The Secret Sauce Behind Short-Term Rental Success Part 1

David Greene: This is the BiggerPockets Podcast show 578.

Rob Abasolo: When I built my tiny house, I was like, “Hey, if I can just build this cool tiny house and breakeven, hey, all good news over here, right?” But then it actually ended up being a cash cow and that was just a bonus for me. And I was like, “This is great. I get this house that I can enjoy, or theoretically, I can enjoy. And it pays for itself, and I make money on it.”

David Greene: What’s going on, everyone? This is David Greene, your host of the BiggerPockets Podcast, here with a very special episode for you today. But before we get into that, I want to let you know that if you are looking for a way to build financial freedom through real estate, if you want to have more control and autonomy over your life, if you value the time that has been given to you and you want to use it in ways that you feel are best for you and your family, this is the place to be. BiggerPockets is a community of over two million members on a journey exactly like the one that you are on, trying to accomplish the same things you are. And our goal here is to bring you as many resources, support, and assistance as we possibly can to help you meet that goal.
One way we do that is with this podcast, where we bring in different guests, where we bring in different speakers, where we bring in different experts to share with you what they did to accomplish exactly what you’re trying to do, the niche, the strategy, the style that they use to get where they’re going. We also have an amazing website with forums where you can ask questions that people will answer, with blog articles where you can read and gain other people’s wisdom and with a lot of support like real estate agents or different support pieces that will help you achieve your goal that you can find through the website. Now, on today’s podcast episode, I am here with my good friend and co-host, Rob Abasolo.

Rob Abasolo: Now, close.

David Greene: Rob Abasolo.

Rob Abasolo: There we go. There we go.

David Greene: That was the thing when Brandon did the show, he always messed up people’s last names and I think that curse has been given to me. I just messed that up.

Rob Abasolo: But hey, for you, I will go by Rob Olasolo. Don’t worry.

David Greene: That’s funny. I wonder Abasolo, why I couldn’t get it. Maybe it’s because the band Abba, it just feels wrong. So, today will be a solo show with Abasolo himself. We are going to be bringing you more episodes where we dive deep into a specific strategy, property niche, giving you more detailed and nuanced information so that you can follow in the footsteps.
And today, I’m being joined by Rob, because he and I are actually partnering on buying short term rentals. And we are going to break down, this can be the first of a three-part series, the process that we are using to put them under contract and manage them. So, today, we’re going to be focusing on choosing a location, a strategy, and a property type specifically for short term rentals. And I couldn’t think of a better person to join me than Rob. Rob, welcome to the show.

Rob Abasolo: Hello, hello, hello. Man, I am really excited to do this, because there’s so many questions and apprehensions I think about getting into short term rentals. It’s all the new rage for a lot of people right now. And this episode, we get into some pretty nitty gritty stuff. I mean, we really talk about the concepts that we abide by ourselves when choosing a market, proximity to locations, availability of vendors, boots on the ground, all that stuff. So, I think people are going to have a pretty good understanding of where to get started after listening to today’s episode.

David Greene: Yeah, and we can get into it right now. Basically, what we’re going to be sharing with everybody is how to choose a location, a strategy, and a property type. So, this is where it starts when you’re trying to say, “Hey, I want to get into short term rentals. What do I do?” This is what Rob and I believe is where you should start. We have a five-step system that we’re going to be sharing with you today. And step number one is going to be looking into the strengths of different markets. So, Rob, in your experience, what is the way that you categorize different markets?

Rob Abasolo: I’d love to tell you all about it, my friend.

David Greene: And now we will get into today’s show. Rob, as you were.

Rob Abasolo: Yeah. So, there are a lot of things for me that I really take into consideration when I’m starting to narrow down my markets. Obviously, there are certain markets that are very vacationer friendly, I suppose you could say. And this would be places like national parks where people are always visiting, a beach town, ski towns, all that stuff. But also, one of the things that I like to consider is not necessarily an up and coming market, but is it a market that is getting a lot of appreciation year over year?
And that’s one of the happy accidents of a lot of my portfolio over the last couple of years for me personally, is a lot of my portfolio has really grown pretty significantly, specifically in the last two years. Not really something that I had anticipated because I was really aiming for just having high cash flowing units, but that’s always like the upside of real estate, right? The appreciation, the compounding interest as you were in the real estate industry.

David Greene: Very nice. So, if I’m hearing you right, you’re looking at, “Why are people visiting the area? And is it likely to appreciate?” So, what are some of the factors that you feel lead to markets appreciating?

Rob Abasolo: Well, one of the things for me is like I think for the most part right now, we’re in a travel surge and so a lot of people are traveling like never before. If you look at a lot of the data, if you look at even Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, he said that this year alone, they were going to need millions of new hosts in this upcoming year, because they can’t keep up with demand. So, for me, I’m starting to look at very specifically, “Where are people starting to travel the most?” And honestly, it’s like a tried and true method for me, but I’m always looking at national parks, because a lot of people have really been sleeping on national park for a long time, I think.
And it wasn’t really up until the whole pandemic and everything where people stopped really traveling to some of the more known places like the Disney Worlds, right? And they started hopping in their car and driving to the Gatlinburg or the Arches or the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Zion, Joshua Tree. All of those different places now are seeing such a surge in visitation right now. I think the Smoky Mountains specifically saw one to two million more visitors in the last year than ever before, which is huge.
So, just in general right there, now that the amount of traffic that’s going to those different places means that there’s way more demand and because there’s way more demand, well, now investors are starting to catch on and get into those markets. And that right there starts driving up prices quite a bit.

David Greene: That’s a really good point. So, we typically break it down into three types of places or three types of ways people will visit an area. The first is they get in a plane and fly there, that would probably be Disney World. You’re going to go to Disneyworld. You got to go to Orlando to get there. You’re going to fly there, you need a place to stay, you look for a short term rental. The next would be a place you would drive for a weekend vacation. These would be national parks a lot of the time, like what Rob was mentioning. If you live in Tennessee, you’re going to go to the Smoky Mountains. If you live in Southern California, you’re going to go to Joshua Tree. So, those are places where people also look to find a place to stay while they’re there.
The states might be a little bit shorter, but they’re typically frequented by people who live somewhat close to that, at least within driving proximity. And then the third would be career-related reasons or occupational-related reasons where you’re traveling for work. Maybe you’re a traveling nurse, or you’re going for a business meeting somewhere. You’re going to attend a conference and you have to stay somewhere and you don’t want to stay in a hotel. So, just understanding that from a high level. Which of these areas your tenants are going to be coming from will help?
We also look at, “Is this a market that is stronger at cash flowing right now, or is this a market that we think has future growth?” We think that there’s going to be equity that’s built in both the revenue that comes in in the future, as well as the value of the property itself that you’re going to be buying. So, Rob, what are some of the things you look for in both of those two different strategies to try to maximize your efficiency?

Rob Abasolo: Well, if I’m being honest, when I got started in short term rentals in general, my MO was cashflow. That’s really all I cared about, right? Because a lot of people getting started in short term rentals and just real estate in general, we all want to leave that W-2, so that we can focus on being a real estate investor. And so, for me, my whole strategy was buying a place at a very fair price, right? And then having a huge cash-on-cash return. That was always the gold standard, but really, it hasn’t been until recently, where once you settle that up and once you establish a pretty good lifestyle and you’ve got a good budget and you stick into it, then that’s when appreciation really starts being a lot more important.
So, I’ve really shifted my mentality a little bit. It’s not that I don’t like cash flow, obviously, like we all do. But now I’m really starting to target places that I think have a little bit more appreciation. And so, obviously, you want both. There’s like a balance, right? But for the most part, I’m trying to look at where people are going, right? So, if you keep up with a lot of the trends, obviously, one of the big one right now, a lot of people are leaving California, and they’re going to a bunch of different places. They’re going to Arizona, they’re going to Texas, they’re going to Florida, and so many other places.
So, for me, I started asking myself questions like, “Well, where are they going? And what are the different locations that I can really start to capitalize?” And one of those for me was Arizona. That’s where I started putting a lot of emphasis on it because it’s really close to California, right? That’s one of the logical steps, but obviously, Texas is a really big place too right now. So, for me, I’m looking at not just travel trends, but overall trends in where people are migrating to in and around the US.

David Greene: So, what type of investor should be looking for a more cashflow heavy opportunity, and what type of investor should be looking a little bit more for future growth and appreciation?

Rob Abasolo: The people that are starting out, they’re going to be a lot more focused, I think, on the cash flow side of things and I get it. I have a couple students who they’re so focused on the cash-on-cash metric. Though, obviously, that’s the metric right? But I’m like, “Guys, there’s a little bit more to real estate investing than your cash-on-cash return. There’s tax deductions, there’s appreciation, there’s pay down and all that stuff. So, again, as someone that was there and not too long ago, I understand that cash flow is really important.
So, I think it’s important when you’re first starting out, for a newbie investor to aim for that, because it helps you just build up your amount of cash that you can then put into the next investment. And obviously, there’s an argument for focusing on appreciation first, too. But for me, as someone that did that at the very beginning of their portfolio career, I think that newbie investors are a little bit more prone to take that cash flow side of things.

David Greene: Okay. And probably also, I would say, people that don’t have as much cash, right? Cash flow is more important when you don’t have a lot of cash flow in other parts of your life. But maybe if you’re a little more financially successful or comfortable, that isn’t as important to you. And that’s typically why the wealthier people tend to look at appreciation. I’ll leave a little cherry on top of the sundae of step number one, by saying that the thing that a lot of people don’t consider is the time they’re going to put into the property and the energy they’re going to put into the property. So, that’s another thing.
If you have 90 cash flowing properties, what you’ve done is created another job. You’d have to manage 90 properties. And if you’re not managing it, you’re managing the person who’s managing it. So, there is a point of diminishing returns, where if you just continue chasing after the same type of property, it starts to have a negative effect on your life, and you lose the freedom that you’re trying to gain in the first place by getting these deals. Anything you want to add on that?

Rob Abasolo: Yeah, so I want to turn it back over to you, because this is something you and I have talked about quite a bit in this first deal. And obviously, you’re a big fan of appreciation. So, I’m curious just hearing it from you. When do you think an investor or what kind of investor should really be focusing on appreciation versus cash flow?

David Greene: The first thing I want to address is the belief that appreciation is not guaranteed at speculative, but cash flow is guaranteed. If you’re looking at it from that prism, no matter what I say, you’re just going to throw it off to the side and say, “That’s heresy.” Cash flow is not guaranteed.
If you are an investor who owns a lot of properties and you try to live off the cash flow, you know how difficult it is how many things go wrong that make cash flow wildly inconsiderate or inconsistent, I should say. And then the other thing I’ve noticed is my best cash flowing properties got there through appreciation of the rent. What it was renting for when I bought it is not what it’s renting for now, and that’s why I’m getting a lot more cash flow. So, you have to break yourself out of the cycle of looking at an investment like it’s a one­-year decision. It’s not, it’s a many year decision. And so, if you look at a property and how it’s going to perform over a long period of time, properties that appreciate more are going to make you more money.
Now, it’s not the concept of appreciation that I’m saying that you chase. It’s the area or the asset type that is going to increase in demand. If more people want the type of asset that you own, it will naturally appreciate. And in that sense, it’s not speculative. Buying a very reliable thing that everyone’s going to want is not a speculative move that you’re just, “I hope it appreciates, because if it doesn’t, I’m going to lose it.” You make sure you can afford it. You make sure it cash flows enough so that it can support you, but you don’t get rich off of cash flow. Making 100 or 200 bucks a unit is not going to make anybody wealthy. It’s just a lot of work.
So, I started off chasing after properties only looking at ROI just like everyone else did, because I was in a job and I wanted to have enough cash flow coming in that I could leave the job. It wasn’t the cash flow to make me wealthy. It was the cash flow to support me breaking that connection between needing that job. And once I did and I became a real estate agent, I didn’t have a consistent income that I always knew would be the same. I started to shift a little bit more into our long term investments, delaying gratification.
And then as I became more successful as a real estate agent, I built a team and then I built a loan company and some of the other businesses I have. I shifted even more into delaying gratification. So, maybe a better way than saying appreciation, which has a stigma of speculation, is how long can you delay gratification. If you’re going to get cash flow right off the bat, it’s going to stay that way for the rest of time you own the property, you won’t do as well as if the property becomes a little more desirable every year than it was the year before.

Rob Abasolo: 100%, man. For me, really the big lightbulb moment here was one of my first two Airbnb’s and short term rentals was the house that I bought in LA. I moved to LA. I bought this house, it was really expensive. It was $624,000. And I really spread thin when I bought that I probably shouldn’t have, but I was taking a bit of a risk because I was like, “I think this is going to work out.” So, this house had a little 279 square foot studio apartment under it. And I was like, “If I put this on Airbnb, I think I can make $2,000 to $3,000 a month.” And so, it was like a house hack, if you will. And then I was renting a guest room to my best friend and I was making 800 bucks a month off of that. And then I built a tiny house in my backyard. Now, I make $2,000, $3,000 a month on Airbnb with that as well.
So, I’ve added all that up. Since I’ve owned that house in the past three, four years, the cashflow on it has been between $180,000 to $200,000, which is awesome. That’s nothing to complain about. But when it hit me, I was like “Whoa, that property has doubled in value. It is now worth between $1.25 and $1.3 million.” So just that appreciation right there is three times more than I’ve made in cash flow. And that’s when I was like, “Oh, David, you’re making a lot of sense now, man.”

David Greene: Yeah. And here’s the part that you start to see when you get deeper into investing. When you take that appreciation, that’s three times more than the cash flow and you reinvest it into a different cash flow and property, you increase your cash flow by three times. That is way, way faster than if you were just to save up money and keep buying cash flowing properties to try to build it up to where your cash will be three times as much. So, I don’t like people looking at it like cash flow or appreciation. They work together, right?

Rob Abasolo: Sure.

David Greene: As you get more appreciation, you exchange it for more cash flow. When your cash flow starts to get stagnant because it’s gone up too much, you can then sell it and you can upgrade. This is how real estate is designed. So, typically, when you start off, you’re asking yourself, “Am I going to buy a property that skews more towards cash flow or skew more towards appreciation?” But your portfolio shouldn’t be determined by only one thing. So, that being said, let’s move on to number two, which might be the most important part of our entire process. Step two is choosing your location, that location that’s right for you individually. We’ve got quite a few steps here. So, I’m going to let you run with that, Rob. And you can just tap me in for backup when you think you need it.

Rob Abasolo: When I need to breathe a little bit. Sure thing, man. Well, okay, so obviously, the world is your oyster when you want to get started in Airbnb. I’m genuinely a believer that pretty much any market, you’ll find success in the short term rental industry. But when you’re starting out, obviously, it’s a little bit more daunting to just throw a dart at the US map, right, and just pick something that’s long distance. So, for me, what I typically preach to a lot of people is I want to see people starting out if it’s possible in their backyard. Now, I don’t necessarily mean literally in your backyard, although I did actually literally start in my backyard.
But what I mean by this is I want people to be two to three hours away from the actual place that they’re investing. And there are a couple reasons for that. Two to three hours away, when you’re at home and you’re working a full time job, that’s still enough for you to get to that property if something happens. If there’s something major or catastrophic, if there’s a fire, if there’s a roof leak, or whatever there is, you can feasibly get there in a night. And then also, during the weekend, you could also just go and visit and you can go and spruce things up. You can go and replace furniture. You can go and do touch up cleanups, all that stuff, right? So, I think there’s a lot of benefits to starting in your backyard, because you’re in close proximity.
So, I think it makes you feel better. It feels a little less risky that you can actually go and get there. Whereas I still think it’s far enough to where you’re not going to be dependent on having to go there. And I’ll give you an example of what I mean by this. When I first started on Airbnb, I was doing what’s called rental arbitrage and I lived 10 minutes away from the apartment that I was subleasing on Airbnb. And every time something small happened, I would go. I felt obliged to go, I felt like I had to go and take care of it. If it was battery, by the way, it was always batteries. But if those batteries dying in the remote, I would go and replace it. If it was the thermostat wasn’t working, I would go and click it up or down for the guests or whatever it is.
Then you just feel this certain obligation to say like, “Well, it’s not worth me hiring someone for 20 bucks off a TaskRabbit to go and figure this out.” But obviously, that’s not going to be as feasible. My other property in Joshua Tree, two and a half hours away from LA. It’s not really feasible or realistic for me to go and do that. It forces me to take the crutch away and let my team step in.

David Greene: Jordan Peterson has a quote that at one point I thought was offensive. But then as I listened to it more, it made more sense. And as a parent, you might understand this. He said, “Never let your kids do something that will make you dislike them.” So, his argument was that when your children are acting in a certain way that just really, really bothers you and you start to despise them, what we think we’re doing is loving our kids by holding it inside. But what happens is that resentment leaks out, they sense it and then they’re damaged by the fact that mom or dad does not like me. There must be something wrong with me. It’s a much more big problem that if you step in and say, “Stop banging that pot, I’m taking it away from you,” right?
That little momentary stigma that the kid feels from getting admonished is better than the resentment that flows out of, “I just can’t stand you because you keep doing this thing.” And I feel like that translates pretty nice into real estate, because what I’ve learned is that if I do any of the job that I don’t like, I take it out passive aggressively on real estate. I have a relationship with real estate, okay? So, if I have to do too many of the things that cause David to be burned out and take away my energy, which for me would be driving to the house to change out the batteries or the thermostat or dealing with like minutiae is what I would call them, those are just challenging for me.
I will subconsciously stop putting my time into real estate. I will stop respecting it, I will stop cherishing it, I will not honor that relationship like I should. Whereas if I say, “This is really bugging me, I need to find someone else to do it,” my relationship gets better. I treat it better. I’m happier with real estate, and then I put more into it. So, I just want to encourage everybody, if you like doing those things, keep doing them.
Brandon and I have gone back and forth, and the ultimate conclusion I came to is there certain things he likes doing in his house, right? He likes fixing stuff. If it energizes you, do it, because you’re going to want to buy more real estate. But if you don’t like doing that stuff like me, hire the person on TaskRabbit and let them do it. Because that energizes me and then I will buy more real estate.

Rob Abasolo: Man, that’s so true. And also, let me just say, I didn’t even have to tap you in, man. That was very seamless. That was a good back and forth there, but it’s so true, man. That first apartment was really a life changing apartment for me. It really paved the way for financial freedom, but I’ve got PTSD. I got PTSD from going there and my guest saying the remote’s not working. And I’m like, “Are you sure?” And they were like, “Yes, I’m sure.” And then I went, I was like, “Well, it seems to be working.” And they said, “Oh, I was using the other remote.” And I was like, “Yeah.” So, there’s so many moments like that that happened. And it’s because I live so close to it that I just felt beholden to that apartment.
But the moment I started really assembling my team and my Airbnb Avengers, as we’ll call it, when we’ll get to that later, but the moment I started doing that and not being so in the weeds of my business, that was the moment that I was like, “Oh, okay, so it’s not a grind, actually. It’s actually really quite fun. It’s a puzzle that you have to figure out.” So, I think, for me, being two to three hours away is that distance where you’re like, “Okay, I’m not going to drive there after work. I’m not going to go and fix that. I’m going to just find someone that can help me with that.” So that’s why I really dive headfirst into if you can be close, that’s great. But obviously, there are going to be instances where investing long distance makes sense.

David Greene: What are some of those instances? Let’s move on to number two there. When would you see that as making sense?

Rob Abasolo: Yeah. So, this would be in an instance where, for example, there are a lot of turnkey markets out there. And what I mean by turnkey is you buy the property and it already comes fully furnished. So, a couple examples of this would be the Smoky Mountains, Blue Ridge, Destin, a lot of beach places that are like very popular STR locations. Typically, people are selling those Airbnb’s as a turnkey rental. And so, really, you do have to fly in to go and make sure that the place is actually what you bought, and the furniture is nice. And you’ll have to go and spruce the place up and replace furniture here and there, but it’s so much easier.
And I mean, so much easier than buying an empty house in the middle of wherever, Chattanooga, Tennessee, driving out there, going, finding all the furniture places, setting it up. I mean, that’s a real hustle. That’s a real grind to go out and furnish a long distance unit. Because A, if you’re like me, I buy in areas where there are national parks, there aren’t necessarily furniture stores or anything like that around. So, it’s like very tough to find furniture for different Airbnb. So, I think if you’re looking to start long distance and you don’t necessarily want to start close to you, I would try to identify some of those turnkey markets where short term rentals are encouraged, they’re welcome, they feed the economy.
Then, like I said, the Smoky Mountains is a really great one that would do that. Another instance in which I might consider investing in a long distance place, especially if I’m just starting out, is if we have what we call boots on the ground. And that just would mean that you have some connection or someone that you know in the city that can help you out if stuff happens, right?
And so, this would mean if you have an aunt or an uncle that lives in the same city or a best friend or an old college roommate that you keep up with, anything like that, where you can say, “Hey, I’m thinking about opening up this Airbnb in Akron, Ohio, for example. I’ll need someone to help me occasionally I’ll try not to call you, but would you be interested in helping me out anytime that someone burns down my house or something like that?” And usually, if I have some connection like that, that immediately mitigates a lot of risk for me, because I know that I can call on someone if anything ever happens. So, I think that’s when you should start maybe considering doing the long distance thing, although it’s not particularly necessary.

David Greene: That’s actually in long distance real estate investing, that concept. I call it a competitive advantage, or sometimes we call it an unfair advantage. But it’s when you have a person local that has a skill set or at least that you can trust that gives you an advantage over the other people that are trying to buy in that market. When I wrote that book, a lot of people’s questions were, “How do I find the market that has the highest ROI? I just want to know the best one and I’ll figure it out from there.”
What I learned at least from the way I did it was that if you’re trying to find the best market, you end up just following the crowd and you’re always in a super competitive area that everybody else is trying to get into. I could go back over the 10 years I’ve been investing and remember when Phoenix was the hot market and then it moved into Memphis was the hot market and then Atlanta became the hot market and then it moved into Tennessee and Nashville. Everyone just followed the same. Huntsville, Alabama had its moment. Madison, Wisconsin had its moment Austin, Texas had its moment.
Now, South Florida is having its moment. It’s super challenging when you just throw yourself in the mix of every other investor, that’s all converging on these market like locusts at one time. Instead, what I recommend people do is find the market that you could be the most successful in and make it work there, instead of following the crowd. So, that’s definitely something I’d encourage people to do. Now, we also have four categories that we consider when looking into short term rentals. You want to go over those? You mentioned them briefly, but let’s cover them again before we move on.

Rob Abasolo: Yeah, let’s officially state the POV here. So, four categories here. And again, there’s no right or wrong here, but this is just a very concise way of explaining where in the country I’m looking at. It helps me locate, it sets some beginning parameters, right? So, number one is going to be national parks. Number two is going to be state parks. Number three is going to be eclectic towns. And number four is going to be vacation destinations. So, what I mean by all of this here would be national parks, I think we know what that is. It would be like your Grand Canyon, Smoky Mountains, Zion, Yosemite, all that stuff. State parks would be smaller, but they still receive a decent amount of visitation from the actual state itself. And then we get into eclectic towns.
And so, what I mean by eclectic towns is small towns that have some draw or some reason that people go to. So, if you think of places like outside of San Diego, there’s an area called Julian. A lot of people love going there, apple picking. They’ve got good pies. There’s just a draw. People love it. It’s an adorable little town, right? Waco in between Austin and Dallas, that’s in between two very big cities. It has been popularized by-

David Greene: Chip and Joanna Gaines. Yeah.

Rob Abasolo: Yeah, exactly. So, it’s a pitstop in between those two cities. Eureka Springs is another one that’s like there’s cute shops and everywhere. One shop is vintage Italian sodas, and another one’s like vintage candy, that stuff.

David Greene: Yeah, we’ve got a couple out here in California. I think Copperopolis is one. They have this old Western fake city where you can go in through swinging doors. And I remember as a kid, we’d go there and they’d be rock candy, and they had these fake horses you could sit on. So, there are people that do like to visit those places. I think like a little bonus, quick tip we should throw in here is look for places that kids want to go. As I grow, if I ever move out of real estate, what I will get into is either selling something involved with nostalgia or selling something that kids want, because I believe those are the two things that drive people to make decisions more than anything else.
When the first Transformers movie was shown, you might have been too young to remember that, but I remember seeing that big Transformer leg come down and be like, “Oh, my God, they are doing Transformers.” And I knew at that point, I would pay anything to go see it because of the nostalgia factor. And then the other one is kids. Kids just beat down their parent’s will just asking for the same thing over and over and over. And when you finally let a kid have what they want, everybody feels so good. That finding properties in areas near where kids want to visit. That’s why Disney World’s so popular, Disneyland, some of these things. So, I definitely think those are things to consider. Moving on, the next thing you have is a place that you would want to visit occasionally. Tell me more about why you think that’s a good factor.

Rob Abasolo: So, it’s very important to have some draw or something that you like about a market, A, because you have to go there. You’re going to have to go there and actually visit it at least once or twice, every couple of years, right? And so, you want to have a reason to go there. But ideally, for me, if you follow a lot of the trends and a lot of the investors in this space, a lot of them aren’t necessarily full time investors, they are just people that want a short term rental. Maybe they can’t justify the expense of a second home, right? And then they’ll go through a second home or vacation home loan and put down 10% to get into a property. And they’ll be there for maybe one or two months a year, but they can’t justify paying for the other 10 months, right?
And so, these are the types of investors that are really getting into the game right now. And so, if you’re buying a second home, because you want to use it, ideally, aside from the actual investment part of it, it is nice if you could actually go visit, stay, and enjoy it as a guest. I don’t do this enough admittedly. When I built my tiny house in Joshua Tree, I was like, “I’ve built the ultimate tiny house. I’m going to go and stay there all the time.” And I really only stayed there once or twice. It’s fully booked. I love it. It’s really great. I have kids now so a tiny house makes it a little bit tougher. But if I could, I would.
I have probably 14 Airbnb’s or so. There might be 15 right now, but we have 14. I’ve visited seven of them. The other seven, I still actually haven’t visited. They are long distance. But I have aspirations too. I’ve picked out locations that I was like, “I would like to go here one day,” because I hear good things and I want the option to go and enjoy my own property.

David Greene: Here’s another reason that I like that. I feel like it mitigates risk. Now, hear me out. If you’re buying a property solely for cash flow, you’re only buying a business, you’re putting a lot of pressure on that property and yourself to perform having maximum vacancy, and then you’re going to spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect property. Then when you find the right one, you’re going to have to spend a lot of money to fix it up. It’s just making your job hard the higher your expectations are, what you expect of that. I’m going back to the real estate relationships thing. If you have very high expectations of what you need from a partner, it’s going to be very difficult to find someone that can meet those needs.
If you’re a relatively stable person that just want someone to share life with, it’s not that much pressure on your partner, and they’re going to perform better, right? I don’t like putting a lot of pressure on real estate to change our lives, to meet all of our needs. And that’s when people have the problem when they’re saying, “I want to property, the 40% cash-on-cash return, 70% of ARV in gray day schools,” and they go through this list that they’re never going to find. If you’re finding a property that you want to use and then the fact you can rent it out at the same time is like… I can’t think of the word I’m trying to look at here, but basically handle some of the responsibility for your mortgage. There’s a lot less pressure that’s on you, right?
You’re going to buy it because you want to use it and then you’re going to have the mortgage offset by other people. So, it’s like a super cheap vacation home or maybe it even pays for itself, even if it just broke even. Over 30 years of it going up in value and you paying off that mortgage, you’re going to make a buttload of money, even if it never cash flowed. And so, I like maybe having at least one property your first property, being that vacation home. You can get 10% down if it’s a vacation home. You’re going to use it, you can have family events there. And then when you’re not using it, you can rent it out.
That’s my ultimate goal for what I’m doing for myself is to have probably 10 to 15 short term rentals throughout the country in all the places that I want to live. And I will just bounce around from place to place wherever I want to go. When I’m not using it, I rent it out. I mean, that’s one of the most beautiful things about the short term model is you have that flexibility. It’s hard when you try to take that model and force it to only be a cash flowing cow. That also gives you passive income. Would you agree?

Rob Abasolo: Oh, yeah, 100%. When I built my tiny house, I was like, “Hey, if I can just build this cool, tiny house and breakeven, hey, all good news over here, right?” But then it actually ended up being a cash cow and that was just a bonus for me. And I was like, “This is great. I get this house that I can enjoy, or theoretically I can enjoy. And it pays for itself and I make money on it.” But I agree. I think that if you’re getting into it and you just want to step into it, you want to de-risk it a bit. Buying it as a second home, where it breaks even, it’s still a great investment over 30 years. There’s no question about it.

David Greene: And you will develop the skills to get cash cows like what Rob and I are looking at now, but you can’t do that in your very first try. It just doesn’t make sense. You have to lower your own barrier to entry. All right, next one, we have proximity to you. We’ve covered that. I like this next one, availability of vendors. Can you briefly cover why having available vendors close to a short term rental is so important?

Rob Abasolo: Yes. So, you’re not going to be the one that’s actually necessarily managing it. I mean, there’s a couple of schools of thoughts here. I’m big into self-managing. So, let me clarify what I mean. The person that’s actually going to be managing your property for the most part is going to be your cleaner. They’re going to be the ones that are reporting back to you. They’re going to say, “Hey, Rob, your toilet wax ring is not good. It’s leaking. Your sink is leaking, your light bulbs are out,” whatever, right? So, they are effectively like a pseudo property manager, but you still need to be in a market where there are cleaners available. You need to be in a market that’s relatively populated.
That’s something that I look at quite a bit is like, “Can I find a handyman? Can I find a contractor? Can I find a pool service, a lawn service, a cleaner?” To me, this is so important, because these are the people that are going to be managing your house, maintaining it, making sure that it’s up to par. And if you have a tough time finding a cleaner or that person, it’s a really tough for you to ever actually run a business, because what’s going to happen whenever something breaks? You can’t fly there, right?

David Greene: There’s two components that I see to a business. One is the customers, and they have to be the focus. And that would be that your tenants that are going to rent it from you in this case. The other would be your employees. And that would be your handyman, your cleaners, your boots on the ground, people that are needed. You got to have both components, would you agree, to make a business work?

Rob Abasolo: Oh, yeah, especially in the short term rental space.

David Greene: Okay, awesome. So, the next one we have is boots on the ground. We’ve covered a little bit earlier as to why that helps having a competitive advantage. So, we’ve got five steps to go. I’m trying to get through here. I like your statement here of how competitive is the market. Rob, you and I look at this very frequently. Hey, how competitive is this market? We want to try to go where other people aren’t. I think I probably covered that a little bit earlier as well. Talking about how you don’t want to follow the flock. The next one would be year-over-year projections of the market. Can you share what you’re looking for and why we are looking for those things?

Rob Abasolo: So, this goes back to the cash flow versus appreciation conversation that we had earlier. But theoretically, it’s similar to what you’re saying with like long term investing. You want your rents to theoretically follow appreciation or you want to raise rents slowly over 30 years. Same thing is really going to be true for short term rentals. And I just want to make sure that year over year that I’m making more money. Now right now in 2022, it’s going to be a little tough to follow up 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID spikes that we had and all the travel surging, but theoretically, that’s going to be the case for us for the next couple of years. People are going to just be traveling more and more and more, because we’ve just realized as a nation that, oh, we miss traveling.
Let’s get back to the ancient art of migrating across the country, if you will. So, I want to see a property that I buy is going to make more money from a gross revenue standpoint, and there are a couple tools that you can use for this. I use the AirDNA has a little chart in there that will show you year over year, I think, over the past two years, how much money a certain property has made and how much it’s growing every single month. And so, that’s been a really helpful way for me to analyze properties.

David Greene: Beautiful, and we do look at that. It actually is very helpful, especially when we’re trying to take away to take two properties and make them apples to apples. I find that in my investing career, much of what I’m doing is that as I’m saying, “All right, we have all these options. How do we find a way to reduce all the variables and try to draw them down to where they have all these things in common?” And from that point, see which one stands out as the best. And that’s where some of those tools help. The last one that we have here under choosing your location is going to be seasonality. Can you tell me what you mean by that?

Rob Abasolo: Certain markets have highs and lows. A really good example of this would be a lot of destination markets, right? When I say vacation destinations, I was talking about things like beach towns, lake towns, ski towns, mountain towns, everything in between those, right? And so, if you look at a beach town, for example, one of the markets I was recently looking at was Destin. Destin is on fire basically from March to August, but then it really slows down pretty significantly, especially November through March for the most part.
And so, if you’re a new investor, seasonality is something that I really want you to keep in mind, because it happens all the time, where I’ll have a student buys a really great Airbnb that comes out, but they close in January in the Smoky Mountains, for example. And then they’re like, “Rob, the bookings aren’t coming. Did I make a bad investment? What do I do? What do I do?” And I’m like, “No, no, it’s fine. You just bought a place in the Smoky Mountains in January when no one is traveling to the Smoky Mountains.”
And so, I really encourage people to look at what the seasonality is and really predict how much they’re going to make every single month and say, “Okay, if January and February are slow months, let’s take advantage of that. Let’s use that as an opportunity to renovate our cabin or whatever we have it.” We’re actually doing that right now in Gatlinburg.
We shut down our listing for January, February, and March. And we’re just going to do all of our renovations now. I mean, we could have made some money in March, but not as much. As I said, “Well, hey, since it’s going to be a dead zone anyways, why don’t we go ahead and get in there remodel the kitchen, change out floors, paint everything?” So, my partner’s like, “Okay, sounds good.” And then that way, once the hot season comes.

David Greene: It’s going to be even hotter.

Rob Abasolo: Yeah, exactly. We’re going to make more money. So, I think that’s an important thing to keep in mind that just so you’re not stressing out when you’re not booking.

David Greene: Yes, two things I’ll add on that. It’s very similar in other businesses to have similar patterns. So, in my real estate sales business, spring and summer is what I call the Hunger Games, especially in the Bay Area. It is brutal. People are sacrificing their grandmothers to get into a property. It’s so, so hard to build and buy. So, we are all hands on deck. Every person that we have, we’re trying to keep this thing going and go as far as we can. Then wintertime comes and it becomes a much slower, much more manageable, we spend more time regenerating. That’s always where I work on improving the business. That’s where we get better systems, better training, better curriculum. I get most of my book writing done at that time.
I pour into the employees at that time, so that they are ready when springtime comes and summertime comes to be better. So, that’s a great business tip that you just shared. The other is when you’re buying a property that will have fluctuations and seasonality, it’s only a problem if you’re pulling out cash flow. This is actually a cash flow problem. And when I say cash flow, I’m not meaning the ROI on your return. I mean, literally, like a business, how cash flows in and out. Construction companies have this problem where they have profitable businesses, but at any given time, they might have all their cash out on a project and then they can’t pay their guys. They can’t be payrolled. This happens all the time.
Learning to manage your cash flow, money coming in and out of your bank account is crucial if you’re going to be in the short term rental game, because you will have seasons that are very slow and seasons that are red hot. What I find humans tend to do is take a red hot time and say, “That’s normal. That’s what I expect all the time.” And then when they have a normal month, they say, “Well, this is terrible. And things aren’t going well.” Not so. This is why when we evaluate short term rentals, we always use the metric of yearly revenue, not monthly revenue like a long term rental where the lease specifies the same amount, is paid every single month. So, be aware of that, and then seasonality won’t be a problem.
Okay, moving on to step three here, location is probably the most important one to start with and that’s why we spent so much time covering that, but this next one is important too. And this is strategy, and they’ve chosen their location. Now they want to find a strategy within that location. What are some of the things they should be looking at?

Rob Abasolo: Well, when you’re starting out, you really aren’t necessarily going to be the best manager of your money. And so, I think this is where we need to really get into the nitty gritty of cash flow. How do we want to spend that cash? Do we want to take a paycheck from this? Do we want to let it stack up? Do we want to reinvest it in? For a lot of new investors, I really do encourage most Airbnb investors not to spend their money for the first year, because it’s a learning process. And it’s the ebbs and flows of seasonality and you’re still figuring out how much a property is going to make.
And so, if for example, seasonality, if you’re not really attuned to this thing and you’re like, “Oh, hey, man, I just made 15 grand last month in Destin,” and then you spend it all in the next month, you don’t make any money, then now you still have to pay all of your bills and everything like that. So, I think you need to really start diving into, “How do you want to actually allot your money? Do you want to keep it invested anywhere? Do you want to keep it in your bank account? Do you want to have reserves?” What about you, Dave? Are you usually putting any reserves on any of the types of properties that you require?

David Greene: I started that way, then I got so many properties. Literally, the bookkeeping of trying to keep up with that cost more money than it was worth to do. So, I moved from a specific strategy of X amount of money for every property into a general principle. So, now the way that I have things set up is that all the cash flow from every property is going to go into the same account. And out of that account is where I make repairs on specific properties. And then throughout the year, I track which properties are profitable and which ones are not through the accounting. And I trim off the ones that aren’t doing well. And I 1031 or I sell a move into bigger areas.
And the ones that are doing well, I ask myself, “How can I make it do better?” So, you and I have talked about this many, many times. Hey, this property here would do this much money at this time if we first buy it. Let’s look into pursuing this one, make it profitable, keep buying. And then when we had a slow season, this is that pattern where you’re talking about, fluctuations. Let’s say that there’s nothing to buy, because everyone knows that’s going on right now. It’s hard to get deals, right? That’s when we put our time towards, “Well, let’s take what we already have and make it work better.” Where could we invest into it, rehab it, do the backyard, do some landscaping, add some fun things to it?
We talked about ideas of adding a car that someone can rent on tour when they go there. That’s where the creative stuff comes out? How do we make what we already have better? That’s how I run my portfolio. When it’s green light time to buy, that’s the most important thing is you do everything you can to put stuff in contract and grow. And when you can’t do that, just like with my real estate team, that’s where I focus on improving the efficiency of my agents, I do the same thing with my properties.

Rob Abasolo: That makes sense, because all of that basically comes to time, right? It’s all time management to get into that, which I think is actually our next point here. And it’s like, how much time can you actually commit to your short term rental? And I think this is a question that you really have to decide pretty early on. Because if you’re working a really busy job and like in my past career, advertising, it’s very common to work 60-, 70-, 80-hour weeks. If you’re doing that, you probably don’t want to go buy a farm on 40 acres that has a couple campsites, right?
This is a deal that you and I talked about. There’s a house that had eight different cabins on it. It was pumping out a net of $200, $250K. You and I had to have the hard conversation of, “Can we actually give the time to this property? Even though it is a cash cow, can we actually manage eight units at once?” And I think we decided, let’s try to find an equally expensive property, maybe it’ll be a little bit less of a return, but we’ll spend less time in the weeds of that.

David Greene: That’s a really good example. I thought about that earlier, when you were talking on the same topic is if you’re only looking at ROI, how much money will it generate? What’s my return going to be? The decision becomes very easy. You buy that eight-cabin property that’s way off in the middle of nowhere and it’s very hard to find vendors. It’s very hard to get boots on the ground, the cleaners are going to be really difficult, getting someone to go out there and look at the septic tanks, all of that stuff. You don’t think about it. You’re just like, “Oh, that’s the highest cash-on-cash return. All systems go, let’s do it.”
And then you get married to that property and you’re unhappy with your relationship with real estate, because it’s not treating you very well. It’s demanding, it’s nagging, constantly fix me, fix me, fix me, pay attention to me, I need something. And you’re like, “Why did I ever do this? I hate it.” That’s not what you want, right? So, we just had the wisdom to look at that and weigh all the factors and recognize, “Hey, if we spent less time but get a smaller return somewhere else, we’ll use that time to make much more money than it would have been spent fixing all the issues that are going to come from that one property.”

Rob Abasolo: Yeah, man, I brought you that property. And basically, you shook me and you’re like, “Rob, your time is worth more, man.” And I was like, “You’re right.”

David Greene: We did have a moment, didn’t we? I have spoken to you like with Goodwill Hunting. Remember that? The Matt Damon and Robin Williams. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. I am worth more than that. That was a good talk. I appreciate you sharing that.

Rob Abasolo: And then we put it on YouTube and then recite it at lunch. We’ve rehearsed it, man. It’s great. Aside from that, I mean, that’s on the extreme side of it. But I do want people to really sit down and say, “All right, how much time am I willing to put into managing a property?” Because if you say, “I don’t have any time,” it’s really going to dictate your strategy, because that means that you then have to go and give it to a property manager. But if you have 5 to 10 hours a week, then it’s very feasible for you to get in and manage it yourself.

David Greene: And there was a time that people got used to, 2010 through 2016, 2017 or so, where you can just buy a property that was a long term rental. And one of the benefits of that was they take less time. Property manager runs it, you answer a couple emails. There’s not much to do once it’s fixed. And so, the returns were lower than what you could get, but there wasn’t much time. And now if you don’t have time, it’s harder to make money in real estate right now, because many of the asset classes that still work will take more of your time. Okay, next one up, how much risk are you comfortable with? Stuff like regulations and HOAs, what do you have to say about that?

Rob Abasolo: This is going to really depend person to person. I typically am a little bit more of a risky fella, if you will. But there are things to consider. HOAs, for me, aren’t necessarily deal breakers, but they can be. I mean, 90% of the time, they’re a deal breaker. If I go on to Redfin or Zillow and I see that, it’s got a $15 per month HOA, that’s not really going to scare me quite as much as an HOA that’s like $150 or $300 a month, because I know that probably if it’s 15 bucks a month, probably they’re maintaining-

David Greene: You don’t have as much control or power over the community if they’re only bringing in that.

Rob Abasolo: So that’s where I’m like placing my focus is like, “How active is this HOA? Are there actual bylaws?” For the most part, it does kill a deal for me, but I’ve made exceptions to this many times. And then obviously, regulatory risk is something that’s like, I think, the biggest risk in most short term rentals, is the city friendly? Is it receptive to short term rentals? Does it have outdated laws? Does it have laws that outlaw short term rentals that aren’t actually being enforced? That’s something that I’ll look at too and say, “Okay, well, they were written in the ’90s. They weren’t really thinking of Airbnb.”
And so, I might still make that decision. But for the most part, for people starting out, I have a very diversified portfolio. And so, that’s why when it comes to seasonality or regulation, I don’t really have too much risk, because I have such a well-balanced… I have a little bit of everything. Whereas if you’re first starting out, it’s your first deal. You don’t really want to get into anything risky, like an HOA or regulation or seasonality, because you don’t really have a portfolio to back you up whenever stuff starts to dip.

David Greene: Very good point. Okay, how about the next thing? How fast should someone scale? How does that factor into strategy?

Rob Abasolo: That will mostly depend on how fast they want to quit, which all of us obviously, always want to quit our 9:00 to 5:00, but I think it’s a marathon, not a sprint. It feels like a sprint for anyone getting into it. I mean, setting up your first Airbnb, it can be a lot of work, right? You got to go, you got to get it pre-approved. You got to get an offer in. You got to get accepted, inspections, furnished, automations, hire your team. So, it’s very common for a lot of people to do that. We get that adrenaline rush. And we’re like, “Yeah, let’s do it again and again and again. Hurt me.” But for the most part, I always tell people to slow down a little bit.

David Greene: That was me, man. I was just a bird phenom for a while there, right? Every day was cold, just bird constantly. And then one day, I woke up. And I was like, “I have adopted 55 problem cats from a shelter. And I’m trying to control them all.”

Rob Abasolo: I know, I see them in your background on there. I think you want to scale up according to how quickly you can save up any reserve.

David Greene: Very good point.

Rob Abasolo: I tell people, six months is a really nice padding that you can have for reserves. If you can do that and save up your down payment, it’s probably time to move on to the next one.

David Greene: I have a video on my YouTube where I talk about portfolio risk management that would be really good to check out here with what I do to scale fast but still be conservative. Okay, last one would be remodel pros and cons. What do you have for us there?

Rob Abasolo: Well, I pretty much go into any specific Airbnb purchase or short term rental purchase, hopefully not having to do too much remodeling. I’m very picky about this. And when I was first starting out, I was all about the value adds and I was all about like, “Yeah, let’s fix everything.” But now for the most part, unless it’s going to add significantly to the value like you and I have looked at a couple properties, that would be a burst or write a burn into an STR. And that to me would make sense if it’s going to add significant amount of money to the ADR, the average daily rate. But for the most part, when I’m looking at a property, there are only a few things that I’m actually willing to do.
And honestly, I probably don’t even I would rather just move on. But I’m willing to paint the interior of a house and the exterior of a house. Well, no, I’m willing to do that. I’m willing to change the floors in the house. And I’m willing to possibly paint the cabinets of a kitchen and put new hardware. But for the most part, that’s it and then maybe doorknobs. If I want to change doorknobs, I might do something like that. But that’s all I really want to do on a short term rental, because it’s already hard enough getting the short term rental setup and furnished and automated and all your teams hired out.
But to have to manage a remodel on top of that is not something that I want to do as much these days. Although I do have a team that does assist me with that stuff. So, if it’s something that’s like sub $5,000 to $10,000 as a remodel, I’m willing to do it.

David Greene: What’s your logic or rationale behind why you don’t want a big remodel?

Rob Abasolo: Just the time needed because I’d rather move on to a turnkey property that I can get functioning as quickly as possible.

David Greene: I’ll give you an example of how this works out in real life, because this is a good point. I bought a place I’ve talked about earlier, the East Bay, almost 1.9 million. And it’s a 5,000 square foot house that’s going to basically be broken into smaller units and rented out. During the remodel, it’s a little over $10,000 a month that I have to pay to carry that property. The permit process was not started when I was told that it was going to be started. So, we’re three months behind. So, take $30,000 plus, whatever, the four to five months of rehab is going to be, plus the actual cost of rehab itself. It will be years before the cash flow ever recovers, many years for that initial money that I spent up front.
Now, if this was a property bought as a short term rental to be a cash flowing cow, that would be stupid, but it already just doesn’t work. I made a mistake. In this case, I’m looking to refinance it after some of the work is done. And that’s how I get my cash back out. But if it’s not a burster, like what we talked about, this is why Rob is saying, “I don’t want to do a big rehab,” because the time it takes to do it as well as the money putting in is going to steal money from you that you would have been generating when you were renting it out to different people. So, very good point there.

Rob Abasolo: If you could add a treehouse or some feature like a hot tub or a treehouse or a crow’s nest around a tree.

David Greene: In my case, I’m converting a garage into 2,000 extra square feet of living space. That’s going to make the property worth quite a bit more, right?

Rob Abasolo: That would make a big difference on Airbnb, extra rooms. You can now hold… How many people can fit in that? … 10 people.

David Greene: It’ll be a ton, but what I was more saying is when I go to refinance it, that extra 2,000 square feet is going to up the value of the property. I will get that money back. Now I don’t have to wait however many years it takes to make back the 200,000, 250,000 I lost, I mean to get that back on the refinance. And now the time can start, the clock can start from that point versus if you’re not able to do that and you’re just making a house look prettier and it’s already at the top of its value. You’re starting from way behind if you try to do a big remodel on a short term rental, and that’s one of the reasons people can sell them for a premium if they’re already ready to go. And it still makes sense for the buyer to pay that much money.
All right, I hope you have enjoyed this show so far on how to buy your first short term rental property. Now, Rob and I got into so much detail that we actually ran out of time. And rather than trying to make you listen to a two-hour podcast, we are going to air part two a couple of days from now.
Now, what we went into today was some pretty important things that you want to start with if you’re looking at getting your property, the strengths of different markets, how to choose the location, which is really important, and then what strategy you’re going to tackle going forward. In the next show, we are going to talk about picking the property type, choosing the timeline that you want to operate on both if you’re going to be in a partnership or with the property itself, and then a bonus step that we didn’t know we were going to give you or you didn’t know we were going to give you I should say, how to divvy up the work involved and what work to expect.
Now that’s not going to be the end of this series. We’re actually going to have two more episodes at least where we dive even deeper into how to analyze these properties once you’ve got an individual property in mind and then how to manage the operations of a property once you got it. So, this is going to be pretty close to a short term rental workshop. You’re getting a lot of information that’s all free. So, I hope you’ve liked it. Please let me know in the comments what you think so far and keep an eye out for the next show to air in a couple days. Rob, anything you want to leave people with before we get out of here?

Rob Abasolo: Man, that was fun. That’s the river flow. I thought when you give me a mic and some topics on Airbnb, you know I’m going to talk a lot. So, hopefully, it wasn’t too rambley. But then if people want to hear from you, if they want to be enlightened on the social medias, when it comes to anything, Airbnb, how can people find you, my friend?

David Greene: They can find me @DavidGreen24. I’m actually in the process of hiring a social media manager, because everyone has told me how bad it is. So, keep an eye out for that. It’s going to be better pretty soon once we find the person we’re going to hire.

Rob Abasolo: I’ll take it.

David Greene: I should have just handed you the reins. That’s a great point. But yeah, that’s where they can find me and then keep an eye out because I’ve got some changes that are coming. If they want to know what I’m doing, I actually have a text letter that we’re going to be putting out every single week that tells people. So, if they go to DGTlive/textletter, they can sign up for that. Just like Brandon Turner has one and you can see what he’s up to, what’s going on in his world, they can follow me there. How about you? If people want to learn more about this amazing insight you shared, where can they find out?

Rob Abasolo: There’s always the YouTubes. I just actually released a video called, “This is exactly how much your short term rental is going to make,” which will give you a little bit of an insight of what we’re going to be talking about a couple episodes from now when we actually deep dive into the nuts and bolts of analyzing a short term rental. You can always find me on Instagram, @robuilt and Tik Tok, @robuilt.

David Greene: All right. Well, thank you very much for joining me. I could not do this without you. And let me just say, I don’t think I could have picked a better partner. I am very happy and proud that you and I are going to be looking at this together and that we get to share our experience with the masses so that they can learn from it too.

Rob Abasolo: I won’t let you down, cap.

David Greene: Appreciate that. This is David Greene for Rob won’t let me down Abasolo, signing out.