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Real Estate Investing School Podcast
227. Scaling through Systems with Blake Dailey
01:05:01
Welcome to the Real Estate Investing School Podcast! We’re on a mission to create freedom through real estate investing by building scalable systems and assembling great teams to manage our portfolios. In this episode, we’re bringing you insights...
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- [00:00]
Joe Jensen
Welcome to the Real Estate Investing School podcast. I'm your host, Joe Jensen. Our guest today is Blake Daly. I'm excited to dive into this one. Blake began his real estate investing career buying and renovating hurricane damaged homes in Panama City, Florida. While doing that, he stumbled upon high cash flowing short term rental strategy by acquiring houses with ADUs additional dwelling units. After surpassing his W2 income with his cash flow, he pivoted to commercial, multi family and syndicated his first large apartment deal which was a 66 unit in in North Carolina. Combining his experience with raising money and doing commercial deals and buying, renovating and renting out residential short term properties, Blake jumped into commercial short term rentals where he was converting rundown motels into renovated boutique hotels. He now owns five of those. He owns a handful of short term rentals from California to Florida to Utah along with the 66 unit apartment complex. He's the CEO of Adventure Stays which buys, renovates and operates boutique short term rentals. His company has over 30 employees, virtual and US based and that manages his whole portfolio of short term rentals through that. So doing quite a bit of stuff, A lot of different pieces of the game. Welcome to the show, Blake.
- [01:34]
Blake Daly
Thanks man. It's. I'm excited to be on here and get into this stuff, man. I could talk real estate all day. So you might have to cut us off when we get to that time.
- [01:42]
Joe Jensen
I know that's how it goes, dude. It's like, I don't know what it is about real estate investors specifically, but we just love to talk about this stuff. I don't know, more open community. That's just like, let me tell you everything, you know.
- [01:55]
Blake Daly
Yeah man, I like it. Let's, let's jump in. I'm excited to be here.
- [01:58]
Joe Jensen
Well, sweet man. So you, you've done quite a bit. You know, obviously I. One of my first questions I always love to ask and it's always interesting is just like what was the first thing? Like how did it all start? You know, because people see this like, oh man, like I just read your bio. It's like, you know, that's, that's pretty impressive. You've done quite a bit like how did it all start? You know, I know you said you began with, you know, doing the renovating of, of hurricane damaged homes, which is kind of niche and unique. I want to talk about that. But how did that even get on your radar?
- [02:30]
Blake Daly
Yeah, so it was, it was really kind of like a, a snowball building up and like that snowball early on was like education the podcast and really kind of like positioning myself because if I could have, I would have just jumped in. I've, I've. I'm very much a, you know, build airplane while I'm flying it kind of guy, for better or for worse. But I got into while still at the Air Force Academy and cadets couldn't own rental property is, you know, based on like the, the rules and regulations we had there, which was, you know, one of the maybe a million, because I think they figured out that cadets were like buying homes or like renting places offside outside of base and like getting in trouble and stuff like that, throwing parties. So I was kind of just using that time to kind of build up my background and figure out the strategy that I wanted to jump into when I actually, you know, graduated and got to Panama City, which, which was my first duty station in Florida. And I, I spent that time, you know, I think I early on read Rich Dad, Poor Poor dad, which is, you know, the genesis of a lot of real estate investors. And from there, you know, started Bigger Pocket or researching real estate and found bigger pockets, read some of Brandon Turner's books and was just ready to go. So as soon as we got to Panama City, like Dean, I have a place to live yet. We're living on base and the temporary housing and me and my wife, I figured out the direct to seller thing or at least like the, the presence of it, not really how to do it right because I would just like print off. I'd go to the base library and print off like a hundred letters at a time and then I'd, you know, hand sign them all. And then my wife and I would split, like putting the stamps, writing the addresses and send them. And that's kind of how we got started in with the hurricane damage homes. And you know, we had the VA loan, so we, we use that kind of all in conjunction at the beginning, just throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck and kind of found our niches through doing that.
- [04:13]
Joe Jensen
So you guys were actually like putting out letters to just kind of homes that were damaged. You just driving for dollars, just driving around, finding the homes and.
- [04:20]
Blake Daly
Right, yeah. Like when we got there, it was nine months after a Category 5 hurricane and this is already a lower income area. You know, like you think of south Florida. South Florida, like very rich, a lot of money. Nice areas like the panhandle of Florida is, is more like lower Alabama and more rural side of Florida, just with really nice coast and beaches. So they got hit really hard with the, with that hurricane and just really devastated the local area for a couple years. And we got there kind of at the, the start of that whole thing. Like there were still down businesses, you know, holes in roofs, trees over roads and over properties, a lot of vacant houses, busted out windows. I mean just a lot of damage done by this hurricane. And you know, because of the presence of the base, like it's a very strategic base for our nation just with like the flying mission they do there, they have open range out over the Gulf. So like that base wasn't going to go anywhere and they're doing like a, still in the middle of a $5 billion rebuild. And what that is doing is bringing in, you know, at the time and still is to this day because it's you know a multi year project but it brought in a lot of contractors, a lot of, you know, economic development, a lot of home building. So the, the plate, the, the market started seeing a lot of appreciation you know over the, over the time that we're investing there. So when we got there, yeah we were looking for just driving for dollars. We were looking, driving the areas close to the base that you know, with my limited experience I knew that you know, at the very least military people would live there, you know, decent areas close to the base, close to the shopping centers and stuff like that in town. And we would just write these down on the notes in my phone and go back and I'd you know, go onto the county website, find out the addresses and just put that stuff on a letter and send them out.
- [05:58]
Joe Jensen
And you did it all manually. This isn't like skip tracing using all the apps and all this stuff now like you listen on the website handwriting.
- [06:05]
Blake Daly
No VA is doing the skip tracing. It was just all me and yeah, completely manual looking up property addresses, writing down you know, driving for dollars. Like didn't have deal machine then or at least didn't know about it.
- [06:16]
Brody Fawcett
What's up guys? It's Brody Fawcett. Hey, I just want to jump on here really quick and say thank you. Thank you than for tuning in and listening to the show week after week. It means so much to us. Real quick if you are getting value out of this, please go ahead and leave us a review and feel free to share this with anyone who else you think might receive some value. And if you feel like you could benefit from working with us directly through a one on one coach like Joe or through our trainings and online program, head on over to real estate investingschool.com where you can schedule a free one on one strategy call and dive in to see if real estate investing school will add some value for you.
- [06:58]
Blake Daly
And yeah, just straight sweat equity. Getting into these deals.
- [07:02]
Joe Jensen
That's awesome, man. And it's like, so how does that work though? I mean with, you know, you're buying these. If they've had all this damage, were that not covered with insurance?
- [07:13]
Blake Daly
So a lot of, because the whole area got hit by this hurricane, all the insurance, like there's a, there's a handful of the insurance companies in this area were just like insolvent, like they couldn't pay all the damage at one time. So like still to this day there's people waiting on insurance. But I remember before I left, like I got out here to Utah in July of this year, but I was still looking for deals in Florida before I got here. And people were just now getting, you know, getting insurance payouts from three, three and a half years prior when the hurricane hit or still kind of battling insurance. It was a really big problem. You know, insurance went into default, couldn't pay and you know, now that's, you know, experiencing secondhand effects with the, the higher insurance costs and premium and premiums and it's just, yeah, it was a whole thing. So I guess the short answer is no. Like insurance did not come, come in all at one time. So there's a lot of opportunity for a lot of real estate investors. You know, you, you hear about the storm chaser sometimes that'll go into these markets after hurricanes or after natural disasters or tornadoes or whatever and scoop up properties at a discount. But I think at my, at my point in time, a lot of that had passed and there was just a lot of, you know, value to be added and sellers to be helped as well because they don't know all the stuff that, you know, like us as real estate investors know about how creative finance and how, you know, they can renovate their home and get the equity out of it. And for them, you know, just selling, getting the cash they couldn't get from insurance was a huge benefit. To not have to deal with that headache and, and let somebody else, you know, some young green, behind the ears, 22 year old to go, yeah. Jump into this huge rehab and try to figure it out.
- [08:50]
Joe Jensen
That's awesome, man. Well, that's cool. So that, that kind of got you started and obviously we, we went through, you know, so many pieces already. Just in your bio as I read, I'm like trying to think of like all the steps of where you've gotten to. I feel like, it's, it's been quite the journey. Was this part of the plan? Was it, you know, or how, how did you grow as you went? You just pivoting along the. This kind of like a preset, determined idea the whole time?
- [09:16]
Blake Daly
Oh, man. Yeah, I think it's just a story of a series of pivots, which I think, you know, is a common thread in a lot of entrepreneurs journeys or those, you know, who are building their business and kind of rolling with what the economy, what the market gives them. And, you know, at the time I was, you know, marketing for these off market properties. I had my VA loan, did that once and in this year I was, you know, wholesaling and, you know, just trying to build up my own capital and had my VA loan again after this year. So use that to jump into the next deal. And it was another house with a guest house, which has kind of been like a, a little sweet spot strategy for me. I'm living in one right now. It's a house with a guest house that we rent on Airbnb and pays the mortgage here. So that's always kind of been a backbone to what we've done on the short term rental side. And I think, you know, thinking back to the beginning, my whole plan was that, you know, I know I had at least five years commitment in the Air Force and I got about 12 months left, but at the time I had about five years committed to the Air Force to be in this position. And I knew that, like I was in real estate, got bitten bit by the real estate bug and wanted to build up my portfolio. My plan was that in that five year period, I wanted to be able to replace my W2 income so that I could have that, like, financial security at that point to make the transition out of the Air Force, if that's what I wanted to do, or if I had an assignment that I loved, I could stay in and still be building my wealth and have like the passive income side of things. And then that happened in a year and I was like, man, I got to reevaluate my goals and what I'm actually working for. And, you know, I just loved it. Like, I loved what I was doing the whole time. You know, working long days before work, going to work and coming home and working, but just really enjoyed the real estate side of it, putting deals together, finding deals, you know, putting the pieces of, you know, private capital and funding and all that kind of stuff to do the deal. And I was like, at that point, I was like, why Am I thinking so small? Like, this is my five year plan. I just did it in a year. Let's think bigger. And that kind of transitioned me into commercial multifamily. This is kind of about the time Covid hit. I was sitting at home, you know, doing a couple rehabs, still collecting the cash flow and had this extra time. I was like, this is my time to, to like to actually dive into this and make something of it. And that's what kind of led to that apartment complex that we syndicated and really still believe in commercial multifamily as asset class. And I think the way the reason I pivoted away from it was just because cap rates got really compressed. There was all that stimulus money, like institutional investors and a lot of big money firms were chasing returns in commercial multifamily because it's kind of like a hedge against the unstable market. And I saw that as an opportunity again to pivot into something that I could get higher returns that'd be better leverage for my time and the capital that I could bring to deals. And that led into the, you know, this multi unit, short term rental boutique hotels and lodges that we're doing today.
- [12:07]
Joe Jensen
Yeah, so let's talk about short term rent a little bit because one thing I hear from people is they'll be like, man, but short term rentals, like, I don't want to deal with all that. Like, that seems like a job, you know what I mean? Like I'm trying to get in real estate to not have a job. And like how, how would you respond to that? Or what has the experience been for you with running short term rentals? I mean, is it a 9 to 5 job or you're running all of this work or have you been able to outsource at all?
- [12:31]
Blake Daly
Yeah, I think it's, it's really function of the, the systems you can put in place and like the team you can build around it. Right. Like at a very base level, if you know to do nothing, like if you did everything yourself, to have nothing outsourced, like, you would be the one fixing everything. You would be the one doing the cleaning, you would, you would be the one managing the guests and everything. So from a very, you know, base level, I knew I couldn't do that because I was in the air Force. My wife was getting her doctorate. Like we couldn't be that common. We tried it for a little bit. We've done all that stuff. We've cleaned the units, we've, you know, message the guests. We've, I've you know, pulled out my tool bag to go fix stuff. But I knew that wasn't the best use for my time. So from a very early stage, like I just started outsourcing the things that I, you know, manageably could from like a cost perspective and just a time and experience perspective. So like, right away it was all right, hire the cleaners, right? And I had, at one point we had interviews, like four or five people in one night in our living rooms, like, hey, I want to meet you in person. You're coming into our house and, and cleaning it in our guest unit in our house. Like, I want to make sure that I can trust you and get a good feel for you. And then, you know, from there, finding the handyman, finding the landscaper and just putting the, the pieces in place where then it was just me, you know, messaging the guests. And now we've scaled to where we've got a, a full team of, of 60 concierge members who are all in the Philippines who have, you know, extensive training and have their process to fall and do all the guest messaging. But I think, you know, as a, as a person trying to get to that point or just trying to get into short term rentals for, because of the higher cash flow, but to try to make it manageable, there's a few things that you can do and kind of start to lay out the roles that, you know, that need to be complete. Like it could be the cleaning, the handyman, the, the guest messaging and kind of assign, you know, a personal responsibility to that role. And at the, at the beginning it might be you, but try to then, you know, outsource each part of those. And if you do that, as you grow and scale, it becomes much more manageable than doing everything yourself until you burn out. And then you have to put these people in place. You're going to be like one of those distressed sellers that's fire selling just to get out of it. Like you don't, like you're not if you're listening to this podcast, like that's not you, right? You want to build this up, create the passive income and create the wealth that comes with real estate investing. So I think you have to be intentional about it up front and you know, just, I guess to back up a little bit. Like when we had one or three or five short term rentals, we did a lot ourself in terms of like the guest messaging, you know, purchasing our own supplies and taking them to the different houses. And I still have friends or people in my mastermind that are at that stage now. And it can be done pretty passively. And I think the base things are setting up automated message templates or if you have a property management system or a PMS that has automated messaging baked into it, then when somebody responds or when they book or when they make a reservation, whatever it is, those automated messages go out and it's less work on you. So there's a lot of things now that technology can help with that, you know, a lot, a lot more platforms than when I started four years ago that are actually good now. And if you kind of start with those, like think with the, the end in mind and what you want, you know, your lifestyle and your investment strategy to actually look like from a time perspective and a return perspective, you can absolutely get into short term rentals and be relatively hands off. But like, I think, you know, I both know like any way you cut it, it's going to be more hands on. There's more things to manage. Like you have to be really intentional about the metrics you track about the, you know, you know, just all the things that go into it to make sure you're curating a good guest experience. But that's more like headspace, high leverage time than you actually, you know, going out and turning in the unit. So it's a better use of your time, I think.
- [16:21]
Joe Jensen
Yeah, man, that's, I really like that that you have so much knowledge in the space there. And it's like, I guess the question I'd ask is, is there a point of like how many units that it starts to make sense to scale? You know, you mentioned you were doing like you people do four or five kind of on their own. Like is there a point where it's like you can you outsource with only one or two or does it not really make sense at that point you really need five or six before you start outsourcing. Like what's the tiers there?
- [16:49]
Blake Daly
Yeah, that's a really good question. I think it like not to take the scapegoat of it depends, but it kind of does, you know, like depending on your strategy, depending on your market, your length of stay. Like if you, if you're doing like more of a midterm rental where you have, have people coming in for the local hospital or nurses or corporate professionals, those are going to take a lot less management out of you. And there might not be a whole lot to outsource in, in that phase, especially when you have a few. But I think like always like my first hire and you Know, I probably hired 4 or 5 until I found the right one was just a VA that can help you with the admin items and you can find these on upwork or onlinejobs, ph or you on Fiverr. And you can find people that are either like general admin that have specialties and whatever it might be, like social media, marketing, guest messaging. There's a ton of people that we've hired that used to work for Airbnb and have been trained by them and know the platform really well. So that when you hire them they already have like a baseline understanding. And these people can be hired from anywhere from like 4 to 5 to $6 per hour, which if they're working 10 or 20 hours a week for you, is very manageable. I mean if you have one short term rental, say it's cash flowing, you know, a couple hundred, maybe a thousand bucks a month, like you can afford that. It's just kind of like the mental hurdle of now you have somebody to lead and manage, but takes your time to focus on the, the higher value things that are making that, that make a bigger impact for your business and you can outsource those other things and have them, you know, have the tactical work done without it taking up your headspace. So I think that's a really important part of it. So you can start, you know, with a $5 VA from the beginning that messages guests, you know, a couple hours a week maybe and might help make sure that all the turns are ascribed to a cleaner to make sure that, you know, you're not getting double bookings, you're not missing turns, things like that. And that's where I started and you know, kind of incorporated them into more and more then they're helping me, you know, get all the documents to the bookkeeper in there. So it just scales kind of as you go. So I think that's a really important one. But if you want to talk about, you know, having a team or more of a high leverage position, you might need three to five short term rentals to actually, you know, start to build that back end infrastructure to actually help with the operations. And then certainly like when you get to around, you know, the eight or ten level you like at that point, unless you're just buying really thin margin deals like you should have the, you know, the top line revenue to be able to divert, you know, a hundred, you know, a couple hundred bucks, maybe 1,000 bucks a month towards that kind of administrative help that eases the burden on you to manage everything and then you can you know, focus your time on, you know, making sure your business is actually running smoothly, finding new deals, you know, increasing the profit, doing pricing strategies, things like that.
- [19:40]
Joe Jensen
I've seen a lot of success of people I've talked to that it seems like when you kind of bundle where you buy, you know, as opposed to having like one short term rental here and one all over there, it's like you. Yeah, you'll have like five or ten in one location. It sounds like that's something that you've done.
- [19:55]
Blake Daly
Yeah, that's a really good point. And like, and all that, the things that I was just talking about, about, about building up to that level of that, that number of units really it's a number of, of, of revenue. Right. Because you could have one unit that just kills it that could provide the, that revenue you need to outsource and like different asset classes will have higher margin so you need less of those properties. So it's really, it's a revenue number but it's really hard to meet that and meet kind of like this base economy of scale where you can really have a team in place in that location that manages everything. And kind of for us, like we found that in our markets it's, it's somewhere in like the 20 to 30 unit range of where we can have an on site property manager.
- [20:34]
Joe Jensen
Right. Doing all of your units in that, that handyman doing all of your units, you know, because. Right, yeah, those guys and find the right ones and.
- [20:46]
Blake Daly
Yeah, but if you only have to.
- [20:48]
Joe Jensen
Once for all of your units, that, that seems like a lot better than trying to do it all over the, the place.
- [20:54]
Blake Daly
Yeah. So that's where it starts to get much more efficient and you're on a much more manageable scale because as we're building our business, like we started with our two hotels in, in Panama City Beach, Florida, plus all my rentals there and then we had one in South Lake Tahoe and we could see the difference. Like we had the two hotels plus the houses. So that team, you know, they managed the houses, they managed the hotels and you know, we had the revenue to cover, you know, all of the payroll expenses to have those people there doing the things that like my partner and I just couldn't do, we didn't have the time to do, still got our full time jobs. Like a lot of people that start investing in real estate have full time jobs that are using real estate to get out of that job. It's like you need those people in place to do that and to really grow and Scale. But then in Tahoe we had the 14 units and we weren't quite at that level. Like we didn't really have the revenue to hire the property level team there until we got our second property which is 20 units. So that put us at 34. Then we had you know, the margin that we needed to have our property manager, assistant property manager, our maintenance guy and all of our cleaners. Plus the, you know, the overhead went towards our back end team hiring an additional Econiers member, promoting one of them to a manager that kind of oversees that team. And now we're really, you know, running at a smooth operational pace. Whereas before you get up to that level it can be more hands on and you know, you doing more of the things or just wearing more of the hats.
- [22:18]
Joe Jensen
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me because I feel like, like what would you say like to somebody who's like is it worth owning two or three short term rentals or is it, is it really only makes sense if you're gonna like actually say be able to grow it enough to be able to outsource a lot of it. Because you never use like a property manager. Right, Because a lot of these property managers are taking 25, 35% for short term rentals. Yeah, that's exactly why we kind of.
- [22:44]
Blake Daly
Developed into having our own, you know, like a whole separate entity which we have Propco and opco. The OPCO is essentially you know, the operating company, the property management company that runs everything and that be really was built out of necessity because we knew that another property management company wouldn't have, you know, the infrastructure and the know how to manage all that we have and really do it to the quality and maximize the profit potential there. But I think to, to go to your question, yeah, property management is super expensive but if you have a, you know, if you've got like, if you're in the one to three range and you have the revenue to be able to cover that and still have, have profit and do better than you would as a long term rental, like it can definitely be justified there. But I think like it's so in that one to three range it's still so easy to. I say easy, you know, it's got its own set of problems but easier to wear all those hats and actually you, you get a better, better understanding, you know, of your business, how the pieces work together and can really affect the change. Change to maximize your potential. Because if you, you, you pull in a property management company, you know, they might have 50, 70100 other units that they're managing. They're using all the same pricing strategies, they're using all the same recommendations and you're not really getting a diff differentiated product. And I think in today's market the, you know, the Airbnb rentals and short term rentals have become so commoditized because there's so many operators out there like that that think it's, you know, easy to just furnish a place, you know, put some cool art up on the wall, throw some cool throw pillows and you know, run this, you run the short term rental and it'd be as profitable as it was two to three years ago. But the number of listings has gone up so much that you really, I think, need more control and you need to have a differentiator and you're not really going to get that with the property management. Now you can set it up on the front end, but I think like again it just kind of tailors off, tails off over time. But in the 1 to 3 range, I think you can absolutely like still be profitable, you know, still put in systems that makes it really manageable to, you know, do what it ever do, whatever it is in your life, you know, still go to work, still go on vacation, not having to be pulled into the business all the time. And you put a few of those things in place, like have a really good, excuse me, have a really good cleaner that has a little bit more responsibility, does, you know, maybe you pay her just a little bit more. We pay all of ours hourly now because we're kind of at that scale and that's another, another percola scale. But if you find this cleaner that you know, can not only clean the unit but can, you know, maybe purchase supplies for you, can maybe let you know when something's broken or they just call the handyman themselves to get it taken care of, then that takes you out of it even more and there's less things you have to do. And I know like a handful of people, they might have, you know, four to five or six short term rentals that perform really well and you know, they're like, that's their full time income. They're out of their jobs now and they can travel, do whatever, got kids and spend time with family. So that I think that 1 to 3 range is where you really like, you know, sharpen your ax to be able to scale to that next level where you really get that financial freedom. But it takes going through that phase of kind of like learning how to put all those pieces in place to get to the next level.
- [25:53]
Joe Jensen
I love that. I kind of suggest that to a lot of people when they're first getting into real estate, it's like do, do the dirty work yourself so that you know how to manage the people that are going to do it eventually. You know, whether it's like say physically, you know, getting in there and changing this or like fixing that up. And like a lot of times you gotta do the dirty work at the beginning so that you understand the ins and the outs.
- [26:15]
Blake Daly
Yeah, yeah, I always recommend that too, especially with like short term rental property management because there's so many nuances like your, your location, your property type and a few different things like your pricing strategy are really going to dictate like the type of guest you get. And the more you figure out how those inputs like affect your outputs of, you know, how you're financially performing, you know, how the workload is, what the guests you're actually getting. Because like a certain kind of guest will absolutely, you know, be more of a headache and be harder to, and create more work for you. But if you set your business, you set your, you know, your rental and your unit up in a certain way, like you can get the best, you can get, get, get the best guests and you know, make it more manageable on you. And that's things like you just don't, like, you just don't understand that dynamic. If you just hand it over to property management. If you do, that's fine. Like if you want to go completely passively, you can still do that with short term rentals. But we're kind of like talking about like putting those systems in place, you know, and getting to that place where you have control kind of over your like, like in a weird way like your financial destiny. Right? Yeah. So yeah, I, I think it's a great tip and I tell people that all the time too.
- [27:17]
Joe Jensen
Yeah, it's almost like there's a disconnect if you don't and it's like it doesn't need to last forever but just it's part of the tuition, like go through it. Yeah, you get it. But man, you're, you're doing more than just, you know, oh, renting out a house. Like you're, you're running hotels. I mean you're running multi unit hotels. I like that niche of going in, taking these rundown motels and totally renovating them. These like really cool, unique, original boutique like hotels. How has that been running like a whole hotel as opposed to like an airbnb Is it pretty similar and just like. Yeah, just kind of same systems, just easier to scale it?
- [27:54]
Blake Daly
Yeah, I think there's definitely similarities, but there's also like, there's also nuance to it as well. Like you got to think about when you have, you know, a bunch of rooms. We have anywhere from eight to 20 units in one location. So when you have 20 units that are all, all, you know, beside each other. We got a couple, we've got one that's two stories. You got them on top and bottom of each other. You kind of got to think about like the guest experience and how they go through, you know, having people beside them. It's not, I mean it's private. It's a private space. You know, their own, their own entrance, their own complete unit and. But there's also going to be other guests on, on site. So you really have to be intentional with like your guest communication up front with your listing and really just over explained because guests don't always take the cue from you and they don't always look at all the pictures and they don't always read everything. So we put, you know, a couple of different things and really explain out in our listing. We explain out in the automated messaging, you know, explain out on our websites so that they know what they're coming into. And I think like the key here is to set your expectations, like for good or bad, you know, whatever it may be. And I think we have awesome properties and they're not bad, but like it just properly sets the expectation that like, hey, you might hear noise and we provide, you know, earplugs at all our places because of that to try to of, you know, provide something in places, at least show them that we care if they don't use them or not, you know, but these systems are, are the biggest part. And I think those are essentially the same. And like the cool part is it. The cool part about it is those scale out. So like the things you do for one unit are the same you do for two on a bigger level. But when you put systems around that, it makes it a little bit easier, right? It could be your, your guest, your guest communication. It can be your guests like refunds and resolutions. And when you have systems in place for that and you have a bunch of units, you know, they all kind of fall under that same fold. So it takes out a lot of guesswork from you. I think the. Because we have, you know, different kind of properties in different locations. Now if they're all different houses, like I could see the difficulty in you know, having this house with this set of amenities, with you know, this rule book, you know, this local codes and ordinances and you know, you've gotta, I don't know, go check in with a caretaker and do all this. And it's completely separate for a different house, completely separate for a different house. So it allows you to kind of systematize each property under like a bigger umbrella of an operational fold of how you actually run your business. You know, your underlying principles of how you process certain things, whether it be refunds or you know, whether it be your, your transient occupy, occupancy taxes, you know, based on your location. So it allows you to build up a lot of redundancy and then outsource those kind of mundane, repeatable tasks that you would, you know, have to do separately in a lot of cases if you had a bunch of different kind of properties all over the place.
- [30:40]
Joe Jensen
So where did you get this, this business mindset, you know, as you're talking about running all this? Like you're not, you're not passively owning some investments. Like you've built a business. You understand it like especially short term reels. Like it is its own industry of business. You know, have you always had that kind of business mindset or is it, did you just learn it along the way? Like what do you, what would you say?
- [31:03]
Blake Daly
Yeah, I think it's, I think it's really developed over the last, you know, two to three, I mean really been in short term rentals for the last like four plus years. But have like, like. And I've been through every stage of it now. Right. I mean I think the next stage would, you know, to get like a 100 plus unit boutique hotel like on a lake on a mountain somewhere that like floats up into space every 12 hours. But I think like it's, it's come from just like going through each phase and like, like I'm, I've just always been, you know, like self reflective of like the things I've been through. And like, I don't like making the same mistake twice. I don't, you know, always avoid the second time. But you know, if I reach a bottleneck, like that's where I want to put in a process or a system so that doesn't become a bottleneck in the future. Like I don't want that one thing to limit my growth or like pull me away from, you know, what I'm actually focused on at this point anymore. I want that to be something that can be, be, you know, Handled with something in place, a team member, you know, a process that we can go to when that thing arises. And I think one of, you know, some point. I read the book Traction and we run our business on eos, so I think that compartmentalizes the different. I saw you looking for it on your screen.
- [32:16]
Joe Jensen
Yeah, I was like, have that right here.
- [32:18]
Blake Daly
Yeah. Kind of use that as like a manual. You know, I refer to it, I don't know, maybe once every couple weeks and just like reread a section of something I'm kind of going through. And I think it allows you to kind of compartmentalize different areas of the business, whether it be marketing, whether it be your revenue management, you know, which involves like your pricing strategy and discounts and different things like that, your HR systems and pull those back into, you know, like understandable pieces so that like, hey, we run this function of our business this way and what that allows us to do is save all this time, run more efficiently. Like employees know what to do. We have these different documents that we, we run our business on and the employees know where to go find that. Like if it's a question about a property or e concierge member knows where to go find that, they'll look it up and give the response. So it's just like been a series of like getting through like each bottleneck phase, learning the lesson and just continuing to, you know, add new pieces of, I don't know, like optimizing behavior kind of at each level.
- [33:22]
Joe Jensen
Yeah. And it's the funnest thing, I think one the key attributes of successful entrepreneurs or business people, anything is just the confidence and knowledge or belief or whatever you want to call it. They're like, you can figure it out, you know, so you get to the stage and you just figure it out. And like you say you remove that bottleneck. I really like how you describe that. And it's like, okay, now we'll just go as far as we understand. Like, we won't. We don't know what's going to stop us. But then when we hit that wall, you figure it out and you create a system to overcome it. And like that concept, so many people are afraid, like, oh, well, I don't know how to run a short term rental business. I don't know how to flip a motel. I don't know how to, you know, buy a 66 unit. And it's like, dude, Blake didn't either six years ago. You know what I mean?
- [34:03]
Blake Daly
Like you, I think that's like, like such an Important thing of just, you know, real estate, short term rentals, like business in general. Like you learn what you need to at that stage and then continue like building that bridge until you like reach that crossroads. But the whole time, like, like I just always kind of like tried to absorb the, the information and the resources about that thing I'm going through and really like learn it and then build a system around it and then I can move forward. Like I'll give an example about one of the things that, that we've done in our business is hiring. So South Lake Tahoe and Panama City beach, where we have our properties at our, you know, destination vacation rental markets. So you know, the, the local population isn't as big as like the influx is what is what we see every year. So they've got tougher rental markets. They're also, you know, kind of more rural, like further away from bigger metro areas and especially like South Lake Tahoe, it's a mountain town, so it's really hard to hire there. And we had a lot of, a lot of trouble getting the right, you know, the right candidates, hiring the right people. Had a lot of turnover. I think we had, I'm counting my head, I think we had five different property managers in like six months or maybe less. Five different property managers in five months. And it was just like a constant headache. It's like we could never get past this problem. And luckily we've had an awesome girl now for 11 months going on a full year with us and she's awesome. And it took, you know, learning the things that we had to learn. But I read this book, who the book on hiring and got really intentional about our, you know, like, job postings to make sure that we're in the first place attracting the right people. And then our screening questions and our interviews to whittle through to really get the right people. And then our, they call it the who interviews. When you take like your top two to three candidates and then really narrow down the one you want to hire and then from there you've got to do your onboarding process to make sure that they know everything that they need to be doing, that they really understand their job, that they understand what their goals are, that they understand what the company does and is, you know, and stands for and the core values and all that kind of stuff. And then just the ongoing training. So it's like this whole, you know, system and process flow. So that took, you know, probably four or six weeks of just like doing that thing. And then once we got through that like, the next time we had a hire is much easier because we had it all documented, we had all the things in place, we had all the screening interviews, we had the job posting templates to get out there. And it was just repeating, you know, repeating that system. I'm not going to say like, you know, hiring in South Lake Tahoe became the easiest thing ever overnight. Like there's still kind of issues underlying, but now we know how to deal with it and like we know the levers to pull to get better candidates. And like that's just one example of like the many of like when we hit that bottleneck or when we run into that, that crossroads, like what, what can we do? What can we learn as like the owners of the business to fix this thing, make our business better, increase our profitability and decrease the headaches and all those different things.
- [36:55]
Joe Jensen
And I, I love so much the concept of like I can put in work now and it'll be forever return by making life easy. Right? Like, that principle is, you know, what attracted me to real estate at all. It's like, oh, I'll to get this asset stabilized and secured and rented or.
- [37:12]
Blake Daly
Whatever, build your portfolio and then collect.
- [37:13]
Joe Jensen
The cash, you know, no matter how much time or effort you put into it. Right now I put sleepless nights and just crazy. It's not sustainable, right? But once it's up and running, like it'll pay me forever, you know. And even with the systems in your business, like I said, it's like, dude, that sucks. At first it's like this huge headache. You're like, I don't want to be doing this with my day every single day. But it was not every single day day. Eventually you get it figured out and then next time it only takes a fraction of the amount.
- [37:42]
Blake Daly
And that's always like the, the pushback I hear when I, you know, talk about this kind of stuff or whatever. It's that it takes too much time on the front end to actually do it. But you don't think about like all the time you're going to save on the back end. And that's what you're going for, right? Like, you might spend, I don't know, call it 20 hours to build this hiring system, but then you say save, you know, four hours for every like hiring tranche you do. And if you're doing that once every couple months, you know that payback is, is infinite after like month two of building the system. So it's, don't think about like the, the hurdle you've Got to jump to get there. Think about how, you know, smooth the rest of that process is going to be for you, you know, and save all that time. I mean, it's, it's such a. It's such an impact on, not just like the efficiency of the business, but like the, the clarity and the quality you have in your own life and being able to manage it like it, it makes all the difference.
- [38:33]
Joe Jensen
Well, that's the heart of real estate to me. And owning assets, that's the difference between an active income and owning an asset is you don't have to keep jumping the hurdles. I think of like a hurdle race, and it's like, imagine if you could have a choice, like, hey, your first hurdle is 15ft high. You literally have to, like, climb over this thing and then climb down it.
- [38:52]
Blake Daly
But then there's no more hurdles.
- [38:54]
Joe Jensen
There's no more hurdles the entire race. And it's like, like, okay, you gotta.
- [39:00]
Blake Daly
Just gotta learn how to climb really fast. And then, you know, you, you out climb everybody and you're running, you're running easy after that. Yeah, I think that is, I mean, that's one of the biggest keys. And like, you know, I think what leads us oftentimes to real estate is the. Is that promise of passive income, right? Like, you don't have to work for your money. You buy the asset and then it just pays you and mailbox money and all that kind of stuff. But there's such a gap there about the things you actually have to do up front when you buy that. I mean, when you buy that property, it could be the renovation, it could be like the tenant placement, it could be, you know, the hiring the team, whatever it is. But then it becomes passive. Like, it does, like it, you know, it takes me four to five, maybe six hours a week to like, actively manage the business. And then, you know, there's other, like, research and optimization, you know, tasks I do on top of that because I'm trying to make things better and grow and all that kind of stuff. Like, the active management takes a couple hours a week. And that's what with, you know, like 85 units and over two and a half million of revenue that we bring in, it doesn't take that much, that much time when you actually build the systems. And then you can have that base layer that, that, that baseline to build on top of, right? Like build a really strong foundation. Then you can build anything you want on top of it.
- [40:13]
Joe Jensen
Yeah, I love that. That's awesome, man. Well, I know we don't have all day. But maybe we could just touch a little bit bit on the. Well one just you know, running your Adventure Stays. If there's any more assets or aspects to the company of adventure stays that we haven't really touched on, you know we, is there, is there any other parts that we haven't really mentioned of the company you run?
- [40:37]
Blake Daly
I mean we could talk about like the, the positions of the functions we have in the business. One of the biggest kind of separators for like, like for our business. And you can do this in you know, different kind of real estate businesses when you operate yourself. So like I, I like to think of myself as like the real estate investor. Yes, but like the operator. Like I know what goes on in our business, like I know our niche and all that kind of stuff and don't just invest passively. So like how we've set our hours up is we have our prop cos, our property companies that are our LLCs that have our ownership interest in the actual real estate. And then we have the opco which is the operating company or the property management company that manages all of our real estate. So there we have you know, basically money collected into the OPCO account paid out to the, the propco account which pays out us and our investors. And then we also own, you know, a share of the OPCO as well. So we get paid from there. So we have two different sources of income and also two, you know, value drivers. As the operating company gets more valuable, has you know, more top line revenue, increases its ebitda, it becomes more value because as a property management company, as an operating company company, it's valued as on like a multiple of its EBITDA or its earnings before interest, taxes and depreciation. Then obviously our real estate, it's commercial real estate so it's valued on you know, the, the performance of the asset or the noi. So we got two different value drivers there. And then kind of like underlying the business we have our, our revenue manager, we have our back end operations manager, a director of operations who manages the, the day to day and all the different divisions, guest experience manager who's, who's you know, domestic and manage manages our team of Filipino VAs that do all the guest messaging and the refund requests and resolutions and all that kind of stuff. And then we have our property level staff of our cleaners, our property managers, assistant property managers and maintenance. And then we've got a listing manager missed out on the first time that does all our updates, creates new listings, different stuff like that. So, and these are all, all like, functions essentially that I kind of did at one time. And like, we talked about like, meta bottleneck and then, you know, outsource. Like for the longest time, I did all of our revenue management and I just sat down for like a week and just went savant mode and typed up, you know, this big revenue management document with hyperlinks to videos, kind of walking through our calendar and showing these different things, you know, the strategies about it. And then trained that person, our revenue manager on that and met with her weekly. And then it became like a, a one hour, a half hour to one hour management meeting for me to kind of check her work, give her more insight and stuff like that after she was trained and just took each one of those positions and kind of outsource it to make it more scalable.
- [43:18]
Joe Jensen
And you built all this out in just the past how many years?
- [43:22]
Blake Daly
We started in June of 21 with adventure stays. So what's that, like, 20, 18 months? 20 months.
- [43:31]
Joe Jensen
That's crazy. Like, I think somebody listening to this, like, oh, well, yeah, you know, know, sounds like you've been doing this, you know, decades. You know, it's like, dude, you, you, you built this in just a couple years, not even, not even two years, you know, and it's like, that's pretty inspiring like that, you know, even just being able to replace your W2 within the first year. Like, a lot of people, like, yeah, like, it's like a lifetime goal. You know what I mean? It's like you're able to pull that off so fast. What would you attribute your quick success in, you know, from level one up to everything we've been talking about, like, so fast.
- [44:03]
Blake Daly
Yeah, that's a good question. I think, man, it really comes down to just like the, the speed of action. Like in, in business, I think speed is very forgiving. Like, because if you, if you succeed, that's great. Like, you just compounded your success because you're, you know, you're chasing the next thing. But if you fail, it's also a really good opportunity because you take that as a learning lesson and you figure out what didn't work and you're able to pivot as long as you don't give up. Like, you never really fail. So by going really fast past you just, you flatten your curve. And, you know, I think there's a really fine line between being like, overly aggressive and also like being like, conservative in nature of not wanting to get into a real estate investment and lose your shirt. Right? Like, you Want to make it profitable for you, for your investors, if you're raising money. But you also have to go, you know, fast, whether it's like chasing a deal. Because in this competitive market, like if you're not pursuing a deal with, with you know, some intention, somebody else is going to get that deal. And you know the same thing with hires like you gotta, when you find a good candidate, you gotta, you gotta pull them in quick because somebody else is going to hire them. And I think that's everything around what I've done is just like try to go fast and stay a little bit uncomfortable, be reflective in the lessons learned and the failures that I've had to take that into the next success.
- [45:18]
Joe Jensen
Yeah, I mean and, and, and just for those listening and we, I know we didn't dive into. We've been talking more about your short term rentals and your systems like you did. The way you funded a lot of this was through the BRRRR strategy, right? Like you didn't just have millions of dollars, you know, you're active military, you're not just inheriting millions of dollars to throw at this. You, you funded most of it through, through buying and rehabbing and refinancing. Is that right?
- [45:42]
Blake Daly
Right. Yeah. I mean when we started, like me and my wife, neither one of us came for money. And I think when we bought our first house with a zero down VA loan, like paying closing costs, I don't think we could have even covered all that. So we negotiated in like costs so that we didn't have to, you know, go into the hole. So we started with you know, 2,500 bucks, not that much money. And from there, you know, just built up our cash like over time, like we would just save everything we made. We actually cash flowed on our first deal like 100 bucks a month. So that just went into the account and I was just watching it go up 100 bucks every month. I was like, we're rich baby, we're doing it. And got into wholesaling. I think I did like three or four wholesales and a whole tail. So allowed me to build up a little cash and then did the, was doing the burst strategy and would just, you know, roll everything back in. And then when I got to the limit of like my own personal funding, you know, I was doing creative finance with the early deals I did and just like figuring out how to put the pieces together and like building my confidence and that translated into, you know, bringing deals and experience. I had to be able to raise money and bringing investors to my deals. So when I kind of met the natural limit of, of what you can do or what I could do with my own money started, you know, getting good at raising money or getting decent. Like I want to call myself a, a great capital raiser by any means, but had some success at it, you know, syndicated the apartment complex, raised some money for the, the boutique hotels and other deals I've done. And I think that's one of the things that, or the thing that's always going to be your limiting factor. Like Brandon Turner told me this at the Maui Maui Mastermind. He's like, if you don't have like you could be able to, to you know, find great deals, you could be able to, you like pull all the different levers in the different areas of your business. But if you don't have the money to close it, close the deal or grow your business, like that's going to be your, you know, like kind of ultimate stopper. So you need to have focus on that. And that's kind of what got me able to scale up, man.
- [47:40]
Joe Jensen
There's so many things I want. We could do like five different podcasts just with you. But let's. Before we end out though, let's talk just a little bit on that. So raising money to be. Because like I said a lot is it obviously an issue. I think a lot of people think about, oh, I don't have any money, you know. And so people started learning about the birth strategy. So if they have a little bit they can go recycle it basically and do it over and over, you know, but talk about that because that is a bottleneck. That is the lid that stops a lot of people at every stage in their investment. You know, those even who own like lots of property, they hit a wall. They're like, dang, like how do I buy more? Tell us a little bit about how you've raised money and how that's been such a win win for you and those that you brought in and how you kind of, you view that going forward.
- [48:25]
Blake Daly
Yeah, yeah. I think raising money, raising capital from private investors is such a relational thing. Like for people to invest money with you, they have to know you, they have to like you and they have to trust you. So those are like the three areas that, you know, if you're looking to raise money that you, you could focus on. And like the easiest one, or maybe not the easiest but the most apparent, it's like how get more people to know me just because like the law of large numbers, the more People I know and ask to invest with me, the more people will invest with me. But to do that, you've got to get them to like you. Like nobody's going to invest money with you if they think you're like a dirt bag and just, you know, not doing the right things, like hold yourself with credibility, have integrity, that kind of stuff. You probably shouldn't be raising money if you're not anyway. And then you got to be trustworthy. So you got to get people to know like, and trust you. And that's all based on your relationship with people. And that could be, you know, your relationship and your perception, like how you put yourself out on social media, right? And I don't suggest you just go like, hey, I'm raising money, you know, invest my deals. But like share your deal, share your successes, share your progress, share your journey, right? Because if you're already investing in real estate, you're doing something that a lot of people aren't doing and a lot of people with capital aren't doing but want to because they might be high income earners making a lot in their job, you know, stuck in the job, whatever it is, or maybe got inherited, whatever that situation for them might be. They're not the one chasing down the deals, but they want to invest in real estate. So if you can connect with those people, it can be on social media, it could be your local real estate meetup. I thought about joining a country club, but I never did that one, but hosted a real estate meetup for two years and a lot of got a lot of investors there, found partners there, found deals there. Like the more you can get around people with that like mindset and just make yourself known, liked and trusted, you'll have those opportunities. And then of course, eventually you've got to actually put the deal together and have the confidence to either pick up the phone, meet in person, meet for coffee and share that opportunity. And something I always like to do on this is ask somebody if they know anybody that wants to invest with you, share that opportunity. Like, hey, I mean, I got this great deal. Do you have anybody that would want to invest in this? And I've asked that question. People say, yeah, me. And it kind of takes the load off of asking them directly and kind of defers like, oh yeah, my Uncle Jim might or whatever. If you're kind of that more deferential.
- [50:39]
Joe Jensen
Person when you're happy either way, right? If they're not interested, but they have like, you know, Uncle Jim and Aunt Sally do, it's like Great, you know, and if they are, then they can volunteer themselves. It's like, it's a win win for you.
- [50:50]
Blake Daly
Yeah, exactly. But it's just all about relationships, man. You got to put yourself out there. You've got to, you know, be vulnerable at times and you've just got to make the effort to put yourself in the position to provide a good opportunity for somebody. Like, first you got to have, have like you're not going to raise money for a bad deal or shouldn't anyway. You've also got to have some kind of, like some kind of experience, some kind of drive, some kind of hustle. Like if you're not, if you're not doing anything, if you don't know what you're actually raising money for and have confidence in yourself to actually do the deal, like, you shouldn't be raising money. I see people, you know, doing that on social media. You know, I know that know some of those people, you probably do too. And it's like, probably need to back up and learn what you're doing a little bit more before you actually go ask somebody for their money. But yeah, know what you're doing, know your strategy and just make the relationships.
- [51:34]
Joe Jensen
No, experience isn't required in the social media world anymore. Everybody's expecting a mentor and the expert now.
- [51:42]
Blake Daly
So.
- [51:43]
Joe Jensen
Right. So, so let me ask you this. Do you find the deal first or do you find the money first? I know it's a lot of questions.
- [51:49]
Blake Daly
Chicken and the egg problem. I'm a deal guy. I think if you find the deal, you will find the money. Like I've always, always had success by going out, putting in the work, putting in the hustle, finding the deal and then not, not like the money just gravitates towards you, but like the gap between finding the deal and finding the money is just simply telling people what you're like, what you have and what you're looking for. So if you've got a really good deal, like go to your real estate meetup, like get on, I mean, depending on, you know, SEC rules, if you're, you know, raising money for commercial real estate that could be offering a security, you don't want to get into that realm. But if you got a single family house and are just looking for a private investor to partner with you, partner with the, with you on it, you know, probably not a big deal, but I guess talk to your attorney if, if you think that's a line you don't want to cross. But you basically, I, I always think the deal. So that's where I come from on it is if you find a deal, you can find money. But also like if you are, I don't know, the more cautious type that wants to build out a, you know, email system and you know, talk to a bunch of people and go out and raise the money first, you can absolutely do that, that and you know, raise a fund or something like that and go out and look for deals. But I don't know, I just like the pursuit of the deal.
- [52:55]
Joe Jensen
Yeah. And it sounds like, I mean, obviously there's no right answer. Right. It can work however, you know, I'd like to hear how you do it. And you know, it sounds like your strategy though is to be out there, be networking, be seen, like you said. And then when you find the deal, there's, there's a, there's people that you know, to reach out to, you know.
- [53:12]
Blake Daly
Yeah. And I think even when you don't have the deal yet, like, like let people know what you're looking for. Like. No, let them know like your, your track record, what's your past record is and your credibility say, hey, I'm looking for more deals like this. You know, we had a 30% return on this deal. We refinanced, got our money back in 12 months. We're looking for another deal. And they're like, oh shoot, man, you know, that's a great returns. If you find one, let me know. So raise money that way is just like, you know, priming the pump of having those conversations beforehand. And you, you as a real estate investor, you should, should especially as you get to the next level, you should always kind of be raising money. Right. You always want to be like building your investor list, building your network, you know, opening up that door for opportunities. And then when you find the deal, bang, like it's, you know, like the fish hits the hook and you're ready to go.
- [53:56]
Joe Jensen
Well, and I love it because it's such a win win. You know what I mean? It's like whoever's investing, they're, they're, they're super passive and they just get, you know, to benefit off of all the time and effort and knowledge and all those hurdles, those giant 15 foot hurdles we talked about. You've done all that work and they just get to like come in and ride your coattails and, and they get a, facilitate the whole process so you can keep going, you know. So it's such a win.
- [54:18]
Blake Daly
Yeah, I mean it's such like a mutual relationship because like I was saying, there's, there's a whole demographic of people that have money that want to get invested in real estate, but don't have the time, don't have the experience or the knowledge. And if you are that person with the time, experience, and knowledge, then, I mean, that's a perfect, you know, mesh. And what I did when I first started was like. Like, I found the deal, the other person brought the money, we split the proceeds. Like, that's a great way to get started. Like, you don't have to go raise a million bucks to do a single family house and get your, you know, track record started. If you find a really good deal, you, you know, you bring the contractors, you close it, like, all that kind of stuff, and you just need the money, partner. I mean, you're in the money. Pun intended.
- [54:57]
Joe Jensen
Love it, man. Well, we'll. We'll kind of end out here, go to our final. Final four questions and. And everything like that. You. Is there any last bits of information you want to make sure the world has heard from you? I guess that'll be part of our questions, but.
- [55:12]
Blake Daly
Oh, man, put me on the spot.
- [55:13]
Joe Jensen
Any things I should have asked you? I haven't asked you yet?
- [55:18]
Blake Daly
No, nothing that you haven't asked. I would just say, like, before we get into this last section, I'll leave everybody with, like, just, you know, go get after it. The action is the most important thing. Like, I've. I guess I've been fortunate by not failing too bad so far. But, like, there's going to be failures along your journey, and don't let the fear of failure stop you. Like, I think about, like, I was teaching my wife to ski the other day, and, you know, she wasn't one to point her skis downhill. And I was like, the worst thing you do is fall. And you get up, you get back up and keep going. And I think the same is true for real estate investing, building your wealth, building your business, whatever it is. Like, you have to go take the action and focus on the speed and the velocity of turning your money into more money. And I think you'd be pretty pleased with where you end up at the end of that.
- [56:02]
Joe Jensen
I love that. There's this concept I read in a book once, and maybe it was in a movie. They talk about getting hit, like, getting punched in the face right there. Once you get hit once and you realize you're not made of glass, like, everything changes, you know, and that's what I think. Like, yeah, so you fall and you didn't break. Like, it's okay and you can Just then you can actually have the confidence to keep going. Going.
- [56:24]
Blake Daly
Exactly.
- [56:25]
Joe Jensen
All right. Love it, man. We'll dive into our final four questions here. All right, Blake, number one, what is a non real estate related bucket list item you've recently checked off or are excited to check off next?
- [56:37]
Blake Daly
So at the end of November, early December, I went to Central America for the first time and I hiked an active volcano at night and watched it erupt.
- [56:46]
Joe Jensen
And three, down in Guatemala.
- [56:48]
Blake Daly
Yeah, I was in Guatemala. That was a pretty.
- [56:50]
Joe Jensen
That's crazy. Cool. My buddy. I have a friend that literally just got back yesterday and was telling me about that, and they got stuck up there at night in these, like, windstorms, and they, like, almost died.
- [56:59]
Blake Daly
Yeah, I mean, you're up there in the clouds because, like, these volcano. We're in Antigua and there's just these three big volcanoes, like, around the outskirts of the city. And they're just like, from a distance, they just like big triangles. It's like, how did that thing even get there? And we hiked it and we got up there at like, I don't know, 7pm it probably gets dark around around 8pm and then we had to make the climb down the slope and then back up to get to the other volcano and watch this thing from, like, I'm not even exaggerated. Probably 150, 200 yards away from, like, the mouth of the volcano. Now, you could feel it erupting underneath you, and you just see it spew into the air and like, you're in the. At a safe distance because it kind of blows the other way. But just, I mean, just an unreal, unreal day and a real experience. A very cool group of people that was fortunate to go with and. Yeah, good bucket.
- [57:47]
Joe Jensen
Listen, that's cool. I like that. I need a.
- [57:49]
Blake Daly
So you guys haven't been to Guatemala? It is amazing.
- [57:52]
Joe Jensen
I know, it's funny. It's like you hear. See something in one place, and I felt like I've just seen this exact same thing, like, in five different places.
- [57:58]
Blake Daly
I'm like, dude, the stars are lining up and you got to get your ticket.
- [58:03]
Joe Jensen
All right, number two, what book are you currently reading?
- [58:07]
Blake Daly
So I'm. I'm reading two, and I kind of usually do this, but I've got one paperback that's up on my shelf and one on Audible, and The paperback is 30 day stay by my friend Sarah Weaver, who actually that Guatemala trip and her co author, Ziona. And that book's pretty good. It's like the, like 30 days and more for short Term rentals, I guess medium term rentals. But just reading that to kind of add another tool to the tool belt and pretty well written. And reading Becoming Trader Joe which is like the, the story of the entrepreneur who built, built Trader Joe's, the, the grocery chain. And reading that one on Audible like while I drive and work out and stuff and enjoying both of them.
- [58:48]
Joe Jensen
Love it. All right, so what content, podcast course, YouTube channel, etc, any source of whatever kind of content you comes to your mind. What's something you would recommend people diving into or checking out?
- [59:00]
Blake Daly
Yeah, I think for a book to get started, a really tactical piece of information is a book by Brandon Turner that I read really early on and was a huge help for me. It's the, the book on investing in real estate with load no money down, super title but just an awesome book like learned about wholesaling and seller financing and lease options and you know, partnering and raising capital and all those different things that you really need is like all the different puzzle pieces you have to kind of create what that deal actually looks like. And because of that book I like I used three different creative strategies or four different strategies for my first four deals. So I did a zero down VA loan, I did a seller finance deal, I did a lease option deal and I partnered on a flip. So I used like all these different things because of that book. Like I knew they're out there and then I just had to like figure out the contracts and put it all together and that was a really good one for me and I think that would help a ton of people, especially those just starting out. And I think if you're flipping into flipping or wholesaling, 7 figure flipping is a good like online education and group and stuff that I've been a part of. Went to the events and get a ton of value from and if you're into short term rentals, I got a YouTube channel, you know Shameless plug and lay down some, some stuff on there.
- [60:10]
Joe Jensen
Now what's the, what's your YouTube channel?
- [60:12]
Blake Daly
It's just my name at Blake Daily.
- [60:14]
Joe Jensen
And that's D A I L E Y right?
- [60:18]
Blake Daly
Yep.
- [60:19]
Joe Jensen
Check out these. Not like the word, not like the word and it's. And that's the same for your Instagram if people want to follow you on Instagram and reach out.
- [60:27]
Blake Daly
Yeah, Instagram is Blake J Daily because Blake Daily was already taken. They had like two posts from like six years ago and, and two followers and. And can't get my name on there.
- [60:37]
Joe Jensen
But just like messing it's like hey Can I just, like, take you? Yeah, I think I messaged him to cancel your Instagram.
- [60:44]
Blake Daly
Yeah, I messaged him for about, like, I think I was on like, a monthly cadence. Like, I'd message him once a month, and I did that for about a year, you know, out of my just belief in the follow up from, like, real estate deals. I've got a lot of deals from just, like, following up with sellers, and they never budged, probably because they had two followers and six posts.
- [61:02]
Joe Jensen
Like, he doesn't even know his login six years ago.
- [61:04]
Blake Daly
Yeah, they don't even know their login.
- [61:05]
Joe Jensen
Logged into that thing ever. Yeah, someday they'll delete the account and it'll free up and it'll be yours.
- [61:11]
Blake Daly
I know, I should set like a. An alert on that or something, right?
- [61:15]
Joe Jensen
All right, last question. Blake, this has been a treat. So much to learn. Like, say, I'm glad you do have your, Your podcast and, and your Instagram. I do recommend people to follow up on that because obviously we didn't get to a ton of things I wanted to pick your brain about. But, you know, they can find you directly and see the content that you're putting out there. But, but. All right, last question. You. You pull out your phone, you write a text. Everybody's phone in the world just vibrates. They look down. What's it gonna say?
- [61:43]
Blake Daly
Ooh, I. I was thinking hard about this. I wrote down, like, a little. A little idea about it. But the opener would be dream big and act. Like, I think anybody anywhere in the world, real estate investing, business owner, or not. Like, the. What got me into this was like a dream for. For more of my life. And real estate just happened to be like that avenue. And then the other part of that is act. You got to take the action. Like, too many people either don't have, like, goals that they're working towards, you know, or they don't have a. A dream that they're. They're. They're chasing. And I think you need that to. To have the passion to have the drive to keep working towards whatever it is you're. You're. You're going towards. Like, you need something to fuel you because there's down days, you know, there's. There's bad stuff that happens in the meantime. You got to have something to keep you going. And there's. There's always, you know, something in the way. There's. There's always an excuse, but if you just. You dream big and act, you'll overcome it and get through that stuff. And achieve what you want at the end of it.
- [62:40]
Joe Jensen
I love it, man. I love it. Well, sweet. Well, hopefully everybody reaches out to you if they need to invest in you.
- [62:46]
Blake Daly
Have any syndications, please do. Everybody listening hit me up on Instagram, would be happy to. To help or, you know, provide any feedback or value that I can. You guys, what's your.
- [62:58]
Joe Jensen
What's your next big project you're ready to tackle or do next?
- [63:02]
Blake Daly
Oh, man, I've actually. So I got my eye on one. I got to figure out how to raise a little bit more money before I take it down. But I think the, the general, you know, direction that I'm heading is more unique spaces, more properties and units that just really stick out. You know, like, when you see that listing photo, you're like, boom, I gotta book that thing. Because I think Airbnb, Airbnb bust was a, you know, a big controversy over this low season. And the fact is, like, Airbnb does, like, shadow list certain listings in the low season because they have way more supply than they have demand for those, for those periods of time. So if you're not one of the best, or if you, you know, if you're not hitting certain marks that that platform wants to see, whatever the algorithm is saying, like, you are not going to get shown in search, you're not going to be seen, you're not going to get booked, you're not going to make money. So it's just like a vicious cycle. But if you, if you, like, focus on the virtuous cycle of, you know, have a really unique property that stands out, then you get more views, you get more clicks, you get more bookings, you get more, and you get more money. So you want to put the virtuous cycle in, in your favor. And I think looking for more really cool places, like maybe some tiny homes or tree houses or just cabins up here in Utah or wherever, like, Yellowstone's not too far away. Like so many national parks out here that, you know, have, have, have the demand, then you just gotta provide the product that people really want and will pay the highest price for. So that's what I'm looking forward to, finding some spaces like that.
- [64:32]
Joe Jensen
I love it, man. All right, well, without any further ado, we'll let you go. I appreciate your time, but this is Joe Jensen signing off for the Real Estate Investing School, reminding you the speed of action is.
- [64:48]
Blake Daly
Come.