Today I had the honor of speaking with Dawn Parr. Dawn and her husband were tired of working the 8-5 in nursing administration and sought a way out of the corporate rat race.
In 2015 they began building a tiny home on some property they owned in Lubbock Texas, and in 2016 sold their big home, downsized their life, and quit their jobs to begin building their new lives from scratch.
Dawn, her husband, and their daughter Tesla, now own and operate 6 tiny homes on their 2 acres of land and are continuing to build more homes for their guests to expand their tiny village.
Dawn’s story shares so much such as breaking the fear of comfort to design their own lives, the struggle of uncertainty and a lack of a primary source of income, and what it takes to run and scale a tiny village.
Video Transcript
00:00:00
You could do this. You could be retired. You, you think about 10, 20 years from now, what is industry will be like, be, be kind of the visionary. Don’t just get stuck on your job. If you have a passion for something else, start saving for it. Now that
00:00:17
He saved us. 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. There’s some reviews that came in that I wanted to highlight this week. This one coming from CTA, he says, Julian does a great job of asking the same important questions to his guests, which does an awesome job of juxtaposing. How different owners have found success differently. We have another five star coming from dubs. And wh who says this podcast has helped me dream big. They said, I’m starting my first Airbnb in Nashville, but I am already plotting a rental arbitrage business in Colorado to live my life to its fullest.
00:01:02
And I couldn’t do it without short-term rentals. Julian is a very humble and good nature podcaster who brings some of the most successful Airbnb hosts around the world to hear how they’ve been able to build their businesses. If you’re a seasoned pro or a newbie like me, you will certainly find value from this podcast. Couldn’t recommend it more. And then our last review is from rich Rhonda, who says all episodes, fabulous content with all episodes. Thank you so much, everybody for the reviews. It really means so much to me to be able to hear from you guys. And I love all the messages and all the feedback you guys have been giving me on the Facebook group, the host nation. It is just so nice to be able to connect with you all. And I really hope that we can connect even more. And really like what CTA said was that, you know, I’m trying to get people on the show to show that it’s everybody’s success.
00:01:48
Story is going to be different. You know, there’s no one person that has like, this is the thing that you need to do in order to find success in the space, because everybody has found success in different ways than everybody measures their success in different ways. So I really hope that the show is bringing a lot of value to you. And that’s what I really hope with every episode and every interview today, I have the honor of speaking with Don par, Don and her husband were tired of working the eight to five and nursing administration and sat away out of the corporate rat race in 2015 to begin building a tiny home on some property. They owned in Lubbock, Texas, and in 2016, sold their big home, downsize their life and quit their jobs to begin literally building their new lives from scratch, Don, her husband and their daughter, Tesla now own and operate six tiny homes on their two acres of land and are continuing to build more homes for their guests to expand their tiny village.
00:02:42
Don stories share so much such as breaking the fear of comfort to design their own lives, the struggle of uncertainty and lack of primary source of income and what it takes to run and scale a tiny village. If you like my show notes for this episode, go to Short Term Sage dot com backslash STR one eight, or if you’d my show is sent directly to your inbox every week, then can go to Short Term Sage dot com backslash show notes with all that being said onto this week’s conversation. Welcome back hosts that I have the special honor of speaking with Don par. Don, would you please let the audience know a little bit more about who you are and what inspired you to get into short term rentals?
00:03:18
Hi, my name is Dawn par, my husband and I, and my daughter Tesla. We are, we have a short term rental company. Now. It was inspired by just rarely us downsizing. We, we actually had a home that was about 2,400 square feet, and we decided to sell it and get away from the corporate life that we were living and try to come up with something a little bit better in life, just in general. And so one day we put the for-sale sign in front of the house. It sold in 10 days, that was in 2016. But in the meantime, we were building a small 500 square foot home standalone house that we now call the Western cottage. And we, when we sold our home in town in 10 days, we moved in to that Western cottage. And in the meantime, we, we started building another home beside it, which we now call the beach house or beach cottage. And we moved into that beach cottage and rented the Western cottage on Craigslist. Not really knowing all the platforms out there now for short-term rentals, but I put it on Craigslist, fully furnished bills paid all your utensils. I think it was very vague and just very, I didn’t give it a lot of thought. And the first day it rented and I was so excited and it, it actually ran into someone who was going through a divorce, so it worked out great for him and it kind of started from there.
00:05:37
You know, I think it’s super interesting done before we, we, we first the record button, you, you have five properties now and you’ve literally built all of them from the ground up.
00:05:51
Yes. Oh my poor husband. I couldn’t do it without him. Just could not do it. You have to have a really good team, especially if you don’t want to get into a lot of financial debt and we don’t have any mortgages, a lot of sweat, a lot of hard work. I mean, it’s, it’s nothing for us to be up at midnight painting, putting in windows. I mean, that’s nothing to us that that’s been our life for the last four years and I project probably another four years. So yes, I design, I do all the painting. I try to find artwork, local artwork. And if I can’t find local artwork, I usually just kind of do something on the wall and, and, and make it work. And people have really liked that. I’m not sure why, cause I’m not an artist, but we also do all the management and we live on property.
00:07:11
I am so used to communicating with people just because of my background. My husband and I are, we’re both in the nursing home administration industry. And I would have to talk to family members and residents and, and lots of state corporate people. So I, I have learned because it is a learning thing to be able to talk to just about anyone. My husband is, is the quiet guy. He’s the real smart one. I’m extremely book-smart thank goodness, but I’m more of the visionary and, and, and take off and let’s, let’s just do this. I think it will work and he’s, and, and he’s been awesome. So we, we do everything here. When I say manage, I don’t mean just, okay, give me your money and, and I’ll give you the house keys. You know, we literally still have keys. We have talked about going keyless or doing like a smart key or something like that, but not yet being that we manage on site, there are so many wonderful things about that, that we have grown to love. For instance, we’re very pet-friendly here. And I personally think if you are not pet friendly, you’re, you’re gonna lose a pretty big clientele from for my experience.
00:08:52
I know what tarred, I think it would be a lot harder to be very pet-friendly if I wasn’t here because I can kind of see things getting out of hand, but because I am here, I, I can encourage it. And, and they know in our lease that I can go in. And if, if I see a cat, a dog or any kind of animal in the house longer than they should be, I have kind of an agenda that they signed that I can actually go in and take care of that pet and do what I need to do what is necessary. So that works for us. It may be different for a lot of other people. We just, one of our guests had a pet and she got off the leash and my husband and our daughter chased the dog until the dog. Well, the dog was rescued. I won’t go any further than that. But I mean, when they went out of their way to make sure that Tilly was back in the arms of her, of her owner.
01:10:08
So, so you’re, you’re really providing a, a really full service to your guests. And when, when you, when you decided to sell your home and, you know, really, you know, quit the nine to five, you know, quit the corporate life to be able to create, literally create this, this new life for you and your family. How, how did you, how did you know, because you said initially you just posted your first place on Craigslist and you’re just like, I need to get this out there posted on Craigslist and you started getting some business, but so, so when, when did it start to make sense that it’s like, okay, we we’re, we’re catering a specific type of guests, and now, now we, we know who our clients are. Okay.
01:10:50
It’s crazy because I think, you know, we have a larger home as well. It’s a country home and it’s been here for years. I, I think it was built in 1954, literally. And that was honestly in 2014, my, I used to have to manage this, this just the warehouses and this one old house for my dad when he became ill. And, and, and I didn’t have a passion for it. I did it for him, but I think it was the, when we put that four bedroom, we had converted it for our daughter in college. Now this was years ago, this was back in 20, 20 10, 20 0 9. So this was, this was years ago. And, and we had already converted that house for hers and her friends. So they could go to college and live there and just be able to, you know, have affordable rent really. And, but after she moved out, the Airbnb thing came about, which was about 10 years ago, I think. And I thought, let me see if I can put this on Airbnb. I had no idea what I was doing, but I stuck that one on Airbnb. And I was a horrible host.
01:12:16
I’m sorry. I was, I was a horrible host. I don’t even want to talk about it. It’s still embarrassing to this day because I still have me as, but, but I pulled out of the Airbnb because I felt like Lubbock was so small at that time in the, in, in, you know, the last nine years or so that, that I could do it. I could work my full-time job and not do the Airbnb, but just rent it, you know? And, and I did, I, after the girls moved out, I left that furniture in there. They left all their furniture in there, literally. And that’s when I did that Airbnb thing. And it didn’t work out so well because I was horrible at it, but I just put it on Craigslist or something. I can’t remember exactly how, but I had an electrician coming, rent it, and he rented it for him and all of his employees.
01:13:18
And that’s kind of when I knew I was like, how remotely I’m getting, I don’t even know what I was getting. It was probably so low. It was incredible. I think I was getting 1500 a month for that four bedroom, which is insane. I know, I know Bobby loves me for it, but I still remember his name. And, but I gave him a great deal and he was fabulous. He stayed there two years. He had job after job, after job in Lubbock. And I think that’s when I kind of knew, but as that was happening, we in 2015 is when we started building that Western cottage. And so I didn’t even really realize it, but I realized it, but I kept working the nine to five or eight to five, or actually 24 7 when you’re a nursing home administrator. So I didn’t know, even at that point, I did not know that it was going to be something I was going to be doing in my fifties.
01:14:23
I have always remodeled. I have, I have many injuries from remodeling and building and my husband does as well, but I think that’s when I knew I knew something was good there. And then, especially after I built this Western cottage and it rented on Craigslist, just like that, the Airbnb thing I’ll be very honest, was not, it was Tesla, which is our daughter. She was working in the medical field herself. And I said, Hey, would you like a part-time job? Could you do my Airbnb? And, and don’t suck at it because I mean, I just, it Airbnb’s a full-time job. It really is. I mean, to be honest, you, you, you need to stick to it. And, and, and it’s a wonderful platform though. I mean, it, it it’s a wonderful platform. And so she did, and she rented the tiny container house, which we have, it’s 150 square feet. It has an induction plate pretty much. And I awesome bathroom and a washer and dryer combo, believe it or not. And she rented that on Airbnb and it has stayed a hundred percent occupied probably for the last three years.
01:16:00
You know, what I think is, is pretty interesting. As you said, you have a 99% occupancy, which, you know, and, and love it. Lubbock, Texas, I mean, you said it’s around 250, so it’s not like the most touristy destination. You said most of the people that are going there, it’s like people that are workers, you know, they work with the wind turbines, they work with electrical nursing. So, so how, you know, how, why, why do you keep such a high occupancy and, and what, what made you want to not maybe push your prices up a little bit more and keep your occupancy around like 80 or 70%?
01:16:38
You know, I fought with myself internally on that. I really have, believe it or not, my husband is, is a very God. He’s just, he’s so smart. He’s too smart. And he’s very ABCD. And I told him last night, what I was making on the Western cottage and he almost fell out of the golf cart. So this is a 1984 golf guard that we have, and he just painted it. It’s adorable. But he said, I don’t even want to hear it. He said, you’re doing a great job. I’m going to keep building and keep my nose to the ground. You just do what you need to do. But even when you break that down to a daily rate or a weekly, right, it’s, it’s incredible.
01:17:29
And I kind of, actually, I integrity is a really big thing for us. And I know not everybody out there has a lot of money. I know that people that have stayed with us, I do know that they do come from quite a bit of money, but even with down, I’m like, Hey, this is fair in Lubbock. This is what I can give you. And, and, and, and, and then I go up. So I started out at 900 a month for that little 500 square foot, a hundred percent completed. Walk-in ready. This is your house. You will have everything. You will have the soap. You will have toiletries. You will have towels. You will have everything set up and it’s going to look so darn cute. And it’s going to have our personal touches to it that people have really told me, and that we live here on property.
01:18:30
I get to hear my reviews, I guess that’s, I guess that’s kind of how I would have to put it so people would understand. I, I get to hear my reviews right in front. I don’t get to read them a week later, or I don’t have to beg for them. I get to hear them as we sit on the porch and talk or a text message last night, love it. Got a huge hailstorm. Huge, I mean, it was, I’ve never, I have never witnessed the hell storm. Like we witnessed last night and love it. It was insane. And my husband and I, Brian, is his name ran outside. And we started knocking on doors. The warehouses that we have, we have warehouses that we actually have designated for our properties, for cars. If they want to use them, they can. But it was a mad rush to get very expensive cars into these warehouses.
01:19:38
So right when we get in the house, I get a text message from both of, or I’ll actually all three of our guests. And they’re just like, you are my hero, but we don’t do that for that. We do it literally, really we are doing it because we that’s the way we would want to be treated if we go to a Airbnb or a, an unknown place. So that’s kind of how, how it, how it rose here at cozy homes. We, we do this because we love it. I mean, it’s not all about the profit. I know some people are going go. I is about profit, but I think we’re going to build a very successful business. If we treat people the way we would want to be treated, and that’s just a business philosophy of mine, period, that’s just the way our role and
02:20:42
What has been the most challenging part of starting this, this business
02:20:48
Money. Of course, everybody’s probably like money I have to do. I have to throw this out there. And this is for the young ones, the 20 year olds that are jumping in this with, I, I had a guy actually stop. And he was like 20. He stopped out here and he’s like, oh, this is a dream. This is my dream. And I’m like, well, you’re very young. So I suggest you not get into debt with this. I saved a lot of money growing up or actually in, in, in my teens, even when, when I started a very young career, I was probably 18 when I started in the nursing home field, not in administration, but in a different department and ever since I started. And so I can’t say everything bad about corporations because they’re not, they are the ones who jump started me into what I’m doing now.
02:21:53
And so, all I can do is say, thank you to that. But I saved and I did a retirement fund. I did IRAs. I did everything. And the challenge has been, we had a, we had a nice savings. We sold everything. We had, we sold cars, we sold furniture. We sold everything when we downsized. So we had the ability to build this little beach house that we’re in on property and the little tiny container Bohemian container. And it gave us also money to build our industrial lofts from our warehouses. But we ran out of money and it freaked me out. And I literally was like, what are we going to do? We can’t stop. And we were working our 10 hours here on property. I said, okay, I’ll be a Lyft driver, Tesla. You’re going to go. And you can go, you know, go get back into the middle medical field.
02:23:11
She’s great with marketing. And so she did that. My husband’s like, Hey, whatever I need to do. And I’m like, no, you’re the builder. You can’t work. You have to keep going. And so one day I started thinking, wait a minute, there’s gotta be something with our retirement money that we can pull. I mean, I know that, you know, the, the, the financial people, I listen to podcast one starts with a D I don’t know if I can, I can give you his name, but anyway, I’ve listened to him for like 30 years. And he, we were able to pull some from our retirement account without any penalty. And that was a lifesaver to us. I mean, literally to this day, as I’m sitting here, we don’t spend a lot of money. I cook every meal. I, we mow our own grass. We do our own landscaping.
02:24:14
I go to a state sales and I buy the best furniture, really nice furniture. My husband builds platform beds. So we don’t have to go out and buy a $500 bed or a $1,500 bedroom. So, you know, everything is from, from us. We, we really do it all we painted, I paint the platform beds. I mean, so you have to save to do this. I mean, you don’t have to, but you, you, you know, I’m just telling the people that can, that are in a position to do that. You’ve got a really great job right now. You’re making, you know, over 80,000, 60,000 man, if you live on half of that, you could do this. You could be retired. You, you think about 10, 20 years from now, what this industry will be like, BB, kind of the visionary. Don’t just get stuck on your job. If you have a passion for something else, start saving for it. Now that has saved us.
02:25:24
And when did your units start? Because you, you, you’ve invested all this, you know, this time and this energy into building this business, you literally built everything from the ground up. This is all, you know, sweat equity and, and, you know, saving money. When, when did your, your units start being able to pay you and be able to pay into reinvesting into the business?
02:25:46
Oh gosh, probably two months ago, literally I, I called Tesla and offered her a part-time social media marketing. I, even though I love doing that, I would love, I do my best marketing and here onsite this property. And when Airbnb guests get here or guests that we pull from other websites or whatever, or our website, or just a local recommendation, I meet them. I greet them. I let them know about where everything’s at, where I live. I’m literally, you know, 10 feet from you, not that close, but so when I tests, we were already profiting a little bit, but everything was still going back. I mean, we have to eat too. And we don’t pull a salary.
02:26:58
What, what we probably get monthly that we can actually have is very small. I won’t even go there because people are going, how in the world do you live off that? What we, we are going to sacrifice we’re sacrificing right now. So I’m hoping in six months, once we get this next cozy home, ready to rent will be profiting to where I can take a deep breath, a little bit of a breath and not have to pull out money from somewhere else to continue to build. I may have to do that anyway, initially, but I can put it back or I’ll feel like I’ll be able to put it back. Eventually. It’s just very different. This one’s a very different business. Cause like you said, we kind of created this from ground up and I’ve had my hands in different things, you know, over the course of 25 years, 30 years. And so I’ve always thought 10 years before it’s 10 years. So that has been my, I can honestly say thank you. I don’t know where I got that insight from, but I, I appreciate it now more than ever, that I’ve saved back when I was 18, 19 20.
02:28:34
So you, you, you you’re, you’re building all these places. You’re investing now the money into that, you’re, you’re starting to profit from, into, you know, building more units. So you said that your goal is to get to around 12 units. Where, where will you be like financially kind of set once you reach that, like 12 mark
02:28:56
You’re you’re talking numbers,
02:28:58
Right, right. With like, where, where are you going to be like, like a comfortability? Because a lot of people around that six around that six mark is where they’re able to typically transition out of their full-time job to replace their income that they were previously making. But so you you’ve, you’ve bootstrapped it all the way from, you know, zero to five. So now you’re kind of able to, you know, be able to supplement what you were making before. So once you reach that 12 mark, where, where are you going to be able to be comfortably
02:29:33
Comfortably? We’re hoping when we get to that 12, I, you know, honestly, it, I feel like I’m going to jinx myself if I say it, but I’m just looking at the numbers. If, if everything goes well and that’s, that’s where we’re supposed to be at 12, we won’t even probably be on property. We, my husband and I, I I’m, I’m estimating four years from now. We’ll build everything out. If we keep continue to do what we’re doing now, but we’re having to go a little faster and get these things moving. So we may have to start hiring a few more people to get to that 12 mark faster than we projected. And if we do that within the next couple, three years, even I said four, that’s kind of, you know, a dream. But if in, in this, the three year mark would be best.
03:30:44
I mean, we’re, we’re financially. We will be in a very good position to where we won’t have to live on property. I could actually let Tesla live here and be the management and actually hire maintenance. Somebody we can trust that would come out immediately or live on property as well, because we feel like that works management and maintenance. So if we could pay two salaries and my husband and I retire and start our other little adventures that we, that I, I have in my heart, one being a charity, that’s where I would like to be. Money-wise. I mean, I’m looking at 204 K with 12, we do have a little adventure we would love to have, or to take on it. It’s it’s our neighbors, but that’s, that’s kinda not here. There we’ll have to see kind of what happens in the next couple of years with down. But they’ve got a awesome piece of property. It is not so awesome now, but we would like to make it awesome. But we’ll have to see where that goes.
03:32:06
No, I, I, I just think that that’s so cool that you you’re, you’re literally building your, your future. You’re not, you’re not doing your rental arbitrage. You’re not just living off of other people’s properties with co-hosts thing. You, you, you are literally, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s mortgage free, you know, it’s free. This is all all because of you. What do you, what do you do to set your units apart?
03:32:30
I have fame homes. I know it, there, there are different themes. That’s crazy. I know my husband thought I was absolutely insane. So the Western cottage and I always bring that up. Sorry, but I’m looking right at it, to be honest with you. I’m like sitting in my bedroom, our little one bedroom loft beach house, and I’m looking at this copper roof, which is our Western cottage. The site is so cool. I mean, the site itself, if you could just kind of do a, do a, a video shot around it. I need to do that actually. Now that I said that, but it’s really cool. So we’ve got a four bedroom, the Western cottage, the beach house, we’re all neighbors. So it’s a community. It really is a community. Everybody kind of knows everybody, even though everybody lives in different states or they’re here building a home in Lubbock because they just moved and it’s not ready for them. Sorry, Julian. I just completely, yeah.
03:33:36
Yeah. The theme theme Toms are, what are you, what are you doing this?
03:33:40
Hello? The house. So theme homes, the Western cottage, if you go in, I have this decal of this huge tree and these birds and my husband built the loft, I guess, kind of the loft, the loft header out of a tri-fold animal room divider. We disassembled that room divider and took all this beautiful wood, elephants, zebras, birds, beautiful wood grained. And we took it apart and he built this really cool looking loft divider that you can see, right when you walk into the Western cottage. So it’s like the main focal point. And people love that. They walk in the ceilings are high. They have, they have so much personality going, which is probably all of mine. My husband will come out and say, okay, that’s that’s too much. Don’t, let’s not do that. So because he’s more the conservative one that I’m the open-minded Hey, they would love this.
03:35:04
Literally I am not an artist, but thank God I had an artist actually call me local artists Facebooked me and asked me if he could put some, some of his art in my housing homes. And I would, I was like, oh my gosh, I would love that. So I’m going to work with him on that. But yeah, so they’re all themed Western cottage beach house, the industrial loft. It has a very cozy gray, very soothing feeling. When you walk in open cabinets, the warehouse is just self it’s a, it’s a, a spray foam, which is closed cell and it’s a real dark, so you can see it, but you can’t see it. It’s absolutely really cool. The tiny container it’s it’s like when you walk into that, it’s like a Bohemian, it’s got a lot of blues and reds and different colors and we can play with it as much as we want.
03:36:06
So when we it’s funny Tesla and I, oh, we are the cleaners we clean. There is no shame in my game. I know that that place a Tesla has got to be the best cleaner in the world, the best marketer. So we get in there and, and we make sure because we are at pet friendly, we make sure there is no hair on the couch. There is no hair on the floor. We are the cleaners. So we market clean manage. We do everything, everything landscaping, and, and it really it’s all coming together. So it kind of looks like, yeah, a family owns this business and we can tell, and we love it. You know? So that’s kinda the, that’s the feeling we’re getting, we’re hoping to continue our, our, we are working on a Mediterranean type industrial, feel a cozy home as we speak. It’s very different and it’s going to be really cool. So you gotta, you gotta continue to watch that one as we build it, but that’s, that’s kind of what sets us apart.
03:37:26
Definitely. Yeah, I was, I was, I was looking at the pictures and man, I love the love, the look like the, the container home. It’s just so cute and very unique skin and all, all of the, all of the photos and the homes that you build, doesn’t it doesn’t look like, like if I tried to build a home, it would be a sad, sad looking home. But the homes that you’re building, I’m like, wow, like people pay good money to live in. Those
03:37:51
That is crazy because people want to know, they’re interested in knowing what in the world, how do you do this? I told my husband the other day, I said, you know what? You should teach people how to do this. You really should. You should teach them the basics of building your own place. I would have never dreamed. I know so much. And I’ve been, you know, we’ve been married a long time and I had no idea this man was absolutely just smart. He just, he just is. And it’s, and, and we, we hang out with people who are smarter than us. I mean, I not with a framer, he’s, you know, he, he frames these homes. People don’t get that. The framer is the basic of your house. So if you can learn to frame and you can learn the basics of plumbing and, and you can save a lot of freaking money, you know, a lot of money. So I can’t give enough credit to my husband. He’s he’s like it, he’s just the backbone. He’s very quiet. You know, I’m the outspoken one.
03:38:58
Did you guys ever build homes prior to this venture that you took? So you had no
03:39:06
Completely remodeled homes. This, that Western cottage is our first home that we built together from ground up in this beat was second in the tiny was third. And then we went into the warehouses and started converting nos. And we’re going to build three. We hope I’m saying this. I’m not going to knock on some wood. We help to build more affordable. And I know people are like affordable. How more affordable can you get? But our homes go from 7 25 a month and you can break that down to a week or a day or however, that’s kind of how I do it to, you know, 1900 a month and our business model right now. And we have done some weeklies and I’ve done a couple of three or four days on Airbnb for, you know, with tests just to fill in. But our, we have 30, 60, 90 day plans and, and the longer you stay, the less it is.
04:40:25
So the traveling nurses, the medical professionals that come to the Lubbock right now, they love that plan. It, it gives them a little bit of security. It’s not just like an Airbnb or a, a nightly thing that we’re doing. This is a special plan that we do for the medical and even the turbine peoples. Cause I really don’t know if they’re going to be here month to month, but usually they’re a little shorter, but the medical field, the out traveling OTs, traveling, RNs, traveling PTs, peop PAs, physician assistants, NPS nurses, nurse practitioners that are coming to Lubbock.
04:41:08
They’re coming to school for medical, whatever the case may be. We want to build smaller homes for them. Stand alone, not connected to anyone stand alone, modern cabanas, and really our traveling nurses. They’ve actually inspired us to do that. I have a young graduate student that is with us right now and she’s an OT. And she said, oh my gosh, I want to stay here. I want to be here with y’all while I’m doing this, but I can’t, I just cannot afford it. You know, I’ve got college debt. I that’s why I’m traveling because I’ll make more money. But I just, you know, if I’m in debt, I can’t really give you the money because that I’m like, I totally understand. I get it. She wanted the tiny, but the tiny has been booked for, you know, six months now. So we’ve learned from her that, yeah, she’s got a great profession.
04:42:25
She she’s an awesome person, but she can’t afford, you know, the 1699 that we’re charging, you know, a month for these in, in, in, in Lubbock. That’s, that’s pretty much the market. I know. You’re like, wow, that’s pretty cheap. But in Lubbock, in Texas, that’s kind of the market I had actually, I had a corporate housing.com person call me, and I guess they’re in Lubbock now or something. I don’t know. But they do a lot of the sublets in apartment complexes here. And, and they tried to do the secret shopper thing with me and I’m like, oh my gosh, I’ve been a secret shopper. You know, for very many years, I know exactly what, what you’re doing, but I, I stopped her and I talked to her. I told her the truth, but yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s, that’s what I would, I, I, it’s a great industry. I
04:43:22
And H how do you, how do you target, like traveling nurses, traveling workers, you, you said that your, your daughter, Tesla does a lot of your social media marketing. How much, how much of the business are you getting from like off of the platforms, like Airbnb,
04:43:40
Quite a bit, quite a bit. The platform, other than Airbnb, I have found that a lot of the medical people use furnished finders. And so I have got quite a bit from them say, or then I actually, I still do Craigslist. I do apartments.com. I mean, I do a lot of them, or I don’t actually Tesla does. And she refreshes everything. She has her own calendar that she kind of keeps up with. And because we do this full-time and we’re on property and we see each other every single day. And we, we, we are able to keep that calendar intact. You know, we’re not double-booking, but I say that, and I, I don’t, I almost double booked last night. So it was a scary thought because I definitely don’t want to do that to anyone, but, but yeah, that’s, that’s, we do all of them right now, but the Airbnb has been very successful just because if we feel like we’re not, we’re not, it’s a slow month slow week, or I’m not getting people in the cause I, I need to be booked by the middle of the month for the next month period.
04:45:10
That’s just the way it is that we have to do that. Or we start going to a weekly, sometimes daily, not daily, maybe three days, minimum, four days minimum, something like that on Airbnb. And, and, and when that happens, it’s, it’s almost guaranteed that Airbnb helps us maintain occupancy.
04:45:37
So w so what do you, what do you typically set your minimum occupancy to
04:45:46
Minimum occupancy? Or what are you are?
04:45:49
So like how many, how many days do you require people to stay there before you start dropping it drop?
04:45:54
Yeah. If I don’t have a 30, a 60 or a 90 day guest, I usually do four, four. You must be here at least four to five minimum. I think it’s five. I think I’d have to ask Tesla on that, to be honest, she, like I said, she’s the one that does my Airbnb, but she, I think it’s about a four day minimum stay. I’m pretty sure.
04:46:21
Oh, so you’re, you’re really getting people that are more like longer term tenants, you know, they’re, they’re, yeah. They’re staying there for 60, 90 days, 30 days. And if, if you need to supplement that income, then you just drop it down. Is, are you charging people more money for these shorter term stays like, let’s say four days.
04:46:42
Yeah. We go up on the daily. Right. So what I do is normally I, I, I have the 30, 60, 90 day plan for people and I break that down per day on the calculator, see what the daily rate would be on that. And then I usually just go up, I’ll take it up. Maybe, you know, maybe five, $10 per day to see if it, if it makes it, if it makes it and somebody books it great. If not, I’ll take it down a little bit, but I don’t like them to sit. I want them after we clean, after we prep them after they’re the make ready is done and we’re ready for somebody to walk in. I don’t, I don’t stress about those days that I’m having to be, you know, the cleaner, the housekeeper. I tell Tesla, Hey, block it. And then we’ll put it the minute we’re ready or the day before we’ll, we’ll activate it.
04:47:42
You know? So I, because we’re a team and we, we are here, you know, daily meeting, we look at our board, we find out who has called, even if somebody called and said, well, my wife and I are dah, dah, dah, you know, and you’re not really sure we put them on the board, we get their name, we get their phone number. We’re very active in the marketing part because you have to be, I had a senior couple call me just last week and they’re looking for something they’re moving to Lubbock from level, land level lands, what, 30 minutes from us. And, but they’re moving closer to Lubbock because of medical. And I said, oh yeah, we have an adjustable bed. His wife just had a stroke because we’ve been in senior care for so long. We knew kind of what their needs were going to be. And so w which prompted us to do kind of a senior saying, and which we’re going to do a little bit more, but yeah, so we can, we break that down on a daily rate and we see kind of what works for us and it’s successful. I’ll be honest. Airbnb gave us a, this guy who travels with Airbnb all the time.
04:49:06
He is in the wind turbine industry. He goes across the nation. He was only supposed to be in Lubbock for like a week. And he is still with us. He’s been with us two months, but he found us for that weekend, Lubbock through Airbnb.
04:49:31
Well, I, I, I think it’s really cool. The, the, the, the business model that you have, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re treating, you know, you’re, you’re keeping the, the, the rates at more of the average rental rate for the area to attract those longer term stays. And then you’re supplementing that with shorter term stays and then converting those people that would potentially just be short term stays to, you know, be more direct booking and then become longer term.
04:49:56
The thing about it is you can do that with our model, our business model, because I, I actually hand them the key and I’m like, Hey, I’m right across the street. If you need anything, you let me know. And I, I mean, it was like, I love this place. This guy, our guests is very cool. I love this place. He rescued a cat recently rescued a cat and took him to that poor cat was attacked by some dogs and to go to the vet, got him taken care of and big, beautiful black and white cat, his name’s Tex text. And, and, and I see that cat every day at the window in the loft. I mean, he is just the cutest thing ever. And, and now there’s that connection, you know, when he’s out of town, he’ll like, Hey, can you go in and feed text?
05:50:51
And I’m like, yes, it will be, you know, $20 more or whatever. And he’s like, no problem. And, and, and so we’ve kind of got this pet set, pet sitting thing going on too now. So it’s, we’re supplementing. And not that we want to, but it, it’s kind of great, you know, that we have this in our, agendum our little lease contract and Hey, we can do pet sitting if you’re going to be out of town, if you’re not. And you know, you’re not going to be back because you’ve got this medical emergency, let us know we’ll go in, we’ll take care of your pet. So it’s kind of a, it’s a different, it’s a different business model, but we’re really doing it just because it takes care of our homes. We see the house we get to see, they don’t mind if we clean up. I mean, I don’t really charge them if I’m asking the guests to let me go in and clean, because I’ve got somebody else that wants to look at it, that’s moving to Lubbock, but their house isn’t ready to move into yet. They’ll say, oh, sure, come on in. And we’ll go in there. Tesla will straighten up. We won’t do a deep plane, but we’ll straighten up enough to where somebody, when they walk in, they are not going, oh my gosh. So it, it is a different business model.
05:52:11
We
05:52:11
Are, we are hands-on
05:52:15
I think, I think it’s so interesting. Just every, everybody that’s been on the show has such a unique story in such a unique way of how they operate their business. And I think yours is very interesting.
05:52:27
I listened, I listened to your podcast all the way to Dallas and back just this past weekend. And I’m trying to kind of understand what I could learn from other people, because people are, are so unique in this business right now. I think the big fear out there right now is, you know, what is going to happen to the regulations of short-term rentals. And we were listening to one of your podcasts about the real estate license and, and, you know, they’re thinking that they’re going to have to, you know, get, you’re gonna have to have some kind of license to operate a short-term rental, regardless where you’re at. And my husband’s like, all right, go get your real estate license now. And I’m like, oh, no, I don’t want to do that. But you have some great, you have some great stories.
05:53:19
Yeah. We have, we have some really unique guests, including yourself done is, is what would you do differently if you had start from scratch?
05:53:33
If I had to start from scratch? Well, as I had mentioned, I think for me, it depends on what age you are. I mean, I had no idea I’d be sitting here, like at 53, running a full time, short term rental company. But if you’re, if, if the younger viewers are listening or even your older viewers that have maybe a piece of land, a piece of property, I say land only because we build from ground up. But even if you found some land that you could build a small little house that you could actually rent or manage on property, I, I probably would’ve done it sooner, you know, 10 years ago, or whenever Airbnb started, I had a house in town that I was renting. I have some rental experience do my background, kind of a weird part of my life. But anyway, I do have some real experience, but I actually thought about doing the 30, 60, 90 plate, 90 plan back probably 10, 12 years ago with a house that I owned. And I got a lot of feedback from it, but I was too busy being an administrator and going to school and, and, and trying to survive that I never really fulfilled that, but I would start slow, start, start with something that, you know, you can build on.
05:55:26
I think all these people that are subletting apartments or whatever, there’s so many different ways to do this. I think that that’s great, but don’t spend all your money, go put it back in something that’s going to be yours a hundred percent. You know, you’re working, you’re working for someone else steal. So if you’re, if you’re making $500,000 a month or whatever, put that back, put that back and buy something that is yours that you can build on. And that’s kind of what I would say. I would have done even even 20 years ago. I wish I would’ve done that because that, I, I don’t know how my life would have had any other direction, but, but yeah, if you’re young and or even if you’re, you’re like us and you have the ability to build something close to you do it, it, it, it it’s, it’s, it’s awesome. It’s a great experience. It’s a, if you like people, now, you must like people, you have to be able to deal with people.
05:56:37
Now, now you, you catered to, to a specific type of people, like more of the traveling people that are are on business. So I’m curious to see, like, where do you, where do you see short-term rentals in the future?
05:56:52
I I’ll be honest. I have a vision right now. I have a vision that people want this term. They don’t want just a Short Term. They might want a short term rental for, for their, for whatever reason they’re traveling. But I have a couple of people that have approached me in the past, younger, younger people. And they’re like, you know what? I’m so busy and I travel, but I need a home base. And if you can get this affordable for me to rent this for a year, all bills paid, furnished, the whole kitten caboodle I’ll do it. And I usually tell them, I’m like, it’s pretty expensive when you start looking at 1900 a month for a year. But, but I can do like 1475, if you want to do a year lease. I always feel though, right now, I may not feel this in the future, but I always feel that that’s going to be a burden on you.
05:58:08
And, and, and I’m always looking out for people and I need to stop that because that’s not the best business model you can have if you want to, if you do want to, I guess, I, I don’t even want to say be rich, but, but my business model is, look, I have a, it’s not all about the money for me. It is about making connections with people and treating people good. And so if you have the ability to do something like this, and you want to do that, go for it, because I feel like the vision or the industry itself could actually be longer term rentals, all inclusive. That’s kind of where I would love to see it, but I don’t know. I really don’t know. I had a professor real quick story at a professor that stayed in our tiny, he was in Lubbock taking get classical guitar lessons, loved him, just love day, me.
05:59:12
He was so fun to talk to quiet, man. Scary, smart. I mean, I always felt so, so stupid next to him, but very smart. And one day he looked at me and he said, you know what? She’s got something going on here, girl. And he said, this little thing right here for me. And I’m 60 something years old, and I’m trying to get out of debt at this age. He goes, it sucks. He said, you have inspired me. And I’m like, oh man. You know, but that kind of connection with people. I don’t know. It just does something for me. Maybe it doesn’t do anything for anybody else, but for me, it probably has come from my senior geriatric experience, hospitality experience, customer service, hospitality must have experience. So, but I have, I really need to start a journal with, with my guests because they have so many interesting stories.
06:00:28
And I think that’s the that’s, that’s kinda where I see it. You know, more of a community that people can actually live here longer term and feel safe and feel good. And I would, I had an artist actually yesterday, Facebook me and say, Hey, I would love to live in your community, but more longterm, maybe six months. And I was all for it. I gave him a price and he’s going to get with his wife and see if that’s something they want to do. But yeah, that’s kind of where I see it. I don’t know.
06:01:05
That’s pretty, that’s pretty unique. I know nobody on the show is shared that type of model, but when you, when you put it that way, it makes sense. You know, as people travel more and people don’t really want to be tied down to a specific area, they live in more, they’re living more minimally. They don’t want to carry all this stuff with them. It makes sense that that they’d want to stay maybe in a community of other people that are just staying in shorter term. And they can use that as like a home base and kind of travel to different areas.
06:01:33
That’s kinda what I’m, that is my vision for, for 8 0 6 cozy homes. It, it, it is my vision, but you know, you get so wrapped up in what you gotta do now, especially us, because I mean, we wake up having to paint. I wake up literally with paint on me. My husband’s like, did you shower? Yes, I did. But you know, you, you’re constantly, I’m having these different hats and I’m constantly having to put a different hat on and I’m not no spring chicken anymore. So I, you know, we were a little, a little slower, again, things done, but man, I see that I really do see that happening. And I think if you had like, even if you had 12 on one side, 12 on another side or something like that, even 24 small, you know, I’ve seen communities, but they’re more long long-term and, and, and the, the little house, the tiny house communities, I guess you could say it that’s actually there’s well, no, I want it to be mine.
06:02:39
I still want the business, but I want it to be affordable for somebody to rent from me and me to maintain it for them when they’re gone in their absence. Even like the pet sitting and stuff, people love their pets, but oh my gosh, you know, they can’t stay in the house all day by themselves when they’re working. So we started offering that service. It was, it just came hand in hand. It’s just a natural thing. And for a community in the future, you think of that. And you’re like, why wouldn’t somebody want to pay, you know, 1500 a month for a small home base that has people they trust. And they like, and that will do, you know, even if they were gone for a week pet sitting. I mean, I just think it’s a kind of the coolest thing ever. So maybe, maybe not. I don’t know.
06:03:34
I think, I think you’re onto something here, Don. I think you’re onto something. Do you have a we’re we’re, we’re a big, you know, we’re really into learning and educating. And you said that you’d listened to a lot of podcasts. Do you have a favorite book or maybe even a podcast that you could recommend that has really kind of changed your business or your life?
06:03:54
Oh gosh, I, I’m going to tell you, like I tell my husband, I cannot remember anything but everything. So I’ll be, I mean, I don’t know if I can, I can throw his name out and Dave Ramsey, I I’m just gonna throw his name out. You can edit if you need to, but I’ll be honest. I have been listening to that guy since I was probably 31. And even though I just as still listen to him still, I read his books. I take his advice literally seriously. And I do what I had to do when I was in my twenties. So that’s kind of that’s, that’s the guy who, who really, probably that don’t even knowing really sent me to be honest. I mean, I got, we got ourselves here because we sacrificed, we sacrificed the big house. We, we sacrificed two or three cars that we had. We, we sold them cars that my husband had.
06:05:02
I don’t even know what you call it when you renovate a car, but recondition, whatever, but you, you gotta sacrifice. And that, so Dave Ramsey, he would harp on that a lot. If you’re not willing to eat beans and rice and sacrifice, then I can’t get you where you need to be. Period. That’s just the way it is. And I, that has stuck in my head forever and trying to get out of debt and don’t spend like for material stuff. So I’m not real materialistic, even though I give a lot, we have a lot of material for building, but we do a lot of recycling. We do a lot of upcycling. We, we are kind of like the planet. We love the planet. Everybody should love the planet. So we, we take all those things very seriously. When we, we recycle here, we have a program for it and everything. So we, we are trying to help others be better. And that’s all we can do really. But yeah. That’s
06:06:20
Yeah. Dave, Dave Ramsey shares a, a lot of great, great advice. I love the, the total money makeover. Yeah, but you’re, you’re definitely, you’re definitely sacrificing Don you’re, you’re, you’re putting your blood, sweat and tears into this. And I think your vision will definitely come to fruition and I just wish you the best of success. And we will continue to just keep on watching your journey. And hopefully we can get you on the show when you reach that 12, 12 property mark. I’d be excited to do that and see, see, see where your business is now and, and how your life is.
06:06:54
Oh my gosh, Julian. I’d love that. That would be so cool with,
06:06:58
Right. Well, thank you so much, Don. And until next time, host nation, keep on hosting. Hope you hosts benefited from the show. If you found value, please go on 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 go on over to our Facebook group, the host nation, talk to your hosts in the next step. So keep up.
