[00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to the Short Term Show. The show about short term rentals and long term wealth with real property owners hosting real properties who are crushing it in the vacation and short term rental space.
And here's your host, Avery Carle.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Hey, y'.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: All.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Welcome to another episode of the Short Term Show. Today's guest is Chris McKenna, and he was with a Fortune 500 Global 500 company for 26 years. He was a VP and he was able to retire on a handful of rentals. And he's running those now, doing almost a million dollars a year and really excited to talk to him today. How's it going, Chris?
[00:00:54] Speaker C: It's going great, Avery. Thanks for the opportunity to share my story.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. So let's get right into it. Tell us a little bit about yourself, what you were doing before you got into real estate and how you got into real estate.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: Yeah, sure. So back when I was a normie, I'll give you the scoop here. So born and raised in Medford, Massachusetts, just north of Boston.
Moved to Maine, Southern Maine, when I was still in high school with my family. That's where I had my family, my kids. My two boys are 26 and 29. So we were in Maine for quite some time, 25 years, I guess. And most of that time I worked for, as you mentioned, a Fortune 500 company. I started kind of grinding my way through the business as a shift supervisor. And then the last seven years of that business, I was a vice president of manufacturing.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:01:53] Speaker C: In Maine, you know, working for that company, really, I just had aspired to work for that company and build the 401, live a normal life, retire at 65.
And I continued that thought process as we moved from Maine to our promotion to Dallas, Texas. So kind of the VP job took me from being home every night to being on the road, travel, hotels, being, you know, stuck in airports, and a lot probably what a lot of people that are listening to this are dealing with today.
We landed in Dallas, Texas, in 2017 in a town called Flower Mound, and spent five years there. But that five years changed our life because we were there during the pandemic, which strange to say, the pandemic was the best thing that ever happened to us.
Being on the road so much and then all of a sudden being home, that's when we discovered, well, what I say, I know you usually I like to ask people about what books they're reading and share, you know, kind of things like that. But I will tell you better than any book that I've ever read was I stumbled on something called Bigger Pockets and listened to episode 365 with Avery Carle, and that podcast changed our life. So from there it was. That's when really when our real estate journey began, which is in 2021.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Well, thank you very much. I'm honored. Hopefully, it's changed your life for the better and you're not ripping your hair out, but.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: Is that a ball joke?
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Oh, no, it's not. But it could have been.
[00:03:32] Speaker C: It could have been.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: So, all right, so you listen to that podcast, and that's how I got into real estate investing, too, is listening to bigger pockets in 2015. Fifteen, back in the day when it was Brandon and Josh, and Josh got every woman's name wrong that came on that podcast.
I noticed. Anyway, Bigger Pockets og Bigger Pockets was. Was the greatest. And I missed those days. But anyway, you.
You listen on Bigger Pockets, and then you said, okay, I want to get into real estate. And so what did you do next?
[00:04:10] Speaker C: Well, you know, from that episode, at that point, we really didn't have any investment other than we had a vacation home that we bought in Maine up in a place called Rockwood on Moosehead Lake in Northern Maine.
We were renting it once we left, but I would not consider it an investment property. But we kind of had that.
Once I listened to that episode, then it's, like, consuming as much as possible. And I've heard. I know you've heard this story hundreds of times, because I've listened to you listen to this story hundreds of times.
You know, so we, you know, I read books and podcasts and just asked around and discovered that there is this beautiful beach community called Fort Morgan and Gulf Shores in Alabama. Being from New England, my wife and I didn't even know there was a beach in Alabama. You know, people here in Alabama, they have one, you know, vision of what the state is. And we're like, is it really this beautiful beach?
So we made a trip out. We made a trip out to go check it out, and then three months later, we met Jonathan, and we bought a little beach house on Mile Marker 2 in Fort Morgan. And I was thinking about this, preparing for the podcast is that. And I know you would never remember this, but just how fast your business has grown. You know, back then, we bought a $350,000 beach house in Fort Morgan. We were Jonathan's first clients in Gulf Shores.
And you actually got on a call with me and Jonathan on a zoom call to strategize how to buy a $350,000 house. And I'm thinking, man, I'm betting that Avery does not do that anymore, especially for a house that small.
And that. That was our first. That was our first purchase. So.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Oh, I am so honored. That's so funny. I didn't know you were Jonathan's first client.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: Yeah, I remind him all the time because I think both of us. Both of us were faking until we made it. We're like, man, I hope this works out.
But it ended up being fantastic.
You know, we have. I don't know if you have time for a quick story about. About that first purchase.
And any of my friends listening to this have heard this story at campfires, over beers many times. But I'll share kind of the highlights.
So, you know, we find this house, we really like it. We came out, looked at it. Jonathan toured us through.
We decided to do a small renovation. You know, it was like paint and decks and things of that nature.
So all of this work is being done. We have a completion date, and we're coming out to Gulf Shores from Dallas to do the furniture and decorate and get ready for photos.
So at the same time, we're driving out.
My in laws wanted to come down and see the beach, so they're flying into Pensacola.
We roll up to the house. It's pouring rain. My wife and I just drove two hours, two dogs in the car, raining out. And the plan is I'm going to drop them off at the house, go get my in laws, come back, and we'll get to work. We pull up to the house and the cars, the driveway is full of cars.
And someone is in the rain painting one of the doors of my house outside in the rain. So I see the look on my wife's face. Now, keep in mind this is our first ever investment, that she's like, okay, I support you. I walk into the house, and there are three families that are living in the house.
So I walk up on the deck, my tools are in the rain, all rusted. There's families inside. Someone's drinking my beer. There's kids in the bedrooms. There's someone in the bathroom. And I look around, just in complete shock. Now, no one was able to speak English to explain to me what was happening here, but I knew we could not stay there.
So if you rewind a little bit, the head, the contractor running the project went in for surgery. So he was unavailable the last couple of days. I hadn't talked with him, but we had agreement on this date and I had Agreed to let a group come in. They were painting to stay in the property while they were painting so they didn't have to travel and they gave me a better rate. But everything went dark the last two or three days. And then we show up and now I have no place to stay with two dogs, my in laws flying in, and the house is, is weeks away from being finished.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: Oh, man.
So what did you do?
[00:08:25] Speaker C: So, yeah, panic, pretending that I didn't see my wife, like staring me down about, why did you get me into this?
But, you know, we had planned to be there for a week and try to, you know, long story short, we ended up being there for a month.
You know, I ended up going down, getting another short term rental for all of us to stay in.
Went down and basically took over the contractors in the project, came up with punch lists and did all of this myself to kind of get the project done.
So we ended up being there a month. I was going back and forth for work. My wife had stayed and kind of the, you know, the exclamation point on the project is everything got done.
It was a lot harder than it should have been. And on the last day that we were there, we had planned to go to the beach.
We had not even been to the beach yet. We're gonna have a beach day and then we're gonna drive back to Texas.
The last day that was there, I ended up in the emergency room from the stress of the project.
I actually got Bell's palsy on the last day we were there.
If anyone, you know the movie Vanilla sky, like I was Tom Cruise, like half my face was like hanging down on the side of my face from stress. And ended up driving home the next day, like holding my eye open so I could see while we were coming home from the rental. So.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: And you still bought more after this?
[00:09:51] Speaker C: Well, here's. This is why you, you know, you.
It's a story that is like super funny to tell when you're hanging out with your friends.
But it's a story that I wanted to tell because I think it's. It is a funny story. It's crazy. This was our first shot. This was our first short term shot. Pretty property investing. Like, let's do this. All the podcasts, the books, the videos, everything.
And that's what happened. And when we got home, this thing, you know, kind of the dust settles. This house like booked like crazy.
We had under owed God, I mean,
[00:10:28] Speaker B: paralyzed half your face over it.
[00:10:30] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, it all came back. It all, it all came Back to normal, you know, and it's just. You start watching the bookings come in, and we had underwrote 65,000 gross on this house for a $350,000 house. Jonathan and I were like, this is a great deal if this is what we can grab. And in that first rolling 12 months through Covid, we almost hit 100K on this house. And this house was 864 square feet, three bed, one and a half bath. And it normalized after Covid and did 85 a year for the next three years. But it ended up being a unicorn with an amazing story. And preparing for the podcast, I thought to myself, this is a good, like, funny story to share where if people, you know, if we stop there, I'd still be working on my plan of corporate dominance with my 401k and working till I'm 65.
And at the end of the day, we didn't stop there. We kept going. And I retired at 49, you know, and in a matter of five years, from the time I listened to your podcast, you know, to Now, I got 15, 16 years of my life back. And if we said, we're done after that first crazy experience and it just became a story we told, I still would be there. It would be the end of it. It would have been one and done, and we'll never do it again. But I give all the credit to my wife for supporting me and saying, this is insane. I'm worried about your health, but if you feel like this is going to get you out of this W2 life that you want out of, then let's keep going.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: My goodness.
That is. I've never heard a story like that. Yes. And if I.
[00:12:07] Speaker C: It's hard to find a story that you haven't heard, Avery.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: I have not heard one like that. And if I had known that that was going on at the time, I probably would have been extremely stressed out also. So I'm glad that worked out and that you got past the bill's palsy.
So what was your next investment after that? And was your wife like, we're not doing this again.
[00:12:33] Speaker C: We. You know, it.
I tried not to flinch, like, you know, stay confident, even though, you know my face. It was a whole thing. But anyway, we got through that, and once I started showing her, like, this is what I thought was going to happen, and this is what's happening with the revenue, you know, she's like, listen, if you want to keep doing this, because at the end of the day, Avery, I was gone. I would Come home Friday night, I'm gone Monday morning. And that was for seven years.
And you know, it just was. There was an opportunity for a better life. And if this is what I thought, she supported it. So. But then we, we went, I would say we went crazy. It does sound very. We, we, we bought a lot in the next 12 months. So from, from January 21st to January 22nd, we had bought the property I mentioned at Gulf Shores. We bought a property from Yock in Blue Ridge and we bought a cabin from Kathy when you guys first went into the Broken Bow market. And we bought the Broken Bow cabin when there, I think I Remember there were 13 cabins for sale in Broken Bow and we bought one for sale from Kathy.
And then shortly after that, in that same 12 months with everybody doing remote work and the job that I was in, we ended up selling the house that was way too big for us in Texas. And then we moved to Fort Morgan and we bought an 1100 square foot roundhouse on mile marker 4 in Fort Morgan, sold everything we had and just said let's. For me, mentally, it was like proving to myself that we could retire early because I started thinking, I can do this by the time I'm 50 and let's move to the beach and I'll travel from Pensacola. And that's just another signal that I'm going to put my money where my mouth is, even to prove to myself that we're going to do this. So that first year, three new rentals sold our house, bought our house, moved to Fort Morgan 12 months after we bought the house. We call the Blue Pearl the first property with the crazy story.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Thank you for listening. We sincerely hope that you find value in this podcast.
We would love it if you would use our team to purchase your next vacation home.
We sell houses in all of the best vacation markets in America and we want to earn your business.
Reach out to us
[email protected] stsconsultation.com that's the shorttermshop.com this program has been brought to you by the Short Term Shop.
The Short Term Shop is the premier vacation rental real estate agency and we are hiring real estate agents in the following markets.
Outer Banks, Shenandoah, Virginia, Galveston, Texas and the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee.
If you are a real estate agent in one of these markets or, or want to move to one of these areas, please contact us. Careers at the short term shop.com okay.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: All right, so you, you bought the house in Fort Morgan, then you bought one in Blue Ridge, then Broken Bow. And then now you've moved to Fort Morgan, Correct?
[00:15:56] Speaker C: You got it.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: Okay, tell me, tell me about the Blue Ridge property. So you bought the one in Fort Morgan, did you. What was your strategy for saving up all of these down payments? Or did you have that ready from working for 26 years? What did that look like? Because I think that's where a lot of people get hung up is the I'll never have a down payment.
[00:16:18] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, at the time we were the first two, we used a 10% down loan method. Right. And at the time, that was something that was really kind of eye opening for a lot of us that were following you at the time to use that.
And also in both of those first two properties, we were able to have the seller cover the closing costs. So like for the Blue Pearl, the Gulf shores property at 350, we literally brought 35,000 to the table. And then the next property we bought from Yock was similarly priced. It was probably around 400,000. And we used the same. We were able to pull it off again. How we saved the money.
Before my episode 365 on BiggerPockets experience, I was focusing my time on learning more about personal finance. Because having the job that I had and for the great company I work for, every year I got a bonus. So I could be super sloppy with my finances, knowing that every March the bonus check comes and I can pay the credit card and the car, you know, all the stuff that I didn't do very well, saving.
So I got into Dave Ramsey, which I know, like cue the Dave Ramsey jokes, but I was super into Dave
[00:17:30] Speaker B: Ramsey at the beginning.
[00:17:33] Speaker C: He gets a bad rap these days. But I'll tell you, anybody that asks me my advice on I want to do what you do, that's the first thing that I ask them, is just read this book and just read it and let me know what you think. Because I 100% believe that if you don't have a good personal financial foundation, you won't be able to weather the storms of wealth. What it takes to kind of gut through. Sometimes with short term rental, like you have to have a solid foundation. You can't have money going to a lot of commercial debt. It's just not a good combination.
So that's where I started before investment and we paid a bunch of stuff off. I cut up my credit cards. We started socking money away, actually throttling back on what was going in the 401k and putting more into a high yield savings to kind of save this dry powder thinking like, I need these 10% down loans now. We only did it twice. Avery when we went to Broken Bow, it was the biggest property we ever purchased. It was a million dollars. And I didn't feel comfortable at 10% down. So we put more than that. But.
But yeah, I guess long answer to your question is we cleaned up our personal financial house, got rid of the stuff that didn't really matter, and then saved every dime we could to start putting it towards down payment.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: That's 100% the way to do it. That's the way we did it. I read all of the Dave Ramsey books at the beginning and set us up a budget, a daily budget. And I just got cash out of the bank every week and we had it lined up on the kitchen counter of Avery Monday, Luke Monday, every Tuesday, Luke Tuesday. And we weren't allowed to go over, we weren't allowed to spend more than that. And it really. Everybody in the real estate investing influencing industry likes to make fun and say, Dave Ramsey so wrong. But you do have to use his, his principles to get yourself into a position of having that down payment so that you can then turn around and leverage.
So his advice is really good for most of America because most of America is not investing in real estate. So it definitely has its place in the Kiyosaki world.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:44] Speaker C: And I now that we are where we're at, it's almost like I'm finishing that, that book. Right. So I followed Ramsey until it's pay off your mortgage and then went to Kiyosaki to like understanding how to leverage good debt and invest. And now we're on the other side of like, we're building like here's the next 10 year plan of reducing some of the debt on the property we have the older we get. And you want to leave it to your kids. I don't. I would rather leave something with very little leverage than say 50% leverage. So now I'm kind of back to the last chapter of the Ramsey book of like, all right, now we're going to start paying these things off. But it's like you combine those two theories together and whether it's by accident or. Well, it's definitely by accident because I didn't plan it this way, but I can make it make sense in my mind that you can, you can really follow both and be successful.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree.
So I want to hear the numbers that you're. So you saw the, the one in Gulf Shores and you're living in the other one. Right?
[00:20:46] Speaker C: Yeah, we've got.
We. We. Yeah. So I guess right now we've got.
We have two in Broken Boat. We kept the original one. We have one in Gulf Shores.
And then we have a commercial property we bought in Maine that's got five cabins on it and then there's a cabin next to it. Ten properties total, three markets.
But in Gulf Shores we have one. We actually sold the first one and kind of used that to improve some other properties, which is kind of where I'm at now. Return on equity, making sure everything's working hard and then using that cash for either a more premium property or last year we used one property's profit to improve three different properties and kind of grow that, that cash flow. But I didn't want to interrupt you asking about numbers, so you let me know what you. What you want.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah. Tell me about the numbers on your Broken Bow places.
[00:21:43] Speaker C: Sure.
Broken Bow, which also gets a lot of heat. And I think unfairly, I think, you know, every, every market has seen this is it, you know, Covid impact or was it overdeveloped when it got really hot.
And I think all of us have had to really look at basic purchases versus really premium properties. And that's what Broken Ball has become for us. So we bought a. Our first Property was a 5 bed, 5 bath, 3400 square foot in broken bow. One of the OG cabins 2007. Not a modern cabin, but it came with a 2 car garage that we didn't do anything with until this year. So that cabin at its best year grossed 165.
And the next couple of years started to. That started to degrade as they started building more cabins. So 2025, we were down to 135 gross on that cabin.
We then sold our original Gulf Shores house that I was telling you about, the little three bed, one bath. And we hit that big equity boost, depreciation boost in Gulf Shores from 21 to 25.
And the money that we took out of Blue Pearl. We then did a full renovation of the two car garage into a game room, put in a heated pool, replaced the hot tub and then used the balance to buy another property in Broken Bow. And Avery. From what we were making netting on the Gulf Shores house, I'm going to say we 3 to 4x that money not by buying more property but by investing and upgrading what we had. So that that Broken Boat property that peaked at 165 we went from 135,000 gross for 2025.
This year we're just under. As of today, we have just under 170 on the books and we're projecting 225 on that house.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: Wow. What did you add to it?
[00:23:37] Speaker C: We put a heated pool.
That'll do it. Heated pool. And then we took that two car garage and we gutted it. We ripped the doors out, resided it, you know, know put heating and cooling in there and It's a full 500 square foot game room on the cabin because that garage was just sitting there. We just never kind of had the money or the forethought to say, you know, let's turn it into something until it was like when you, you know, I think sometimes people want to play defense and it becomes a very sad story instead of playing offense and saying, okay, if this is what we need to do to perform and this is how many five bedrooms have a pool in this market, like, let's go for it. And you know that that pool investment, I mean that could end up being a two year return on investment for us in that market. And it's been so successful. We just bought, we bought another one from Kathy the end of last year that just went live, I guess December, we went live of last year on that property and that was another five bed, three and a half bath.
That was a different one for us because it was basically brand new. There was nothing to do inside, but the yard was kind of boring.
So we put a pool, hot tub, sauna shower out there and that one. And we're projecting 180k on that property and we ended up getting it for 848 with the pool loan rolled into it.
Yeah, so we're, we're, we're super happy in the broken bowl market right now.
[00:25:06] Speaker B: Yeah, sounds like it. Sounds like it.
Well, last question I have is the, the five cabin little micro resort in Maine? I know a lot of people are really interested in the micro resort world. So how did that come about and what does that look like to run and finance versus a traditional single family short term rental?
[00:25:26] Speaker C: Yeah, don't do it. Everybody watching, really.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: I was not in shock.
[00:25:31] Speaker C: It's, I have learned so much, Avery, on that property. I remember underwriting and thinking, this is going to be awesome. I'm going to have five cabins paying for one mortgage and it's just going to be five individual short term rentals on Airbnb and I'm going to run it just like everything else. And I didn't realize until after I signed all the paperwork that I had just bought a Business.
So it was a property that was built in the 40s. There were five old sporting camps that were on Moosehead Lake in northern Maine. They had only had two owners from 1940 until when we bought it in 2022.
So what we bought was a business that needed a complete gut remodel for the whole property.
But we learned a lot of things, you know, going into the, into this property. You know, I'd say we, we bought so much in 21 that we bought this one in 22. And we didn't do anything for 18 months except work on this project. So they were grossing around 90,000 a year with these five cabins. The folks that were running it before.
But what we had learned is never been on the Internet, all phone call, pencil writing reservations down. People just have the same week every year. They pay cash when they leave. So for that part I was really drooling over man, what could we do with this? Getting it online.
But some of the challenges we faced were we realized after we bought it there were unpermitted improvements to the property that we had to go back to the state for.
It was never a licensed business in the state of Maine which we went and needed to apply and go through all of the inspections.
We needed to do state water testing and submit water testing. We ran into boundary disputes.
It was, it was interesting. And on top of that it was a full gut remodel on the project. So everything, roof siding, windows to all the interiors, appliances, heating, electrical, plumbing, the whole ball of wax. So where we are now, fast forward.
This property we purchased for 750,000 and it was our first commercial loan. And we were able to get, I guess we would call it an as built appraisal and got another 225,000 for remodel into the same commercial loan. So we put 975 in it. We have put more than that on top of it to get it to where it is now.
But that property, when we bought it was a 90,000 gross property. Last year we did 345,000 on that property.
And we've got just that one commercial loan. There is a version of like mortgage insurance if you, you know, when you pay PMI and residential insurance, we had a, there's a program in Maine that allowed us to put less money down on it and they just removed that insurance. So we got a nice little bump on our mortgage there too as well. But this, my initial reaction is kind of joking. It's, it's a lot of work when you have these multi cabin Properties, you're dealing with people that don't know each other in a very close proximity. I thought we could manage it without having people on site.
And we got lucky enough where we have a couple that run the property. There's an apartment on one of the cabins, and they live on site.
And Trina, who is a godsend, runs the whole property for us. She handles guest communication, all the housekeeping.
Anything that needs to be done on the property, she takes care of it.
And kind of another great story is during the renovation, I ended up firing the contractor that started the project. And then this guy that had come up to help us with, he came up to do demo for a weekend, and he's been there for four years now. His name is Adam.
Adam and Trina fell in love and got engaged.
So they both live at the property. So Trina handles.
He handles the guests, she handles the housekeeping. She's the face of the business. And Adam has done all of the remodel, and now he does the maintenance, the landscaping, takes care of us all year round. And they're. They live right at the property to take care of all of that for us.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh, that is so lucky. And that's so cute.
[00:30:01] Speaker C: It is lucky and cute. It is both. Avery, you are right.
Well, when people ask me about this market, I'm like, yeah, listen, it's beautiful. It's. It's.
It's like Fort Morgan. It's an unorganized territory.
There's 300 people that live in the town, but it's, you know, it's three hours north of Boston, and there's no. There's no systems, there's no infrastructure.
So we got super lucky finding really talented, passionate people that want to be there to take care of the property. But everything else is. It's work. You know, Amazon delivers in a week. There's no same day or next day.
Home Depot is two and a half hour drive away. You know, it just.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: There's not even anything right there.
[00:30:44] Speaker C: It's very, very remote. So we got super lucky because of the talented people that we found to help us. And we've kind of restored a brand there in that Moosehead Lake area.
The owner. The property is called Lawrence's Lakeside Cabins, if anyone wants to check it out. But the namesake, Bob Lawrence, had actually sold the property to some folks that I think were in over their head. And they owned it for about a year, changed the name, tried to run the property and realized it was too much, so we bought it from them.
And then Put Bob's name back on it and renamed it Lawrence's because it had been the name since the early 90s.
And I think that might have been a signal just locally that we weren't trying to change things. We're trying to preserve history, preserve the property. And that definitely helped kind of bring that reputation back and grow the revenue.
[00:31:39] Speaker B: Yeah. I got super curious while you were talking, and now I'm looking at it on Airbnb. It's really cool.
[00:31:45] Speaker C: It's. It's. We've really.
I'm. I'm very proud of it. I go there now. We do a family reunion there now every year in September. So my whole family comes up, my wife and I, and it's just a spot where we spend a long weekend together. And I'm very proud of what we've been able to build there. And actually to tie it back to that Gulf Shore sales we sold and use the equity to improve things. The property at Lawrence's has a.
It had a little utility building, laundry building on the back of the property, and the state wouldn't allow us to expand that to make a sixth cabin due to the septic, but they would allow us to make it a common building. So we used our last expansion permit for the property and made it a 2022 by 24 game room cabin. So it's a cabin. It's got all the arcade. Like, it's. We've taken, like, everything that we do as investors in our property and made a cabin for it because we couldn't do anything else with it.
And now that's a game room for kids and adults and everybody, too. So when you go to the camp, we call them camps. When you go to the camp or the cabin, you get a door code, and then you get a code to the game room, and it's open certain hours of the day. And it's just another amenity that shared amenity everybody can use.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: Love that. This looks really, really cool. I. And it's doubtful I'll be passing through Maine anytime soon, but I would love to see this because it's really cool.
[00:33:12] Speaker C: You never know. You never know.
But, yeah, it's a property we're super proud of. Where.
Thank you for bringing it up and asking about it.
[00:33:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So you're saying, don't do this to people.
[00:33:24] Speaker C: Well, you know, I guess it's very exciting to buy these properties with multiple cabins on them, because as investors, we're all thinking about, you know, multiple streams of revenue and that scale, you know, in this market or really anywhere. You know, what I caution folks that ask me about it is, you know, just here's all the things that we learn.
It's going to be, it's a, it's a great property for us now, but it's very dependent on the talent you can find. And the talent pool is not very deep. It's just, it's a, it's a small town and there's not a lot of infrastructure and we've learned a lot of lessons the hard way. So not to mention, guess what? When people all stay in close proximity together on vacation, they might not always get along, you know, so this isn't about people complaining in the Smokies about a neighboring cabin being loud. They're complaining about your cabin being loud that's right next to them, you know, so you've, there's a lot to this in order to be able to pull it off, make it successful. So I wouldn't say for people not to do it, but just proceed with caution, you know, good advice.
[00:34:33] Speaker B: So, Chris, your story is so interesting and you've done this in so many different ways. It's all really, really cool and hopefully inspiring to our listeners. And before we go, we have three questions that we ask every single guest who comes on the show. Question number one, what advice would you give 20 year old Chris if you knew then what you know now?
[00:34:56] Speaker C: Don't apply for a credit card. Kris, are you listening to me? No credit cards.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: Okay, self explanatory.
Number two, what advice would you give a new short term rental investor who's getting started today?
[00:35:13] Speaker C: Well, I do this pretty regularly.
You know, I think there's a balance between being well read and researched and knowing, you know, kind of doing your homework and not getting stuck and just doing that until too much time passes. Right. The best day to buy real estate was yesterday. The second best time is today.
You have to be willing to take some risk.
And that's just part of what we do. This is not passive investing and it's not risk free. So you have to be able to have a stomach for that. And the final point is what we talked about earlier.
Read Dave Ramsey.
If you read that and you're really far away from that, I think you might have a tough time doing what we do in the short term rental business or in real estate investing, period.
So one of the things I normally tell people, Avery, is like, well, we do a renovation and things go wrong. I'll say that's great news because we found bad things while we were trying to Do a remodel and we fixed it. I don't look at it and say, oh my God, that's another five grand and what's that gonna cost? And due to my return, it's all good news. Either we get the work done and nothing's wrong, it's great. Or we get the work done and we find bad things and fix them. But if that's a freak out moment, then maybe you're not ready.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, totally agree with that.
And last question, what's your favorite book that's impacted your mindset?
[00:36:37] Speaker A: I don't.
[00:36:38] Speaker C: I wish I had like a really exciting answer to this question and a book that you had never read before, but. But I don't.
I.
The episode that you and I know I'm not the only one, but that episode that you did on BiggerPockets365 changed my life. And the follow up to that, I think between your episode on the podcast getting my Financial house in order and reading Dave Ramsey and then reading and understanding what the future could look like by reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
I've read a lot of books since then that you've recommended or others have recommended. But those three things got gave me and my wife 15 years back on my life where, you know, at 49, I get up and I do. Or I'm 50 now, but retiring at 49, I get up and do what I want to do every day. And if those three things didn't happen, I probably couldn't say that today.
[00:37:29] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, what a great episode. I'm so glad that your path in short term rentals only went up from that Bell's palsy incident.
I've never heard anything like that before. And I'm glad that, that it improved and that you kept going. And guys, listeners, so Chris does have a management company that he's involved with called. What is it called?
[00:37:54] Speaker C: Chris Vandell Vacation Rentals.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: Okay, and where do y' all manage? In Gulf Shores.
[00:38:00] Speaker C: Yeah, it's the company, actually. You actually interviewed Wilson Van Hook for your Broken Bow episode. So Wilson and his partner Cole Odell started Vandell and Broken Bow. They're one of the biggest managers up there. And you've heard this before. I was their first client in Broken Bow.
So when I retired and realized if I didn't find something to do, my wife was going to smother me in my sleep because I was home all the time, I called them up and we came up with the idea to expand their full service management to Gulf Shores.
So we're partners. They run everything from finance to revenue management and guest communication. And then I handle operations here from my home base in Fort Morgan.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: Awesome. So if our listeners want to find you, follow you on social media, how can they do that?
[00:38:52] Speaker C: Yeah, sure. So I have a page on Facebook if you want to just be friends, you know, you can find me on Facebook.
And then we've got our Lawrence's Lakeside Cabins is on Instagram Facebook and you can check us out on the website.
My portfolio, just our personal all of our personal properties are on unpluggedvacations.net and then look us up if you're looking for management in Broken Bow or in Gulf Shores at Vandell Vacation Rentals. And then Vandell Vacation Rentals backslash Gulf Shores for the beach market.
[00:39:26] Speaker B: All right. Well, Chris, this was a really great show. Thank you so much for coming on. And listeners, we will see you next week.
[00:39:33] Speaker C: Thanks Avery very much. Appreciate it.
