HIP E66 Curt Marker - Pilot Bought a 10M Hotel

If you've been on the sidelines of boutique hotel investing because you're worried about operations, like how the hell am I supposed to manage this thing? Here's what you need to hear. You don't have to. My guest today is Kurt Marker. He's a professional pilot who raised a million and a half dollars and became a partner on a 130 room hotel deal without ever talking to a single employee. He brought capital raising, strategic guidance, and his balance sheet to the table while the operating partner handled the day to day. That's a real lane that you can play in. We don't just talk about the highlight reel. We get into what happens when a deal gets messy, specifically a loan delay that dragged on, created real pressure and forced hard decisions. The most valuable part is how Kurt and the team communicated it to investors, month by month, without losing trust. Whether you're looking at your first hotel deal or you're already in the game, this episode gives you a real world look at roles, risk, and what professional communication actually looks like when things go sideways. Let's get into it. The Hotel Investor Playbook. Your guide to building wealth and freedom through hotel and hospitality ownership. Welcome to the Hotel Investor Playbook. I am Michael Russell, co-founder of Malama Capital and your host on this podcast. We talk story about everything you need to know to make money, investing in hotels and in hospitality assets. My guest today is my man, Kurt Marker. This is a guy who flies Gulf Stream Jets for billionaires by day and raises millions for commercial real estate deals by night. Kurt, you're a pilot who's built this real estate portfolio. It includes everything from boutique hotels, flex space. Look, I want to know all about your capital raising efforts. I want to know about how you've built a personal brand. I want to jump into some of the deals that you're investing in from residential to commercial. We're going to get into all of this, but first of all, welcome to the show. Thanks a lot. Excited to be here. Yeah. So, a little fun fact, right? We went to the same high school. We grew up in Carlsbad, California. Kurt, are you like a year? You were a grade below me. Yeah, I think you're 98. I'm 99. I think you were football, right? I played football before, but I was a water pool and swimmer. So kind of hung with that crowd. Yeah, we didn't really quite cross pass in high school, but it's interesting. Later in life, we've got a lot of things in common now. I mean, just being from the same town, but investing in real estate, a lot of the same personal connections. You know, we've talked now. It's like, we're kind of in that same path with kids and investing in real estate and balance and work life and trying to sneak in trips to Fiji and things to go surf in. And so it's interesting how although in high school, we didn't necessarily hang out now. It's like, "Well, man, I feel like we've got a lot in common." So it's good to circle back later in life. Yeah, it's a funny long, long, short, long story coming up, but it's great when you, you know, you connect with people that what you're doing at that time. So a lot of my high school friends are great people. We were friends for a long time. And then now my friends are business people, right? People that are growing wealth and I'm dedicated to my kids just like you are. It's the struggle being apparent, but being, you know, a little bit of a workaholic, right? I'm still trying to build, but balance life. So like after this Zoom call we're having the podcast, like I'm going family time, going to legal and or check your cheese for the rest of the day and I'm shutting work down. So I've still learned of the balance, but it's a real fun to reconnect and really talk about growing wealth and providing for our family is the reason we're both growing wealth, right? So I think we have a similar look on life when I think it's a big deal. Yeah, different chapters in life. You've got friends like that that feel a very important role of different points in time, but like you said, right now it seems like, you know, I follow on social media and I see a lot of what you're posting. And some of it relates to like, well, finding out your why, right? There's this mindset piece that you often talk about like, what am I working so hard for? You know, am I just a hamster or tread wheel? Am I, is there a larger purpose? I definitely want to unpack that a little bit. I think you've got a lot to offer, especially for, for perhaps younger listeners that are trying to figure out who they want to be. I mean, you've, you've got some whiskers, right? You and I are not necessarily youngest guys in the room, but we've gained some experience over the years. And so I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned and I'm excited to pick your brain a little bit about where you are now and where you plan on being and how you got there. It is 2026. It is the first week in January. And I'm stoked that you're actually, so this is the first episode that I'm recording this year. You know, obviously these episodes are not live. And so I took a couple of weeks off for the holidays and I'm back in the podcast seat and I want to start out with a banger episode and I'm so pumped that it's you Kurt because you got a lot to offer. So let's get into this. Well, let's start with a little bit about what you got going on in 2026. Like what do you focus on? What's on your plate for this year? Well, I'll start with the most important part to me. I've kind of dedicated my 2026 to charity. As I get older and as my kids get older, you know, I'm leaning into not just making money and providing for the family. It's about giving back to other people. So the first thing I tell everybody right now, 2026, I'm raising money for kids that are critically sick. One of them being as my son's teacher, these 10 years old has been battling leukemia for five years. Does it relate to real estate? No, but as I get older, like I want to get more out of life than just money and buying things and going on vacation. So it's something I'm not a runner. So I'm turning into a runner to raise money for sick kids. I have a child of the 10 year old I just spoke about. I'm going to grant him a wish this summer, which is a beach house and notion side for a week for his friends to visit. And then we're flying him on a private jet. I have a client that donated that up to San Francisco to go to the Pokemon World Championships. So I'm excited about charity for 2026 and bringing the people that want to change people's lives along with that. So honestly, I'm probably dedicating like 25% of my time to learn using my fund raising techniques before charity. A lot of people want to give. They just don't know or trust where they're going to give. So that's the biggest thing for me in 2026. The second piece of that would be business. 25 was a challenging year for a lot of people with rates kind of still high for development or acquiring assets. As you know, rates are finally coming down in 2026. I believe they're going to come down a lot more, especially in May when Jerome Palgates replaced. I believe we'll have a very real estate friendly nominee as long as the Senate approves. So my focus in 2026 is to buy more land and do some of my industrial developments that I really enjoy. They're pretty simple projects. And I like kind of being the quarterback as the CEO or developer. You're kind of the quarterback of a lot of moving parts. The second piece of that is I'm going to go ahead and acquire. I haven't acquired anything and existing building in over two and a half years, just over two and a half with the last hotel. So I'm going to probably acquire one or either a hotel or an industrial building like mine and use the bonus depreciation since we got 100% back. The last thing I will comment is I I'm going into a new asset class. Even though I like staying in my lane and I'm really an expert in industrial, which I'm building now, the folks on it every day I'm learning. I'm partnering up with a friend of mine who actually was on my podcast and he's a broker in San Diego and he builds a lot of the 80 years near San Diego State University. So we're closing on our first development project February 1st thing I like about this is number one, he's already a broker that sold 30 almost like 26 million in 2025 in his first year. I did his new brokerage. He's the ADU expert. There's multiple people in San Diego doing it, but he has a lot of experience. So what you do is you buy a single family home. The one we're buying is a five bedroom already. And we're going to add an ADU that's six bedrooms in the back. So now you got 11 bedrooms near San Diego State University. They rent them out by the room. Investors are buying those like a commercial project, like a commercial product on a cap rate. There's a lot of money to be made because ADUs were built them for 350 square foot and sell them for about 700. So it should be the same, the same square foot price as the main house. Well, what I noticed that you are doing and I've just kind of followed along your journey a little bit on social media. You have a really big presence on Instagram. You've got a lot of followers and things. But what I can tell is you're pretty much real estate agnostic. Like if the deal makes sense, hey, you'll pursue it. You're not just stuck into one particular asset class. And depending on your theory, that could be a good or bad thing. Some people argue like, look, stain your land, you hyper focused. I had folks that say the key to productivity is becoming a master in one thing. But you're kind of a, you know, Jackamall trades in a sense. Like you've invested in flex space. You've invested in boutique hotels. You're now getting into the ADU play. And so how do you kind of balance all these different shiny balls? Do you feel like this is a distraction or do you feel like it's an advantage that you're flexible? So I would say it's a little bit of both because in my past as a newer investor, I was flipping homes and I was flipping four plexes and then managing four plexes. Then I wanted to get I bought a mobile home park. And because I wanted to scale, right, it was an easier way to scale. A lot of seller financing in mobile home parks that deal went well, except for my partner. So I think it's, you got to be careful how quick you jump to an asset class. And it is hard if you're trying to manage four different asset classes, four different states. I have projects in multiple states. But with zoning regulations or operations, with STRs, right? We're talking about short term metals starting to get outlawed in certain cities. I think it's good to be flexible, but you really got to have a base. So I've been I've been investing for 10 years now. I had a finance and economics base before that So what I'm learning is I kind of mentioned I'm a good quarterback So if I can find the right partner which I have failed at that before a Partners they talked how good they are at this and then as soon as you bring the money or you close They kind of like don't do what they promise So I found myself in a couple deals that didn't go well and I wanted out of those deals for months So you got to be careful of that if you're dipping around but what I'm doing is I'm partnering with people like our hotel Blake daily is the main operator that hotel. I'm not on the phone with employees all day long I think we have 12 staff over there. I've never talked to a single one of them So I brought a lot of money to the table. I signed on the note with Blake So there's a lot of liability there on a $10 million note. Let's pause there for a minute because I want to dig into this a little bit So yeah, I mean you've got a lot going on man, but look let me just summarize your your investment journey here So you started investing in residential real estate You were doing some house hacking from what I understand you did some flips Then you transitioned into mobile home parks and then you decided at one point Hey, you know why I'm gonna get out of residential and I'm gonna I'm gonna go into commercial real estate What was it about commercial real estate that you felt okay? That's the path for me to go where were what were the advantages and commercial real estate versus what you were doing in residential The commercial real estate. I mean I fly private jets for some people that are commercial real estate Individuals or I've been at conferences with people that do residential and commercial what I found is Commercial or just bigger projects and most of them you need partners for the hard to do by yourself if you go to a larger one But it seemed like there's a lot more money to be made in commercial and quicker so even though you can make a hundred grand 200 grand on flipping a house. It's non-stop every day on the phone with contractors This and that I like to draw of commercial because I'm kind of a high net high income earner Commercial banks love loaning the money now where when I was flipping homes I was making a hundred to 200 grand a year That's about all the loans I could get where enough loans to flip two homes a year Yeah, so did you own any short term rentals? I only own one and I really use it more as a personal vacation house But I do operate it as a short term rental. Hey guys People have been hitting me up asking if I have a mastermind or a course I don't run one right now, but I do know the legit operators in this space if you're thinking about paid Education and you want my honest take on who I'd talk to for your situation Just email me info at hotel investor playbook.com I read every email and I'm happy to point you in the right direction. I mean the thing is like short term rentals are cash cows Right, there's very there's like a low bear to entry. I mean, I love short term rentals Honestly, if I could buy more short term rentals and be successful like I know that commercial real estate has its perks in terms of like getting additional loans and equity Appreciation and all this but I mean there's cash in short term rentals like you can you can buy a home and immediately Start seeing a nice healthy cash flow return on it. I don't know. What are your thoughts on short term rentals? Yeah, I mean I like them what I have found is like it's not I was gonna scale and buy more of them I bought mine in March of 2020. I did very well for about two years and then everyone bought them in my town I picked that place because I wanted to go on vacation there So it's a house that I'm gonna hold forever. It's a 2.75% interest But if you're doing short term rentals, you're right. It's a low-barry to entry I think I put down 20 grand on that house and then I Remodeled it in first different 40,000 I refinance 50 grand back out. I was 10,000 into owning that house That's a pretty good deal But if you're gonna go into STRs I feel like Airbnb or in VRBO are always changing that platform So you really kind of need to focus on it or have a manager manage it for you That's an expert with all the different little things. I was very into it for the year I was operating it and that's right before I started flipping home So it's kind of like my one thing I focused on at the time I have friends that are doing very well in the short term rentals And I also have friends that are not doing so well may want to get rid of them But I think the key difference is during COVID people's like we're kind of over going to hotels They all wanted to bigger homes with pools and all the amenities So right now if you're gonna do short term rentals the ones that are cash cows in my opinion have a bunch of amenities Whether it's a pickleball court a nice pool I've seen like golf simulators going in. They're definitely more money But they're equivalent to kind of running a hotel in my opinion. Yeah, I think that's a natural progression I call short term rentals kind of like the gateway drug for me because Once I got a taste of the cash flow I was addicted. I was like oh my god hospitality This is NASA class and I want to be a part of I want to show I want to demonstrate an example because what you just said is Hey, look if you are gonna go into STRs You need to pick something that's got some sort of amenities got to have some sort of maybe it's a larger home I've got two short term rentals in Hawaii and their their cash cows, but there's there is a barrier to entry You can't just go buy a short term rental at least not a four bedroom and a nice home in in Maui where I live Because there's rules and there's regulations and there's a limited. There's a finite supply So I have this moat where I got something before it's just not like an endless abundance of supply So this is very unique now compare that to my home in San Diego So I recently just started short term renting a home. I've owned it for 20 years I had it as a long term rental and it was kind of you know, it was a little bit beat up over time And I put about a hundred grand hundred and fifty grand into it to spruce it up new roof backyard Read it the backyard just really kind of gave it the love that it needed and so This property you own bought it many many years ago. It's gone up I've got over a million dollars in equity over time. That's just a pre-shed a California home in San Diego It's gonna go up like you know, I'm fortunate in that regard But when I'm short term renting it, I'm doing the math on this It's nowhere close to the type of cash flow that I'm getting for my Hawaii properties I think you know, and this is a good beach property. I mean, it's in a beach area So you would think oh man, this thing's gonna kill it. I'm projecting around $30,000 a year for that short term rental Hey, that's not chump change. I'll take it. I'm grateful But I've got a million dollars tied up in this thing $30,000 on a million dot like that the return on my investments not Fantastic when you put it in that perspective and that's when I'm starting to shift my focus more into Hotels. This is one of the big reasons why I'm looking at investing and taking that money I'm thinking about selling this Premier location property in San Diego and doing a 1031 exchange into a hotel currently I'm about to enter into a transaction in Idaho and I'm gonna transfer a million dollars of 20 years of equity into a commercial asset and why would I do that? Well, it's because with commercial real estate There's levers that you can pull when I do the math on the equity multiplier commercial real estate isn't always about cash flow It's oftentimes about pulling a lever where you can generate massive equity And I think that's the unifying principle when you look at all of these different assets that you're currently evaluating That doesn't matter if it's hospitality flex space if you're doing the 80 you thing I mean regardless you're looking and you're referring to constantly how do I build equity? How do I build massive wealth over a shorter relatively shorter period of time in my opinion? So look it took a million dollars to generate I'm sorry It took 20 years to generate a million dollars worth of equity for this single-family residential home I believe and I am Positioning that this next hotel I'm buying is going to produce two million dollars of equity in a seven-year period So it's just reframing your mind about how what is your target? What is your goal and how are you going to get there and that's that's what I like about what your philosophy is Grime, I'm kind of paraphrasing what you're saying here, but you're agnostic you're like look I run the numbers from an objective perspective. I'm a pilot so pilots are very like checklist oriented right there So a degree either risk averse, right? You know we've got to follow a process and what you've done now in multiple deals is you've partnered with people that have credibility that can follow a process because your goal has been equity grows So I just wanted to provide my perspective on what you're saying because I think that there is that unifying sense of what you're doing Despite that the asset it's a unifying principle so you know I'll pass it back to you But we were starting to talk about that Tremont Lodge with Blake daily and you said, hey, look this is a big project I think there's like a what a three and a half million dollar renovation, right? This was no. Yeah, this was a big deal. Can you walk us through that a little bit like what you saw who were the partners? What was your role? Yeah, so I'm one of the main GPs in that Blake came to me because he needed to raise extra capital Dave Pierre is also a GP in that deal the military to millionaires a great guy as a great community for veterans and people in the military So they needed someone to bring more capital to the table Blake was so focused on the underwriting and his back was kind of against the wall I had heard him actually on Rich Summers podcast. It was a very impressed by Blake daily is that episode was I mean I mean more than two years ago two and a half years ago and he was a younger guy in the Air Force that he handled acquisitions of buildings for the Air Force So I kind of liked that already but he'd already owned six hotels He had a bad partnership where they didn't agree so he sold some of the hotels. I had been there already So we hopped on a bunch of Zoom calls and I just started asking business questions. What would you do in this scenario? I really liked the the hotel was a mom and pop. There was no marketing. They were on one platform booking.com and that was it So I said Blake, what's your strategy? I understand marketing well, but I'm like well if you're gonna pay seven million How you gonna exit it at you know, what's your exit price? So he's thinking 14 million 14 to 17 They said well, what's the plan to get there? And he's like well day one we can go in and put on 14 platforms It's already which is the not gonna cost any money, that average daily rate at the time, I think was $85 a night. We just had our meeting today and right now we're at $129 a night. Wow. So we're happy with that. But the biggest thing is, in 2025, we booked 3,000 more rooms than 2024. Expenses have come up for replacing sheets and maids and things like that, but so far, I like the project. Well, wait a second, though. 3,000 more nights. Break that down for me just like relatively. How many nights were you booking before? Like I want to know, what do you have the double drop base here? Number, we just went over today. Basically, with 130 room hotel times that by 365 nights. Well, that's like your total available nights. But we just finished the major reservation in July. So a lot of the hotel, the buildings were down. It's an eight building hotel laid out over 15 acres. So two buildings at a time, we renovated completely and then opened those up. Long story short, I like the operator part, operating partner. They asked to use my bank debt or my personal financial sheet because the bank like that I was a high income earner compared to everybody else. And I also raised $1.5 million to bring to the table at closing. And 300 grand of that is my own money. It's not a small chunk of change, but I believe that much in the project. Why I believe in the project? I like the property. We want to add value. The thing needed a remodel. The pools got redone. The lobby. We were able to get rid of the manager's suite and open that up to a bridal suite. They weren't really using it that well for weddings. We had 22 weddings last year or goals 40 weddings this year. So I saw the project is like, wow, this isn't a great area. I'd already visited the area. It's a smoky mountains of Tennessee. When I started doing my research on it, even though not a hotel expert, I understand finance and business and I relied on the hotel expert to teach me how are you going to raise the rents and the room and nightly rate in the room. So I just kind of learned the language pretty quick. I went out and visited and they said, yeah, I would put my dad's money who was also in the deal in friends money as well. So I like the boutique hotel because it was a mom and pop brand. It wasn't a national brand and it was like, you go in there, you add a bunch of marketing, you throw a $3 million. Room, Rano's, new mattresses. We got two pickleball courts. We added a big fire pit, gazebo, barbecue area. And we target a lot of the former guests. We got the email list when we bought it and a lot of these guests are returning every year, twice a year. So it's been really great so far. What I like about it is that I'm not involved in daily operations. I'm on monthly calls or if I have questions that I call Blake personally. And so far, it's been great where he's very open. That's a good point. You know what right there? I think you just struck a chord, at least with me because I like putting deals together. Right? I like looking at the numbers and I like figuring out areas of opportunity. But I don't really like dealing frankly with people and issues and challenges and emotional states. I'm kind of, you know, a little bit more of an introvert. And so it's difficult sometimes for me to like lead, manage people, like human emotional beings. And so I think that this is a natural point, an area of pain for people and they think about buying a hotel. They go operations. How the heck am I going to do that? But what you're demonstrating is you can have a role in investing in hotels and bring a skill set, bringing a level of experience, bring a bank role, bringing a balance sheet and be a partner without necessarily having to be responsible for operations. Now, I know Blake and we had a conversation last week about this because I talked to him about, you know, I'd be like, just got a curiosity. Like, why are you doing the operations? Like, why not hire a third party manager? You've got this, how many hundred plus, what, how many rooms is it? 130 at three months. Okay, this is 130 plus room hotel. Like you've got enough scale to go hire a property manager and he has a mastermind, great mastermind. And you know, he wants to be involved because he wants to, if he's going to teach, he wants to know how to do it. And so he's operating that. That's his dream. Not mine. And I think that a lot of people get hung up on the idea when they start investing in hotels that, oh my gosh, like, I'm going to have to operate this. And it's not actually always the case. The Blake is demonstrating how he's operating this very effectively. And if you want to learn how to do that, he's a guy to reach out to for education in that regard. But there's third party operators that can do this. And there are, in your case, there are people that want to do the operations. You can be a partner in a deal. You just got to find the right people to connect with. So I just wanted to touch upon that because it resonates with me that you're applying your skill sets, your great capital razor, you're a networker. And touch with high net worth individuals through your job as a pilot all the time. And you know, you have experience and the ability to analyze deals. So you bring that to the table and you don't necessarily have to be the operator yourself. Yeah, I agree. And you know what's funny? I had someone on my pack house recently and he's a, he's similar to me. We love the chase of the deal, the underwriting, the sourcing. How do you find it through relationships? And it's kind of a challenge to close. This hotel was a challenge to close. We were raising capital to the night before we closed the deal. And I love the chase and the thrill and the clothes and the big picture of it. And then he said to me, he goes, hey, I kind of get bored once we're done. So he hands it off to his operations team. And I'm realizing that's kind of where I, what I like to do. I like to bring people together, raise money, educate people how we can help them make more money. I'm more than the 401k. And I like to source the deal and invent the operator, vet the deal. And then kind of put my stamp of approval on it and how I do that is say, hey, I'm putting a hundred grand. Hey, I'm putting two in a grand of this deal. I think you should come along for the ride. So I agree. People should know what their skills are. And I bring certain things to the table and there's certain things I don't want to bring to the table. You know, Blake said, hey, you need to come out here and help operate the hotel. I won't come out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This deal, I want to talk about this. This deal has some hair on it, right? I don't know the exact details. Maybe you can shed some light on this. But there's some opportunity with getting a USDA loan that is very attractive, right? It's appealing. And so the draw is, you know, you can get a very low interest rate and great terms. But I think these USDA loans, they're complicated and they can be time consuming. Can you walk us through it? Because you guys were in this bridge loan situation, right? You're paying this high interest rate, like 14% interest while you were waiting for the USDA loan. So what happened? What got delayed? And then how much extra and interested this cost you? What was the impact of this deal? Yeah, it was supposed to be a four month bridge loan for those that don't know, that don't know. It's basically a hard money loan short term. So they came out and met us all out at the hotel. 14% is a lot of money. But we were already in discussion with USDA before we closed the hotel. They said their process is six months. They couldn't get it done in two months or whatever. Okay, so we'll take the bridge loan. We'll pay the high fee. And then they had told us, okay, we'll have it done by April, which is like three and a half months after we closed the hotel. So you're doing your underwriting, but the bridge loan at the time, I think was like $75,000 a month, right? And that's a lot of money when you're operating the hotel. So the hotel is already going into the red because of the debt. So you're trying to operate the hotel really well. Well, they had to do like an agricultural like civil soil samples. And I believe, I can't remember, right, but I believe Blake, number one, they found some skeletons of an animal on the site. An environmental, archaeological, that's what it was, a survey. So that paused everything for like a month or two to make sure it wasn't like Indian remains and some kind of weird thing. But then what we had learned is once that we got past that, that was like a two month delay just for that. So now we just lost another compared to the regular loan rate. We're losing like, let's just say we're bleeding 30 grand a month between the bridge loan and then what we thought the USDA loan would be closed. So we're just losing money. The USDA, I guess the guy that we were talking with ended up leaving and quitting his job. The file sat there on no one's desk for like two more months. All in all, Blake was pulling his hair out, but we're also just losing money trying to operate though. So that was best we can. And the USDA loan, I think, took an extra six months. So we paid that bridge loan. I can't remember the all-in cost, but it is costing us like an extra $200,000. Damn. Which is a lot of money on a $7 million purchase. Yeah. And that money doesn't just come out of thin air, right? Like where's that? Did you guys have reserves that you had saved up? So we had some reserves, but some of that the GP's loan back into the business at a very low interest rate just to kind of save the cash flow of the deal. The hotel was kind of breaking even on cash flow. So one of the GP partners is actually put up 150 grand. I didn't want to do it. I had other deals going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm return. Dude, I love this, bro, because this is the real deal. Like right now you're spilling the beans on like, this is the kind of shit that happens behind the scenes that no one's glorifying on Instagram. Like if you're going to invest in hotels, dude, you got to understand and realize that and have contingency plans for when Shico sideways. So but you guys pulled through, like, look, the hotel right now is doing well real quickly, though. How did you handle communicating this negative, like this negative news to the investors without causing them to be like freaking panic? Yeah, I'll tell you like, I think I'm pretty good at the communication fact. Like side of things, I actually enjoy it. Even when it's bad news, I don't say I enjoy bad news, but we had a GP call. General partners call and some of the people on there are like, hey, we just shouldn't say anything because we don't know an answer yet. And I said, I think we got to talk about the delay. Like every month you've got to be updating your investors. We do monthly updates. We're only required to do quarterly, but I don't think that's good communication. So every month we're writing letters and first off, we're starting with the positives. Right? daily rate was 90, we're at 120 before the remark. model, we couldn't even remodel before the S/USD A loan was closed. They said no construction until then. So here we are thinking we're trying to get these weddings and everything booked on a remodel hotel, which didn't happen for quite a long time. So it didn't just delay the loan, it delayed remodel and it delayed new hotel rooms, right? Remodeled retrofate hotel rooms and it delayed some of the profits in my opinion. I will say this, it also delayed profitability on the hotel. So we thought we had 12 months, we would start giving investors a small return, right? Profit of the cash flow. It has yet to start for two years in. We're over a year late of investor disbursements, but we put that on an email, hey, we have money right now to disperse, right? We know it's taken a while because of the loan, because of construction, but we want to keep some reserves in the bank for January and February, which are the two slow months out there. So as long as we're talking about the positives, so what we do is we relay all the positives. Hey, we booked way more weddings last year. We have six tours today going on to the hotel. So most of we've ever had in one day. So we talk about the positives. The average daily rate is up. The new general manager is great. So and then you got to break it down to the negative and you don't have to just go super negative with it, but you got to tell them the truth. So I'm always about people want to invest with you again. If you're telling them the truth and you're communicating. If they feel like through your email or videos and your photos you supply that you're working your butt off and you're trying really hard and you're protecting their money, the other thing is they know that we all have a lot of money in the deal as well. And it's just we haven't gotten this first since either, you know, so I feel like as long as you give some positive and it's not just all negative, negative, negative, there's no win. Then that looks bad. But if you have some positives, hey, these are the positive. We got some new staff. We fired some of the cancer in the staff and we have higher average daily rate. We booked more rooms this year. We made 500,000 more in revenue than we did the year before. We liked that number a lot. Now I know this hasn't as ringed. So that was our meeting this morning. I love having the monthly meeting and just talking about, hey, what can we do? What can we do on marketing? And what that comes down to is all the partners have different backgrounds. Blakes the operator, but I'm 15 years older than Blake. I got a lot more business sense. I've done more loans. I may not be the hotel expert, but it's like, how can we improve marketing? How can we cut costs? So it's a balancing act forever with hospitality, I think. Let me ask you. I want to dig in so real, real briefly or just for my own curiosity. But why go through all this pain and headache and distress of trying to secure this USDALO? What are the advantages of a USDALO versus a conventional loan? I mean, honestly, it's the lowest rate at the time, but I think right now they just let us drop a point, which was $10,000 a month without having to refinance. They just, they said, hey, you know, we want to protect our assets. So we'll drop the rate, say to you guys money, they're still profitable because the rates are coming down. I'll tell you right now, I think I think if you looked at a regular conventional loan, we could probably refinance out right now below the USDA rate, which is our plan to do, but we're going to wait about another year. We want to show the next bank the highest year over year, which is going to be 2026. And then we'll go into a refi because they want 12 months of solid use of the hotel. What's the right word? Because our remodel kind of just finished in June, July, we don't have 12 months of like, oh, yeah, they want a trailing 12. Yeah. So so right now we're just kind of pumping that up for a 2026. The reason at the time was the USDA loan provided the construction also and not all companies would do that. We had a $7 million purchase price. So the USDA loan was kind of the only loan at the time we could get at $10 million. But it allows us to draw $3 million for construction. Dang. Okay. So how much was the purchase price? We purchased it for $7 million. $7 million. And then you put what, three and a half into it? Yeah, like $3.2. Yep. $3.2, okay. And what's the projected? What do you get? $330, so $130 units, so like $80,000 or so key. So key, yep. And then what? The projection was 10 years out like you do with most commercial. Yeah. The projection sale price is 17 million. Wow. 17 million bucks. Okay. Well, if we take, I mean, yeah, I mean, that's just comes down to I know why we could go through that exercise. But I was just more curious of what that was. So just real quick, what is the interest rate for this USDA loan currently? 7.85%. Oh, that's high. That's higher than I thought it would be. Yeah. It wasn't like, wow, you know, I believe it was actually eight and a half. And then they helped us by decreasing a point. And that point just got decreased in October. So the advantage was, hey, look, you got to go get a construct, you got to pay for this renovation. And so they were open to financing the cost of the construction, but not necessarily at the lowest rate. It was just about facilitating the capital for the renovation. Correct. Yep. And that was the best way to do it. Overall, a plan was to refi out within two years, but it was really to capture that 3.2 million. So we don't have to bring as much equity to the table for a normal construction loan. Okay. And so you had to communicate this bad news to the investors. What was the response to anyone's squawk and be like, what is this? This is BS. Was anyone pissed off? I mean, they had questions like, hey, what is the reason alone is taking so long? And you know, you like, you can place blame on USDA, but we have no control over that. So most of them understand because number one, we provide photos and really good monthly updates. I'm available by phone call for all my people. And if I'm hanging out with someone like my dad or a friend that's in the deal, I talk to them about my call today, you know what I mean? So it's like, hey, the monthly thing is great. So I just, I feel like communication is key, but yeah, some investors, I mean myself, I want to refine, get my capital back out and go get more projects. Yeah. As long as you portray the investors, you guys are all working your ass off, which we are. Like there every day. Well, the end result was you didn't have to do a capital call because you guys fought well, not you personally, but others on the GP, the general partnership forked over the cash to meet the shortfall. So that speaks volumes, right? You're not doing a capital call. The general partnership is so invested in the outcome that they're willing to invest their own personal funds to help float the deal. And so that was loaned, the investors did technically have to pay a portion of that cost because the GP capital was loaned to the investment fund there. And then was that all that money returned to the GP once you guys refinanced? Yeah. Well, it's already been returned because we had some really good profitable months. And so what they do is, as far as I know, and what do we do on my deals as well as the GP can loan at a max of a 10% interest. So there's no like advantage. You have to pay an interest rate by law. You can't just input money or it's a cash call. So if you're loaning the project money, it's actually cheaper and more beneficial for investors for the GP just to loan it at 10% annual and get the money back because there's no equity. Or else you're you're liquidating people or you're, you know, downsizing their percentage in the deal. If you just invested another 150 grand into the deal. Yeah, you're diluting their share. I'm rooting. There you go. So no one shares got diluted in a 10% on a $150,000 loan that we use for six months. It's a pretty minor number. It's what, $7,500 bucks. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, on a deal that size, yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's that's a lot. That's a lot to go through. Now, it's a learning experience. Every time you go through this exercise, like you build confidence in yourself and your investors. If they come out on the positive side of this, they build confidence with you, your ability to communicate. So there's always a silver lining. But, you know, we all, we all wish that we could just mark up how everything's going to go smoothly and perfectly. And, you know, I think we all realize it doesn't always work that way. So that was, that was a hard lesson, but I think a valuable one. And man, I'm really, I'm grateful that you shared that experience with us because we don't always get the true grit of what's going on behind the scenes. So appreciate that. Hey, but I do look, I want to talk to you a little bit about just capitalizing it in general and how it relates to you building your own personal brand. It's kind of an area in my life right now that is relevant because I've been building my own personal real estate portfolio over the last 10 years or so. And you know, I've done pretty well, but I've built in silence. And honestly, man, I was looking at your stuff and it was helpful because like I'm a 45 year old man. And when I go on Instagram and I see like people that are young and attractive and doing, you know, fun stuff. And it's like, it seems like it's a very like young cultural thing. And I'm like, how do I fit into that world? You know, and do I even want to do this? And what you've demonstrated, you've inspired me that you can do so and be your own, be authentic to yourself. You've built a personal brand partly off of maybe some entertainment aspect. I think what you started with and gained a lot of traction with was marketing yourself because your brand is captain capital. It's a little play on words for you being a pilot. But a lot of your social media initially was you demonstrating and showcasing what it's like to be a pilot for private jet charters, for chartering people that are very affluent. And so I'm curious, you know, about that journey that you went on. Maybe you can lend some advice, things that you've learned about building your own personal brand, where you were and kind of where you are today. Yeah, it's a great question. So when I first started building a personal brand, I saw other people in the real estate building it. There's a lot of people in the real estate space trying to build a brand. It's all good stuff, but it's almost like I felt like it was kind of overplayed or overdone. It's a lot of the people saying the same things. There's probably 50 people in the STR space, just only talking about STR. So I just said, well, hey, I fly private jets for billionaires, which is true. It's what I do for a living. There's credibility in that. Like they trust me enough with their 20 to $40 million airplane. I run flight departments. So there's credibility there. But also I find private jets even for me still interesting. And so everyone that meets me at lunch or a real save me up, they're like, wait, you fly private jets. Like I got a question for you. So what I did was I started putting out videos of like, hey, this jet from LA to New York cost this much, just in fuel. And people were flabbergasted. And private jets are for wealthy people. I mean, you can break it down to like splurge for yourself, but it's still expensive. I got a lot of traction with that. Some of is good. And then a lot of it was good. I got really good views. Some of it was humor, like you said. I have a good personality. I like comedy and entertainment and things. So I made some videos that were like, hey, the worst, these are the worst three things about flying jets for billionaires. And it made them funny. Like going to Tahini for eight days and having to eat steak and fish. And I got a lot of like laughs at it and whatever. But so it got me a lot of attention, a lot of follows. And I blew up really quick. And I was like, holy crap. Now the downside of that is it wasn't real estate related. My whole content goal, build a brand, help people make money. I was a financial planner before I was a pilot. So I just, I've always wanted to help people make money, including myself, but bring other people along with me for the ride. So it brought a lot of attention to me. I got a lot of pilots DM me, hey, how do I become a pilot this? And then all of a sudden, I honestly got sidetracked because people on my content theme, like you should build a pilot community. So I did that and I spent so many hours. And it ended up that like everyone that wanted pilot advice is just new in their career and their broke. So there was, there wasn't a way to monetize it. I was spending like four to five hours a day between shooting content, giving pilot advice, building all this stuff. As much as I enjoyed it, it took away from family time. And it wasn't. I'm not saying it won't long-term because right now I have a lot of pilots on Instagram that maybe have been following me for two years. And now they're hitting me up because I shifted fully about real estate and family things in just regular life that now they're wanting to invest in real estate. If you were to summarize that though, like what's the key takeaway? Like what did you learn? What was the key lesson from that experience? The key takeaway is getting attention is good. Being follows, messages, all of that. But it was too much attention in the wrong way that I wanted it because my DMs were flooded with no real estate topics. So just be careful what you wish for because it's great that I will say I'm probably selling a couple aircraft because of some of those. But my main focus on content is hey, I'm still a guy that flies private jets for billionaires, but I don't want a bunch of DMs from pilots that are 21 years old. It sounds nice. I only have so many hours in the day. I'm running a flight department. I'm trying to build real estate. So I want to focus my content. I'm still a captain curve captain capital. I love that stuff. But I want to see you more. You got attention, but it was a bit of a distraction. Now, you've had success. You've raised millions of dollars. Where would you attribute your capital raising success from? I would tell you most of the people investing with me currently, I would say 80% of them know me at some capacity. Other people I used to fly airplanes with, family, friends, this and that, but I will say a lot of them have reached out. And now because I've shared it on social media, that's where everybody's watching. Facebook, Instagram, whatever their choices. And I've shown credibility after so many years. I'm sharing more of my deals. And honestly, I don't have time to share all of them and everything that goes on. Like if I set a camera up here in my office, it would just be non-stop meetings, phone calls, negotiations. I want to share more of it, but it's time consuming. It's expensive. But really 80% of people that you know, but when you put it out there online, now they're actually going to come to you. It may take a year. It's not going to be day one, but they're going to go, wow. Can I tell you something that's been, I want to tell you something that's been frustrating for me. And you know, part of it may just be ego and just as a human being. But man, sometimes I'll go and I'll scroll on Instagram and, dude, I'll see people on there that are having success. Like hey, hats off to them, right? They're gaining a lot of attention. They're gaining awareness. Some of them are starting communities in which they sell education. And it's hard for me sometimes because not to take anything away from what they're doing. Okay, I'm just setting the context. But I'm like, dude, I know a lot of stuff and not many people even know I exist relatively speaking because I haven't been out there. And sometimes it's frustrating for me when I see people that are less qualified, less experienced, less knowledgeable, that are gaining way more attention and accolades or gaining opportunities simply because they're out there posting content. And so those that are active are not necessarily more skilled. They're just, they're just putting themselves out there. And that's kind of the realization that I had for 2026 is like, dude, you gotta just get out of your skin, your comfort zone a little bit and start posting stuff because the more people are aware, like what you're describing, the attention you got from all of the interesting stuff about being a private jet pilot, that puts you in a position to where you got enough reps to be like, I feel comfortable doing this. And then you started to hyper free start refining and started focusing on one of the things that are going to move the needle for what you're ultimately trying to accomplish, which is raising money for investing deals. But the first step was do you just got started and then you refined it. And now you're starting to see more success. And so for me, that's been a challenge. I've been reluctant to go on social media. I've just started posting on LinkedIn and realized, okay, you know, hey, there's some opportunity here. I'm curious from your perspective. What channel has been the best for attracting investors like LinkedIn, Instagram? You've got a podcast. Like what do you think? Yeah. I mean, for me, it was Instagram because it's the largest, right? And so a lot of people are on there, but I'm kind of shifting that. I'm shifting more focus to YouTube and LinkedIn. The podcast I love doing podcasts. I love learning and learning about my guests and getting their expertise as well. It just makes me smarter. It's a little selfish, but podcasts cost money and a lot of editing and all that. I haven't got really, I'm not saying I can't, I guess I can't track investors through the podcast just yet. I have an investment form because I don't have a lot of investment opportunity. Like I said, I didn't close a single deal in 2025. I did it on purpose. I was overloaded with my pilot community and everything I was doing. I offloaded a couple of assets that were paying to my butt that I just was tired of operating. So I kind of did it clean slate 2025. I revisited my goals and now 2026, I'm in an implement. For me, LinkedIn and YouTube are going to be my most sought after to get after people. People listen to your podcasts. They start trusting you based on the hour that they spend with you on each episode, right? So I can't track like, oh, I got five investors from there on my form. You can, but not everybody puts where they found me from. Well, let's make this practical for anyone listening. Let's say look, they're presumably working a job. They've got a full time responsibility. Maybe they've got family and kids. And so the idea of running a podcast, it's not really remotely close to what's feasible. So if they want to raise capital in order to purchase real estate, whether it's hospitality or other asset types, in your experience, what is the best way for someone to gain that exposure and to make people aware of what they're doing? I would say target Instagram. And even like the tweet post that you see people put out, I put out a bunch myself. They take three minutes to come up with. It's like, hey, I want to do some mindset stuff right now. I'm focused on charity. You'll see more giving back tweets. Those tweets take three seconds. You don't have to have a camera. You don't need editing. And those can go out. I mean, once you post it on Instagram online, it can just accelerate some other day. We have a hundred thousand likes. The first day I put stuff out, sometimes it's two thousand thing abuse. Sometimes it's three thousand. Then all of a sudden, a month later, it's a hundred thousand views. And so it just has to get shared around not all of them hit like one out of ten hit. But honestly, repetitions, they get easier. So I would say like LinkedIn and Instagram just make tweet posts. LinkedIn loves text posts. If you have some ideas or thoughts, throw them on there. Use the AI feature on LinkedIn. There's a lot of professionals working professionals on LinkedIn and start connecting with people. I'm on my LinkedIn daily. At minimum every other day, connecting with pilots because I can really connect with another pilot and say, look, this is what I do on the side. I invest all my money that I earn as income and I build wealth that way. So that's my plan for 2026. But I think also like reading into what you're saying. Like if someone right now wants to get started real estate, they don't necessarily want to be some influencer and gain like half a million followers on Instagram. That's not the goal. The goal is to raise money to buy real estate and you've been successful at that. And I think listening to what you're saying, what I'm gathering, at least as it relates to myself is really the people that are most likely to invest with me are not unknown strangers on Instagram. It's the people that are already connected with me that know me as a human as a real person and just see me on Instagram and see me often and regularly posting and they may not, they may never even engage with anything that I post. But it's crazy. I was over, I don't know, the summer break is a little bit ago. I ran into some friends and I had very sporadically posted and people that I haven't seen in years, they never even responded to any of my posts. But I was at a barbeque and there was a collection of people that I knew actually from Carl's bed, folks that you would also know as well. And sure enough, people brought up, oh man, how's the hotel investing going? How's the hostels going? How the heck did I didn't even register? Like they didn't even, they had been following my Instagram. And so it's incredible. Like if you just start posting and you're not necessarily seeing the results in terms of like likes and shares and follows and all that stuff, that doesn't really matter. It's your initial network. Like we had a business coach who once made me go through this exercise where we were talking about raising capital for this deal we had in LA and we're like, okay, how are we going to do this? And he's like, I want you to open your phone right now and there's like some way to go through your iPhone and look at your contacts and sure enough, I have like over a thousand contacts on there. He's like, export that to a spreadsheet and methodically go one by one by one and start identifying people that might have an interest and start by just sending a text that says, hey, I just thought I'd let you know I'm investing in real estate. I should have some deals popping up in the next few months. If you have all, you know, any interest in it, I'm just letting you know this is what I'm doing. And so it's uncomfortable. Man, it was really kind of like, what's the word? Not like, like, cringy, you know, to reach out to someone. But the people in your network, they want to support you. They know you, they like you presumably and they, they want to trust you. And so if you just post regularly, it's not that you're going to be into the famous, you know, immediately. It's the 300, 400, 500 people that you already are connected to and a combination of LinkedIn and Instagram. Those are the folks that are going to invest in with you for your first deal. At least that's what has been told to me. That's the key takeaway that I see with you, Kurt, is you've been successful raising millions dollars, you are expanding your network. But at the end of the day, the people that have invested with you, they, they kind of already know you, right? They know you in person. So that's the takeaway. I think for me, 2026, I'm flying a little bit last, which is nice. Me and them. I'm home more. And my focus is going to go to a few more in person meetups because even though I'm an introvert at home, I just like to work and I like to hang out with my kids. I'm strong in person. So at a couple of meetups, I pretty much get one investor at minimum every meetup. I want to get their number, whatever. I just do really well in person. So I want to do more of that. So people should know their strength. If you're not like outgoing and you're not a people person, maybe you're analytical, then just stick to the emails and the texts and posting on social media like you're saying, I honestly have not gone through my phone and text everyone in there. I've text like the 10 people at top of my head that I'm close with that I know that have some money and deals and guess what? They've invested in deals. So my next deal, I will probably be going through my phone. Why do I say that? I'm going to be going through my phone for my charity fundraising for this leukemia child in the next three months. So I'm going to probably start that this week and I'm just going to be single texting people. Is it time consuming? Yes. But I think it's well worth it. Like you said, targeting the right people that have some finances. They're not a college student that's broke. Targeting the right people that may be interested. So I think that's great advice that you just shared. Yeah. Love that. Okay. I want to ask you one last question. You had a lot of success. You've invested and you want to a large portfolio real estate with on your own and with partnership. If you could go back to the version of yourself who was just getting started and tell yourself one thing, what would it be? You can do it. It's give yourself confidence. When I first bought my first duplex, even though I had read so many books, I'd want to do invest for years. I wanted to be rich to add port ed. That was a book that turned it for me. It started my investment. I mean, it's scary, but I kind of surrounded myself with a praser and a contractor at the time to go visit this house that I bought. And you don't know if it's going to work. It's like, well, I need a place to live. It's a duplex. I don't know how to manage a tenant. I don't know how Elise works. But at the end of the day, you figure it out as you go. I think just knowing that you can do it every time I look at an asset to buy, all it is now is do the numbers look good enough to bring along and will investors come in on this deal. It's not if I can do it anymore, but back when it was the first deal, the second deal, the first mobile home park, the first hotel, my first development. I'm literally in the middle of my first industrial development. It wasn't a if I can do it. It is okay. I've got enough confidence. I know I can make this happen. So I think you build confidence. Yes. Even if you think you do, you don't have enough confidence on your first deal. You need to just go with your gut and realize any issues that come up. There's people that you can call on. There's people that you can pay to coach you. There's CPAs to talk to. Just have the confidence that you're going to make it work out. Yeah. Yeah. Learn by doing. I like to say that all the time. People get so hung up reading books. And if I only just join this next workshop, then I'll have the information. I need no. Sometimes you just got to jump in, even if it's uncomfortable. So love that man. Kurt, this has been great man. For folks who want to follow your journey, learn more about Captain Capital or Connect with you, where should they go? Yeah. Instagram is probably the best place. It's the Captain Kurt with all Cs. And then my website is CaptainCapital.com. We got development info on there and updates with photos. And those are my two most spent places. You know, so easiest way to find me. And thanks for having me on. It was great. Yeah, man. I appreciate you sharing your story. Thanks for being here. For our listeners. We'll catch you again next week. Bye.