STRSS 58 – Advocating the Short Term Rental Industry w/ David Krauss

Video Transcript

 

00:00:00

There are vested powerful interests that are, are interested in putting clamps on short term rental. I’m not gonna say exactly who we’re talking about, but you’ve probably stayed in one of their hotels or their hotels in order to fight that battle. We need to raise our game.

 

00:00:18

This is five eight of the short Rental success stories podcast. Are you an investor that’s looking to have your home professionally managed, go to cohost it.com for more information, welcome back to short term rental success stories. I’m your host, Julian Sage. This is a show where I talk to hosts about their journeys and starting and growing the short term rental business. My goal is that you’ll be able to walk away with practical information. That’ll help you become a better host and learn how to scale your business. Like any exceptional host. We all strive for five star reviews. So please go on over to iTunes and let us know what you enjoy as it really helps support the show. If you haven’t done so already going over to our Facebook group, the host nation to connect with the community. Hey, what is going on? Host nation?

 

00:00:59

I’m super excited to be back again with you this week. So just yesterday, Airbnb announced that they are gonna be rolling out this new thing, which they’re calling the cleaning protocol, which is their enhanced or intense cleaning checklist that hosts are going to have to be able to comply with in order to get a boost in search. One of the big things that has gotten under a lot of host skin with this new proposal or this new thing that they are gonna be rolling out is that they are gonna be limiting hosts that do follow these cleaning guidelines, ensuring that there is a 24 hour window, that the place is vacant. So if you are gonna be part of this cleaning protocol and following these CDC guidelines, that Airbnb is gonna be basically doing as a certification program from what it sounds like you are gonna have to withhold from hosting for 24 hours in the property and up to 72 hours.

 

00:01:54

If you do not have all of your cleaning standards to be able to qualify for their program. I made a video review yesterday on my thoughts of this new Airbnb news that was released to us. So if you want to go and check that out, go to YouTube, or you could just go to Short Term Sage dot com slash YouTube and subscribe to the channel where that video has been posted. I’ll also be including the link to the video in the show notes of this episode. So of course go to Short Term Sage dot com slash STR five eight to listen to that. In this episode, we have the special honor of speaking with David Cross. Again, who is in our success stories episode three, one where David talks about how he got started into hosting and also about noise aware. So for those of you that don’t know, David Cross is one of the co-founders of noise aware.

 

00:02:47

And recently David stepped away from noise aware to be able to focus all of his attention on his other company, rent responsibly, which focuses on empowering short-term Rental advocates to build a sustainable future for short term rental in their community, David and rent responsibly help us with the short Rental community, allow our stories to be heard and really advocate for the short term rental rights. In this episode, David talks about the importance of getting involved, telling your story and making sure those stories are captured. One of the ways that David is capturing stories is by just finding out how are hosts being impacted during this time, as you can kind of see the theme from a lot of the guests that have been coming on the shows is just them telling their stories about how they are being impacted during this time. What David is doing though, is he’s taking that information and trying to make it a little bit more visible.

 

00:03:38

So there is a survey that I would love for you to go fill out. If you go to shorttermsage.com slash rent responsibly, you can fill out a survey that will be for rent responsibly. And it’s just an impact survey. You can put your information in there. And the survey is really quick. It takes like less than five minutes and it’ll just help for hosts to be able to tell their story and really understand what is the impact of hosts during this time. Right now it’s more important than ever to be able to come together and help unify our story and our voices. So again, go to shorttermsage.com slash rent responsibility to fill out that survey. And of course you can find it on the show notes page with all that being said onto this week’s conversation. Hey, welcome back, host nation to another episode of short to Rental success stories.

 

00:04:22

In this episode, we have this special honor of speaking with our good friend, David Cross from rent responsibly. Prior to that noise aware we actually interviewed and spoke with David in episode three one. So we are quite a few episodes now forward, but if you wanna go listen to that conversation with David, where he talks about noise, aware and hosting, then definitely go and check out Short Term, Sage dot com slash STR three one. For that episode, it was a really good conversation, but now we have David back on again, what are we gonna be talking about today? David,

 

00:04:54

We’re gonna talk about rent responsibly. We’re gonna talk about our, find the helpers campaign. We’re gonna talk about hope in the time of COVID and we’re gonna talk about self care.

 

00:05:04

Yes, David, you’ve been doing a lot of self care, so let’s, let’s just start off with, you know, where were you prior to this pandemic? Were you prepared for something like this? Was this something that was even on your radar or was it a total shock to the system?

 

00:05:18

I predicted it, man. I’m the only one who saw this coming. Of course not. It was really interesting. I think with respect to preparation or, or being a, like, you know, aware and ready, I think invariably, nobody was ready. You know, you start to see these YouTube circulating bill gates, you know, a number of years ago talking about all this stuff. And of course the reality is we had a really good stretch in the short term rental space for half a decade or more in terms of like, you know, the growth and the tools that were appearing. And, and everybody seemed to be getting in on it that aim to a screeching halt in a way that I think we’ll talk about today and we’ll talk about next month and we’ll talk about for years. And as we mentioned prior to the call, it’s an opportunity just like every moment of every life, but this is a particularly distinct one in that I think a lot of people are gonna dial in and thrive on the other side of this

 

00:06:24

Now dialing in and thriving. I mean, from rent responsibly now, you know, part of rent responsibility, if you wouldn’t mind educating the audience about what are you guys’ missions.

 

00:06:34

Sure. So rent responsibly.org, you can go check it out. Rent responsibly is an organization it’s built around the stakeholders in the short term rental space. And our mission is to build a sustainable future for the stakeholders of the short term rental space. So what does that mean in play in English? We are thinking five years out and 10 years out and looking at how we can meaningfully contribute to the ecosystem and build tools that are necessary to make sure that we’re building a sustainable future. So maybe that wasn’t even English to, to now to put into lay layman terms, maybe by way of example, we see the number one frontier right now, the, as the regulatory environment, anybody who’s met me over the years, the short term rental Rental space knows that this is just a passion of mine. Something that I just think does not work yet, but it needs to work for us to have a sustainable future.

 

00:07:39

There’s too many cities that ban or Sean, or don’t realize that they need to harness short term rental. And then there’s too many communities that think they don’t need to be in too many, sorry, communities of short term rental owners, hosts and managers that aren’t yet engaged in that process of creating rules and regulations. That’s primary focus, secondary focuses are celebrating the short term rental industry. That’s part of telling our story and it’s a media play. It’s a content play. It’s why I love talking to you. Cause you have a big and growing audience, congratulations on all the success. And I’m excited about what you’re gonna do next too. And then the other main focus is education. So that was another, another thing we’ve connected around, but just educating people internally in the industry, what’s important to Rental what’s unique value proposition. Those are our primary focus,

 

00:08:46

You know, and I love that about you David, because your, your, your focus is to help people written responsibly. Really? It’s not, it’s not like you’re selling anything. You’re, you’re, you’re helping people, you’re educating people. Like I just went onto your website and you’re trying to help people get connected with first responders. You guys are just super passionate about, you know, helping the community, helping the short-term Rental space. Now, you know, with that, that kind of being like your whole focus, you know, what, what have you also seen though, as far as like, you know, hosts being impacted through this time, you’re sharing a lot of success stories and a lot of people that are, you know, fruitful and shorting, but right now it’s, it’s really challenging. How, how is that impacting you personally?

 

00:09:30

Yeah, I mean, for better or for worse, I don’t know if you can see these, these are rose colored glasses, but we, the, the, the harm and the personal toll and the stress and the business crucible moment that we’re under is, is not well documented and, and no industry can document very well in real time. I think we will find out just how bad things are and were in short order. That said, as I mentioned before, I’m thinking five years out. So the fact that some listeners may have already closed up shop, or the fact that some people have changed their one unit to long term Rental and may never go back to anything less than 30 days. Totally understandable. Matter of fact, I’ve done that with my own short term rental, and then I have another one that’s absolutely vacant. And I’m just, I’ve, I’ve basically given up, asked for forbearance on my mortgage and gonna wait a little bit.

 

01:10:35

So I I’m, I’m part of that side too. I feel the pain I’m hemorrhaging, you know, thousands of a month as well. And it sucks. It really does, but that doesn’t, nobody was entitled to, to be insulated against something bad. I mean, I’ve said this all the time, every single investment you make, every single thing you do, every single business that starts has inherent risk inherent risk. It just blew up in our face and nobody could calculate this risk ahead of time. That said the question now, isn’t what is happening on a macro level to any individual it’s, what’s happening? What are you doing about it? And so I talk about what I’m doing about it responsibly. I am focused on multiple years out in order to think about where, what do we need to start putting in place now? And there’s a lot of stuff that you’ll, hopefully everybody will be seeing in weeks to months, including one thing I can announce today, I, when this will launch, but next week, so it’s 17th today, roughly seven days from now, folks will, should be able to take a survey that we are launching with some partners.

 

01:11:51

And the survey is gonna be around the I really some of these personal impacts on businesses and people in order to get that information in a survey form. So we can then go out to the larger world, the government entities, et cetera, and really advocate with strength and data. And then also be able to tell the personal stories. So that’s where shortterm or humans of short term rental series with our focus on helpers and people who are helping in the and data together. Like, you know, two of a, and we can really with advocate because as you know, there’s 13 plus states, that’s an old statistic cuz it’s two days ago that have already put severe restrictions on ability to, to short term rental, Florida, almost half of the country’s short term rental activity has put a massive clamp on their own Vacation Rental Rental industry. And they have to for, for public health reasons, that’s okay, but how are we gonna get out

 

01:12:49

It? One of the things with that is could there be some lasting effects, like, you know, in the, in the military, they, for the coast guarded specific, like they’ve restricted YouTube access because a lot of people at home they’re, you know, using these workstations, these computers and they’re taking up a lot of bandwidth. So they’re blocking certain sites that take a lot of bandwidth, but we don’t know moving forward after this, are they going to leave these sites closed? I mean, are they gonna let these things sit by? Just because it’s like, oh, well, you know it, you know, it’s making the, the network faster or it’s allowing us to be able to become more focused. So let’s just leave those things out. Do you imagine, or can you see those types of situations happening with states that are limiting short-term rentals moving forward after this event?

 

01:13:36

I don’t anticipate that happening. I can guarantee that will happen. And I’ll tell you why. There’s a couple reasons first and foremost, just like every business has to deal with COVID as a disaster. It is fundamentally an enemy. We’re gonna go some military stuff, you know, kinda concepts here. It’s a, it’s an enemy that doesn’t discriminate. It’s not a centralized enemy, right? It’s not a mono. If there’s not a king of all, COVID saying, go here, go there. It’s an opportunistic enemy. And it’s it, it works like a network effect, right? Like one person can spread, it can spread it, spread it. So there’s a massive fear element and you can’t fight it. So to speak with the opposite mentality, meaning you need to, you need to marshal a network approach where you’re diffusing information down to each and every person involved as opposed to one person sitting up on high saying like, we’re gonna charge the front lines tomorrow.

 

01:14:37

This is really the military concept is, is the Navy seal concept, which is something I’ve been studying. And that’s that it’s centralized mission and decentralized command. So if you think does short term rental in, it means that at of the, the peripheral on each and every unit is a real factor in how we behave as our lowest common denominator, right? That the bad actor, so to speak, who’s not following the rules who might be trying to rent despite the statewide ban. Well, those ads are public. And this happened in Vermont where the, the state sees these ads, you know, just that person on the end and they ban it for everybody. So how do we roll that back? We need to make sure we’re distributing the mission to these endpoints and working together to advocate for ourself, for what our reasonable rollback provisions. And so that’s one enemy is just the nature of the battle.

 

01:15:43

And the beast tried to a podcast. I heard earlier about this like nature of the network enemy. Anyways, the other, the other battle we’re fighting, I are the, the domestic or the, the kind human human enemies. If you will hate to call it that, let me rephrase that. There are vested powerful interests that are, are interested in putting clamps on short term rental. I’m not gonna say exactly who we’re talking about, but you’ve probably stayed in one of their hotels or all of their hotels. It’s the frigging hotel lobby IM gonna say, and they have been pushing out strategy to highlight all of the negative impacts and hyperbolic claims about short term and Vacation rentals for years. Well guess what? They’re in state city, federal, sorry, state city, state, federal level at all levels. They’re trying to put the screws on our industry cuz they want the profit and it’s, you know, we’re gonna be fighting over a shrunken pie at this point, so it’s gonna be bad.

 

01:16:51

And so in order to do, in order to fight that battle, we need to raise our game. They’re gonna say we have standards and short-term rentals. Don’t they’re already saying that. What are the cleaning standards in short term rental? I didn’t get a checklist when I started. So we’re starting to work on these things because if we can stand up and say, look, this is a CDC approved checklist and we’re following it. Now we can, you know, move on the next battle. So we’re gonna be there’s, there’s a lot of forces against us, but we have innovation. We have passion, we have local control and economies that are gonna be benefiting from us. And you know, we have Julian Sage. So like, what else do we need?

 

01:17:30

You know, David it’s, it’s one of those things. And one of the other things that, that we’ve seen is even, even with the podcast, like, you know, you know, I can see right there, like just the amount of, of traffic, the amount of people that have just kind of like stopped listening to the show just because they they’re, they’re either defeated or they feel like, you know, the, the time has come for the short Rental space, but this is what you’re kind of saying is our, you know, our, our crucifying moment, like this is the moment where we really need to be focused on, you know, how are we going to respond after this? Because you know, right now the hotels they’re, they’re getting bailout money. They’re they’re, you know, getting supported by the, by the government. And what we’ve been seeing is short-term rentals. Haven’t been getting that same type of support, you know, strictly, just even just outright banning them in, in many states. How can you see us coming back from this type of situation, moving forward, if you know, hosts are going out of business, if people are, you know, just moving onto the next business venture, whether that’s long-term rentals or whatever that is in that real estate market, how do you see us recovering from this?

 

01:18:32

It’s a great question. I don’t think that there is the phrase that I heard that I liked. It’s not gonna be a new normal, it’s gonna be a next normal. And what that means to me is if anybody expects it to go back to the way it was just get lost. You, you’re not reading the facts. The facts are that we’ve had attrition catastrophic. I mean, it’s been an extinction of our industry. So we are rebuilding a new version of our industry, the next version. And it’s not gonna feel normal until it’s the way it is. And I think the key elements of that are we need to take standardization around minimum requirements of what it means to be, you know, safe, habitable, habitable, housekeeping, guidelines, all those things like we should be embracing them and we will. And that’s where rent responsibility is gonna lead because we’re just gonna get trampled and stomped if we don’t and, and frankly, it’s the right thing to do.

 

01:19:36

So I think there has obviously been a thinning of the herd I’ve read today. Stay Alfred is no longer or really has a low likelihood of coming back. Lyric raised 160 million. I love the, the leadership team there. I’ve known them a long time. I feel terrible, but it, it is what it is. This is, you know, an accelerated evolution accelerated Darwinism that said it doesn’t mean that the demand for this accommodation type went anywhere. Do you just say, you know what, there aren’t as many Rental. Therefore I spend a seven day holiday with my reunion in a, in express is insane. I actually think it’ll be higher quality demand in that there are, there’s already now an educated public about what value there are to short, short term rental, but they’re gonna look for different things. If I’m shopping for short term rental, I want to know that there were proper products used when the housekeeper was there.

 

02:20:40

So I know that disinfecting happened where, you know, on the level at which the CDC or whoever says, you’re supposed to use this to kill that. And you know, let’s, let’s move on. We’re not gonna be talking about COVID forever, but the standards could stick forever, which is a good thing. We’re gonna get more consistent, positive consumer experiences. And guess what higher standards means, higher confidence from neighbors, from cities, these other relevant stakeholders that, you know, have a good reason to put a band in place. We need to give them a good reason to take the, the screws off of us. And we’re gonna do that. And rent responsibility is gonna lead. I I’m very passionate about this and I, I realize there’s not a ton of people thinking about it, but by God, I, I am not gonna sleep until we, we get there. You know, this is, this is the call. This is the call to action.

 

02:21:36

So, so going back to what we’re we were talking about earlier, because I think it’s important is you said, you, you, you don’t, you know, for a fact that these states are gonna be moving forward and they’re probably gonna keep holding these types of tight restrictions, just because of the players in play because of the lack of real standards that are, you know, that shorter mental hosts don’t have, you know, a lot of hosts right now during this time they’ve been, you know, trying to follow CDC guidelines. They’ve been trying to make sure that their places are, are more well suited because there, there has been no real standard for that. And the hotels are pointing that out saying, Hey, you know, these guys aren’t following the rules, which is why you gotta shut ’em down. How are you and how should hosts be moving forward to be able to have more legitimacy, have more strength in, in the, the local states so that we can keep operating.

 

02:22:29

That’s a great question. I’m gonna take it in parts and I one, one element. So when, when you think of the, the bands or restrictions that are out there right now, I support them from a public health standpoint. What I don’t support is when they start to bifurcate that decision about lodging between hotels and short term rental and say short term rental rentals are non-essential hotel are essential. That’s a really big problem because I, if you go to rent responsibility.org, right now, we have about five stories of people taking in either a medical patient non-related to COVID who would otherwise have to go into what a hotel environment, where there’s a lot of common area. And these are immunocompromised people, short term rental really do value an lodging in that regard of how do we advocate for ourselves is twofold. Number one is we need data. And that’s where that survey project comes in launching next week. And number two is stories to make these UN tell people, understand why, when we say short term rental actually are essential people. Aren’t thinking about, you know, the party house down the street, or whatever kinda preconceived notion that has been promoted about our space. All that being said, there’s gonna be lawsuits and constitutional issues. And a lot of this stuff will just have to play out and, and go through the, how we, you undo very heavy restrictions.

 

02:24:15

It’s we’re is local somewhere. Everybody is local somewhere, and everybody employs local people, housekeepers, et cetera, to keep their business running. That is our core value. And the way to turn that fact into something that creates let’s call it advocacy outcomes is to organize and to be active and proactive. So prior to COVID rent response was dedicated to building strength where there was a lot of energy, but disorganization, and that becomes when you align and you start growing in the same direction, we build strength in, in terms of community power, political power, advocacy power. So it’s even more important. Now I’m gonna probably plug this a couple times on the show, cuz I, I really am passionate about this and we can’t help folks if they don’t get involved. Then the next question is, how do you get involved? The easiest thing you can do and it’s free.

 

02:25:21

And it always will be free, is sign up at rent, responsibly.org and just sign up. And I think at the bottom of the homepage, it says, join the cause if you do that, we’ll have your zip code and we can, and we can start to get you involved in what’s already happening, or maybe it’s write a letter to your, you know, Congress person right now. There’s so many tools that we work with and, and partners. It’s literally one quick one click and send, and then you’re, you’re done. If we don’t have people doing that, we’re never gonna get anywhere. That’s at minimum at maximum, you know, start a group. If it doesn’t exist, David rent, responsibly.org, we are built to help you advocate for yourself. Cause you’re local where you are. I’m not local where you’re, there is Jack shit that we can do for you if you’re not involved and we can’t help you if, if we can’t connect with you. So that’s kind of where I go with that.

 

02:26:11

Awesome. Yeah. And we’ll, we’ll include all of the links in the show notes, you know, it is such an important part. I really hope that, you know, even just talking with you, David, like I, didn’t really kind of, I wasn’t really thinking about the long lasting impact of how this can play out. You know, we’ve, we’ve been hearing about all these states that have been getting shut down, but it’s just, you know, we’re thinking, oh, well, you know, if we’re not in that state, it’s just kinda like, you know, I feel, feel bad for them, but you know, there’s nothing that we can really do, but even just moving forward and you know, how hosts are gonna be able to recover from this, you know, how states are gonna respond to that. I think it’s really important. You know, now more than ever, we, we really need to be coming together to be able to, you know, keep this business alive and, and, you know, allow us to be able to keep on hosting.

 

02:26:54

Yeah. And lemme just tell you a real concrete example of how powerfully it is to be proactive, to actually, you know, get involved in just advocating, telling our story. So there was a, a manager in Philadelphia, he reached out to the city and said, look, all these cancellations left. You know, the, I think it was eight to 10 units that he was managing completely vacant. Right. Everybody experienced that in, in March specifically. And the gentleman said to the city, I wanna be helpful. I’m not gonna ask for much in terms of money at all, but I wanna be helpful. Here’s what I have, you know, these, these private apartments and I, and you know, what can we do the city, you know, passed around and finally got the emergency management part of the city. And that division said, wow, this was a quote unquote, wow.

 

02:27:58

I did not know that this resource existed in our city. We definitely need your help. What can we do? They signed a contract and now the emergency workers that are coming in. And so I, I don’t know if it’s like firefighters and police that don’t want go home or FEMA representatives, but they’re now the city is using these units as comfortable long term. You know, the, all the things that short term rental are to begin with. And that is like, now think about when Philadelphia goes to think about regulating or, or advocating for, is this an essential business or not? It’s just, I mean, without, first of all, without us knowing that story and rent responsibly is fundamentally a bigger megaphone for a small, like an individual story can get out there. We wanna be that conduit for. So if anybody listening has any stories of hosting a medical related, stay hosting, a stranded traveler or a student who got kicked off campus, or even just a first responder who didn’t wanna go home, anything that would allow us to really say what has happened during COVID cuz this stories are everywhere.

 

02:29:20

If we don’t capture ’em and tell them we’re losing again, an opportunity to, to really advocate for ourselves and, and last but not least these stories are powerful. They really are. We’ve had one story I love the most is support for housekeepers initiative. So a good friend of mine, cliff Johnson put together a housekeeper relief fund. And so many people donated to it. It was basically you give money, we’re gonna take, we’re gonna directly put it in the hands of housekeepers who are struggling more than anybody. And it went so well. He’s now transferring that fund into a nonprofit that he was affiliated with anyways, and it’s gonna be a continuous fund. So let’s say a cleaner has, you know, medical bills. They can’t pay and it’ll be this kind of, it’s very, you know, germane and organic in our industry to help people we’re in hospitality. So we need to capture that. We need to keep doing that. We take on the responsibility of, of broadcasting it. We just need folks to tell us about it and to sign up so we can activate when needed.

 

03:30:28

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, that, that, that is so key. And you know, with, with that, if, if there are any hosts and if you, if you wanna broadcast the message, David, you know, you, you know how to reach me and, and we can definitely use the platform, the success stories platform to highlight those types of individuals as well. And so kind of last thing is what are you doing personally during this whole time moving forward? You know, prior to the conversation, when we hit record, you’re talking about some of the things that you’re doing, you know, in your life to be able to support moving forward because there’s, there’s a lot of stress in this space. There’s a lot of people that are worrying about the money, the, you know, the, the loans getting dried up people that, you know, their, their units are getting shut down, but you know, right now more than ever, you know, we need to be doing things to support us mentally, emotionally. What, what are some of those things that you are doing in your life?

 

03:31:17

Sure. Glad you, you gave me an opportunity to talk about this. I know we talked about it before you record. And I was like, eh, a little off topic, but we’ll just go with it. Let’s talk about it. So short story, I was on a, a mastermind actually invited by one of my short term rental friends in Denver, Joe peri, shout out to join him in, in a group of like 30 or 40 other folks from around the country and around the world, talking about how they’re, they’re all business leaders. So talking about how they’re dealing with COVID both personally and professionally. And the one thing that came up, I mean, whether it was a beer, a restaurant tour, one guy who sold like hiking equipment and online, and then, and then a personal coach and chiropractor, like literally everything. And everybody kept talking about how they’re focusing on their personal care.

 

03:32:13

Actually self-care was the word, but personal habits, personal things, physically, mentally mind, body spirit, that sort of stuff. And it just came up like over and over again. They said, if I’m gonna be a strong leader for my team, I need to take care of myself first. And you hear that now. And again, in, in just PO you know, like whatever popular culture, just like, you know, take care of yourself and, and all that. But I think in this moment, it really, again, a crucible where you’re, you’re boiling off all the things that don’t seem to matter that much and saying what really matters the most. And I think a lot of people have realized that being quarantined, spending more time with people that you, you know, your loved ones that maybe you don’t get to spend a lot of time with and then just complete habit disruption.

 

03:32:58

So one of my favorite quotes of all time is on my, but chart a little bit, but like tr travel is not changing your location. It’s changing your habits. And I, I just love that idea that this moment tough way to phrase it, but I I’ve appreciated the fact that this moment has given me an opportunity personally, to completely throw away whatever habits I was in. So to your question, I took, I, I thought I’ve been working on like my morning routine and this book morning, my buddy Mike S got me into stuff, shout out.

 

03:33:37

You know, I just, I thought sit at my desk and like, almost not exactly at clockwork, but somewhere between seven 30 and eight, I’m sitting at my desk. I’m like, holy shit, I am so clear minded. You get up at the same time. So you get tired around the same time. I just turned myself into a little bit of a machine and it is, that was my, that was my self-care reaction was like, okay, just dial in your morning. And then everything can lever off of that. So if anybody wants to chat about that sort of silliness and, and you know what they’re doing, I, you know, my, I like running, I’ve been posting some stuff about that, but kind of turned into a little bit of a self-care guy. I was a fat ass two years ago. Didn’t really like to do any of this stuff, you know, had had a couple too many adult beverages now. And again, and like, I’ve been, you know, on day hundred and 707 of sobriety, like, so I’m a little indexed over towards like, kind of insane on it right now, which is, you know, it’s whatever. But, but you know, this is an insane time and I to lead some people. So I’m just dialing it, recommend anybody, just you try and make one incremental improvement and stick with it for at least two weeks. See what happens.

 

03:35:07

No. Yeah. I, you know, was it, I think it’s Hal, Hal Elrod is with miracle morning. Yeah, that’s right. But yeah, I can, I can attest to, to, to that, you know, for, for me, I’ve been waking up, you know, I was, I was really taking a hit on, on just everything. Just, you know, my, myself personally, I was, I was burnt out. I was, you know, questioning if I was depressed or if I was just burnt out and I didn’t, you know, even just opening a computer screen, you know, a few weeks ago, it was like, you know, with all the tabs and all the different things, just like I felt overwhelmed. So, you know, I, I had to decompress and then I started going back to just like what I know, which is, you know, I know people do well when they do the miracle morning when you, when you work out, when you meditate, when you journal.

 

03:35:54

And so I, I started doing that as well. And you know, so every morning now that’s part of my, my ritual is I wake up, you know, I don’t check my phone, you know, I’ll just stay off of social media and I’ll have a morning where it’s like, I meditate. I journal, I think. And I also decompress, you know, I watch, I watched the whole season of a whole B of Ozark. So I went through all three seasons. It was a good show, but, but yeah, I, I think, I think personal care is so important. What you’re doing is, is really important, David, and, you know, we appreciate you. That’s why, you know, I love having you on the show to, to help, you know, help be that megaphone for the people that, that need their, their story shared and, you know, you know, so thank, thank you for that.

 

03:36:37

It’s my pleasure. And I appreciate what you do. You’re, you know, you’re, you’re out here educating people, you’re sharing. I know you’ve the pre podcaster in the space and love watching the rise and, and being a small part of it. So it’s, it’s my pleasure. And I’ll leave. Can I leave people with one thought as well? Yeah. Go for it. You know, when you’re in the, you know, we’re in the eye of the storm, like, I think we’re maybe coming to the other side, but who knows, and it’s gonna be prolonged, right? Like the whole nature of this beast, is it, you know, we don’t, we don’t know how long things last, at least a year plus for, for a vaccine. Right. So there’s no short, nobody’s claiming short, short sprint here. What does that like, did think about your life on the other side of whatever unknown timeline looks like.

 

03:37:34

And I think the people who really embrace this disruptive moment as an opportunity, you know, the financial side is, is nothing to be ignorant about for yourself and other people, but, you know, we, we don’t get to choose these sort of things, but we do get to choose what we do about them. And so I think I, you know, luckily was in a position where I personally had enough, you know, clarity about what I wanted to do, that it gave me a real clear shot for what COVID has meant for, for myself and rent responsibly. I don’t think every, you know, no, not everybody has that clarity from the minute they get started, but get clear on what you wanna be, who you wanna be a year from now, and also get clear about, you know, what you haven’t done or put off. And if one of those things that you’ve put off is signing up for rent responsibility.org. Now is the time

 

03:38:36

Now it’s the time you sign

 

03:38:37

Up? No, it’s, I, I hate to be such a shrill for it, but honestly, like we don’t ask for much and we’re willing to do work. That’s really the only call to action that we ask is let us help you. Right? Like, I don’t know how many people make a sales like that, but I, I, I’m very passionate. I’ll do 99% of the work. I just need to need to get, need to get folks who are local somewhere to help us, you know?

 

03:39:03

Yeah. I just, I just wanna piggyback off of that, you know, for, for those of you that are listening, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve only been in this space for about a year now, you know, the podcast is about a year old, but just the amount of support and, you know, this is such a small community, you know, for all the, all the listeners for the host nation family, you know, David David’s, your friend, David, is the guy that you go to when, when you, you know, when, when you, you want to have your message heard when, when you want other people to know about, you know, what you’re going through, you know, he really is an ear. You know, my myself included, you know, is such a small community that it’s, it’s, you know, we need to be able to support each other. And it’s not like, you know, it’s not like the general real estate public, where it’s like, you know, you have a bunch of different voices, a bunch of different talking heads.

 

03:39:49

You don’t know who to trust, and you don’t know who’s on your side, but you know, we, you know, this being such a small community, the people that are, you know, passionate, the people that are good natured and friendly, they, they stick together and they help support each other. And that’s why we like, you know, having David on the show here. So for those of you that are listening, you know, do part of your part of being the host nation, family, being, being a host is supporting each other. So definitely again, you know, if you want to have our, our voices unified, if you wanna be able to help support each other, you know, go to rent responsibly, do your part and be active in the groups. You know, if you, if you’re struggling, don’t just stop listening to the show. Don’t just stop hosting, you know, reach out to us, you know, David or I, you know, we’re just a message away and we’d love to be able to talk with you.

 

04:40:37

Amen.

 

04:40:38

All right. And with that, thank you so much, David. And until next time, host nation, keep on hosting. Hope you host benefited from the show. If you found value, please going over to iTunes, leave us a review and let us know what you enjoy about the show. If you’d like to talk to hosts that have been featured in these episodes, as well as the community, going over to our Facebook group, the host nation.