his phone number on the side of his truck. And we'd take pictures of all of them or we'd stop them and ask them if they were handymen. And then we were able to kind of find cleaners that way.

Because cleaners don't typically have advertising on the sides of their vehicles. So we sat at the gas station where they sell biscuits and waited for people to come get breakfast and found our first two vendors that way. And we use Airbnb and Verbo and I had to sit down at the beginning of every month and look at our calendar and all of our bookings and write an email to my cleaner and say these days, and I had to watch like a hawk to see if we got a booking.

Cause then, and there was no automation. So I had to sit there and respond to every single message. And we did it now. So all of that is automated. Do you have electric locks back then? We did have electric locks. So, but you know, this was 2015. So it was 10 years ago and the industry was not what it is now.

No, no, no, no, no. So at what point did you say, okay, we've got our two, and you went from, you know, we're doing this to we're scaling this. At what point, what did that decision look like, and what was that process? Everything just kept working,

so we just kept going. There wasn't a, oh, we need this amount of properties or that amount of properties. Once we got to five short terms and the cashflow was coming in pretty heavy, we started buying duplexes in Chattanooga because they were cheap. They were only like a hundred thousand bucks.

And you notice, don't really notice that 25,000 leaving the bank account as much. So we started, I think we got up to like 40 doors there and have just kept buying on all three of our asset classes. So we buy vacation rentals, only vacation rentals. I wanna make that distinction. The whole like Airbnb thing of like, let me buy a whole street in Kansas City

and turn it into Airbnbs because I can make more money than just long-term renting it. Vacation rentals. You're buying where people actually plan vacations. Yes. That's where you're buying. Yes. So we are always buying vacation rentals,

always buying apartment buildings, always buying single-family long-terms, and we just kind of have all three of those rolling at all times. We've got about 250 doors now. But been slowing down on buying. Cause as you know, the real estate market has sucked the past couple of years.

Well, there's going to be a lot of opportunity, I think, in the multifamily side, because the syndicated deals are smashing into walls. They are just, I mean, those guys that, I know a lot of syndicate, I know a lot of deal syndicators that were flying pretty high a couple of years ago that I, they, I haven't seen them anywhere because their deals are falling apart. So I

think there's going to be some I think rates are going to need to get below six to make that those deals work, but they're going to have to do something. Because have to do something. The entire market has stopped. It's bad. Yeah, your home sold in 2024 than the last 65 years, including you know, 2008. Well, I think you know, for the residential market overall, I'm talking about multifamily, but in residential and tell me, you

know, my number on residential market is five, five. That's my number. What I mean by that is I think that when the rates now that we're far enough away from the 3% rates, we're far enough away from it. And when rates tip back to five, five, when they hit there, I think people that have a three, one, five rate are going to swallow a five, five rate. Yeah, they're not swallowing seven. Yeah. If they're in a house hit there, I think people that have a three, one five rate are going to swallow a five five rate. Yeah. They're not swallowing seven. If they're in a house or like, I really need a bigger house, but my interest rates 3%, right?

I think that's the number that eases that up. That feeds them. That feeds inventory into the market that makes things go. What says you? Yeah, I agree with that. I think for the invest residential investment side, I think maybe six will do it. Yeah. But yeah, I think you're right. Right now I'm talking about, I'm telling what's going it. But yeah, I think you're right. Right now. Well, I'm talking about, I'm talking about what's going to motivate people to sell the houses they're in

and go off and look at other things. Cause that's the problem is we've got those golden handcuffs have just eliminated the inventory. What's the problem? Well, and right now on the investment side, people need a 1031 exchange if they're going to sell. And so they don't want to sell, take a hit on their value

because somebody doesn't want to pay a 7% interest rate and make their payment, not make the cash flow work. And then they have to turn around and become a buyer in a high interest rate environment that they don't really want to be anyway. However, I will say that it is a really good time to buy right now because nobody's buying houses so you can get better deals because you don't have that competition. Oh, no, for sure. I mean, when you look at we, we, we advise clients all the time. It's like fishing, right? Like right now there's not a lot of boats on the water. So it's easy to catch big fish. But if you wait till rates come around, everybody's waiting for that. Yeah.

Yes. Everybody's waiting for that. I mean, granted, if you're trying to do, you know, burr properties into long-term rentals, it's challenging to get them to cashflow. Like right now stuff we're trying to acquire. If I can just break it even right now, I'm fine. Because I'll ride the appreciation. I believe in, especially in right now, I'm fine. Cause I'll ride the appreciation I believe in, especially in this market. I believe in it based on the growth of Las Vegas and what's happening. But yeah, cashflow, you know,

buying a cash flowing asset in Vegas on a burp strategy is damn near impossible right now. It just, it's, it's just impossible. So what point did you look, cause obviously you're learning as you're doing deals. What percentage of your education would you say like you went to YouTube and figured it out? What percentage of it was school of hard knocks

from getting smashed around in these deals? I would say it's all been school of hard knocks from getting smashed around. Yeah, because when we first started, there weren't YouTubers on short-term rentals. Now, we got smashed pretty hard on one multifamily this year and it really wasn't, I learned not to buy cheap properties

just because they're cheap. And a lot of those investment gurus out there will say, oh, you know, here's a list of the top 10 best markets. And it's like Memphis, Indianapolis, all these places that yeah, it's gonna be cheap, but you're gonna have to replace that HVAC that gets stolen. Rust belt garbage. Yeah.

So we had a situation where we've got other stuff in that markets in the Midwest and it's fine, but we had a bigger property than ours across the street that the guy just like let it go to hell and ended up condemned by the city. There's squatters in there, there's crime, there's drug dealers, it's coming across the street to our property.

Our tenants don't feel safe. They're moving out. They're breaking windows in ours. And finally, we just were like, we're just gonna sell this. And we had to sell it for like a little bit less than what we paid for it. Cause the market turned, but we also bought in a market that doesn't appreciate,

which is why all those markets on those lists are typically very cheap because they're in markets that don't appreciate cause they don't have a lot of people moving in. So I learned my lesson about not buying cheap stuff just because it's cheap. Yeah, see, I went the other way on that. I went the other way on that.

I learned to stay closer to the median price and not the luxury stuff. I mean, last year when the interest rates hard turned on us in 2022, at the end of 2022 and the rates shot, right? I was sitting on probably close to 12 million in luxury flips and that, and it wasn't a bunch of houses. It was a bunch of square feet.

It was a bunch of big houses. And yeah, and when the interest rates turned and everything stopped, we just got, I mean, the juice just demolished all those deals and it took a big hit. And you know, that's real estate investing. I always say if you don't have a big loss sometimes, you're not entrepreneurial enough. Yeah. You're not hard enough. Yeah.

Your number is going to come up at some point. What's the biggest hit you've ever taken? It was that one. It was that one. Yeah, it was that one. Is it tell me about a time through this, cause you did something kind of interesting too, right? So you came out of the box doing something that it normally takes people a lot. It's a hump to get over. Most people, when they start investing in real estate, even on a small scale, they want to buy everything in the market they're in. It's a lot for them to say, how am I going to bar? How am I going

to buy a property across the country? How am I going to buy a property that's 800 miles away from me? Like that's something people normally work up to, but you came out of the box swinging with that. So did you guys even think about that? Or do you realize that's something people normally work up to, but you came out of the box swinging with that. So did you guys even think about that? Or is it like, do you realize that's an anomaly with you? Or? I didn't realize it at the time. We just thought, well, it's not gonna work here. Where's it gonna work?

And found the place that it worked. And we could get there quickly enough if we needed to. But the truth is, you don't really need to get there. I think everybody gets really hung up on that. They're like, what if there's an emergency? I'm like, what if there's an emergency? I'm like, what if there's an emergency? Are you gonna go in the midst of a fire and insert yourself and perhaps accidentally

create liability? Yep, that's always my comeback too. It's like literally, if there's a leak, are you gonna go fix it or you call a plumber? I'm not going to fix it. Exactly, exactly. So people have a hard time getting over that, but no, we were just like, okay, we can't get there here.

So where can we get there? And we just did it. Yeah. So you mentioned earlier that you own properties and just a vacation markets. What markets do you have and what makes a good vacation market for you? This place you got to like to go, or is it a place where you just, what do you look at? Okay. So for my personal vacation rental investments, totally, I do not invest in different asset classes in the same towns. They're typically different types of markets. So for both my vacation rental investing and then with the short term shop, we only work in true regional drivable vacation destination.

So we're not opening up in Nashville. As a matter of fact, we had an office in Nashville and I shut it down because after two or three of our clients got in lawsuits with the city, because Nashville does not is not dependent on tourism. There's other industry there. So they don't want it there. They have the hotels, they have everything. Anyway, I focus on regional drivable vacation destinations

that don't have a lot of hotel presence and that are dependent on tourism. So I own in the Smokies in Tennessee, so Pigeon Forge in Gatlinburg, Destin, Florida, 30A,A Florida and Cape Sandblast. All these areas don't have a lot of hotel presence and get, so I live on 30A. There's 10,000 of us that live on 30A full-time.

There are 10 million people that come to 30A every year and they all stay in vacation rentals. So if the vacation rentals went away, 30A would not exist. Nobody's business, everybody else that lives their full-time small business owners, none of those would exist, you know, hospitality businesses, restaurants, things like that. So I focus on areas where the economy is dependent

on tourism so that there's a few exceptions to this like Breckenridge, but in most cases, they're very, very short-term rental friendly because they're so important to the local economy. Well, I want to talk about 30A in particular, because you own a bunch of properties there and I love that area. My family, we spend a week there every year.

But I also know that being from Florida, growing up there, you have a little issue in that part of the world called hurricanes. Like for example, Mexico beach got leveled. What was it, three years ago? 2019, yeah. Oh my God, is that far again? Oh my God. Good Lord. 2019. You blink man. Yeah. I had friends that had houses in Mexico beach.

It got leveled. Um, you know, when it comes to that and the new, the new laws, cause now you have a roofing issue, uh, whether you have to have your roof redone every so, so often in Florida to get insurance. And you know, you look at what just happened in Southern California with the fires and insurance companies. I mean, how much of how much of how much of the natural disaster potential do you pencil into these decisions when you're doing this stuff? So it's just a risk that you have to be willing to take. When you think about and I do not have exact probabilities on this. I'm not a scientist or a mathematician. But when you think about, and I do not have exact probabilities on this. I'm not a scientist or a mathematician, but when you think about the percent chance that your property is going to

take a direct hit and be a total loss, it's actually decently small. Like is Florida going to get hit by a hurricane every year? Yes. But is it going to necessarily be your part? And how bad is it going to be? Like I was eight and a half months pregnant for hurricane Sally and we just, it was a category three. We sat there, it was like a long Mississippi thunderstorm for three days and then it was over and it sucked. It was a lot of water, but like it was not, it's not always a Helene situation. And the chances of you getting a direct hit

and having a total loss are relatively small, but that's something you just have to be okay with if you're gonna buy in a beach market. Now the thing that beach markets offer is high levels of tourism, especially in that market, expensive tourism. So if you're not okay with that, there's other places you can buy,

like Scottsdale does not have natural disasters. We've got an office there. Smokies, we have fires there too, not as much as Southern California, but there's gonna be something everywhere. I had a, I bought a duplex in Chattanooga got run over by a tornado like two weeks after I bought it. So there's always something. Yeah. Sept in Vegas, baby. It's just hot here. That's it. We have no natural disasters here.

Yeah. You know, it's funny you talk about how expensive it is on 38. Everybody that ever bitches about the price of food and like football stadiums when they go, I'm like, bro, go buy a snow cone from the snow cone truck at seaside. And you come back and tell me how expensive that beer was. I'll go out to eat like just me and my six-year-old daughter and have like two appetizers, 90 bucks. Oh dude, my kids ride the bikes in those food trucks

and like, I got to fill out a credit app. Wait, what do you know? I don't do that. It's crazy, it's insanely expensive. But that's wild. But you wrote this book, I want to talk about the book. All right, this one short term now question because I was a little confused with this. You have to forgive me. Okay. But my podcast affiliate, my podcast associate that booked you on the show

today is also my 16 year old son. So sometimes some of the notes I get are a little bit incorrect. So it's fine. The book, short term rental, long term wealth, that one's out. Yes, that one came out in 2021. Okay, cool. So you have another one coming out. Yes. All right.

Well, let's talk about this one first. Okay. So what inspired you to write a book? Bigger Pockets Ask Me To. Love that. Bearded Brandon, man. He's a convincing dude, isn't he? Yes.

Such a good dude. Yeah I it kind of We have you know when you have clients and You have three or four of them in a row ask you the same question You're like, okay What can I get hand them when they come in the door or show them that's gonna answer all these questions? So I'm not answering the same question over and over again. I just kind of wrote the book based on that. Like, okay, we've got all these

clients who ask all these questions. Let's answer all those questions in the book. Because that that's yours. That's your niche. We didn't talk about that. I'm sorry. That was your niche when you got into real estate was all sudden, like, not only doing this for myself, but I can help other people do the same thing. I got the blueprint and got the plan. And that became very, very attractive to investors because I'm sure you're like a one-stop shop. It's not just let me buy the house. It's we're going to set the whole thing up for you. Is that part of the process for you?

Yeah. So what we do and it started just because I had my license and friends would say, you're making how much on that cabin in the Smokies? Help me buy one. Teach me how to do it. And then it became bigger. And then all of a sudden I was the top agent in the MLS. And then we opened up other markets because I had clients, again, more than one client coming to me and saying, hey, I want and then it became bigger. And then all of a sudden I was the top agent in the MLS. And then we opened up other markets because I had clients, again, more than one client coming to me and saying, hey, I wanna buy something in Destin, Florida. Is there a you in Destin that you can send me to?

Better yet, there's a me right here, let's do it. Yeah, so we just plugged other markets into the existing system that we have. And what we do is if you're gonna buy a short-term rental with us, we send you to what we call Management Monday, and we teach you how to manage it. We do it while you're under contract buy a short-term rental with us, we send you to what we call management Monday and we teach you how to manage it. We get you, we do it while you're under contract. It's like a bootcamp.

It's a, we have it every Monday. It's like a two hour thing. And it's Luke, my husband, cause he has come up with all the systems and processes. Don't people find him abrasive? They just get, no, I'm kidding. Luke, if you're listening, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. He's got a lot better. Okay, cool. So yeah, he's better. man, I'm sorry. I haven't met you in a while. I'm sorry, I just said. He's gotten a lot better. Okay, cool. So yeah, he's better. Yeah, he's learned. But so he manages all of our properties. And so he teaches all of our clients how to manage.

And so a lot of the big. Well, okay, hang on a second. I'm gonna say this. If Luke is dealing with an army of cleaners and handymen nationwide, it needs to be a little abrasive. Yeah, he is. He's built for that. Yes. You gotta be a little price of, he's built for that. You gotta be a little assertive in that situation.

Yes. And on the group text with this contractor who's rebuilding our, I'm gonna say condo, our apartment building that burned down. Sometimes I'm like, damn Luke was just like a real dick to him, but he deserves it. Like he's not getting stuff done.

I'm like, thank you for doing that. So you don't have to do it. Yeah, I learned to. He's like, he's the enforcer, right? Like he's the guy like stands behind you. Whatever you say, just goes, yeah. It's scary enough that they just do it. I love this.

It's a great partnership. Good job. It is. It's good job. Keep going. So not manic Mondays. Manage management Mondays. Management Mondays.

That's what it is. So I love that as a service, it's a bootcamp. Do you ever let prospective clients go through that just to get a taste or do they have, is it like, you got to buy a ticket if you want to get on the ride? You got to buy a ticket if you want to get on the ride. We did recently open a mentorship program for like, if people want to buy with us that we don't have an agent in that market, but they still want our help,

then we've opened up a like a year long mentorship program or people who are like, really, really nervous buyers who don't want to wait for management Monday, then they can pay to go into the mentorship program, which is much more comprehensive than management Monday. But we try to keep that super affordable so that we can teach everyone because that's the biggest question mark. Because for you, the long term value is let me make, let me show you how to make money here because these are repeat customers, which is, you know, in real estate

are repeat customers every seven years. These are people that can buy something as they're scaling up and being profitable. So good business model, good for you. Thank you, yeah. Look how smart that is, man, bam. Yeah, I mean, the goal is we make you so successful with your first one, maybe you come back

and buy more with us in more markets. Yeah, I love that. That's great. So the new book that's That's, that's, that's great. So the new book that's coming out, what's the new book? New book is called Smarter Short-Term Rentals, How to Out-Host the Competition. So, okay. Yeah, previous one was more like a primer

on how to choose a market, how to choose a property and some light management, but this is more like the business running aspect of it. I love it. So is this something that, so, so should people start here before they start talking to you? Was this like a, you know, cause like I have stuff with me with, with,

with not necessarily clients, but more like with agents, I'm like, okay, you need to go through this and then you'll, you'll speak the same language I speak and then we can talk. Is that like something you advise people to do your clients when they like, if they come on, are you going to use this as a leader for them? Or like, let me send this to you as a gift. Or you can, I mean, how are you going to utilize this? Obviously it's, it's lovely to educate people, but in your, the course of your business, how are you going to use this? So for me, it's more of like authority building, like two books on this. I wrote the book on it.

Yeah. Why would you go use another agent? Yeah. Schmucks, terrible class of Wednesday. You can never know what you're going to get on the authority of this. All right. Well, schmucks. Terrible, class of Wednesday. You never know what you're gonna get on the authority of this. All right, well, I love it, dude. That's 250 doors in five years. That's amazing growth. And obviously you are tenacious. And hats off to you and abrasive Luke for getting it done. That's amazing.

If they wanna find you, connect with you, learn more about this, buy the book, how do they find you, Avery? Where's the best place? So our website, theshorttermshop.com on Instagram, probably the easiest place to find me. It's at the short-term shop. Oh gosh, at the short-term shop.

If you wanna follow the brand or at the Avery Carl, if you wanna follow me. And YouTube slash the short-term shop. And if you wanna buy the new book, you can get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. Like you can walk into a Barnes and Noble and get it. Love that. Or you can pre-order Barnes and Noble and get it. Love that. Or you can pre-order it.

It's not quite out yet. It comes out February 11th on biggerpockets.com slash smarter STR. I love it. Well, dude, Avery, it was such a pleasure to meet you today. I'm so in awe of your success. It's awesome. If you're ever back in Vegas,

you feel free to stop back through. Well, thank you so much for having me. Guys, listen, man, if that doesn't get you fired up and inspired to do things, I mean, look, take some chances with your life. Do some things. Take steps back to take steps forward. Nobody's coming to save you, man.

It's on you to get there. See you next week. What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you wanna learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list.

But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.