Should You Go FULL TIME in Real Estate?! with Austin Palacios

If you can replace your income and then you have reserves to like test this thing out for 6 months or a year, then you're good to go. You have nothing to lose at that point because after 6 months or a year of doing it, just go back and get a job. Jobs are always going to be there, but like your time isn't.

Hello and welcome back to Multifamily Strategy. I'm your show host, Christian Osgood, joined by Austin. I got to spend a little bit of time with Austin before the show. This guy is fantastic. He has a super unique way he's picking up rentals. And he is the inverse of me in a multifamily strategy. He started in multifamily, switched to short-term rentals. So as some of you know, the bane of my existence, we're going to talk about why that's worked for him, how that business works, and his strategies around both acquisition and running his business. Austin, welcome to the podcast, my friend.

Christian, it's a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to digging deep and dropping some golden nuggets on the pod today.

There we go. Well, I've seen you here and there online, so you are a known figure in your space. For those who don't know who you are, tell us a little bit about your journey in real estate, where you started and where you're at today.

Yeah, absolutely. Happy to dig into it. Yeah, so I started my, my career in wealth management in Chicago. So I was, I was going to school in Miami, going to college, and I was working as a valet at the time. And during that time when I was working as a valet, I was listening to BiggerPockets So I kind of got my start with BiggerPockets, listening to the podcast, reading the books, David Greene's book. And when I got into Chicago, I started working in wealth management and it literally only took me like 2 to 3 months to realize, hey, look, I hate this corporate life. Like, I hate, I hate the, the politics. I hate having to commute to work. I hate having to ask for time off. So really started digging deep and trying to figure out like, all right, well, what can I do to potentially get my way out of this job? Was looking into all these different businesses. And then one day, um, I was walking from the subway to my office and I kind of just stopped and looked around, looked around at everybody that was doing the exact same thing as me. There was people in their 20s, 40s, 60s, and they were all commuting to work. And I just said, damn, if I don't figure this out soon, I'm going to be doing this until I'm 60 and then retire, right? So, um, that night I went home, kind of just sat down looking at all these different businesses I thought about starting, and then I realized, hey, look, real estate has always been there. There's this blueprint for real estate. Why don't I just copy what everybody else is doing and then go from there? So next few months, dug into real estate, went to multiple different meetups, drove like an hour and a half, or actually took a train an hour and a half every, every, uh, every day once a week to 5 different meetups. Started learning that way. And then shortly after, ended up, uh, finding my first investment property, which was a, um, small multifamily. It was in Chicago, we call them flats. So it was a 2-flat, which is considered a duplex, and then I converted into a 3-flat or a triplex. So wasn't in the best part of town. I ended up house hacking it. So I moved in there and learned pretty quickly this is, this is a crazy way to get in the game.

In true BiggerPockets fashion. Yeah, that is the go-to BiggerPockets strategy. Nothing wrong with it. But yeah, the house hack, add a unit, do some value add, whatever that did. That's awesome.

Yeah, yeah. So did that. I can jump into some of those crazy stories that I experienced later into the pod. But shortly after COVID ended up happening, I was just like, hey, I got to get the hell out of Chicago. I want to go back to Florida and move back to Florida. Found this thing called short-term rentals because long-term rentals or small multifamily wasn't really producing the cash flow I was seeing in Chicago. Mm-hmm. So this is over short-term rentals. Ended up buying 2 in West Palm Beach, 1 in Fort Lauderdale, and then 1 in Tampa. And then shortly after that, interest rates started going up in 2022, transitioned over to managing for other people, found a very unique strategy of targeting existing vacation rental homeowners that are with larger property managers. And I was able to get them on the line and have a conversation with them and ask them how they were currently doing with their, their current property manager. And usually it wasn't that great and then got them to convert over to me and then scaled that company pretty quickly.

Dude, that is— property management's a hard business to be in. I own two property management companies. Actually, I'm under contract to sell one of them, but property management has been a really good way for, at least for me, I'm curious your take. It's been good for me to expand my portfolio just because I get these relationships and I get to control market rent. So I do like doing property management. It is a really hard job that's typically fairly low margin. So I'm interested to see how you structure this. I know you're much more involved in a short-term rental than you would be multifamily, so the margins look completely different. It is a different business.

Talk to me about—

so how many rentals did you have before you started managing for others? That's one of the things I'm really curious about.

Yeah. So at that time I had I had 4 at that time before I started managing for other people. Okay.

And are you still actively buying deals or are you primarily focused on management now?

The thing is, is like I transitioned away from single-family homes now because that's what the majority of my short-term rentals are. So if I do buy something, I'm still looking, it's going to be in the boutique hotel space. So 10 to 30 units, I think you can still use the same strategies, the same technologies. If it's below 30, 30 keys or 30 units, if you will.

Boutique hotels are very popular. That's, that's how I got into short-term rentals. I hate it. A lot of people love it. I do believe boutique hotel is a crazy good niche because you can take some of these really tired motels. I've seen people do this and you make them beautiful or you find a crazy unique property and now you have something that's not going to be regulated like single families tend to get in the Airbnb space. You have a true commercial space that you can still utilize all the same marketing.

Yep.

It is phenomenal, in my opinion, phenomenally better, phenomenally better than the single-family game, cuz you are just not competing with mom-and-pop owner and you're not fighting cities as they change regulation. No one's trying to make, as I've never seen a city try to make a small hotel, not a hotel.

Yeah.

Like if it's already, you already got the zoning, you already got the use. You're set there.

You're good to go.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

Have you, have you closed on it yet, or is that what you're looking at now?

So what I'm looking at, I was under contract, um, in this city called Maggie Valley outside of North— or outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Um, ended up falling apart, but still, uh, still looking.

You said something that, that caught my attention. You're buying— or sorry, not, not buying, you're finding owners. You said you have a unique way Or you've been tracking them down. You have a really efficient way you're doing that. Almost all of my business has been direct to owner. I've built an entire portfolio on no marketing whatsoever other than a few cold calls and going to a heck of a lot of meetups. You've shared, hey, I was going to a bunch of meetups to get started and you have a way that you're getting connected with these owners. I'm really curious how you're playing the game.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's just to give you a background. So my background was in wealth management, a little bit in sales. So it was my job when I was working in wealth management to find new clients for the bank, right, that were currently having their banking relationship with other, other banks, if you will, other financial institutions. So I kind of used that strategy, a portion of it, and just pinpointed that into real estate. So what I do is I target existing vacation rental owners, so people who already own a property that is a vacation rental, a short-term rental, and they're having somebody else manage it. Usually a large corporation such as like Vacasa or Evolve. I'm sure you've heard of those. And I have a way to be able to pull those addresses with the data engineer that I use. So he pulls those addresses. Once he pulls those addresses, I then skip trace those addresses to get like the phone numbers, mailing address, email addresses, everything like that. And then from there, I then pick up the phone, either myself or my VA, and, and then we reach out to those, those individual people and just ask them how their current experience is going. How's their occupancy been? How's the revenue been? How's their revenue strategy in place? These different questions that majority of people don't know how to answer and have no idea because the manager's managing it for them and their revenue really isn't that great right now with the, the massive supply of vacation rentals coming into the space back in 2022.

How are you tracking all this? Are you a, are you a CRM guy where you have a whole infrastructure where you have VAs, CRM, you can track all the notes, or are you a you know, Excel spreadsheet guy, when you're trying to set up this business where you're actually finding leads, skip tracing them, how does one build a business around that?

Yeah, dude. So you definitely have to have a CRM. If you don't have a CRM, you're really not running a business. You're really just running a hobby. So I have a CRM that I use. I use HubSpot personally. It's cheap. You can get the basic package for like $20 a month. Keep track of all your leads, where they are in the sales cycle. Are they in the initial call, sales call, negotiation call, onboarding call? What does that look like? If Billy Joel says, Christian, call me back on Tuesday, like, you need to have somewhere to like actually track that. So every morning whenever you log into your CRM, hey, these are the calls I need to make, these are the follow-up calls, these are negotiation calls, whatever that looks like. Because in reality, a lot of people, like, usually people have like one or two short-term rentals, they want like a little bit of additional income to leave their day job, so they're thinking about this co-hosting thing and they just like, they're on Facebook groups waiting for somebody to say, hey, look, I'm looking for a co-host, and then 20 other people are replying to that comment, right? Like, how can we get creative and actually get over— get it in front of other, uh, potential owners?

It's fantastic, dude.

I—

the way that you put systems around things is everything. Now, I— my personal strategy, I just meet with owners and brokers. It's the only business I have that doesn't have a CRM, is my real estate acquisitions. And the only reason that is because I'm only relationship-based. Yeah. So I will buy in a specific area, specific cities, and I will know all the players there. I don't need to track that because I know who the players are. If you're doing anything to scale and you're marketing for the— and you're in a, you're in a competitive market, you're talking about growing a property management company, you absolutely have to have a CRM. Yeah. Uh, it's like, it's, it's mandatory. If you're building any business that has significant pipeline and significant follow-up, you need a way to track that. How large is your team? Is it just you and a VA or do you have multiple team members?

Yeah, dude. So like in the beginning when I just first started out, like it kind of like just randomly happened. Somebody just randomly reached out to me and was just like, hey, look, can you manage my property for me? I was just like, yeah, sure. So like I was scheduling all the cleaners, I was doing all the outreach, I was doing all the revenue management. But then like as you begin to scale, you're just like, okay, like how do I take myself out of this? So after you get to about 10 properties, I would say what you want to do is you want to have somebody handling guest communication. And you can automate like a lot of that, like the initial check-in instructions, the checkout instructions, the inquiry questions, things like that. But like the very niche questions, where's the can opener? You need to have a VA doing that. So that's the first hire I would do. And then as you start ramping up quickly, you want to kind of use that same VA as your onboarding specialist because onboarding a property takes a lot of time, right? You got to photographer, you gotta like set up the listing on Airbnb, VRBO, all those different things. And then after you get that down, then I would transition over to potentially looking into like a revenue manager, because revenue management is like a huge aspect of short-term rentals because clients are not happy when they're not making money, right? So if you can't have the revenue down packed, you're pretty much going to be screwed. And if you can't spend the majority of your time in revenue management it's definitely going to impact them as well as your business. So I found a revenue manager that handles all my revenue management now at this, this point in time, so I don't have to do it myself.

Fantastic structure. Why short-term rentals? Is it just, is it just the margin that you were finding from that to Chicago? Is there something about short-term rentals that resonates with Austin specifically?

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's the cash flow. Cash flow was definitely the first part of it. And then when I got into it, I really liked like actually being a part of the guest experience. Like that's kind of just me personally. I like creating cool, dope experiences for people to like enjoy, right? Majority of Americans go on vacation like once or twice a year because they just can't afford more. So if I'm able to create these really cool experiences and these memories, that's the aspect that I really like of it. Like we really look back at like, like our life, right? The majority of the time when we had a really cool experience, it was like when we were traveling on vacation. Like, I'm sure it's like the same thing for you. And maybe you, your wife, your girlfriend, whatever it is, went to like Mexico. And then you guys look back on those experiences, not really like the day to day when like you're working, like what really like stands out to yourself. And that's kind of, that's kind of something that like kind of fell in my lap that I figured out I enjoyed, like after I started in short-term rentals.

Yeah, well, and that is the cool thing that for me was what really attracted me to the boutique hotel space. I got this hotel on the water on the Hood Canal in Washington, which is the— it's a little saltwater fjord, actually the only fjord on the West Coast, funny enough, for whatever that means. But it's this amazing thing on the foothills of the Olympic Mountains, 12-acre campus, 20 individual cabins. Every cabin has its own hot tub. We do wedding events, we do concerts. We actually have a huge concert series next week where we have musicians coming in all week.. And I was like, this would be amazing to be a part of. What I found, I don't have any fun with the stress of curating that experience and having the people part. I like doing stuff that's scalable and I get the most joy out of scale. And so for me, multifamily was like, okay, let's— I have a way that I can renovate units where I can make these really nice, nicer than all the units around me, and I can charge less. So I have like no vacancy. I improve communities and I can scale this again and again. And that part, dude, that gets me so excited. Then you get into guest experience. I'm like, dude, that's not my personality. That's not my personality at all. You said something that's really important. There are a million ways to make money in real estate. In fact, I think one of the first things you said was there's already a blueprint for real estate. There is not one right way to do real estate. There may be a right way for you if you are a hospitality guy. You lean all the way into hospitality and you make your money in hospitality. What you've done is you set up systems in hospitality, you started buying hospitality, you're looking at buying more hospitality and scaling hospitality, and you're acquiring clients in hospitality. That is what I call a good business. It makes sense. You're not doing anything weird. You're not trying to jump all over the map. You found something that you are good at, that you're passionate about, and that you know how to make money at. Exactly, exactly.

In business.

Yeah, man. What is more important? I'm curious, I'm curious. Is it making money or doing something you're passionate about? What is, what is more important? I've heard different takes on both of them. I, I know ideally both, but if you're starting a business, where do you start? Is it passion or is it profit?

That's the thing, man. Like, I feel like everybody really in the beginning, if they're working a W-2 job and they don't really have that much money in the beginning. I think it all goes down to the money. And then as you start making money and you reach like a certain threshold of, um, like, what's the word for it, um, happiness and the amount of income coming in. Yeah, like more money isn't going to make you more happy, right? So at that point, that's when you got to figure out, all right, what am I passionate about? Like, am I actually adding value? Am I making an impact? Like, do I actually enjoy what I'm doing? And then that's when the passion comes in. Because for me in the beginning, like, I didn't really care what I was doing. I just wanted to see, like, make money. But like, as I started making money, I'm just like, okay, this is great. But like, more money isn't going to make me happy. Like, what am I really going to enjoy? Like, what do I want out of this life at the end of the day?

What was that money threshold for you? How much money per month was enough for you? Like, I, I'm happy and I can start focusing on passion over profit.

I think it was about $15K a month.

Exact same number for me.

Exactly.

Exactly. Exactly. When I hit 15, I was like, I'm like, I live on under 10. I'm saving at 15. I was like, I'm saving like more than 50% of what I bring in is just going straight into savings. This is, this is fantastic. The fun thing is once you get systems, it's not that hard to scale beyond that 15, right? Like when you have excess, you get to keep investing your excess. Plus you already have the skills to build a business without money. I find that if you start with no money and you know how to build $15K, $30K is a million times easier than $15K.

Oh, 100%. 100%. The hardest part is just starting and figuring out what works and like being focused enough to just choose one thing. Because there's so many different like avenues out there that are pulling so many different people in different directions, like Airbnb, e-commerce, dropshipping, like all those different things. And people are getting pulled in all these different directions. If you just picked one, for 1 year to hit $15K. It could be shorter than that, could be 6 months, but people aren't disciplined enough to do that.

That's a horrible piece of advice that people tend to circulate too. It's like, oh dude, millionaires have an average of— I forget what it is, it's like 7 income streams. But there's this thing that it's like, oh yeah, millionaire. I think it's from the book Millionaire Next Door actually is where I think it really got popular. But it's like, oh yeah, millionaires all have multiple streams of income. They don't start with multiple streams of income. You start by being really good at one thing. And as you scale, you tend to get more pieces. Like for you, you started with multifamily and then you got into hospitality, you got into Airbnb, and then naturally you branch into, okay, I'm buying short-term rentals and I'm managing them. So now you have two companies, you have two revenue streams, but they're married to each other. I, I'm imagining you didn't go out and say, I just want additional income streams. It was probably a this is a necessary piece to run my business better, and I can also make money at doing it, right?

Yeah, man, everything's interlinked, right? So I started off with multifamily and real estate, uh, transitioned over to short-term rentals, which are still real estate, started the management company, which is in real estate, and then I started the coaching program, which is like still tied to real estate. Everything's tied to real estate. It's just like, it's just pivoting a small amount every time to bring in additional income.

Tell me a little bit about your coaching program.

How long have you been running that? Yeah, man. So I just honestly started it in December last year. Um, I think the biggest thing is, is just like, if you have like an investment property or you have a way to like, are you trying to find a way to make additional income? Um, I think co-hosting is like the best way to do it because I'll give you an example. Like when I first started off investing in real estate, I didn't really have that much money. Like I was making $70,000 a year and I was pretty much just saving everything. I was being like super frugal, not going out, not, not doing anything. Saved all this money, bought my first property, and then like, I was like, all right, great, I got this cash flow coming in. But like, what's that cash flow really going to do for me? At the end of the day, it's not going to let me leave my job right away. If I was to do it again, I would have started my own business first. And then as I had cash flow coming in from that business, then bought real estate. Because it would have allowed me to leave my job sooner. And then in that aspect, I could have focused on real estate full-time and had more time to do it. So the coaching program is pretty much just around helping people start and scale a management company around short-term rentals.

Okay.

I mean, I'm going to, I'm going to touch back to that.

One more question on the mentorship group. What makes you unique? There are a ton of short-term rental coaches. There was, there was a time a few years ago where that was like the business to start. You did Airbnb, you got good at it, you told everyone else how to do Airbnb. There's a lot of them out there. There are a few that are spectacular and there's a lot that are garbage. Yeah. When you're putting together this course, what is unique about you and what value do you offer where someone's like, hey, Austin is the guy that I need to learn from?

Yeah, I think it goes back. So like I probably spent over $50 grand in mentorship myself. And there was one that I paid like $12.5K for. And they were just like, all right, you're gonna get all these results, blah, blah, so on and so forth. This is great. And then when I got in there, I didn't get the results that they were promising. And like, it was literally impossible to get ahold of them. Like they had like one weekly call, whatever, like a week. And then that was pretty much it. So when I started my program, I pretty much took whatever everything I learned from those bad experiences and the good experience and just created that. So what I do is like people that are in my program actually get access to me. So if they want to book one-on-one time on my calendar, they have the ability to, if they want to send me a text on WhatsApp, they have the ability to. So whatever they're actually challenged with or issues that they're facing, they're actually able to have access to me. Like I never wanted to grow like a huge coaching program where like that's the majority of my income coming in. It kind of just started off as like, Hey, look, you're doing this. You have a unique strategy for acquiring management clients. Can you help me? Same thing with the management side of things. So I think it's that. And then like my unique outreach strategy that I do, which like the majority of coaches out there with like Airbnb, because there's hundreds, right? They mainly focus on the operation side. All right, great. You got the operation side down. You have the knowledge, but do you really have a business if you don't have any clients? So like my whole focus is like, all right, how do we actually get clients in your door so you can start generating revenue and get a return on your investment?

And you said the most important thing. You're offering a course where you're the coach and they have access to you. That is the problem that I have with the majority of courses is that people do not teach their own stuff. That's when I started Multifamily Strategy course and mentorship group. That was the reason I started it because I'm like, we're not going to outsource people ever. Meet multiple times a week. You have access to the coach and then yeah, you have something unique that you bring to the table where it's like, hey, I know what I'm doing. I'm a master over my space. Dude, absolutely love it. Okay. Going back to building a business versus portfolio, you'd mentioned you'd build the business first. When is the right time to leave your job? Like when is someone making enough money where it's time for them to leave?

Yeah. So let's just say for instance, like myself, right? So I was making $70,000 a year. So I was probably making, let me just do the quick math. I think it was like $5,200 a month. Yeah, so I was making $5,800 a month, right? So in reality, I would leave my job if I was making $7,000 like a month in my, uh, my job or in my, um, in my business. And then I would have at least like 6 months to a year of reserves. I think that's key. Like people don't have reserves. Like if you can replace your income and then you have reserves to like test this thing out for 6 months or a year. Then you're good to go. You have nothing to lose at that point in time. Um, because after 6 months or a year of doing it, just go back and get a job, right? At the end of the day, jobs are always going to be there, but like your time isn't.

Yeah. Uh, where were you when you left your job? Like how far along your journey were you when you actually went like, okay, I'm just gonna go full bore into this?

Yeah. So 20, so 2021, end of November time. I was working in wealth management and they wanted us to go back to Chicago and— no, sorry. So they wanted us to go back to Chicago in June time. I said no. They were just like, all right, well, you can go to Naples, work in Naples and be in the office over there. So I'm just like, all right, that's not that bad. I'm still in Florida. So I go to Naples, move over there. I'm there for like 4 months. Absolutely hate what I'm doing. And then it was like November time, end of November time, and I like asked my boss for time off for like the holidays to like a family in Detroit. So I was going to go back up there and spend time. And we didn't have like enough, enough like employees in the office. So she pretty much just told me no. And I kind of went home like that night and I just kind of just sat down and like looked at like how much income was coming in for my short-term rentals because it was only the properties I own, like the ones in like South Florida, Tampa, and Chicago. And I was making somewhere around like the amount that I was making per my job. And I was about to have one go live. So I was like, oh, like I'm good. Like I'm just like, I'm just going to go in and put in my 2 weeks or whatever. So I put in my 2 weeks and I just, I just left at that point. And I just never looked back.

And that was a unique time in history where a lot of people did leave and a lot of entrepreneurs did start their business. That is when I started around 2020. For me, it was when they shut down. I'm an outside sales rep working for CoStar. They shut down my job and they're like, hey, you're probably not coming back for a year. And also anyone who cancels— I had a bunch of like gym clients too, a lot of retail clients. They're like, oh yeah, anyone who cancels comes off your commission. So I'm like, okay, so I'm selling really well, but you have businesses that are going under and every business that goes under or is struggling during the whole debacle of 2019 through 2021. Something was happening there that I'll get restricted if I mention it on my podcast. Thank you, YouTube. But during that time, it's like, okay, well, I'm not making anywhere near the money I usually make, and I'm an outside sales rep forced to work from my house. My wife is a kindergarten teacher at the same time, so she's teaching kindergarten over Zoom. I'm trying to sell like they basically had to go to a phone sales job. For me, the jumping off point was like, I'm just not putting up with this job. Like the job is not what I want to do. And that was enough pain where I did not have the cash flow that I needed, that one should have, or the reserves that one should have to leave their job. I just went, you just were going for it. I think if you have the patience, because sometimes you do just hit your threshold and that can be okay too. If you have the patience, I think you're rules are perfect. You have enough cash flow to more than replace the income you're used to living off of, and you have reserves because you will have unexpected expenses in any business that you do. I guarantee it. Yeah, that is really safe. 6 months to a year and anywhere more than the money you're used to making.

Yeah, dude. I mean, there was a time where, where I just left my job and I had a drowning at one of my Airbnbs and Airbnb shut me down in high season. For 8 weeks. And like, then I had a flood of that same property, so I had to rip up all the LVP, and then I had a plumbing issue. And like, these things happen, and obviously I didn't know that was going to happen or whatever. And like, that like definitely sunk like a lot of my savings I had put aside. But like, I kept going. Um, but there are gonna— there's going to be stuff that pops up 100% that you did not see.

Question I've never asked on the pod: How do you handle stress as an entrepreneur? You have stuff happen like that. Like, you don't have a huge portfolio yet, but you have a flood and a drowning and plumbing. Basically everything that can happen with water happens. Like, you just have a ton of water happen to your property. How do you handle the stress of that?

Yeah, I think I'll talk about what I do now, but like back in the day, I just got so used to getting punched in the face that I was just like, All right, what's next? What's gonna happen? I'm just like, all right, well, fuck it. Like, I'm still, I'm still breathing, still alive. Like, let's keep moving. But now what I do is I do a few different things. Every morning whenever I wake up, I write down 7 daily affirmations. I'll walk outside, get some fresh air, put my face in the sun. And then when I'm really stressed throughout the day, I have a cold plunge here as well. And I'll jump in the cold plunge for like 2 to 3 minutes as well. And that, that'll reset me if I'm really having a stressful day. But I think the biggest thing is, is like writing down your affirmations every single morning. Like, who are you becoming? What are you working towards? Like, what does that look like? Really envisioning that because you're going to be dealing with so much shit. Like, remember that time I had a drowning and then flooding and then it's hard to keep in mind like why you're building this business, what you're working towards. And the other thing that I do is I just pray. I pray every night and then like I pray for like what I'm working towards and ask for guidance and that just helps.

Dude, that is, that, that is huge. And I, I have found all of those things are super valuable. The cold plunge, I also sauna. Good. Hot and cold therapy work wonders. I don't think anything, period, I don't think anything beats prayer. If you're someone who, who has not yet figured that out. One of my first things for stress, if you haven't found God yet, find God immediately. If you're still seeking him, learn how to pray. I think it's more powerful than meditation, which I also am a huge fan of. Meditation is internal, prayer is external. Both of them are going to help center you and it takes you out of the situation that you're in mentally, regardless of the spiritual aspect. Well, but we'll keep this on business. On a personal level, if you spend time in your head focusing internally, and then focusing externally on your situation, the little things that you are worried about are just that— they become little things. And I think that massively, massively helps. Dude, I love everything you're doing. I have not done the affirmations thing. I've heard amazing things about it. But I mean, the rest of your regimen, exactly what I do.

Fantastic.

It will work like Say what you want about the cold plunge people. I know we get a lot of hate online. It is a fantastic thing to do, and it is not nearly as hard as everyone says it is. People love to be on social media, be like, oh my God, it was the worst thing ever. I'm like, it's not very hard. You sit in cold water for a few minutes and then you feel amazing for like 2 hours after.

It's a fantastic trade. Yeah, it's like the routine that we follow is just— it's not rocket science. It's not crazy stuff, but like The biggest thing I want to bring up right now to the audience is for a business to be successful, you just have to keep doing it until it becomes successful. And what that routine does, it makes you mentally strong to be able to keep going. Right. So that's it.

Now, there's two questions I ask on every pod, and usually I do a good job of reminding our guests I'm going to ask these. I did not tell Austin what the questions are. So we have two questions where this is, this is firing from the hip. Austin. The thing that you're best in the world at, the thing that makes Austin uniquely talented in business and how that has affected your business.

What is your superpower, man? 100%, man. So it's just, I think it's the relationships and asking the right questions because no matter, no matter where you are, if it's business or relationship with your significant other, you need to understand what the other person like wants and what they're looking to get out of that current situation. If you can just understand that, like, you'll excel in any business that you're, you're good at. So just being able to understand somebody, I feel like I'm really good at that. And figuring out like, okay, if they're talking to me, what are they really trying to tell me? And then what they're really trying to tell me, how do I ask them a question to dig deeper? And that's it.

Is that something you're naturally good at? Like, is that something that you're born with, or is that something that you honed during your wealth management career?

No idea. I used to suck at it. I guess I was like a really selfish person and just didn't really care what other people were saying. For the longest time, I'm just like, all right, shit, like, where am I like lacking right now? Like, how can I— why did I just lose this deal? Like, why is this girl mad at me? Why does she just want to break up with me? And then it really just came down to myself. And I kind of just sat down one day. I was just like, all right, how can I fix this? All right, I need to care more about what this person is actually saying. And you just practice that like time and time again. And I'm still not perfect at it, but I get better every single day. And I think that's the key. It's the key with everything in life.

There's a lot of entrepreneurs that never hit that level. They never hit the level of what do I need to change about me to have more success in life, in business, that internal reflection. Seriously, like if there's anything from this episode, people are like note takers, write that down. That is what you need to do. A self-aware entrepreneur will go immensely farther than someone who has generally good business skills or a good business idea. Your ability to be selfless and listen to others, dude, that is a superpower. I see why you're doing as good as you are in the hospitality space. You have to have that.

100%.

100%. Now the opposite question, the biggest stupid tax that you paid along the journey. Everyone, when we start. There's something we don't know we don't know, and we have to pay for it. In business, it is sometimes ludicrously expensive. This could come as a monetary cost. It could be a personal cost. It could be emotional loss of a friendship, partnership gone bad. It could be, hey, I lost a million dollars on this deal because I didn't ask for the right questions when I got started. When you were learning how to play the Airbnb game, or even the long-term rental, when you were switching from your career into real estate What is the highest stupid tax that you had to pay to learn how to be where you're at today?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is, is like I kind of mentioned it a little bit earlier in this podcast, is choosing too much stuff to do at the same time. Like you're trying to figure out like what you're good at in the very beginning. I understand that. But the thing that I see so many people do is they're just like, okay, I want to try this. And then they'll jump on a phone call with me. Hey, I want to get into like Airbnb management. Okay, great. Like, why do you want to get into Airbnb management? Like, how long have you been looking to get into Airbnb management? Like, maybe a month. All right, what were you thinking about doing before that? I was thinking about doing dropshipping. How long ago? 6 months ago. All right, and then what were you doing before that? I was looking to get into this other thing. All right, dope. So you've been looking for a whole year to get into this side business. If you would have just picked that first one that you chose in the very beginning, how far along do you think you would be? Like, how much money do you think you would be like making right now if you would have just started? Uh, I don't know, $10,000. Oh shit. Well, why don't you just start today? Stop trying so many different things and just jump in. That's it. Like every time I get on a conversation with somebody, hey, you want to do this? Okay, great. Like you don't have to sign up with me. I don't really care, but like you just need to start. Just start right now and start that thing for at least 6 months. Go 6 months, just try this one thing, do as much research as you possibly can on YouTube, podcasts, books, whatever that is. But just hang up this phone and just start right now. Because if not, you're going to be calling me 6 months from now and you're going to be in the same exact situation. So same thing for me in the beginning, in the first 3 months of my business, uh, when I first got into real estate, I was looking at multiple different businesses. I should have started. I should have just picked one thing instead of waiting that this 3 months, 6 months, whatever that time frame was. Before I jumped in. Like, imagine if you imagine where you're going to be in 6 months from now.

And so many people get hung up on like, I want to just be successful immediately. You're not going to be successful unless you find the thing and you stick with it for a little while. Like, pick something that you know works. That's why I'm a fan of real estate. Turns out it's been around for a while and a lot of people have made money at it. It's like, okay, we know this works. Is there anything that people are doing in real estate that I'm incapable of doing?

No.

So if people could be successful in this, and I know that I can be successful, pick a lane and stick with it and get better and better and better at it. I mean, it's fantastic advice. Worst mistake I made was venturing into hospitality when I'm excellent at entry-level value-add multifamily. Mm-hmm. Getting out of your lane or diversifying early is not the play. And you, you were lucky enough to learn that super early. Um, and I'm assuming you spent less than $4.5 million, which is, uh, what I spent to get into hospitality before I learned that I hate it. So congratulations on keeping your stupid tax sub $4.5 million. But learn from guys like us who do— like, you make these little mistakes and you're like, oh, I could have been way farther in business. It is a common theme. Do not diversify early. We hear that all the time on the pod. You've learned it. I've learned it. Millions have learned it before us. If you are the person trying to figure out, do I want to do hospitality, multifamily? Do I want to do dropshipping? Am I going to be a crypto trader? Which, by the way, don't do that. But if you're figuring out what you want to do, pick a strategy and freaking stick with it until you're successful. Because if you're not successful at it, you're not going to magically do something else and just become successful at that. Yeah, it's usually not the business. If you have a proven business, the business is usually not the problem with why you're not successful. There's something you haven't learned or a skill that you don't have. Stick with the thing. Yeah. Austin, if someone wanted to learn from you, you have your course, you have your mentorship, or mentorship program. I don't actually know if it's a course, but you have your program. How does someone reach out to you if they want to learn from you or they just want to follow along the journey?

Where would someone look for you online? Yeah, man. So I'm, I'm on Instagram, Austin underscore underscore Palacios. I have my own podcast, which we're going to have Christian on here shortly as well. Uh, Spotify, Apple. Um, I'm also on YouTube now, so I'm trying to push more like free content for you guys. So if you do want to learn about Airbnb management, I'll be posting some videos there, long form as well. So just send me a message on Instagram too if you guys have any questions, and it'll be me getting back to you.

Dude, he's running it right. He's running the business right. You're actually— people can actually get a hold of you.

That's—

that is the most important part of coaching. You're actually there. So I, I love it. I love your business model, your lessons that you've learned along the journey and the company you've created. Everything in this makes sense. You have built a business, you've refined what you're good at, you are building in your lane and you're scaling in your lane. Wishing you the best of luck with hospitality, especially as you go into boutique hotels. The margins on some of these are incredible. If you do this right, you will make a ton of money doing that. People want to learn how to do this, you guys look up Austin Palacios. He is, uh, again, Instagram, YouTube. Is YouTube, uh, your name or what is the name of YouTube channel?

Yeah, it's just Austin Palacios. Yeah.

You'll be able to find me. There we go. Uh, look up the name Palacios, not all that common of a last name. So you should find the correct Austin Palacios. And everyone, thank you for watching the podcast. If you do me a favor, share this with a friend. If you made it all the way through, I'm hoping this episode was good enough to merit that. So share this with a friend, like the podcast, subscribe to the podcast, help us grow and get this message out to more people. Austin, I look forward to seeing you on your pod and everyone else, we will see you on the next episode.