How to Profit from the Hospitality Industry

Okay. You are listening to the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that helps hosts all over the world get the tools, the tactics, the trainings and most importantly, have the confidence to go out there and get more direct bookings. Today we have a very special guest who is a short term rental host. She is a real estate investor who along with her husband established a highly successful real estate firm called the Short Term Rental Shop. She's a best selling author of the book called Short Term Rental Long Term Wealth, a book which I highly recommend you go and check out. It's in my audible sort of favorites. She's the host of the epic podcast series the Short Term Rental show. And overall, just one of the biggest influences in the short term rental space. And I'm so excited, if you hadn't already guessed it, we've got the amazing Avery Carlon with us today and she's sharing her vast experience on what you need to be considering when you invest in a short term rental. So welcome along Avery. Thank you for joining me today.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

So why don't we get started in the way we normally do, which if, if you can just introduce yourself and share any facts that somebody may or may not know about.

Yeah, yeah, sure. So my name's Avery Carle. I'm a real estate Investor. I have 245 doors, eight of them are short term rentals. And the way I kind of look at short terms is as a cash flow turbocharger that has a place in any real estate portfolio. For me, short term rentals were the my first investment. So five of my first six investments were short terms. And because they cash flow so much heavier than traditional long term rentals, we were able to scale our portfolio much more quickly than if we just stuck with traditional long term. So I'm not one of those short term rental influencers that is going to say short term rentals are the right and only way all the time. We have long term, multifamily, long term, single family. We've got a little bit of everything. So I think that short terms are definitely the path to get your cash flow where you need it to be to grow your portfolio in whatever way you want to do that. So whether you want to have a thousand short terms or maybe you want to mix it up some, that's kind of my strategy. Also run the Short term shop, which is the US's largest and maybe only short term rental specific real estate brokerage within the brokerage of exp. I have to say that or else I get in trouble. And we focus only on short term rental investors. We've got offices in 15 of the top short term rental markets in the US open in a few more this quarter. And I think that's about it for now.

And it's amazing story in your book as well, isn't it? Because if anybody who hasn't checked out the short term rental long term wealth book, it's a really interesting story about how that all all comes around, which is amazing. And if you could take the listeners back, what did you do before getting into this part of hospitality and I guess what did you do before? Before real estate in general.

So I worked in the music business in Nashville. Before that I was a marketing manager. Before that I was bartending in New York City in Austin, Texas. And I graduated from University of Texas at like the worst time in the history of the world to graduate, which was May of 2009. So there were no jobs. We were right, you know, in the thick of the Great Recession. So I play music toward playing guitar in a bunch of sloppy punk rock bands, toured Europe a few times, Japan, the US a bunch of times. I got to do a lot of really fun things that I would not have been able to do had I been able to get a job directly out of college. And over the course of time I went back, got my master's degree and started working on the business side of music in what I thought was my dream job up until then. And I was about a year in and I was, my boss did not like me. I was on what's called a performance improvement plan, which is basically when the HR department tells you, hey, you're doing a really bad job here, we're giving you 30 days to get it together or else you're out. And usually that they're not actually going to give you a chance. It's just like them letting you know, hey, we're going to fire you in 30 days. So that happened to me twice in a row and I realized I am not a good employee. And I also realized I did not want to sit in a desk all day and be at the mercy of someone else. So my husband and I kind of started looking at ways to get, I mean really both of us out of that. His job was much more flexible than mine was. So we started kind of looking at real estate, kind of got into the long term rental thing. And then we only had just a little bit of money left and we said, well, what can we buy that's going to make us the most amount of money, the fastest, so that we can build this portfolio and actually make a business out of this. And we landed on short term rentals and we knew we didn't want to do it in Nashville, where we lived at the time, because the regulations in Nashville are just nuts. They're changing all the time. And we could not afford to buy something and then be told a year and a half, two years, ten years down the road, hey, sorry, you can't do this anymore. So we decided to invest in the Smoky Mountains, which is three hours east of Nashville. And we'd just been there on vacation and we'd stayed in a rental cabin and everybody else that was there was staying in rental cabins. And we said, well, somebody owns these, why can't it be us? And we kind of were off to the races at that point.

That's cool. That's cool. And I know in your book you mentioned that you would travel around growing up for short term rental and vacations. Do you think that that's impacted your journey?

Oh, yeah, it absolutely has. I grew up in Mississippi, which is about a six hour drive, or at least the part of Mississippi I grew up in, about a six hour drive from the Emerald coast of Florida, which is Destin 30A Panama City Beach. I live in Destin now as an adult because it was my favorite place to vacation as a kid. And we always rented big houses for. We would do like a girls weekend kind of or week where it was my mom and her two sisters. All the men stayed home and worked and all the moms and cousins came to the beach together for a week to 10 days sometimes. We did it twice a year and it was awesome. And we always stayed in a beach house. Rented beach house, same thing. Going to the Smokies when I was a kid, always stayed in a cabin. So it was definitely those experiences of doing that every year as a kid that made me realize, oh, somebody owns these things. Somebody's making an income off of this. I just thought when I was a kid that all these nebulous rich people just happen to have all these houses. I didn't realize that it could actually be a business and you're making the money off of owning them. It's not just a luxury item.

That's a great bit of fun, isn't it, that you get to, you get to experience it as well as, as not understand it from both sides. And this is the fun thing about this industry.

Yeah, it's really, it's definitely a lot more fun to go shop for a beach house than, you know, a 15 unit apartment building?

100%. 100%. What's one perception that's changed, particularly about short term rental, from the early days when you got your first unit to how you feel now about short term rental?

It is a lot easier now than it was then. When we first started, I think we bought our first one in 2015, there weren't really any property management softwares. There were probably at the time, but they were like in their infancy. They weren't as accessible as they are now. And there weren't. There were definitely not any education platforms. No, there were no influencers, there were no courses, there were no masterminds. And we kind of had to figure out how to do it on our own. At the beginning of every month, I would look at our calendar and write out our cleaner schedule and send it to her. And there was no automation. And so now that you can streamline all of that stuff, it just feels a thousand times easier than it did back then, having to do all your pricing by hand and all that. So I feel even better about it now than I did then. Then it was when we first started. It really was a life changing experience for us when that first booking came in. And to give you some context, so I was making US$37,000 a year at my job, which translated to roughly about $500 a week after they take everything out of your paycheck. And you know, so a Property that's making $3,000 a month, that was more than what I was making at my job. So that really was life changing. And we were really excited about that. And only for it to get easier to do over the course of time. I mean, what a dream, right?

That's music to my ears because there's so much worry and doom and gloom and to hear somebody say, hey, it's actually getting easier. And it is. The software is making things a little bit easier. The barrier to entry isn't that high for what we do. So it is just making things a lot more accessible and easier for people. What would you say has been your biggest win, particularly with short term rentals so far?

That first one was a big one. I would say number property number six, which was our first beach house down here in Destin. That was probably the biggest win. It had been foreclosed on twice. It was just sitting right there on the MLS for everybody to see. And it had been on the market off and on for two or three years and we were able to get it for a couple Hundred thousand under market because the pictures were terrible. All the flooring was ripped up. It's. It still is a little bit of a weird floor plan, but we were able to make it work really well. It already had a pool and it really just needed some love on the inside. Like the kitchen was horrible in early 2000s and the granite color looked like dog throw up. But so it was enough to deter just a normal second homebuyer from clicking through and investors maybe didn't want to mess with the work. We put maybe 150,000 into getting that up to speed. And that includes all the rehab and all the decor and all the furnishings. And it's worth triple now what we paid for it. And the cash on cash return is about. That first year was about 30%. I mean, but it's easily 40% now. So that property really was just like a diamond in the rough game changer for us.

I love it. That sounds like a game changer. Definitely does. So one of the things which I mentioned before this is we're actually recording this for people listening. I know this isn't Valentine's Day when you listen to it, but we're actually recording this in mid February. It's Valentine's Day. Avery is spending her time just before she heads off and enjoys her sort of day with us recording this. So what I wanted to do is to make this a little bit more fun, a little bit different. What I'm going to do is give a multi choice game. So these are all going to be questions related, related to short term rental in general. Basically, Avery, all you got to do is choose out of the two choices and written on the back of each of those choices is a couple of options. And basically we are going to discover what you pick as the perfect Valentine's Day date for somebody out there. So just for a bit of fun. So first of all, we've got short term rental versus long term rental. If you had to choose an investment, what would it be and why?

Well, I do love them both, but I'm gonna have to go short term rental because that really was, you know, the life changing thing for us. We love our long terms, but the short terms were what made everything else possible.

That's cool. That's cool. So the next one, let me just see if I've got these in the right place. Sorry, if you can hear paper moving about. And I'm glad you said short term rental because that is the whole of our audience pretty much agrees with you, which I'm sure they do. So when choosing an area to invest in, what is more important, would you say that the having the right market with an average property would be more important or having a unique property in an average market? If you had to pick, and I know a lot of these aren't, you know, sort of you, you can find ones which are a good property in a good market, but if you had to pick between the two, I'm going.

To go better market, average property, because none of my properties are what I would call like a unique stay.

And.

But the tourism is there. If the market is good, then the proper. I think you're going to be better off with an average property than going to a weird market, which, you know, maybe there's not as much tourism or maybe the regulations are wacky. So I'm going to go with the stability of a good market. But an average property, I like it.

I like it. And it makes sense, doesn't it? Because at the end of the day, I always remember Grant Cardone in his book saying that you could be the worst hot dog salesman in the world, but if you put that in the right place, you know, outside a stadium, you're going to sell, you know, so that's kind of like find the market and, and go for it. So if you had to choose only one of the following, would you choose to have more asset appreciation or more cash flow from your properties? Cash flow, always lovely cash flow. That's what we like. Okay, so for success in short term rental, is it better to have the right tech or the right people?

Ooh, well, to choose the tech is only as good as the people on either end of it. So I'm going to say good people.

Good people. Awesome. To help us struggling short term rental. So imagine you've got a struggling short term rental. What would be the first thing that you do? Would you improve the amenities or would you improve the amount of marketing for that particular listing? Amenities, amenities. Lovely. Cool, Cool. We're getting that. Okay. Would you rather increase the number of properties or increase the performance from existing properties?

That's something that I struggle with every day. My husband and I have this conversation all the time. Do we want to buy more properties and create more work for ourselves or do we want to start paying off a few? Because we've got a lot now. 245 Doors is a lot. So that's hard. I don't know if I know the answer to that. I guess I'm going to say more properties.

Still more properties. Awesome. Awesome. Cool. And last, last couple of questions. Here they do. The last one's very easy to be fair, but to market a property. So you've. I often get asked this, hey, what should I do more of? Should I be looking at doing more social media posting or more email marketing? What should I be doing more of?

Email marketing?

Yeah. That's an easy one, isn't it? Completely agree with you. And then lastly, would you rather, and this is a bit of a loaded question, would you rather have more online travel agency bookings or more direct bookings?

Direct bookings, of course.

Of course. Of course. Okay. So on the back of those, this is the, the date that you've selected. I won't tell you what the other options are, but a live music performance to go on your date with a gift of jewelry and roses. Your date would arrive 10 minutes early. You'd be drinking beer and casual dressed burger and chips. And that would be with your husband.

Yeah.

How does that sounds?

It sounds a lot like our first date except for he was 10 minutes late.

Oh. Do you know that was one of, that was one of the choices actually. So I don't know which one that was. But yeah. Awesome, awesome. So just wanted to do that as a bit of fun. And of course some of the points that you made in there about what you should and shouldn't do, it brings home the point that we don't always have the perfect situation, that sometimes we have to make these choices and this is where we spend our time. So what we'll do now is we'll move on to some general tips for short term rental hosts. Is there any tips in general that you could share with the audience that you think is essential when it comes down to running a successful short term.

Rental, it's really important to be adaptable because things are going to go in ways that you did not expect or did not want them to go. Some of the ones that I see people complain about on Facebook groups all the time, time is, you know, they're watching their camera and they saw somebody did something they didn't want them to do, that they never would have known that they did had they not watched their camera, didn't damage anything or anything like that. So if you are somebody who can't just kind of roll with the punches and let that slide, as long as there is no damage and you know, not micromanage people, then this business is going to be very difficult for you. So I would say being adaptable is a very important thing and also being empathetic and understanding, you know. Yeah. Your guest could be being very high maintenance and difficult. But you have to understand from their perspective, they probably have been planning this for a long time. They had to ask off work, they had to save up their days, you know, their PTO days. And it's really important to them. And so they're a little high strung about it and that's okay. And it's. You have to put yourself in their shoes and understand how important it is to them and why they might be coming across as difficult when they really, you know, they're not or they don't mean to be.

I think that's such a good point because. And that resonates with me, first of all, the empathy. I've got one really high maintenance guest stand with us at the moment and we are literally her, the only person she knows in the, on this continent. You know, I mean, like, so is it case she's come here to, to do some learning and that side of things. And we don't always think of that, that, you know, there's a lot of different customs and things like that. So we are a great point of reference. And when you say adaptable, again, this is just one of the things that so many newer hosts will worry over, stuff that they just don't need to worry about. You know, be watching that camera, watching that noise monitor device or whatever it is. The more you can relax, switch off and deal with it. If, if there's problems, if there's not, you know, then enjoy your time, which is cool. What tech do you use in your business and what tech especially do you use to help you find deals? And again, a bit of a loaded question because you've helped me with some of your training videos with this, so.

Well, in terms of our management, we use hospitable and price labs in terms of tech to help us find deals. So being a real estate agent, I do a lot of MLS looking and so I use the MLS a lot. I would say most of our single family deals have been just stuff that was on the mls. My favorite thing for finding potentially undervalued deals, or maybe not necessarily undervalued, but things that you can get better deals on on the MLS are are properties that have terrible photos similar to that beach property that I mentioned. That was back in 2019, but I got one in 2021 at the height of all of the multiple offers for 75,000 under asking because the owner had his neighbor list it who happened to have a real estate license doesn't do a lot of business but and just threw it up on the MLS with like flip phone photos and they were terrible. And the house was a mess, so it looked horrible. But it was the second row back from the beach. No roads between this house and the beach, so just one more house in front of it. And I noticed that it was built in 2019 so it was basically brand new construction right on the beach. But the photos were terrible and I was like, you know what, this is probably a good house, but people just can't tell so they're not clicking on it and they're not making offers. So we went over and looked at it. It was great. And what they also didn't mention was that there was a partially finished first floor utility room that already had a bathroom. So all we did is finish that out and redo the bathroom and make it a full bath instead of a half. And now we not only got a $75,000 discount originally, but we added more value and it did appraise for that 75,000 higher. We added more value by adding another bedroom and bathroom and all because if anyone had gotten any decent pictures on it, it would have been multiple offers. But it didn't get seen. So we were able to snap it up.

I love that. And that actually reminds me a conversation I had with an auction house owner here in the uk. They own the, the biggest auction house for, for properties and he actually said to find the best deals, they're in plain sight. He goes, it's the ones that people don't think to investigate further, you know. So if there's anything putting you off about a place, well, that could be the right one to go and have a look at because that's putting everybody else off, which is, which is important. And one piece of advice that you've, that I've seen you use and I've, I've used this, this method is you've used air DNA when assessing deals and I think you call it, is it the, the killer method or something like that?

Oh, the enemy method.

The enemy method, that's it. I knew it was something like, you know, sort of like that. So which, which is amazing. And for anybody listening, please go and check out Avery's videos for, for the Enemy Method. They are, it's solid gold on how you can help to find out what an income could be for one of your short term rentals. So how important are direct bookings to your short term rental arm of your business and how do you attract them currently?

So this is actually something that is pretty new for us as of the past year or two because we operate in pretty high volume markets where you don't really have to depend on people coming back. So it's been something that is, we're still currently testing, I think for the short term rental industry as a whole. It's only going to continue to be more important all the time to, you know, take control of your own destiny a little bit more. But for us, we're just now kind of implementing in the past year with Mark's help, direct bookings into it. So I'll have to report back, but it's definitely something that I think is going to continue to be of the utmost importance moving forward.

That's awesome. There was, there was a stat last year where Airbnb are growing their, their hold on the market, their market share, but the only thing that's growing faster is direct bookings, you know, in. So everybody else is getting squeezed in the middle there. But which is cool because I think there's a lot of people realizing that guests when they travel realize they can save money, but then hosts as well realize that actually hang on instead of Airbnb getting that service fee, if I just had half of that, then that goes directly on my bottom line, which is, which is cool. Is there any tips? This is this question I must give a shout out to Sergio from Jungle House based in Columbus, Ohio. He said that I always ask what questions should we ask our guests? And he said is there any tips on how to fund or get lending in the short term rental space at the moment as we record this in 2023. And then the second part of his question is how would you prepare to sell a short term rental investment in terms of lending?

And this is not like the mind blowing answer that anybody's looking for for single family short term rentals. Getting a 15% down conventional investment loan is always going to be the easiest to find, the cheapest interest rate wise and just easiest to execute. Now there are other types of loans out there for if you can't qualify for what you want to price wise with a conventional loan like DSCR loans and things like that, but the interest rates are higher, there are prepayment penalties. So I am of the mindset if you've got conventional loans left, which in the US you can have 10 per person or 20 per married couple as long as you can qualify separate from each other. If you put both of yourselves on the loan, then you can only get 10 collectively. But we alternated. So I think, I think we both have a couple left. But if you like you don't have to complicate it. Everybody wants this like mind blowing creative financing thing that's like so crazy. You don't have to over complicate it. That 15 down investment loan conventional is always going to be the easiest and the cheapest.

Cool. Cool. And is there any tips around how you'd prepare to sell a short term rental? If you were looking to either sell a portfolio or sell an individual unit.

I would make sure you have a detailed rental history. And I always tell my buyer clients that the rental history doesn't matter as much because that's. It's not data, it's one little data point. It's not the plural data. So it's just what one person's been able to do with one property. You don't know if that's underperforming or overperforming. So you do have to use data sources like Air DNA or STR Insights or Rabu or any of those to kind of look to compare and then also the enemy method. But if you're selling, you do want to have that because even though that's being preached to buyers, they're still going to ask for it. So you want to have and if it hasn't been good, you want to have a good reason as to why like oh yeah, we stayed there for six months last year. The number one thing is absolutely do not negotiate on this whatsoever. You have to get professional photos. And I see this all the time. I tell this to my short term rental buyers too. You have to get professional photos. Now we have a Facebook group called Short Term Rental Listing Advice where you can post and say hey, I'm not really getting booked. You know what's wrong with my listing. 99% of the time they do not have professional photos. And it really, really makes a difference because that's what draws people in. They're not going to click to read the details if the photos don't draw them in. So make sure you have your rental history available. But also so like professional photos are the most important thing.

Certainly hits home with me for making sure that people have got the right photos, the right marketing. We're actually my hospitality business outside of Boostly is a marketing agent, a short term rental marketing agency who manages for, for other hosts. And we actually took over this, this unit which exactly wasn't doing these things. They had phone pictures. They thought they were achieving some good rates but just by going in there, better description, which is more emotive, more drawn towards the avatar that we're Looking for and better photographs, even drone shots and things like that video from the inside, all of that stuff just helped instantly to get a higher nightly rate and more occupancy in general. And it's like you say the history of short term rental unit is just that point in time. That's what that person could do. It's not what necessarily the market can do or what that unit is capable of, which is really cool. Little tip, one extra little tip for anybody listening as well, which we've just started doing, is those 3D floor plans so people can understand the interconnecting rooms because you can't put videos on Airbnb, but you can add that floor plan where the bed is and all that stuff that they need to know. We're finding that's really helping our units do better than the competition, which is cool.

Yeah, totally agree with that.

So let's move on to talking about the market in general. So in your opinion, is the market oversaturated? I keep hearing people go, oh, my area is saturated or are there still opportunities that we're missing?

Yeah, so a lot of people say the short term rental market is saturated, period. But that's an entire asset class in every single market cannot possibly be oversaturated. That's like saying the multifamily market is saturated and nobody's ever going to make money on an apartment building ever again. It's ridiculous. So real estate is market specific and there are some markets that can be. But I think the mistake that a lot of people make is they look at a market and they actually had a new client who did this the other day. She was looking at Destin Florida and she said, oh, I went to book and it's February, so here it's very much the off season. And she said, I went to book and there were just so many listings to choose from, it's saturated. And I was like, well, you know, just because a market has a lot of listings does not mean that it's saturated. It means that there's a lot of tourism. There wouldn't be a lot of listings if the tourism wasn't there. And then you also have to take into consideration that it's the off season. So I would say a lot of people mistake a high volume market with being oversaturated. I also hate the word oversaturated because it's either saturated or it's not. It's not like you're wet or you're not wet, you're not over wet. But anyway, that's my own, like, psychosis. So anyway, I think a lot of people make that mistake that they're like, oh, there's a lot of listings. It's too. I had somebody, I saw somebody on Facebook recently say the entire state of Florida is oversaturated. And that's just not true. So you cut, you have to look at. And I'll give you an example too, because one of the markets that I own in, in the Smoky Mountains, that's one of people's favorite places to say is oversaturated. The first house that I bought, 2015, there were less than a thousand short term rental listings on Airbnb and VRBO. That house made $45,000 last year. Same house, it's just a, a true log cabin. So the only thing you can really update in it are countertops and, and paint the cabinets. And last year there were 8,000 listings on Airbnb and VRBO and that house did 80,000. So yes, there's 10 times the listing. But I also doubled my income, so it can't possibly be saturated. And I also think that even if a market is saturated, the bottom 15 to 20% of listings are going to be the ones that feel that. So I don't think that a market being quote saturated, if there even is one at this point, I'm sure there's one out there. Not one that I can think of. I don't think that's something to run away from. I think that's something to run towards because the reason that it's saturated is because the tourism is there, the traffic is there. You just have to figure out a way to stand out. And you only need, depending on what the seasonality of the market is, 50 to 100 bookings of those millions of people that are coming in. So anyway, that's my spiel on, on saturation.

No, it makes sense. It does make sense. And to double the income in a market which is gone up by what, 800% or whatever it is that is, is amazing. And goes to show that there's a lot of worry. And often when you hear this, you know that markets are saturated. It's usually somebody just saying, hey, I can't find my opportunity or I don't know how to stand out for my target guest avatar. Whereas that's part of what we teach at Boostly, which is how do you market your property to get your unfair share of bookings in any market, which is so important. And I also like what you're saying about there isn't such thing as over saturated. You reminded me that the word priorities doesn't really exist. Like the word priority means first thing first, but priorities, first things first. Well, you can't do them all. So the same sort of thing around that. What do you think about all the regulation changes coming into the industry at the moment? How do you think that's going to affect things in your view? Is it good or is it bad?

I think that with all the regulations coming in, I think it's ultimately a good thing, especially for my particular investment strategy. So I focus only on vacation rentals in vacation markets and regional drivable vacation markets. So where we're seeing most of that regulation squeeze is in urban and suburban markets, which I think is going to make the vacation market holdings much more valuable as time goes on as all the regulations come in to the metro markets now. I also think it's good for metro market investors because it puts a cap on their competition so that the market cannot get saturated. So I don't think regulations are a bad thing at all. Is it definitely negatively affecting a lot of people right now? Yeah, it is and that sucks. But you know, it's part of the market cycle. Things blow up and then they get regulated and then they kind of come back down to earth and then it kind of business kind of cruises. So I think we're kind of seeing that now, especially in urban and metro markets and in some vacation markets, not many, but there are a few out there that are doing it. So I think that if you continue to invest right, then regulations are a good thing.

That's cool. That's cool. And a lot of people already listening to this will already be short term rental hosts. So ultimately many regulations that come in will. Sometimes there's grandfather rights and things like that, isn't there? It just depends on. On the local county and the regulations that come in.

Yeah, well. And people get hysterical about the word regulations just immediately. So for example, I own a house in Destin, which is one county over from where I am here in Walton county in 30A, where I also own a short term rental. It's actually above my head. My office building is mixed use, so I've got my office and then a short term rental upstairs. So in Okaloosa county there are a lot of regulations in terms of being able to get your permit. They're never going to say no, you can't have a permit, but you just have to complete steps one through ten to get it. And it's like you have to have someone local that they can Call and there's some parking restrictions and things like that. Nothing major. There are no restrictions in Walton county. And last week Walton county passed a bunch of restrictions and everybody lost their minds. And when I read them, I'm like, okay, basically all this says is we need to establish someone to call if someone's guests are out of hand or if something happens. There are some parking regulations and none of it was anti short term rental at all. It was just like, hey guys, we should probably organize this thing. But everybody was losing their mind because of the word regulation.

It happens, doesn't it? And that's the good thing, is that as entrepreneurs, we look at and go, well, what hoops are we going to have to jump through here? What is this? Probably going to cost me a little bit to get this sorted. And you know, we jump through them and get it sorted. It made me laugh. You said about the short term rental being above your head because you're. For anybody who's listening in on the, on the picture in the background. And Avery's got an awesome picture of a lovely cabin in the background. So I'm thinking there's a place on top of there as well. But obviously it's a sort of image in the background.

Yep. This is also one of my short term rentals, but in the Smokies.

Oh, nice, nice. So let's talk about the future. What are you currently excited about in hospitality or otherwise?

Ooh, I am excited. So there's a lot of really great conferences this year and events that not necessarily weren't around, but we things that we couldn't do in 2020 and even 2021. So I'm excited for all that to come back so we can all kind of like actually meet each other and build relationships and not just all be stuck in our own little caves running our properties. It's nice to be able to get out and meet people and hang out.

That's cool. And I know. I was actually speaking to Julie George, who I know you've just had on your podcast recently. I speak to her. Yes. Well, for her this morning, for me, yesterday, based in the uk, but she was saying that she's senior at the short term rental conference. You're there. And also Hospit, you've got a chapter in the new book, I believe. Is that right?

Yes, yes, I do. Very excited about that. Happy to be included.

Nice. I'm looking forward to reading that. And, and just, just reading everybody's chapter. It's going to be absolutely amazing. What does the future hold for Your short term rental business, are you looking to continue to grow it and how much will that play into the future of your overall business? Are you looking to grow more Percentage of short term rentals overall?

So we will continue to buy short term rentals. I would like to buy. Honestly, the next short term rental purchase we make will probably be more of an a lifestyle asset. We would really like to have a house. My husband grew up fishing in Wyoming. We'd really like to have a house in Wyoming. That won't necessarily be the best cash flow, but it'll just put a dent in its own expenses when we aren't using it. So I got to pick living at the beach because this was where I came growing up. So it's his turn. He gets to pick the mountain house. So that'll probably be our next one. And I don't know that we'll buy in any. If we buy other just investment specific short term rentals will probably stick to the markets that we're already in. So we don't have to build any new systems in new markets. We're all. But we're always buying or always buying short terms, always buying long terms, always buying multifamily. We kind of have our three pillars rolling at all times just in whatever deal comes down the pipeline. Then that's the one that gets taken down, whether it's short term, long term or multi.

That's cool. That's cool. What advice would you have if you could go back to the start and give yourself one piece of advice?

I don't know that I would do anything differently because everything has led us to the point that we're at. But I mean, if I could go back in time and get myself to not be so damn anxious all the time, which I'm still struggling with, I think that I would have been better off. But starting earlier, obviously, I mean, everybody says that. I didn't realize that I did have the means to start earlier. But what I didn't have was the mindset. So I thought, well, I mean, buying a house to invest in, like that was weird. And I would never have bought like a cute little, you know, 1800 square foot, two or three bedroom because I thought, well, you don't buy a house until you like have a family and you're buying your forever house. And it didn't occur to me that it doesn't have to be that. And so I just never did it. And so I regret not having the right mindset earlier in life. But I mean, happy where I am anyway.

I love that. And they always say, experience teaches us if we need more of it. And day to day, looking forward, I always have to tell myself, hey, you don't need to panic over this investment or I'm sure this will go right. You know, that is just it. It's natural. But looking back, you just go, what was I worried about? You know, that's like you. You kind of looking back, it makes sense, doesn't it?

Yeah.

So as we reach towards the end of these, we just. Let's do a couple of questions just for fun. So what was the best live performance or gig that you've ever been to? And also, who would you like to see perform either alive or posthumous?

Well, man, I've seen so many good ones. I would have to say I saw the rolling stones in 2006 in a general admission, Zilker park in Austin. So we got to get really, really close, like, third row. And I did make make it on the dvd. It was the biggest bang dvd. And it's during she's so Cold, which I didn't think they were going to play. So I was really excited and it was awesome. So that was probably the best one.

I like that. I like that. And is there anybody you'd like to see whether, you know, still around today or no longer with us?

Yeah. Well, speaking of the Stones, not all of them are still around today, but I did read that they're doing a US tour this summer. And I would love. Like, and by love, I mean no amount of money that I would not pay to get my kids to see the Stones before, you know, the rest of them go.

So you know what that gives me? That gives me goosebumps because we're talking before this. My little boy is five years old, and I saw the Stones back in 2008, and I remember thinking then going, wow, this is. You know, they've been around for 60 years. How much longer will they go for? And that was 15 years ago. I mean, that's. That's crazy. You know, like, that is. Is crazy. So, yeah, what a great answer. Love that. If you had to. Speaking of children, I know you've got kids yourself. If you had to choose a fictional children's character, which one would you be and why?

Oh, gosh. You know, I was a big fan of all these Disney movies when I was a kid, and now, like, looking back, like, Little Mermaid was my favorite, and now I watch it and I'm like, man, Ariel was pathetic. She was embarrassing a fictional children's character. You know, I Am going to go with Moana.

Nice.

I'm a Moana fan.

Yeah, me too. You know, if. If you get a chance, and this is a random tangent, but if you get a chance, watch Wreck It Ralph Breaks the Internet. Because. Oh, yeah, you've seen it. It's got all the princesses in, including Ariel, and they kind of correct some of the, kind of, you know, sort of stereotypicalness of some of those older films, which is amazing. What. We always end with this question, Avery, so what. What mantra or saying resonates with you and why? So is there a saying or a quot. Something that you've. You've come across which you go, do you know? In general, I agree with this, especially either at this moment or in the past.

Yeah, yeah. So my husband and I say this to each other a lot. We say it around the short term shop in terms of making our own investments all the time. And that is ready, fire, aim. So you know, you're ready to do it. You kind of just have to fire and figure out the rest later. Like, done is better than perfect. So you can sit around and analyze and wait for the perfect deal. And wait for the perfect deal that's never going to come. Another one would be don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I've got that one in my book. So you can find every reason in the world not to buy a house because you're waiting for a better one to come along and never buy anything. So ready, fire, aim. Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I like that. I like that. And what a nice way to bring it to the end. So how can the people listening come and get in touch with you?

Yeah, so the best way is probably on Instagram, it's at the short term shop. And then I have a link tree there with, you know, links to everything else that you could possibly want to do with the short term shop.

So that's cool. That's cool. And was there any questions I missed or any final thoughts before we bring it to a close?

I don't think so. You did a great job.

Thank you so much for spending your day with, especially Valentine's Day with us. And thank you too. If you're listening in on the Bruce Lee podcast, we know there's a lot of places you can put your attention. It is your most cherished asset. And thank you for putting your attention with us. We really appreciate that. We hope you have picked up some awesome tips, some good, inspiring sort of stories in general and generally the positivity from this show, so thank you so much. That's it for myself. And that's it from Avery. Thanks again.

Thanks, guys.