How to Replace Your W2 Income with Just 6 Rental Properties

this is real estate rookie episode 309er okay so we have six short-term rentals and I'm managing a midterm rental uh midterm rental as well and what time frame did that happen in less than maybe nine months from when we met I've gone from like you know having two rentals to to the six that I'm I'm managing right now my name is Ashley care and I am here in LA live in person with my co-host Tony Robinson and welcome to the real estate rookie podcast where every week twice a week we bring you the inspiration motivation and stories you need to hear to Kickstart your investing journey and if this is your first time here and it happens to be episode 309 and you're wondering why Ashley said 309er um I didn't really understand it at first either but it's a quote from a movie called Tommy Boy starring David Spade and Tom Farley Chris Farley Chris Farley shows how much I know about it that's what it is but uh we're here in La we actually uh earlier today I recorded an episode at the Spotify podcast studios in downtown L.A uh so now we're here at this Airbnb and we actually interviewed uh Travis Hall uh amazing guy Travis actually a student student of mine and Alpha host and he just had this incredible backstory of how he got started and what he's been able to accomplish in a relatively short period of time and I thought it'd be so cool to share his his journey with the with the rookie audience yeah and Tony and I have the partnership book coming out real estate Partnerships and we actually got to talk to Travis about the Partnerships he has developed as a new investor so the first one he talks about starts out with uh buying a boat and how he's actually able to use creative financing and what he did and how he had to have an exit strategy and pivot so I think the most important part of that story is really how he developed that partnership and how it ended up playing out yeah so overall just a really interesting story lots of little tidbits throughout but if there's one thing I want you to take away from Travis's episode just listen to his commitment to taking action and you'll you'll hear that as a theme throughout the entire episode and I really try and point it out as we're having that conversation with him but just there's so many little moments where instead of waiting he just he took action in a paid major dividend so really really good conversation today now before we jump in I guess I should read a review from today uh so today's review comes from someone by the username of u251 uh they say fantastic advice I'm learning so much from you guys so quick easy straight to the point but for all of our rookies that are listening if you haven't yet uh please take a few minutes I promise it's just a few minutes believe it's an honest rating and review on whatever platform it is you're listening to Apple uh Spotify YouTube wherever leave a comment leave a review the more reviews we get the more folks we're able to reach the more folks we can reach the more folks we can help and uh help in an impact in lives is what we're all about here at the rookie podcast and for today's Instagram shout out we are actually going to give it to David Green at David green24 when we recorded with him in the Spotify Studios earlier today he did mention he did a revamp it's a new and improved uh Instagram with lots of great content so make sure you go and give David a follow if you haven't already and that episode that we recorded earlier today with David Green will be available on our next release episode 310. all right and also make sure to follow me and Ashley she's at wealth for rentals I'm Matt Sony J Robinson we post a lot of pretty cool stuff too um but last our book me and Ashley co-authored a book it's called real estate Partnerships and we're giving away some pretty cool bonuses for those who buy before the official launch date so if you head over to biggerpockets.com Partnerships and if you use code real estate you get a 10 discount on the book so again biggerpockets.com Partnerships and you'll actually hear a little bit about Travis and his use of Partnerships in this episode so pick up the book if you want the the full breakdown okay you guys we are going to bring Travis into the Airbnb and get him on the show Travis welcome to the show thank you so much for joining us today thank you I'm so pumped to be on the show with you guys thanks for inviting me yeah so tell everyone a little bit about yourself and how you got started in real estate okay yeah my name is Travis Hall uh I'm So Cal native we kind of got we found ourselves in real estate not not planning not you know doing a whole lot of deep thinking to get in there but basically we we always knew we wanted to buy a home and so we found a duplex in Long Beach and then um stumbled upon bigger bigger Pockets I think in August of 2021 and then we just started looking at other ways of being creative with that and one thing led to another and um haven't looked back since yeah when you say we who are you talking about my wife and I so yeah my wife and I are married we live in Long Beach yeah so Travis we met at one of my events back in September you know joining my coaching program and I've just had the pleasure of really getting to know you on on a deeper level than many of our guests here so I I know a lot about your backstory I'm excited to kind of pull it out of you um so just you know you're I guess before you even dive into it just give us a quick overview of what your portfolio looks like today gotcha okay so we have six short-term rentals and I'm managing a midterm uh midterm rental as well um that's what we have right now and we're we're still you know adding we signed closing docks yesterday for another property in Memphis but we have six Active short-term rentals in a midterm right now yeah and and what time frame did that happen when I met you I think that was October 22 right yeah um uh we had one we owned one duplex and then had one Arbitrage um a few months after that we got another property uh in Memphis that was our first out of state property first uh partnership as well and then just kept networking and then now I'm I'm managing oh so disclaimer some of those properties that I'm operating are I'm just as a manager so not not all that I own but yes and less than maybe nine months from when we met I've gone from like you know having two rentals to to the six that I'm I'm managing right now yeah congratulations thank you Matt super cool thank you let's talk about that management piece so what does that involve for you and how did you even connect with these people to manage their properties yeah I so I feel like uh I'm kind of like preaching with like Theory here because I don't have it figured out uh I was telling Tony a while ago I feel like I'm kind of a mess right now with management just with I'm learning by doing you know I didn't I didn't read a whole lot of books on how to manage I didn't uh Shadow anyone I just found property owners that had rentals and because they were in a pinch and I was local I seemed like a great option for them and so um one of these uh properties that I manage I just found on a Facebook a local Facebook group and she was saying hey I'll be out of the country for a few months and I was hoping to have someone that can kind of take over messaging for me and I was like one of two or three people that responded that was it and we had a great conversation she instantly referred me to her sister who also had a property to manage so I started managing her sisters first then a few weeks later when she left then I started managing her own can you just kind of give us an idea of how you guys set that up was this kind of like a handshake deal I'll pay you this much did you end up putting a contract and like how much money do you actually make off yeah so I had I learned a little bit like you know put it on paper so uh I had enough of experience we've all been there yeah yeah and so I just pulled a generic co-hosting agreement I found online and customized it made sure everything was good um it has a ton of holes in there it's not it's not airtight by any means no other uh managers that have like a 15-page contract I think ours is like four with like last page left intentionally blank something like that so it's pretty it's pretty thin um but we just agreed upon a management um right now I'm managing at 15 but I know that won't be sustainable going forward I'm doing way too much work for 15 also I feel like my value proposition was take me I'm cheap you know right I'll manage your property for achieving that and I realized that's not the that's not the real value I'm offering you know and if if that's the only attraction to that owner I probably don't want to work with them if that's their way of operating in doing business and so but it's an important thing to call out you know and we talked about this was that when you're and we just talked about this too on our on our other uh episode but sometimes when you're first starting out you do have to maybe give up some of that Revenue potential to establish a track record um I I think still even when you're starting out you still want to be somewhat selective about who you work with because you can put yourself in a position where you're working with someone that you just don't enjoy working with yeah yeah um but I do think that early on it's not uncommon to see people give a bit of a break price-wise Equity wise whatever it is to kind of get the get the gear certain definitely I mean that first conversation turned into two listings right away and so I definitely want to keep adding value and then figure out a way to restructure to where they're still really happy with me managing and I'm still very very happy at managing for them just at a higher rate or you know no longer opening Amazon boxes for them to sit on their counter because hey I'm out of town you live local tribes you can go drive down there and set that up for me right I don't want to do that anymore more but that's I'm kind of their their gopher what are besides your gas and your mileage what are some of the other expenses you have incurred are you paying for software or anything like that yeah and so I I pay for Price Labs I pay for my PMS so each time I add a property just goes my monthly fee just goes up a little bit um I have a virtual assistant that I'm you know continue to develop but but those costs are shared across all the properties and so each addition may be an additional probably 25 a month in software Max and then for the VA that that might be literally 20 a month because it's spread out over you know several properties so so somewhere around forty five dollars a month is my contribution as far as gas goes all these ones are here locally and so I may visit the property once or twice you grab one of those lime scooters on hot days like this I'll take the AC yeah and so I guess along with that question like if someone wanted to start an Airbnb co-hosting business or Property Management business today is it feasible to get started with zero Capital oh completely that's probably the easiest way to get started with with anything real estate would be getting that experience getting those reps and learning how to respond to guests learning how to talk to property owners that is your easiest way to step in the game uh if you've got a computer and Wi-Fi you can do it all you know um even even including your contract hey I'm going to use some very sophisticated software I'm going to charge you know X percent and and 45 a month to cover these things and I'll need that up front to get started and so you could even make it so you literally get started without any money out of pocket they're they're buying that subscription for you each month that's how I do it with the person that manages my short-term rentals she pays a percentage and then I cover all of the costs and she has a credit card to you know get supplies toilet paper and then I pay for all the software and so Tony you build back we build back so like every month we have just like a flat fee that we build back to the properties for like the tech fee yeah um and we just recessed that every quarter to see okay how many new properties do we have in here we update the number accordingly so ideally as the portfolio grows that Tech fee comes down um but that's that's how we're managing everything you tell the managers hey keep affirming more properties I can spread that Co-op right keep referring to me it will bring it down from 1999 to 18. somewhere in that ballpark right um so Travis I want to go back to when you when you first started because you're you're doing this full time now yeah um but you weren't always so like bring us back to Travis before he was the the full-time real estate investor back when I was a young young man Tony yeah so uh this time last year July 2022 I was just trying to hustle as a real estate agent um getting all of my all of my money from helping people buy and sell homes and really quickly I just got tired of that because it's uh the way I was doing it was not really fulfilling not really scalable and it was really like oh please Tony let me let me help you sell your homework please actually let me help you buy a home cool I helped you buy or sell it let's catch up in 10 years when the average time to buy or sell again is and then I'll get another paycheck right um at that same time we had just closed on the duplex and we're living in a few uh for maybe a month or so and we had a long-term tenant in there and we get you know a check every month the first of the month and you know that subsidized our mortgage quite a bit but then when they were supposed to move out in August they said hey Travis you know I know our lease is up in August but um my job's not ready for me in Florida until like October or September and at that point I had already put out ads on below you know three bedroom two bath three thousand a month I had people walk through through the the unit that I was living in we fixed it up so they were walking through my unit because they were moving there I was gonna move in the back fix up the back do all that and so I had some some really qualified tenants ready to go and then I find out like hey sorry you can't move in in August oh cool when can I move in I have no idea because my tenant hasn't moved out yet and um that gave us the time to really figure out what's the good rental strategy that we could do and then um a random friend said hey Travis I know you're a real estate agent you should check out Bigger Pockets I was like okay so I wasn't much of a podcast person but I just started devouring those messages uh while I was retiring the bathtub I was listening to Brandon Turner and David Green talking about you know what a burr is what a HELOC is and so I'm just chipping away and listening and and eventually came across a podcast that was about short-term rentals uh I listened to to Rob talk and I listened to you talk and I was like that's really cool and it kind of shattered this idea that airbnbs are not just owned by Hilton you know uh literally anyone can start an Airbnb in certain cities without even having to own the property and so it was just a lot of knowledge I didn't have and so as I started looking at that I thought hey we could try this with Long Beach I did the research Long Beach allows it a very straightforward permitting process let me ask you where somebody else that wants to look into their City to find out what the rules are where did you go to find that information just so simple I just Googled Long Beach short-term rental policies and they had a page and it was so simple they did good job Long Beach you did a great job with that um but it's just really straightforward so let me let me add to that because we um we were recently in in Dallas looking at some properties out there that we wanted potentially short-term rent and for those who that maybe haven't been keeping along Dallas passed an ordinance uh about two and a half weeks ago that banned short-term rentals from any single-family residences and if you did it in a multi-family there were some restrictions around it as well we were looking to do it in a multi-family property so I was I was all over their website trying to find like hey where is this new ordinance wasn't posted anywhere I called uh never got a call back I was being bounced around to all these different departments so we actually flew to Dallas we literally flew to Dallas and went to City Hall uh to try and get a straight answer from someone so sometimes it is great like Long Beach other times it's a little bit more convoluted like Dallas but if you get an answer you know we got an answer that day and I was actually able to get the ordinance emailed to me um so if for for the rookies that are listening it's like sometimes it's going to be easy but if you're really committed to this sometimes you might have to hop on a flight to Dallas and go to City Hall to get your answer and like how much did that flight cost risk of get into that deal not knowing exactly how it would turn out I'm sure here's the other thing too right so um initially we were thinking of not moving forward with the deal once we saw that ordinance but there were two things that we found out when we went in person that uh made us feel comfortable about moving forward with the deal so it's an Arbitrage deal first was that the even though the ordinance was passed in June they weren't going to start enforcement until December so there was a six month kind of time frame of the enforcement the second thing we learned was that the city itself the people that we talked with at the city told us they were fairly confident that it was going to that the city was going to get sued and that it was more likely than not going to get overturned so there's all of these investors who are now afraid of going into Dallas but we're getting this inside information that's like hey you still have six months B there's a good chance it's not going to hold and then we started seeing some other research there were other cities in in the state of Texas that had tried to ban short-term rentals in a way that Dallas did and and the states overturned those those ordinances so my point is like going in person you get so much information would you get grandfathered in that no so I actually emailed the guy that was in charge of compliance and his answer was kind of like a non like he doesn't even know yeah so I don't really know the answer to that yet yeah but we're going to roll the dice and we're comfortable doing it because it's an Arbitrage deal so I'm not signing a 30-year mortgage I'm signing a 12-month lease and if we need to Pivot to a midterm to like kind of finish it off right yeah yeah wow all right so back back to your story man so you're you're um you're you're checking these ordinances but I I also want to kind of give some more context here because you you were uh you were a realtor then you kind of assemble on the the whole short-term rental thing but um you you guys also had a had a goal right so yeah your your wife uh she was I guess just kind of give some insights on kind of what what it was looking like in your marriage in terms of what was your wife doing and how did that kind of plan and what you guys wanted yeah so when my wife finished law school she you know passed the bar and then you go to work for a big law company and uh you know had it one had a lot of law debt around 180 but no I think I think closer 280 000. oh my God and uh I want to throw up so that's undergrad and and uh grad school combined so uh a ton of debt uh that was another thing that I think really slowed us down in the real estate game is I thought just again not having any knowledge of financing of lending laws who on Earth would lend to anyone with almost two hundred thousand dollars in student debt we're not going to qualify for anything it's almost the opposite when Banks see like oh you know big grad school that oh and you also have a job that's um you know marketable the they almost like close their eyes to like oh wait don't worry about the debt you know like we just look at your salary you know forget about the debt and so I mean there are numbers that they'll use uh your estimated monthly student payment student loan payment for that but so they'll factor that into your um your debt that's income exactly but it's not like they say oh you owe 200 000 cool once that's paid off let's talk it's not like that at all but um so she was working at a a large firm in Los Angeles and um just had crazy hours incredible pay also incredible demand and the that those big paychecks were super great but but it was like killing my wife she would just come home from work and just so tired and and I'm like oh yeah you know I'm doing the real estate thing you're doing the W-2 thing great and and really it was just killing her uh weekends were pick one day to sleep in and then the rest of the days just catch up on all the work you couldn't get done because there's just Unlimited work that can be done and there's no such thing as like oh I'm done at the end of the week or I I it's five o'clock I'm going home no you gotta have your laptop open we're we're closing on this case in two weeks and it's a fire drill everyone's everyone's gonna stay in this until it's done and so really like right away I realized like this is not going to be sustainable for is it or is this what life will look like for my life for the next 20 years until she retires and so in talking to Tony we had to figure out what's what's the amount of monthly income I'll get from rental properties to where my wife has the option to step away and we came up with that number I think ours was like sixty five hundred dollars and so we just started working backwards okay 6 500 is what we're netting from Real Estate what is it going to take to get there so we might be able to buy one Mega property that does that but realistically it'll be buying several properties at each pitch in a thousand you know 1200 here maybe 800 there until you know you build up that monthly rental income we just interviewed Chad Carson who went through that exact step-by-step process of working backwards I'm like what's that number okay in my market that I'm investing in you know what's my potential cash flow so how many properties do I need but you just wrote a book um small and mighty um and it's about real estate investing where you're not trying to grow and quick scale to get like this huge portfolio but like you want to make all each and every property count so that you can still have a small portfolio but it's still giving that Financial Freedom that time Freedom definitely that a lot of people want so yeah so you have this really strong motivation and then you go down the Bigger Pockets Rabbit Hole um so get us back to to where you are so you're you're listening to this you've got this tenant that's about to move out how does that lead into you yes so so we just doubled down on like Hey we're gonna do short-term rentals as soon as they uh move out you know as soon as they move out we're gonna move into the back and we're gonna leave all the all of our junky furniture from our apartment that we brought over there we're gonna leave that as the Airbnb and my wife you know being very very uh risk-averse I was like hey you know what if this doesn't work out what if what if a tenant or I guess just refuses to leave in California that's a you know the state is more friendly to tenants than get than to owners and so we went through all these scenarios and we're like okay we're just gonna you know worst case if this doesn't work out we'll just go back to doing long term you know 3000 a month is what we'll expect for uh long-term rents and um we can even rent it out furnished if we want to for you know maybe 3 200 or 3 300 something like that and see how it goes so then October uh October 1st I think they moved out we had two weeks of you know decorating moving stuff around uh finishing up some things October 21st or so we had our first guest check-in that first night they were in there um so it's a duplex so we lived in the back we split a wall there in there my wife and I were like like please please do not nothing crazy no drugs no holes in the walls and then when they checked out my wife and we like ran over there I looked at everything like are the bed sheets check that out the forks check the picture frames and just like you'd expect it was just a bunch of people that were there for something in Long Beach that they were doing and then they checked out and said hey Travis thanks thanks for the great night you know five stars yeah we were like it works like it really works you know I love that man so so you guys you guys have that first experience it all tends to go well uh so I you know maybe we'll talk numbers later but like are you typically able to get more than that 3K per month as a short term than you were with the oh yeah so um we just did our taxes for 2022 and I uh our take home after regular expenses is closer to 60 I think 6 500 per month wow after we've paid our cleaner yeah I mean there's there's utilities as well but but more than double what would you be what we'd yeah your utilities aren't three thousand dollars a month yeah yeah of course of course um but yeah we were just amazed and I think after those uh maybe some point mid-november we realized oh wow from you know end of October to where we are now our mortgage just got paid it got paid it got paid in about uh three and a half weeks or maybe about four weeks but we're like wow we have we have a little bit of cushion we have you know 20 more than like three thousand dollars left in what we would have had with with long-term 10 and plus we can open up our home when my parents can visit where my family's here we can open it up for a few days and we just got super pumped about that so once you guys have that first successful run take us on the Journey of going from that duplex to kind of where you are now with the six properties yeah so I'll try to try to be concise in like chronologically in order so that was October 2021 um within but by may I was talking to another landlord about a Triplex she had and me being a tenant as an Arbitrage she liked that idea she she and I tried to explain to her how I'd be the best tenant she'd had compared to just a traditional tenant and just just real quick I'll explain what Arbitrage means for folks so uh I become the tenant but I don't live there but um with the owner's permission I I rented out I furnish it and rent it out as an Airbnb and again Long Beach is also okay with that and so um actually she she got the permit for me so she she got the permit she was excited about that um and she she liked that I was taking care of the property as if it was my own and kind of like a property manager but my I'm incentivized to keep property super clean I'm incentivized to keep it you know looking great and in any repairs I can't have a a hole in the wall uh for the next guest whereas if you have a long-term tenant that could be in there until they until they move out or I manage a 40 unit apartment complex and I have two Airbnb arbitrages in there the one that's been in there since 2018. there have been tenants that have moved out from 2020 until now like stayed there less than I've had this Airbnb there has been constant people in and out of this Airbnb I think we have like a two night minimum okay there it is the nicest condition of rather than people who have lived in that property for one year two years three years completely that is such a great Point as to kind of an incentive to kind of sell an owner on letting you do that Airbnb Arbitrage walking through I mean as a realtor we look at properties all the time and walking through a tenant occupied home that has two and a half feet of cardboard boxes trash toilet paper food it's like it is not hard at all for me it's like Airbnb is way safer and property owner another thing that I think about too is evictions okay so say that Tony is living in the house and you're doing the Airbnb Arbitrage in one unit okay you go to a victony he comes up to court he's like well you know what like my kids this happened all this stuff gives the judge all these excuses and the judge goes okay you know what I'll give you a two-week extension you come up with money blah blah this is your home these things happen to you whatever that because that's happened to me where or a tenant finds a loophole or whatever they don't I've been there for more than 30 days yep and then yeah you though it's not your house you're running a business out of there the judge is not going to be sympathetic to you not paying the rent most likely because it's not your home completely I could see the eviction process going a lot smoother definitely definitely yeah so keep it going here so what happens okay so so that's that's Arbitrage that's in May um a few months after that uh a buddy is setting up his his short-term rental in Joshua Tree as I'm doing furniture with him he says oh you got to go to uh Tony and Sarah's um short-term rental Summit in uh Newport Beach and so I'm like okay you know uh how much is it oh it's you know it's a thousand dollars because I'm like last minute like person I'm like oh man that's like I've never spent any I don't think I've ever spent this much amount of money on like anything and so I'm like really like thinking but then my friend Mark is like hey like just the knowledge you'll get from that do you think that'll be worth a thousand dollars I'm like I it could so so for me I was so skeptical of like you know buying my course by do the do that you know you know subscribe to this and so but it was really I think just fear of missing out I was like I could just keep trying to figure it out by myself or I could put some money into that and see see what comes out of it and honestly that was a huge turning point you know going to that going to that Summit meeting the people I did getting the info I got meeting the the people that were there that was huge um so that really kind of like just fanned the flame of what what I was doing I was already had some some momentum but that really kind of gave me more like actionable steps and like key things to look for not just oh that's a deal oh that's a deal you know that's a deal but like really like being more selective and intentional in what I was doing um at this uh so right right at that time I think maybe a month before that sorry to backtrack uh my wife and I love doing camper van trips and so I I bought her old plumber's Sprinter van I turned it into a camper van and whenever we're not using I rented on an Airbnb um that's not like drivable like we're not okay with that kind of risk so we just park it in a nice area and let people stay there for you know two or three nights something like that so that was like my third little property and that one um has been like the most simplest and like has had the best reviews even though we offer the least because it's super clear like there's no shower in here you know you're not driving to Yosemite in it like we've got a little toilet and a little sink and little fridge like that's it but we have the best reviews from that um right after that um so then we have Tony's Summit met up in with an awesome dude named Casey we both talked about sailboats we're like oh man like you're doing this thing with with camper van straps what if we did that with a sailboat and my dad had sent me a message a few weeks ago just some this really beat up uh sailboat in Oxnard California like the owner was just trying to give it away because he was behind on his dock fees and so I'm like man his doc fees are like 500 bucks a month he's trying to sell this 30-foot boat for like a thousand dollars basically just just get me out of this debt of you know paying this fee and I was like oh I couldn't make that an Airbnb but I never took steps on it and I met this guy Casey who's like I'm trying to do the same thing so then we jump on Craigslist like the week after meeting at the summit uh I find this guy in Marina del Rey he's selling a sailboat for twelve thousand dollars I negotiate with him hey I'll give you your price but can you can you sell or Finance you know nine thousand dollars we'll bring three thousand we're gonna pay on the first of the month you'll still uh have your name on the title we're gonna fix it up but would that be okay and because he had no other people you know give him calls office is best option so he said sure and so we wrote up a contract made sure it was good uh got the keys to the boat I learned how to you know drive a sailboat around the marina when we were working on it Casey did an awesome job on fixing you up making it look beautiful and we started renting that out in maybe uh maybe end of October 2022. and then that was that was going swimmingly it was going perfect for uh maybe 45 days until the marina told me stop instantly we were always like operating under the under the radar letting guests know you know a lot of people may not be familiar with this and so we we knew it was going to happen it was just kind of like when when it's gonna happen we thought oh maybe nine months you know nine months I'll probably catch on like no like day 45 they were like we just had some really angry entitled guests that were just so rude to the dock Master this is my Airbnb I'm gonna sue you don't you don't you come here like just the worst guess you could imagine blew it up for me so that's when I got the email and then we uh quickly sold that boat uh got all of our money back and then some then uh Andrew made that money over the 45 days yeah yeah okay yeah yeah but I also just want to pause on that right because uh there's a few important things I think to to pull out of that story um first you you went outside of your comfort zone to put yourself in a room with other people who were focused on the same goals as you and I think oftentimes you underestimate the power of surrounding yourself with people who are going on the same Journey as you and Ash we talk about this all the time you know it's like you there you you you get this energy when you're around uh a group of people who are kind of pushing you to to be better so I mean that's the first thing is just you know you got to find the tribe that you you want to be a part of second you you took action you met someone and a week later you guys are already working on that deal together yeah and that's something that should be overlooked either because a lot of people they'll go to the events they'll take the notes and then that little notebook just lives in their backpack for who knows how long and they never do anything with it oh that was a fun conference oh great right and then it goes wow and they go back to their to their old life right but yeah within seven days of you leaving you've already taken action to to make it worthwhile I feel like that's something like I guess that's like a strength and a weakness with me I I can't like sit still like the the same reason I went to your summit was because what else am I gonna just be at home watching watching like the doorbell camera I'm like all right I could go you could do that from the conference yeah not that I recommend that but like uh just not taking action would probably be the most painful thing I could do and so for for me um that also like has consequences like if you are just an action Taker and not like a planner you can you know wind up doing things incorrectly or costing you more but my just disposition was like let's do it and then let's learn how to do it you know let's do it and then figure out what I'm supposed to do and so basically that's how we jumped into that and um now my wife like really kind of balances me she's like hey hey let's see if this is legal hey hey wait up what happens if the boat sinks you're like okay okay fine we should probably look into that yeah but about everything which is yeah yeah it was sold it to a person who's very very happy to have a you know manicured perfect boat yeah and so yeah we um sold that and then um just kept taking action after the sailboat kind of fizzled out Casey and I were still like hey what what else could we be doing um in in the background you know on a side note or I guess concurrently what I'm doing is I I just was on Facebook and uh asked a question about real they mentioned that you know I'm doing short-term rentals here in California another person just messaged me up and said hey I'm really curious about short-term rentals and uh what can you tell me about that we had a bunch of conversations he's also a local you know La realtor and we started just looking at deals together you know not committing to anything just like looking at analyzing eventually we figured out like he's got some real good out of state experience with properties but doesn't have any short-term rental experience and so we thought we'd make kind of a good team so we did some market research we found Memphis we dialed in on that and then as we started looking at properties a deal pops up out of nowhere and then we partnered up on that and closed on that in January of uh of this year so that was maybe January 30th 2023 um that was a crazy deal that was our first you know partnership first seller finance first subject to all in one and um that's that's been you know going great as well um but but and again let me let me just pause you again right man because you're you're such an action Taker and I I don't want that to get lost on our audience because yeah we talk about this all the time actually about like as a rookie one of the most important things you can do is share your journey is talk with other people about what you're doing and you said you went into some random Facebook group posted about something related to short-term rentals yeah and then you found someone that then became a future partner for you on a deal yeah there was an immense lesson to be learned in that man yeah no I feel like it's just so simple you no one's a mind reader no no one will no one will probably ever come up to you well maybe not you guys because everyone knows who you are but but to the average the average person who just in their hearts says I want to get started in real estate no one is going to come up to them and say here's the deal right you know you really have to um let people know what you're looking for and and for for that deal and then I think for the next one uh well actually for the next two after that it was very much like you know almost the same format I posted something you know I started being more consistent posting on social media that's what Tony was telling me to do so I started doing that random people that I've been friends with for years said hey Travis you know I also want to get started in real estate I see you're posting about you know replacing the sync in your Airbnb what what's that like for your or are you getting better returns in the stock market with with your Airbnb and I said you know the stock market's super volatile and but with Airbnb you have 100 control over you know things that that can change the output versus you buy a stock of Apple they're never going to ask you hey how many cameras do we put in the iPhone 15. we really want your opinion Tony yeah you'll never have that control over something like that so for stocks I thought that was way safer because you had that kind of control over it and um because those two people that were asking me questions they were also in a pinch and I was in a pinch I wanted to get more real estate but you quickly run out of money buying real estate there's great deals all over the country and even if they're all incredible you know you can't buy them all and so uh they were they had Capital but didn't have the experience or the um the know-how or the you know desire to pick up something and so we partnered up we bought um one of these we bought 10 acres in Joshua Tree we're gonna put a tiny house there and then the other one we just um closed on a second property in Memphis and we put some Capital into there from another investor that had money but didn't know how to put it to real estate use let's talk about your Partnerships because Tony and I are launching our new book soon real estate Partnerships so it's been a there it is there it is first partnership with the sailboat how did you feel comfortable partnering with somebody that you had just met at a conference yeah so one I mean we just got along so well at the conference uh we both had real estate we both had you know Airbnb experience so we both you know could share about how we like to do business you know struggles we've had um we I mean we just buddied up real quick at that conference we probably like committed the greatest sin of like networking is like oh Tony you're a cool person I'm just gonna stick by you for this week oh yeah so that I don't have to meet anyone else because my social battery is like running low but he and I buddied up and I mean that has been a such a profitable friendship and partnership but um we we just talked on the phone what we wanted to do because we did seller finance we didn't have to bring a whole lot of capital table we brought 3 000 and we said know what um he I think he is a definitely a lot more uh Hands-On and and he's he's an incredible like handyman he's just really good with like repairing things I'm like competent but not skillful in that and so I said no I'll bring I'll bring 2 000 to the table for the down payment you bring 1 000 but you need to you know make this thing look nice and he was thrilled with that his wife did the design he just you know to the paint did these little um the in-person fixes with the some of the plumbing and basically I just got to stop by take a look at the boat yep everything looks good okay yeah and you guys were 50 50. yeah we were 50 50 I brought a little more Capital he brought capital in the work and then furnished it and then um we just uh we just felt felt good about it we did sign all contract hey we're both you know owners of this boat it's not like a handshake deal and uh he he did more of the operations and I you know found the cleaner negotiate negotiated with her uh made sure we're all good with that and we just we're trying to figure out this partnership as we go um but I felt like uh a big hesitation my wife had that I was just not even considering is I'm such an optimist like oh let's let's you know all of us let's just let's buy a house together and run it but my wife being in litigation says like these deals go South all day long her job is is you know patching up and resolving these disputes between partners on huge deals and so she was really like we we have to be so careful with the the type of partnership we're in and with uh the weights described well at least you have a great resource yeah yeah yeah definitely definitely and so I think um we because that was such a low barrier to entry we're like okay this is like this is just a test run this is my first I guess that was my first partnership that was my first partnership that involved money was something like this and it worked out great for us to wear hey let's do another one so then that same partner we've I found another investor that's when we bought the land together this cat this partner brought all the land uh bought all the capital to buy the land and then we're gonna do all the labor and so that's like partnership round two because we have some track record we have some experience with another I have you know full trust in in my team at this point but I think that's a great Point too because you know we talk about this in the book um it's good when you're starting a new partnership to try and test it in a small way yeah and three thousand dollars on a twelve thousand dollar sailboat is a great example of a small test for a partnership because at most say things go terribly wrong you're out two thousand dollars in your time yeah uh that's different than if you guys went out and bought you know a million dollar property and you're doing all these things like yeah that's a big commitment so again just if you're thinking about partnering with someone especially for someone that you just met but it's a really good idea to Smart Start small in the way that you guys did yeah I mean it's like I feel like our story is so much of like oh that was dumb luck and it worked out great for us I feel like that was the same thing I wasn't I wasn't as cautious with like oh let's only have 3 000. looking back hindsight like oh wow that was like a pretty good way to structure it yeah I wasn't designing it that way but it worked out great I'm like I'm I'm glad to you know smarter people that they think oh that's a great way to you know structure it and so that's just what we ended up doing all right travel so you've had a phenomenal Story So Far brother and I'm I'm sure you've inspired other people to take action man and and you you were just a shiny example of what happens when you just you stay consistent and put one foot in front of the other but I want to take us to our rookie exams these are the same three questions we asked every single guest that comes onto the rookie podcast so are you ready for the exam yeah let's start it all right question number one what's one actionable thing rookie should do after listening to your episode I think the the easiest thing is just to start telling people what you want to do um you will find people that that want to help you get there and as you're doing that you'll find people that you're also helping them on the way finding this person that reached out to me they had capital and wanted to invest but didn't know how to do it they weren't just a you know an answer to my prayer like we together are winning together by by you know offsetting one another so you definitely have to talk to people social media is the lowest hanging fruit to do that but if you're scared just start talking to people like in person um each week set it set a small goal like I'm gonna talk to five people about real estate and then as you keep doing that eventually someone's gonna say oh Tony likes real estate you should you should ask him about that and so I feel like that's probably the the easiest thing you can do is just throw out what you want to do out there and you're going to help people on the way oh and Travis like out of everyone in Alpha host I feel like you Olivia as well you guys have done just a great job of posting that Journey um and you also hosted a few meetups as well and like those are the kind of actions yeah make good things happen it's like if you're posting on social you're hosting these events even if even if it's a small show like just the the the action of doing that thing usually makes good things happen and you know like you know what's one actionable thing but like that was the second thing I wanted to tack on is like it's so easy to just stay in your comfort zone of like but I don't know everything about Airbnb like it would be so stupid to get started I don't know all the answers you know I can't buy real estate I don't know what the Market's gonna be like in seven years it's so it's so scary we can just surround ourselves with doubt to the point where we the safest option is to curl up in a ball and do nothing but for me I've just always take action and figure it out take action and figure it out so I feel like that's the uh you know related to what you're talking about just you have to get started just just start today by doing research start today by buying a book start today by listening to podcasts that are going to help you and then you know deals will literally throw themselves at you I think too if you think about a lot of business owners so especially I would say like blue collar workers is doing landscaping or pouring concrete things like that they know how to do that but they don't know how to run the business side of things so I think you can look at so many different Industries and say like okay somebody's going in knowing one thing I had this skill set and I still need to learn how to do payroll I need to learn how to do this there's so many different aspects like some not one of my business partners he owns a landscaping company I'm just like how do you survive like there's things you know that I know is on the business side but he also he can write up like a great scope of work of how he's gonna he can drop the design but as far as like his bills you'll get them the following year because he actually got around to invoicing that's crazy please pay me for the work that I've already done or else I'll like repo your lawn here oh wait people yeah um so yeah I I think that was a great advice as to how you should you know tell everyone what you're trying to do and things like that um okay and then our second question is what is one app tool or software that you use in your business yeah I mean there there's there's so many that are so helpful for short-term rentals but I think one that's probably overlooked so much and is so like old school is just Facebook groups that may not be like a tool that I'm like checking on every day like my pricing but there have just been so many huge deals that are available because they're on Facebook groups same thing with like oh what's what's a good handyman or my AC is out that is such an instant resource of like local knowledge that is helpful and you know responsive right away that I'm using that all the time to find better cleaners better repairman better landscapers you know you name it yeah all right last question question number three where do you see yourself in five years so in five years I'll be 36 uh I see my wife you know being able to fully step away from her W-2 I see us being able to to travel with our family hopefully we have you know a couple kids at that point and uh you know it just sounds so crazy but like we really look forward to not having to ask another adult hey can I take time to be on vacation yeah that's something that we're just so used to but we want to have enough rental income to where we have that you know freedom and then also you know once you hit that like what next what do you do once all your you know Earthly meds are are met um I think for me you get lifestyle creeps yeah yeah of course of course that happens but I feel like also like more meaningful like it is so encouraging and so empowering helping others like taking the first step like you guys have helped so many people take their first step take their second step like you know I'm sure you there's so many people that you've seen like raise up in real estate that are doing incredible things you guys must be like so proud of like like oh they're they're really crushing out there they're doing great and you had a huge part in that I think for myself I'd love to keep helping people you know do the same thing what I'm doing right now and keep growing in that way and not to go back to Chad Carson again but it was such a great episode but he talked about that where it's not like you know know you're making money to spend money it's about making that money so you can spend your time fulfilling your passion and he does a lot of education on real estate too and he said if I was working a W-2 job things like that he said it would be much harder for me to make that time commitment to teaching others and educating them and there's a bunch of other things that he's passionate about and he's like I get to spend time doing that because of what I've built from Real Estate exactly well thank you so much for joining us thank you this is like a dream come true being on this podcast with you both even better in person yeah to have you here yeah instead of a little webcam and like can you hear me I can hear you but I can't hear you okay no this is awesome being together yeah so let everyone know where they can reach out to you and find out some more information um on my Instagram at Travis Hall homes okay Travis do you have any other meetups happen again soon Tony we're going to start the meetups again yeah so in Long Beach we'll be having uh meet UPS uh hopefully once a month Tony hold me accountable once a month yeah in uh in August all right if they want to find that Instagram's best place that's right I'll be posting on there awesome okay thank you Travis thank you everyone for watching or listening today's podcast episode live from La I'm Ashley at welcome rentals and he's Tony at Tony J Robinson and we will be back on Saturday with a rookie reply [Music]

Channel: Real Estate Rookie

Views: 17,813

Keywords: rental properties, real estate portfolio, replace your W2 income, real estate, real estate investing, rental strategy, cash flow, airbnb arbitrage, short term rental, medium term rental, long term rental, rental income, how to quit your W2 job, house hack, property manager, property management company, real estate partnerships, real estate networking, real estate meetups, passive income, real estate agent, biggerpockets, real estate rookie, real estate rookie podcast

Id: VuyXl4WxbH4

Length: 48min 24sec (2904 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2023