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How to Start a Hot Tub Rental Business: Zero to $1000s per Month (Greatest Hits)
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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:05]
B
What's up, what's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle show because your idea of success might not coincide with your boss's awesome show for you today with another example of an unconventional rental business. Yes, there are assets other than traditional real estate that can cash flow pretty nicely with lower upfront investments. This week's guest is a high school history and economics teacher in New York and a listener of the show who reached out after our Thanksgiving episode, which touched on briefly renting out attic space and even camper vans and semi trucks as potential sources of recurring revenue. Steve Nadremia said he had a side hustle that definitely checked the unconventional rent rental box Portable hot tubs. How awesome is that? Steve wrote that lihotubrentals.com has been a life changing side hustle. He's got 25 to 30 of these things in his quote fleet, delivers them with his pickup truck, and is doing thousands of dollars in bookings every month. Stick around to learn how Steve got this idea, how he's marketed and grown the business, and the logistics of how it all works. Notes and links for this episode are@sidehustlenation.com hottub or all one word. While you're there, be sure to download the free list of 24 other unconventional things you could start a rental business around. You can also grab that through the link in the episode description of your podcast player app. I'll be back after this chat with Steve. Ready? Let's do it.
- [02:37]
C
There's a product out there that's kind of like a high density foam hot tub. So the tub weighs about 200 pounds and has a detachable motor pump unit. So they're pretty portable. They're also circular, so they rol that's the product that we use in the United States. There's a handful of people who are doing this business. But if you look up hot tub rentals on the Internet, what you'll find is probably 100 or 200 companies in England, in Ireland, and in central Europe, where it is just absolutely a huge industry. A very normal, popular type of recreation for every holiday under the sun. So there's huge operations there, and I've kind of tried to observe and learn a little bit from what they do.
- [03:18]
B
So very popular in Europe. Was it on a Europe trip that struck the light bulb for you or curious? How did this get on your radar?
- [03:28]
C
It got on my radar. I'm a high school teacher. As my primary career and occupation. I teach high school history and I teach high school economics. And I had had for many years a summer job where I worked in parks and recreation. I was responsible for running the beaches and summer operations for a local town. That job was absolutely amazing. I had a lifeguard job there as a kid and then a management job. And then when I got this teaching job, I was running the whole operation and it was just like a dream come true. And it was like that for years, and it was fantastic. And as things often happen, things change. The management there changed. I ended up for the first time in my life having a boss that I just could not find common ground with. Just a really difficult, difficult person. I started looking for something new. Thought about a rental business as a good opportunity. A lot of people rent tents and chairs around here on Long island for parties. Inflatables was an idea.
- [04:24]
B
Okay.
- [04:24]
C
It was really a saturated business. I just found a guy in upstate New York in the Syracuse area who was renting hot tubs. He's like in a big college town, kind of in a ski town area. And I just got in touch with him, sent him an email, talked to him on the phone. Guy was awesome. I went up there, bought the first three units from him, spent the day with him, learned all about his business. He was super helpful, supportive, and it just kind of ballooned from there.
- [04:52]
B
Was there any research into is anybody looking for hot tub rentals near you? Or you say, hey, he's making it work.
- [05:00]
A
He's not too far from me.
- [05:01]
B
There must be some demand here.
- [05:03]
C
I kind of felt like he was making it work. In central New York. We're on Long island, and we just knowing our population here, we've got the hamptons kind of 20 miles in one direction. We've got pretty affluent suburbs 20 miles in the other direction. There's over a million people on Long island alone. And I thought, you know, like, Look, I'm making $10,000 a summer in this summer job. If I could make $1,000 a month over the course of the year renting these hot tubs, I think that's really doable. I'd have a lot more free time. And I think at that level, it's worth a shot.
- [05:39]
B
Okay, so you meet this guy in Syracuse. You say, okay, I'm going to buy my initial inventory from him. He was unloading stuff or he was also a dealer?
- [05:48]
C
Yeah, he was a dealer, did hot tub service. Sold this one brand of hot tub that we use, which was portable. So he had units everywhere. It was like a hot tub graveyard. So we picked out three good units. But he was great. He put together, like, really, like a nice starter pack of stuff that I would need and parts and things that he uses and gave me a lot of info, gave me some of the documents that he uses, his insurance policy. I mean, he was really, really helpful. Okay. You know, about three. Three. I'm three, 400 miles away. So he was just a helpful and friendly guy. Maybe he was hoping to, you know, sell stuff over a longer term relationship, which was cool.
- [06:24]
B
Yeah. You're not gonna be stealing market share from him. You're far enough away, right?
- [06:28]
C
No.
- [06:28]
B
Okay.
- [06:29]
C
Not at all. So got along well and that's how things started.
- [06:32]
B
Okay. And so there was nobody doing this currently on Long island, but you're confident that the demand was there? It was just unfilled demand. What did it cost for these initial three tubs worth of inventory to put up for rent?
- [06:46]
C
Yeah, the three tubs. Two of them. The plan was two of them are in real good shape. You know, didn't need anything. And then one was a spare. It was functional, but maybe didn't look so great. So we'd have the two and we'd have a spare. So we didn't get jammed up with any problems if anything went wrong. I think I paid 6,500 bucks for those three tubs. Beyond that, I had a pickup truck. I had a trailer. So there was no investment there. We spent a little bit of money on website development. I got Squarespace. I started working on it myself, basically on my lunch breaks. But in the end, I took what I Had and what I could build on my own, having never built a website before, and basically just got a freelance helper to come in and say, this is what I've got. Tune it up, help me out a bit. We sat down for about three or four hours and made it, I think, really presentable to roll out. So we had a little bit of expense there and some initial signage for the truck, some printed material, and that's it. That's it.
- [07:42]
B
Okay, so I'm@lihotubrentals.com now. If I navigate over to packages, I can see the pricing there. And then it's just a. Is it online reservation system where people call you to say, hey, I'm looking for. Looking for a hot tub for this weekend. How does it work?
- [07:59]
C
Yeah, we get a lot of phone calls through Google Voice, which we use. We get a lot of emails through the website. We get a lot of Facebook and Instagram inquiries. Really? Facebook. I could not imagine growing this business in the way that we have without Facebook. And we're trying to bring Instagram in as a parallel because I feel like in my day job, I work with high school students, 11th and 12th graders. Not one of them has a Facebook account. From what I can tell, they all have Instagram and they're our future customers 10 years down the road when they're in their mid, late 20s and beyond. So we're trying to grow that at the same time. But Facebook has been tremendous and mostly free.
- [08:40]
B
Anything specific that you did on Facebook to gain traction, to gain customers?
- [08:45]
C
I mean, so our product is great in that it's really visually presentable, you know, so you get lots of good organic pictures that we take, that our customers take, send to us, that we can post. You know, it really looks inviting and lends itself to that. It also seems to really get good traction on local groups, whether they're buy and sell groups, which are free to post on Facebook. Marketplace, we found a way where we can post on there without having a problem, and that's been really helpful. And the local, kind of like school groups, moms groups, community groups, they get a hold of some of our posts, and that has really taken off.
- [09:23]
B
Oh, interesting. So you can put rental stuff up on. On Marketplace. I didn't know that.
- [09:29]
C
Yeah, you can. At one point, I thought we were having trouble with that because it was like, hey, you're not selling a product. Boom, we're going to shut it down. But we're forthcoming with what we're doing. You know, we post it as a price. We say you know, it's 249 or 259 for the. But we just listed as 259. And then in the details, it's exactly what it is. Rent a hot tub for a week. We can put it right on your back deck on your patio. Give us a call and gets a ton of traffic.
- [09:53]
B
Okay, I'm looking at Amazon for, I searched, I think, portable hot tub. These are the inflatable models. So would this work? Because these are kind of in the price point of say five to eight hundred dollars versus. You're talking about picking up used ones for three grand.
- [10:10]
C
Yeah. So the inflatable tubs are cool for what they are. They definitely work. But they don't function below 50 or 60 degrees and, you know, or at least don't function efficiently. So you can't use them in the winter.
- [10:24]
B
Like the pump or the heater isn't.
- [10:25]
C
Strong enough when it starts to get cool. Kind of like New York fall temperatures, they work, but they run constantly. Then once you hit around the 40, 50 degree mark, they can no longer create heat in a sufficient way that you can use them. They're also not really durable. So, you know, you're looking at a season or two or three if you use it carefully. But if you're not going to have this tub for a long period of time there, you know, it's like you ever have an air mattress, you take it out of the box, you lay on it and it's like this thing is garbage and throw it away. It's kind of like that. They're not repairable, they're not serviceable. They're, you know, it's a different animal. So for some people, that's what they want, but that's not what we, not what we offer.
- [11:04]
B
All right, so you're going a little bit more premium quality on the inventory in the hopes that, number one, it functions during a New York winter, and number two, it lasts a little bit longer. And once it's paid for, paid off, once you've broken even on it and it's all gravy, it's just your labor in the pickup and delivery and stuff.
- [11:21]
C
Yeah, exactly.
- [11:22]
B
How did you figure out how much to charge for the service?
- [11:27]
C
Yeah, I'd like to say that I really studied the market and looked at all kinds of data, really. I looked at what I needed to make to get rid of this summer job, which was becoming kind of a burden to me. And like I said, I was looking at that thousand dollar a month, twelve thousand a year to kind of COVID my $10,000 salary that I was trying to replace. I thought that was doable. I think we started at a 199 for a week, so 200 a week. You know, if I had two tubs, could I get five rentals, basically a 50% capacity. Right. You know, per month between the two tubs, could I do that on average over the course of a year and make 12 grand? I thought I could. It also seemed like a price that I would pay. My friends who are kind of in the same middle class neighborhood lifestyle would pay for their vacation, for their kids birthday party for something like that. There's a lot of alternatives that are around 2, 300 bucks. I'm going to rent a tent, I'm going to rent a water slide, I'm going rent a bounce house. They're all around that same price point. So I thought we'll just go in there.
- [12:38]
B
Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Was it a matter of just scoring the initial inventory, putting up the website and then the phone started to ring or did you do anything else proactive to market this thing?
- [12:50]
C
The challenge which has been really rewarding is that there's really two sales that have to be made. Right. You've got to in this case introduce the idea to the customer because no one is really out there looking for this or they certainly weren't four years ago. So no one is thinking like, I got a week off, maybe we're not going anywhere, let's rent a hot tub. Nobody's thinking that. So you've got to introduce that idea. And then they will call and then make the sale of your hot tub for $200, you know, on the, on this day. So we had to do that and that took a little bit of time. Social media with the images have helped a lot. And then word of mouth. We've done about 700 rentals now in any given month. Half of our rentals are returning customers. Another chunk of our customers have come as a word of mouth, referral, friend, neighbor, parent. And now we are filling in the rest with brand new organic business.
- [13:47]
B
Okay. So somebody is proactively searching for it. They are likely to find you by virtue of there not being that many other options out there. But it was a matter of this boots on the ground. Social media in the marketplace, in the community groups, in the local buy sell groups, letting people know this was a thing, this is an option, and hey, it's not that expensive for what is kind of a cool like novel thing to have at your house.
- [14:13]
C
Yeah. Now we do get calls all the time. And I always ask, you know, how'd you find us? And I do get a lot of customers said, oh, I just typed it in Google. I was just searching online. There really is no one else doing it. So if you type in not even Long island hot tub rentals or hot tub rental Long island, even if you type in Long island hot tub, I think we're pretty visible even with those pretty basic generic terms. And that's been helpful.
- [14:38]
B
So you're teaching high school history, the phone rings during the day, you're in the middle of class, like, how are you handling the customer inquiries? Logistics.
- [14:48]
C
So I try to keep my two worlds separate a bit. I certainly don't. The calls go to our Google voice. A lot of times the calls will go to voicemail. Lindsay gets them, she'll take care of it or send it to me. I'll see the emails come in and I'll respond to them over the course of the day just because I like to. And, you know, so I'm able to kind of balance it. You know, we will get back to a customer that same day 100% of the time. So usually within a few hours. And that's helpful because a customer is interested in this, they've called us, we get back to them and you know, a lot of times that's it closes right there. They say, what's the first available? Or we want this date or we want this week and that's it.
- [15:32]
B
Oh, okay. So you get somebody on the phone, you book them. Do you take credit card information over the phone?
- [15:38]
C
What we'll do is we'll send them a square. No matter what you're doing, whether you're doing a three month rental or a two day rental, our deposit is 50 bucks towards the total. That small amount is basically enough to stop 99% of the cancellation schedule changes. Anything. And we're pretty flexible. I mean you can, you can change a reservation up to a few days before, but that small deposit basically locks it in and eliminates all the headaches that you might have with customers making changes.
- [16:06]
B
Okay, so a little bit of a deposit up front, 50 bucks up front and then balance due upon delivery. How does that work?
- [16:13]
C
Yeah, delivery and set up. Yes.
- [16:15]
A
Okay, more with Steve in just a moment, including the customer setup process and how he thinks about the return on investment math for each new hot tub coming up right after this. With our partner, Mint Mobile. You can get the wireless coverage and speed you're used to, but for way less money. I think that's a win we could all use right about now. And you can keep your same phone number. Plus, for a limited time, Mint Mobile is offering side hustle show listeners three months of unlimited premium wireless service for just 15 bucks a month. All Mint plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. I've been a customer since 2019 and haven't looked back this year. Skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your 3 month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month@mintmobile.com Sidehustle that's mintmobile.com Sidehustle upfront payment of $45 required equivalent to $15 per month limited time new customer offer for first 3 months only. Speeds may slow above 35 GB on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. One of the tools I've personally seen make a huge difference for business owners is Quo formerly openphone. It's the same great business phone system you've heard me talk about before, just with a new name. When you're running a business, you know that every missed call is a missed opportunity. The Quo formerly openphone. This is the number one business phone system that streamlines your customer communications. It works through an app on your phone or your computer. So no more using your personal number as your business line. No more carrying two phones around. With Quo, your team can share one phone number and collaborate on customer calls and texts just like a shared inbox. So anybody can jump in to keep response times fast. And this is where it gets super cool. You can set up Quo's built in AI agent in just a few minutes to handle calls after hours, answer customer questions and capture leads on autopilot. I want to invite you to get started for free. Plus side hustle show listeners get 20% off your first six months at quo.com sidehustle that's quo.com sidehustle look at them getting that three letter domain. Quo. And if you've got existing numbers with another service, Quo will port them over at no extra charge. Quo no missed calls, no missed customers.
- [18:42]
B
So you roll this 200 pound thing into the back of the pickup truck and you say all right, we break it at delivery today.
- [18:50]
A
So you roll it up to somebody's.
- [18:51]
B
Backyard and then it's theirs. They fill it with their own water supply. They plug it in.
- [18:57]
C
Yeah, I'll do the setup. That's part of it. So we leave you with a hot tub that's up and running. Show you how to use it, give you written instructions. I put in the initial chemicals, and that's really important. So when it's full, the chemical proportions are going to be correct. When it's full, the customer will have to maintain. It's usually just a chlorine level. So just like a pool. So we give them a test strip, they match up the color, add really small amounts. I mean, if you had this thing for a week, you're talking about ounces of chlorine that you would really need to maintain it. And that's it. Plug into a standard outlet. 110 so there's no wiring or, you know, electrical issues or anything like that. Comes with a cover, locks up, is a really nice, really nice unit. Heats up to 104 degrees. Set the thermostat, forget it.
- [19:41]
B
Okay. And after 10 or so rentals, you've broken even on the. I mean, depending on the length of the rental. But like, if, you know, if it's just 259 for a week, you know, after eight or 10 of those, you're kind of in the black on that unit. Not counting delivery time and stuff like that. Is there a metric that you're shooting for in regards to ROI or anything on that math front?
- [20:06]
C
My mentality is I get this hot tub. I'm thinking, I buy a car, I buy a hot tub, I buy a house. I'm thinking, not breaking even. I'm thinking, how many years? Which child of mine is going to be using this hot tub 20 years from now? Okay, so, you know, my strategy has really been to find a product that is really reliable, but is also like refurbishable, that is also serviceable, and we can prolong the life. I have hot tubs that are from 2001, 2002, 2003. They're 15 years old. This one particular brand you can buy and replace motor parts, pump parts, the liners. I've actually gotten this type of hot tub, you know, off Craigslist for 50 bucks. For 100 bucks, I've got out of the trash, okay, that needs to be completely refurbished, But I can do it. And I can have a fully functional tub that looks brand new, sometimes for 1000 bucks, 1500 bucks, buy a brand new cover. They look fantastic. I've had someone pay me to remove it from their home because they didn't want it anymore. It was in a basement and they had the dealer bring it in eight years ago. And we just want to get it out of here. We're not using it, but they didn't know how to take the door off the hinges. They didn't know how to get it up the stairs. I said, I'll come and take it for free. I ended up taking it. The guy gave me a hundred bucks.
- [21:24]
B
Gladly. I'll take it off your hands. Jeez.
- [21:26]
C
The tub was in great shape, you know, I brought it home, ran it, cleaned it, replaced a couple of little fittings and things on it. That was a couple of months ago. That tub went out after being with me for about a week. And it's been out for 350, 400amonth for four months.
- [21:42]
B
Okay, nice. So this is the soft tub brand and you must have just Google alerts, Craigslist alerts. Like anytime somebody posts one of these used for sale, it's like, I gotta jump on that.
- [21:55]
C
Yeah, I've gone. So I'm on Long Island. I've gone everywhere from Montpelier, Vermont all the way to really South Jersey. So about 300 miles in any direction. If I can get one of these at the right price, I'll go and scoop it up.
- [22:10]
B
The goal is to have them all rented so there's not a lot of storage issues, but they got to come back for repairs or if there's a low and you got a bunch of these sitting around in a storage locker or in the side yard or your house. I'm just curious. It's a big bulky thing.
- [22:26]
C
It is times 25 or times 30 by the summer. It's a massive amount of foam. But, you know, that's a problem that we started thinking about when we first started this business. And I figured as soon as it becomes a problem, we're going to have to broach that. We're going to have to deal with that. We're going to have to rent space. We're going to have an issue. Now I got 25 tubs. I have zero inventory right now. I had picked one up yesterday, brought it home, cleaned it, it was out today. You know, I got one coming back tomorrow. It actually comes back, gets serviced, goes back out tomorrow. We have no slack. We've got a spare which we keep as our own.
- [23:02]
B
Is winter like the high time for you? High season?
- [23:05]
C
Well, winter, the holidays is a huge season. My initial thought when we started this as a teacher was this is a summer thing. You know, pool parties, barbecues. We're going to be hanging out in the summer. I'll be a little bit busy, you know, and make money during the summer part time. I'll be maybe a little busy over the course of the year and it'll kind of come together. Turns out there is that. But there's also this huge winter. As soon as it gets cold, the winter market just explodes.
- [23:32]
B
This is fascinating.
- [23:33]
C
As a matter of fact, I will. There's a snowstorm coming, right? Or some crazy winter weather. I'll just take a screenshot of the Weather Channel 5 day forecast and just post that as the ad and I'll just put some text across it like, perfect. Hot tub weather on tap. Boom. Lights up the phone. Snow day. Your kids are going to be home from school. Basically the insinuation, do you want to be occupying your kids for the one or two days that they're going to be off because we're going to get 6 inches or a foot of snow? The answer that every parent has is no. If a solution to that is $200, that's a very easy sell to make.
- [24:11]
B
Yeah, this is fascinating. So it sounds like the bottleneck isn't necessarily the marketing right now. It's the inventory. It's, you're like, you know, because it's kind of like a hotel, there's a sweet spot for occupancy, right? It's like, well, you know, at the price point and you know, the occupancy rate versus like, did I undercharge and could I have sold more? It's an interesting one where you're kind of still in this inventory growth mode to meet the existing demand, which I again, you have helped create, but I didn't know was a thing. So it's very impressive.
- [24:44]
C
I also try to depress supply. So if you want to buy my customers, they love these hot tubs. How can we get them now? They could buy them new, you know, and that's pretty expensive at the retail level with no discounts for buying a bunch of them or anything. They're looking at maybe $5,000 to buy this unit. But if they're on Craigslist or ebay or Facebook Marketplace and I've told them this, you're, you're competing with me to buy this used tub. The other thing, and maybe this was your next question. We were busy, you know, up until a year ago, just doing our thing and we'd have busy times, we'd have a few come back. We try to extend our current customers. That was always the idea, right? Somebody has it for a week. If we're not busy, call them halfway through and be like, how about next week for half price? Just keep it out, keep it rolling.
- [25:33]
B
Oh, okay.
- [25:34]
C
We've already made the delivery. Right. And I'm looking at availability for next week. And I kind of do this mental supply and demand graph of where's that price that this customer is going to say, yeah, I'll keep it.
- [25:45]
B
Okay, I like that. That's interesting because it's an incremental, you know, almost nothing for you if it wasn't already going to be rented to somebody else.
- [25:52]
C
Right. And you only get one chance to make that offer. Right. You can't offer 150 bucks and say, you know what, it's been great, but no thanks. I don't. Then go so, well, what about 110 right now?
- [26:00]
B
Now you look desperate, right?
- [26:02]
C
So it's, you know, and you don't want to be completely seem like this price is this just completely flexible thing between zero and infinity. Right. You know, so like. But based on what next week looks like and how busy you are. Yeah, I have that little supply, and I'm an economics teacher. I have that little supply and demand graph in my head and I'm trying to find that equilibrium based on my availability. Also my knowledge, informal knowledge of the customer and that kind of thing. But Covid has really changed the game in a way that I never could have predicted in terms of the demand side for this. With customers being at home and travel plans being canceled. It's really just blown my mind.
- [26:44]
B
Yeah. So I take it that has been a very positive thing for your business.
- [26:49]
C
Yeah. You know, when we started, when the whole Covid situation began, you know, this involves going to different people's houses, being on the highways, putting yourself, I wouldn't say in danger, but things can happen. And here in New York in March and April, things were not good and hospitals were full and pretty scary. My wife and I, especially my wife was very concerned about me being out there just doing things, even though it's not a real close contact thing. And she said, if you're gonna do this, you gotta do long term only, you know, two month minimum. That way you're not going into 15 houses or yards and customers and cash exchange and trips on the road. A week, two months. I said, you're nuts. Right. Somebody calls, they want something that's $199. You say, well, we can't do that, but here's something for a thousand bucks, you know, I would hang up on me. That's what I always say. If somebody made that offer and I was 100% wrong. Once the kind of lockdowns hit and work from home became the reality, and school at home and Trying to balance all of that, the hot tub just became the hottest commodity that I could ever have imagined. If you wanted to order one brand new and pay five grand for it, you were looking at four months of lead time. If you even wanted to buy one, the market just exploded.
- [28:10]
B
I've got my Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace fired up. You got me looking for these things. I've got. Here's one for a couple grand. Oh, no. This is somebody who wants one. I'm willing to pay up to two grand, depending on condition. Here's one for free. It says it has a slow leak. Maybe somebody can salvage it.
- [28:28]
C
So where is it? I probably have seen it.
- [28:32]
B
It's near Richmond, California. So it's probably 45 minutes from me. It's not too far.
- [28:38]
C
Okay. The leak is the tricky one. If it's internal on these tubs, which is rare, you really have a major issue that probably can't be fixed. But if it's the liner or the motor, it's very easily kind of serviceable. I've made a couple of bad purchases. I've got a couple tubs that I thought I could repair that I couldn't. I've made a couple repairs that I've screwed up and took a little bit of a bath on. No pun intended. But you know, in the grand scheme of things and in the, the realm of, you know, mistakes I made in my side hustle business, it's been pretty, pretty low. Downside.
- [29:13]
B
I was going to ask about any horror stories with the thing, I don't know, exploding all over somebody's yard or garage or rolling off the back of the truck or. I don't know what else could go wrong, but I imagine there's some things.
- [29:26]
C
Had a few things fall off the truck. Not a tub, but. But we offer as an extra, a few pieces of woodwork that can go with the tub, which is really popular, like these little cedar benches that go around. Get like 100 bucks for the month for those or 50 bucks for the week just to add it on. People love that. Sent one or two of those sailing off into the shoulder of the expressway.
- [29:46]
B
Okay, just stay safe. Stay safe.
- [29:49]
C
Yeah, yeah. But other than that, no. I'd say the craziest thing that ever happened. We do get some New York City business, which has to be a long term rental, but I really love it. I actually just did one in Brooklyn yesterday. I just love something about getting this into somebody's apartment building. You know, if they have that outdoor space. I just think it's so Cool that their neighbors and their friends are going to see this. Nobody for blocks and blocks and blocks around has this amenity and we're doing it. I just think that that's a huge market. Haven't really exploited it too much.
- [30:20]
B
If that's a little bit of a hike for you, do you charge extra delivery fee to get it there?
- [30:24]
C
Yeah, unless it's going to be three months or more, I'll definitely charge a delivery fee on it. Yeah, yeah.
- [30:32]
B
If it's a long term thing. If they're going to pay you six, seven hundred bucks, like, okay, I can drive over there. And it sounds like you've gone down the Southwest Airlines model of like just having one type of plane, just having one type of tub. So it just makes repairs and parts interchange. It makes life easier from that front rather than starting from scratch every time something does go haywire.
- [30:54]
C
Yeah, I mean part of that is, and I've researched it, I don't think there's another brand of tub that would really work as well, which in a way scares me a little bit because I'm really beholden to this one brand. They've been around for a long time. I think they're a healthy company, but you know, there's not a lot of options for me if they went out of business or stopped making what they're making. But it is what it is. That's. That's what I'm using. The long term rental is kind of my bread and butter. You know, it's 499 for a full month right now, as opposed to 250 for a week. So we're really basically saying you're getting a full month for two weeks cost. Part of that is just because I like that idea of giving a good value. It's making money for us and it's not really pushing everything to the red line of how many times we can get this thing rented. The other thing is I don't foresee myself leaving my full time job. So how many of these I can do in a week after work or on a Saturday is kind of limiting. So there's more money in doing 31 week rentals in a week, if you could do that. But that's 660 jobs, 30 deliveries, 30 pickups, cleaning in between, supply store, Home Depot hardware. You know, you need a staff to do that.
- [32:09]
B
It's just you and your wife right now?
- [32:10]
C
Yeah, yeah. And I'm really doing all the deliveries. We had three small kids, nine, six and two. So she helps me tremendously with the Schedule figuring out where we're going to go, putting things in a logical order. So, you know, Long Island's 30 miles wide. 20 miles wide, but 120 miles long.
- [32:28]
B
Okay.
- [32:29]
C
So, you know, you need to be a little bit judicious about what's getting dropped off where and picked up where on any given day. I was good with this until we had about four hot tubs. And then she saw my whiteboard in the basement and papers that I was taping to it, and she said, you know what? I'm going to help you out with this. And she does tremendously every day. Basically tells me where I'm going.
- [32:51]
B
Is there a software system that she's using or some sort of spreadsheet tracker? I don't even know what it would look like.
- [32:57]
C
Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah, we've looked at that. Trying to just create something on Excel, you know, basically we were just taking what we were doing on a paper calendar and putting it on the computer. We've looked at some different software for things like real estate. You know, like somebody maybe has an Airbnb kind of situation and they're managing units, or a hair salon booking program is something that we looked at, but we just haven't quite found something that fits. So basically we take a reservation. Either if I take it, I'll email it to her, she'll email it to herself. She puts it on the calendar, assigns it a tub. We have the tubs numbered, so she's assigning that. We've got about 99% accuracy. Very rare. Which, you know, sounds terrible, right? Because I mean, that means there's a screw up in there. But very rarely have we had a situation where we couldn't cover a rental on the day we were supposed to or forgot about somebody or something.
- [33:54]
B
The Airbnb option is an interesting angle to potentially partner with owners or hosts.
- [34:01]
C
Yes.
- [34:02]
B
To say, would you like. I don't know if there's capability, but to have this as a little checkbox, upsell add on for their guests.
- [34:10]
C
I have had that experience a couple of times with Airbnb hosts. I've had to find them just kind of randomly, organically. At first, I guess I was kind of naive. I just kind of created an Airbnb account. I started looking at the local vocation rentals and emailing the hosts. And that's how you get banned from Airbnb. Apparently.
- [34:32]
B
That's how I would have got about it. Okay, that's a good way to get in trouble.
- [34:36]
C
Some people, I guess, weren't Appreciative of being sold something when they were expecting their emails to be conveying reservations. I get that. I do. But I actually, I guess like everybody. I think my service is so valuable to them because, look, you can take your rental and charge more for it because you're offering this amenity, right? And you don't have to buy it, you don't have to maintain it. You don't have to have it there when your guests are not there. You can target off season periods and say, okay, we're going to offer this amenity and maybe get some more guests. You can charge more again. And they have to do literally nothing. So I have three Airbnb hosts that I've worked with on an on again, off again basis. One has a tube right now on kind of a permanent basis. The others kind of call when they need it.
- [35:25]
B
Okay, when you were getting into this or since you've gotten into this, anything that has surprised you about the industry?
- [35:31]
C
Well, I can tell you about my customers. I have all different types of customers. One question that we had was, you know, are we going to have rich customers who are like, let's get a hot tub this weekend? You know, and there is some of that. We have the Hamptons and New York City suburbs, you know, people who could very easily buy the hot tub that I'm delivering, probably with the money that they have on their person. In some cases, they could buy my hot tub, the truck and everything, you know, and they're smart people who've made financial decisions that have afforded them a $5 million home. And I'm thinking, you know, you're paying me 500 bucks to deliver this 1500 dollar hot tub to you, and I'm gonna take it away in a month. What's up with this? The convenience factor is so important to some people that if you go and you provide this experience that's really seamless for them, you show up on time, you set it up, talk to them about it, tell them how much fun it's going to be, deal with any problems that they have, answer the phone, take it away when they're done, it is absolutely worth it to them. And this just makes my head explode from where I'm coming from. From a financial mindset of I just can't imagine if you can get. I can't even explain how foreign it is to me because even if I wasn't renting the hot tubs, I'm looking, and if I wanted one, I'd be scouring Craigslist to find repairable I get a charge out of that. And then on the other end, you have a lot of your, you know, your regular families and they've got a week off, they've got a kid's birthday, they've got guests coming into town. And at that exact same price point, I mean, there's no change based in the price, based on your address, you know, not at all. And you've got basically people from vastly different backgrounds, spots on the, on the economic ladder, you know, enjoying the same exact experience the same way. It's actually kind of interesting.
- [37:21]
A
I asked Steve how he cleans these.
- [37:23]
B
Things in just a minute.
- [37:24]
A
But let me take a quick pause here to thank our sponsors for this episode. You know when you're shopping online and you see that little purple shop pay button at checkout? That's a sign that the store you're on is one of the millions of businesses powered by our partner, Shopify. Shopify makes it incredibly easy to start and run your business. For starters, you don't even have to start from scratch. They've got hundreds of beautiful ready to go proven to convert templates that you can adapt to your brand's style without needing to know how to code. You can tackle all your most important tasks in one place, from managing your inventory to tracking payments to analytics and more. Plus, Shopify helps you make sales with built in marketing and email tools to go out and find new customers and keep the ones you've got. If you want to see less carts being abandoned, it's time to head over to Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com sidehustle go to shopify.com sidehustlez shopify.com sidehustole years ago, this is probably 2009. I'm sitting in this conference in Santa Barbara and the presenter asks this question. Are you working on your business or are you working in your business? I saw myself as this full time entrepreneur, but it was this moment of clarity that no, I was still very much working in the business day to day. So when I got back home, that's when I made my first full time hire. It was the first in a long series and an ongoing series of steps in trying to take control by being okay of letting go of certain tasks. Now when you find yourself in that position of needing to hire like yesterday, you need our sponsor, Indeed. Plus Indeed's sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast. There's no monthly subscriptions, no long term contracts and you only pay for results. That's why for my next hire, I'm using Indeed side Hustle show listeners get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ 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.
- [39:44]
B
I mean, is it just like a Clorox wipe type of cleaning situation, like in between rentals, Like, I know it's not.
- [39:50]
C
It's not.
- [39:51]
B
I know somebody's going to be asking about, like, what do you do to clean these things in between?
- [39:54]
C
Yeah, absolutely. So when we pick up the tub, what we'll do is we'll pump out three quarters of the water. So they're 300 gallon tubs. We probably bring it down to 75 gallons. You know, just a foot of water in there and we super chlorinate that water and run the tub. So this super chlorinated solution runs through all of the internals of the hot tub, all of the motor units. It gets all over all of the surfaces that you touch. So that's a sanitizing solution. We pump that out, hose it down, bring the tub home where it's filled with fresh water, get all those harsh chemicals out, wash the tub with soap and water, then after, and then bring it to the next customer whenever that is.
- [40:37]
B
Okay, Gotcha. So a little bit of a process.
- [40:39]
C
It's a process, you know, also when the tub is delivered, and this might be getting a little too in the weeds, but when the tub is delivered, we put the full dose of the sanitizing chemicals in when we first get there. So you've got 10% of the water, all of the chemicals, and then that's kind of like that fail safe. That tub is again, getting a chemical treatment of cleaning.
- [40:58]
B
Okay. Like re sanitized just to be doubly safe there.
- [41:02]
C
The thing that, you know, when customers ask that question, and I try always to really comfortably answer that question, never balk at it, because I think that's a question I'd be asking. Right. I just kind of relay the experience here. For a family business, we got three kids. When we're using a hot tub, it's kind of one of these. And, you know, we put our own kids in there, our own families. It's the whole business. If we're not cleaning these tubs and, you know, providing a nice clean sanitary product, we're not in business. And I send Them, a few pictures of my young kids in the tub, and that's it.
- [41:32]
B
And then the fears go away. Have you had to do anything on the insurance or liability front just to protect yourself from? I don't know. I imagine there's some liability involved here.
- [41:44]
C
Yeah. You know, water and electricity is definitely a cocktail that, you know, you want to keep separate. The business is formed as an llc, and we keep the finances, you know, to the best of our knowledge, done properly to protect ourselves from liability there. And we do have liability insurance for property damage, for personal injury, for, to the best of our knowledge, everything that we can do to protect ourselves. And, you know, we just approach every day trying to do the right thing and go from there.
- [42:11]
B
During this setup and takedown, how much time are you spending at the house? Like, for this kind of, like, setup and then this chemical cleaning process Each.
- [42:20]
C
Time at the house, the initial setup is probably about 40 minutes.
- [42:24]
B
Okay. And it's just like filling it with a hose or you kind of let them do that on their own afterwards.
- [42:30]
C
If I can get a fraction of the water in there, if I can get 6, 8 inches of water in there, I can get the tub running, show them how everything works, test for any leaks, make sure everything is cool, and then let that tub fill. It's going to take a half hour, 45 minutes to fill after I leave. But that's all good. They can just do that and turn off the hose when they're done.
- [42:48]
B
Okay.
- [42:48]
C
One thing we do is fill it often with hot water. You know, the tub is going to take a full day, really, to heat if we fill it with the hose, especially this time of year. So we tell customers if you want to hook up to where your washing machine connects in the house, or if you want to hook up to a sink, we've got all these crazy adapters we can get on sinks and showers. Fill with the hot water from your house. Run it really slow. When that tub fills, you might be in there when it's full.
- [43:11]
B
Oh, okay. Yes. Burn some hot water instead of the electricity to heat it, but okay.
- [43:16]
C
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
- [43:18]
B
Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, Steve, this has been awesome. I have, like you said, you got me searching the marketplaces to see if there's any of these nearby. I don't know where I would keep it.
- [43:27]
C
No, there's nothing there. You shouldn't.
- [43:28]
B
Maybe I'll stick it. I'm across the country from you. I'm not competition. Stick it on the patio or something. I think the kids could have a great Time. Okay. You don't see yourself leaving your teaching career to do this full time. Where do you want to take it right now?
- [43:44]
C
I think what needs to happen is when we get to that 30 tub mark to have some part time help. And that's just a step that has to be taken because I'm maxed out 100% right now. So I think if we could get some help to do even exclusively the pickups so the customers had the whole experience. Everything is good. I did the setup, but now it's done. Someone else comes to their home, pumps out the water, cleans it out. I mean, there's definitely responsibility there, but the customer's already had their hot tub experience and hopefully they're already happy. And now somebody else is doing what really, if it's not half of the work, close. And that would be a really big help. Now beyond that, you know, we've toyed with different ideas. I have thought about taking a year off from work and trying to grow this thing or creating other locations either as a franchise model or ones that we would operate ourselves in other cities. We get calls from all over the place. Boston, Washington, D.C. pennsylvania, New Jersey suburbs, upstate New York or northern suburbs that are too far. If I could replicate what I'm doing, maybe not quite as big, but if I could have a couple of subsidiaries with five to 10 tubs in three locations, four locations, it would be a home run in a week.
- [44:58]
B
Yeah, that's an interesting path. The franchise model. It sounds like you're an early mover in the space. So I don't know.
- [45:07]
C
I also think like for a teacher, it's really a sweet thing. You know, teachers have pretty regular schedule. They have some time off at different times, especially around the holidays. Teachers are pretty intelligent, right. Are personable, can answer people's questions and kind of deal with different types of people, difficult situations. I think that the teacher who also maybe is looking to make extra money, which is something, especially in other parts of the country, that, you know, you hear from teachers all the time. I got to work two jobs that this could be like a really cool side gig. And we're not talking about, you know, tutoring. For 50 bucks, you could really legitimately do a couple hundred bucks, 500 bucks a week, you know, without too much trouble, I don't think.
- [45:50]
B
There you go. Maybe there's the. I mean, that's a perfect segue to the, you know, here's my online course about how to start a hot tub business. Is that coming down the road, you.
- [45:59]
C
Know, I Listen to the show. That's why I'm here, right? Because I love it. And so many of the things I find interesting, but so much of it is about, yeah, the book, the online course, the app. I really like the business. You know, we're selling this product. It's this thing I talk to the customer. So, like, that's kind of the direction that I want to see it go in. If it was the franchise, which is something that I'd love more information on, how to just kind of navigate that. Like, how does that even happen? How would I be involved? You know, would I be involved? Would all the bookings come through us? Would. Would I be involved in helping to. To show the business to the, to these people around the country? Or would I be leasing the equipment to them and they'd be doing whatever they can do with it? You know, these are all really cool options. No one ever comes to me and says, man, I want to do that too. They tell me it's awesome. They think it's fun, they think it's cool. Nobody wants to do maybe three or four pickups in a night. After getting up at 5 in the morning and teaching 41, I can still do it. I get a kick out of it. I sleep well at night, but I get a charge out of it.
- [47:04]
B
Well, I hope you get some calls after this because you definitely got my gears turning on it. It sounds like a really cool operation. Sounds like you're just accumulating these assets that can turn into long term cash flow down the road. It's like, it's a very exciting thing and do it much faster than with a traditional rental real estate model. Like, you know, lower startup costs, you know, quicker cash flow. Lots of cool stuff going on there. Lihotubrentals.com for Long Island Hot Tub Rentals. Steve, let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side Hustle Nation.
- [47:38]
C
I mean, I gave this some thought, and I think one thing that really helps us is talk to every single customer right now. It's early January. Our next available rental is March 3rd. Right now. Customer that calls today, I call them back immediately. I tell them what our next available is. I tell them why we're so busy. Make that communication, establish it, have that conversation. Even though chances are right now they're not booking anything or they're saying, we're going to wait and give you a call in a month, make that contact. Don't let autoresponse on email do it or anything like that. I make every single call back and I think that's been real beneficial.
- [48:16]
B
I said that was going to be the last question. But are you maintaining a database of those like customer phone numbers or emails in some way to like.
- [48:22]
C
Yes.
- [48:22]
B
Okay.
- [48:23]
C
Any business that we actually do, anyone who reserves, yeah, we have their email and phone, but. But yeah, anything that we can't fulfill goes on another list. And in the past, yeah, when I've seen vacancies come up, you know, we put out an offer, I call some specific people or even if I'm going to like a far flung location, right. I'm going to the city, I'll put out an offer for special deal of someone on the way. Like you can have this thing for 150 bucks. I can get two on the truck. Two or three. Let's make this ride 200 bucks more. You know, for $150 more. I'm already going there and I have been able to cultivate, you know, a pretty good following with that.
- [48:58]
B
I like it. Well, very cool. I like the ability to remarket and do some strategic things, you know, based on just the physical logistics of the business. Very inspiring to see what you built, what you'll continue to build. Steve, thanks again and we'll catch up with you soon.
- [49:12]
C
All right, thanks so much.
- [49:17]
B
What a cool side gig. I hope you enjoyed this chat with Steve. Love the Hustle. Love the confidence to enter a market and then proactively help create the demand through social media. I thought that was really cool. And if hot tubs aren't your thing, maybe they're too heavy, they're too, too bulky, too much maintenance. Maybe there's something else you can rent out. In a similar fashion, I've compiled a list of other potential quote, unconventional rental products to help get your creative juices flowing. You can Download that@sidehustlenation.com hottub or through the link in the episode description of your podcast player app. That's sidehustlenation.com hottub. And you'll also find the full text summary of this chat with Steve along with links to all the resources mentioned there as well.
- [50:01]
A
That is it for me.
- [50:02]
B
Thank you so much for tuning in. 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. I'll see you then. Hustle on the.