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The Side Hustle Show
686: Waiter to Glamping Millionaire: How to Build a Six-Figure Glamping Business
00:42:38
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- [00:01]
A
From a waiter to glamping millionaire. What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the side Hustle show where we've been sharing legit ways to make extra money since 2013. Today's guest took a unique land hacking approach to build both cash flow and life changing wealth by tapping into the glamping trend. This is glamorous camping for those uninitiated. For the day job he teaches short term rentals at bigger pockets. But on the side he runs a multi six figure glamping operation from Cameron Ranch. Glamping.com Garrett Brown. Welcome to the side Hustle show.
- [00:36]
B
I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
- [00:39]
A
Me too. This is, this is a new topic in the 670 plus episodes of the show. So stick around. I'm going to be learning right alongside the audience. We're covering how you can get started with this side hustle, how some of these can command four star hotel types of rates without the four star startup costs, the marketing best practices, the mistakes to avoid all that stuff. But Cameron Ranch doesn't happen by accident. You see this trend and say, look, I got to get in on this, I got to figure out a way to take advantage of that. And before you can do that, you need some acreage, you need some land. So talk me through the initial phases here.
- [01:14]
B
So I went all in for a lack of better words into the glamping side because I was able to get this land with something called land hacking is what I call it. In the biggerpockets community we've coined the term house hacking, which is essentially where you buy a property with, you know, four, five, six bedrooms, maybe three bedrooms and you rent out those rooms to either, you know, roommates or friends or you know, tenants or whatever, whatever you want to call them. And then they're helping you pay down the mortgage while you're almost essentially living for free. So I was like, why could I not take that same concept and do this with, you know, maybe some cabins and call it land hacking. So I found a property in a, I'm in Houston, Texas and I was looking for something within the vicinity of Houston, Texas that was a little more rural. I have something I like to call a 60, 30, 10 rule. Now I've coined it that. But at the time I knew that I needed to be 60 minutes from, you know, a major city. And so I found some land. I didn't want to go three or four hours out from a major city because I figured people would, people Wouldn't want to drive that far. Yeah, I thought of the. The 30 portion was 30 minutes from some type of national, regional, or state attraction. The land I ended up finding was about 10 or 15 minutes from a lake. It's called Lake Livingston, which is the second biggest lake in Texas. But it was also near a state park. It was also near a national forest. And so there was a few, like, attractions. And then the, the 10 of the 60, 30, 10 rule is you want to be 10 minutes from some type of civilization, you know, a Dollar General, gas station, Walmart. That. Because I knew that if I was, you know, in a beautiful place, but 30 or 40 minutes away from civilization, I was like, how am I going to get people to come out there and clean for me? How am I going to get people to come out and, you know, operate the facilities for me when I'm not there?
- [03:10]
A
There's such thing as too remote.
- [03:12]
B
Yeah, exactly. And I was. And I see people, they'll see really cheap land in, like, a really, you know, remote area. And I'm like, well, there's a reason that land is extremely cheap because you're, you know, you're going to have a hard time turning that into anything for, you know, a million different reason. So I ended up, you know, researching a lot of places. I found a house that was on a little over 10 acres. And so I knew that having that house on the property, it's very hard to get a loan for land.
- [03:40]
A
Just. Just raw land.
- [03:41]
B
Yeah. Black people have to buy it with cash. You can. You can probably get a loan for like 50% down, which, you know, a lot of people. 50% down. Even if you're buying a piece of land, it's still going to be, you know, maybe $100,000 or something that's really expensive. And then you. Then you have to spend the money to the site. So I found this house on about 10 acres in a. In a unrestricted area. It wasn't in, you know, it wasn't in a neighborhood or an HOA or anything. And so I sold my townhouse that was in Houston, took a little bit of the money I made off that and put this into this new house, which I only had to put 5% down on, which it's. It was a $500,000 house. $550,000 house, to be exact.
- [04:23]
A
Okay. On 10 acres.
- [04:25]
B
On 10 acres. It. It came in appraised at 600,000. So I already had some instant equity when I went into it. But the cool thing, I had the 5% down. But I also was able to negotiate a 3% seller concession into my offer. And so what that did is I almost went into the property for about 2% down because I had a 5% down payment that I needed to put down. But within my offer and my negotiations, that seller agreed to pay back 3% of the price. There's even opportunities out there that you could get a, it was called an FHA loan, which could be 3.5% down. You could even possibly get a USDA loan, which is a government loan, and, and getting into it that wants to develop rural areas. So with all the money that I was able to save up front, I only ended up having to put about, I think it was about $12,000 down. Yeah, that money, the money I saved, I ended up building my first tiny cabin on the property. The really cool thing about land hacking is one of the most expensive things when you're doing raw land is the utilities, getting electricity to the property, getting, figuring out how you're going to get water, figuring out are you going to be on a septic system, are you going to have public sewer available to, you know, have, for restrooms and things like that. So one thing about having a house on the property is you've already, you know, that electricity is right by the property because that house has electricity.
- [05:50]
A
Yeah.
- [05:50]
B
There's a, there's a good chance that you're going to be able to either tap into that water system they have, if it's public water, or if it's a water well system, which this property had a water well already.
- [06:02]
A
Okay.
- [06:03]
B
And then the septic is a little bit of one that, that there's not many ways to go around it because usually the house that's built, if you're on in, you know, remote land, is usually going to have septic systems. You're not probably going to be able to tie into that septic system because they're very strict on the, you know, the size of it. So one of the big expenses I had was a septic system that I had to design which cost about $8,000 to put on for my first two tiny homes and then the road system. Those are two things that people personally underestimated myself. So I had the land and I, I put my first tiny cabin which is, it's called a geodome, basically like a glorified tent, but it's like made out of steel and it's got like this 10 year long canvas.
- [06:47]
A
Okay.
- [06:47]
B
So, and you know, we bought it for about $13,000. There's a company called Pacific Domes in America that make them. They're in Oregon. There's a lot of, like, cheaper options out there, but I personally wouldn't recommend them.
- [06:59]
A
That seems fairly affordable for a semi permanent residence.
- [07:03]
B
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, you know, you build your foundation under and things, but I've seen people buy, you know, two or $3,000 geodomes from, you know, Alibaba and all these, you know, like, worldwide sites that will, you know, sell them within a year. They're deteriorating. So that's a good thing about buying with a company that has reputation.
- [07:21]
A
Okay.
- [07:22]
B
But we bought it for about 13,000. We built it a little bit in the middle of the property. So our road to get back there was about $5,000. It was a gravel road. And then we had to put the septic in, which is about $9,000.
- [07:34]
A
Got it.
- [07:34]
B
And so we're all in for that for about, I think, $30,000. We worked with our county. One thing good about Pacific Domes is they actually have architectural plans from an architect that are. That comes with your geodome. So I went to my county and I said, hey, yeah, little easier to.
- [07:51]
A
Get that signed off.
- [07:52]
B
Yeah, way easier. You know, they were. They were very skeptical at first, but they were open to hearing what I had to say. And then I was like, hey, this is what I want to do. Like, I have these plans. These are stamped by an architect. Like, is this doable? And, you know, luckily my county, I was in an unrestricted area. My county was on board with it. Not every county is going to be. So make sure you're talking to local permitting departments and just be honest with what you're thinking about doing.
- [08:17]
A
Yeah, you've got me searching like Redfin for, okay, I need, you know, three plus bedrooms on five plus acres. And not a lot of options come up, but some do. And, you know, there's price difference between the Northwest and Houston, but there's also that regulatory component where it's like, probably, probably a stricter building code environment than outside in the Texas rural area. But you never know. You never know until you ask and figure out, well, what can I realistically do with this parcel or this piece of property? And so this is where the math gets kind of interesting. So, okay, we've got. I got a place to live, right? So the land had a house on it if you wanted to go live out in the burbs. Deep, deep burbs. And then for $30,000, with the septic and the road and the structure, now all of a sudden I've got this asset that could potentially start cash flowing. It's like, now we got to turn around and rent this out.
- [09:10]
B
Yep. And we tapped into the water and the electric that we already had at the house and so that was about another $5,000, I think, to, you know, trench some lines and add some lines to get to where we were. So we're about 35,000 there. We added a hot tub because we knew that that's a major selling point for. We wanted to rent, you know, we, we wanted to rent at a luxury price.
- [09:32]
A
Yeah.
- [09:32]
B
A hot tub is, it's a little more work, but it increases your reven 36% just by adding this one simple amenity.
- [09:39]
A
Wow.
- [09:40]
B
It's almost like a. You have to have that.
- [09:42]
A
It pays for itself right away. Yeah. More with Garrett in just a moment, including how the geodome generated nearly $100,000 last year, plus the creative partnerships that got him $129,000. Cabin for free coming up right after this.
- [09:58]
C
For such an important channel like phone, the software powering this important channel was super outdated and clunky. We wanted to make it delightful and make it very easy for businesses to connect with their customers through voice and text.
- [10:12]
A
That's Darina Coolia, co founder of our sponsor OpenPhone. Trusted by more than 60,000 customers, this is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communications. I like to think of it like a centralized hub to receive and respond to calls and texts in your business. And I asked Darina about who's typically signing up for this kind of service.
- [10:33]
C
We definitely have a lot of folks who come to us and their personal cell phone has become their company phone number and they've hired a team or they're starting to scale their business and they just find themselves as a business owner, as a founder, being the bottleneck. So we see that all the time. And then we also see folks much further along where they're using some legacy complicated tools that are just not really made for communication. Happens these days. We also just recently launched Sona, which is our voice AI agent that can handle any missed calls. If you have clients calling outside of business hours, instead of them going to voicemail, it can go into, into Sona, which is capable to handle any replies and can also take a message. So you are capturing that lead information.
- [11:23]
A
And it's like, and it's a robot like it responds on the fly with some pre programmed responses.
- [11:30]
C
It does such a great job. This way they can handle questions 24 7.
- [11:33]
A
Now here's a scenario for you. So let's say I've committed to a certain business phone number and I've distributed flyers. It's printed on my business cards, it is on my local business listings, on directories throughout the Internet. Like, what's the process to now have that ring Open phone system versus the current system?
- [11:53]
C
Totally. So we see this all the time. This process called phone number porting. We port numbers from all kinds of carriers. So basically, no matter what provider you're using, we can take that number and move it over to openphone. It is free. We handle the whole thing. And if you want to try out OpenPhone, we have a free trial. You can try it out, see how you like it. And if you like it, you can then decide to port your existing number over. And we handle the whole process.
- [12:20]
A
Now openphone has automatic AI call summaries so you don't have to worry about taking notes while you're on the call. But another cool feature is what arena called AI call tagging. Basically allowing you to quickly filter for the calls that were sales objections or customer complaints or requests for a discount so you can review those and see what worked, what didn't, and train team members on the most effective tactics and language in those cases. And it's all in the name of building a better, faster and friendlier customer experience.
- [12:50]
C
I want all OpenPhone customers to have five stars only.
- [12:54]
A
Right now, OpenPhone is offering Side Hustle show listeners 20% off your first six months at openphone.com SideHustle that's O P E N P-H-O-N-E.com SideHustle and like we talked about, if you've got an existing phone number with another service, OpenPhone will port it over at no extra charge. OpenPhone. No missed calls, no missed customers. With our partner, Mint Mobile, you can get the coverage and speed you're used to just for way less money. And for a limited time, Mint Mobile is offering side hustle show listeners three months of unlimited premium wireless for just 15 bucks a month. So while your friends are sweating over data, overages and surprise charges, you'll be chilling, literally. And financially. I've been a Mint customer myself since 2019. All Mint plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can bring your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and your existing phone number and your contacts. So join me in ditching overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint mobile for just 15 bucks. A month this year. Skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.comsidehustle that's mintmobile.comsidehustleen upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 per month limited time. New customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.
- [14:26]
B
For people that are listening and thinking the same thing as you about, like, oh, well, I don't know if I can get things like this permitted in my area because, you know, rural Texas is a lot easier to build in. Just simply find out a county that you're interested in and call that permitting department and talk to them. And I, I've called about three or four different counties before even figured out the county I wanted to go to because I would just call them and I would say, hey, like, would y' all allow this? And if a county is like, absolutely not. Never. We would never do that, then you go, okay, that's not somebody I'm, I'm gonna want to deal with.
- [15:01]
A
Cross that went off.
- [15:02]
B
Yeah, yeah. You know, most of these smaller counties, they have like one or two people that work in their permitting department, so you just need to reach out and ask them. And I also would ask local contractors. I started calling some local contractors in areas and I was like, hey, you know, what do you think of County A versus County B? Have you, you know, are they more strict there? And every single contractor was like, hey, go to County B. I promise you they're way, way easier to deal with on this type of build.
- [15:27]
A
Oh, interesting, because we've got like Mount Rainier national park, we've got Olympic national park, we got Lake Chelan and Eastern. Well, there's like some decent destinations here that people are coming to from out of state and they're not super close proximity wise to like, you know, go visit on a day to day basis. But it could be feasible you find something in proximity there following your 60, 30, 10 rule.
- [15:47]
B
Yeah, there's a lot of really cool stays in the Pacific Northwest area that have already been established. So if you find some areas that maybe have one or two kind of unique, you know, there's like some immaculate tree houses and like floating airbnbs I've seen in the trees up there.
- [16:04]
A
Yeah, yeah, there's like a famous tree house that's nearby us.
- [16:06]
B
Yeah. Maybe piggyback a little on some of those stays and say, Call those counties and go, hey, I have a project I want to do. Is this feasible? Or, you know, even the worst case scenario, quote unquote, would be you build something a little more traditional built, but then figure out a way to make it really, really cool with some of the amenities you add and, you know, like, you can have a base. I have friends that have very basic cabins, but they made, you know, they had a hot tub, but then they maybe built a little outdoor grilling area. They put some, like, LED lights and just some, like, really cool features to it. And they still just cash flow like crazy because they built an experience. You know, that's the whole thing here is you want to build an experience for that. When somebody comes out into you, your place that you're thinking about building, that they're. They're going to leave there, like going, wow, that was, you know, I can't get that type of, you know, vibe anywhere else. So I. I even have a friend in the UK who has a glamping site who's one of my mentors. He has 11 cabins on three acres, and he is booked out for two years in advance, and he built them all himself.
- [17:14]
A
Wow.
- [17:15]
B
And, and, and, you know, he spent maybe 30 to $40,000 on each structure. And so you don't need 10, 12, you know, 40 acres to do this. A lot of it is building the experience and then building it right. You could easily have a very profitable glamping site with a couple acres, a few acres in a good area, you know, similar to we did. We got the first one going. It started renting out. We probably were all in for about $60,000 by the time we did flooring. We did an inside bathroom, like everything top to bottom.
- [17:46]
A
Garrett, the number keeps going up. First you said 30, then you said 35. Now you're telling me 60. Like, there's a little. There's some scope creep here, as it goes.
- [17:54]
B
Yeah, well, you know, I mean, I'm going through the. The levels of what you have to add, you know, I mean, because you could slap one up for 30,000. I'd have friends that have done it. You can do it. I'm speaking on how high I went with it, but anybody could do a much more basic setup and still run into a business. I have friends that have put up a safari tent with, you know, a fire pit, and they maybe $5,000 per, and they're still getting a few thousand dollars a month. It's all kind of dependent on what your goal is and how high of a Luxury item you want to go to.
- [18:26]
A
What is the geodome rent for?
- [18:27]
B
So my geodome, now two years in, it rents for about, we get about $422 average daily rate with cleaning fees and everything included. And we're booked about 88% of the year. 88% occupancy.
- [18:43]
A
Wow.
- [18:44]
B
So we made about $95,000 gross last year. You know, there's operating expenses to this. You have cleaners? Sure, we have our mortgage that are the cash flow from our geodome is paying the mortgage on the house. So we don't have any living expenses. You have some utilities, but we still profited about $60,000. So our first year we covered all the expenses back in and then it's all gravy.
- [19:08]
A
Isn't that crazy? That's what's nuts is the nightly, if you can figure out the marketing and the occupancy side and we should get, get into that. But like 400 bucks a night is crazy. Like you should be in like a luxury hotel. But it's like, it's like you said, building that experience that we're saying we're going to go out into the country. We're expecting a certain thing. It's like the Instagram worthy, you know, cover photos and everything else that make people want to make that trip and spend that kind of cash for what is not a Four Seasons downtown.
- [19:38]
B
Yeah, I think it's crazy all the time. Other people, when I tell them how much we, we do and you know, spoiler alert, we built more tiny cabins on same land that do even better than the geodome because of everything we learned, cost a little more to build. But the cash flow we had coming in from the geodome, we rolled it into more tiny cabins.
- [19:57]
A
I've got enough space here where I could basically lather, rinse, repeat, add something. It sounds like a slightly different build or kind of a, you called it like a tiny cabin or almost like a kit build where it's, you know, find a place, plop it down. And it's not necessarily hammers and nails and foundation like building something completely from scratch.
- [20:15]
B
Yeah. The second, second tiny cabin we built on site, I got creative with it. We planned how we were building. So we, we built in phases. We built the geodome closer to the house because it's cheaper to get the utilities there.
- [20:28]
A
Okay.
- [20:28]
B
And then we kept expanding some on the land. The second build that we did, I found a company, they're called Oud, they're from Eastern Europe, Estonia, but they make mirror cabins where there's this really cool tiny cabins that have these, like, mirrors all surrounding them, basically. And you can see outside but can't see inside. They were running for $129,000. I want one, but I don't have $129,000. I reached out to the company and I said, hey, I have a profitable site that I'm wanting to expand on. Would y' all be interested in a partnership or anything along those capacities? They had just brought their first few houses to the United States and surprisingly well. They said yes. And they gave me a $129,000 cabin for essentially free in return for me giving them a revenue split. So that way I didn't have to put any money down for this cabin except for the small infrastructure we built with more utilities, all that, which is about $20,000. They gave me the sauna and the house, brought it, dropped it on a crane. And that cabin alone is doing $498. Average daily rate for two years has been booked. I want to say we're about 90% occupancy on that, but it grossed $115,000 in its first year when I didn't have to put any money down for it.
- [21:46]
A
That's nuts. And I'm looking at the. The pictures on. I'm on the OOD website. It's like Oomlot. Um, lot D. Yep. O o D Kind of these things. They're tiny. Like, they're smaller than, like, a kid's bedroom.
- [21:58]
B
Oh, yeah. They're 221 square feet. People tell people all the time. Like, we've had people stay four or five days before, but most people come in for two nights, one nights on the weekdays. We get a ton of birthday celebrations, anniversaries, romantic getaways. That's kind of our target demographic. But I tell people that just to, like, spark people's ideas on the creative side of things. Like, you don't have to have cash all the time to get things started.
- [22:24]
A
Yeah.
- [22:24]
B
There's tons of tiny home companies out there that build them. And as I expand, I. I reach out to tiny home companies all the time, saying, hey, do you want to do a revenue split? Because it's almost like an infinite cash on cash return for me when I get a free place. And then I'm able to just split profits with people. That's like. It's almost a cheat code.
- [22:42]
A
Yeah. Keep your risk super low. What kind of split do they expect if they're going to rent for almost 500 bucks a night?
- [22:48]
B
Yeah. So they get 30%, which is. Yeah. Like you were talking about the risk. I would have been so nervous to buy one of these. And then.
- [22:54]
A
Is anybody going to want to come and stay here? Yeah, yeah.
- [22:56]
B
They're going to want to see you have some skin in the game. The one reason why they were fine with this, because I had my geodome already.
- [23:02]
A
Yeah.
- [23:02]
B
And I own the land. And so they. They're like, okay, you've obviously invested some money into this. But I have friends in areas even not far from me. There's a lady I know, she bought, I think, four or five acres. And this is kind of what I was alluding to earlier with the safari tents, which I personally am not a big fan of, but I know people do really well with them. Yeah, you can get them for a few thousand dollars. And she put up seven or eight safari tents on just a little piece of land. Just had basic utilities, no real big amenities. And she's probably, you know, she's probably making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year collectively across all of them now, y. You know, as gross revenue. So there's a lot of levels and levers you can pull to, you know, depending on your situation and where you're at. And even now that she's built up that business, she could replace one of the tents with her cash flow and maybe, you know, get a more unique tiny home or something that will bring in a higher average daily rate as she keeps reinvesting back to her business. And the really, I mean, cool thing to me about this, and, you know, I'm hoping other people can see this as a. Like, this is how I. I've planned to build generational wealth is that property that I took that was worth $550,000, but now we have four tiny homes. I have tiny homes in other cities as well. But that land value and everything I've added to it, appraisal wise, it's worth about $1.5 million now because of all the utilities I've added, all of the infrastructure I've added, and because I've built out a business on the land, I could sell everything with the assets. The house included everything as a total business one day if I wanted to. When you're selling a business with assets, they're not worried as much about the asset value. They're worried about how much income the business is bringing in.
- [24:47]
A
Yeah, I mean, it's crazy to be generating that type of nightly rates, that type of monthly cash flow, and to have added a million dollars in equity to the property in just a few short years. I think that's really, really inspiring and I like this creative financing aspect of well, I don't want to buy this thing for $130,000 but like it's almost kind of a glorified owner financing type of deal where like hey, why don't we see what a cash flow is it? I'll pay you a percentage of the proceeds, stuff like that. More with Garrett in just a moment, including the shocking to me at least percentage of bookings he gets directly through social media without any paid advertising, plus the essential tools and team members to let him manage 10 properties while working full time. Coming up right after this. Let me know if this sounds familiar. You've got more ideas than you've got hours in the day and that to do list is never quite done. That's why finding the right tool to stay on top of everything and simplify things is such a game changer for millions of businesses, including dozens of side hustle show guests. That tool is Shopify. One thing I love about our partner Shopify is you don't have to start from scratch. They've got hundreds of ready to use templates that help you build a beautiful online store to match your brand's style. Plus, Shopify makes it easy to create email and social media campaigns to capture customers wherever they're scrolling or strolling. And they're not sleeping on AI either. I'm talking tools to write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn those dreams into and give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com Sidehustle go to shopify.com Sidehustlez shopify.com Sidehustleen it's summertime and the living ZZ. That is unless you're a business owner with too much on your plate. If that's you, it's time to start buying back your time and the number one place to do that is our partner. Indeed, by the time this ad is over, 23 businesses will have found their next team member. I'd love for you to be next to find that amazing candidate, find them fast and free up some of your hours. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites. Indeed's Sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast. Plus with Indeed Sponsored jobs, there's no monthly subscriptions, no long term contracts, and you only pay for results. It's no wonder why three And a half million employers worldwide are already using Indeed to hire great talent fast. And why it'll be my first stop when I need to make my next hire. There's no need to wait any longer to speed up your hiring. Right now with Indeed side Hustle show listeners get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility@inn Indeed.com Sidehustleshow just go to indeed.com Sidehustleshow right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com Sidehustleshow terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. I want to shift gears into the marketing side of things because there's always the adage of if you build it, people will come, but that's not necessarily the case. You know, I stick a cabin out in the middle of nowhere. Nobody knows about it. Obviously Airbnb is going to be a big marketing channel, but talk to me about setting it up and kind of getting those initial bookings, especially when you don't have any reviews or social proof yet.
- [28:07]
B
I was doing what I like to call build in the open or build in public, where I was documenting my journey while I was doing this on social media, on YouTube, all these things. It was fun for me to like, do these projects and like film them and, and, and go about it that way. But also at the same time, I was already starting to build my Cameron Ranch glamping brand on social media without even opening. And so I'd already had 10 or 15,000 followers between a couple different platforms.
- [28:34]
A
Yeah, pretty significant following.
- [28:36]
B
But I was building it for like a year and I was posting all the time. And I think people get, they're like, oh, I'm not going to start the social media until I've, I've built, you know, like, I haven't it refined and every, you know, like, my business is perfect or, you know, like XYZ is, is like, you know, flawless now. And it's like, no, people want to see right now. People want to see the struggle. People want to see you, like your trials and tribulations, your wins and your losses. You know, one of my most viral ones that I made through a few times is I had, I had this big issue with building. I was trying to build this like, really cool. I call it a cowboy pool, but it's just a big stock tank pool. And then we put a filter into it for like above ground pools. And I was building this and, and like I, I was documenting my journey of how to learn how to do this, it wasn't an amenity for my short term rental site, but I had this, this video just because people like to see something cool that they may think about things that like 20 million views now across, like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, all that, every single platform it went viral on. Not only did that build my social awareness, but it also had people going, oh, I want to stay at the place with the, with the cowboy pool, like with the G, the guy. That's weird tent.
- [29:44]
A
That kind of took a turn that I didn't expect with the build in public. Sounds like you were able to almost build a wait list of people who were like, whenever this is ready, whenever, whenever you open, I would love to come and stay here if they happen to be local or maybe even flying in from out of state or a different area. So talk to me about the first bookings.
- [30:04]
B
Yeah, because we built out this side of things, I was able to get some immediate bookings. And, and honestly, like, it sounds like, looking back, it's like, oh, it sounds so simple. But like, we launched the geodome, but.
- [30:16]
A
It was a year of work.
- [30:17]
B
But yeah, we launched the geodome and instantly we've never had a slow month since then. And we've been open for over two and a half years now there. And I got professional photos. I paid for a few hundred, I think it was about three or four hundred bucks for really, really good professional photos. And then we just, you know, we launched it and all that building in public and building up the trust with people, it, it just, it took off. And I worked with some local content creators too. That' that's something in this space that you can do if you're, you know, looking to anything in this space, any, any foodies or travelers, any. I was starting to reach out to anybody in Houston to say, hey, do you want to come stay at my place for free? And you know, I'll give you an exchange stay and you just promote it. Some of them would come stay for free. A couple of them wanted to charge me money. And I was trying to decide, like, oh, you know, some of them are expensive too, like a thousand dollars to come stay. And I'm like, oh man. You know, this is right when I was starting. I'm like, oh man, should I do it? And a couple of them, they did okay. Not as good as I want, but there was a few of them that I paid that just took off. And, and also there were some free ones that did just as well.
- [31:19]
A
Okay.
- [31:20]
B
Like, there was one guy that he had like a thousand followers. And I watched a couple of. He reached out to me and he was like, hey, like, I love. You know, it was a unique stay. We. There was no other geodomes in Houston, so, like, a lot of people were trying to come to make cool content. And he reached out to me and I was like, okay, I'll check it out. I looked at his page, and he was. You could just tell he. He was inter. He was going to restaurants and he was interviewing owners, and you could just tell he kind of cared about his content, but he didn't have a ton of followers. And. And I was like, all right, well, I'll give him a shot. His video exploded. It got like a million views, you know, like, and then he came back and did my other cabins and got like a million views on those. And it was just because I saw that he had a good storytelling. And now his. His following is, you know, exploded since then. But sometimes some of these content creators, if you're building a business, they just need to highlight to blow up their channel as well. And you may be that story if you talk about your trials and tribulations with them and hit. One of the videos I had with him was me talking about how hard it was to build the site, how. How long it took to build the site and all the things that we faced. And because we were telling that story about all our struggles, it, you know, and how he highlighted the content. It did. Amazing. Any social media presence is not always going to be guaranteed to have the virality that you want, but sometimes you have to take a few swings to. To hit that home run with them.
- [32:40]
A
Sure. Do you find that the majority of the bookings are now coming directly through the website or people still discovering it through Airbnb? Vrbo. Like more of these traditional booking platforms.
- [32:53]
B
Airbnb is still a great resource because they have more eyeballs than anybody. But people don't believe me sometimes when I say this. We do 80% direct bookings on our website all through social media media. We don't do any paid ads. All we worry about is organic SEO content, you know, search engine optimization for Google, and then we do organic content on all of our platforms. I even have a girl that works under me now that does all of my social media content. We have videographers come out and shoot it, but she posts seven TikToks and reels a week. And we have just exploded just on social media growth, just doing that formula. And we do do, like I said, 80% direct bookings. And I wouldn't be surprised if we end up getting into the 85 to probably 85% by the end of the year. Airbnb still has a big grip some areas. Vrbo is still kind of popular, but for the most part, it's pretty much direct bookings in Airbnb. But I, I do recommend people being on as many of those platforms as they can. There's a lot of them popping up there. There's one called Glamping Hub, there's one called Hip Camp, and we, we get a few bookings through those, but, but maybe 5% out of the year, but majority is direct bookings and then that second tier is Airbnb.
- [34:03]
A
That's super interesting. I would have guessed almost the opposite. So that's, that's a testament to the power of your, your social presence, for sure.
- [34:11]
B
Yeah.
- [34:12]
A
You made it a destination, you made it worthwhile. You sold, you built and sold the experience and people want to come and check it out. What's cool about that is they're now booking directly with you rather than comparison shopping. Oh, should we stay here? Should we stay here? Well, this one's an extra hundred bucks a night. Is it really worth it? It's like if you can drive that own traffic way, way more profitable and you're not paying any Airbnb fees and stuff.
- [34:34]
B
Yep. And, and we, you know, we control the guest experience from beginning to end when they're on our website for the myriad of things we do. And like you said, like, they're not price shopping. I find that people in our direct booking website are less sensitive to pricing than on Airbnb. We don't have a ton of people asking us for discounts on our direct booking site. They just book on air. Everybody wants a discount. Everybody is comparing other places. Everybody wants you to. Oh, can you waive this?
- [34:59]
A
Yeah, like, no. We're 98% booked. We're not. We're not waving anything for you.
- [35:03]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [35:04]
A
And it looks like Lodify is the software that's powering that direct booking experience. Anything else on the tools and tech side that people should know about?
- [35:13]
B
I work a full time job and I manage now 10 rentals. I own a good bit of them and also manage for some other people people. Lodify is my property management software, which I love. It handles everything. It connects, you know, it has a direct booking website, but it also will have my geodome if it's on Airbnb, if it's on booking.com, vRBO, glamping hub all this, it, it combines all of that into one calendar so you can't get double booked. And then you have one messaging inbox too. And then on top of that, I use, I use something called Turno. Yeah. Which connects with Lodify. So when we get a booking, it goes to my cleaners that are on turnoff. They get notified like, hey, you have a new booking request, you know, this is your cleaning date. Do you want to accept it? My cleaners always accept it because, you know, we're building a business together. But at the same time I have backup cleaners. If they declined it, it would go to my next cleaner. And then I have something called Price Labs and that's like the last one that I think is pretty critical. It's, it's dynamic pricing. It sinks into your Lodify as well. All these work together and it's about $20 a month. But what this is, does is it's similar to how hotels price their properties. It take supply and demand in the area events, you know, rates that you already have set. You can set a minimum and a maximum. Whole bunch of like really cool tools.
- [36:30]
A
Yeah, Yeah. A Tuesday night in Vegas is going to be a lot cheaper than a, than a Saturday night.
- [36:35]
B
Exactly. And so this software works the same way as that, you know, as that type of, you know, hotel software they use. And so it will, it will fluctuate my booking rates to make sure I'm as profitable as possible. And I think it equate a percentage. I mean Price Labs makes me a big, about 15 to 20% more profitable. And I spend $20 a month. No brainer.
- [36:55]
A
Yeah. For, for 20 bucks a month. Yeah. Are you living on site? Talk to me about where does the time go? It sounds like a lot of it's going toward content but like, you know, maintenance requests. So like what does it take to maintain this on a, on a day to day basis?
- [37:07]
B
So when I lived in the, in the main house while we were building the geodome and we launched the geodome, I still live there. For about a year I was more on site helping with things when I needed to. But then now as we've expanded and grown, I've really empowered, powered my cleaners. Now that I've been out in that area more, I've met electricians that I trust, I met plumbers, I've met handy people and I kind of just have a Rolodex of things of people that if an issue pops up, I give them a call and they can go handle it. Because I built out those systems and team and I really empower my, my cleaning team too. That's something that people are always looking for the cheapest cleaners and, and this. And it's like that's the one area I would never skimp in. Like I pay my cleaners very well, very well, but they also do an amaz job and they have, they go above and beyond for me. Like even today, like we needed to refill some propane tanks and normally I have, you know, I have a couple people out there that help me with things but my cleaner just went and handled it for me today because she had a little extra time and I want them to be happy with this, with us. Go above and beyond for me and then stay with me for a long time because training and teaching new, new people how to help is, I mean that's a whole other headache that I don't want to get back into into.
- [38:19]
A
Right. Like, like any business that turnover is expensive is the worst.
- [38:22]
B
Goes back to treat the people that you do trust, treat them well, pay them well and I promise it's going to make your life easier and make you more profitable in the end. So don't skimp on that.
- [38:32]
A
Any expensive mistakes or surprises you've seen over the last couple years?
- [38:36]
B
I think the one thing that I underestimated with this and I still continuously just pay a lot for is just the upkeep of the, the land. You know, when there's big floods and rains coming, I usually have to have a, you know, more gravel put down on the road. Mo lawn. I, I mowed the lawn and stuff myself for the first bit. But then, you know, when I moved off property, I have a guy come out there to mow it a lot. He does great, but cost a lot. It's not cheap. You know, grass grows very fast and you to have that pristine element that you want for the certain areas, you know, it costs a lot. I have another, a day helper now that goes out a good bit to the property and he's pulling weeds constantly. And, and the things I used to do all the time like fixing little lights. I think just trying to figure out how to make your. I don't want to say landscaping, but I guess, guess it kind of is landscaping of sorts. Just try to make it as efficient as possible.
- [39:24]
A
Yeah, yeah, no, that, that's helpful. Appreciate you sharing that. You've got the bigger pockets day job, you've got the glamping sites. What's next for you? What are you excited about?
- [39:32]
B
So I actually just wrote My first book with bigger pockets, which I'm super excited about. It's called the Glamping Investor. It comes out July 15th.
- [39:39]
A
Oh, perfect. That's great timing on this episode.
- [39:42]
B
I'm super excited about it. Pretty much has put every bit of knowledge in my head that I've learned over these past five years that I've been researching this and doing it and put it into a book. The one thing I loved about BiggerPockets Forever was, you know, they didn't sell $10,000 masterminds provencing you to make $20,000 next month. I'm so against that because that's just not how this goes. Like you're going to have to put some money up. You're going to have to take your lumps to make good profits and you're not, you're not going to be a millionaire the next day you blink and making this site. And so we put it into a book form. You can buy the paperback for $20 or the e book for 10 bucks and I guarantee you it is going to be as valuable as, as paying some of these five and ten thousand dollar masterminds that are out there. This is one of my joys in just teaching this and you know, I kind of light up, light up in, in my personality when I do talk about the glamping side of short term rentals and all that too because it's my passion. You know, it started as somewhat of a side hustle for me and then grew into something bigger. But this is something that could, could supplement. You know, you could enjoy living on a property with some land and have some, you know, tiny homes on your land that's paying for your property. Property growing the equity. And at the same time, like I've met some amazing people. We've had proposals out there. Even this morning I got a text from one of the guests and we knew he was proposing. He sent us a message like oh, she said yes. And it was a picture holding up the ring. And that was just so cool to see. You know, like it's just like remind. It's exactly why I built the space. I named it after my brother who struggled with mental health. He passed away from suicide about 15 years ago.
- [41:13]
A
I'm sorry to hear that.
- [41:14]
B
I wanted to honor him and tell people that, you know, it's okay to not be okay and to take moments for yourself and get out. And I like one of my. Our slogans is disconnect to reconnect. And we want people to slow down and just enjoy time with their loved ones. And so it's, it's so fulfilling to see people enjoy that. And then at the same time, like it's a business that I'm growing and that's, you know, that those are two things that I've always been passionate about. And if I could combine those, then it was a win, win all around.
- [41:41]
A
The glamping investor. Very cool. We'll link that up in the show notes for this episode along with the Cameron Ranch glamp site. Garrett, this has been awesome. Let's wrap it up with your number one tip for side Hustle Nation.
- [41:53]
B
You can't be great unless you start, but then you also, you don't fail until you quit. So there's times I've wanted to quit through this whole process and, you know, sell everything and give up. Like one guest has a bad experience. But as long as you keep pushing through, you're gonna find a way to make it through it.
- [42:08]
A
I like that one. You can't be great until you start it. Can't fail until you quit. A couple takeaways from me before we wrap. Number one is this game, game of cash flow and building equity at the same time through that, like every thousand dollars I add to the monthly revenue is, you know, a 3x return to the, the equity that I have just built almost out of, you know, sweat equity, you know, I was going to say out of thin air, but like, there's effort that goes into that. I love the, the call to get creative on the financing side with these, you know, relatively low cost structures. Or maybe there's a way to make them low cost to you to get them up and running. Running. I liked the note about you gotta make it a destination. You gotta build the experience, especially if you're gonna command these four star prices. And the last bit, hospitality isn't passive. This is not, you know, necessarily a passive income stream. So you gotta build out that team to limit your day to day involvement there and build a team of people that you can rely on that you can trust and deliver a great customer experience. Some really, really cool stuff again, cameronranchglamping.com check them out over there. If you're into real estate as a side hustle, of course, check out the resources at biggerpockets. Check out Garrett's new book. And we've covered a lot of different flavors of real estate on the side Hustle show. And that's why I've put together a little sampler platter playlist. Everything from land investing to co hosting to Creative financing, Rental Arbitrage, Single family House hacking. Lots of stuff on there. You can grab that for free in the show notes for this episode. Side hustlenation.com glamour camping or just follow the show notes link in the episode description and I'll get you right over there. But that's your real estate themed side Hustle show playlist going back several years. You know from the Greatest Hits archives there a cool collection of strategies to to build some extra income. Again, just hit that show notes link in the description. It'll get you right over there. Big thanks to Garrett for sharing his insight. Let me shout out our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. Super cool of them to Support the show. Signhustlenation.com deals is where you can find find all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, help spread the word. Fire off that text message to that entrepreneurial friend of yours who's always got some idea cooking. You never know, maybe it sparks the next side Hustle project. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on the.