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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros Podcast, Cody Crabb interviews Bill Faeth, a serial entrepreneur, former pro golfer, and real estate investor with a $24 million short-term rental portfolio. Bill shares his journey from startups, golf, and long-term rentals to building a thriving short-term rental business. He emphasizes the importance of treating real estate as a business, conducting deep market research, taking the “two extra steps” for competitive advantage, and creating a life plan to guide investment decisions and achieve financial freedom.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Bill Faeth (00:00)
Thereis, and I believe that those two extra steps, like I told you, I send a welcome video to my new guest, right? Or when I ask you, what do you do with a new lead that comes in, right? And those are the things that…
Cody Crabb (00:08)
huh.Bill Faeth (00:10)
AI are not going to be able to replicate. So if you want to create a position of strength, because you think that AI is going to make human beings weak, it’s not. Look at the things that AI cannot do today or into the future, and there’s going be very few. So when you nail those things that are going away and do them really, really well and excel at them, that’s how we’re going to be able to create our competitive advantage against AI.Cody Crabb (02:05)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Cody with Investor Fuel and today I’m joined by Bill Faeth Now we had a little bit of conversation before we started here and right away I was like, this is gonna be a good episode. ⁓ He lists all these accomplishments and then he tells me, and by the way I was a pro golfer and I’m just like, what? And then it even escalated from there. So you’re gonna love this one. ⁓I’ll let you introduce yourself, Bill, because you’re going to do a much better job than I will. ⁓ Bill Faeth, thanks for joining us today.
Bill Faeth (02:35)
Yeah, Cody, I appreciate you having me. Number one, if you guys are listening out there, there’s no pitch. I’m not selling you anything at the end of this, just FYI. Cody, if you’ll put in my Instagram, BillFaeth, F-A-E-T-H 73, DM me. I’m happy to answer questions. I don’t use an AI chat bot. It’s me, right? So I’m the real deal. ⁓ My history, Cody, I’m a recovering fat guy. I got healthy about when I turned 50, about two and a half years ago. ⁓ I’ve slept with Tiger Woods over a hundred times in my life.I have done 43 startups, over $2 billion in sales, 37 exits. own a $24 million personal with my wife who’s in the room right behind me. Short-term rental portfolio. We are just finishing a hotel in downtown New Orleans. I’ve been in a lot of different industries, but I’ve also been investing in real estate. I made $181,000 when I was 19. I had a full ride to UCLA. was a third ranked golfer coming in the world coming out of high school. Went to UCLA, dropped out after three months and made $181,000 in my first year.
playing golf and so I bought a hundred and sixty thousand dollar duplex lived in half of it and then started house hacking. That was my gosh I am 52 that was a long long time ago 33 years ago and like many people I migrated into the short-term rental space because I was in long-term beforehand and I had a good friend of mine Jeff he owned an electrical company in Nashville we were playing golf one day and he just showed me you know said man I started doing this short-term rental thing in a condo in downtown
Nashville and he was doing like seven eight thousand dollars a month when the rent back then in like 2013-14 was going for like fifteen hundred bucks, eighteen hundred bucks a month right and that’s kind of what got me into short-term rentals and then we moved all of our LTR stuff into short-term rentals with our first one down in Gulf Shores.
Cody Crabb (04:21)
Hmm.Wow, okay. So with that resume that you just shared, it sounds like you could have pretty much had your pick of industries. Like you had some talent and success in other places, or at least you had some interest at least. I’m curious, what is it that kind of brought you and landed you in short-term rentals specifically?
Bill Faeth (05:30)
It’s literally the cash flow versus long-term rents, mid-term rents, commercial, industrial space. Right before we got into short-term rentals, just built, did a gold LEED certified commercial industrial building for one of my businesses in Nashville. ⁓ I’ve done a lot of construction stuff and it was just, so the appreciation stays the same, whether you’re long-term, mid-term or short-term. The debt pay down can be the same if you have some profitability in long-term, but here’sis the deal there’s so many people that have been in long-term rentals and hey I’m doing 18 I make $18,000 a year really that’s your net profit no I’m the rents 1500 a month
Okay, well then what is your mortgage? What’s your insurance? And at the end of the day, they’re making $500 a month, right? It’s an absolute waste of time. So what I learned is I like building the equity in the business and then the short-term rental space or really in real estate, you have four parameters that play into this. Number one’s cashflow. One A, I’m not even gonna classify it as two as appreciation, right? So number three is gonna be debt pay down. So a lot of investors, even if they’ve been
doing
this a long time, which doesn’t qualify them to become an expert, by the way. ⁓
They don’t understand the amortization schedules between like a traditional Fannie and Freddie loan versus going to a local commercial bank that’s gonna be a little bit more aggressive, ⁓ know, doing a DSCR product. And they don’t know how that ties into, you know, their debt pay down, but also most importantly, how long they hold properties. So I only average holding a property 3.2 years. So I’m looking for very fast amortization on…
Cody Crabb (06:53)
Hmm.Bill Faeth (07:13)
⁓ The principal side as opposed to if I go do like a 40 year ⁓ Interest only on a 30 year AM and a DSCR product, you know, I’ve got no principal going to I might have a lower payment But I’ve got no principal pay down right and then number four is the tax benefits So what happens is is when you check these boxes all four of them You’re really expanding the the annual wealth that you’re building in that property, right? So that’s why I only own properties for an average of 3.2 years⁓ You know, there’s nothing wrong with buying and holding for 20, but I promise you I can make more money by flipping out of that property and repositioning. So I’ve taken the commercial, you know, the multifamily type of mindset of taking investors money, getting to reposition, paying off the investors, buying them out, you know, then the GP owns the asset repositions the most important thing there for the investors, right? I do that. I take that same approach with my short term rentals. So that’s why I’ve got to check all four of those boxes to really
the right super property to invest into.
Cody Crabb (08:15)
Yeah, it sounds like you’ve got quite a system. You’ve kind of really narrowed down exactly what you’re looking for there. ⁓ And I’d love to hear it. Because you said, you said just now that it’s not about years in the business. You specifically said that, so I’m curious what you’d say.Bill Faeth (08:21)
Well, you know why that is?It’s
not, I mean, I’ve been doing this with my wife for 10 years, actually 11 now. It’s because we failed. So we got lucky in our first short-term rental investment, right? And we picked a unique property in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and it was pre-COVID, and we got appreciation, and right at the start of COVID, we sold and blah, blah. But our second one, we lost 126,000 bucks. And at that time, in like…
2015, 16, we were recovering. We almost went bankrupt in the Great Recession. Then we got hit by the, not at them, but it was actually after the flood in Nashville in 2010. So we’re coming out of the Great Recession or whatever they called it. And then May 3rd of 2010, the Nashville flood hits and we lose our number one business, our glow in the dark miniature golf course, our number one location in the country. We created this industry.
Cody Crabb (09:16)
There’s another one. Youjust throw something in like that. I’m like, what? I’m sorry, go ahead.
Bill Faeth (09:19)
Well,yeah, we created the glow in the dark miniature golf industry and shopping malls, you know, 21 years ago, actually 23 years ago. And then we lost our number one location, which was 600 grand a year for us. And, you know, we almost went bankrupt. So it’s the failures and what my friend Dean Graziosi, I’m sure a lot of your listeners know who Dean Graziosi is called success tax. ⁓
Right? The question is, is do we learn from it and apply into the next venture? So if remember, I told you, I’ve done 43 startups, I’ve had 37 exits. That means that I have had how many failures? Six, six failures. Now that’s a pretty solid run rate. You know, I’m batting probably about 3000, but you know what? Those six failures are the ones that have absolutely transcended my life, the way what me and my wife are doing today. So.
Cody Crabb (10:09)
Yeah.Bill Faeth (10:09)
Like literally,the big thing I think that has to be the driver for people is why are you doing this? Like almost everybody that gets into real estate has a W-2 or they have their own business and they get into it kind of as the side hustle. But here’s the number one thing I’ll share with people that do that. And that’s how I started. You have to treat real estate like a legitimate business.
You have to have P &Ls, you need to have balance sheets, you need to be doing marketing, you need to be doing sales, you need to be doing all of those things, because if you don’t, you are not going to maximize your return on investment.
Cody Crabb (11:19)
Yeah, wow, yeah, that’s true. I feel like that’s true. Yeah, the people treat it as like a, it’s just an investment and not necessarily ⁓ like a job. You know what mean? Like a business.Bill Faeth (11:28)
They look atit as a lifestyle asset or a vacation rental or, you know, it’s going to be my side hustle. Well, you better fucking work as hard on your side hustle as you’re working on your regular job or your regular business, right? Or you’re just wasting your fucking time.
Cody Crabb (11:31)
You’re right, yeah.Yeah, yeah,
yeah, that’s a good point. yeah, yeah, no notes. That’s a very good well said. So I’d be curious, when you’re picking a market, what are the deeper things that you feel like you check and that you do that other people skip and that gives you an advantage?
Bill Faeth (12:00)
Great question. So I’ve got 34,000 students that I teach how to do this, right? And every one of them sends me the Zillow link and a Performa when they first start in my program or before they even get into a program. And what happens is, is they get paralysis by analysis by going to running a Performa first. So I’ve created this thing called a super grader.Right? And I can send you the link. You can put it in the notes or whatever. It’s a free thing to where you go in and you analyze the market first to see the potential. Because what happens when we go to a perform and we go to AirDNA or Rabu or Mashweizer or any of these data tools to see what this condo that I’m sitting in, you know, AirDNA said this condo did $19,000. We’ll do $19,000 in revenue.
Cody Crabb (12:28)
Okay.Bill Faeth (12:45)
And I know Jamie Lane who runs it and you know, Kenny Bedwell who started SDR Insights has been in my mastermind since it started. understand. I know all that stuff, right? But I have the benchmarks of all of the historicals on my properties once running it like a business year over year that I live in the 152nd percentile of AirDNA.Right? So everybody looks at the 50th percentile, the 75th percentile, the 90th percentile. I know historically that I can buy something and when AirDNA says that max is out at the 90th percentile at 100 grand, I should be able to do $152,000 in revenue. So AirDNA said this would be 19 grand. Literally the one bedroom condo, ski and ski out here in Whitefish, Montana that I just got done snowboarding in this morning. And literally they said the seven condos in here were doing 19 grand a year on average. We did 92 in our first year.
because we take the two extra steps. Now, Whitefish Montana.
For your listeners, I’ve got $9 million invested into this place. I’ve got a one bedroom condo, a two bedroom condo. I’ve got an amazing property on a river with two acres, a three, two cabin. And we just bought a $2.7 million five bedroom and put 1.2 million cash into the renovation. It’s now, and so we talked about the appreciation, right? So I’m in for three, nine. I’m gonna take a guess on when we got done with it, what it was worth. I’ll give you the answer, 5.2 million.
Cody Crabb (14:03)
⁓ well, yeah.Bill Faeth (14:04)
Right.And so now I’m doing weddings there and I’m doing hosting my educational events in my event center that’s there and we’re doing short term rentals and
Cody Crabb (14:13)
See that’s yeah. Yeah. Yeah. YeahBill Faeth (14:15)
So I’m generating multiple revenue streams and we’re forecastingto do between 800 to $900,000 in revenue there. And the reason is, there, this is getting the long winded answer to answering your question, Cody. It’s not just about that data. That’s the T12s. That’s the trailing 12s. That’s, oh, if you would have owned the property last year, that’s what you might be able to do. It has nothing to do with what’s going to happen in 26 or 27 or 28. That’s the, this is the difference.
I always become friends, not just a relationship, but I become friends with the like number one player in the market. Here it’s a guy named Sean Avril. He owns the Whitefish Lodge, he owns the Flathead Lake Lodge, he owns the hotel, he’s got this mega hospitality company, right? And then I look at…
What other development is coming in? Discovery Land Management, the largest country club builder who built the Yellowstone Club and Maribel and Scottsdale and Iron Horse here came back into this market and is building a massive Marina golf course and trying to buy the secondary ski resort down there. David Goggan, if anybody’s heard of him, he’s one of the top five wealthiest people. He’s got 800 acres on the other side of our ski resort on the mountain and he’s building a Yellowstone Club over there. Right? So what’s that doing? That’s impacting a specific buy-bot.
Cody Crabb (15:54)
Yeah.Bill Faeth (16:07)
in this market. So if you guys are listening out there, come to Whitefish and think you’re gonna buy something at six or seven hundred thousand bucks. That is actually depreciating. The buy here is like 1.7 million to 3 million, right? So how do I find that out? I meet, I make friends, find out who the top players are, city council meetings, minutes for the last 12 to 24 months, planning and zoning, seeing what big developments have been permitted and what’s coming down the pipeline, but it all starts. you like in Park City, we’re just talking about the economicdevelopment division of Salt Lake City and Park City to know what’s happening with the Main Street lift from the Deer Valley expansion to see about the stuff that was happening in Winter Park, Colorado before people knew about it with that expansion. My number one market to invest into right now is make it having a huge expansion. ⁓ I started in Gulf Shores and I knew about the airport that just started flights this year five years ago. So I took my assets at that point that were in a sub market, Fort Morgan, Alabama, and pushed them to the heart of
West Beach which was right by the airport right so it’s that deeper research as we were talking about in the pre-interview that doing the two extra steps those are two small things taking two extra steps doing two small things that your competition is unwilling or incapable of doing.
Right? That’s all it is. That gives me the competitive advantage because I’m willing to, you know, put in like I told you, I’m going to put in that two extra minutes as opposed to just doing 20 minutes on the treadmill. I’m going to do two extra minutes. That gives me another 14 minute session every week to stay healthy. Right? It’s the welcome videos to my guests. The deeper research.
that other people are not doing to see where the market is headed in specific buy boxes and that directly ties into the appreciation rate. So a lot of people don’t think about appreciation. That house that’s worth 5.2 is gonna appreciate it seven and I mean, unless the war screws things up, but probably between six and a half to 8%. I have seven and a half percent annual appreciation. That’s $350,000 a year in appreciation.
That is over a million dollars in appreciation alone in three years. Hence why I typically hold properties for 3.2 years and then sell. And the interesting thing is this right here, this is a 500, like I don’t even remember, like $520,000 condo. In my 550 plan.
of how you build 250,000 dollars in net income with one upfront investment in five years. We have to reposition and you start with small properties. It started with this one. And then it rolled its way up to the $3 million property. I don’t just start at $3 million properties, right? I buy and hold things and then I reposition out of them and take that strip that the equity, which creates leverage. So if I look, if I can…
Tap the box for cash flow. Tap the box for appreciation. Tap the box for debt pay down. Tap the box for tax benefits. That property, that $5 million property is gonna yield me about $680,000 in tax benefits dollar for dollar.
Cody Crabb (18:59)
Hmm. Yeah, it seems like when you really, the point you seem to be making, one of the points you seem to be making is the little extra steps are sometimes the ones that make the difference, really.Bill Faeth (19:14)
It is, I mean, and it’s finding a way to gain a competitive advantage without having to put in an extra 30 hours a week, right? That’s all it is. And there’s these simple anecdotes that we can put into place. And I learned this, honestly. Can I tell you a quick story? Because I know you kind of asked me about this, right? So I said I slept with Tiger Woods over 100 times. And in junior golf,Cody Crabb (19:28)
Please do.Everyone’s been wondering about that since the intro.
Bill Faeth (19:37)
You know, his family didn’t have much money. My mom was a teacher in California. We didn’t have much money. So like Tiger and a guy named Chris Tidlin from Placentia, California, and Jason Gore, who now works with the PGA Tour and that type of stuff, we all traveled together and we would share rooms together. So the biggest event we had in Southern California, like non-national event.⁓ I’m 16 years old. ⁓ Tiger is I think 12 or 13 at that time. And he’s playing with the under 18s as I am, right? He’s playing up. And it was our Southern California Match Play Championship. So we had 150 guys play a round of golf and the top 64 qualify for match play. And I was just starting to get good. I wasn’t great at that point. And we were down. ⁓
I walk off the 18th green and I made a four foot birdie putt on a par five to shoot 71. The first time in a big tournament in Southern California ever posted an under par number. And it’s like three, four, two, six, 35, three, four, two, five, six, you know, whatever. Billy Faeth, 71, circled in red. And I couldn’t wait to run inside. But I knew my mother was sitting inside the cafe or the little restaurant thing. And she would have her menthol mountain, you know, her ashtray of two packs of
You know mentholated cigarettes sitting there and that just that smell makes me want to puke And I was so excited and I her hey come on. Let’s go look at the scoreboard. Let’s take a picture and There was two groups behind me and there’s this one scrawny little kid in a bucket hat and he passed out on the fringe walking up to the 18th green and Bob Livingston who ran the Southern California PGA ran over there with towels and water Got him. He was okay. They got him up off the ground
and he makes about a 10 foot putt and it was the first time I saw this and it was Eldrick who shot he comes in and I’m like Eldrick you okay how’s everything how’d you play ⁓ you know I bogeyed three but you know I scraped it around and I was able to shoot 64 what he literally just beat me by seven shots he’s 12
I’m 16 years and he’s not even going through puberty yet. You know, I just have my biggest thing. But here’s the lesson. We go inside, we have our cheeseburger, you know, we sit down Earl, I’ll call him Tiger, his name’s Eldrick, Eldrick, my mom, myself. And then my mom gives me $3 to go get like 25 golf balls and a Bikita token to go hit 25 golf balls. There’s nobody on the range. It’s just me and he goes to the putting green and he puts.
Cody Crabb (21:37)
Seriously, yeah.Bill Faeth (21:59)
I’m there screwing around, hitting funny shots, whatever. Phil Mickelson didn’t stay and hit balls. Chris Tidlin didn’t stay. Chris Riley Ryder-Cupper didn’t stay. Tiger stayed there. This was probably 3, 3.34 o’clock in the afternoon. Back in the hotel room, knock, knock, knock, about eight o’clock. And Tiger, hey, you want to come over and watch TV or something before we go to bed?We both had to play, you we started our match play the next morning. I’m like, yeah, we get over there and what have you been doing? Did you guys go out to dinner? no, we just got back from the course. So for the next five hours, five hours after shooting 64, 12 years old, I said, did your dad make you do that? No, I wanted to, I wanna practice. He’s all.
Cody Crabb (22:42)
there.Bill Faeth (22:43)
I forgot whoever Tom Smith, whoever he said, I’m going to crush Tom Smith tomorrow. At 12 that mentality was instilled. He did the two extra steps. He’s putting in that extra effort. And if any golfers are out there, he won 10 and eight the morning match 10 and eight. That means he won every single hole. He beat that Tom Smith, whoever the guy was. That’s not his real name, right? He won number one, number two, number three, number four, number five, number six, number seven, number eight, number nine made the turn. One number 10 matches over.Cody Crabb (22:52)
Yeah.Yeah.
Bill Faeth (23:09)
Didn’t have a chance. That’s through osmosis and through proximity and nobody had any idea what he was gonna turn into, right? I learned that and all the things that have been talked about him is that his dad pressured him, his dad forced him. No, that’s where his drive today, you know, the guy can’t even walk today and he’s still trying to make a comeback for the Masters in a couple of weeks, right? That’s where that self drive is. That’s that two extra steps. That’s what I learned.Cody Crabb (23:18)
Yeah.Bill Faeth (23:35)
through that experience. I’ll give you one more thing. Today was a big day for me, Day 61 on snowboarding today. 61 days. I live in Nashville. We don’t have anything close. That’s why I’m in Montana. But today was my first day. So I took this up about a year and a half ago. This is my first real full season. 18 days of lessons my first year.Cody Crabb (23:38)
yeah?Bill Faeth (23:57)
I was out the last two days with my teacher, my coach, my instructor, the last two days. My wife had to fly home and she just came back today. And today was the day that I got off the groomers, in the two feet of powder, in the trees.because I had a breakthrough today because of my instructor and I wasn’t afraid to put in the work and take those two extra steps. Does that make sense? So this is applicable in real estate investing. Hence that deeper research you asked me about. I didn’t mean to go on for this for like 15 minutes, but it’s so important for people to understand that people are lazy, honestly.
Cody Crabb (24:18)
Yeah.No, it’s great, it’s fine.
Bill Faeth (24:31)
If you’re the doctor out there or the attorney that thinks that you can just go write a check and buy a property anywhere that you like the market or the beach or the mountains or whatever or Sedona and then hire a property manager to run it for you, whether it’s long term or short term and you’re to make any money, you’re gravely mistaken. And if you’re doing and if you’re letting the tax tail wag the investment dog, that’s going to come back to bite you down the road when you have a property that’s eating up all your one year tax benefits in year two, three, four and five.Cody Crabb (24:59)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.Bill Faeth (25:00)
Sowe need to do that deeper research. We need to know where the market is going, not where it’s been. And that’s what everybody teaches. Look at the T12s. That’s a trailing 12 months, right? I don’t even, like when I buy a product, I don’t even ask the seller for it. I don’t care. Because what they did is not relevant to me. I’m looking at where the market’s going and how I can leverage that knowledge that I’ve invested time to research. I did a training on this. This used to take me 20 to 30 hours. Now with AI,
I can get this done like I did it in Park City. That’s what I did the training on. And I also underwrote Ogden and I underwrote, know, Cottonwood Canyons as well, just for good measure and less than four and a half hours using AI.
Cody Crabb (25:35)
⁓ Wow.Yeah. I mean, yeah, it’s really, I it’s never been easier to not be lazy. Like, you could be very lazy and still do the hard thing because we’ve out all these tools now.
Bill Faeth (25:50)
Thereis, and I believe that those two extra steps, like I told you, I send a welcome video to my new guest, right? Or when I ask you, what do you do with a new lead that comes in, right? And those are the things that…
Cody Crabb (25:58)
huh.Bill Faeth (26:01)
AI are not going to be able to replicate. So if you want to create a position of strength, because you think that AI is going to make human beings weak, it’s not. Look at the things that AI cannot do today or into the future, and there’s going be very few. So when you nail those things that are going away and do them really, really well and excel at them, that’s how we’re going to be able to create our competitive advantage against AI.Cody Crabb (26:24)
Wow, that is a good one. Snip that right there. That’s gonna make a good little reel. ⁓ So let’s say someone’s trying to, ⁓ our audience is like mainly people starting out real estate investing or they’re kind of getting into it and they’re in the middle of it. ⁓ What would you say, like if someone was gonna build a serious short-term rental portfolio, they’re looking to do that in the future, what would you say their first move should be? And I know that we talked about like,know the market, like dig in, do some research and stuff. But what’s even before that? What would you say? How would someone decide where to even start looking?
Bill Faeth (26:58)
Number one is decide what you want your outcome to be because if you don’t decide what you want as your outcome, then you’re not gonna be able to architect it every single day, right? So why are you deciding to do this? Are you doing it to pay for kids college fund? Are you doing it to pay for a wedding? Are you doing it for retirement? Are you doing it to pay the bills? Right, so if you’re doing it to pay the bills, then you probably shouldn’t be.going into real estate, you should be getting into, and what I mean by that is owning real estate, because that puts you into the slow money track.
Slow money is like 12 months or longer fast money is when you get your return on investment in six months or less medium money is six months to 12 months and slow money is 12 months or longer and Unfortunately, most people default to the slow lane I have money coming in in the fast lane the medium lane and ⁓ In the slow lane and the slow lane is where you build your wealth But I would say get into wholesaling or get into flipping right? They and a lot of this is gonna have to do with your personal You know not really preference but financial
situation and what you want your desired outcome to be so like I in 2015 I had a very important person in my life named John Baren who had me build a life plan and he’s like Bill you’re you’ve done all these startups you’ve been successful But you’re running from business to business chasing money. Let’s give it some purpose and let’s decide how you want to live your life in 20 years, right? Well 2015 was 11 years ago. I’m over halfway there. Does that make sense? So literally
I said, this is what I want to do. This is what me and he’s like, it’s not what you want to do. It’s what do you and your spouse want to do? Wow. I don’t know that me and my wife had ever talked about how we wanted to live our life in retirement or how much money it was going to take. And I just give the quick analogy and I want you, all the listeners to think about this. It doesn’t matter if you’re 25, 35, or you’re an old codger at 52 like me.
What date are you going to retire? How old are you going to be? We have to have numbers. We have to have time. We have to be able to hold ourselves accountable and measure the success of the failures, right? But I just want you to think about this simple anecdote. When you are retired and everybody says, want to be financially free. Okay. Well, what does that mean? How much money do you need? How much cashflow do you need? How much debt are you cool with? How much wealth do you have to have? Where’s it going to be? And then they say, I want to travel the world. That’s where this comes in. Okay. Are you flying Southwest?
Cody Crabb (29:12)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Bill Faeth (29:12)
Are you flying first class on United Delta?Are you flying private?
Because if you’re in the Southwest economic realm today and you think in 20 years you’re gonna fly private, you’re gonna have to make some fucking sacrifices, right? And I’ve never wanted to fly private. I’ve never wanted to own a jet. I probably will in the next couple of years just from a tax perspective to be honest with you. But.
Cody Crabb (29:24)
Yeah, no kidding.Bill Faeth (29:33)
I always wanted to fly first class and I lived in, I’ve lived in Nashville for 23 years and I’ve been the Southwest guy until three years ago when I hit my financial freedom goal. So in 2015, I want one, set my debt. set my stock market cash. set my real estate cashflow and also the equity that I positioning that I wanted in 2015 with John. It’s changed seven or eight times.But I can tell you right now, all of those things are about 10 to 15 times higher than what I initially set in 2015. And I haven’t flown coach unless I get bumped from a flight and have to rebook in three years. So I hit my financial, actually I hit my financial freedom goal at literally before 50, right when I went from 48 to 49. But on my initial sheet, I wanted to do it when I was 60.
Because when you have this vision of what you want your outcome to be, and then you hold yourself accountable every week. So my wife just flew in, she left on Wednesday, came back today, and then we just got done right before your podcast with Faeth Friday.
That’s a three to four hour meeting that her and I have every single Friday to discuss how we’ve moved our life forward, backwards, accountability, spending, what we’re doing next week, setting goals and holding ourselves accountable as parents.
Cody Crabb (30:42)
I like that.Bill Faeth (30:52)
as best friends, husband, wife, lovers, business partners, and make sure that if you’ve seen the commercial with Follow the Green Line, that we are following that green line to architect. Because now we have clarity of what we need to do every single day to layer in and compound our daily decisions to weekly decisions, to monthly growth, to quarterly growth, to annual growth. And that’s how you speed up and accelerate to exceed those goals. Without it, we don’t have a vision.We’re just running around like the little rabbit in, you know, the story just going in circles. We need that focus. That building out that life plan is the fundamental biggest thing that has ever happened to me in my life.
Cody Crabb (31:25)
Yeah.Yeah, wow. This is gonna be one of those podcasts where like every three minutes we have a little quote going out, because I feel like you’ve just said so many good little things here. ⁓ Wow. ⁓ I don’t even, yes, yeah, undersigned, great, fantastic, love that, I’m speechless. ⁓ Thank you so much for sharing all this. I feel like ⁓ the biggest thing I’m gonna take away is like the trajectory, like you have to know where you’re going. It’s like the Alice in Wonderland quote of.
you know, Alice asked the Cheshire cat where, which way should I go? And he said, where are you trying to go? And she said, I don’t know. And then he says, well, it doesn’t matter.
Bill Faeth (32:09)
There’snothing more important than that, right? And I’ll go back to Eldrick Woods at 12 years old. Both him, his father and his mother and Rudy Duran at that time, his golf coach knew exactly where he was going. I might not have, know, his friends or fellow competitors might not have thought that he was gonna become better than Jack Nicklaus and the greatest golfer of all time. But he believed that when he was 12. And he learned from…
from the people that he put into his circle taught him what he needed to do to be able to achieve that with his physical ability. And I’ll tell you, it’s not even really physical ability. His mental ability was 10 times stronger than his physical ability back then. That’s what I learned from him.
That’s why you look at my 550-250 program. That’s my super properties book that you can buy on Amazon or, know, literally for nine bucks you can go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble. It’s sold everywhere. My best-selling book that shows how somebody with…
little to no money can do exactly what I’ve done. And my wife and I still follow this, right? That’s why we go always go back to baseline. And that’s something that a lot of people don’t do, especially when they get success. They just stay on that success train and they never go back to baseline, even if it’s for an audit. So at least in real estate investing for me, it’s always back to baseline and then rebuilding so I can hedge because I built my $24 million short-term rental portfolio, Cody, this is going to blow your mind.
with $126,000 investment on our first property. My wife and I have never put another penny into it.
Cody Crabb (33:37)
Wow, even I’m inspired by that. That’s amazing. ⁓ Yeah, I guess that’s true. mean, the difference is not necessarily who can do all the early stuff, but who can keep going and continue it. That’s the real challenge, I guess.Bill Faeth (33:54)
Yeah, I mean, so what happened? People listen to your podcast or they listen to a guy like me. that’s great, Bill. You got $24 million portfolio. I started out just where everybody else did. I didn’t have any money.We saved for four years to get $126,000 to buy our first place after coming out of that, what I just said, almost bankrupt and you know, the great recession and the national flood and all these things. Oh, and no, and by the way, those aren’t one time things. That shit happens all the time. We are at fricking war right now, right? Gas is going to be $5, you know, in California in about a week. We could see seven or $8 a gallon of gas and that’s not uncommon in Europe. It just is uncommon here.
Cody Crabb (34:19)
Yeah, true.Yeah, I’ve seen it, yeah.
Bill Faeth (34:32)
Right? So you think about the recession in 2008, 2009, you think about the sales and loan, you think about the Millennium crash, right? You think about all these things that just come back at cyclical. We all live these crazy things. It’s how do we endure? So if you don’t have money,If you have like 20 grand and you want to get in, don’t buy real estate. Start wholesaling, find a partner to flip with, right? And turn that 20 grand into 40 grand and then do another flip and turn that into 60 or 70 grand and then do a wholesale and make 10 grand. Build it up to where you have 120 to 150,000 bucks. Then buy your first $400,000 property and always buy a piece of shit property at what I call Golden Girls and ARV it, right? And if you don’t know where to start in your stock, just DM me at BillFaeth73 on Instagram.
BillFaeth73 on Instagram, it’s me. I will answer all of your questions. I’m not gonna charge you. I’m not gonna try to sell you into a program, any of that type of crap. I just want to help people because you gotta get started because most people get into the starting box and then they fail the first time because they haven’t surrounded themselves with people that have already achieved what they want to achieve, right? And then they don’t know what they don’t know and then they make the costly mistakes.
Cody Crabb (35:39)
Yeah, yeah, I feel that. Wow. ⁓ Definitely, I would recommend anyone that’s got questions or wants to learn some more, definitely get in touch, because it’s not often we get an offer like that. Like, I will personally respond to you. Like, that’s pretty neat. So ⁓ take advantage of that if you can on, as you said, Instagram, Yeah. ⁓Bill Faeth (35:57)
Instagram, yep. I mean,I’m on TikTok. I’m on LinkedIn, Facebook. I mean, I’ve got 34,000 members. I’ve got a free Facebook group. It’s Build Short-Term Rental Wealth with Bill Faeth. Check out the Facebook group. It’s probably the best community ⁓ in real estate investing. I’ll put it up there with Pace Morbys community. It’s just so helpful, so unbelievable.
Cody Crabb (36:06)
There you go, yeah.Wow, well Bill thank you so much. This has been fantastic. I love the idea that like your real edge can come from something that you already have inside you. You don’t have to have anything special except just to be determined and keep going. ⁓ Thanks so much for sharing all those experiences ⁓ and thanks to everyone that listened today. Hope that you got something out of it. I know you did because it was a really good episode. If you liked it, go ahead and hit like, hit to subscribe, do all the things and we’ll see you next week on
Real estate pros.
