How Interior Design Boosts Airbnb ROI with Lisa Wood

Lisa Wood (00:00)
When I learned about short-term rental design, that completely shifted my mindset on what I do. love, granted, I have got and had the best clients. They are so loving and educated and respectful. And we have had great, great projects together. But what I really find fun is this short-term rental design because I love real estate. I love interior design and I love hospitality.

And so that is my trifecta. And I get to help not only do it for ourselves, because we’ve got two properties out in Branson, Missouri, but I can help investors understand when they’re coming into this realm, what does a good design look like and how can we get you the best return on investment when we are evaluating competing product properties and products and what they have, what you can have, and how you can go about creating something that people walk into.

We have a ring camera on our properties and I would say 98 % of the people that when they walk in, first impression is, wow, this is beautiful. And to hear that kind of feedback and it’s just, it’s heartwarming honestly. So I love it.

Quentin Edmonds (02:47)
everyone. Welcome to the Investor Fuel podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds. And today I am joined by someone who I have already enjoyed talking to and I know you’re going to love hearing from. She’s done some amazing things as a real estate investor, but one of the things she loved to do is an interior design.

And y’all, I messed up earlier because I thought interior decorating, interior design was the same. And I come to tell you that it is not. And I would love for her to talk a little bit on that when I give her the floor. But listen, she’s phenomenal. I think she is such a great communicator. She is someone who can keep things calm in a time of crisis. And so I am so excited to have y’all here.

My friend, Ms. Lisa Wood, how are you today, ma’am?

Lisa Wood (03:39)
Well, thank you, Quintin. How are you?

Quentin Edmonds (03:40)
That’s

good. I’m doing great. How was the intro? I didn’t over sell that. I think I was spot on. What you think? I think I was spot on. Absolutely. Absolutely. Listen, I am excited to hear what you have to say to our listeners. know they’re going to get a great take away from this. And so I just want to dive in. Of course, some people are meeting you for the first time and are familiar with your world and what you do.

Lisa Wood (03:45)
I feel honored. Thank you very much.

Quentin Edmonds (04:08)
And so if you don’t mind, give us a short version of what your main focus is these days. And if you would tell us what markets you’re operating in.

Lisa Wood (04:16)
Happy to, I am a luxury interior designer and also a real estate investor. My husband, when he retired from his IT job, we started that path about four years ago and we focus on multifamily, long-term and short-term. For my design business, I focus on residential and then, and a lot of it is ground up and or large scale renovations. And then I also have shifted into short-term interior.

short-term rental interior design because there is a nuance to short-term vacation rentals that can help provide a better return on investment for investors. But they have to know what that is and how to execute a design plan to achieve that so they don’t look like a cookie cutter version of everybody else. And that’s what I do. And I’m in Asheville, North Carolina. But because of technology, I can really work design projects nationwide.

Quentin Edmonds (05:09)
I love it, I love it. What, what, I’m trying to see how to ask this, like ask this question. Cause I don’t want to say what motivates you more, but what is it that you like more knowing? You like the investing side of it or you like the interior design? Like what really gets your passion really going? What part of that?

Lisa Wood (06:12)
When I learned about short-term rental design, that completely shifted my mindset on what I do. love, granted, I have got and had the best clients. They are so loving and educated and respectful. And we have had great, great projects together. But what I really find fun is this short-term rental design because I love real estate. I love interior design and I love hospitality.

And so that is my trifecta. And I get to help not only do it for ourselves, because we’ve got two properties out in Branson, Missouri, but I can help investors understand when they’re coming into this realm, what does a good design look like and how can we get you the best return on investment when we are evaluating competing product properties and products and what they have, what you can have, and how you can go about creating something that people walk into.

We have a ring camera on our properties and I would say 98 % of the people that when they walk in, first impression is, wow, this is beautiful. And to hear that kind of feedback and it’s just, it’s heartwarming honestly. So I love it.

Quentin Edmonds (07:28)
I love it. love it. I know it’s not easy in this climate. I know some people can give you pushback. They can look at the cost. can look like, you know, is this really worth it? what’s the difference? Is this material really better than this material? Like, I can imagine you get all kinds of different things. And what I, you know, you’ve told me from your friends and what I’ve actually had experience is your calm demeanor. You’ve been a communicator. You’ve been able to

educate the people on the best process. And so I guess my question is like, does that come from? What keeps you centered? What keeps you running smoothly when things can sometimes go chaotic or there could be some tension or some friction. What keeps you centered and how do you operate keeping things smooth?

Lisa Wood (08:15)
God, I mean that my faith on how to live my life. I grew up with a father who had quite a temper and that dictated the mood in our home and I did not want to carry that on for my children. And so I got very much into personal development and how can I rise above and not take these, bad habits and trans…

Quentin Edmonds (08:16)
Woo!

Lisa Wood (08:38)
for him into my own family as I was starting it. So I’ve done so much in that realm. And so through my prayer readings and my faith and constantly learning from experts and how to stay so grounded and not let things get to you, because as a designer, I wear a lot of hats. I’m a therapist. I’m a coach. I’m a creative problem solver.

You know, have to work with so many different personalities and in order to achieve the best outcome for my clients, I’ve got to be a grounding point for them to turn to. And that’s what I try to do. I’m not perfect by any means, but it is, I work at it a lot every day.

Quentin Edmonds (09:17)
Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely, absolutely. No, I believe I can tell me. Of course, we haven’t known each other for all the long time of maybe 30 minutes or so, but I can tell. And not to make this type of show, but you said something, talking about your dad with his temper. And my vulnerable moment is my wife, who I love so much. She has a sin.

Tone, tact, and timing. Tone, tact, and timing. Watch your tone. When to say something and the time to say it and watch how you say it. And her number one issue with me is my tone. It’s the way I say things.

And I have come to realize the majority of the time when my tone is not controlled, has to do with everything to do with my lack of confidence. My lack of confidence of how to share what’s really on my heart.

how to really share my perspective. Maybe something didn’t go right, you know, within my life, you know, a moment that I thought was going to be a great moment maybe didn’t go. And my tone, it translated into my tone. And my wife has to tell me all the time, watch my tone. And I hear you, like that self-development piece, it’s so important for you to recognize it and then dig in and to say, hey, why are you doing this? Why is this this way?

And so, you know, that kind of leads me to my next question. You know, things doesn’t always go right. You know, you’ve been around, I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of deals. There’s moments when things get real, things go sideways. So give me a time, if you don’t mind, a story when you had to pivot and again, you know, how did you say so come and diffuse it? So give me a time when a moment got real and you had to kind of put that diffusing skill into play.

Lisa Wood (11:40)
Well, pertaining to real estate, I guess we ought to just keep it there. have a, we decided to get into long-term rentals and short-term rentals to take more active control of our money, because we were in a number of deals, like 21 multifamily deals, and we were really aggressive going after that and trying to build that portfolio. And we had about six major hits on some because of

taxes changing, interest rates, bridge loans, variable rate loans, and we didn’t know what we didn’t know. So we decided we need to be more hands-on. we bought this duplex out in Chattanooga, and we had tenants on one side who did not want to renovate because they didn’t want their rent to go up to what we were going to have to put at the other side. They were paying way low, way too low. But anyhow, so we…

We were renovating this one side and I was very detailed with my contractor. He was a great communicator, which was a blessing because I’m in Asheville, he’s in Chattanooga. I can’t get there every day. he, so he was very appreciative of the detail of scope of work that I gave. We were going to keep the cabinets because we didn’t necessarily need to replace them. They just needed to be cleaned, but we had a problem with some mold in the bathroom.

There was mold up on the sheetrock and that was gonna need to be changed. And he told the contractors, he said, remove the mold. Well, they found mold elsewhere too. Before we knew it, they had gutted the entire house, threw our cabinets away. It was down to the studs. You could literally walk in the house and see from the front all the way to the back. And I was like,

Whoa, now our renovation cost just went pch. And I, he goes, Lisa, I hate to even make this phone call to you. I don’t even know what to say. And I said, what happened, Keith? He goes, I think there was a language barrier. I said, where are our cabinets? They’re gone. So I guess somebody took them because they were in pretty decent condition. And I went.

Quentin Edmonds (13:26)
Yeah, absolutely.

Lisa Wood (13:46)
Okay, we hung up the phone and I wandered, I think I wandered around in the stupor for a little bit. I might’ve said some choice words and you know, we had to figure it out, we had to move forward. So we pivoted and we increased our budget much to our not liking, but you do what you gotta do and things happen and so.

You know, my ultimate goal was I wanted to have a place that we were proud of, that we could put a family in that was going to be safe and comfortable and give them a quality of life that they were not going to find elsewhere. And we ended up turning it into a great property. Everything was rewired. All the plumbing issues were fixed because we could see them and all of the walls were shored up where we needed. And we were able to make some structural changes by that point. And the flow was better. We got better storage. There were so many things we could do.

So it ended up winning, but the lemons out of lemonade or lemonade out of lemons, things like that happen, especially in real estate.

Quentin Edmonds (14:38)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yes, ma’am.

No, thank you. That was a phenomenal story. Thank you so much. You turned what seemed to maybe be a setback into a setup, right? A setup for, like you said, you was able to do soap plumbing, a better use of the spacing. That’s honestly, that’s what…

separates people from just doing stuff short term and those that’s going to be in it for the long term for the long haul. And so that’s, that’s amazing. I mean, so I have, you know, I have a lot of questions, but you know, we can transcribe this podcast. So I just want to know if you could give me the exact words that you said, you know, when you seen the stuff going bad. You said, you said choice words, but I want to know if you can give me the exact, the exact word. Cause we want to transcribe this Ms. Lisa. So you can see.

Lisa Wood (16:09)
I don’t think you want to know the choice words that

came up. My husband calls me a sailor at times. I mean, I may be calm, but…

Quentin Edmonds (16:15)
Yes. No, I love it. Yeah. I love it. You you come off as a consummate problem solver. So I would love to know, what are you solving next? What are you scaling next? Like, what’s your next real goal?

Lisa Wood (16:16)
I can say I’m one of the best of them, I think.

I’m very excited. We’ve got a community I just started over on Facebook called the Inspired Home Collective. I’ve been growing my social media account on Instagram and YouTube and getting back into YouTube and also LinkedIn. I want to help more people through the renovation process and the build process. As a designer, I can only work with so many people and I wanted to find a way that I could help more. My grandmother was a designer as well. My great grandfather was a builder.

and it’s just in my blood. And in order to do this, I wanted to create a kind of a toolkit that people could use to help walk through the process because not everybody can afford to hire an interior designer. And if they can’t, what are the steps that they need to and what are the clear steps? Because HGTV and the TV shows and the flipping shows, they don’t always give a realistic picture because nobody’s gonna get a project done in 30 minutes, you know?

And so what are those hurdles like when we’ve had our cabinets thrown away and all the sheetrock ripped out because they interpreted a direction one way and it was meant another. So how do you create that clarity? How do you create the realistic budgets and timelines? where do you put the investment? Because you have to think about this big picture.

And it’s not just about following trends. It’s really getting down to the core. What are your family values? How can you make this design fit those values? So then that home is going to reflect you easily in so many ways from beauty to aesthetics to materials to function. And then you’re able to really have that because you are in your home a lot of time, a lot of hours out of the day. And so it’s I I’m excited to have this community and then get this toolkit ready.

We still haven’t really even put a name to the toolkit, so we’re working on that, but we’ll have that available for people that they can purchase if they think that that’s gonna help them. And then if not, just be a part of our free community on Facebook, and we’ll see if we can grow it that way too, and help a lot of people.

Quentin Edmonds (18:30)
Absolutely. I love it. I love it. I mean, because you already got things in place, you you’re doing a short term, doing a long term, doing the interior design. Then you like, listen, we got this, but I also want to educate people. So you go ahead, you say, hey, the Inspire Home Collective, let’s put this in place. And you’re building tools that’s going to help people. mean, this is incredible. And I mean, you know, you’ve been in it long enough that you know the next move can either compound things or it can create total chaos.

I know you’ve been at it enough to know that. But I love the fact how you like, no, let’s keep putting ourself in a position to help people. And so it sounds like to me that you value relationships. So I want to ask you this. You know, of course you got people that are listening, they’re early in their journey, they’re looking to level up. And I think it would benefit for them to hear when it comes to building relationships and growing your network. What’s the biggest difference for you?

Well, what’s made the biggest difference for you in doing that?

Lisa Wood (19:26)
For me, it’s been staying curious and not being afraid to talk to people. My husband does not believe it, but I was a total introvert. I came out in high school. But I love staying curious about people because you never know where they’re coming from and what they do. There are things that I’ve learned that people do I had no idea existed.

And if we can stay curious about people, then we can be better connectors. I find it to be a very fun connector. love matching people up. But what is that saying? Your network is your net worth. And it’s very true. God puts people in our lives for a reason, and it may be for a short encounter, but

How curious can you be about that person? Because it is amazing. Not only can you walk away with good information, but maybe there’s going to be some word that you say that helps them, and it helps them level up. So I think curiosity is the biggest beautiful trait to never, ever lose and to keep practicing till the day we go up.

Quentin Edmonds (20:26)
I love that. I love

that. When you said that, I covered my face, because that’s the same experience I had with my wife. She tells me for all the way up until high school, maybe even college, she was an introvert. She was quiet. You could not get her to do anything. Of course, you don’t know my wife, but just imagine yourself, Miss Lisa. my wife, I’m like, what? Babe, are you serious? And I mean, she is…

And she, I call her, we both like connecting. I call her the queen of resources. This woman can connect anybody with anything. And so just hearing you say that, it made me just light up. like, that’s amazing. That is amazing. Absolutely. Yeah. So listen, yes, yes, yes he is. Yes he is. Yes he is. So look, I only got two questions left. This question, you know, I like to throw out every now and then, especially when I’m talking to somebody like you.

Lisa Wood (21:05)
Yeah, she sounds amazing.

you

Quentin Edmonds (21:18)
What has it, is there anything that you have been musing lately, something that you’ve been thinking about, something that maybe that can inspire people or encourage people? I find you very encouraging. Like I said, I love the way you communicate. And just for people that’s listening, what kind of encouragement maybe that you can give people or a thought maybe you’ve been thinking about that you think can inspire people?

Lisa Wood (21:39)
Well, I’m a big reader and there’s a book if people like to learn and grow their faith. There’s a book called the Book of Mysteries by Jonathan Cahn. I think that’s an excellent resource. Yeah, and it ties in the Old Testament to the New Testament and it’s a story of a gentleman who’s walking and just trying to get enlightenment and it’s just powerful. I find so much

Quentin Edmonds (21:51)
Ooh, I love Jonathan Cronin. Ooh, Book of Mystery, I’m sorry. Book of Mystery, I’m so sorry.

Lisa Wood (22:05)
encouragement and I’m using it a day through the year, know, like a year through the Bible type thing, but that and then being being around like-minded people where you can get your questions answered and not be afraid to ask them because You know, I still feel like we’re early investors only being in it for years and we’ve still got so much to learn we’ve had some hard lessons but to to get around get into a good group where you can

You can learn from others. And if you’re in the industry, go to trade shows, go see what’s out there and and and just stay curious because it’s amazing how you can with the right people being able to grow your net worth by your network and and just saying that I it’s just people it’s communication. Get good at communication. And if you don’t know how to communicate good, there’s a

great guy online on YouTube who’s exploded. name is Jonathan Fisher and he is a podcaster as well, but he’s an attorney that trains other attorneys how to communicate. now, and he believes that you’re just one good communication from changing your relationship or changing your, the quality of your relationships or something like that. And he has, he Jefferson Fisher, I’m sorry, not Jonathan Jefferson. Yeah. And, and it’s just,

Quentin Edmonds (23:18)
Sure, because I’m okay.

Lisa Wood (23:21)
You know, it is really good to learn. Don’t take things so personally, but go learn how to be a good communicator and a great networker and have fun. Stay curious and have fun getting to know other people.

Quentin Edmonds (23:33)
I want to double down on what you just said. Just one of my mentors told me, he said, instead of getting angry, get curious. He was like, it’s hard to stay angry when you’re curious. It’s hard to be curious and angry at the same time. And so everything you just said, get curious, that’ll lead to better communication when you’re curious, because you’ll ask more questions. You will stop taking things so to heart. And I’m just wanting to double down. I’m just telling y’all, I am.

I’m in recovery right now. I am recovering from not being a curious person and I’m learning. What did you mean by when you said that? You know what? Maybe, you know, I heard, I heard this. Is that what you meant? And so staying curious is wonderful, wonderful advice. Thank you so much for that, Ms. Lisa. I appreciate you. Now, listen, we’re about to wrap up. If someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, maybe collaborate with you, learn from you.

hire you, what’s the best way for them to get in contact with

Lisa Wood (24:28)
My website is a great place and it’s just Lisa J. J for Jeanette. Wood, one wood, like a tree, singletree.com. then if you’re interested in our Facebook group, then you can come join the Inspired Home Collective and it’s just a free space to share and ask questions in a safe place. That’s what it’s intended to be to help you get the home of your dreams.

And then I’m on different socials as well, but that’ll all be on my website as well.

Quentin Edmonds (24:57)
Absolutely. I love it. There she is everyone. Miss Lisa Wood. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time, your story, your perspective. We definitely need people, more people like you in this space. So, Miss Lisa, Miss Wood, thank you so much for being here with us today. I so appreciate it.

Lisa Wood (25:16)
Thank you so much. This was fun. I really appreciate the opportunity to know you.

Quentin Edmonds (25:19)
Absolutely.

Absolutely. And listen, for those tuning in, listen, I know you got great value from this. So what are you waiting for? Make sure you are subscribed. You do not want to miss these type of conversations like I had today with Ms. Lisa Wood. Thank you all so much for tuning in. And until the next time, you have a great one. Bye bye.