Eminent Domain WINFALL! With Tom Merrifield

In this episode of the Blue Cup podcast, Russ Scheider and Tom Merrifield discuss their long-standing friendship, Tom's diverse career journey from pharmaceuticals to real estate investing, and the challenges and successes he has faced in the industry. They delve into the intricacies of flipping houses, the unexpected experience of eminent domain, and the acquisition of 75 rental units. The conversation also touches on Tom's adventures in managing trailer parks, his transition to short-term rentals, and the importance of networking and mentorship in real estate. As they explore their personal lives, they reflect on the joys of travel, skiing in Europe, and the changes that come with becoming empty nesters. Takeaways Consistency is key to success in business. Investing in coaching can save time and money. Flipping houses can be rewarding but challenging. Eminent domain can lead to unexpected opportunities. Networking with experienced individuals is crucial. Short-term rentals can provide a steady income stream. Traveling can enhance personal and professional life. Managing properties requires effective systems and processes. Adapting to change is essential in real estate. Investing in diverse avenues can mitigate risks 

Takeaways

Consistency is key to success in business.
Investing in coaching can save time and money.
Flipping houses can be rewarding but challenging.
Eminent domain can lead to unexpected opportunities.
Networking with experienced individuals is crucial.
Short-term rentals can provide a steady income stream.
Traveling can enhance personal and professional life.
Managing properties requires effective systems and processes.
Adapting to change is essential in real estate.
Investing in diverse avenues can mitigate risks.

To find more about Tom please visit: https://beaufortdreamsvacationrental.com/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

There's things that I like to do now that I didn't didn't like to do then.

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Is that the city, the state, whoever for the greater good can take property from you. We're here to have fun. And it was it was hotter than hell. Um, but it was it's amazing. It's a no-brainer.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Welcome to the Blue Cup Podcast. Subscribe, click below, click on the bell, follow us, and make comments. We'd love to hear from you. I'm very excited to have a good friend and very somebody I admire in business and life on the podcast today. And uh our the the point of fact I'm going to bring up at the beginning is Tom and I have had lunch every week together for 12 years, unless some one of us is out of town. Um, and that consistency I think is really key to why Tom is successful. He is very consistent, he's very smart, very capable, but just it's just somebody you can count on. So this will be fun. And we're gonna talk about some adventures that I've had that Tom's had, things like mountain biking in Utah and skiing in the Bavarian Alps, and you can you can tell the stories better than I can, Tom. Yeah, I like to see that smile. We are chairmen, we do not smile. I get it. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

We concentrate.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

No, we're we're here to have fun. So would love to hear a bit about who you are and from where you come and who your people are and what you have been doing. So, real quick, and then I'm gonna back off. Tom and I met when our daughters, I'm gonna tell let Tom tell you how we met because he remembers it better than I do. But the next week we found out that our our daughters were in the same second grade class. And our daughters are both yours is at Clemson University and mine's at the University of South Carolina today, as we're speaking. So it's pretty cool that we've been friends since our daughters were second grade. That's right. That's right. Yeah, so how do we meet?

SPEAKER_02 2:31

We met actually. Well, maybe I should back up a little more about who I am and then and then how lead into how we met. Well, thanks for the introduction, Russ. Right back at you. Russ is very dependable. Somebody that I admire and look to when I have questions. He's done so many different types of deals from so many different ways that he's always a good sounding board when I come up against an issue I'm not sure how to deal with. I am originally from Southern California, Laguna Beach, little town between San Diego and Los Angeles. Lots going on in real estate there, but I have nothing to do with that. That part of the country is just a little bit too expensive for my taste. I'm I'm truly kind of a hybrid dress set. I'm German. I'm I'm I'm born and raised in the US, but my mother is German, my father is American. I spent a lot of time as a kid uh summers in Europe visiting family and friends, and that led to me studying international business management and German um in California and in San Luis Obispo, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Uh when I just before I finished college, I actually went to Germany and did a one-year internship when I came back, graduated. Um there was not a lot of good stuff going on in the US in 1990. So I went back to Germany actually to look for a job, move in with my German girlfriend, and um ended up instead of the plan two to three years, spending 23 years in Germany.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Yeah. Um not not two or three, twenty-three.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

23, yeah. Right. Two two or three kids, two or three wives, two or three jobs during that time. Um, I have I have three daughters from two marriages, all born in Germany. Oldest daughter still lives, well, she lives in Innsbruck, Austria. Just finished her master's in psychology, is doing an MBA and and working for a consulting firm there. And my two younger daughters from my from my second, my current marriage, they moved to the States with us. The one was just going into first grade, and the other one was going into third grade. And now they're both both the Clemson, as Russ mentioned. So that was 13 years ago uh in 2012. I had during my entire time in Germany, I was in the pharmaceutical industry. Um, it just so happened that when I was looking for jobs over there, the the companies that made me good offers were both in the pharmaceutical industry, and I ended up accepting a job with Pfizer and working my way through the ranks at that company and then a French company, then a Japanese company heading up marketing and sales in Europe and later being a country manager for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland for a Scottish company, actually.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

I love hearing your stories about driving on the Audubon. Oh, yeah, going 120 inches.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

Yeah, sat a Maserati for a while, a little midlife crisis there.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

That was so funny to me because I was like, Maserati is like, that thing's a piece of junk, man. Yeah, it's a it's you don't want one of those.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

It's a fiat with a with a Ferrari engine in it, basically. Engine's great, everything else is crap. But um, yeah, low tech. But um, yeah, uh in 2011, my wife and I, for various reasons, decided it's time to move for me back to the states, for her to the states. She had similar to me done an internship in Southern California as a lawyer many years before and loved loved the U.S. And we had been on vacation in um the Charleston area the year before and absolutely loved it and found that the prices were very reasonable at that time. So we put a plan in motion, ended up um well, I quit my job and ended up um then becoming a consultant for the next two, three years for the company I left, as well as some other pharmaceutical consultant, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Yes, to the pharmaceutical business development, right, and Anetta issues. Your wife is lovely and tough as nails, and we know that.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

Yeah, uh she's German.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

She has a former attorney, but she works for a corporation. She works for Apple, and she was she was able to move. Yeah, Apple. Is that the name? Did anybody ever heard? Everybody knows anybody know Apple?

SPEAKER_02 6:48

She was she was able to um get a position within the US uh similar to what she was doing uh in Germany. And Germany, a much smaller organ organization, her responsibilities were much broader um than when she moved to the U.S. But in the U.S. when you have a a number of markets, you can go very deep in your knowledge of that. So her international training helped her a lot, and she's able to contribute quite a lot. She's been with that company now for 14 years. Um in Huntsville, Alabama. Okay. And we'll be home tonight.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Well, they have Apple in Huntsville, too, so you know. They do. They have it in Alabama, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

And interesting, so the fact that she worked for a good company full-time while I was doing about 50% uh as a consultant was what opened the door for me to get into real estate. Right. I had no knowledge of real estate investing at the time. I was interested in in real estate. My wife and I, whenever we're in the US, we would pretend to be in the market, no matter whether we're on the west coast, the east coast, and and we would we would go and go to open houses and pretend we were looking to buy just to see what was out there. California, and it was seven to ten million dollar villas. Here it was more in the three to four hundred thousand dollar range at that time, right? And I I knew I wanted to do something in real estate and actually signed up for uh an agency class to become become an agent, but I wasn't 100% sure if that really fit my skill set and what I wanted to do with my life. And uh one day I heard on the radio an advertisement for a two-hour free meeting to go to to learn about real estate investing from some guy who used to play football for the Chicago Bears. Yeah. Um, and ended up starting a big company called Fortune Builders.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah, Dad Merrill, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:44

Dad Merrill, that's right. Um, so my wife and I went to that meeting. I actually met Kurt, one of our investor buddies, at that meeting uh for the first time. And um that led to a three-day meeting uh for a couple hundred bucks to go see how they do it, get more in depth, walk through some houses that are being flipped. Um uh and and that ultimately led then to the decision at some point they want to know are you gonna be part of this or not? Where's your money? Let's go. And I did it and I never looked back. I was very, very glad I did it. It was good to have a structure like that. Now, joining a huge company like that maybe isn't for everybody, but there are so many different types of mentors, sizes of mentors, and I would definitely recommend to anybody starting out to it's worth whatever you're gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

So when I do this, Ryan tags things. Okay, that's a gold nugget.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Nugget, yeah. I mean, why make all the mistakes yourself and waste time and money doing it? There you go. Learn from other people's learn from other people's mistakes, it's worth every penny.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

So if everybody, everybody listening or watching, think about that. Tom was a pharmaceutical consultant from the US to a German company and to other companies in other nations. So he's not a dummy. And his wife, Anetta, is a was an attorney and works for a corporation called Apple, which you may have heard of. And yet they still sought the guidance of a coach in this weird real estate thing that we do to get the specifics. It doesn't mean you're not smart, it just means, you know, I I was very successful in a former career, but getting into real estate, I needed a coach because it's really easy to step on your own foot and fall down the stairs figuratively in this business. So that that's a gold nugget to me is get the coaching and it's expensive. What I mean, it's expensive and it's so valuable that in the end of the day it's cheap.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Yeah. No, no question. I mean, I monetarily, um, I don't know if you guys want to hear numbers. Back then, I paid $25,000 to join Fortune Builders. Sure. Um, and I made that back on my first flip easily, and I made it back multiple times just in that next year as well, because I sold the first home that we bought here, sight unseen.

SPEAKER_04 11:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

I flipped it, made about 80,000 bucks on it. I negotiated the house that we were buying down by 60,000 bucks because the uh the flipper had uh cut a bunch of corners, and I wouldn't have been in a position to know any of that had I not gone through the training.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yeah, so that education I just heard 80 and 60 is 140. I mean the and you paid 25 to to do that. And I um just to kind of keep things light and moving, I know that you grew to dislike flipping. Right? Well, yeah. It's you're you're itching. Look at you scratching yourself.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

Yeah, well, because I don't dislike everything about it. I I love what I love about flipping is you're taking a how can I say that? Piece of shit and making it shine. You can search your, you know, you're um you're you're turning something that looks like crap into something that's gold and shiny and blings. And that's the that's the only part of the business that my wife gets involved in too. She loves making things bling, pick out tiles and paint colors and things like that. It is it is nice to see the fruits of your labor aesthetically. It's it's it's very pleasing and rewarding. The the the things that I dislike about flipping are managing contractors. Yes. Because we in the flipping business, you you can't afford to go out and hire the best of the best. You're you're you're working with people who you're hopefully mentoring and trying to move along in their business, helping them run things more efficiently so that they can stay affordable and still do good work, but it doesn't always work. You're then you're dealing with you're dealing with cities and counties.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Um Yeah, we get we get down on the weeds on that stuff all the time.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

Yeah, it's it just it's it takes a lot of time and effort. So if you're doing it at a time where the market is is good and growing, flipping is is great. You can make some good money in a short amount of time. We've had many discussions right now. Flipping is a little bit difficult. You end up owning more of the more of the houses you flip than you end up.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

There's probably better things for us to spend our time and money on right now than flipping. Okay, and that's a discussion we have at lunch almost every week now.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

All right.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yeah, so thinking about I know you guys built uh you were able to build a house on the water with a dock. I've been to pool parties at your house, and it's a beautiful lifestyle to be able to enjoy the pool, and you have a boat and a kayak on your dock, and you you throw great parties, by the way, great food, great entertainment. Um, I've been to several parties at your house. And I want to talk about the the deal that you did that I think was kind of a game changer, and it's very unusual. And guys, if you're watching or listening to this, stay on. Because how many people do you know who've been through Eminent Domain? I know one, and his name's Tom, and he's on the podcast right now, yeah. And it was a fascinating, frustrating, and eventually rewarding experience that I got to experience vicariously. So talk about talk about the deal. Actually, there's so much to unpack here because the deal is so cool, and then there was like a big red flag after the deal, and then there was a resolution to that. So, can you take us through that?

SPEAKER_02 14:54

I can. And and actually, I'll go back 30 seconds because I never answered the question how we met. I after joining Fortune Builders, they tell you to go back to your local markets and go to you know REI meetings, real estate investor meetings. There's there's official clubs and stuff. So I did that, meet people, network, but I was very disenthused with these meetings after a short time because it was either newbies like me, but who had no training or weren't trying to use their training, or older guys who were basically there feeding upon newbies and their lack of experience. And so another guy who was similarly minded but had much more real estate experience than me, Blake, asked me if I wanted to go join a different type of meeting, and that was Russ's group. That's how that's how we met. And I actually, after the first meeting out of that group, I got my first flip from another from Kurt in that group who funded me. He was he was wholesaling it, he sold wholesaled it to me, funded me. After two or three of these flips, I I uh decided I want to move into the buy and hold phase. And my first buy and hold I bought from you for $39,000 in in uh Somerville. And I still own that home today. Shaladin, yeah. Uh, by the time I took it, it was infested with a bunch of other stuff, but yeah, I still own that home today. Um, and then I think my very next buy and hold was 75 units. Um and this deal was initially brought to me by a guy from that group that I wanted to get out of.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

So so let me rewind that and talk about so this is another gold nugget, is when I first got into real estate investing in our local area, same thing as Tom just said. I was visiting my my coach, I hired a coach similar to how Tom went into Fortune Builders, uh different coach, but he said, get into every real estate organization in your city. So I did. And I'm paying $600 a year, $400 a year, you know, whatever. It doesn't matter what it costs, cheap. And going to the meetings and and for months and months and months at a time, hearing kind of the same thing. And uh sitting at a table with people who weren't doing deals. And I'm a newbie, but with a coach, my coach has got me doing deals. And so Tom and I were attracted to each other through Blake. Blake was our mutual friend, and Blake said, Tom, you need to. So what I did is after attending all the Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday morning meetings over and over and over, I picked a few people out of those meetings who were doing deals and said, Let's just have lunch on Wednesday. And so Blake was one of those, Rich was one of those, Robbie was one of those, and then Blake invited you. I think you were like the fourth or fifth member of the lunch group. There's like 50 people in it now. Right. But the key was we were all actually doing deals and helping each other. So Tom just told the story of coming to my private lunch groups. So I would encourage you if you're if you're frustrated with what's happening in your networking groups, start your own. There were no dues or fees. We just meet for lunch.

unknown 18:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

And I change the venue every month so you can't find us. You can only come if you're invited. There's we'll have a separate podcast on the reasons why I do that and some of the some of the situations that have come up based on that. But go ahead. I wanted to interrupt just to kind of talk about the importance of that that connecting with other people. So you you met Kurt in our lunch group. Correct. You were able to facilitate a deal with him, and now we're going to talk about 75 units that you bought and how that I think it really changed her life. And I know it was a ton of work. It was. Still is. But you did the work and it's really changed her life.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

Yeah, it has. So, yeah, this deal was brought to me by a guy who turns out didn't have the deal. He was looking for money to do the deal himself. And by speaking with Robbie, who I also met in the group, who later became my first property manager for those 75 units, we were able to figure out who really had the deal, and that was Dusty. Right. Dusty is also now a member of the group through that deal. Um, and Dusty is super experienced and has contributed so many things, like the whole trust network and stuff that we work that most of us work with. But Dusty and a partner of his had had found an uh 80-year-old gentleman who had amassed a certain number of properties in North Charleston over the years, just stepping into people's mortgages and and things like that. And only about 35 of these 75 units were actually livable at the time, but they negotiated uh a price of $750,000 for 75 units. So, including their finder's fee, let's call it, I paid $11,600 per unit.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Right.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

They're probably on average worth about $200,000 a day. This is right. This is uh exactly 10 years ago, August 15th, 2015. Really? Okay. When I when I closed on these. Um so they brought me this deal. I went through it, seated my pants. I did due diligence as best as I could, as you can, on that many. I only probably got into 20 of the 75 units. I knew it was going to be a mixed bag. Um after I I decided to go ahead and do it. Um we happened to be selling our house in Germany. That was gave me the down payment and the funds I needed for my first tier of renovations. About two weeks in, I'm out in California at my at my 30th anniversary high school high school reunion, and I get an email stating that you are losing three lots to eminent domain. We're gonna build a train track through them and and build a 30-foot high sound wall. The three lots doesn't sound like a lot, but that was 25 or one-third of the units. 25 units on three lots. So there one was a 12plex, then I had another like huge swath of land that had duplexes, triplexes, single-family homes, everything you can imagine on it.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

And explain explain eminent domain. What does that mean?

SPEAKER_02 21:45

So what eminent domain means is that the city, the state, whoever for the greater good can take property from you. They they do have to compensate you for it, but how much they're gonna compensate. Say you depends on what you've done with it. Gosh. And I was, of course, freaking out, thinking, Oh, that jerk, he must have known about this. This can't have come overnight. He sold this to me to get out of this and stuff. And when I got back to town and I met with the group, it was Dusty again, who said, Well, hang on a minute. He goes, This could be the best thing that ever happened to you. Long story short, I found he suggested an attorney. I'm trying to remember whether that's the one I actually went with. I spoke with a couple of specialized attorneys in an eminent domain and basically figured out that in order for the property to be any value for you to get money for them, they need to be rented out. You need to be getting otherwise you're just going to get a couple bucks for the land and the and the vacant property. And most of these were vacant.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Right.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

So I I ditched my entire plan of which houses I was going to renovate in which order and focused all my efforts on those three lots to make sure they were rented out, fixed up. I had butts and seats for the time for the discussions. And basically with through that attorney, drugged that out as long as I needed to get all this work completed. So after two years, we were finally able to negotiate. Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

So and I remember at lunch every week, I mean, this was you were you were so stressed. Yeah. And I don't blame you. I would have been so stressed, like this is so complicated, it's so difficult. This sucks that this happened. This is not what I was anticipating. Yeah. And having somebody like Dusty and you guys who watch this podcast or listen to the podcast, you're gonna meet Dusty. Um, because he's a key player for us in our lives.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

Really is.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

And Dusty's I love Dusty's confidence, even though he was involved in selling it to you and he could have been embarrassed, like you know, he had caused you a problem. He didn't know about it, you didn't know about it. And so his encouragement was this could be the best thing that ever happened to you.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

Well, and even after but before we closed, after we had negotiated the deal, he backpedaled and asked if I wanted to partner with him on it. He goes, I'm not so sure I should have given this away.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

So but yeah, no, he knew he knew it was a gold coin. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

So anyway, with that, with that, I don't know, I don't want to get too in the weeds. Um, maybe you've talked about 1031 exchanges on the podcast before at the minute of maintenance.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

I don't want to get a little technical about how that works.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

But the 1033 exchange, it means you have three years in which you can reinvest the money you get without paying capital gains.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Yeah, very simple terms, a 1031 exchange. You you can exchange like for like property and avoid um a tax burden or kick the can down the road. You don't avoid it, you just kick it down the road. And what's a 1033?

SPEAKER_02 25:07

So the the the the major difference is that in a 1031 exchange you only have uh six months, 180 days between the sale of the one property and the purchase of the next. Right. And on a 1033, you have three years. Okay. Because they're forcing you to give something up. They have to give you more time. Okay. Um, and I ended up as you know, buying two trailer parks uh in Orangeburg, which is a story for itself. Should have done my due diligence on the Orange Burgess. Yeah, but I got into the trailer park world. I've decided it's not for me, or it's too stressful, it's too stressful for my wife, let's put it that way, yeah, to listen to me talk about it. So I ended up selling those last year Yeah, and you were right taking up way too much time at the lunch table.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Yes, I know talking about give us some give us some trailer park stories, give us some crazy shit from the trailer park.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

Well, uh, for fun on Friday nights, uh people like to do drive-by shootings in some of the trailer parks. Okay. And then then it's fun to watch on the cameras because the county line went right through the middle of my park. Oh no. Different cop cars coming from different directions. I you just can't make stuff up. People falling through stuff, people stealing things out of the trailer next door, only uh and only afterwards noticing that I have a camera set up and then going and beating the camera down as if that's gonna get rid of the it's it's it's crazy. I I um I have learned to to shake my head and move on. I've had people burn down trailers, I've had people steal the metal siding off of trailers. Um it's uh yeah, I'm I'm glad to be out of that. Yeah, and you you've sold those properties since yeah, I sold those properties since and also also made some money on that after holding them for five years. I think I made about six hundred thousand dollars, which which is good, which I've invested in in in my next phase of business, which was the short-term rentals.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

In Buford.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Let's let's talk about some fun stuff. You and Brad, who's a mutual friend, just did a trip out west.

SPEAKER_02 27:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

Tell us about mountain biking in California, Utah, whatever it was you did.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

Yeah, we also like I said, I'm from uh Laguda Beach. We we flew out west. My wife couldn't join me this time, so I decided to make a a guy's trip out of it. And we had I had other friends who were flying out to Colorado for a concert at Red Rocks, which was kind of a bucket list of mine. So we put a pin on that date and kind of worked backwards two weeks and uh started in California, hung out with friends of mine, saw my dad, but we you know we had fun. We played golf, we went to bars, body surfed. I went to went to the whiskey of go-go. Brad's a musician, his dream was to go there and then eat at the rainbow, a bar next door where hard rockers like to hang out. Then we went on from there to Las Vegas again to stay with some good friends of mine, go boating um out on Lake Mead, seeing the Hoover Dam from a different perspective, and then really began began the part of the trip where a lot of new things for me were too.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

Up until that point, it was all knowns for me. Yeah, so Brad Brad's a musician, so the whiskey of go-go, and yeah, you know, all that stuff is.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

He's a guitarist, so he loves all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Moab had as a mountain biker, I've I started mountain biking when I was in college on the west coast and really got into it when I lived in Europe. I lived at the base of the Alps, I've crossed the Alps three times, straight before the lot.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Um, and we're about the same age, and I I started mountain biking about the same time. Right. And I have ridden in Bo Alp, which is amazing. Yeah. So warm.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

Yeah, we had to start the tour at 6 30 in the morning because by 10 it was 104. Right. Right. That's why. Oh, yeah, we did about a five-hour five-hour tour, and it was it was hot in hell. Yeah. But it was it's amazing the the different landscapes that you see there. How many different landscapes in such a compact area.

SPEAKER_04 29:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 29:33

It turns out my brother lives an hour south of Moab, so we went and uh spent a night with him, but he also showed us some things off the beaten path, which were just amazing, where you'd drive 30 miles out of a dirt off a dirt road and end up at just this point with a cavernous view of canyon lands and Colorado River off at the distance. Um it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_04 29:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:58

From there we went to started working our way towards Vale. Um and Vale is a place I'd been many times in the winter skiing, but never seen it in the summer, and it felt almost like home, like in the Austrian Alps, which is where I've spent most of my time skiing with the time I lived in Germany. And uh, because Vale Village is Austrian, basically, for lack of a better term. They've taken Austrian names, Austrian dishes, German beers, and and turned it into a really high-class resort when you're walking through the town in the summer with the flowers and the window dressing everywhere, it really feels like.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

Speaking of Aspen?

SPEAKER_02 30:41

No, Vail.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Oh, in Vale. Vale. I'm sorry. I got lost for a minute. So in in Vale, it's a very European experience.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

Yes, very European feel, at least in the in the village. I know there's different parts, but not at Lion's Head, but in the village, it feels very Austrian. The names of the hotels and restaurants are all Germanic, and uh it's it's very beautiful with the creek running through it, just people on bikes and and and different uh things everywhere. And we uh Brad is good at meeting people within a half hour. He had got us free. I wanted to bike up the mountain. He's a lazy bastard. He won he got us free tickets for the lift to get us up the mountain. I love it. But I made him go much higher anyway. We had we had a blast. We rented a couple E-mountain bikes and and and spent four or five hours cruising around up there, and it was awesome. Beautiful, beautiful scenery, but a good time.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

And what happens with your business and your investments at home while Annette's traveling for work? I mean, she's she's not here working the business.

SPEAKER_02 31:45

No, she she doesn't she doesn't take care of other than cosmetic additions to the business, how things should look, how we design properties that we Airbnb, she's not in the day-to-day at all. That's that's all means. She's not in the operations. So uh luckily I didn't have going on during this time, but as far as my Airbnbs and my daily business, I was able uh I was able to, you know, manage that around it either because I have systems in place that allow me to do that, which which is the case for the the uh short-term rentals. Yeah. Um and for everybody else, if it wasn't urgent, I pushed it back two weeks. Um, and for everything that was urgent, you can you can take calls, you can make calls, spending hours in the car. Doesn't matter whether you're sitting at a cafe with a beer in front of you and looking at the mountains. You can still you can still do your business from on the on the road. Um that's that's just that freedom is one of the big reasons I I got into this.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Yes. Yes, absolutely. One of my favorite ridiculous sayings is the great thing about 2025 is you can work from anywhere, and the terrible thing is you can work from anywhere. So you can't really completely escape it, but I mean you have systems in place, you have people doing what they do. Right. So is it fair to say that an hour or two per day is enough to definitely to keep keep things going and keep things moving?

SPEAKER_02 33:22

Yes. So it's that's not enough to start new business and things like that. Right.

unknown 33:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

So when you or I are mountain biking and Moab, it's not like we've abandoned our business entirely. It's just that there's no requirement to be in a specific place at a specific time because of the way the investments in the business are struck.

SPEAKER_02 33:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:46

And for the for most of the business partners we're dealing with, be it property management, be it agents, be it whatever, the unless you're you know trying to get something closed that day, unless your house is on fire, it's all stuff that can wait an hour or two until you're in a better place to have that conversation.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

Right. Until you're finished with lunch or mountain biking or you know, hiking or whatever you're doing that day. I've I've I've told the story before, but uh when we went on our big RV trip, we were I closed two deals from Yellowstone National Park, which was very, very difficult because there's no cell signal. Right. And so I'm standing on a bench outside the Yellowstone Lodge, you know, I'm 6'3 and I'm holding the phone up, thinking that's going to give me more signal, and trying to listen to uh an agent walk me through a repair addendum on a property, but then I went in the lodge and I said, Can you know we're not staying here? I'm dirty, I'm sweaty, we're staying in the campground in the camper. And they were so gracious to say, I said, I need to print some things, I'm happy to pay for it, et cetera, et cetera. I said, Well, I'm not a guest at the lodge. And he gave me the man at the front desk gave me a room key. And he said, Don't go to the room, but this room key will open the business office. And he said, No charge, whatever. There's a landline phone in there, and I was able to call and fax and print and spend about two hours and close a deal. And then we went and watched the sunset over the um the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, they call it. It's gorgeous.

SPEAKER_00 35:30

Right.

SPEAKER_01 35:31

So that's one of the things I love, and I I mean you just did this last month.

SPEAKER_00 35:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Is we don't have to abandon or neglect our investments or our business to go have an adventure like that.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

No, you don't. You don't. You know, it works. California's only a three-hour time difference. I've done it from Europe many times, been skiing in the Alps, and and and have to do have to do that. And it's it's just a different time at day. You wake up early and you get stuff done because you're six hours ahead, and then you have a break, and then at night you can, you know, clean up whatever happened during the day. For the most part, it works out really well.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

Yeah. Yeah. We just have to adjust to it and adjust thinking, you know, I'm you're sitting in your office, I'm sitting in my office. Right. We don't have to be here all the time. No. Uh to get things done.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

I don't sit in my office very often.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

I know. I know. I wouldn't either if I had a pool and a dock like you do. I'd be out on the out in the pool or out on the dock or traveling like we do. Right. So the 75 units, we went through I feel like we did it together, even though I just was listening. But you went through imminent domain. You got a pretty good payday from that after a lot of you know stress and work.

SPEAKER_02 36:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

And then the mobile home parks, for those of you not from South Carolina, Orangeburg is an interesting area. We'll just leave it at that. Yeah. Um, so you told us some stories about drive-by shootings, and uh, I have not heard of people stealing the metal siding off of a mobile home. That's probably a first for me. So there's that. And now you are pretty deep into the Airbnb space, right?

SPEAKER_02 37:19

Yeah. So I have I have I still have about 50 properties, 50 doors, put it that way. Um, 30 of those are in uh North Charleston still. So of the 75, I still have about 30. I've sold some off over time and done those 1031 exchanges, turned that into properties that I own in in uh Columbia um or in Jacksonville, Florida. Um, and then three years ago, my wife and I decided we wanted to look at the the Airbnb side of things, short-term rental side of things, and started investing in Bufort, which is an hour and a half south of here. You know it very well since you're from that area. Quaint little town, quaint quaint, quaint little waterside town between Charleston and Savannah, that just has a lot of charm, um, a slower pace than here.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

And um, so we've I'll be spending Saturday and Sunday in Beaufort. My parents live there, I have a lot of friends there. Right. It's a beautiful little town, very small town.

SPEAKER_02 38:24

It is, and then you have Fort Royal, which is not right next to charm. And that's all about 15 minutes apart. So how many short-term rentals? I have four short-term rentals down there, two historic downtown Bufort properties, which as you can imagine were the a much heavier lift in terms of the renovation of these, not just because more work had to be done. They had not been lived in the main house, had not been lived in in 30 years. It was an art gallery. Oh, wow. And the and the ADU has never been lived in. It was a concrete floored bunker, basically, that they had lathes mounted and things to woodworking tools. And so I was able to renovate the first one in about six months. The second one took over a year. Yes. Those are both up and running. You have to deal with things like historic review boards when you when you renovate historic properties, and that I can tell you is a pain.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

Yes. Yeah, it was a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 39:27

Something you just have to plan for and you just set it. Yeah. Nonetheless, you hit things that that uh you don't plan for, like you can tell me if that's too much in the weeds, but um, if you remember, I hit a point then where I was ready to rent it, and then I was told you can't rent or sell it for two years, because I signed a little piece of paper to get around using an overly expensive contractor. I said, I'll do the work myself. And they said, Well, here, then sign this. But I didn't read the fine print, and nobody told me about it that said, if you do it yourself, you can't rent or sell the property for uh a minimum of two years. And since renting that property out was the mainstay of my business, I then started looking for attorneys who could help me get out of this mess after the county would not help.

unknown 40:20

Right.

SPEAKER_02 40:20

They said you have to deal with Columbia now, and it's a state thing, and um, but four thousand dollars later I was able to reverse that mess and start I waste I th I lost I want to say three months in the process. Um yeah, then we purchased one in in Port Royal and another one in Beaufort kind of on the on the border, and the the homes are they target different audiences in such that Buford is more either young families with children or older couples coming to town either for weddings or because they want to live in a place that they stayed many years ago in Buford. A lot of people coming back who moved up north, moved to Montana, who lived in Beaufort 30 years ago, and and just want to spend a month or two uh in uh over over the winter months in a in a place they know. And the other two are more targeted towards what you know. We have one of the largest um United States Marine Corps, Paris Island.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

Well, they're only there are only two training bases. Right. One's in California and one's in Beaufort, South Carolina.

SPEAKER_02 41:32

Right. And so we have a lot of military families coming to celebrate their graduates.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 41:39

So we target the uh the two homes that are closer to Paris Island, more towards that group, the one's called Fort Freedom, and it's all red, white, and blue wherever you look, and they they they come out of the boat from my parents' dock into the main river, you're looking at Paris Island.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Right across it's a a big part of Beauford, South Carolina's the Marine Corps Air Station and the training Paris Island training facility. So it's a great place for short-term rentals. I'm really interested to to hear that there are people spending months there. Previously had some rentals in the Florida Keys, and people would do that, just go for months at a time. When Lake Huron was frozen over, yeah, they would spend you know two or three months in the Florida Keys. So I didn't I didn't know that about Bufort. That makes well I don't know how many people there are.

SPEAKER_02 42:33

I'm trying to capitalize on that market because there is definitely a season right in this part of the country, and it it starts in the middle of April and it it shuts down in October basically.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

So yeah, in terms of short-term rentals. See, and to me, I would rather be in the low country in November and December than any other time of year. Right. And it's funny that people stop coming. To me, it it's funny, it's like November is a very good thing.

SPEAKER_02 43:03

So they my two properties that are closer to Paris Island, Paris Island churns marines out on a constant basis, with the exception of like a three-week break around Christmas and New Year's. Right. So that's that's pretty good, but especially for the downtown Bufort properties, I have started marketing to snowbirds, and that's where I usually get these older couples who come down and spend one, two, or three months. Oh, that's I've rented one out now for three months and give them like a 30% discount, but it's still, you know, I used to give a 50% discount. Wow. Just just to have butts and seats, to have the bills paid, to have the mortgage taken care of.

SPEAKER_01 43:43

Yeah, that consistency.

SPEAKER_02 43:45

To have some consistency over the winter months because the the short term rentals are few and far between, and right now a couple weekends of 200 bucks a night isn't gonna isn't gonna do it. So um gotcha. I've turned to that. Um is taken care of. The other one has one month booked and then some weeks booked. We'll see. I'm I'm I'm playing with it. The one I've got booked, like I said, for three months now. The other one I'm looking at to see what weekly minimums instead of two-night minimums will do if that will get me some more. So it's still, you know, I've only been doing it for two and a half years now. So still learning. And I and I took over management of all of my properties away from property managers, which I used in the beginning, and that has been a big upside. In again, I paid somebody who knew what they were doing to show me how to manage this myself, set up systems and platforms so that everything goes into one area. It works 90% that way. Unfortunately, there are still technical glitches. So sometimes you have to chase. I just found out that I lost a reservation, a potential renovation reservation, because the booking.com reservation was not forwarded in time to my overwriting platform. And I didn't find out about it until it was expired.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Okay, so what's the lesson there? I mean, how how do you change that in the future?

SPEAKER_02 45:16

I guess beat up on the platform so that things like that don't happen. I I mean they warned us about it, so I don't even know if it's their glitch. That would mean though, you'd have to go. I have a platform which allows me to look at Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking.com. All comes to my platform. But if one of them isn't sending the message, I don't know how to fix that. That means I'd have to go back to each individual platform to make sure that nothing falls through the clack cracks. That's not that's not time efficient. That's the whole reason I have a platform. Right, right. What's the point of the platform if it doesn't matter? So there every once in a while things things happen that I guess are beyond control. The learning out of it is, and and the platform has also made this possible. I'm moving towards direct uh direct bookings. I've set up my own website and everybody I'm collecting the information on everybody who's ever rented from me, and now I can communicate with them directly to try and have them book through me rather than through let's say Airbnb um or VRBO in the future, and that saves them money because they pay about 15-17%, depending on who they're booking through. And I only charge five.

SPEAKER_01 46:38

Right. So lessons, I think, I mean, there's so many good lessons in this discussion. Both Tom and I paid a pretty significant amount of money for somebody to teach us how to get started in this, because it's not common knowledge. It's not, it's not, it's simple, but it's not easy. Right. And it's only simple if you understand how the process works. And then one of the things I love about Tom is I can depend on him to consistently be there, be honest. And the network that we've formed together, I think, has been huge. Buying 75 units from Dusty and his partner, and then having the support to go through eminent domain, the whole story that you've told, going through and figuring out you really don't love and owning low-end mobile home parks. So you operated them for a while and then liquidated those. And now I didn't I had heard you talk about the drama with the renovations in Beaufort in the historic properties. When I got to see them, when I came with you and visited them, they're gorgeous.

SPEAKER_04 47:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:46

And I could not even tell. I mean, you told the story as we walk through, but looking at them, I would never have known that there was a struggle of turning it from a wood shop and a you know frame store into these beautiful Airbnb residences.

SPEAKER_02 48:03

Yeah, they're they're they're that and that's again, that's that's kind of what I like about the flipping component. You're you're you're turning, you're changing something, and you you see that. Now it's the Airbnb is not a fire and forget, means you you have to keep it beautiful. Um that's why I go down to Buford every couple of weeks. But it's okay because I like Buford. If it were in Columbia or Orangeburg, I wouldn't like to do it. Yep. Yeah, so choose choose your markets wisely. Also, yeah, if you plan on being boots on the ground.

SPEAKER_01 48:38

Well, and you haven't mentioned this, and I hope you don't mind if I mention it, but I know the Bufort Water Festival is a lot of fun, and you guys go from Charleston, where we live, by boat to the Bufort Water Festival, enjoy the music, enjoy the food, and then you have your own Airbnb that you've that you own as a reservation. So that's uh pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 49:02

Yeah, it's great for us and friends. My daughters love to use them. They're yeah, they go down and stay there on on uh on break whenever they get a chance, or my daughter Mila will go and stay there with three three or four nights with friends for her birthday, things like that. So there's there's a lot of pluses. I always hate that I'm losing revenue during that time, but I'm glad to be offered be able to offer that to them.

SPEAKER_01 49:26

Right, right. You have the luxury of that.

SPEAKER_02 49:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:28

So what what do you think is next for you?

SPEAKER_02 49:32

So what I'm looking at right now is not necessarily buying more property, but looking at my properties and deciding which ones to divest so that I can let that money work for me in different ways. Also, for the most part, real estate related, real est investing in real estate debt funds, promissory note investments, you know, maybe maybe companies who work in you know, buying and and improving storage facilities, or you know, there's so many different avenues to this, but again, due diligence is the key. Who are you gonna invest with? What is it they work in, what kind of partners do they use? Have they used them many many times over because they've performed? How do they mitigate their risk? Because there's no such thing as a risk-free investment.

SPEAKER_01 50:26

No, yeah, no, there's there's more lit risk and less risk, but there's never zero.

SPEAKER_02 50:33

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 50:34

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 50:35

So I think that's kind of my key focus as I you know I I am now my wife and I are now empty nesters as of last week. Yes. So we've now bought an RV. It's actually sitting out in front of my house. I went and picked it up this morning trying to get it ready for our trip. Um, both of our girls are at the same university at Clemson. There's a big game this weekend, so we're parking the RV up there for the whole football season. Um, and are going to be going up for multiple games. And um I'll be going up during the week, maybe with maybe you want to come one time, do some hiking and mountain biking up there, play some golf. All you have to do is work on my daughter's cars, whatever needs to be done. I have that flexibility. It doesn't matter whether I'm here or whether I'm there. We just need somebody to feed the animals while we're gone. Um and um I lost my train of thought as so often happens.

SPEAKER_01 51:28

Yeah, so so motorhome, going to Clemson football season.

SPEAKER_02 51:33

Oh, yeah. Yeah, you asked you know what's what's next. It's a different phase of life, so I'd like to spend less time chasing contractors. I had to yell and cuss one out yesterday who hasn't been performing for months. Threatening them with a lawsuit. I'm tired of that. Same thing with property managers. Right. Yeah. Love and hate property managers, a job you don't want to do yourself once you get over a certain number of properties, or oh yeah. I I had I had to call one today. I get it. Yeah. Or depending on where the properties are, you don't want to be there at all. Right.

unknown 52:07

Right.

SPEAKER_02 52:07

When the sun goes down. So I mean you certainly do. They aren't working just for you. You're always having to fight for their time. Yeah. And I would make like to make my life less dependent upon such people. So that's why I'm not gonna sell everything and divide divest everything, but if I can identify those things which are performing less good than others and turn that into money that works for for us in a different way. That's what I'm looking to do.

SPEAKER_01 52:39

Well, and you you have your license now. I sold what did I sell an eight-unit apartment building for you a few years ago? Um Yes. Is that what that was?

SPEAKER_02 52:48

Eight units, and uh Um, I'm trying to remember actually uh oh that one. Yeah, that was a that was a 12 unit of only six six were only livable, that's right. Yeah, that those were part of the 75 that that that I bought back then.

SPEAKER_01 53:04

Yeah, they were they were some of the worst of the 75. So right. Um you I I listed those, you now have your own license. I have a another friend who I I haven't seen in several years who called me and said I have a house in Charleston Farms, which is a neighborhood that we know, and he said, I mentioned to three people that I want to sell it, and all three of them gave me your name.

SPEAKER_02 53:32

Right.

SPEAKER_01 53:32

And I was like, that that's what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_02 53:35

Yeah, that's that's all that's awesome. I'm I mean looking for I haven't done nearly as much with my license as you have, but I got it for different reasons. Sure. I got my license so that I didn't have to pay you when I sell stuff. Right, right. No, I understand, and I completely completely and beyond that, I've I I've become kind of the agent for Mount Pleasant-based Germans.

unknown 53:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:59

So I I do deals for friends buying and selling houses in the German community. The German part helps, yes. Yeah, because I can explain, especially from people living in Germany, what the difference is in the purchase in what houses have here as opposed to in Europe, uh what they don't have and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 54:17

I love I love that you found that. I mean, that's such a small part of your life. You know, you understand Germany, you understand Mount Pleasant because you live there and you live here. Right. Um and I never expected to use my license like I do. I've just people bring things to me, and I love helping, and the commissions don't hurt my feelings. Right.

SPEAKER_02 54:42

Um, so you know When the market's constantly changing, you need these different platforms so you can pivot. Exactly. That nugget for yeah. So, you know, our your business looks completely different than it did 12 years ago where you were just wholesaling and flipping. Now you own properties, you're an agent. And same with mine. Mine's transitioned into something totally different as well.

SPEAKER_01 55:08

Still got elements of what it was, but so as you as you're listening to this or watching this, it we we like things to stay the same, and we like to know what to expect. I have um I have a bunch of children, but I have one daughter in particular who's like, Dad, I just need to know what to expect. I don't care what it is, but I have to know what to expect. And whenever I can, I give her that. And occasionally I'm like, Skylar, I don't know what to expect, so I can't tell you what to expect. And she'll accept that. And then I realized I'm I'm that way myself because I kind of want to know what's next, what uh what can I expect? And you use the word pivot, Tom, and we've had to pivot and pivot and pivot and pivot. And for the audience, y'all listening to this, watching this, I mean, hear that. We both have earned some gray hair over time, and as you said, my business 12 years ago looks nothing like my business today, and I didn't see that coming, but you just have to to take it as it comes, and your yours is very different too. So I think that's a really good piece of information for people to hear, is because with our coaching company, we bring people in and coach them, and then a year later it's different. And that's why we've had coaching students who sign up for two or three years because it just keeps changing, and we're trying to stay ahead of it. And also, you're empty nesting now, so it's a different stage of life than when we met, our daughters were in second grade, and now they're both away at college, right? So it's a it's a completely different economy, it's a different stage of life. There's things that I like to do now that I didn't like to do then, and things that I you know, vice versa. Sure. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 57:10

And stuff's gonna just learn as many sides of the business as you can. I mean, real estate is endless. There's not just residential and commercial, there's multiple multi-family, there's single family. Two years ago, I was spending all my time trying to get into multi-family. Yes, and then the bottom fell out, the models didn't work anymore because the rates went crazy. Right. And if you got cash, you can pick up a lot of those properties for cheap now that have already been renovated because they can't afford to pay their investors what they said they were gonna pay, but it's but it's gonna be expensive if you need a mortgage.

SPEAKER_01 57:42

Yeah, the the consistent is change. Yeah. Um, and I really appreciate you being a friend and being at lunch almost every week, unless one of us is out of town.

SPEAKER_02 57:54

Um that's very important to me. It's it's yeah, I think you need to be intentional, intentional about things if you want to be successful in them. You know, not not every lunch gives as much information or nuggets as every other lunch, but there's always something you can you can take with you. And if you don't go, you won't know.

SPEAKER_01 58:16

Yeah. Yeah. And anybody can do it, anybody can do it. Just to show up consistently and get a good coach or mentor or do something that gives you direction and then be consistent action. That's really what it's all about. That's right. So well, I appreciate it, and I want to talk about one more thing. Okay. And this is a anybody who likes to travel and or ski. Tom shared something very interesting to lunch. It's probably two or three years ago now, where my family we do snow skiing trips when my back can hold up to it. We'll go snow skiing.

SPEAKER_02 59:02

Same there.

SPEAKER_01 59:04

Skiing in Colorado, Utah. Uh, big, big mountains, beautiful snow. And Tom came to lunch after having been. Where did you go? Was it Breckenridge or Utah? Oh, in Utah, okay. Yeah. And came to lunch and was kind of disgusted, like, yeah, it was nice, it was wonderful, but it was so expensive compared to skiing in Bavaria in the Alps.

SPEAKER_00 59:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:28

And you worked out that you could fly to Europe and ski for the week and fly.

SPEAKER_02 59:36

Yeah, and we've we've known it for years because my life's side of the family is German because I've lived there, we have a lot of German friends. We have over the years, we would spend Christmas in in Germany with family, and then we would add on our Austrian ski vacation right there. So the flight is already paid for and everything. There, then it's a no-brainer because you're already there, you've got a rental car, and basically your your lift rates are a third of what they are here. Yeah. Um, like I I I remember being in in uh Steamboat, Colorado. Yep. And I had just had shoulder surgery. So I was done skiing. My wife and my daughters were skiing. I was drinking. Um, but it was cold outside, and I had my old snowboard pants on.

unknown 1:00:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:26

And I reached into my pocket and I pulled out my my last lift ticket from Austria. And it the entire week, five days of skiing, cost less than one day at Steamboat. Which just, you know, just amazes me. And and I mean, now I think um you brought up Aspen before. It's almost $300 a day, $260 a day for a lift ticket at Aspen. Yeah. Um, it's it's it's crazy. So when when we went to Alta this year, um Alta, Utah, we skied for five days, and I I just put together a quick and dirty spreadsheet. But basically, you can fly to Europe, fly to fly to into Munich, rent a car, drive two hours to the Austrian Alps, live in a four or five-star hotel with three meals a day, and ski, and you'll have the best wellness. Americans don't know how to do wellness, Europeans are much better at it that you'll ever have, and it won't cost you a dime more than if you go skiing Colorado or or Utah for a week. You'll have some jet lag, yes. You'll you might need to take to get seven days of skiing in, you're gonna have to be gone nine days because of the flight times and stuff like that. Right, right. But it's it's so much more of an amazing experience being being in the Alps than it is here. If you're not just there to ski, ski, ski. If you want some ambiance around it, upright ski and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:55

It's definitely at my stage of life, I can ski two days in a row, then I need a day off. Then you need a break. I cannot I cannot ski three days in a row.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:04

I made it four this year.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:06

Ooh, not me. But I had to get injections in my back. One off, two on, one off, fly home. And and we we found the same thing, and again, kind of the the beauty of the lifestyle that we can create for ourselves is um flying to uh Italy, Spain, France. We flew to Barcelona. The flight was about the same as a flight to California. Cost.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:33

Cost-wise, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:34

The lodgings were less expensive than in my hometown. And the food and entertainment and that kind of stuff was ridiculously inexpensive. Just a few euros, you get a great breakfast, a few euros, you get a great lunch, and a very reasonable price, get a good dinner. So once you're there, and that's the other end of Europe, but it it's just amazing. It's you helped open my eyes to that. That I spent a lot more money in California on vacation than I did in Spain.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:08

Yeah, we Brad and I would go get a breakfast burrito and a coffee. 60 bucks.

unknown 1:03:13

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:14

For two of us.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:15

My wife Beth and I went to California this summer, and um, I was like, I'm not even gonna get coffee because I had coffee at the hotel room. Yeah, I got a glass of water and like two scrambled eggs and a bowl of fruit, and she got avocado toast. It's fifty-eight dollars. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:31

That's nice. That's nuts.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:33

So it is um, and the great thing about the European travel, you're talking about the time difference, is I found it really easy to work just a lot a certain amount of time. So it's a pretty cool thing. I appreciate you having I appreciate having you in my life. And oh, thank you. And the consistency that you show and your resilience. I really appreciate it. And I hope I hope people listening and watching this please comment below and tell us what you liked, what you didn't like, what you'd like to hear more of. Of course, like and subscribe, ring the bell on YouTube. We are on social media with the Blue Cup Podcast. It's the Blue Cup, there's one of the Blue Cups right there. Blue Cup Podcast is on social media on Instagram, Twitter X or whatever they call that now, YouTube for sure. And then Brian, who is my hero behind the camera, and he's been gesturing at me the whole time trying to keep my head straight. But he he will post some links to some websites if you want to do business. We'll have those as well. So, Tom Merrifield, I appreciate you. Thank you. This has been a great conversation. It's always good to see you. And if anybody wants to reach out and contact Tom, you can go through me and I'll connect you immediately.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:56

Perfect. Yeah, I was just gonna suggest that. If anybody's got any questions about eminent domain or anything else, or if you want to buy a forplex in Jacksonville, Florida, contact Russ.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:05

I I'm familiar with that floorplex because you are in Florida. We'll see who wants to buy it. That's right. Okay, thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Or if you want a beautiful place to stay in Bufort, South Carolina. Oh, yeah, I got a couple of those. Um we got a few of those too. That's right. So thank you so much, and thanks to all of you for joining us on the Blue Cup podcast, and we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:27

Bye. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:01

He's got some riding friends, he's gonna have him on the show. You need some information, Russell tell you where to go. If you feel down or feeling mighty low, Russ will talk about money. Watchin' Anony grow. His name's Russ. He's got the microphone. Now he's got a podcast show.

unknown 1:06:29

His name is Russ. He's got the microphone.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:35

Now he's got a podcast show. Yeah.