From Grit to Glory: Unveiling the Power of Resilience Real Estate with Noble Crawford

Transcript

[Mattias]
Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I’m Mattias, an agent and investor.

[Erica]
And I’m Erica, a licensed therapist.

[Mattias]
Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing.

[Erica]
Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors.

[Mattias]
Ready to level up?

[Erica]
Let’s do it.

[Mattias]
Welcome back to the REI Agent. We have an Erica episode. Erica, thanks so much for being here.

[Erica]
So happy to be here.

[Mattias]
We had a great conversation with Noble Crawford, who we’ll introduce more here in a minute. But in that conversation, and something we’ve been kind of thinking about as well, is kind of, well, we’ve been thinking about some of the freedoms, the enhanced freedoms that we’ve had since we’ve kind of, you know, been our own bosses and have a little bit, we’re more established now. And some of the benefits of that.

But talking to Noble, and we were briefly chatting about this as well, is like, there was periods of time where we really, you know, had to put in the work. Not that we’re not working hard now, but like, it’s just different. We really had a grind and a hustle phase there for a while that really kind of launched us into this trajectory.

And oddly enough, like we were happy. We’re super happy now. We’re great in many ways.

But we do look back at that hustle, that grind phase, with a lot of nostalgia. Like in some ways, it was the closest we’ve been in our relationship. And just some of the happy years of our lives, even though we were sacrificing working so hard.

Wouldn’t you agree?

[Erica]
Yeah, yeah. We required a lot of teamwork because we were operating on a very tight budget. I think we talked about that before at one point.

And so it required a lot of trusting one another to respect that budget and knowing we’re working towards a common goal. And then I think we had also mentioned that we had our debt thermometer in the kitchen that we’d sit and eat breakfast and dinner beside every day. And we’d color in as we went to pay off our debt.

But yeah, in the meantime, I think I still have these somewhere. But we’ve had, I don’t know, five, six W-2s one year because we were working so many different jobs just constantly. And I think when we first started dating, you were, let’s see, customer service at Rosetta Stone.

And I was working in the school system as a behavioral specialist for kids with at-risk behaviors. And we had opposite schedules. So I worked from 8 to 3, and you worked from 3 to 11, right?

And then once we got married, oh man, we had a whole slew of things all strung together. I would do my day job, and then I would go in the evenings until almost 9 o’clock at night working with families in the home, doing in-home therapy. And it was really tough hard work.

[Mattias]
For a while there, you had your private practice too on top of your job. So yeah, I guess from an agency, you had a couple different hats that allowed you to work that much. Then you moved on to having your own private practice on top of your main job.

And oddly enough, you didn’t move right into full-time private practice. You still kind of valued that office dynamic and having people around you. Do you miss that now that you’re just kind of in the private practice world?

[Erica]
No, I don’t really. And when I think back to it, I valued that structure at that time because I was having children. Like I was pregnant, and so I was exhausted.

And so the thought of creating something new or coming up with something and keeping up with it, knowing that I was going into maternity leave, that was exhausting to me. And so I remember feeling pretty relieved when I closed that private practice down and just went back to just a very structured nine to five job.

[Mattias]
Having a normal life.

[Erica]
And it was a supervisory position too, so I could just be in the office. And it was pretty low-key for a pregnant lady bouncing on a ball. And so now that I’m done having children, well, actually, the reason I got into private practice and left my W-2 was because I was drowning because I had children.

I guess it went the other way then. I can’t do full-time work and have two little kids. And so I need to switch it up and figure something else out to give me more flexibility for about the same amount of money.

[Mattias]
Yeah, that’s been so nice. We obviously have you on these recordings because you have that flexibility now. So Mondays and Fridays, you don’t work.

But going back to that hustle phase, as I’m writing this book, encouraging agents to take on a real estate business and invest at the same time, there’s a lot of demands. There’s a lot of asks and a lot of sacrifice. And I think it’s maybe not for everybody to go that hard.

But again, once you get into it, if you have a clear why, it feels good to really put forth that much energy, to sacrifice that much. And we were paying off $120,000 debt between the two of us. And we were making not very much money.

So it was a huge, huge sacrifice for us too. We had to say no. This is like when we were in our early 20s.

And so we were saying no to a lot of people going out because we had a very little budget for going out, drinking, eating, whatever. And so we said no a lot and lost some friends and had some hard times, seemingly hard times from it. But again, we feel like it was totally worth it.

And that we were just going together towards this. We were going to pay off this debt. And along the way, we decided that once we got to, was it 80%?

That we could start trying for our first kid.

[Erica]
That was our compromise. You wanted to be 100% done. And I was like, look.

[Mattias]
We’ll have nine months to finish.

[Erica]
I think that’s what I said. Not like as soon as I get pregnant where the baby’s coming out.

[Mattias]
But we wanted that phase to be past us. But the beauty of it was that without kids, we were both working so hard. And for me in my real estate career, when we did have a kid, I was able to leverage the paternity leave into transitioning into full-time real estate.

And all the hard work I put in throughout those years finally paid off. And I started having more sales. And this is when it was a bit slower in the real estate market.

So I had built up a business that allowed me to go full-time. But yeah, again, writing the book, it seems like a lot to be investing in real estate and to be building up a business. But I mean, really, that’s what we were doing.

We didn’t really think about it as investing in real estate. We bought a house to live in that we kept as a rental. But we put it on a 15-year note, which in hindsight, maybe would have been better to just have it on a 30.

The cash flow would have been better. But we now have an equity position in it that’s very significant. I think we owe less than $60,000 on it now.

And we just have it rented. Same tenant this whole time. And yeah, so I mean, that’s very easy.

You have to have a place to live as you’re investing or as you’re building up your business. So if you can make it work, why not buy a house that you can turn into a rental? And if we were a little bit more aggressive, we could have maybe done that a couple times before moving into our house that we’re in now.

But we did move into a house that needed a lot of work. And we’ve been renovating it kind of as we go. And so we’ve seen a lot of value growth in that.

And while we’re still investing in other real estate forms as we go.

[Erica]
Yeah, looking back to that time when we were really in the grind, I feel like we had to have a lot of grit. But I also have really fond memories of walking this walking path at one of our local parks. We would go there almost a couple times a week, I feel like.

Or maybe on the weekends or something. But we would take our dog and our coffee, do you remember? And we would just walk and talk because we didn’t have a spending budget.

And the park was a free place to go. And we could go and catch up and spend time together. And we would go out to…

That was back when there was snow. And we would be the only ones out there. And we would be the first ones walking on fresh snow.

And then our dog just loving it. And I have really fond memories of that.

[Mattias]
Yeah, it was great. And you really don’t need to spend money to have those… Yeah, have great memories to spend time together to have quality time, right?

That’s kind of… Honestly, that’s kind of what we’re hoping to use our position that we’re in now to kind of help create more of is to have more time, more quality time together. For us, we have this time.

This is quality time. Enjoy this with you. We go to the gym multiple times a week together.

And so we’ve kind of been able to use the position we’re in now to leverage more time together. And then we also really seek to get our kids involved in fun things as well. That we take them on adventures.

They come on trips that some flexibility in our schedule allows. So delayed gratification, grit, hard work. It’s worth it.

[Erica]
Yeah, I think it can be hard to see where it’s going when you’re in it. I’m so glad that we did that at the very beginning. I remember a lot of people asking us like, why don’t you…

Because I could have worked in say like a public service position for 10-15 years and had our debt forgiven. And those are all those are tough jobs like the burnout. And those are just incredible.

And we decided not to do that. I’m just glad we did that. We decided not to.

I was able to choose jobs then that felt like they gave me what I needed at the time, which is where I landed now.

[Mattias]
It’s really taking the control and having it. Taking it in our own hands. I mean, we’d be just getting done with that.

Or if it’s 15 years, we wouldn’t even be getting done with it. So yeah, so thankful that we did that. And we did follow Dave Ramsey in that time.

And it was nice to kind of give yourself something to listen to or to kind of guide you through this process. Because again, it was challenging and we had to kind of stay focused on it. But we also feel like we’ve kind of graduated from Dave Ramsey.

That’s also why we had the house on a 15-year mortgage, which I don’t think we could do in hindsight. And we maximize credit cards now to get reward points to travel places for free. So but anyway, yeah, I think it was a good time.

And take something on that’s challenging and hard. If it has an end game, if you can stay focused and move towards and work really hard to get somewhere, it just feels worth it. That the reward is great.

Yeah, and so our guest, Noble Crawford III, he…

[Erica]
That’s a great example of that.

[Mattias]
Yeah, he’s got a great story. His line in the sand that made him, you know, kind of get that guiding star is a really good story. And I’ll let him tell it.

But he has found a really cool niche. This is talking mainly about midterm rentals, Airbnb arbitrage as well. And so it’s a really, really interesting conversation.

And he focuses on, I think one of the biggest takeaways I got is really just focusing on the people you’re serving and making sure you have this stream that is consistent and it’s clear that you’re serving this direct client. So I think there’s a lot of lessons you can learn when you’re investing in real estate from that, whether it’s in the spaces he works or not. But if you are, you know, very clear as to who you’re serving, that will take you far.

[Erica]
Yeah, so enjoy Noble.

[Mattias]
Welcome back to the REI Agent. We are here with Noble Crawford. Noble, thank you so much for joining us.

We got another Dallas-Fort Worth area person. So we might just need to move there. We could do these in person.

[Erica]
We might. It actually is a frequent stopover point. My family lives in Kansas, Wichita area.

Okay. And so sometimes when we fly south, we fly through that area. A lot safer than Chicago, less snow.

[Noble Crawford]
Absolutely.

[Mattias]
So Noble, yeah, thanks for being on here. Tell us a little bit about your real estate journey. What got you into investing and what you’re doing now?

[Noble Crawford]
Yeah, well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I certainly appreciate it. So for those that don’t know, my name is Noble Crawford.

I actually started in the short-term rental space. That was kind of my launching off point into real estate, if you will. So back in 2017, I had just left my W-2 job and I had cashed out and I started a marketing agency.

So I was doing marketing in the same field that I was working in my W-2 job. And I fell in love with this concept of MRR, Monthly Recurring Revenue, right? And so as a stacked marketing class, that monthly revenue just kept growing.

So I was like, I can dig this, right? So on the heels of that, I got introduced to short-term rentals. My dad actually sent me this YouTube video.

He’s like, have you heard of this? And I was like, no. So checked it out.

Long story short, went out to California. My wife and I went to this mastermind event. They were training and teaching on short-term rentals.

And we said, hey, we can make this happen back in Texas. We went back, put our heads down and went to work. And six, seven years later, it just exploded.

And so that was kind of our foray into real estate, if you will. Okay.

[Mattias]
Yeah, that’s a fun space. I know that it got really, really popular through COVID. Did you find any…

Were you still actively buying at that time? Or were you kind of just reaping the benefits of the values going up and the increased bookings, I would imagine too, right?

[Noble Crawford]
Yeah, very good question. So interestingly enough, when we got in, the way that we were taught this strategy was a method you’re probably familiar with called lease arbitrage. We’re actually leasing other people’s inventory and leveraging that to list it on platforms.

So that’s how we learned about it. So that’s how we started. We weren’t aware of other strategies outside of that, right?

And so as we got into it and started to scale, eventually I started to get into the direct booking aspect of the short-term rentals where I started to gradually depend less and less on the platforms, on the Airbnbs, VRBOs, and I started to go direct after business. Okay. And so as we began to scale that direct business, things really sort of took off and we found ourselves in a unique position whereby we needed to take that cash that we were generating and park it somewhere else into actual assets that were generating wealth, right?

And so that’s when we started to acquire VRBOs.

[Mattias]
Okay. Can we get into that arbitrage for a second?

[Erica]
Absolutely. I have never heard that term before. So for those of us that have not, can you explain that a little bit better to me?

[Noble Crawford]
100%. So essentially, lease arbitrage or rental arbitrage, as some people call it, is where you don’t own the asset, you’re simply leveraging somebody else’s property, other people’s property to make it available to your clients or your guests who are coming to stay at that property. So as an example, and this can be true for both single family and multifamily.

Okay. When we started doing it, we started doing it using multifamily, i.e. apartments. Okay.

So we were leasing the apartments and with property management permission, we were then putting those apartments, listing them on Airbnb, VRBO, Booking.com, those platforms, right? And so obviously we’re paying by the month on that lease, but we’re leveraging that lease and charging our clients or our guests by the night and we’re keeping that spread in the middle.

[Erica]
I see.

[Noble Crawford]
That’s arbitrage.

[Erica]
I see. Interesting.

[Mattias]
Now, that was a key little thing you slipped in there with the permission of the landlord. Was that difficult? How many noses did you get before you could secure someone that was willing to do it?

[Noble Crawford]
Bro, let me tell you. It’s when we first started because I was the sales guy, right? So my wife is doing operations.

I’m doing sales at the time. And when we started, all I was encountering was nos. I was like, how did they make this work?

And I had this inflection point where I kind of went over the top and I found out that it was the way I was framing these conversations and the lack of confidence that I had going into these conversations. And that’s why I was getting nos. As soon as I kind of reframed it and I positioned the conversation in a way where it was, I’m doing you a favor and I’m going to show you how you can make more money on your property dealing with one client, a corporate client that you don’t have to worry about all of the issues you would with a long-term tenant.

It’s going to be a better proposition for you. As soon as I was able to reframe that and articulate that in a way that made sense for the property owner, it just took off from there.

[Erica]
Interesting. Because you could say that you’re assuming a lot of the risk, right? Because you’re the one leasing the apartment and then it’s kind of up to you to fill the spot.

[Noble Crawford]
100%. 100%. So in the arbitrage space, there are some key things with property management companies and property owners that are pain points to them, right?

And so when you understand what those pain points are and you’re able to position your company or your entity as the solution to those pain points, then they connect the dots. Then they start having light bulb moments. One of those is occupancy rate, right?

And so in a multifamily community, they want as high occupancy rate as possible. Vacancies are a bad thing, right? So when you’re able to come in and say, I’ll take multiple doors for 12 to 24 months, that helps with that problem, right?

And so just knowing those top seven pain points and positioning yourself properly, that’s how we did it.

[Erica]
Interesting. And you would also be the person, say somebody’s like they’re renting out the place for like an Airbnb. If they would have a complaint, they would be calling you, not the property owner, right?

So you would also take on that kind of phone call.

[Noble Crawford]
A hundred percent. So we were basically the property manager for our guests, for our clients, right? So they wouldn’t interfere with the leasing agent team or the maintenance team onsite or anything like that.

We were the first point of contact. So that was very helpful.

[Erica]
Wow, interesting.

[Mattias]
Yeah, no, it’s an interesting idea. And I’ve definitely, yeah, it’s writing a book. And that’s one of the things that I write a little bit about in the book, about an idea for somebody who with no or low money down, how they could get started in the investing space.

And it’s interesting. Yeah, you have to frame it as a one win to make it, you know, to have any kind of success. And you have to have a lease, I would imagine, that protects you from like, you know, to be able to do this legally.

Because, I mean, if the lease prohibits it, and you’re just kind of like, you know, doing it on a handshake, they could stop your operations if they just feel like, you know, they don’t want to have you continue. Did you ever get any complaints? Was there any drawbacks to the landlords then once you were, you know, had it up and running?

Like, were there people partying? Like, anything like that?

[Noble Crawford]
Number one complaint, yeah. So the short answer is yes, right? You can’t be in this space for as long as we have and not have experienced like a litany of things.

So yes, absolutely. There were situations where property ownership would change hands, as is common, really in the multifamily space, and the new ownership would come in. And before we even had a chance to have the conversation, to sell them on the idea of how we’re helping them, they’re like, no, you know.

So we had to deal with those, right? And so, you know, we probably have had, I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve had people attempt to have a party in one of our properties. We put some, you know, some checks and balances in place to prevent that from happening.

We use some different tools and things and software and things that didn’t allow it to, you know, rise to that level. But yes, that can certainly happen. I think the key is when you’re dealing with short-term rentals, which in this industry, short-term rentals are considered less than 30 day stays, right?

And so now the big thing is these different jurisdictions and municipalities putting restrictions on short-term rentals, right? And so a lot of people, you know, like myself in the industry that have been in it for a while have since pivoted to 30 day plus stays. Those are more common now, midterm rentals as people call them.

Because we don’t fall under those same restrictions that these municipalities put in place for short-term rentals.

[Mattias]
Yeah, absolutely. So the city we’re in has restrictions and you have to, it has to be a primary occupancy or primary residency to have a short-term rental allowed to be operated. Either you’re leaving for a little bit, you’re renting out of space, et cetera.

So midterms though are allowed. And I was curious, how would you go about analyzing whether or not you have a location or, you know, a property that might work well as a short-term renter or midterm rental?

[Noble Crawford]
Great question, great question. So a couple of things that you wanna keep in mind when you’re looking at the midterm rental space. One, that is the client demographic that you’re catering to, right?

So we played across a number of, you know, midterm rental verticals, if you will, or segments where we’ve done direct booking. So we’ve done corporate travel, we’ve done healthcare, we’ve done higher education, we’ve done military, traditional relocation, insurance, all these different verticals, right? So determining if that property is going to work in a specific market for us really depends on which vertical are we trying to attract or which vertical are we going to try to leverage this property in, right?

And that kind of dictates our strategy for getting maximum occupancy in that property.

[Mattias]
Yeah, is it common to have like, you know, months on end where there is no, when the turnover happens, like having it vacant for months and then once it’s filled, it’s, you know, it’s good for a little longer?

[Noble Crawford]
So I wouldn’t say common, but it can happen, right? And so a lot of that is predicated on your knowledge of how to obtain those bookings, right? And so I would say probably one of the biggest mistakes that people make, especially in the midterm space, is they are, and even in short term too, they’re too dependent on the platforms.

They’re too dependent on the OTAs, online travel agencies, right? They’re too dependent on softwares, you know, softwares and services like FurnishFinder is one, right? They do the 30 day plus model, right?

So I’m very much an advocate of going out and building your own book of business, working direct with different verticals, different companies, different entities, different organizations, right? And that’s what we did. And that’s what really kind of pushed us up quite a bit.

[Mattias]
Yeah, we’ve got a property that we’ve considered doing this with. It’s, with interest rates the way they are, it’s hard to make it a true BRRR. You know, we’re flipping it, it’s almost done, wanna get a cash out refinance on it, but to put it into a long-term rent and pull the money out of it that we put in, it just doesn’t quite pencil or it’s really close to penciling.

And we’ve considered doing the midterm route for that reason to hopefully we have, you know, a hospital, universities, we have some different industries in the area as well that could cater to this type of niche. So it’s definitely something we’ve considered. It’s also, you know, it’s a big thing to jump into.

I mean, you gotta buy all the furniture, right? I mean, you gotta furnish and decorate the place and take the risk of that. That is, you hope that it’s gonna work, right?

I mean, I’m assuming you’re doing it, you understand it’s going to work before you do it because you’ve got those pipelines created. But from our position so far, we don’t have that assurance. So it’s been a bit of a, seems like a risk to us.

[Noble Crawford]
Yeah, it’s just a matter of doing the proper due diligence. Again, based on the location, the region you’re at, which vertical or two or three make the most sense so that you don’t have those long gaps of vacancy, right? And if you can solve those little two or three, you know, issues, then you’re good to go.

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Erica]
I was curious when, what was happening in your life when you and your family were talking about you leaving your W2 and moving into something different? What was going on then?

[Noble Crawford]
Good, great question. So there’s just a little bit of a story. I’ll give you the background.

So what basically happened was my wife got sick. My wife got sick, she was having these headaches, these migraines that were intense. Then she started having seizures.

Turns out she had a brain tumor. So we found out she had a brain tumor. Had to get the surgery scheduled, all that good stuff.

Got in, got the surgery scheduled. What should have been a six to eight hour surgery is like 14 plus hours, okay?

[Erica]
Did they come and update you and to let you know it was gonna be longer?

[Noble Crawford]
Yeah, it came out periodically. She had to have a couple of blood transfusions. Things were just kind of not going too well.

Long story short, they got the tumor out. She goes into the ICU. She’s in the ICU the second day.

She ends up flat-landing twice in the ICU. And it turns out she was allergic to morphine and they had her on a morphine drill. It was killing her organs from the inside out.

Oh my gosh. And so they resuscitated her both times. Thank God she recovered.

She lost her sense of taste and smell basically for the rest of her life, but she’s still here with us today. Thank God. So on the heels of that, I had a decision to make.

I could either, cause I’m still working my W-2 job. I could either go back into the office and continue grinding. I was grinding, I was a sales engineer.

And so I could either, or I could stay home and take care of her. I looked to stay home and take care of her. And so on the tail end of that, her recovery, I get called back into the office for a sales meeting, a company-wide sales meeting.

And I just get berated in front of the entire company for having dismal sales numbers for the previous quarter. And everybody knew, including the CEO, who did this to me, everybody knew why I was out. And so I had made a decision in that moment, I’m never going to be beholden to working on somebody else’s timetable.

And I’m going to grind and work myself out of this position. So I’m not in this position again. And so that’s what I did.

So I put my head down for the next two years and I cashed out. And that’s when I started the marketing agency. That was kind of the catalyst.

[Mattias]
Yeah, no kidding. What a powerful reason, my goodness, to draw a line in the sand. That’s so horrible.

[Erica]
Yeah. Talk about having something almost so black and white where you don’t, in some ways, it makes it, I don’t want to say easy, but clearer maybe to see that another option is going to feel a lot better than that.

[Noble Crawford]
A hundred percent. Yeah, a hundred percent. It’s the best decision we’ve made.

[Mattias]
Yeah, wow. I think not everybody’s going to have that big of a reason, but I think whenever you have that kind of guiding star, the reason you’re going and you’re doing the extra work is usually to get to this position, you’re going to have to hustle more, right? You’re probably going to have to, if you’re an agent that wants to start and you’re working another job, you’re going to have to work extra hours or have a part-time job, juggle two things.

There’s often this period of time where you’re going to just have to grind harder than other people are and you’re going to have to make sacrifices. But if you have that guiding star is the best way I can describe it. I mean, it just makes you get up in the morning.

I bet, did you wake up early to work on this side marketing business and then go into your job and then come back and work more? What did that look like?

[Noble Crawford]
Yeah, it’s interesting you say that. So I was all in on cashing out of my W-2 until I left. And right on the heels of that, I started the agency.

But oddly enough, one of the reasons I left my W-2 was to create more time for myself, to be with my family. And then when I started as an entrepreneur, I’m working twice as many hours. So that’s just the way it worked out.

But I was in control of my own time. I was time-free.

[Erica]
Yeah, did you guys have kids at that point too at home?

[Noble Crawford]
We did, we had three little ones, three boys. And at the time, the youngest was maybe 18 months. And then we had a two and a half year old and then a five year old.

[Erica]
Wow.

[Noble Crawford]
Yeah, so it was a struggle, but it worked out.

[Erica]
How do you think back on that time now that you’re out of it?

[Noble Crawford]
You know, I’m just thankful to God. I mean, we went in, she was in the hospital for a couple of two or three weeks or whatever. We went in a week or two after Thanksgiving, I think a week maybe after Thanksgiving, and she got out on Christmas Eve that year.

And so that’s always a memorable moment for us every year, Christmas Eve, because that’s when she got released. But yeah, it’s one of those things, you’re just thankful to have made it through on the other side. She’s still with us here today.

So a lot of gratitude about that.

[Erica]
Yeah, well, that demanded a lot from you too. Not only to care for her, but for three little ones, that’s a lot. We have three kids, they’re also small.

They’re actually around those ages you mentioned. And it’s really tough work. And we’re both pretty healthy at this point.

So man, I can’t even imagine the amount of strain that was on you at that time.

[Noble Crawford]
Yeah, it’s a lot. I had support from family and friends too. So that helped considerably.

But yeah, we’re older now and they’re growing and out of the house and all that good stuff. So it’s just something we’re all grateful for as we reminisce.

[Erica]
Yeah, well, where’s your family now? Because I did see, I was just kind of going through your social media stuff and I saw your son reposted one of your reels and that was like, whoa.

[Noble Crawford]
Yeah, so our youngest is in college. He’s at Texas Tech University, video pros. And then our middle son, he’s living on his own, doing his own thing.

He’s in his early 20s. And then our oldest, he just got engaged recently. And so he’s already- Yeah, congrats.

[Erica]
So yeah, yeah.

[Noble Crawford]
Thank you, thank you.

[Mattias]
Living the dream, it’s awesome. So tell us a little bit about how you got into real estate syndication then because that’s something you’ve taken on here recently. Tell us the journey there.

[Noble Crawford]
Yeah, so let me give you a little backstory, a little context. So as we went into COVID, okay, so we’re going into COVID and we got the businesses up and running, we’re scaling and everything. And then COVID hits and everything just, as you know, shuts down completely, right?

Including short-term rentals. Like they just came to, not only did they come to a complete stop, a complete halt, but then Airbnb, all the other platforms, they’re refunding people automatically. And I literally, I have colleagues in this space, I watched their business get decimated.

Overnight, like to where they would lose like chunks of bookings at a time, 30 and 40 in a day, just consistently, right? And so fortunately for us during that time, I had already started building our direct booking business going direct with these different verticals, right? So we’re doing direct business.

And so when COVID happened, we weren’t dependent on the platforms like a lot of others were. And so we literally lost like five bookings during COVID, that was it. And so, but what happened was we actually grew during COVID.

And it was the strangest thing because if you remember, at some point the colleges and universities started shutting down, right? Cause it got that bad. And then they started sending the kids home cause my son was one of them.

They started sending the kids home. And then the problem existed because there were international students in the States that couldn’t fly home because they shut the airlines down. But then they didn’t have a dorm to stay in any longer.

So we have properties near some colleges and universities. We raised our hand and said, we’ll house them, okay? And so, however it worked out for whatever reason, our first set of students were Asian females, okay?

It turns out they had a lot of friends, international friends. So we started converting these three and four bedroom townhome units where we were rented by the property. We started renting it by the room, right?

So then we would double and triple in our revenue. And then we just turned that on, right? And then, and so we actually grew during COVID whereas a lot of people were folding and going under.

And so that just made us double down even more on direct bookings. Well, as a result, we needed more property, things like that, more money’s coming in, starting to have to get into property investing. So I had a light bulb moment on the heels of that.

And I figured, hey, I should start doing some work with the government because I used to sell into the government space when I was in my W2 job. That’s how I learned about government contracting, okay? So I had a light bulb moments like why am I not doing that in this business?

It’s just a different product or service, right? But the process is the same for federal procurement. And so we turned that switch on and we started engaging in direct booking business with the federal government, right?

And so when that happened, it just really just took off. It just really took off like crazy. And so our first contract opportunity was an opportunity where we had nine properties, okay?

Nine multifamily. There’s still leases at this point. There’s nine multifamily properties a mix of one and two bedrooms.

And so we found an opportunity where this Fortune 500 company had a defense contract. And under this contract, they were required to train and recertify pilots and mechanics, helicopter pilots and mechanics, okay? And so these pilots and mechanics will fly to this area to do their training and recertification.

The pilots will come in for 30 days. The mechanics would come in for two weeks. And so we said, hey, we wanna be able to house those people coming in because they were staying at hotels, right?

We knew that our product is a short-term rental far exceeded that of any hotel space, right? So we were able to get on that list to provide housing inventory for that contract. Okay, but here’s the beautiful thing.

The government pays by the night, not by the month, okay? Mind you, we’re leasing property by the month, right, at this multifamily community. So the government pays what’s called a GSA rate, Government Services Administration, a GSA lodging per diem.

That’s a nightly per diem rate that they pay. In our area at the time, that rate was 167 a night. So if you’re doing the math, that’s $5,010 a month, okay?

Here’s what we did. Exactly. Now it’s starting to make sense.

So here’s what we did. The pilots were coming in 30-day intervals. So we said, okay, we have these one bedrooms.

We’re gonna put them up in the one bedrooms, okay? And so one bedroom for us was like $1,485, a couple of hundred dollars in expenses. We’re charging $5,010 a month, okay?

Now this is a five-year contract. These pilots and mechanics are coming in on rotation for the next five years, okay? So it’s like automatic, like clockwork.

So we’re keeping the spread between expenses and that $5,010 a door we’re charging, right? So we did that for our one bedroom. So for the two bedrooms, this is where it gets good.

For the two bedroom units, because they had two beds, two baths, a shared kitchen, shared living, and the mechanics were only there for two weeks, we would put two mechanics in a two bedroom. But guess what? We were able to double that GSA rate.

We were charging 167 a night times two. So our two bedroom units were grossing, yep, $10,020 a month, right? And our expenses was a couple of thousand in rent and then a couple of hundred in utilities and stuff.

And we’re keeping that spread. So we had nine doors grossing 65K a month.

[Erica]
Wow. I can see why you get pretty excited about that.

[Noble Crawford]
A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And to this day, that’s why we love the government contract space and mesh in real estate with that because it’s so lucrative. It’s ridiculous, right?

And so we doubled down and we said, we’re gonna do that again and went out and got a second contract. The second one that we got though, we didn’t have the inventory. We got the contract and we leveraged the contract to go get the doors to support it.

And that’s the beauty of it.

[Erica]
Is that a competitive space, getting the contract?

[Noble Crawford]
It’s bid, it’s a bid base. Let me back up. So it can be bid base.

Not all contracts are based on a bid. Some contracts are considered sole source contracts where an agency can basically offer a contract opportunity to an entity, to a registered vendor. And some of them are considered set aside contracts.

So a set aside contract is where an agency will say, we’re setting this contract aside for an entity that fits in a certain socioeconomic group. Woman owned, minority owned, veteran owned, 8A classification, different classifications where they set aside contract opportunities for those groups, right? And those are less competitive.

There’s some of both. There’s some competitive opportunities and there’s some non-competitive opportunities.

[Erica]
Okay, interesting.

[Mattias]
Now you said you leveraged that contract to get the property. So is that one you were purchasing, not just arbitraging?

[Noble Crawford]
So that was also still arbitrage. How we got into the multifamily space and that’s kind of friends and family syndication is based on a separate vertical that we were attacking, which we can certainly cover, but that was on the airline side. Okay.

But of all the different verticals that we kind of play in, the most lucrative to date and the one that we like the most obviously is the government space, right? But the reality is this, anytime you’re engaged in that type of lodging or accommodations or housing that is not traditional, long-term 12 month tenant type landlord opportunity, there’s a lot of cashflow coming in, heavy cashflow situation. So you end up in a situation, you’re in a different tax bracket at some point and you gotta go park that money somewhere, right?

And that’s where it can be advantageous to then leverage that and get into a multifamily, right? Use those assets to get into multifamily. And so that’s what we were able to do.

Yeah, that’s fascinating.

[Mattias]
Yeah, I think one of the things I really appreciate about the way it seems that you focus on is really who you’re serving. I mean, that’s what you’re talking about with the verticals, right? And you’re just looking for a really consistent, heavy flowing stream.

That’s basically what you’re doing, right? And I think that that can be lost on people sometimes when they’re looking at property to invest in. If they’re looking to buy, for example, they might fall in love with a property that just doesn’t have that target demographic that you’re really going for.

So really focusing on who you’re serving and making sure that’s crystal clear is a key. And that’s probably more so on that short term, midterm space because it turns over more and you got to make sure that you have that flow.

[Noble Crawford]
100%, 100%. I would even go so far as to say even some of the properties that we purchased have been vertical specific. I’ll give you a quick example.

So we got into the airline space kind of by accident. My cousin got on with Southwest Airlines. He’s from Florida.

He came to Dallas to do his training. And then when he gets his, when he finishes training, he gets hired on. He stayed in Dallas and he had to select between the top three cities he wanted to be based in.

Well, he selected Tampa because that’s where he’s from, but he didn’t get his first choice. So he got Dallas, which was the second choice. It was very common as I found out.

And so after he’d been here a couple of months, I’m like, you know, because where are you staying? And he’s like, I’m staying in a crash pad. And I was like, what is a crash pad?

And he’s like, well, it’s a house that all of us flight attendants and pilots share collectively. I was like, really? Because it was kind of close to what I do.

So I’m like, tell me more, right? Long story short, essentially what happens is pilots and mechanics. So when they are out flying their active routes, they stay in traditional layovers, which are hotels, right?

And so when they’re out flying their routes, they could be gone three, four days at a time and are staying in these hotels as layovers. However, when they’re not actively working, they have downtime, something and a lot of times that’s like about 10 to 12 days out of the month. They have to still be close to the airport that their base near, right?

Because they could get called in, something like that. So they have to be in close proximity. And so they’ll stay in housing together collectively.

And it’s very much, you know, it’s very much I’m drawing a blank, but they’re basically sharing rooms. So there’s four to a room. They’re bunk situations.

But they’re paying by the bed per month. OK, so, yeah, exactly. So then I’m taking what I’m doing in a government space and that’s like like steroids to me.

Because I’m thinking, OK, wait, it’s not by the room, it’s by the bed and there’s four beds in a room. And so then once I said, I need to see this. So I got a chance to go check it out.

And what I found was that these these crash pad homeowners, because they’re single families, OK, they were not like the properties were, in my opinion, the properties were trash. Like they weren’t well kept. The furniture was old.

Like it was just bad. And so I’m looking at the product that we provide on the short term rental side, which is immensely different. And I’m saying if this is what you guys are accustomed to, we can crush it in this space.

Right. Because we have a better product. And so that led to us purchasing a four, three and a half.

Right. And putting four in their gender specific rooms. Right.

But putting four to a room. And but here’s the thing. But then charging $500 per month per bed.

Yeah. So then you got four bedroom property generate you a sleep 16. Right.

So then you so then we’re like, OK, we need to purchase another. Right. So that makes sense.

[Erica]
Right.

[Noble Crawford]
So that’s the aviation play. So so some of our purchases can be vertical specific. Right.

But we want to know that coming in.

[Erica]
We are a really nice area for all. I mean, for the military, for airlines. I mean, you’re just it’s perfect.

[Noble Crawford]
I can’t complain. I can’t complain.

[Erica]
I got to ask, was your is your cousin still working with Southwest?

[Noble Crawford]
Yes. I was just not no longer stationed in Dallas, but still.

[Erica]
OK. I was curious if if he talked about his experience when Southwest crashed a couple of years ago, Christmas Day, Christmas Day. We were flying Southwest that day.

And so we had a real, real adventure.

[Mattias]
Can we get him on the phone?

[Erica]
I cannot even imagine as a pilot what that must have been like that day.

[Noble Crawford]
I don’t know if he was working or not, but it was I believe he’s a flight attendant. He’s pleasant. And I believe he was.

And every it was pure chaos. Yeah, pure chaos. As you can imagine, even on the employee side.

Right. Oh, yeah. But that’s just it comes with the territory, you know.

[Mattias]
So I felt so bad for the employees that were working.

[Erica]
Oh, they felt awful. Yeah.

[Mattias]
Like there’s just so many people that are just so mad and like and, you know, it was it sucked. It was not fun to be part of a customer either. But like at the same time, like, you know, giving somebody crap, like, you know, getting mad at them, giving them attitude.

It doesn’t help the situation at all. They have no control over it. And yeah, we ended up rerouting into Nashville.

And then we were supposed to go to fly it out from there. But then we just said, you know what, we’re just going to rent a car. And we just rented a van and drove to Kansas.

[Erica]
Yeah, there weren’t any flights. But I’ll tell you, I mean, it was it was kind of a crazy 24 hours trying to figure out how we were going to get where and if we could or if we’re going to arrive in time for Christmas. But the memory that our kids have of that trip, it was like the best trip they’ve ever been on.

They were like, we’re sitting on the hotel bed in the middle of the night and we’re eating Christmas cookies because we didn’t have any food and nothing was open. And then they were like, you know, we woke up the next morning and it was snowing and then we got to our road trip and they had a great time. So it was awesome.

Yeah, it’s good. Good memories. Looking back on it now.

Crazy, crazy time. Anyway, side story.

[Mattias]
Yeah, so like where would you suggest people look in their local markets to find these verticals? And how do you start coming up with these ideas? It sounds like you’ve got this like idea planted in your head and you’re just looking for new opportunities to find new verticals.

And how do you suggest people look into that?

[Noble Crawford]
Yeah, so proximity is always one criteria that we look at, right? So, you know, how close are you to a military installation? How close are you to a hospital district or a trauma center district?

Or how close are you to colleges and universities, right? You know, how close are you to, you know, I have like the corporate corridor, if you will, right, in the tech sector. How close are you to that area?

So proximity can have a lot to do with, you know, determining what’s going to be the best, you know, top one or two or even three verticals to try to get the, you know, the greatest occupancy rate from those types of clients.

[Mattias]
And then and then so we’re close to a hospital. Who do I call? How do you like start making those relationships?

Because you’re going direct to like the HR or something. And what do you do?

[Noble Crawford]
So oddly enough, when we first got into hospitals, that’s kind of where we started with HR. Um, I actually started which I started housing, um, pre-med students that were doing post-doctoral stuff. And that was through a university contact that I had when I was working my W-2 and I had higher education as one of the verticals I worked.

And so I reached back and got some work there, which led to me then going through the hospitals. I would say present day was very common in a strategy that’s been kind of shared across the space is working with, like nurse placement companies, different agencies like that, healthcare agencies. That’s the actual thing where the healthcare agency is paying for paying the housing stipend for the traveling healthcare professional.

So that’s become a more common strategy. But certainly contacting HR at the hospital and finding out, you know, who is that department head that’s overseeing those practitioners that are coming in on a temporary basis and find out who that contact person is. You always want to, whichever vertical you’re going after, you want to try to find the decision maker.

That’s the key thing. Once you can get in front of the decision maker, articulate your, you know, kind of your unique selling proposition to them. And, you know, plant the seed of the different benefits and stuff that you get bring to the table.

That’s where it all starts right there.

[Mattias]
That makes sense. Yeah.

[Erica]
You had mentioned, I wanted to get to this too before we get too far. That recently you had been, you’d gotten into syndications. And so I wanted to hear a little bit about that, how you got into it, what the project is or what you’re getting into.

[Noble Crawford]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s not a traditional syndication in the sense that I’m the GP and we’re bringing in a bunch of LPs and things like that. It’s more of a kind of a friends and family round.

But in the aviation space, we identified a multifamily building that is out in Houston. And it was built initially to house airline personnel. And so, you know, we are going to be taking that over with the idea of renovating it.

It’s a 26 unit that renovating it and make it exclusively, exclusively available for two airlines, which I can’t name. But that’s an example of the larger one of the two that we’re currently looking at. And so so we’re waiting on a closing for that.

But yeah, yeah. So that’s that’s our largest and first opportunity.

[Mattias]
That’s super cool. Yeah, you’re giving me all sorts of ideas.

[Noble Crawford]
Yeah, I think it’s you know what, to be honest with you, like we’ve kind of grown into this space. And I think a lot of others who’ve been in space for a while where you really need to kind of think outside the box a little bit. Right.

And not necessarily follow the normal. Let me get a property. Let me list it on Airbnb.

Let me see how many bookings I can get, you know, and then you’re dealing with all the offseason issues, the algorithm changing and you lose your bookends, just different things like that. When you start building your own book of business, the consistency and occupancy rate stays high. You can command more money.

It’s just a win, win, win all the way across.

[Erica]
Yeah, it’s cool. It sounds like the job you have your W2 in a lot of ways really helped propel you forward in the way that you’ve built your business now, too. You’ve had a lot of contacts.

You’ve kind of reached back and pulled up to where you are now.

[Noble Crawford]
It did, definitely, because the verticals that I play in, a lot of those I serviced when I was in my W2. And so I, you know, on the one hand, I’m thankful to not be there. On the other hand, I’m thankful for the experience, right?

[Erica]
Right. Right. Where are you hoping to go in the next couple of years or so?

[Noble Crawford]
So we’re all in on the contract side, on the government side. That’s that’s our bread and butter now, you know, in 44 doors later. That’s still the highest generating, you know, revenue that we bring in.

And so I have recently over the past year and a half, two years been coaching other students in the space, helping them realize their own wins with contracts and stuff. And so I’ve been doing that full time for the most part. And, you know, I’ll still jump in here and there and, you know, partner with some students or some former colleagues on deals like that.

You know, we recently did one recently, but that’s where I spend most of my time. It’s kind of helping other people navigate that space in the process of landing those contracts.

[Erica]
Awesome. Yeah. But you’re a valuable mentor.

And are your kids, have you found that they’re interested in this also? What are they going into?

[Noble Crawford]
Absolutely not. So the the oldest, he’s a creator, so he’s into like graphics, videography, all that stuff. And he, you know, he does his own thing with that.

I’m middle and he’s in the software side. And then the youngest now the youngest, he’s still in college, but he’s about to get his real estate license. My wife’s a commercial real estate agent.

I failed to mention that. She’s obviously that helps us. Right.

But my youngest is getting ready to get his license as well. So we’ll see how that pans out. Awesome.

[Erica]
Yeah, that’s really fun. It’s fun to see what your kids I’m just imagining this because our oldest is what? Almost eight.

So it’s fun to think about them becoming adults and seeing what they get into what they’re interested in.

[Noble Crawford]
Yeah, absolutely. And it was crazy is they have these interests over the years and where they land is not where you would ever have expected. But it totally works.

They all have different personalities and get into their own group. So that’s awesome.

[Erica]
Yeah, that’s great. Cool.

[Mattias]
Well, I have to ask if you have any books you’d recommend people to read, whether that’s general mindset books that would be, you know, helpful for anything or specific to your niches. Yeah. Do you have any recommended books that you can come up with?

[Noble Crawford]
Yeah. So I’ll tell you the book that changed the game for me when I was going through that whole ordeal with my wife and everything. Somebody I cannot remember if somebody gifted me a copy of The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.

And I literally devoured that book over the course of a weekend. And I started then putting some things into place that had just completely changed the trajectory of my life. And that’s what prompted me to start the agency, you know, on the heels of leaving my W-2.

And so if I ever meet Tim Ferriss, I’m going to give him a huge thank you. Because that was the book for me, you know, and a lot of people, you know, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, great book, a lot of great books. But for me, that was a game changer.

[Erica]
Yeah, it’s a great book.

[Mattias]
I don’t think we’ve had that one being mentioned on the podcast before, but I have had, I know people who have been in a similar boat that that one really just kind of broke them out the way they were thinking and everything. And yeah, Tim has a great, so many great resources. His podcast is great.

And he’s not too far from you, right? He’s in Austin. I’m not sure.

[Noble Crawford]
I’m not, I’m not even sure if he is. I need to, I need to hunt him down.

[Mattias]
I think he’s in Austin, but I’m not 100% sure on that. So yeah, but cool. Yeah.

So do you have any platforms that people could, you know, follow you on or if they want or are interested in some coaching for this midterm, this, you know, agency stuff that would they reach out to you on Instagram or where would be a good place?

[Noble Crawford]
Instagram is probably the best place to find me. That’s where I’m probably hanging out the most. So my IG handle is Noble N-O-B-L-E dot Crawford dot the number three.

So Noble dot Crawford dot three. That’s where they can find me. Feel free to shoot me a DM.

I’m going to be doing a free webinar coming up. I think it’s December the 9th, but you can go to, you can go on my website, noblecrawford.com. And I have some information on there, you know, about my, my speaking engagements that are coming up, other different podcasts that I’ve been on, a free webinar that’s coming up.

And so, yeah, best place to find me. Awesome.

[Erica]
Awesome. Well, thank you, Noble. It’s been so much fun talking to you.

I’ve learned a lot. I feel like we’re going to get off this podcast and Mattias is going to go call a bunch of people trying to do exactly what you just said. But thank you.

[Noble Crawford]
I love it. Thank you so much. Thank you.

I appreciate it.

[Erica]
Thanks for listening to the REI Agent.

[Mattias]
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week.

[Erica]
Visit REIAgent.com for more content.

[Mattias]
Until next time, keep building the life you want.

[Erica]
All content in this show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.