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Welcome to the big show, short term rental management. Today we're going to talk about how to transition from third party property management to doing it yourself. But more importantly, I do want to get to, the fact of the matter is that we've got two corn huskers on one call. And Jim, of course, that's how you got my attention. Jim sent me a couple emails, said he'd been listening to my show and he said something about being, or maybe it was your signature in your email, said Nebraska. And that's always going to get you pretty far around here.
A lot of Mississippi action going on on the wife's side. And of course I'm born and raised in Nebraska and a big corn husker fan wore my black shirts hat today for the occasion. And Jim, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you got going on.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Well, I guess just a quick summary. My wife and I got married about 23 years ago. Met at the University of Nebraska, both animal science majors. After we got married, came back to where she was from, got in the cattle business, did that for 15 years. Then we, crazy idea. We started a brewery and a winery. Still doing that. Then we got into short term rentals. About three years ago, we bought the first one. We have three now and two in South Dakota and one in Hochstown, Oklahoma.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Which is where is that exactly? Oklahoma. That's broken bow ish, right? Yep.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Yep. That's north of broken bow by the Beavers Bend State park.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Okay, so cattle business, that's what you went to college for, it sounds like. Yep. All right. And then did that for a number of years and just decided you wanted to change or couldn't do it one more day or how did that go down?
[00:02:25] Speaker B: It just got to where we were fighting the expansion deal, real estate. When we started it, you could buy farm ground around here for about $3,000 an acre. And that same farm ground now is $16,000 an acre. So it got to where you just can't afford to run cows on it. So we branched out and did something different and started a brewery in the middle of nowhere that has exceeded anybody's expectations.
It's been very successful.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Well, let's talk about that. Because where you are is, I would assume. I've never been to your exact part of the state, which we'll get to that. But I would assume it's very flat and no timber or very little timber.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: Very little. You go south of us a little bit, you get into some of the hills in Thayer county, which doesn't matter, but there's trees south of us. But we are quintessential Nebraska. Boring cornfields, bean fields, flat ground.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Right. And I am fascinated. I've done a couple of dirt deals in my day and I'd like to do a little bit more. So that is a fascinating thing for me. But when you say from 3000 to 16,000 an acre, what period of time are we talking about? First of all, when did you buy it for 3000?
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Probably 2004. We bought some ground for between dry land ground. That was pasture. We bought for about 1200 an acre.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Oh, my.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: We bought some irrigated ground for 3000.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: So 20 years ago.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: And now 20 years later, that same dirt is whatever the math is 16,000 from 3000 to 16,005 times. Yeah. More than five times. And it's because, Jim, you know way more about this than I do. I would assume it's because they're using it for crops and there's more money in that than cattle or. How does that work?
[00:04:12] Speaker B: Yeah, that just pencils better. It's hard to run enough cows on ground to make the kind of money you can if you're raising corn or soybeans. And a huge part of it is there's no subsidies for cows, there are subsidies for crops.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Right? That's true, yeah. Okay, well, what does that mean exactly? Explain that to me. So the government's giving you money, insurance. Yeah.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: The government's guaranteeing a certain income level, price controls, that sort of thing.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Now, are you saying it gets to the point, and we will get to the short terms, but I am fascinated with dirt. Are you saying it gets to the point where the dirt is worth so much money it's kind of undeniable and you kind of have to dump it and then decide whether to move your cattle operation elsewhere or what?
[00:04:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
The ROI on farm ground is like 2%. You'll own $2 million worth of dirt and you're getting about $40,000 worth a year worth of rental income. So either own it as a buy and hold situation or you decide to take the money out and put it into something where you can make 810, 15, 20% return on that money rather than just the safe 3%.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: And when you say rent, you'renting it to the farmers.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Now, could a farmer make money buying his own dirt and farming his own crops or no?
[00:05:33] Speaker B: They do. You have to have a pretty big plot of land already, thousands of acres that you bought cheaper, and they call it dollar cost averaging, where you just spread the cost of the new ground over all of the ground that you own before. Because the return to be able to make the money back on $16,000 an acre ground is you're never going to do it. So young people coming in, if you're not inheriting it, it's almost impossible to get into the farming game.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: Does this concern me at all for the future of farming? It does sound a little bit alarming. I mean, what happens when the dirt is worth more than the crop and to the point where nobody wants to do crops anymore?
[00:06:19] Speaker B: That's kind of where the concerns out here is. How do we get these young kids back?
They're either working for a farmer. There's guys around us that are farming 15, 20,000 acres and there's guys scratching by with 1000 acres. So it's going not vertically integrated, but it's becoming big corporations that are doing a lot of the farming.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: I see. Well, it's a little bit concerning.
Okay, so how many acres did you own when you decided to get out of the cow business?
[00:06:53] Speaker B: About 400.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: 400 acres. And these were beef cows, I would assume?
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Yeah, we didn't do the traditional where we buy cows and just own them. We would take in yearlings on irrigated grass. So we had the center pivots all that to where we're irrigating it. We were running about 1000 yearlings on grass in the summer and then we would take in cows, other people's cows, and run them on corn stalks in the winter. So we didn't have the big swings. We kind of knew what we were going to make. Charging ninety five cents a day in the winter, dollar 35 per head in the winter or in the summer. So it's called custom grazing. And we were management intensive. So we had all the paddocks to where you move cows every day.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: And you, out of college decided to buy this 400 acres and come up with the scratch to do that? Or how did that go down?
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Yeah, we kind of got into a pretty good deal where some people wanted to get rid of some ground. So we were just relationships kind of how it works once in a while and got a good deal on it and the bank was favorable to us and it worked out okay.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: And then one day you just said, let's dump the 400 acres and try something new. Or did the new thing come up? You say, I want to get into this brewery thing first. Or how did that go down?
[00:08:14] Speaker B: We started the brewery. First brewery in a vineyard and going to do a winery while it's Nebraska. So the beer pushed the wine out. We still sell wine, but we have another winery make it for us. Just because we ran out of space in the building. We built a 60 x 150 foot building and it just forced all the wine tanks out. Beer did.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: Where do you get the grapes?
[00:08:40] Speaker B: They're Nebraska grapes.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Yeah, there's quite a few vineyards in Nebraska.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: No kidding. Okay. But the beer was selling better than the wine.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, it's Nebraska, right?
[00:08:51] Speaker A: Yeah. There's a whole lot of beer drinking going on in that area. Yeah, I was partied to that for many then. So the brewery starts taking off and you say, you know what? Let's get out of the farm business.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: Yeah. We had the opportunity to sell some ground that we bought ridiculously cheap. About $600 an acre is what we bought this rough ground for and sold it for 5000 an acre.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: So when you buy it for, you bought it for how much again? 600 an acre.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: Now, this sounds to me like it's probably unusable at that price point.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: That's kind of why we bought it that cheap. It was an old army airfield where the housing was. There was a ton of foundations everywhere. We just run cows on it because they can walk around the foundations and the concrete. The guy that bought it from us went in and developed it, tore all the concrete out, filled a lot of ditches. And he's farming it now. So I would have never guessed you could do that. But he spent the money and did it.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: Tell me a little bit more about this area where you live. I looked up your town and according to the census, the population is 122 people. So you are extremely rural.
[00:10:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
Well, to make it easy to understand for everybody, we're 45 minutes away from a Walmart.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: And is that walmart in a town of how many people?
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Probably 6000.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Okay, so you're 45 minutes from a tiny town.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: But that's where you go get your groceries, et cetera.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Yeah. If we don't run to Lincoln, how far is Lincoln?
[00:10:29] Speaker A: Which is. But for those that don't know, that's where the football team, forget about the college. That's where the football team is. How far is that?
[00:10:35] Speaker B: About an hour and 15 minutes.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: Okay.
Your wife grew up in this area. How did you end up in this little town?
[00:10:44] Speaker B: She wanted to come back here and live close to her family, so we didn't have anything that we needed to be anywhere, so we came back here and just started living life and bought the dirt?
[00:10:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. And so the family is obviously in the farm business as well?
[00:11:01] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: Nobody living out where you live is doing anything but farming, I would assume.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: We have plumbers and electricians and HVAC guys.
Most of it is ag related.
You work in the ag service industry or you're in agriculture or one of the supporting industries.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: Fascinating. Well, just to wrap up the dirt thing, is there a way to make money in vast pieces of useless dirt for the rest of like, let's say I live in Seattle or Chicago and I can't even wrap my head around this. Is there a way for a guy that has some extra dough, wants to invest in dirt to do that?
[00:11:42] Speaker B: There's a lot of people that do invest in ground that are not residents here. They live out of state. Texas is a big state that buys ground up here. I don't know why. I guess it's probably cheaper than Texas dirt.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: And then what? You just sit on it and wait for it to appreciate?
[00:12:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Make your two to 3% return.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: This is a very long term play, I would assume.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
You're not flipping farm ground, right?
[00:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah, you could flip hunting ground. I've actually done that before. And you can go and buy a piece of big timber that is. Otherwise what I did was. It was not well managed. It was never managed. And I went in and bulldozed and created roads and manicured it and put green fields in the whole thing. And then I sold it.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: You could probably do that. I don't know. Could you do that with crop ground as well or not really?
[00:12:41] Speaker B: Not really? No. It's just more valuable as farm ground than it is as hunting ground. There is some value to hunting ground, but it needs to be crick ground and trees and all of that, which.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: Is probably hard to find where you are.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: It's around, but it's pretty limited.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: What is there is all we've got.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: What does it go for? An acre?
[00:13:07] Speaker B: I think the last stuff that sold, I've seen some sell last winter, I think it brought 5600 an acre.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Oh, my. Okay.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: And it did have some farm ground on it, but it was probably a third of it was crick ground. And trees and they bought it for the hunting rights and then just rent out the farm ground.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: And for those of you that aren't from our neck of the woods, by the way, Jim and I grew up. I grew up probably about 2 hours from where he's. If you're an hour and 15 minutes from Lincoln, then I'm about 2 hours from where you grew up. And if you don't know what a creek is, it is a little piece of water that runs through the dirt. And other people would call it a creek.
But anyway, it seems like a natural evolution here, quite frankly. But how did you then get into the whole vacation situation with the houses?
[00:14:00] Speaker B: Well, we started vacationing up in South Dakota in the, you know, we'd go up there, know, we take our side by sides up and we'd do the trail riding, know, sightseeing and all that stuff. Just fell in love with the area and decided we wanted to buy a place up there. And we're not going to spend enough time up there to make it solely just our vacation home. So we decided to start renting it out and Airbnb in it, or however people want to consider it. And it kind of worked. We were using a property manager because we didn't know any better.
And then we bought a second one up there and then a third one in Oklahoma and decided, hey, it's time to start looking know managing this ourselves.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: Okay, so can you give me a town? What town?
[00:14:53] Speaker B: In the Black Hills, Leed, South Dakota, which is basically the bedroom community for Deadwood.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Okay. Love Deadwood. I was there last summer. Deadwood is guys, if nobody knows, it is really freaking cool. Of course they have the tv show or whatever, but I never watched. It's the same name, right? This tv show is called Deadwood, right? Yeah.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: I've never watched it either.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: I never watched it. We went through last summer on our. We do a road trip every summer and that was one of our stops. And man, Deadwood, I don't know if I ever went there growing up. We went to South Dakota often. My grandmother's from South Dakota, but I don't know that we ever got that far west as a child. Well, I guess, I mean, obviously we went to Mount Rushmore, but I was probably too young to remember. But anyway, for those that aren't aware, Deadwood is freaking awesome. It's got everything. I mean, we took our kids, obviously, but I could see that a younger version of myself could have a lot of fun partying there. Also there's casinos and a lot of extracurricular, nighttime activity type of things. And it's also gorgeous. I mean, it literally looks like an old western movie, but it's real.
So what does Leed have to offer? I guess, is it just kind of a suburb exterior area for Deadwood or what is it like?
[00:16:12] Speaker B: Pretty much when we bought there, there was no short term rental regulations at all, nothing. Now they've limited them to, I think there's 112 and they're not accepting any more.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: Is that the city of Leed or the city of Deadwood or the county.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: Or city of Leed? Deadwood doesn't allow any.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: And I attribute that to the casinos wanting people in their hotel rooms primarily. And Leed just, people started complaining because they thought there was. At one point they thought that 20% of the houses were rentals, was the big rumor. And they come to find out it was like 7%, but they limited it to whatever was existing. 112, I think.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: So in other words, if you already were operating, they gave you a permit, but nobody else can have one, right? Okay.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: See, I see this a lot in what is, I mean, essentially a vacation town, it really is. But where the local government, and correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of times what happens is the local government, they decide that they are protecting their locals. They were concerned with their locals, and they think that as these rentals, they think they're going to multiply overnight, and then all of a sudden the locals have nowhere to live. Now, the way I look at it, and again, I live in a vacation town and have for quite some time, and I look at it differently. I think that it's wonderful for the local economy and you need to be accepting of it. And maybe you have little pockets where it's allowed and little pockets where it's not allowed, maybe something like that. But I see this often where they say, you know what? We don't want this. This whole verbo Airbnb thing. And I think it's honestly because of lack of education on the part of the local, the politicians basically.
Is that your take on it as well?
[00:18:07] Speaker C: This episode of the short term show is brought to you by the short term shop. 30 year fixed mortgages, tax benefits, and long distance management training made easy are just a few of the perks of owning a short term rental. The short term shop can help you buy and learn how to manage your property from anywhere in the world. Just go to theshorttermshop.com and click get connected again. That's the shorttermshop.com and we are brokered by exp. See y'all over there.
[00:18:34] Speaker B: Yeah. I think the whole rental thing is still fairly new to a lot of places. I get the beachside places, have been there forever, but Airbnb, say, in South Dakota is still kind of a new thing. And I just don't think people understand it. They don't see what the whole industry brings back to some of these little communities. Leed has one of the nicest grocery stores I've ever been in. Little bitty town at 2000, 503,000, whatever it is. Amazing grocery store. That place would not exist without the short term rentals. They just couldn't support it.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: I don't know if it's weird because verbo has been around since the. So this concept. Well, and renting your home overnight has been around for a million years, but the Internet came around in the verbo kind of jumped on that first to the space. Rent your house when you're not there on the.
But. But then Airbnb made it popular and made it hip and cool and put it on the television and.
Yep. So I think that's kind of what people are afraid of. It was a little too much change too soon, especially a tiny little town like this. But little do they know, it's been literally happening for almost 30 years now with the verbo or longer.
Right? Yeah. I don't know. But I guess if you're in the county, you can do whatever you want. I would assume.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: Yes. We own one house in the city of Leed that we have to abide by the regulations. The other one's up on Terry Peak, which is the little ski slope that's up there. And it's the wild west up there.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: Are there a lot of houses there at all or not a lot of.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Houses on Terry Peak. There's probably less than 200.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And they're all little vacation towns for midwestern or little vacation getaways for midwestern folks. I would assume that, yes, some of them maybe do rent and some of them probably don't bother.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: Most of them are rentals. How hard they pursue it is another thing.
People like you and me that are very tuned into this industry are the rarity. Most people, it's an afterthought. Thank you.
I see a lot of the rentals. Our neighbors, I've never seen anybody, Adam, ever in three years. I've never seen a vehicle there. And others are rented all the time.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: I couldn't agree more. And I do think that folks that at least in the world that I'm immersed in are too over.
They go too far the other direction. They think that everybody knows all this stuff and oh my goodness, all my neighbors are going to be doing what I'm doing and they're going to take all my money away from me. And they get nervous and freaking out about saturation this, that the other, and I'm just like, you do realize that you're in a major minority here. There's very few people that know all this stuff or even know average Joe that can afford to have a house in Terry Peaks, South Dakota. He probably has a big job at home and his family and his kids, and he just doesn't give a get. My point there is if you get too carried away with the short term rental management podcast and Avery's podcast and the little tiny world that we live in, just remind yourself of what Jim just said every now and then. We are not in the minority. I mean, hell, most property managers for old asset classes are just God awful. Right? Well, let's get into was, uh, was Deadwood your first market or was the Oklahoma your first market?
[00:22:10] Speaker B: South Dakota was first.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: Okay, so let's talk about that. And those properties were functioning as vacation homes when you purchased them or not?
[00:22:19] Speaker B: One of them had. The first one we bought had just become a rental. A realtor from the east side of South Dakota bought it, put it into the market. She was using evolve. We bought it from her, stayed with evolve, which I don't recommend. They're great for marketing, but they don't do anything else. And then the property, you know, had always been a rental, as far as I know.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: And that one was with a local, or was it with a nationwide, like evolve?
[00:22:46] Speaker B: It was with a local property management company.
[00:22:49] Speaker A: Now, did you dislike that property manager less than the big nationwide?
[00:22:55] Speaker B: I didn't like either one of them.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Didn't like either one of them.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Okay. My wife says I'm a control freak, and I like to consider myself more of a control enthusiast. I like to be involved in everything that's going on. So it's very hard for me to sit back and watch a big management company that's managing even just 200 rentals not give the attention to detail that something deserves, which as a guy that only owns three of them, I think all three of them deserve all the attention.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: Okay, so at a certain point, you just said, you know what, I'm going to do this. I'm going to take over. I'm going to learn about this verbo thing. And that was all there was to it. You just took it and ran.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Well, we fired the bigger property management company and we hired a gal that was only managing maybe six or eight, but things still weren't. She was doing a good job. She was also the cleaner. And things were going well. But 20% is 20%.
And if I can do this and figure it out, which everybody, all the property managers tried to convince me that I had no idea how much work was going to go into this, how much time they spent, right.
Pricing and customer relations and all that. Well, customer relations is what I do.
I've been running a brewery for nine years. My only job in the tap room now is grabbing a half a beer and going out and talking to customers.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:21] Speaker B: So I just ensure people have a good experience. And once you get to that point, this business is not that hard. But it was overwhelming. The first time you click on owner res and go to try and set anything up. Holy crap.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: Wait a minute, how did you go straight to owner res? I mean, that one obviously is going to be a little overwhelming.
[00:24:42] Speaker B: Oh, it was very overwhelming. We decided that's what we're going to use because the Facebook groups, tons of people recommended it. They weren't telling you exactly how complicated it was to set up. But I kind of figured I can kind of slog through this.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: So. Wait, by this time, it sounds like you discovered us, right? At that point you just short term shop and started to dig around.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I probably listened to Avery's book maybe a year and a half ago.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:25:11] Speaker B: And I've since listened to it two or three times because all of our properties are 9 hours away. So I've got time to catch back up on podcasts and audiobooks and all that sort of thing.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: I would assume somebody living in the part of the world where you live in is very accustomed to long drives.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: Everything is a long drive for us. An hour is close, right?
[00:25:35] Speaker A: An hour is a joke. Yeah, I got you. Yeah, that's for supper, right? Going to get something to eat. Yeah.
Not too dissimilar from the way I was raised. I'm definitely from closer to a much bigger city than you, but very similar part of the world there. Well, same part of the world. You're bringing back some fond memories of the childhood there and go, big red man. We'll get into that later.
Okay. So in other words, you found a cleaner and she said, I'll do it for you. And you gave that a try for a while and then you decided that wasn't working either. Yes.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: I'm too hands on. I'm sure I was annoying to her as a property manager because I got my fingers and everything, which is good and bad.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: Right. Okay. So you went right into ownerz and that was obviously a learning curve, but no issues there. You're still using it? You like it?
[00:26:34] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I love owner. I did. After about three days trying to figure it out, I found a company that helps you set all that stuff up. The utmost host is who they are. And I think I paid $2,500 and they helped me set everything up, got all my integrations down. Now I can finesse things in owner rest myself.
Otherwise that thing's a beast.
It's huge. It does a great job, does everything I'd want it to, but it was overwhelming and it was the best $2,500 I spent.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Yes. And there are just, so if you're unaware, there's plenty of places out there that will set up your owner. As for you, there's plenty of Facebook group that are geared towards helping folks get into owner res, et cetera. And that's why I don't use it, because I don't want to have to pay somebody and deal with all that crap and deal with the 16 Facebook groups. It's too complicated for me now. That doesn't mean I won't go that direction someday. I don't know, maybe. But I like simple. I totally understand why you're using it and I do think it's a fantastic product. So then we're listed on Airbnb and Verbo. Anything else?
[00:27:44] Speaker B: Yeah, is it booking? I think we're on booking too, but I have never seen a booking.com reservation come across. So most of them Oklahoma is primarily Airbnb. South Dakota is more verbo.
And I don't know why.
It's just two different cultures, I think.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Yeah, see, I hear that a lot. And where folks say, well, this market is more verbo, this market is more Airbnb. And personally, I don't know that I think that it's market related. Now it can seem like that in certain circumstances, and I don't think you're wrong at all, but I think that it was me. I think it was more just a fluke. But you are right about the little tiny town you're in in South Dakota. It's probably an older crowd.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: It's far more family oriented. It'll be grandparents, parents, kids, grandkids.
You see a lot more of that than what we do down in Oklahoma.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Okay, cool. So you had the two in South Dakota up and running, rocking, and rolling. And then you said, let's go look at another town.
And how did you pick that town, and how did that come about?
[00:28:55] Speaker B: My wife found know. We've looked all kinds of know. We're still know. If something presents an opportunity, we do it. But she found Hocha town, and we drove down there, spent a night in a different rental, and looked at houses for a weekend, and ended up finding this one. It was exactly what we wanted. And great location. So far more expensive than the South Dakota market, but everything we've got is cash flowing right now. And I think if we can cash flow during the off season, we're doing something right.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: So you're saying you've never even been there before, you just decided you wanted another rental?
[00:29:37] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. We've never even heard of even. I didn't even know it existed.
[00:29:41] Speaker A: Heard of broken bow, though, I would assume.
[00:29:43] Speaker B: No. Never heard of broken bow either.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: Okay. All right. So you went down there and you found one you liked and put it in your system that was pre existing and let it rip.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:29:55] Speaker A: Okay.
What advice do you have for somebody that's going into this? And, of course, if you would have found the short term shop to begin with, we wouldn't have had this problem. I know, but that said, we're not currently in South Dakota. We would like to be. We were up know, scouting things last year, and we would like to go that direction if we can find the right situation to be in there. But anyway, so what advice do you have for somebody that may not even realize this exists? And that's just kind of tip of the iceberg, thinking to do it themselves.
What advice do you have?
[00:30:29] Speaker B: Well, overall, everybody's situation is different. People look at things, their investments different. We would only buy places that our family can all stay at, so it has to be three bedroom, and we would only buy in places that we are willing to go to because I don't want to own a property in downtown Los Angeles because I have no desire to ever go there, and I don't understand the people, the people that do go there. So it'd be harder for me to handle guest interactions with people that I don't understand.
We're pretty rural, so I understand people coming out into the country.
I get to, hey, I want to get away. I want to get to the washed off forest and spend my time there. Yes, I can relate to that. So I can talk you through it and do all that. So I would recommend, first and foremost, don't buy in a place that you don't want to go to.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: I agree with that. I think that is completely underrated. And we all the time, I mean, I'm talking dozens of times a week, people say, luke, where should I buy? Avery, where should I buy? And I'm sitting there, and I'm like, where does your family want to?
And you nailed it, man. You had a criteria of three bedrooms, no, less than three bedrooms, because that's what your family mean. People are overthinking the crap out of this all the time because of the numbers, the numbers, the spreadsheets, the numbers. And I'm just like, listen to Jim. Where does your family go, and how big does the house need to be? Does your family have any interest in going to this area? And again, Jim, never heard of broken bow before. Never heard of Hochi town before. But they thought maybe it was going to be appealing to what they were looking for in life and their type of people, and they went down there and explored it, and I would imagine you fell in love. Are you going there on the regular at this point, or once a year or something like that?
[00:32:23] Speaker B: We try and get to all of our properties about once every three to four months. I will never go to Hochtown during the summer when it's just. That's the busy season, and I hear the nightmares. No, I'll be there in the off season. And we only vacation during the week. The brewery is open Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So we like to be here or be close to help manage this thing. So we only vacation Monday through Thursday or Friday, but we go down there. We've been fishing down on Broken Bow Lake. Our kids, we have a 20 year old son and a 17 year old son. They're outdoorsy. Hunting and fishing is what they do. So these places just kind of fit for us.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: And if I'm new to this concept, and I've had a property manager on a property that I've owned for a while, and I'm scared to transition over to self management. What advice do you have there?
[00:33:22] Speaker B: Just do it.
It is not hard.
If you don't want to talk to people, you don't want to deal with little stupid problems that aren't really problems. Maybe leave it to a property manager, but if you can tell them where the second propane tank is, if you can explain to them how to turn the shower head on, it's little things like that that you got to want to give your guests a good experience, and you have to have your phone with you all the time. I mean, the thing is, just married to you now. You're never getting away from it. So if you're the person that ignores your text messages, it's probably not a good fit for you. You've got to be in the hospitality business, like 100% in the hospitality business. We've been doing it self managing now for just over four months. We've got super host, we've got two of our properties are guest favorites. We're premier on herbo.
Those are things that I take very seriously. And I think most of the people watching you are just nodding along because people that don't care about their rentals probably aren't watching your podcast. Everybody that is, is people like us that are just super dialed in and we want to be the best at what we're doing. So I would tell if you want to get into this and you want to do it yourself, stop screwing around and just start doing it.
[00:34:46] Speaker A: Yeah, well said. I love it. Yeah, it's really as simple as that. Any advice for getting into the brewery business? Seems to be a very interesting topic for a lot of folks.
[00:34:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that you're going to start seeing breweries close faster than they open now. We kind of got in at the sweet spot when it was hip and cool. There was a brewery going up. Seemed like every week. I think we were the 23rd brewery in Nebraska to open and now there's 80. So pick your location. It's no different than buying a rental.
[00:35:20] Speaker A: Are you shipping beer to bars in Omaha?
[00:35:24] Speaker B: We used to. The margins are so thin on distribution that we really don't worry about it too much. There's a few that we do deliver beer to, but the money is in pushing beer across the bar.
And we're not just a brewery. We have a wood fired pizza oven.
[00:35:44] Speaker A: It's like a restaurant.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it's probably more of a restaurant than it is a brewery.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:35:51] Speaker B: Everybody thinks of us as a Brewery because we make our own beer, but it's a full service restaurant.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: You're my kind of guy. It sounds like a pretty cool life you're living, man. I'm proud of you.
I want to be more like you when I grow up. I love it. Well, let's talk about those corn Huskers for a second. You went to Nebraska and what's going on? We got to look like we got a couple of good players coming in.
[00:36:12] Speaker B: Well, it looks like maybe we're going to turn the page, but we've been playing this we'll be better next year game for the last 20 years now. And maybe we shouldn't have fired our nine and three head coach and got down to three and nine, but it looks like we're on the right track now.
Getting the number one quarterback recruit helps and he's helping to bring some new players in. It looks like that's a big part.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: Of my life, always has been, always will be, and go big red. And it's just absolutely heartbreaking. As a matter of fact, I watched Monday Night Football last night and it was the Peyton and Eli show. I like that one on Mondays. And they were talking crap about Nebraska because if you remember, I think it was 96. Nebraska beat the crap out of Tennessee and Peyton was the quarterback and he was saying, man, they smoked me in an orange bowl one year and now they can't get into a bowl game to save their lives. So the tables have turned and Nebraska stinks. And I'm like, yeah, we deserve that.
[00:37:17] Speaker B: Anyway, yeah, and I went to college during, I was there 96 to 2000. So I got the sweet spot for Husker football and student tickets were not up in the corner like they are now. They were on like the 30 and 40 yard line.
So yeah, I lived the good life for Husker football back then.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: No pun intended, but yeah. So listen, anybody likes college football, thanks for hanging with us today, Jim. Anything to say on the way out?
[00:37:45] Speaker B: Just get out there and take over your own management. Do your own thing and you'll get way better results than you will from anybody else. And it's not that.
[00:37:56] Speaker A: I agree, I agree. That's the whole point of this podcast. So if you come hang out with me every Tuesday, you can be just like Jim and own vacation rentals in different towns that you like to go to with your family. Man, it's been a pleasure. I appreciate you for hanging and go big red and don't overthink it.
