E16 LGBTQ+ Entrepreneurship & Short-Term Rental Mastery with Jason Muth

[0:00] This is the Wealthy Investor Show, where we don’t just talk about your wealth, we also talk about your holistic health. I’m your host, Matias. And I’m Erica. And this is the Wealthy Investor.

[0:14] Welcome back to the Wealthy Investor. It’s just Matias again, guys. I am sorry. Erica is with the kids. Two of our kids are home right now. So if you hear some pitter-patters upstairs and some yells, that is what she is doing. That’s our life right now. But it’s a good thing in the sense that we realized yesterday, yesterday was Sunday, that we had two podcast guests scheduled today. And we had been recording everything off of our dining room table. So we were able to quickly decide that we’re going to paint my home office downstairs and create a more official studio. So we are excited about having a more official studio set up that we can just come down, be separate, be away from the chaos.

[0:57] If there is kids at home and everything, and be able to hit just record and go. I apologize for watching on video. One thing I need to figure out is the recording thing. It is obviously glitching out and going crazy right now. But anyway, we had a really fun guest today, Jason Muth. Erica was disappointed she could not be on the phone conversation or on the Zoom conversation with him. Jason is out of Massachusetts. He owns Airbnbs, along with his husband, Rory. And they created a business called Pride Away Stays for Provincetown, Massachusetts. And basically wants to provide a service for people that really want to have very welcoming to the LGBTQ plus community for short-term rentals. So Provincetown, I wasn’t aware of this.

[1:54] He told me that is a really awesome destination for people. A lot of people want to buy property there. They’re very expensive as like second homes. And so people are often seeking to rent them out as an Airbnb on the side to just make it more affordable. And so they are seeking to provide that service for people who don’t want to take it on themselves. They are experienced operators and clearly understand what it takes to do the job well. So we got into some different things. We got into how being a workforce, being an employee can actually, it seems like a, it can seem like that’s a safe option, but it can actually be a more dangerous option if you’re only thinking about your career. And one of the ways that happens is that you become very specialized in your education and in your work experience.

[2:51] But if you’re laid off or if something happens in that industry, that is, all your eggs are in that basket. And so we talked about how it’s a bit of a, you know, interesting how people think that entrepreneurship and getting out there and doing your own thing seems more risky than having a steady job with steady income. And there are, you know, there’s obviously pluses and minuses to both. But, you know, being laid off, which Jason will get into, is a reality with big businesses. And, you know, if all your eggs are in that basket, you can find yourself in a pretty bad position. So Jason was laid off two years ago today, is what he said. And he took that as an opportunity. He was going to quit anyway to transition full-time into real estate since they had been buying and managing Airbnb properties since 2016.

[3:49] But yeah, if you are not financially literate, it’s definitely something worthwhile looking into no matter what your career is. If you are a realtor listening to this and you don’t understand what it means to be a real estate professional tax-wise, if you do not own rentals and you’re not taking advantage of being a real estate professional, that is one of the best things you can do to minimize your tax liability. I highly recommend you look into this a little bit more. And one of the goals of this channel is to help educate realtors about that. You don’t have to personally oversee renting properties for forced depreciation. Again, going down a rabbit hole, look into accelerated depreciation, bonus depreciation as a tax strategy.

[4:39] You don’t have to buy property necessarily to do that, but you can actually invest into syndications, things like that, that will allow you to take full advantage of being a real estate professional. So Jason said he went to a conference and they said that the biggest tax strategy you can do is marry into having a real estate professional as your spouse. And so if I’m talking Greek to you as a realtor or as a real estate professional, somebody who is mainly doing real estate for their work, their income, you definitely need to, you owe this to yourself to find out more about how you can take advantage of this designation that a lot of people wish they had, a lot of high income earners wish they would have this designation.

[5:24] So going, going back to Jason, Jason was a great conversation. He had a lot of great insights. If you are in the Airbnb space, it is very interesting. And we spoke a little bit about how the market shifted from through COVID and how it is now. And some of the traps people fell into post COVID with the numbers being really good 2021. Um, so yeah, stay tuned for this conversation. It’s great. Uh, without further ado, Jason Muth.

[5:56] Uh, Jason, you’re coming out of, uh, Providence town, province town. No, uh, province town is where we have some properties, but we’re coming out of Newbury port, which I did not tell you beforehand. So I don’t fault you for that, but, um, yeah, we’re, we’re about 40 minutes north of Boston. And so you own Airbnbs in Providence town. Yes, we have. So we have four up in New Hampshire, not too far from here. Uh, one, three of them are in Farmington. One is in Guilford. And then we have one in Providence town and the one at Providence town inspired the business we launched last year called Prideway stays, which services Providence town. And that’s, and that’s management for, uh, Airbnbs in Providence town.

[6:36] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we’ve been doing our own properties since 2000 or since 2016 is when we bought our first investment and we bought into P town in 2018. And, you know, I’m in a short-term rental mastermind group called STR secrets. And we are learning from the best people across the country with lots of amazing operators that run their own properties and co-host other people’s properties. And, you know, the, the mastermind connects people, builds our mindset, builds our network and teaches us kind of how to run co-hosting businesses. When I joined it initially, I just wanted to meet people that were in the space and then run my own businesses better, you know, the only houses that we had. But once I realized I wasn’t fully optimizing, um, what I’ve been learning, I was like, you know what?

[7:18] I think there’s an opportunity in P town. So, you know, last November, a business partner and I basically, uh, built a brand and a website and started promoting the fact that we’re going to manage other people’s properties. And, you know, we have a handful of clients in P town now. Okay, cool. And what got you started down the path of real estate investing in general? We, we started following bigger pockets back around 2015. Uh, in fact, we, um, as we have a podcast ourselves, the real estate law podcast, we’ve interviewed a number of bigger pockets, people on that podcast, Dave Meyer being one of them. Um, and I was telling Dave, like, you know, my relationship with bigger pockets almost predates a lot of the people who work there at this point, you know, cause we built our profile back in 2015.

[7:59] And I just was interested in figuring out a way to diversify our income streams and invest some money that we’ve been saving up. I’ve been working at W2 job for, I mean, my whole life up until two years ago today, I worked for somebody else and we started doing real estate on the side back in 2016. Um, when there’s like, you could probably Google my name and find a podcast that I was on, uh, by a gentleman named Kevin Amos, who we had on our podcast and he, uh, titled the episode. I won my down payment gambling, which is kind of true, but not fully. Um, I mean, yeah, yeah. It’s a long, you could find that podcast episode, but we want to, uh, you know, 15 grand or so. And we put that toward a down payment for a property.

[8:42] And that has been a wildly successful investment. That’s turned into like a wealth of understanding what the short term rental space is. And it gets very addictive. Like once you buy one property and then you buy another, and then you buy another, and you start seeing things appreciate and you get good reviews and just all good things happen. On the hospitality side and on the real estate investing side, because short term rentals is both. It’s not just buying a multifamily and installing tenants and, you know, renovating it and refinancing and do it again. So yeah, we kind of were accidental investors, half purposeful, half accidental. Um, but once I realized how good it was, I was looking for a way out of my job and, you know, my job gave me that exit two years ago, literally two years ago today.

[9:25] And it’s, it was the exit that I needed because now I do this full time and, you know, I’m wildly happy and life is amazing. That’s fantastic. And, and so you said the first one was in 2016. Yes. Yeah. I mean, so we, we saw a flood of, of interest in, in, um, short-term rentals over COVID. How’s that impacted your portfolio? So when COVID hit back in 2020, we owned two properties and some land that we had the aspiration to build on. And when COVID first hit, I mean, if you remember back then, I mean, people were dying. The world was closing. Lots of bad things were happening. Uh, we had full calendars that were booked that summer that got totally unbooked and it kind of freaked us out because one of our properties, we just purchased kind of a year and a half prior to then.

[10:14] And we just went through one full season on it. You know, so suddenly we’re now paying multiple mortgages and we’re like, well, how’s the money going to come in to pay those? But, um, you know, as the world has been over the past, you know, four years since that, you know, COVID really started spreading, there’s just been so many changes. Like the way we operate has changed. So we started changing along with that and realizing that, you know, nothing was going to be permanent and we just need to figure out a way to, you know, rebook our calendar and see what happens going forward. So, you know, it was like a momentary freak out. And then suddenly, you know, once things started to kind of reopen that summer, we realized that, okay, people are going to be doing more local travel.

[10:57] So, um, it’s better ultimately for you. Yeah. I mean, like the, the biggest year in short-term rentals was 2021. And this has been documented by lots of studies. A lot of people are talking about it now, you know, really a lot of the conversations that are happening today about short-term rentals is how people are down versus previous years. Uh, and that is true. I mean, people can now travel internationally again. They have more options with inflation where it is and prices where they are. And a lot of people that got into these properties the past couple of years, you know, they’re having to charge more than people are willing to spend on this. Uh, but when you look at kind of the perfect, um, like the per, the perfect combination of occupancy and rates, 2021 is the year that people are measuring against.

[11:42] It does pose a challenge for a lot of people that have purchased the past couple of years, ourselves included, cause we bought one of them in the past couple of years also. And that is the, the laggard in our, in our portfolio. Um, that the, the, the problem right now is that people just can’t fill these places up like they used to with the rates they want to charge. And they have these high interest rate loans that they have to pay down. Um, but back before 2021, anyone that brought back then they’ve, we’ve all seen tons of appreciation. If you’ve optimized your systems, you’ve found a way to give a better experience to your, your guests thereby getting better reviews thereby being able to charge more money.

[12:19] And, you know, like we’re grateful that we got in when we did, because, um, you know, it’s just been a pretty decent acceleration since then. I actually just ran my numbers last night since we’re, uh, I don’t know when this is going to come out, but like, you know, we’re halfway through 2024 at this point, not to date the episode too much. Um, but we’re actually up in our portfolio, like half over half, like from last year too, which I think is a pretty decent accomplishment because, you know, last year was, uh, which direction is this going this year? Most people are down and, and, you know, some of our properties are down, but collectively our portfolio is up. That’s interesting. And, and yeah, what I, you, you’re addressing exactly what I was getting at.

[12:59] I mean, so again, I’m a, I’m a realtor. I’ve, I’ve serviced a vacation area that has a lot of vacation homes and that’s the market. That’s the only market in my area that I’m a little bit more nervous about. Um, and that’s just because I think a lot of people were buying. So, you know, all prices went up in 2021. Um, people had an influx of money. Money was cheap and there was a huge demand for, for yeah. Airbnb is exactly for why you were talking about. And I think people started running numbers based on those, those, that analysis. So like we have, you know, amazing numbers, this, this property is performing super well. So all those factors mean that they’re paying high for this investment property.

[13:37] And then if they come in and put, you know, start not seeing that success the next few years and having the higher interest rates and all that kind of stuff can start adding up. Um, and I haven’t really seen, I have seen more properties being listed. I don’t know if I’ve seen necessarily a downward pressure, uh, on, on the prices in my, you know, local area, but I’m interested to see if that’s, if you think that’s going to be a trend in some markets. So, you know, we know, uh, the lakes region in New Hampshire, you know, Guilford, New Hampshire is basically a Lake Winnipesaukee community, which is a classic vacation destination. We have chosen to invest in places that people have had a history of renting properties short term province down.

[14:18] People have been going to Cape Cod for a century. Uh, where we are in Farmington is a Lake, you know, so the town itself is not really a destination, but the Lake unto itself is. Um, and we’re just, we’re in there really cheap, frankly. I mean, like we bought at the right time in Farmington. We built a beautiful place. Our, our top performing property is one that we just built two years ago and we built it the right way. Like we built it specifically for short-term rentals. It looks fantastic. Everybody loves it when they stay there. You know, things have come up, including a massive flood that happened this year and a really big insurance claim. Um, but thankfully I had really good insurance with a company that specializes in short-term rental insurance called proper insurance, not paid to say that.

[14:57] Uh, but they certainly, they certainly did everything they promised to do when I decided to take a higher premium policy with them. Um, but you know, with that said, Guilford’s an interesting one. Like I was just looking at Guilford today and like another property came on the market, you know, literally yesterday. That’s a direct comp of mine. It’s actually had a bunch of price reductions. They’re, they’ve priced it about a hundred thousand more than we paid two years ago, which I’m like, eh, I really wish appreciation was more than that because, you know, 5% a year I can get with a, you know, high interest savings account with no frustration. But if I’m able to get that as a comp, then you just kind of like hold your head down and keep going.

[15:38] You know, we actually have a high interest rate loan on that property. That is the one that is dragging a little bit because we bought it in 2022. Uh, it was comped against 2021 numbers using air DNA, which is a pretty standard, uh, platform that a lot of the financial, um, you know, the financiers are going to look at. And we have not been able to hit the numbers air DNA thought that we’re going to, and we are doing like literally everything, right? Like less of us putting in a hot tub and building a game room and really making it a mega property, which requires an additional investment in capital that we don’t think we’re going to get back yet. You know, we’re, we’re literally just, I think fully optimized with this property.

[16:19] Um, one thing that we did well the past couple of years is get fully optimized, literally get up to the point that I think that we’ve squeezed as much as we can out of each of these properties. And then hopefully each year it incrementally increases. Um, you know, but like our initial property, the very first year where we had no idea what we were doing, you know, we brought in $24,000 in that property. And the same one did 72 or 74 last year, you know, this is a under $200,000 home that we bought. So it’s like, we optimize that one really, really well. Guilford, I think I got up to, you know, cruising altitude immediately because I really knew what I was doing. I was in the right network of people.

[16:57] I had my systems, right? And if the answer for that one is that what I was able to do last year is about the best I’m going to get going forward. And that was 20% less than air DNA told me it was going to be. I’m not alone in having that dilemma. There’s a lot of other people out there that are not as good operators as I am, and they use those same numbers and they’re probably really underwater with those types of properties. Um, so yeah, I don’t, I, I think that you’re onto something as to what’s happening in some of these vacation markets. Um, you know, let’s see what happens. One easy way for things to normalize a little bit in the minds of short-term rental operators is for inventory to get pulled off the table altogether and it become long-term residential properties.

[17:40] But I don’t foresee that happening with, you know, some of these mega houses. Especially if you’re, if you’re, you know, in a vacation spot that has always been, it wasn’t like a new created spot in 2021 that, um, that makes a lot of sense. What, when you say optimize, what are some ways that you can optimize your vacation rentals? I mean, so I would imagine there’s things like, uh, price, uh, fluctuations up and down, um, some other strategies that might be helpful. So dynamic pricing is a big, um, a big thing that people should be using. A lot of people are not using dynamic price and they’re just kind of setting one price and letting it go. Uh, people are also thinking about, you know, longer term minimums and sticking with this stuff and being very rigid with how they’ve operated for many years.

[18:27] You know, so kind of the basics right now, if you’re going to buy a property now where you’ve bought it the past couple of years and you want to optimize, you need dynamic pricing. So we use price labs for that. And you need to have an understanding of the market where you’re looking at market data, you’re pricing your property against that market data and against the comps, and you’re not over or under pricing your property. So you need to figure out where are you? Are you a 50th percentile property, a 75th percentile property, a 20th percentile. And then you need to see what the market is selling at and then put your property kind of in that same range using that market intelligence area. Um, price labs helps with that.

[19:08] There’s a bunch of other tools out there that kind of can tell you where you should be priced in the marketplace. It’s not perfect, you know, so you have to also use your intuition. Um, and it’s hard to get that intuition if you’re new to a market. Like it takes a couple, couple full calendar years to really understand the cycle of the market. Um, I would recommend any, you know, I, I speak from experience, but I don’t know every single market. Um, we underwrite our properties with about 45%, 50% occupancy. Um, I ran into like an influencer at a conference and I told him that and he thought I was crazy. He’s like, every market should be selling 85%. But then I’ve since watched some of this person’s stuff and I’m like, this guy’s insane.

[19:51] I’m not going to talk to him and listen to that. I’m not going to name names. Um, but you know, I, I would do those things at the very basics, right. And then realize that you, you know, you need to really up your game with customer service. So we do a lot of, um, messaging that is automated, uh, from booking all the way through to asking for the review. Um, it saves a lot of time and a lot of frustration for the things that I don’t want to be doing, which are these kinds of rinse and repeat messages to people. Uh, we certainly respond to all the questions that come up in real time. And I recommend that people do that as well. There are a lot of good hosts out there, but like the bad hosts make it easy for good hosts to be better.

[20:31] So, you know, having bad hosts that really don’t know what they’re doing. They have really bad grainy photos. They’re not captioning their pictures. They’re not really describing the property. They’re setting expectations poorly where people are, you know, thinking they’re getting one thing and they’re getting something else. So if you could basically deliver what you promise or more to your guests, that is a basic these days. You know, the reason that people don’t get five stars all the time is because people are underwhelmed by what they thought they were booking. So, you know, we have a 4.95 on Airbnb with 330 reviews at this point. Um, you know, it just happens through consistency and, you know, the more five star reviews you can get, it counteracts those bad ones that you get every so often.

[21:19] But I would say optimizing your property is really the first thing you want to do. You know, like if you don’t have professional photography, like you’re leaving a ton of money on the table, like your iPhone is not going to do it. You could supplement your listing with a couple iPhone photos that you got when you were at the property, you know, that the photographer couldn’t caption at dusk or, you know, a special thing that you see. But yeah, I mean, I look at these people that don’t have professional photos and I’m like, I’m going to run circles around your property. Thank you. Yeah, no, man. What a one-on-one for, you know, customer experience in general, like over deliver, you know, from what you’re promising and set expectations.

[22:02] That’s just, that’s so key to so many business, you know, avenues, real estate sales included. So that’s, yeah, that’s excellent advice. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about how you maintain your mental health, your wellness as you, you know, pursue your, you seem like a high achieving person. Yeah. How, what’s your, what are your processes? What are your systems for, for just making sure you’re right to, to be able to, you know, go out there and achieve more? Yeah. So that’s an amazing question. I’m glad that you kind of focused a bit on that in all your discussions on this podcast. Um, you know, before I started working for myself, you know, which again was two years ago today, uh, I only knew to work for other people and to try to get ahead there and work as hard as you can for somebody else.

[22:51] And, you know, hopefully you’ll get that incremental raise or that praise that you get. Um, but you know, we all originally have an expiration date if we’re working for somebody else, whether it’s, we’ve expired mentally and don’t want to work there anymore, or they’ve chosen to go in a different direction for whatever reason, you know, it’s no hard feelings, it’s business, but it’s always good to have a plan B. So I don’t think I read a book as to how to live my life with building a plan B, but I was lucky that I found the real estate side and that things were going well for a couple of years. So when I, when I had that break point where, you know, they said that my job was no more, I literally transitioned directly into what I was doing.

[23:29] It didn’t even miss a step, you know? And then I decided to invest more in myself and I made a declaration, you know, I’m going to bet on myself for 18 months and see how it goes and do everything I can to launch this thing, get it off the ground, scale a little bit higher than I have. And, you know, it worked really well. Like I spent money on education. I’m building a network. Um, we invested smartly with building that new house and we optimized all our properties, as I mentioned, and, you know, we came out of it, you know, making so much more money than I was earning for, you know, somebody else. Um, we talked off camera a bit about the real estate professional status, uh, which is definitely a tax strategy that a lot of people in the real estate investing community, um, use.

[24:15] We didn’t even optimize that. I mean, my husband is a real estate attorney and a real estate broker, a real estate attorney unto themselves does not qualify for that status, but having the real estate broker side, he did qualify. So for a long time, we went on a long time, but we were able to file as real estate professionals where I had the W two job and he had the real estate professional status and oddly enough, it flipped a couple of years ago where now I do this full time. So, you know, we, we didn’t miss a beat. We still continue filing with that real estate professional status. Um, but we don’t have to go too deep into that. There’s plenty of stuff online that people can read about real estate professional status, but like I was at the bigger pockets conference a couple of years ago, listening to a tax, a tax guy talking, you know, in what many people would perceive to be really boring panel, but I thought it was most of a fascinating thing.

[25:06] And it was worth every single dollar of the entire investment I made going out to that conference. Um, because we learned about cost segregation studies, which is something that a lot of people take advantage of in this, uh, in this space. And again, that’s all online. People could dig into that. We’ve hosted people from cost segregation authority on our podcast, who is who we use for our cost segregations. We’ve done a couple of them. Um, and it’s allowed us to defer significant taxes to the future by taking bonus depreciation, which is a hundred percent fully legal based on the tax code. Um, and taking that now, you know, which allows us to offset some of our active income. And, you know, we ended up having to restate one of our taxes, our returns from like, I don’t even remember what year it was, 2022 or something.

[25:51] And man, I finally got that check back. It took 16 months for the government to send me that check back. Like no joke. It just was in a mailbox two weeks ago. Um, but yeah, like, I mean, real estate professional status is a lot is what a lot of real estate investors use. And when I say we weren’t optimized, we didn’t know about it. Like our own fault. We had no idea that we were that exact situation where a high W2 earner can be married to a real estate professional. And then you get offset some of that, that tax that the W2 earners paying by filing together. It was like the joke at the conference was what’s the best tax strategy out there. It’s marrying real estate professional, right? We were already that, like, we didn’t even plan this thing.

[26:34] So, um, well, to your point, to your point, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve noticed, I don’t think, I think a lot of, uh, realtors that I come across and I work with on a day to day basis don’t fully understand that either. And it’s a huge opportunity. Um, I know that people that are not real estate professionals often will use Airbnbs as kind of a loophole to try to get that real estate status. Something else that I can’t really, I don’t have the expertise to really talk about, but that is something that somebody else could research if they’re, if they’re not a realtor or a real estate investor full time. Yeah. Let me go back to your question though, which was, you know, about kind of mental health and, you know, like happiness, um, you know, at quiet quitting was a big thing a couple of years ago, right?

[27:15] People were giving up on their jobs and not really caring. Um, I’m not going to say I was that deep. Um, but you know, what I’d done was I’d done it for so long and I kind of reached the maximum of where I can get with that company and in the industry. If I felt, you know, like I really wanted to go to another company, I could have done that, but then you’re kind of rebuilding everything. And at some point in your life, you start to look at the end point of your life, right? Like, you know, when you’re in your twenties and your thirties, you’re building, you’re accumulating, um, you’re doing relationships, you’re living your best life. Hopefully you’ll live your best life until your final day.

[27:49] Um, but you know, let’s face it like, like my final day, I don’t know when it’s going to be, but you know, I’m in my late forties right now. Um, so it’s probably, I’ve probably lived over half my life at this point. Um, you know, now I can start to look at how do I want to spend the rest of my days? And, you know, I think I have a good, you know, 10 more years of building stuff if I want to, right. At some point I want to stop doing all this and have somebody else just kind of manage it for me. Um, but I’m not fully there yet. So I am driven by, um, by my own personal, like gratification that I’m doing a good job for myself. Like, I feel like it’s important to be a productive member of society to be provider or good for your family.

[28:39] You know, like we have kind of a dual providing household, but we have a five-year-old daughter also. So we want to set a good example for her. We want to be around a lot for her. I have zero understanding as to how power you said you have three kids. Like, I don’t get how people can work full-time jobs and really be around their kids as well. It’s really a huge struggle. And we just sent our daughter to pre-K at the local school here. And like her day ended at one o’clock. I was doing a lot of the pickups, a lot of the drop-offs. I’m like, I don’t understand how I would have done this with a full-time job. Um, it’s hard, really hard. It’s, it’s so hard. And, and also just having the, the, uh, you know, the mental energy, the, the stress-free, uh, ability to, to be there in the right way for your kids is also really hard.

[29:27] And I think a demanding schedule can only increase that difficulty. Yeah. And, and, you know, it’s not like we’re sitting back and, and, you know, just kind of letting our investments do what they do. And unfortunately my daughter kind of picks up on the fact that I’m working a lot. Like if, if she sees me in front of my computer or my phone, she knows I’m doing something for work. And it started, she started to kind of pick up and I’m getting a lot of verbal cues about the amount of work that I’m doing, which is a bit of a bummer, but you know, I am trying to instill some work ethic in, in her. Like, I think it’s important that she sees how we earn money because she is used to having multiple homes.

[30:03] Like we legitimately at 1.07 properties, we just sold one. So she’s kind of going and she goes with the flow and we use most of them. So she’ll go to the property and she’ll be like, Oh, what house are we at this time? And we can only be so fortunate to have that many properties, right? Like most people, you know, either own their own home or don’t even own their own home. So I don’t want her to think that it’s normal to have this many different houses that you can just kind of randomly show up at and, and your stuff is there or stuff is there that you could live your life. So, you know, I think that not having that job anymore is great for my mental health. Frankly, um, I don’t begrudge people that work W2 jobs at all.

[30:40] There’s a lot of people online that are like, quit your job and make millions of dollars, drop shipping stuff or whatever the heck you do online. I think it’s important to build those work skills. It might be my generation because I’m Gen X and we all kind of had one foot in both the boomers and the millennials. We saw the best of both. And I think that we carved our own little path and I think I met a lot of people and learned a lot of stuff about what I wanted to do with my career. I worked in the media business for a long time. It was a great run. Um, the media business is tough as you know, um, it’s very unforgiving. And I always say that it’s like a game of musical chairs and they take away a couple of chairs a couple of times a year.

[31:20] And eventually there’s just fewer seats for everybody, but it was great. Great memories and everything. But you know, I’m in my, I’m in my chapter two now. Um, I haven’t looked back. Uh, a lot of what I wanted to do the past couple of years was rebrand myself into what I am now. And it, I mean, it just feels so natural, like having these types of discussions about, you know, enjoying life, uh, being around for your family. We’re in a new community. We moved here two years ago here at Newburyport. We feel really ingrained in this community. Um, you know, I just, I have a foot in the gay world of Boston too. We talked about that off camera. Like I still referee in the, in the gay flag football league in Boston.

[32:00] We just had our 25th anniversary. Um, and it’s a big part of my identity as well. So I have a lot of friends there. I think it’s important for me to have that escape, you know, like in the spring and fall Saturdays, like, that’s where I go. That’s who I see. I see my people there, you know, it allows me to kind of live a rounded life. Also, we all need to have things outside of work that we like to do, you know? So I think those things really help keep me focused. That’s, that’s interesting. You say that I think, uh, my wife who’s a licensed therapist and couldn’t make it today. So I apologize for that. But, um, partly because kids, two, two of our kids are home. Um, I think they’re at the gym now, but one of the things she always talks about is, is having a third space.

[32:41] Like, so you have your home, you have your, uh, you know, your work and then having a third place that you have a community, which sounds like that could be for you, uh, is just, is a really important, uh, energy, energy giving thing that you need as like us as being like, you know, kind of tribal people, right? Tribal. Um, I have two follow-up questions if, if you don’t mind on, on that, that piece of your story. Um, one would be, do you remember the moment that you were, you were given the news and, and was it immediately seen as an opportunity or I could imagine that would have been pretty hard as well, uh, that the job was no longer there. Oh, uh, all right. Yeah. So again, taking us back two years ago today, I got the phone call when I was sitting in my car outside of dropping my daughter off for daycare.

[33:27] Uh, we just moved to Newburyport. Um, I mean, here’s the honest story. If people find it, we didn’t tell anyone we were moving here. It was none of their business. Uh, the office was moving. It was moving farther away from Newburyport. And I had zero intention of spending any more time in that office. Like I was not going to stay at that company because they were calling everyone back to the office. I did everything I could do, but I’m like, let me get moved. Let me get the mortgage closed. You know, cause the craziest thing is, you know, if you, if I had, if my job had ended shortly before I closed, I couldn’t close the loan. But if I closed the loan and then the job ended a couple of days later, you absolutely could close the loan.

[34:05] Right. It’s just the most insane part of qualifying for conventional financing. Um, so with that said, I got, I got the call. I said, okay, I send over, you know, the package and everything. I was already literally planning on this. Like I was probably going to try to resign in September, uh, but I didn’t want to leave money on the table. So I was going to see when they were having the next round of layoffs and volunteer myself. As someone that can be put up because they 100% would have taken me up on it because they just a couple of times a year, they cut people. It doesn’t matter what level you’re at. They just need money and they’ll take concessions. So, um, got the package, hadn’t turned to look at it.

[34:46] Everything looked fine. Um, signed it, collected an appointment on top of it, you know, looked around a little bit for a job, like, cause I had to, but I was like, I really think I want to do this entrepreneurship next. Um, when I came home after I dropped her off, I told Rory, I’m like, oh my God, they just cut the job. And my next words were the HELOC. Cause we were qualified. We’re, we’re in the process of applying for a HELOC on one of our properties. Uh, it was like a quarter million dollar line that we want to use to invest in other properties. And I’m like, man, I’m not going to be able to get that HELOC right now. Like we had just gone through the appraisal, gone through everything. We’re about to pass papers.

[35:23] So I had to call the lender and just say, Hey, listen, this is what happens. So, you know, unless there’s a way that you can finance me. Otherwise, uh, I don’t think that you’re gonna be able to qualify me for this loan, you know, without the W2 job, cause they’d have to verify employment afterward. And I’m certainly not going to lie. And, uh, and yeah, I couldn’t get that loan on the property, you know, but that’s okay. Cause I was like, you know what? I don’t care. Like real estate investors find a way, like, you know, the equity is still there. It’s not like I lost the money. The equity is still there. I just can’t tap it. Let me go figure out something else. Let me go find other, another source.

[35:53] So like the only thing, two things bugged me. One was that, that I couldn’t close on that first. Second, I was bugged by who I did and didn’t hear from afterward. There were certainly some people who I expected, you know, to hear from who I’d worked with closely for a long time, you know, on some senior levels in that company. And, uh, didn’t hear a pin, didn’t hear a pin drop. And, you know, again, not naming names. It was, it was like, it was more, it, it, it spoke to me more about their character than mine, frankly. And I moved on, but I’ll never forget that. Never. And that’s exit, exit interviews and, and all that kind of stuff is something. I think that that type of thing, people probably avoid like the plague, right?

[36:48] Cause it’s not comfortable, but it is super important. Like you said, and, and, you know, you can’t just ignore having built a professional relationship, a personal relationship with people for, for many years. Um, some people can know that. You shouldn’t. Yeah. Yeah. You can, but you should. Um, the other question I would have for you is now that you’ve gone through your, you know, you’re on your chapter two, as you describe it, what would you tell yourself, um, at, you know, you know, either in high school or at around age 20 in their twenties, uh, if you could go back and give yourself advice, is there anything you would say to, to, would you want to speed that up? Would you want to be in this position sooner?

[37:27] I mean, what, what would you give yourself advice? So, you know, I, I feel like my generation wasn’t taught through the internet. Like a lot of people are these days, you know, there weren’t really influencers. I mean, my first email address, I was in college, social media didn’t exist until, you know, my space in the two thousands and really Facebook in the late two thousands, you know, it’s been, you know, we’re 15, 16 years into, into that. So there wasn’t a ton out there about financial independence and retiring early, which is, you know, the fire movement’s kind of a big deal these days. If, if you don’t know what that is, you know, you could look it up. I’ve told some neighbors about it.

[38:04] I would have tried to have sped all that up by investing in real estate sooner. Um, I was single-handedly taught through, you know, just a good upbringing and a good work ethic and going to a good college. And then on you go, I just assume that you just find your way into a career path. You work hard, you work your way up, you work to your 65 and then you retire. Nobody told me that there was a different way. Um, and maybe I should have found that out myself. Right. But I think that financial education is something severely lacking in school these days. Um, it’s lacking in high school. It’s lacking in college. People are teaching the wrong stuff sometimes. And I went to an Ivy League school.

[38:47] Like I went to a great school and I didn’t have that education at all. Like it wasn’t instilled in me. Maybe the generations after me have been instilled a little bit more entrepreneurship. Lots of great things happened at my school. I loved, I went to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Loved it. Okay. Like it was a great education, study what you want, meet great people, free thinking. You know, it was, it was everything I wanted for in, in, in college and still have some great fond memories of it. Um, but there’s a lot of stuff that I don’t think we’re teaching people these days to come out with the right tools to succeed on their own. You know, the, the whole college culture is to go into the workforce as it should, but it’s always to work for somebody else.

[39:31] Um, I might’ve tried to find my way to entrepreneurship a little sooner than I did. So that would be one thing that I would probably tell that 20 year old, like, listen, you’re getting into this industry. It’s going to be a rough industry that is not growing, but it’s fun. Um, but look for your plan B sooner than later. I was fortunate that everything worked out. Like there was no, sure. There were a couple, you know, jobs, ever since along the way, but like, there was no time that I couldn’t just dust myself up and find the next step. Um, but nowhere along that way did someone say, start building your plan B. I found that out myself. And I really wish that it was like someone shook me and said, build your plan B, build your plan B.

[40:13] Like I see a lot of my former coworkers that don’t have their plan B. And I mean, it’s going to be on them if, and when that day happens. And that happens to a lot of us in a lot of industries. So that’s what I would say. Yeah, no, I actually, uh, so I’m, I’m writing a book right now and I, um, I was reading, I’ve been rereading rich dad, poor dad, Robert Kiyosaki. And he kind of talked about the ultra specialization, which is, is what the universities and school is trained to you to do. You get into your career, you get ultra specialized. He was arguing that that makes a lot of sense for unionization in that area, because you, you, if you get, if you lose that, what do you have? Right. And I think that’s exactly what you’re talking about.

[40:57] I mean, obviously he talks about building up your assets and everything as well, the side hustle, the plan B, as you described. Um, but yeah, I think that you’re exactly right. There’s, it seems like the more secure route and that’s what we’re taught is to get specialized to get education. But in some ways it’s, it’s, I mean, a lot of ways it’s a lot less secure if you really think about it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I, I just think that the, the, you know, companies will look out for themselves like, and that’s always been the case and that’s fine. You know, company culture is also important. It’s certainly important to like build a great resume of working for amazing employers and people can make a ton of money working for other folks, you know, especially in, you know, high level director type roles, VP roles, sales roles, you know, and money is not the driving factor for a lot of people.

[41:45] I mean, frankly, what drives me financially is seeing the numbers that I feel secure that I can do what I want. Right. Like I don’t live an extravagant life. My car has got 118,000 miles on it right now, but I love it. It’s an orange Jeep Cherokee. I drive around town. Everyone knows that I’m there. So I’ll drive it until it doesn’t want to drive me anymore. And then I’ll find another car. Like, you know, some people are really driven by possessions. Um, you know, we have a nice house. Like we have nice houses that we rent out. Like we have nice stuff. We took a cruise a couple weeks ago that we just booked two weeks prior because we wanted to like, we could do that kind of stuff, but like, we don’t live over the top extravagant because to me that doesn’t matter.

[42:27] Like I’ve, I don’t, I don’t need that level of material possessions, but some people really, really need that. And again, to each their own. But what drives me is seeing like seeing that I could afford the stuff I want to afford when I want to buy things. Yeah. And like you said, the freedom, right? That, that, that’s, that’s what motivates me as well. I mean, I like to have some nice things as well, but, um, that the freedom of, yeah, like to, to be able to say, you know what, I don’t, I, one of the things we want to do is take our family to Spain for a year. And, uh, you know, having the freedom to be able to do that is, you know, what, one of the things that motivates me. Um, well, tell us a little bit more about the Pride Away stays, um, and that business and what you’re, what you’re seeking to achieve there.

[43:14] So Pride Away stays, we just launched it last year. We thought there was a big kind of hole in the market for an LGBTQ plus owned short-term rental co-hosting business, uh, in that specific town, Provincetown. It’s on the very tip of Cape Cod. It’s probably one of the gayest places in the country unabashedly. Um, and people usually have a lifelong aspiration to own property there. If indeed they are P-Town travelers, if they love P-Town, a lot of people want to retire there, have a place in Palm Springs and a place in P-Town or a place in Florida and a place in P-Town. And then they go back and forth between the, between those places. It’s a very, very expensive town. Like real estate is very expensive there and your dollar doesn’t go that far.

[43:55] You know, what you’re getting is not a palatial estate. It is a lot smaller, but you know, it’s a very magical place. Um, you could be who you are. You can come as you are. You could dress however you want to, you know, it is welcoming to everybody. It’s an old, um, fishing town. So it’s a very, you know, it’s a lot of Portuguese people there as well. Cause there’s a, uh, Portuguese heritage people, you know, it’s an old fishing village and it’s just a classic Cape Cod vacation destination. Families go there as well. You know, a lot of our guests are straight families that go because there’s great restaurants. It’s very vibrant. It’s very picturesque and scenic. Um, so our thesis was that there are owners in Provincetown that don’t know short-term rentals as well as we do.

[44:38] And they might want to work with a company that’s LGBTQ plus owned, uh, like one of the national companies, which, you know, I don’t need to like speak ill about the national ones. Um, you know, their earnings and, you know, their layoffs kind of speak for themselves. Um, you know, and it’s all their public companies and you could read, you know, kind of like how, unfortunately a couple of those have hit some, um, pretty big speed bumps of late and it trickles down to the actual clients of theirs and the people that are feeling the pinch of the lack of customer service from a lot of those businesses. So like there’s one kind of angle where there are some national companies that we could probably do a much better job with better customer service, good relationships on the ground, also being owners in Provincetown where we feel connected to the community because we own property there.

[45:27] We pay taxes there where they are frequently. That’s like thing one, but also we know that people are not going to invest in P-Town as like a strict cashflow market. It just doesn’t behave that way, especially the way that prices are right now. So when people are buying into that market, what they’re looking to do is use their properties and defray a lot of the costs of the mortgage and the taxes and everything by renting it out when they’re not using it. And a lot of people that are buying that have bought the past couple of years, they need the rental income in order to afford that property. And that is just a fact of what their mortgages are. Unless they’re paying cash or they’re independently wealthy, the majority of the people need to rent their properties out.

[46:08] So we’d like to help them if they want our help. If they want to self-manage, fantastic. But a lot of people don’t have the time or the effort or the understanding to self-manage. So… Right. I mean, there’s a clear skill in optimizing your rentals like you were talking about. Yeah. We’d like to think so. So, you know, but not everyone feels that way. And there’s a lot of self-managers who actually do a really good job because they have the time to pour into that. And maybe it’s an interest of theirs as well. That maybe they don’t like their job and they want to do this and see if they can make a go at it with this other rental property. So, you know, they’re meticulous with the design, with the communications, whatever.

[46:43] And I applaud them for doing that type of thing. So what we’re looking to do with Pride Away Stays is, you know, just have a boutique business that serves that one town at this point and not get too big too fast. It’s not our primary income stream. Like we don’t need it to feed our families, but it’s a great supplemental way to build credibility, to build expertise, to help other people, and to make some money. So, you know, we launched with a goal that was very modest. You know, we’ve picked up a bunch of clients this year where we’re physically co-hosting their properties. And, you know, we’ll probably make another go at some more outbound marketing later on this year once the summer’s over because our thought is, you know, people will have had either a good experience with managing or a bad experience.

[47:30] So why not be right there in front of them with another option? But we did a lot of marketing the first quarter of this year and it turned into, you know, a decent amount of phone calls that eventually turned into a number of clients. So, yeah, we like how things are going so far with it. Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense that, I mean, and especially in a market. Everybody kind of dreams about the, you know, the beach house that they would run out and everything. But it sounds like your clientele, the people that are buying there are really wanting second homes. I mean, that’s the primary focus, right? And so that’s a really interesting niche. Now, you said your husband is a real estate broker and an attorney.

[48:11] Does he help on the sale and purchase at all on that as well? So he can. I think he’s been involved, you know, as a broker or an attorney with everyone of my or our personal transactions over the years, whether it was something that I was buying, we were buying an LLC, we were buying together. You know, he does run a brokerage. It’s been pretty quiet of late, you know, just because of the way the market has been. And he’s invested a little bit more time in the law side of it. So, you know, he does a lot of closings and land issues and, you know, all that stuff that a real estate attorney focuses on. I don’t know what he does all day, every day, frankly, but I know we have the podcast together.

[48:51] That was basically a vehicle for, we launched that back in 2019 as a way for him to build some credibility in the space. And it certainly has helped me a ton as well, because once I, you know, executed my chapter two, you know, the podcast was a pretty strong way that I could point to it and develop my own expertise as well, to the point that a lot of people think that I’m the attorney. And I’m like, no, no, no, I’m not the attorney. Right. But it’s just the name of the podcast. And, you know, we’re almost 200 episodes in. So, you know, we’ve been sticking at that and we think it’s a pretty good listen. We have found doing the podcast together to be a lot of fun and a connecting thing for us.

[49:33] So that’s been a really fun thing to do. I would imagine it’s similar for you all and, you know, the business you do as well with the rentals and everything that it kind of brings you together as well. Yeah, it’s, you know, I, we always talk about the podcast and how much we’re each putting into it. I book the guests, you know, I deal with the production afterward. Like we have producers that will produce everything and deal with the social media. It’s just kind of not what Rory loves doing. So, you know, before we hit record on this, I was talking about how last week was my kind of like big podcast thinking week. Like I have an AI thinking week coming up. I don’t normally do this, but I wanted to put something on the calendar to say this week, you’re going to focus and time block and think about this topic.

[50:15] So in two weeks, I’m going to think about how I can continue improving using AI in all my businesses. Last week was a deep dive on the podcast. Like look at the stats, look at who we’ve invited. Look if, if the why as to why we’re doing it is still giving us joy and helping serve the purpose that we want with our, our businesses. And is it giving us personal gratification? So, you know, like we talked about a couple of things that we both could be doing differently with how we utilize the podcast. I just had a guest on a couple of weeks ago and he said something amazing about podcasts. And, you know, hopefully I can impart this upon you and your, and your audience too. Having a podcast is the ultimate cheat code to building a network.

[50:56] Like it is, and it’s a great way to be able to circle back with people that you’ve invited out of the podcast and say, Hey man, I was thinking of you, you know, this thing popped up, like, you know, hope everything is well. Here’s an article or is there any way we can do business together or whatever? It’s like, it allows you to get into somebody’s inbox or get it, send them text messages or just be connected with them on LinkedIn. And you’re not just that random person looking to sell something. Like you’re somebody that you had a meaningful conversation for like an hour. You gave them a platform that they could talk about themselves. And I find that most people, you know, certainly appreciate that.

[51:33] I will be, I will take your calls in the future when you, when you want to reach out. I promise. Well, it’s 45 minutes in and I haven’t, I guess, uh, burned that bridge. No, no, this is, I, I, I, I’ve enjoyed this so far. Uh, no, it’s been a great conversation. Um, so for people that would like to use your services, um, that would want to reach out, where’s a good place for them to follow you? So my name.com will have everything, which is Jason Muth, M U T H. Um, pride away stays is the business in Provincetown. So if you Google pride away stays, you could find it pretty easily. Um, and if you’re curious about our personal properties, uh, and there might be something in the future that I’m working on with a couple business partners.

[52:15] About, you know, doing a little bit more mentorship for people that want to launch properties and don’t want us to co-host. Um, you can go to straightforward short-term rentals to find out our properties. So if you Google that, you’ll find our five beautiful homes and more info about us. And you’ll see my daughter as, uh, you know, heavily featured in our marketing because why not? Right. Yeah. I love it. Uh, when we can link that, those in the show notes as well, but it’s been a, it’s been a great conversation. Um, thank you so much for being a guest, uh, with us as, yeah, I hope we can stay in touch as we continue our journeys of financial freedom.

[52:58] Thanks for listening to the Wealthy Investor Podcast, where we talk about wealth and holistic health. If you enjoy our content, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and hear new episodes every Thursday. If you really like our content, you can follow us on social media at the Wealthy Investor Wealthy Spell W-E-L-L-T-H-Y.