In this episode of The Passive Income Attorney Podcast, Seth discusses with “The Fearless Investor,” Kyle Stanley, about passive income using AirBnB. Kyle reveals the secrets of how he outsources most of the work that AirBnB properties require in order to make them completely passive.. We also learn an incredibly powerful tool called the M.A.S approach that can apply to any business. Enjoy!
“Knowledge is not power, knowledge plus action, that is power. And if you’re not taking any action, then you’re just wasting your time, your money, and your mentor’s time too.”
HIGHLIGHTS
0:51 – Kyle talks about his background
6:02 – Kyle talks about how he got started in house flipping and how he quit his job after 6 months
7:02 – Kyle explains the things to consider before quitting your day job
7:58 – Kyle explains how to turn $100,000 into $200,000 with real estate
8:28 – Seth asks about Kyle’s AirBnB investing strategy
8:45 – Kyle talks about the three ways of operating AirBnBs
12:20 – Seth asks about buying AirBnBs where you would like to go on vacation
12:36 – Kyle talks about the high and low seasons of AirBnBAirBnBs
14:40 – Seth asks how to make AirBnB a passive income stream
18:51 – Kyle talks about the MAS approach
20:20 – Seth asks about AirBnBs vs. traditional long term rentals
23:38 – Seth asks about property criteria when looking to invest in AirBnBs
32:25 – It’s time for the Freedom 4 – In an alternative universe where you weren’t involved in real estate, what would you be doing?
32:46 – What’s the best thing you do to keep your mind and body healthy?
33:08 – Where were you at five years ago and where do you see yourself five years from now?
34:24 – How has passive income made your life better?
FIND | KYLE STANLEY:
Website: https://www.fearlesskyle.com/
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Seth:
What’s up law nation hope you’re having a wonderful week. Really excited for today’s episode, which I know will be incredibly valuable to you by expanding your mind into a niche investment asset. Today’s topic is especially interesting to me as well. I love to travel. I love real estate and I love to create income streams. How about you guys? This investment could actually cover all of the above. Well, have you ever stayed in an AirBnB? I think most of us have. Have you ever thought about buying a vacation property and then potentially having it pay for itself? Well, the guest of honor today is Kyle Stanley, otherwise known as the fearless investor. He’s an AirBnB expert based out of Fresno, California. And he’s scaling at an incredible rate. In only 18 months, he has over 25 AirBnB listings that net over $20,000 per month. How about that for some fast income replacement, Kyle now teaches others how to replicate his path success in AirBnBs. So without further ado, on the show.
Seth:
Kyle Stanley, welcome to the show, man.
Kyle:
Hey, Seth. Thanks for having me, man.
Seth:
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, let’s just dive right in and tell us a little bit about your story.
Kyle:
Yeah, I mean, you know, not to drag it out or anything, but I just, I was kind of a born entrepreneur, but really fought it for most of my life. You know, when I was a kid, I, I was the top salesman and all the things that you could think of all the dorky stuff that we did in elementary school, from, you know, raffle tickets all the way to cookie dough, and all that kind of stuff. And then, and then, you know, I got into college, and I, I was, you know, making sports shows for our local television station in San Diego. And, and, and, you know, doing all these things that really like I had control of and really enjoyed, because I controlled my success, right? Well, then I get into the real world right after college, and I become a sports anchor. And I have to go work for someone else. And for the first time, like, my creative, my creativity, my, like, everything, just felt handcuffed and, and it made me lose a lot of passion for my job. And so I was like, why am I feeling this way, and I boil it down to I don’t like taking orders from other people. I like being able to create, I like being able to, you know, determine my own success. And so shortly after I realized this, I started a business, helping high school athletes get recruited, playing college, making their videos, move that from Colorado to Arizona. I did that for a few years. And honestly, Seth, like, the big thing I can say is I just didn’t have a mentor, I didn’t have like the help to really understand how to start a business. I had the mindset I had the, the like, desire, I had all the things that would, you know, be a good starting point. But when you have no idea, like how to actually start a business, you make all the mistakes that most people make. And I just tried to be everything for everyone. I did not specialize myself, I try you know, if someone needed something, oh, yeah, I’ll figure it out. I’ll do that. And it just really spread myself thin. And it got to the point where I was just so bogged down with things that I didn’t enjoy doing that I started to hate that business. And so from there bounced around, and different sales Jobs was a part of an MLM for a little bit. And I would just say, though, like, it was all the culmination of all these things that I tried for what was it? I mean, I 22 was when I started and now I’m 33. So like, for 10 years, you know, I just, I was kind of gathering all these skills in different areas, networking and communication and sales and, you know, customer service and all this kind of stuff. And, and, and one day when real estate came across my desk, I was just like, you know, this is passive income, like MLMs. Yeah, I mean, like, I heard about passive income the first time getting into one of those, which I think is a crime by the way, I think passive income needs to be taught. That term at least needs to be taught like from a young age. The fact that was 26 years old hearing for the first time I think, is a crime in itself. But I was like, you know, okay, I’ve got this idea of passive income, but what is truly passive and I thought about it, as like real estate really is passive. You literally buy a piece of real estate, you put a tenant in there and you get paid and, you know, everyone’s small stuff comes up but outside of that, like it Pretty passive. So I started listening to podcasts a lot like this one, you know, listening to Bigger Pockets, Cardone’, all this kind of stuff. I was just educating myself. And finally, after about four months of education, flipping was what I landed on. And I was like, yeah, I’m gonna do this whole flipping thing got started off real quick. And that got a couple deals under my belt within the first four months. But then I kind of looked back and I was like, You know what, I’ve been doing this thing called AirBnB for like five years, and I’ve just been doing it as a room out of my house, what would happen if I actually did an entire house? Well, fast forward about 15 months later, I went from one AirBnB to about 22, AirBnBs. Went from about $1,000 a month of net income to about $20,000 a month of net income. And you know, in under a year and a half, it was a complete life changer. And that’s really today, like, where my bread and butter is, is AirBnB, and then I’ll flip a house occasionally as well.
Seth:
Nice. Was that transition all at once, while you were working full time, or gradual?
Kyle:
Yeah, good question. So I, like I said, I’ve done a lot of things. So I, I went into this new sales job, part time, at the end of 2018, and then decided, Hey, 2019, I’m going full time on this. Well, the day before, I went full time with it, I went to a seminar called Fortune Builders, and they teach you how to flip houses and everything. And that was when I made the decision, I’m flipping houses, it was literally a day before starting a essentially brand new full time job, that I decided to go into real estate. And then it was it was about six months later of just doing both at the same time that I finally just said, Okay, I’m, I’m making enough money doing real estate to be able to do this full time. And I got out.
Seth:
Gotcha, yeah, that makes sense that a lot of our listeners have really good w two jobs. So they might want to start something on the side, maybe investing real estate on the side before they actually transition all the way out or even at all. So
Kyle:
Yeah, you know, and that’s what I really suggest is if you’re going to get into real estate, and you have a steady job, even if you don’t like it, you know, there’s a build up process. I got a, you know, I’ve got a podcast too. And that’s where a lot of people that I talked to, you know, they all talk about, there’s very few that like get started and say like, Oh, yeah, 10 days later, I was closing a deal and making six figures, like it just, it just doesn’t really happen. But a lot of people that I talked to, you know, hey, it took me five months to get my first deal. But once I did, you know, 10 months later, I’m doing like a deal every month or two deals every month. And so I think there’s that build up processors that learning stage, you know, there’s a lot of things you have to build up to really be able to go into something full time.
Seth:
Yeah, for sure. In capital two, again, a lot of our listeners have really good jobs, and they have a you know, a large chunk of change to invest. If they have a bigger, you know, bigger chunk of change to invest right up front. I mean, you can accelerate that growth a lot quicker as well.
Kyle:
Yeah, absolutely. Anytime you have the availability of money, whether it’s yours or someone else’s, you can scale so much faster. So and that’s the great thing about real estate, right? Because you can literally look at $100,000 and turn it into a 200,000 and a lot of active ways you can turn it into 110,000. And a lot of passive ways you can turn it into, you know, somewhere in the middle there, like passively and you know, there’s just, there’s just so many opportunities when you do have the availability of money.
Seth:
Yeah, for sure. For sure. Well, let’s jump into your bread and butter, man. Tell us about AirBnB investing.
Kyle:
Yeah, man, I could tell you a lot about it. What would you like to know?
Seth:
Let’s just start you know, what, what is it? I mean, what, you know, what is it? Like? What, what’s your strategy?
Kyle:
Yeah. So I’ll say this, you know, for those that are new to the world of AirBnB, a very simple term would just be short term rentals. Someone who wants to, you know, get away for a weekend, you know, I know you live in San Diego, you know, some wants to get away to the beach, might instead of going to a hotel, they find a house that someone else owns on AirBnB or vrb. Oh, and they booked it for a couple nights and they pay a premium to do that. A lot of people ask me today like, why would anyone want to do AirBnB over like a hotel? And I think there’s a number of different reasons. I think the biggest reason is people want the convenience of being able to have you know, a couple days that they go in and get out without having to worry about you know, a whole lot of things and especially right now, with COVID going on, the less people you’re around the the more safe you feel. And so you know, hotels are just flooded with a ton of people and you don’t know where those people then you don’t know, you know, what, what if they even have COVID or not, and so there’s especially right now a big need for more privacy when it comes to a short term stay. But then you know, the availability of a kitchen and a living room and you know, the ability to be able to cook Like, while you’re there, you just don’t really get that in a hotel. And so I think there becomes a really great problem that we can solve if we own real estate or if we know people who own real estate. And so to really answer your question, here, Seth, I do AirBnB in three different ways. I own some property, which is really like the number one people think of right? Oh, I got to own a piece of property first. Well, yeah, absolutely. But you can also use other people’s properties. So there’s a form called arbitrage where basically you rent it out from a landlord and then you sublease it with their permission on AirBnB, and you keep the spread. Or when you get to building a reputation like myself, people might start coming to you and ask you Hey, what if you manage my AirBnB for me What if I furnished the whole thing and I just pay you to manage it and and you can then just like a property management company charge them a premium to do this as a short term rental make them a whole lot more money, and everyone’s happy in the end so I I have now 24 AirBnB s, seven of them we own three we arbitrage and the other 14 we manage for other people. They’re all based here in Fresno, California. And we’re expanding over to Phoenix right now, we just bought our first two that we’re gonna renovate and then turn into an AirBnB. But the, I think the best thing about you know, the AirBnB model is just speed and acceleration because you look at any other rental type of option, especially the single family home, and you’re going to get, you know, call it in our market, if you’re cash flowing two to $300 per door, then you’re making a great long term rental profit. In AirBnB, I’m three to five times that. So if I’m making $300 per door, on a long term rental, here in Fresno, I’m making at least $1200 on an AirBnB, and that’s after expenses. So just pretty much like if you if you look at it, take whatever you’re making, whether that’s gross income or net income, and multiply it by three to four. And that’s what you should be getting with AirBnB.
Seth:
That’s awesome. Yeah, those returns are crazy, man. So you said all your all your rentals are in Fresno, right? And then you’re looking to Phoenix?
Kyle:
Yep, exactly.
Seth:
Do you know if you know people that you know, I’ve heard that people buy AirBnB at places where they’d like to vacation and then kind of just spread them out so that they can actually stay in those AirBnB while they’re while they’re traveling?
Kyle:
You know, my answer to that is make so much with your short term rentals that you can vacation anywhere.
Yeah, I talked to people all the time, especially here in Fresno, they’re like, hey, what if we get like a cabin up and we got some places over here called bass lake and, and shaver lake. And, and they’re like, what if we get a cabin over there? And you know, we rent it out. And then every once while we could use ourselves, I’m like, Yeah, that’s great. But at the end of the day, to the numbers make sense. And some of these places, it’s like, the seasonality is so high, it’s this roller coaster that you’re riding, you’re like, Oh, my gosh, I made $5,000 this month, and then it’s February, and no one wants to go there. And now you’re actually paying $2,000 that month in mortgage and, and your expenses. And so I’m like, you know, you could do that. Or you can just find a really good market. I’m not saying fresnos that market for me it is I like it, it’s consistent. But I’d rather just make a whole lot of money in my market here. And then say, Okay, I just made X amount of dollars, why don’t I just spend 10% of that and go on a vacation next month and spend a bunch of money going to someone else’s AirBnB, and let them figure out all the cleanup and stuff. So, you know, there’s two, there’s two thoughts there. But I think the sexier idea is like, yeah, let’s have like, one place in all these different vacation areas and rent them out, and then be able to use them whenever we want. And that’s fine. But I think the biggest thing that people don’t think about when they go to do that is you have to build an entire team of people to keep this passive for you. So every new location that you build for AirBnB, short term rentals, you have to go and hire new people, handymen interior designers, cleaners, you know, boots on the ground person who’s going to be able to be there at all hours of the day and night to be able to attend to these people’s needs. Because this really I mean, at the end of the day, Seth it’s not really even a real estate business. It is a hospitality business. And so we just happen to use real estate to be able to give a hospitable, hospitable experience to all the guests.
Seth:
Yeah, yeah. Well, let’s dive into that a little bit more because some people think of AirBnB investing as really active including myself, so I need you to convince me otherwise, how do you make it passive?
Kyle:
So there’s, there’s sides of it that are active if you’re trying to grow a business, right? Anytime that you’re trying to grow something, you’re gonna have to be active in it, unless you have you know, I think is it is it Robert Kiyosaki that has the four quadrants. And he talks about when you’re really a true business owner, you have, like 500 plus employees. And that’s, that’s being a true business owner. So we’re not talking about being like true business owners and having over 500 employees and AirBnB, we’re talking about having a very small system that doesn’t have to have a whole lot of moving parts in order to be successful. But I would say in my active AirBnBs, the 24 that we currently have, I might be putting in three to four hours a week, Seth, I mean, I just don’t really do a whole lot there. And when I do, it’s just because I like being hands on. So there’s, I think that’s what I love about real estate, not just AirBnB is that everything is outsourced. You can teach anything to anyone so from guests experience communicating with guests, and and you know, having to answer either phone calls or messages from them, we can hire a virtual assistant from that. Someone in the Philippines for the nighttime, someone you know, even just whether it’s in the US or call it like Canada or Mexico, with just a similar time frame, we could we could have two different VA is working 24 hours. So that’s what part of what we do, then you can hire the cleaners, don’t clean these places yourself. You know, that’s, that’s an obvious I don’t want to clean I don’t think anyone wants to clean, hire that out. There’s great technology and automation that AirBnB partners provide, that helps us to be able to take care of all the notifications. So when someone books, our cleaners are automatically notified of when they’re expected to clean. And when they’re expected to be done with that cleaning. So I don’t have to be calling my cleaners being like, Hey, did you clean Did you clean? There’s pricing automation, there is calendar automation, there is guests reply automation on the app. And then with just other really good people like handyman, and I have a number one assistant that just really runs my business, if I’m out of town or not, you know, able to be able to put any time into it, I have a great assistant that does everything for me. But at the very least you want to have someone that’s going to be there in person that if a guest says hey, I don’t know, AC went out. And we can’t get a guy there to fix the AC for another 24 hours. Well, we got someone in person that’s going to go pick up a couple fans from Walmart, deliver them to the place and be able to help them at least be comfortable for the next day, while there’s some sort of fix that needs to happen. So there’s lots of people, lots of technology, lots of options to make this business very passive from a operational standpoint. But from a growth standpoint, I’m the guy that you know, has conversations with sellers, I’m the one that talks to landlords about adding more to our portfolio. Yes, is that outsource double, but that’s not something so far that I want outsource. So for that it becomes a little bit more active. But I love that side of it. So yeah, I would say as long as you’re doing the things that you love, I call the things that feel light, you know, like if it feels light, and you want to keep on doing that, do it. I’m a numbers guy. So I love doing a lot of the pricing stuff manually, even though I could automate that I really enjoy that stuff. So I continue to do it. So you know that? I would say that’s the number one thing about this business, you can do what you want, you can outsource what you don’t want to do.
Seth:
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s just like anything else. I mean, you probably got to put a little bit of work upfront, you know, to get your systems and your automations and your vendors and VA s and whatever, whatever you’re using technology wise to get those systems and stuff in place. But then once that’s all set up, it becomes a lot more passive.
Kyle:
Exactly. I call it the MAS Effect or the mass system, its master, automate, and then scale. And so I mean, you got to do it yourself, right? You got to be able to figure it out. Even like the first time or two, you might even want to clean it yourself just so you can see. A what’s the best way to do it and be Do I really dislike it as much as I think I just like it and the answer that’s probably gonna be yes. So you know, just being able to do it yourself and then automate it. And then from there, if it can, if it can scale on its own, or with you putting a lot less effort into it, then you know, you’ve got a business that’s thriving.
Seth:
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, again, why it might make sense to even invest locally or pick, you know, market or to to stick to and not just place an AirBnB here and here in Costa Rica and San Diego, in New York or something like that.
Kyle:
Yeah. 100% because I mean, you know, at the end of the day, you build up this reputation in one location and you know, for us, just to kind of give you an idea of our, the growth of our business. June of this year 2020 we had 10 AirBnBs. And then by October we were at 22 going on 24. And the reason it just exploded loaded so quickly it was because I built this reputation of being like the AirBnB guy in Fresno. And before I knew it, my phone was just ringing off the hook with people being like, Can you manage my place? Can you manage my place? I got a friend that needs some management for AirBnB. And so if you become like that go to person opportunities just kind of come to you.
Seth:
Yeah, yeah. Nice. Well, let’s go through maybe some other pros and cons of investing in AirBnB versus, you know, just traditional single-family rentals.
Kyle:
Yeah, I mean, so the obvious pros so far has been the income, right? The other Pro is that you I mean, I think this is a great Pro, you get to put a lot more people to work, you get to employ some people to do things that you wouldn’t be doing in long term rentals. And I really get a lot of enjoyment out of being able to create jobs for other people. I would say another Pro, especially if you’re trying to do this arbitrage model for other landlords is that you’re taking care of this place way better than a regular long term tenants going to I mean, if you think about it, long term tenant goes in there, they sign a 12 month lease, and you know, month one, I don’t know the screen door at the front falls off, and they don’t tell you, and then there’s a hole or some chip paint, and they don’t tell you, or they call you because of these little nuances, like hey, the towel bar fell off the handle. And now you got to go deal with that. And so it’s condition of the place. And it’s also as a landlord, you’re dealing with all these little things. Well, if I go in there, and I say, Hey, Mr. Landlord, we are actually going to clean the place every time there’s guests turnover, which could be as much as five times a week. So you know, the place is going to be in pristine condition. If the towel bar falls off the wall, we’re not going to call you with that we’re going to call our handyman, we’re going to get it taken care of and you’re not going to hear about it. And so we have all these things that make us a lot more attractive to landlords than regular long term tenants that I think kind of makes it a no brainer really makes it a better option for a landlord. Plus, we have insurance in three different ways. So really, like you’re covered on all ends. And so any landlords that I do this with, they’re like, yeah, we’re, we want to renew with you, because we don’t want to have to deal with like, trying to get a new tenant in there and seeing if their credits good, and all that kind of stuff again. So that’s another pro con, I mean, hash sets. I guess the con would just be that sometimes there’s some unknowns about the guests that come in. And to me, it’s not even necessarily like, oh, are they going to destroy the place? Because if they do, I’m covered by AirBnBs insurance, I’m covered by their host guarantee. And I know that I’m going to get covered. And that’s a risk I’m willing to take. But more so like, you know, I want to make sure I’m a good neighbor in that neighborhood as well. And so I always kind of feel bad if there’s ever a party or anything that just kind of got under the radar that Yeah, we get a call from a neighbor saying, Hey, you know, it was a party last night, yada, yada. That would be really the only thing that kind of bugs me a little bit. But I can tell you this when you have the right pre qual that you put all these guests through and you have all the right security measures that you take when you do all the right things to try to weed out the bad guests. Most the time they weed themselves out. And so for that reason, knock on wood, we have not had many issues when it comes to parties as we have evolved in this business.
Seth:
Yeah, there’s ways to reduce that risk. Right.
Kyle
Exactly. Just like anything.
Seth:
Yeah, so when you’re looking to buy a property? I mean, what are you looking for, for an AirBnB investment? Like what are some of your property criteria?
Kyle:
Yeah, you know, the first thing I would do if I’m looking is if and I’m speaking more to your your listeners right now, go to air DNA, and do the research. Air DNA is the MLS of AirBnB, I have a direct referral link. It’s just bitly forward slash AirDNA link. If you just go to that, it’ll take you right to AirDNA. And you can see hey, I’ve got a three bedroom two bath on Main Street. Is there another three bedroom two bath within? You know, like half a mile? If so, what does it look like? How’s it going for per night? How much did it make in the last 12 months? How much was occupied? You can look at all that stuff. And you can really then look at am I gonna make money with this? And so most people then from there are like, Well, you know, what other expenses Do I need to think about what other ways can I make money with it? Well, the best thing you can do at that point is go to my website and download. It’s right there on the front of the website at fearlesskyle.com. We have an AirBnB profit calculator that literally shows you what you could make as long as you’re evaluating the property correctly. What you could make profit minus expenses every single month. So for that reason, You know, you might go and say, Man I’m in I’m in San Diego, this is a great place to do AirBnB because of the beach and everything. I bet you if I got a great beachfront property that you know, I would just make bank. Well, you might think that, but will it actually do that? And AirDNA is the best place to go take a look at that. And just to kind of deeper answer your questions, I think you’ve got to also look at is my city the best place to do it, I always suggest starting off in your city. But there’s really two types of cities that I would say, are like, the two types of cities that you could think of would be either are people coming there because they have to or be coming? Are they coming there because they want to, I like Fresno, because no one wants to come to Fresno, everyone who comes here has to come to Fresno, oh, shoot, gotta go visit Grandma and Grandpa, Oh, she got to visit mom and dad or I’ve got business over there. And you know, all these different things. It’s like, you know, there’s nothing exciting drawing people to Fresno. But when there’s that necessity, that’s why during a pandemic, we haven’t seen any drop off, we actually were really worried that we were going to see drop off. And then after two months of doing some research data and market analysis, we were like, holy cow, we’re making like the exact same amount that we were even before COVID started. So I like Fresno, or places like Fresno for that reason. But if you want to just you know, do the higher risk places, San Diego, Newport all these beach, places in California or across the US, I mean, you can make a lot more money, you’re just going to have a lot more of the ups and downs. So I would say figure out you know what your risk tolerance is, figure out the numbers and use both those resources, the AirBnB profit calculator on our website and the air DNA. That’s the best place to be able to find out what, what you should be doing for AirBnB.
Seth:
Awesome, man. Yeah, AirDNA. That’s a great website. I’ve clicked around on there. There’s some really powerful stuff on there.
Kyle:
It’s a good one. It’s, you know, and it has the membership. I would say get a membership for a month and then just cancel after that. You don’t need to have it month in month out.
Seth:
Yeah. Cool. Cool. Well, let’s switch gears a little bit, man. So how’d you get this “Fearless Kyle” moniker and your fearless brand that you’ve adopted? Where did that originate?
Kyle:
Yeah. So it started out as fearless flipping when I wasn’t doing AirBnB, and I started my podcast. Then, pretty much I like six months later, realized I wasn’t really talking about flipping very much anymore. I was just talking about AirBnB. And I wanted to rebrand and so the name of my podcast is actually the fearless investor. But fearless investor com was already taken. So I took fearless Kyle, but I guess, you know, the, the fearless thing comes from, if you see our logo, it’s a lion. And growing up, my mom always had the like, you know, fear. Or the lion kind of imprinted in my mind, which was like, you know, have the courage courageous, like a lion, and then be gentle, like a lamb. And so I just kind of thought of, like, you know, how can I bring a lion into this and, and to me, lions are fearless. And, and I just, I don’t know, I like that. I like the word fearless. I think it’s got a little bit of a ring to it. And I think at the end of the day, like, that’s really what we’re helping people to do. When I bring guests on our podcast. And when I share knowledge and information, I’m trying to help people get past this fear of never taking action. And in real estate, like, yeah, you need to do the research, and you need to know the numbers, and you need to like, really have a foundation. But then at some point, you just have to be able to pull the trigger. And the people that never pull the trigger, just are always excited about, oh, I’m gonna find a deal. I’m gonna find a deal. And then they look up a year later. And they’re like, wow, I haven’t put any offers in. I haven’t got any deals like what’s holding me back. And it’s just, you’re just obsessed with education, and you’re not obsessed with taking action. And I think that’s what we’re just trying to help people do is get over the fear of taking action.
Seth:
Yeah, I mean, you can listen to podcasts and read books and go to seminars and do these things all day. But at some point in time, you’ve got to take action.
Kyle:
Yeah, and it’s, I’m so guilty of this, too, Seth. I mean, I think we all are at some level, this, you know, analysis, analysis, paralysis, or paralysis by analysis, whatever you call it. And especially in in real estate, because there’s so much to analyze on a deal. And, and you just kind of get down to that point where you’re like, you know, what, the worst deal I could do is no deal. So why am I just pounding my head on like, I don’t have to do the perfect deal. Just because I’m only going to make 10,000 on this flip doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t do it. It means that I’m gonna learn a whole lot and learn what I didn’t like about it, what I do like about it, and so you know, then You just you take but I think at the same time though, like, there’s also the shiny object syndrome in real estate, right? Like there’s, there’s subject to there’s AirBnB, there’s long term rentals, there’s flipping, there’s wholesaling. There’s creative financing. There’s all this stuff, right? And, and so we get in, and we’re like, oh, yeah, I want to do AirBnB. Oh, wait, would that be a good flip? Oh, that’d be a good host. And then you forget, like you, you came here because you wanted to do AirBnB? Well, get in your lane, put on the blinders. But educate yourself about other stuff so that when those deals do come around, then you have the knowledge to be able to either pull the trigger or have someone in your network that you could sell that deal to, and, and be able to, like capitalize on that, but at the same time, not get distracted by those things. So I think that’s the biggest thing is, you see, like, the most successful people in real estate, they all have their specialty, but they don’t talk about it, they’re, you know, hey, this guy is doing flips. But by the way, every once in a while, he’s doing a, you know, a long term buy and hold. He’s doing a bur every once in a while. He’s just not really focused on finding those deals. But when they come his way, he knows exactly what to do with them. So I think you’ve got to have your lane. But you got to educate yourself about the sidelines as well.
Seth:
Yeah, for sure. Especially at the beginning, you’re kind of exposed to a lot of different stuff, and everything just seems new and shiny. And you’re like, oh, man, AirBnB sound great. You know, maybe I should do that instead of this. And that said this, or let’s look at this syndication, maybe I should just invest passively. Like there’s just so many different things. So you’ve got to, you know, learn a little bit about each and then find your lane.
Kyle:
Yeah, and you know, I talk to students all the time, or prospective students, I should say, and one of the questions I asked them is, Hey, have you ever bought a course? Or how to mentor in the past as well? And if they say, Yes, and I asked them how much they invest, then I’m always gonna ask them. Okay, so how many deals did you do from, you know, investing 10,000 or 20,000 into that, Oh, I didn’t do any deals. Because this this, this happened. I didn’t like my mentor. I didn’t like that. I get worried about people like that. Because I’m like, at the end of the day, you just like you like learning and which is not an issue. But if you know that the worst scene out there is knowledge is power, knowledge is not power, it’s knowledge plus action. That is power. And if you’re not taking any action, then you’re just wasting your time, your money and your mentor’s. Time too.
Seth:
Yeah, I love that man love that. Let’s jump into the Freedom Four.
Seth:
So in an alternative universe where you weren’t involved in real estate, what would you be doing?
Kyle:
I’d be the play by play broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs. That was, that was my goal. That was my goal when I was coming out of college. And I still would do that today. I do it for free.
Seth:
Yeah, very specific. And I love that man. A lot. Oh, yeah. what’s the what’s the best thing you do to keep your mind and body healthy
Kyle:
Learning. So even though I just rag on people who only learn I think, I think if you’re not learning, then you’re not growing. And if you’re not growing, then you’re dying. So I love learning on a daily basis.
Seth:
You’re speaking my truth, man. So where were you at five years ago? And where do you see yourself five years from now?
Kyle:
Five years ago, I was in debt. I was living in Arizona, I just bought my first house and didn’t realize how much the first time home buying process actually does costs, they don’t really tell you every single thing that you have to think about. So I got into debt very quickly. That was why I started AirBnB in a room out of my home because I needed to pay for my mortgage. And so it’s crazy to see where our life is taking me. And just not even the last five years but really the last two years. But five years from now. I mean, I don’t know man, I don’t do a whole lot of five year goals. I do a lot of one year goals because I feel like they’re a little bit more bite sized. But I’d like to think that five years from now I’m in a very good place financially just like I’m at right now but doing more things that I enjoy helping people I enjoy doing things that give back those are the things to me that fulfill me having I want to have a family I want to be able to just be able to make more choices that I can’t make today. Not necessarily for selfish reasons but for others.
Seth:
Nice Nice. So how has passive income made your life better?
Kyle:
Kind of just what I said there but it just made me realize what is possible. You know, I I used to do this whole you know, you have to trade time for dollars and then you know, you have this mindset of time for dollars and then then taxes come in and wipe out a lot of that stuff and you just you end up feeling like man I’m just I’m working literally for minimum wage. And then when you come in you find something. I mean Seth, even a flip You find a deal. Let’s just say you’re the only person and you hire the contractor. Even that dude, like, I remember the first flip I did, I only made $61,000. It was a small flip. But I learned a ton. And I did the math. And it was like, from the time that I found the deal to the time that we sold it, I might have put 20 hours into that flip all together. And that came out to like, almost $300 per hour that I made, I’m like, I’ve never made $300 an hour. So real estate and AirBnB, just the margins of which you can make will just, it’ll give you the opportunity to see that there is light at the end of the tunnel, you’re you don’t have to replace time for dollars. You can you can make more of an impact on other people by giving them jobs by hiring them by giving other people opportunities and, and so to me, it’s not just the freedom, it’s the impact that you can have on other people.
Seth:
Nice, nice brother. Well, thanks again for coming on today. where can our listeners find out more about you?
Kyle:
Yeah, either fearlesskyle.com or you can go just to any podcast platform or my YouTube channel and just search the fearless investor.
Seth:
Awesome. Thanks, Kyle. It’s been great.
Kyle:
Thank you Seth.
Seth:
Talk soon. All right, Kyle really broke it down for us about how he scaled his AirBnB business quickly and efficiently, and how he effectively made those investments as systemized and automatic as possible. Now, I don’t know about you, but before this episode, I never would have thought of AirBnBs as passive. But after talking to Kyle, I do believe that with some careful and thoughtful strategies, vacation rentals could be a viable option. If you want to take your passive investing to the next level, I want to invite you all to go to escapethebillable.com and get your free copy of our new passive investing guide. Alright, until next time, celebrate the journey!
