The Personal Finance Podcast - How to Create Massive Wealth with Short Term Rentals with Rob Abasolo

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

In this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to be talking to Rob Abasolo how to create massive wealth with short term rentals. How Andrew Can Help You:  Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! Learn to invest by joining  Index Fund Pro! This is Andrew’s course teaching you how to invest!  Watch The Master Money Youtube Channel!  Ask Andrew a question on Instagram or TikTok.  Learn how to get out of Debt by joining our Free Course  Leave Feedback or Episode Requests here.  Thanks to Our Amazing Sponsors for supporting The Personal Finance Podcast. Shopify: Shopify makes it so easy to sell. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at  shopify.com/pfp Chime: Start your credit journey with Chime. Sign-up takes only two minutes and doesn’t affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/ Listen to Planet Money wherever you get your podcasts. Policygenius: This is where I got my term life insurance. Policygenius is made so easy. To get your term policy go to policygenius.com and make sure your loved ones are safe.  Relevant Episode:  How to Build Wealth With Airbnb Short Term Rentals with Lauren Keen Aumond Connect with Rob Abasolo: Conference Instagram Facebook Podcast Linktree Connect With Andrew on Social Media:  Instagram  TikTok Twitter  Master Money Website  Master Money Youtube Channel   Free Guides:   The Stairway to Wealth: The Order of Operations for your Money  How to Negotiate Your Salary  The 75 Day Money Challenge  Get out Of Debt Fast  Take the Money Personality Quiz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Countertop wipes and fly traps Hey fruit flies, your baby boom ends here Save the Everyday with Amazon On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, how to create massive wealth with short-term rentals with Rob Abasolo. Everybody and welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, Andrew founder of mastermoney.com. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to be talking to Rob Abasolo about how to create massive wealth with short-term rentals.

If you guys have any questions, make sure to hit us up on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, at MasterMoney Co. And follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcast. or whatever your favorite podcast player is. And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Now, today, we are going to be talking to Rob,

and Rob is one of the hosts of Bigger Pocket's podcast, and he's also the owner of the Rob-built YouTube channel. And on that channel, he talks about some amazing stuff with short-term rentals. And that is why I wanted to bring Rob on this podcast. He is a master at short-term rentals. He creates really cool, unique properties. and we're going to be diving in to a bunch of different things that he does. First, we're going to talk

about his story and how he got started investing in short-term rentals. Then we're going to go through how he actually finds properties, how he screens properties, how he manages his properties, and we're going to talk about a bunch of unique properties that he has that are out there. I really, really enjoyed this episode with Rob because I think he's got some really cool stories about some of his properties, how he built them out and how unique some of these are, including some glamping properties. He's got tiny homes. He's got all different types of Airbnb's. And, you know, short-term rentals that he rents out. So this is a really, really cool episode. Now, Rob also has a conference called HostCon that I would definitely recommend that you guys check out. HostCon is one

that if you're interested in Airbnb investing or short-term rentals, that is the place to be in order to learn more about that and network with like-kind individuals as well. So this is a really fun episode. So without further ado, let's welcome Rob to the Personal Finance Podcast. So Rob, welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. Hello, hello. Thanks for having me, man. So I am so incredibly excited to have you here because Airbnb investing and short-term rentals are a huge, huge question that we get all the time from listeners on this podcast. And one thing I want to talk through with you is obviously short-term rental investing because you have some really cool and unique properties that I want to talk through. But before we dive in, how did you get started Airbnb investing or short-term rental investing? And what kind of led you to do that instead of any long-term real estate investing? Yeah. So it was sort of this thing that I, I mean, I can't really say I fell into it. But, dude, I was always like a side hustle guy, right? I was always trying to figure out how to make a thousand bucks extra every single month.

And I mean, I would just do anything for money, man. When I started my advertising career, that's what I did for the majority of my career. Man, I came in making $40,000 a year, which felt like a lot of money when I got the offer. And then after student loans and mortgage and credit card payments and everything, my wife and I were definitely like chilling on less than $1,000 a month. and I was always doing stuff, man. I was so cheap. My friends always made fun of me for being cheap.

And like they would say basically like when a meeting would let out at work, they would take the food out from that meeting and put it in the kitchen. And I would like sprint to the kitchen so I could get like free food. And so like that just kind of goes to show I was always just like trying to make more money, right? And so I think like I had heard from a buddy, he had an Airbnb and he had it in Colorado and he had just this crazy like he was. was so excited about it. And he was just like, dude, man, we're booked all the time. We're making like really good money. And I'd never really seen anyone passionate about how they made money outside of work than this guy. And he was a full-time photographer, like, for an ad agency. And

he was living to dream as a photographer. So when I saw him get so excited about Airbnb, I thought there must be something special here, right? And so I kind of filed that away in my mind. I was like, well, this is all nonsense anyways. It's not like I'm ever going to be able to afford a house. And so, So fast forward a couple years and we moved to L.A. You know, we're like, hey, we were broke in Kansas City and we're like, hey, why don't we move to L.A.? That's a good idea. So my wife and I moved to L.A. And we rent this like 660 square foot apartment and we're paying $1,850, something like that.

And after six months, I got super tired of paying almost $2,000 for 600 square foot apartment, right? And so I pitched my wife, like, I was like, hey, we should buy a house. this was going to be our second house because we had sold ours in Kansas City. And she's like, can we afford that? And I was like, definitely not. But we will figure it out. And I'm a big house hacker. Like I had house hacked in Kansas City. I totally understood the idea of like, hey, other people can pay your mortgage. But then I got to this idea of like, what if I could start a side hustle where the money from that subsidized my mortgage, right? I was life hacking at that point. So we end up buying a house in Los Angeles. And this house had like a, a

279 square foot bonus area underneath it. And so I had calculated that if I rented that on Airbnb, I was looking at other calendars. I was like, I think I can make like $2,000 to $3,000 a month doing this. My mortgage is $4,400. I mean, like, I'd only have to pay like $1,400 out of pocket, which is less than the rent I was paying. And so we buy this house. And then we had the apartment that we were staying in. And my wife's like, well, what are we going to do with the lease? And, you know, this is 2017 or something like that. And I was like, well, I had heard about this crazy concept, right, where you could list your home on the internet and strangers will pay you money for it. And obviously that was Airbnb. And I was like, we should try it, you know. And so she was like,

will it work? And I was like, I don't know. I think so. I feel good about this. My one friend back in the day, he loved it. So I ended up kind of sub-leasing that on Airbnb. I buy this house at the same time, I put that on Airbnb, and turns out that the apartment that I was subleasing was making like a profit of $1 to $2,000 a month. The house studio basement space was making $2,000 to $3,000, just like I thought. And between both of those things, I was not paying a mortgage, this L.A. mortgage, right? I was living the dream in Los Angeles on a $4,400 mortgage, incredibly scary on paper, but I just felt like, you know, renting out and subsidizing and all that because I was like, I think it's going to work. And guess what?

it did work. And that was really the start of my Airbnb career. I absolutely love that because you moved to a high cost of living area. And one cool thing that you did here is we talk about house hacking all the time on this podcast. And house hacking is just one of the most valuable things that you can do, especially if that cost of living is high. And you did that, your proof that you can do something like that. And you also paired it with Airbnb, which I think is really, really cool. And one big thing that you do, especially on your YouTube channel, Rob Belt, is that you have some, and you document all of your deals that you do, but you have some really cool and unique properties. What are some of your favorite Airbnbs that you have right now? And talk about some of those unique properties.

Yeah, man. So that kind of escalated into like a lot of things, right? I'm making $1,000 bucks over here, $2,000 over here. My big thing was like, babe, what if we could do this 10 times, you know? And she was like, she didn't care about money the way I did. But I just knew we needed to make more. I figured out this little cheat code where I'm making like $1,000, $2,000, right? So that escalates. And I remember standing in my backyard one day and thinking like, oh my gosh, my lot is actually pretty big. It's 6,600 square feet. There's all this space in the back. And so I was like, what if we build a tiny house? And she's like, you don't know how to build a tiny house. I was like, absolutely I don't. But I think I could figure it out. So I go on to build a tiny house.

And I think that one has a really soft spot in my heart because it was really the first really big leap of faith, the first set of giant failures in my life that led to the empire. Right. And so, you know, I end up building this tiny house thinking, all right, you know, I get this quote from this contractor that, I don't know, he was definitely talking sweet talk to me. Like, trying to make me think it was going to be cheap. And I asked him, I was like, how much will this cost? And he was like, 40 grand. And I was like, great, let's do it. So I take out a loan for 45,000, like a private personal money loan kind of thing. The interest rate on it was 7.54%. I'll never forget that figure, which is actually pretty good for a personal loan. But at that time, Yeah, right now. And so I was like, yeah, I'll get an extra $5,000, and then I'll buy some fancy tile, like whatever. Well, fast forward, I think this project's going to take two weeks. Fast forward 13 months, boom, ends up taking 13 months, not two weeks, and it ended up costing me $72,000. So I actually had to kick that crew out and finish the job myself. I was like, I love you guys, but dad's out of money. And so I finished that tiny house. And so through that entire process, like I learned a lot of

things like carpentry, flooring, final electrical, plumbing, all that type of stuff. And so I think that's my favorite. But I've gone on to build other things. I've built other tiny houses. I've built lamp sites ranging from luxury canvas tents to air streams to a tiny a frame. And then I even have like a luxury mansion in Scottsdale as well. So I think I've done a little bit of everything. But now I'm working on some tree houses. And my plan for the future is like the weirder I can get, the better. Exactly. That's what I love about some of the things that you're doing is you have so many cool, unique properties. And I think those really, really stand out in the short-term rental market, especially when you look at some of these deals out there now where a lot of people are maybe potentially

buying things, you know, in a single family house area. And sometimes they don't perform as well, but some of these unique properties, and we'll talk about some of them later may have some really cool stuff that you can do with this. And before we go into some more of those unique properties, I kind of want to dive into some of the nuts and bolts on how you kind of systematize your entire business here, because I think you have a really cool and unique perspective when it comes to some of this stuff. So when you're looking to find different properties, how now in today's market do you go out and you look for properties? Do you actually just look to build new properties and or if somebody wanted to go actually just go and buy their first property? How would you kind of think about that?

And what factors would you consider when you're choosing the right property? Yeah, sure. So I think there's really two things to consider. Do you want to build equity, right? And so equity is effectively how much value you have in a home. If you were to sell it, how much delta do you get to keep yourself, right? So if you owe $100,000 on it and you sell it for $200,000, you had $100,000 of equity in it, right? That's question number one. How important is that to you versus cash flow, meaning how much money am I netting profit after all expenses every single month? Now, ideally you get both, right?

you buy a property, you cash flow, and over time, you build equity. But depending on what type of property and what type of location you buy in, you may be playing the long game and just playing the appreciation game, right, the equity game, or you might be playing the cash flow game. That's the general principle of real estate in general, but it's also like how you should think about, do you go and buy an existing property or do you go and build it? And the reason I say this is, if you build a property, you're building it at your cost, right? I mean, obviously you're paying a contractor. They're marking that up. But at the end of it, you're paying significantly less than what you would pay for that same house on the MLS.

If you build a house for $400,000, sorry, for $400,000, I wish you could build a house for $400,000. Maybe back in the 1950s. But do you build a house for $400,000? Chances are, it's probably worth $5,000, $800,000. You have captured that equity. But what you've sacrificed is about 12 to 18 months of your life of a lot of work to get to that point. And if you did that, your cash flow is going to be really high because not only do you have that built in equity, but your expenses are going to be way lower than had you gone and purchased that same house for $800,000 on the MLS, right? So the reason I explain this process is because if you're not strapped for cash, if you're not like, I need $1,000, I need $2,000 every month from Airbnb, then I would totally go and build a new

house because the cash flow from that is really, really great. But if you're on the flip side of that and you're like, I want the cash flow now, then go and buy a house off the MLS, pay the markup. Again, over time it'll appreciate, but it just, it's like less money overall. So I kind of just think it depends on someone's personal situation for me these days. Just for example, when I got started, I was so focused on the cash flow. I wanted to make $25,000 a month on Airbnb. I was sprinting all out towards that goal. But now I could break even on an investment, in a real estate investment, knowing that eventually, it will be worth two or three times what I paid for it. So eventually I'll have a big payday because I make money in other ways. And that's what I love about is that you have multiple options when it comes to short-term rental investing where you have these two options where you can build something out and make it unique, make it your own, do some of these things, or you can go find it on the MLS and still find profitability. And one big piece of this, as I know you know, is that in real estate, you've got to figure out how to run the numbers

and make sure that this property is actually going to work for your situation. So how do you actually run the numbers? Is there a spreadsheet you use? Do you use bigger pockets or how do you actually think about that? And then when you do that, you know, how do you kind of find profitability when it comes to this? Totally. Yeah. So I do have a spreadsheet. And that spreadsheet, you know, it's pretty robust. Like when I first started out, it was honestly relatively like not as robust as it should have been. I wasn't calculating things like vacancy or CAPEX or maintenance or anything like that. I mean, I had maintenance in there. But these days, effectively, I have a calculator that has like purchase price, square footage, you know, how much I'm going to

spend per square foot to furnish it. So if it's like a 2,000 square foot, I typically do like $10 to $15 a square foot. And then I've got so many expenses. I really try to beat up a deal to make it not work. So I'll project my yearly revenue using different softwares like an air DNA or a mash Pfizer, anything like that. And then I'll have a bunch of expenses like I have maintenance. I have CAPX, which is capital expenditures, how often I'm going to have to replace things like AC and roofs, right? And then I have things like emergency fund, one to two percent of my overall revenue. And that emergency fund is like if I ever have to give a refund for something that comes up in my property. Then I have like supplies. Then I have hot tub. Then I have utilities. Then I have cleaning fees. And so my goal when I'm

analyzing a deal is how can I beat up this deal so much to where it barely works? Most deals these days aren't standing up to my intense scrutiny, but when they do, I'm like, great, this is going to be a solid deal because I have overestimated, I have patted this thing from what was a 30% cash on cash return to basically like a 5%. And if I can do that, I'm pretty happy with it. I love that you do that because I do the same exact thing when it comes to any rental property or any deal that we do is we try to make this not work and figure out all the situations where it wouldn't work. And then you can kind of put that piece together. And one cool thing that you're doing basically is you're treating each and every property like it's a

own little P&L or its own little business, and you can kind of figure out, hey, what are each of these things here that we need to make sure that we cover and then kind of go through that? So I really, really love that about how you look at this. Now, if people are looking for properties, are there any areas in the country that you were kind of bullish on for the future? Yeah, but I'm not going to say it on this podcast. No, I'm just kidding. Okay, so I've got four different types of markets that I invest in. All right. So everyone at home, take notes. I like to invest in national parks, state parks, eclectic towns, and vacation destinations. All right. National parks are going to be like your Grand Canyon, Smoky Mountains, Yosemite,

Shenandoah, lots of those types of places, right? What I like about national parks is they are Mother Nature's Disneyland, right? You don't have to go out and advertise the Grand Canyon. You don't have to market that. Millions of people go there every single year, right? The Smoky Mountains, over a million people visit the Smoky Mountains every single month. We are talking about like 14.5 million people visited last year, something like that. That's a lot of people. people. And so when you think about national parks, it's a really special place to be because a lot of people, you know, in a recession or harsh economic times or whatever it is, they may not be able to afford Disney World or Disneyland, right? Because you got to fly there. It's very expensive. I just went to

Disney Alani with my family in Hawaii. Doritos were $4 a bag. Bananas were $3. It's expensive to travel to Disney, all right? But it's not all that expensive to hop in a minivan, pay. for gas in drive eight hours to a national park. It's actually in theory, free outside of that, right? You can camp, you can buy very cheap food and it doesn't have to be an expensive experience. So that's going to be like the low end of it. But then if you have like vacation rentals in these markets, then it's great. Like you can really hit a large group of people that you don't really have to market all that much, right? So state parks are kind of the smaller version of this. This would be if you want to go to a, you know, like a smaller place within a specific state.

I can't think of any state parks off the top of my head, but same type of appeal, right? Like everyone in Texas goes to the main state park in Texas, right? Then you have eclectic towns. What I mean by eclectic towns is I mean these towns that have like some kind of draw or some kind of gimmick or some kind of charm about it that cause people to just flock to these like really random small towns, right? We'll give a good example here like Waco. Waco is, you know, a totally fine town, but Chip and Joanna Gaines, they went in the

super, they popularized it and now it's a very popular pit stop between Austin and Dallas. You've got Fredericksburg right outside of Austin, right? That is the Texas wine country. You got Julian outside of San Diego. You got Eureka Springs. I want to say in Arkansas. I can't remember. It's been a while since I've been there. And so when you think about those different types of towns, people are vacationing there. People in those states typically, almost like the state park methodology, they're driving an hour, hour and a half to these really cool little towns. So I think it's like a really great place to look as well. And then on top of that, you've got vacation destinations. So vacation destinations are going to be like lake towns, beach towns, mountain towns, ski towns,

or destination places, right? Disneyland, Universal Studios, touristy places. Places where people will go with large groups of people, like eight to ten people, their family, places where they spend a lot of money on this vacation, places where they plan this stuff out a year in advance because it's such a big vacation for them, right? So think about Destin, Florida. A lot of people go there is like the most popular beach city in the country effectively. And so a lot of people say, all right, this is going to be our big vacation. We're going to spend $10,000 for a week at a beach house, me and the family, but it's worth it. This is our one big thing every single year. So those are going to be like the four types of markets, right? National parks, state parks,

eclectic towns, vacation destinations. And then if you want like a fifth more tangible tip here, invest in your backyard. I don't mean that. this literally, because I actually did invest in my backyard with my tiny house, but I mean it figuratively, where within an hour and a half to two hours from your place can you invest? And what I like about this is that it's close enough for you to be able to go. It's like a very easy weekend trip for you to go and check in on things. But it's far enough away to where you're not going to go. You know, if a battery and a remote isn't working, you're not going to drive an hour and a half to fix it. You're going to figure out a solution to it. On the flip side, if something crazy happens,

If someone breaks into it, if it catches fire, again, you can hop in the car. It's not going to put you out to really drive out there. So that would be my main recommendation for someone that's really scared. I think you can invest anywhere in the country. I think you should try it. I think it's a really great learning experience. But being in your backyard from a mental standpoint really makes me feel a lot safer, even though it's really the same amount of logistics no matter where you invest.

There's some really cool things that you said here. One of the really interesting things is that looking at some of these areas, You can think through, you know, the National Park areas or some of the vacation town areas. A lot of those areas, you know, have the legislation in place where you can have those short-term rentals. You don't have to worry about that legislation changing because it's been the same over the course of, you know, 30 to 40 years. And that is one great piece to that as well. And then I love the idea of those eclectic towns. I think that is a really, really unique idea.

One that came to mind when you said to Waco, which I'm sure you've interviewed him before was, and I can't remember his name, but he has the A-Frames there in Waco that go all around that lake or in that area. Isaac French. French, that's it. Yeah, yeah, cool guy. And so he's just crushing it doing something like that in one of those unique, eclected towns. So I think that's really, really cool that you kind of think through some of those options. And then like you said, in your own backyard, it'll kind of give you peace of mind, maybe even for your first one that would help where it's, you know, far away enough. We're not just going to do all these different things to go out there and try to fix something yourself. But at the same time, you have it there with that slight piece of mind. And for a lot of people, maybe doing some out-of-state

real estate investing might make them nervous. And you have to manage these properties and go through the management side of this. How do you kind of handle property management that you have properties all over the country? How do you think about that? And how do you get over that hump of worrying about not being right next to your properties? Yeah. So I think it all comes down to like very basic, long distance real estate investing principles, right? You're putting together a team that will be the eyes and ears of your operation, right? So I call them my Airbnb Avengers. There are a few key players on your team at every single location that will run your property. You have your cleaners. They're the people that are cleaning your property. You have your handymen. You have your

pest control. You have your pool maintenance people. And let's see, what else? Your contractor is certainly one of them. And then for the most part, between those five people, you're going to be able to run your business. The cleaners are really the most important component of this because they're coming and cleaning every single component of it. So when something is broken, in theory, they're going to relay that to you. You got to brief them. You got to let them know to tell you when things are broken. But let's say you got a really loose chair or table leg or something like that. Well, they're going to say, hey, Rob, your chair is like really loose. I think it's dangerous. If someone sits on it, it might break. Great. That triggers me to say, I'm going to call my handyman. And my handyman is now going to

go out and fix that chair. Right. Now, if something is much bigger, right, if there's like a giant roof leak. For the most part, I would say that your handyman can at least patch it up, but you might need to call a contractor at that point to come and fix that roof leak. I actually just had this happen at my tiny house in Joshua tree. I had a roof leak. I called my contractor who built the house, and he's the one that's sending out the roofer to go and fix it. So in zero of those scenarios, am I the one that's actually going out in doing that? I'm not cleaning it. I never would. I have cleaned my own Airbnb when I first got started. I was like, oh, an extra $100. Heck yeah, let's do this thing. And afterwards, I was

like, I'm not going to do this again. But outside of that, like, you have a team that's really managing the day-to-day on-the-ground aspects of your property. I think that's awesome. And I think that kind of thinking through having those main five team members is the core thing that you have to have when anything in real estate really is you got to have that team in place. You don't want to be in there fixing everything on your own. And having it long distance, I think is helpful for that as well, which I think is a really, really cool piece to that. Now, when you go to cleaning and turnover between guess, how do you handle that or how do you kind of schedule that? Is there like a software you use to kind of think through all this stuff? Or how do you get on the same page with your team since you have so many

different properties? So with Airbnb, automation is the name of the game. So you want to automate as many aspects of your property as you can, right? And so what this basically means is instead of you manually being in the weeds and sending out text messages to your cleaner, what can you do to make that a seamless process that you're not really all that involved in? So there's a thing called the property management system, PMS for short. And effectively what it does is it automates a lot of components of the back end, right? So we have the team that's on the ground doing stuff. But then there's the back end of like messaging, leaving reviews, scheduling, all that

type of stuff, right? So when you have a property management system like mine, for example, it can actually automate the cleaning side of it for you because what it does is you can set it to send a text message or an email to your cleaner. And you can set different automations like, When someone books a reservation, send an email or a text to my cleaner. When someone checks out, send them a courtesy reminder that someone checked out and it's time to clean. When someone is checking in, send out a text message.

So you can basically automate all of the different components of how you schedule it. So I'm not really texting with my cleaners anymore. That's all just getting imported into their calendar. And then they really only reach out to me when they want to get paid, right? They send me an invoice. And then if something like really, really big comes out, they bring it to my attention. I love that automation piece because I think that's so incredibly important to have that available. So you're not spending so much time managing your managers and everything else that's

involved with that. So how do you ensure that your property stay booked throughout the year? Because obviously you want to maximize some of that profitability. Do you use automation for that or how do you figure that piece out? For the pricing and just to make sure that each property that you have actually is booked out throughout, you know, as much as possible when you do that. Yeah. So remember I talk about the automation, right? So I do automate pretty much everything on the backend. So I automate messages. I automate the pricing side of it. And so there are different pricing softwares that effectively will, they'll price your property using algorithms and AI and crazy computer things, right? They'll price your property for the optimal price point for that

specific day in that specific month, in that specific year. And so what they do is they can go in and scan, you know, the internet, different things to find out when the peak seasons are, when big events are. So think about ACL and Austin, for example. It can detect that a lot of places are getting booked in that specific weekend. Thus, supply is getting a lot lower, but demand is getting a lot higher. So what that does is it kicks it to the algorithm, lets the algorithm know, well, hey, Austin is like really popping this specific weekend. Let's Jack Rob's prices up.

Vice versa, though, when no one is really traveling to Austin, let's say in the summer, because it's very hot in Texas, it knows to drop the prices to remain competitive with everyone else because no one is getting booked. So it is a pricing change game at that point to see who can provide the most value to their guests. That is something that is also automated. We still step in for the most part. I think automations are 80% of it. And a lot of people rely on them and they'll say like, oh, I've automated a million units.

It's like, well, if you're completely automating it, you're not really doing a good job. Because for the most part, like automations can be a crutch. And like I said, they only really solve 80% of the problem. but there is a 20% human touch to it. And as a reminder, like, we are in the hospitality business. So you can't entrust hospitality to AI automations and robots. Agreed. And I think that's really cool that you kind of do both sides of that where you still, you know, have a hand in there, but you automate most of it. And that's probably really, really helpful.

And one of the best things that you could do there. So when it comes to this, like you said, you're in the hospitality business. How do you handle negative guest reviews and how often do you kind of see those come across? man, at this point, dude, I've got like 40 units, right? I've got like a 20 unit motel, which is effectively like a small Airbnb boutique hotel. And then I've got 20 like houses, tiny houses, units, arbitrages, everything. So I have a lot of people coming through my place. Quick way to just math this out is, I've got like five to seven sets of guests every single month. So let's just say on the 20 units, like I could have anywhere from 100 to 140 sets of guests

every single month. The majority of those, the vast majority are going to be five-star reviews. But it is impossible to keep every single person happy, right? So I would say we rarely get a one, two, or three-star review. Occasionally, we have a four-star review. I would say a four-star review comes in like two to four percent of the time, two to five percent, very low. Like for every 20 or 30 five-star reviews, we might get a four-star. So we do. So we do. We do. We do. You do. We do. We do. We do. We do. We pretty good, but occasionally you do have the unreasonable guest. Perfect. Yeah. So I think that makes complete sense. And I think it's one of those things where, you know, if you have those guests in place, it's just kind of, you know, you got to expect that every once in a while. But if you're doing the best that

you can to kind of have the best possible place, I think that's a really, really cool and unique thing to do. Now, one big thing is obviously now in today's day and age, one big thing of Airbnb's is making sure that you are standing out in some of the amenities that you have. So what amenities do you think are essential to have a successful short-term rental property. Oh, man, that is a, that's a hard one to answer, man. So this is like sort of been my soapbox for the last six or so months. Honestly, six to 12 months is back in the day, you could stick a mattress in a room, take cell phone photos, and you would get booked, right? And so my whole thing, my whole platform on the Rob Belt channel is like, hey, you got to have exceptional design, exceptional photography. And if you do both of these things,

you're going to stand out from all the, you know, all the bad competition that doesn't do that stuff, right? Well, fast forward to 2023, everyone's seen my channel. They've all done it. They've all exceptionally designed their places and photographed it and everyone's Airbnbs look good, right? So, now we're in this arms race of amenities. Amenities have always been a big thing, but I think now that everyone is sort of on the same playing field from a design standpoint, amenities are really the only way that you stand out. Back in the day, an amenity was like a gift basket when you check in, chips and, you know, whatever, like a bottle of wine. Nowadays, I think amenities are like a hot tub, a bocce ball court. What outdoor amenities? Like a nice outdoor perglo with an outdoor grill.

Or if you're like me, I just added a pickleball court to my place in Scottsdale. I am obsessed with pickleball. You do it. Me too, man. It's, it's an addiction that I'm trying to break it, but it is super fun. And I didn't know that before I installed it. I just knew that it was all the rage. And now that I played, I'm like, dude, that is such an amazing amenity. What was I thinking? But I added that. That was a $20,000 amenity that I added to that property. And it's made a huge difference in bookings. And then I also added like a mini golf course to the backyard of my beach house in Crystal Beach. And so now, you know, there are way lesser amenities that you can add than that. Like a hot tub is a really good start. But for me, I'm trying to stand out in the

best way possible. And so I'm investing in crazy things like mini golf courses and like, yeah, basically a $22,000 pickle ball court. But when you do and you're in the right, location, you can really have a pretty drastic change in your bookings. Like, that pickleball court has amounted to about $60,000 to $80,000 worth of bookings at this point. So I've already paid off that pickleball court two to three times in future bookings. Like all of my revenue year over year for the rest of the year is already higher than what I was making last year. So that's why I do think a lot of people think about amenities as like a really big expense because they are. But what they don't realize is they can actually amount to be,

the greatest ROI that you could get. Because if you think about buying a short-term rental, we're trying to get like a 10 to 20% cash on cash return. If you're doing long-term rentals, you're just trying to honestly break even, but like a 5 to 10% cash on cash return is great. But when you think about doing something like a pickleball court, right? Let's say I spent $20,000 to do it. Let's just say that it increased my revenue, $10,000. The ROI on that pickleball court is 50%. It is unbeatable. That is the greatest investment I could ever make. And so now when I'm talking to people and they're saying like, where should I buy next? I'm more saying, what should you buy next for your current property?

Because I do think that reinvesting back into your property is something that most hosts don't do. And thus, a lot of hosts right now are kind of crying like, oh, I'm losing bookings. I'm not making money. The Airbnb bust is real. But really, I think a lot of people have gotten complacent in this space. I love that thought process because I think one of the big things that you have there is that you can invest in something like this, and pickupball is a huge one. So we can use this as an example again. If I saw two different properties and one had a pickup ball court, I would literally pay hundreds of dollars more per night to stay at that property with the pickleball court than I would the other property just because I'm so addicted to that. Or the same thing I think about, you know, every single

year, I have a group of friends. There's 12 of us. We go on a golf trip every single year. If there was one with a golf simulator there or some golf amenities, maybe like a putting green, something like that, we would definitely stay there even and pay more, more so than we would, you know, just somewhere else in a random house in the middle of a neighbor. So I really, really love that thought process. And I've seen a lot of people on Twitter and a lot of other locations talking about some of this stuff where they're building these unique properties with some of these unique amenities. And a lot of those amenities are tailored to some of the things around in that area as well. Exactly. It just helps them kind of have those increased

profitability. So I think that is a really, really cool idea of thinking about how can you reinvest in some of your properties that will actually increase that profitability. So are there any, you know, strategies that you use with some of these things to maximize occupancy during off seasons? You know, yes and no. Part of the reason that I'm doing these amenities is that not only do I stand out during peak season, but I stand out in off season, right? So I'll give you an example of that mini golf course that I built. That was a 21 to 25. There's a backstory there, but we'll say it's $25,000. That's what it costs me to put that mini golf course together. Now, I know as a beach house, no matter what, I'm going to make money in the prime peak season in

the summer. But there are still people that travel, to the beach when it's not the summer, right? And so my thought process was, why not offer a one-of-a-kind amenity so that whenever people are looking to go to the beach, they look at my property and they say, oh, well, why wouldn't we just book the place with the midi-golf course? It's not like we're going to be swimming, right? So you do have to sort of think about the outdoor experience and like what people are trying to do. So a beach house, like people go to the beach. They don't want to just look at it. They want to go inside. And so if someone is going to travel to Crystal Beach in the winter, I got to give them something fun to do. And so I'm really investing in a really nice outdoor experience underneath my

house. All the houses there are on like piers, right? So that whole bottom section to me is like a cabana with string lights and like a dartboard and hammocks and a lot of different things that allow people to not just hang out outside, but inside. So I think that's how you should really be approaching it. That's why I think the amenities conversation is so big because at the end of the day, like we weren't really booking the way I wanted to initially in Scottsdale before the pickleball court. And so I started looking at the competition. And all the competition had golf simulators and pickleball courts and bowling alleys and all this crazy stuff.

Their houses were way lamer than mine. My architecturally was super beautiful. So I thought, this place is going to make a ton of money. But then I came to realize, I'm not. And I looked at the competition and I'm like, well, yeah, it's a way lamer house. But at the end of the day, it has all these really cool. amenities that people will get to hang out and make memories in, right? And they're going to be thinking to themselves, well, why would I pay $2,000 to stay in a cool house when I could spend $2,000 to stay at a

house where, like, we can all drink beers, hang out, cook food, grill, hang out with our kids in this amazing outdoor experience. And so that's where I'm really moving these days in the Airbnb space. Have there been any amenities that you've come across where maybe you've seen them commonly across Airbnb's or some that, you know, you've seen in some of your properties, where the amenity is just not worth adding and it really just costs too much to maintain, something like that? For a long time, I used to say that about hot tubs.

Gosh, dude, hot tubs are really just a thorn in my side, dude. They are the thing that are the most frustrating aspect of running a short-term rental. Like they break, they always need maintenance, they're not hot enough, and guests figure out a way to get mad about it. So the thing with hot tubs is, people specifically book your place

because it has a hot tub or not. So if you don't have a hot tub, you're leaving money on the table, most certainly guaranteed, especially in the smokies. And so when you look at some of the data, they have found that hot tubs can add up to $49 a night to your ADR. And so if you're booking 200, you know, nights a year, you're potentially losing, I mean, I don't know, whatever 200 times 50 is, a lot of money, right? You're potentially losing that, leaving that money on the table. So for a long time, I was like, eh, it's not really worth it because I've issued so many refunds over the dang hot tub. And now I've switched on it. And I think it is something that you need to do.

So I don't think that there's anything that wasn't worth it. For a long time, I used to say that about hot tubs. But now that we are in the amenity side of things, I would say that that is crucial. You could argue that my mini golf course is absolutely not necessary. And I won't really see the ROI on that for about a year because I built that in the peak season. like at the end of July, which was the worst idea, but I just wanted to get it done. And so that's the end of the season. There are really no more crazy bookings after that. So I'm not really going to see if it increases my bookings for about 10 to 12 months from now,

but it's fine. I'm okay with it. Like I did it out of creative fulfillment first and foremost, but as an experiment to let people know, hey, it was totally worth it. I love that. And I think that it's just really at this point in time, like you talk about all the time on your YouTube channel as well, it's just having these extra amenities are just going to create that unique piece to a lot of these properties. And I think that's really part of the fun of doing this is being able to kind of add some of that stuff as well

because you're going to get better reviews. A lot more things are going to happen for you that will improve. And really, they're like many little businesses just having those in place because you can see the ROI coming in right away. So I think it's a really cool thing

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Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com. You have these unique properties. One of them I'm really interested in, because I think this is kind of cool, is the glamping properties that you have? Yeah. A lot of people may think, hey, well, is glamping more profitable because you just find a piece of land and you put some glamping things there? Or is this something that's actually more costly than we think. So how did you come up with that idea to create some of these glamping experiences? Yeah, man. So I like the window shop, right? And so when I started my first Airbnb, I remember, you know, I was making $1,000, $2,000 on that little apartment. And I was like, man, how can I do this again? Like, I just got to see what other people are doing. So I was on Airbnb looking at all the different, like in the LA area. And then I just kept zooming out. And they zoomed out to the point where I saw Joshua Tree on the map. And I saw that someone

had listed a TP in Joshua Tree. And they were charging like $150, 200 bucks a night. And I was like, what? That's kind of crazy. And so I go and I look at their calendar, completely booked, booked solid. So I got on my calculator. I'm like 150 times 292 nights a year. That's 80% occupancy. And I was like, that's like $50,000. This person is making $50,000 from like a $5,000 TP.

And I got angry. I was mad. Not at that person, just at the universe. I was mad that I wasn't making $50,000 from a $5,000 TP. So I remember texting my business partners and I was like, dude, I have got, an idea for y'all. And they're like, what now? And I was like, let's put a tent in the middle of the desert. And they're like, yeah, let's not do that. I'm like, guys, let's put a tent in the middle of the desert. And then finally, they're just like, all right, bro, shut up. Just buy the freaking tent.

Okay, that sounds good. Just do it. So I did it. And I spent $3,000 on this tent. I didn't own the land. And so I was like, all right, how do I get creative here? I don't want to spend $10,000, $20,000 on land. So I put out an ad on Craigslist. And I said, do you own land? And if you do, are you wanting to make extra money? I would like to put this tent, I took a stock photo, on your land and let people rent it on Airbnb. And if you're okay with this, I'll pay you a management fee or like a percentage of my revenue. Well, little did I know that 30 people would reach out from that one ad. And I was just getting phone calls left and right.

It just so happened that the second person that called me was the person that I went with. Honestly, it might have been the first. So he calls me, he's like, hey, man, I saw your ad. And I was like, yeah, man, you got land? He's like, yeah, yeah. And I was like, you don't mind that I'm going to Airbnb on it? And he was like, well, actually, I'm an Airbnb host myself. I know the ins and outs.

I actually host a couple of like little campers and, you know, little fifth wheels on my property. So, yeah, I actually kind of know how to do this. I'd be more than happy to host for you. And I was like, oh, my gosh, this is like crazy. And so I remember we go and we check out his land. And he was like, all right, yeah, let's talk about payment. What did you have in mind? And we're like, well, we don't know.

you're the one that does this. Do you have like a fee that you charge? And he was like, well, we could either do 25% of your revenue or 500 bucks a month. And we were like, yeah, let us talk about that. And we're like, let's do the 25% of revenue. So he was like, sounds good to me. And we got in the car and we were like, oh my gosh, he's so dumb. 25% of revenue. We're going to make like 400 bucks a month on this thing. Oh my God. We got them. So turns out that was the greatest deal in the world for him because that tent was grossing like, $5,000 a month. Like, we had no idea, dude.

We launched it in December when it was negative 10 degrees outside. And we're like, well, if we make $100, great. Dude, it was booked 100% of the time. We could not believe how booked it was. We were just like, holy crap, dude, this is insane. And so we were like, well, let's get another one. Let's get another one. And so we kept putting out these tents and like, dude, that first tent that we listed,

I mean, it was $3,000 for the tent. call it another $7,000 to build like a small deck and some furnishings and everything. That first tent that we ever listed ended up grossing $142,000 over the three-year course of its life. We had some expenses. Our profit margin was about 65%. But regardless, that is the power of a $3,000 tent. And that's really what kind of gave way to like where I would eventually come. Like now I'm developing like glamping villages and units around the country. That's incredible. Because I think for a lot of people, you can think about this. And this is a way where you can get started with low money is being able to kind of, you know, reach out to people with land and then put some of this stuff together.

If you only have, you know, $10,000, $30,000, and maybe that's something that you can actually look at and do something like this. So as you come and you start to build some of these out now, how are you actually kind of thinking about, you know, the locations that you're putting these in? And, you know, what does it cost for each one of these tents? Yeah, so this one is just really right on the nose on the state park side of things. That's really where we're focusing. And we've actually like scaled out of that specific business bottle because, you know, I was such a big proponent of what's called like a rapid prototype. How do we just see if this idea works, right?

So we did it super cheaply. Like a tent can cost you $3,000, $4,000. I mean, you could honestly spend $30,000 on a tent if you want. The actual like cost of the surrounding side of it, like it depends on if you're off grid versus on. If you're off grid, you could get a very simple setup for like $5,000. A couple solar panels and like a compost and, like, a compost and, toilet, all that kind of stuff. We've scaled out of that because, you know, it was a Wild West

back in the day. So we could kind of do it. And like, the county didn't care. It was out in the middle of nowhere. But then I did inadvertently kind of popularize that model a little bit. And so I don't think you can really do that these days, right? I don't think you can just necessarily, I mean, it's really finicky, man. Like, you could go out and put a tent in certain parts of the country. And they don't care. Like, I've called different areas that we were putting stuff in. And they just kind of laugh at the idea of getting a permit. And they're like, we don't do permits around here, right? And then there are somewhere you have to go through like an extremely rigorous conditional use permit, supplemental use permit process.

And that's what we're doing now, because at the end of the day, when we were doing those initial glamp sites, they were making a ton of money. But on the flip side of it, we were like, well, it's a temporary business because no one is going to buy that business from us. Like the only endpoint is shutting down the business, right? No one's going to come and say, yeah, let me buy your little janky like tents and your little janky like geodome and I'm going to pay you $300,000 for it. It's just going to pay you lot value for these things, right? The flip side of this is when you go through the conditional use permit or the supplemental use permit, you go through the county, you get plans and site plans and civil engineering. If you do all that stuff, then you actually

become an official campground. When you become an official campground, you now become a piece of real estate like a business that you can sell at a very high valuation. So it's the difference between investing $100,000 that you'll never make back or investing $2 million into a glamp site, but it being worth $20 million, right? The upside is much larger in that way. It's a much safer business bottle. This is really where I push people most of the time. With that said, I do still like rapid prototypes. I'm all about that. But I just don't think it's as easy to do these days as it was like, you know, five years ago. And worst case scenario, if you did something like that, maybe it turned into a campground,

can you use that for like RV sites and things like that as well? Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's effectively what a campground is. Like, there isn't particularly a limitation on the types of units. So what we're trying to do, like doing that whole supplemental use permit from ground up development, very long, very tedious. It's actually a lot easier to go and buy an existing campground that's like dilapidated and then just retrofitted into what you want it to be.

because they've already got the permit. They're already grandfathered into the laws and ordinances. You can go and add anything you want most of the time with a little bit of work with the county from that standpoint. So that's kind of our business model is we're doing some ground-up development. We're trying to develop 65 units at the Grand Canyon right now. That's been a tedious task. I've got my tiny house village, which is like this tree house dome, Ewok village that I'm trying to build in Gatlinburg. That'll be like four or five units. And then we're trying to buy campgrounds around the country that we can go and stick some of these high-end, air streams on and basically turn those into like high-end glamping resort. So take them from

camping grounds to glamping grounds. Very cool. I love that idea because there's so many different options that you have available based on the use of that land. So that is very, very cool. How do you handle logistics for some of this stuff? Because obviously it's a little farther out maybe for some people, you know, when you have things like, you know, a tent, for example. I don't know if you do like bedding and sheets and all that kind of stuff in the cleaning side of it. But how do you kind of handle those logistics when it comes to some of those? It is pretty much the same process of that, you know, the Airbnb Avengers. It's a little different when it's a glamp site because glamp sites are definitely a lot more

finicky and require a lot more like intervention, if you will. So we really just kind of mastered the art of having like a property manager that lived on site. When we were looking for landowners, we were specifically looking for landowners that lived on the land so that they could just walk over and address anything. If you're really out in the middle of nowhere, it becomes a lot harder and you got to make sure that your setup is perfect. Otherwise, because guests are just like, bless their hearts. They're not all the smartest people. Like some people just cannot figure out how lockboxes work. They can't figure out how on-off switches work. They can't figure out how to start fires. And so that's why it's really important for

us to have someone that lived on site because guests were really running into really just the easiest simplest things. But oftentimes they just, you know, they couldn't figure it out. And oftentimes, times, like, we didn't have a ton of service to even communicate with them. So it was very nice to have an on-site property manager that could see them sort of struggling and just go and fix it for them. That makes complete sense because I think just having that available there, especially when you're a little further out like that, is just going to really, really helpful for some of those small things, especially they've never done it. So some other questions I have are what strategies are you think about? You've talked about this a little bit already, but what are you thinking about when scaling

up some of your properties? Are you going to add more properties? Are you kind of happy where you are? What is your thought process there? So I am buying less this year. And I'm not buying less because like the real estate scared and the housing crashing. Like that kind of stuff. I'm just buying less because I think there's so much work to do in my current portfolio. You know how I said host got complacent? I feel that way about myself too.

Like all my places are nice. But outside of nice photos, they're not really offering the experience that I tell people to go out and give. Right. So I'm actually investing in the neighborhood of $300,000. back into my portfolio, really to maintain, to get everything back up to like, you know, raw-built standard, but also to create some of these outdoor experiences and amenities. So I'm actually investing quite a bit back into the portfolio. I've made that decision, like, I'm not going to be the thought leader, the educator in the space and have a janky

portfolio. So I'm going in and I'm really like really just doing a lot to everything, right? Pickleball courts, mini golf courses, all that kind of stuff. So that's part one. But part two, as I actually scale. And part of the reason why I haven't really purchased a lot of single family homes recently is because it is really hard to scale that model. I think as a long-term investor, you can buy a million houses, give it to property manager, no big deal. I don't think you can really give short-term rentals to property managers with the same piece of mind because short-term rentals are such a hospitality-driven business that most property managers aren't really going to be able to handle a large set of houses. So, and it's really hard for us to do it in-house at the scale

that we're at. So the way that I'm scaling is I am trying to buy hotels and turn them into boutique, Airbnb hotels, which is kind of funny because I'm such an anti-hotel guy, but I think it's just because hotels are boring. And so I want to kind of create experience hotels, if you will. And I think that's the way that you scale is you go into some of these like multifamily type of properties where I might buy like a 20-unit multifamily, right? That's typically a long-term investment. And I'll split it up into three sets of rentals. I'll have long-term rentals for this stability. I'll have midterm rentals, which are 30-day stays, and then I'll have short-term rentals. And that's how I think you really scale as a seasoned Airbnb host is you can do the multifamily

thing. Don't go all in with short-term rentals, like add some stability and some dynamic to your portfolio. That's what I'm working on these days is how can I acquire more doors, but stay true to who I am as a creative, as an entrepreneur, as an Airbnb investor, but more importantly, as a real estate investor. That's a really unique idea because it really just helps you diversify. obviously your real estate holdings. You have some of those long-term rentals there. You have the midterm, and then you also have the Airbnb, which you're an expert in. So I think that's really, really cool to kind of think through that as you go through this process. Where do you see short-term rentals in the next five to 10 years? Or how do you think about that? And where do you think they will be?

Do you think it's only going to be the unique properties that kind of help and have that staying power? Do you think that we're going to kind of continue on? I think we're going to continue on. I mean, at the end of the day, when you think about what was wrong with the hotel model is that, you know, if you want to take a trip with six people to a city, six people can't really comfortably stay in a hotel room, right? You got to split that up into two hotel rooms. That gets pretty dang expensive. And then on top of that, at night, everyone's got to retire to their own separate hotel room. There's this experience that you actually have in an Airbnb where everyone's under the same roof. Everyone's hang out in the living room. When someone gets tired, they're like, hey, I'm going to call it in. And it really is just this game of like,

who's going to go to sleep last? Because everyone's going to be in the same. Because everyone's one wants to just hang out and enjoy their trip together. You know, it's very rare that I've stayed at Airbnb where at the end of the night we get home from dinner. We're like, all right, guys, that was fun. I'm going to go to my room. But it's very common in the hotel model, right? You get hotels with friends and then you might go to the lobby for a drink, but it's like, yeah, all right, I should go to my room. I think it's just a very different experience, right? And so many people get mad about Airbnb's being more expensive than hotels, but that's kind of the point. It really is. It didn't start out that way, but now it's kind of the point. And on top of that, you got a stove,

you got a really big refrigerator, you know, you got a kitchen, you can make your own food. Like, there's so many pluses to an Airbnb that I just don't think it's going to go away. I do think that we're going to see lower returns. I think the days of 100% cash on cash returns are over, right? Like when you bought a property at 3%, no problem like getting a 40% or 50% cash on cash return, super easy. But these days, you know, I think we're going to start seeing some of these crazy Buku Bucks returns normalizing to the 10 to 15% range, which is not good news for long-term rentals because long-term rentals are really only going to go down from there too, right? So I think it's always going to be the asset class within real estate that provides the most cash flow and the best

return. But with that said, it will be lower. But relative to that, so will everything else. Makes complete sense. And I think that is one of the one of the best. of the things that we've been kind of thinking about here too is seeing that I think it's just going to, you know, it's always going to be there. It's just one of those things where what will those returns be is the biggest question. So if somebody looked at a pie chart of all of your investments out there, because you have all these different real estate investments that you're investing in, you have these unique properties. Do you only invest in real estate if you looked at that pie chart or there are other things that you invest in? Yeah, I would say the pie chart is going

to be, who, that's a good question, like 95% Airbnb, you know, real estate and 5%, gosh, I don't even want to say this, just for the sake of your comments and the bots, but crypto. Yeah, I got a little bit of crypto. But, oh, I guess that's not true. I do have some stocks. I do, I max out my, because I'm like on an S-Corps, I got a W-2, all that stuff, to myself, right? I work for the man. The man just happens to be me. But I do max out my 401k. I only put it exclusively to the S&P 500. That's a very minimal, though. That's like $17,000 a year. And then my wife also. So $34,000 a year goes to the S&P. P 500. And then, yeah, I would say 8% stocks, crypto, 92% real estate. Well, okay, depends on how

granular you want to get. I would say it is a breakdown. I would say 90% real estate. I can do this. 10% crypto stocks, watches. Oh, love it. Because watches are definitely an investment. I've seen a lot of people, and it's been an interesting market too. So that's really cool that you have some of those diversified things there. So that's interesting. I won't go all in and say it's an investment. It's my justification, but it kind of, the investments are typically investments that are definitely like for the long haul that I believe over time will always at least retain the value, if not be more. Right. So that was kind of like the finicky, but if we're talking to the pie chart, like that should be included. Absolutely. I think that's super interesting. So that that's awesome.

I think that's a really cool thing. And I think, you know, you're saying, you know, crypto is a small percentage of your thing. I don't think there's anything wrong without having that small percentage, even though people will, you know, we'll see what people say. But I don't think there's anything wrong with having a small percentage in crypto at all. So, Rob, I want to shift gears here. I'm going to rapid fire some of these questions that we ask a lot of our guests because we kind of get some cool answers on some of these. So what part of your work or life makes you come alive? I think I would say when I'm on camera and not necessarily in the podcasting sense, but like when I'm shooting a YouTube video, that is really when it's like, fool me. You know, I've got

my editor oftentimes is like sitting with me when I'm recording and I'm just going crazy on camera. I'm giving everything I got. I would say that's probably my favorite version of myself is like, no pressure, no audience other than my editor, who's like my really, really good friend. And I can just sort of like be wacky on camera. It's going to be between that and being on stage and kind of doing the same, just going all out and being kind of a little goofball, the goofball that I am. And that truly does come out because you have one of the more entertaining YouTube channels that are out there for sure. Thank you. What is your biggest fear when it comes to money? Losing it all. That's a great answer because that's one that most people have, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't keep me up. Like, I think, Okay, how about this? I'm going to give you a better answer because everyone feels that way. I would say more money, more problems, right? And people don't tend to believe that. But I think my biggest fear is that the more money I make, the more stressed I'll become. Whereas it should be the opposite. And I know that the trajectory that I'm on is really only going to be more money. And so my fear is like, I really lose touch with why I'm doing it. There you go. There's a more profound answer. Yep. I love that. I love that. How do you plan to level up your finances this year? I'm just trying to figure out how to, I mean, really, like, I'm trying to invest in more real estate as much as possible, not for the cash flow side of it, but actually for the tax side of it, the bonus depreciation, the cost segregation side of things.

Like, that to me is the greatest wealth builder. So I'm trying to just like snap up as much stuff as possible so I don't have a $500,000 tax bill again. And that is one of my favorite things about real estate investing is some of those tax benefits. We talk about all the time here. So if you could tell your younger self anything about money, what would you tell you? yourself. Be as cheap as possible. This whole like you sprinting after the conference room lets out and puts the lunch on the table, do it. Continue to do that. Let your friends make fun of you. Let it fuel you because I promise if you stay cheap, you will be rich one day. Exactly. We have so many guests who are so incredibly wealthy because they were frugal, especially in their early years. And then as time went on, they spent more money and things like that. But that helps so much, especially in the early years.

And the last one is my favorite. It is what does wealth mean to you? I've been thinking about this. I think it means the ability to hire whoever I need to hire so that I don't need to do small, boring things. I feel like I'm getting closer to that, but it's just like, remember I said, the more money I make, the more stressed I become because the more I have to like puppeteer, if you will, wealth to me is like hiring the perfect staff, even if they are expensive C-level people to handle all that so that I can just really oversee and not have to worry about the actual financials or anything like that. Like I can hire people. I'm not going to be like, oh, but I got to pay them $200,000. Like wealth is excited to hire people because that's how much

money I'm making because that means I get my time back. I get my freedom back. I don't have to continue to put things on my plate the way I do now. That's what I'm working towards. The ability to hire people in being excited about it versus, ooh, that's going to cost me money. That to me is wealth. The ability to buy back your time is so incredibly powerful for sure. Rob, this was absolutely amazing. I truly enjoyed this. Can you tell people where they can learn more about you, your YouTube YouTube? You can find me over on Rob Built on YouTube. It's the biggest Airbnb channel on YouTube, R-O-B-U-I-L-T. You can find me on Instagram at Rob Built. And you can catch me every week, a couple times a week on the Bigger Pockets podcast show. So come say hi, come listen. And yeah, man, thanks for having me

on. This has been super, super fun. We chatted for a long time before this. And I was like, oh, man, I think you and I are buds now. I think we can officially dub ourselves buds on the podcast. We absolutely are, Rob. Thank you so much for coming on. I truly appreciate it. We will have you back on someday soon. Awesome, man. Talk soon.