Oh, what a life!
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!I am really having fun creating my STR empire.
And, boy, have I learned a ton over the past 9 months. It’s hard to wrap my head around sometimes just how fast this has happened, but I have a goal. As you know, when it comes to goals I won’t stop till I get to them.
It was about this time last year when I started thinking about doing STRs. As with anything new that you’re thinking about doing, I had to give it some thought. Then I started doing my research and figuring out how, when and where I’d take down my first short-term rental property (STR). I gathered lots of intel and data to help me decide if this was the right play for me, would I be able to put together the team I’d need if I wanted to do more beyond my first couple of properties and to do them super-fast.
Then I hit the switch, taking down my first STR in June I believe… That was just 9 months ago and now I have 18 STRs and counting.
In this article I’m going to share with you videos that take you through my journey. Here’s one last summer where I was just looking at a property to see if it would be a fit. I won’t be a spoiler. Just watch and see if YOU think it would make a good STR or not.
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Why am I sharing this journey with you?
The answer is simple. There’s no way better to show you that you can build your very own STR empire, too. While my goal is to get to 50 (yes, FIVE ZERO) STRs this year, your goal doesn’t have to be so big. That’s just who I am as a real estate entrepreneur.
Want to build your own short-term rental portfolio? You can!! Share on XStart your journey by setting a small goal of getting your first property… then your next. After you’ve successfully set them up and have them being booked, you’ll see that the theory works and you can do more.
Maybe your goal can be to have 50 STRs. No one is keeping you from it. Your goals are your own. If you need a better understanding of how to set goals I’m finishing my Gear Up for Goal-Setting Master Class this month. There’s only one more session to go, but that’s okay. You can still get in on it. (You’ll get the recordings of the first two classes, too, and you get to keep them forever.)
My goal is to have 50 STRs by the end of this year. What’s your goal? Share on XIf you’re interested, just click into the box below:
But this is not a pitch to buy anything. I’m simply sharing information. The long and short of it is that we all need to set goals and dare to make them big. But we have to keep them realistic at the same time. You can do that by giving a timeline.
For example, in my book I talk about setting a really big goal but giving it a 20-year timeline. Then it becomes very doable in your mind’s eye.
If you haven’t read the book yet, you can still grab a copy here: www.cashflowdiary.com/freebook.
You can’t beat the price.
Grab a little inspiration for free right now: www.cashflowdiary.com/freebook Share on XWhy I keep telling you to grab the book is because I wrote it to inspire YOU to take your own path… enter your own journey… in real estate entrepreneurship.
If you have never ever done a deal before, that’s okay. That’s where we all start. Seriously. Every single person who has ever done a deal in real estate started from scratch, not knowing anything. Then they learned and applied what they learned. Then they kept learning.
In fact, learning truly is a lifelong thing. You have to become a lifelong learner to reach success. Any success. But especially as an entrepreneur.
Now, back to my STR journey…
When I realized that I could do this thing in short-term rental properties and that I could make a darned good income doing it, I was hooked. In a BIG way!!
Did I make mistakes?
Um, yes. Of course I did. But I corrected course and didn’t repeat those mistakes in the next STR and the next.
Mistakes won’t kill you; they’re just a part of reaching success!! Share on XAs in everything else I’ve done related to real estate, I knew I had to set up systems that worked and then follow those systems in each new property I took and in each new STR I created. Now that I have a system that doesn’t just work but works really, really well… there’s no stopping me.
Besides, it’s too fun to stop.
Here’s another video I did after I’d taken down a few more STRs. (You can see that by this point I’d gotten my system down, but I was still honing it.) This one is inside an article I wrote just after I’d done this. Hey, why not get some reading in, too?
Besides, the video starts a little slowly. You can be reading the article that talks about turning $0 into $100K in 100 days. Sounds pretty good, huh?
You can do what I’m doing.
There isn’t another strategy I can think of that does what the STR model does.
- It produces significant income without dealing with long-term tenants.
- It hones your customer-service skills, which is something we all need to improve upon no matter what we’re doing in business and life.
- It exposes you to all sorts of different personality types and great people. (Guests come in all types, and getting to know them is part of the fun.)
- It is a network-expanding mechanism, because you never know who will be renting your properties. (Some might even be interested to help you do more rentals!)
And that’s just a few benefits of doing STRs off the top of my head. There ae many more. But one of the benefits that keeps me going toward my 50-unit goal is how fun this is for me. Here’s another article with a video in it that I made along the way that reflects a bit of that joy.
Keep watching my journey and replicate it.
I’ll close this short article off with a call to action.
If you want to be successful as a real estate entrepreneur, there are all sorts of ways to get there. By far, the one I like most is creating STRs. And it’s something most people can do.
You have to be uber-aware of the rules in your area regarding the allowability of running STRs, which cities work best for this strategy and why, who you will be serving (because you will need to choose the type of guest you want to create your STRs for), and you’ll have to set up good systems so you can put your STR business on the rinse-and-repeat mode.
But here’s the deal…
If you think you can’t do this thing, you’d be wrong. There are parts you don’t have to do yourself. Lots of them. But then that would be part of your system, wouldn’t it?
My STR Life: Looking Back Over the Past 9 Months Share on XIf you have ever thought about getting involved in real estate investing but haven’t taken any steps yet, this strategy may just be the thing you’ve been waiting for. It’s not wholesaling, it’s not fixing and flipping, and it’s not even buying-and-holding. Though learning those strategies would absolutely help you in every way, because there are elements to each of them in doing the STR play.
Understand that it goes beyond real estate, too. It enters the realm of creating a business that will thrive in a lot of places. I’m not saying it will work everywhere, because it won’t. But chances are that it can work for you where you live and do business.
It’s certainly worth a look.
If you’re ready to get the basics so you can forge ahead, here’s your most logical next step:
