Are We Going To Jail? (How We Got Here Pt. 2)

In Episode 2 of Designed to Glidewell, we’re continuing the story—and this is where things get even more real.

Just as we started to find our footing in the Airbnb world, everything shifted. Regulations tightened. Neighbors started paying attention. And what once felt like momentum quickly turned into legal battles we never saw coming.

We’re sharing what it actually looked like to navigate lawsuits, deal with the pressure of community pushback, and make the difficult decision to sell some of our properties.

This episode is about more than just real estate—it’s about risk, resilience, and the parts of entrepreneurship that no one talks about. The moments where you’re forced to pivot, protect what you’ve built, and decide what’s worth fighting for.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when things don’t go according to plan—or how to move forward when they really fall apart—this one is for you.

Hosted by Ethan Glidewell & Sarah Glidewell 

You can view the video & audio version on our Youtube Channel 

Thanks for listening!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

No, we get a call one day and the guy's like, hey, uh, just so you know, the four permits that are going to be handed out on your lake have already been handed out.

SPEAKER_03 0:08

Yeah, we've declined your application.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

We've declined your application.

SPEAKER_03 0:12

Gosh.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Yeah, for our listeners, can you guess where the four permits went to? The four city council members that live on the lake that will never open a BNB ever. All right. Well, welcome back to episode two of us um revitalizing a podcast that we've recorded for some time now. The last episode we told you that we didn't have a name picked up. We thought we did, and then we realized that it was taken. Since then, we've come up with about 18 more names, all of which have been taken as well. Um, and so we finally landed on a name. We are going to call this podcast uh Designed to Glide Well. Um, mostly because our last name is Glide Well. It's very personally branded towards us. But the entire point of this podcast that um we want to create here is all around building a unique lifestyle, one that is very specific to us, but also interviewing other couples or solopreneurs who have built an interesting and creative life that is not your typical 401k nine to five, have kids, have grandkids, and die. Um rhymed. Look at that. It's almost like I rehearsed it. And so our idea around this is just that we're very intentional around designing our own lives and doing things in a very creative way. And although our current life isn't necessarily gliding well, we're in a very clunky transitional phase. That's the end goal, right? Is that we create something that uh really is perfectly catered towards us. So with that being said, uh, welcome to episode number two. All right, episode number one. We caught you guys up on the uh um journey, I guess, for maybe the first five years of our entrepreneurial life and kind of the chaos that um that contained. And even if you thought the first portion of ours was chaotic, the second half might be even more chaotic. So this is just a continuation of what led us to this point of in 2026 kind of scrapping and rebuilding. And so we wanted to kind of pick that conversation back up where we left off.

SPEAKER_04 2:33

Yeah, here we go. Buckle up. It's been a fun one.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

We left off the last conversation, kind of ending on transitioning to Michigan, getting in a van, deciding to buy some real estate. Um, do you want to kick off that conversation of like buying that first piece of property, what that looked like, and and starting from there?

SPEAKER_04 2:55

Yeah, sure. I mean, uh I wanted to preface it by saying we really had no intent of moving to Michigan or even leaving Fort Worth. Um but of course, like we had mentioned on that last episode where we had gotten in the van and gotten to travel for six months, we had uh six months to really align and and reduce the noise, reduce all the outside influence and figure out what it is exactly that we wanted to do. And of course, we felt like the stars were aligning when you know we got to Michigan, we had X amount of money, saved up enough money for a down payment and some renovation costs, and then of course, your dad retiring um from GRCC. So we kind of thought that that was all the stars lining up, that was God nudging us in that direction, and so we made that decision to move here and that very first property. I mean, where to even start? You know, it was uh we were supposed that Friday we were gonna go look at it.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Yep. I didn't want to, I wanted to get on a boat.

SPEAKER_04 3:50

Yeah, we were supposed to go get on a boat, go hang out with some friends, and we pulled up to the house and there were too many cars, and we were just like, ah, maybe we don't want to like hang out with that many people today. So we bailed and I was like, let's go look at that house. It was only 45 minutes further. Yeah, 45 minutes further away, and I said, Let's go look at it. We didn't contact an agent, we didn't let anybody know we were going.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

I now hold it was just so on brand for us.

SPEAKER_04 4:16

Yeah, I now hold my real estate license, and I understand like we should not have done that, we did it completely wrong. Um, however, I just think that everything we did led to us ultimately getting it, and so we traveled north, we started walking the property. Thankfully, nobody was there. Uh started walking the property, you know, peeking our head in the windows and looking inside. And I mean, from that moment of looking, I can remember looking into that downstairs um window and looking at the downstairs living room, and I was like, we just immediately started envisioning like and designing and like this was our house, yeah, no matter what. And we had never purchased a house before. I don't even think we had gone through lending yet.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Maybe we just started gotten the pre-approval like the day before.

SPEAKER_04 5:00

Yeah, pre-approval day before, and pre-approval for $300,000. Yeah, and to remind you guys, we were both $1099 at this point. Yeah, really instable income. Yeah. Uh instable, unstable income. And you know, it was fairly difficult and with much persuasion towards the lender to even give us um that loan amount because I think initially they'd given us like $70,000, and then I had to file taxes for uh the previous year to get that $300. So we thought that was a fair trade-off. However, when you file taxes, you then got to pay the tax bill. Yeah. And uh and some of that money was supposed to go towards renovation. Um and so we looked through the windows, we started dreaming, we're like, This is it. We called your parents random Friday afternoon, probably four o'clock, and was like, hey, travel an hour north, come look at this property.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

And uh-uh. And she was like, Yeah, how soon can you go tour? And I was like, I'm in the front yard. And she's like, Why are you in the front yard? I'm like, what why are you saying it like that?

SPEAKER_04 6:04

That's right, that's right. That did happen. And uh so we brought your parents up because we thought it would be a a a pretty good idea to get your dad to take a peek at the house and look for any larger things that we weren't accustomed to.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Well, and I think part of the context of this as well is it was 2021. And if you remember in 2021, interest rates were 3% or lower, and houses were just flying off the shelf. And so it was one of those things that like it was listed that day. We went and looked at it that day. We were already exhausted from looking at other houses, and then when we got there, we were like, this is it. Oh my gosh, we have to make a move immediately. Like it was, you know, really snappy. Um, and so I remember like mom and dad coming up. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:43

Like, like I said, we'd never bought before, so we didn't know how the process went. I didn't know how like working with an agent went, but it was quite the whirlwind, quite the 24 to 48 hour whirlwind after that.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Well, and a portion of what made me like anxious and excited about purchasing this house is one, my parent like my childhood home at the time was is probably still to this day worth around 300k. And so we were looking at spending the max amount on our first ever purchase, which was a home that we weren't gonna live in. That was the equivalent of my childhood home that my parents spent their entire life like building, adding on. And so, and my mom was a high school teacher in a county that was very close to where we were purchasing this property. And it was the I mean, it was the poorest township in the county. Right. And so when she was like, they came up and looked, and she was like, Please don't. Please don't. Like we were so excited, and like my mom meant with the best of intentions was like, No, like, don't purchase this. Like, you are going to be dealing with people that you don't want to be dealing with. Who's gonna come up here on vacation?

SPEAKER_04 7:52

This is not a vacation destination, like it's a cute house, but in a weird location, like just well, and thankful we had that excitement and that enthusiasm behind us because we could have easily been talked out of it. Yeah, because all the points she was making were valid.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Valid. Um, and based on her experience, I would have like, if I were her, probably screamed louder.

SPEAKER_04 8:10

Unbeknownst to us, she was correct about a few things. The area is and yeah, is a bit difficult, but yeah, uh but it worked out. Yeah, so we put an offer in that night, that night. We went to a party that night, yeah, and we were all sitting around a fire having a good time, chit-chatting with all of your high school friends who you hadn't seen in X amount of years, and we got a text message saying uh the house is ours. The house was ours, and that began I mean, I don't think we even understood what that began at the time. Well, that began a monster next three years.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Yeah, well, and we bought that house.

SPEAKER_04 8:48

Like now, looking back, we should have bought every house at three percent.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Sure. Um, but it seemed like such a big risk at that point because there was only two other BNBs on the lake.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

We couldn't like I didn't know what Air DNA was at that point. I didn't know what a pro forma was at that point, I didn't know how to run numbers. Like, we had been doing this apartment game for two years, one of which being 2020, and now we were halfway through our second year, which was successful, but 2020 was like brutal, yes, to say the least. And so we end up purchasing this house, just being like, okay, well, if it makes 65k a year, like we're barely in the green, but we're in the green. Right. And it's just a risk that we were willing to take without any sort of like double checking numbers. Um, and honestly, I'm I'm so thankful we couldn't see the numbers at that point in time because had we been able to see the numbers at that point in time and run a pro forma on it, the data up there was so unavailable. Right. Everything looked like grandma and grandpa's cottage, everything was like nothing had a hot tub, nothing had professional photos, nothing had professional design, like, and everybody was making no money, you know, or like some money. Right. Nothing exciting. Right. Nothing to like spend your entire life savings on. Um, and so I think it was probably like three or four months after we purchased that house that I was introduced to Air DNA, and I actually got to go back and look at the air DNA numbers, and I was like, oh my gosh, like literally a house that's holding double the people that we're holding and has been around a lot longer than we have is making a total of 65k a year. Like, uh oh. Uh-oh.

SPEAKER_04 10:24

We went on pure vibes.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Running on vibes, hopes and dreams.

SPEAKER_04 10:29

Now people's got whole businesses on finding BNVs. That's an incredible thing to have currently, but like we did not have that.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

We did not have that and we wouldn't have purchased that. All we had was magic. Yeah, no one would have advised us to purchase that. Correct. Um we flipped that house, spent three, four months flipping it.

SPEAKER_04 10:50

Yeah, we lived in it.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

No, we spent like nine months.

SPEAKER_04 10:53

Yeah, it was a long time. We lived in it, we did a live in reno. We had the whole family up there painting walls, um, you know, fixing ceiling and you know, drywalls. We're doing bathrooms. Yeah, we did all the work.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Yes, 100%. That's what we did not outsource a single thing.

SPEAKER_04 11:06

No, we couldn't. Couldn't didn't know how to hire contractors, didn't have the money to hire contractors, so yeah, it wasn't even an option. But we had your dad, he was retired. Yeah, welcome to your second job, John. Yeah, yeah. You retired to come work for year at eight. A way worse. 8 a.m.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

every morning. We had so much fun with that property though. And we ended up launching it live on Airbnb March of 2022. Yes. And um it was our first time ever owning a lake house. It was our first time ever owning anything, really. Um, and so we decided like it didn't matter what kind of numbers it was bringing in, we were gonna stay in it three weeks out of the year, the three most profitable weeks out of the year.

SPEAKER_04 11:44

Yeah, and our backup plan was like, worst case scenario, we just live there. We live here, and was it like perfect for us at the time? Maybe, maybe not.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

But to own a lakefront property. Oh, it was perfect. Uh 28.

SPEAKER_04 11:56

My very first Michigan lake house, like that I owned, that like the water was beautiful, you could walk right out into it. Um, you know, there's no crazy steps or anything. Like, there's uh I just can't even explain how excited I was.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Now having toured hundreds of lake houses since then, like yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:13

Now I can't find anything even comparable to that. I don't want the 25 sets of stairs that go down to it. I don't want the nasty water because now I'm spoiled.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Yeah, yeah. Black Pearl is like close, it's our closest one to it. But yeah, that was just such a diamond in the rough. Right. Um, and and so we ended up redoing this house. We launched it live on Airbnb March. We stay in it two weeks in June, the first week in July, which now having run Airbnbs in Michigan for the last several years, we know that they are by far the most profitable weeks out of the year. Like those three weeks out of the year, had we listed it on Airbnb as opposed to stay in it, we would have made an additional fifteen thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_04 12:52

Yeah, but it wasn't about that that year. It wasn't about it. We did just show off. Show our friends like it was paint the vision, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Yes, both for ourselves and our friends, really. Um it was a lifestyle, like it was one of those things where the reason we were so attracted to Airbnb was because of this lifestyle component of like getting like there's no case scenario where you're investing in the stock market and then you're able to like utilize those stocks to have a really good time for three weeks with your friends. Right. Like that it just doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Um, and so we just really I think hung on to that of like, no, this is both like us investing, but us investing in ourselves in a like lifestyle way. Right. Um, and so that first year we ran it, we had never worked inside of like price labs or like run a house or had to hire like cleaners in the middle of nowhere, or like that was a whole adventure. Yeah, there was just so many things that we hadn't done. And so we were doing it to the best of our abilities, but like without outsourcing anything, without having experts, without anything.

SPEAKER_04 13:56

Yeah, we were trying to hold on to every dollar we could make so we could reinvest.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Yeah. And that first year, even with staying in it the three most profitable weeks out of the year and running around like chickens with our head cut off, trying to make sure that everything was smooth and seamless, we made $85,000 on that property that year. I mean Which after all expenses paid was $45,000 going in our pocket.

SPEAKER_04 14:22

Yeah, that was more that was your That was my entire W-2 salary.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Right.

SPEAKER_04 14:25

Like your your mom capped out at how much per year? $70K. Right, doing what she did her entire career. And we just made three quarters of that or whatever that number is on one property, on one investment. Yeah. So that was a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

That was a big light bulb moment where all of a sudden it was like, even though we were full-time managing this B, it didn't take 40 hours a week.

SPEAKER_04 14:49

Right. Like, even with us doing absolutely everything, it was like maybe 10 We didn't clean, we found cleaners, but as far as guest management, yes, property management, cleaner management, restocking, pricing, like the whole nine yards.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Right. And so all of a sudden, that was such a shift in life for us because it was like, okay, not only am I not working 40 hours a week, I just replaced my 40-hour a week income. And all of a sudden, like this has a lifestyle component to it as well. And so now, and we'll get into this, I think, a lot more as the podcast goes on. Like, now I don't know that I would say that like Airbnb is like your ticket to financial freedom because it is a very slow build. Like, even with the cash flow from B's, it's like, okay, if I wanted to make a million dollars a year, like the amount of money that I have to invest versus like what these properties are making versus you know, like that equation now, five years after 2021, doesn't make as much sense to me anymore. Like I have a whole different perspective on where I where we're spending our time and energy and money now. But at that point in time, it's like the only thing you know is a nine to five. And then when you find a slice of business that replaces your nine to five income 100% and you're working a fraction of the time, you just earn all your time back to go relearn, right? To go reallocate your attention elsewhere. And so as we get into these conversations further and we start like shifting our narrative around how like what role Airbnb plays in our life, I still think it is the best move to make for any nine to fiver to just replace their current income. Yeah. Like that might be one house for you, like it was for me. It might be three houses, but nonetheless, the the focus isn't how do I go make a million dollars tomorrow? The focus is how do I get back a hundred percent of my time tomorrow, so then I can figure out how to make a million dollars tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

And so that just in that moment, I was like, the second we went through that first year and it replaced my nine to five income 100%, I was like, I am now unemployable. Like you just you're not gonna catch me in an office ever again.

SPEAKER_04 17:05

Yeah, well, it's funny. We replaced your income. I was still doing insurance at that time. Yeah, still running leads, still talking to people, um, still very involved in that. But because your time was now freed, it was now geared towards which we'll go into more in just a minute, but it was geared towards finding more opportunity and more properties. Whereas guest communication, cleaner communication, maintenance, all the things started stacking on me. And I was like, oh, one property, it's not a big deal, right? It's not a big deal until it's Christmas Eve at midnight and the pipes freeze, or you know, the cops are at your house because your cleaner said something or popped off, you know. So it's not a big deal when it is one property, but it as I learned it will soon become a very big deal.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Yeah, because it's like if you think that if we look at what we used to always say is one property would have one nightmare scenario a month.

SPEAKER_04 17:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Like you could guarantee that it was gonna bulldoze one of your weeks.

SPEAKER_04 18:02

Yeah, a nightmare scenario isn't like it burned down, but it is like a pipe is frozen. Yeah, the toilet is frozen.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Like it's something that like it involves you getting involved. Yeah, it's like okay, three of the hours every single week are going towards like you're just keeping the wheels turning. It's not Wednesday at noon.

SPEAKER_04 18:18

It's not Wednesday at noon, it's Friday at five, it's Saturday morning.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

It's like the most inconvenient time in the world that you're like now on the clock for a full day.

SPEAKER_04 18:27

Nothing bad happens to the houses during a weekday.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

No, no, it's only the weekends and the evenings.

SPEAKER_04 18:32

Sunday when you're at church. It just yep.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Yeah, bad things happen in BBs during prime bar hours. Like that's what it stems down to. Yep, yep. But um, but like the second year that that property ran, we made $120,000.

SPEAKER_04 18:47

Right, yeah, things start cranking.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

And so again, like our expenses on that thing were like 40 grand. So we were bringing all of a sudden I went from having 45 grand in the first year to having like nearly 80 grand profit in my pocket from that one property, and I was like, bye.

SPEAKER_03 19:01

Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

Bye. Yeah, like this is crazy. Um, and so it just created this like intense optimism around Airbnb. We weren't looking at anything else, we were just like ready to go all in on Airbnb's, like, this was our ticket to freedom. Um and again, like I've already mentioned, that narrative has shifted over the last five years because we had that huge win. That win was incredible, but that was the beginning of us also getting our teeth kicked in for the next No, the next one was good with your brother.

SPEAKER_04 19:34

Yeah, that's so that one is still the only one going. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Yeah. So at that point in time, um, if you guys have listened to this podcast when Emily and I were hosting it previous to this, I had my brother come on as a guest, and my brother's a financial advisor. He is eats, sleeps, breathes money. Yeah. Eats, sleeps, breathes. You want to know how money works? That guy knows how it works. I mean, any investment you could possibly think of under the sun, how you like he is a wizard when it comes to money. And so he was looking at this investment, and he full-time handles investments for people everywhere, and he was like, This is the best return I've seen on anything. Like, this is outrageous. I was like, I know it's magic. Like, ta-da. Um and so he was like, Let's buy one. And so I remember like, you know, we toured a few houses, the one with the crappiest Zillow.

SPEAKER_04 20:27

I just told the story today to the cleaner, the new cleaner of that property. I was just talking about how it was the last property we toured that day. Yes, it was the furthest from home. All of them were terrible. This one wasn't exciting. Yeah. And we I was like, let's just skip it.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

Yeah, we were like done because we had toured three other houses that day, and all of them we were like, no.

SPEAKER_04 20:45

Yeah, the agent wasn't impressive. Like it was just a kind of a weird day altogether.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 20:52

But we went.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

So we go and we walk in, and again, like this Zillow listing, the only reason that we had decided to tour it was because it was in the area we were already in. And the Zillow listing photos were like from an iPhone. It's like your contractor photos where they're like there's dust all over the camera. You've got grandma who's got one finger in front of the camera, like you can barely see it. The lights are off. They have no, there's like two photos, and they're of the corner of the bedrooms. Like, you're just looking at this thing and you're like, oh god, what am I about to walk into? Like, there's just no. We walk into this property, this property number two. And when we walk in, you walk into the entrance, you walk straight back into the main room of the house, and it is just this like partial A-frame wall of windows. Yeah. Full wall of windows facing the lake. Not a single photo of that on the Zilla listing. That's right. And I was like, she's ours.

SPEAKER_04 21:44

Thank God.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

This one's it. Oh, yeah. I need to see nothing else. This one's it. And so we purchased that one for $319. Yep. Caleb took out the loan because we had just taken out a loan on the previous house.

SPEAKER_04 21:56

We put Yeah, our DTI was maxed. Our DTI was maxed.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Next. Um, I think in total we ended up putting a hundred and forty grand between down payment, closing costs, and renovations into this B and B. And that thing, year one, we didn't stand it a single time because it was an investment with my brother and he was like, let her run.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

No lifestyle play needed here. Yep. Let's just let her run. And she made over six figures the first year.

SPEAKER_04 22:21

Significantly smaller than the first one and held less. I think we held 12 at one time in Bightley. And then I think we went down to 10. Yep. But Hale's always held eight.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Yeah. We had no idea if it was going to make significantly less.

SPEAKER_04 22:33

And again, on the west side of Michigan.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

We knew Air DNA at that point in time. We looked it up. The air DNA projections were even lower than Bightley.

SPEAKER_04 22:40

Yep. I think it was 57,000.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Yeah. Yeah, as opposed to 65. And we were like, okay, well, we're gonna be in the green just barely if we make 57. But again, every property on this lake looks like grandma and grandpa's house.

SPEAKER_04 22:52

Yeah, they looked really bad.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Really bad. Um, nicer houses per se, but like design amenity-wise, photograph-wise, trash. And so we outfitted it nicely, did it scrappy again, didn't outsource anything. Crushed it. Crushed it.

SPEAKER_04 23:07

And as you can imagine, the confidence that comes when you're two for two. Oh. I mean, despite, you know, you heard on the last episode, March of 2020, we just lost everything, and it was just a constant struggle to keep our head above water, you know, and that's where we really cut our teeth and we learned. So that comes with some confidence.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:25

And then when you apply those learnings and you're two for two on those, you're just like, oh, gone. We truly cannot be touched.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

When are we gonna learn?

SPEAKER_04 23:33

Yeah, I know, I know. And then that's when number three came.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Number three, number three was Orange Cadillac. Yeah. And you guys saw last year me create a podcast where I was like nearly in tears the whole podcast because we were just we were in it. Um and that project.

SPEAKER_04 23:52

And truthfully, I mean, we don't have to go too far into detail on that one, but truthfully, that one wasn't like like, yes, we went through regulation change, but it it wasn't like it was done wrong in the beginning, like our other one has been or was. With the regulations. Yeah, with regulations. So it's like, yes, the experience went bad, and again, we can go into a little bit of that, but it was just like one of them weird situations that we really shouldn't have been in.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

That lesson was a lesson that we needed to learn. Yeah, that was a perfectly crafted lesson. It was uh a bit long in my opinion, but so I'm gonna try and give a like condensed version of it. Because I've had so many people on social media be like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize you made it out of the Orange Cadillac Situation Alive. And it's like, it's because I'm not ready to talk about it.

SPEAKER_04 24:41

Yeah, we just disappeared once we got it good. We're like, see ya. Uh yeah. We're not the trauma, you know, and too much trauma is just it takes a while.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

I took back. I cannot wait to interview some of the other partners on that project on this podcast because uh like the T.

SPEAKER_04 24:57

Well the T.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

The the reason that project went so south, and like let's fast forward to we got four properties up and running in three years, right? Like we did the first two Bightly, we did Hale, and then we did Orange Cadillac, and then we did Big Rapids, all back to back, all from 2021 to 2023.

SPEAKER_04 25:17

Yeah, two years, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

And in the last two years, so 2024 and 2025, January, the first week of January in 2024, we found out that Biteley, Big Rapids, and Cadillac were all gonna go through mass massive regulation changes. Like I remember 2023 was a year that I had made more money than I had ever made in my entire life. It felt like I was walking out of the best movie I had ever seen in my entire life. I was on such an emotional high. You couldn't touch me, everything was going so smoothly. And I remember in December just like reflecting back on 2023 and being like, wow, like that year, like incredible. To the moon. And then four days later, I'm like, it's all gone. Burn it. Burn it. Like, you know, and I had no idea how long the regulation change process was going to be. I didn't know the outcome of the regulation changes on whether we were going to get to keep the properties or not. I just remember sitting on our sofa in our Muskegon apartment, and I remember having my head on your lap, and I just remember being like, everything that we just spent the last two years building and putting 100% of our money towards is now at risk for just being ripped away from us, and there's really nothing we can do about it.

SPEAKER_04 26:34

Right. Yeah, yeah. And honestly, I think the only thing I wish we could have had some foresight on was the length of time that all of this took. Yeah. And I wish we could have maybe spread out the emotion a little bit more instead of just hi, hi, hi all the time. Just nasty anxiety. Yeah, just like, hey, uh decision ain't gonna be made for another year. Yeah. So there's gonna be some trials in that year, but like you don't have to just be up here all the time.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

Right. Because I think one thing that you and I do really well of is saying that's a tomorrow problem.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Like we can see when things are gonna go down and like when things are starting to go a little south, or like there's a problem that we have to handle, a hard conversation, an uncomfortable situation, whatever it is. And like, if it's like let's say that it's happening this Friday, right? You and I are very good about being like, it's Monday, that's a Friday issue. Yeah, only about that then compartmentalizing that, kind of putting a pretty little bow on it and forgetting about it until Friday. When it comes to regulation changes and anything that's happening when lawyers are involved, yeah, you just don't know when it's gonna hit.

SPEAKER_04 27:38

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

And so it keeps that box open.

SPEAKER_04 27:41

Oh, yeah. Lawyers are the worst.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

You don't they're the best of the worst.

SPEAKER_04 27:46

Well, yeah. I mean, uh, you gotta have them, but it's one of them things where like their communication styles really good in the courtroom. That's it. You don't hear from them, you don't get any communication from them, you don't get any update, and then all of a sudden, boom, it hits you, and it's like six pages worth of homework, and you're like, And it has to be handled tomorrow. Tomorrow. And I'm like, dude, we could have like thrown this my way two weeks ago to give me a little time to come up with some answers here, and no, it's right now.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so January 2024, we have you know four properties up and running. All of them are doing just crushing it from a numbers perspective, like cranking, cranking money.

SPEAKER_04 28:25

Um, and fortunately, for the most part, we got to keep running those properties during those regulation changes. However, one point we didn't make is remember all the things that Ethan got put on me uh or put on him for the client communication, the uh guest communication, all those things. That's now multiplied by four. I think we outsourced Orange Cadillac fairly quickly. I think we got out of that one pretty quickly. That's part of the drama of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But but so I had 3x plus insurance, yeah. Plus, we're still living in these properties while renovating. So we're living in a construction zone. So we've got saws while I'm on the phone, while I'm yelling at a cleaner, while I'm training this person. And when we're on Big Rapids, and I know I'm fast forwarding a little bit, but we were on Big Rapids, I just I finally met my match, and I was like, oh, this is yeah, I'm this is too much. This I've gone too far.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Yeah. Yeah. When we got to the Big Rapids property, um, that was at the point in time where I really started developing a solid relationship with Fede. Yeah. And I remember we had our third wheel who um comes and lives with us every single summer. And we always have ourselves a morning, right? Like the morning is me time, the morning is coffee, it's working out, it's like it's anything. Yeah, it's anything other than work um in the mornings. And so I had been recommended by one of the investors on Orange Cadillac to read a book called Buyback Your Time by Dan Martell. And I was in the middle of that book, and it like gives you this um chart that essentially is to help you understand what you need to outsource. And it like puts it in, you know, what takes up the most amount of your time brings you the most amount of joy, what takes the least amount of time, least amount of joy, kind of like making you understand where you receive joy and are most valuable. And those are the things that you need to hang on to, and the things that don't bring you joy and are least valuable, you need to outsource. And it just was at that point in time where I remember reading that chapter, texting Fede, because I knew you were done managing, I knew I was done managing, you and I were not having fun trying to manage together.

SPEAKER_04 30:34

We're getting along very well.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

It was bulldozing our day at least once a week at that point, because when it was one property, it was once a month. Well, now there's four properties, so it's a once-a-week situation, whole thing. So we I call Fede and I'm like, these are yours.

SPEAKER_04 30:48

Here you go.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Start managing them like your problems now. And it was just I like one of the things that I think was such a point of value at that point in our lives was that because I was coming from the interior design world and just selfishly wanted the prettiest BB on the lake. When that time came that we had to outsource management, we could afford to. It wasn't like past time, past time to outsource it at that point in time. We were like still pinching pennies, but like we could afford, like, it didn't matter what the management percentage was because we were making between 40 and 80,000 of profit a year on each one of these B and Bs. Right. And our time was now completely gone again.

SPEAKER_04 31:33

110.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

110% gone. And so we were like, okay, this is still gonna be plenty profitable.

SPEAKER_04 31:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

I don't care if one of these four B and B's entire profit goes to management. If it means that I get my weeks to not be bulldozed every single week, paid. Um, and so he took him over immediately. Thank God. Um he's excellent.

SPEAKER_04 31:54

Still has the ones that are running.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

Yeah. But those those next two years, 2024 and 2025, were brutal from a regulation standpoint. Yeah. Um and also like now looking back, because we're wrapping up the final situation of that regulation change now. So you can see like it's taken two and a half years, two years and a few months to like even get to a point where we have a direction, we know which way we're going, we know that we have to sell what like all direction, court order, same thing. Yeah. Um but it's two years of drama. It's just two years of drama. Um, but we still got to run in those two years, and so yeah, that was a lifesaver.

SPEAKER_04 32:41

Yeah, except for that's how I feel. Yeah, other than Orange Catholic, but that's how I feel like we still came out on top on the regulation game was that we were able to continue running. Yeah. And honestly, the first one we were never told to shut down.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Um this was the tricky part about the first one, which still to this day, like if anyone from Lily Township is listening to this, like this is my giant middle finger up to you. The we went to these regulation meetings for our first property that had the 3% interest rate on it that was making us like 80k a year. We had that thing so buttoned up. It was so the property was in pristine condition 100% of the time. We had it, it was a fine-tuned machine. Our neighbors never had any sort of like big issues with us. We had good relationships with them. And the township itself was like, we don't want B and Bs. And there were five council members on the city council that were determining whether we could continue running short-term rentals or not. Four out of the five city council members lived on the lake that our property was on.

SPEAKER_02 33:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

And when they decided to allow BNBs, like we go through this year of like attending city meetings every felt like every other day.

SPEAKER_04 33:54

And mind you, this is at least one hour one way.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

At least one hour one way. Several times plus the two hour meeting.

SPEAKER_04 34:01

Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

Plus the hour home.

SPEAKER_04 34:02

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

And so we're like going to all these meetings, we're advocating for it, we're speaking, we're organizing, we're in email threads, we're doing the whole nine yards. And the city decides, hey, we're gonna make Airbnbs legal, we're just gonna put a cap on them. Right. And we were like, yeehaw.

SPEAKER_04 34:17

Right, because there was how many on the water. Three had already sold by three sold right away. Yeah, so it was like, oh, no-brainer, because they're gonna allow four permits.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

They were gonna allow four permits and there were two B and Bs left on the lake.

SPEAKER_04 34:29

Easy. Yeah, because I was like trying to contact them and say, hey, can I buy another house?

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Like, give me all four permits.

SPEAKER_04 34:36

I mean, honestly, like if we're like it's so buttoned up, we have the nicest house on the lake. It's all like the cause no issues. The yard is in pristine condition, the trees are trimmed, yes, the guests are great. Minus sometimes the trash got a little overfilled. Shoot me a text, it'll be handled in an hour. Yes, you know, that's all you have to do.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

So yes, like we thought we were like I just remember seeing.

SPEAKER_04 34:55

We're so in, like we were so good with all the board, like we'd go to their house. I mean, we would chit-chat for hours just at their house. Like, we were in.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

The amount of lobbying we did.

SPEAKER_04 35:05

Oh my gosh, we're professionals at this point.

SPEAKER_01 35:07

Uh yeah. One day when we are in politics. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:10

Just know we're coming forward.

SPEAKER_01 35:11

Just know that we've started our lobbying practice in 2020.

SPEAKER_04 35:15

Oh, we're gonna be so good. It's gonna be the greatest thing.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

It's gonna be the greatest thing. And so we uh so we think we're in the clear. We get a phone call one day.

SPEAKER_04 35:26

Saturday.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Saturday. And we're like so convinced, right? We're so certain that we're in the clear at this point that we decide to install a new septic system at our property and pay 25 grand just to get ahead of it, just to be like, you know what, we see you, you see us. Like, we're gonna make it.

SPEAKER_04 35:41

You see the effort we're putting in.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

You see the money we're throwing in the city.

SPEAKER_04 35:44

That tree might be on your on the county line, but we're gonna go ahead and take it down and we'll pay for it. Don't you worry about that.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

So confident.

SPEAKER_04 35:51

Mistake.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

Yeah. No, we get a call one day, and the guy's like, hey, uh, just so you know, the four permits that are going to be handed out on your lake have already been handed out.

SPEAKER_03 36:01

Yeah, we've declined your application.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

We've declined your application. And I'm like, what do you mean? There's not even four BNBs on the lake.

SPEAKER_04 36:09

I've been so respectful to that guy that called me until that morning. Oh, yeah, you uh you let him have it. I just thought we were like we went to like we went to high school together.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

We were broke.

SPEAKER_04 36:22

I knew I know your family, like I know everything about you, you know everything about me, you know the situation I'm in. We're young kids, you know, we're just trying to make it work, you know, we're not a problem. Yeah, we're good. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

Nope. Yep. Gosh. Yeah. For our listeners, can you guess where the four permits went to? The four city council members that live on the lake that will never open a B ever.

SPEAKER_02 36:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Like it just is one of those things that I just was like, oh, this is why we get into politics.

SPEAKER_04 36:52

Yeah. Yeah. The moment that happened, I was like, oh, we're we're playing the wrong game. And that's okay. Like we don't have the power. I got mad for a minute, but I was like, no, no, I I see. I see now. Like I'd like to play this game. I got it. I understand now.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

I there is no one that's playing that game harder than Fede in New York right now.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

Yeah, well.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

Um, but yeah, it just, I mean, corruption goes like you think that it's you want small local governments to be in charge? No. You want big governments to be in charge? No. Like it just, it's it doesn't, if you have power, you're you're doing you're marching to the beat of your own drum. Right. Um, which whatever. Like that's I guess that's part of the game that we all play. Um, but yeah, we got that news and I was like, they always knew. Yeah. They always knew. And it just was so frustrating to me to be like, you just put me through two years of emotional turmoil, and I just spent 25 grand on a septic tank when you knew the entire time that we were never going to get a permit. Yeah. And just like, just say that. But you can't.

SPEAKER_03 37:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

But you can't. But nonetheless, even in that case scenario of that property and having to let it go, it's like we had made we originally, I think we put 90 grand total into that property between down payment, closing costs, the whole nine yards. Right. The first year we made 40, second year we made 80, third year, I think we made 80 as well. We had made more than our initial investment back. And then when we sold it, we sold it for like we bought it for 300, we sold it for 425.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

It was one of those that like it was so frustrating to lose that property because we were emotionally attached to it. And it was our baby, it was our first one, the interest rate was low. Like, there was so much about it that was so great. But at the end of the day, it's like we didn't lose any money. We we still made great money on that.

SPEAKER_04 38:39

Yeah, and learned a lot of lessons. A lot of lessons. We learned how to hire, we learned how to fire. Yeah, had to fire a few.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Had to fire a few.

SPEAKER_04 38:45

Those were always interesting conversations.

SPEAKER_01 38:47

Yeah, firing cleaners is like my least favorite thing in the entire world.

SPEAKER_04 38:50

I'm getting pretty good at it.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

Yeah, Ethan has to handle the cleaner communication because the second they took me off, I'm like, fire them.

SPEAKER_04 38:57

Yeah, yeah. Look, if we worked in like a nice vacation market where there is an abundance of cleaners, sure, I'm with you. Fire them right now. Um, however, the markets that we choose to invest in don't have an abundance of anything. Um, it's certainly not logic. Or people. Oh, or people, or teeth. And so we have to just take what we got and you just have to weigh the good and the bad. Like, there's just so many situations where I'm just like, wow, that is super silly or so stupid, or whatever. But it's just like, you know, I can tell that was honest. I can tell like you they didn't obviously mean to, they're just maybe not they weren't thinking or didn't have whatever. I'll be nice. I'm trying to be nice here. Um, so I just am like I have to decide there's a lesson in that, right? And I think that there is an opportunity when you have a lesson like that to create loyalty, and so I let them know that I'm disappointed. I let them know that I think they could have done better, or this is how I would have thought about that, and this is maybe how they should start thinking about it moving forward. And you know, because they already think they already know you're mad.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_04 40:04

They already know you're gonna come in, and chances are they're gonna get fired. So they're already thinking that. Yeah, they're already nasty, anxious. Right. I'm in here coming in and saying, like, look, this is how I would have done it. This is maybe how you can start looking at it. I am disappointed. However, I think this is a learning opportunity, and I just want to make sure that this doesn't happen again. Yeah, and I just think that creates some sort of loyalty.

SPEAKER_01 40:24

It does the cleaners and you are the biggest thieves.

SPEAKER_04 40:28

Oh yeah. I yeah, I know everything.

SPEAKER_01 40:31

I'm so glad you handled that because I just I don't have the thing.

SPEAKER_04 40:35

It's just a challenge, it's one of those things where you're like, okay, because the first thing you want to do, you just want to blow up and get mad because you're like, What?

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Like this is so simple.

SPEAKER_04 40:44

Yeah, so that's the first thing. So like, and I as a younger man had like explosive anger issues, and so it's always like a it's a nice test test, if you will, of going like, okay, like I just I hear it, then I just like set the phone down for a second, and I'm like wow, okay, and then I'll pick it up and I'm like, all right, let's let's handle it. And I just think it's a good test for me, and then then like I said, it just creates loyalty and I I really enjoy it now. Like I was so anti-employee for so long. I think I shared that on my first on the first episode. But as we get further into it, I'm just like, no, no, no, it's not I'm not anti-employee. I just I wasn't a leader myself. I wasn't I didn't know how to train or how to lead or how to develop these people. And it's like, no, once you once you start learning those things, it's like no, it it gets exciting and fun. And again, every lesson is like an opportunity or every ding is like an opportunity, and of course you you still have to know when to like cut it off. Yeah, get rid of them. But but again, it's I don't know. I've I've really enjoyed it. That's been the best part is outsourcing guest communication because that's that I'm not good at. I don't like the all the questions. Um all the whys. Um but the but the the maintenance and the cleaning communication I've had a lot of fun with. I've gotten to really sharpen my knife on those people.

SPEAKER_01 42:11

Yeah, you have. And like when you get a good cleaner, they're worth their weight in gold.

SPEAKER_04 42:16

Yeah, you have to like encourage them and like give them permission. Like if they understand that they are the eyes, like, hey, I don't visit this property. I don't go. Um, and so you're the eyes, and you are never going you're gonna upset me if I find out you knew about something and then tell me that if you would just tell me, like I know it's not your fault. I don't care if the lamp is broken from the guest or if you accidentally did what I don't care how it happened. I want to know that it happened so I can replace. I'm more concerned with the guest experience being perfect than spending twenty dollars or whatever on fixing a lamp, or for example.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

Yeah, I think the reason I have such a problem with it, and we were talking about this yesterday with my parents, is that everybody feels their own pain the most.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

And so when I think about the problems that we're solving, when I'm like on the phone with lawyers, and then I'm on the phone with investors, and then I'm on the phone with like real estate agents, and I'm like handling all of these, like what feels like to me the biggest problems in the world, because they're my problems. And then the cleaner is feeling that same thing towards their problems, but they it's because it's their problem and they don't realize that the problem that they're gonna have to bring to me, that they're equally as anxious about bringing to me as I am bringing to a lawyer or an investor, the problem that they're bringing to me, I'm just like, this is the lowest thing on my totem pole of things that I'm anxious about. Just like, let's not do the emotional dance of you like being anxious to tell me or like you like it it's your problem to me is not problem. Yeah. It is just like part of the thing, and just like don't put any emotion behind it. But that's like asking me not to put emotion behind conversations with lawyers and investors, and that's like just not the that's not human nature.

SPEAKER_04 43:59

Right. Yeah. And the anxiety thing is a is a tricky thing with cleaners because I mean, even after two years, we had the same cleaner in hail for three and a half years before she had a medical issue. And she would call me and be like, I'm so sorry to bug you. I'm so sorry to have to bother you. And I was like, Sarah, like I've never once, hopefully I've never once made you feel like an inconvenience. Yeah. Or made you ever feel like you were bothering me. I I actually get upset when you don't call me. Yeah. Like I want to bug. Even if there's nothing wrong, like call me and just say, Hey dude, everything's going really well. Yeah. Fantastic. I don't need that very often, but like once a month, like let me know how you're doing. Hey, is there anything I need to do for you?

SPEAKER_00 44:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:39

Like one thing I always ask a cleaner before I get off the phone with them, and I try to ask all employees now is there anything I can do to make your job easier?

SPEAKER_00 44:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:47

You know? Yeah. Most of the time they say no, but like sometimes they'll say, Hey, I actually need a uh a uh spot treatment cleaner thing.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

Yeah, a new vacuum, a new mop, a new hose.

SPEAKER_04 44:57

Dude, this vacuum you have sucks. Oh, great. I don't know. I've never used it. I didn't even know we had a vacuum. What are you vacuuming? They're wood floors. Yeah. But okay, let's get you a vacuum.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

Yeah, absolutely. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 45:09

I love it. I just love it. It's just a small opportunity to just make somebody's job easier and life better.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree. And it's like, you know, going back to the regulation issues that we had all throughout the last two years, it's like the Orange Cadillac one, in my opinion, was the most stressful because it involved other people.

SPEAKER_04 45:29

Partners, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:30

Like the there were two portions about that one that were so annoying to me. One, it was like the city did the absolute worst job in the world of communicating the regulation because I think part of our problem is that they were starting to have conversations around regulation as we were buying the property. Right. And so they hadn't taken down their existing regulation online that said we were legal. I just looked online, saw that it said we were legal, bought the house.

SPEAKER_04 45:59

Which in 2022 you could. You could. That's what you could.

SPEAKER_01 46:02

Like at least they had regulation. The other places had nothing. Right. And then it was like very shortly after we launched, we were getting letters from the city.

SPEAKER_04 46:11

My problem with that is the accountability that they did not take. They didn't, they never once said, You're right. That was on the website. We understand why you made that decision. We're sorry that we did that. It was never a conversation. It was deny, deny, deny. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 46:26

Gaslight, gaslight, gaslight. Brush it under the rug, brush it under the fault, your fault, your fault.

SPEAKER_04 46:33

Yeah, and not once did any time in that two years, somebody just say, you know what? You're right. She is right.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

I just had such high hopes in like local politics because I've always like been such like an anti-big politic person. And I'm like, no, give the power back to the states and give it back to the townships. And that what whatever. Yeah. No, it exists on every level in every form.

SPEAKER_04 46:53

Small town, big city. Oh, it's there.

SPEAKER_01 46:56

So Cadillac shuts us down. Yeah. Completely shuts us down, right? And we have investor money on it. And again, like that property we had projected, like the air DNA projections for that property when we bought it were like 120K a year, it was like the best performing property in the area. We buy this big house, year one, we get to run it the entire year, and it makes 190K in revenue. And I was like, we've done it again. Like this, we've got we've got the art of making a property profitable down.

SPEAKER_04 47:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:26

Like you want me to make your property make money via design and photography and amenities? Got it. Gotcha. Got it in the bag. We're batting 100. That's right. There's never a case scenario where that hasn't been the case, right? But they make us shut this property down, and we went right back to our lobbying. Yep. Like hard lobbying. Very hard. Um, because the city was basically arguing with us. We were saying, the city was saying, hey, we're shutting all down like B and B's across the board, unless you're in this specific zoning, we're shutting it all down. Right. And we were, from what I have been told from the city at the beginning, our property was half and half, like zoned one half one thing, and the other half was another thing.

SPEAKER_04 48:06

How big that bad boy was.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

Because the previous owner had essentially bought the commercial space next to this residential home, knocked it down, and built like this insane backyard that was like over a garage. It had a what is it, a truck? Um a ramp. Yeah, uh semi-truck ramp on the side of it. Like it was still a commercial space, but like converted into a residential space. And that the previous owner was sitting like the head of the DDA or something. He was very involved in the city, and so they never made him like officially rezone it because again, you're a person in power, nobody cares what you're doing. That's right. Like you're gonna you're gonna get to do what you want to do. Um and they just were so anti us rezoning it because they were mad about B and Bs, they were mad like understandably.

SPEAKER_04 48:58

I mean, some of the stories that we had heard that were happening in the Cadillac area. I mean, I get I was like, oh, okay, yeah, I'd be pretty anti that as well. Got it. Yeah, got it. I mean, we're running a tight ship at this point. I mean, we know exactly what it is we're doing. We know our neighbors, yes, neighbors know us.

SPEAKER_01 49:14

Yes. We had called the police to ask for a report to see if we had ever had any noise complaints, ever had any parties, nothing.

SPEAKER_04 49:20

And this is what you would arguably call a party house. Like it holds 16 to 20, huge pool, huge backyard. This is where, if there were a party to be thrown, it was gonna happen. It was happening there. Not a single report.

SPEAKER_01 49:32

Yeah. Yeah. And so we like went through the whole process of lobbying everyone in the city. We got signatures, we got people to show up to the meetings, we got just we did everything under the sun to like change the perception of ourselves to the city council. Um, but in that process, we were again, we had investors on that deal, and we had another person who was on the active side of the deal. So we had three passive investors who were like financial investors, and then me and another person, or me and Ethan, and another couple were the active members on that deal. And internally, while we had to shut down, it was right after summer that we had to shut down on our second year. We had like second, like we had 70 or 80 grand in the bank account from that summer to like carry us through while we were being shut down, lobbying the city, seeing if we could like you know, get them to make us the exception to the rule, rezone the property, let us be legal, let us be the only legal B and B in Cadillac. Like everything was kind of against us. Um, but again, like you and I have this like eternal optimism where I'm like, if anyone can do it, it's us.

SPEAKER_04 50:36

It's all we had.

SPEAKER_01 50:37

That's all we had, and I am so stubborn.

SPEAKER_04 50:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:39

Like if I want something, I'm going to get it.

SPEAKER_04 50:42

Yeah. Between that stubbornness and my experience in like door knocking and shaking hands and just being out there in front of the community. I mean, that combo was deadly.

SPEAKER_01 50:51

Yeah. We were like, okay, we're gonna handle this like we're running as mayor so the town. And we did. Um, but the internal side of that partnership is what just absolutely crumbled. Yeah. Like just I I completely get it. Um, the investors were worried about how they were gonna get their money out of this deal.

SPEAKER_04 51:12

If we didn't get the regulation to go in our favor, yeah, if we couldn't rezone and get that back to a legal BNB, I mean the loss we would have taken on the house because it had plummeted in value. Yeah. I mean, yeah, all their concerns were valid.

SPEAKER_01 51:27

All their concerns were valid. Um, and so fortunately, all things said and done. I posted a reel about this the other day on social media. The lawyer that we use most frequently, her name's Katie. She's in West Michigan here. She is incredible. Um, we had hired her to like kind of sort through everything with the city, respond to the city letters, the whole nine yards. And she was like, Look, I need to step away from this project. You need to hire someone local.

SPEAKER_02 51:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:52

Like you need to figure out who is in the good old boys club up there because you are dealing with a good old boys club when you're trying to get this thing rezoned. And if you don't have someone on the inside, like you're you're screwed.

SPEAKER_02 52:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:03

And we've we learned that with Bightley, right? It's like we weren't in the good old boys club, and that was the reason why we didn't get the regulation to go in our favor. Right. And so we had hired this lawyer that several of the people on the DDA, which is the downtown district district association, which is made up of all the business owners, they had pointed us in the direction of a lawyer who had like is the best lawyer in the city that he his office is in the same office as all the city council members. He's obviously rubbing shoulders with them every single day, and I was like, That's my guy.

SPEAKER_02 52:32

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 52:33

Mike, you are my guy. That's right. Um, and so when he came on the project, uh, I mean, he got to see the internal chaos.

SPEAKER_04 52:44

Yeah. He got the first half. He got to dip after the second half started.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

He got to see the internal chaos that was going on uh inside of our group, um, which was not pretty. Like, I think that was overall the lesson that life was teaching us there is that like and this is me digressing a little bit, but I think that when you're taking risk and you're starting businesses and you're really trying to find your footing as an entrepreneur and an investor, it's really hard to have the confidence to do it on your own without anybody else. Yeah. And so you start networking and you develop these relationships, and it's super exciting. And you're like, wow, these people have portions of this figured out that I don't have figured out, and I have portions that they don't have figured out, and we need each other. And if we like combine forces, it's gonna be this great thing and it's gonna create this like well-rounded team. And it just didn't.

SPEAKER_03 53:36

Nope.

SPEAKER_01 53:37

Like it just didn't. And that entire project, what it taught me is like I should have done this solo the entire time without another member on that team who is like supposed to be active, and I should have just had the confidence that whatever I didn't know I could learn as opposed to relying on somebody else to fill those gaps. Yes, one thousand percent.

SPEAKER_04 53:58

Yeah. Um that's the lesson learned right there. That was yeah, that was anybody listening to this that's out on their about to be on their new journey, have the confidence. Like have the confidence.

SPEAKER_01 54:10

You already have the audacity to go do the thing.

SPEAKER_04 54:12

Yeah, you'll learn it, and it's and uh another thing is if you mess something up, it's not that big a deal. Like we're we messed up our 2024 taxes and we're it's 26, and now we're about to go back and do it, right? Like it's not a big deal. It's not a big deal. Like nothing you're gonna do is gonna land you in any sort of like big trouble.

SPEAKER_01 54:30

It's not a big deal if you don't make it a big deal. It becomes a big deal if you're stuck with people who make it a big deal.

SPEAKER_04 54:36

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:37

And I think that that is a lesson that I like a huge lesson in the entire Orange Cadillac situation is it's like it would have been so much less stressful if it was just us on that project. Oh, yeah. Because again, like bad things happen, like investments go sideways, like you're not promised anything, but it's like the way that you handle stress and respond to stress, and you either crumble or you pull up yourself by your bootstraps, right? Then is the outcome. Like it it drives the outcome of that result of that stressful situation. And so if you are surrounded by people who crumble, it just makes it so much worse than it needs to be. And so it was like, I just the entire time we were in that mess, I was like, I just wish I was in this mess by myself because whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen.

SPEAKER_02 55:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01 55:27

And so that's all this extra fighting that's happening about every scenario that could happen and how do we handle every scenario and like having to agree with so many people on how to handle every single scenario is just exhausting. It was traumatic. It was a lot. It was a lot. Yeah. Um close to an hour. Yeah, we've got yeah, we'll wrap it up. But but nonetheless, that situation, um, all things said and done by having that lawyer that was the local guy in the city. Two out of the five city council members, thank you, Jesus, quit the week before we were having a vote happen on whether or not we were going to get to connect. Two that were anti. Two that were anti quit.

SPEAKER_04 56:12

Yeah, because Cadillac were having their own turmoil. Yeah, Cadillac had their own issues. Yeah. So it was a lot going on all at one time.

SPEAKER_01 56:20

It was a lot going on, and so those two people quit. Our lawyer got to hand pick. I don't know if it was like hand pick, but he was like He knew he knew who they were, he got to have conversations with them about the situation privately before they came on. They came on with a certain perception of us that wasn't the same perception as the two that had quit. Right. Um, and so we were just getting this like fresh start, this moment to like create a new first impression as opposed to like coming in and trying to convince people who already had.

SPEAKER_04 56:51

So what did you not show up to the meeting?

SPEAKER_01 56:54

Yeah, yeah. So we showed up to the meeting. Right. Um other parties didn't, but right.

SPEAKER_03 57:00

First impression didn't show up. Yeah, cool.

SPEAKER_01 57:02

Um, nonetheless, um the vote went in our favor, three to two. We got the rezone, it was incredible. I cried. Um it was so emotional. I just remember being like, holy cow. Like the best case scenario is what we got um in that situation. And so nonetheless, the partnership side of it crumbled to the point where all of us were like, don't care if we get to continue running, we out. Yeah. Um, and so we ended up selling it. And so now it's a successful, profitable, short-term rental run by somebody else. And they're a pretty good deal. They're crushing it. Yeah, hope so. Um, I want to get in, I don't care if we go over an hour here, I want to get into the last one that we're dealing with right now to like catch people up to where we're at today.

SPEAKER_04 57:46

Yeah, I wanted to as well.

SPEAKER_01 57:47

I just wanted to I could talk for literal hours about Orange Guy. So let's talk about Big Rapids. Do you want to talk about the start of that story?

SPEAKER_04 57:58

Yeah, the start was like, well, it was more detailed than any of them that we had done in the past because um regulation had started and we started hearing a lot more about regulation. I don't think, yeah, we had already been told about Bightley. No, no, no, not yet. Not yet.

SPEAKER_01 58:13

But we just knew that it was like Yeah, like regulation was starting to chatter, like there was a lot about it.

SPEAKER_04 58:18

So I was like, okay, no, not a problem. So we found this Big Rapids property. We called the township, wrong township, call this other one, called them, spoke with Pete. He told me two years later down the road that I never called him, even though I have a recording of me calling him. Um spoke to the township supervisor.

SPEAKER_01 58:35

Tip number one if you are calling the city for regulation and they're not gonna send you an email, record your call.

SPEAKER_04 58:41

Yeah, record your call.

SPEAKER_01 58:42

I don't know if that's legal in Michigan.

SPEAKER_04 58:44

I was gonna say there's probably some legality behind all that, but um, you know, we called and he said that's fine, happy to have you. Welcome to the area, yeeha. Um, and so that was a green light for us. You know, we didn't know we had to go any further than that.

SPEAKER_01 58:57

And we had the title company check the deed restrictions.

SPEAKER_04 59:01

Yeah, I mean, yeah, the title company did what they normally did, which we didn't understand what they were doing, they were just doing what they normally do. Um, so everything looked good and and we got the green light. And so we bought the house in March of 24 and immediately went to work. 23. Immediately went to work. You know, the first thing we did was rip out the carpet, upset all the neighbors. That was brand new carpet they just put in there. And uh we don't typically have carpet in ours, so we took that out. But uh the funny story I like to say is it was man, it snow just melted. So April or May of 23. And uh there's this beach a couple doors down, and and public beach. Yeah, public beach appeared to be a public beach. Yeah, appeared and everything, you know, it looked nice, and it went right up to the water, and I was like, Oh boy, I'd love to go take a look. And so I walked on the beach and uh was looking at the water, and that was all I was doing. And uh guy came out and said, Can I help you? And my first words out of my mouth were, Well, if you're asking me that question, that means I'm doing something wrong.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:07

And he said, You're trespassing. I was like, Oh, I was unaware, I thought this was public. He's like, Nope, it's private, I own it. Oh, okay, cool. I said, Well, my name is Ethan. We just moved down the road, you know, we're on that house. He's like, Oh, okay, very cool, nice to meet you. Um, I said, All right, well, good to meet you. We'll see you later. And I went to the house, and I think it was you, your parents, or wherever there, and I go, That'll be our problem.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:30

There he is.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:31

There he is, and he was.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:33

There's uh always that guy on the lake.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:35

That's right. Uh, which is funny because he's like seven or eight houses down, like not even close. Uh, you would think that it would be like the immediate neighbor, maybe the guy behind the house.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:44

Who runs an entire campground with two tiny homes and a beach that he charges for all on his piece of property.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:51

Yeah. So uh long story short, he was nice enough to let us dump all of our money into that property, renovating it. Before he mentioned that uh he's uh, you know, I think we just listed it on Airbnb in like September of that year or something. So he had just mentioned to us, he's like, Oh, you can't do that. And I'm like, how come? And he was like, There is a deed restriction on this property that states you can't run any commercial activity, um only uh residential, and Airbnb is commercial. And I was like, Well, that doesn't make any sense because our title companies would search for something like that, and nothing popped up. And we had two title companies take a look at that, and he goes, Oh yeah, well, they didn't catch it because I actually have the original deed. I never filed it. Oh okay. Neat. Yeah, that's fun. How exciting. Um and so he was basically like, Shut it down, or I'll have to you know move forward um with shutting you down. And I was like, Oh well, I mean, there's you're gonna have to go for it because uh we're in it now. Yeah, you know, we just dumped a hundred grand into this bad boy, so we gotta we gotta make some money. Yeah, so we started out by with the county. Because that's how we found out was the county.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:06

No, yeah, but remember he's we started with township meetings. Uh-uh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:10

Uh uh. I went through the whole county thing before we did the township because the county had, and the county gave it back to the township. Uh the township got it. We had to go to the meetings, brought Katie. Yeah. Yeah. So the county writes uh letter uh that we do not have a permit to blah blah blah. So I get on the phone with them. I make the lady my best friend. Like, I'm if I'm good at anything, it's that. Yeah, you can make some of the other things. Immediately I was like, like, I guarantee to this day, if I walked in, she'd be like, What's up, dude? Yeah. Um had a good time with her, and we just figured it all out. She goes, Nope, you you have to get a uh approval from the board. Cool. So we signed up for that. We were in Texas. She's like, You can do it by Zoom, no worries. Didn't let us into the Zoom meeting.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:53

Didn't let us into the Zoom meeting. Yeah. So we could sat on it for three hours.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:56

Three hours the entire time. I wanted them to see Ethan is in the waiting room. Like and I had like seven different uh we had sent emails, tablets. Yeah, like I had it all. And she uh emails me the next morning is like uh sorry to you know, sorry to hear you couldn't get in, but you've been declined. And that was it on the email, and I was like, mm-hmm that doesn't sound right. No, um, that that wasn't the relationship we had. Something's wrong. So I called her and I don't know, maybe ratting around a little bit, but this has been a couple years now.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:24

So she goes, Well, let me get into my office and shut my we were in Fede's apartment in Fort Worth, and you call her, and she's like, Let me hold on, I need to shut my door.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:34

Yeah, let me get in my office and shut my door.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:35

And I was like, put that on speaker, I'm recording it.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:37

Yeah, and I was like, I knew that something was wrong based on that email. I was like, that was not uh-uh. Yeah, you don't just send me that email and then not expect me to call. Like, you know what I'm calling.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:48

And I was like, what's up? And she's like, everything we did in that meeting was illegal. Um, I've actually told all the board members that if they move forward with what they're trying to do, then I'm done. Um, and I I guarantee they're gonna have legal on them, and so they are all hands off now. And actually, we have not we're not gonna issue any more permits for Airbnb. We're actually like not handling that anymore. And anybody that has one currently, we're current completely refunding them and we're just pushing it down to the township level. I was like, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:20

It literally, like, that is because you made a friend out of her and she was ready to go to bat for you.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:24

She did, yeah, yeah. And she was like, I'm willing to quit my job for this. And I was like, Wow, well, yeah. I was like, That that's a much better answer than your email. She goes, I'm sorry, I'm way too mad right now. And I was like, Oh yeah, you think you're mad? Uh you got a hundred thousand dollars. Go get them, Tiger. Yeah. So they push it down to the township level, then we go to the township meetings and they go, Okay, we can start a moratorium. However, you guys are already in this. Like we we can't go back. Yeah, so you're already in it, so you're safe.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:48

Yeah, right. And they weren't, it was the same like shifty thing where we were like, we called and asked, and the guy was like standing there arms crossed. He's like, I'm like, we have the recording. He's like silent. And I'm like, seriously, dude, like I shouldn't have to record it. We should be able to just have a conversation that we had a conversation.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:05

And and again, it goes to the point of like, just for once say, you know what, you're right.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:10

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:10

You're right. That's my bad. Like, if it wasn't allowed and you said it was, own up to that. That's all we're asking. Like, I shouldn't have to record it, but now I do, and now I did. And so we get it, and we brought Katie the lawyer into this, and uh, and she said, you know, she stu stood up and said a few things, and so that was it, right? They township said we can't do anything about it, and so we just knew the only avenue the campground owner had was to sue us. Yep. Um, and it was funny because in between all this happening, I got my real estate license, and I really uh began to understand the severity of a deed restriction and just really how powerful it is. Um, I had no clue, I just thought it was an old cranky man trying to get kick us out, but it is a very powerful thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:55

Unfortunately, it was both.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:57

Yeah, yeah. So, and he did, he and Up uh filing suit and uh so that came. Of course, he had a hard time finding us because we were frolicking in Europe for like a month. So they're having a hard time serving us papers.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:10

Okay, they show up to my parents' house and they're like, no, not here.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:14

I'm not signing for that. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:15

So that was interesting.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:18

And I'll wrap this story up. But uh, you know, we so Katie finally advises us to receive the paperwork so we can get started. And um she immediately writes a letter to the title company and was like, Hey, you missed this, you are responsible for this, and you owe these us. And so they uh responded and said, You're absolutely correct, even though I still think it was like Jim's fault for like never filing the like the deed, you know. Like, I don't I don't understand how you can do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:45

But well, it's just it like goes to show how recent the internet and technology is because like the deed was uh 50 years old, yeah, 60 years old. And so it's like, okay, well, Jim would have had to like physically bring that thing into an office and be like, here you go, time to scan it in.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:01

It's like what if Jim was dead? Like, you know, like would we have ever gone through this? You never know.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:05

No, you uh the answer is no.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:08

Right. Like it so the title company uh they made it right, they hired us a lawyer, they paid us out a lump sum, and which was very helpful. So that entire situation, I mean, that again started in January of twenty-four, and we are still we are just about to sell that house. We just decided in like February one to list the property. Yeah, and that's how long these things take.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:32

Yeah, yeah, and the the irony in all of this is it's like it it didn't matter that like Jim's dad wrote the deed to the plots along the lake, and he wrote, Hey, I get to operate this commercial entity, this campground slash tiny home situation slash paid for beach, and nobody else can. And now that's just law for all of the properties around the lake. And to me, that's crazy that that is a thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:03

Like that's the developer's choice.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:05

Yeah, it just seems like there would be something like I don't know. It's yeah, it just is one of those things I'm like, that's wild that some man that like literally isn't alive anymore is the determining factor on what I do with my property now, especially in a case scenario where it's like very obvious that it's a whole monopoly on the lake for him. So yeah, the entire like we now in going through the whole lawsuit, um, there's like a huge, not a huge portion, but probably a 10 to 15% portion of the campground that this guy runs that is on the same plat of land that ours is. So like he's like a portion of what he's running and doing the exact same thing as us is also illegal, but then we would have to spend more money, more time, more energy going back and suing him for that same thing, and it's like just literally not worth the energy. So it's it's like one of those things where we're walking out of this situation being like, there is no case scenario where this is fair in any way, shape, or form. Again, our neighbors love us. We wrote letters to all of the homeowners on that lake. We got approval from over half where they were like, we do not care at all what you're doing, we welcome you. It's never been an issue. Like Jim seems yeah, Jim's Jim is definitely the stick in the mud here. We had several neighbors who are who was like, he's sued us over stupid things. He's trespassed on our property. We've asked him to stop. Like it's you go to Big Rapids and you say Jim, and everybody's like, ugh. Yeah, everybody knows he's got a reputation, and it's just one of those that we weren't gonna win no matter what, and I'm just like ready to not be in a relationship with him.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:34

Yeah, that's the deciding factor. Like, I'm like, I'm glad it's all over. I'm like, enough. We've spent enough time, energy, no money. Uh but a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of conversations, a lot of back and forth. And we had a lot of conversations with him.

unknown 1:09:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:50

Again, we would like we're working with him and say, Well, you know, whatever we would call him and be like, Jim, like, is this not something that we can handle between the two of us? Like, if you're concerned about X, Y, and whatever you're concerned about, we can implement rules, we can implement safety measures, we can communicate with you, we can Or we can break them. Or we can break like this can be a good relationship. It's like this can be the most ideal person. Well, we can be whatever you want us to be on this lake.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:14

We're the best people to be working with because we'll do whatever.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:16

We'll do whatever you want.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:18

Yep. As ridiculous as it gets.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:20

Yeah. And he just yeah, he was like, Well, my reputation is gonna be ruined in this lake if I don't uphold my end of the bargain by shutting you guys down. And I'm like, Okay, well, we've talked to the neighbors and they also all hate you.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:31

So Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:33

But he owns the boat ramp that uh everybody uses, or so he uh everybody has to like him twice a year when they put it in and take it out.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:41

Yeah, to wrap this portion of the story up, I want to include our last experience there in the courtroom. Um, because this is just another it's a situation where we're where like now that we've told the story to the people who are close to us, they're like, Thank you for not telling us this story until after it was done because it would just stress everybody out. And it's responses like that in stories like this where I realize how high our stress tolerance is.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:06

Because you and I are like, oh, like I'm sure it's gonna be fine. Like, we again, it's like this like inherent internal optimism that like everything's behavior.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:13

Like, worst case scenario, what's gonna happen? Whatever.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:16

We go to jail.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:17

Well, yeah, in that situation, sure. But like, okay, like play that one out. Who cares?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:21

Like, people go to jail, they're surprised.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:23

Alright, I'll be fine. Honestly, I'm like not worried about that. Like, I'm not the guy that they want in there. I made friends with the guards before we walked in. I'm good.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:31

I yeah, I'm so telling, yeah, tell the story. So we are dealing with this gym situation and we're waiting for the court to decide like, do we have to shut down a day? Do we have to shut down tomorrow? Do we get to keep running? Does gym have to cancel these?

SPEAKER_04 1:11:44

Do we have to cancel the reservations? What day is our last day?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:47

Yeah, and we're just like waiting to hear back from the court, right? So we and again, the lawyer that we have is not our preferred lawyer, it's the lawyer that the title company gave us. And this guy the entire time is like showing up to things late. He's not great at communication, but he's free, and we already are like hate gym, so we're like, okay, well Yeah, we wanted to see the process out.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:06

We knew it wasn't gonna cost us any money. We'd never gone through the process. We didn't we didn't anticipate it going all the way to the end. We thought they were like in maybe in mediation.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:14

And we told the lawyer too. I'm like, even if we win this thing, I'm probably gonna sell the house anyway.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:18

Yeah, yeah. Like it was something that I we wanted to see just through the experience, like all the way through.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:22

Yes, yes. I wanted to take advantage of it. Stand by it was exciting, it was exciting.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:27

Everything worked out just fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:29

But so we like, you know, get done with um, they get done presenting it to the court, and the judge makes a a ruling. And so it's like January 6th. This is you know, two months ago now. And our lawyer um contacts us and he's like, hey, I got a response from the judge, you know, it didn't go in your favor. They're siding with Jim per the deed restriction, which we were like, of course, like you know, we kind of expected that. Um, and he was like, but you know, we have a we'll follow a continuous. Yeah, we're gonna file this motion to reconsider. And so you've got another 21 days, but like obviously they're not gonna reconsider. We know that it's just so that you have an extra 21 days to like honor the reservations that you already have, don't accept any new ones, and don't accept any new ones. So, like by you know, February 1, you need to have this thing wrapped up. And so we were like, okay, so we keep running for the entire month of January. Um, proper insurance is gonna hear this and be like, wow, you guys got out of this live. At the beginning of January, we have a tree fall through our roof.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:31

Of course.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:32

And it's like while a guest is there, the guest is like unbothered by the entire situation. The guest has, like, I guess our stress tolerance as well. He's like, No problem, like it is what it is. It like fell on the roof and it like punctured a hole through the roof, and the hole was like right above the bathtub. So all this water's coming in because it's raining and snowing outside, the ice is melting, and like everything's draining into the tub, and we're like, okay, well, best case scenario. Yeah. This was my response to Ethan, is he was like, I have some bad news. And I was like, What? I was like, are is the restaurant we're going to tonight? Did they not have reservations available? And he was like, No, there was a tree fell through that fell through our roof. There was a tree that fell through our roof. And I was like, So we do have reservations tonight. And Ethan was like, Yes. And I was like, okay, well, we have proper insurance, no harm, no foul. Yeah. So we like have this tree fall on our roof. We have to file a climb with proper insurance. We have to like go through this whole process. We don't know if we're selling yet. We haven't heard back from the lawyer yet, whatever. And so proper insurance like pays us out for income replacement, which was incredible. Um, even though we were like having to wrap up from you know having this lawsuit and being told that okay, in February you're gonna have to shut down. We they pay us out for a new roof, and so we're like not certain we're gonna sell yet or what the situation is gonna be. But like, if we are gonna sell, that new roof is obviously super attractive to like um your mom's calling me. She called me. Oh, okay. Um, and so I was like, okay, this is amazing. Um, and then when our lawyer told us, hey, you can continue running throughout January, I was like, awesome, that's like another five grand in our pocket.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:02

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:03

And so we are sitting at the property, we get a call from our lawyer, and he's like, We need to talk right now. And we're like, okay. And so we get on this phone call with him, and he's like, I misread the court case. You did not have the option for reconsideration, you were supposed to shut down in December, and since December, you have been in contempt of the court order for the last month and a half, and now you have a court hearing.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:34

And I was like, now you're expecting a court next week.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:37

I was like, what? And so we like chat GPT, like what's worst case scenario?

SPEAKER_04 1:15:42

We didn't do that until like the night before.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:44

That's true. We were like, okay, that's a week from now's problem.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:46

Yeah, I didn't even look at that, didn't know what it meant, didn't ask him what it meant, didn't ask worst case scenario. We're just like, cool, see you next week.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:52

Yeah, I was like, all right, cool. We gotta schmooze our way out of something else. Yeah. Amazing. So the night before, we're, you know, scheduled to go to court the next morning. We have no idea what being in contempt of the court means. We have no idea what kind of trouble we're in.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:05

We just like Harvey Specter didn't teach us that.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:08

Yeah, yeah. Suits didn't inform me of what I was walking into. And so the night before, I'm like, okay, tomorrow we've got a problem that we've got to handle. Um, what's like give me worst case scenario? And I'm thinking worst case scenario is like a lump sum of money. Yeah, fine. Yeah, I'm like, okay, whatever fine that we have to pay, like we got to run for an extra month, so maybe they want that month's worth of like whatever we got a new roof out of it. Like, it just is what it is. We chat GPT, like, what's the worst case scenario that can happen if you're in contempt of court in a civil case scenario? And it was like up to six months in jail.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:43

I was like, Oh no, okay, I have so much to do in the next time. Do we both have to go? What happens to Luna? Who gets custody?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:56

So we tell no one, nobody, we tell no friends, no parents, like literally no one. I'm just like, we're just gonna go in there tomorrow, and if like we're going to jail tomorrow, we're gonna make that phone call in jail.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:06

Like, and the first thing I did when I walked in is I immediately made friends with those guards.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:10

And the guard was from Texas, of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:12

Oh, we so obviously had a lot to talk about. Literally, yeah. I was like, dude, just know, man, these wrists are a little sensitive. So if you have to slap some cuffs on there, be gentle, dude.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:22

These are well-lotioned. Yeah, dude.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:25

Take it easy, man. You don't have to rough me up. I ain't trying to do all that.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:29

Yeah, so funny. And we get into that courtroom, and I mean, that judge ripped our lawyer a new one.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:36

Oh, yeah, it was a good time.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:37

It was wild. It was like, and then we're in there, and the lawyers like, or the judge is like, one of you has to come up and like swear under oath and give a testimony of your experience. And I like I didn't read anything. Like, I didn't open up the court order from the original time. I barely listened on the phone call of our lawyer telling us what to do. Like, I just Just a girl. I'm literally just a girl. And it was just one of those case scenarios where I was like, okay, you can ask me questions, but you're not gonna like the responses. Yeah, I'm not gonna know the answer. Like, you're gonna be like, what did you think this court order said? And I'll be like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:13

What court order?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:15

It's it's still on read in my inbox. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:17

Like I ladies, it's in the inbox where everything goes to die.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:21

Where everything goes to die. Um, and so needless to say, the whole like as we walked out of it, um, the judge was very clear that like it didn't matter that our lawyer gave us incorrect advice. Yeah. That the fine was going like Jim was only asking for a fine, he wasn't asking for jail time. Thanks, Jim. Um, and he was just asking for his lawyer fees to be paid and for that portion of it. So it was like $3,700, and then our lawyer who had given us who had what it Katie said it was malpractice or something like that. Yeah. Um, he's covering the fine of that. So we got to run an extra month, we got a new roof in that extra month, and uh, we didn't have to pay the fine, our lawyer did, and we didn't go to jail.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:04

Didn't go to jail, that was the best part.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:06

And so now we're selling that house.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:09

So if you're looking for a property.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:11

Yeah, so out of the four properties that we put together in two years, three out of four got shut down, is really the overall story that we'd like to tell here. Um needless to say, we walked out of all those properties. Cadillac, we did not walk out with a win. We gave 100% of that back to the investors. As we should have. As we should have. That just was a big waste of time.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:30

Yeah. Uh big lesson.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:31

Big lesson. Uh. Big L. Um, the other two properties we walked away with great profit from the cash flow, and then hopefully, assuming that this sale goes the way that we anticipate it'll go, we'll walk away with a profit on the sale, which is amazing. Great house. Yeah, like still great investments overall, even though you know the best case scenario is we would be holding them. But um, and now we're reinvesting all of that money into the black pearl.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:56

Yeah, so if you're listening to all this and wondering why we're still going, we don't know. We we just we still got fight at us, we still got magic to give.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:07

Um got beautiful spaces to create.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:09

Yeah, we still think Michigan, although it has leveled up quite a bit since we've been here, I would give credit to your influence. I still got a long way to go, and we're still ready to give that to Michigan. So despite everything that we've been through with all of these townships and boards and lawyers and judges and all the neighbors and things like that, we still have magic to give. Um, but on top of that, I am running for Senate. No, I'm just gonna the lesson I've learned is I'm getting into politics.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:40

Yeah. Yeah, and I think it just like we'll get into this in the next episode of just like a shift in mindset. The lessons that we've learned over the last couple of years in investing in real estate, how it's shifted our perspective on real estate, where our attention is now, why it's not 100% on real estate anymore. Um, but nonetheless, it's like real estate changed our lives. It freed up our our brain capacity, especially at the beginning. And then I just feel like these last few years, like we're gonna look back in a decade on the lessons that we learned through fire over the last couple of years and be like, ah, that all prepared us for this. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:17

You think we're confident then. Now we're ultra confident. Yeah, you yeah. Oh, there's just nothing. Well, don't say that, but it just we're prepared. Yeah. We're prepared for the next level.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:29

Yeah. The the what ifs about what could go wrong in pursuing any new business, any investment, things like that, it just doesn't scare me at all. And I also feel like it's just given me this like ultra high confidence that I don't need to bring on other people, share that partnership to like build something that's great. I think that it, you know, us finally being in a position where you and I are aligned and it's like we're building the thing that we want to build, the life that we want to build, has all just been a result of the fact that at first we didn't have the confidence to do that. Right. Um, and so there are lessons that are perfectly curated for us.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:07

Yeah, and I think that we have a level in of influence in this space, and I believe with that comes some liability on preparing people for what could come. And I know a lot of people that have influence in this space that are still giving bad and wrong information because they haven't gone through the experience. Or so maybe they have gone through the experience but they didn't learn any lessons.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:28

And so I just feel a responsibility to share what we've learned. So the next generation, if you will, the next people that are trying to come up and do exactly what we were trying to do, whether it was eliminating the nine to five or freeing up the spouse from working or whatever it may be, I just want to be able to give them that information so that they don't make the same mistakes.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:49

Yeah. So yeah, 100%. And if you do, if you are listening to this and you are on this like creative pursuit yourself of like trying to accomplish something that isn't laid out in front of you, um, like a nine to five can be, I suppose. I guess it's maybe the wrong way to like phrase that. But if you are trying to do something that is high risk and feels like high risk but high reward, and you're looking at other people who have done big things and you don't get to see the messy middle of the big things, I think that that's my biggest goal in this podcast is to like everybody comes out of the woodworks to show up on social media when they've made it. And then they want to like tell war stories after they've made it. And that's a little bit of what we're doing here because they are war stories from like, okay, the past five years.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:37

Yeah. But I just Well we shared every bit of it along the way.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:39

Yeah, I just want the I just want to open up that conversation to be more front-facing of like when you're in the thick of it, right? Not when you're you've already created the thing. Like the thick of it is the hard part. It's the part, it's the lonely portion. It's the am I the only one that's experiencing this portion? And like we have asked ourselves that a hundred times over the last two years of being like, why does it feel like nobody else's portfolios are crumbling? Like, what did we do wrong? Like, why are we learning these lessons? And and at the end of the day, it's like, I guess I just have this internal belief that it's because we're meant for more and there's like something greater that's coming that we needed these lessons now to like prepare us for the next thing. Um, and I know that there's a lot of people out there that are going through similar things where you're just like, why am I in this season of struggle? And like, why does this feel so difficult? And is this normal? Am I doing something wrong? And I just want people to not feel alone in that messiness, that like thick of trying to make something work where the world is just like shaping you into who you need to be. And so um, we'll probably end up bringing on guests in this podcast of people who are kind of on the same path that we are. And I hope that this uh conversation makes you feel maybe seen or a little bit lighter um or better about some of the messes that you are likely in yourself. So um, but I think that's enough to wrap up this podcast. I think we're uh a little bit over an hour. So thank you guys for listening, and we will catch you next time. Bye.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:06

Bye.