Strategies and Income Diversification for your Financial and Time Freedom with Ginny Townsend

October 14, 2021

Expert CRE Secrets Podcast

“You’ve worked hard. You enjoy working hard. But at the end of the day, you’re looking to create financial freedom and time freedom so work isn’t all you ever do. You want to actually LIVE your life. You want to spend it with loved ones and leave the world a better place than how you found it.”

With a background in financial and strategic marketing, Ginny Townsend has spent over a decade helping organizations of all shapes and sizes draw out their unique gold, allowing them to connect quickly with their ideal clients. Currently, Ginny works with entrepreneurs and business owners to fully develop a compelling signature offer that speaks their clients’ language, then helps them craft a strategic webinar based on that offer.

She also specializes in filling the virtual room once their webinar is complete. In addition to serving business owners and entrepreneurs as a Strategy and Growth Consultant, Ginny is also an Advisory Board Member for a legal-tech startup that also serves growing businesses; Legalucy.

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Strategies and Income Diversification for your Financial and Time Freedom with Ginny Townsend

Brett:

I'm excited about our next guest. She has a background in financial strategic marketing, and she has spent over a decade helping organizations of all shapes and sizes to try out their unique gold, allowing them to quickly connect with their ideal clients. She currently works with entrepreneurs and business owners to fully develop a compelling signature offer that speaks their client's language, then helps them craft a strategic webinar based on that offer. She also specializes in filling the virtual room once this webinar is complete, and so much more, as well as leveling up your wealth using Airbnb, which is going to be talking, and that other stuff as well. Please welcome to the show, Ginny Townsend. Hey, Ginny, how are you doing?

Ginny:

I'm doing great. How are you?

Brett:

I am fine. I'm excited to get to know you a little bit more here, and I have our listeners hear your story, and then talk about using Airbnb to grow some wealth. Far, our listeners getting to know you for the first time, would you give us a little bit more about your background and your current focus?

Ginny:

Like you mentioned in the bio, my background is in marketing, strategic marketing, and it's I think, my love of marketing, that really helped me to see the power of Airbnb’s growing wealth, and I'm happy to explain that more little bit later. But I spent about a decade in financial services, marketing, and then moved over to the agency side. I've been a part of a creative agency and now consulting on my own, helping entrepreneurs level up their game, and by bringing creative offers, like you said, in the bio, that is just a great fit for their audience. But I also have this extremely just like a passion project of mine, and it really is more than that, but helping people to become financially free, and I think Airbnb is one of the best vehicles to do that one of the most approachable ones, the most consistent, and I think one of the most proven in this day and age.

Brett:

We're going to dive into those secrets here in a minute. But before we go there, Ginny, we've all been given certain gifts in this life, and some people call them superpowers. Some people call them strengths. I believe their God-given gifts are given to us to be a blessing to help others. I want you to go back to maybe your high school days, maybe college. I want you to think about maybe that was one or two gifts that you believe you were given? How did those help, and how did you help and bless people today?

Ginny:

I think I have the ability to put together a big picture, to see a big picture where, where some might be focused more on some specifics, like details or even specific tactics. I feel like my God-given gift is the ability to have a vision at a 30,000-foot view, and then be able to make complex things simple.

Brett:

You even made that answer simple, the ability to put things in the big picture for high vision from a big view and make complex things. Simple. Excellent. Let's dive right into the number one secret to leveling up your wealth using Airbnb, and feel free to tie in like your story. Because let's be honest, marketing and real estate go hand in hand, market the communication building systems. Secret number one or step number one for doing all of that. Go ahead, Ginny.

Ginny:

First of all, I think I want to go back and clarify what I had said about how Airbnb is beautiful for anyone who knows about marketing because they do all of the marketing for you. As a host, they bring all of the guests. They bring the buyers to the site. You don't have to do any kind of advertising. You don't have to do any kind of yard signs or Facebook ads or Facebook marketplace or Craigslist, whatever all of the other kinds of typical things that you might need to do. As a real estate investor from a marketing perspective. Airbnb does that for you. They even do the vetting of the people. You don't have to do background checks. I mean, I know that's not marketing, but that's just in addition, they do kind of everything for you. You just get to be able to plug into this amazing marketplace that has a bunch of rabid travelers right now. Being able to leverage the tool of Airbnb, I think is one of the first secrets. Just knowing that that tool exists, is I think, really the first step in the roadmap to financial freedom.

Brett:

Excellent. Very well said, and by the way, my wife and I, we've done Airbnb on both sides. We've hosted and of course, traveled, and it's wonderful, and so many ways, but it's so turnkey. Simple, like they just literally make what could have been super complex. They broke out all the steps and they keep continuously improving it as well. Yes, thank you, Airbnb, all the folks that are listening to this. You guys are amazing, and you're right, zero advertising because they're so well marketing themselves and people are trusted in all that we can go on and on. Knowing that it exists. What's step number two or B?

Ginny:

I think being able to be an entrepreneur, as a business owner. Let's just say for a moment that your listeners have a current long-term rental, being able to take a look at this asset, making what it could, for me is my ROI, what it could be. Being able to take a look at what the rates can handle in the market for a long-term rental, and then exploring, is Airbnb a fit for where I am? Because if it's not a fit, even though it's a powerful tool, it's not a fit. I have a calculator for your air if your listeners would like to see it.

Brett:

Speak out right now. That sounds great. Let's do it.

Ginny:

In the calculator, it's at ginnytownsend.com/ltrtostr, so long-term rental to short-term rental, and what I had done was I put in the numbers from a house that we used to own it was a house that we owned in Lincoln, very close to where you're at. Brett.

Brett:

We spoke about a month ago. Not getting me on camera, because I was on your show. That's right. Let's go, Ginny. We're back again.

Ginny:

We were living in Lincoln, loved it, and had no real plan to have an Airbnb at the time, and this is why I call myself an accidental six-figure host. We were living in Sacramento, my husband's job moved us temporarily to the San Francisco Bay Area, and we loved our house, and Lincoln, we didn't want to sell it, and so what we decided to do was, I really believe this moment of inspiration, I feel like it was just God being like, hey, like, I wonder if we could rent this place out furnished, because moving to the Bay, everyone lives in like a shoebox down there. We're like, well, we're gonna have to sell this place, we're gonna have to rent it, we're gonna have to like rent a storage unit, oh, I don't want to do that, and so we're like, let's just see if we can cover our mortgage, I'd be so happy. It was like, boom, month, one was profitable, boomed like the second month, and so we were in the bay for a little over three years, and we were profitable every single month, and in fact, we only had 11 vacancy days, the entire time, and we had a unique situation. I know. But the thing is, what I'm why I love telling that story is it is so accessible, I didn't know what I was doing.

When I started, I just, and we found out very quickly that we were undercharging, and so we could even up-level our own what I accepted each month as like. Alright, here's our goal, by 1000. Like it was, it grew tremendously, and so it was this huge, amazing blessing that we had no idea was coming our way. We were, and I shared that to say like we were looking at, like, what if we did this as a long-term rental, and we had to account for the money that we would have spent in a storage unit. But now, for anyone who is in that kind of a situation? Or, if maybe not like that, they're trying to figure out what they want to do with their primary home. But if they already have a long-term rental, what could that be doing for you if it was a short-term rental, and I'm happy to send over it's a very simple calculator, you enter in numbers you already know, and there's a link to a tool that will give you what your property is like you just put it in address, and it'll give you an estimated annual salary or annual revenue potential for that specific property, which is really, really cool, and then you just see.

Brett:

GinnyTownsend.com is G I N N Y townsend.com. The calculator is a link there?

Ginny:

I need to add a link to the homepage because I keep talking about it more and more. But the URL is ltrtostr, so if you're turning a long-term rental into a short-term rental, and the example that I had was it wasn't the house that we had on Airbnb, it was just, it was we lived in, we had had two houses in Lincoln while we were there. I put the first one on there and it was over a 600% increase in monthly cash flow simply by furnishing it. That's really, that's the secret, that's, I'm gonna preemptively say that secret number three, furnishing it. That's the only thing that I know of, that you can increase your cash flow by 600% easily.

Brett:

Airbnb knows that it exists to use the site, or number one and number two, do like an underwriting. Find out what are some of the rental rates? Would you do number three, furnish it? Now, are you still doing those now? Do you still have those going?

Ginny:

We sold the one in California and we bought a farm out on the east coast, and we have a couple of farm cottages that we are fixing up and they should be live by the end of this week. We have to Airbnb is going live again this week. I am so excited to enter back into it because I believe in it. I do wholeheartedly believe in it, and I feel like this is the right time to be in a short-term rental for sure.

Brett:

Everyone wants to travel. I want to get out, and by the way, you're in New York. We're part of New York?

Ginny:

Hudson Valley. About an hour outside the city.

Brett:

Looking for an inner Hudson Valley, check out ginnytownsend.com. Very cool. That's steps one, two, and three. Any other secrets or steps there that you want to touch on Airbnb?

Ginny:

From here, it is a little similar to bringing a long-term rental to market. You have to have it photographed, you have to list it, and like you really are just listing it in one place. Airbnb, as opposed to like, all of the different marketplaces where you can list a long-term rental, or having to hire an agent or something like that to find you a renter, but it becomes very familiar. The Airbnb platform walks you through listing a property, which is very straightforward, and in fact, they have a much-discussed release that happened pretty much over Memorial Day weekend of this year, and there were like, 103 updates to the site. I mean, it was like they went Apple-style, like the big kind of reveal at once. Wednesday, Tuesday, they just went full update, and, and their focus on that was making it even easier for hosts to add properties to Airbnb, and what I hear from that, and in fact, what the CEO said is they need more supply and that in any type of business, you want to be on the side that has like, tighter supply or tighter demand. You want to be on the side that's a little bit tighter, and so what they're saying right now is we have so much demand, we don't have enough supply. They've made the process of bringing on listings even easier.

Brett:

Love it. Absolutely love it. The marketplace is right for it. A part of our housing crisis. People want to rent places, too. It might be a rental crisis as well.it goes hand in hand. Well, so those are the main secrets or level up, you’re your Airbnb business, building your wealth there. Yeah, and also touch on there.

Ginny:

I think once something is live on Airbnb, it is live. I think that's where I get a lot of the most common questions. I'm just like, well, isn't this going to take so much of my time communicating with people? Or what if I have a bad guest? What if, what if, what if, but I'm here to tell you because of the margins? Well, there's, there are so many answers to this question, by the way, but like, one of my favorite ones is, there's so much margin on a typical Airbnb, that you can hire full-service property management with just one property, and oftentimes, in long term, you need to have the economies of scale working for you. Like you might have to have eight or 10 or 12 properties in an area to make property management affordable to have that margin. But from property one, you can afford a full-service agency to handle all of the communications like scheduling cleaners, things like that, which by the way, is another one of the questions that I keep hearing is like, so doesn't cleaning get expensive, and that is simply something that we pass through to the guest. Like I don't upcharge any, I just give the full work to the cleaner, because that is where I mean, I want them to get they do great work. I'm making sure that the place is clean and ready for guests to come in.

Strategies and Income Diversification for your Financial and Time Freedom: “Owning a home is a keystone of wealth…both financial affluence and emotional security.”―Suze Orman

Brett:

I'm really making the complex simple here, and we're jamming through this episode. We have so much meat, which is great. You can hire full-time management, which makes sense like in multifamily. Sometimes it's 75 to 100 units. The moment to get a full-time manager. California requires 60 minutes or more to get a full-time manager on site. But, generally speaking, it doesn't scale for a lot of units. But what you're saying is, you look at the rents, to make sure it makes sense. There's one single unit, you can justify a full-time property manager because you're getting that 600% potential difference, and what the long-term rental would be versus short-term. Is that a fair summary, Ginny?

Ginny:

It's a very fair summary, and then also what I like about short-term rental management companies is they are very, very aligned with your goals. It's oftentimes not a fixed fee. It is usually a percentage of revenue.it is in their best interest to make sure that you get the highest rate per night. That you get the most nights per month booked, because obviously, that increases what they earn. But it increases your bottom line as well. It is a true win-win situation, and there are all kinds of even hybrid-type opportunities if someone is like, you know what, I don't mind communicating with people. I want to meet people like we, so with this, with the first rental that I had in California, we met some of the coolest people, and really enjoyed talking with them. But now I'm happy to have that completely outsourced if that's not something I want to do, but if it's in your phase of life that you're like the rentals nearby, it'd be cool to meet random people and hear random stories from wherever part of the world they're from. It's a really cool way to feel connected in a time that has been so disconnected, because of COVID, and everything.

Brett:

That's a similar experience to with my wife and me. We rented the houses out, and we'd meet some really cool, neat people, and I parented it 20 times, let's say, and we took a little break because the kids and we didn't travel as much. We typically schedule it when we would travel. Rented out, in Roseville, is a little more restrictive with the way they've done things. But that being said. Give me some really neat, cool, interesting people that you wouldn't have met before, and like, I remember, we go to Lake Tahoe, and I'm like, we're getting paid to be here. Like, it feels really good. Like to be really good. Like, they're paying us. I think they're paying like 20 $100 for the week or something, something wild, and then we were traveling and it cost us like 23 for the week, wait, so we're, we got an extra margin of 500 to travel this house that we would have done anyway, and our house would have been sitting vacant. Now. It's like that plus all of our money for all of our food, for the entire family of seven. That's, pretty cool.

Ginny:

I was just going to say, and even as I mentioned, if someone has a rental, is that asset making its money for you? Like even if it's your primary residence? Is it making money? Like, that's not often a question that we ask ourselves if our primary residence is because that's not obviously its initial goal. But, I can absolutely pay for vacations.

Brett:

I had to twist her arm a little bit at the beginning. Like, she's like, to be living in our house. I'm like, but let's see, these numbers here. This is $3,000, I was looking to have. Take one or two or three extra vacations. He’s vacationed more time with the family. When I framed it that way, she's like, although it does take a lot of work. You have to, I mean, if you're living in your own house for her, because she wants to get everything organized, and everything really, and I do too, but I mean, she does more, more of the heavy lifting regarding those things. Well, I'll tell you what, you don't have to do any of that. Well, hire the cleaners to come in. That became a part of our process where we said before and after, we'll do both, we'll hire that that'll be part of our profits. It's okay, and we were making an extra 20 $500. This week, we can pay 500 bucks, and anyway, those are some of them, I guess, internal conversations that my wife has about this kind of thing?

Ginny:

It's great, and I also think that it's a wonderful first touchpoint to say, am I even interested in being an Airbnb host, is to either rent out a room in your place or rent out your house just to see what the experience is like? Because some people, frankly, don't like it. They don't want to be in that business. But it might also be like, this might be one of the coolest things we can do right now.

Brett:

Very cool. Ginny, this is so helpful. All that being said, we're running out of time. Are you ready for a lightning round?

Ginny:

I love that.

Brett:

All right. Knowing what you know, now, if you go back to your 25-year-old self with the one Golden Nugget, make sure to tell yourself to do.

Ginny:

The first thing that came to mind is my 25-year-old self. I wanted to make really cool, beautiful things, and I would tell my 25-year-old self, like, what it needs to make good business sense first, like that. Then you can take that thing and make it cool and beautiful.

Brett:

Got it. Cool, and beautiful. Well, she said, the second question, what's in the phone book? Are you recommending her gift to you the most in the past year?

Ginny:

In the past year? Well, this is so funny. I was talking about this earlier today. I have it on my desk. It's called Optimize YOUR Bnb, and it is by a person named Daniel V. Rusteen, and he was an employee at Airbnb, and so he gave a lot of insights behind the tech of like, optimizing and things like that. But that's, frankly, his area of expertise. I'm more, the vision, let's get the roadmap in place, and he's like, all right. Here are the very few buttons you need to push to make sure that you show up higher in search results. But that like if anything about marketing, that's the thing that gets you exposure and clicks and therefore money.

Brett:

Next question. What's the number one leadership quote or theme that you strive to live by?

Ginny:

The theme, quote? That is a good question. I feel like I thought that's a good question, and I don't have an answer to that right now. Can we come back to that? I know that it's the lightning round that is going to come back to that.

Brett:

The next question is, what are you most curious about right now? What am I most curious about right now?

Ginny:

We just put our daughter we had a daughter right before the world shut down, and this is now her first time being in like, we just took her to daycare, we call it school, but like to be able to Should we just have had the most amazing little glimpses into her personality, because, it's just been us, like us on the east coast. We don't have family out here. It's been pretty closed. But like when she's around other kids, she just lights up, and so I think she's going to be a very social person, and so it's been really cool. Like, she should be around more kids more often, and so we just implemented that. But like being curious about this new phase in her life and how to do it even though we still live all kinds of quiet, secluded lives right now. How can I give her an environment where she can thrive and grow into the woman that God made her be?

Brett:

That's a beautiful curiosity and the best type of one helping to develop and inspire kids and get them in environments where they're, they're thriving. Really cool, okay, so back to the question. Quote or theme, so it could be like Winston Churchill's theme. It could be Martin Luther King, Jr. Could be a kick, could be a verse in the Bible, like anything, just a quote, or a theme in general, that you really try to live by that helps keep you inspired, encouraged.

Ginny:

Something just came back, and it was on a message that I heard this last weekend over a podcast, and it was this idea that if there's an area in our lives, that we are experiencing hopelessness, or there's just this lack of a gleaming hope, that means that we're believing a lie, something about in that area, that means there was a lie. I've had it's been of lately something like what areas do I not have hope in or like, I'll be like, struggling or frustrated with one area. I'm like, why could I be believing right now that is leading me to not have as much hope as I should in a given area?

Brett:

See that wisdom? We just had to like mine.

Ginny:

Like Airbnb. Like alright, let's go back to the rest of the world in life.

Brett:

As well as passive income. This is very cool. Alright, so last question. Is this knowing what you know? Last question. Is this your answer to that question, after helping others, after growing your wealth, after having a family, all the stuff you've accomplished so far. How do you stay centered on your values? How do you stay encouraged to reach new heights?

Ginny:

I definitely consider my faith to be integral in that integral, and I think having an enormous goal to work towards, I think like, that, like having this big idea, this huge, why that pulls you forward, I think, is one of the most compelling not anchors, because anchor keeps you in the same spot, but like a compelling almost motor, the opposite of an anchor to keep you moving forward, and so I know, a couple of last years, actually 2020, I graduated with my Master's in finance, and one of my biggest, thank you, one of my big goals, while I was doing that Master's was I wanted to come up with something like a business model that could help families grow wealthy, like become wealthy, and I actually, in that time, decided that I think owning a bank that is geared towards helping families become financially free or build legacy wealth, I think is something that it's it's very central to who I am and I feel like real estate is really central to how that will look.

Just throwing that out there. But I think when I come back to like, okay, like I need to do X, Y or Z like to move whatever I'm working on right now forward, whether it is, getting these two Airbnb’s live this week, or my own podcast, After I have created a course, to help people like figure out the ins and outs of selecting the, finding furnishings and filling a profitable short term rental.it's like when all of the little things which are, as you discussed, I love the vision like it's the little things that are like, if you like to take forever, it's remembering I'm like, okay, at some point, I'm going to own a bank that will help finance things that will bring financial independence and legacy wealth to families across the country. I think having that like is a big, big thing. Just like, Yes, like, let's go do those little things that need to get done. That's what keeps me moving forward.

Brett:

I've heard we can live in two states. We live in apprehension. That's where we don't really have a great compelling vision, writing down the goals, visualizing what they could be, what would it feel like what it would look like the impact to have on others in your family if you don't have that compelling wire that big, you're living in apprehension, or you can live in anticipation. That vision is huge. It's big, it's compelling, it makes an impact for you and your family and others, and you're reviewing those goals. You're visualizing what it's going to be like, what it's going to feel like, and it's daily, and suddenly, it has, it's like a pool, it's like a motor, but it's like a magnet, that's just like pulling you towards that, so you can live in. It can live in anticipation or apprehension. It's your choice if you're going to have that compelling vision. That being said, Ginny Townsend, we're all out of time. For those who want to get in touch with you, what's the best place for them to find you?

Ginny:

ginnytownsend.com is definitely the best place. If you are interested in booking a time to talk with me, talkwithginny.com which is the best place to schedule a call.

Brett:

Amazing, and that's, by the way, it's not a J, it's a G I N N Y townsend.com. Ginny Townsend thanks for being on the show. I want to encourage you to keep using the ability to put together a big picture vision from a 30,000 point view into simplicity right complex to simple and helping others do the same and to level up with their marketing and their Airbnb business, and I think you've been on the show I know we're better for it, and also want to thank our listeners for listening to another episode The Capital Gains Tax Solutions Podcast also streaming expertcresecrets.com where we believe most high net worth individuals and those who help them they struggle to clarify their Capital Gains Tax for options. Not having a clear plan is the enemy using a proven tactical strategy such as the deferred sales trust is the best way for you to exit your real estate including these crazy Airbnb price properties to further Capital Gains Tax also you can create and preserve more wealth it also works for primary homes, businesses cryptocurrency and stock so go to capitalgainstaxsolutions.com to learn more about that, and please rate review, subscribe. We appreciate everyone out there. Bye.