In this episode, Steven Pesavento interviews Bill Faeth, a real estate entrepreneur with almost 25 years of experience in the industry. Bill shares his inspiring journey towards creating a better life and vision for himself, starting from selling t-shirts at high school football games to owning his own portfolios and helping others. The episode delves into proven methods for making, managing, and growing your money, including ways to reduce taxes, boost returns, and increase passive income via investments.
Key Takeaways
Resources Mentioned
Interested in connecting with other like-minded individuals? Then join our VonFinch Private Capital Network. Learn more at http://www.vonfinch.com/invest.
About our Guest:
Bill Faeth is a real estate entrepreneur with almost 25 years of experience in the industry. He is the founder of Inbound Marketing Agents, a digital marketing agency that specializes in helping companies grow their online presence. He is also the co-founder of LendVer, a platform that connects borrowers with lenders. Bill is passionate about helping others achieve their financial goals through real estate investing.
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00;00;00;17 - 00;00;08;04
Steven Pesavento
Welcome back to the Name Your Number show presented by the Investor Mindset. I'm Steven Bento and today I have Bill Faith in the studio. How you doing today, Bill?
00;00;08;15 - 00;00;11;06
Bill Faeth
I am amazing. Thanks for having me today, Stephen.
00;00;11;23 - 00;00;33;13
Steven Pesavento
Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you, Bill, because you're somebody who's, you know, you've been in the real estate game for almost 25 years. You've had a lot of success. You own your own portfolios. You're helping other people doing a variety of things. I'm really excited to kind of dive in to understand kind of the path towards getting there in the life and vision of that life that you're creating, because I think it's one that will be very inspiring for a lot of people.
00;00;33;25 - 00;00;48;01
Steven Pesavento
But before we get into that, tell me what was the first thing that you named that first target of something that you were going after towards kind of creating a better life and a different life than, you know, the traditional the traditional world that most people live in?
00;00;48;10 - 00;01;10;11
Bill Faeth
I mean, honestly, it started when I was a sophomore in high school. My mom and father were divorced when I was five, and I was an only child with a single mother who was a teacher back in the early eighties. And I started selling. I won't go through the whole long story of how I got to this point, but I started selling t shirts and high school football games out the back of my mom's 1984 Ford Tempo.
00;01;11;01 - 00;01;28;26
Bill Faeth
And I remember there was a guy, J.J. Gobi, in Los Angeles that gave me the t shirts. He said, Just sell them for 20 to 25 bucks. I'm going to charge you five. And he had this huge company called American Pacific. At the time, it was like a 40 or $50 million, you know, apparel company. And I'll never forget my mom.
00;01;28;26 - 00;01;47;05
Bill Faeth
After we sold the first 50 shirts, we literally, literally were at the dining room table. And she has the money on the left hand side and she's got like one of those old school, you know, like graph paper pads. And we're writing down how many shirts we sold when we sold them, how much we sold them for, and what we owe Mr. Jacoby.
00;01;47;05 - 00;02;08;23
Bill Faeth
And it was like my first introduction to a pencil when I was 16 and my mom was just a teacher. She wasn't an entrepreneur, she wasn't a business owner at that time. And that was kind of the first the first experience for me to kind of get an intimate relationship with my financials. Ironically, that's part of the focus of your podcast, and it's kind of resonated with me through my entire career.
00;02;08;23 - 00;02;31;23
Bill Faeth
With that being said, I like a lot of human beings. I strayed a little bit in my twenties and thirties and now I look back at 50 and I'm like, Man, if I just stayed that course through that entire kind of probably from 24 to 32, things would have just accelerated much faster. And I had to re be reintroduced by a mentor back into that intimate relationship.
00;02;31;23 - 00;02;40;00
Bill Faeth
And then it's amazing when you do have that relationship with your financials, just how much more clear your decision making process becomes as an entrepreneur.
00;02;40;19 - 00;03;02;20
Steven Pesavento
Well, it's such an incredible example because you started learning this really early and a lot of people who are listening, myself included at one point in time really didn't like doing the numbers, didn't like kind of diving into the financials and knowing all those little details. But I, like you, grew up broke, you know, single mom for kids, you know, was always finding some kind of hustle.
00;03;02;27 - 00;03;28;12
Steven Pesavento
But it's once you actually get clear on how much you're making, what you're spending, what you need in order to kind of create the life that you want to create, that it becomes easier to then make those decisions about what you should do or you shouldn't do. And oftentimes, a lot of people are just taking the money and they're putting it out and they're essentially flying blind when it comes to actually knowing what it's going to take to create that life.
00;03;28;28 - 00;03;50;13
Bill Faeth
It's interesting, Steven, because the only reason I started selling t shirts and my mom encouraged me to do it. Look, we weren't poor, but we were lower middle class. You know, I made like 30 grand a year. We had a house. I never I never missed a meal, but I just started playing golf and getting really good, really fast where I was already a nationally ranked, you know, as my sophomore year.
00;03;50;13 - 00;04;07;01
Bill Faeth
And but she couldn't afford like 1500 bucks for me to. I remember to fly to Kentucky to play in my first national championship, and that's when Jay stopped in. And she literally on that pad said, hey, here's what the airline flights are going to cost, Here's what it's going to cost to park at LAX. When we had we lived in Bakersfield, California.
00;04;07;06 - 00;04;21;21
Bill Faeth
Here's what gas is to get to. And from L.A., she had everything mapped out, but if I remember correctly, was like 21, 2200 bucks for both of us to go. And she's like, if we can't sell and make this much money in the t shirts, I don't make enough money to afford for you to be able to go.
00;04;22;05 - 00;04;40;28
Bill Faeth
And it's really interesting. I'm 50 now, Steven. I have two daughters, 117 getting ready to go to Belmont University next year. The other is a freshman in high school and one of the most important things outside of faith for me and my wife was to teach our daughters to become financially literate before they leave high school, all going back to what my mother did for me.
00;04;41;17 - 00;04;58;12
Steven Pesavento
Yeah, because going through that process, it's literally that simple to create almost anything that you want in your life. Because when you can get that pen and paper out, you can understand the numbers, okay? You want to be able to go and live at a beach house six months out of the year. Well, how much is that going to cost?
00;04;58;19 - 00;05;19;12
Steven Pesavento
What is that going to look like? What are your options? Where is that money going to come from and how can you create in some kind of residual way where you're able to live that in the same comfort level of how you're living your life wherever you're at? And that really leads us into what I'm curious about next, because I think you've set your life up in a very interesting way, and we're going to get into that in a few minutes.
00;05;19;27 - 00;05;30;01
Steven Pesavento
But what do you really want from your life? What do you working towards? What are you working on creating and why is that so important for you to create that kind of dream life vision that you have?
00;05;30;28 - 00;05;49;05
Bill Faeth
It kind of goes back to 2015 when I didn't have this focus At that time, I'd done 23 start ups, I'd had 17 exits at that point, all bootstrapped with no investors. And I was on this path, you know, to go from being 40 to 50, I was doing like four and a half startups in a decade, right?
00;05;49;05 - 00;06;07;17
Bill Faeth
And I had this mentor named John Bourdon who said, Bill, what your life going to look like when you're 50? And I said, I don't know. He's all always you have the opportunity today to architect that outcome. And then what's it going to look like when you're 60? I said, I'd like to be retired at 60. It's like, okay, well, how much income are you going to need at 60?
00;06;07;17 - 00;06;31;14
Bill Faeth
I'm like, Are you fucking crazy? I don't know. I'm 40. That's 20 years away. So he taught me how to project out. Just like we have to run projections in any business, right? Take what you're spending now. Take what your lifestyle is now. What's your desired outcome? How much do you want to travel? Big difference. If I'm going to travel in a $40,000 fifth wheel versus fly private versus take, you know, around the world, cruises, we have to define that.
00;06;31;14 - 00;06;50;16
Bill Faeth
So I had to sit down with my spouse, my wife, Maria, and get crystal clear on what all of these outcomes we desired. And what we found out is it all resonated. All came back to we're probably some of the most active parents, at least that we know. We're the crazy parents that go watch our daughters practice high school soccer because we want to be there.
00;06;50;16 - 00;07;19;25
Bill Faeth
We want to be involved. We both had great childhoods, but man, my mom was working two jobs and I didn't have a father. I didn't have people, you know, pushing me and watching me and, you know, just there wasn't that time for my mother. So for us, everything was shaped around that. So, number one, Steven, we defined retirement, what that meant to us, because it's not Al Bundy, at least for me, sitting on the couch, you know, when I get done selling shoes at the mall with my hand down my pants watching reruns or whatever show for me, it's still going to be business.
00;07;19;25 - 00;07;38;15
Bill Faeth
It's still going to be engaged, but on my own terms. So we wanted to define what retirement meant to us and how we wanted to live in retirement. And then there's two different levels. There's the life plan that you have to have in the financial plan. And you mentioned like it's as simple as having a pen and a piece of paper.
00;07;38;15 - 00;07;58;12
Bill Faeth
I think a lot of people, as you know, get stuck. I can't do panels because I don't know how to operate QuickBooks or they think they're looking for the hurdle. That is not that challenging to jump over, but mentally, we make it way bigger than it is. We built everything out literally in our life plan on a Post-it note and wrote it down.
00;07;58;16 - 00;08;16;22
Bill Faeth
It's now in a Google Docs or we can change it and update it. And once we did that in 2015, at that time, I was going to retire when I was 60, I wanted eight or $500,000 in passive income, hence why I really drove heavily in real estate and short term rentals at that point and all the other things.
00;08;16;22 - 00;08;34;13
Bill Faeth
But we also have to consider the life events. And it's not just like my two girls graduating from high school. We're planning on having to take care of her parents. I have to take care of my mother. For three years. I didn't realize it was going to cost me $8,000 a month to have her in, you know, get the care that she needed.
00;08;34;26 - 00;09;06;12
Bill Faeth
So we're budgeting that, but also strategically structuring our life around where our kids are going to potentially go to college and what we're going to have to do to take care of our of my in-laws in the future. That all will prepare us to be able to hit the goals that we want. Now, just off my short term rental own portfolio, last year, I made 1997 just under a million, and I've hit all checked every box for my financial goals with my other businesses, but it's waiting on those life events.
00;09;06;25 - 00;09;22;12
Bill Faeth
So for me it's like, how do I optimize my life even more now to make lots of money? I know that sounds crazy to some people because I don't need more, but to save more time so that way I can spend that with what's important to me, which are my kids and my family. And a lot of people say that.
00;09;22;12 - 00;09;44;25
Bill Faeth
But I want you to understand today's Friday. As soon as I get done recording this with you, because I'm encroaching on very, very gracious time, my wife and it's 112 my time from noon to 4:00 every Friday, me and her have what's called faith Friday and we're auditing our successes and failures in our track to hit those long term goals every single Friday.
00;09;45;04 - 00;10;08;23
Bill Faeth
So when we get done recording, we're actually going to go for a walk together. Then we're going to go have an early dinner together. And we not only just talk about this, but we have the plan documented and we actually see what do we do financially. And then our daughters know the first thing they have to do when they get home from school is they have to give us the 15 minute audit of how we did as parents and they grade us every single week.
00;10;08;23 - 00;10;23;05
Bill Faeth
And I learned that from John Burden. I built out. Everybody has a plan, All right? I built out my own planner that I follow, and my wife and I actually audit our success and failures every single day in our planner. And then we bring that together on Friday afternoons.
00;10;23;18 - 00;10;41;15
Steven Pesavento
Well, I love all of this. There's so much to unpack here. I mean, you're really talking about sitting down in and really getting a clear vision of what that's going to look like. You're sitting down, you're your understanding, what are those roadblocks or those challenges that are going to come up and how can we financially plan for them?
00;10;41;24 - 00;11;08;14
Steven Pesavento
You're sitting down and you're getting clear on the values that you want to have as a family in your relationship and how you're going to actually instill those. And so everything that we're talking about, it's so fascinating because people, when they think about investing, they're thinking about money. But money is just the tool. It's just the catalyst to allow you to be able to go out and actually create that in the real world and have the ability to be able to do those things and have those experiences.
00;11;08;25 - 00;11;29;12
Steven Pesavento
So it and it's really it is that simple. I mean, we have a process. We walk three people through in one of our programs and we have an advisor, our team that's a 17 year certified financial planner that helps people figure out some of these financial pieces. But at the beginning it really comes down to answering those questions for what's important to you.
00;11;29;12 - 00;11;48;23
Steven Pesavento
Because, Bill, what you want from your life is going to be different than the next guy down the road. Different from what I'm looking for an across the board so no one can tell you what it is. They can inspire you to have some ideas, but actually want to go on a little side quest Because, you know, I heard you mentioned something about this, this routine that you have with your wife.
00;11;48;26 - 00;11;50;02
Steven Pesavento
How long have you guys been married?
00;11;50;25 - 00;11;51;22
Bill Faeth
25 years.
00;11;52;03 - 00;12;14;12
Steven Pesavento
So you guys have been married 25 years. And, you know, I had the gift of having two parents that are both amazing people, but they hate each other and and they have for 30 years and a lot of poor relationship examples in front of me. So for the last decade, I've been asking this question, and I'd love it if we could take a little sideways to answer it and kind of dive into what you've done to create that marriage.
00;12;14;20 - 00;12;33;27
Steven Pesavento
But if you were to look back 25 years before you got married, you were going to go talk to that version of yourself with all the knowledge and wisdom you have of creating a great 25 year marriage, what would you tell that younger version of yourself is the important things towards creating that type of lifelong partnership?
00;12;34;16 - 00;13;01;02
Bill Faeth
I think I would go back and look at the mistakes that I made and I was for the better part of, gosh, 15 to 17 years I was focused on business and I thought I thought that I was doing the right thing. And I'm the typical quadruple type A, you know, the the Tim Allen from home improvement or, you know, type of bust through walls, you know, entrepreneur.
00;13;01;19 - 00;13;20;13
Bill Faeth
And that's why I did so many start ups. One because I didn't like large businesses but the problem was is I was married to those businesses probably more than I was married to my wife. And if I didn't have and just an incredible wife, I've never slept in a hotel. I've never had to sleep on the couch. We have all we she has always had the patience of job when I'm traveling, when I'm doing whatever.
00;13;21;02 - 00;13;46;01
Bill Faeth
And we would mitigate everything before we go to bed. And I think that's something that you've got to choose your spouse wisely based on where you're moving forward. And then what I would say pre-marriage, we weren't I didn't have this discussion and I would have it if I had to do it over again is really explaining and being 100% transparent and honest about what my goals were, what drives me and what life is going to look like.
00;13;46;01 - 00;14;07;00
Bill Faeth
And that's a really hard conversation when you're 24, you know, when you're getting married. I'm 50 today, so I can't even visualize myself being able to have that conversation because she didn't know what to expect going into this. And she's just been a frickin trooper. She's been my lover, my best friend, my business partner, everything you know, for 25 years.
00;14;07;11 - 00;14;37;01
Bill Faeth
And we talk about this a lot, man. Life is so different today than it was back then. I mean, we've we've opened and scaled restaurants together. We were doing dropship thing with Brazilian bikinis and sarongs and swimwear in the early nineties on AOL chat rooms. We've been through all of it, but we weren't prepared. Right. And it took having our oldest daughter and my wife bringing up my disdain for my father that left me, left my mother, all that angst that I've had for the last 40 years of my life.
00;14;37;19 - 00;14;54;24
Bill Faeth
And she just and she didn't mean it, but she said, you're turning into your father. My oldest daughter was four and a half years old. She's like, We haven't been on a vacation since Gentry was born. You know, you work seven days a week. You're taking care of your customers more than you're taking care of your family. And that's when just the light went off.
00;14;55;11 - 00;15;18;21
Bill Faeth
And I had always had the drive to not become my father and do what he did to me and my mother, but in a different way. I wasn't really consciously choosing about subconsciously. I was just putting something else as the priority. So if I could go back, I would really want to take the knowledge I have today and explain to her what's going to happen over the next 25 years.
00;15;19;05 - 00;15;38;10
Bill Faeth
Because I think most marriages that we go into, they just don't have deep enough conversation. And it's really surface. Even when you go to marriage counseling and stuff, it's kind of surface level stuff. And I think people are afraid to have those conversations. And that's the biggest piece of advice that I would give to me is don't be afraid to open up.
00;15;38;26 - 00;15;46;01
Bill Faeth
You don't have to protect her. She is so strong. You can share the good, the bad and the ugly. All she wants to do is know what really is going on in here.
00;15;46;27 - 00;16;10;01
Steven Pesavento
Well, I really appreciate the vulnerability because you're speaking directly to me. I'm sure a lot of people get benefit from this. But, you know, I carry a lot of that fear and trauma from the past. And I've put so much into business that I am very much in line with you. I'm pre-marriage I'm at that point where I'm I'm wanting to have those types of conversations to pick somebody who's going to be a ride or die partner for the long term.
00;16;10;01 - 00;16;28;04
Steven Pesavento
But knowing what challenges are going to come up when you're an entrepreneur, when you're in business and being in alignment, that this is the life that you're going to create. I think there's probably nothing more powerful that a couple could do. And even if you're in the midst of it now, no better time to have it. Just like you guys had it.
00;16;28;12 - 00;16;39;23
Steven Pesavento
You had that wake up moment that made you realize that, Oh, well, now's my chance to really reconnect and rebuild so that the next chapter of life is even better than the last.
00;16;40;01 - 00;17;05;15
Bill Faeth
All right. I agree. And it's rebuilding financially and personally. Look, I'm afraid of going bankrupt. I've got over $20 million in liquid assets. I've done very, very well for myself financially, but I'm still afraid of going bankrupt. Right. And because I've been close before, I'm never have. And it was as recent as 2010 when Nashville I lived in Nashville when we had the flood right on the back of a recession.
00;17;05;25 - 00;17;25;10
Bill Faeth
So that's not that long ago. And that's kind of what drives me. But I also think a lot of entrepreneurs end up being bankrupt personally at home. They may they may be successful financially, but when you have too much focus on that and their home life is not the priority, then you become bankrupt at home. You look at the divorce rate in the country is like 50%.
00;17;25;10 - 00;17;42;21
Bill Faeth
But if you look at successful entrepreneurs, it's like 72%. That's almost 45% higher than the standard. It's because most of us have that drive. Most of us engulf our lives into scaling and growing businesses. And I'm a believer that we need to put that same effort into our spouse and into our children.
00;17;43;08 - 00;17;58;22
Steven Pesavento
Yeah, there's nothing more important than your primary relationship. It's one of the biggest financial decisions that you make, is to really build that foundation. If you're going to be an entrepreneur who's going to go and get on a rocket ship, you better make sure that you and your family are on the same page so they're coming along with you.
00;17;59;00 - 00;18;21;27
Steven Pesavento
Otherwise you end up growing beyond. And then, you know, that separates things. So I appreciate you joining me on that side. QUEST Insurance, some wisdom, you know, at this point, you know, whether we talk about the specific number or not, what is your number? The point that which you've made it, where you don't have to work? And the reason I ask this is because, you know, back in 2020, I sold my personal home.
00;18;22;06 - 00;18;41;08
Steven Pesavento
I went out to Hawaii during the pandemic and you couldn't get on the island. We found a way on and there was this retired builder who owned the Airbnb we were renting. It was the former Beach Boys estate, this big, beautiful nine acre spot. But I was talking to him and we were kind of sharing, you know, the vision, what I'm creating and I'm driving forward.
00;18;41;08 - 00;18;57;23
Steven Pesavento
And he asked me this question. He said, Well, what's your number? What's that point where it's enough, where you're going to be content, where you can live the life you want to live and you know, that number always kept growing and changing. And I don't think there's anything wrong with the growth and change, but it made me really think about that.
00;18;57;23 - 00;19;11;28
Steven Pesavento
And so when it comes to you've clearly gone through some of this vision setting process, What did coming up with that number and drawing that line in the sand do for you, and what would you recommend other people take away from doing the same?
00;19;12;14 - 00;19;32;27
Bill Faeth
I think that I think those those thoughts, those notions, those desires are going to change as you evolve as an entrepreneur. I mean, if you're if you're in the early stages of the journey, it's going to be completely different than where I'm at, which is basically on the back end at this point. So the way I think today I could have never thought of when I was 25 or 30 years old, my number financially, I've already hit that number.
00;19;33;27 - 00;19;55;05
Bill Faeth
It used to be $500,000 a year in total income. And then as you hit that, then you continue to grow and you continue to grow. I make multiple seven figures today, but I'm optimizing down, as I said earlier, like my owned real estate portfolio did 997,000 net income in 22. My goal is to actually drop down. If I can sustain it, that's great.
00;19;55;16 - 00;20;22;19
Bill Faeth
If I could increase it vanity wise by three grand to hit something bigger, it would be a mental victory. But the reality is my numbers time and I would have never answered it with time. You know, 20 years ago. It's literally 15 is my number. 53 hours a day is what I want to work. But then there was a different shift and it's like, Well, why don't I work 5 hours a day, three days a week?
00;20;23;08 - 00;20;44;27
Bill Faeth
And that's the goal. It is not the way I operate as a coach and influence or whatever we're called these days. I spend way I've been able to reinvest my time into that and I spend 20 to 30 hours a week, most of it actually pro-bono to try to help because the help mentality is just in my blood.
00;20;44;27 - 00;21;17;10
Bill Faeth
My entire family are educators, you know, like teachers, principals, like true educators. Well, I dropped out of UCLA and didn't get a degree, so I can't be a true educator. So this is the way for me to be able to educate. And that time allocation, whether it's pro-bono or it's for profit, is irrelevant to me. It's the fact that if I can give back and if I can educate and be accessible when most people in our space are not accessible and help, then that doesn't constitute as work for me.
00;21;17;10 - 00;21;35;16
Bill Faeth
So for work for like true professional time, I kind of classify that at 15 hours. I try to do that and it varies week to week. It could be three days or 5 hours a day. It could be five days that 3 hours a day. But that creates that time for me to do what I love and have that passion for, and that's to help people.
00;21;35;22 - 00;21;38;24
Bill Faeth
So it's 15 hours more than it does financial.
00;21;39;17 - 00;22;03;29
Steven Pesavento
Well, see, it's interesting, too, because it's such a great example of the next level. You hit that financial number, you hit it again, you hit it again, you created this vision for your life and now it's optimizing to that vision. How can you pull yourself out further and further, having more time to then dedicate to the thing that you care about your purpose?
00;22;03;29 - 00;22;07;06
Steven Pesavento
You want to help people change their life and do the same.
00;22;07;29 - 00;22;27;26
Bill Faeth
100%. And I and for your listeners out there, I'm not the automation VA guy on the brute force. You know, boots on the ground. I do my own shit, right? And I've got plenty of automation and technology in my businesses. That's where I can do, you know, 80 hours or 50 hours a week and, you know, 5 to 10 or 15 hours.
00;22;28;13 - 00;22;49;03
Bill Faeth
But I'm the one that's directly involved. I'm not one of the absentee owners that we see out there or the guy that's pitching, hey, you make $1,000,000 in, you know, nine months and, you know, work 2 hours a week. I don't think that stuff's a reality, but I believe we can optimize everything. We can optimize our family, we can optimize our spousal relationship, we can optimize our sex life.
00;22;49;03 - 00;23;07;09
Bill Faeth
We can optimize, you know, our professional life. A lot of things we can optimize. And kind of, as you said earlier, we're all on these different paths. How you choose to optimize is your way. So one of the things that I love, I grew up playing basketball before I got into, you know, golf at the competitive level and playing professional golf.
00;23;07;24 - 00;23;34;05
Bill Faeth
And I was fortunate enough that my grandfather paid for me to go to John Wooden's basketball camp twice. The legendary UCLA basketball coach and arguably one of the greatest coaches in the history of coaching for anything. And, you know, he had a couple of couple of teachings that he had in his pyramid of success. So number one was always to work swiftly, but don't be fast and out of control, and two was optimize everything that you do.
00;23;34;07 - 00;23;54;11
Bill Faeth
And that's something that I've always learn. And it was a challenge. Steven is as a golfer in high school. Then in the short time I was at UCLA before I dropped out and I played professional golf because you had to optimize your time because golf takes so much time, but also you had the self direct that you had to self manage, that you had to self inspire, you had to self motivate.
00;23;54;14 - 00;24;25;06
Bill Faeth
You don't have a coach like in team sports, right? And I think that has been something that's been absolutely beneficial for me to actually grow up without a father to grow up with just a mother and then to migrate into this individual sport. But because it makes it so much more interesting the couple of times you get into that team component, right, and it gives that independence, it's you have to be driven, you have to self motivate, you have to self inspire and most importantly, you have to have self commitment and accountability.
00;24;25;06 - 00;24;35;15
Bill Faeth
And I think those are the things that I see a lot of traits in successful entrepreneurs. But we got to make sure that transcends over to family as well. And a lot of us just tend to leave that behind.
00;24;36;06 - 00;25;03;01
Steven Pesavento
Man. So, so true, so true. It's all about knowing what you're really going after. And, you know, I think I want you to share a little bit about kind of this lifestyle that you've created, because obviously you had a bunch of business success, you had some exits, you kind of redirected your vision and I'll share mine. And then I think it it just goes to show kind of I'm looking at what you've created and I'm excited about it.
00;25;03;08 - 00;25;23;24
Steven Pesavento
For me personally, I want to have, you know, a beautiful mountain house with great views and be able to ski. I want to have a beautiful beach house, have been splitting my time between the beach in the mountains for the last four or five years. And then I want to have one of those houses be the place. Maybe it's a separate house in the city where the family is got their foundation.
00;25;24;01 - 00;25;38;19
Steven Pesavento
Kids go to school and we do this thing, but we have the ability to go and travel around and enjoy the good life. I know you've created that, so I'd love have you to share that just as an example of what you can do when you're very specific in that vision and you go out to do it.
00;25;39;06 - 00;25;57;13
Bill Faeth
Yeah, it kind of. We built the life plan, right? And the personal and the financial. My wife and I got unified and what we both agreed on that the number one place we wanted to have in retirement was the beach. And at the time when we started this, we could not afford to go to. We live in Nashville, so everybody goes to the panhandle, right?
00;25;57;13 - 00;26;17;07
Bill Faeth
So like everybody talks about Destin and then the super high end is 38 right next to Dustin. We wanted to go to 38, but what my wife wanted was to see the water here, hear the waves and smell it. And even back in 2015, you could not get that for under a million bucks. We had 125 grand. We're going invest.
00;26;18;05 - 00;26;37;04
Bill Faeth
We went to Gulf Shores, Alabama, the Redneck Riviera, you know, a couple hours to the west, still white sand beaches. It was great. We bought our first beach house. We learned how to self manage ourself, as you know, an Airbnb or VR bio or short term rental host made 100 grand in the first year, took the profits and your number two and bought our second one.
00;26;37;21 - 00;26;56;20
Bill Faeth
What we learned is, is that as a couple we we love the beach but then we bought a lake house and we're like, wow, we got sea dos, we got boats. We that gets closer. We can actually drive two and a half hours away. We were like people like, holy shit, if we if we love the lake, we might be mountain people.
00;26;56;29 - 00;27;18;23
Bill Faeth
Now. We bought a place in North Carolina in the mountains, not the Smokies, but in Banner Elk. A massive place. Yeah. And then we learned how to ski. We're like, Hey, we love skiing. All through that time we had this one vacation that changed our lives forever. I took my family to Yellowstone right in the heart of Coban to go see the park, and we fell in love with Montana and Wyoming.
00;27;19;05 - 00;27;40;22
Bill Faeth
So this February I bought my Montana property. That's my river property. It's about 15 minutes outside of Whitefish, Montana. So I get the best view I've ever seen. I fly fish literally and be smoking to try to buy my trigger and throwing the fly in the water. It's so close to the water from the deck, but it's also 15, 25 minutes to go ski and whitefish.
00;27;41;28 - 00;28;00;15
Bill Faeth
So that was our Montana property. We've got a place in Scottsdale in the next golf professional. We want to have a so we got warm climate golf ski Montana. We're closing on another property next week right next to the entrance to Glacier National Park. We've got the lake. We've got the beach. So that's woops, that's two in Montana.
00;28;00;21 - 00;28;24;04
Bill Faeth
That's the beach. It's the lake. It's the North Carolina mountains and it's Scottsdale. Those are six properties. All of those are 100% paid for by my investment. Short term rentals. So typically I learned from my business partner, we started a business going to dark miniature golf courses in shopping malls around the country in 2003, and he was a second franchisee in the Pizza Hut in 1868.
00;28;24;23 - 00;28;45;10
Bill Faeth
At the time, he was we're just under $1,000,000,000 and we grew our glow in the dark miniature golf business to about 40 million in annual revenue pre-COVID. And one of the things that I learned from him was to cluster our businesses and cluster our investments. So when we would go in to, you know, Louisville, Kentucky, as an example, we'd have three locations in Louisville.
00;28;45;10 - 00;29;09;01
Bill Faeth
If we went into Chicago or, you know, Boston, we'd open up at least three locations to maximize labor. And what he did with Pizza Hut is he never had a general manager. So they bought geographically close to where they could pay an assistant manager at each location and then have a district manager. And he said, Bill, over the last 40 years, that's probably saved me about three or $4 million because he had like 300 pizza hats at one time.
00;29;09;01 - 00;29;35;04
Bill Faeth
So I started clustering and I've applied that exact same thing into my real estate investment strategies as well. Whether it's long term, short term, you know, or multifamily, because it does give me economies of scale. But one of the other reasons outside of most people to get into real estate and I'm sure you know this, Stephen, they invest within like a 5 to 10 mile radius of where they live because they're not comfortable going outside of their local, you know, community.
00;29;35;23 - 00;30;04;22
Bill Faeth
And when you can open up the country as your oyster or internationally, you can find higher producing income properties regardless of it's short term, mid-term or long term. But also then you can diversify geographically and it's not as important in the long term space or even in the mid term space. But when you are in the profit maximizing arena of short term rentals, the having cash flow diversification from beach to, you know, ski markets is abundantly critical.
00;30;05;00 - 00;30;26;10
Bill Faeth
And then you think about earthquakes in California for I mean I literally had a forest fire at that Montana property I just closed on in February with 3.2 miles away from that house. Two weeks ago, I had I lost a property in Hurricane Sally, you know, in the Panhandle. So geographic diversification and clustering have been two cause to how I've grown out my portfolio.
00;30;27;12 - 00;31;03;19
Steven Pesavento
Well, it's so cool because I think this concept that I've carried, which is, you know, this is how I started doing business, I started doing Airbnb back in 2014. I went to go travel to visit a girl out of state. I got paid to go and do it and I got hooked. I immediately got another property in the third property in Boulder, ran that for a couple of years until the regulations changed, moved to another house, started my business, left my personal home one week out of the month, and paid to create the business that I now run today by being able to bootstrap it like that.
00;31;03;19 - 00;31;22;20
Steven Pesavento
And so it's such a powerful way to think because if you're deciding, Hey, I want this thing in my life, how can you get somebody else to pay for it? How can you get your clients, i.e. the renters on these vacation rentals to be able to fund that so that you can go and do the fun things and create that life that you want to create?
00;31;22;20 - 00;31;42;13
Steven Pesavento
So I think it's such a great example. You can do it across the board in so many ways, but I really appreciate you being on, Bill. Got one more question before we wrap up, but just for the audience, you know, you're teaching people how to create the life they want to live and doing that using short term rental as a strategy.
00;31;42;25 - 00;31;46;03
Steven Pesavento
How can people find out more about you or follow along?
00;31;47;13 - 00;32;15;10
Bill Faeth
I've got a couple of websites probably the easiest place Belfast dot com that's FAA bill FT.com and also build SDR wealth dot com and it's it's a journey that I've been on since 2015 and I've completely changed my life. I've got 30,000 members in my build SDR well Facebook group that's free if you want to join that and kind of start your journey there And I've just you can find me anywhere.
00;32;15;10 - 00;32;25;01
Bill Faeth
I've got multiple podcasts, YouTube, just Google my name and you'll see it all. It's built faith up and, you know, happy to help you along with your journey as well.
00;32;25;20 - 00;32;50;00
Steven Pesavento
It's been it's been super fun. Thanks so much for joining us. As we wrap up for all the people who are listening there, they have that vision. They understand what they're they're looking to go after, but yet they still have that fear, that fear of taking action, that fear of doing something different. What advice do you have to those listeners who want to make a change but they can't seem to get themselves to move?
00;32;50;19 - 00;33;11;01
Bill Faeth
You've just got to take that first step, right? And I think one of the things that I learned is when I when I dropped out of UCLA at 19 and turned professional, I started working with a sports psychologist named Dr. Bob Rotella. The power of positive thinking is critical. Most people try to avoid the crash. They try to avoid driving their golf ball into the water.
00;33;11;01 - 00;33;29;22
Bill Faeth
You got to focus where you want it to go. The only way you're going to be able to do that, and this is the most important thing that I'll share with you today. You have to give yourself permission to succeed. And we literally need to have that self-talk with our self and say, Bill, you will be successful, you can be successful.
00;33;29;29 - 00;33;45;24
Bill Faeth
It is ingrained in you to become successful. I don't care how much shit you've gone through in your life and every hurdle you've had to jump over how bad your life is. If you start believing in yourself and you give yourself permission, you can achieve some pretty big things.
00;33;47;02 - 00;34;08;19
Steven Pesavento
That's awesome. Well, such is so good to get to talk with you here today, Bill. Thanks so much for joining us. And thank you all for listening to the Investor Mindset Show. Definitely take some time to reflect on what you can take away from today's episode and put one thing into action. Take that first step towards creating the life you want.