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.
Watch the episode here:
Listen to the podcast here:
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 actually going to be talking about 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. So 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:
Yes, definitely. So like you mentioned in the bio, my background is in marketing, strategic marketing. And it’s actually I think, my love of marketing, that really helped me to see the power of Airbnb to growing wealth. And I’m happy to explain that more a little bit later. But I spent about a decade in financial services, marketing, and then moved over on the agency side. So 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, 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:
Amazing. We’re gonna dive into those secrets here in a minute. But before we go there, Ginny, I believe, we’ve all been given certain gifts in this life. And some people call these superpowers, some people call them strengths, I believe their God-given gifts that are given to us to be a blessing help to others. So 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? And how did those help how you help and bless people today?
Ginny:
Yes, so 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 actually make complex things simple.
Brett:
Beautiful you even made that answer simple, right? So ability to put things in the big picture for high vision from a big view and make complex things. Simple. Excellent. So let’s dive right into the number one secret to leveling up your wealth using air b&b. And feel free to tie in like your story. Because let’s be honest, marketing and real estate go hand in hand, right? market the communication building systems. So secret number one or step number one for doing all of that. Go ahead, Ginny.
Ginny:
Okay, well, first of all, I think I do want to go back and clarify what I had said about how Airbnb is beautiful for anyone who knows about marketing, because they actually do all of the marketing for you, as 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 like yard signs or Facebook ads or Facebook marketplace or what or Craigslist, whatever all of the other kind 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 actually rabid travelers right now. So 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. Yeah, 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, right 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. Um, 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. Okay, so a knowing that it exists. What’s step number two or B?
Ginny:
So I think being able to as 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 is this asset making what it could, for me is my ROI, what it could be. So being able to take a look at what the rates can handle in the market for a long-term rental, and then being able to explore 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. So I actually do have a calculator if your air if your listeners would like to see.
Brett:
speak out right now. That sounds great. Let’s do it.
Ginny:
I actually, 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 Actually, 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. So yes, let’s go, Ginny. We’re back again.
Ginny:
So we were living in Lincoln loved it had no real plan to have an Airbnb at the time. And this is actually why I call myself an accidental six-figure host. So 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, you know. 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. So 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 actually 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 kind of 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 were able to even like up-level our own what I accepted each month as like, Alright, here’s our goal, by over 1000. Like it was it grew tremendously. And so it was this huge, amazing blessing that we had no idea was coming our way. So 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 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:
Ginny Townsend.com is G I N N Y townsen.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 actually 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 actually increase your cash flow by 600% easily.
Brett:
That’s amazing. Amazing. So 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 potentially do number three, furnish it? Okay. And then now are you still doing those now? And you still have those going?
Ginny:
So we actually 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. So 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, right? We’re part of New York?
Ginny:
Hudson Valley. About an hour outside of the city.
Brett:
So looking for an inner being Hudson Valley, check out ginnytownsend.com. Very cool. so 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 know, 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 you know, having to hire like an agent or something like that to find you a renter, but it becomes very familiar. The Airbnb platform walks, 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, you know, like the big kind of like, 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 actually 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, right? 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. So 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. So it might it’ll be a rental crisis as well. So it goes hand in hand. Well, so those are the main secrets or level up you’re your Airbnb business, right, building your wealth there. Yeah. And also touch on there.
Ginny:
So I think once something is live on Airbnb is live, I think that’s where I get a lot of the most like 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? Or, you know, 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 actually 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 and and ready for guests to come in.
Brett:
Whoa, yeah, I’m really making the complex simple here. And we’re jamming through this episode. Yeah, we are so much meat, which is great. So you, yeah, you can hire the full-time management, which makes sense like in multifamily. Sometimes it’s 75 to 100 units. Yeah, the moment to get a full-time manager. California requires 60 minutes or more to get a full-time manager on site. But, but generally speaking, it doesn’t scale for a lot of units. But what you’re saying is, you know, of course, you look at the rents make sure it makes sense. So 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. So it’s oftentimes not a fixed fee, it is usually a percentage of revenue. So 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. So it is it’s a true win-win situation. And there are all kinds of even hybrid-type opportunities. So if someone is like, you know what, I don’t mind actually communicating with people. I want to meet people like we Okay, so with this, with the first rental that I had in California, we met some of the coolest people actually really enjoyed talking with them. But now I’m happy to have that completely outsourced, you know if that’s not something I want to do, but if it’s in your phase of life that you’re like, you know, yeah, like the rentals nearby, it’d be cool to meet random people and hear like random stories from wherever part of the world they’re from. It’s actually a really cool way, I think, to feel connected in a time that has been so disconnected. You know, because of COVID. And everything.
Brett:
Awesome. Love that. Yeah, that’s a similar experience to with my wife and me, we rent 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. So we typically would schedule it when we would travel, right? 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, and, you know, like, I remember, we go to Lake Tahoe, and I’m like, Hey, we’re getting paid to be here. Like, it feels really good. Like to really good. Like, they’re paying us, I think they’re paying like 20 $100 for like the week or something, something wild. And then we were traveling and it cost us like 23 for the week. Wow, 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. So that’s, that’s pretty cool.
Strategies and Income Diversification for your Financial and Time Freedom: “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill
Ginny:
I was just gonna say and even how I mentioned, you know, if someone has a long term rental, is that asset making its money for you? Like even if it’s your primary residence? Is it making the money? You know, like, that’s, that’s not often a question that we ask ourselves if our primary residence because that’s not obviously its initial goal. But yeah, can absolutely pay for vacations.
Brett:
Yeah. And I had to like, kind of twist her arm a little bit the beginning. Like, she’s like, so be living in our house. I’m like, but let’s see, these numbers here. Like, this is like $3,000, I was looking to had. Take one or two or three extra vacations. She’s like, he’s actually vacationed more time with the family. So when I framed it that way, she’s like, okay, man, although it does take a lot of work. You have to, I mean if you’re living 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 when it comes to those things, right. So Well, I’ll tell you what, you don’t have to do any of that. Well, hire the cleaners to come in. So that became a part of our process where we said before and or after, like, 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, you know, 500 bucks. And anyway, so those are some of the I guess, the internal conversations that have my wife about this kind of thing?
Ginny:
Yeah, 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 is the experience like? Because some people, frankly, don’t like it. They don’t want to be in that business. But it might also be like his might actually 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. So 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:
So the first thing that came to mind is my 25-year-old self, I think wanted to make really cool, beautiful things. And I would tell my 25-year-old self like, you know 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 recommend her gift to the most in the past year?
Ginny:
In the past year? Well, you know what, actually, this is so funny. I was talking about this earlier today. So I actually have it on my desk. It’s called Optimize YOUR Bnb. And it is by a gentleman named Daniel V. Rusteen. And he actually was an employee at Airbnb. And so he gives a lot of insights behind like the tech of like, optimizing and things like that. But that’s, frankly, his area of expertise. I’m more you know, the vision, let’s get the roadmap in place and he’s like, all right. Here are the very like, the little buttons that you need to push to make sure that you show up higher in search results. But that like if you know anything about marketing, that’s the thing that gets you exposure and clicks and therefore money.
Brett:
Amazing. Yeah. 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 gonna come do come back to that.
Brett:
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, you know, 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, you know, she should be around more kids more often. And so we just implemented that. But like, actually being curious about this new phase in her life and how to incorporate even though, you know, 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, you know, 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, you know, Winston Churchill’s, you know, theme, it could be Martin Luther King, Jr. Could be a kick can 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:
So something just came back to my mind. And it was actually 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. So I’ve actually it’s been of late something like what areas do I not have hope in or like, I’ll be like, kind of 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 like the rest of the world in life.
Brett:
As well as passive income. Yeah, so 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 in your values? And how do you stay encouraged to reach for new heights?
Ginny:
Yes, so 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, you know, like I need to do X, Y or Z like to move whatever I’m actually working on right now forward, whether it is you know, getting these two airbnbs 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 furnishing and filling a profitable short term rental. So it’s like when all of the little things which is, as you discussed, I love the vision like it’s the little things that kind of 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. So I think having that like is a big, big thing. Kind of just like, Yes, okay, like, let’s go do those little things that need to get done. That’s what keeps me moving forward.
Brett:
Amazing. 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, you know, writing down the goals, you know, 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 kind of living in apprehension, or you can live in anticipation, right? 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 on a daily basis. And all of a sudden, it has it’s like, it’s like a pool, it’s like a motor, but it’s like, it’s like a magnet that’s just like pulling you towards that right so you can live in. It can live in anticipation or apprehension. It’s your choice if you’re gonna 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 actually booking a time to talk with me talkwithginny.com that’s 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 thank you 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.
Important Links:
About Ginny Townsend
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.
