Bill Faeth’s Transformation: A Real Estate Success Story Transcription:
Bill Faeth [00:00:00]:
Most of us have that drive. Most of us engulf our lives into scaling and growing businesses, and I'm a believer that we need to put that same effort into into our spouse and into our children.
Steven Pesavento [00:00:10]:
Yeah. There's nothing more important than your primary relationship. It's one of the biggest financial decisions that you make is to We build that foundation. If you're gonna be an entrepreneur who's gonna go and get on a rocket ship, you better make sure that you and your family are on the same page so they're coming along with you. Otherwise, you end up growing beyond, and then, you know, that separates things. Welcome back to the name your number show presented by the investor them set. I'm Steven Pasavento. And today, I have Bill Faith in the studio. How are you doing today, Bill?
Bill Faeth [00:00:39]:
I am amazing. Thanks for having me today, Steven.
Steven Pesavento [00:00:42]:
Yeah. I'm excited to talk to you, Bill, because you're somebody who's you know, you've been in the real estate game for almost 25 years. You've had a lot of success. You own your own Folios. You're helping other people doing a variety of things. I'm really excited to kinda dive in to understand kind of the path towards getting there in the life and vision of that life that you're creating because I think it's one that will be very inspiring for a lot of people. Before we get into that, tell me, what was the first thing that you named? That that 1st target of something that you're going after towards kind of creating a better life and a different life than, you know, the traditional, the The traditional world that most people live in.
Bill Faeth [00:01:19]:
I mean, honestly, it started when I was a a sophomore in high school. On and father were divorced when I was 5, and I was an only child with a single mother who was a teacher back in the early eighties. That, and I started selling I won't go through the whole long story of how I got to this point, but I started selling T shirts at high school football games out of the back of my mom's 1984 Ford Tempo. Them. And I remember when there was a guy, Jay Giugobi, in Los Angeles that gave me the T shirts. He said, just sell them for 20 to $25. I'm gonna charge you 5, and he had this huge company called American Pacific at the time. It was probably like a 40 or $50,000,000, you know, apparel company. That in. I'll never forget my mom after we sold the first 50 shirts. We literally she literally were at the dining room table, that. And she has the money on the left hand side, and she's got, like, one of those old school, you know, like, graph paper pads, and we're writing down how many shirts we sold, when we sold them, how much we sold them for, and what we owe mister Jacoby. And it was like my first introduction to a p and l, when I was 16, and my mom was just a teacher. She wasn't an entrepreneur. She wasn't a business owner at that time, and that was kind of the first the 1st experience for me to kinda get an intimate relationship with my financials. Ironically, that's part of the focus of your podcast, that. And it's kinda resonated with me through my entire career. Without being said, like a lot of human beings, I strayed a little bit in my twenties thirties. And now I look back at the fifty, and I'm like, man, if I would just stayed that course, through that entire kind of probably from 24 to 32, things would have just accelerated much faster, and I had to re be reintroduced by a mentor back into that intimate relationship. And then, Eric, it's amazing when you do have up that relationship with your financials. Just how much more clear your decision making process becomes as an entrepreneur?
Steven Pesavento [00:03:11]:
Well, it's such an incredible that Because you start learning this really early, and a lot of people who are listening, myself included at one point in time, Really didn't like doing the numbers. Didn't like kinda diving into the financials and knowing all those little details. But I, like you, grew up broke. You know, single mom, 4 kids, you know, was always finding some kinda hustle. But it's once you actually get clear on How much you're making, what you're spending, what you need in order to to kinda create the life that you wanna create, That it becomes easier to then make those decisions about what you should do or you shouldn't do. And oftentimes, a lot of people are just taking the money in. They're putting it out, and they're essentially flying blind when it comes to actually knowing what it's gonna take to create that life.
Bill Faeth [00:04:00]:
It's interesting, Steven, because the only reason I started selling t shirts and my mom encouraged me to do it. Look. We weren't poor, but we are lower middle class. You know, she probably made, like, $30 a year. We that. We had a house. I never I never missed a meal, but I just started playing golf and getting really good really fast where I was already a nationally ranked, you know, as my sophomore year, and but she couldn't afford, like, $1500 for me to I remember to fly to Kentucky to play in my 1st national championship. That, and that's when Jay stepped in, and she literally on that pad said, hey, here's what the airline flight is gonna cost. Here's what it's gonna cost to park at l a x when we had we lived in Bakersfield, California. Here's what gas is to get to and from l a x. She had everything mapped up. If I remember correctly, it was like, 21, $2,200 for both of us to go. And and she's like, if we can't sell and make this much money in the T shirts, I don't make enough money to afford for you to be able to go. That in. It's really interesting. I'm 50 now, Steven. I have 2 daughters, 117 getting ready to go to Belmont University next year. The others are freshmen in high school. That. And one of the most important things outside of faith for me and my wife was to teach our daughters to become financially literate before they leave high school, all going back to what my mother did for me.
Steven Pesavento [00:05:11]:
That Yeah. Because going through that process, it's literally that simple to create almost anything that you want in your life. Because when you can get that that pen and paper out, and you can understand the numbers. Okay. You wanna be able to go and live at a beach house 6 months out of the year. Well, how much is that gonna cost? What is that gonna look like? What are your options? Where is that money gonna come from, and how can you create it in some kind of residual way where that where you're able to live that in the same comfort level of how you're living your life wherever you're at. And that really leads us into what I'm curious about next because I think I think
Bill Faeth [00:05:48]:
you've set your life up in
Steven Pesavento [00:05:48]:
a very interesting way, and we're gonna get into that in a few minutes. But what do you really want from your life? What are you working towards? What are you working on Creating. And why is that so important for you to create that kind of dream life vision that you have?
Bill Faeth [00:06:01]:
It kinda goes back to 2015 when I didn't have this focus. At that time, I'd done 23 startups. I'd had 17 exits at that point, all bootstrapped, with no investors. And I was on this path, that, you know, to go from being 40 to 50. I was doing, like, 4 and a half startups in a decade. Right? And I have this mentor named John Bairdon, who said, Bill, what's your life gonna look like when you're 50? And I said, I don't know. He's all, well, you have the opportunity today to architect that outcome. And and then what's it gonna look like when you're 6 years? And I'd like to be retired at 60. He's like, Okay, well, how much income are you gonna need at 60? I'm like, Are you freaking crazy? I don't know. I'm 40. That's 20 years away. That. So he taught me how to project that just like we have to run projections in any business. Right? Take what you're spending now. Take what your lifestyle is now. What's your desired outcome? Come. How much do you wanna travel? Big difference if I'm gonna travel in a $40,000 5th wheel versus fly private that versus take, you know, around the world cruises. We have to define that. So I had to sit down with my spouse, my wife, Bria, and get crystal clear on what all of these outcomes we desired. And what we found out is it all resonated all came back to were we're probably some of the most active parents, at least that we know. We're the crazy parents that go watch our daughters practice high school soccer because we want to be there. We want to be involved. That we both had great childhoods, but, man, my mom was working 2 jobs, and I didn't have a father. I didn't have people, that, you know, pushing me and watching me and, you know, just there wasn't that time for my mother. So for us, everything was shaped around that. So number 1, Steven, we defined retirement. That what that meant to us because it's not Al Bundy, at least for me sitting on the couch. You know, when I get done selling shoes at the mall with my hand down my pants watching reruns or whatever show that for me, it's still gonna be business. It's still gonna be engaged, but on my own terms. So we wanted to define what retirement meant to us and how we wanted to live in retirement. Them and then there's 2 different levels. There's the life plan that you have to have in the financial plan. And you mentioned like it's as simple as having a pen in a piece of paper. I think a lot of people as you know, get stuck. I can't do p and l s because I don't know how to operate QuickBooks or they think they they're looking for the hurdle. That is not that challenging to jump over, but mentally, we make it way bigger than it is. We built everything out literally in our life plan on a Post it note and wrote it down. It's now in a Google Doc, so we can change it and update it. That. And once we did that in 2015, at that time, I was gonna retire when I was 60. I wanted 8 or $500,000 in in passive income. That. Hence why I really dove heavily into real estate and short term rentals at that point and all the other things, but we also have to consider the life events. And it's not just like my 2 girls graduating from high school. We're planning on having to take care of her parents. I have to take care of my mother that for 3 years. I didn't realize it was gonna cost me $8,000 a month to have her in, you know, get the care that she needed. That. So we're budgeting that, but also strategically structuring our life around where our kids are gonna potentially go to college that in. What we're gonna have to do to take care of our of my in laws in the future. That all will prepare us to be able to hit the goals we want now just off my short term rental, own portfolio. Last year, I made 9.97 just under a1000000, and I've hit all checked every box for my financial goals with by other businesses, but it's waiting on those life events. So for me, it's like, how do I optimize my life even more now to make less money. I know that sounds crazy to some people because I don't need more. But to save more time, so that way I can spend it with what's important to me, which are my kids and my family. A lot of people say that, but I want you to understand. Today's Friday. As soon as I get done recording this with you because I'm encroaching on very, very gracious time. My wife and I, it's 1 12 my time. That from noon to 4 o'clock every Friday. Me and her have what's called faith Friday, and we're auditing our assessors and failures in our track to hit those long term goals every single Friday. So when we get done recording, we're actually gonna go for a walk together, then we're gonna go have an early dinner together, and we not only just talk about this, but we have the plan documented. And we actually see what do we do financially? And then our daughters know the first thing they have to do when they get home from school is they have to give us the 15 minute audit of how we did his parents. That and they grade us every single week. And I learned that from John that. And my wife and I actually audit our successes and failures every single day in our planner, and then we bring that together on Friday afternoons.
Steven Pesavento [00:10:54]:
Well, I love all of this. There's so much to unpack here. I mean, you're really talking about sitting down and and really getting a clear vision of what that's gonna look like. You're sitting down. You're you're understanding what are those roadblocks or those challenges that are gonna come up, and how can we financially plan for them. You're sitting down, and you're getting clear on the values that you wanna have as a family in your relationship and how you're gonna actually Still those. And so everything that we're talking about, it's so fascinating because people, when they think about investing, they're thinking about money. But money is just the tool. It's just the catalyst to allow you to be able to go out and actually create that in the real world and have the ability to be able to do those things and have those experiences. So it And it's really it is that simple. I mean, we have a process. We walk through people through in one of our programs, and we have an An adviser on our team that's a 17 year certified financial planner that helps people figure out some of these financial pieces. But at the beginning, it really comes down to Answering those questions for what's important to you. Because, Bill, what you want from your life is gonna be different than the next guy down the road, different From what I'm looking for and across the board so no one can tell you what it is. They can inspire you to have some ideas. But I actually wanna go on a little side quest because, You know, I heard you mentioned something about this this routine that you have with your wife. How long have you guys been married? 25 years. So So you guys have been married 25 years. And, you know, I had the gift of having 2 parents that, are both amazing people, but they hate each other, and And they have for 30 years and a lot of poor relationship examples in front of me. So for the last decade, I've been asking this question. I'd love it if we could take a little side quest to answer it and kinda dive into what you've done to create that marriage. But if you were to look back 25 years before you got married, you're gonna go talk to that version of yourself with all the knowledge and wisdom you have of creating a great 25 year marriage. What would you tell that younger version of yourself is the important things towards creating that type of lifelong partnership?
Bill Faeth [00:13:05]:
I think I would go back and look at the mistakes that I made, and I was for the better part of, gosh, 15 to 17 years, I was focused on business.
Steven Pesavento [00:13:17]:
Mhmm.
Bill Faeth [00:13:18]:
And I thought that. I thought that I was doing the right thing. And I'm the typical quadruple type a, you know, the the Tim Allen from home improvement or or or, you know, the IPO, bust through walls, you know, entrepreneur, and that's why I did so many startups. 1, because I didn't like large businesses, but the problem was is I was married to those businesses probably more than I was married my wife. Mhmm. And if I didn't have an just an incredible wife I've never slept in a hotel. I've never had to sleep on the couch. We have always she has always had the patience of Job when I'm traveling, when I'm doing whatever, and we would mitigate everything before we go to bed. And I think that's something that you you you've gotta choose your spouse wisely based on where you're moving forward. And then what I would say, pre marriage, her and I didn't have this discussion, and I would have it that if I had to do it over again, is really explaining and being a 100% transparent and honest about what my goals were, dives me and what life is gonna look like. And that's a really hard conversation when you're 24, you know, when you're getting married. I'm 50 today. That. So I can't even visualize myself being able to have that conversation because she didn't know what to expect going into this. And she's just been a freaking trooper. She's been my lover, my best friend, my business partner, everything, you know, for 25 years. And we talk about this a lot, man. Life is so different today than it was back then. I mean, we've we've opened and scaled restaurants together. We were doing top shipping with Brazilian bikinis and sarongs and swimwear in the early nineties on AOL chat rooms. We've been through all of it, but we weren't prepared. That right. And it took having our oldest daughter and my wife bringing up my disdain for my father that that left me, left my mother, all that angst that I've had for the last 40 years of my life. And she and she didn't mean it, but she said, you're turning into your a father. My oldest daughter was 4a half years old. She's like, we haven't been on a vacation since Gentry was born. You know, you work 7 days a week. You're taking care of your customers more than you're taking care of your family, and that's when just the light went off. And I'd always had the drive to not become my father and do what he did to me and my mother. But in a different way, I wasn't really that consciously choosing it, but subconsciously, I was just putting something else as the priority. So if I could go back, I would really want to take the knowledge I have today and explain to her what's gonna happen over the next 25 years because I think most marriages that we go into, They just don't have deep enough conversations. It's really surface. Even when you go to marriage counseling and stuff, it's kind of surface level stuff, and I think people are afraid to have those conversations. And that's the biggest piece of advice that I would give to me is don't be afraid to open up. You don't have to protect her. She is so strong. You can share the good, the bad, and the ugly. All she wants to do is know what really is going on in here.
Steven Pesavento [00:16:17]:
That Well, I really appreciate the vulnerability because you're speaking directly to me. I'm sure a lot of people get benefit from this. But, you know, I carry a lot that fear and trauma from the past, and I've put so much into business that I am very much in line with you. I'm pre marriage. I'm at that point where I'm I'm wanting to have those types of conversations to pick somebody who's gonna be a ride or die partner for long term. But knowing what challenges are going to come up when you're an Entrepreneur when you're in business and being in alignment that this is the life that you're gonna create. I think there's probably nothing more powerful that A couple could do. And even if you're in the midst of it now, no better time to have it just like you guys had it. You had that wake up moment that made you realize that, oh, well, Now is my chance to really reconnect and rebuild so that the next chapter of life is even better than the last.
Bill Faeth [00:17:10]:
That I I agree, and it's rebuilding financially and personally. Look, I I'm afraid of going bankrupt. Them. I've got over $20,000,000 in liquid assets. I've done very, very well for myself financially, but I'm still afraid of going bankrupt. That right. And because I've been close before. I never have, and it was as recent to as 2010 when Nashville I lived in Nashville when we have the flood right on the back of the recession. So that's not that long ago, and that's kind of what drives me. But I also think a lot of entrepreneurs end up being bankrupt personally at home. They may they may be successful financially, but when you have too much focus on that and their home life is not the priority, then you become bankrupt at home. You look at the divorce rate in countries like 50%, but if you look at successful entrepreneurs, it's like 72%. That's almost 45% higher than the standard. It's because most of us have that drive. Most of us engulf our lives into scaling and growing businesses. And I'm a believer that we need to put that the same effort into into our spouse and into our children.
Steven Pesavento [00:18:14]:
Yeah. There's nothing more important than your primary relationship. It's one of the biggest financial decisions that you make is to really build that foundation. If you're gonna be an entrepreneur, who's gonna go and get on a rocket ship, you better make sure that you and your family are on the same page so they're coming along with you. Otherwise, you end up growing beyond, and then, you know, that separates things. So I appreciate you joining me on that side quest and sharing some wisdom. You know, at this point, You know, whether we talk about the specific number or not, what is your number, the point at which you've made it Where you don't have to work. And the reason I asked this is because, you know, back in 2020, I sold my personal home. I went out to Hawaii During the pandemic, you couldn't get on the island. We found a way on. And there was this retired builder who owned the Airbnb we were renting. It was The former Beach Boys estate, this big, beautiful 9 acre spot. But I was talking to him, and we were kinda sharing, you know, the vision, what I'm creating, and I'm driving forward. And he Ask me this question. He said, well, what's your number? What's that point where it's enough, where you're gonna be content, where you can live the life you wanna live? And, You know, that number always kept growing and changing, and I don't think there's anything wrong with the growth and change, but it made me really think about that. That. And so when it comes to you've clearly gone through some of this vision setting process. What did coming up with that number and drawing that line in the sand do for you. And what would you recommend other people take away from doing the same?
Bill Faeth [00:19:43]:
So I think I think those those thoughts, those notions, those desires are gonna change as you evolve as an entrepreneur. I mean, if you're in if you're in the early stages of the journey. It's gonna be completely different than where I'm at, which is basically on the back end, at this point. So the way I think today, I could have never thought of when I was 25 or 30 years old. That, my number financially. I've already hit that number. It used to be $500,000 a year in total income. That. And then as you hit that, then you continue to grow and you continue to grow. I make multiple 7 figures today, but I'm optimizing down as I that said earlier. Like, my owned real estate portfolio did $997,000 in net income in 22. My goal is to actually drop that down. If I can sustain it, that's great. That if I could increase it vanity wise by 3 grand to hit 7 figures, that would be a mental victory. But the reality is my numbers time. That, and I would have never answered it with time. You know, 20 years ago, it's literally 15 is my number. The 53 hours a day is what I wanna work. But then there was a different shift, and it's like, well, why don't I work 5 hours a day, 3 days a week? That, and that's the goal. It is not the way I operate as a coach, an influencer, whatever we're called These days, I spend way I've been able to reinvest my time into that, and I spend 20 to 30 hours a week. Most of it actually pro bono to try to help because the help mentality is just in my blood. My entire family are educators. You know, like, teachers, principles, like true educators. Well, I dropped out of UCLA and didn't get a degree, so I can't be a true educator, so this is the way for me to be able to educate. And that time allocation, whether it's pro bono or it's for profit is irrelevant to me. It's the fact that if I can give back and if I can educate and be accessible that when most people in our space are not accessible and help, then that doesn't constitute as work for me. So for work, for, like, true professional time, that. I kinda classify that at 15 hours. I try to do that, and and it varies week to week. It could be 3 days at 5 hours a day. It could be 5 days at 3 hours a day, but that creates that time for me to do what I'd love and have that passion for, and that's to help people. So it's 15 hours more than it is financial. That Well, see, it's interesting
Steven Pesavento [00:22:12]:
too because it's such a great example of the next level. You hit that financial number. You hit it again. You hit it again. You created this vision for your life, and now it's optimizing to that vision. How can you pull yourself that out further and further having more time to then dedicate to the thing that you care about, your purpose. You wanna help people Change their life and do the same.
Bill Faeth [00:22:38]:
A 100%. And I and for your listeners out there, I'm not the automation VA guy. On the brute force, you know, boots on the ground. I do my own shit. Right? And I've got plenty of automation and technology in my businesses. That's where I can do, you know, 80 hours or 50 hours a week in, you know, 5 to 10 or 15 hours. But I'm the one that's directly involved. I'm not one of the absentee owners that we see out there or the guy that's pitching. Hey. Make $1,000,000 in, you know, 9 months and, you know, work 2 hours a week. I don't think that stuff's a reality, that, but I believe we can optimize everything. We can optimize our family. We can optimize our spousal relationship. We can optimize our sex life. We can optimize, you know, our professional life. A lot of things we can optimize and kind of as you said earlier, we're all on these different paths. How you choose to optimize is your way. That. So one of the things that I love, I grew up playing basketball before I got into, you know, golf at the competitive level and playing professional golf. That and I was fortunate enough that my grandfather paid for me to go to John Wooden's basketball camp twice, the legendary U C l a basketball coach and arguably one of the greatest coaches in the history of coaching for anything. And, you know, he had a couple of couple of teachings that he the hat in his pyramid of success. And number 1 was always to work swiftly, but don't be fast and out of control. And 2 was optimize everything that you do. That and that's something that I've always learned. And it was a challenge. Steven as as a a golfer in high school, then in a short time I was at UCLA before I dropped down. I played professional golf because you had to optimize your time because golf takes so much time. But also you had to self direct that. You had to self manage that. You had to self inspire. You had to self motivate because you don't have a coach, like in team sports. Right? That and I think that has been something that's been absolutely beneficial for me to actually grow up without a father to grow up with just a mother and then to migrate into this individual sport. But the because it makes it so much more interesting the couple of times you get into that team component. Right? Mhmm. And it gives that independence. It's you have to be driven. You have to self motivate. You have to self inspire. And most importantly, you have to have self commitment and accountability. And I think those are the things that I see a lot of traits and successful entrepreneurs, but we gotta make sure that transcends over to family that as well, and a lot of us
Steven Pesavento [00:25:06]:
just tend to leave that behind. Man, so so true. So true. It's all about knowing What you're really going after. And, you know, I think I want you to share a little bit about kind of this lifestyle that you've created because, obviously, you had a bunch of business success. You had some exits. You kinda redirected your vision, and I'll I'll share mine. And then I think it it just goes to show kind of, that I'm looking at what you've created, and I'm I'm excited about it. For me, personally, I wanna have, you know, a beautiful mountain house with great views and be able to ski. I wanna have A beautiful beach house. I've been splitting my time between the beach and the mountains for the last 4 or 5 years. And then I wanna have, the One of those houses be the place. Maybe it's a separate house in the city where the family has got their foundation. Kids go to school, and we do this thing, but we have the ability to go and travel around and enjoy the good life. I know you've created that, so I'd love it if you'd share that just as an example of what you can do when you're very specific in that vision and you go out to do it.
Bill Faeth [00:26:09]:
Yeah. It kind of we we built a life plan, that right in the personal and the financial. My wife and I got unified in what we both agreed on that the number one place we wanted to have in retirement was the beach. That. And at the time when we started this, we could not afford to go to we live in Nashville, so everybody goes to the panhandle. Right? So, like, everybody talks about Dustin, and then the super high Diane just 30 a right next to Dustin. We wanted to go to 30 a, but what my wife wanted was to see the water that here here the waves and smell it. And even back in 2015, you could not get that for under $1,000,000. We had $125 we're gonna invest. We went to Gulf Shores, Alabama, the redneck Riviera, you know, a couple hours to the west, still white sand beaches. It was great. We bought our 1st beach house. We learned how to self manage ourself as, you know, an Airbnb or VRBO or short term rental host. Made $100 in the 1st year, took the profits in your number 2 and bought our second one. What we learned is is that as a couple, we we love the beach, but then we bought a lake the house. And we're like, wow. We got sea dewes. We got boats. We that gets closer. We can actually drive 2 and a half hours away. We were lake people.
Steven Pesavento [00:27:22]:
That Mhmm.
Bill Faeth [00:27:23]:
Like, holy shit. If we if we love the lake, we might be mountain people. Now we bought a place in North Carolina in the mountains, not the Smokies, but in Bander Elko, a massive place.
Steven Pesavento [00:27:34]:
Yeah. And
Bill Faeth [00:27:34]:
then we learned how to ski. We're like, hey. We love skiing. All through that time, we had this one vacation that changed our lives forever. I took my family to Yellowstone right in the heart of COVID, to go see the park, and we fell in love with Montana and Wyoming. So this February, I bought my Montana property. That's my river property. It's about 15 minutes outside of Whitefish, Montana. That so I get the best view I've ever seen. I fly fish. Literally, I'd be smoking a tri tip on my trigger and throwing the fly in the water. It's so close to the water, that from the deck, but it's also 15, 25 minutes to go ski in whitefish. So that was our Montana property. We've got a place in Scottsdale. I'm an ex golf professional. We wanna have it. So we got warm climate, golf, ski, Montana. We're closing on another property next week right next to the entrance of Glacier National Park. We've got the lake. We've got the beach. So that's, whoops, that's 2 in Montana. That's the beach. It's the lake. It's the North Carolina mountains and it's Scottsdale. Those are 6 properties. All of those are a 100% paid for by my investment short term rentals. So, typically, I I learned from my business partner. We started a business going to dark miniature golf courses and shopping malls around the country, in 2003. That and he was the 2nd franchisee into Pizza Hut 1968. At the time, he was we're just under $1,000,000,000, this, and we grew our glow in the dark miniature golf business to about 40,000,000 in annual revenue pre COVID. And one of the things that I learned from him was to cluster, our businesses and cluster our investments. So when we would go into, you know, Louisville, Kentucky as an example, we'd have three locations in Louisville. If we went into Chicago or, you know, Boston, we'd open up at least 3 locations to maximize, labor, and what he did with Pizza Hut is he never had a general manager. So they bought geographically close to where they could pay an assistant manager at each location and then have a district manager. That. And over he said, Bill, over the last 40 years, that's probably saved me about 3 or $4,000,000 because he had, like, 300 pizza the clustering, and I've applied that exact same thing into my real estate investment strategies as well. Whether it's long term, short term, you know, or multifamily, that, because it does give me economies of scale. But one of the other reasons outside of most people who get into real estate, and I'm sure you know this, Steven, they invest that within, like, a 5 to 10 mile radius or where they live because they're not comfortable going outside of their local, you know, community. That. And when you can open up the country as your oyster or internationally, you can find higher producing income properties regardless of its short term, midterm, or long term, that, but also then you can diversify geographically. And it's not as important in the long term space or even in the midterm space. But when you were in the profit maximizing arena of short term rentals, the having cash flow diversification from beach to, you know, ski markets that is abundantly critical. And then you think about earthquakes in California for I mean, I literally had a forest fire at that Montana property that just closed on them in February with 3.2 miles away from that house 2 weeks ago. I had I lost a property in hurricane Sally, that, you know, in the Panhandle. So geographic diversification and clustering have been 2 cores to how I've grown out my portfolio. That
Steven Pesavento [00:30:58]:
Well, it's so cool because I think this concept that I've carried, which is you know, this is how I started doing business, started doing Airbnb back in 2014. I went to go travel to visit a girl out of state. I got paid to go and do it, and I got hooked. That I immediately got another property in the 3rd property in Boulder. Ran that for a couple years until the regulations changed. Move to another house, started my business, left my personal home 1 week out of the month, and paid to create the business that I now run today by Being able to bootstrap it like that. And so it's such a powerful way to think because if you're deciding, hey. I want this thing in my life. How can you get somebody else to pay for it? How can you get your clients, IE, the renters on these vacation rent Rentals to be able to fund that so that you can go and do the fun things and create that life that you wanna create. So I think it's such a great example. You can do it across the board in so many ways. But I really appreciate you being on, Bill. Got 1 more question before you we wrap up. But just for the audience, You know, you're teaching people how to create the life they wanna live and doing that using short term rental as a strategy. How can people find out more about you or follow along?
Bill Faeth [00:32:18]:
I've got a couple of websites, probably the easiest place, bill faith.com. That's f a e t h, bill faith .com, and also build strwealth, .com. And that. It's, it's a journey that that I've been on since 2015 and have completely changed my life. I've got 30,000 members, that, in my build STR Wealth Facebook group that's free. If you wanna join that and kinda start your journey there, and I've just you can find me anywhere. I've got multiple podcasts, YouTube. Just Google my name, and and you'll see it all. It's Bill Faith, f a e t h. That, and, you know, happy to to help you along with your journey as
Steven Pesavento [00:32:56]:
well. It's been, it's been super fun. Thanks so much for joining us. As we wrap up, For all the people who are listening, they're they have that vision. They understand what they're they're looking to go after, but yet they still have that fear, That fear of taking action, that fear of doing something different. What advice do you have to those listeners who want to make a change, but they can't seem to get themselves
Bill Faeth [00:33:21]:
the move. You've just gotta take that 1st step. Right? And I think one of the things that I learned is when I when I dropped out of UCLA at 19 and turned professional, I her to work with a a sports psychologist named doctor Bob Rotella. The power of positive thinking is critical. Most people try to avoid the crash. They try to avoid driving their golf ball into the water. You gotta focus where you want it to go. The only way you're gonna be able to do that, and this is the most important thing that I'll share with you today, you have to give yourself permission to succeed. Mhmm. We literally need to have that self talk with ourself and say, Bill, You will be successful. You can be successful. It is ingrained in you to become successful. I don't care how much shit you've gone through in your life that in every hurdle you've had to jump over, how bad your life is. If you start believing in yourself and you give yourself permission, you can achieve some pretty big things.
Steven Pesavento [00:34:17]:
That's awesome. Well, it's such it's so good to, good to talk with you here today, Bill. Thanks so much for joining us, and thank you all for listening to the Investor Mindset Show. Definitely take some time to reflect On what you can take away from today's episode and put one thing in action. Take that 1st step towards creating the life you want. That Thanks for listening to the Investor Mindset podcast. Make sure to hit that subscribe button. And if you'd like to watch another, Here's 1 up top, and here's another great video right down below.
