Transform Your Life: 10 Powerful Lessons in Digital Real Estate Success

John Harcar (00:02.0)
Alright, hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and I’m here today with Ron Curtis. And what we’re gonna talk about, besides his journey in real estate and business, we’re gonna talk about why it’s important to have multiple streams of income and how he can help you. Guys, remember at Investor Fuel, we help real estate entrepreneurs, real estate investors, service providers, two to five extra business by providing tools and resources to grow that business.

which also really helps build a life that they want to live. So Ron, welcome to our show.

Ron CEO WavyStay (00:36.792)
Thanks for having me, I’m excited to be here.

John Harcar (00:39.054)
Yeah, man, and I’m excited to talk about multiple streams of income. I think that’s extremely important, and I think a lot more people are starting to understand that, but it’s always good to hear about it. But before we dive into the weeds, why don’t you tell our audience a little bit about you, kind of your background, your journey in business and real estate?

Ron CEO WavyStay (00:54.99)
All right, great. So my name is Ron Curtis. a native Washingtonian. Pretty much I have a background in financial literacy and real estate. I got $10,000 in a credit card debt right out of college. And after that, I got myself out of it, started a credit repair business, and just started diving into a lot of entrepreneurship activities. I’ve had everything. I’ve done drop shipping, vending machines, a rental car business. And I’ve also, what I would like to focus primarily now on is what I like to call digital real estate.

which is a model called co-hosting when it comes to Airbnb with short-term and mid-term rentals.

John Harcar (01:32.096)
Awesome. All right. Well, let’s go back a little bit. I always like to find out with folks. This is one of my favorite questions to ask is like, what did you go to college for?

Ron CEO WavyStay (01:40.702)
So actually, when the College of Business, I had a major in human resource management, had some psych answers and business credits. One day I googled, you know, what’s psych credits plus business credits, HR popped up. I always consider myself a people person, but I realized I didn’t want to work in HR. So I did some more research and I found out that I wanted to learn the psychology of business. How people who obtain wealth, how do they have it, how do they scale it, how do they manage it, et cetera. So that’s pretty much what my focus has been on.

John Harcar (02:11.546)
Got it. Okay, then the golden question I like to ask, where did real estate come into play? Did you have any influences in your family? Anybody you knew that was an agent or an investor, or did you pick up that beautiful purple book?

Ron CEO WavyStay (02:25.975)
So it’s crazy. Real estate came into play once I graduated college. I found out about a strategy called house hacking and I became a fashionista.

John Harcar (02:33.808)
yes.

Ron CEO WavyStay (02:35.022)
So I purchased a house in DC. I bought a $423,000 house. I leveraged first time homebuyer programs. I do work for the DC government. I bought that house for $3,700. I leveraged my knowledge of credit to convert my basement into a one-bedroom studio efficiency. And that started to pay my mortgage. And what I did was I pretty much cookie-cut the business model and transferred it across multiple people’s properties, not only around the country, but also other cities around the world.

Awesome.

John Harcar (03:06.096)
Now, how do you house hack other properties when you’re not living in them?

Ron CEO WavyStay (03:11.79)
Great question. So I have a lot of different investors who have properties that either owner occupied or their properties that they invest. So what I do is like I call it a digital real estate. I can manage a property anywhere in the world as long as they have access to Wi-Fi and cleaners. So what I do is I’m running their entire 24 seven. I call it a hotel business for them for a percentage of the revenue that comes in.

John Harcar (03:36.944)
Okay, so you’re finding, and let’s just break this down to its most simplest form for, know, maybe some of our folks understand, and maybe for me as well. At the simplest form, you’re finding people who have small multifamily, or are they single family, or is it everything?

Ron CEO WavyStay (03:52.046)
So I have anything from bedroom basement studios now to eight bedroom kind of mansion mega houses, right? So it’s not necessarily only for people with house hacking. I’m trying to teach people that kind of like the traditional way of renting out a home section a long term, especially with today’s market rates and also the economy. You’re not really going to profit. And I tell people, let’s say on a good day, you’re profiting $500 a month on your rental, right? So after 12 months, you profit at $6,000. If your HVAC system goes

John Harcar (03:57.904)
Okay.

Ron CEO WavyStay (04:22.05)
out you’re in the red automatically, right? So I have some owners who have transitioned from long-term traditional renters and then now they have their properties bringing in ten plus thousand dollars a month, which is like exponentially greater than what they would have brought in if they were renting to a long-term tenant.

John Harcar (04:23.524)
Yep, yep, yep.

John Harcar (04:38.576)
Okay, got it. it doesn’t matter really if it’s a single family or he said big eight bedroom mansion, whatever. You’re just helping them convert it to a short term to make more money versus what they would be doing on a long term.

Ron CEO WavyStay (04:51.392)
Yeah, but it gets kind of deeper than that. So I always tell people if you have a room with four walls and a door, I could figure out a way to cash for you. So an example, you short-term rentals, that varies based on state. But I also do hourly rentals, right? I list on properties like Peer Space where you can make more in a three to six hour period than you would make in a weekend, depending on the house, right?

John Harcar (05:02.256)
Mm.

John Harcar (05:10.724)
and hourly rentals?

Ron CEO WavyStay (05:12.462)
Yeah, hourly rentals. There’s a website called Peerspace, P-E-R-S-P-A-C-E dot com. like let’s say we wanted to shoot this podcast in person. We can go rent somebody’s property for two hours at a place and shoot it. So I’ve had news interviews, ESPN reached out. People like to go parties, watch the NBA finals, all types of stuff. So I list on multiple platforms to increase the visibility, which, you know, then in turns leads to maximize revenue potential.

John Harcar (05:22.03)
Okay. got it.

John Harcar (05:29.892)
That’s interesting.

John Harcar (05:40.526)
Man, that’s interesting. I’ve heard of Room By the Hour, but those are sometimes where people don’t like to have those type of people by Room By the Hour. But I never heard about that. But that makes so much sense because, if you got someone coming into town, you want to rent a nice, you don’t have a nice little meeting spot. Yeah, that’s awesome. So how did you get into that part? Like how did you, I mean, you house hacked a house.

Ron CEO WavyStay (05:50.164)
Yeah.

John Harcar (06:06.286)
And then at that point, did you find mentorship? Did you find a specific mentor that was doing that?

Ron CEO WavyStay (06:12.27)
I actually know, so I’m a self-starter. I actually don’t have any mentors in this space. So I just consider myself a student of the game. My dad’s a principal, my mom’s a teacher. They’re both retired. And I’ve always had a passion for learning. I literally just, I like listening to books, reading books, listening to podcasts, and also going on YouTube University, like soaking up as much knowledge as I can. So I got into it.

John Harcar (06:36.016)
Mm-hmm.

Ron CEO WavyStay (06:38.766)
I actually read a book, it’s a CEO of Vigor Pockets podcast. His name is Scott Rich and he wrote a book called Set For Life. And during the pandemic, I listened to it. It talked about how you can save your first $25,000 to start house hacking. And I actually implemented those strategies and that kind of gave me the push that I needed to go and purchase my first house. And then I started doing this business model across multiple properties.

John Harcar (06:42.97)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

John Harcar (07:05.754)
So how are you finding these owners, these operators?

Ron CEO WavyStay (07:09.763)
So my lead generation is basically based on…

really social media, like, and doing good business. So I have a lot of referrals, client to client referrals. And like I mentioned earlier, my background is in financial literacy. I consider myself a financial literacy coach and I had a credit repair business. So with me fixing people’s credit, I had a pipeline of referrals, which are realtors and lenders, right? And if I fixed multiple people’s credit for these realtors and lenders so they can close on their homes and get commissions, now that they know that I do short-term rentals, now that people are having problems paying

John Harcar (07:31.322)
Mmm.

Ron CEO WavyStay (07:42.768)
for their homes, they start referring those same or new clients to me. Thank you. And I leverage just like putting out content. Facebook groups are really key. And then just marketing myself.

John Harcar (07:47.258)
That’s awesome.

John Harcar (07:56.768)
Okay, all right, that’s awesome. Sounds like you’re scaling fast, you’re running hard. What are some of the pressures of the business or maybe some struggles that you might be having or have had in this growth path that you’ve been on?

Ron CEO WavyStay (08:08.238)
I would say the first one is time management. The second one is finding good and reliable people. So like I said, I do have a nine to five. work for the DC government. I consider myself a nine to five for nor. So I had to find. Yeah, nine to five for nor. I had my shirt made. It’s in the it’s a detracting. I should have worn. But yeah, so so like I work from nine to five every day and I get off and I’m working on my business from five to nine plus. Right. So managing.

John Harcar (08:19.344)
A 9 to 5preneur?

John Harcar (08:26.48)
Man that’d be cool

Ron CEO WavyStay (08:38.006)
not only a full-time career, also a seven-figure business, right? Those things I always tell people, there’s only 24 hours in a day, you work for eight, you might commute for another two, that’s 10, you sleep for another eight, you’re at 18, you have six hours left to live your life, right? So what I did was I read a book called, Bye-Back of Your Time, and also a book called, The Four-Hour Workweek, and what it allowed me to do was start hiring people.

John Harcar (08:54.64)
Mm-hmm.

Ron CEO WavyStay (09:05.87)
to help me buy back my time. So I leverage a lot of virtual assistance in other countries to help me run and scale my business also to get my time back.

John Harcar (09:15.792)
Okay, that’s awesome. type of kind of a, are there any specific like maybe mindset things that you use, any type of, you know, things you listen to or are things that kind of keep you in that, in that going forward mode, in that mindset?

Ron CEO WavyStay (09:29.466)
So I’m a man of faith. I put all my trust in God. I always say like all of this is because of God. He’s the CEO. I’m just the vessel, right?

John Harcar (09:36.408)
Yep. Amen.

Ron CEO WavyStay (09:40.214)
What I do is primarily going to work. job is my goal is to fire my job, right? So when I go to work, I usually wake up and I listen to a sermon as I’m getting ready. Some type of motivational sermon, go on YouTube, click something that catches my eye. And then by the time I’m getting ready, I’m usually finished the sermon. I listen to some type of motivational video on the way to work, right? As I’m driving to work, my 45 minutes to hour commute. And then when I get to work, instead of listening to music, I’m listening to podcasts. I’m taking notes.

I’m feeding my brain with that motivation that’s igniting me and keeping me going every day.

John Harcar (10:15.744)
Who do you like to listen to? Who do you send your motivational guides that you like to put on in the morning?

Ron CEO WavyStay (10:20.814)
Les Brown is one of my favorite motivational speakers. I mean, he’s a motivational speaker. I like listening to Zig Ziglar. He talks a lot about sales. And ironically, Steve Harvey. I like Steve Harvey as a nice story behind him. And I just listen to his motivational videos.

John Harcar (10:38.0)
That’s awesome. So what does your team look like now? I mean, you’re obviously working a full time and is it just you? you have, I mean, you mentioned you have some VA’s. What does it look like?

Ron CEO WavyStay (10:48.044)
Great question. So up until June of last year, it was just me with probably three VAs. Now I’ve scaled to about 10 VAs. I hired a chief of staff who lives in Washington, DC with me. And I recently hired a community manager, someone who’s responsible for going around to the properties, double checking the cleaners, and dealing with maintenance and inventory issues, right? And I probably have a team of 30 plus cleaners. I use different cleaners that

John Harcar (11:16.107)
wow.

Ron CEO WavyStay (11:17.968)
our companies and subcontract, they’re subcontractors to me and I get work daily to clean my properties.

John Harcar (11:26.296)
And that’s keeping it local too, right? Keeping it local businesses. Are all your properties in DC?

Ron CEO WavyStay (11:33.742)
No, right now I properties in DC, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. I have a property in Florida. I’m working on a property in Panama right now. Where else do have properties? And I’ve consulted with properties all over the country. I used to manage two properties in Saloon, Mexico. I’ve been in California, Texas, Georgia, Nevada, Las Vegas.

John Harcar (11:44.516)
Wow.

John Harcar (11:58.832)
Are you finding boots on the ground then and someone in the local, I mean obviously you have to have cleaners in the local market, so are you finding someone in that local market that manages that group, that property or whatever?

Ron CEO WavyStay (12:09.836)
Yeah, so that’s one of my skill sets. Like when I said I could run an Airbnb business or short-term rental business anywhere in the world, all I need is access to cleaners and Wi-Fi. like in Tulum, prior to me managing those properties, I’d never been in Tulum, but I was able to build a cleaning team, airport transportation, a private chef, and a massage therapist, all off by leveraging the internet. So any city in the world, I’m pretty sure I could find a cleaner for them just by leveraging resources that are online and available to us.

John Harcar (12:39.504)
Do you fly down and make sure the chef’s getting good?

Ron CEO WavyStay (12:43.278)
Ironically, one time I got flown out by a client. She met me on Facebook. She flew me out to Neptune, New Jersey. Before I went out there, said her house could do $160,000 a year. I went out there, worked with her for some months. She connected me with her neighbor. And just to kind of use some context of like the…

social proof that I have. Her neighbor, I never went in her house, never saw her house ever. I flew back to New Jersey. I worked with her one client for a couple months. And then she referred me to her neighbor. Her neighbor on average, it’s a beach town, was doing about eight grand a month. And when she started working with me last summer, she went from eight grand to 10 grand to 13 grand to 17 grand to August, she made 20 grand in last August. And the same year, she renewed her agreement and we’re working together again.

John Harcar (13:06.032)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (13:26.84)
Oof.

Ron CEO WavyStay (13:30.574)
But I help them find cleaners. I’ll find real estate photographers in different cities and states, also handyman, maintenance techs. And I usually have my cleaners be like my runner, my eyes when I’m not there. So I have like SOPs and processes in place that they must follow in order that everything runs smoothly.

John Harcar (13:50.896)
Perfect. That’s almost exactly what I was thinking and I was going to ask is like what kind of processes do you have in place set up for all these virtual stuff? you just kind of so you have something that I mean they can just follow that and as long as they follow the Bible, they’re good.

Ron CEO WavyStay (14:07.156)
Exactly. And a lot of those skills are transferable from a nine to five. So I work for the DC government, I oversee, oversee contracts and I’m constantly making SOPs and I was like, if I’m making SOPs for the government, I might as well start making SOPs for my business where I symbol it down to if I hand you this packet, email you this PDF, a fifth grader can understand it, right? Step by step, SOPs, screenshots, things of that nature.

John Harcar (14:16.132)
Yeah.

John Harcar (14:30.554)
Well, let’s kind of transition a little bit just to maybe some of our topic, like how we talked about multiple streams of income and kind of why that’s important and how you help. So why don’t you kind of give us some information on that.

Ron CEO WavyStay (14:41.518)
Yeah, so I pretty much got into this when the pandemic started. I was teleworking for 18 months, didn’t have to go in an office at all. And I just started trying a lot of different business endeavors, right? So one of the first things I did, I learned how to drop ship. I learned how to trade stocks. was selling items on eBay and Amazon. I started a vending machine business. started a rental car business. I started a credit repair business, a tax business. I wrote an ebook. I started doing public speaking gigs. Once the world opened back up, getting contracts.

government to do that. And then when I bought a house, I started doing Airbnb. And just last year, I niche down to focus primarily on that. But I’m saying all that to say, like, I tried all of these things and I failed fast, but I learned even faster. Right. And the beautiful thing about it is always tell people if you have a hobby, you can monetize it right. In Washington, D.C. right now, with everything going on with the politics, a lot of people, especially in the federal government, went into work in

John Harcar (15:30.98)
Mm-hmm.

Ron CEO WavyStay (15:38.86)
logged into their computers and found out that they no longer have a job, right? And a lot of people rely on one stream of income and I always tell people you have to have multiple streams of income, especially in this economy. And when I niche down and focused on one thing, it allowed me to create multiple verticals inside of my Airbnb business. That one thing, I read that book also and it helped me realize like you have to find different verticals.

John Harcar (15:42.062)
Right. Yep.

John Harcar (15:58.414)
Yeah, inside that one thing.

Ron CEO WavyStay (16:06.082)
whatever you’re focused on. So now I make money in multiple different ways inside of my one business and it’s all centralized instead of, you know, having rental cars breaking down, doing consultations, preparing this person’s credit, like, going to this speaking gig. Like, so now it just, it allows me to like centralize and focus more. But all in all, it is very important to have more than one stream of income in 2025.

John Harcar (16:18.276)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (16:30.064)
Yeah, and I it’s 100 % true. I mean, you can’t put all your eggs in a basket, especially in the economy that we’re in. But you know, but I like I like what you’re talking about as far as and I’m seeing more of that in a lot of my conversations is taking what you’re in and vertical, getting vertical and finding different ways within that to make money. So, you know, if you’re a flipper and you maybe do lending to and you do other things within the business, so it’s great.

If someone wanted to get into the business, you know, of what you’re doing, what kind of advice would you give them? I mean, is there any like tools or resources that you would recommend to kind of set them up for success?

Ron CEO WavyStay (17:07.662)
Yeah, I mean, the first one I would say is reach out to me. My Instagram is wavy w a v y underscore s t a y. I’m an open book. I put a lot of value and free game on there. Also, it’s the same on TikTok. And another thing, if someone wants to get into the short term rental space, there’s Airbnbs in every major city in the world. And a lot of people don’t understand who have Airbnbs that this is a business, right? So

I always tell people, people usually have two major pain points, right? They either have time problems or money problems, right? If you can help them buy back their time so they can spend time with their family and do what they’re great at, that’s a way to get in and start managing somebody’s property for them, right? Or they have money problems and you know a way that they can make money with their property, that’s a way for you to get in as well. So I always say like, you definitely want to like focus on getting a knowledge. I have a webinar coming up. I did one of these two years ago. I’m going to do another one.

like a workshop where it’s for anybody that wants to get into Airbnb because there’s a lot of different ways to get into it. I always tell people, you know, if you’re a photographer, you can focus on taking photos specifically for Airbnb hosts. You can go on Airbnb, look at everybody with sorry photos and message them and say, hey, I can do your photos for X amount of money.

you can start to do like that. Or if you like cleaning, you’re a neat freak, you can literally do the same thing. Message them, on Facebook groups, say, hey, I can be a reliable cleaner, right? Or if you’re a handyman, if you’re a handyman, you have a skill set, you’re good with tools, you can do the same thing because something’s always gonna break, you’re a plumber, electrician, et cetera. So that’s how I would say start. Figure out which lanes you wanna enter it in and then you can grow from there.

John Harcar (18:51.216)
Yeah, no, 100%. And I agree. And I just forgot this last question. Oh, what do you contribute your keys to success?

Ron CEO WavyStay (19:02.062)
My keys to success, I would say is consistency. And it’s very difficult to be consistent in life, right? So it’s difficult to work out every day. It’s difficult to eat the healthy foods. It’s difficult for some people to be on time, right? But when you lock in and say you want that thing, like I know short-term rentals are gonna retire my family and I, right? I spend time with this every single day.

John Harcar (19:18.192)
Mm-hmm.

Ron CEO WavyStay (19:29.194)
And I don’t consider myself an expert because I learn something new every single day about this business, right? So in terms of if you want to be successful, you have to be consistent in what you want to be successful with.

John Harcar (19:41.36)
Amen. Put a big star around that guys. If you took that note, mean, consistency wins. What do you got going on right now? mean, any, do you have it? mean, are you doing any coaching? Are you teaching people any stuff? I mean, what, what, does your active business look like? Are you working on any big deals?

Ron CEO WavyStay (20:00.172)
Yeah, so like I said, I’m working on some properties out of the country. I went to Panama last week and I actually met some investors out there trying to get some properties locked in out there in that market. I am starting coaching and consulting now that my time’s freed up more and I’ve been able to automate the business.

That’s my passion, teaching, helping people, right? So I wanna get back into that because like I said, there’s Airbnbs in every major city in the world. And then the only thing that’ll probably stop me is the language barrier, right? So I wanna connect with as many individuals as possible to help them start to achieve the financial freedom and passive income that I’m seeing as well. So I wanna teach people about the cohosting model, about the Airbnb rental arbitrage model, just about Airbnb in general. I’m also doing government contracting in Jane where it’s

of the government contracting business, primarily to focus on short-term rentals in government contracting. And as I started to get deep into it, I realized I can apply for a lot of different types of government contracts that are outside of short-term rentals. So I’m in that as well. And…

I also am getting back into credit education and business funding. The reason being is because credit is how I got here. I got $10,000 in credit card debt right out of college. I did a consolidation loan, got my credit back up, and then I wrote a credit ebook and started fixing people’s credit. So I just want to show people the power of credit. And even now with the economy, prices going up, and people losing their jobs, it’s more than ever important to have credit because credit can be a safety net for you. That’s actually access to

capital and then I also want to help other entrepreneurs gain access to capital. It takes money to make money. We live in a debt wealth society and I see many entrepreneurs whether you’re a hairstylist or whether you own a building they’re using their own personal credit or their cash every single day to run their business and you shouldn’t be doing that.

John Harcar (21:45.776)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (21:58.316)
Nope, you should do it on a business credit and business lines and all that stuff. Man, I appreciate you coming on here and dropping all that, man. You dropped some good information. If folks wanna reach out to you and they wanna kinda talk to you about maybe your coaching or just they’re interested in what you do, how do they reach out and connect?

Ron CEO WavyStay (22:16.874)
So the best way to get in contact with me is through Instagram or TikTok. Follow me, send me a message, I’ll promise I’ll respond. My Instagram is wavy, W-A-V-Y, underscore stay, and so is my TikTok. You can also go on wavystay.com and submit a inquiry on my website to contact us. But those are the best ways to get in contact with me.

John Harcar (22:37.868)
Awesome. And then, you know, we’ll take all that stuff. We’ll put it down in the show notes so everybody can reach out. Guys, I hope you enjoyed the conversation, the podcast. I mean, I really did. This is very interesting and I’m intrigued. I hope you took some good notes. know, Kevin, thank you again for coming by and sharing with us and, Ron, I’m sorry. And guys, reach out to this guy. He’s a very intelligent dude. And I think what his model is, is perfect. But you know, like he said, you got to get into it.

and you gotta be consistent. Guys, I’ll see you on the next show. Cheers.

Ron CEO WavyStay (23:12.11)
Cheers.