Jonathan Campau - Luxury Hospitality Pioneer | How He Built a $700M Real Estate Portfolio Serving The 1%

My first property of all was 32,000, timing is great, location is great. We pump in money into it. I remember the feeling of, oh my god, I just made a million dollars. This is insane. Johnny Campal isn't just building properties. He's building a lifestyle brand for the world's elite. As the founder and CEO of Luxury, Johnny turned a bold idea into one of the fastest growing luxury hospitality companies in the US. I didn't belong buying a 10 million dollar property to begin with. I should have two, three, four, five million dollar properties is my comfort zone, so just don't bite off more than you can chew. That's where you lose. You get in at 600K, you spend the money and the work, make it beautiful, and then you can earn higher revenue and have an unappreciated property. But the real money and real estate is not selling. But this didn't come from generational wealth. It came from relentless vision, obsessive attention to detail, and an unshakable belief in creating experiences, not just spaces. From ultra high-end vacation rentals to personalized concierge services and hotel acquisitions, luxury is changing the way luxury has lived and Johnny is the mind behind the movement. My advice for anybody who has big plans is you have to first find your faith. If you don't have that, then it's going to be very difficult and you'll probably give up. In this episode, we dive into the hustle, the mindset, and the moments that turn one man's grind into an empire of luxury. Well, it would be a lesson that you learned that you hope nobody else would ever have to learn. Well, it's really okay. Are you wanting to know if Miami is a place of luxury? I guess. No. Why is that? So, Johnny, if somebody's going to ask you what you do for a living, what do you tell her? I generally would respond with, it depends on who's asking the question, but if I'm in a networking event, generally, depending on the individual, I would say I'm a property manager. But my passion is hospitality, so I'm a hospitality expert. That's how I would classify my your job. My passion is hospitality. My job and my career is real estate property management. I mean, I feel like that's not doing justice to what you do, because some of the projects you've worked on, some of the people that you've worked with, I don't think that's the normal clientele at the average hospitality. That's why it depends on who's asking, but when did this, so you grew up in Kansas? I grew up in Michigan. Michigan, but you started working in Kansas with flipping small homes. So, I grew up in Michigan, and I went to college in South Florida, and then I got a job after college in Kansas City. So, I moved to Kansas City after college, and I worked there for a hedge fund, a mutual fund company called Waddell and Reed Ivey Funds. So, I worked there for five years, and then I started using my money that I was earning to purchase real estate in Kansas City, which is, I mean, I just think the reason why I point out Kansas City, because I can't think of, Kansas City is such a small town idea. I find that Kansas in general, what is that like Wizard of Oz? This seems like a small town, and now the people that you work with, and I think the majority of your work now is, is it in Miami, the majority of your work, or is it all over the US? It's Miami and Aspen. Yeah. Miami and Aspen. So, we have an office and Aspen in an office here in Miami. If I think of the people that you work with now, it's like a complete 180 from the type of clients that I would assume you're working with. Yeah, Kansas. When you look back to where you came from, your family, your upbringing, now you're very entrepreneurial. You built an incredible business. Was this something that was taught to you, where your parents entrepreneurial, they were? So, did they hate that you went to go work for a hedge fund? Were they like, what's wrong with you? No, I mean, my parents both own companies, my brother's own companies, my uncles and grandparents, they all own companies. So, it was kind of in our DNA as a child, like it's a learn from many mistakes and many successes that they've each been. Was it real estate though or no? No. No, none of my family members are actually in real estate. So, yeah, and I remember when I was a kid, when I was in high school, I was looking at which university to go to and I told my dad, I wanted to go to school for a hotel management and he was like, no, no, no, no, no, he's like, you can go to school for business and if you want to be in hotel management, you can always manage a hotel with a degree in business, but you're not going to go to school for hotel management. So, when you think about how you started in real estate, you've been in, now I understand, so that's how you ended up in Kansas. What was, and you're young still and you've built a massive portfolio, you've done incredible stuff. We're going to talk through some of the journey, but what was the reason for starting in real estate? What was this? Because there's a million different people, I mean, real estate seems oversaturated in general. Yeah, I mean, I started, I started like 15, 14, 15 years ago as when I started, and they was cheap. So, in Kansas City, the real estate's not like Miami prices, so my first property about was 32,000 and then I did rent to owns on more properties that were in the same street. So, I did another one on like 50,000 and 70,000 and 100,000 and 200,000, then I started doing more properties downtown and I was doing these rent to own type projects and as doing long-term, long-term tenants in them and then converted those over into short-term rentals. Is that like, I mean, if you think about how most people should get started in real estate, would you say that you picked a good path, this rent to owns? Yeah, I mean, the rent to own was, I kind of figured it out on my own. I didn't have any instruction. There wasn't anybody coaching me through it other than my mentor Larry from here in Miami who, when I went to college, he was my mentor when I was in college and I got my real estate license in Florida, and I would call Larry and I'm like, man, I don't like the tenant who's living next to me in the house where I had. I was like, I don't like the tenant next to me. He's like, well, buy it and I was like, well, I can't afford to buy it and he was like, well, off from a rent to own. I was like, well, what is a rent to own? And then he started explaining it to me and I was like, oh, okay, that's great. But there was nothing really online about it. There wasn't a lot of, there wasn't contracts out there for that. And so I hired a local attorney who I still work with today, actually, in still in Kansas City. Yeah, he's the broker for my company in Kansas City. And yeah, so he helped me draft the contract and I made the offer and they accept it. And I was like, wow, this is nice. And then next thing, you know, I had 20 more of them over the course of another year and a half, two years, it was just quickly getting those contracts and then earning enough money from the assets to start purchasing out the contracts that I had. And I feel like that's moving, of course. So it seems like you're moving quick when you first start out because so the rent to own seems like an ideal situation because you're renting it eventually all the capital that are the principal, the capital you're putting into the rental eventually just turns into ownership. So like, it just seems like a very low stress way to acquire properties. Because you're you're generally I would find a property that was on the market for sale for like 12 months or six months to 12 months and it hadn't sold. So then I would put an offer out there and I would offer them what they're asking or maybe a little bit more. But in five years or in two years, whatever the best terms I could negotiate. And then they would accept I would pay and then I would bring the value of the home up by making it, you know, by bringing making it a better property, redoing the kitchen or floors or paint or and then staging it and then photographing it with professional photography and then and then doing rentals. I was actually initially started out by renting by the room to college students. So I'd have like a four bedroom house, for example, where my rent was like 1200 and I'm renting it out at say 500 per room, like 800 bucks a month. Yeah, and then they pay their utilities. So that got really hairy though, because it'll like start fighting over like so many of my cereal and you're like, you know, like 20 houses times, you know, 14. Yeah, like are you managing yourself? Yeah, I was managing and I'm working at the edge volume. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm like, this is too much. I'm getting texts of like someone park in my spa and, you know, that's it. That was when we, I was like, there's got to be a better way. And so as one of the tenants moved out, one of the units was almost completely empty. I had told another tenant who wanted to work for me and help me. He's like, I'll manage all this for you. And I was like, well, how about when they move out of that property that we go ahead and convert that into an Airbnb? It's already staged. I already staged it. So it's already ready. And I wanted to do Airbnb. I just didn't have the ability to manage that and work, you know, 40, 50 hours a week at my name. My yeah, your actual job. And like, it seems like such a simple like, tell me if it's just I'm assuming that it's simpler than it is because there's so many strategies to get involved in real estate. And the way that you accomplish it where you could find, find people that could do this rent to own agreement. It seems like, well, why wouldn't everybody get involved in real estate this way? Because it just seems like the smart thing to do where I see people trying to do like true fix and flip where they're actually buying it. And I have friends that do it and they keep telling me it's like very hard, especially Miami to find houses that, you know, at the right cost per square foot where you can actually put money into it and then flip it because the square foot pricing is so ridiculous. So maybe it's like a regional thing, why that's an issue for some people. People talk about like the burn method, people talk about house hacking. I just, it seems like why doesn't everybody get into real estate this way, the way you got into it and maybe not manage it themselves. That people talk about section eight as a way to get into real estate as well. Like a million different things if people do to get into real estate and a million different influencers and thought leaders and gurus on YouTube talking about this that and the other going to reach, go buy whatever. Why don't more people do this? Is it just because it was time and location, which is I guess the secret? I would say time, my timing was pretty great. I mean, there was, you know, there was a lot of real estate on the market that wasn't moving. So that's one thing right now you're you're in a market where there's less inventory, you know, there's less inventory. So the sellers are in control of the properties. You don't have desperate sellers. They're not selling for below market price. They're they're all listed for higher than what they're they're valued at for the most part. And so if you make an offer at market price, you might get it. Like I said, the offers I was making were on properties that were not not moving. They weren't selling. So and again, I started in the lower end market, you know, the lower end properties and moved my way into middle and then higher end properties in Kansas City. And that was that was actually to my surprise the first property that I took that I took on was like that was a bigger property. I was pretty nervous about how well it would perform. And then I couldn't believe how, you know, the cost was 4,500 and it was making 18, 20, 25,000 in a month in Kansas City. And I was like, oh my god. And I was calling my mentor like Larry, you're not going to believe these numbers. And that was when he was like, you've got to you got to do what you're doing up there down down here because he was in Miami. He was in Miami. Yeah. Yeah, Larry. And so he said, you have to do your rental arbitrage and your lease to own and these contracts to purchase. There's lots of different forms of rent to own. There's rent to own contract to lease lease to purchase. There's lots of different options. They're very similar. There's option contracts, which is not an actual rent to own. You're not building any equity. You just have an option to purchase it. So like a write a first refusal to a degree? Yeah. Essentially a write a first refusal. Okay. Again, like the last question I just have on this like initial strategy because again, someone's going to say, well, how do I find the people that are cool with this? Right. How do you find the owners that are cool with rent to own? And I listen, I don't come from real estate. I don't pretend to come from real estate. But a comparable idea is, you know, Cody Sanchez is. Yeah. Yeah. Cody's praising. And she talks about how all these business owners are retiring. Yeah. And why not sell or finance the acquisition of these businesses? And I've tried, like, I've looked, I go on biz by sell, I go to and I'm like, no one wants to fucking sell their finances, but they want cash. They want cash for their business now. Maybe like a portion of it, but they want. And if you could just de-risk the deal for yourself so that again, business acquisition world, you're not taking on a massive SBA loan that you're personally liable for if things don't work out. And the seller is financing most of it. All of a sudden you have this whole world of acquisition or purchase opportunity, but I find it very hard to find the people that are willing to do that. It sounds like when Cody talks about it, I love Cody too, but it sounds that you just find these people all over the place and are like, you know what? I'm retiring. I want no money upfront. I'm just going to, you know, sell or finance my business. And I've I have not been successful at finding those out. So you did reach out to some companies. And what can you mean? Example, like, what's it's like 10% seller finance in the resting cash? Was the business like a good operating smooth running machine already? More often than not. Yeah. Okay. That's the guy that wants all cash. And it's all it's always the stuff that's on market, never off market. So I did, I did a seller finance on two car washes. Very random. I know this is like 12 years ago. I did a seller financing and I was going through it. I'm like, I can't believe I have all these houses that are doing these deals with me. I was very surprised myself of how many people were willing to do these. And some of them were doing them. I had one one house that he didn't even accept I might offer he accepted was no money down, but I'm going to fix up the property. Why would I go delinquent on a payment when I'm enhancing the value of your home by 30 or 40,000? These are Kansas City numbers 30 or 40,000 on a house that's only worth 60K. You know, I'm I'm enhancing the the value now to 110,000 legitimately because I was doing work. I did all kinds of work on the property and and then rented it out. And I showed the revenue, which then increases the value of the home base on the revenue, right? If you want to go with that type of loan. But the car washes, I basically was just in my job in my cubicle at my at the fund company. And I was going through loopnet and I was looking at all the different businesses that are for sale. And I was literally just had a same text message of like, hi, I'm interested in purchasing this property with just putting down, you know, 10K down. Let me know if you're interested. I would close out in two years. Copy, pasted, sent this to like gas stations, car washes, parking garages, storage facilities. I sent it out to mobile home parks like everything, everything, anything. Yeah, there was no like direction. And I had one one guy, Chuck, he replied back. He's like, he's like, are you available for a meeting? And I was like, sure, when? And so at the time, my not wife, I took Halley with me. And we went to this place called the peanut or the cashew. I don't know, it's not there anymore. But I think it's called the cashew. We went to the cashew. And I met this guy to have my checkbook. And he's like, I have another after we talk about the car wash. He's like, I have a second car wash that's in one was in Missouri, one was in Kansas. And I was like, I'm asking, do you have the numbers? Like, oh, it's all cash. You know, it's hard to tell how much revenue. And I'm like, okay, do you have, you know, like maybe the utility bills I can see. He was like, yeah, but you know, we pay him on this car and we pay him on that car. And we pay, we don't really have a spreadsheet for it. I'm like, well, he's like, but look, do you want them or not? And I was like, well, like, can I, I remember just being like very, like this guy is literally putting me, I don't even, I haven't even verified if he owns the properties or not, you know, he just doesn't want them anymore. Yeah, he's just done. This guy, he had his own real estate brokerage. He had lots of stuff going on. I could see who he was. I knew he was a legitimate individual who had lots of stuff going on in his world. And these things were taking away from what was profiting him, you know? And so I literally pulled out my checkbook and I wrote him a check for 12,000 for each property, 24,000. I gave him 24K. And I had even bendy either of the car washes. And I have no idea how to run them either. So he's like, do you want to go see them tomorrow? Or when do you, when can we finalize this? I'll have all the paperwork sent to you tonight and you can just finalize it tomorrow. And I'm like, I left there and I'm like, I'm looking at my, now my, now wife, I'm looking at her. I was like, I think we just bought two car washes. And um, and he was cool with the finite. He didn't give a shit. He didn't care. Now he didn't care. He did not care at all. He just pay him every month and operate the business. And did you? I operated them. Yeah, I ran the two car washes. I was my, again, my girlfriend at that time, my wife now, but my, uh, Hallie and I were like, leave work during lunch and she'd go to one car wash. I'd go to one car wash. We're like grabbing the money out of the machines. I'm seeing the trash cans, like cleaning up the place really quick. We had one person who would work both as a cleaner, but he would do all like the nasty stuff because it's pretty gross. But we would like basically make sure all the vending was full and grab all the cash and run to the bank and then hurry up and get back to our job. When you look at, so again, it's a numbers game. You have a clever message. It forces the realtor to actually put the offer in front of the client, which is smart. If you think about the type of homes that this strategy works on, I know it's a numbers game, but just like objectively, like, you know, you send out 10 messages, you get a higher response back with one type of home versus another. Is it the ultra luxury where they don't really need the cash? Is that if you thought about that because some people need the cash. Some people are house poor and they need the cash to go by another house. So that would not be your ideal client. Yeah, your ideal client is someone who is distressed for one reason or another. It doesn't mean that they can't afford the home. It may be that they're getting a divorce and they want to be out of the house. It may be that they're moving and their job took them to another state and they don't want to be here anymore. And they just, they just want out. It may be that their realtor is at the five month and three week, you know, timeline of their six month contract. And they're like, wow, they didn't bring me one buyer. And I'm, and I'm, I'm not a realtor. Okay, I own brokerages, but I'm not a realtor. So I, I'm sending a message to a realtor as a buyer or to an owner as a buyer. So then they always ask, are you a realtor? I'm like, no, I'm a buyer. And they're like, oh, okay. And then their, their guard comes down and they start, you know, talking terms with a with me. Yeah, but I try to do it all through text. I don't want to get on a phone and have a whole like call or start touring properties and wasting my time, like going through home. And I have, you have a process that works. Yeah. And copy and paste it again and again. And I guess some, but like I mean, at this point now, I want to understand when you started moving to more luxury and sort of like what, I mean, not just luxury. Now you work with like hotels and massive properties, but this has all been sort of a progression. If somebody ever wanted to start just to sort of finish up with your origin story, what would be your advice for them if they want to get into, into real estate this way? I mean, in 2025, you mentioned Kansas at the time was good. I don't think that Miami is a city for somebody to start this in. No, this is like a big boys. Yeah, pond here. Yeah, I know pond actually. You know, it's so funny. Ocean here. Most of the people that I know that are in real estate investing, they actually stay away from Miami. And very sick. Those are big investors. They can be from Miami. Yeah. They knew Ohio. But that's probably multi family. It is. Yeah. I'm trying to think where else I have a friend who does only section eight, and I'm not going to remember where it is, but it isn't some like very bad, like really impoverished. There's some, there's some place where he does only section eight. Definitely not Miami. The point is anybody who I know is into real estate basically stays away from Miami. For a variety of reasons, even my fixed long time to build. They can't find good GCs. They can't find good GCs and they can't do fixed and flips or people are screwing them or taking advantage of them. So I mean, like Miami in general seems to be like a stressful place to do real estate. You got to have a great team. Yeah. I have an amazing team. I would absolutely not be able to do what I do without an incredible team. They find the deals. They find the tenants. They find contractors that do work. I mean, I'm not so much involved in that process. The process I set up and created. I'm not so involved in that process anymore. Unless I just, I mean, I can't help myself. I'm always like looking for deals. But I would say that for somebody who comes to me and says, how do I get started? At least save from whatever your job is I had a day job. So and I earned and I saved. And then I got that cheap property 32k. I would start saving from your wherever you're at. Get 20k. If you got 20k, then I would start with an offer of, you know, 5k down or do a project a house and then get it ready and then either flip it like a like a wholesaler, you know, so you can increase the value and then wholesale it to another buyer or an investor, occupy it, fill it with with tenants, show the revenue and then sell it to someone like me who's like, yeah, I'll buy that because it has a tenant in there. There's lots of buyers out there for that. And it's really easy to get into that. And if you're wanting to do in the Airbnb section section and you know, getting into short term rentals, then I would and you want to scale it fairly quick. I would probably go there's here's what I've learned is that what there's a tenant for every property. It didn't matter if it was a 32k property in the hood of Kansas City, like South Kansas City, not even a good area or downtown or the big houses in Kansas City or on the plaza or these nice beautiful homes like there was always a tenant. It didn't matter what whether it was an apartment, a penthouse, it doesn't matter what it is. There's always a tenant for it. So I would recommend starting in the fringe of a best of a great area someplace that's close to a good area and that someplace, you know, out in farmland. Like I would find a property that is maybe on the market for sale. Like right now I would probably find something that's like six, like a six bedroom commercial property, right? Some like apartment that the units are like six hundred dollars a month, eight hundred dollars a month. I would find a property like that that's on the market on loopnet and I would reach out to them and make an offer of something like 20k and then you're going to do the work and like run it. I mean, I literally did the work. I was doing renovation work and learning how that process works and hiring local people and I'm monitoring and like doing the work, you know, in the property. So when did you move into luxury? What was sort of like the thing that gave you confidence to move into the luxury space? Because that's a huge leap too. You're not dealing with $30,000 homes anymore. Now you're dealing with like multi-million dollar. Multi-million dollar, yeah. So when was COVID? That was 21? Yeah, 21. Yeah, whatever the super bull was. So from Kansas City, I feel like that whole part of my life is just like this bluer. I'd one year. Yeah, like one year, yeah. But in super bull, that was in Miami. The chiefs were playing in Miami and being from Kansas City, I was very hyped about that. I made a million bucks in profit that weekend from our rentals and those were not like super luxury properties. Those were two, three, four million dollar homes that we were managing or sub-leasing. So same strategy, just for... Yeah, I was either leasing and sub-leasing on short-term mental platforms or I was managing for someone else. Maybe you gave me your home and I'm managing it for 30%. I made a million bucks and right, that was February 2nd. I remember this is like, I feel like every entrepreneur has a moment that was like a turning moment of where you were either like toast. Yeah, or you carry through the... Yeah, the hardest points, all the bullshit. And then on the other side of that, that's when you see like the hockey stick. Yeah, the hockey stick growth. Yeah, and that for me was COVID. And I remember the feeling of, oh my god, I just made a million dollars. This is insane, in like a weekend. And just like a week before, we had... I'm not kidding, we had paid our payroll and there was like $50 in our bank account. Like we were so low. Like we were so low and I was so scared. Like, gosh, I know, I just got to make it to Super Bowl. Because I just got this property and I just rented that property and I just hired these people and I just staged this home and I just arbitraged that property and then we go right into Super Bowl and I'm broke and I'm ready, like bring me the money. And then we made a million bucks and I was like, yes. And then I sublies this waterfront home and another waterfront home for 15 K a month, 25 K a month and I'm... These are big homes. Because before I was renting like, I think the most I ever rented was maybe seven or eight thousand a month homes. But I realized all the way back from 32 K a month that the value of the... There was always a tenant for everything. The only thing that changed was the value of the property. The margins stayed the same. So if I'm making two X my costs, for example, if I'm making two two to three X on my cost on a 30 K house, I'd rather do it on a three million dollar house. Because it's the same amount of work. Check in, check out. Text the client, text the client to check out. Why are they owner? Like it's the same process. Pay the utilities, pay the landscaper, pay the housekeeping, pay the pool. It's the same exact process. Nothing changed. The only thing that changed was the profit was so much more because it's a more expensive property. So when I... That week, and I took the next... Over the next week, I was leasing this one, 50 K out here, 25 K out here, 100 K out here, 75 K out here. I was just running through my money, running all these new homes. And then my parents and my friends that don't live in Miami were like, hey, you should be careful. This COVID has really taken over. I'm like, what is COVID? Because if you're... I don't know if you were down here during that time. No, I wasn't yet. I was still in Toronto. It was like, it didn't exist down here. I realized it very much existed in Toronto. Did not exist here in February. I think we got into the first part of March. And it was like spring breakers were all down here partying. They're like, what is COVID? Everybody's like joking, laughing. It was like March 15th or so. Airbnb and VRBO sending cancellation email that the state of Florida's ban short-term rentals until further notice. And in one email, in two emails, I had millions of dollars of my future revenue was all at zero. So I was 100% dependent on platforms on OTAs is what we call those platforms. Airbnb, VRBO, TripAdvisor, all these platforms. So I now had zero revenue with high overhead. Well, yeah, because you're in your into agreements with all of these homes and you owe them monthly. Yeah, and I just got into a lot of them. And I was ready for season. I was like, I'm going to do this because I realized during Super Bowl, the homes that were booked the most were the most expensive lavish luxury homes. And so your question of what got me into the luxury side was I realized that Super Bowl, I made most of my money was from those big homes. The ones that were smaller homes I couldn't hardly book them. So the clients demand for this market was luxury, was luxury properties. Today's episode is brought to you by Vanta. Now listen up, this matters for your business. And today's digital landscape security isn't optional, it's essential. Without it, deal stall, sales cycle stretch on and scaling becomes very difficult. Now why? Because investors, customers, and partners all expect businesses to demonstrate strong security practices before they commit. If you can't prove trust, you lose opportunities. So whether you're a startup founder, trying to land that first big client or an established company, scaling your security program, Vanta helps businesses of all sizes prove that they're trustworthy by automating compliance across 35 frameworks like SOC2, ISO 27001 and HIPAA. 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I personally can't wait to try this new and improved version. And if you've never tried them before, you're in for a treat. Because the old one was great. I can't even imagine how good this new Prolon five-day program is going to be. And for a limited time, Prolon is offering success story listeners. You guys 15% off-site-wide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their five-day programs. Just go to prolonlife.com slash clary to get your 15% discount and your bonus gift. Prolonlife.com slash clary. And so this is something that I'm interested in just again, we're sort of going through the mechanics of your business. But the options, the options are always key in these rent-to-own scenarios. So putting options on this for purchase really, that's sort of like the play that you've always used for since Kansas to luxury properties in Miami, to not like some of the hotels. Exactly. So it's not just when you work on this deal with the owner or the landlord. It's not just I want a sublease. It's always sublease, but then with the option. Yeah, because if I say to you, can I rent your house if you were a landlord, can I rent your house and turn it into a commercial enterprise, turn it into a hotel you're gonna say no. But if I say I want to buy your house in two years, it's a different contract than just a lease with the option to sublease. So I'm now coming to you saying, I want to buy this house and you're like, well, it's not for sale. You know, I want, I want, let's say it's worth a million. I was like, okay, I'll give you a million one and you're like, it's not for sale. I'll give you a million two. What's your cost? I can see what you paid for. So I know what your mortgage is. You paid 600K for the house, let's say, and I know your mortgage is probably around 4,000 a month. So I'm going to start offering you at your mortgage cost 4,000. That's where that's the starting point. Okay. So I'll pay you 1.3 and I'll pay you 6,000 a month. I told you it's not for sale. I'll give you 6,500 and I'll pay 1.4 million. Why would you do that? Well, I need five years to get it there. Now the terms, the levers start to move. The lever is not now a two year contract. We're on a five year contract because I need to get you one point. I need the proper, I need time for the property to appreciate. And they know that just with the market, the property is going to appreciate, but they're assuming that you can have outsized appreciation because of the work you're going to put into. Plus also the fact that you're going to draw revenue from it. That's going to actually help. They're hoping I default. They are hoping you default. Yeah, that's the game on the on the landlord side. On the landlord side, if you came to me and I'm the landlord and you made this offer, I would make sure that it's that the deck is kind of stacked in your favor, stacked in my favor to make sure that you're putting a lot down. You're renovating my asset. And if you miss the payment on the third day, I'm taking your assets, which I have a great story about this actually, but dull. I mean, what? What? This wasn't on a rent. Oh, this is on my house that I bought on Flamingo. It was a this is crazy. This is a crazy story. I bought this house. It was 10.2 million dollars. And it was a normal contract like put down the the money to buy it and had it. My idea was that I was going to sell this house. I bought it off market. So I thought that I could get it. I could flip it for 14 million in like 90 days. Didn't work. Didn't didn't pan out. So I had a the loan that I used on it. This is crazy. The loan that I had on it. I had only a 12-month term loan on it because I again, I had only anticipated being in the deal for 12 months. So I go to the closing table to purchase it. And my lender is like, hey, if they knew I had other assets, he's like, hey, we're going to need an extra I forget what the dollar amount was. We need an extra $800,000 down in order for you to close. I'm like, how are you telling me this today? Like that's crazy. He's like, well, we have an option. You can you we see you have this other property over here. We'll go ahead and pay off your loan on that other house. You have a million five inequity on that house. We'll pay off that house. And we'll now hold the note here. And that's just basically what's called cross collateral. So we're going to cross collateralize your two properties. And I'm like, well, that doesn't sound great. But I don't why would they do that to you? Because they can. Because I have no option. I'm they know I'll do it. I have I'm at the closing table. And I've already put down 500 K to purchase the property in that I'm way past my due diligence. So that's now in the seller's pocket. There's no like collecting that back. If I say, you know, I don't want this property anymore. Let me leave. It's gone. It's gone. And they know that the bank knows that and the bank knows I have another asset with equity, other other assets with equity. So the easiest thing is for them to just reach into my pocket and say, hey, I want to take the loan on that property and have all the equity on that property. We need 30 percent we need 30 percent down rather than 20 percent down. So now I have to be, you know, three and change down on this property. Anyway, it is what it is. I cross collateralize two properties. Go to the closing table 12 months later. I sold the house to Lindsay Vaughn. She's a Olympian gold medalist. I don't know if you know Lindsay is, but she she bought the house and she the offer comes in from from Lindsay and they they're set for like a 45 day close. They put their money. They're past their due diligence. I've already been down the road where she's in, right? Yeah. So I'm I'm now in the seller's position and they're at their 45 worst. My loan is only a 12 months loan. Okay. So my loan is a 12 months loan. And my lender is saying, hey, I want you to renew for another two years. And like, well, of course you do, you know, and he's like, he's like, yeah, I don't want you to, you know, he didn't say I don't want you to sell, but he in less words, you know, he's like negotiating with me with, you can I'll renew your loan, two points higher than you currently are, but you need to pay another $200,000 down to renew the loan. And I'm like, that's great. That's robbery. And he knows that you don't have a choice. If I can't sell in my 12 month period, I have to renew. So this is like, let's just, I don't know the exact dates or whatever, but it was a Thursday. I remember that it was a Thursday in my bank sacks. Man. So the bank or he's like, it's a Thursday and he calls me, he's like, Johnny, he's like, have you decided if you're going to extend the loan with me? I said, no, I have a closing as you know, it's supposed to close on Monday. And he says, I said, they're supposed to close on on Monday. And he goes, I want, I want to be very clear with you. Let me just be very clear. And he gets closer on the phone with me. And he's like, I, he's like, if you do not close on Monday, I will take both of your homes. They will be mine. I want to be very clear with you. And I have a $2.75 million property over here and a $10.5 million property over here. And he's going to take them both, right? Because I can't clear one day. And I was like, you won't just give me an extra two days. And he said, let me repeat myself. And he goes through over it again. Okay. So I hang up, I call, I'm like, just don't know that you've done business with me for never did business with this guy before or again, no, I would never do business with him again. But I learned a great lesson from it. So I, so I, so then Lindsay's attorney calls me. This is Friday, this is Friday morning. No, this is okay. So the closing on the bank was Monday. My loan was over on Monday. The closing with the house was Friday, right? So the before the Monday. So it's the next morning, Friday morning. The lawyer calls me, hey, Johnny, with my attorney and my, and Larry's on the phone. Of course, you know, Larry's always right there. And he's like, he's like, hey, listen, we're going to need another 30 day extension. And I said, let me be very clear with you. If you do not close today, I will keep Lindsay's $500,000. There will be no extension. This house will not be for sale. He will, that she will never purchase this house. I will hold this home. I want to be very clear. We are closing today. There is no extensions. And they hung up. I hung up. Everyone hung up. I'm like, turn around. I look at Halley. I'm like, oh, my God. Like, both homes are in the balance right now. And you didn't, you didn't think that if you told them what was going on, I would have helped your case. No. Then they would have waited for me to default and bought them from him at a discount. For sure, you can't let your cards be shown. They would have been, oh, yeah, he's in a weak spot. We'll see you Tuesday. You know, like, that's what, that's how that played out. That's how I would have played it out if I was on their end. So yeah, I, I learned once that generally I'm of forgiving, very, it's like, give everybody lots of opportunity, sure, extend, extend, extend, and then, and then, you know, in this case, I was like, he was here and the fire was there. It was like, no, I'm, I had to push back in the same, the same tone. What happened? The wire cleared Friday. And I sent it to my lender and paid him off and and got all of my, everything was done by Monday, cashed out both properties, both properties sold. I figured that's the second detail was there was two closings. I had another buyer for the other property. And we had teed him up to both clothes on that same Friday because with cross collateral, you can't sell one without the other. So we had multiple times we had a buyer for this one, but not that one and a buyer for that one, but not this one. And I kept trying to deleverage the properties from each other. So there's, there's some wisdom. Don't cross collateralize assets. Why was this? I was going to, you know, he obviously would never say this that that lender, but it sounds like he knew that if you cross collateralize, it's going to be harder. Very hard. He knows that there's a real good chance that you can milk you for as anything and take both. Yeah, take both or force you to renegotiate and renew at two points plus another $200,000. And you can't say shit because you can't sell the properties simultaneously. So they did it. He was like two degree fucking you over. He had planned it from the beginning. Yeah, I can see that. When someone gets into this game, someone's going to listen to the story of the big shit. Okay, well, that's scary as hell. How do you avoid that? I didn't belong buying a $10 million property to begin with. I shouldn't have gotten into that type of property where that I should have if, you know, two, three, four, $5 million properties is my comfort zone. And this one was, oh, a $10 million property. I can flip it in 90 days because it's worth 14. There was another property that just sold for 14 on the same block, same square footage, same lot size. I was like, okay, I can, I can get probably 14. So that was the plan was to, you know, get in and get out. So just don't bite off more than you can chew. That's where you, that's where you, you lose. You're saying that, but now I know you deal with like ultra luxury and hotels and all that. So what was your thought process after that? Because I was obviously like a little bit of trauma, a little bit of stress that worked out. But then you think about how you've progressed since then now you do ultra luxury and you do high-end and you do, I think, like what, 30 to $40 million plus property. So what was the point when you decided to get into that into hotels? Yeah. And right now you still just do two to three million dollar homes, but you also do hotels? No, I, no, no, that's not true. I know. So I'm asking. So what was the start and you move? I mean, I'm gonna buy good deals. So whether, if it's two or three million or it's four or five or six, maybe the one I'm gonna close on next month is should appraise over five million. We should get our appraiser back this week. It just, I, I, how can it cash flow and what's the future value of the property? You know, you don't want to necessarily be buying. I think I see a lot of people say real estate didn't work for them because they got it and got out and they got burned or they didn't really make a profit. And it's because, you know, real estate's not a game to get in, get in and get out of. It's a get in and, and let the property appreciate and get all of that depreciation every year and, and let your tenants pay it, pay it down. So two million or five million or, or 20 million, it's, it's the property price isn't the, the main focus. It's, for me, I'm in the hospitality game. I'm in the hospitality business. So, for me, what's important is that I can earn money in the villa or the hotel and it's in a, in a prime location, prime, the, you know, the waterfront for, for homes. Most of the homes are waterfront for hotels. They're all, for mine, they're, currently, they're all on South Beach. Yeah. And then that's, so that's when you moved into hotels. So last, I got into hotels actually just one year ago, but when I was a kid, my grandmother used to take me traveling all the time and she'd always get me whatever the presidential suite is in the hotel. And I felt like Kevin McCallis cheer like with the big cheese pizza. And I would have a, I would stay in the presidential suites. My grandma would get her own suite and, and I would shoot always let me buy the robes and like just, I did this every summer like from middle school all the way until I graduated high school. I always traveled with my grandma for a week every summer. And, and I'd said, and I used to say, I want to manage a hotel. I want to man my grandma would say, somebody you'll own your own hotel, don't worry, you'll own your own house, you'll own your own hotel. And that's why I wanted to go into hotel management. And my dad said, no, you can't go into hotel management. And, and so last year I was just, just had a, an agent who works with a, works, now he's with our company, but at that time he, he's just an agent I know here in Miami, David, and, and he's, he's great. I really like David. He's, he's very genuine person. And he's like, Johnny, I got these hotels and he's just hitting me with, you know, I, I get deals all day long from people texting me deals all day long. You should buy this a building. You should do this. You should do that. And so I, I was like a hotel, hmm, I kind of like hotels. This is a cheap one. This was a seven million, it's like seven point five million dollar property on Collins. He's like, I have this property. This owner's in a bad situation. I was like, oh, I speak more. I like these deals. That's where you find good deals. Yeah, no, I have a distressed seller. He needs to get out of this property. He'll do a, he'll do a contract on it. You should, you know, look, like come and look at it. And I was like, all right, let's go look at it. So I go and I look at the property. And I'm like, man, this is, it's only a 17 room space with a retail space in the frow hotel. Yeah, a little boutique hotel on Collins. And so I went to the property. And I was like, I like this. Yeah, I think I can do this. And I'm looking at how they were. And I asked how, how much revenue is like, oh, it does like, it does like, I hate when someone says that because now you know, they'll be asking, you know, it does like 70,000 a month. And I'm like, okay, and I'm like, running the numbers in my head. Like, okay, I think the account for the bullshit factor. So, and it was in January and February. So I was that, you know, that was in February last year. And so I was like, yeah, I would try it. Let's, let's do it. I'll just make an offer. I'll pay you first, you know, the rental amount was 35,000 per month. I was like, I'll just give you first, first last, first, first and second months deposit. But I want two months free because I'm going to pump money into the property. And they agreed. So for 70,000, I took keys of a $7.5 million property. When you think about this business, how do you think, like, when you go into a hotel, how do you know that you can make the improvements to bring the value up to, like, like what's scared the math that you do or the strategy? Because like the hotel is different than a villa, which is different than a luxury home, which is different than a home in Kansas. But you seem to be a, I'm sure there's a lot of times. I don't know if it hasn't worked out. Feel free telling me about like the horror stories. But you seem to be pretty capable at doing this strategy again and again and again. And I know you're saying it's same strategy, but like, it's also not because somebody who can flip a home, I don't think they know exactly what they have to do to increase the value of a hotel. But you've done it pretty successfully. But there's, there's something that you, like, there's some sort of math or some sort of margin or some sort of, like, leeway that you give yourself. Traveling, myself, personal travels, personal experience, gives me a standard that I want to uphold within our own company and being better than our, you know, the other inventory. Now when people say, what do you do? You do Airbnb? Like, I don't, I try not to like cringe at that, but we're not Airbnb. Like, that's not, yes, we generate, yes, our properties are on Airbnb. But, but this now our customer experience when someone books our properties is so much more than just booking in here as a code. Our guests now, they get, you know, the agents represent all of these properties and they list them on the MLS. They're all listed like Larry and I did during COVID, right? They're all listed on the MLS as fully stocked, fully furnished utilities, beautiful homes. So, so we get the property. We list it for a high price for sale right out the gate. So we buy it for five million. We might list it right away at six point two. Yeah. Yeah. Just in case you wouldn't believe how many people have bought properties that we listed for a million five two million dollars over market price and they pay for the price because they want that house because we're and it's like, if you don't want to pay that price, that's okay. We're earning revenue in the in the meantime. So we're just generating, but it's giving the property an immediate value by increasing the monthly rate online, increasing the sale price online, and then giving it a great customer experience. So the properties are all represented by by a professional licensed real estate agent and then we have amazing property managers. They do in-person check-ins only groceries are all stocked in the home for when the customer arrives. They're getting boats and cars and jet skis and massages and dog walkers and it's true luxury. It's true luxury. Yeah. We're giving a full full some of these invoices, Casey and Aspen. She just showed me an invoice yesterday. It was $42,000 from the customer that just checked out and she's like $42,000 is like massages and hair and makeup people and like whatever the customer wants, the agent who represents that property will absolutely get the customer with discretion. And you go to these properties, you experience true luxury and that's the experience that you give the people that stay. When my wife and I travel or we take our family to wherever we go in the world and we stay in beautiful properties or we do house swaps a lot. So we do a home exchange where we'll swap one of our villas here and stay in Cape Town, South Africa or stay in South of France or wherever we stayed all over the world. And we were like oh my god this is so opulent. Everything is just perfect. There's nothing like everything's clean. There's the service is incredible. The explanation of how to use the problem. Okay, we need to incorporate this. And then you go to the next place and you're like oh my god, they picked us up from the airport. They had our refrigerator. We need to incorporate this. You know, like oh my gosh, they had all the options of places to go and introduce us to five different vendors that they recommend like the YAH person or the okay, let's incorporate that. So the more I travel, the more things I begin to incorporate in our business. In your opinion, what is like true luxury? So I don't think that luxury is actually about a price tag. It luxury is a feeling someone gets after they spend their money. So when you spend your money, you go into Louis Vuitton and you leave and you spend $3,000 on a bag. Do you feel great because you have it. You spent the money or do you feel great because while you were in there, they were giving you the coffee and they were calling you by name and they cleared out a space for you and they didn't rush you and the bag is so high quality that the bag is inside. And then you get home and you open it up and it's sprayed with the fragrance and it's still giving you memories of the store you are in. That's the luxury experience of the product. And so when someone stays in our homes, the experience begins when you book the property and that wire clears on our end and we're contacting you with like, who are you? Why are you coming? What is your purpose for being here? How can we accommodate your every need and your request and you begin to just build? It's not about up sales. I don't even like this word. It's really just about satisfying the needs that the customers have as well as desires. They didn't know that they had. And then they leave feeling cared about and that everything was intentional. One thing that I've noticed and you can correct me if I'm wrong is what I personally feel because I've also traveled and there's been beautiful places that we've stayed and beautiful restaurants that we've dined at. I better have Gina. She's into Michelin restaurants and I don't really get it but she likes it and I find that in Miami in particular, it's easy to spend money but I don't feel like there's a lot of luxury in Miami. I feel like people are focused on extracting as much money from people as possible without the luxury component. I find that I can spend I mostly benchmark against restaurants and food. Less so hospitality is not the world I come from and I find that Miami in particular restaurants are overpriced. Quality is sort of underwhelming versus if I could spend that money in like a London or even in a New York. I find that that's something that I hope you and other people that are sort of adding value to Miami in particular because now we live here. It's like our city. I hope that that changes. I don't know if you feel that or if you think that that's totally off base but I've noticed that. I think that the prices are expensive in Miami. I'm not going to water that down. It's expensive to live here. It's expensive to dine here. It's expensive to drive here. It's expensive to park here. It's just but is it luxury and I don't mind spending money but in my opinion that there's to your point you have to remove the just spending or versus what do you actually get for it? Are you wanting to know if Miami is a place of luxury? Yeah I guess. No. Why is that? No but I think that it has all of the right mechanics to be that and I would say that it's not because of the feeling that most people have when they see their credit card the next day the seeing your bill when you what you paid you shouldn't have remorse about your experience and you might some some people may spend and think feel that they overspend and that they shouldn't have done that but I mean if you spend there's some okay so go to rest. I'm just speaking from personal experience. Yeah you can you can push back if you want like when I spend money when I go to Vienna and I sit in one of the oldest cafes in the world a cafe on trial and I'm getting like a ridiculously overpriced coffee or pastry and it's like beautiful and it's like obviously a century's old and like the art I mean I you know it's just a completely different experience and I don't mind it I don't mind paying anything because I'm like wow I'm sitting in history when I go to a restaurant in Miami and I get a you know a class of zool it's a hundred dollars for a glass of class of zool and all I get is like my food being brought to the table with like the sparklers and there's like a stripper at the restaurant dancing that to me is not luxury that to me is exorbitant and it's showy but it's not luxury. It's like a matador yeah exactly keeping you occupying your mind occupied while the bill is going higher that's not I agree with you on that I don't think that but but my industry and in particular of if you're I don't for what we do in in our home in the villa side forget the hotels the hotels we have right now they're not high-end luxury hotels they're they're their beachfront hotels they're nice hotels and I'm working on bringing that experience to a luxury experience so this is a fun project for me actually the team I keep I have a completely new different team different staff that's operating the hotels then is operating the villas I keep them very separate but the the villas I I don't have a hundred percent money back guarantee situation but when you do come to the property you do two or the home and you do an inspection and you do look at it and then you sign the paperwork that says you've checked and you approve of the property and you agree to the terms and you know pets parties are smoking in the villa whatever if you weren't happy in that moment that's the time to speak up because that's the time where we would put you in another property or we would refund you I do care about your experience and and and then we're chuck checking in with you all day every day like did the chef come how was his experience you know we're like in communication with all the people who are who are servicing the home during that stay we're talking to the captain on the yacht are they having a good time no they're not okay maybe they need a playlist you know they will send them like a special playlist like his vibe up like yeah so that is luxury it's like being aware of the experience I want them to have an amazing experience and come back and combat more than 30% of our customers that are these high paying customers are repeat customers they just yeah and that's that's awesome to have that's what it shows it shows and I like I mean like again I'm not in the property game but there's a lot of restaurants in Miami that I just don't go to I think with a restaurant experience though it's easier to be in and out in turn tables I personally waited tables before and waiting tables you're just trying to turn turn tables get them in and out in the luxury or the higher end I won't call them luxury the higher end restaurants in Miami there's time there's time limits an hour and 45 minutes to two hours is the max time frame so with the villas we're not like that we're you're there with us for three or four days and if you're not having a good experience we're probably gonna hear about it pretty quickly I just want to take a second and thank cornbread ham for supporting today's episode now cornbread ham CBD gummies have been this really nice addition to my wellness toolkit I don't use them every day just when I want to win wine after those extra busy weeks but they're perfect for those moments when you want to take the edge off and just find your balance really 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dash offer transform your business with fresh books today at freshbooks.com slash pricing dash offer for 60% off what what are some of the so with some of these luxury villas and some of these luxury clients and just say whatever you're allowed to say what are some of the more funny interesting ridiculous stories requests the people have had because you deal with I mean name whatever you want to name you deal with some very high-end celebrities clientele some of them people would know their names obviously so I'm sure they have interesting requests David Beckham booked a home one time wanted to have complete privacy so he tinted the entire front of the house added $50,000 in shrubs to the front of the property so that nobody can see the house from from the water so that's interesting you get you get but you get fined when you do that don't you by who I don't know I've heard this story about like if you put like shrubs and you block the water view the city fine they were gone before it was they were in and out and we just we just put them in and take them back out I probably should have pulled permits for that but I I didn't I'll see what else we've we've hosted so many events so many like bad bunny he's recorded several of his albums of his last albums have been recorded inside of our homes he converts the upper area into a studio and and that's cool so yeah I mean turning properties into studios is interesting having Megan Stallion she hosted her hot girl summer at one of our houses her opening when she first popped off this is Beck I think this was before COVID actually was there any times where a client just absolutely trashed a luxury villa never never of course okay I was like what like for real yeah of course yeah but you know the the thing about a property being trashed is we take damage deposits for it and we repair it pretty quickly so I mean I house being trash for me when I first got into the business in Kansas City I would panic when I would walk into a property and I'm looking around and stuff's broke and couches are destroyed and whatever and you know with platforms like Airbnb and BRBO they're pretty good about having policies that protect the host so they do pay out so you get you know more used to okay it's not a big deal you take all the pictures you submit it all you make the claim you get the money back from the platform and the higher end homes that are not necessarily on platforms like Airbnb and BRBO you we take damage deposits for a reason and we fix the property up and we have surveillance on the exterior of the property only never anything on the inside but we also have 24 hour security we have monitoring they're watching the cameras they're driving they're tapping there's you know taking a picture of the QR code outside of each home to verify that that the security guard went to each house which gives our customers a sense of security in the home now now the average property price villa price for our customers are spending between four and 10,000 per night for these homes and the caliber of client that's paying that price point is generally either a 1% or they're a celebrity status a diplomat there I had a diplomat one time book a property and and Aspen and they requested to have six exact SUVs that were all identical with six drivers that were all the same color and height because I'm sorry it wasn't a diplomat it was a it was a it was a shake it was a Saudi Shaya they wanted all the drivers be the exact same when all the cars be the exact same and then they would leave the property in one vehicle they'd go around the corner and get out and get into another vehicle and then they would keep driving and they'd get out and get into another security it was all secured to keep him safe like that nobody knew which vehicle he was in and and so like that's a very specific request that somebody has that's like how tall are you what's your weight what's your skin color like you're you I mean you're you had to have all of the the drivers had to look alike and all the cars had to look alike they had all be the same and yeah if you think about all the guests that you've hosted like what's the level that you're playing at now so like what would be the highest rent that somebody would have ever paid for any one of your properties right now we have a customer that's closing that wire we should be receiving this week that's 800k that's a good that's a good one what do they get for 800k they get a very nice villa I really I wish I could say I can't tell you who that customer is and you definitely know who they are and I can't even say the the time frame of how long it is for unfortunately but 800k that's that's a that's a good one we did we did another contract this was for four years which is a good deal this is a four-year contract now it was 11 million yeah that's all gonna be serviced you know these aren't just like a long-term tenant it's a four years is a long-term is it is not a short-term rental but it's a it's a full service I mean we're handling landscaping and housekeeping and pool and they're they're living their concierge where there's their servants during their stay for four years you know and that's a that's awesome I love that because you get to know the custard you get to know the client and and you get to know the homeowner really well and yeah I'd say the most per night I've ever received we have a house and asked been that that regularly gets 25 to 30,000 per night and that's literally there's zero availability in that property during season so that's incredible to have a house that produces 20 25,000 it's not bad I mean 20 25 thousand a day yeah no that's not bad if you think about like the health of the business now so for people to understand like how I don't know I don't think you're not public about all your numbers but like how big is this business now like in 2025 you have your hotel portfolio villa as you still have all the I'm assuming a whole bunch of other units that are not as pricey as that but what's like the what's the number to benchmark how big you built this? oof doors revenues approximate so we've got up we've got 60 properties that are our full time exclusive those are 30 days a month those are occupied at 80% or higher occupancy we've got the three hotels on the beach and we've got another 150 maybe 200 properties that are one off properties where we book them a few times per year so when you get over a certain caliber of a home like say a 20 million dollar home for example these are we would never sell an investor a 20 million dollar home and say buy this house for its cash on cash return like it doesn't compute when you have taxes and insurance and it's and mortgage payment it's too much and we just can't occupy that type of property but the requests are there for that type of villa so what we do what with that whole that's like another whole business model but there's like I said there's another 150 homes there we've got the 60-ish properties that are on the full time the three hotels and then I have a software business and I have three real estate brokerages we have a brokerage in Aspen we have a brokerage here Miami we have a brokerage in Kansas City and then my software business is a is a support software I'm three million in three years in on building a software that's a support it's a full to full pack a CRM PMS system that kind of brings all of these components together of the concierge it brings the the owners report so when a booking comes in from a platform like Airbnb or VRBO it will come in and immediately disperse the data it'll tell the housekeeper you now have a check in it'll tell the property manager you have a check in it'll tell the agent to let the calendars block it'll tell the owner what their payment is will tell admin how much taxes are due to pay the city it just auto reports every all aspects of the business which cuts our communication down by like 80% because right now if you saw my phone there's just probably 150 group chats of you know like every there's just a group chat for everything and we do use tech packs so we use a tech for their housekeeping communications a tech for property management a tech for you know there's all these different platforms that we're using that then are all synced together so I've we created our own we're it's proprietary we're using it for ourselves now and and our own team is using that it's it runs our website it you can instant book properties on our website and when you instant book it disperses that data appropriately and that's a that's a awesome technology that I'm really proud of you gonna say you're gonna eventually put that on the market it just is an entrepreneur like is that how you think eventually you're gonna guess yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I would that's in the pipeline yeah for now I'm using it for our own company to work out any kinks and continue to perfect it and then and then bring it to market amazing and I mean like the the rest of your portfolio like I don't know what an average occupancy rate but 80 percent is very good yeah it's good and the hotels were over 95 percent this like all of season we're gonna be running right at 100 percent occupancy for the hotels so where do you where do you go from here like what are you excited about in the future because obviously you already have like an incredible business diversifying revenue super smart I love when people build lake software for their own problems because then it's probably already something that they could commercialize it could commercialize and make a ton of money off that I would want to I would want to expand my business I will expand my business into the luxury markets that are on a global level south of France and Greece and places that I like to travel yeah right so what is what is I mean if for people that are you know just I know that luxury real estate whether or not you can afford it the thought of going to a luxury villa in south of France is like it's just like this like romantic idea that's why the youtube channels all have like millions of hits even if people can't afford it regularly maybe they go on like some bucket list trip what is a really interesting luxury opportunity or vacation destination that that you would be excited about investing in that you also think somebody should go to that isn't as well known like a place Cape Town South Africa yeah Cape Town South Africa I've been there twice took my my parents and my in-laws there this last trip we went and Cape Towns just it's like the Malibu it's like a cheap map a cheaper version of Malibu yeah the the the oceans just slamming up against the cliff the the modern villa we stayed in is right on the cliff it's just like overhanging with an infinity pool is beautiful you two million dollar house beautiful and in in in Malibu that's a you know 40 million 50 million dollar house like these are beautiful well created homes in in in with incredible views of the sun setting right on the ocean and then there's just unlimited amounts of things to do and then the service is incredible and the food is decadent and uh yeah you you just you can take a uh a small plane right over to the safari lands all over the place you can go and stay in another villa in the in the bush as they call it and you can go and and do safars where they they come right to your house and they pick in the villa in the middle of the of the uh uh serengeti or wherever you decide to stay the the villas are there they come pick you up they take you out and they can drop you off and the chef is preparing the the whole experiences is is is inexpensive it's um it's uh it's not common i don't know very many people who have been uh and actually gone through with like the full experience of a of a South African trip but yeah Cape Town's amazing if you could go back and and tell yourself something about you know what you've learned so far something that would sort of change what you what you did when you first started out what would that lesson be and why and sometimes people you say they don't want to do anything different that's also and that's also an answer but also i'm just not one with tries to live with regrets you know i i really learned from so many of each one of these things these challenges these hurdles i've had my attorney says it's the cost of tuition and i take that pretty serious uh my advice to my entire team is live low and bill high don't don't don't spend just because you you can you just live low be humble continue to serve if if you were checking into my home right now one of my properties i personally would be there opening the door for you out open the trunk i'd be grabbing your bags i'd be taking it inside like staying humble and not just just because of all these things i have or in weird where we've built doesn't doesn't take the the service element out of my DNA even when i'm at my own hotels i'm opening the doors for the customers i'm i'm helping the bag boys i'm showing them like one of the baggers i was he's like i said are you making at least you know $150-$200 a day in tips here he's like how and i'm like let me show you and i just i was basically just opening doors and grabbing bags and calling customers by name and i'm five dollars here five dollars here ten dollars here and i'm handing it to the bellman and he's like i've been here for three hours and having gotten a tip i'm like because you're not paying attention you've got to this is a service industry like in in now we got to go back to training you know i think so i think that staying humble and living low well below your means live low and build high all the the car wash story all that i'm i'm emptying the trash cans like you've heard my story like i'm i did it myself i didn't have some big investor that pumped money in i i took my profits i got the next part i took my profits i got the next one like i had all these properties in the first 24 months of doing it from living below what my means were having roommates house hacking or how did you call it it's house hacking yeah house hacking i didn't know there was a name for it oh so how is hacking i i learned that from one of my early mentors and it was basically you buy like a fourplex and you live in one and then the other three pay for your mortgage that was like the concept of how and was that when did you learn about that like 23 yeah two 23 like young young yeah but like i mean like i don't think that many people knew about that yeah i didn't know anyone else that was doing that the only reason why the only reason why um i learned about that is because the guy was a tech entrepreneur real estate investor but he was also similar to like he like kind of always just did everything himself so he's like i want to learn real estate i don't want to raise money so what do i do okay so let me just live in this you know one of and the condo he lived him was probably not a beautiful condo if then a fourplex that he could afford at the time and he's like well that got me my first four doors and just like rinse and repeat so and and he was just very entrepreneurial which i think that's a whole other conversation of even if you aren't an entrepreneur you don't feel like taking the risk working in a startup is also a smart idea because you get access to people to think differently versus if you go work out of school at a at a hedge fund i don't know how big it was but say you work at uh you know four to one thousand four to five hundred maybe you're lucky if you find a mentor but it's not always the case but when you work around entrepreneurs or you work for a startup or you work for someone like you you think and you look at the world differently than somebody it's only ever worked i share my uh my expenses and my burden i share it with my team so they see it because when they say oh i just closed a hundred thousand dollar booking and you're like great and then and i don't like i'm not like throwing a party you know because we have a hundred k booking i'm it there's so many they see the costs they see that the revenue is is great but it didn't be what we did last year yet like and and um uh living they see me continuing to serve and uh and then trusting the people i will trust you if you tell me to do something i more unless you give me a you've given me a reason not to i'll try when the guy said book book by this you know do this hotel deal or buy this property or i'm generally trusting the team that's with me that they've vetted the deal they think it's a good deal and and then if it doesn't work then that's my lesson to be learned what would be if you look back at your at your life what would be the biggest risk that you've taken and maybe people don't know about and and what was the outcome well the i would say just breathe as of late doing these hotel deals um the second hotel i was like i was telling david the agent who brought me these three different properties i was like i need the revenue and you see the income how much of they made let me see like reporting you know the same question like can i see the utilities how much i should be able to tell an occupancy based on utility usage you should see you know if you see water bills that are like way up here and then they go way down here you'll know those are that should line up with like your slow months you know anyway i um they said they're not going to provide any of that information it's based on your per what you think you can produce not based on how we produced and um the attorney uh it was like johnny we're not giving you that information and uh we're just we're just not going to give you how much money these properties have produced uh and honestly it's just uh it's based on what you you can do and i was like i called my attorney and i'm like i don't know what to do like you know we're today we're supposed to close and my attorney said johnny my ring goes johnny why do this he goes why are them the money send them the money don't sign the contract once you do that call them put me on the phone and and uh let's go from there i was like okay so i'm sitting at chase bank i send the wire i said i called the lawyer i was like did you guys receive the wire in your escrow he's like i did but i didn't see the kind of the sign contract and you send that over yet and i was like well now that i have the wire and the miren steps and just like go he's like well now that you guys have the funds you can tell he's not just wasting your time he's he is interested he is doing this deal can you guys just please relinquish the pat you know the rolling 12 the past 12 and the the attorney like has another like lean into the microphone moment and he was like let me be clear if you do not want to be in business don't be in business and he hung up the phone and i'm like they're fucker i was like let me dot loop sign sign sign sign sign sign sign sign sign like send it through and um and then i opened up the books and i you know there's uh just my own experience with um certain religious groups is they're they're position their position is their disposition is to treat you better than they would treat themselves or their own culture if you will and and um and i just went with that experience that i have the um for this particular religious group i was like they're they would never say that to me and then ha ha got you there's no income like that would be a really that would be a really poor reflection on that would be yeah and i just i just went with a gut instinct of do it and then i opened up the books and they were at 90 percent occupancy and i was like oh my god this is great and there's all this reference this is fantastic this is the purpose of somebody being a dick about it though but but doesn't for me now it makes me just want to hold my cards a little tighter i've been pretty loose with my cards like if you say how much is this but i've already overshared on this podcast of all kinds of details of the sauce to my creation and these guys would never do that you know it's in a in especially in in the midst of a deal making you know the the art of a deal in the Donald Trump book great book by the way um talks about you know hold what what you what you allow them to see and what you allow them to perceive is the most important part of your deal making i've always been i agree with that i've always been so conflicted about this idea because i have made great deals by being radically candid because then people can work with the truth and they trust you and they trust me as opposed to negotiating on theoretical these guys are multi billionaires and they do not need me and so their their position is we don't need you you're either going to do a deal with us or you're not going to do a deal with us and that's interest and that's your own risk yeah and it's also a personality thing some people like there's a lot of billionaires that are very candid and don't care about this is what the business is and especially if you're serious about it i think that it depends on who the person is and understand i don't know maybe i just looked at it and i saw a great property in a great location that in my personal opinion had really poor customer service and had a had a a falling apart product that i knew i could i could repair it matters yeah confident but i didn't know their occupancy was great even in its in its uh current state i guess maybe right if you do understand what the value you bring to the table doesn't really matter and that's what they were that was the lesson for me was and now i i look at my own occupancy rate i've raised the ADR the average daily rate i've average i've increased the average daily rate by 40% of the property which is nuts so for me to have increased the income increased the product of the property and i'm averaging like i said all season long work we're going to be at 100% occupancy during your especially from Thursday to Monday but the rest of the week you're maybe running a 95% occupancy Tuesday Wednesday and then back to Thursday you're going back to 100% occupancy amazing what would be what would be a lesson that you learned that was useful to you but you hope nobody else would ever have to learn because it was so traumatizing boy it's really uh it's really embarrassing to check somebody into a property that's not prepared that's not ready yet and you think it's great and it's not great it's like i don't know if that's a great if that's a good example but those are humiliating moments for me being in hospitality that a customer checks into a house what happened what led it to not be ready well the baby you know Jonathan the baby with a DA checked into one of the houses on new years we were walking through the property and um there's the last house we had available it was like 10 o'clock at night and his whole team was there they're all pulling up in all the suburban and escalades and everything and um i'm like running around with or we're both running around the house turning on all the lights getting it already because they're going to be showing up in like five minutes and and then they show up and they're like touring the house and they're unloading their copious amounts of bags and i mean the the amount of like stuff they they travel with and then they're all in there and then they're like oh this house has a has bedbugs and i'm like the house does not have bedbugs there's it's impossible they have bedbugs in these in these like our bet our mattresses have proper protection we spray the homes properly we have i mean we put in all kinds of protocols anyway we go into the room where he's uh and um he's like point there's an ant literally one ant crawling across the bed of the white sheet just one ant and he was like he's like what do you call that and i was like well that's an ant and he's like ain't that a bug i was like yeah it's a bug he's like that's a bed bug he's but i can't stay here i can't he's like i came too far i can't stay here and i'm like oh my god and then and then you got to be kidding me and so we like i'm like changing the sheets he's like forget the sheets i'm out of here and like give me my money back and he had paid us like 25 racks and cash and it was like like yeah that's like the most painful part to give money to a client on New Year's Eve like i'm not going to book the house now give it back and there's an ant on the bed could have been avoided had had one had we seen it when we were i don't know how to avoid that i mean the house is perfectly meticulously clean i don't know that's just bad luck it's a lot of bad luck it's it just it feels bad when a customer leaves your house and thinks that it's dirty or you know like it and i know the house was in excellent condition i know the house was was there was nothing wrong with it but it still wasn't up to their standard which still is below mine i think that's a good lesson if you lost everything and you had to restart what would you do differently i'd start as a free property manager working for somebody else i can be a property manager i know more than everybody else i can probably your property manager i'll make you more money i'll teach you how to make money on the pro i mean that's first just offering my my skills what if if i didn't have any skills if that's the question if i don't have any skills and i don't know anything and i want to first and i want to get into this industry i would start out as a property manager which is where pretty much everybody starts in our company start out as a property manager like i want to make more i want to you know be more on the the client facing side then you get your real estate license and then we teach you concierge and uh real estate then you start learning real estate yeah property management is there anything that you did sacrifice on your way to build this but also what would be the lesson for maintaining balance while still building a very large uh company yeah i think that the time the the one on one time i see other couples like going out on dates and stuff all the time you know like like their date night and i think in the um uh in our relationship if that was a conversation we've we've had before of like you know can we have date night and i'm like but we're not like every other couple so like we can go to europe for six weeks yeah like you know we can i think i think the most i think especially my my my better half would be fine with that like that's that's i it just takes a different when you don't have any i don't have i have amazing parents my parents are amazing uh they are still married to this day they're i'm one of five boys um you know they've been exceptional uh examples um and i just i i saw my father a lot uh make statements like you know i chose your mother yeah you were a byproduct you know like i chose your mother and that it was instilled at me at a very young age of not that i'm less than less loved by my father but uh just that i want that i want that like irrevocable can't be broken love with with my wife that um whether we had money when i was a kid or when we didn't have money and when we had money again or when i have those different experiences that damper that never changed and so i i have a really i have a really great example of that um and i'm also uh i also believe in and god and and jesus and i i grew up as a christian and and a christian home and um and so i keep faith at the center of my relationship and even in the midst of our most difficult challenging times where uh you know we we may be i may be trying trying struggling with regret of a decision or a you know a car wash or a flaming a flamingo ten million dollar house purchase or some regret i may be having i try not to have regrets i try to just focus right and and learn from these and and so i would say that i don't have the date nights i wish i i wish i had date nights i i feel like that's a um a sacrifice if you will but we get to be together all day every day where we live together and sometimes that line can be blurred with just feeling like it's always work yeah so it requires me to be intentional with like leaving my phone is now like that's my thing if i leave my phone in the other room then that you know i i don't care what's going on you know with it's just her and i and so it doesn't have to be date nights maybe just about intention it's just our where we come from in kansas city it's like people are it's like date night you know it's you know Tuesday is our date night when's your date night i mean so i i would say that's something that i wish that we had had more time but i cannot plan for a date night because there's inevitably something going to come up at all times we're here for uh this month of March and then we'll be back in kansas city for the month of april and when we're there we we go for walks every single morning i leave my phone in the house a lot of the times we go for coffee or breakfast every morning so i don't think you're giving yourself enough credit i think just being i don't think you need that's another thing too like what works for you or where someone else it could be different but the point is what's the end result like you focus on the end result the result is a happy marriage good communication um i think that when people uh say oh if i don't have i can't i can't do date night i'm too busy i'm traveling i have too much going on i can't plan but then there's nothing else that's when you run on the problems not about date nights about okay what's what's the what's the alternative in your life and it's going to be the same when you have kids but let me be clear traveling to europe for six weeks doesn't mean i left my phone in florida you know but i enjoy traveling internationally uh with my wife because now the work schedule is asleep when we're awake over there so i don't mind where i sleep less hours so i can i can work different hours and um and pivot and then hang and be completely uh uh unbothered all day long and just be you know yeah weeks with her and that that's amazing i actually find that's a totally totally side point but when i actually go to europe i actually find i'm more efficient so efficient because uh all the emails come in while you're sleeping yeah yeah and then you can get to answer them all in the morning nobody can bug you so it actually forces a fan vice versa when they wake up in the morning they feel plagued with duties and tasks and bullet points and you're just crushing during the day and then you close the laptop and they wake up in the morning with all their how much just like bs like do you deal with today yeah yeah yeah in the same time zone it's like pick up a call jump on a zoom should be a quick conversation ends up being 30 minutes it's like you're checking email through the day i think there's a lesson there about batching tasks but when you look at what your definition of success was when you first started versus what it is now how is it changed how do you define success in your life and your business all of it um i have a pipeline i have a 20 year pipeline that's on a spreadsheet i'm a spreadsheet guy i have a spreadsheet for everything so um i i generally hit most of the the marks on my on my uh my bench marks i'm i'm pretty i'm consistent with it so you put a you think pipeline in terms of like life yeah i have a 20 year pipeline so it was like last year i wanted to hit three hotels and i did you know or i wanted to expand into aspen and become brokerage by the end of 2023 we did we wanted to have um you know by the end of this last quarter i wanted all the merch lines to be out for all the hotels and for the villas and for aspen with everything having its own separate you know personality and branding but being consistent with the luxury brand we did i wanted to be on auto instant book so everything is like is like timelineed out um my idea of success uh i i never really like put a like a big grandiose thing out there that i'm like striving towards um i just have a lot of things that i enjoy doing like hotels like houses like tech like my tech that i'm building the software as a service that i have these things and i i put the end goal for that on the pipeline and then i just backwards um put it to what do i need to get to get to diverse engineering yeah i just reverse it all the way backwards so i love it i love it last thing that i like to ask um because you know you've given like a lot of different insights and wisdom that have helped you over your life and your career um so if you had to only pick one and the frame is uh say you uh want to pass on one lesson to your kids at some point and you can only pick one lesson the most important lesson that you've ever learned what would that lesson be and why i mean for mine it's going to come down to my faith in in Jesus like you have to have without having uh a moral compass without having you know your faith in line it's just i can't imagine making decisions or feeling like i'm like like i'm doing it on my own i don't feel like i'm doing it on my own my Instagram is luxury.co but i'm i'm just the CEO i'm not like it's God's business it's God's that you know i'm just his i'm just here so i would say that my my advice for for anybody who has big plans is you have to first find your faith if you don't have if you don't have if you're not grounded in in in in faith in your whatever your belief maybe um if you don't have that then it's going to be very difficult it's very cold out there and and you'll probably give up you'll probably quit i'm i don't feel like a failure even when i fail because i i know that i'm i i'm just like working for him i'm doing what he's got opens doors no man can close god closes doors no man can open and that's that if the door is closed there's not that door wasn't meant for me if the door is open then i'm going to walk through it and i'm going to have the faith that he's going to take i can't see it i just just blinding light the door's open it's blinding light and i don't know what i'm walking into but let's go and then i start walking through it and i have never ran a car wash and now here we are you know like i know i i didn't ever own a hotel i've i've worked in hotels but i never owned a hotel i never been in this on the operating side and so to come in and realize you have to have like 15 different permits and you know inspections and yeah it's uh faith you