How Brooke Pfautz Grew A Portfolio of 500 Properties in Just 5 Years! (And TIPS for How You Can As Well)

welcome back everyone to the short terminal riches podcast happy to be here again happy to have an extra special guest today a guest that's written a great book and writing another one uh and it just has a ton of experience and that's Brook Fouts welcome to the show Brooke glad to be here Tim thanks uh would you mind just giving us a quick background I know you've just you've got so much experience in the space but uh I guess where he got started and where you're

at now yeah I'll uh I'll try to keep this as brief as possible because it's in a long long road but uh stumbled into the short-term vacation rentals back in 2007 didn't know anything about short-term rentals um ended up building that company pretty fast started a company called vantages or Realty in Ocean City Maryland uh built that to about 500 properties under management uh sold that in 2013 went down to Orlando where I was um I was Chief Business Development officer for another management company down

there I was also CEO of a company called purpose-built vacation homes where we designed and built these luxury vacation rentals uh then I went into software for a couple years when I was headed up uh sales and marketing for live res which is a property management software company and then four years ago I launched ventory and inventory is a sales and marketing platform that helps professional short-term vacation rental managers grow their inventory yeah awesome and I know I know that we could talk for 20 hours

today but uh our our podcast episodes are normally quick actionable ones so I want to try to get to some nuts and bolts here uh your book that you wrote zero to 500 properties in five years I read it uh as as we know there's lots of different ways to make money in the short-term Rental World we can buy our properties and invest in them which is usually what we talk about on the show although we can do lease Arbitrage which is another way and Property

Management we can build like like you've done and a lot of us are doing and then we can also manage properties and so I know a lot of people that listen to the show are also managing properties and you built a massive portfolio in a short amount of time can you give us a little more insight into that yeah so I you know I launched in uh in Ocean City like I said didn't know anything about the market and knew really quickly and realized really quickly

for us to really scale um and kind of make the max amount of money that we could the best way to do that was by growing inventory you know if you had if you only had a handful of properties there was kind of a cap on what you could really make uh but the the most impactful lever that you could pull what we determined was just adding inventory because we we knew we would fill them up with guests we didn't have any issues with marketing to

guests this is in the early days of Virgo uh and homeway and uh we used a couple other channels at the time the Airbnb wasn't even really a thing but we knew we'd get them booked uh but so we realized that again the the most impactful lever we could have was uh was really getting inventory and I came from actually Mortgage Banking that was kind of my original career right out of college did that for about 10 years and um was pretty decent marketer in that

realm and kind of took those marketing skills and uh to turn it into short-term rentals where most of our competitors were lobbing out one postcard per year we were constantly doing owner acquisition marketing um from both a digital perspective but also a lot of direct mail Direct Mail really really works in this industry mm-hmm yeah it's awesome it's a great story in your in your book was jam-packed full of uh of insights a lot of the people listening to show know that uh my company and

I recently started managing other properties as well and we're doing a little differently we kind of have we're managing managing properties virtually so a lot of things have changed since when you started building your portfolio what what would you say to to someone I guess building a management portfolio today in terms of just how things are different yeah I mean well the first thing is I like to look at just from the first perspective of if you want to build net worth um you can do

you can do it many different ways you can do it from owning the real estate you can do it from Arbitrage but many people think that you can't do it from managing other properties but these contracts are super super valuable um and it's probably I think people discount really the true value of these contracts I mean there's a guy named Jacoby Olin with c2g advisors he's done more M A transactions mergers and Acquisitions transactions than anybody did over 200 million dollars last year and he said

publicly multiple times that the average contract what came out value was about thirty four thousand thirty three thirty four thousand dollars so I mean that's pretty significant I mean you can figure it out you can grow a portfolio of 100 properties you know on average you know that's 3.4 million dollars so it's not just owning the real estate um so the first thing is understanding that you know there really really is value to these properties and these contracts and the second thing is you know have

a specific proactive plan to go out there and get them don't just assume they're going to stumble to into you you know just like you have a most people have a proactive plan to going out there and getting guests um you should do the same thing with uh with new inventory as well yeah great tips well I guess you know acquiring new inventory is one thing but then actually managing it is another thing and we have so many tools today a lot of them I'm sure

you didn't have when you got started with your property management business what would you say to those out there looking to manage properties with the tools that we have available today well there's a lot obviously so much more technology and you know I look at technology it's obviously making everybody so much more efficient and not even talking about you know Ai and chat gbt and everything else and how that really turns out we'll be turning people into the Superhuman and 10xing everybody but I mean I

look at you know from just even the prop the development and property management software has evolved so much um obviously marketing channels um channels like you know like Breezeway Breezeway makes it so much more easier and those kind of tools um even like guest uh marketing platforms and guest guide books and things like that that can really cut down I mean I remember how many times we have hundreds and hundreds of calls we would get per day and it was these people asking the same darn

questions every single time it's like you know some of these guide books really eliminate so many of those questions uh right now and obviously the use of virtual assistants um Revenue management is I mean they're what Revenue management wasn't even a thing when I first started in this industry and now it's like if you're not doing Revenue management you you're you're in the uh you know the dinosaur ages but um tons of Technology really is making it much more efficient and again leveraging virtual assistants and

you know one of the mistakes that I made and um I'm actually admitting this in my I'm actually doing a post online about my top 10 mistakes uh that I made and one of them was um thinking that everybody had to be located in my my office I mean now looking at it it was it's kind of like a dumb moment you know but back then it was like no we have to have everybody here and uh nowadays it's it's obvious it's very obvious you don't

need to have everybody in and very often having people in these Resort markets is really challenging as uh one one gentleman mentioned the other day to me he goes it's not a talent uh talent pool it's a talent puddle in many of these small tiny markets there just really isn't much there so if you can broaden it and make it virtual it definitely can make your life a lot easier for sure yeah yeah I know we're here recording this uh you know I'm down here in

South America and you're we're far away um from each other and we actually our team you know we have people in the Philippines and Mexico and we just started hiring out of Eastern Europe and we have people in the US as well but it really is I mean there's so much opportunity now and we can do so many things virtually uh I guess with that said though it's not easy necessarily to manage a lot of people and managing people virtually is just another another aspect it

comes with its own set of challenges and so I imagine managing 500 properties like you were before you sold your company that you had quite the team do you have any what would you say for someone building a team out there today or maybe what what to look for any tips around that yeah so first off the team is probably the most important thing I mean I say here just at my job at venturia CEO is is people it's culture and vision and strategy so two-thirds

of my job really revolves around the team and if you think about it you know we have the right idea at the right time and the right market and what determines our success or not is really the team we assemble so my number one job I'm on the front lines of recruiting I'm on the front lines of actually going through and vetting resumes and things like that so we take it very seriously um we've got a team of uh close to 50 people here at Venturi

and um I've hired every single one I was the initial call and every single one of them um but we we have a pretty dialed in process but one of the things that I think is most effective is we leverage psychometric personality assessment tools uh so you may have heard them like predictive index uh and culture index these are these are a couple tools that I've used for close to a decade and every single team member on our team has been hired with these tools and

I would and hire a babysitter without them right now it's it's that impactful it's almost like cheating you know people can interview really really well and they don't tell you though they're going to be late you know they're going to not have a lack follow-up and these kind of things but these kind of tools really make that so much easier so I really don't even look at a resume until they filled out that uh that psychometric personality assessment then I look at the entire candidate I

almost look at their profile first before their experiences because to me that's the most important trait and then once we see if they have the right profile for that role then we'll look at their experiences and then determine if it's uh if we should interview them then we interview them we're really looking for just more of a cultural fit uh and looking in for you know how will they fit in with the team and you know do they have the capacity and the desire to do

the job yeah yeah great points there uh we use the disc personality a lot I I know there's there's a whole bunch of them too and the culture fit really is uh a big thing um one of the books that I read recently and I I've heard you mention on other podcasts too is the book traction and he talks about uh you know all those things so anyone out there listening if you're if you're starting building a business I highly recommend you read the book traction

it's it's a blueprint for running a successful business at all levels pretty much I second that 100 it's so we we are running EOS uh in our business uh entrepreneur operating system which obviously talks about Gina Wickman and especially managing remote teams it's we we say we manage outcomes not hours worked or where you work from and much of that comes from uh EOS because it's there's accountability built into it there's a Cadence to it um and you really can't hide died behind the metrics so

people that are effective and do a good job uh you know it's uh it's super helpful and I always say like you know look I went to business school and you know I don't you know their business school they don't teach you how to run small businesses really um EOS is probably the closest you know you know building a business in a box that I've ever you know came across yeah it's amazing um yeah it's been really good I've just been studying it back and forth

and uh implementing it's it's really fantastic so well okay let's see here so you know building a management portfolio we know that it can be a really good opportunity and it's a natural progression actually for a lot of people in the short terminal world and maybe you know they get it their first property and they like what how it's working they get a few more they realize that they have to develop a lot of these management skills and some tools and then their friends start asking

and they say hey can you manage my property and so sometimes it's a Natural Evolution but there's a lot of mistakes that people make along the way and I think this is what your next book's going to be about is that right it is yeah it was uh it was kind of funny yeah it's the top 10 mistakes that uh many of these uh these professional short-term vacation rental managers made and it was funny how it all kind of came about I just casually sent a

text one Sunday afternoon I read a a podcast or write a blog or something from somebody else or a post that somebody else did in a different industry so I said let me try it out so I sent a text out to four of my buddies in the industry and they all responded I was like man this is some great content I asked him if I could share it online and it went viral ever since that point and since that point we've asked 52 different people

uh their top 10 mistakes and we've been sharing it on LinkedIn it's just been an incredibly uh just powerful series and takeaways of this are so valuable and it's just so nice to see people there you know people have been very candid and vulnerable but it's not just the mistakes they made it's you know you take the inverse of that and it's like all right what is the you know what would you do almost like differently next time and you know decided to it was such

great content decided to turn it into another book you know yeah yeah yeah thank you by the way for that great great information I it's so exciting to me that I love reading and and the thing I love about it is that you can pick up a book or you know watch listen to an audiobook or watch a series on YouTube whatever it happens to be and you can learn from someone's career you know someone dedicating years of their life they condense it down into a

tiny little version and it can help you save so much time and frustration so well without giving too much away uh what would you say or maybe like three of those top 10 mistakes that uh property managers are making today wow so it's funny because it ended up um really coming down to about 10 common mistakes across the board and we can touch on a couple of them uh one was team so the the theme of uh in one case like not hiring fast enough uh

in another theme it was talking about not firing uh soon enough like they should have fired quick um in in getting right the right people on the team so team was a big part of it uh let's see there was uh not inventory go figure you know inventory acquisition was a big part of it but it was a lot of it based around not knowing the value of inventory not knowing how valuable it was to actually bring on more properties but also was talking about bringing

in the wrong properties and not only the wrong properties but the wrong owners um and a big part of it was uh firing owners that weren't a good fit for you so uh you know because there are a lot of them could be very toxic to your uh culture and really burn out your team um let's see what else we had we had uh networking was probably this is probably one of the biggest surprises for me was networking um not networking with local competitors soon enough

but also like not going to uh industry conferences I mean so many people said I think just about every single person uh mentioned that that they wish they would have gone to conferences sooner and they would have uh you know actually uh partnered up with their local competitors and just learned and realize that they're not they're not competition I mean even though they may be competition but they could be friends and not necessarily foes um yeah and there's so many good nuggets in there but those

were kind of some of the big ones great advice great advice I I love going to the conferences too I mean aside from the fact that they just can be fun to get away for a little bit but uh again it's kind of like you have so much knowledge and so much wisdom all gathering in the same place around the same topic it's like a it's like a condensed Mastermind in a weekend so and the virtual options are good now too I would say at least

on in in my case a lot of times I'm not as focused with the virtual one as I would be actually being there in person so uh but yeah definitely are you going to be at any of the upcoming conferences yeah we go to most of them um so we'll definitely be a vrma international uh I heard uh the data and revenue management conference is going to go on in Nashville and early December so I'll be at that we'll be at some of the software uh

conferences uh as well so yeah we'll definitely be uh we're we're usually at every single one of them and I'm I'm probably 80 of them awesome well before we uh finish up here today we'll make sure everyone knows where to find you uh and yeah if anyone out there is is interested in Property Management I highly suggest checking out Brooke's book uh he's he's got a bunch of knowledge a ton of wisdom learned a lot and was willing to share it with us all so check

that out um and then looking forward to getting the new book when it comes out Brooke do you know where uh when that might be available yeah so it's probably going to be available this summer later uh part of this summer uh if you want to get a reserve uh we'll we'll send you we are sending out some free copies uh so just go to ventory.com v-i-n-t-o-r-y.com slash mistakes and uh you can get on that list and we'll go ahead and send you a free copy

of the book and also if you just go to our website uh and just uh you know and you can get my other book from zero to 500 uh properties in five years uh for free as well we'll send you a digital copy of that one uh too so just don't anywhere you know contact us page uh awesome oh why don't you tell us a little bit more about ventory too Brooke that's your that's your current company right yeah so start inventory about four years ago

and our mission has been the same since the beginning it's helping people grow their inventory so we don't do anything with Revenue management we're not doing anything operations or guest marketing marketing we focus exclusively on the supply side of things so all that means is we help people get more inventory more properties in the rental program and we do that in a couple different ways we do that through data we have uh the largest database of vacation rental homeowners uh in the US we have a

really cool CRM and marketing automation platform that helps you kind of nurture those leads we also have really cool campaign engine that allows you to easily send out Direct Mail kind of our version of canvas so you can build out really cool postcards and Direct Mail pieces and send it through the system uh we have you know do some digital marketing like email marketing to our platform and other digital marketing services and uh yeah just uh everything you need to grow your inventory bringing a nice

neat little box and uh it also you know has it we have a team of 50 growth experts that this is all we do kind of helping you you know get more properties awesome that's awesome uh well Ash I I know we could talk uh for for a long long time there's so many Avenues to go down um but most of our episodes are pretty quick actionable advice so we'll definitely make sure to have you back back on in the future before we go though I

just got I have one other question for you the name of the podcast is short-term rental riches and a lot of people when they think about riches they think about just financial side of things but life has so many more riches to offer than than just the finance side so what's one thing that you've a habit or something that you've started doing that's enriched your life uh in a non-financial way yeah well the industry 100 I was just thinking about this this morning the industry has

enriched my life with just the people that I've met I mean the the the friendships I've gained I mean I I think uh if I were probably to get married again luckily I'm happily married but if I were I mean I think my entire bridal party would be people that I've met with in this industry and just some of my best friends now are from this I mean I can count on them for anything I mean we do Retreats we do Mastermind Retreats and we're um

just and every time we go to a conference it seems like not only the people that have become really really close with it's almost like a family reunion but all the people within the industry all the vendors and everything else it's just I've never seen anything like it like I said before I was in Mortgage Banking and you know I'd go to these conferences and you know wanted to talk about a boring conference man you know like this is just a completely I ever I love

how everyone really tries to help each other out even competitors um and it's just uh it's fantastic truly blessed to be in this this space it is it is it's a lot of fun and I love that it's so Global too you know we have short-term rentals everywhere people are traveling everywhere and so I I agree with you well awesome Brooke we'll make sure we get your information and our show notes really appreciate uh your time and having you on today and we look forward to

having you again in the future appreciate it thanks take care I've dedicated years figuring out how to manage my personal portfolio remotely and it wasn't always easy and it took a long time but now my amazing team can professionally manage my properties without me and good news our team can also manage yours let us save you the stress and headaches and some money by offering you an industry low fee find out more about partnering with us head to str-riches.com hit the property management button answer a

couple quick questions and meet with me personally that's striches.com rest easy knowing that with my team your properties will be in excellent hands