Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Jonathan Campau - Luxury Hospitality Pioneer | How He Built a $700M Real Estate Portfolio Serving The 1%

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Jonathan Campau - Luxury Hospitality Pioneer | How He Built a $700M Real Estate Portfolio Serving The 1% · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  My first property of all was 32,000, timing is great, location is great. We pump in money into it.
• 0:05
  I remember the feeling of, oh my god, I just made a million dollars. This is insane.
• 0:09
  Johnny Campal isn't just building properties. He's building a lifestyle brand for the world's elite.
• 0:13
  As the founder and CEO of Luxury, Johnny turned a bold idea into one of the fastest growing luxury
• 0:18
  hospitality companies in the US. I didn't belong buying a 10 million dollar property to begin with.
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  I should have two, three, four, five million dollar properties is my comfort zone, so just
• 0:27
  don't bite off more than you can chew. That's where you lose. You get in at 600K, you spend the
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  money and the work, make it beautiful, and then you can earn higher revenue and have an
• 0:37
  unappreciated property. But the real money and real estate is not selling.
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  But this didn't come from generational wealth. It came from relentless vision, obsessive
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  attention to detail, and an unshakable belief in creating experiences, not just spaces.
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  From ultra high-end vacation rentals to personalized concierge services and hotel
• 0:54
  acquisitions, luxury is changing the way luxury has lived and Johnny is the mind behind the movement.
• 0:59
  My advice for anybody who has big plans is you have to first find your faith. If you don't have
• 1:04
  that, then it's going to be very difficult and you'll probably give up. In this episode, we dive
• 1:09
  into the hustle, the mindset, and the moments that turn one man's grind into an empire of luxury.
• 1:14
  Well, it would be a lesson that you learned that you hope nobody else would ever have to learn.
• 1:18
  Well, it's really okay. Are you wanting to know if Miami is a place of luxury?
• 1:22
  I guess. No. Why is that?
• 1:38
  So, Johnny, if somebody's going to ask you what you do for a living, what do you tell her?
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  I generally would respond with, it depends on who's asking the question, but
• 1:49
  if I'm in a networking event, generally, depending on the individual, I would say I'm a property manager.
• 1:57
  But my passion is hospitality, so I'm a hospitality expert. That's how I would classify my
• 2:05
  your job. My passion is hospitality. My job and my career is real estate property management.
• 2:14
  I mean, I feel like that's not doing justice to what you do, because some of the projects you've
• 2:22
  worked on, some of the people that you've worked with, I don't think that's the normal clientele
• 2:29
  at the average hospitality. That's why it depends on who's asking, but
• 2:34
  when did this, so you grew up in Kansas? I grew up in Michigan. Michigan, but you started working
• 2:41
  in Kansas with flipping small homes. So, I grew up in Michigan, and I went to college in South Florida,
• 2:49
  and then I got a job after college in Kansas City. So, I moved to Kansas City after college,
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  and I worked there for a hedge fund, a mutual fund company called Waddell and Reed Ivey Funds.
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  So, I worked there for five years, and then I started using my money that I was earning to purchase
• 3:06
  real estate in Kansas City, which is, I mean, I just think the reason why I point out Kansas City,
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  because I can't think of, Kansas City is such a small town idea. I find that Kansas in general,
• 3:18
  what is that like Wizard of Oz? This seems like a small town, and now the people that you work with,
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  and I think the majority of your work now is, is it in Miami, the majority of your work,
• 3:29
  or is it all over the US? It's Miami and Aspen. Yeah. Miami and Aspen. So, we have an office
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  and Aspen in an office here in Miami. If I think of the people that you work with now,
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  it's like a complete 180 from the type of clients that I would assume you're working with. Yeah,
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  Kansas. When you look back to where you came from, your family, your upbringing, now you're
• 3:49
  very entrepreneurial. You built an incredible business. Was this something that was taught to you,
• 3:56
  where your parents entrepreneurial, they were? So, did they hate that you went to go work for a
• 4:01
  hedge fund? Were they like, what's wrong with you? No, I mean, my parents both own companies,
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  my brother's own companies, my uncles and grandparents, they all own companies. So, it was kind of in
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  our DNA as a child, like it's a learn from many mistakes and many successes that they've each
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  been. Was it real estate though or no? No. No, none of my family members are actually in real estate.
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  So, yeah, and I remember when I was a kid, when I was in high school, I was looking at which university
• 4:33
  to go to and I told my dad, I wanted to go to school for a hotel management and he was like, no,
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  no, no, no, no, he's like, you can go to school for business and if you want to be in hotel
• 4:44
  management, you can always manage a hotel with a degree in business, but you're not going to go
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  to school for hotel management. So, when you think about how you started in real estate,
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  you've been in, now I understand, so that's how you ended up in Kansas. What was, and you're young
• 5:04
  still and you've built a massive portfolio, you've done incredible stuff. We're going to talk
• 5:08
  through some of the journey, but what was the reason for starting in real estate? What was this?
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  Because there's a million different people, I mean, real estate seems oversaturated in general.
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  Yeah, I mean, I started, I started like 15, 14, 15 years ago as when I started,
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  and they was cheap. So, in Kansas City, the real estate's not like Miami prices, so
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  my first property about was 32,000 and then I did rent to owns on more properties that were
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  in the same street. So, I did another one on like 50,000 and 70,000 and 100,000 and 200,000,
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  then I started doing more properties downtown and I was doing these rent to own type projects
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  and as doing long-term, long-term tenants in them and then converted those over into short-term
• 5:56
  rentals. Is that like, I mean, if you think about how most people should get started in real estate,
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  would you say that you picked a good path, this rent to owns? Yeah, I mean, the rent to own was,
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  I kind of figured it out on my own. I didn't have any instruction. There wasn't anybody
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  coaching me through it other than my mentor Larry from here in Miami who, when I went to college,
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  he was my mentor when I was in college and I got my real estate license in Florida,
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  and I would call Larry and I'm like, man, I don't like the tenant who's living next to me
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  in the house where I had. I was like, I don't like the tenant next to me. He's like, well,
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  buy it and I was like, well, I can't afford to buy it and he was like, well, off from a rent to own.
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  I was like, well, what is a rent to own? And then he started explaining it to me and I was like,
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  oh, okay, that's great. But there was nothing really online about it. There wasn't a lot of,
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  there wasn't contracts out there for that. And so I hired a local attorney who I still work with today,
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  actually, in still in Kansas City. Yeah, he's the broker for my company in Kansas City.
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  And yeah, so he helped me draft the contract and I made the offer and they accept it. And I was
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  like, wow, this is nice. And then next thing, you know, I had 20 more of them over the course of
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  another year and a half, two years, it was just quickly getting those contracts and then earning
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  enough money from the assets to start purchasing out the contracts that I had. And I feel like
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  that's moving, of course. So it seems like you're moving quick when you first start out because
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  so the rent to own seems like an ideal situation because you're renting it eventually all the
• 7:27
  capital that are the principal, the capital you're putting into the rental eventually just turns
• 7:32
  into ownership. So like, it just seems like a very low stress way to acquire properties.
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  Because you're you're generally I would find a property that was on the market for sale for like
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  12 months or six months to 12 months and it hadn't sold. So then I would put an offer out there
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  and I would offer them what they're asking or maybe a little bit more. But in five years or in two
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  years, whatever the best terms I could negotiate. And then they would accept I would pay and then I
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  would bring the value of the home up by making it, you know, by bringing making it a better property,
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  redoing the kitchen or floors or paint or and then staging it and then photographing it with
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  professional photography and then and then doing rentals. I was actually initially started out by
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  renting by the room to college students. So I'd have like a four bedroom house, for example, where
• 8:21
  my rent was like 1200 and I'm renting it out at say 500 per room, like 800 bucks a month. Yeah,
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  and then they pay their utilities. So that got really hairy though, because it'll like start
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  fighting over like so many of my cereal and you're like, you know, like 20 houses times, you know,
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  14. Yeah, like are you managing yourself? Yeah, I was managing and I'm working at the edge
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  volume. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm like, this is too much. I'm getting texts of like someone park in my
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  spa and, you know, that's it. That was when we, I was like, there's got to be a better way. And so
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  as one of the tenants moved out, one of the units was almost completely empty. I had told another
• 9:00
  tenant who wanted to work for me and help me. He's like, I'll manage all this for you. And I was like,
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  well, how about when they move out of that property that we go ahead and convert that into an Airbnb?
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  It's already staged. I already staged it. So it's already ready. And I wanted to do Airbnb. I just
• 9:14
  didn't have the ability to manage that and work, you know, 40, 50 hours a week at my name. My
• 9:20
  yeah, your actual job. And like, it seems like such a simple like, tell me if it's just I'm assuming
• 9:28
  that it's simpler than it is because there's so many strategies to get involved in real estate.
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  And the way that you accomplish it where you could find, find people that could do this rent to
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  own agreement. It seems like, well, why wouldn't everybody get involved in real estate this way?
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  Because it just seems like the smart thing to do where I see people trying to do like true fix
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  and flip where they're actually buying it. And I have friends that do it and they keep telling me
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  it's like very hard, especially Miami to find houses that, you know, at the right cost per square
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  foot where you can actually put money into it and then flip it because the square foot pricing
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  is so ridiculous. So maybe it's like a regional thing, why that's an issue for some people.
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  People talk about like the burn method, people talk about house hacking. I just, it seems like
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  why doesn't everybody get into real estate this way, the way you got into it and maybe not manage it
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  themselves. That people talk about section eight as a way to get into real estate as well. Like a
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  million different things if people do to get into real estate and a million different influencers
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  and thought leaders and gurus on YouTube talking about this that and the other going to
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  reach, go buy whatever. Why don't more people do this? Is it just because it was time and location,
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  which is I guess the secret? I would say time, my timing was pretty great. I mean, there was,
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  you know, there was a lot of real estate on the market that wasn't moving. So that's one thing
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  right now you're you're in a market where there's less inventory, you know, there's less inventory.
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  So the sellers are in control of the properties. You don't have desperate sellers. They're not
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  selling for below market price. They're they're all listed for higher than what they're they're
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  valued at for the most part. And so if you make an offer at market price, you might get it.
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  Like I said, the offers I was making were on properties that were not not moving. They weren't selling.
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  So and again, I started in the lower end market, you know, the lower end properties and moved my
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  way into middle and then higher end properties in Kansas City. And that was that was actually to my
• 11:30
  surprise the first property that I took that I took on was like that was a bigger property. I was
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  pretty nervous about how well it would perform. And then I couldn't believe how, you know, the cost
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  was 4,500 and it was making 18, 20, 25,000 in a month in Kansas City. And I was like, oh my god.
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  And I was calling my mentor like Larry, you're not going to believe these numbers. And that was when
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  he was like, you've got to you got to do what you're doing up there down down here because he was
• 11:59
  in Miami. He was in Miami. Yeah. Yeah, Larry. And so he said, you have to do your rental arbitrage and
• 12:06
  your lease to own and these contracts to purchase. There's lots of different forms of rent to own.
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  There's rent to own contract to lease lease to purchase. There's lots of different options. They're
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  very similar. There's option contracts, which is not an actual rent to own. You're not building
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  any equity. You just have an option to purchase it. So like a write a first refusal to a degree?
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  Yeah. Essentially a write a first refusal. Okay. Again, like the last question I just have on
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  this like initial strategy because again, someone's going to say, well, how do I find the people
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  that are cool with this? Right. How do you find the owners that are cool with rent to own? And I
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  listen, I don't come from real estate. I don't pretend to come from real estate. But a comparable idea
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  is, you know, Cody Sanchez is. Yeah. Yeah. Cody's praising. And she talks about how all these
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  business owners are retiring. Yeah. And why not sell or finance the acquisition of these businesses?
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  And I've tried, like, I've looked, I go on biz by sell, I go to and I'm like, no one wants to
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  fucking sell their finances, but they want cash. They want cash for their business now. Maybe like
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  a portion of it, but they want. And if you could just de-risk the deal for yourself so that again,
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  business acquisition world, you're not taking on a massive SBA loan that you're personally liable
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  for if things don't work out. And the seller is financing most of it. All of a sudden you have
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  this whole world of acquisition or purchase opportunity, but I find it very hard to find the people
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  that are willing to do that. It sounds like when Cody talks about it, I love Cody too, but it sounds
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  that you just find these people all over the place and are like, you know what? I'm retiring. I want
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  no money upfront. I'm just going to, you know, sell or finance my business. And I've I have not
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  been successful at finding those out. So you did reach out to some companies. And what can you
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  mean? Example, like, what's it's like 10% seller finance in the resting cash? Was the business like
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  a good operating smooth running machine already? More often than not. Yeah. Okay. That's the
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  guy that wants all cash. And it's all it's always the stuff that's on market, never off market. So
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  I did, I did a seller finance on two car washes. Very random. I know this is like 12 years ago. I
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  did a seller financing and I was going through it. I'm like, I can't believe I have all these
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  houses that are doing these deals with me. I was very surprised myself of how many people were
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  willing to do these. And some of them were doing them. I had one one house that he didn't even accept
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  I might offer he accepted was no money down, but I'm going to fix up the property. Why would I
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  go delinquent on a payment when I'm enhancing the value of your home by 30 or 40,000? These are
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  Kansas City numbers 30 or 40,000 on a house that's only worth 60K. You know, I'm I'm enhancing the
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  the value now to 110,000 legitimately because I was doing work. I did all kinds of work on the
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  property and and then rented it out. And I showed the revenue, which then increases the value of
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  the home base on the revenue, right? If you want to go with that type of loan. But the car washes,
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  I basically was just in my job in my cubicle at my at the fund company. And I was going through
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  loopnet and I was looking at all the different businesses that are for sale. And I was literally just
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  had a same text message of like, hi, I'm interested in purchasing this property with just putting down,
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  you know, 10K down. Let me know if you're interested. I would close out in two years.
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  Copy, pasted, sent this to like gas stations, car washes, parking garages, storage facilities.
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  I sent it out to mobile home parks like everything, everything, anything. Yeah, there was no
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  like direction. And I had one one guy, Chuck, he replied back. He's like, he's like, are you
• 15:58
  available for a meeting? And I was like, sure, when? And so at the time, my not wife, I took
• 16:05
  Halley with me. And we went to this place called the peanut or the cashew. I don't know,
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  it's not there anymore. But I think it's called the cashew. We went to the cashew. And I met this guy
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  to have my checkbook. And he's like, I have another after we talk about the car wash. He's like, I have
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  a second car wash that's in one was in Missouri, one was in Kansas. And I was like,
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  I'm asking, do you have the numbers? Like, oh, it's all cash. You know, it's hard to tell how
• 16:31
  much revenue. And I'm like, okay, do you have, you know, like maybe the utility bills I can see.
• 16:37
  He was like, yeah, but you know, we pay him on this car and we pay him on that car.
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  And we pay, we don't really have a spreadsheet for it. I'm like, well, he's like, but look,
• 16:46
  do you want them or not? And I was like, well, like, can I, I remember just being like very,
• 16:52
  like this guy is literally putting me, I don't even, I haven't even verified if he owns the
• 16:56
  properties or not, you know, he just doesn't want them anymore. Yeah, he's just done. This guy,
• 17:01
  he had his own real estate brokerage. He had lots of stuff going on. I could see who he was. I knew
• 17:06
  he was a legitimate individual who had lots of stuff going on in his world. And these things were
• 17:11
  taking away from what was profiting him, you know? And so I literally pulled out my checkbook and
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  I wrote him a check for 12,000 for each property, 24,000. I gave him 24K. And I had even
• 17:22
  bendy either of the car washes. And I have no idea how to run them either. So he's like, do you
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  want to go see them tomorrow? Or when do you, when can we finalize this? I'll have all the paperwork
• 17:31
  sent to you tonight and you can just finalize it tomorrow. And I'm like, I left there and I'm like,
• 17:34
  I'm looking at my, now my, now wife, I'm looking at her. I was like, I think we just bought two car
• 17:41
  washes. And um, and he was cool with the finite. He didn't give a shit. He didn't care. Now he didn't
• 17:47
  care. He did not care at all. He just pay him every month and operate the business. And
• 17:54
  did you? I operated them. Yeah, I ran the two car washes. I was my, again, my girlfriend at that time,
• 18:00
  my wife now, but my, uh, Hallie and I were like, leave work during lunch and she'd go to one car
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  wash. I'd go to one car wash. We're like grabbing the money out of the machines. I'm seeing the trash
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  cans, like cleaning up the place really quick. We had one person who would work both as a cleaner,
• 18:14
  but he would do all like the nasty stuff because it's pretty gross. But we would like basically
• 18:21
  make sure all the vending was full and grab all the cash and run to the bank and then hurry up
• 18:27
  and get back to our job. When you look at, so again, it's a numbers game. You have a clever message.
• 18:33
  It forces the realtor to actually put the offer in front of the client, which is smart. If you think
• 18:38
  about the type of homes that this strategy works on, I know it's a numbers game, but just like
• 18:45
  objectively, like, you know, you send out 10 messages, you get a higher response back with one
• 18:50
  type of home versus another. Is it the ultra luxury where they don't really need the cash?
• 18:56
  Is that if you thought about that because some people need the cash. Some people are
• 18:59
  house poor and they need the cash to go by another house. So that would not be your ideal client.
• 19:05
  Yeah, your ideal client is someone who is distressed for one reason or another. It doesn't mean that
• 19:12
  they can't afford the home. It may be that they're getting a divorce and they want to be out of the
• 19:16
  house. It may be that they're moving and their job took them to another state and they don't want
• 19:20
  to be here anymore. And they just, they just want out. It may be that their realtor is at the five
• 19:27
  month and three week, you know, timeline of their six month contract. And they're like, wow,
• 19:32
  they didn't bring me one buyer. And I'm, and I'm, I'm not a realtor. Okay, I own brokerages,
• 19:39
  but I'm not a realtor. So I, I'm sending a message to a realtor as a buyer or to an owner as a
• 19:45
  buyer. So then they always ask, are you a realtor? I'm like, no, I'm a buyer. And they're like,
• 19:49
  oh, okay. And then their, their guard comes down and they start, you know, talking terms with a
• 19:54
  with me. Yeah, but I try to do it all through text. I don't want to get on a phone and have a whole
• 19:58
  like call or start touring properties and wasting my time, like going through home. And I have,
• 20:04
  you have a process that works. Yeah. And copy and paste it again and again. And I guess some,
• 20:09
  but like I mean, at this point now, I want to understand when you started moving to more luxury
• 20:13
  and sort of like what, I mean, not just luxury. Now you work with like hotels and massive properties,
• 20:18
  but this has all been sort of a progression. If somebody ever wanted to start just to sort of
• 20:24
  finish up with your origin story, what would be your advice for them if they want to get into,
• 20:29
  into real estate this way? I mean, in 2025, you mentioned Kansas at the time was good. I don't
• 20:37
  think that Miami is a city for somebody to start this in. No, this is like a big boys. Yeah, pond
• 20:44
  here. Yeah, I know pond actually. You know, it's so funny. Ocean here. Most of the people that I know
• 20:49
  that are in real estate investing, they actually stay away from Miami. And very sick. Those are big
• 20:54
  investors. They can be from Miami. Yeah. They knew Ohio. But that's probably multi family.
• 21:00
  It is. Yeah. I'm trying to think where else I have a friend who does only section eight,
• 21:04
  and I'm not going to remember where it is, but it isn't some like very bad, like really
• 21:12
  impoverished. There's some, there's some place where he does only section eight. Definitely not
• 21:17
  Miami. The point is anybody who I know is into real estate basically stays away from Miami.
• 21:22
  For a variety of reasons, even my fixed long time to build. They can't find good GCs. They can't
• 21:27
  find good GCs and they can't do fixed and flips or people are screwing them or taking advantage of
• 21:31
  them. So I mean, like Miami in general seems to be like a stressful place to do real estate.
• 21:36
  You got to have a great team. Yeah. I have an amazing team. I would absolutely not be able to do
• 21:41
  what I do without an incredible team. They find the deals. They find the tenants. They find
• 21:50
  contractors that do work. I mean, I'm not so much involved in that process. The process I set
• 21:56
  up and created. I'm not so involved in that process anymore. Unless I just, I mean, I can't help
• 22:01
  myself. I'm always like looking for deals. But I would say that for somebody who comes to me and
• 22:11
  says, how do I get started? At least save from whatever your job is I had a day job. So
• 22:18
  and I earned and I saved. And then I got that cheap property 32k. I would start saving from
• 22:26
  your wherever you're at. Get 20k. If you got 20k, then I would start with an offer of, you know,
• 22:32
  5k down or do a project a house and then get it ready and then either flip it like a like a
• 22:39
  wholesaler, you know, so you can increase the value and then wholesale it to another buyer
• 22:44
  or an investor, occupy it, fill it with with tenants, show the revenue and then sell it to someone
• 22:49
  like me who's like, yeah, I'll buy that because it has a tenant in there. There's lots of buyers
• 22:52
  out there for that. And it's really easy to get into that. And if you're wanting to do in the
• 22:58
  Airbnb section section and you know, getting into short term rentals, then I would and you want
• 23:04
  to scale it fairly quick. I would probably go there's here's what I've learned is that what there's
• 23:10
  a tenant for every property. It didn't matter if it was a 32k property in the hood of Kansas City,
• 23:17
  like South Kansas City, not even a good area or downtown or the big houses in Kansas City or
• 23:24
  on the plaza or these nice beautiful homes like there was always a tenant. It didn't matter what
• 23:29
  whether it was an apartment, a penthouse, it doesn't matter what it is. There's always a tenant for it.
• 23:34
  So I would recommend starting in the fringe of a best of a great area someplace that's close to a
• 23:41
  good area and that someplace, you know, out in farmland. Like I would find a property that is maybe
• 23:49
  on the market for sale. Like right now I would probably find something that's like six, like a six
• 23:54
  bedroom commercial property, right? Some like apartment that the units are like six hundred
• 24:01
  dollars a month, eight hundred dollars a month. I would find a property like that that's on the
• 24:04
  market on loopnet and I would reach out to them and make an offer of something like 20k and then
• 24:10
  you're going to do the work and like run it. I mean, I literally did the work. I was doing renovation
• 24:16
  work and learning how that process works and hiring local people and I'm monitoring and like
• 24:22
  doing the work, you know, in the property. So when did you move into luxury? What was sort of like
• 24:28
  the thing that gave you confidence to move into the luxury space? Because that's a huge leap too.
• 24:34
  You're not dealing with $30,000 homes anymore. Now you're dealing with like multi-million dollar.
• 24:39
  Multi-million dollar, yeah. So when was COVID? That was 21? Yeah, 21. Yeah, whatever the super
• 24:46
  bull was. So from Kansas City, I feel like that whole part of my life is just like this bluer.
• 24:50
  I'd one year. Yeah, like one year, yeah. But in super bull, that was in Miami. The chiefs were
• 25:00
  playing in Miami and being from Kansas City, I was very hyped about that. I made a million bucks
• 25:07
  in profit that weekend from our rentals and those were not like super luxury properties. Those were
• 25:14
  two, three, four million dollar homes that we were managing or sub-leasing. So same strategy,
• 25:22
  just for... Yeah, I was either leasing and sub-leasing on short-term mental platforms or I was managing
• 25:28
  for someone else. Maybe you gave me your home and I'm managing it for 30%. I made a million bucks
• 25:33
  and right, that was February 2nd. I remember this is like, I feel like every entrepreneur has a
• 25:39
  moment that was like a turning moment of where you were either like toast. Yeah, or you carry
• 25:46
  through the... Yeah, the hardest points, all the bullshit. And then on the other side of that,
• 25:51
  that's when you see like the hockey stick. Yeah, the hockey stick growth. Yeah, and that for me was
• 25:57
  COVID. And I remember the feeling of, oh my god, I just made a million dollars. This is insane,
• 26:05
  in like a weekend. And just like a week before, we had... I'm not kidding, we had paid our payroll
• 26:11
  and there was like $50 in our bank account. Like we were so low. Like we were so low and I was so scared.
• 26:17
  Like, gosh, I know, I just got to make it to Super Bowl. Because I just got this property and I
• 26:23
  just rented that property and I just hired these people and I just staged this home and I just
• 26:27
  arbitraged that property and then we go right into Super Bowl and I'm broke and I'm ready,
• 26:31
  like bring me the money. And then we made a million bucks and I was like, yes. And then I sublies
• 26:36
  this waterfront home and another waterfront home for 15 K a month, 25 K a month and I'm... These are
• 26:42
  big homes. Because before I was renting like, I think the most I ever rented was maybe seven or
• 26:46
  eight thousand a month homes. But I realized all the way back from 32 K a month that the value of
• 26:52
  the... There was always a tenant for everything. The only thing that changed was the value of the
• 26:56
  property. The margins stayed the same. So if I'm making two X my costs, for example, if I'm making two
• 27:03
  two to three X on my cost on a 30 K house, I'd rather do it on a three million dollar house.
• 27:09
  Because it's the same amount of work. Check in, check out. Text the client, text the client to check out.
• 27:15
  Why are they owner? Like it's the same process. Pay the utilities, pay the landscaper, pay the
• 27:20
  housekeeping, pay the pool. It's the same exact process. Nothing changed. The only thing that changed
• 27:24
  was the profit was so much more because it's a more expensive property. So when I... That week,
• 27:31
  and I took the next... Over the next week, I was leasing this one, 50 K out here, 25 K out here,
• 27:38
  100 K out here, 75 K out here. I was just running through my money, running all these new homes.
• 27:43
  And then my parents and my friends that don't live in Miami were like, hey, you should be careful.
• 27:49
  This COVID has really taken over. I'm like, what is COVID? Because if you're... I don't know if you
• 27:53
  were down here during that time. No, I wasn't yet. I was still in Toronto. It was like, it didn't exist
• 27:58
  down here. I realized it very much existed in Toronto. Did not exist here in February. I think we got
• 28:05
  into the first part of March. And it was like spring breakers were all down here partying. They're
• 28:08
  like, what is COVID? Everybody's like joking, laughing. It was like March 15th or so. Airbnb and
• 28:16
  VRBO sending cancellation email that the state of Florida's ban short-term rentals
• 28:23
  until further notice. And in one email, in two emails, I had millions of dollars of my future
• 28:31
  revenue was all at zero. So I was 100% dependent on platforms on OTAs is what we call those
• 28:38
  platforms. Airbnb, VRBO, TripAdvisor, all these platforms. So I now had zero revenue with high
• 28:46
  overhead. Well, yeah, because you're in your into agreements with all of these homes and you
• 28:51
  owe them monthly. Yeah, and I just got into a lot of them. And I was ready for season. I was like,
• 28:56
  I'm going to do this because I realized during Super Bowl, the homes that were booked the most
• 29:01
  were the most expensive lavish luxury homes. And so your question of what got me into the luxury
• 29:05
  side was I realized that Super Bowl, I made most of my money was from those big homes. The ones
• 29:11
  that were smaller homes I couldn't hardly book them. So the clients demand for this market was luxury,
• 29:19
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• 32:20
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• 32:27
  Prolonlife.com slash clary. And so this is something that I'm interested in just again,
• 32:32
  we're sort of going through the mechanics of your business. But the options, the options are always
• 32:36
  key in these rent-to-own scenarios. So putting options on this for purchase really,
• 32:42
  that's sort of like the play that you've always used for since Kansas to luxury properties
• 32:47
  in Miami, to not like some of the hotels. Exactly. So it's not just when you work on this deal
• 32:53
  with the owner or the landlord. It's not just I want a sublease. It's always sublease,
• 33:00
  but then with the option. Yeah, because if I say to you, can I rent your house if you were a
• 33:06
  landlord, can I rent your house and turn it into a commercial enterprise, turn it into a hotel
• 33:10
  you're gonna say no. But if I say I want to buy your house in two years, it's a different contract
• 33:16
  than just a lease with the option to sublease. So I'm now coming to you saying, I want to buy this
• 33:21
  house and you're like, well, it's not for sale. You know, I want, I want, let's say it's worth a
• 33:26
  million. I was like, okay, I'll give you a million one and you're like, it's not for sale. I'll
• 33:30
  give you a million two. What's your cost? I can see what you paid for. So I know what your mortgage
• 33:35
  is. You paid 600K for the house, let's say, and I know your mortgage is probably around 4,000 a
• 33:41
  month. So I'm going to start offering you at your mortgage cost 4,000. That's where that's the
• 33:46
  starting point. Okay. So I'll pay you 1.3 and I'll pay you 6,000 a month. I told you it's not for sale.
• 33:51
  I'll give you 6,500 and I'll pay 1.4 million. Why would you do that? Well, I need five years to
• 33:56
  get it there. Now the terms, the levers start to move. The lever is not now a two year contract.
• 34:01
  We're on a five year contract because I need to get you one point. I need the proper,
• 34:04
  I need time for the property to appreciate. And they know that just with the market,
• 34:08
  the property is going to appreciate, but they're assuming that you can have outsized appreciation
• 34:12
  because of the work you're going to put into. Plus also the fact that you're going to draw revenue
• 34:15
  from it. That's going to actually help. They're hoping I default. They are hoping you default.
• 34:20
  Yeah, that's the game on the on the landlord side. On the landlord side, if you came to me and
• 34:25
  I'm the landlord and you made this offer, I would make sure that it's that the deck is kind of
• 34:30
  stacked in your favor, stacked in my favor to make sure that you're putting a lot down.
• 34:34
  You're renovating my asset. And if you miss the payment on the third day,
• 34:38
  I'm taking your assets, which I have a great story about this actually, but
• 34:43
  dull. I mean, what? What? This wasn't on a rent. Oh, this is on my house that I bought on Flamingo.
• 34:48
  It was a this is crazy. This is a crazy story. I bought this house. It was 10.2 million dollars.
• 34:56
  And it was a normal contract like put down the the money to buy it and had it. My idea was
• 35:03
  that I was going to sell this house. I bought it off market. So I thought that I could get it.
• 35:07
  I could flip it for 14 million in like 90 days. Didn't work. Didn't didn't pan out. So I had a the
• 35:14
  loan that I used on it. This is crazy. The loan that I had on it. I had only a 12-month
• 35:21
  term loan on it because I again, I had only anticipated being in the deal for 12 months.
• 35:27
  So I go to the closing table to purchase it. And my lender is like, hey, if they knew I had other
• 35:34
  assets, he's like, hey, we're going to need an extra I forget what the dollar amount was. We need an
• 35:39
  extra $800,000 down in order for you to close. I'm like, how are you telling me this today?
• 35:45
  Like that's crazy. He's like, well, we have an option. You can you we see you have this other
• 35:49
  property over here. We'll go ahead and pay off your loan on that other house. You have a million
• 35:53
  five inequity on that house. We'll pay off that house. And we'll now hold the note here. And that's
• 35:58
  just basically what's called cross collateral. So we're going to cross collateralize your two
• 36:03
  properties. And I'm like, well, that doesn't sound great. But I don't why would they do that to you?
• 36:08
  Because they can. Because I have no option. I'm they know I'll do it. I have I'm at the closing
• 36:15
  table. And I've already put down 500 K to purchase the property in that I'm way past my due
• 36:21
  diligence. So that's now in the seller's pocket. There's no like collecting that back. If I say,
• 36:26
  you know, I don't want this property anymore. Let me leave. It's gone. It's gone. And they know
• 36:30
  that the bank knows that and the bank knows I have another asset with equity, other other assets
• 36:35
  with equity. So the easiest thing is for them to just reach into my pocket and say, hey,
• 36:40
  I want to take the loan on that property and have all the equity on that property. We need 30
• 36:45
  percent we need 30 percent down rather than 20 percent down. So now I have to be, you know,
• 36:50
  three and change down on this property. Anyway, it is what it is. I cross collateralize two properties.
• 36:55
  Go to the closing table 12 months later. I sold the house to Lindsay Vaughn. She's a
• 37:03
  Olympian gold medalist. I don't know if you know Lindsay is, but she she bought the house and
• 37:07
  she the offer comes in from from Lindsay and they they're set for like a 45 day close. They
• 37:16
  put their money. They're past their due diligence. I've already been down the road where she's in,
• 37:20
  right? Yeah. So I'm I'm now in the seller's position and they're at their 45 worst. My loan
• 37:30
  is only a 12 months loan. Okay. So my loan is a 12 months loan. And my lender is saying, hey,
• 37:36
  I want you to renew for another two years. And like, well, of course you do, you know,
• 37:40
  and he's like, he's like, yeah, I don't want you to, you know, he didn't say I don't want you to sell,
• 37:44
  but he in less words, you know, he's like negotiating with me with, you can I'll renew your loan,
• 37:50
  two points higher than you currently are, but you need to pay another $200,000 down to renew the
• 37:56
  loan. And I'm like, that's great. That's robbery. And he knows that you don't have a choice. If I
• 38:01
  can't sell in my 12 month period, I have to renew. So this is like, let's just, I don't know the exact
• 38:08
  dates or whatever, but it was a Thursday. I remember that it was a Thursday in my bank sacks.
• 38:14
  Man. So the bank or he's like, it's a Thursday and he calls me, he's like, Johnny, he's like,
• 38:22
  have you decided if you're going to extend the loan with me? I said, no, I have a closing as you know,
• 38:26
  it's supposed to close on Monday. And he says, I said, they're supposed to close on on Monday.
• 38:33
  And he goes, I want, I want to be very clear with you. Let me just be very clear. And he gets closer
• 38:38
  on the phone with me. And he's like, I, he's like, if you do not close on Monday, I will take both
• 38:47
  of your homes. They will be mine. I want to be very clear with you. And I have a $2.75 million
• 38:55
  property over here and a $10.5 million property over here. And he's going to take them both,
• 39:02
  right? Because I can't clear one day. And I was like, you won't just give me an extra two days. And
• 39:06
  he said, let me repeat myself. And he goes through over it again. Okay. So I hang up, I call,
• 39:12
  I'm like, just don't know that you've done business with me for never did business with this guy
• 39:16
  before or again, no, I would never do business with him again. But I learned a great lesson from it.
• 39:21
  So I, so I, so then Lindsay's attorney calls me. This is Friday, this is Friday morning.
• 39:29
  No, this is okay. So the closing on the bank was Monday. My loan was over on Monday. The closing
• 39:35
  with the house was Friday, right? So the before the Monday. So it's the next morning, Friday morning.
• 39:42
  The lawyer calls me, hey, Johnny, with my attorney and my, and Larry's on the phone. Of course,
• 39:48
  you know, Larry's always right there. And he's like, he's like, hey, listen, we're going to need
• 39:54
  another 30 day extension. And I said, let me be very clear with you. If you do not close today,
• 40:01
  I will keep Lindsay's $500,000. There will be no extension. This house will not be for sale. He will,
• 40:08
  that she will never purchase this house. I will hold this home. I want to be very clear. We are
• 40:13
  closing today. There is no extensions. And they hung up. I hung up. Everyone hung up. I'm like,
• 40:20
  turn around. I look at Halley. I'm like, oh, my God. Like, both homes are in the balance right now.
• 40:28
  And you didn't, you didn't think that if you told them what was going on, I would have helped your
• 40:32
  case. No. Then they would have waited for me to default and bought them from him at a discount.
• 40:38
  For sure, you can't let your cards be shown. They would have been, oh, yeah, he's in a weak spot.
• 40:44
  We'll see you Tuesday. You know, like, that's what, that's how that played out. That's how I would
• 40:48
  have played it out if I was on their end. So yeah, I, I learned once that generally I'm of
• 40:57
  forgiving, very, it's like, give everybody lots of opportunity, sure, extend, extend, extend,
• 41:04
  and then, and then, you know, in this case, I was like, he was here and the fire was there. It was
• 41:09
  like, no, I'm, I had to push back in the same, the same tone. What happened? The wire cleared
• 41:16
  Friday. And I sent it to my lender and paid him off and and got all of my, everything was done
• 41:23
  by Monday, cashed out both properties, both properties sold. I figured that's the second
• 41:29
  detail was there was two closings. I had another buyer for the other property. And we had teed him
• 41:33
  up to both clothes on that same Friday because with cross collateral, you can't sell one without the
• 41:38
  other. So we had multiple times we had a buyer for this one, but not that one and a buyer for
• 41:42
  that one, but not this one. And I kept trying to deleverage the properties from each other. So
• 41:46
  there's, there's some wisdom. Don't cross collateralize assets. Why was this? I was going to,
• 41:51
  you know, he obviously would never say this that that lender, but it sounds like he knew that if
• 41:56
  you cross collateralize, it's going to be harder. Very hard. He knows that there's a real good
• 42:01
  chance that you can milk you for as anything and take both. Yeah, take both or force you to
• 42:06
  renegotiate and renew at two points plus another $200,000. And you can't say shit because you can't
• 42:13
  sell the properties simultaneously. So they did it. He was like two degree fucking you over.
• 42:20
  He had planned it from the beginning. Yeah, I can see that. When someone gets into this game,
• 42:26
  someone's going to listen to the story of the big shit. Okay, well, that's scary as hell.
• 42:30
  How do you avoid that? I didn't belong buying a $10 million property to begin with. I shouldn't
• 42:35
  have gotten into that type of property where that I should have if, you know, two, three, four,
• 42:40
  $5 million properties is my comfort zone. And this one was, oh, a $10 million property. I can flip
• 42:46
  it in 90 days because it's worth 14. There was another property that just sold for 14 on the same
• 42:50
  block, same square footage, same lot size. I was like, okay, I can, I can get probably 14. So that
• 42:56
  was the plan was to, you know, get in and get out. So just don't bite off more than you can chew.
• 43:01
  That's where you, that's where you, you lose. You're saying that, but now I know you deal with like
• 43:06
  ultra luxury and hotels and all that. So what was your thought process after that? Because I was
• 43:12
  obviously like a little bit of trauma, a little bit of stress that worked out. But then you think
• 43:17
  about how you've progressed since then now you do ultra luxury and you do high-end and you do,
• 43:21
  I think, like what, 30 to $40 million plus property. So what was the point when you decided to get
• 43:26
  into that into hotels? Yeah. And right now you still just do two to three million dollar homes,
• 43:31
  but you also do hotels? No, I, no, no, that's not true. I know. So I'm asking. So what was the
• 43:36
  start and you move? I mean, I'm gonna buy good deals. So whether, if it's two or three million
• 43:41
  or it's four or five or six, maybe the one I'm gonna close on next month is should appraise over
• 43:46
  five million. We should get our appraiser back this week. It just, I, I, how can it cash flow
• 43:54
  and what's the future value of the property? You know, you don't want to necessarily be buying. I
• 43:59
  think I see a lot of people say real estate didn't work for them because they got it and got out
• 44:03
  and they got burned or they didn't really make a profit. And it's because, you know, real estate's not
• 44:08
  a game to get in, get in and get out of. It's a get in and, and let the property appreciate and
• 44:14
  get all of that depreciation every year and, and let your tenants pay it, pay it down. So
• 44:20
  two million or five million or, or 20 million, it's, it's the property price isn't the, the main
• 44:28
  focus. It's, for me, I'm in the hospitality game. I'm in the hospitality business. So,
• 44:33
  for me, what's important is that I can earn money in the villa or the hotel and it's in a,
• 44:41
  in a prime location, prime, the, you know, the waterfront for, for homes. Most of the homes are
• 44:45
  waterfront for hotels. They're all, for mine, they're, currently, they're all on South Beach.
• 44:51
  Yeah. And then that's, so that's when you moved into hotels.
• 44:56
  So last, I got into hotels actually just one year ago, but when I was a kid, my grandmother used
• 45:02
  to take me traveling all the time and she'd always get me whatever the presidential suite is in
• 45:06
  the hotel. And I felt like Kevin McCallis cheer like with the big cheese pizza. And I would have a,
• 45:14
  I would stay in the presidential suites. My grandma would get her own suite and, and I would
• 45:19
  shoot always let me buy the robes and like just, I did this every summer like from middle school
• 45:25
  all the way until I graduated high school. I always traveled with my grandma for a week every
• 45:29
  summer. And, and I'd said, and I used to say, I want to manage a hotel. I want to
• 45:34
  man my grandma would say, somebody you'll own your own hotel, don't worry, you'll own your own
• 45:37
  house, you'll own your own hotel. And that's why I wanted to go into hotel management. And my
• 45:42
  dad said, no, you can't go into hotel management. And, and so last year I was just, just had a,
• 45:51
  an agent who works with a, works, now he's with our company, but at that time he, he's just an
• 45:57
  agent I know here in Miami, David, and, and he's, he's great. I really like David. He's, he's
• 46:03
  very genuine person. And he's like, Johnny, I got these hotels and he's just hitting me with, you
• 46:08
  know, I, I get deals all day long from people texting me deals all day long. You should buy this
• 46:14
  a building. You should do this. You should do that. And so I, I was like a hotel, hmm, I kind of
• 46:19
  like hotels. This is a cheap one. This was a seven million, it's like seven point five million
• 46:26
  dollar property on Collins. He's like, I have this property. This owner's in a bad situation. I was
• 46:31
  like, oh, I speak more. I like these deals. That's where you find good deals. Yeah, no, I have a
• 46:36
  distressed seller. He needs to get out of this property. He'll do a, he'll do a contract on it.
• 46:41
  You should, you know, look, like come and look at it. And I was like, all right, let's go look at
• 46:44
  it. So I go and I look at the property. And I'm like, man, this is, it's only a 17 room space
• 46:51
  with a retail space in the frow hotel. Yeah, a little boutique hotel on Collins. And so I went
• 46:56
  to the property. And I was like, I like this. Yeah, I think I can do this. And I'm looking at how they
• 47:00
  were. And I asked how, how much revenue is like, oh, it does like, it does like, I hate when someone
• 47:06
  says that because now you know, they'll be asking, you know, it does like 70,000 a month. And I'm like,
• 47:12
  okay, and I'm like, running the numbers in my head. Like, okay, I think the account for the
• 47:16
  bullshit factor. So, and it was in January and February. So I was that, you know, that was
• 47:24
  in February last year. And so I was like, yeah, I would try it. Let's, let's do it. I'll just
• 47:32
  make an offer. I'll pay you first, you know, the rental amount was 35,000 per month. I was like,
• 47:37
  I'll just give you first, first last, first, first and second months deposit. But I want two months
• 47:43
  free because I'm going to pump money into the property. And they agreed. So for 70,000, I took
• 47:48
  keys of a $7.5 million property. When you think about this business, how do you think, like, when
• 47:53
  you go into a hotel, how do you know that you can make the improvements to bring the value up to,
• 47:59
  like, like what's scared the math that you do or the strategy? Because like the hotel is different
• 48:03
  than a villa, which is different than a luxury home, which is different than a home in Kansas.
• 48:06
  But you seem to be a, I'm sure there's a lot of times. I don't know if it hasn't worked out.
• 48:11
  Feel free telling me about like the horror stories. But you seem to be pretty capable at doing
• 48:16
  this strategy again and again and again. And I know you're saying it's same strategy, but like,
• 48:19
  it's also not because somebody who can flip a home, I don't think they know exactly what they have
• 48:25
  to do to increase the value of a hotel. But you've done it pretty successfully. But there's,
• 48:31
  there's something that you, like, there's some sort of math or some sort of margin or some sort of,
• 48:36
  like, leeway that you give yourself. Traveling, myself, personal travels, personal experience,
• 48:42
  gives me a standard that I want to uphold within our own company and being better than our,
• 48:50
  you know, the other inventory. Now when people say, what do you do? You do Airbnb? Like, I don't,
• 48:56
  I try not to like cringe at that, but we're not Airbnb. Like, that's not, yes, we generate,
• 49:01
  yes, our properties are on Airbnb. But, but this now our customer experience when someone books
• 49:07
  our properties is so much more than just booking in here as a code. Our guests now, they get,
• 49:15
  you know, the agents represent all of these properties and they list them on the MLS. They're all
• 49:20
  listed like Larry and I did during COVID, right? They're all listed on the MLS as fully stocked,
• 49:27
  fully furnished utilities, beautiful homes. So, so we get the property. We list it for a high price
• 49:34
  for sale right out the gate. So we buy it for five million. We might list it right away at six point
• 49:38
  two. Yeah. Yeah. Just in case you wouldn't believe how many people have bought properties that we
• 49:44
  listed for a million five two million dollars over market price and they pay for the price because
• 49:49
  they want that house because we're and it's like, if you don't want to pay that price, that's okay.
• 49:54
  We're earning revenue in the in the meantime. So we're just generating, but it's giving the property
• 50:01
  an immediate value by increasing the monthly rate online, increasing the sale price online,
• 50:08
  and then giving it a great customer experience. So the properties are all represented by by a
• 50:13
  professional licensed real estate agent and then we have amazing property managers. They do in-person
• 50:19
  check-ins only groceries are all stocked in the home for when the customer arrives. They're getting
• 50:25
  boats and cars and jet skis and massages and dog walkers and it's true luxury. It's true luxury.
• 50:32
  Yeah. We're giving a full full some of these invoices, Casey and Aspen. She just showed me an
• 50:38
  invoice yesterday. It was $42,000 from the customer that just checked out and she's like $42,000
• 50:43
  is like massages and hair and makeup people and like whatever the customer wants, the agent who
• 50:50
  represents that property will absolutely get the customer with discretion. And you go to these
• 51:02
  properties, you experience true luxury and that's the experience that you give the people that
• 51:06
  stay. When my wife and I travel or we take our family to wherever we go in the world and we stay
• 51:13
  in beautiful properties or we do house swaps a lot. So we do a home exchange where we'll swap one
• 51:19
  of our villas here and stay in Cape Town, South Africa or stay in South of France or wherever we
• 51:24
  stayed all over the world. And we were like oh my god this is so opulent. Everything is just perfect.
• 51:30
  There's nothing like everything's clean. There's the service is incredible. The explanation of how
• 51:37
  to use the problem. Okay, we need to incorporate this. And then you go to the next place and you're
• 51:40
  like oh my god, they picked us up from the airport. They had our refrigerator. We need to incorporate
• 51:45
  this. You know, like oh my gosh, they had all the options of places to go and introduce
• 51:51
  us to five different vendors that they recommend like the YAH person or the okay, let's incorporate
• 51:58
  that. So the more I travel, the more things I begin to incorporate in our business. In your
• 52:04
  opinion, what is like true luxury? So I don't think that luxury is actually about a price tag.
• 52:12
  It luxury is a feeling someone gets after they spend their money. So when you spend your money,
• 52:19
  you go into Louis Vuitton and you leave and you spend $3,000 on a bag. Do you feel great because
• 52:26
  you have it. You spent the money or do you feel great because while you were in there,
• 52:30
  they were giving you the coffee and they were calling you by name and they cleared out a space for
• 52:34
  you and they didn't rush you and the bag is so high quality that the bag is inside. And then
• 52:43
  you get home and you open it up and it's sprayed with the fragrance and it's still giving you memories
• 52:47
  of the store you are in. That's the luxury experience of the product. And so when someone stays in
• 52:54
  our homes, the experience begins when you book the property and that wire clears on our end and
• 53:02
  we're contacting you with like, who are you? Why are you coming? What is your purpose for being
• 53:08
  here? How can we accommodate your every need and your request and you begin to just build?
• 53:14
  It's not about up sales. I don't even like this word. It's really just about satisfying the
• 53:19
  needs that the customers have as well as desires. They didn't know that they had. And then they
• 53:27
  leave feeling cared about and that everything was intentional. One thing that I've noticed and
• 53:34
  you can correct me if I'm wrong is what I personally feel because I've also traveled and there's
• 53:39
  been beautiful places that we've stayed and beautiful restaurants that we've dined at. I better have
• 53:43
  Gina. She's into Michelin restaurants and I don't really get it but she likes it and I find that
• 53:49
  in Miami in particular, it's easy to spend money but I don't feel like there's a lot of luxury
• 53:56
  in Miami. I feel like people are focused on extracting as much money from people as possible
• 54:03
  without the luxury component. I find that I can spend I mostly benchmark against restaurants and
• 54:10
  food. Less so hospitality is not the world I come from and I find that Miami in particular
• 54:16
  restaurants are overpriced. Quality is sort of underwhelming versus if I could spend that money in
• 54:21
  like a London or even in a New York. I find that that's something that I hope you and other people
• 54:28
  that are sort of adding value to Miami in particular because now we live here. It's like our city.
• 54:33
  I hope that that changes. I don't know if you feel that or if you think that that's totally off base
• 54:38
  but I've noticed that. I think that the prices are expensive in Miami. I'm not going to water that
• 54:45
  down. It's expensive to live here. It's expensive to dine here. It's expensive to drive here. It's
• 54:51
  expensive to park here. It's just but is it luxury and I don't mind spending money
• 54:56
  but in my opinion that there's to your point you have to remove the just spending
• 55:01
  or versus what do you actually get for it? Are you wanting to know if Miami is a place of luxury?
• 55:09
  Yeah I guess. No. Why is that? No but I think that it has all of the right mechanics to be that
• 55:21
  and I would say that it's not because of the feeling that most people have when they see their
• 55:29
  credit card the next day the seeing your bill when you what you paid you shouldn't have remorse
• 55:35
  about your experience and you might some some people may spend and think feel that they overspend
• 55:43
  and that they shouldn't have done that but I mean if you spend there's some okay so go to rest.
• 55:49
  I'm just speaking from personal experience. Yeah you can you can push back if you want like when
• 55:51
  I spend money when I go to Vienna and I sit in one of the oldest cafes in the world a cafe
• 55:58
  on trial and I'm getting like a ridiculously overpriced coffee or pastry and it's like beautiful
• 56:04
  and it's like obviously a century's old and like the art I mean I you know it's just a completely
• 56:09
  different experience and I don't mind it I don't mind paying anything because I'm like wow I'm
• 56:14
  sitting in history when I go to a restaurant in Miami and I get a you know a class of zool
• 56:23
  it's a hundred dollars for a glass of class of zool and all I get is like my food being brought
• 56:30
  to the table with like the sparklers and there's like a stripper at the restaurant dancing
• 56:36
  that to me is not luxury that to me is exorbitant and it's showy but it's not luxury.
• 56:41
  It's like a matador yeah exactly keeping you occupying your mind occupied while the bill is going
• 56:48
  higher that's not I agree with you on that I don't think that but but my industry and in particular
• 56:55
  of if you're I don't for what we do in in our home in the villa side forget the hotels the hotels
• 57:02
  we have right now they're not high-end luxury hotels they're they're their beachfront hotels
• 57:08
  they're nice hotels and I'm working on bringing that experience to a luxury experience so this
• 57:13
  is a fun project for me actually the team I keep I have a completely new different team different
• 57:19
  staff that's operating the hotels then is operating the villas I keep them very separate but the the
• 57:24
  villas I I don't have a hundred percent money back guarantee situation but when you do come to
• 57:31
  the property you do two or the home and you do an inspection and you do look at it and then you
• 57:35
  sign the paperwork that says you've checked and you approve of the property and you agree to the
• 57:40
  terms and you know pets parties are smoking in the villa whatever if you weren't happy in that
• 57:45
  moment that's the time to speak up because that's the time where we would put you in another
• 57:49
  property or we would refund you I do care about your experience and and and then we're chuck checking
• 57:55
  in with you all day every day like did the chef come how was his experience you know we're like
• 58:01
  in communication with all the people who are who are servicing the home during that stay we're
• 58:05
  talking to the captain on the yacht are they having a good time no they're not okay maybe they
• 58:10
  need a playlist you know they will send them like a special playlist like his vibe up like yeah so
• 58:15
  that is luxury it's like being aware of the experience I want them to have an amazing experience
• 58:20
  and come back and combat more than 30% of our customers that are these high paying customers are
• 58:26
  repeat customers they just yeah and that's that's awesome to have that's what it shows it shows and
• 58:32
  I like I mean like again I'm not in the property game but there's a lot of restaurants in Miami
• 58:35
  that I just don't go to I think with a restaurant experience though it's easier to be in and out
• 58:40
  in turn tables I personally waited tables before and waiting tables you're just trying to turn
• 58:46
  turn tables get them in and out in the luxury or the higher end I won't call them luxury the higher
• 58:50
  end restaurants in Miami there's time there's time limits an hour and 45 minutes to two hours is
• 58:56
  the max time frame so with the villas we're not like that we're you're there with us for three or
• 59:02
  four days and if you're not having a good experience we're probably gonna hear about it pretty quickly
• 59:07
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• 59:12
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• 1:01:21
  these luxury villas and some of these luxury clients and just say whatever you're allowed to say
• 1:01:25
  what are some of the more funny interesting ridiculous stories requests the people have had because
• 1:01:33
  you deal with I mean name whatever you want to name you deal with some very high-end celebrities
• 1:01:39
  clientele some of them people would know their names obviously so I'm sure they have interesting
• 1:01:45
  requests David Beckham booked a home one time wanted to have complete privacy so he tinted the entire
• 1:01:51
  front of the house added $50,000 in shrubs to the front of the property so that nobody can see the
• 1:01:56
  house from from the water so that's interesting you get you get but you get fined when you do that
• 1:02:03
  don't you by who I don't know I've heard this story about like if you put like shrubs and you
• 1:02:08
  block the water view the city fine they were gone before it was they were in and out and we just
• 1:02:14
  we just put them in and take them back out I probably should have pulled permits for that but
• 1:02:19
  I I didn't I'll see what else we've we've hosted so many events so many like
• 1:02:30
  bad bunny he's recorded several of his albums of his last albums have been recorded inside of our
• 1:02:34
  homes he converts the upper area into a studio and and that's cool so yeah I mean turning properties
• 1:02:46
  into studios is interesting having Megan Stallion she hosted her hot girl summer at one of
• 1:02:54
  our houses her opening when she first popped off this is Beck I think this was before COVID actually
• 1:03:01
  was there any times where a client just absolutely trashed a luxury villa never never of course
• 1:03:09
  okay I was like what like for real yeah of course yeah but you know the the thing about a property
• 1:03:15
  being trashed is we take damage deposits for it and we repair it pretty quickly so I mean I
• 1:03:25
  house being trash for me when I first got into the business in Kansas City I would panic when I
• 1:03:31
  would walk into a property and I'm looking around and stuff's broke and couches are destroyed and
• 1:03:37
  whatever and you know with platforms like Airbnb and BRBO they're pretty good about having
• 1:03:41
  policies that protect the host so they do pay out so you get you know more used to okay it's not a
• 1:03:48
  big deal you take all the pictures you submit it all you make the claim you get the money back from
• 1:03:52
  the platform and the higher end homes that are not necessarily on platforms like Airbnb and BRBO
• 1:03:58
  you we take damage deposits for a reason and we fix the property up and we have surveillance on the
• 1:04:07
  exterior of the property only never anything on the inside but we also have 24 hour security we
• 1:04:13
  have monitoring they're watching the cameras they're driving they're tapping there's you know
• 1:04:17
  taking a picture of the QR code outside of each home to verify that that the security guard went
• 1:04:21
  to each house which gives our customers a sense of security in the home now now the average property
• 1:04:28
  price villa price for our customers are spending between four and 10,000 per night for these homes
• 1:04:36
  and the caliber of client that's paying that price point is generally either a 1% or they're a
• 1:04:44
  celebrity status a diplomat there I had a diplomat one time book a property and and Aspen and they
• 1:04:53
  requested to have six exact SUVs that were all identical with six drivers that were all the same
• 1:05:00
  color and height because I'm sorry it wasn't a diplomat it was a it was a it was a shake it was a
• 1:05:06
  Saudi Shaya they wanted all the drivers be the exact same when all the cars be the exact same
• 1:05:11
  and then they would leave the property in one vehicle they'd go around the corner and get out and
• 1:05:15
  get into another vehicle and then they would keep driving and they'd get out and get into another
• 1:05:18
  security it was all secured to keep him safe like that nobody knew which vehicle he was in and
• 1:05:24
  and so like that's a very specific request that somebody has that's like how tall are you what's
• 1:05:31
  your weight what's your skin color like you're you I mean you're you had to have all of the the
• 1:05:36
  drivers had to look alike and all the cars had to look alike they had all be the same and yeah
• 1:05:41
  if you think about all the guests that you've hosted like what's the level that you're playing
• 1:05:46
  at now so like what would be the highest rent that somebody would have ever paid for any one of your
• 1:05:51
  properties right now we have a customer that's closing that wire we should be receiving this week
• 1:05:57
  that's 800k that's a good that's a good one what do they get for 800k they get a very nice villa
• 1:06:05
  I really I wish I could say I can't tell you who that customer is and you definitely know who they
• 1:06:09
  are and I can't even say the the time frame of how long it is for unfortunately but 800k that's
• 1:06:15
  that's a that's a good one we did we did another contract this was for four years which is a good deal
• 1:06:21
  this is a four-year contract now it was 11 million yeah that's all gonna be serviced you know
• 1:06:27
  these aren't just like a long-term tenant it's a four years is a long-term is it is not a short-term
• 1:06:33
  rental but it's a it's a full service I mean we're handling landscaping and housekeeping and pool
• 1:06:40
  and they're they're living their concierge where there's their servants during their stay for four
• 1:06:45
  years you know and that's a that's awesome I love that because you get to know the custard you
• 1:06:51
  get to know the client and and you get to know the homeowner really well and yeah I'd say
• 1:06:59
  the most per night I've ever received we have a house and asked been that that regularly gets
• 1:07:07
  25 to 30,000 per night and that's literally there's zero availability in that property during
• 1:07:14
  season so that's incredible to have a house that produces 20 25,000 it's not bad I mean 20 25
• 1:07:21
  thousand a day yeah no that's not bad if you think about like the health of the business now so
• 1:07:27
  for people to understand like how I don't know I don't think you're not public about all your
• 1:07:32
  numbers but like how big is this business now like in 2025 you have your hotel portfolio villa as
• 1:07:39
  you still have all the I'm assuming a whole bunch of other units that are not as pricey as that
• 1:07:45
  but what's like the what's the number to benchmark how big you built this?
• 1:07:49
  oof doors revenues approximate so we've got up we've got 60 properties that are our full time
• 1:07:58
  exclusive those are 30 days a month those are occupied at 80% or higher occupancy we've got the
• 1:08:06
  three hotels on the beach and we've got another 150 maybe 200 properties that are one off properties
• 1:08:14
  where we book them a few times per year so when you get over a certain caliber of a home like
• 1:08:19
  say a 20 million dollar home for example these are we would never sell an investor a 20 million
• 1:08:26
  dollar home and say buy this house for its cash on cash return like it doesn't compute when you
• 1:08:32
  have taxes and insurance and it's and mortgage payment it's too much and we just can't occupy
• 1:08:40
  that type of property but the requests are there for that type of villa so what we do
• 1:08:45
  what with that whole that's like another whole business model but there's like I said there's
• 1:08:49
  another 150 homes there we've got the 60-ish properties that are on the full time the three hotels
• 1:08:56
  and then I have a software business and I have three real estate brokerages we have a brokerage
• 1:09:00
  in Aspen we have a brokerage here Miami we have a brokerage in Kansas City and then my software
• 1:09:05
  business is a is a support software I'm three million in three years in on building a software
• 1:09:12
  that's a support it's a full to full pack a CRM PMS system that kind of brings all of these
• 1:09:19
  components together of the concierge it brings the the owners report so when a booking comes
• 1:09:25
  in from a platform like Airbnb or VRBO it will come in and immediately disperse the data it'll
• 1:09:30
  tell the housekeeper you now have a check in it'll tell the property manager you have a check
• 1:09:34
  in it'll tell the agent to let the calendars block it'll tell the owner what their payment is
• 1:09:38
  will tell admin how much taxes are due to pay the city it just auto reports every all aspects
• 1:09:45
  of the business which cuts our communication down by like 80% because right now if you saw my phone
• 1:09:50
  there's just probably 150 group chats of you know like every there's just a group chat for everything
• 1:09:57
  and we do use tech packs so we use a tech for their housekeeping communications a tech for property
• 1:10:04
  management a tech for you know there's all these different platforms that we're using that then
• 1:10:08
  are all synced together so I've we created our own we're it's proprietary we're using it for
• 1:10:15
  ourselves now and and our own team is using that it's it runs our website it you can instant book
• 1:10:22
  properties on our website and when you instant book it disperses that data appropriately and
• 1:10:27
  that's a that's a awesome technology that I'm really proud of you gonna say you're gonna
• 1:10:32
  eventually put that on the market it just is an entrepreneur like is that how you think eventually
• 1:10:36
  you're gonna guess yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I would that's in the pipeline yeah for now I'm using it
• 1:10:44
  for our own company to work out any kinks and continue to perfect it and then and then bring it
• 1:10:50
  to market amazing and I mean like the the rest of your portfolio like I don't know what an average
• 1:10:56
  occupancy rate but 80 percent is very good yeah it's good and the hotels were over 95 percent
• 1:11:01
  this like all of season we're gonna be running right at 100 percent occupancy for the hotels
• 1:11:07
  so where do you where do you go from here like what are you excited about in the future because
• 1:11:11
  obviously you already have like an incredible business diversifying revenue super smart I love
• 1:11:16
  when people build lake software for their own problems because then it's probably already
• 1:11:19
  something that they could commercialize it could commercialize and make a ton of money off that
• 1:11:23
  I would want to I would want to expand my business I will expand my business into the luxury
• 1:11:29
  markets that are on a global level south of France and Greece and places that I like to travel yeah
• 1:11:38
  right so what is what is I mean if for people that are you know just I know that luxury real estate
• 1:11:46
  whether or not you can afford it the thought of going to a luxury villa in south of France is like
• 1:11:52
  it's just like this like romantic idea that's why the youtube channels all have like millions of
• 1:11:57
  hits even if people can't afford it regularly maybe they go on like some bucket list trip what is
• 1:12:02
  a really interesting luxury opportunity or vacation destination that that you would be excited
• 1:12:10
  about investing in that you also think somebody should go to that isn't as well known like a place
• 1:12:16
  Cape Town South Africa yeah Cape Town South Africa I've been there twice took my my parents and my
• 1:12:23
  in-laws there this last trip we went and Cape Towns just it's like the Malibu it's like a
• 1:12:30
  cheap map a cheaper version of Malibu yeah the the the oceans just slamming up against the
• 1:12:36
  cliff the the modern villa we stayed in is right on the cliff it's just like overhanging with
• 1:12:41
  an infinity pool is beautiful you two million dollar house beautiful and in in in Malibu that's
• 1:12:47
  a you know 40 million 50 million dollar house like these are beautiful well created homes in
• 1:12:56
  in in with incredible views of the sun setting right on the ocean and then there's just
• 1:13:02
  unlimited amounts of things to do and then the service is incredible and the food is
• 1:13:08
  decadent and uh yeah you you just you can take a uh a small plane right over to the safari lands
• 1:13:16
  all over the place you can go and stay in another villa in the in the bush as they call it and you
• 1:13:21
  can go and and do safars where they they come right to your house and they pick in the villa in the
• 1:13:26
  middle of the of the uh uh serengeti or wherever you decide to stay the the villas are there they come
• 1:13:34
  pick you up they take you out and they can drop you off and the chef is preparing the the whole
• 1:13:38
  experiences is is is inexpensive it's um it's uh it's not common i don't know very many people
• 1:13:48
  who have been uh and actually gone through with like the full experience of a of a South African
• 1:13:54
  trip but yeah Cape Town's amazing if you could go back and and tell yourself something about
• 1:14:05
  you know what you've learned so far something that would sort of change what you what you did when
• 1:14:09
  you first started out what would that lesson be and why and sometimes people you say they don't
• 1:14:14
  want to do anything different that's also and that's also an answer but also i'm just not one with
• 1:14:20
  tries to live with regrets you know i i really learned from so many of
• 1:14:24
  each one of these things these challenges these hurdles i've had my attorney says it's the cost
• 1:14:29
  of tuition and i take that pretty serious uh my advice to my entire team is live low and bill high
• 1:14:37
  don't don't don't spend just because you you can you just live low be humble continue to serve
• 1:14:47
  if if you were checking into my home right now one of my properties i personally would be there
• 1:14:52
  opening the door for you out open the trunk i'd be grabbing your bags i'd be taking it inside like
• 1:14:56
  staying humble and not just just because of all these things i have or in weird where we've built
• 1:15:02
  doesn't doesn't take the the service element out of my DNA even when i'm at my own hotels i'm
• 1:15:08
  opening the doors for the customers i'm i'm helping the bag boys i'm showing them like one of the
• 1:15:14
  baggers i was he's like i said are you making at least you know $150-$200 a day in tips here he's
• 1:15:20
  like how and i'm like let me show you and i just i was basically just opening doors and grabbing bags
• 1:15:27
  and calling customers by name and i'm five dollars here five dollars here ten dollars here and i'm
• 1:15:31
  handing it to the bellman and he's like i've been here for three hours and having gotten a tip
• 1:15:36
  i'm like because you're not paying attention you've got to this is a service industry like in in
• 1:15:42
  now we got to go back to training you know i think so i think that staying humble and
• 1:15:47
  living low well below your means live low and build high all the the car wash story all that i'm
• 1:15:54
  i'm emptying the trash cans like you've heard my story like i'm i did it myself i didn't have
• 1:16:01
  some big investor that pumped money in i i took my profits i got the next part i took my profits i
• 1:16:06
  got the next one like i had all these properties in the first 24 months of doing it from living
• 1:16:12
  below what my means were having roommates house hacking or how did you call it it's house hacking
• 1:16:17
  yeah house hacking i didn't know there was a name for it oh so how is hacking i i learned that
• 1:16:21
  from one of my early mentors and it was basically you buy like a fourplex and you live in one and then
• 1:16:26
  the other three pay for your mortgage that was like the concept of how and was that when did you learn
• 1:16:31
  about that like 23 yeah two 23 like young young yeah but like i mean like i don't think that many people
• 1:16:37
  knew about that yeah i didn't know anyone else that was doing that the only reason why the only
• 1:16:41
  reason why um i learned about that is because the guy was a tech entrepreneur real estate investor
• 1:16:48
  but he was also similar to like he like kind of always just did everything himself so he's like
• 1:16:53
  i want to learn real estate i don't want to raise money so what do i do okay so let me just live in
• 1:16:58
  this you know one of and the condo he lived him was probably not a beautiful condo if then a
• 1:17:04
  fourplex that he could afford at the time and he's like well that got me my first four doors
• 1:17:08
  and just like rinse and repeat so and and he was just very entrepreneurial which i think that's a
• 1:17:13
  whole other conversation of even if you aren't an entrepreneur you don't feel like taking the risk
• 1:17:18
  working in a startup is also a smart idea because you get access to people to think differently
• 1:17:23
  versus if you go work out of school at a at a hedge fund i don't know how big it was but say you work
• 1:17:28
  at uh you know four to one thousand four to five hundred maybe you're lucky if you find a mentor
• 1:17:34
  but it's not always the case but when you work around entrepreneurs or you work for a startup or
• 1:17:39
  you work for someone like you you think and you look at the world differently than somebody it's
• 1:17:44
  only ever worked i share my uh my expenses and my burden i share it with my team so they see it
• 1:17:49
  because when they say oh i just closed a hundred thousand dollar booking and you're like great
• 1:17:53
  and then and i don't like i'm not like throwing a party you know because we have a hundred k
• 1:17:57
  booking i'm it there's so many they see the costs they see that the revenue is is great but it
• 1:18:04
  didn't be what we did last year yet like and and um uh living they see me continuing to serve
• 1:18:13
  and uh and then trusting the people i will trust you if you tell me to do something i more
• 1:18:18
  unless you give me a you've given me a reason not to i'll try when the guy said book book
• 1:18:22
  by this you know do this hotel deal or buy this property or i'm generally trusting the team that's
• 1:18:28
  with me that they've vetted the deal they think it's a good deal and and then if it doesn't work then
• 1:18:33
  that's my lesson to be learned what would be if you look back at your at your life what would be
• 1:18:38
  the biggest risk that you've taken and maybe people don't know about and and what was the outcome
• 1:18:43
  well the i would say just breathe as of late doing these hotel deals um the second hotel
• 1:18:50
  i was like i was telling david the agent who brought me these three different properties
• 1:18:56
  i was like i need the revenue and you see the income how much of they made let me see like
• 1:18:59
  reporting you know the same question like can i see the utilities how much i should be able to
• 1:19:03
  tell an occupancy based on utility usage you should see you know if you see water bills that are
• 1:19:08
  like way up here and then they go way down here you'll know those are that should line up with
• 1:19:12
  like your slow months you know anyway i um they said they're not going to provide any of that
• 1:19:19
  information it's based on your per what you think you can produce not based on how we produced
• 1:19:24
  and um the attorney uh it was like johnny we're not giving you that information
• 1:19:31
  and uh we're just we're just not going to give you how much money these properties have produced
• 1:19:36
  uh and honestly it's just uh it's based on what you you can do and i was like
• 1:19:41
  i called my attorney and i'm like i don't know what to do like you know we're today we're
• 1:19:45
  supposed to close and my attorney said johnny my ring goes johnny why do this he goes why are
• 1:19:50
  them the money send them the money don't sign the contract once you do that call them
• 1:19:57
  put me on the phone and and uh let's go from there i was like okay so i'm sitting at chase
• 1:20:03
  bank i send the wire i said i called the lawyer i was like did you guys receive the wire in your
• 1:20:08
  escrow he's like i did but i didn't see the kind of the sign contract and you send that over yet
• 1:20:13
  and i was like well now that i have the wire and the miren steps and just like go he's like well
• 1:20:18
  now that you guys have the funds you can tell he's not just wasting your time he's he is interested
• 1:20:23
  he is doing this deal can you guys just please relinquish the pat you know the rolling 12 the past 12
• 1:20:28
  and the the attorney like has another like lean into the microphone moment and he was like
• 1:20:34
  let me be clear if you do not want to be in business don't be in business and he hung up the phone
• 1:20:42
  and i'm like they're fucker i was like let me dot loop sign sign sign sign sign sign sign sign sign
• 1:20:48
  like send it through and um and then i opened up the books and i you know there's uh
• 1:20:56
  just my own experience with um certain religious groups is they're they're
• 1:21:04
  position their position is their disposition is to treat you better than they would treat
• 1:21:09
  themselves or their own culture if you will and and um and i just went with that experience that i
• 1:21:16
  have the um for this particular religious group i was like they're they would never say that to me
• 1:21:23
  and then ha ha got you there's no income like that would be a really that would be a really poor
• 1:21:29
  reflection on that would be yeah and i just i just went with a gut instinct of do it and then i
• 1:21:36
  opened up the books and they were at 90 percent occupancy and i was like oh my god this is great
• 1:21:41
  and there's all this reference this is fantastic this is the purpose of somebody being a dick about it
• 1:21:46
  though but but doesn't for me now it makes me just want to hold my cards a little tighter i've
• 1:21:52
  been pretty loose with my cards like if you say how much is this but i've already overshared on
• 1:21:56
  this podcast of all kinds of details of the sauce to my creation and these guys would never do
• 1:22:03
  that you know it's in a in especially in in the midst of a deal making you know the the art of a
• 1:22:08
  deal in the Donald Trump book great book by the way um talks about you know hold what what you
• 1:22:16
  what you allow them to see and what you allow them to perceive is the most important part of your
• 1:22:21
  deal making i've always been i agree with that i've always been so conflicted about this idea
• 1:22:26
  because i have made great deals by being radically candid because then people can work with the truth
• 1:22:34
  and they trust you and they trust me as opposed to negotiating on theoretical these guys are
• 1:22:40
  multi billionaires and they do not need me and so their their position is we don't need you
• 1:22:49
  you're either going to do a deal with us or you're not going to do a deal with us and that's
• 1:22:54
  interest and that's your own risk yeah and it's also a personality thing some people like there's
• 1:22:58
  a lot of billionaires that are very candid and don't care about this is what the business is
• 1:23:04
  and especially if you're serious about it i think that it depends on who the person is
• 1:23:08
  and understand i don't know maybe i just looked at it and i saw a great property in a great location
• 1:23:13
  that in my personal opinion had really poor customer service and had a had a
• 1:23:18
  a falling apart product that i knew i could i could repair it matters yeah confident but i didn't
• 1:23:23
  know their occupancy was great even in its in its uh current state i guess maybe right if you do
• 1:23:29
  understand what the value you bring to the table doesn't really matter and that's what they were
• 1:23:34
  that was the lesson for me was and now i i look at my own occupancy rate i've raised the ADR
• 1:23:40
  the average daily rate i've average i've increased the average daily rate by 40% of the property
• 1:23:45
  which is nuts so for me to have increased the income increased the product of the property
• 1:23:50
  and i'm averaging like i said all season long work we're going to be at 100% occupancy during your
• 1:23:56
  especially from Thursday to Monday but the rest of the week you're maybe running a 95% occupancy
• 1:24:02
  Tuesday Wednesday and then back to Thursday you're going back to 100% occupancy amazing what would be
• 1:24:08
  what would be a lesson that you learned that was useful to you but you hope nobody else would ever
• 1:24:14
  have to learn because it was so traumatizing boy it's really uh it's really embarrassing to check
• 1:24:19
  somebody into a property that's not prepared that's not ready yet and you think it's great
• 1:24:26
  and it's not great it's like i don't know if that's a great if that's a good example but
• 1:24:30
  those are humiliating moments for me being in hospitality that a customer checks into a house
• 1:24:35
  what happened what led it to not be ready well the baby you know Jonathan the baby with a DA
• 1:24:42
  checked into one of the houses on new years we were walking through the property and
• 1:24:47
  um there's the last house we had available it was like 10 o'clock at night and his whole team was
• 1:24:53
  there they're all pulling up in all the suburban and escalades and everything and um i'm like
• 1:24:58
  running around with or we're both running around the house turning on all the lights getting it
• 1:25:02
  already because they're going to be showing up in like five minutes and and then they show up and
• 1:25:06
  they're like touring the house and they're unloading their copious amounts of bags and i mean the
• 1:25:11
  the amount of like stuff they they travel with and then they're all in there and then they're like
• 1:25:16
  oh this house has a has bedbugs and i'm like the house does not have bedbugs there's it's impossible
• 1:25:24
  they have bedbugs in these in these like our bet our mattresses have proper protection we spray
• 1:25:30
  the homes properly we have i mean we put in all kinds of protocols anyway we go into the room where
• 1:25:38
  he's uh and um he's like point there's an ant literally one ant crawling across the bed
• 1:25:45
  of the white sheet just one ant and he was like he's like what do you call that and i was like
• 1:25:51
  well that's an ant and he's like ain't that a bug i was like yeah it's a bug he's like that's a
• 1:25:58
  bed bug he's but i can't stay here i can't he's like i came too far i can't stay here and i'm like
• 1:26:05
  oh my god and then and then you got to be kidding me and so we like i'm like changing the
• 1:26:11
  sheets he's like forget the sheets i'm out of here and like give me my money back and he had paid
• 1:26:14
  us like 25 racks and cash and it was like like yeah that's like the most painful part to give
• 1:26:21
  money to a client on New Year's Eve like i'm not going to book the house now give it back and
• 1:26:27
  there's an ant on the bed could have been avoided had had one had we seen it when we were
• 1:26:33
  i don't know how to avoid that i mean the house is perfectly meticulously clean i don't know
• 1:26:37
  that's just bad luck it's a lot of bad luck it's it just it feels bad when a customer leaves your
• 1:26:43
  house and thinks that it's dirty or you know like it and i know the house was in excellent condition
• 1:26:49
  i know the house was was there was nothing wrong with it but it still wasn't up to their standard
• 1:26:54
  which still is below mine i think that's a good lesson if you lost everything and you had to restart
• 1:27:01
  what would you do differently i'd start as a free property manager working for somebody else
• 1:27:06
  i can be a property manager i know more than everybody else i can
• 1:27:09
  probably your property manager i'll make you more money i'll teach you how to make money on the
• 1:27:13
  pro i mean that's first just offering my my skills what if if i didn't have any skills if that's
• 1:27:20
  the question if i don't have any skills and i don't know anything and i want to first and i want
• 1:27:24
  to get into this industry i would start out as a property manager which is where pretty much
• 1:27:29
  everybody starts in our company start out as a property manager like i want to make more i want
• 1:27:33
  to you know be more on the the client facing side then you get your real estate license and then we
• 1:27:40
  teach you concierge and uh real estate then you start learning real estate yeah property management
• 1:27:47
  is there anything that you did sacrifice on your way to build this but also what would be the
• 1:27:54
  lesson for maintaining balance while still building a very large uh company yeah i think that the
• 1:28:00
  time the the one on one time i see other couples like going out on dates and stuff all the time you
• 1:28:08
  know like like their date night and i think in the um uh in our relationship if that was a
• 1:28:16
  conversation we've we've had before of like you know can we have date night and i'm like but we're
• 1:28:20
  not like every other couple so like we can go to europe for six weeks yeah like you know
• 1:28:27
  we can i think i think the most i think especially my my my better half would be fine with that
• 1:28:33
  like that's that's i it just takes a different when you don't have any i don't have i have amazing
• 1:28:39
  parents my parents are amazing uh they are still married to this day they're i'm one of five boys
• 1:28:45
  um you know they've been exceptional uh examples um and i just i i saw my father a lot uh make
• 1:28:56
  statements like you know i chose your mother yeah you were a byproduct you know like i chose your
• 1:29:02
  mother and that it was instilled at me at a very young age of not that i'm less than less loved
• 1:29:08
  by my father but uh just that i want that i want that like irrevocable can't be broken
• 1:29:16
  love with with my wife that um whether we had money when i was a kid or when we didn't have money
• 1:29:23
  and when we had money again or when i have those different experiences that damper that never
• 1:29:27
  changed and so i i have a really i have a really great example of that um and i'm also uh i also
• 1:29:34
  believe in and god and and jesus and i i grew up as a christian and and a christian home and um
• 1:29:40
  and so i keep faith at the center of my relationship and even in the midst of our most difficult
• 1:29:49
  challenging times where uh you know we we may be i may be trying trying struggling with regret of
• 1:29:58
  a decision or a you know a car wash or a flaming a flamingo ten million dollar house purchase or
• 1:30:04
  some regret i may be having i try not to have regrets i try to just focus right and and learn from
• 1:30:10
  these and and so i would say that i don't have the date nights i wish i i wish i had date nights i
• 1:30:17
  i feel like that's a um a sacrifice if you will but we get to be together all day every day where
• 1:30:24
  we live together and sometimes that line can be blurred with just feeling like it's always work
• 1:30:29
  yeah so it requires me to be intentional with like leaving my phone is now like that's my
• 1:30:38
  thing if i leave my phone in the other room then that you know i i don't care what's going on
• 1:30:42
  you know with it's just her and i and so it doesn't have to be date nights maybe just about
• 1:30:47
  intention it's just our where we come from in kansas city it's like people are it's like date night
• 1:30:52
  you know it's you know Tuesday is our date night when's your date night i mean so i i would say
• 1:31:00
  that's something that i wish that we had had more time but i cannot plan for a date night because
• 1:31:06
  there's inevitably something going to come up at all times we're here for uh this month of March
• 1:31:12
  and then we'll be back in kansas city for the month of april and when we're there we we go for walks
• 1:31:17
  every single morning i leave my phone in the house a lot of the times we go for coffee or breakfast
• 1:31:22
  every morning so i don't think you're giving yourself enough credit i think just being i don't think
• 1:31:25
  you need that's another thing too like what works for you or where someone else it could be different
• 1:31:30
  but the point is what's the end result like you focus on the end result the result is a happy marriage
• 1:31:36
  good communication um i think that when people uh say oh if i don't have i can't i can't do date night
• 1:31:43
  i'm too busy i'm traveling i have too much going on i can't plan but then there's nothing else
• 1:31:47
  that's when you run on the problems not about date nights about okay what's what's the what's
• 1:31:52
  the alternative in your life and it's going to be the same when you have kids but let me be clear
• 1:31:57
  traveling to europe for six weeks doesn't mean i left my phone in florida you know but i enjoy
• 1:32:04
  traveling internationally uh with my wife because now the work schedule is asleep when we're awake
• 1:32:09
  over there so i don't mind where i sleep less hours so i can i can work different hours and um
• 1:32:15
  and pivot and then hang and be completely uh uh unbothered all day long and just be you know
• 1:32:22
  yeah weeks with her and that that's amazing i actually find that's a totally totally side point but
• 1:32:27
  when i actually go to europe i actually find i'm more efficient so efficient because uh all the
• 1:32:31
  emails come in while you're sleeping yeah yeah and then you can get to answer them all in the
• 1:32:35
  morning nobody can bug you so it actually forces a fan vice versa when they wake up in the morning
• 1:32:40
  they feel plagued with duties and tasks and bullet points and you're just crushing during the day
• 1:32:46
  and then you close the laptop and they wake up in the morning with all their how much just
• 1:32:52
  like bs like do you deal with today yeah yeah yeah in the same time zone it's like pick up a call
• 1:32:58
  jump on a zoom should be a quick conversation ends up being 30 minutes it's like you're checking email
• 1:33:03
  through the day i think there's a lesson there about batching tasks but when you look at
• 1:33:09
  what your definition of success was when you first started versus what it is now how is it changed
• 1:33:16
  how do you define success in your life and your business all of it um i have a pipeline i have a
• 1:33:22
  20 year pipeline that's on a spreadsheet i'm a spreadsheet guy i have a spreadsheet for everything
• 1:33:27
  so um i i generally hit most of the the marks on my on my uh my bench marks i'm i'm pretty
• 1:33:37
  i'm consistent with it so you put a you think pipeline in terms of like life
• 1:33:41
  yeah i have a 20 year pipeline so it was like last year i wanted to hit three hotels and i did
• 1:33:47
  you know or i wanted to expand into aspen and become brokerage by the end of 2023 we did
• 1:33:53
  we wanted to have um you know by the end of this last quarter i wanted all the merch
• 1:33:59
  lines to be out for all the hotels and for the villas and for aspen with everything having
• 1:34:03
  its own separate you know personality and branding but being consistent with the luxury brand we
• 1:34:08
  did i wanted to be on auto instant book so everything is like is like timelineed out um my idea of
• 1:34:16
  success uh i i never really like put a like a big grandiose thing out there that i'm like striving
• 1:34:28
  towards um i just have a lot of things that i enjoy doing like hotels like houses like tech like
• 1:34:35
  my tech that i'm building the software as a service that i have these things and i i put the end
• 1:34:40
  goal for that on the pipeline and then i just backwards um put it to what do i need to get to get
• 1:34:47
  to diverse engineering yeah i just reverse it all the way backwards so i love it i love it last
• 1:34:52
  thing that i like to ask um because you know you've given like a lot of different insights and wisdom
• 1:35:00
  that have helped you over your life and your career um so if you had to only pick one and the frame
• 1:35:07
  is uh say you uh want to pass on one lesson to your kids at some point and you can only pick one
• 1:35:13
  lesson the most important lesson that you've ever learned what would that lesson be and why i mean
• 1:35:19
  for mine it's going to come down to my faith in in Jesus like you have to have without having
• 1:35:25
  uh a moral compass without having you know your faith in line it's just i can't imagine
• 1:35:32
  making decisions or feeling like i'm like like i'm doing it on my own i don't feel like i'm doing
• 1:35:38
  it on my own my Instagram is luxury.co but i'm i'm just the CEO i'm not like it's God's business
• 1:35:45
  it's God's that you know i'm just his i'm just here so i would say that my my advice for
• 1:35:52
  for anybody who has big plans is you have to first find your faith if you don't have if you don't
• 1:35:59
  have if you're not grounded in in in in faith in your whatever your belief maybe um if you don't
• 1:36:06
  have that then it's going to be very difficult it's very cold out there and and you'll probably give
• 1:36:12
  up you'll probably quit i'm i don't feel like a failure even when i fail because i i know that i'm
• 1:36:20
  i i'm just like working for him i'm doing what he's got opens doors no man can close god closes doors
• 1:36:26
  no man can open and that's that if the door is closed there's not that door wasn't meant for me if
• 1:36:31
  the door is open then i'm going to walk through it and i'm going to have the faith that he's going to
• 1:36:35
  take i can't see it i just just blinding light the door's open it's blinding light and i don't know
• 1:36:39
  what i'm walking into but let's go and then i start walking through it and i have never ran a
• 1:36:46
  car wash and now here we are you know like i know i i didn't ever own a hotel i've i've worked in
• 1:36:51
  hotels but i never owned a hotel i never been in this on the operating side and so to come in and
• 1:36:56
  realize you have to have like 15 different permits and you know inspections and yeah it's uh faith
• 1:37:09
  you