Journey from Pilot to Hotel Owner

John Harcar (00:00.992)
All right, guys. Hey, welcome back to the show. I’m your host here, John Harkar. And we’re here today with Mike Stohler. And what we’re going to do is talk about his journey from a pilot to a hotel owner. Remember, guys, here at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and really all real estate entrepreneurs 2 to 5x their business by providing tools and resources to help you build the business you want to live, live the life that you’ve always dreamed of. Hey, Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Stohler (00:29.836)
Thanks, John. Appreciate it.

John Harcar (00:31.362)
Yeah, I’m super excited to talk about your journey, man. I mean, from what we talked about before, it seems like you have a lot of knowledge and experience. But before we do that, tell our audience a little bit about you, where you came from, your background, how you got into real estate, or how you got into be a pilot, et cetera.

Mike Stohler (00:48.854)
Yeah, great question. I’m from a very, very small town in Indiana, about 2,500 people. And it was like everyone read the Rich Dad Poor Dad. And it’s like, that must be it. Let’s do it. So I found a bunch of, I found like eight homes, bottom up. And back then, there’s 30, 40, 50,000. I mean, they were cheap in this small town. And

John Harcar (00:55.043)
Hmm.

John Harcar (01:01.518)
Great.

John Harcar (01:12.558)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Stohler (01:14.37)
I caught the PG days, pre-Google days when I bought them. the buying part was easy, but then what? How do you be a landlord? Oh, you got to fix stuff, due diligence. I didn’t know any of that stuff. just, here’s a house for sale, and then all of a sudden it’s a piece of crap and condemned. I was like, OK, here we go.

John Harcar (01:17.57)
Yep.

John Harcar (01:29.614)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

I want to say that’s like you know something that’s rare but that’s just all the time I mean that’s right in this business. Yes.

Mike Stohler (01:38.946)
It is all the time. Ladies and gentlemen, do your due diligence, please. And it ended up being horrible. I gave them all back. I had to sell my house. My wife and I moved in with her parents. So it’s not all those YouTube channel, get rich quick real estate. It is hard. It is tough. You have to have your coaching, your mentors, and all that stuff. And my dream was to be an airline pilot. So I quit the real estate for a while.

John Harcar (01:50.35)
Mmm.

John Harcar (02:01.612)
Yep.

Mike Stohler (02:09.506)
Well, before that I was first Gulf War as a veteran, 89-93 in the Navy. I was an ops specialist. then fast forward, I became an airline pilot for Continental back in those days out of Houston.

John Harcar (02:16.142)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (02:25.582)
Now, did you fly before or did you go to pilot school? No, I’ve gone.

Mike Stohler (02:30.178)
I went to pilot school, so I got my license at age 17 and realized it was really expensive. And then dad said, you know, get your business degree like everyone else. You know, go work for someone for 45 years, get your watch. Do it like the rest of us. And I’m like, that’s not me. You know, stick me in the cubicle, I’ll go postal, I think, you know. So it’s, I’m not that, it’s not in my blood. So I became an airline pilot.

John Harcar (02:38.286)
you

Mm.

Right.

John Harcar (02:51.299)
Hahaha

me neither.

Mike Stohler (02:58.622)
Fast forward to 2012 and while I was an airline pilot I was like you know what I’ve got money I’m making money let’s get back into some real estate so you know bought some houses bought a four-plex you know kept it small hired a property management group and then I got really injured flying into Houston during a tropical storm you know was a hurricane was starting to blow in and and that was fun safely landed I’m still here yeah I got the plane down

John Harcar (03:15.854)
Mmm.

John Harcar (03:23.022)
Hey, I’m about to say you got the plane down you’re still here. That’s good. That’s

Mike Stohler (03:28.406)
But it was, so during that disability, I was like, you know what, you why aren’t these things making any money? And I realized that property manager group was nickel and diming me. They’re charging me for everything. So I fired them, started doing it myself. And then I came to conclusion that, you know what, I can pretty quickly match or exceed my pilot salary. And so I quit and man, you know, total 15,

1500 doors later, someone came in, bought my portfolio, and then I was like, now what? Because during that time, I was now in Arizona, cap rates were 3.5%, 4%. And I was buying at 10%, 12%. And I’m like, I can’t do that. So through the networking, through people you know, I found a guy that managed and owned about

John Harcar (04:08.27)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (04:18.243)
Yeah.

Mike Stohler (04:25.026)
25 years experience in hotel business. said, you know what, that kind of interests me. Teach me. And ladies and gentlemen, when you go through another asset class, what do you do? You know, it’s like, okay, I’m gonna have you run it. I have the cash. You find it. You’re gonna teach me everything you know. And I gave him a cut at the end so that he has something to strive for. The better I do, the better he does. And that’s how I got into

John Harcar (04:43.342)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (04:51.342)
break.

Mike Stohler (04:53.278)
single family at hotels and now we’re having fun.

John Harcar (04:56.43)
Awesome. What were some of the challenges? Let’s go back to that first rental fiasco, I guess you could say. So all these properties were foreclosed on. Did you get bank loans? Did you have private money to buy them?

Mike Stohler (05:03.009)
Yeah.

Mike Stohler (05:09.452)
No, so here’s what a lot of people don’t realize is did you know that you can go to local colleges, local universities and pick up pretty good homes? These colleges and universities get bequeathed okay, from alumni. Well, they’re not into being a landlord. So you can actually go and there’s someone that’s in charge of the real estate.

the property at these colleges and universities and get a meeting with him and say, he’s like, yeah, you know, I’ve got eight homes, I’ll do seller financing. Here’s what we do know at the college is monthly payments. So I put down payments and they financed them and said, here’s the keys to these eight homes. And I didn’t really take a look at it. I’m just like, wow, I am now a real estate man. I’m an investor. Here we go. And then,

John Harcar (05:56.994)
Hmm.

John Harcar (06:01.646)
I’m an investor!

Mike Stohler (06:06.05)
They gave me the keys and I went to look at the houses and I’m like, yeah, there’s a reason why they gave them to the university. know, some of them were nice. know, there was two four-plutches that really nice, but I just, I didn’t know what’s an application, you know, what’s the foreclosure, what’s the due, I didn’t have any of that, you know, so I’m writing down on a piece of paper, like, yeah, okay, you’re gonna pay me 12 months and I couldn’t go online, you know, and download a form.

John Harcar (06:11.895)
you

John Harcar (06:27.223)
bright.

John Harcar (06:34.03)
All right. How long did you have these?

Mike Stohler (06:37.13)
I’m about a year and half and racking up the credit card deck because all of sudden, know, new roof and new and I’m I was in my early 20s, mid 20s. I didn’t have any money. you know, I’m up there putting new roofs on, putting things on credit card. I found out how to become a plumber, you know, with leaks because I couldn’t afford to could pay one. So I’m down there busting my butt and I’m like, I’m not having fun. This is there’s something.

John Harcar (06:56.18)
You can afford to pay one.

John Harcar (07:03.04)
And you didn’t even have YouTube U to learn off of like everybody else does.

Mike Stohler (07:05.826)
I didn’t have anything. I’m just looking at this and I like, okay, that pipe’s leaking. It looks like it’s some type of a metal. I don’t know. Do I solid? I mean, I didn’t know what, do I, well, you know, it’s like, what do I do? And finally got too much, you know, it’s like I was actually getting new credit cards to pay for it. And I’m like, you know, my wife and I, my wife was like, you got to stop this. I’m like, I don’t, know, and here’s the thing is I didn’t even know how to,

John Harcar (07:12.878)
Hahahaha

Do I weld it? Do I clamp it? What do I do?

Mike Stohler (07:35.85)
Like, do I sell it? Do I try to flip them? It’s just like I was so new and so naive. And finally, I just gave them back to the college. So it didn’t really affect my credit or anything like that. But I was so much in debt that we had to sell the house to pay off the debts.

John Harcar (07:42.399)
Right.

John Harcar (07:47.82)
Okay.

John Harcar (07:54.606)
That’s an interesting, interesting way to find property. Go to colleges. Now, everybody who listens to this is going to be going to colleges all across the country. But what department did you go to or how did you figure out? you just go knock, you know, or just asking anybody and everybody that might be in administration or something or?

Mike Stohler (08:10.306)
Yeah, I just went to the admin building. It was at the local college, very small college. And I said, hey, who’s in charge of real estate? And someone has to be running this campus and finding new campuses. And they said, oh, yeah, this guy down the hall. And I knocked on his door and said, hey, can I set up a meeting? And he goes, yeah, sit down. I said, do you have any homes? And he smiled and he goes, no one’s ever asked me that. And he goes, yeah, I’ve got.

John Harcar (08:22.947)
Right.

John Harcar (08:39.566)
Well, matter of fact, we do. So what do you think were some of the challenges? Obviously with this, you know, a lot of people go through that. They might get knocked off, right? They might get out of the game like, hey, real estate sucks. Not for me at all. You know, that is a pretty, pretty big hit. How did you personally get over that mentally? Like it with a mindset and what challenges did you find getting back into it?

Mike Stohler (08:40.916)
We do.

Mike Stohler (09:03.244)
Yeah, great question. Well, I consumed myself with being an airline pilot, training. I didn’t go to the military. I did it on my own. By that time, I had a good job. Paid like $35,000 a year. And I just started doing that. And what I did is I said, where I failed is I just didn’t know how to be a landlord.

John Harcar (09:31.17)
Great.

Mike Stohler (09:32.734)
I went to these big apartment complexes. I said, you know what? I’m going to pretend like I’m going to rent an apartment. And they gave me the applications and the lease forms and I just stole them basically. And I was like, okay, now I have forms. And I listened to their pitch and what they did. And I started asking them questions. And so now I had forms and now I did. And then before I was in between training, I went to work for a property manager group. I said, okay, I want to know how to do this. You know, so instead of.

John Harcar (09:42.988)
There you go.

John Harcar (09:59.638)
Okay.

Mike Stohler (10:02.922)
saying I’m done, it’s like what do I need to do? I need to learn. And that was probably the military mindset of never giving up, you know, go out and learn it, overcome the challenges. And so was there for, you know, just enough to learn and then quit. And then moved out to Arizona to, well, you know, I had an agenda. I’m not going to admit, you know, I’ll admit it. And then.

John Harcar (10:07.448)
this.

John Harcar (10:12.599)
Yep.

John Harcar (10:24.288)
Hey, right, I mean, I’m not, you’re nothing for me.

Mike Stohler (10:31.328)
Moved out to Arizona, finished up pilot training and looked at, wow, palm trees and weather. So moved out here and then became an airline pilot and that kind of was my focus for a long time. But then I was like, just that burning in the back of the head, back of my mind, just like real estate, real estate, real estate. I’m going to do it right this time. I stole the forms. I have some knowledge.

John Harcar (10:53.08)
Yeah.

John Harcar (10:58.158)
There you go.

Mike Stohler (11:00.13)
You know, but then I had enough money to hire a property manager group and then I knew it’s like, know, I’m actually going to visit the properties before I buy it. I have enough money to have an inspector come in. So the hard knocks, you know, hit me in this bald head and, you know, it ended up working out.

John Harcar (11:08.812)
Yeah, good idea.

John Harcar (11:25.74)
Well, a lot of times the school of hard knocks is the best way to learn, you know, it’s, you know, sometimes like I said, it will knock people off their, off their block, but I think that’s where they get, where you get the most real world experience. So you’re a pilot, you got some properties. At what point did you say, all right, I’m done with the piloting.

Mike Stohler (11:29.632)
Absolutely.

Mike Stohler (11:46.594)
Well, I got injured. I had no choice. I tore the forearm muscle off the bone landing the jet into Houston. Yeah, there’s something called wind shear. And basically the airplane did at 600 feet off the ground, just went whap, and did almost a full 90 degrees. Well, that was at 1,200 feet, so I grabbed it and then it tried to buck again at 600 feet.

John Harcar (11:59.628)
Yeah.

John Harcar (12:09.198)
Cheers.

Mike Stohler (12:15.072)
and that’s when it bucked so hard and I had the white grip of death on the yoke that it actually popped my forearm muscle off the…

John Harcar (12:19.446)
Yeah, yeah.

John Harcar (12:24.354)
man that had to hurt so so obviously you’re not piloting and then you’re going in did you decide at that point hey it’s full-time real estate.

Mike Stohler (12:25.704)
yeah.

Mike Stohler (12:36.642)
Yeah, as I fired the property manager group because they were charging me 500 bucks to sneeze, basically. But I went back once to try to be a pilot because I spent so much time and effort. And I could do the Sunday flying, but when they tried to kill you in the full motion sim, I just that arm, I couldn’t grip it tight enough. So I went back and I was like, you know what? I talked to my wife and I said,

John Harcar (12:45.646)
Bye.

John Harcar (13:02.636)
Right.

Mike Stohler (13:07.426)
I think I can do this. And she goes, you better not, you know, up this time, you know, and I made her a bet, you know, it’s like, okay. And that’s when the last recession hit, you know, the now it’s, you know, 2007, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, that time period. And that’s when I made all my money. That’s when I was buying everything. Cause you know, great assets, a hundred percent occupied, but the, and ladies and gentlemen, in the commercial space, we have

John Harcar (13:12.235)
Sure, sure sure.

John Harcar (13:23.094)
Yeah, right,

John Harcar (13:28.152)
Got it.

Mike Stohler (13:36.552)
five-year balloons, seven-year balloons. You don’t have 30-year mortgages. And so there’s like a 28-unit complex came up. It was now valued $300,000 less, even though it’s the same thing, 100 % occupied. But they wouldn’t give the loan. They wouldn’t give the balloon. So seller financing, seller financing, assuming mortgages. Well, we have Google now.

John Harcar (13:41.485)
Right.

John Harcar (13:53.726)
Mm-hmm. Right.

John Harcar (14:00.478)
How did you learn that?

Mike Stohler (14:04.386)
By that time, there’s Google. So what I did is I sought out some local mentors and coaches. I’m not going to say seminars, because that kind of has bad rep. There are some really good seminar people out there, and there’s a lot of bad seminar people out there. I found the good ones, and they taught me everything. And they gave me the forms, and they had all this stuff. The biggest one I had, his name was John Burley.

John Harcar (14:06.124)
Right.

John Harcar (14:21.175)
yeah.

Mike Stohler (14:33.982)
is the Burley model. He does lease options. He does all these different things and he taught me a lot. He goes, here’s how you talk, here’s how you say it. I just started doing assumptions, seller financing, because I knew that the whole thing wouldn’t last. Then in 2013, now I’ve accumulated God. It’s like, man, I better be able to get some loans, get a portfolio loan or something.

John Harcar (14:48.344)
Yep. Cut.

John Harcar (15:02.382)
Right?

Mike Stohler (15:04.801)
And I was able to, so I’d, you then it was 50 plexes, 100 plexes, 150 plexes, you know, and then I just kind of built, get build it up, hired crews, learned how to do that, on-site managers, on-site maintenance. You know, then.

John Harcar (15:19.438)
And you said you got up to about 1500 doors. That’s incredible. How did you find all these? I mean, what was your lead gen strategy?

Mike Stohler (15:30.582)
Well, once you start getting known in a town, the leads come to you. All the off market. when I say that, and then I would like refinance cash out, buy something. Refinance cash out, buy something. You just kind of build it up, build it up, build it up. And by that time I had the team, and that’s another thing, ladies and gentlemen. Once you get 100 units or so,

John Harcar (15:49.848)
Yeah.

Mike Stohler (15:58.818)
150, you need a team now. You’re gonna drive yourself nuts trying to do it yourself.

John Harcar (16:04.622)
What things did you delegate, like start delegate, what was like the first couple things you delegated out to a team when he built it?

Mike Stohler (16:12.954)
Good question. First off, you get complexes that are big enough where you hire on-site people. Even the 28 units, even the smaller ones. I found, I call it the mother hen, the one person, the one lady that will kick your butt if you don’t behave in her complex. And you find that person and she runs it for you. You give her free rent.

John Harcar (16:33.623)
Mmm.

John Harcar (16:37.846)
And that’s just a tenant before she moves into that, but that’s just a tenant.

Mike Stohler (16:41.204)
She’s just a tenant. I found the tenant.

John Harcar (16:44.588)
You found the Nancy or whatever, what’s that word? What’s the word they call the, you know, like the Karen, that’s the Karen. found the Karen. The mother hen.

Mike Stohler (16:45.698)
I the Karen. I call her to the mother hen, man. It’s like, you come into my roost, you better behave.

John Harcar (16:58.368)
And all Karen’s out there, we love you, trust me, this was just a joke. Bye.

Mike Stohler (17:01.954)
But you find that person and then it’s like, hey, is anyone here good at maintenance? So that’s what I did first is I stopped going every day. I stopped, you know, she collected the checks, she made sure. And I was like, hey, we have some apartments coming up. Find people that you want as your neighbors. And she would bring people in. So that’s how it kind of started. And that was an easy way. was, you know, give her free rent. You know, give the maintenance guy free rent. I didn’t have anything out of the pocket.

John Harcar (17:22.551)
Smart.

John Harcar (17:27.746)
Yeah.

Mike Stohler (17:31.362)
It didn’t hit me that much. Then as you get bigger, the CPAs are extremely good, extremely important. The eviction attorney, don’t find just an attorney, find one that specializes in evictions. And then you start, as I got bigger, I actually got into a really good property management group. And then I played golf and I was fine. Then I was like, hey, I show up once a month at these places.

John Harcar (17:45.463)
Right.

John Harcar (17:51.96)
Good.

Mike Stohler (18:00.342)
just to make sure that nothing’s happening. And that’s where I got was I was no longer working in the business.

John Harcar (18:07.306)
Working on it instead. Yeah, that’s where we want to be. What were some of the the troubles or or or things you ran into as you grew your but you know as you went from one to five to hundred to fifteen hundred?

Mike Stohler (18:13.698)
You don’t have…

Yeah.

Yeah, banks, you know, were number one. You go to one bank and I forget what it was. They only allow you four or five loans per bank. You know, there’s some rule out there that, know, unless you do like a portfolio loan. So then you find another bank, then you find another bank. And the hardest part is as I grew was just how am I going to manage?

John Harcar (18:37.891)
Yep.

Mike Stohler (18:51.262)
all of these things and all these people. So I got an office, had the people in my office that were the key contributors, the stakeholders. And then it was just…

I’m a nice guy, but there’s also the business. know, and then the hardest thing for me was being really hard on people. Okay, because this is a business. Don’t take this personally, but it’s a business. Get your ass in gear. You know, that was another thing. And just keeping on top, I had to learn how to now manage employees and keep them honest, you know, not like they’re going to steal from me, but

John Harcar (19:10.606)
Yeah.

John Harcar (19:19.565)
Yes.

John Harcar (19:25.187)
Yep.

Mike Stohler (19:38.454)
just keep you show up to work you do this this is what you’re doing the scheduling keep them on track and just doing all that more of the delegation part of keeping everyone on on the same page and doing what they need to do.

John Harcar (19:41.024)
Great. Keep them on track.

John Harcar (19:51.362)
Got it. So you sold the portfolio and you decided to go into hotels. Why hotels?

Mike Stohler (19:59.01)
Yeah. Great question. You know, I had a quick story. I had this big group out of Idaho. They came in, to say, hey, I want to buy your apartment. So I’m like, nope, I am golfing. I am having fun. I finally built the life I want to. And they came back three times and I’m like, I’m not going to do it. And they said, well, we’re going to be in Phoenix. Let’s meet at IHOP. And I’m like, oh, that sounds like an Idaho group. You know, they’ve got millions and millions and millions of dollars when IHOP is like a pancake house.

And,

John Harcar (20:29.294)
Yeah, I I live in Boise.

Mike Stohler (20:31.778)
Yeah, there you go. Well, they finally gave me that price that I’m like going, man, I’ve never had, I didn’t even dream of this type of money, know, small kid in Indiana. So ladies and gentlemen, it’s all about networking. It’s always about going out. There’s some type of a RIA, you know, here it’s as RIA, Arizona RIA, there’s Idaho RIAs, there’s RIAs in every state. Go to them, go to networking, go to events, go to conferences, meet people.

Don’t be shy. And so I found this guy that I’d known before that was in hotels. And I was like, wow, I didn’t even know people could own hotels. I mean, that’s how naive I was. And of course he was Indian. But his last name was not Patel. That’s an inside joke, that 96 % of the hotels are owned by Patels. Inside joke for all the Indian people. But I just sat down, took him out for coffee.

John Harcar (21:21.186)
Yeah.

Mike Stohler (21:32.217)
and got to know what the differences and there’s a lot of differences. Hotels are not real estate. It’s a business. Yeah, it happens to sit on real estate, but there’s nothing real estate about it. And especially if you have franchises like I do. So I told myself, I’ve got a wad of cash that is now getting ready to expire with my 1031. Go find me some hotels really quick. But here’s the caveat. I don’t want you to teach me everything.

John Harcar (21:40.462)
It’s a business, right? Yeah.

John Harcar (21:56.142)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Stohler (22:02.21)
how to buy it, what you’re looking at. I’m going to be your wingman the entire time. And then I want you to run them, because I don’t know anything about it. You’re going teach me how to run them. And I can’t afford to give you a salary. I could, but I didn’t want to. It’s just me. But I said, I’ll give you like a property management fee. And then what I said, what I’m going to do is when we start selling these properties, I’m going to give you a cut at the end.

John Harcar (22:10.008)
right?

John Harcar (22:19.594)
Right, it’s okay.

Mike Stohler (22:32.905)
So he has kind of like a profit sharing. He an equity stake. So I knew that if he has skin in the game on the back end, he’s going to run them well. And then he’ll make millions.

John Harcar (22:35.626)
Sure. Equity stake.

John Harcar (22:43.544)
Yeah.

John Harcar (22:46.85)
What you think are some of the biggest hurdles of moving up to that asset class? Like what are the biggest differences in that asset class? Besides the fact that you mentioned before, it’s a business really, not necessarily real estate.

Mike Stohler (22:58.944)
Yeah, so the biggest thing is, are you hearing something in the background? Okay, it must be on my side. For some reason, there’s music coming in, so.

John Harcar (23:05.879)
No.

John Harcar (23:13.283)
yeah, that’s weird. No, not on my side. I don’t hear anything.

Mike Stohler (23:16.162)
They’re just quit. Edit that part out.

John Harcar (23:21.902)
No, we don’t. We like to keep it natural. But anyways, go ahead. Finish.

Mike Stohler (23:26.39)
So what happened was…

The biggest thing is when you look at franchises, Hilton, Marriott, whoever it is, they’re not going to give any Joe Schmo keys to a franchise. So you have to qualify, you have to have experience. So what I found out is Vic, my partner in these, he actually had to be on the lease, he had to be actual the partner. And so that’s the biggest thing is they’re not going to give, I don’t care how many multifamily doors you have,

John Harcar (23:51.436)
Okay.

Mike Stohler (23:57.64)
Hilton’s not going to give you anything. These franchises aren’t going to give you anything. The second thing is you have a lot of vendors. have probably 20, 25 different vendors now. You have the breakfast foods, the maintenance, HD Supply. have all these different pieces. House cleaning. Now I have lot of expenses. A lot more employees. Benefits. All of sudden it’s like, wow, I’m having to deal with all this sort of stuff.

John Harcar (24:00.8)
Sure.

John Harcar (24:12.566)
house cleaning all that stuff.

Mike Stohler (24:26.082)
third party bookings, you know, it’s like, and then you realize, you know, the booking.com’s travel hosties and then they get commissions and everyone gets commissions. And I’m like, you know, it’s just, it’s like this tornado coming at you on, the differences. And then what type of people, you know, are coming in and then, you know, you get into what kind of price points do you want to be at?

John Harcar (24:39.534)
Right?

Mike Stohler (24:50.53)
It’s kind of like gas stations where you have four or five gas stations around. They’re always kind of switching prices and trying to compete with each other. So you have your competitors set. I that’s just, I can name a hundred different things that are different.

John Harcar (24:56.929)
Right, right,

John Harcar (25:02.327)
sure.

If someone wanted to get into doing hotels or let’s just say real estate as a whole, I mean hotels, what kind of advice would you give? Resources would you recommend tools they should look out for?

Mike Stohler (25:16.578)
Yeah. The biggest thing is get a mentor. You know, don’t just buy it. Contact myself, contact someone that you know, you know, that is in hotels and have them, you know, kind of show you the ropes. There are some lobbying groups and different, there’s a HOA and, you know, big groups, they have free educational material. They just have these different things.

Get to know the biggest thing is if you ever do buy a hotel or want to build a hotel You really need to put the correct type and the correct franchise in The location, know, that’s something that I learned also. You don’t put a Marriott in a small town wherever off of a highway Okay where you know, what’s the best thing is a limited service with truck driver parking

John Harcar (26:06.69)
Hmm.

John Harcar (26:16.034)
Yep.

Mike Stohler (26:16.81)
free internet, free breakfast, and then they’re gone. And those hotels just stay booked. You don’t put a fancy hotel in a town of 3,000. Nice restaurant. That stuff is not going to work. So that’s another thing that I learned that is really one of the other big things. And there’s not a lot of educational stuff out there as like how to buy a hotel.

John Harcar (26:19.267)
Yep.

John Harcar (26:23.928)
with a nice restaurant in there and yeah.

Got it. Cool.

John Harcar (26:45.922)
Mm.

Mike Stohler (26:46.636)
telling me I should write a book, how to go from multifamily to hotels.

John Harcar (26:52.78)
That could be a good one. That could be a good A. I mean, you got some time now, don’t you?

Mike Stohler (26:57.514)
Yeah, well, I’ve got some time. Yeah, I’m spending the week, you know, up at our mountain house and, you know, fiddling around. But yeah, that’s just one of the big differences. It’s a big enough leap. It’s not like going from houses to multifamily houses to storage unit. It’s a big enough leap where I would say don’t do it unless you have someone with you.

John Harcar (27:02.87)
So awesome. So awesome.

John Harcar (27:18.99)
You’re prepared or you have that meant. Well, and that’s been a big theme of almost every podcast I’ve been on. When I ask folks that same question is like, get a mentor. It’s going to shorten your learning curve. It’s going to help you avoid mistakes because they already made them and they know how to tell you to avoid those pitfalls.

Mike Stohler (27:26.86)
Yeah.

Mike Stohler (27:35.532)
Exactly.

John Harcar (27:36.524)
Mike, you shared a ton of great information. I love your journey, man. I love your story. I think you should write a book. I think that would be the next evolution of your journey. if folks want to get in touch with you, they want to talk about whether it’s multifamily, whether it’s hotels, whatever it might be, how do they reach you?

Mike Stohler (27:53.41)
Yeah, great question. have a website. It’s gatewaype.com. P is in private equity gatewaype.com. I’m on LinkedIn. Go there a lot. I have my own podcast, The Richer Geek. And it’s a lot like John’s. It’s all these different ways to diversify portfolios. It’s not just real estate, but all these different things that you can diversify out of, you know,

John Harcar (28:11.694)
Cool.

John Harcar (28:17.55)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Stohler (28:22.678)
your stocks and bonds where you can put money into it. But it’s been a lot of fun and yeah, reach out and say that you found me on John’s podcast and love to talk to you.

John Harcar (28:25.495)
awesome.

John Harcar (28:34.638)
Yeah, that’d be awesome. And guys, I definitely encourage you to, if you have any interest in getting into the hotel game. Mike, thank you again. Folks, I hope you guys got some good nuggets. I know I did. Key theme, think, on here is if you’re going to get into any asset class that’s like a hotel or something like get a mentor. Get someone that can lead you the way. I hope you guys enjoyed today’s show. I know I sure did. And I’ll see you guys on the next one. Cheers.

Mike Stohler (28:58.914)
Pleasure.