On this episode we have Adam and Deavon Peterson, a couple that plays on each other’s strenghts. They own over 100 long-term-rental doors and 4 short-term-rentals. They went against the grain and purchased in non-mainstream vacation destinations and found a niche that has allowed them to outperform their investor peers. They walk us through their philosophy that lead them to major direct booking wins by serving a short-term-rental market that does not fit airbnb’s demographic.
Podcast Summary
Adam and Deavon have achieved success in the short-term rental business by leveraging Adam’s established fishing charter venture and targeting properties in areas renowned for fishing and outdoor activities. Their strategy revolves around catering specifically to anglers and outdoor enthusiasts, enabling them to drive direct bookings through focused marketing efforts. Key tactics include active participation in relevant Facebook groups, collaboration with local businesses such as other fishing charters, and hosting influencers and YouTubers at their properties to amplify their reach.
Central to their success is the advice to pursue one’s passion and embrace it fully, rather than conforming to predetermined paths that may not align with one’s skills and interests. Adam encourages self-belief and perseverance in the face of challenges, emphasizing the importance of resilience. Deavon underscores the significance of supporting a partner’s aspirations, even when the route to success isn’t immediately clear. Their partnership thrives on the synergy between Adam’s visionary approach and Deavon’s practical implementation skills, illustrating how complementary mindsets can lead to success.
In summary, Adam and Deavon have distinguished themselves by capitalizing on their expertise and passion for fishing and the outdoors, rather than attempting to compete directly in saturated vacation markets. Their unique approach has enabled them to carve out a niche and achieve notable success in the short-term rental industry, demonstrating the power of focusing on what one knows and loves.
Essential Highlights
Here are a few key takeaways from this podcast episode:
- Adam and Deavon have found success in short-term rentals by leveraging Adam’s existing fishing charter business and focusing on properties in areas popular for fishing and outdoors activities. By catering specifically to fishermen/outdoor enthusiasts, they’ve been able to drive direct bookings through targeted marketing.
- Some of their marketing strategies include being active in relevant Facebook groups, collaborating with complementary local businesses like other fishing charters, and hosting influencers/YouTubers at their properties.
- They emphasized finding your passion and leaning into that, rather than trying to follow a prescribed path that doesn’t fit your skills/interests. Adam said to “believe in yourself” and persist through problems rather than getting discouraged.
- Deavon highlighted the importance of supporting your spouse’s dreams, even when the path isn’t clear at first. Their differing mindsets (Adam the visionary, Deavon the implementer) complemented each other well.
- Overall, they’ve found success by doubling down on what they know and love (fishing/outdoors) rather than trying to compete head-on in oversaturated vacation markets. Their unique approach leverages their existing expertise.
Follow Adam and Deavon on instagram @southernparadisevacation
Transcription
We’ve even started marketing a lot on the different fishing groups on Facebook. We’ll send out our, through our direct booking website. We’re able to share that on a lot of different Facebook groups that maybe it doesn’t look as good coming from an Airbnb/VRBO sharing, but if you’re able to share it through a direct booking website and you put it out there and you say, hey, you know, here’s a way to reach me, you can book directly right here on our site.
It also allows them to ask questions and, you know, Hey, if you’re on here, it says you might know a little bit more about parking and a little bit more about what we’re trying to do. And it started just popping off immediately, to where, it’s been steady. Our occupancy is over 80 percent in our off season, which is typically 30 to 40%.
Welcome back to direct booking simplified. We break down the strategies and tactics to win in direct bookings. On today’s episode, we have Adam and Devon, their long term rental investors that turned short term rental. They currently have more than a hundred long term rentals and four short term rentals and starting to migrate their portfolio into more short term rentals.
They went away from investing in mainstream markets and now has outpaced their peers. They leverage their passion in fishing to double their occupancies. Today, the walk us through how they think about investing into short term rentals and how they’re able to get more direct bookings. So let’s bring them in.
Hey, A am Hey, Deavon. Hey, how’s it going? I’m, I’m doing well. How are you going? How are you guys? Great. Good We’re good. What’s what’s been up with you folks? Well, we are on a spring break with our little kiddos right now. So busier than usual running everybody here and there. And we just spent the weekend at one of our short term rentals enjoying, you know, enjoying all our hard work.
So that was fun. Yeah. Did you guys have any Easter egg hunts and such? We did. We did. And we’re in South Louisiana. So we had the obligatory crawfish boil. I don’t think anybody else does, but I don’t think we have that in the city. We don’t have a top of the Easter egg on. Nice. Nice. That’s okay though. I love it I love it. Um, to kind of kick us off. Um, do you mind giving folks a brief introduction to both of yourselves? So Adam Peterson, we are, or I am a real estate investor. I left my W two job after 15 years, um, about two years ago. Um, I started investing in long term real estate, um, about 10 years ago. Um, we had built up to about a hundred doors, 150 doors, and then decided, but we started getting into the, um, started getting into short term rentals and we started, we really liked that space better.
Um, so we started to almost trade up our long term rentals and a few short term rentals. Um, started with one, we’re up to four, uh, currently that we’re operating and working on, um, converting another, uh, long term rental that we’ve already owned into a short term rental, as well as another, um, short term rental that will go along with our fishing company, which we’ll talk more about in a little bit, but, um, so we’re working on five and six right now to, uh, get us moving.
So it’s full time trying to move a hundred percent into short term real estate, along with, uh, a charter fishing operation. And I’m Deavon, I’m his wife. Uh, I still work full time as a nurse practitioner. Um, but I do most of our management for the short term rentals. I take care of more of the, like, email messaging.
All of the more finite details out of his word, the dreamer, the big picture person, I kind of just make sure all those small details get taken care of. I really like managing the short term rentals. I’ve never could manage the longterm rentals. I just wasn’t where we could really thrive. And so I find the short term rentals is more of a hospitality and I can definitely get into that.
So I’ve enjoyed taking over as we add onto the short term rentals, taking over management of those. Got it. So you guys, you have Adam, which is the visionary, and then Deavon, you make it, you make it reality. You make it happen.
Wait, Adam, do you say you have long term, how many, how many long term rentals do you have? Um, we’re back down to right around a hundred doors right now. We’ve got up to 145. Um, I’ve since like sold a couple off to, um, you know, whether market conditions changed over the years with, um, interest rates and, uh, insurance costs going up.
So some deals that may have worked five years ago don’t work in today’s market. So we, you know, sold those, took some of the equity and put it in the short term rentals. And that’s how we kind of scaled our short term rental, uh, you know, the Business is through the, you know, moving off of some of those actors are trading those acquisitions for short term rooms.
Got it. Are they large multifamilies or are they single families? Combination. Yeah, it’s a combination of both. We have uh, we have one apartment complex quite a few smaller apartment duplex quad units Uh, seven, eight unit, uh, setups, and then probably 60 single family homes as well. Wow. Did you, uh, did you use the BRRRR strategy to, to scale to, to, to that?
We did. We, we built the whole thing. Um, I, I’ll be quick thing on that. We built the whole thing off of a 10, 000 401k loan that I took out, uh, 10 years ago. Wow. I bought a property in Louisiana for that. Was able to fix it up. Burr, I actually used the, just took a loan out against it and had a revolving line of credit for 40, 000 against the first 10, 000 house that we bought.
And we just use that 40, 000 revolving line to build up everywhere else. And so the, you know, started there, you know, working with, you know, creative financing with banks that would finance a hundred percent of my deals. As long as there was a good equity position all the way up to where we now use private money for almost all of our acquisitions, um, on that side of things, and we still do some.
Um, we do still do a few, but we’ve scaled way back. We only do deals that are really, really good deals and everything else we kind of pass off. Um, and are really trying to focus more on the short term rental stuff now. Wow. So do you, do you see yourself moving from those hundred doors to, to more SDRs? We do.
Um, we’ve started to, so a lot of what we’re doing is owner financing out our, um, um, The long term portfolio, um, and taking those, the initial down payments that were taken from there. And if we don’t put it on the existing, um, whether it’s a mortgage or, uh, financing of some sort that we have on the others, we, uh, on the long term we’re taking that and we’re just.
Using that as our down payments for our, uh, short term rental deals that we’re, we’re putting in place, or for instance, like the one we’re talking about now, we’re converting one of our long term rentals. It’s in a good market, in a, a town that’s, it’s kind of doing really well. And we’re using that same money to say, convert long term into short terms, um, upgrade costs, uh, updating, and then furnishing costs.
What’s, uh, what led you both? It sounds like you both are leaning in on, on the STR side. What’s, uh, what’s driving you guys to move from long term to short term? So our long terms tend to be very hard to turn over. They damaged and, uh, the costs, we weren’t seeing a lot of profitability because we need so much to recover from the tenant turnover.
Um, and once we had. One short term rental and we realized they don’t damage it. Our property still looks in pristine condition and it’s a much higher value property that we’re maintaining like this. It just seems to make so much more sense to have a higher value property that wasn’t going to get damaged the way that our longterm rentals, I mean, I guess damage might be a strong word, but we were having to do a lot of repairs every time we had a tenant turnover.
That makes sense. Yeah, the cash flow. I was in long term before I went to short term and the cash flow on long term is just it’s so negligible. And if you start having big CapEx items that aren’t really like it kills your cash flow, it kills your cash flow for possibly years, right? That’s exactly what we were struggling with.
The just economy, you know, through, um, just appreciation are through. Um, you know, different, different pieces, different things that have happened, whether it’s like we talked about interest rates earlier, insurance, um, just commodity costs, you know, what used to cost me 300, 350 bucks to go get a new refrigerator now costs 700.
So you take a house or, or whether it’s a single family or an apartment and that, that, Might make 250 a month. Well, you just ate up 700, you know, seven months, six months worth of cash flow because you gotta buy a new refrigerator. Um, if an AC goes out or a, you know, you got to change a roof. I mean, the CapEx costs just for eating in.
And, and as the economy of today started to really eat into all the profit margins and the cashflow you had, it’s almost impossible to make it. Um, in the long term, at least in the properties that we were buying, um, we were, we saw our margins start to shrink every year, um, to the point where a year ago we were, we were taking started taking losses on a lot of them that were good cashflow and properties, but a good cashflow longterm might be 300, um, 300 a month.
And after you’ve serviced all your debt and you take a little bit out for vacancies and Um, you take a little bit out for maintenance and CapEx, you really weren’t left with much. And then as insurance starts doubling, you know, that, that knocked us down really hard. Cause you couldn’t, you can’t scale your rents as fast as all these other factors are changing.
Right. So it just led us in the, Hey, let’s find new ways to do what we’re already doing. Utilize all the talents in the. Um, you know, skills that we’ve learned, whether it’s through acquisitions or through, you know, uh, bank funding or private money funding and just find a way to make those better or more, um, you know, I guess pay out at a higher scale.
And so that’s where we landed on short terms and it just makes way more sense. That makes sense. And you guys, it sounds like you’re into creative financing. So I’m guessing you guys Got some, some pretty decent rates compared to at least nowadays where you’re, you’re trying to give back the spread, um, and do some creative financing on that one.
On our financing, uh, so as we’re both sides on that, so we’ve done some creative financing as the buyer. Um, to where we were able to maintain a lower rate over a longer period and some of the acquisitions that we’ve done, but then also because of the properties that we purchased, you know, say five to seven years ago, we’re in them for, you know, say a four and a half percent interest rate, we’re able to offer those out at a six and a half, a 7 percent and owner finance them to a buyer that would have was only going to get eight to eight and a quarter from a bank, if not more than that.
Um, so we’re able to really. Sweeten our deals as that. That’s the biggest way that we’re going to be able to scale the, the short term is to continue to be able to offer these really good financing deals on the properties that we already had. Yeah. Moving to like the short term rentals, you’re not taking the more mainstream approach of acquiring short term rentals and like really top vacation markets.
You’re, you’re taking a very different angle. Is that right? Yeah. When we first started getting into it, we thought we needed to be in those really popular areas and we, we traveled there and we thought, okay, this is Real outside of our, it’s outside of our wheelhouse. It’s not areas that we’re as familiar with.
It’s not things that we typically vacation at. And, um, we just kind of realized, well, this probably isn’t gonna work. You know, we need to stick with what we know. And so we started investing in South Louisiana on the water, which is where we wanna vacation anyway, personally, that’s what we like to do with our children.
Go fishing, be on the water with them. Uh, so we, uh, that’s, that’s really been a better deal for us. We’re still in a market that we’re familiar with. We can give a lot of good information when the guests want to know about our area because we love it and we sell it easier because we love it and we want to be there.
Yeah. And are those markets a lot, I’m guessing a lot less saturated, a lot less folks that you have to really compete against. 100%. And then, The other side of it is, you know, I know you, you talked about you were in the Smokies, right? And so the, I guess the aptitude of the, the host is so much better in those markets.
So like you, you have to really be top tier in those markets to get your properties looked at or because it is very competitive. Whereas our markets, We, we’re probably not at the top of your market as far as what we would be able to do in the Smokies, but because we have done so much more research and education on these things through, you know, short term secrets and other groups and, and, um, you know, the, the wealth conferences that we’ve been to with the short term rentals, we’re able to take all of that knowledge and put it in these markets where nobody else is utilizing these same strategies.
Whether that’s through dynamic pricing, that’s through just how we, how we monitor, right. Just using Airbnb and VRBO because some of these markets are mostly maintained by old school people. You have to know the lady who markets those houses and you have to call her on the phone. And so people that are our age aren’t doing that.
They’re getting on Airbnb and VRBO, you know what I mean? Like, so we’ve just had outstanding success. I think like Adam said, because we’re kind of. In that market that not everybody is performing in the same way that we are. It’s, it’s working out well for us. Yeah. I think we just, we just did some numbers, uh, just year over year.
So our, most of our properties are summertime heavy. Um, so we kind of, one of our goals this year was really to. Figure out how we could really increase bookings in the off season, um, because our summertime books up and so does everybody else’s, but we wanted to see what we could do in the off season.
Well, after looking at it this week, we ran our numbers through March, um, and just taking the tips and things that we’ve learned over the, the last year. We, this March, January, February, March, so first quarter, we are between 100 and 140 percent year over year increase in revenue based off of where we were at a year ago.
So, and this is over each individual property. We have one property that didn’t hit quite as high of a number. But it’s still up say 50%. I think 55 percent over, you know, year over year. Um, but all of our other ones, we went from saying we had a couple of properties that maybe did three to 4, 000. And those three months last year that are going close to 10.
And those same three months this year. So we’re seeing these really big jumps in, in earnings in our off season, which those are the things that we feel like really, really focus and hone in on when you’re, you know, to become a better, a better host and a better short term owner is find ways to make the times when you’re not at a high, um, high demand, make those times, you know, really, really shine for you.
And then we’re making our number year round numbers look so much better. Yeah. What do you think attributed to that? Like 150, 100, 150 percent increase this year versus last year? I think it was because we were able to get some return guests that booked directly. Um, we were able to find people who were coming to that area for either work or for, so in the area, one of the areas that we were having trouble renting our house was, is a primary fishing area where they have a lot of tournaments.
And we were able to get in with a few guys who actually like, um, Fish the tournament and they’re staying for long periods of time. They pre fish, they post fish. I don’t know. They have all these different things that they’re trying to do. So they need to be on the water for an extended period of time.
And once they knew that my property was. Steady. It was going to have everything they needed. It had a place for them to park their boat. It had all of the amenities that they needed to be competitive on their fishing tournament. They keep coming back. They book for a week long stay. They don’t book for that just weekend day or three weeks.
We had one book for three weeks. Yeah. Like at our regular nightly rate, just put it in for, you know, Hey, can I book for, I need a book for three weeks. So we booked up almost our whole February. Um, to fish a tournament at the end of February. So we found that, and so we’ve even started marketing a lot on the different fishing, uh, say groups on Facebook.
We’ll send out our, through our direct, uh, our direct booking website. We’re able to share that on a lot of different Facebook groups that maybe it doesn’t look as good coming from an Airbnb sharing, but if you’re able to share it through a direct booking website and you put it out there and you say, Hey, you know, here’s a way to reach me.
Um, on top of here, you can book directly right here on our site. Um, It also allows them to ask questions and, you know, Hey, if you’re on here, it says you might know a little bit more about parking and a little bit more about what we’re trying to do. And it started just popping off immediately. Um, to where, I mean, it’s been, it’s been steady.
Our vacancy through our off season is over 80 percent in our off season right now. I mean, our, our occupancy rate is over 80%, sorry. Our occupancy is over 80 percent in our off season, which is typically 30 to 40%. Wow. You mentioned you’re able to market yourself better than an Airbnb site. I’m guessing when you land on your direct booking site, it’s not just talking about the, the amenities, checkoffs and such.
You’re able to actually build a more holistic story around how your place is different than other stays. Is that right? Right, right. We’re able to more target our, our guests, our avatar. You know, we know that we’re really targeting the guys who are fishing right now in certain seasons. We know that it might be families in the summer, but in the spring and the fall, it’s going to be the fishermen who are coming in for these tournaments.
So we can really take our direct booking site and hone in for the season, what we need to be directing our, um, bookings towards. Got it. Do you, do you guys have different sections within your, uh, direct booking site that is tailored around content specifically around fishing and other other activities?
We, we don’t yet. We are still working on building it out the way that we need to. I mean, that’s definitely a goal of ours. We, we actually worked with, we’re getting all worked up with Sam Estrada, who was on your show not that long ago. And so part of his marketing is going to be tagging in our fishing company and tagging in different fishing tournaments.
And so we’re hoping that with his marketing, we’ll be able to, uh, bring those two pieces together a little better. Nice. Um, what other types of marketing do you, do you folks do? So it sounds like you guys do, you’re pretty active on the Facebook groups where people are actually looking to stay and having the competition.
So you’re, you’re pretty active on, on those forums. What else are you? Are you active on? Yeah. So one of the things that we’ve done, um, is we’ve, we have another company we talked about earlier as a fishing company through, um, the Gulf of America outfitters. We do offshore charter fishing in the, in the Gulf, um, in the Gulf of Mexico and Northern Gulf, um, out of the coast of Louisiana.
And so what we’ve done is we’ve started to build in, um, our short term rentals with our fishing companies or with our fishing company. And so we’re running a couple of boats. We run six person trips. Um, we’re pretty booked up on weekends and weekdays during the summer. Um, so what we’re able to do is add our, uh, our bookings are through all of our short terms to our website for that, and we’re able to push these folks that are coming to fish with us.
We’re able to put them in our short term rentals. So we’re able to direct, direct book way more towards our short terms that way, because we own the other business that complements it. And we started to look at other ways that we could find other businesses that compliment. Cause you, while we own our business, that complements our short term rentals, you don’t have to, you just need to find other folks.
Or other businesses that do compliment your short term rentals. So we’ve started to look at other things like that. If there’s other, say on some of the lakes that we’re on, that maybe we don’t own a fishing company, but maybe somebody else owns a charter fishing company. How can we tie our bookings, our short term rentals into maybe theirs and say, Hey, we’ll give you a discount for your folks to come stay.
And we have ease of access for you to pick them up. We’ll promote your business for anybody that comes stays with us that doesn’t have a Say a fishing outfitter that’s fishing in your area. So that’s, we’ve started to find, try to find folks that are doing not even just fishing, but anything that involves, they have a business that involves tourism in our areas and say, hey, how can we tie, how can we, as short term rental hosts, Drive your customers to us.
And then we’ll in turn, take our customers and send them to you. And we’re doing this through multiple different collaborations across the country at this point, and through the fishing company, finding other outfitters that maybe do big game and other things and saying, Hey. You know, our customers come down here.
They want to do that too. And helping just broker these, these relationships to where everybody’s getting more direct bookings because of what we’re doing. So a lot of this is through the knowledges that we found out through these, um, you say mastermind groups or community type based things. We’re just doing it through.
We’re tying short term rentals into all these other activities that people travel for and trying to get those people involved with getting short term rentals booked. And we don’t, I don’t feel like this is something that has never been done or we reinvented the wheel. We’ve just said, Hey, we’re really gonna, we’re really gonna focus on this as the, This is a way that on top of all the other marketing tools that we’re doing, that we can really drive people to stay at our place that would’ve stayed, maybe just looked online and got a place off of Airbnb at V-B-V-R-B-O.
Right? ’cause we’re, we’re being very, um, almost direct or very intentional about how we’re gonna meet their needs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Recently you had a YouTuber on the boat with you, right. So the other big thing we’re doing with all this is we’re including social media influencers to come and stay at our places.
Um, which is, I mean, if you’re just running Airbnbs, that might be harder to do, but because we’re doing it through the fishing channel and running it through our outfitter services. We’re able to take, um, the social media influences or YouTubers that have massive followings, millions of followers. When we bring them to our place, um, we, we allow them to come stay, really get a good vibe for what we’re doing.
They come fish with us. They come meet our captains, meet our team. Um, and then they put a YouTube video out or a couple of Instagram shorts or. whatever their space may be. And it goes immediately gets, you know, 250 to half a million views or impressions over the first 24 hours to 48 hours that it’s out.
And that reach alone is so massive compared to what you can do in marketing your short term rental. So that’s another thing that we felt like, Hey, how do we find more of these people with this massive reach to come in, you know, stay in our place and see how nice it is and tell the world how great these places are and how much better ours is than everybody else’s.
Yeah, it sounds like your, your other life of having a fishing company really help you like boost your success in shorter rentals. Would you say that’s true? I think both. And that’s what we’re finding is that, and that’s what we’re telling other people is like, we’ve really found that the short term rentals has helped boost our fishing company as well.
It’s not one, this one helped this one, but not the other way. Um, the fact that we can offer lodging in with another business is, has made, you know, people call it, you tell them like, Oh, we don’t have lodging this chance, they’re going to call the next guy and maybe he can offer that. And so you lose a, you lose a sale right there.
Um, that goes for all these people that we’re talking to about. You know, potentially teaming up with, like, if you can offer both if you’re a, a wholesome all in package for these folks to, to come and stay, play, do whatever. And it could be a golf course, it could be, it doesn’t have to just be tied to fishing.
It could be so many different things in your markets that. You can utilize to say, Hey, how do we make this deal? Good for both of us. And what you’re finding is that if people can, you know, have an all inclusive stay or as close to that as you can get, then you’re more likely to get more bookings. And that’s what we’re finding that it’s a hundred percent working out for us.
Yeah. What do you, what you recommend for folks that haven’t really tapped into that they’re probably in a smaller town. There are few amenities around, they’re not part of, um, one of the other industries are in their area. What do you suggest them to do to kind of get, get started in that? Yeah. So, I mean, obviously we, we operate in these very rural or there, some of them are coastal, but there’s not a lot down there as far as other industries and things, but what we have found is that.
There’s always something. Maybe it’s a, maybe it’s a paper mill. Maybe it’s a, um, maybe there’s a timber company down there that brings in, uh, folks and has to house them for long periods of time, you know, your Airbnb or VRBO or short term rental, whatever that may be the prime place for them to stay. And chances are what we’re seeing in one of our markets is just construction workers.
There’s no real, um, Um, There’s nowhere to put up construction workers in that market. So we’re able to take these on a weekly, uh, booking and we take them Monday through Thursday, and then we book vacationers Monday or, uh, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, but these construction workers come back every Monday because we’ve reached out and made relationships with construction workers.
owner that says, hey, thi I can put a few more guys we promise, you know, and we’ll take really good ca and they save money and w in the meanwhile. And so for everybody. So it doesn a charter fishing or ente can be just some other bu That is in the same boat that needs this, right? So on the Gulf Coast, there’s plants and other places.
There’s, uh, we looked at golf tournaments and golf, uh, golf courses around that may not have lodging included with ’em. Mm-Hmm. , those are big ones. Um, if you’re out in the, in, in the country, in rural areas, there’s probably out outfitters around there that do something, whether it could be. Anything from bird hunting to, um, trapping or different things that they bring people in for, chances are that it’s such a big expense for them to run that operation and be able to invest in real estate that, that it’s, it’s, they probably don’t have that.
And there’s an opportunity there for you to reach out and, you know, just Google outfitters in your area and see if maybe some of those guys would be looking to add some lodging options to their websites for their customers. And you’ll see almost instant impact from that if they, if you can find those folks.
So there’s so many options, so many opportunities. I was going to say, just being part of the community. I know when we started research in short term rentals, one of the big things was you don’t have to live in the area that you own, he says that, you know, you can really invest wherever you want to, which is 100 percent true, but I think what’s made us successful is that we do love the areas that we invest in.
They’re not. They’re all like a couple hours from our house, so we can go frequently, but we’ve really like invested in the community. We know our, anybody who works at our properties, we know them. Well, they’ll call us with additional people that need to stay. They’ll drive our business for us because they know that we love the area that they live in and they want to help us out.
So just having really great relationships, you know, we’ve met a ton of people in all the areas that we own Airbnbs in. And they want us to be successful because they know we love the area that they live in, wouldn’t you say? I mean, that’s a big part of it too. Yes, relationships, word of mouth. We get more deals and I have more people call me.
Um, that might be a cleaner or a maintenance tech in an area. A lot of our folks are retired because we’re in these older markets that a lot of retired people live in. And I’ll have guys call me like, Hey, you know, this property over here is coming up for sale. You know, you might want to look at it before it hits the market.
So you start to get these relationships or building these off market transactions where you can, you know, save anywhere from 15 to 20 percent on a deal because you were first to it and were able to offer something before they got realtors involved in other things. So yeah, relationship building and this, this.
The aspect of investing in real estate is huge. It has been huge for us for the last 10 years. Yeah. It sounds like community is like a big part of it, both on the community, on the guests that travel in your area, but also community with the local area. So you really try to find out one. How do you get back to the community?
How do you find the right things that really resonates back with your guests, why people visit it? Um, I think you guys are leveraging all the right pieces there. Yeah. Loving it. Yeah. So what’s, uh, what’s, what’s next for you folks? So you guys mentioned you’re, you’re looking to acquire or get two more, uh, in the next few months.
Yes. We’re hoping to convert our long term rental into a short term rental. That one’s well underway. It should be live within the next month. And then we’re, uh, brokering a deal for another one on the Gulf coast that we can fish. Yeah. We can partner with the fishing company. So we should have that one live around May 1st.
Um, so a month and a half from now, two months from now, I guess. Um, yeah, staying busy with those trying to get them furnished and everything before like it’s go time. Um, and then I think our little bit longer term is, So we want to expand the, we want to expand the short term rental, um, portfolio with some of the, with the other business, like the fishing company.
So I think we’re going to go just continue to take the Gulf of America brand and, um, around the gulf coast. U put a boat and a captain maybe destined, maybe For Aransas. Um, all these di here on the gulf coast an investing in real estate. thing is we’re brokering folks. We’re bringing in You know, it’s been watching what we’ve been doing for this, this longer period of time, and they’re buying properties or want to buy properties alongside our businesses and us manage them.
So we’re going to continue to build, you know, that’s really Deavon’s market and our, our area of what we do. And so I just put them out in front of her and she just keeps knocking them down left and right. She’s, it’s killer. Uh, but we, uh, the goal is just to keep stacking them up and, um, you know, growing the brands, you know, around the coast and around the country.
Yeah. Um, just see how far this thing takes us. We’re having a blast doing it. So it’s, we’re passionate about it and it’s, it’s hard to, it’s hard to miss when you’re this passionate about what you’re doing. Um, I’ve never been happier doing anything, um, in my life, you know, working in different industries for a long time.
This is. This is definitely where we’re called to be, and we’re, we’re having a blast doing it. Yeah, I was, uh, talking to Chris, uh, from SDR secrets and, and he mentioned how we’re in this really amazing world where in short term rentals, you have people coming from very, very different backgrounds. And no matter what background you are coming from, people find ways to be successful on it.
And I think the really successful people are the ones that really try to focus in on what their expertise is and really leverage that very effectively and really stay focused on that and try not to go way beyond kind of that sphere, but they, they really leverage that. For you folks, like you could go into the mountains or you could do something else, but you know that like by going down a very focused path that you know really well, you’ll be, you’ll be able to kind of leverage your past experiences and grow much more quickly.
Right, right. Absolutely. And you told us you like to build houses that are, you like to be in markets where you want to bring your kids. And it’s the same for us. It’s just that we like to do different things with our children. We want to bring them fishing. Yeah. Ours are regulars on our, on all of ours.
They love them. And then they, you know, we pass by one and they just want you to buy them all. Yeah. y 0ah Yeah. You’re totally right. Like when, when we look at acquiring a new property, we look at like, what do we want to bring our kids to? And our kids are our ideal guest avatar. So we try to make sure like, Oh, it’s in areas where they like to visit.
They want to, they have amenities inside that they can do. And like at the very end of the day, It’s, we’re able to market the entire portfolio as one set. Like we’re, we’re tailoring our places for very specifically families that are within kids that have, or kids are three to 10 years old, three to 12 years old.
Um, and that’s our niche. Like we’re, we’re not going to try to go above that. We’re not going to try to go singles and, and couples. Um, so we know our market really well. Yeah, you’re absolutely right about that. Um, any other, is there anything else you want to share with our, our listeners here today? I just think that there’s so much out there and sometimes people get, they get closed off or you feel like that you watch, you listen to these podcasts or you listen to, you know, something and it says that this is the way that you, you have to do it.
All the way from when I listened to the birth strategy or listen to how to go get your first deal. And there’s really, it is infinite. amount of ways that you can make a deal happen and that you can, you can do a deal. So be open to listening, but then really forming your own opinion and your own way of doing things.
And I think that that’s huge for people because they feel like if it doesn’t work because I got blocked in because somebody told me no, or somebody said it doesn’t work, you know, you get in your own head and you just can’t get out of your own way. When you find that you have a goal and that you think it can work and you’re passionate about it, if you just lean into that, instead of leaning away from it, because some, something, some outside perspective makes you want to lean away from it, that’s when you should lean in the most and really put all your, your chips into doing what it is that you are passionate about.
And I think that the world is way more successful and way more happier when people are doing things that they’re passionate about rather than going through the motions of doing something that they just, they feel like they had to do because something said that they had to do it that way. And that, that’s been huge for us.
And that’s, I, if I could tell people, lead people with that, like find what you feel good about and really lean into there. Yeah. That’s, that’s awesome. That hits home for me, um, in a very different way from, for me, I come from a very different world. I come from tech. So when I approached the short term rental industry for the longest time, I was like, I can be acquiring more and more properties.
But now I realize that like, My passion is in creating great products and I’m really passionate about changing the way and the tools that we have as short term rental hosts and really leveraging my expertise in technology. Um, and really making us all more successful by leveraging that. So, and I, like for me right now, like I’m.
I’m not as interested as acquiring the next two or three properties. Um, I’m more interested in, in, in leveraging my expertise. So I, what you just said is like, yeah, right. And that’s what people need. You know, I mean, there’s so many of us who don’t have the expertise in tech and that’s not where we’re going to shine.
You know, we can make the fishing company work, but we’re not tech savvy. So there’s so many of us who need that help to build our short term rental. It’s a, it’s a great. Place for you to be in good people, people that support your goals. That’s huge. Right. And then whether it’s tech or, um, short term rentals or bring something different to the table, be, be, be very open to, to hearing what other people are, are doing and see it instead of shutting things off.
I, I grew up in a world where, you know, parents and other things were just very turned, turned off by anything that might be different or it might make you feel different. And just so much of the world that we live in now is being open saying yes. Like. Hey, yeah, I’m willing to hear that or I’m willing to talk about it and let’s, let’s see if it works.
And if it does, then great. And we can always, you know, pivot off of it later. But if you go into every opportunity and every conversation thinking that there’s something in this that I can learn from, um, just your interactions with people, the relationships you make are so much better and deeper because you’re, you’re open.
Your mindset is there allowing you to get to a place where you can, you can absorb rather than, um, you know, reflect or, or deflect. Yeah. I think we’re in a very unique. space where it, we don’t have like a very zero sum mindset in the space. Like we’re not, even though we’re hosts in many of the same areas, we don’t talk to each other.
We don’t like, we don’t try to shield information in that way. And that’s like one thing that I really love about our community is that folks just want to help each other. Right. Um, we’re not looking at each other as competition. We’re looking at how do we help each other? How do we help each other grow as an industry as a whole?
And it just opens the door to so many new things. I agree. Absolutely. I agree. Awesome. Um, to kind of wrap us up, I have two questions for you and I’m going to be slightly different this time. I’ll start off with the same question. What’s a, what’s one mindset advice that you would give and you guys can both answer separately if you want.
Um, what’s one mindset, uh, advice that you would give to someone that is starting something completely new? Thank you.
I would just say follow your passions. Kind of what we talked about a few, you know, here recently is don’t, don’t let anything outside of what your goals are really waver. you know, your passion for what you want to do in the place that you want to get to. And I think that the longer you can stay the course and the longer, you know, when things get hard, you can, you can push through it and because it will be, it will be hard and things will not always be easy just because you’re going down this path where you’re gonna love what you’re doing.
Um, And enjoying the process like go when you’re passionate about what you’re doing and you start to fall in love with the process. The end result doesn’t even doesn’t even hold that much weight anymore. Like we’re having so much fun doing what we’re doing. And I think that once people realize that, like when you really fall in love with the process of Of getting to wherever you think you want to go, you’ll start to forget about like where the end game is and because there won’t be, because the process is the end game, the passion that you have for doing what you’re doing is becomes your, you know, your, what’s, what’s driving you.
And so when you can wrap your mindset around that, um, I think that that’s, that’s where to me, life changed so much is when I realized that I really love doing what I’m doing, not because I’m going to get somewhere, I’m going to be wealthy one day or anything like that, just because I’m happy. I, I enjoy what I’m showing my kids what to do.
And I think, you know, when you can, when you can strive towards that, I think that’s huge. Yeah. I think my answer will be more for the spouse. Who’s not the big, you know, the big dreamer is like, let your spouse dream and, and it will, it will work out. Cause it was so scary at first. I had big, big dreams and I was, could not see how it was going to work.
And leaving your W2 is a scary thing when you have little kids and a family. Um, and. He’s right. His passion keeps us going. It’s fine. Everything always works out and he’s happier. And, and with my support, like our marriage is so much stronger because I’m not saying, no, you can’t do that. No, I don’t see the picture.
I can’t, I can’t visualize where we’re going. I just let go and said, all right, we’re going to, I’m going to read all the books. That’s all I know to do. I’ll read everything and listen to all the podcasts and I’ll dream with you. And I’m all in and our marriage has Gotten so much stronger because I didn’t, uh, hold him back.
I let him be the big dreamer and just answer the emails for him and keep on going. That’s a, I love how you guys approach it very differently, but there’s this strong, I can definitely feel a strong bond between the two of you and how like Adam, you just saying like, you’re, you’re happy in the journey and not necessarily striving for that goal.
Like, It makes me very happy to hear that you’re in such a wonderful place right now and that Deavon you’re, you’re there to support him, but I, I bet that you’re also in the same happy place as well too. Absolutely. Well, when your spouse is happy, your whole family is happier, you know, and our kids are happier.
He’s home more because he’s not working a W2 anymore. We can travel together more. Our schedules are a lot more flexible. So yeah, everybody’s happier whenever the spouse is happy. Oh, that’s wonderful. I can’t wait to follow your journey and see where you guys are a few years from now. Um, yeah, you guys are on a really, really beautiful path.
Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Um, all right. So for the, the last question here, what’s, Adam, you did a really good job of kind of summarizing this, so it could be some of a repeat. Um, but what’s the one thing that you guys want folks to take away from, from today’s, today’s time? Yeah, there’s no one way to do it, right?
Like, What we thought was the one path to get into long term rentals or short term rentals, whichever However, we got in you don’t have to have money. Obviously we didn’t we had we took out a 401k loan You don’t have to have a perfect plan We thought we were gonna have to buy in the in the smokies to make it work and we ended up in south Louisiana where we already were um, so there’s a million different ways to do it find what makes you happy and just go for it Believe in yourself Um, I think that’s, that’s really the big key for this is whoever, whoever is driving this thing and, and just stay, stay the course, keep believing.
Um, and I think that if you can really lean in whenever, every, everything else in the world is telling you to lean away from whatever your passion is. Just keep leaning in. I think you’ll be, uh, you’ll find yourself in a, in a really good place at the end. Yeah. Adam, just to build off of that, you said, believe in yourself.
Were there times where it was really difficult for you folks that you’re, you were questioning whether or not you took the right path or did you know from the get go that this was, this was the right thing? No, I mean, I think that there’s always times when you, there’s definitely been hard times throughout all of this.
Um, there’s been challenges with markets and there’s, there’s always problems. Uh, it’s funny. I listened to, you know, we’re, we’re big in, uh, like watching the UFC and stuff. And I heard a thing with Dana White one time or just recently where he said, it’s like every time I, you know, with every business, it’s like, there’s a hundred people just trying to.
Just trying to tear it down around you, whether it’s people or it’s just the, the universe, um, it, there’s hard things and you have to battle through things and it does seem like that, right? Whether it’s a, yeah, just so many different, different obstacles that you got to overcome and you didn’t see them coming.
And it’s, it enjoy solving the problems, be a problem solver. The world needs more problem solvers, be the person that solves problems. And the problem solver is that mentality is going to take you so much further. And that’s where I think that. And how you lean in is you just don’t get so broke down over the problems because that’s what shuts most people down and be too damn stubborn to quit.
Like that’s why people tell me all the time. They’re like, man, how’d you make it? Like, it’s really simple. I was just too stupid to shut it down and quit. There was probably times when everything, all the numbers, all of the, the investors. Everything said, I probably need to go ahead and just shelf this one for a while.
And I was just too determined and too, uh, you know, call it dumb at times to be like, nope, I’m not, I refuse to quit. And you come out on the other side, um, there, there is, there is bad times and there, there is going to be hard times, but they won’t last that long. Um, just keep striving through it. There’ll be good ones too.
And more often than not, 80, 90 percent of the time, you’re just trying to figure out what to do next. You know, 5 percent of the time you’re enjoying it, you know, and the rest of it, you’re just trying to figure out what’s going on. I believe that’s really like, you’re just enjoy solving the problems and you’ll be just fine as an entrepreneur and whatever facet that takes you down.
Yeah. Yeah. I, I needed to hear that because I’m still in my very early days of my startup and it’s hard right now. It’s hard having to do everything yourself, growing the team, growing your customer base. It’s there’s a whole lot of hard times. And like, I try to keep myself in that right mindset, but Having, having you here, having you say what you said was, was helpful for my day.
So I appreciate that. Um, all right. To, to close this out, um, Adam, Deavon, where can folks find out more about you? How can they follow along in your, in your journey? Uh, so our fishing charter company is go America outfitters. com. Our, uh, handle for our short terms on Facebook and Instagram is Southern paradise rentals.
Thank you, Adam. Thank you, Deavon. It was so good to see you both here today. I really enjoyed hearing your entire story and how you guys look at things very differently than a lot of folks on the kind of the mainstream STR world and just seeing how just looking at it differently just didn’t really help you, but it really gave you a very unique advantage that will surpass a lot of folks.
So again, I can’t wait to keep on watching kind of where you guys are growing. And if there’s anything you guys need along the way, help, please reach out. Thanks so much. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Bye. Bye.