Jason Muth - Turning A Side Gig into 3 Short-Term Rental Businesses
Jason Muth is the founder of 3 real estate investment and short-term rental businesses. After working for large media corporations, Jason decided to leave the corporate world behind and welcome guests into short-term rentals full-time, so he turned his "side gig" into his primary focus. Along with his husband Rory Gill, Jason launched Prideaway Stays, a gay-owned, tech-driven short-term rental co-hosting business. He's also launched Straightforward Short-Term Rentals, their owned-and-operated portfolio of vacation homes in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Finally they also have their own podcast The Smart Stay Show (previously The Real Estate Law Podcast). Hear Jason share his journey and advice for others looking to leave a W2 behind and work in real estate full-time!
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Learn how Jason' was able to transition from W2 to full-time real estate
- Learn the secrets to starting a successful short-term rental business.
- Unlock the steps to achieving Superhost status on Airbnb and stand out from the crowd.
- Discover the strategies for investing in profitable vacation rental properties.
- Uncover the insights to building a thriving real estate co-hosting business.
The key moments in this episode are:
00:00:00 - Deciding to Invest in Real Estate
00:02:01 - Transitioning from W-2 Job to Real Estate
00:06:02 - Finding Inspiration in Real Estate
00:09:54 - Taking the Leap into Real Estate
00:15:35 - Scaling the Business
00:20:02 - Utilizing Technology Tools
00:22:19 - Action Over Planning
00:29:31 - Customer Profile and Niche Market
00:35:44 - Creating Lasting Memories
00:36:09 - Learning and Growth
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Jason Muth
As luck would have it, during one of our walks down the street, we saw for sale sign on a house and it never occurred to me that I could afford a second house. But this is back in 2016 and we said, hey, we got some money for a down payment, lets schedule an appointment. So we did, we looked at it. There was nothing wrong with the house, despite the fact that the price had been adjusted a couple times. We put in an offer that was lower than they were asking. We negotiated a little bit and next thing you know, we own a second house and we're like, all right, now what do we do?
Mike Swenson
Welcome to the REL Freedom show, where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities and real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some REL Freedom together.
Jason Muth
Hello, everybody.
Mike Swenson
Welcome to another episode of REL Freedom. We talk about different ways that we can build time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I am your host, Mike Swenson. And today we're going to talk about moving from kind of the traditional w two type job to the opportunities that present itself within real estate, which is where I'm sure a lot of you people that are listening right now are at. People that want to get into real estate don't know how to get started, want to get started with something and realizing it's taking longer than you think. And so today we're going to talk with Jason Muth and he's going to share his journey about moving full time into real estate. So a little bit quickly about his background. So he is the founder of three real estate companies and short term rental businesses. We have pride away stays, which is your kind of rental co hosting business shown on the shirt right there. For those that are watching straightforward short term rentals, which is your owned and operated properties that you have, also a podcast as well. And you do this all with your husband, Rory, who's a real estate attorney and broker and 27 time Airbnb super host status. So you are certainly doing a great job. So we're excited to hear more about kind of your life and what you're building and your process. So thank you for coming on and welcome to the show. Jason.
Jason Muth
Thank you, Mike. That is such an incredible introduction. You did so much homework on me, or at least you pretended like you did and you did a great job with that. That's far more than I do with our podcast and our guests. So I appreciate that. There is one thing I have to correct that I probably sent you the raw materials, but we are now 29 time super hosts on Airbnb. So I think I might have sent you an old version of some of our talking bios.
Mike Swenson
Get outdated and they get updated.
Jason Muth
They do. Well, you know what? On Airbnb, they update that every quarter, right? So, you know, every quarter you're hoping to get that super host. And if you get it again, you could put a notch, notch on your trophy case that you're another super, super host for another quarter. Oddly enough, this came up yesterday in a Facebook group where people are talking about things that, you know, either gripes with Airbnb or it was a host community group because I'm one of the host community leaders for New Hampshire and Airbnb. I'm going to be on a call, like, next week or something, and I think I was one of the first to respond. So I got to submit a question for Brian Chesky, who knows if he'll actually answer the question. But it was along the line of like, hey, listen, how do you differentiate people that are 29 times super hosts from someone that's a super host the first time and had ten bookings? You know, and they don't really have that platform on Airbnb. So not to jump too much into the weeds, but, you know, we would love it as people that have been doing this for so long. I mean, I've been doing this for eight years at this point. We've hosted thousands of people. I have, you know, almost 405 star reviews, but we're viewed as the same as someone that just came into this. And, man, if you're listening to this, Brian, you got to fix that. Fix that for us.
Mike Swenson
Well, I was going to say I'm. I'm two times super host. We've got four properties, but at the same time, my super host badge is the same as your super host badge, but you have a ton more information and experience than I do.
Jason Muth
It's so weird how it happened, though, because, you know, as you alluded to earlier, I've been working at w two job for most of my life. I mean, for over 25 years. And I was of the generation that you do well in high school to get to a great college, you do well in college, you form your way into a great career path. You know, I was supposed to be a doctor way back in the day. I took the MCAT and I realized I didn't want to do that. I was the science and math guy growing up, but I. Man, when I got to college, I found radio. And back in the nineties, radio was a big deal. So I somehow ended up in the media business for the majority of my career, radio, television. Half that time was on the research side. Half that time was as a sales manager or director, which is kind of really where the money is. Unless your talent and your way up there and, you know, this was not supposed to happen. Like, I wasn't supposed to be doing this. In fact, I was doing short term rentals on the side during my final years working as a w two employee. And, you know, I stumbled into it. But because I had a little bit of extra money, I remember I had some comcast stock, which I bought as an employee. I cashed it in to buy our first property that we still hold to this day, and we didn't even know what we were doing. I was like, I've heard of this Airbnb thing. This was 2016. I think I could do this. We didn't have a rule book. We didn't know who to talk to about it. And then you just kind of stumble your way into success. Next thing you know, you've had a couple of bookings, a couple guests. You learn some things along the way. There's a lot of big failures that happen as well. You become a super host that first time, that second time, like you are that third time, whatever, and next thing you know, my God, 29 times. Like, I feel like a dinosaur in this business.
Mike Swenson
So kind of talk about maybe the why behind getting started. You know, some people, it's like, hey, I read a book. Something landed with me. I've got this story of, you know, wanting to pave my own path, you know, and. And so, just curious for you, in addition to working your w two job, what was it about doing the stuff on the side, or what did you maybe think you wanted to have happen as a result of doing the side hustle or whatever? You know, people might call that.
Jason Muth
So I was in my early forties, and we found biggerpockets, like a lot of us do, and I credit them for putting me on the pathway that I'm on right now. We've been fortunate enough to have had a number of biggerpockets hosts on our podcast. Uh, I bumped into Dave Meyer, of all people, literally at a sandwich shop here in Newburyport, Massachusetts, when he was on his way to his wedding last year. And I, of course, went up to him and introduced myself. And then a few months later, I introduced myself again online and invited him onto our podcast, and he came. And they're such an influence over many of us, right? Everything they do where they show real estate investing is available and accessible to anybody that wants to kind of like put their mind to it and put some skin into the game and take some risk and take a chance and go do this. Anybody can do this. So we used to listen to the Biggerpockets podcast on long drives like my husband and I before we had our daughter. Maybe I'd be going down to New York to visit my family or be driving somewhere else. And he's a real estate attorney and a real estate broker, so he knew a lot more about this than I did. But I knew that I liked what I was hearing. This was back in the Brandon Turner Josh Dorkin days, and it was so, so accessible. It was everyday people that were telling these stories of purchasing real estate and it having a profound influence on their lives. I love the job that I did. I love the industry that I was in. I was doing really well at it, but I didn't see beyond that at the time. I look back at this now. I'm like, my God, like, I should have done this sooner, but you got to start somewhere. So I was working, working like that good worker, be working his way up in the corporate environments that I was in. And we were listening to this podcast. We started going to real estate meetups here in the Boston area. And we started meeting some other people that looked like us that did jobs similar to what we did. And they were doing it. So we were like, we can do this stuff, too. If these guys are doing it, why can't we do it? So, fast forward to 2016. And there's a lake up in New Hampshire called Baxter Lake. We currently now own three properties at that lake. My husband's parents have retired to that lake. They had a camp that they turned into a vacation home for them. They were living in northern Massachusetts, and it was going to become their weekend getaway. And eventually it's become their retirement property. And they actually had a property next door to that that they purchased, and they put on short term rental before we even did any of this stuff. And they weren't doing it with all of the really well optimized systems that we're using and that I'm guessing you're using. A lot of people that listen to this understand how to do it today. It was very diY. They were on Airbnb. They were doing their own cleanings. So we were up at the lake visiting. We ended up staying there. It was probably a big family event or something, and they needed multiple places to put people. And my dog was there and the floor was just, it was like this laminate floor where her fingernails would tap on the floor and wake us up super early in the morning. The windows faced east, there were no window coverings. It was the middle of the summer, so the sun was blazing in before 05:00 a.m. the bed was super uncomfortable. I felt the spring in my back and I was like, rory, I am not staying in this place ever again. And if your parents are going to keep this place and we're going to have to stay at this place whenever we visit, and if we have a family someday, this is where we're staying. I don't see that as super enjoyable, frankly. So as luck would have it, during one of our walks down the street, we saw a for sale sign on a house and it never occurred to me that I could afford a second house. But this is back in 2016. And we said, hey, we got some money for a down payment, lets schedule an appointment. So we did, we looked at it. There was nothing wrong with the house, despite the fact that the price had been adjusted a couple of times. We put in an offer that was lower than they were asking. We negotiated a little bit and next thing you know, we own a second house and were like, all right, now what do we do? And this is what weve done. So its turned into a portfolio of five investment properties that we own, one of which we built from the ground up. Uh, we have a short term rental co hosting company called Prideaway stays that serves Provincetown, Massachusetts, where we have one of our properties, uh, and we're about to launch a coaching company. And you know, it's, it's how I spend all day, every day, uh, of my life these days.
Mike Swenson
It's so funny to hear your story of I'm naive, I don't know what I'm doing, but I know I want to do something. And, and for people, listening like that is really how you get started. You know, I think people, because there's so much content out there and people say, well, I can learn everything I need to learn for free by watching YouTube videos and whatever it is. They learn and they consume content and they learn, but they don't take action. And you're going to learn so much more by kind of blindly stumbling into something like that, buying it and figuring it out while doing it, than consuming a bunch of podcasts. So even though the podcasts are fantastic, you really are going to learn by doing and digging into it. And so kudos to you for deciding, you know, hey, we're going to do this and we'll figure it out, and we'll learn from there. And, yeah, the technology and the tools have come a long way to help string everything together so you can maximize efficiency, but you had to go from nothing to something and kind of make that initial leap. And that's what I'd like to encourage people listening to do, is you got to take that leap eventually, even if it is on the side, and then the side turns into full time.
Jason Muth
So you, I was listening to one of your other podcasts. You had a gentleman on that, went to Columbia, who was a real estate investor, lives in New York City, I believe, had some property in Philly. Um, he was a basketball player, if you remember, and he, he had a great analogy. Hes like, listen, Michael Jordan by himself versus a team of 100 high schoolers is going to lose every day to those high schoolers because hes going at it alone. And I couldnt agree more. I didnt discover that until a number of years into doing short term rentals, because we were going at it alone. It was just us doing it. I can't even say me, because Rory is super helpful with everything that we do with the short term rentals, whether it's acting as a broker or an attorney, or acting as legitimately a handyman. He installs a lot of the tech. I know my limitations. I'll paint stuff, I'll do a couple things, we'll hire the rest out. But he helps out at the properties. That was it. It was just us. I was working full time somewhere else, and I started getting questions from people at work all about short term rentals, and I was answering more of those than my actual job. That's when I knew that it was time to kind of, like, make the change, uh, because we were just killing it at work. I was hitting all of my goals. It's kind of a shrinking business, the media business, unfortunately. So, you know, when I left, it was them telling me that my job was no more, despite the fact that three months later was about when I was going to voluntarily resign or try to get laid off. Um, but that's when I discovered that I can't do it by myself. So you and I were talking off camera about the mastermind group that I'm in. It's called short term rental secrets. And since joining that two years ago, about a month or two after I came and did this full time, I realized there was a world of people out there that were just a support network that I could learn from. That I could have conversations with where we're talking the same language and the words, the terms that we're using. You don't have to kind of redefine from the ground up for somebody because they know exactly what you're talking about. I started going to all the short term rental conferences. I started building good relationships with people that are in the space. I started finding people that wanted to talk to me about the work that we were doing. And I realized that going at it by myself all those years brought me to where it brought me, which was good. But from that point onward where I said, I'm going to invest in myself, I'm going to meet people that are doing this professionally full time, I'm going to partner with some of them on some opportunities in the future, and I'm going to present myself as this short term rental expert that I know that I am. I just never was branded that way. It's given me all the confidence in the world that I can go talk to anybody in this space and they'll want to talk back because they're not going to look at me as a short, you know, who's this guy? Well, you know who this guy is? This guy is doing this seriously right now, and this guy's doing this at a high level, talking to a lot of people that are also in this space. And I got to credit the mastermind for that. But you credit everything along the way. So bigger pockets is just such a big influence that got us interested in doing this. And then when we launched the real estate Law podcast back in 2019 and then really focused on it in 2021, that got lots of conversations like this going where we were talking to people like yourself and other great professionals around the country that are real estate investors doing all these super interesting things. Next thing you know, you're building this network of folks that all have great stories and they all have a very similar journey that they started not knowing what they were doing. The next thing you know, theyre running this big enterprise. And then I meet people in the short term rental secrets mastermind. And im like, all right, these are my people. These are the folks that I could lean on if I have any questions, if I dont know how to get myself out of a certain situation, if I need some improvement with my mindset, a lot of what they do is just saying, listen, the sky's the limit. Like, don't limit yourself to what you think you could do today. Your mindset should be limitless, as is your business. And it's just such a different way for me to be thinking. I couldn't even imagine three years ago me being the person that I am today.
Mike Swenson
Talk a little bit about that building and scaling piece. So you started with the one that you bought. You also now have a co hosting business. So how did that develop for you as kind of, you know, deciding, okay, we're going to own, and we're also going to help others who own.
Jason Muth
So in 2018, we purchased a second property in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It's on the very, very tip of Cape Cod. It's legit, one of the gayest places in the country. It's very LGBTQ friendly, like, unabashedly. I mean, our logo has a pride logo in it right there. They just had carnival. We're recording this in the summertime, and there were probably 70,000 people there all dressed up in costumes and having a great time. It's an amazing town that a lot of people in this community aspire to own property in. And we were fortunate enough to purchase before for the massive spike that happened during COVID We bought a condo in 2018. We didn't even know about our daughter at the time. We adopted her the following spring, so we were getting the place ready as our second investment. And then next thing you know, we find out that we're adopting a newborn baby the following May. So we kind of pivoted and made that into as much of an income generating property as we can get out of it. We do use the property, like, we go there on a fairly regular basis, but I always deferred to the rental side of it. That came about because a friend of mine and his now husband owned property in Provincetown. And they said that it was doing pretty well, and I happened to have some extra money sitting in a savings account that I could put for a down payment. So we said, maybe P Town is the place to do it. And I remember we were about to go to a softball tournament. I was waiting for Rory to get ready. I saw a property pop back on the market, and this was after having searched one end of town to the other, didnt see anything we liked. And I said, this. This is it. Put an offer in, and then let's go play the tournament. And then if we don't like the property, we'll back out of it somehow, because he's an attorney and knows how to do that kind of stuff, which is exactly what we did. And we eventually, we put an offer inside unseen, went down, checked out the property. It all checked out, and then we purchased that one in 2018. So now we're doing short term rentals in two different markets, building up networks in both places, seeing the differences between two markets, and it's starting to really kick in. I'm like, I like this. Like, I like what I'm doing right here. So investments happened in New Hampshire afterward, like where the property next door to us was a vacant lot that came for sale. We purchased that because we wanted to control the land that was next to us. The property next to that, a tree fell on top of it. We saw the owner's dad working on the roof. We said, what are you doing with the house? He's like, it's vacant. I said, would you consider an offer for this house? So we negotiated, we bought that house, and then along the way, I got a construction loan to clear that lot and build what is our. My favorite of the houses. It sleeps 14 people. We call it Camelot Chalet. It's beautiful. We built it from the ground up, and I qualified for that loan using my income. I still had a job when I did it, so I was able to get a great 3% loan to build that property. We closed right before rates popped up. And then when the job ended, now I'm out there with commercial territory and commercial loans because I can't qualify a standard way. But we bought our fifth property after we sold our place in Boston and moved to Newburyport. And we didnt put all the money that we earned on that property down on this home. So we had some money left over. We put that down on that fifth property, and then the business came along after I joined short term rental secrets mastermind, where I realized lots of people in that group were running co hosting businesses. And at the time, I just wanted to meet people and operate my five properties really well. But then once they got stabilized, I said, well, what am I going to do next? Whats the next challenge? And I looked to Provincetown, and I said, you know, what? What everyone else is doing in this group, nobody is doing in P town. And I could do it really well because I could speak short term rental. I have the credibility for that. And I could speak the gay language, which, you know, I kind of joke about that, but it's legit, a language that sometimes people who are in the LGBTQ community want to speak to people that are also part of that community. So I got a business partner for P Town because I didn't want to do it by myself. My friend Ethan, I said, hey, what do you think of this idea? He thought about it he said, it's a great idea. Let's do it. And here we are. Jeff.
Mike Swenson
It's so fun to hear how things just grow organically, one step in front of the other. You know, you're not going to necessarily know what two steps ahead looks like until you take the next step. But then you look back and you see, oh, my gosh, I've accomplished a lot over this time just by kind of taking the next right step and the next right step. And, you know, I'm guessing when you started your, your second location, you didn't probably go to air DNA and run an analysis on projected revenue and all that and what amenities and, and so I think, and sometimes nowadays, when we do have the technology tools, we can kind of get in our own way, right, and maybe make decisions or not make decisions because we get scared to because the data maybe doesn't support it. But you started it and you figured it out and you built and grew off of that, versus having to wait for all the technology to tell you which was the perfect property to pick.
Jason Muth
You know, so, you know, air DNA, I got my subscription when I, I joined the mastermind. So, you know, we, I've been able to see what happens across the country, whatever market I want to look at for a couple of years now. And, you know, we do use it for Provincetown when people come to us for analysis, like, I'll, I'll jump into air DNA, I'll see what comps are in the area. I, I always see air DNA as being a bit higher than what the reality is because I always check my own properties and what they think I'm making is, is not quite exactly what I'm making, but I think it's off by about 20%. So I don't know if it's the case across the country that way, but I know what Im seeing. We did use air DNA to help underwrite the property that we purchased in Guilford, New Hampshire, which is up in Lake Winnipesaukee. And as it turns out, the numbers were inflated. So what the lender used for underwriting, I used a company called the lender with a DSCR loan for that property. They underwrote me thinking there would be a certain revenue projection. I went into it thinking thered be a certain revenue projection and Airdna said it was going to be a certain revenue projection. And sure enough, we're operating this property at a high level and we are not hitting that number right. So it's okay. I mean, like right now, you know, that is a long term play. It's got some great tax benefits for us as well. It is bringing in money. We've had 40 something reviews, five star across the board. It's a really, really nice property. It's just not making what I thought it was going to. The other properties that I have are really helping supplement our entire portfolio. So im able to take a risk like that and maybe sit on it for a little bit longer if it doesnt pay off right the second. I think actually you guys were talking about on that same episode that I cited that people are looking too close to today to see if an investment makes sense, whereas if you look a little further out, it will make sense 510 years from now. So anyway, so I use AirDna for that, right. And I do think AirDna is a good directional tool, meaning like what's the direction the market's going in? What are some other properties in this market looking like? What does it think it's doing? It's not good for. I don't think it's good for absolute numbers, frankly. So I wouldn't underwrite another deal using Air DNA. I hope they're not listening to this, but I'm just not going to. But I do use air DNA when I'm helping comp things out in Provincetown to give somebody an understanding as to what their property might be doing. I also use Pricelabs, which is a dynamic pricing tool. And Pricelabs I think is a bit stronger because it gives some real time data as to whats happening with bookings. So it helps me determine occupancy, percentiles, where I should be pricing my properties, where I should be pricing our clients properties and what im about to see in the coming months. Trey.
Jason Muth
RObert well, we literally just ran our numbers today because we're coming to the end of the month. So I track this stuff and we're up year over year across our whole portfolio. But I look at this like a sales team where even though we're up overall and the end is really the overall bucket of, of the assets, some of them are flat, some are up a lot, and a couple are down a little bit, and then that mutual fund of properties leads to an increase over my previous year. So really what I look at is, I don't care how I got there, I got there. And that's what a sales manager would look at. Also, frankly, if nine of their salespeople missed budget by 10%, but one of them exceeded by 50, you're going to hit your number. You'll hit your quota. Not everyone will. But then you can work with the individual people to figure out, how do you get from 90 to 100 or 105? So I'm looking at each one of the properties, and we've identified one, the one I was talking about in Guilford that we're watching. Because if I don't see it making sense in a year from now or two years from now, maybe that's the one that we decided 1031 into a different investment. I'm not fully connected to any of my properties that I wouldn't be willing to let any of them go, but if I would let any go, that would be the one that I would let go first. For, for a variety of reasons, even though we just had purchased that property, where do I see things headed? I think it depends on the market. Here in New England, weve decided to focus on classic vacation markets that seem to be holding the test of time and popular across generations. Lots of folks want to buy investment properties or vacation properties within a drive of a major city like where they live. We purposefully did not decide to invest in a market that was a ten hour drive or four hour flight that we didn't really have too much kinship to because we wanted to invest what we knew. And I do give this advice to people. If they just don't know where to start, it's, well, what do you like? Where do you like to go? If you want to get into short term rentals, maybe consider doing something in a market that you're familiar with, that you can get to, that just has a level of comfort for you. You could listen to all the podcasts, and next thing you know, you're investing in Scottsdale, Austin, Nashville and the Smoky Mountains. But, but I mean, how many of those places? Ive been to Scottsdale once. Nashville three times. Ive never been to the Smoky Mountains. Ive been to Austin a couple of times. But I dont know those markets enough, and I dont think I have the skill or the interest to dig into markets that I just dont know. So ive decided to go to the markets that we do know, that are relatively near where we are, that over generations and generations, people have had experiences going to the lakes of New Hampshire or experiences going to Cape Cod, and they seem to be continuing to get more popular as time goes on. I also look generationally and I see a heck of a lot of people that are in their twenties, thirties and forties that are living their best lives, living longer, wanting to buy real estate, and we're not building enough of it. So I see it as that finite resource and a huge cohort of people that are going to start competing over it, that I feel confident that prices will continue to be favorable to me as an owner. And the people that are wanting to go to these same places continue to outnumber those that don't. So Boston is not exactly a market that I say Boston because I've been living in this market for a couple of decades now. It's not like we have a huge influx of population here, but it's a pretty stable population throughout New England. That tells me that people are going to keep going to Cape Cod and keep going up to the lakes in New Hampshire. I think we have pretty decent markets. Thats why I think that it is very market dependent, whereas you have some other markets that are like in the Rocky mountains, the plains, the west, maybe. Its harder to get to these places because you have to fly into them. Its not a quick drive from a major city. And they shot up in popularity during COVID And I understand some of these markets are having challenges right now because things might have gotten a little overheated. So I do think it's very market dependent. Every time I see a heat map on my instagram feed from biggerpockets about prices, the northeast is just solid. It just remains solid. So I focus in on what I'm interested in, where we've invested, and that is the northeast.
Mike Swenson
It's fun. I like to keep track of the guests and kind of where they're coming from and what they're doing, but it's so fun to see because it's the family reunions. Well, at least here in Minneapolis St. Paul, it's the family reunions. It's the weddings, it's the sporting events. I used to live here, and now I'm coming back here with a spouse or family members. Or I used to live a ways away, and now we're coming back and we're coming through here. Or I had somebody that was coming from out west and they spent two days here and then they're headed out east, you know. And so people are still traveling because I hear a lot of people say, oh, people are going to go back to hotels. And I remember one guest that said, hey, I've got four kids. Hotels are hard, you know, as somebody with three kids myself, that's hard to be able to make hotels work, you know, and, and you can get the, the two beds and the pull out couch. But after a while, my kids now they fight over the pullout couch because they get to sleep by themselves when they stay there, but they're not going to be excited about that. And obviously, I know with short term rentals, you can have condos and other places. We have, you know, single family homes. But this niche is, it serves a population of people that love to stay in a house for you. Like when they, when they're traveling.
Jason Muth
Right.
Mike Swenson
There's limited places to stay, so they want to stay someplace that's nice. And so I still feel like that niche is going to be well served well into the future.
Jason Muth
Yeah. You know, New Hampshire, our customer profile is multi generational families that are traveling. And, you know, at Baxter Lake, it has had a culture of renting around. It's a small lake. It's not like it's a huge destination like Sebago or Winnipesaukee, but we get people that are all types, like, we get people coming to weddings and funerals that are coming to celebrate an event, a big, you know, six years for their 70th birthday party. Maybe it's a group of guys who wants to get together for a guy's weekend or a girls weekend. We have neighbors whose relatives stay at our places because they dont have enough room at their own places. Theres a couple of farms nearby and a couple of people that live there have had a bunch of kids. So they have a lot of relatives that are coming in and they want to stay at a place like ours. One of the bookings that we just got yesterday is people from New York City that are going up to Maine and making their way back to New York. And theyre stopping at lots of places along the way. And they said that ours happened to be right in between two of their stops and they thought it was a perfect location. So, you know, like the New Hampshire properties have always just been that type of mixture of folks that are coming to the area. And we, we supply something that the hotels aren't able to supply. One of our properties sleeps four or five people, but the rest are 810 14. Okay. You have to rent a lot of hotel rooms to get your whole family at the Holiday Inn or the Hampton Inn. And you're getting really generic, comfortable, but generic sleeping arrangements. You'll get a free breakfast, which we're not providing, but I got coffee. But you'll have your run of the house if you stay at our place and you all get to stay together. I think that Airbnb and Vrbo have done some really fantastic marketing of late. Vrbo is marketing the fact that when you book a Vrbo, you're getting the entire house and they're trying to go against Airbnb because Airbnb allows you still to rent a room within a house, which I've never done. I don't know if I'd ever stay that way, but that's how the company started. But I think Airbnb's marketing is like when you rent an Airbnb, you know, when you put the kids to bed, you're putting the kids to bed. You don't have to be on the desk right next to them or on the bed right next to them. Like, you put them in the bedroom, and then you and your spouse go and have a nice glass of wine, watching the sunset, watching the tv, hanging out with the rest of the family, because you're not all staying in one room together, you know? So I think that it's an important component of, of leisure, travel, hospitality that people like us supply. And Provincetown is a different market. Provincetown is not necessarily passersby. That is a destination market. So we know the people that are going there, that is their end point. Whereas New Hampshire, we're getting people of all walks of life.
Mike Swenson
It's so funny you mentioned about putting your kids to bed, because I still remember being in hotels and it's like we'd put our kid to bed and my wife and I would each share an earbud sitting in a closet, watching a movie on our computer, you know, on the floor, because our kids sleeping in the room. Right. And what else can you do? You don't want to wake them up. So, yeah, there's, there's a whole array of, of opportunity there that travelers and people looking for places to stay that they just can't touch. It's so fun. I love it. My business partner kind of teases me when I share the backstory of like, oh, the person coming in today is coming from here and they're doing this and they're going there. Like, it's so great to see the stories of the people as they travel and come in and out of the property.
Jason Muth
Yeah. Yeah. I've noticed two things. We don't put guest books in our properties on purpose because I don't fully trust that what people are going to write is something that I want to have in the guestbook for somebody to read through. I'm a little paranoid about that, but, you know, reviews or reviews, that's fine. Like, that's part of the process, but I just don't want to have that on site. The other thing I don't want to have on site is something that happened with some content creators that we had stay at one of our properties, you know, to help with some lifestyle images. We traded a stay for their, you know, for their photography and videos were mostly nice, but it was a touch weird seeing people in our space, and we use all these properties ourselves. So I get over it very easily that hundreds of people, thousands of people have been in, slept in, been in our properties, right? If they're not there when I'm not there, it doesn't matter. Like, to me, like, that's our space. Seeing somebody else, like, in our space and how they were interpreting it and doing it, I was like, I don't know if I like this, frankly. But the final thing I'll say there is, it is very touching to know that our properties have helped create memories for so many different guests. Right. I don't need to see them. They're on the phones of all the guests that are there. We don't ask people to hashtag us and show us all for the world to see. Those are private memories. They want to make those memories. They're private to them. I don't need to see it as the host, but knowing that we've had years of guests stay at our properties with their families, doing whatever they were doing, enjoying their time there, you know, that that makes me really happy.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. What do you see for you and your husband and your family and kind of your companies as you continue to grow here over the next few years?
Jason Muth
I need to learn a couple things. Like, I don't have all the answers. I'm still learning how to leverage teams of people, raise money for bigger, bigger properties. I haven't done that yet. I haven't tried to raise money for anything. I've been doing this financially. We've been doing it all on our own through typical ways to fund properties, and it's been working fine. I bet you I could scale this a lot bigger if I wanted it to. But I don't need to have all the money when I'm dead and buried. I need to have enough to keep myself happy and our family fed and us feel good about our lives. And I think that we're well on that pathway with what we have. I mean, a lot of people aspire to own five properties that can get their mortgages paid down by guests that are coming. And eventually youll own them free and clear if thats what you choose. Or you leverage them into other properties because over the years weve leveraged low interest home equity lines of credit back when they were low to parlay up into other properties. Weve bought and sold a couple of things. We bought and sold a commercial property and did okay with that. So I think what were going to do next, we are focusing on pride of waste days. We've started to really build the confidence that we're doing a good job with prideaways. The number of owners that we have right now, we've kept it very small just to build our systems up and make sure that we liked doing it and that we could do it for other people. So I'm glad I didn't scale too quickly, that it got too overwhelming because it is a lot of work. I mean, it's not just set it and forget it. You're getting questions left and right and we are. We do have a team of people also, we talked off camera about virtual assistants, so we have some vas that are helping us. But a lot of the work we're doing ourselves, I'm doing myself right, just because we've built some systems, but sometimes things work outside of the systems. But I've said this recently to some people, like if I wanted to scale pride away quicker, I probably could have because I think the demand is there. We've sent out some marketing pieces, old school direct mail. We're really dialed in with a very good list to send to. We're just sending out our second mailer right now. We're starting with some email campaigns as well. It's been a lot of word of mouth building relationships to lead to conversations that have eventually led to the clients that we have. But my guess is if we really put our pedal to the metal, for lack of a better phrase, I probably could have had three x the clients at this point already. So we're going to try to hit the goal that we have, not try. We're going to hit the goal at the end of this year for how we set 2024 up and then we're going to set new goal for clients next year and then continue growing that at the pace we want to. That's thing number one thing number two, we're going to keep optimizing the properties that we have. This was a big infrastructure year for the homes that we own. I ended up putting in six generators in our properties, including our single family home. And I had to completely replace one of our air conditioning systems. That was another eighteen k. I didn't expect to have to spend, but a lot of money went right back into the properties this year and we did that on purpose. We said, you know what, this might be a good year to reinvest the properties. I thought it was going to be simply just like upgrading my kitchen with butcher block counters and paint the cabinets, which is something that I did. But what I thought was going to be a $5,000 capex year turned into $105,000 a year. But it is what it is now. We have generators at all the properties. So that was this year. And then in the future, we're about to launch a coaching program with a couple of friends of mine that I met through the mastermind. More info on that to follow. But we realized that not everybody that we talk to wants us to co host the properties. They don't want to pay the co hosting fees. They want to do it themselves. But they have no idea how to start. Because, as you know, if you have a number of arbitrage properties, it takes a lot to get going, get those things furnished, get them supplied, get all of your automated messages going, start to build up a good reputation. Photograph it well, and it took me years to learn this stuff, or at least find the community of people that could teach it to me well. And when I found that community, I was doing things about 85% correctly is how I've assessed it. But there were some things that I was like, oh, my God, I have to fix this immediately. And the coaching program is going to help people, you know, eliminate that, that ramp up. And they could, you know, they should be able to, like, start right off the bat once they, you know, once they sign up with the program. But it's going to just be like, you know, one on one coaching and consulting. It's not going to be like a big, big mastermind community, that kind of thing, which is more one off stuff.
Mike Swenson
Well, thank you so much, Jason, for coming on and sharing. Cool to see kind of where you've been, how things got started, and where you're looking to go. For people that do want to reach out to you, that want to learn more about what you're doing or connect with you, how can they do so?
Jason Muth
First of all, Mike, thank you for having me on the podcast. Really appreciate this. You know, I think you guys have a great show and I've watched a number of the episodes. I think you do a great job with, you know, keeping the conversation going, especially for people like me that just keep talking so you can reach out to me on my website, Jasonmuth.com, comma, which is m u t h, or you can reach us at prideawaystays. So prideawaystays.com pridea waystays.com well, thank you.
Mike Swenson
So much for coming on and sharing and best of luck to you in the future.
