From House Hacking to Property Management Success w/ Tyler Kabat

Summary

In this engaging conversation, Tyler Kabat shares his journey into real estate, starting with house hacking and evolving into a successful property management business. 

He discusses the importance of personal development, the challenges of managing short-term rentals, and the lessons learned from failures. 

Tyler emphasizes the need for entrepreneurs to work on themselves to handle the pressures of business growth and shares insights on how to stand out in a competitive market. 

The discussion also touches on the value of continuous learning and the influence of mentors in shaping one's career.

Takeaways

House hacking can significantly reduce mortgage payments.

Building a property management company requires a focus on client properties.

Short-term rental demand is shifting towards shorter stays.

Effective property presentation is crucial for bookings.

Learning from failures is essential for growth.

Personal development is key to handling business challenges.

Understanding market trends can lead to better investment decisions.

The importance of setting standards in property management.

Continuous learning through books and mentorship is vital.

Success in entrepreneurship requires resilience and adaptability.

Sound Bites

"We either win or we learn."

"Everything happens for a reason."

"The book was written for entrepreneurs."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Real Estate Success

01:34 The Journey of House Hacking

03:31 Snapshot of Current Business

05:15 Investing in Vacation Rentals

08:50 Market Trends and Short-Term Rentals

11:55 Strategies for Successful Property Management

15:43 Lessons from Party Situations

20:47 The Entrepreneurial Mindset

25:46 Learning from Failures

37:53 Influences and Personal Growth

42:10 Advice for the Younger Self

46:13 Current Reads and Recommendations

52:44 R.E.A.L. Podcast Video Outro (1920 x 1080 px) (1920 x 1080 px).mp4

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Transcript

Duane Murphy (00:00)
5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Shane Kilby (00:04)
You got the echo effect. So ladies and gentlemen, we are here today live or previously recorded for some of you guys that may listen to it, catch it or download it at later date. This is the real podcast, real estate agent life. So today we have a very special guest with us. None other than Tyler. You had helped me with the last name. Cabot. Okay. That's what I had, but I was like, if I roll with that, I'm like, I'm butcher that up. Tyler Cabot. Welcome my friend. How are you?

Duane Murphy (00:24)
Tyler Cabot.

Tyler Kabat (00:25)
Tattlet, tattling rabbit.

I'm doing great, thanks for having me guys.

Shane Kilby (00:36)
All right, so let's walk into it. So tell us a little bit about your backstory and how did you come about to be a part of all this real estate success and chaos?

Tyler Kabat (00:47)
my gosh. Yeah. my wife and I started buying real estate. We did the, we started with house hacking upfront. So we bought a duplex was the first house we ever bought. We lived in the upper of an upper lower duplex. at the time I didn't know it was called house hacking. I just thought it made sense to live in half and have our mortgage paid for. we had family living in the lower half, so they paid kind of a discounted rate, but

You know, I like to say that my mortgage payment was 150 bucks for four years. So that set us up to get started in real estate. And then we just slowly started acquiring properties from there and then kind of fast forward to where we are today. We slowly got into the short term rental game, which is how we started building out our property management company in the short term rental space. And that's that's the fast track. What happened the last six years?

Shane Kilby (01:41)
So, ladies and gentlemen, when you hear this, listen to the key nugget of wisdom, house hacking. He bought a property that had two units and was basically able to offset the bulk of the mortgage minus 150 bucks a month, creating equity, driving down principal, and providing a great home for his family. And like I said, if it hadn't been...

Duane Murphy (01:41)
So now, oop, I was gonna say.

Shane Kilby (02:11)
folks that were relatives of his or family or friends, then he would probably actually even cash flowed off of that opportunity. That's pretty cool.

Tyler Kabat (02:18)
Yeah and and to bring that experience full circle we moved out of it after I think the fourth year that we were there. We lived there I think full four years. We did a cash out refinance and the cash out refinance put I think it was 68 ,000 tax free dollars in our pocket. So in hindsight you know that was the best purchase we ever made.

Shane Kilby (02:43)
Yeah, those are nice. Those are nice.

Tyler Kabat (02:45)
Yeah.

Duane Murphy (02:45)
Wow.

So, Tyler, now for our listeners. So you got started with the real estate investing by doing the house hacking, doing the cash out refi. I'm assuming then rolling that into a, to another purchase. Can, before we, before we jump into some of that, because that's more, more real estate agents need to do investing. It's, it's scary how many real estate agents.

Tyler Kabat (03:01)
Yep, correct.

Duane Murphy (03:14)
Realtors in the business just they help investors, but they don't invest and in the real estate themselves. And, there's a, there's a great opportunity there, you know, not only for realtors, but obviously just the general, the general public. Right. So now you've taken those early beginnings and wrote it into, can you give us a little bit of a snapshot of, your business today?

We didn't get into that all doorway travel if I'm if I'm not mistaken and what your business looks like today and what it is that you have going on in in the real estate world.

Tyler Kabat (03:52)
Yes, yes sure. So currently so doorway travel is my main focus right now. It's a vacation rental property management company. So we manage 32 doors so Airbnb, Verbo, about half of those properties I think 18 of them are client properties and then my wife and I own 14 doors.

So we've got the 14 short -term rentals and then we've got about a dozen long -term rentals. So I think once we hit that 12th LTR, right, to use the acronym, we started buying vacation rentals, fell in love with the business model. And before you know it, we had 14 of those doors and started taking on clients beginning of 2023. And so right now all of our energy and focus has been in the property management company. That's our bread and butter.

Duane Murphy (04:47)
Right now.

are all the short term rentals that you manage manager or own right either one. Are they all all here in the state of Wisconsin.

Tyler Kabat (05:00)
Most of them are, we do have one condo in Panama City Beach, Florida, which kind of a cool story. We bought it sight unseen. We wanted to find something in Florida. Being in Wisconsin, we wanted a place that we could escape to. And we just reached out to a couple different realtors in the area, told them what our budget was. And we found a condo that is listed as a two bed.

But someone had remodeled the inside and created a third bedroom. It doesn't have egress so we can't list it as a three and it doesn't appraise as a three. But what that allowed us to do is it increased our sleeping capacity significantly. So now we can list it on Airbnb as a three bed, two bath, and it can sleep 10 guests.

So it greatly increased our revenue potential with the property and it does give us a place to go. So we owned it for about three months before we actually stepped foot in the place. A realtor changed the door locks for us. He's the one that took all the photos and video and so we kind of didn't know what we were walking into but man talking about increase in appreciation.

We've almost, we've doubled the equity, you know, in a short, short while. So I think we're actually now looking at, maybe we should move on from that one 10 31 that into something else, because there's just so much equity in a place like that.

Duane Murphy (06:25)
Yeah. And now with that,

you, right. You, identified a, a potential cash flowing asset, right. That had way greater potential than it was even being advertised as. Right. I mean, there was, you know, other investors or other buyers, right. That, that may have been looking at that going, okay. Well, it's only two bedroom. can only sleep.

Tyler Kabat (06:38)
Correct.

Duane Murphy (06:50)
four and maybe a pull out couch or something, Or a couple bunk beds so we can only sleep six or eight or whatever it may be, right? And looking at that going, I don't know if the numbers work, it's just not worth it. And you were able to take that, identify it and say, hey, there's a way bigger opportunity than just a two bedroom house.

Tyler Kabat (07:16)
Yeah yeah absolutely and part of choosing that market you know if other people are wondering how do you identify a market outside of your local area right if you can't be there to walk the streets how do know where to look and we identified a vacation market

that's recession proof. So the Panama City Beach area that's up in the Panhandle of Florida, people drive there from every state that's adjacent to Florida. So even when times are hard, you're still getting vacationers that they might just take a long weekend instead of escaping for a week. And then that market also has a rich history.

of having vacation rentals so the chances of the government local government stepping in and putting any kind of limitations on our ability to market or host as a short -term rental is very minimal. So it's a very safe market from that perspective so there was a lot of factors that played into the decision to move into that market and buy the property.

Shane Kilby (08:18)
Nice, nice, nice game plan. You know, and so a lot of times you hear outside sources talking about this is contracting, that's contracting. course, as real estate as a whole, we've seen some contraction in the marketplace. How, so with that, which we've had some short -term rentals, of course, some of those we bought a long time ago and the cash flowed better at that point in time than long -term rental and of course, and

times changed in the past few years and the appreciation went up so much on these properties and the rent rates went up so much on these properties. And of course the cost of maintaining them as well. We ended up able to flip those back to long -term rentals. how has the market, you know, has it caused any contraction on your STR business or do you see it the same or do you see it better?

Tyler Kabat (09:06)
Yeah so that's a really good question. What we've seen is there's less demand overall across the entire market. So travelers are traveling less and they're doing it for shorter periods of time. So some of our properties that used to get booked for a week is now getting booked for three to five days.

And then the lead time, so the time from the the time of booking is made until that reservation happens. Used to be six months where people are planning their travel six months out. And now that might be six weeks or less. So we'll be looking at our calendars for the upcoming weekend. You know, we have a home packer game and there's a couple of places that aren't booked. It's Wednesday. I'm not afraid of them not being booked. They're going to get booked.

But instead of being booked at the beginning of the season or in the summer when the schedule dropped, it's like people are looking at their finances. They've been hit so hard by inflation recently that it's becoming more of a last second decision. So the places are still getting booked, but that week is significantly shorter. And then kind of, as I said, I want to add the 30 ,000 foot overview is that the properties that are

Shane Kilby (10:12)
land

Tyler Kabat (10:21)
Let's just say they're average looking, your average vacation rentals are not getting booked. Airbnb's algorithm has changed and they've kind of created a two tier system. You now have to do things to stand out in the marketplace or your bookings are going to suffer. So decorations, amenities, your photo's got to be better than anybody else's. So it's kind of a two tier process of what's really hitting the market right now.

Shane Kilby (10:48)
That's interesting. But if I'm not mistaken, the shorter timeframe, the last minute rentals, that's better for you as the property owner, right? The rates better last minute rentals like that, or does it go up or go down for you?

Tyler Kabat (11:08)
It goes down. So the we use a dynamic pricing tool which sets our rates for all the properties and we go in and we manually tweak it depending upon what we know is happening in each local market. So you know the pricing software might set something at a specific nightly rate coming up to a local event in Appleton. You know we have like Oktoberfest and it might not be pushing that price high enough. We know that we can get a little more out of it. So we'll manually tweak those prices.

Shane Kilby (11:10)
Really?

Okay.

Gotcha.

Tyler Kabat (11:36)
But there is the software is set that a week out from specific date, it's going to drop it 10 to 20%. Few days out is going to drop another 10 to 20%. So it is built in that way. Cause at the end of the day, we rather get heads in beds than sit vacant. Right. But we do have a price floor. Every price has every property is a price floor. It's not a race to the bottom. And we won't take any guests. A guest still has to meet our client avatar or we will deny a booking. I'm not afraid to do that.

You know at the end of the day, especially taking out clients, they expect us to protect their property. That's their investment. So we got to take care of their property first and foremost.

Duane Murphy (12:15)
Yeah, something, something that I've noticed and you had just hit on a little bit. and it's something that without a doubt that, that I've noticed from watching your business from the outside that, that you and, and Nicole, right, your wife, Nicole, doing exceptionally, well and at building your business and, I think really servicing your clients is, is taking those properties and making them stand apart.

Tyler Kabat (12:32)
Yup.

Okay.

Shane Kilby (12:43)
you

Duane Murphy (12:44)
Right. You had said that the average properties are the ones that are not, not getting rented, that are having the empty spaces. Right. I mean, I'd seen the pictures of the before and afters of what you do with, with your STRs, with your short -term rentals and, and making them pop and giving them certain pieces, you know, in each home that just, right. Makes that traveler go, wow, because there are a lot of options now. I mean, you can stay right. You can just.

jump on Airbnb, VRBO, and at any given time, right, there's sometimes hundreds to choose from, right? And it's, it's that, you know, it's that one picture or that one piece of that home, or maybe it's that coffee nook or whatever, that little mini bar, whatever it may be that, that gets you those bookings.

Tyler Kabat (13:21)
Absolutely.

Right.

Yeah, 100%. You know, when, you pop out Airbnb on your, on your phone right now, you're to look, you're to travel, let's say Salt Lake City, you know, my wife and I are going to be there next week for, for an event. And so you're looking and you're just scrolling on that first page. And the first one that looks great, you're going to click on. It's the same thing as on Amazon. You know, I want to buy a specific item on Amazon.

often do you click on the second page? Arguably maybe never. You see something that's got 4 ,000 reviews it's 4 .8 stars I'm buying it right there I'm clicking buy now you're not clicking to the next page. So there are ways on the OTA. So OTA stands for Online Travel Agency that's your Airbnb and your Virgo.

Shane Kilby (14:03)
Hmm.

Tyler Kabat (14:19)
yourbooking .com there are ways to get your property up to the first page. So we're constantly doing little things to tweak to use the algorithms that the OTAs have provided to make sure that our properties are on that first page and then yeah your hero image which is your first one's got to be awesome it's got to be the best.

Because that's all your marketing. If you're using those as your main source of business, it's getting that guest to click on that first photo. And then it's the first five, do the rest of them look awesome to get someone to do the book? So that is really important. And so to speak to what you're calling us out there, Dwayne, the decor has to be killer. I've got a great case study. We took over a property from one of our competitors. The client wanted to make a change and they hired us.

and we signed the contract with them before I had even walked through the property because there was guests staying in the property for long term. And when we finally got in, my first reaction was, this is a long -term rental that's in rough shape. How on earth is this ran as a vacation rental? My list of items that needed to be done before we would even put this property live,

Shane Kilby (15:24)
Yeah.

Tyler Kabat (15:35)
was pages long, not even exaggerating. And I told the client that I said, if you want us to continue forward, we need to do these items because that's the standard that we've set because we understand how the market's working now. And you have to set yourself up to stand out from the competition. Or like you said, Dwayne, you know, this is a lamp. This is a property that's close to Lambeau field. There's 250 options within a mile of Lambeau. So you have to do some extra things. You can't just put anything out there and expect to make money on it anymore.

That's just not the case.

Shane Kilby (16:07)
Let me ask you this because you know, in our early on experience with STR, Airbnb, BRBO, you know, I guess we had to learn by trial and error and by fire. We made some holiday mistakes around, you know, we're a college town, so we have a lot of graduations and we've had our share of big cleanups before. It took us a little while to learn.

who not to, know, because we would look for the reviews of the guests, the guests would check out, but we didn't realize at that time that sometimes guests will book and then turn it over to someone else. So we had to figure out that be mindful of the holidays and the high school graduations and the college graduations and the New Year's Eve and the fourth of July celebrations because often times we would be in the situation where we would end up

booking when someone else's name and then we have cameras outside and we're like, what in the heck is going on? Like there's a whole lot of party going on. got neighbors calling. I got my friends on the police force calling. I'm like, that's not what I was planning on for that 350 bucks.

Tyler Kabat (17:24)
Yes, right. Yeah.

Shane Kilby (17:26)
So if you

guys running that, did you, where did you, you I didn't, missed that, that lesson somewhere along the way. learned it, but I missed it.

Duane Murphy (17:35)
What I think I was going to say before he answers that Tyler deals with, with some interesting locations with, right. With being outside of an NFL stadium.

Tyler Kabat (17:46)
Mmm.

Duane Murphy (17:48)
certain local team that might bring in a bunch of visitors.

Tyler Kabat (17:55)
Right, right

yeah. The market near Lambeau Field, well to provide your listeners context, so our business is based out of Green Bay, Wisconsin.

And so we're right there by Lambeau Field. That's kind of our central hub. It's really its own market. And so we did run into a party situation just last year. And in hindsight, the markers were there and we just overlooked them. It's amazing how much you can glean from a guest just through the messaging. So do they have reviews? Have they been on the platform for a while?

are do they make complete sentences in their messaging? Do they use proper pronunciations or do they capitalize letters? Do they use periods? Do they use apostrophes? Little things like that and then you ask the leading questions about who are you traveling with? What's bringing you to town? If they're doing a one -night booking on a Saturday and they've got no previous reviews automatic no right no way on earth am I letting that person into the property.

Shane Kilby (19:04)
Yeah.

Tyler Kabat (19:04)
And

so we did deal with a party and, you know, in hindsight, the markers were there. They didn't have previous reviews. There's a couple guard rails you can put in place. One thing that we've implemented is if we feel like we're okay accepting the booking, even though they don't have previous reviews on the platform, we'll require a security deposit and you tell someone they got to put $500 down and they're only paying 200 bucks a night.

You learn real fast if they were if they had ill intentions or not. So we'll require a security deposit and we'll require a photo ID of every adult that's staying at the property. You put that out there that catches them 95 % of the time. You know if they're willing to put extra money down usually they have good intentions. So that saved us a lot. Just putting that out there on front end. And you can never be afraid to let a booking go.

Duane Murphy (19:55)
Good tip.

Shane Kilby (19:57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Tyler Kabat (20:03)
I kind of alluded to that earlier. This is an investment and you've got a lot of money stuck into furnishings and decor. It's not easy to swap that couch out when you're between guests. You don't want to have to deal with that. Burn holes in the rug or pissing off neighbors. The last thing you need is Mary down the road complaining about the Airbnb.

Shane Kilby (20:14)
No.

Duane Murphy (20:15)
You

Shane Kilby (20:21)
Right.

Tyler Kabat (20:27)
Now she's going to the town board and complaining. Now they're bringing down ordinances and our entire business model is gone. Right. It's that easy.

Shane Kilby (20:36)
And when they bring party favors, it's not as easy to get that house turned for the next guest. It's like, man, was, it's been good. And my wife handled this side of the, that she would handle. so naturally that runs downhill when it creates more pressure on her. So it's, I'm the guy and the end recipient of that good time. So that's, that's good insight. That's really good insight.

Tyler Kabat (20:54)
Yeah.

-huh.

Shane Kilby (21:04)
so, know, STR business hasn't been around forever. So, I mean, kind of walked into the house hacking and how we got to this point, but, but where, where at in life did you decide like, think I just, I think I want to be in, I just want to, I want to be in a real estate game. Like I want to make that my career path. I want to build up, build an empire around real estate.

Tyler Kabat (21:24)
Wow, yeah, great question. I'm like probably 90 % of the real estate investors out there and I read Rich Dad Poor Dad when I was 18, 19 years old. And at that time, I thought I wanted to get into real estate right away. I ended up going to college, I ended up going to grad school, I tried pursuing a whole career in the sports industry. And I recognize real quick that you work long hours for no pay if you work in the sport industry.

Shane Kilby (21:52)
Ha ha ha!

Tyler Kabat (21:53)
I was an intern and then there's an assistant in the marketing department for an NBA franchise. There's an intern that's unpaid. Then there's an assistant making eight bucks an hour. The coordinator has been in his role a decade. He's still making 35k. There's a manager above him who's been in his role for a decade. He's making 50k and I'm thinking I'm not going to work 20 years to hopefully make 50k. That's just not going to put it.

So once we bought our first rental, what opened the door to us to get into the STR space was that I've got kids, I have two little kids, and when we travel, we always like to choose an Airbnb. We want space for the kids to play. I want to be able to shut the door at night and let them be in their room. Mom and dad could have, you know, a glass of wine, hang out in the living room, watch TV, hang out, do whatever we want, and not have to worry about waking up the kids in a hotel room, right?

And so we bought that first one down in Panama City Beach at the same time that we bought one local to us where we live here in Wisconsin and kind of just jumped in and did it part time. And we just enjoyed cater, working with guests and creating great guest experience because we travel so much and can appreciate when a property is well cared for and a host is super responsive and just continued, I think, to fall in love with that business model until

I was let go from my job and we decided to go all in on it. now all our energy and time and resources go into it. And gosh, we could talk for days about the business lessons learned about being a full -time entrepreneur, which I know the two of you guys, you could probably give us a master class on that.

Shane Kilby (23:34)
Well, I think a lot of times we see a vision and we see an income and we see a career path. And then once we get into it, some days we're asking ourselves, what in the hell was I thinking?

Duane Murphy (23:47)
like that

is today. The day I burn it down and go work for McDonald's. Like, mean, like there, I tell you what, man, their benefit plan, shameless plug for McDonald's, right? Maybe in our, in our area, Shane Kilby, it wouldn't be a Buc -E's. It would be quick trip. I tell you what, with what they're paying and their benefits, like some days burn this to the ground. Quick trip. Here I come.

Tyler Kabat (23:52)
I'm

Shane Kilby (23:52)
Yeah, every other Wednesday.

Tyler Kabat (24:07)
Quick trip.

Shane Kilby (24:12)
Absolutely.

Tyler Kabat (24:14)
Mm.

Shane Kilby (24:14)
But you know, it's, it's, at the end of the day, it's, you know, the good outweighs the bad. Like we all have those days where like, man, what, what am I doing? Right. But it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the freedom that we have. Like if we, and a lot of times it's freedom of income, but a lot of times it's the freedom to go to the tee ball game, to go to the soccer game, to go to the dance recital, to go to the.

Duane Murphy (24:16)
See you next time.

Tyler Kabat (24:30)
100 %

Shane Kilby (24:40)
you know, to, go pick a sick child up from school or, know, just the time the kid just doesn't feel well and they just want to snuggle. Like those times don't last forever. Right. And, know, you look at the rest of the world when it comes to jobs, it's like, and I've always looked at it like this. I'm not working anywhere 51 weeks a year to get one 51 to one. I'm not going 51 weeks to get a week off. I'm, I like that three months on.

Tyler Kabat (24:50)
Yeah.

Shane Kilby (25:09)
10 days off, like mentality. And I get a lot of grief in that in my current career path. But what those people don't understand is an entrepreneur never gets a day off, ever. 365 days a year, 20 hours a day, we're thinking about business. We're thinking about the success of the business or the instability of business or the stability of business. There's always something running up here and we're on our laptop, we're working here. And of course it does provide us the freedom to do it when the kids are asleep.

before they wake up, or when they're in activities and stuff like that. So it's not like we have to take that time back away from them. But at the end of the day, I think it's that ultimate freedom. think that's what we, that's what we might come in for the career path and the vision and the money, but we continue forward for the freedom. Because that's what the money and that creates an end. So Tyler, so,

You shared just a snippet there about a career change, you know, from one for someone else to all in on yours. So let's take a dive down that pathway and then kind of go into what you feel like might have been your biggest failure in business. mean, to become great in any role or any leadership or any entrepreneurial path, we got to go through a lot of failure, right? So tell us a little bit about that and the career change.

Tyler Kabat (26:35)
Yeah, yeah, sure. Well, the failure on the career change might have been believing that I could be an employee for somebody else. When I knew in the back of my mind, I wanted to be doing things my own way because I wanted the time, freedom and the control and everything else that came with it. I grew up in an entrepreneur household. My dad was a contractor. And so I was putting siding on houses and framing houses from about age 13.

So my dad's now passed so if OSHA is listening I know that's okay. yeah you know I grew up in that environment and you know reading Rich Dad Poor Dad

got that belief planted in my mind that I wanted the freedom that came with owning real estate. And I saw that most of the wealthy people in the world owned real estate. That's one of their main vehicles. So I thought, you know, maybe I'll work the career and I'll just do real estate on the side. And so I went from...

being in the construction world, into the sports world. Then I got into fitness. I was a personal trainer for four years. And then an opportunity came up to join a wholesaling outfit, doing real estate wholesaling. And so that gave me an opportunity. I'm like, all right, this will get me into real estate full time. And I'll be talking with people every day that are real estate investors.

That's when things really took off for my wife and I. That's when we started buying more properties back to back using the BRRRR method, which if your listeners are aware, it's the buy, renovate, rent out, refinance, repeat method of buying real estate using equity. I use the equity for my duplex, took that cash out and put it into buying more properties. And then,

I think it was my boss and I'm super grateful to my former employer. It was them that I think recognized I wasn't a great employee. was I was in a sales role and I could I can sell really well. I think that's a skill that I have and I did well at it. But the back end stuff I have a hard time listening to other people, you know.

Duane Murphy (28:48)
You

Tyler Kabat (28:48)
I

can serve my guests, can serve our clients, will bend over backwards for them, but at the end of the day, I'm still my own boss. And so you just know, it's in your blood. If you're an entrepreneur, you have a hard time being employed and following the systems and things. You're like, I don't want to do that. Why am I doing that? And don't tell me what to do, you know? And so credit's my former employer. think they saw that I was ready to be full -time on my own before I even did.

Shane Kilby (28:56)
Yeah.

Duane Murphy (29:00)
the

Shane Kilby (29:08)
Yes.

Duane Murphy (29:10)
Yeah

Shane Kilby (29:17)
So they help promote you to full -time entrepreneur.

Duane Murphy (29:20)
You

Tyler Kabat (29:21)
100 % you know it was a surprise at the time and in hindsight the timing was perfect. There was a period of three to six months where my wife and I were sitting at the table at midnight trying to plan out our business and we're like I don't know how we're gonna pay our mortgage this month you know we're not going to Costco for another another six months we're just gonna get the basics.

You know, can we move money from here or there or hey, what can we throw it on Facebook marketplace? You know, and use that as grocery money. And that's just two years ago. Because our portfolio wasn't large enough to sustain us. We needed more active income. And I mean, through the grace of God and working seven days a week, sun up to well beyond sundown.

just grinding and having that vision and the why driving us every day was able to get us to a place that we could sustain and now have some successes. Long story short, I guess to get back to your your question about failure, I truly don't believe that we have any real failures. We have a very objective approach to everything that happens in our lives and that is that we either win or we learn. So we got a lot of lessons.

Duane Murphy (30:41)
Hmm. Hmm.

Tyler Kabat (30:41)
There are a lot more lessons than there

are wins. my goodness. Yes. And I think if you can pull your emotion out of a failure, out of a lesson and look at the lesson to look at it objectively and identify what you need to learn from the lesson itself.

Shane Kilby (30:44)
Yes. Yes. I have a whole playbook. It's a whole library full of lessons. I try not to.

Tyler Kabat (31:06)
That's how you grow and that's the only way you're going to continue to move forward. If you get bogged down and you see something as a failure it's real easy to internalize that. Then you start to believe that you're a failure and you're going to keep tripping over your own feet. So at least if you're tripping and learning the lessons then you're failing forward and you just keep staying. What's the saying the guy that

has the most learning lessons or has the most failures ends up winning in the end something like that some famous guy somewhere said something similar to that.

Shane Kilby (31:39)
Yeah, yeah,

no, I've heard that quote stated many times. I think I've drilled that in my head and thought that quote out because I'm like, I sure as hell feel like I'm not stacking up the wins as much as I am stacking up the lessons.

Tyler Kabat (31:54)
Yes. Yes.

Duane Murphy (31:55)
And

that is a key that that's such a such a key takeaway for everyone, right? All of us are going to experience. mean, you cannot be in any type of leadership, ownership, role, entrepreneurship, and not not take some beatings and Helen, right? You might take them every day, right? You're going to learn, learn lessons. But again, how do you

Tyler Kabat (32:14)
Yeah.

Duane Murphy (32:22)
do you look at that? Because you had, you had hit on it because the majority of business is all mental, right? It's, how do you recover? How do you use that? How do you learn from that? Use the word lesson, right? Like what was the lesson that was trying to teach us, right? Some great, some great faith based background there of what was that lesson that he was trying to teach us. And, and

Tyler Kabat (32:31)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Duane Murphy (32:52)
And that is so huge. Cause if you look at it differently as most would, right. That it's all, that was a loss or I fail or I suck or whatever it may be. Right. You, start imprinting that into your mind. start imprinting that into, into your subconscious and into your actions and into your, thoughts and your, and your spoken word. And, and it's an all of sudden there you are.

Tyler Kabat (33:05)
Yeah.

Duane Murphy (33:20)
you know, rather than manifesting, you know, what was that lesson? And then manifesting again, you know, the, the, taking that, taking that lesson and turning it into a success. So that's, that is, that is huge and powerful.

Shane Kilby (33:37)
Well, I mean, for myself, I'm a very true believer that when you really want that next level of success in life and all things that you do, I myself feel that you're asking the universe or whatever your belief system is to give you the obstacles that you need that are required of you to get to that next level. And we say this all the time, every level has a devil.

Tyler Kabat (33:37)
Yeah.

Shane Kilby (34:06)
So it's not like we're not, you know, we get to this next level. like, we got to be prepared. You know, we can't go, we're not ready from this level to that level. The idea of being at that level. Yeah. Yeah. I won't, I won't the fringe benefits that level brings. However, there's a level of stress and strengths and everything else that we need at that level. So I think that oftentimes, if not all times, we're, we're, have that obstacle later or feet to determine, is this what we really want? Are we willing to go through this obstacle and learn those lessons?

in order to capitalize at that next level, really. I think that's way it is for myself anyway.

Tyler Kabat (34:36)
Yeah. Yeah.

Duane Murphy (34:42)
Yeah, without doubt.

Tyler Kabat (34:42)
Yeah, I couldn't agree

more. What wasn't it? Alex or Mosi had talked about this recently. You know, if let's say, you know, I'm a Christian man. So I use God. And if you ask God, Hey, I want to, I want to be patient, you know, patience of virtue. want to have, well, does that means that you're probably going to have a lot of lessons where you got to learn true patience, right?

Shane Kilby (35:08)
Ha

Yep.

Yep.

Tyler Kabat (35:13)
I want to be strong. You're going to have to work. You're going to have to experience things as struggle that's going to make you stronger. Apply that to any quality you want in life. You can't have an easy life and grow as an individual and have all those positive qualities that we seek, especially in a leader and as a business owner. So you're going to need to face the challenges to learn and to grow.

Shane Kilby (35:36)
Yeah, that's that, that is absolutely. And I've heard that so many times I've read that and experienced that, you know, kind of share with you guys before we started recording, you know, how my Sunday travels were scripted and how they completely that went out the window. And I, you know, I had, when it comes to flights, like everyone knows this is running joke that I have around my house and my, my, my team and stuff like that. Like if we get on the tar mat.

Tyler Kabat (35:48)
No.

Shane Kilby (36:04)
and the light comes on, we need oil change, I'm okay to pull her back in and let's change that oil. Like, I mean, if you see the low pressure light on that front left tire and she sees seven pounds light, let's come on back in. We'll roll on back in here. I get off here, go get me some Starbucks. I'll read a book, work on the computer. You go ahead get that tire changed if that's what you need to do because I'm a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. And our delay, whatever that delay, whatever created that delay from the beginning.

It was always going to be there since the beginning of time. feel like that inconvenience was going to be there. when I'm sitting in Las Vegas at the airport with no entertainment, but the terminal that I was in, no outside entertainment or anything, I'm like, I had a lot of stuff to do. know, Dwayne, you know how things pile up when we're trying to take leadership to another level. We put a lot of things on the back burner temporarily and I had fires erupting.

Duane Murphy (36:57)
The fires

are high.

Shane Kilby (37:00)
Yeah,

like I know you, I know you moved your, bumped your flight up to get out town early because the fire just keeps continuing to grow.

Duane Murphy (37:04)
I'm going to say some of us

were smart. I was supposed to fly out at 6 a Sunday morning too. And I'm like, I was already getting rebooked on Tuesday multiple times for Sunday. And I'm like, he'll be just set it right. That's a sign. And I was like, and all of sudden, like they sent me another, just so you know, like there might be another, there might be another rebooking. Don't worry about it. We'll get your rebooked. I'm like, no, okay.

Shane Kilby (37:13)
Great.

Yes.

Tyler Kabat (37:23)
Yeah.

Duane Murphy (37:34)
the third sign is one that smacks you really hard. And you're like, I'm like, huh, I'm going to jump on the, on the computer right now. I'm going see what's going on out of town on Saturday. And I'm just going to move up my flight a day. And I had a couple of delays getting back to it. I'm like, boy, if this was Sunday, it had been, it had been a mess. It had been Monday before back. it's right. Sometimes it's like identifying those signs and then, and then not only that, but as a, you know,

Shane Kilby (37:36)
Yeah.

Thank

Duane Murphy (38:01)
It's an easy of a thing as rebooking a flight maybe or is not, right? It's as leaders, right? As owners, you know, entrepreneurs, it's taking that action, right? It's going, ooh, I see this or I'm seeing this sign. I'm seeing that sign. I'm seeing this trend, you know? And now I need to take action, you know, and get ahead of it, you know, when you can. So.

Shane Kilby (38:30)
Yeah, it's,

Duane Murphy (38:30)
Tyler,

a question that I've got for you. you had mentioned, you know, you had read the book, phenomenal book, everybody should read it. Rich Dad Poor Dad. Like it's, that should be mandatory reading in school. Like, like get rid of, get rid of a text book and have, have our kids read Rich Dad Poor Dad. Like, please, like teach an entire subject on it. Other than that book.

Shane Kilby (38:47)
yeah, they should be required before you graduate.

Tyler Kabat (38:53)
Yeah.

Duane Murphy (39:00)
Who would you say or what would you say has been your greatest influence in life and business? For you personally.

Tyler Kabat (39:08)
Yeah yeah I give a lot of credit to my father teaching me how to be a man how to respect others how to communicate with others you know I watched him communicate with his clients on a regular basis ever since I was young he'd always take me with on appointments

whether it during the week or on the weekend. And so I saw how, you know, you always stand up tall and shake a man's hand, how to communicate, how to treat people with empathy and with respect.

So that I think set me up well for my career in sales and then being a business owner understanding how to how to connect with communicate with people has really set us up for for success and for continued growth. I'd give a lot of credit there for sure. Yeah you know and then on a on a personal side

Shane Kilby (39:58)
That's awesome. That's awesome.

Duane Murphy (40:03)
Yeah.

Tyler Kabat (40:07)
I started this kind of personal growth journey when I was working for some construction company. They did like steel bolted tanks. Not exciting at all. It was the first job I took when I came back from living out of state. And the guy had a closet full of Tony Robbins DVDs and CDs. Like he must have owned every Tony Robbins CD that, know, CDs, you know, going back 20 years here. But I started listening to him every day on my drive.

And I started asking myself, what do I want out of life? What's the kind of person I want to be? What are some areas that I want to grow in? And I feel like for any individual, whether you want to be an entrepreneur or you just want to grow in an era, you got to be asking those questions or you're not, you just on autopilot, you know?

What are you doing nine to five? doing the same thing seven days a week and it just repeats. You live in the same six months over and over again. If you don't pause and start asking yourself what you want out of life. So that time with Tony Robbins listening to my car, driving to and from work really started me down the personal growth journey. If it wasn't for that, I never would have, I think, taken action to buy real estate. know, believing that I'm worth it. You know, a lot of self belief, like you said, Dwayne, it's so much in your head as an entrepreneur.

You can take it one or two ways at any given moment. If you believe you're worth it and if you believe you can do it, as simple as that sounds, you've got to have that belief or you're not going to get anywhere. At least in my experience.

Shane Kilby (41:41)
No, that's well said. There's no telling what the value of those CDs and all that information was. I mean, even back then in the day when those were manufactured, was probably still five grand for that set.

Duane Murphy (41:55)
Yeah. You, you, brought me back to my early days in real estate as well. The brokerage I was at had like, you I help yourself library, right? It was all the stuff that agents had bought or done or never did anything with. And they threw it on the shelf and donated or whatever it might've been. And, to go even older than your CDs, right? It was the cassette tapes of the success, like six, I think it was called the success agents group.

right? And it was interviews of ultra successful real estate agents from all over the United States. And I, I sat there and I listened to every one of them suckers. Like I checked out every single, every single packet, you know, every single bundle of, of 12 cassette tapes, right? And, listened to every single one of them just to be like, okay, what was it? What, what are they doing? What did they do? What was their mindset that set them apart from

from all the rest, can they be doing what they're doing and digesting that. So kudos to you on that, with the CDs and before the days of audible and YouTube like there is now. So what's up?

Tyler Kabat (43:02)
Yeah.

Duane Murphy (43:14)
Looking back in all of your years thus far, what's something that, that you would give for advice or say to your younger self or say it's someone else that's maybe on the same journey as you. What's something that you would, what's something that you would, would have said to you.

Tyler Kabat (43:34)
Yeah great question. I feel as though

If you want to find success in any area of life, you've got to work on yourself more than anything else. And I feel like I've heard that from so many different areas that it may be cliche to say. But again, in my experience, I feel like if I hadn't been working on myself to grow as an individual to become the kind of person that can handle increased income and not waste it. The kind of person that can handle managing a team and leading a team.

and handle the increased stress and pressure and responsibilities of a growing business. If I wasn't working on myself I won't be able to continue to take steps forward and so I feel like that is that is the biggest one and no one no one taught me that that's something that's picked up along the way because I was asked a similar question and when I was on a real estate panel with a couple of the real estate investors and

You know, they talked about what was their biggest keys to success and they were both talking about specific tactics that allow their business to grow. And I said, it's arguably working on myself because if I'm not the man that can handle all those things I just alluded to, then the business isn't going to take that next step. We're not going to find that next client. If I'm not doing things to learn how to handle the current clients that we have.

Duane Murphy (44:59)
It's it.

Shane Kilby (44:59)
Yeah, I

hear it sometimes in what is it? Faith, fitness, finance. And some swap the fitness and the family in conjunction in the way that's laid out. But I've heard some wise men and women that point faith first and fitness second so that they can provide more to their family for longer lengths of time.

And then of course, you know, without family, there's no point in finance. So yeah, man, that's, that's, that's gold, man. That's, that's, that's good, good value. Thanks for sharing that. It's, know.

Duane Murphy (45:38)
Yeah, I

Tyler Kabat (45:38)
Yeah.

Duane Murphy (45:39)
was gonna say I've heard it when you were speaking that that advice, right? had a quote or or something that comes with that, right? They always say fill your own cup first. Right, so because you can't fill others cups, right? You can't pour into others if you don't pour into yourself. And rather than looking at that as well, I'm being selfish or I'm

Tyler Kabat (45:53)
Mmm, yes.

Yes.

Duane Murphy (46:06)
You it's about me, it's about me, it's about no, it's your you're filling your cup so you can pour into others. And, know, whether that's like like Shane had said, whether that's in your faith, how can you pour into others? Right. If you don't if you don't first pour into yourself and, know, and it's the same way. Right. The fitness, the fat, how can you expect somebody else to be fit? How can you expect someone else to be fit and great shape if you yourself are not?

If you are not living that, how can you tell someone else to? in, right? Family, right? You're right. If you are not being that role model of, of what, right? Of what a husband should be, or you're not leading that role model of what a dad should be, right? It doesn't mean perfect.

Shane Kilby (46:43)
Mm

Tyler Kabat (46:43)
short.

Duane Murphy (47:03)
Right. Best to your ability. But if you're not being that right, how can you, how can you teach someone else? That's, that's huge. I have, I have one random question off the, off the script a little bit. cause I know you had, you talked about right. Pouring into others and filling your cup and knowledge and, just gaining all that, and listening to Tony Robbins CDs. So I'm going to go out and live and, and

guess that you probably either have an audible subscription or a few books that you are digesting. What is one book right now that is on your top playlist on audible or the book that's that's in your hand on a regular basis lately that you are digesting?

Tyler Kabat (47:48)
I am currently reading Dan Martell's Buy Back Your Time and I feel like it was written to me for me right now. I needed that in my life. There it is. my gosh. Is that a good?

Duane Murphy (48:02)
If I was in my office

and not in the podcast room I've been a reach back and do that same thing, but so Dan Dan Martell buy back your time

Tyler Kabat (48:08)
Jesus, that is the one right now.

mean, Dan Martell, I think is just on fire. You know, he's getting interviewed all over the world and this book was, was written for entrepreneurs. think any entrepreneur that's no matter where you are in that journey, whether you're, you got one employee or 500, I think the book applies and

Gosh is that good. I'm treating that thing like a Bible and I'm reading a chapter and I'm highlighting things and then I'm pausing and sitting on a chapter until we put some things into action and against all of my free will I'm doing a time study. my gosh that thought that's gotta be the worst thing ever man.

Shane Kilby (48:45)
Yeah,

Duane Murphy (48:50)
That one is painful.

Shane Kilby (48:51)
that's 15 every 15 minutes for two weeks like

Tyler Kabat (48:55)
it's painful. But the insight of course is, the best ever. You know, you're not going to identify areas you need to clean up if you don't do that. So, but

Shane Kilby (49:05)
Yeah,

I think I'm, I think I'm on the third time to listen to it and the second time to read it. I've even downloaded the, the downloadable stuff and yeah, and put it into a little, I made a playbook, a binder to just to be able to log it all. So I'm like, that's all right. I really did that. You know, it's like, God, I got to get better. I'm playing with marbles.

Tyler Kabat (49:13)
material.

Duane Murphy (49:23)
Yeah. And it's,

and it's right. And not to mislead anybody on that with the right three times, listen to two times read. And I think my stats are pretty close to that because it is a very easy to digest book, but there is soul much there. There's so many nuggets. There's so much truth in that book that you can use in, business and life that it's like, okay, you can't just

Shane Kilby (49:37)
It is.

Duane Murphy (49:53)
read it close and be like, okay, yeah, it was a good book. Like you read it you're like, holy crap, like I gotta do a lot of this stuff. I've got to follow this stuff. And then you write and then you, listen to it again. You're like, like, okay. Like, shoot, I haven't done the first 10 things.

Shane Kilby (50:10)
Well, you know, a lot of us, including myself at times, consume a lot of content, you know, but if we don't act on it, if we don't implement it immediately, we're not going to be able to create a habit out of the quality of the, and the value of the message that we were, that was delivered to us. And then of course, you know, we're never going to replace an ingrained bad habit that we already have. Right. It's,

Tyler Kabat (50:10)
Yep.

Shane Kilby (50:33)
And I have, know, in my space, in the world I live in, I have a lot of folks around me that consume a lot of the same content, similar content. And I think it was like, I've always been, I've always read, but I've always really been audible, right? Moving in a direction and just making the best of that windshield time. But going through, you know, journey through 75 hard and live hard with Andy Purcell, you know, really.

Tyler Kabat (50:33)
Yeah.

Shane Kilby (50:56)
You know, it forced you forces you to read the 10 pages a day and you 10 pages a day. That's 750 pages and just through 75 hard, which is two to three good books of personal Bellarmine growth. It's a different ball game when you're pulling the words off the paper and processing it and you can't, you can't look, you can't be distracted. You can't sit in chaos and read. so it changed my, my mindset and actually I enjoy it so much now that I do both. And so.

I've got this mindset where I'll get a title on Blinkist or Mentorist app and then if I like it, then I'll move it to Audible. And then I listen to Audible. If I like it in Audible, then I'll move it into hard copy and then I'll start digesting, processing and reading it through hard copy so I can highlight it and put it in a playbook and those sort of things. otherwise, just, there's too many ideas, too many thoughts go through. I guess I know for sure my mind and I think every entrepreneur,

Tyler Kabat (51:41)
Bye.

Huh?

Duane Murphy (51:55)
you

Shane Kilby (51:56)
every entrepreneur's mind, but most probably every human being, but definitely so in entrepreneur's mind.

Tyler Kabat (52:04)
Yeah, couldn't agree more.

Shane Kilby (52:06)
Well, Tyler, man, you have been an absolute phenom and appreciate all the nuggets and all the value and gold that you've dropped today. Man, it's been great sitting here chatting with you, meeting you for the first time myself and, and Dwayne introducing you to me a few days ago. And it's, been, it's just been a pleasure, man. We're so glad and blessed to have you here on the call today.

Tyler Kabat (52:24)
Yeah, I'm grateful you guys reaching out. Glad to participate. Thank you so much for having me.

Shane Kilby (52:29)
Yeah, Tyler. So if anyone, the, the downloads are listed this podcast here in the near future, how can they find you? Where can they find you at Tyler?

Tyler Kabat (52:37)
Yeah, you can find me. I do most of my work on Facebook, Instagram, or at our website, doorway travel .com. You can see our offerings there and I'm sharing all about my personal growth journey on my socials. So happy to link up with anybody there.

Shane Kilby (52:54)
Absolutely guys, you heard it there connect with him. He's got some great insight. He's got some great great value and he's a giver. He's got a good heart. He's giving back and those are the people you want to align with. So if you if you want to look Tyler up do so Facebook Instagram and I guess that's all we got anything else the way.

Duane Murphy (53:12)
No, I think that was phenomenal. appreciate, appreciate your time, Tyler. It is, it is awesome watching your business, business grow by leaps and bounds. And there's no doubt that you're making an impact in, in that short -term rental business and in our market. And, it's, it's exciting. I think that's a great path and, there's so many different ways to make money, be successful in real estate. And you're just another example of, of one of those ways to do it.

Tyler Kabat (53:40)
Beautiful. Thank you, Wayne.

Shane Kilby (53:40)
Yeah, man, we appreciate you

so much. Guys and gals, if you would please like and share this episode. And if you have any ideas or would like to suggest a guest to us, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. We'd love to reach out to those potential guests and have them on the show. Thanks so much, guys. And it's been a pleasure hanging out with you guys. Take care.

Duane Murphy (54:00)
Peace.