Fearless Investments: Acquiring Short-Term Rentals with Confidence

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Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives you the listener, the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly, the confidence. So you can go out there and get More direct bookings. We do a mini series where we dive behind a host where we pick interesting and exciting people from across the short term rental community and hospitality communities in general from all over the world to dive into their business, to really find out what they're doing in their business, which is special that you can do in your business. And we've got somebody really exciting today who is a coach. He's got a really niche kind of business that really, how can I put it, it basically is something that you're all going to need at some stage and this is going to be really interesting to, to dive into. So thank you for joining me. We've got Lame and he is from the Fearless Investors which is a kind of coaching community. He's also this sort of founder of Elkridge Management as well. So an str company and management company. So we're going to dive into that. So welcome along. Thank you for joining me, Liam.

Thanks for having me. I, I'm a huge fan of the podcast and of the community so I'm just thankful to have a seat at the table. Thanks for having me.

Well, I say it's awesome to have you here. So what is both the management company and the Fearless Investors? Just give me the kind of elevator pitch of what you do.

Yeah. So Elkridge Management is where it kind of all started. So Elkridge Management started initially as a short term rental management company that I founded really back in 2018 and we started to vertically integrate that. We started to kind of start to bring everything in house. So everything from cleaning, servicing, design, all of that we started to branch out into acquisitions and so now Oak Ridge Management I'd say is more appropriately identified as an investment firm because we now own most of what we manage and we have have about 150 doors in our portfolio. So it's a decent sized portfolio and that's what Elkridge Management is. The Fearless Investor was born. It was essentially a community that I had joined on as a coach and as a member to teach specifically kind of what the strategies I use to build Oak Ridge Management from the ground up. Which is the Caster method is what I like to call it, which is creative acquisitions into short term rentals. So caster. So, so they're, they're kind of married in the sense of my life. Like you know, they both are very important pillars of kind of what I do day to day. But those, those are kind of what we have in front of us and I, I'm just thankful, I'm just thankful that I, I was able to be part of them.

So yeah, I love. The thing is with hospitality, people approach it from all different sides. Sometimes we've got people who are like bed and breakfast owners, sometimes we've got people who are more property people. And when you're marrying up these strategies, I mean creative finance and short term rentals sounds like a really powerful thing to do because we were talking just before we went live and I've been around property people here in the UK and no matter how big your pot is, when you're investing and you're growing, some stage that money is going to run out. So you've got to look at how you can fund your deals and how you can take on more property. So this is really cool. So tell me a little bit more about how did you find out about Creative Finance? Was this, you know, like it doesn't sound like something you kind of wake up and go, hang on, I'm just going to try this and see if it works.

Yeah, no, that's a great question. And I feel like anybody that's in the short term rental space, especially if you start out in management or have management company, you run into this problem often that I did, which is you have a business that's cash flowing, you have a huge portfolio that you're managing, but you hold no equity, right? And that is what leads us all to how do I start buying? How do I start scaling where I own these doors? Now when you ask yourself that question, another problem presents itself with, okay, well, I have to have the right debt to income ratio, I have to have credit, I have to have taxes, I have to have all these things in line for me to look good for a bank to be able to acquire a door, right? And sometimes when you dive into that problem and the solutions that are traditional, right, traditional financing, they sometimes are very daunting and very slow because it's like, how do I scale quickly when I have to go through this huge process of red tape and I can only buy so many doors a year before the DTI falls off the next year. Right? And that was the problem that I just worked relentlessly at solving which led me to creative finance. And there's a lot of guys in the space that I would consider mentors that kind of helped me in it. Chris Prefontaine, Pace Morvy, these are all gentlemen that understand and are very deep in the creative finance space. But interesting enough like as I started to step into it by way of wanting to solve that problem of like, how do I buy more Houses right quickly and scale quickly. I also found that in my back pocket, having come from the short term rental side, was that was a very strategic asset that most that are acquiring didn't have, which is I know how to do short term rentals. And so it allowed me to start acquiring and figuring out, okay, well now there's this seller finance model, now there's a subject to model, now there's this lease option, contract for deed. All of these creative acquisition strategies I started to find that allowed me to scale quickly but then more importantly allowed me to generate even more cashflow quickly because I was turning them all into short term rentals which as we know there's just a lot more velocity of money in that exit versus a long term rental. Right, right. And so that was kind of the birth of like what our community is now, the caster community. But that's how I came about and stumbled upon the strategy was just, just trying to solve the problem in front of me which was how do I scale quickly, how do I buy quickly given all of you know, the, the obstacles in my way when I, when I go the traditional finance route. And it's turned out, turned out good for us. So we've, We've acquired about 100 doors in the last three years, which has been fun. So.

Wow.

Wow.

I mean it certainly talks to me. I mean on the Boost Lee podcast we're often talking about like how to get guests and bits and pieces like that. But for me, I'm a property manager and many of the people listening to this are going to be property managers to some degree. And it certainly talks to. The reason I got into this was to be able to have something which is cash flowing well and then to buy my own and I'm lucky enough to start to have bought my own now. But certainly just the how to get your own doors instead of just managing for a small percentage of somebody else's. That long term equity growth that we know, property is a great way to, to put place, to put money to, to, to watch it grow. There's a reason it's called safe as houses. Right. The same. So ultimately this, this really appeals to me. I want you to take me back to the early days. So when, when you first had your first few doors, what was they? How did you get those? And what was life like for those first few?

Yeah, so early on I, so I bought my first ever investment in 2018 and this investment was just a primary residence. I bought it on a normal FHA loan as a primary me living in it. And then nine months later I moved out and I started renting it out as a short term rental. And that was kind of my first taste into the short term rental space was my own property. So I couldn't even say I was a property manager at that point. It was just me managing my own portfolio around 2019, 2020 was when I decided to kind of jump into it at a bigger scale. And that's when I wanted to really professionalize it. And the reason it came about that, that those years was because I was looking to get out of my normal 9 to 5. I was in a sales capacity, I wanted to work for myself. And so when I started early on I, that's when I started to dig into property management. Just because you know the cost of capital to get into that is nothing. You just have to find the tenant. You got to find your, your owner that would be willing to let you do that, right. But then the, the second to kind of add gas to that growth was arbitrage was like I really wanted to dive into the arbitrage model because of again just the being being able to scale very quickly. So my portfolio started early on with the mixture of those two strategies is, is the, the master lease, lease option co host or arbitrage strategy and then the co host. And then I, I really developed that pretty quickly, a lot faster than I had thought. In the first eight months of operating that business professionally we, we signed like 60 contracts. Wow. And so, and that was a very validating thing for me because in that process I learned how to get really good at the operation sides of the management that we all know, right, which is, you know, the pricing strategy, the listing quality, the actual cleaners, maintenance, all that. And so that's how it started. And I, I appreciate all of that, that of what I learned because I didn't know how valuable it would serve me. And later when I started buying, right, Because a lot of these investment firms that you see, they're third partying out all of these services, right? Typically an investment firm usually has a management company that's separate. They have a cleaning company, servicing company, H Vac, what have you. And my journey started with just doing my own, building my own company, integrating all the services in house over one stop shop. And then I started to buy. So I kind of backed into it unintentionally. But you know, for anybody that's at scale in the acquisition space of buying portfolios, you understand that like, you know, sometimes your biggest profitability margin isn't necessarily, you know the cash flow as much as it is pushing down costs. Right. And me now being able to not have to take market costs of management fees, servicing fees, that has served me extremely well in my business today of being able to buy these things. And it's a one stop shop and I'm doing everything at cost because I know how to do it right. So, so that was kind of the journey early on that led to everything and it was people, I feel like people often are complimenting me on the structure and strategy of it and they're like, hey man, you're, you're a genius. How'd you think of it? And I'm like, I didn't like, I'm definitely not this smart. I just, I just got lucky because I just attacked the one problem in front of me at a time and then before, you know, you look back and it's like, wow, this is, this is a very big business. And it just came by way of just taking the next step, you know what I mean?

So what I like about this is you've come from that property management side space and this as you say that we always look at skills that we haven't got and value it higher than what we have got a lot of the time. So a lot of the time. Certainly for me as a host, I'm thinking, well, I don't know how to get the creative finance, I don't know how to do that stuff. But investment firms are thinking, well we need somebody who's good at managing this property. And that's what I like about what you've done there. And for everybody listening to this, what I want you to think about is that if you were on your first couple of properties that the opportunity here is huge. Even if you're just learning the ropes with your first arbitrage property or with one that you've just bought and you're listening to this, you know, picking up tips will actually the opportunity is as big as your mindset will allow you to, to go with this sort of stuff because there's never ultimately they need somebody to run that investment that they're going for. And at the moment where investments they can be looking at long term rentals and other strategies. Well, short term rental is booming and comparably a lot of people know about long term rental. You know like there's lots of agents and there's lots of those, but there's less short term people who know what they're doing, isn't there? So it's, it works well from, from.

Both Sides and people don't realize. Like I, to, to your point, speaking to that same person that's listening, that's just starting, you have no idea how valuable what your learning is for your future, right? In whatever capacity, whether you continue to build, you know, this property management business, or whether you decide to get into acquisitions, or whether you decide you walk away from it all, you know, having a place to live and knowing how to manage it properly is an asset that will serve you well in whatever capacity, in multiple, countless capacities, in my opinion. So to your point, there's just so much value in, in learning and, and in starting this journey, right?

So 100%. There was, there was somebody I spoke to this week where they actually said, oh, I feel like I've wasted my time. And they tried a venture basically, and it didn't work out. And they go, I feel that I've wasted my time. I was like, yeah, but haven't you learned this? Have, have you done this? Have you grown as a person? I go, well, the time hasn't been wasted because you're still, the thing that we're investing in is ourselves, isn't it? So 100%, that's always great.

The greatest, the most valuable piece of real estate is the real estate between your ears, right? And like, the more you invest in that real estate, you know, the more beneficial of the return in your life is what I've come to find. So, yeah, amen to that.

So, so if I wanted to scale my business, you know, you've got managers and people say between five to 30 properties, 30 doors at the moment, but they want to get into the next stage, you know, like they, they even want to be taken on more management, but then also start to consider these, these other options. What advice would you have for them?

You know, that's a really good question. I, I feel like I get that question asked a lot, and my response has developed over time simply as I've tried to entertain that question, because for everybody it's different. And so my response now, when people ask me that is, is getting clarity on what you really, really want. Because having clarity in, like, what you want in your life is naturally going to create a lot of clarity in what the next step is, right? Because people ask me that all the time, like, what do I, what am I trying to do? And to me, I'm always like, well, what do you want your life to look like? Do you, do you find value in managing other people's property and not being a land, a homeowner? Because there's a lot of cons to that. Or do you want to be somebody that wants to say that they own 50 doors? You know, understanding what you want out of those two scenarios is going to be crucial to have clarity and, and understand for you to be even, for you to even take the next step. Right. Because my advice would be very different if you're trying to build the management company versus eventually trying to buy your own homes. Right. But that's that that is the blessing and the curse of this industry of real estate and of short term rentals is that there is a million ways to make a million dollars. And so having clarity is to me is going to be by far the most valuable thing anybody can do for themselves as they're looking to take the next step in whatever it is they want to do. Right.

So I think that's a great answer and wise advice because, you know, it'd be very easy to say, hey, you go off and you do this, this and this, but you're absolutely right and experience teaches you if you need more of it. Right. So what I've learned, I, when I was setting off in my early days, I was like, I'll have a thousand rental arbitrage properties, that'll be the biggest. And you don't know what you don't know at the time, you know, about the, you know, sort of the challenges that come with it, but also, you know, the tax structures and all that thing, which is, you know, sort of relevant. And you start to see why bigger companies do the things they do in the way that they do. And you can learn from, from the success, you know, success leaves clues, doesn't it?

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What would you say has been the. The biggest success and the biggest challenge in the journey so far? And what would you say is as has been those two things?

Yeah. You know that that piece of advice that I just gave of having clarity in your own mind and life. I give that experience or I give that advice based on my own experience. Where my company really turned the corner and took off was when I finally realized and had clarity of what I really wanted in my portfolio. I started Arbitrage and co host. And it's silly to me now to think that at one point I got excited of the idea of managing 5,000 doors. That was like a goal of mine. Like, I was like, I want to manage 5,000 doors. And really where our business kind of took the turn for the better was when I realized that's not what I actually wanted. I think, you know, now I realize that I'm at a point where I want a much smaller portfolio. However, I want it to be all mine. Like, that's really what I wanted, was I wanted my own assets, my own real estate. I didn't want to have to worry about an owner or worry about another co host. And when I and I. And when I got clarity on that, I started to restructure my business. I hired a property, an operations director to now deal with all of the owners. I started to isolate that business. Now we have two businesses under the umbrella of Elkridge, where we have all of our co hosts in one and then we have all of our owned in another. And as I started to do that, that's when our business took off. And that's where frankly, I started to really excel in my life and in my career. Because it's what I wanted. It's what I really, really, genuinely wanted in My life. And that was. And I see it constantly as I see people come and ask me, you know, how'd you do it? My response always is, well, what do you really want? Right, because your dream is going to be very different than my dream. And I think people see the end result of my life now. But I only got here because it was the game I wanted to play. You know, there's a lot of people that are playing games that they don't know, they don't care to play, you know, but you kind of have to have that real conversation with yourself. And once you do and you start living your life and building your business that's fully in line with your real purpose, things really start to fall into place. And, and it's funny for me saying that because I'm the guy that, like, I used to hate, like, kind of the whole hurrah mindset of, like, purpose and, like, happiness. But, like, until you actually, like, start building a business that's aligned fully with those things, you really aren't full. Fully reaching your full potential and capacity until that's done. And to do that, you have to have clarity. And so I, you know, this. I'm kind of beating a dead horse here, but it. That's my greatest success is just having clarity in what I really want and everything else followed suit. And it's been a huge blessing because of it.

And I, I definitely, you know, that the validity and the conviction of what you're saying there is, is definitely coming through. And this reminded me that when you look back, it's clear to see how you got to the situation where you are, but looking forward, you can't. And I think that was. I butchered that. But that's from Steve Jobs, you know, like from. Yeah, when you look at it. But it's so true. Because I think one of the key things that I'm learning is the more times I'm thinking, oh, I should do that, but I'm not sure if I should. I'm actually, by the time I've thought it, I should do it, find out if it is for me, and then I can easily. The speed of, of learning from that experience. I can always switch back. Because you can always. I mean, tomorrow, if you woke up with nothing and you went, what should I do? Well, you've got all that knowledge. You can go out and do, you know, the arbitrage, grow the portfolio. You know, you can do it. But it's just a case of it's the quicker you get that experience and the speed that you take that, the faster you'll know to be able to, you know, move on to the right course and get the clarity that you need. So.

Absolutely. And that's such wise advice. Like, people often undervalue the idea of, of knowing what you don't want to do, like experiencing what you don't want to do. That is oftentimes far more valuable of experiencing that and knowing it's definitely not what you want to do than finding something that you do or that you're okay with. You know, and so I, to your point, that's extremely valuable advice is like, people often undervalue the idea of like experiencing something you don't want to do because, you know, you don't want to do it now. And it's all, it's confirmed.

It is, yeah. 100, isn't it? So as you've grown this, this portfolio and like you say, mainly owned, is there a particular kind of, I guess, property or guest that you're trying to attract, or does it just depend on the numbers of the particular deal?

Yeah, that's a really good question. I, I, me, particularly as I started to scale, I just, you know, and this goes back to that concept of don't reinvent the wheel. And when I started to get into creative, I made the mistake of like leading with numbers first on the deal. Like, am I getting, is this a low entry deal? Is it the interest rate? Right? Is, you know, is the balloon or the amortization scale the right thing? And granted, those are very important and valuable numbers. However, what I, what I was forgetting was that I had this entire management portfolio of like, managed doors where I knew exactly how big, what area, what location, what amenities were valuable. And like, I was getting so hung up on like the right deal on paper that I was forgetting that, like, the proof of concept's already over here, right? Like, quit trying to reinvent the wheel and just mimic this. And so for me, and this is the advice I give to everybody that's wanting to make that transition from management to acquisition. My, my best piece of advice is just don't reinvent the wheel. And you probably most likely already have an idea of what a good deal is based on what you're managing. And just go buy that, Go buy that and go replicate that. Right? And so for me, that was what has, that was the process of what has now, what has now led to a very specific buy box in my market to where, you know, in Salt Lake City, which is Utah, that's like a metro city, big city here that buy box looks a lot different. And the best deal there looks a lot smaller than one that's in a city called American Fork that I live in. That's a few hours south, right? Or yeah, south. And so like, but I, I understand what deals, what deal looks like a deal in those markets because, because of the portfolio I already managed, because of what I was already doing, right? And so that's kind of how the deal buy box started with me is it's not a matter of like what's good on paper, it's a matter of what proof of concept do, you know, understand and are confident in. Already go by that, right?

And so I get excited by that because the whole reason, well, not the whole reason, but one of the reasons I started the management company is it gives me more data faster because all of a sudden I'm able to see, does that property work there? How was that location? And you start to look at it go, well, I know what not to buy and I know what to buy based on the data that I'm getting access to. And it's, you know, we're still doing the best we can for those people in those, those locations. But ultimately you got to play the advantage of going, if you can see the entire market on a, on a spreadsheet of ones you're managing, well, if you've got money to invest, you can invest in the ones which are doing better or on that, you know, so it's a great benefit of management.

And to that, to that end, because it's our day to day, we forget how valuable that information is. Like I am now at a point in my career where like, people will pay me for my data because they see what I'm buying. And in the world of, in the investment world of, you know, general investments, people I've had people look at deals that I buy and they're like, you're crazy. And then the next month, I net US$2,000 that first month, right? And they're just like, how'd you do it? And again, it's because we have very valuable data in our management of what we do that most don't. And we forget how valuable it is because it's our day to day. So to your point, like data is like, we are data collectors inherently. Use that to your advantage.

So and just having one of the people that I spoke to just said, hey, I don't want to do management because it's just not worth it for the percentage. And I go, I completely get that. But like you say the data like you get access to and the opportunity it brings. And of course all of a sudden your network expands as well from co hosting, managing, you know, like absolutely. The opportunities that come with it is huge. So one question I'd love to dive into. Is there any tech or anything that's helped you along the way? It can be for analyzing deals or for managing the business. Is there any piece of tech which you go. Do you know what that has really helped me over the past.

Really good question. On the acquisition side and I don't know know how it is in Europe, but in the acquisition side, just any of the platforms that are that, that, that are connected to the mls, right. So for here in the US it's Zillow, Redfin, kind of all of the standard like apps that you'd pull up to find real estate. A lot of people grossly underutilize the free resources that are available to us of those ones that I just mentioned because they just don't understand how to use those tools. Right. I actually teach a, it's a five day, it's a free course. I do this free content that we provide where I walk people through some of the tech stack that I use to find deals. And it's all free stuff. Like it's not anything that you buy, it's not anything that you subscribe to. But really what's important is the knowledge of how to utilize the tool. And so, so, so that might be in terms of the specific like app, it might be very, what feels like, you know, lukewarm water. However, when you utilize the tool properly, it becomes a very hot tool. Right. And so that would be my advice is like, you know, utilizing, figuring out ways to utilize any of those standard apps to be able to find the right motivation. And what, and I won't go into much details, but just a little nugget, right. For Zillow, there is a filter on there that allows me to search for properties that have been on market 90 days or longer. So then I can step into any market and I can Google and find what is the standard time on market for a property. And in Salt LAKE it's about 32 days. So then when I go on Zillow and I filter properties that have been on market for 60 days or longer, then I've automatically narrowed down my pool of searchable motivated sellers where there's an obvious red flag, which is it's been on market twice as long as normal houses are. And so that then gives me a very heart like hot lead. To be able to follow up with and try and identify as a motivated seller and try and close. Right. And so just utilizing again all of that is all free information that anybody can pick up. You don't even need an email address to, to, to utilize that. So, so I'd say that's kind of my advice. There's not really a specific tool that we use that you know, you know that people are like, oh, like, because sometimes in the short term rental world when people hear about like price labs, they're like, wow, I didn't know this exists, you know, but in the acquisition world it's all the same boring stuff. It's just utilizing it in a different way.

So it's like some of the trades that we get in to do stuff, they're using the same tools that are accessible to us, but it's how they're using them, isn't it? And this is where, I mean across here in the uk I mean you've got things like rightmove is the biggest one or there's a few others basically that you can, that you can view for free. But there's these awesome plugins that you can get which will tell you a lot more data. So there's things like property data, there's all these sort of plugins that you just plug into Google and that'll tell you so much more information about that listing. And we're talking less than $20 a month to get all the information or even like you say free on some of them. So it's super, super easy to dive into.

Yep. And just to add to that last point is this brings us back to clarity. Imagine trying to utilize these resources not really knowing what you're looking for, you know what I mean? And that's where clarity comes into play is like I had so much clarity that I understand what I was looking for and then I can go and use these tools appropriately based on my alignment, what I'm looking for.

So yeah, that's very cool. Very cool indeed. So I know we've talked a lot about the, the kind of like portfolio side, the guest side of things. Is there any kind of tactics, tricks or marketing that you've done to attract more, more guests, direct or otherwise?

That's a really good question. I'd say one thing that we have done really well in our portf is playing the field with as much different, with as many varieties of occupancy as possible in our space of the short term rental world. There's a lot of niches right there's a lot of people that are specifically short term rentals. Boost Lee's all about direct bookings. A bunch of coaches that are midterms, Rachel Ginsbury, Jesse Vasquez, government contracts, Noble Crawford. Right. These are all people that are very specified and very niche down in a very specific driver of occupancy, which is good. Like that's a good thing, right? What we've done really well is being not maybe necessarily a deep expert in all of them, but we are a very, very good driver of occupancy across the board. And I don't see too many management companies operating that way because a lot of them are usually, you know, nichely focused or they're really focused on a specific strategy, pricing, occupancy, all of that. But what we've been able to do really well is just be a chameleon based on whatever market we're at and understanding what, what, what occupancy drivers are there that allow us to, to capture the max profitability. So for example, Salt Lake City is a huge short term rental market. Okay. Like that we're going to drive most of our dollars from Airbnb, VRBO, Expedia, booking.com, direct bookings. Right. You go an hour south of that and you now hit some of these smaller suburbs, which is American Fork, Lehigh. And what we've actually found is the highest driver of occupancy there is, midterm contracts. So like on Airbnb, even like not even looking at furnish finders. But we drive more occupancy and higher profitability when we have it on Airbnb with a minimum stay of 30 days or longer, sometimes 25. Right. And you have to, you have to understand your portfolio really well and your location in your avatar to be able to pick up on the data to implement that type of strategy. And it takes a lot of work. Right. The reason people don't do it is because sometimes you spread yourself thin and you feel like you're, you're doing too much at one time. But we've just managed to put the time in on the back end to make sure that we are very aware of what strategy is going to bring us the max profitability based on micro location and the type of unit. And that has worked wonders for us. So to, to, to answer your question shortly, I don't feel like we're doing anything like niche. However, we're just really good at a lot of things and that's served us well.

So it's, it's like you say it's the chameleon adapts. And it's being able to adapt where you need to to get the best result, which it sounds like, which is awesome. So what does the future look like, both for you with Elkridge Management and also for the fearless investors as the coach there?

Yeah, I think, you know, I. I would like to get, you know, kind of a personal goals. I'd like to get to 250 doors and then I think once I get there, we'll kind of see where my life has me. But I'd like that those doors to be owned. Right. Because that's just what's in alignment with what I actually want. And I think naturally, you know, that will come by way of, of this coaching community and this caster community, the fearless investors. Interesting enough. Like, one of the principles that I live by that has served me extremely well in my journey is giving far more value than you take in the Ethernet, right? In the world, in the marketplace. I have found that the more people I try and serve, the more people I try and do good by, the more people that I try and help. It's interesting how the universe continues to repay you far more than you can, than you can pay it, pay it back. And that was genuinely kind of the basis of why I stepped into this community. Because naturally, as I think about what I want in my alignment and my goals to get to the 250, I'm now at a different place of mindset where I realize I have to serve the community, I have to serve the space that much more to get that many more doors. Right. And so that's kind of the mantra I live by. And so when you ask me, ask me that they're one in the same. I'm trying to build this community and give where I can so that naturally it builds my 250 door goal.

That's really cool. I mean, this has been so much fun. I feel I've. I'm inspired. And you know, this is why we said before I record I get to learn something. And, and from this, I'm going to go away and actually look at what is my plan to acquire more doors. You know, am I, am I, have I got that clarity? And you listening to this as well on the Boostly podcast, you should be doing the same, you know, just to be thinking, well, what is the, the goal and how quick can I try out the, the different strategies to learn more, to be able to, to get super, super clear on what I want to do? And so you mentioned there was the, the, the course or the training that you give. And also you've mentioned the community, but I'm going to throw the mic open. How can we come and find out more? This is, this is awesome.

Yeah. The biggest thing is just finding me on Instagram, which I think is the primary source of all my eyes, which is hailame my full name, H A I L A M E K. So if you find me there, you can see my. My Instagram follow me there. And then we also have a community called the Fearless Investors co. And so that is the Fearless Investors, plural, not dot com. So that's another place that you can find us. So those would be the two easiest ways. So awesome.

Thank you, Lamy. I mean, is there any, anything that you'd want to give yourself advice back at the start? So if you could go back to those early days, what would you say to yourself now? And I think that'd be a nice way to, to bring it to an end.

Yeah. The one thing that I've learned, and this has been a lesson and a mantra that I now live by in my portfolio, is that no matter the state of the market or whatever strategy you're implementing or what have you, good deals, the best deals, they are not found, they're always created. And so. And in that mindset, it puts on you as the operator, the. You are the person that makes it happen. It's not the market, it's not the strategy, it's not the timing of the market, it's you. Once you understand your inherent ability to create deals and you figure that out, they all come to you. Because good deals, again, they're not found, they're always created.

I like that. What a great way to. To bring it to end. Was there anything we missed along the way?

No, I. More than anything, I just appreciate you having me. Like I said, I've been a fan of this podcast for a long time, so I. I just feel very thankful to have a seat at the table. So thank you. Thank you for having me.

Thank you for coming on and inspiring the listener. And thank you too for listening to this. There's lots of places we know you can put your attention. And really thank you for putting it with Boostly. If there's somebody you know who will get value out of this and feel inspired as you do, can you please share it with them? And if you want to carry on the conversation, you can always come and join us in the Facebook group, the hospitality community and. Or you can even just tag Mark on. On Instagram Boostly uk, basically, for that. So thank you very much. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.