How to Master Acquisition, Management, & Marketing of Lifestyle Assets

Hey, it's Mark Podolski at the Land Geek with a very niche real estate website, the landgeek.com and if you are interested in learning about the vacation rental business, I have the person here that has the number one short term rental education company and mastermind group in the world. If you're not familiar with them, it's Sean Moore from Vodicea.com Sean is an active investor who purchased his first vacation rental in 2006 and has not looked back since. The Vodicea collective portfolio is currently over a thousand properties across the United States and includes several international markets as well. He and his team analyze more than 100 properties in various markets across the US and around the world each and every month while advising Vodicey Empire Club Mastermind members on each phase of short term rental success. Vodice's goal is to create lifestyle and financial freedom by assisting new and experienced vacation home investors to master the acquisition, management and marketing of lifestyle, invested and lifestyle assets. Sean Moore, welcome Mark.

I appreciate you having me, brother. Thanks so much for letting me join your, your podcast and talk a little bit about investing. Right?

Yeah, absolutely. So we have a lot to talk about. But before we get into the nuts and bolts of acquiring, managing, marketing these lifestyle assets of vacation rentals, how the heck did you get into this business in the first place?

Yeah, it was, it was absolutely by accident. I wish I was smart enough to get in and say it was all by design, but like many people, it was just kind of stumbled into it. I've been full time real estate investing for almost 24 years now. Back in 2000, I, I had a job right out of college for about six months. Met a real estate investor that was fixing and flipping homes and I said, hey, you know, he's flying around on helicopters and I'm making $31,000 a year at my job. I thought that would be pretty fun to do that and so started going to his workshops and six months later I quit my job and the rest is kind of history. And I've been bouncing around different asset classes from that amount of time right out of the gate because he was my mentor. I started doing fix and flips. I did one wholesale deal and got my, you know, got made $19,000 on a wholesale deal that I did. And that was my kind of my ticket to say, holy crap, I did this in a weekend and I'm making $30,000 a year, two thirds of this income in a weekend. I'm going to start doing this. But I should have probably stayed with wholesaling for a little longer because I was able to, you know, there wasn't a lot of capital involved, but I dove right into the fix and flip side of life just because that was the person I was paying attention to and watching and mentoring, you know, or taking his advice. And so I did that for about six years, started really getting into build jobs, development deals, started buying long term rentals, multifamily deals, and kind of bounced around different asset classes, paying the bills for a long time, and bought a vacation home back in 2006. And I didn't buy it as a short term rental. This was before it was really popular, was before Airbnb was even invent. Like they, they, they came onto the scene in 2007, so they weren't even around yet. VRBO was around, but it was called vacation rental by owner, but nobody really knew what it was. And back in that amount, in that time, in 2008, there was a big development deal we were working on and the, we were, we were partners on the marketing side of it. We were minority partners in that deal. And the majority partners got indicted on securities fraud. And so all of a sudden one day at the office of nine people, the feds came in and they locked up all the, the file cabinets and computers and businesses shut down. And this was, this was the only development we were working on at the time. My wife and I, and kind of were like, holy crap, what's going on? Sat around on our hands for about six months and pointed fingers and said, this wasn't our fault, this was their fault. Like, why are we in trouble? And blah, blah. And you know, when you do that for a long enough time, you know, the, the, the bank account starts to drain, paying mortgages and car payments and living expenses and everything else. And all of a sudden we turned around and thought, holy crap. Because we played the victim for six months, we ended up losing everything. And one thing that I didn't lose, because I started kind of panicking. I used local Craigslist or local classifieds and Craigslist ads and started renting our vacation home on the weekends. And, and this was during the real estate slide as well. And a lot of things were going, you know, every, you know, tomorrow your property is worth less than it was today. Every single day we felt like that was the case for about a two year run. And so this property, while it was actually going down in value, I was actually making pretty good positive income from it. And so I was like, I can't afford to sell it. But I, you know, started renting it out and started making money. It was the only thing that I was making money on at the time because the development deals were, were done and you know, fast forward a few years and I started, you know, getting back on our feet, started investing again and started, you know, getting, getting some money coming in and started really saying holy crap. You know, if I really look back, that that vacation home that we owned in the mountain town in Utah was doing pretty well for us and still continues to do pretty well and make pretty good money. And it started opening my eyes that this is an asset that might be worth paying attention to. And you know, that was back in 2006. We bought it. Really 2008, 9 opened my eyes to the possibility in 11 and 12. I started thinking there might be something to this by, by 2015. It's the only asset class we've invested in since. And so, you know, I'm a, I'm a real estate guy. You know, you, you and I were talking about land. I love real estate in general. I think it's by far and away the best, you know, the, the best way for average Americans to, you know, grow their wealth and park their money and, and really create that lifestyle financial freedom that we're all after. So you're not going to hear me talk about any asset as being bad. I think they all have pros and cons, you know, especially being experiencing a number of them. But for us, those lifestyle assets, I call them, or short term rentals really were checking a lot of boxes and then you know, fast forward to Covid and fast forward to really them exploding onto the scene of hospitality and everything else. You know, one thing led to another. I wrote a book in 2017 and kind of the rest is history. We started helping people build lifestyle and financial freedom through it.

Yeah, it's an incredible story and so kind of walk us through because you've done just about everything in real estate. Walk us through step by step. What is it you love so much about the vacation rental business juxtaposed by these, you know, say multifamily or fix and flips or the Burr method, whatever it is. Why vacation rentals?

So for me, there's a few things and there's a few things that are different, right? One, they've all got the ability to cash flow. They've all got the ability to build wealth long term with appreciation and all those different things. But one, one thing that I loved about vacation homes particularly is they're easy to get into. There's a lot of really good lending options because they're single family homes. So if you're going to go buy an asset and you've never invested in real estate before, there's a lot of options if you're going to go buy single family real estate. And so a lot of investors start with single family real estate, long term rentals, just buying homes because the ease of entry into the finance markets and is, is that that veil of entry is thinner than other asset classes. If I was going to go buy commercial space or a big office building or a multifamily deal, I'm probably having to partner with somebody that has some experience in that. So one I was attracted to it one because there's a lot of options, really good terms, really good financing options, low down, low interest rates because they're single family homes and. Right.

You say low down. How, how low?

So you know, you and I as investors we always know that there's always creative deals out there too. Right. But if you, if you're really looking at financing it's very realistic to get 10% down financing on second homes. And so you know, as an investment product that's a pretty, that's good right? That's a, that's a pretty low down when you're talking about going out and getting actual financing. Now if we go the creative route, I just locked up a property this week that is actually a land deal. You'd be proud of me. This is actually a land so proud we're going to build a barndominium on it and so it's going to, we're going to put something on it. But it was, we locked it up with seller financing with almost no down I I, it's probably less than 1% down. We gave them a little bit of money just to, just to have an exchange of fees and stuff but it was less than 1% down. They're going to finance it at 5% amortized over 30 years with a 5 year balloon allows us time to build on that property and pull it out and refinance. And so you know there are those deals as well. But if you're talking about like, like just the average, like we work with a lot of higher income earners, W2 earners. It's not necessarily a side hustle for them or them place their income. This is their hey listen, I'm making some really good active income. What's an asset I can put my money into. And the other thing that I really liked about it and this is what I Was interested in the very beginning because I was in my early 30s, still pretty cocky, thinking that I had arrived and, you know, and I was kind of in that show off mode. My ego was still getting involved in a lot of stuff. And it's pretty fun to tell your friends or your family or whoever you're trying to brag to that I've got a property in the mountains, I've got a property at the beach, I've got my desert home, I've got, you know, I've got all these different homes that we can use and really kind of show off. Right? And Right. What I also realized really quickly after we started being, you know, getting a little older and a little wiser, really looking at the logic behind it is it allowed us to invest in more higher quality areas, quality assets, quality areas, quality properties. Well, across the board in real estate, you know, we have average appreciation. When you look at single family homes in real estate, the average appreciation over a 40 year period is about 5% a year. Right. But that's not the same in every market. And you and I know that really well. And when I was early on in my career, I didn't really realize that until we started looking at the numbers. There's some markets that appreciate at negative appreciation. Some are break even, some appreciate at 5% and some are at 8 or 10 or 12% appreciation. And that difference when you're buying quality assets in quality areas, that is a huge difference on the wealth building lever. Right. If I invest 5, if I buy a $500,000 property and I'm putting 20% down, let's say I put $100,000 down, let's do this because the math's easier in my head, right? And so, So I put 20% down on a property, $100,000 down payment on a $500,000 property, if it goes up 5%, that entire property went up 5%. Right. So that $500,000 property gained $25,000 in equity that first year. And so I got a 25% return on my $100,000. Right. That's the right. That's the power of leverage. It's why we love real est, is that by buying quality assets and quality areas, they actually appreciated a higher than average margin. And so let's say I'm going to average 8% instead of the 5%. Well, that 8% on my 100 or on that $500,000 property, that property went up to 40 grand, went up by $40,000. So I got a 40% return instead of a 25% return. When you compound that over 3, 5, 10 years, that is a huge difference in the amount of wealth you're actually building. And so short term rentals allow us to go buy and cash flow higher quality assets in higher quality areas. And so that's the other big lever. So between the personal usage, between the ability to go get financing and be able to buy these properties or get creative financing on them, you know, it's a lot, in my opinion, it's really easy because there's a lot of people who own and understand single family real estate for us to go negotiate deals. If we need to put bank financing on it, we've got options. But also that personal use is huge. And then the third thing or the, the fourth thing is the tax advantages. You know, we love, we love the tax advantages in real estate. You hear investors always say depreciation is the eighth wonder of the world. It's a huge wealth building lever. But most real estate investors, if they aren't actively full time real estate professionals, they don't get the full benefits of being able to write off all of those losses and depreciation against their active income. Right. And so there's different income buckets when it comes to the irs. And the IRS says okay, you've got your active income bucket and you've got your passive income bucket. Well, as an investor we can write off all those expenses and all that depreciation of our real estate portfolio against our passive income bucket. Where it comes in really, really handy is if you're actively making a lot of money, let's say I'm a high income earner and I'm a W2 income earner. Well, there's a short term rental loophole. And if you have a property that has an average lease length of less than seven days, it allows us to materially participate. We don't have to be a real estate professional. And we can take that, those write offs and that, that depreciation and write it off against our active income. And when you talk about bonus depreciation, it is a huge, huge wealth building lever. And because the loophole is a lease length of less than seven days, only short term rentals qualify for it. And so it's another big advantage for, for investors that I really like about it. So those are, those are kind of the main reasons why I like them for me and for our wealth building journey. And you know, and people always say, well, I'm in the, I'm in the investor, I don't plan on using the property very often. But it's pretty fun to have a portfolio of properties that anytime you want to go vacation, you're vacationing for free, right? And, and, and being able to send your friends and family and to be able to use it. I mean, I've owned duplexes and multif family properties and long term rentals and I never told my wife, hey, Theresa, grab the, grab the duffel bag. We're going to the duplex for the weekend. But we do that all the time with our properties right now, which is a big lifestyle upgrade.

Amazing. Amazing. Okay, I'm sold.

Sold. Well, let's go do it.

I'm sold. Because you know, you've got, that, you've got the depreciation, you've got the leverage. I love the lifestyle factor of it. But if I'm listening to this, the, the, the fear base part of me, that amygdala part of my brain is saying, well, you know, it's easy for Sean Moore to find these incredible assets, right? Like sure, he can go into Vail or Aspen or you know, get beachfront property in San Diego, right? But I'm coming in. I don't have this, I don't have his network, I don't have his experience. I don't have maybe the financing arms and relationships that Sean has. How am I going to lock up my first deal? And number one, how do I know this is even a good market? Number two, are there good deals to be had? So for example, in the land investing business, I'm making my money on the buy. I'm assuming it's the same thing in, in the vacation rentals. And so how do you, how do you flip the, the mental fear based switch in the listener's mind? Who's, who's like, okay, this sounds amazing, but for me to actually go out and do this, it's, it can't be that easy.

Right? Right. And it, and one, you know, that fear based skepticism, everything else, it's a double edged sword. One on one side of that sword, it keeps you from rushing in and making a huge mistake. Because we're talking about buying expensive assets, you know, potentially pulling out loans and having a lot of liability. And if you don't understand what you're doing, you absolutely should hit the brakes, pause, say, hey, I got to figure out the game I'm going to play. And it isn't always that easy. It's not hard in that it's not complicated. It's just that most people don't understand how to play the game and that has that, that goes along. Any game you're going to play, whether you're going to get into land business, whether you're going to get into short term rentals, whether you're getting a multifamily commercial, any game you decide to play, it's most of it is pretty simple. But simple is not always easy, right? And so execution is different than understanding the concepts. There's three things we have to dial in with short term rent channels. And it's similar to other asset classes where they have three or four things that you have to dial in with ours. You have to buy the right property in the right location, right? We have to understand how to run the numbers. We have to understand is a market investable, we have to understand regulations, we have to understand how to underwrite a deal, what is the revenue potential versus the acquisition cost, all those different things, right? Right property, right location that has the potential to make money. If you don't understand that, you got to be able to dive into that simple concept. Not always easy to execute. The second thing is, hey, I've got to, I've got to be able to create and develop a unique experience for a target audience and be able to deliver that experience in the, in the short term rental game. We're not selling properties, we're not just buying properties and you know, furnishing them like a model home and say, okay, now I've got a property, come visit me. We are selling experiences and so we've got to be able to understand who is this experience for? How am I going to articulate it? It's that customer journey that we have to really dial in and be able to create this experience and then deliver it. Right? So create a unique experience, target audience, and deliver it at a high level every time. That's the second concept, right? Pretty simple, not always easy to execute. How are we going to do the research on who's coming to this area? Why are they coming, all these different things. And then the third thing is marketing. These are very crowded marketplaces at these stages. You know, the markets are very saturated. You're competing with a lot of people and if you're not, tomorrow you will be. So you better understand how to market in the first place because you may get ahead of the crowd in certain markets, but you have to be able to market effectively, to stand out in very crowded marketplaces. And that's being able to articulate this great house that you have, this great experience that you've put together and be able to articulate that cost versus value that every consumer is wrestling with when they go to book a property, right? They're saying, okay, I'm, you know, Sean's property looks really nice. Mark's property looks really nice. What differentiates us, right? How are we, however we're articulating that is going to be the deciding factor and understand how to market. And so those things are concepts that, you know, I always say that there's always a plan and somebody that's got, that's a few steps ahead of you and a blueprint to follow. And, you know, I promise you, when I was, when I was doing this, There was, in 2006, when we started figuring this out, there wasn't a lot of people that we could look up to in this asset class. When I started my fix and flips business, it was really easy for me to make a decision to say, I'm going to quit my job and do this, because I had a guy that I could follow, right? I had Peter Conti, who was in Denver, right in my backyard. I could pay attention to him. I could follow his plan. And it really accelerated at our progress and our success rate. That is the same with short term rentals, with land deals, with anything else. Because paying the ignorance tax is really, really expensive, right? We're trying to, trying to run down that road and figure it out, make iterations, figure it out again. It's, it costs a lot of time and it costs a lot of money. And so, you know, I would, I would say that that skepticism is going to hopefully save you from just jumping in because there's also the people that are like, hey, listen, I'm sold. I'm doing this. I'm going to go buy a property, I'm going to throw it on Airbnb and it's going to work. That's not either. You know, you, you hear about the headlines of the Airbnb bust and, you know, the short g, you know, short term rental golden age is over. It's, we're past it. Those are all absolutely true statements. Those things are true. That wave that we rode right after Covid was never going to last. But people thought, okay, now that now that that has passed us, this game is over. There's more money being spent in this game than ever before. The difference between the haves and the have nots, though, that gap is widening really, really fast. And like any mature asset class, like any mature Marketplace, the top 20% of the market makes all the money. And that's where we're at with short Term rentals. So I would absolutely say, you know, the, the, you know, skepticism is going to keep you from making those mistakes. But also what skepticism can do and those doubts can do is give you an excuse to not move forward as well. Because anything worth doing is not going to always be easy. You're going to have to roll up your sleeves. You're going to have to be self reliant. You're going to have to have personal responsibility and say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna run down this road and I'm going to run down it and there's going to be dragons around the corner. I wish we could promise you that there was never going to be a dragon around the corner. But what you want to do is find somebody that said, hey listen, last week I fought that same dragon and here's how you beat it. Right. And so, you know, I, I wish we always could just give somebody the easy button and say this is, press this button and everything's going to be okay. That's not the case either.

Yeah, no, you got, you got to choose your hard if you're going to be successful 100% in life. It's so good. So, so Sean, what's the worst advice you see or hear given in short term rental investing?

Yeah, the, the worst is that you're gonna, that you can just buy a good property and a good market and put it on the market. Right, right. Understand like that is, that's, that's the worst advice. It's also the biggest mistake people make is just not running the numbers right. You can, when you buy the wrong property in the wrong area, it's a very, very costly mistake. Like if you have a good property, a good market and you're not marketing it correctly, you didn't set up a un experience, you're not articulating all that. We can make those adjustments. If you, if you have a property that doesn't have the potential to make any money, you're going to be, you're going to, it's going to be very costly. You're going to have to sell it maybe at a loss. You're not going to be able to, it doesn't really matter what you do with it. Right. It doesn't matter how good our marketing is if it's not, doesn't have the potential to make money. So the advice that we see a lot of times is from Realtors, management partners and they want, they want you to join these, these markets. They say, hey, go buy a property in the Gulf coast, go Buy a property in the Smoky Mountains. If you buy a really nice property, you're going to make money. That is 100% not true either because you have to dial in those other two phases and all of them are equally important. And so the, you know, there's so many people that are still, I kind of say, wet behind the ears when it comes to this asset class that joined Post Covet right after Covid. And the, the fact of the matter is you could just buy almost any property. Having a short term rentals for a two year span was like having toilet paper during COVID It didn't matter whatever had made money, right? And so as long as you had a decent property in a decent market, you were going to make money. That advice still is trickling down where people think, well, I'll just figure everything else out along the way. And the problem with it is, is people don't understand the revenue potential anymore and they don't think they have to dial in those other two phases and they forget about it because they've already done. The hard thing in their mind is writing the check, getting a mortgage, buying the property, furnishing that property, throwing it on Airbnb and thinking that they're just going to ride this wave. The wave is gone. Right. If you. We will absolutely crush you in this market when you have to go compete against us. Right? And so. Right. That's like the market is very, very unforgiving. And so at this stage, you have to really understand those other three fate or those other two phases. The biggest mistake is that it's okay to just buy a really good property in a really good market, put it on Airbnb and you're going to be good and get your fair share of business. Your fair share of business is not going to pay the bills. You need your unfair share of business. Because if you don't get it, I'm going to get it right. Or, or somebody that's doing it correctly is going to get it.

I love it. I love it. Well, Sean Moore, your mentorship has been invaluable. But we're at that point now in the podcast where I'm going to ask you for one more gem of wisdom. Your tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something else actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. But before you do that, I got to give a shout out to our podcast sponsor, which is Flight School. Learn how the next 16 weeks can transform your life. Start going up that mountain of land Investing quickly, safely and efficiently with our team of land experts and start building that passive income outing renters, rehabs, renovations or roads. And I know what you're thinking, what about the tuition? It could cost you nothing guaranteed you're going to make it back 180 days or less. Just show us you did the work.

Learn more.

Go to land.com forward slash training the land geek.com forward slash training and schedule a call. Sean Moore, what is your tip of the week?

All right, tip tape, book reference. Since we were talking about choose your hard, one of my favorite books is Winning by Tim Grover. Love the book, love the concept of hey, listen, that is, it is hard to win. It is hard to be at the top. And that's okay. It's okay to embrace that hard. Choose your heart, go check out that book. And then, you know, something that I always say on our podcast, something that I always, you know, kind of my tip of, I would say this is my, my tip, you know, slogan, not just of the week, is to pick that one thing you can do to build that life every single day. That build that life you don't want to take a vacation from is what we say. And so the, the point is just you don't have to go move mountains every day, but make sure you're picking one thing, bite off something you can do every single day to move toward building that life you don't want to take a vacation from.

I love it. Sean, what did you do today?

Well, I'm talking with you, which I'm, I'm always, I'm, you know, able to get in front of another audience. Our number one goal, the thing that we're trying to do is ultimately help other people dive into this game. You know, we've been fortunate to be financially free for over a decade. And so our number one thing is to be able to have more conversations, get in front of other people. And so, you know, we've been, you know, I appreciate the invite because this helped me move that today. We also did a major, every Tuesday I go live on my coaching calls. And so we happen to be recording this on a Tuesday. I don't know when it'll drop, but this is Tuesday is my coaching day. So I had the opportunity to help other people inside of our mastermind group. And this is our day where we review properties, we look at sticking points, we move people past those sticking points. And so those are the things that I was able to do today, just kind of to work toward that, that life that we, you know, that We've been fortunate to be able to build and hopefully pass that on and kind of pass the baton. It's kind of fun seeing. We were just actually running an audit on our membership group and it was really fun to see. There's, we've got over 50 members now that have, have portfolios way bigger than mine. Some of them have doubled the size of mine as far as revenue and the amount of money they're making. And so it's really fun to see you not only, you know, help people, you know, get to where you're at, but also pass you up and just accelerate past you. It's been really fun.

No, it's amazing. We, we have the same mission and I think you're, you're agnostic in the same highway. I'm agnostic, which is, I don't care how you get there, how you solve your money problems and yourself and your.

Solve your time problems.

I'm, I think I love the way I do it. I love the way you do it. I love the way other people do it. It's, it's really irrelevant to me. I just think that you should do it because once your passive income exceeds your fixed expenses, you can live your best life. And our lives are so insultingly short that you've got to choose that path that resonates with you so that you can go and, and really, you know, travel and, and experience life while you've got your, your health and you've got the energy and then you've got resources and you've got time. It's just that that whole trifecta of passive income can really help you live your best life. And then of course, we can talk about the existential crisis of once all.

That'S solved now you gotta, right, you.

Gotta deal with your, you know, you.

Yeah, what are we gonna do? And I think you're exactly right. No, like, I think when you get to a point, it's, you know, neither one of us and a lot of people I talk to that are at our stage in life, they're not, not necessarily, hey, you have to do it this way. We just want to say, hey, pick a, pick a way and go do it right. I think that none of us are ever going to say it was easy. There's plenty of hard times. There's plenty of times you're rolling up your, your sleeves and wondering, is it ever going to be worth it? But I also believe people are so much closer to that life than, than they actually realize. And so, no, they're like the bamboo. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And Sean, I don't know anything, literally, I don't know anything that's worth doing that's easy. Like, the models can be simple, but none of it's easy.

Yep, exactly.

Yeah. I wish. I wish there was an easy button. There's just not one. There's just not. Well, Sean Moore, this is fantastic. I want to thank the listeners. Remind you, the only way I'm gonna get Sean Moore to come back is if you do three little favors. Follow rate Review the podcast. Send a screenshot of that review. Support thelangi.com I'm going to send you for free a signed copy of Dirt Rich, or Dirt Rich too. If you already have Dirt Rich. And if you don't want to read the books anyways, just do it. Because then Sean looks at the reviews like, oh, yeah, I'll go back on that podcast. He's very picky guy. So please do it selfishly for yourself and Sean. Are we good?

We're good. That was awesome, Mark. I appreciate the conversation.

Thank you. And let freedom ring. Thanks, everybody.

Cheers. My friends.

Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive Income podcast. Are you ready to learn how you can start building a passive income without renters, rehabs, renovations, or rodents? Schedule a free consultation@thelandgeek.com forward slash training. Let freedom ring.