A Step-By-Step Pathway to Hosting Short-Term Rentals with Airbnb Superhost Jake Cohen

Jake Cohen: 0:00

What I learned since then is the difficulty comes when there's an issue with the property. If there's an issue at my property, I call the right person, I buy the right thing. I take care of it. It's done in two days. If there's an issue at one of my clients' properties, I have to convince them that there is an issue, then I have to show them the solution then I have to cost the solution then I have to

Announcer: 0:25

Yo found The Real Estate Law Podcast, because real estate is more than just pretty pictures. And law goes well beyond the paperwork and courtroom argument. If you're a real estate professional, looking to build real estate expertise, then welcome to the conversation and discover more at realestatelawpodcast.com

Jason Muth: 0:49

Welcome to The Real Estate Law Podcast. Thank you for listening. We have a fun episode today. All these handsome guys on the Zoom if you're watching us if you're not you have to trust us. We're here with Rory Gill and myself Jason Muth always as handsome, I think right?

Jake Cohen: 1:06

Extremely handsome, both of you.

Rory Gill: 1:08

And modest.

Jason Muth: 1:09

And modest. Yeah. Well, Jake, Jake, thank you so much for at least you know being part of our audience right there of responding to the fact that probably get a little bit of feedback out of Rory saying that, you know, we got a handsome crew today. But we got Jake Cohen here. Jake and I met down in Miami. We were partying hard in South Beach a couple months ago, as dads do you know, when they're away from their kids, just kind of took off and just randomly met on South Beach. No, I'm just kidding. We did meet down there, though. And you know, Jake was my conference, buddy. You were popular though. You had a lot of conference buddies.

Jake Cohen: 1:41

I think you were my favorite conference, buddy. But yeah, I think we met that first night and kind of, you know, just continued to cycle back catch each other and see what was going on every night. So yeah, it was good.

Jason Muth: 1:53

Yeah, I should say. So we met at a short term rental seminar, a retreat. STR Wealth Retreat, is that what it's called?

Jake Cohen: 2:01

Yeah.

Jason Muth: 2:02

Yeah. And it was a small one. I thought it was really well, Ron, we could talk a little bit about that. There are only about 100 attendees and a lot of bigwigs in the game. And a lot of people like Jake and myself that are just looking to you know, suck lots of information in from each other and learn from some of the best. And yeah, we met that first night on the Minoan yacht party. Right?

Jake Cohen: 2:24

That's right

Jason Muth: 2:25

On the top deck.

Jake Cohen: 2:26

Got to do it right on, on a yacht in South Beach. So was a cool way to start off the conference for sure.

Rory Gill: 2:33

Yeah, that's what everybody outside of real estate thinks of people in real estate is doing on a regular basis.

Jason Muth: 2:39

I will say though, I think yacht was a - I guess it was a yacht, but I think that was a little generous. I feel like that was the kind of boat that you could just rent out for a dinner cruise around the harbor.

Jake Cohen: 2:49

I agree. It was more like shuttle boat with a nice space to have a dinner. Yeah, I agree.

Jason Muth: 2:55

Yeah. And to network and hobnob with each other. I don't think there were no hip hop stars there. And they weren't really popping, you know, Cristal and expensive bottles of champagne. I think we're limited to a small selection of wine and beer. Right? You know, mixed drinks were extra, you know.

Jake Cohen: 3:11

It was still still a nice way to just start the conference and be out and about in the city before we sat down and tried to absorb all of the crazy information that everyone was trying to give to us.

Jason Muth: 3:25

Yeah, everyone was very generous. You know, Minoan was great for sponsoring that event. We had Mark on from Minoan earlier this year on the podcast. As we record this, we haven't released the episode yet. But as people that are listening to this conversation right now, it's already been released. But that was a good conversation. And you met Mark, right?

Jake Cohen: 3:42

Mark was a great guy. And honestly, I think Minoan is one of those companies that is kind of a game changer for the short term rental industry. And I am super excited to have them continue to build out their software and make it easier to use because right now it's not fully built out. But man, you can see the potential at how amazing that is going to be and how much easier it will be to source all of the things we need for our rental properties.

Jason Muth: 4:13

Yes, definitely could not agree more. Yeah. Why don't we let you introduce yourself properly. Because you know, we're just kind of jumping into a conversation and people are like, who the heck is this guy Jake, and why did Jason and Rory introduce him, invite him on to The Real Estate Law Podcast and you're probably saying the same exact thing. But I think you have a fantastic story. I think it's super cool is what you're doing, you know, but why don't you tell everybody who you are, Jake, and how you got started in this crazy world of short term rentals.

Jake Cohen: 4:40

Sure. Well, as Jason said, my name is Jake. I have been investing in real estate since I was in my early 20s. I kind of got my start in in real estate with my parents. My folks owned a small hotel in Lake Tahoe. So my first experience with real estate, I was trying to frantically hang pictures on the walls when I was 10 years old, as our first guests were arriving at our small bed and breakfast on the shores of Lake Tahoe. And it was an interesting way to be interested introduced into real estate because my folks actually house hacked the space. So we had a little three bed, two bath house on the front side of the property. And then we had nine guest rooms. And it made for kind of an incredible lifestyle choice for my parents, because we were able to purchase a property on the shores of Lake Tahoe, which at the time was not cheap, and at this time is probably unfathomably expensive, you know, we were able to make a nice living and live on this beautiful property. And I didn't really realize the connection to house hacking until later, when I started hearing the term on podcasts. And people were saying, oh, yeah, I house hack my house. I, you know, I live in this unit, and someone else lives in this unit. And my parents were doing it a long time ago. So was a cool introduction into real estate. I went to college down at UC San Diego. And afterwards, my parents had bought a hotel in Palm Springs. And the manager was leaving the property as I was graduating college. And they asked me to manage the property for them. It was kind of crazy that they were ready to hand the keys to a 12 bedroom, or 12 bed hotel to a 22 year old kid. But they did. And I didn't even burn it down. So it all turned out. But I learned a lot there, I got to serve on a lot of the boards in town, I was president of the small hotels of Palm Springs organization, and really got a feel for hospitality and running my own business doing that. And then when I moved out to Denver, I realized there was a great opportunity in rental real estate in Denver, because the prices were significantly lower than what I was used to in California. And I could see the potential of Denver, so bought a couple of long term rentals with my mom. And my mom was kind of the impetus to me continuing my real estate investing career, because she had retired from the hotels, but she really didn't have enough money to really be well off for the rest of her life. So we came up with a deal where she gave me a chunk of money. And I did all the work the property management, the renovations of the properties, and it was a nice start to our our business. But we realized neither of us were making very much money. It wasn't a whole lot of fun in long term rentals. So we started looking for a short term rental up in Steamboat Springs, and we found a duplex up there needed a ton of renovations. And we found a lot of success with that the following year, bought a triplex in the same area and now own a duplex in Gulf Shores, Alabama as well. My wife and I also continued to kind of rent out our primary residences as we moved from place to place. So we now have five properties, three of them single family homes and two short term rental duplex and triplex rental properties. So been a ride been exciting.

Jason Muth: 8:46

Yeah, you manage them also.

Jake Cohen: 8:50

Yeah, I manage all the properties myself just have a hard time, especially with short term rentals was such a high management fee, never been able to really convince myself that it was worth it. We have two properties. And each of them make over $200,000 a year in income from short term rentals. And I will be giving up, you know, $50,000 plus a year if I let either of those go to a property manager. And the honest truth is, for example, we bought this place in Gulf Shores a year ago, and the property management company that was managing it, the most rental they had ever done in a year was about $110,000. And we did we're at $220k for the year so far. And we have two months left. Slow months albeit, but nonetheless we doubled the income. We did spend a little money on renovations, but not none of the renovations were crazy. It was like new kitchen appliances, paint. You know rehabbing a couple bathrooms. It wasn't anything like we knocked the whole thing down. So yeah, so that really made me convinced that I could do it better than a property manager after seeing those results.

Jason Muth: 10:11

And how many people does that property sleep?

Jake Cohen: 10:14

It's a 10 bedroom property sleeps 28 people. So it's a it's a big one. It's five bed, three and a half bath per side. So it's a duplex. So we can either rent it the whole 10 bedrooms, which we find it does rent that way, mostly in the summer, or we do separate them off during the slow season when when we're trying to get more rentals in there.

Jason Muth: 10:39

Yeah, yeah. When did you purchase in Gulf Shores?

Jake Cohen: 10:42

That was June of 2021. We purchased that property.

Jason Muth: 10:46

Did you find that market because of, you know, kind of the hotness of it being discussed a lot in podcasts?

Jake Cohen: 10:52

I really did. Yeah, the the honest truth is, I had never been there. My mom had been there and spoke very highly of it. Yeah, I had not been there. So I made a reservation to go out there in April of 2021. And it just so happened that that property came on the market, I don't know what it was a week before. And we put in an offer, we were able to be out there for the inspection. It all just kind of came together in the right way. We had planned a trip from Gulf Shores all the way down the coast of Florida, basically to check out all those markets, you know, Destin, Panama City Beach, all of those because they were all getting discussed like crazy and so hot. We just kind of fell in love with the quiet area of Gulf Shores called Fort Morgan, which is right on the peninsula, pet friendly beaches and very quiet, but far away from downtown Gulf Shores. So perfect for where we are in our lives. If I was in my 20s, I'd probably prefer to be more in downtown Gulf Shores where you could go hit the bars, and you know, the nice restaurants and stuff. But this is a perfect fit for us now where we are in our lives.

Rory Gill: 12:02

Before we get too far along in kind of your story in these particular investments. Something that really kind of jumped out to me is the fact that, you know, this is something that your parents were involved with, too. And with some feedback, I hear quite a bit for other people getting involved in real estate investing is that they're being crazy. They're going out there and they're spending lots of money incurring all this debt, how can you possibly sleep at night, and that's where a lot of people have a lot of fears that prevent them from getting involved in real estate or real estate investing. But it sounds like your parents probably were in favor of it and supportive. So you know, aside from kind of the the investment that your mother helped give for the property in Colorado, can you talk a little bit about the support that they gave you for the right to have the right mindset to get involved in real estate?

Jake Cohen: 12:48

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think that both of my parents were entrepreneurial by nature. My mom was a travel agent, and she owned a ski shop with some partners when she was in her younger years. They obviously ran the bed and breakfast and the hotel. So they definitely had that entrepreneurial mindset. And they were comfortable with investing. The interesting thing is, that investment that they made in Palm Springs was actually a horrible financial investment for them. They bought the property, we spent $300k or $400,000 renovating that hotel. And we basically sold the property for I think, just over what we bought the property for about six years later. We just timed the market very poorly, and it was at the time where both of my folks were ready to retire. And, you know, they had kind of had this dream of we're gonna go back and forth between Tahoe and Palm Springs. And that dream just never really came together. And it ended up being a very poor financial decision. So their last real estate investment that they made was was really bad. But nonetheless, their total entrepreneurial mindset and their total Real Estate Investments did set them up for retirement. So it's not like it was all bad. It was just that one investment really didn't turn out the way they expected. Probably if they had a little more timeframe ahead of them, if they weren't, you know, in their 60s at that point, they probably could have said, you know, let's do this for another five years, and they would have gotten significantly more money for it at that point. But yeah, it's I've always been very well supported by my parents and both from a mindset standpoint, and from a standpoint of we'll come out and hang the curtains and you know, bang some nails or whatever you need. So they're wonderful people.

Jason Muth: 15:25

Rory, for the record, I feel attacked by that question, so.

Rory Gill: 15:28

No, you should feel supported by it. I'm trying to help vindicate you a little bit. You know, part of the background of the question is, you know, Jason's parents as he grows the number of short term rental properties he, he has, you know, they're providing some of the objections and some of the I wouldn't say that they're trying to dissuade the progress, but they are very cautious and scared by the leveraged investments.

Jason Muth: 15:58

You're choosing your words very carefully here. I could tell.

Jake Cohen: 16:02

Yes, smartly, smartly, because he may see see them again, in the future, I would imagine. So, yeah, I think most people honestly are in that boat where they, they just don't understand real estate, and especially short term rentals, it's one thing to buy a long term rental, and you're going to make a couple hundred bucks a month, and over the long term of 30 years, maybe you make some money because it appreciates. But buying a short term rental, where you're talking about a huge outlay of cash to, you know, furnish and get everything set up the right way, and buy all the softwares and go through training, it's a lot to bite off. So I think most people are probably like Jason's parents, where they're just uncomfortable with that kind of an investment.

Rory Gill: 16:53

Or, you know, conflating it with just owning multiple homes for yourself. Because if you did own properties in Gulf Shores, Colorado, Palm Springs and Lake Tahoe, that would be extravagant if you were just purchasing homes for yourself to come visit when you felt like it. But that's not what these are.

Jake Cohen: 17:08

And that's, that's absolutely true. But I also think that's one of the coolest things about owning short term rental property is, I own a investment that I can also go to. So this this past year, we invited our entire family, our entire extended family, we had 16 aunts, and uncles and cousins, that came to our Gulf Shores property. And we just said, this is yours, you know, this is yours for free. We went to Costco, you know, we bought a bunch of food and booze and had a great time for a whole week and my aunts and uncles were blown away that me at 38 could invite them on this vacation and allow them to use my property and not charge them anything for it. So it gave me a huge sense of pride to be able to do that. And I think that's one of the things that people who are looking at this as a lifestyle choice should really value because it is worth a lot. It's it's worth a lot to your family to you to your kids, all of those things.

Jason Muth: 18:15

You know, the places that we have purchased, it sounds similar to kind of the strategy that you've taken, Jake, you know, we don't have anything quite the size of your Gulf Shores property. But what we've purchased, we've always decided that we want to buy things that we would want to stay in ourselves. That's kind of one of the criteria. Yeah. And the good Airbnb hosts are the ones, or the good short term rental hosts, I should say, are, are the ones that understand the customer experience. They have good amenities, they have clean places, they have great systems, they're good at communication, you know, so you're not staying in dumps, like the places that are dumps are the places that allow you to charge more than you do. Because you do a good job with it. I do a good job with it. But we always want to stay in the places that, you know, we want to appoint them the way that we would want them appointed and we're not extravagant, right? I mean, but I want the mattress to be comfortable, because I'm going to sleep in it. I assume, I guess want a comfortable mattress too.

Jake Cohen: 19:19

Right. And I think that's the easiest way that I've I've certainly experienced to be able to create that experience is if I'm trying to use myself as my guest avatar, it's much easier for me to know if this is the right choice or not. If I'm saying Oh, my guest avatar is a you know, 75 year old woman, I would have a hard time getting into her shoes and making sure that the place was what she wanted. So I think it's smart. It's just a good business decision to build something that you would want and probably the areas that you guys are interested the areas that we're interested in, are the same places that people like us are interested in as well. Right.

Rory Gill: 20:08

it near where we live so that if there's a problem we can manage it if we're going to shop we can go see it. We can leverage local connections but I know there's a complete opposite mentality, which is to kind of go where the the investments make sense and scatter across the country. Since you do it differently than us. Can you say something about choosing markets and what it's like to have short term rentals in different parts of the country?

Jake Cohen: 20:42

Yeah. So our first short term rentals were in Steamboat Springs, and we were currently living in Denver. So it was about a two and a half hour drive. It wasn't insurmountable for me to go there if there was a true emergency. But I wasn't going there to unclog the toilet or something like that. So I kind of had to set up the systems, but I felt like it was kind of systems with training wheels, because if I really had to go up there, I could. And so I built a system basically, you know, a really good cleaner, a really good handyman. And I built everything out with the idea that if a guest says, hey, my internet's not working, or hey, you know, whatever this amenity is not the way it's supposed to be, one of those two people was going to respond and take care of it. And that was kind of from day one, it had to be that way. So it made it pretty easy. once I went further across the country to Gulf Shores, where now I'm a full day of flying and driving and all that to get there, you know, and also, I can't just drop at, drop everything that I'm doing, and just go to Gulf Shores the next day. So it was the same thing though, basically, I have a cleaner, and I have a handyman, and they're set to respond to anything that that comes up. Further than that. It's basically the same thing. You know, you're calling a plumber, you're calling an electrician, anything like that, if it's more complicated. What I found is that a guest really is looking for a response. They're not necessarily expecting you to fix something that second. So you know, if there is a electrical problem there, they want you to say, I'm so sorry, uh, called the electrician, he'll be there tomorrow or the next day, or whatever it is. Obviously, if it was like, power's out at the whole house, then you would read, you know, you would put them somewhere else for the night and get them squared away. But I set that up from the beginning. And it made it much easier for me to contemplate going to Gulf Shores. It definitely was scary to make that jump, especially with a property as big as as the one that we purchased. But we went in with that idea. And we also were looking for really strong returns so that if something did go wrong, if we had a large expense, if we had something crazy happen like a hurricane, we had a pretty good variable of income, so that we felt comfortable with, okay, we can set aside some money because of the incredible income we're going to get from that property to feel more comfortable if things don't go 100% perfect. So I think that made us feel a little better.

Jason Muth: 24:29

Do you co host other people's properties? Or is it just what you own?

Jake Cohen: 24:34

I did kind of fall into co-hosting. I currently have three properties in Steamboat. Basically, the way I fell into it, these people, I met this lady at a meetup group and she was buying a place and I was just helpful to her as far as helping her, you know, find a couple of contractors and whatnot. And then when it was time for her to put it on Airbnb, she said, Hey, do you mind doing this for me? And I thought, why not as long as you use the same cleaner and the same handyman. I'm going to use the same messaging, all of that stuff. And she agreed to that. And then her neighbor decided he wanted me to co-host his two properties as well. So it's something that I've never really tried to grow. It just happened organically. And it's not my favorite part of the business is the honest truth. All three of those properties make very little money for me. So the effort I put in is minimal, but I also get minimal back. But it was just it was easy to do because they were going to use the same systems that I already had in place.

Jason Muth: 25:51

Yeah. You know, I was gonna say talking about the the conference that we went to, and yeah, you probably follow a lot of the same people online. The conference was put on by Bill Faeth and Mike Sjogren I'm in Mike's Mastermind. I don't know if you're in one of the Masterminds or not. Are you in Bill's?

Jake Cohen: 26:10

I'm not in either the masterminds. I talked to both of them about their Masterminds and I would be interested in getting in one in the future. Right now I had a little too much on my plate. So I decided to put it off for a little while.

Jason Muth: 26:27

I say, I think it's been a great decision for me, it kind of got me on the path, the right path the past couple of months. Because I was out there, I mean, we're sitting, I'm currently sitting in our first property in the kitchen right now. And a lot of what I'm doing now full time is, well, it's this, right? Like, I don't work a W-2 job anymore. And I don't mind zipping up here meeting with this person, that person, that person getting propane refilled, cleaning out gutters, like, they're my properties, we own these things, right, like, so it's kind of like you and that I like making money from the stuff that that we own, and we take care of it really, really well. And it goes up in value. And there's all these other great reasons as to why I like having the properties that we own be, you know, really what makes money for us now. And I say that with a long intro about the retreat that we went to that Mike and Bill led, because a lot of people there are looking to grow their co-hosting businesses and a lot of people in the masterminds are also looking to grow co-hosting businesses. And, you know, one of the things they had me do early on was say, well write your goals down. What are your goals? What do you want to do? And you know, if my goal has never been to grow a co-hosting business. And I made the very clear, and everyone knows that, like the coaches know that Mike knows that. And that's fine. Like, they're not saying you should think about doing this. But I do observe what everyone else is doing. Like I see these people that are getting these co-hosting contracts and whatever. And I'm kinda like where you are right now, which is that seems like a pain in the butt. It seems like I'm creating a job for myself. And I don't necessarily want to do that yet. But I don't know, I might get dragged into it at some point.

Jake Cohen: 28:04

It's, it's hard to not do it if it happens easily. And I think the same thing happened to Bill. He wasn't looking for it. And someone asked him, would you consider managing one of my properties? And he looked at the numbers and he said, Geez, I could make I don't know, what, $40,000 a year by managing one property. How hard can it be, I already have all the systems in place. And I mean, that's kind of the same thing for me is I realized, it would be kind of dumb for me to not take this on. Because it will be easy. What I learned since then is the difficulty comes when there's an issue with the property. If there's an issue at my property, I just, I call the right person, I buy the right thing, I take care of it, it's done in two days. If there's an issue at one of my clients properties, I have to convince them that there is an issue. Then I have to show them the solution. Then I have to cost the solution. Then I have to you know, convince them, the cost of the solution is going to bring more money to them. You know, and it's like, you know, we're talking about a $500 mattress here, I shouldn't have to work this hard when someone just complained and said the mattress is crappy. Just buy a new mattress, it's worth it. You know, that's how I run my properties. And it's really hard when you have clients that don't feel that way. So it's definitely been something I've shifted, as I've gone through the co-hosting to more my decision making on their behalf, as opposed to me having to clear everything with them. So we've had discussions about you know, what amount of money can I just take care of myself? You know, if someone says there's no coffee, can I buy coffee, you know, those kinds of things, so that I don't have to go to them for every tiny little detail.

Jason Muth: 30:06

You know, I just came from a sales-related job, you know, I worked as a sales manager for media companies for 13 years and did research for media before then. And you're always selling yourself, I mean, even in this business, you're always selling yourself, but you know, if you're going to be a co-host, and build up a co hosting business, you're selling yourself to these owners that A) you should have a co-host, B- that it should be you to co host and then C) you're constantly having to resell yourself, you know, with showing performance, monthly performance, you know, dealing with the stuff that you're bringing up right now. And it's in the right mindset for many people. It's not for me right now. Like when I left my job, what I wanted to do was not create another job for myself, but I wanted to continue the path that we're on right now, which we set a goal in 2016 to buy one property every year for 10 years, you know, relatively - nothing's simple, but you know, that seems attainable, right? And we're on track to do that. So It'll give me another couple of years, we'll have another couple of properties, and I'll have more than my hands full to manage our own stuff. That's kind of where my mindset is. It's very different from everybody else, you know, but like, it's actually interesting to hear that, you know, you've kind of taken a very similar path in in purchasing and owning the properties that you're managing. And that's probably how you spend the majority of your day is managing your own

Jake Cohen: 31:27

I really don't anymore. The honest truth is, I stuff. spend probably 10 hours a week on my properties. I still do all of the messaging for the most part, for the properties, but I have really good automations in place. I have, you know, pricing software, all of that. So I don't feel like I spend very much time doing that. But there is certainly some back and forth with cleaners, handymen, you know, buying supplies, that sort of thing. I generally have tried to take myself out of the equation of doing maintenance and that sort of thing on the properties because of the way I initially set it up. I wasn't here, I now live in Steamboat Springs. I think you know that. But now I live in Steamboat, I could go over to my triplex here, and do the gutters and those things. But I would then be taking away business from my handyman. And though, you know, those are things that I contracted him on, basically, from the beginning, the fact that I'm here doesn't really take away from the fact that it's more efficient, for me to give him that job and me to be working on the next step in the business. And I think a lot of people, especially in those masterminds, you'll hear over and over again, the sooner you can take yourself out of the day to day operations of the business, the easier it is to grow. And I have certainly found that. That being said, I bought a new primary residence in Steamboat about five months ago. I've been spending 20 hours a week, you know, doing maintenance and reconstruction and that sort of thing on my primary residence. So the truth is, I'm doing the same thing you are, it's just not necessarily my investment property that I'm doing it on.

Jason Muth: 33:30

Right? Yeah, yeah, I've heard the same thing. You know, take yourself out of the equation, you know, let the, you know, build the systems, and then you'll spend minimal time in the business and your job is the CEO to grow the business. So you know, I actually do believe in that. And I think it's important. Rory doesn't see what I spend the entire days doing you know, I'm kind of with you. And the amount of time I spend messaging, guests, contractors, whatever it is, it's relatively minimal at this point. You know, we have four properties live, a fifth will be live next year. If you get your automations in there, you get your messaging in there, your systems built, then that part of it is probably just about 10 hours a week. I personally, I know that the next property that we're going to get will be at some point later on next year, once we kind of have a little bit more capital that we can go do it because we just if you remember in Miami, we went under agreement on the property that I was showing you. We just bought it just closed a couple weeks ago. I was there yesterday, Rory was there this weekend. We have three bookings already for December, you know, so we're eager to

Jake Cohen: 34:32

Super exciting. That's awesome.

Jason Muth: 34:34

Yeah, it's great. And it's a very turnkey property and even turnkey properties have a long list of things that still need to be done.

Jake Cohen: 34:41

Absolutely, absolutely.

Jason Muth: 34:43

And I was still, you know, I'm doing the purchasing the acquisition of supplies. Just because I have my list like, at least it's written down now. It's not just all in my head. But I have my list. I go through my checklist. I mean, Rory the past couple of weeks, say how many boxes were showing up at our front door? I mean, I think that - I had a guy installing tile at our place our primary home and he must think that all I do is stay home all day and shop online.

Jake Cohen: 35:08

Right?

Jason Muth: 35:11

Yeah, you know, I'm best friends with the guys at Lowe's and BJ's Wholesale, which you know, Costco is probably the equivalent across the country we have a lot of BJ's Wholesales up here in the Northeast. And and just just kind of build your systems. At least I have BJ's shop for me now I pick it online, and I just show up and they bring it out to the car. Same thing at Lowe's, like you know, those are ways that I'm making myself more efficient. But you know, Rory jokes that like my car is never empty. Like I'm always bringing a car load of stuff somewhere, you know, and up in Gilford at the property this past weekend. You know, we had two cars up there and I'm like, This is great. I now have an empty car. I can go get a bunch of stuff and bring it back to the house. I actually don't mind doing that stuff still. I don't know about you. But you know, no, I think it's okay.

Jake Cohen: 35:54

I enjoy that stuff as well. But I think that that's the key. You know, when people say you have to take yourself out of the business. The reason they say that is because you get bogged down out and you know, you get frustrated, and you don't want to do it anymore. If you're still enjoying it, there's no reason to take yourself out of the business, I think you just have to realize, you know, when am I six months Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's important. I mean, this is why or a year away from that point, and, you know, start hiring the help then before you hit that point, and you're ready to sell everything, and, you know, blow up your business. Because I've met a lot of people that certainly get to that point, and they're there for two or three years, and they're hating their life. And the whole reason, I think, we got into real estate investing was to have a better lifestyle, to be able to give time to our family and our kids. And to be able to do the activities that we want. The cool thing that I see from it is I'm able to show my kids, you know, what hard work can can get you. And now we have these nice things, we have these nice places that we can go to. And when I'm there, yeah, I have to do a little bit of work. And the kids see that we have to do some work while we're on vacation. But most of the time, we get to have a really nice time. And I just feel very lucky that that is my life. And you know, coming from a blue collar job as a firefighter, A lot of the guys that I worked with, they are not thinking that way. They're, you know, relying on a pension, and they're planning on working for 30 or 35 years. And the honest truth is, a lot of the guys that are 20 or 25 years in, they shouldn't be there anymore. Their their bodies are broken. And they just know they have to make it 10 more years to get the amount in their pension. And I feel very lucky to be on this side of it not waiting 10 more years and just breaking my body further and doing something that I enjoy most days. are we doing this in the first place? It's the why, you know, we do it for time we do it for our family, you and I talked about that in Florida. I think I remember meeting your daughter on a FaceTime, like when you called her once, yeah, our daughter is three and a half right now she's, you know. She gets so confused, because we did go to a different house all the time. And, you know, it sounds it sounds so snobby. But you know, we're buying these properties for them to be income generating, like nothing that we do, besides our primary home is designed to just be like, kick back and relax, everything generates income. She doesn't get it, you know, especially here where we have multiple houses in a row, you know, sometimes we'll drive past the house next door to get to this house, and she'll be like, Wait, that's my house. But we're going to the other one of your houses. And the other one in the middle is the one that's gonna be your house too. So she's, she probably doesn't get it. And All she knows is her her stuff has kind of all these places. Which is, yeah, which, which I mean, you know, as time goes on, she'll, she'll catch more and more of that. But, but I think it's just, it's amazing to have this lifestyle. And I think that it's really nice to be entrepreneurial in your mind. And whether you actually are an entrepreneur and have your own business, or you you know, help someone else that is an entrepreneur, but have, but you can have that mindset of understanding that you're building something, you're making something greater, I feel very lucky that I'm able to employ the cleaners that I do, to employ the handyman that I do to, you know, have business for the AC guys and the, you know, the electricians and all of that because I'm supporting the economy. And I'm building this business, and it's supporting me. But I also feel like I can get my hands dirty, I can do some of the work myself. And it's very rewarding. My wife and I have been painting our our primary residence. It's kind of the first time I really convinced my wife to do a pretty big job with me. And it's been great, you know, because we're working together. You know, Hey, Jake, I can't do that upper part because I'm scared to get on the ladder. Can you do that part. But we see the results of our hard work and you appreciate it a lot more than if you just say, here's $10,000 paint my house. I'm going to be back in two weeks. You know, you don't get that same reward.

Jason Muth: 40:41

Yeah.

Rory Gill: 40:41

I mean, speaking of the rewards, you know, each you know, we're talking about your primary residence there too. But each property when we've got it up and running, that was a chapter of our lives. We've been on pace for about one a year. But you know, the what you see behind Jason, that was the result of us painting and contracting things out and putting it together and that was, you know, that's what we did in 2016. There were a lot of good memories there. And then the next one was 2017. And, you know, we have actual memories attached to these places for all the work you've done and getting them up and running. And then we're on to the next one.

Jake Cohen: 41:15

Right. And Rory, have you been- you're realtor? Correct?

Rory Gill: 41:19

Yeah, that's right.

Jake Cohen: 41:20

Yeah. And a lawyer.

Rory Gill: 41:22

Yes. I'm both.

Jake Cohen: 41:23

Yeah. Yeah. So. So have you been the Realtor on all of these properties that you've purchased?

Rory Gill: 41:30

Um, I have, yes, I have.

Jake Cohen: 41:34

Okay. Okay. That's, I mean, that's a really cool dichotomy to your business that you guys have where you can use you as the realtor to source the properties. And then Jason, you're the one that's, you know, working through a lot of the supplies and the, you know, day to day messaging and all of that. It's something that I kind of hope for my future is that eventually, maybe my wife will join me in the business. And, you know, she's been really great with design and helping me with colors and things like that, which I am certainly not great at. But at the end of the day, each of these has still been my project, my baby. And I look forward to kind of being that team like you guys have.

Jason Muth: 42:21

Yeah, I mean, Rory is super helpful with everything. I mean, not just in the process of getting the of the acquisitions, but also, you know, he's very handy, probably handier than he thought he would be. And there's definitely projects that I don't like doing or don't want to learn how to do. And then he figures them out. And it's usually involved with home automation technology, some stuff outside of the scope of like, what I'm comfortable learning, like, I'm fine painting on great gardening, I'm good at building some stuff, you know, outside. You know, Rory did a deck here, right? During the pandemic, we were living here on sand, we're like, but we're not deck, a patio, you know, a stone patio, and figured out how to do all that. He's, you know, but what I do want to get myself some credit, you did mention something about sourcing properties. I found every one of the ones that we own.

Jake Cohen: 43:11

Nice, nice

Jason Muth: 43:13

So, you know, I know that as as the real tour. I was like, hey, Rory, guess what, here's your commission, here's here, you know, get get this place closed. But I'm thinking back to all of them. And yeah, I, I was one that, you know, identified each one of them.

Jake Cohen: 43:26

But nonetheless, that's, that's a significant amount of money in your guy's pocket by not paying a commission. It's something that I've considered a number of times should I get my real estate license? And the honest truth is, I went through all the training once. I sat the exam, and I never turned the paperwork in. Because I got busy. It was right before we opened the hotel in Palm Springs, I just got busy doing renovations, and all sudden, I looked down and a year went by and I couldn't submit the paperwork anymore. And I said, Oh, well, you know, no worries.

Rory Gill: 44:00

It's well, it's a you know, it's a business that has a lot of it works pretty well with doing short term rentals. But I wouldn't get a license just for the purpose of doing your own deals. It's great because I have, you know, a separate business that I can use and leverage and find ways to work with the short term rental business. But I wouldn't get a license for it. The same way I think you suggested earlier about, you know, you wouldn't do co-hosting just to do a couple of co-hosts. If you want to build a business that works well with it, and you like co-hosting? Great. That's another business that you do alongside everything else, and it works together but

Jake Cohen: 44:35

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah.

Jason Muth: 44:37

So I do want to get to some of the final questions that we have for you. We could probably go on for a long, long time. But you know, another one thing that I've been curious about, and I'm right now, in between, I've said this to Rory before where I want to have, you know, credibility and influence with what we're doing. But I don't need to be an influencer. I don't need to be the superstar who's in charge of, you know, an awesome social. I mean, we have a social media presence and NextHome Titletown and with this podcast, you know, but we're not doing it to sell courses and run conferences, and all the power that people that are because that's kind of the direction they want to go in. It's not really in my DNA. But I did see that you you have a course or you've had a course you're thinking about doing a course or tell me more about where all this fits into your life.

Jake Cohen: 45:30

I think all of those things that you said were true. I did you have a course, I have a course, and I'm working on a course. I think those are all those are all true. I built out a course. It's currently free and probably will stay free as long as I can continue to make it work that way. But I kind of started this mission of I want to make this easier for others. About three years ago I started doing webinars for people and they were just free webinars and we'd get 10 or 20 people on each webinar. And we go through a certain aspect of the business, like how you automate your messages, or how do you price with PriceLabs or something like that. And I basically came to a conclusion that, okay, I basically have a six webinar series that covers the vast majority of the basics of what people need to know, to get started. And I turned it into a course, recorded about 50 videos, and, you know, have some additional information like, these are the furniture that I've purchased. And these are the messages that I send out, etcetera. But basically, my goal was just to target the people that are interested in maybe buying their first property, and not worry about trying to go after someone who's trying to make a million dollars in short term rentals, I feel like all of the courses that are out there are targeted towards, you're going to be a professional short term rental operator. And what I saw with a couple of my friends is that they were interested in having a place in a ski town, because I live in Colorado, or they were interested in buying a beach house, because they lived in, you know, a beach, you know, somewhere near a beach or something like that. And most of them, were thinking of it from the perspective of, I have to be able to cover a, you know, $4,000 mortgage to buy this house, they weren't thinking from the perspective of, I'm only going to be there one weekend a month. The rest of the time, I could rent the property out. So I'm kind of looking at it from that perspective, can I convince someone who has some extra space in their basement to rent out their basement. Can I convince someone who wants to buy a second home, that they can do it, and they can actually pay their mortgage, and maybe even make a couple bucks on top of that. So I'm not really targeting someone who's like us where we're going to turn it into a lifestyle, but I'm targeting those people that just want to have a little bit of a better life, maybe make a little extra income on the side, and teach them the basics so that they can get started. And if after that, they hit the point where they say, Wow, I want to do this full time. Great, you know, go to Bill Faeth, go to Mike Sjogren. You know, these guys are professionals, they have amazing systems. But, man, it took me hundreds upon thousands of hours to learn which softwares I should use. It took me so long to decide which coffeemaker to buy, you know, all of these stupid things that it's like, if someone had given me a list and said, Here's the list, just buy this stuff, I would have done it in a heartbeat. And even if it wasn't the perfect thing, initially, you know, at least you got something in there and you got started. And you're not waiting two or three months, because you're trying to do research on which coffee maker is the right one, you know, stuff like that.

Jason Muth: 49:12

Yeah, you know, I have to think that there are I mean, I don't even know how, how many hosts are there that have vacation properties, whatever Airbnb quotes, I don't know what the number is, it's ginormous. But, you know, not every, not every one of them is listening to all of the masterminds that are out there. Right, you know, the vast, vast, vast majority, 95% of them are probably just piecing it all together themselves. Right? You know, so and that's your friends, that's people that we know that have second homes who claim they're going to rent them out, but then never do. So they just become, you know, in my mind, you know, places that they're just sticking a lot of money into that happened to be appreciating value unlike like a boat, but they just aren't making money on it. Not everyone wants to do or go to the level that you and I have gone. I mean, the fact that we both showed up in Miami to a conference with 100 people that were curious about this, you know, says that we want to make sure that we're meeting people that are like minded that are, you know, willing to share their systems, that have good recommendations. You know, I feel as though that conference, I don't know what your opinion was of it. But you know, I came back really energized and I had a lot of clarity as to what I was supposed to be doing. And it was great meeting like, you know, people like yourself and folks from around the country who, you know, were probably in a very similar spot. A lot of people there were in that three to eight-ten property range, right.

Jake Cohen: 50:35

Yeah. And I think honestly, probably the majority actually were less than that. I think there were a lot of people there that owned one or two properties, but they saw what this could be, you know, the one or two they're saying, Wow, these are doing really well. Can I buy two more or something like that? But yeah, I think there's there's different paths for different people obviously like Mike is one of those guys that is just skyrocketing. You know, he's buying fifty unit hotels and things like that, that that's really not of interest to me. I would love to have, you know, five or eight really nice properties and make a good living from them and be able to spend a lot of time doing the things that I want to do like being with my family and, you know, going skiing and biking and, you know, maybe down the road, I'm spending a little time on this course helping, you know, helping people out. But I don't want to spend all my I don't want to work if 50 or 60 hour a week job running short term rentals, that's kind of what I got out of was, you know, working the 50 or 60 hour week job. So I feel really lucky to have the clarity that I do. And not to be going that crazy. Now, Mike has on his schedule, I know that he plays golf, three days a week or something like that. It's hard for me to believe that he really actually does that, given how fast he's moving with all this stuff.

Jason Muth: 52:15

Yeah, it might be a little different now with a 50 unit hotel coming on board. But right, yeah, he made some comment last week that he you know, never messages his guests anymore. Like he's not the one that has that correspondence, he has a whole army of people that do all that. And that's great. If you want to build out your systems to that level, you know, fantastic. It's not like I long to message to the guests, but I don't mind it, you know, I don't mind writing back to somebody and putting some humanity, you know, into what could have been an automated message. You know, it's whatever, it's fine. It's like, you know, which reminds me, I have to message our guests that are coming this weekend. So you've, you've given me another thing to put on my list. But, you know, I will say that my you know, since since leaving, you know, my W-2 job, you know, I made kind of a declaration that oh, I'm, you know, retired from the media world. And I might have made a mistake in that people think that I'm retired. You know, so people are thinking, I'm sitting around watching Kelly Clarkson, or whatever, you know, your time shows are on TV, and my parents are like, you don't have a job - how do you keep spending money on these houses? You know, but I just tried, I try to tune all that out, you know, myself, and, you know, have the same clarity that you have, which is, you know, the end goal in mind is time freedom is time with your family is being proud of the work that you're doing is enjoying the work you're doing because I'm enjoying this work. I mean, you know, I don't know, Rory, I don't know, what do you think maybe I've been a little stressed out recently with the acquisition. But, you know, I don't know, I, I've enjoyed what I've been doing for the past few months since I left the media, don't you think?

Rory Gill: 53:44

Yeah, I mean, it comes in spurts, too. I mean, when you have a brand new property in between closing and the first guest, you're, you're running around doing a whole bunch of things at once. And this is also when you're kind of overhauling all your systems at the same exact time. While we are still relatively new in our primary residence, and getting that that all together. So you know, there are a lot of things kind of converging at the same time. But you know, this business kind of comes in waves I find.

Jake Cohen: 54:11

And that's, I feel like, that's just how life is too is, you know, you never know, you never know when the right thing comes up. And they usually all come at the same time. And it's crazy. But it's also I like that project based life because I can work 80 hours a week for a few weeks, you know, work really hard, like move stuff, do whatever I have to do, you know, get a lot done. But it's nice to be able to go back to that baseline of okay, now I can go back to my 30 or 40 hours a week that I normally do, as opposed to I work 60 hours a week, every week. I mean, as a firefighter, my normal schedule was 56 hours a week, if I worked an overtime shift, it was 72 hours a week. And it's like, it's so nice to not have that as my normal baseline, and to not be tired all the time. And you know, give myself the rest and the exercise and eating well. And all of those things that we should do, which most of us in our regular lives have a hard time prioritizing. So I think it's been a great shift for us. My wife is a physician assistant, she still works in normal job and she has health care and all of that. But I think she's felt a huge difference in my stress level. And I think the biggest thing for me, it's just I'm not tired every single day like I was before.

Jason Muth: 55:44

Yeah, it's you know, it's a great story that you've shared and lifestyle that you you know, have built with with your wife and your family. You know, all through the experience that you had growing up, you know, living in house hacking unknowingly and now getting into short term rentals. You know, arguably the last investment that your parents helped me make, you know, one of the earlier ones was was a good one not a bad one, right? Because they helped you get into what you're doing now, with the short term rentals.

Jake Cohen: 56:13

Yeah, well, my mom's retirement is built on our short term rental business. So she, she invested $350,000. And she gets paid $3,500 a month, every single month. And that's the first check that I write every single month is to her. And, you know, if there's ever a month where we're short on cash, she gets her money, and I don't get my money, you know, so it's really was that was the priority number one for me was creating this stable retirement for her. And she has some other small investments and things as well that bring in some money for her. But that's kind of the majority of her retirement income. And, you know, she's able to live a very comfortable life now. Whereas, if she just had that $350,000, and she had not done much with it, she would not be able to have that kind of money to be able to enjoy her life. So I'm, I'm really glad that we came up with this plan. And obviously, we've gotten very lucky with how amazingly well short term rentals did over the last five years as well, since we got into the business. But it's been incredible. I retired her and now I'm able to retire myself. And that is a phenomenal goal for a five year period.

Jason Muth: 57:37

Yeah. And you did it without having to have 500 doors as you'd hear on other podcasts.

Jake Cohen: 57:44

Exactly. I cannot understand how people want to have 500 or 1,000 doors. For me simpler, the better. If I could do it with one door, I would do it with one door. But obviously diversification starts to come into play at that point that yeah, what if your one door burns down, then you're screwed. So I think probably that happy medium is like five to 10 is where I want to be.

Jason Muth: 58:11

Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll hold each other accountable while we are on that journey together.

Jake Cohen: 58:16

Sounds good.

Jason Muth: 58:17

So Jake, let's do the final couple questions that we ask all of our all of our guests on the podcast here, which I have to say get to know you a little bit better. And then we'll let everyone know where you can be found. If you want to be that. First one of these final questions tell us if you can get on stage for half hour and talk about a subject of the world with zero preparation. What would that be?

Jake Cohen: 58:39

Yeah, I think the honest truth is, the only thing that I would feel truly confident talking about at this moment would be short term rentals. So I would probably have a very similar conversation to what we just had here. Tell a little bit about my story, tell people how they could be successful in short term rentals. And I think it's an interesting story as well. So hopefully, it would be entertaining.

Jason Muth: 59:06

Yeah, it's it's a fascinating story. There's elements of your story, I think that would be even more entertaining that we'd even talk about in this podcast. But, you know, I think that like you, we can get brainwashed, you know, with the amount of social media conversations about short term rentals that are happening right now. You know, I could probably talk about it for a long time as well. I don't think I've forgotten stuff and this has replaced it, you know, but I would, I could probably do that same conversation at this point. Yeah. So you know, I get it. Like, the deeper you go, the more you learn. Next thing you know, it's everywhere, right? I don't know about you, but you're probably just soaking so much information in on YouTube and Instagram, Facebook everywhere. So what are these second final question that we have for you is tell us something that happened early in your life or career that impacts the way that you're working today?

Jake Cohen: 59:57

Yeah, um, there was kind of a defining moment for me in my life, I was probably about 10 or 12 years old. And I came in to my dad and I said, Hey, Dad, I want five bucks. You know, I want to go, I don't remember what the situation was, I want to go buy something, I want to do something. I need five bucks. And my dad said, Yeah, I'll give you five bucks if you wash my car. And I said, okay, cool. You know, where's the soap? Where's the brush? You know, he helped me get the stuff I needed. And he said, Go ahead, wash it, wash the car. And I spent about five minutes you know, quickly spraying it down, throwing a little soap on there, spraying it down again came in said, Hey, I'm done. Give me my five bucks. And my dad walked outside and he said, Let's look let's look at the car, you know, and he said, Oh, there's suds there. Doesn't look like you got the roof, you know, blah, blah, blah. And he took the time with me to say, here's how I would wash the car. I would start at the top. You know, I'd scrub scrub the roof. Then I would scrub the windows and the windshield, and then I'd go lower. And I'd start at the top and work my way down, I'd make sure that I got all the all the areas. And I'd make sure that when I'm done, I would feel proud of the work that I did. And, and I said, you know, I'm just washing the car, when you know, what's the big deal? You know, it's fine. And it was one of those things that I don't think I really internalized in that moment. But I remember being super frustrated that I had to spend a whole hour washing the car, instead of the five minutes, I thought I was going to spend washing the car. And as I went through life that just kept coming up in my life of, Am I proud of what I've done. And even if it's taking out the trash, or you know, organizing a shelf or doing anything stupid around the house, and if you aren't proud of the work you do in that moment, it's kind of like, you know, mindfulness or meditation somehow, where you just feel like, Hey, I did the best I could, in this moment, whatever I was doing. And, you know, I didn't just phone it in. So that's been a big thing in my life. And it's definitely something that I've continued through with my short term rentals is, if I was in the guest's shoes, you know, what would I feel was the right thing. You know, so if I get frustrated, hey, you know, they're mad at me, because this wasn't clean. Well, was it clean? If it wasn't clean? It should be clean? You know, there's no question. Just get it right. Send your cleaner back, pay the extra 50 bucks, you know, send them out to dinner, whatever you got to do to make it right. And by making it right, I have always felt like I was comfortable with what I did. And if they didn't like it, at least I felt like I did what I should have done.

Jason Muth: 1:02:59

Right. Yeah. Wow. That's that's your TED talk right there.

Jake Cohen: 1:03:02

There it is. There it is.

Jason Muth: 1:03:05

And the final question we have tell us something that you're listening to watching or reading these days. Well,

Jake Cohen: 1:03:12

I definitely did watch Yellowstone last night. I very much enjoyed the first episode, pretty dramatic, but I did enjoy it. I'm a big podcast listener. The podcast that I listened to the most is called ChooseFI. It's a Financial Independence Podcast. And I think they have, I don't know, 600 episodes or something. And I've listened to every one of them. I feel like I'm starting to grow out of it a little bit. But still enjoying that podcast. The book that I just finished reading is called Raising Lions. May be a good one for you guys to check out with a three and a half year old. Basically, the the very short premise is we are parenting, like our children, our lambs, but we're teaching them to be lions, so they run our lives instead of us being able to control them. I've been, I've been struggling with my my four year old because she realizes she has power now. And it's very hard to, you know, be emotionally stable, and not just yell at her when I'm upset. So this raising Lyons was a very interesting book from a guy that deals with kids with kind of emotional dysfunction and how to deal with that.

Jason Muth: 1:04:46

Rory?

Rory Gill: 1:04:47

I mean, our head of household is a three year old so

Jake Cohen: 1:04:50

It's worth worth an audible download for sure.

Rory Gill: 1:04:53

All right, I will use my Audible credit this month on that.

Jason Muth: 1:04:55

I was hoping she'd grow out of it. But you just said four year old and I'm like, Oh my God, she's four. Yeah,

Jake Cohen: 1:05:06

I think we might be waiting till they're about 18 before they grow out of it. So might be worth reading the book instead.

Jason Muth: 1:05:15

Well, that's our homework. ChooseFI is a good one too. Do you get the newsletter?

Jake Cohen: 1:05:20

Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Muth: 1:05:21

They always talk about your what's your 1% better?

Jake Cohen: 1:05:23

Right? Right.

Jason Muth: 1:05:25

I like that. It's, you know, it's the simple lessons. It's, you know, are you proud of what you just did? You know, and you kind of, that's when you're golden rules from what you've basically just, you know, I counted as the car washing example. I'll have to take that and say, Did I do the best I can? Am I proud of this? And then what's your 1% Better? I love that, you know, it's what's that one little thing that you did that, you know, maybe just to touch better? It could be simply saving 50 bucks somewhere or it could be you know, taking out a new retirement account that you hadn't been used to do for a long time. Or it could be a new lesson that you taught your child.

Jake Cohen: 1:06:01

Yeah, totally, totally. I think time. Investing in time is a big thing that we don't always give ourselves credit for. But yeah, we should.

Jason Muth: 1:06:10

So Jake, you're not you're not the most prevalent person on social media. You do have a website and you are on Instagram. But you know, tell people if they want to get a hold of you and you know, just say hi. They don't have to give you money or

Jake Cohen: 1:06:26

No money needs to change hands. Our website is step by stepbystepbandb.com. Very easy to access our free Airbnb hosting course on that website. We do have accounts on Facebook, and Instagram, and YouTube, all with the handle at stepbystepbandb.com. As Jason said, we've been going through kind of the early family model of social media is what I'm going to call it where I get excited and decide I'm going to go for it. And I post for a couple of months and then realize, oh, we have another child on the way and forget about it for a year and a half. And I have had a vasectomy now. So I'm pretty sure we are done having children. So I'm going to say from now on I will be more active on social media. But yeah, reach out to us on any of the socials. Check us check out our free course we do have a community feature in the course as well. So if you want some feedback on your listing or have a specific question, we do respond to all the comments in

Jason Muth: 1:07:40

This is officially our first podcast that's gone there as well. down a road of urology. So thank you for sharing that.

Jake Cohen: 1:07:47

You know, you could tie that back to the law pretty easily. I think. So. I think we just tied it all together.

Jason Muth: 1:07:55

Yeah. We don't always talk about law in this podcast. I mean, we talk about law about half the time 30% of the time, it's just called The Real Estate Law Podcast just because, you know, we we try to throw it in there. But speaking of which, we do have an attorney that should probably say where you can be heard and found.

Rory Gill: 1:08:13

Well if you're looking for law, and you didn't get enough law on the podcast, you can find me and my law practice UrbanVillage Legal - UrbanVillagelegal.com We're here at my brokerage NextHome Titletown nexthometitletown.com

Jason Muth: 1:08:25

Like people have always had enough law. With whatever level law you've ad, it's always enough. Hey, Jake, thank you for spending time with us. Really appreciate it. I loved hanging out with you in Miami. I hope we can do it again sometime. You know, hopefully we'll run into each other at another conference coming up. If you're ever out in Boston on our way, please let us know. And we will show you around. We are good with hospitality, just like you are.

Jake Cohen: 1:08:46

Absolutely will say same goes for you. If you ever come out to Steamboat, we'd love to have you here as well. I'm sure the girls, the girls would have a great time together.

Jason Muth: 1:08:55

Yeah, I've never been to Steamboat. I've been to Boulder been to Denver, but never Steamboat. So all right, the list added to the list. And you as the listener, if you're still listening, thank you for listening to our conversation. We hope you've been inspired by some of what Jake has had to say. You know, it's not the traditional path that all people who are short term rental investors are taking. There's a lot of noise out there these days, a lot of people that are doing 18 million different things. And they all want to be influencers. I think Jake is a great example that shows you know somebody that is set a goal, tried and true sticking to the plan. The plan is, you know, financial independence for him, his family, his mom, time freedom for him and his family, creating a little bit of influence online and continuing to grow his portfolio. I think it's one that lots of people can listen to and aspire to do. And it's not spoken of that frequently because it always seems to be more more bigger, better. You know, I'm tuning that out myself. So Jake, thank you for sharing the story. Thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, we'd love it if you can give us a great rating or a comment. Or you could reach out to me if you have any feedback or want to be a guest in the podcast. You can find me jason@nexthometitletown.com. So Rory, thank you, Jake. Thank you. We'll see y'all next time.

Jake Cohen: 1:10:12

Thank you. Thanks, guys. Pleasure.

Announcer: 1:10:13

You found The Real Estate Law Podcast. Because real estate is more than just pretty pictures. And law goes well beyond the paperwork and courtroom argument. If you're a real estate professional, or looking to build real estate expertise, then welcome to the conversation and discover more at the realestatelawpodcast.com