HIP E82 Chris Broomfield - 6M Brand With 90K

At 40 years old, my guest had zero savings, zero retirement, and zero equity to pass on to his kids. What he did have was a truck, a set of tools, and a $20,000 car accident settlement. Today, he runs a five- cabin luxury hospitality brand in rural New York that grosses over half a million dollars a year with a portfolio of value at $6 million and not a single outside investor. If you think you need capital, connections, or perfect timing to build something real and hospitality, this episode is going to challenge that assumption. Let's get into it. The Hotel Investor Playbook, your guide to building wealth and freedom through hotel and hospitality ownership. Welcome back to the hotel investor Playbook. I am Michael Russell, founder of Malama Capital in your host. My guest today is the proud owner of a five-unit luxury property at hospitality brand that nets over half a million dollars in income per year. No outside investors, no syndication. I'm sitting now with Chris Brunfield, the founder of Evergreen Cadence. Chris, welcome to the show. Thanks. Thanks for sharing Michael. We'd be having me. Let's start at the beginning. You're building high-end custom homes in Connecticut. You're making decent money, but you didn't have anything to pass on your family. Walk me through that reality. It's a reality when you turn 40 and you have zero in savings. You have no retire. You have kids. You have to take care of everything is getting more and more expensive. It's just that pressure of just constant stress and you got to figure something else out. I know there's people out there doing that. I know it's possible to do it and I just didn't have the time to do it before and I had to make the time for myself to do it. I started with at one cabin. It was bringing in money. It became super popular and I knew I had something. People did want to have they wanted to have a stay in something that was creative. They didn't want to just stay in a hotel that was in a woods. They wanted to stay. Let me time out here. I'm sorry Chris, because your story's too good man. It's like a package. We got to unravel it a little bit by bit here because the context of this is look. It's easy for people now to look at what you've built and say things like, oh, easy for him, right? But you were born this wealthy entrepreneur. You were a trade worker. You were working for 30 years and I know that when you started your first one, okay, there wasn't a ton of startup capital. Maybe you could take us back to that first project like where you came up with the money to be able to build your first. I think it was an a frame, right? Yeah. Let's start there. I want to know what you identified because didn't you buy a piece of land in some small rural town? I think there are like 3000 people. This is rural New York, correct? This isn't like you're in Palm Beach, Florida. You're in rural New York in an area where most people don't even have on their radar 3000 people in the town. Why did you buy a piece of land there and where did the money come from to start this vision? That's all I could afford. Like I said, I didn't have any money at all. The initial money to buy that land was we had a settlement from my wife was hit by a drunk driver, but that's a whole other conversation. Well, we had a small settlement. I think it was like $20,000 and then the rest of it was all a pocket. It was a friend of ours that owned that land. So I know I wasn't getting ripped off. I wasn't paying all these fees, closing fees and stuff. It was just giving the check and the land is mine. So that was a that was the help for getting the land. Building the cabin on the other hand is 100% out of pocket. So I was continuing contracting and every job I was doing, I was getting extra materials that I was able to bring up there and use those to help build the place. So well, I've heard that you okay. Now the five cabs that you have, which I mean, you've got how many hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers do you currently have? Instagram, I think it's a couple hundred thousand. A couple hundred thousand. I mean, you've got a massive following for not necessarily a personal brand. This is a business brand. That's a lot. A lot of people are really attracted to viewing your cabins because they really are spectacular, man. And that's one of the reasons I reached out to you as I saw your your cabins on Instagram and was compelled. I got to talk to this guy. I guess I think that you at some point got an appraisal or your properties have been valued at around $6 million currently. Now you did not put $6 million into these. What did you just start with? Like how much capital did it cost you out of pocket to begin with? Out of pocket was 90,000 over three years. So 20 to 30,000 dollars per year for the three years. Every penny I was making, I was putting right back into building this cabin. And I knew the land was paid for. I wanted the I wanted it completely debt-free. So all that money came in, you know, it was just from contracting 20,000 a year or so. Yeah, it's all settlement. You put in some money that you scrapped together, you bootstrapped from working as a contractor. How did you have the time in addition to your full-time work to be able to build your first cabin? So yeah, that was going to camp every weekend. So I'd work all, you know, five days a week contracting. Leave Friday night after work, truck loaded up, just drive up to camp four hours away and then start building. So I'd build all night under lights and generator and then I would do it Saturday morning until Saturday night using all the daylight I could. Someday, usually clean up and drive home and take a couple hours now. It's about it. And how long do you do that for? How many years? Three years, yeah. Every year, pretty much every weekend. You sacrificed. You worked a full-time job. And whenever you had a free moment, you went up and worked on the first cabin here. Yeah. Wow. Why this town? Like this 3000 person town that nobody's heard of. Maybe they out. I don't want to be sold anywhere. But the fact that it's a small town. What was the checklist you use? It says, hey, these five acres, this is where it's at. Like why this partial specific? So Remson is not, obviously like you say, it's not on the map. Nobody knows about it. I was skeptical that it would even work. So my brother, he was using the BRBO and he has a lake house he was using and I'm like, and he's getting a rent and out. And I was amazed. And like, who the hell is going to Remson? It's not a vacation place. There's nothing touristy about it. So I knew it was there. It was possible to get people there. But the main reason is because that's where I grew up. I grew up in the next town over. So I'd built this. The cabin was mainly for me to go visit my family, bring my immediate family up to see my parents and cousins. And so that's why Remson was chosen. One, it was, or my family, his nail one was it, it could work. So it was kind of a risk not knowing how well it could work. If I was to get 15% occupancy, I was still ahead. It was all the the building, the land, everything was paid for. So it was all free money. Well, because it's sweat equity. So it's not that it was free. It's just you mitigated some of the risk involved because you invested more time, right? And I think that a lot of folks maybe are intimidated by the idea of taking out a large amount of debt or going in raising capital. And I think I like to profile an example like yours because it's the sweat equity model and it's the bootstrapping model. And it's obtainable for those that have skill sets or the determination to go and do this without taking on those extra layers of risk. I want to know what led you to come up with the idea of this retractable bed concept. So for those who have not seen the first a frame, right? All of the units are individual and they're beautiful. But the first one, if you can imagine an a frame cabin and you're laying in bed and at night, if you wanted to star gaze instead of having to walk out of your bed and go sit on a deck with the press of a button, the bed automatically retracts out of the a frame into the open air. So you can be laying in bed and start stargazing. That is one of the most like picturesque novel ideas that I've seen and naturally that is really help your brand because no one's ever seen anything like this. Where did you come up with the idea to do this? Yeah, it's I knew that there needed to be something unique to be able to draw people into remson because it's remson, right? So I tried this out. The idea was at the time I like to go camping and sleep under the stars and feel the cool night air and my wife does not. Like I said, in the beginning it was just for my family and then renting it out for extra income. So I wanted to give my wife that experience. She would not camp. She won't use the woods as a bathroom. I kind of think I think a lot of people can relate to that. But it was to have her feel that cool air and the hearing the birds in a wildlife in the night and seeing the stars and shooting stars. And it's just it's beautiful. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's one thing to envision. It's about a thing to be able to go on, execute it. I want to talk a little bit about while you describe a side selection. That was related to your knowledge and familiarity with the area having been having grown up there. But you bought a piece of property, piece of raw land and the zoning and maybe perhaps the permitting was not ideal. From what I understand, you had to go through some zoning changes. In order to obtain the permits that you have now, what was the process? Yeah, so it was originally zoned residential. They allowed me to change it to a campsite. Like I was able to put campsites which allowed me to put unlimited amounts of buildings on there. That process was super easy in this town at the time. I don't know how it is right now, but being in it is a small town. Everybody knows everybody. The inspectors and everybody in the town knew I was a builder. So they trusted how I was going to build it. I'm not going to build a shack that's going to depreciate the neighbors values and that kind of thing. So that process, I really didn't have to do anything other than say, hey, I want to build as many buildings as I can on this property. What do I need to do? And then he took care of it from there. It just, I don't know what he did internally, but now it's a commercial property and it's zoned for campsites. Well, I think from an investor's standpoint, I mean, that is the jackpot, right? Because commercial rezoning, I mean, it fundamentally changes how a potential buyer, so if you ever decide to sell this asset, they're going to, they're going to value it much differently, much more favorably because it's got the commercial zoning in hand. But at the time, you know, you make it sound like it was quite easy to obtain. I know a lot of folks that are considering doing this. This is one of the most risky areas is there's a lot of pushback in general against the idea of turning residential properties into short term rentals. In this particular town, are you just saying that there just wasn't a lot of resistance? And in that moment, it was just, it was a full little tiny. No resistance at all. I mean, but keep in mind, too, this was before Airbnb and VRGO and bookings and short term rentals exploded. There wasn't many of them out there. It was 2015. I think Airbnb started in 2011. So it was pretty new. There wasn't the restrictions that you have now for all these towns. I mean, if there was restrictions, Airbnb restrictions, there was in the ski towns where the hotel industry was given the pushback here. Nobody here. Nobody lives or nobody vacations and rumps and so they had no pushback at all. I think they saw it as all right, we're now going to be able to collect even more tax from this guy. So I think that's all they saw. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Well, it sounds like it was a win-win then. So let's transition. So you built this asset. You got the permits right. I want to talk about the moment that everything blew up. Like in the best way and possibly maybe not the worst way at the time, but you got big very quickly. I don't think you prepared for it. So I'll let you tell the story. But from what I understand, a guest stayed at your tree house, right? And maybe they posted on TikTok, but you got some crazy amount of views. And all of a sudden, you were booked up for like three years. Like, walk me through what that experience was like. What was the good news? Obviously about that and the bad news. Yeah. That was that was a crazy couple of weeks. Never experienced it before. It was like winning the lottery and kind of not knowing your winning the lottery. Because I didn't realize how the domino effect how much it affected that. So there's this girl. Her name was Nessa Logoris. She was staying at the tree house and she posted this TikTok and she's not an influencer or photographer or anything like that. So she's just a normal guest that came in and posted this TikTok. And I think I think it was the first day of there was one million. I gotta look at these numbers. But I think the first day was one million. But by seven days, there was six to seven million people that had seen that. And the bookings were just going and coming in like crazy. It was 365 days a year, right? Times three years. You can imagine most of the most of the nights, the stays are two nights. So you can imagine how many bookings I was getting in the next three weeks. It was just constant. My phone was blingin' just like a little jackpot machine. It was fun. A lot of fun. Well, so on the one hand, seven million views and three solid years of bookings. That's obviously great news. But now, are you prepared from that? From a price perspective, now as soon as you get the demand, then of course you can raise rates. Obviously, there was some money that was left on the table by not being able to raise rates fast enough. What do you think? Like, if you had to guess what number? What do you think you missed out on by not raising those rates? I might have to be probably two or three hundred thousand, I would guess. No. Yeah, it was a lot. I could have easily doubled the rates and still gotten it booked up. I forget the nightly rate, but it was something crazy low, like one twenty one fifty somewhere in there per night. You know, it went three four hundred dollars a night. So it was a big hit. Well, it's bittersweet, right? That post put you on the map. That's your fully occupied. Gave you cash flow, then. So you can start building more and really built the vision of like, wow, if I've done this, I can continue to build more. There's something really here that is, you know, going viral because there's demand in this three thousand person town. People want to come or you've built it. Now they want to come. So that's the positive. If you understand now though, you're using dynamic pricing. So, you know, how do you think through rate management today? You're running like you said around four hundred bucks a night cross. You know what? I think you're doing like ninety ninety five percent off, because you're most of the years. How is your pricing strategy work now? I'd leave it all up to price labs. I use price labs. Everybody says it's not a set it and forget it, but for me, it has been a set it and forget it. They've been doing a great job. I may be leaving some money on the table, but I don't want to take every penny that I can. No, it's kind of crazy, but I don't want the reputation of all. He's too expensive. The value is not there. So, I have to, there's a cap that you can put on price labs and I could easily go up to twelve, thirteen hundred dollars a night, but I can't. I won't be able to sleep at night. There's so many books of twelve hundred dollars a night. It's not right in my eyes. I gotta keep it down a little bit. Hey guys, if you're getting value out of this conversation, do me a favor and take thirty seconds right now and leave me a review on Apple podcast or Spotify. It literally takes half a minute, but it makes a huge difference in helping other hotel investors find the show. Okay, now back to the episode. Well, there is the case that could be argued that something's value is whatever someone is willing to pay for it. And what you're willing to pay for it might be less. But that's not to say someone else doesn't see value in it. Sometimes we're all guilty of selling out of our own pocketbooks. And yeah, I don't know. I definitely can relate to what you're saying with our own redels here in Hawaii. Gee, sometimes during the holidays, we charge three thousand bucks a night. And that's like, wow, but at the same token, the people that are coming out here cherishing those moments with people they love. And for them, three thousand bucks a night, they've got it and it's a great value. So, hey, who's to say you couldn't charge more, but if if you're only charging four hundred bucks a night, I can respect that. Thinking about what it cost you to build this thing. What was it? But you said about $90,000, right? That was the total build cost for the first one. Yeah. For the A-frame, yeah. Nice. And how much does that do now per year in revenue? 120 to 130 somewhere in there. Wow. Incredible. And you've got five of these, right? You've expanded upon the model. What do you do in now annually and gross income across the five properties? It's over half a million in somewhere 540. It's hard to say right now because I just finished the last two cabins. Before these two cabins, it was four or 30, four thirty fives for more than that. That's what I was doing. Let me be clear though, is that gross income or is that net income? Two very different metrics to try. Yes, gross. Okay. Cool. All right. So these things are healthy. You're earning more than a year than what it cost you to build. And from what I understand too, you just continue to use the proceeds from the business to reinvest to build. So from a debt perspective, do you have any debt on these properties? I do a little bit. Not a crazy. So each build, I got a small personal loan. For the treehouse, the treehouse was my biggest loan, but that allowed it to build it. I built the whole thing from taking down the trees to decorations in 13 weeks. The reason why is because I wanted to get that loan because I know there's a window. No, this excitement about these cabins. So get the thing done as quickly as I can so I can at least monopolize a little bit from the treehouse. The other cabins were, I was using the money from both a frame and treehouse to build a birch falls. And so I didn't need as big of a loan on that one. So that one I got a forty thousand out of loan and the rest was out of pocket. Gotcha. So you're relatively conservative in that regard. We'll be asking you quickly, like we're actually speaking, if you do have staff, I'm trying to understand what the staffing picture is so they can kind of develop a total cost picture of what it is to run these things. Like who is there day to day running these properties? We've got three full-time staff numbers. One main means to cleaners. One of the cleaners, she's also our hospitality manager. So she does all the shopping for all the guests because we offer these welcome packages that people can customize. So she's going to pick in the flowers and get in the right champagne and chocolates and cakes and stuff like that. So she does all that. Well, it's starting from a high level, I guess for something listening to this, it's like, man, I want to have a micro-sort. I'd love to have five of these incredibly built, beautiful lodges, units, whatever you, but they got to underwrite these and they got to kind of figure out what's the, what are the operating costs? It's unique. Every situation is a little different, but from a high level, what is it caused from an operating perspective? What's the operating expense ratio for what you've got going on? If I was to add up taxes, monthly salaries, howls and all the incidentals that we have to keep with them, that's about 180 to 190,000. Okay. For you. All right. Well, that's a really good. I mean, you're running about 40% expense ratio. I don't have a calculator. later, roughly, that's pretty good. This is something I kind of want to transition to because your numbers are really good and you really didn't take the easy road for this business model. I made a lot of sweat equity here. What about some of these, you know, I mean, you've got proven model here that's very profitable. What kind of investor interest did you get? I did anyone approach you, like did you ever have any conversations that people said, "Hey, I'd like to invest in this project." Obviously, you must have said no, but what were those conversations like and why did you choose to deflect any owner investment? Yeah, I should say any investment in your project. Right. Well, it was, I would say three to four every week. Somebody would be reaching out, ask him to partner up or design and build another Evergreen cabin somewhere else and run that. It was constant for a couple of years and people still do it today, but I don't want to create a job for myself. I finally created a freedom, which is what when I go, I don't need to make a hundred million a year. I mean, it's hard to spend the money I make right now. I shouldn't say that, but it's, you're living comfortably. Now it's easy. I get to do anything I want. We have enough money. I'm building equity with my free time and other places. The value of Evergreen is still growing. The end game is to tell Evergreen at some point. So if I have investors, the sale is probably gonna be a lot harder. There's buyouts that it has to do. I've been a carpenter, so my brain doesn't work like that. With the team members and corporate meetings and things like that. I'm gonna steer away from that. Well, I think that the approach most common is, look, if your goal was to scale to be as large as possible, then eventually you have to raise capital from outside investors. And if you have the means to just own it outright, then the advantage is you retain 100% of the cash flow and the earnings. And so one could debate which route is better. It sounds like from what you're sharing, that having a healthy work-life balance takes precedence over absolute scale and growth. And not that one is better than the other, but for you personally, what is the long-term vision? You sell this property at a profit, then what? What does your life look like at that point? Once I sell, it's a problem when I'm getting into something more passive. I probably would, by long-term rentals, I would also do another short-term rental because it is fun to be creative and post people, but it wouldn't be at the scale right now. It would just be one or two cabins, maybe on a beach, I don't know. Well, I appreciate that on his hands, right? Oh, I think a lot of times people overlook the fact that hospitality investing is oftentimes an active business. It's very, very much requires thought on bandwidth and even in our situation, with our properties, we have a full management team, we have full salary employees in place, and so most of the day-to-day operational work is performed by our team. I mean, I haven't visited our properties in a quite a while, and I say that just because I trust that the team can perform their duties effectively, but I do constantly have to think about what's going on in the business. I can't just unplug. And when you own a series of long-term investments, like it's a very different role as the owner, you're not really having to respond or to think through the high-level management of the asset. So that's a respectful answer, it's an honest answer. I am curious, let's say someone comes in with a checkbook and says, I'm ready to buy this beautiful hospitality brand that you've built. Just curious, what's the number it would take for you to walk away? I've got another part of Evergreen that I'm working on. I don't want to say yet. I think that's going to create a lot of this value, but I'm going to give you a number in a second. But what I'm going to be doing is it's going to create probably two to three more million of value of it. I'd like to get it close to 10. Yeah, 10 million with this other thing that I'm working on. Do you hear how folks and million get to you know, a beautiful hospitality asset in rural New York, so that's the number. I'm not so funnier, but I want to bring it back to kind of whorves. I want to kind of share more of an actionable section of this episode where maybe people that are looking at operating their own micro-resort, they'd love to have the success that you have with your social media presence. And so let's talk a little bit about how you've gone from 100% Airbnb bookings to now, you'd correct me from wrong, but you're close to 90% direct bookings. You know, what are the tactical things that you have utilized or deployed so that you could get more direct bookings? Yes, well, I started just with social media marketing and that got me a lot of the followers and a lot of the subscribers that I have. And then I used those subscribers and followers by switching them to email marketing. So email marketing now is what is generating all of the direct bookings. And I use this company called Hidden Gem, the Sky Dustin Baker. He's an amazing, he's amazing at what he's does. He's got a great team, easy to talk to, communicate with, well, they take care of a lot of heavy lifting for me. And so there's a funnel that he uses in its social media to get the interest to be able to sign up for subscriptions. We use those subscriptions for email marketing that generate the bookings. Okay, well, let's lead magnet, right? That's the word. Some of the CG on social media that's like, wow, this is really amazing. You know, your resort looks like maybe the perfect place for a romantic getaway over a family trip or whatever, right? There's some sort of like intention behind the social media marketing or the post. But what is the anchor that gets someone say, yeah, subscribe me up. I'll give you my email address and they know they're gonna be marketed towards, what do they get in exchange? They get a hundred bucks off their first day. And that that's worked really well. We've tried it with, I think it was 30% off off their first day. The percentage thing, it doesn't work as well as the $100 off. So how many people do you think you have on your email list? I think there's close to 40 or 50,000. 40 or 50, wow, that's a good chunk. And so you give them this coupon like that, there's a discount off of their first day, okay? Yep, works good. We don't have to pay OTA fees. It's a simple booking process. They're not gonna get marketed by Airbnb for all these other properties every single day. They only get marketed for the things that they're interested in. We use Facebook ads too. So that's a big draw or getting people to sign up. And how involved are you personally in the marketing campaigns? Not at all. So you're just, you've completely outsourced it to this marketing agency? Yeah, Dustin and I have been friends prior to this toward our business relationship. And he's a great guy. He just, I completely trust everything he does. He's like a genius with marketing. So he, I just completely trust him. Every question I have, we have media answers that it seems like a silly question when I ask them because they're like, "Oh, we just do this and this." And I'm like, "Oh, all right. Have you been doing that? Yeah, we've been doing that for a while." So I just, you're right out of it man. It's all on them. Well, you know, Chris, you have a spectacular way of making something that is extremely complex, seem very simple, which I highly appreciate respect because there's a lot of moving parts to this. And now a lot of people have aspirations to do what you've done. Go buy a piece of land, build a beautiful micros or that has demonstrated profitability year over year, gain attraction on Instagram, social media, develop a direct marketing strategy, and then ultimately sell it for millions of dollars. You know, if that, in theory, sounds simple, it's not easy. And you know, you're executing at a high level. For someone that wants to perform like the what I just described there, what's an actionable piece of advice that you would give them if they wanted to do and be successful like you have? I would have to say, would become a DIYer. All of the value is from my time that I put into building there. So I think that we're low on tradesmen. So the price of hiring somebody is extremely high. And it screws with your numbers where, you know, you have to have higher ADRs and higher occupancy just to balance that out. So when you're doing it yourself, it's not only fulfilling and more rewarding when you get these unbelievable reviews from the guests, but you're learning a trade, you know, maybe you're spending time in your son or daughter building, and it's just extremely rewarding. So what does a typical day look like for you, Chris? So, you know, evergreen cabins, it's most of the operational stuff is being handled by your team, but for you as the owner operator, what would a typical Monday morning look like for you at Evergreen? - Mornings are slow. I get up at my coffee, check my email. I'm always working on these other projects outside of Evergreen, which is building equity. And now it's my personal home that I'm remodeling to build some equity into this or more equity into this. It's not this. It's another property that I have that I'll work on and build equity in that. So rather than me going out to work for somebody else to get money, I just work for myself and I put it in the equity. It's too easy, man. You have a very relaxed approach to this. And I think that more people, I feel like could benefit if they just took the stance that you are, which is quite simply just go out and do it. I think some people get hung up in the idea thinking about it, but from what I can tell is, look, your first years were super hard, you sacrificed a lot, but you were then able to systemize. because if you're waking up on a Monday morning and you're checking through the emails and having some coffee and kind of thinking high level about your next project, then there's some serious process in place. I'm sorry, like you made it sound simple, but the reality is there's systems, there's processes. For someone that's thinking about doing this, like what are some of the most important systems that they need to put in place to be able to live the kind of life that you have? - Hiring them amazing staff. I built these systems in the back end that logs every single move that they make. And if I wanna check in, I look at those logs, see what's getting done, what's being purchased. - All right, let me ask you this, Chris. I wanna ask you because you've positioned yourself as being content with where you are, but look man, you're ambitious. You wouldn't be where you're at if you didn't have this driving force and this ability to sacrifice and commit your time. And so is there a part of you that thinks, "Man, I've had so much success with Evergreen Cabins, "why not expand the brand globally?" Is that something that you, although you've communicated that it's now on the cards right now, is that something that you could potentially consider doing, eventually scaling this brand maybe globally or at least to multiple locations throughout the United States? - Yeah, yeah, I totally with that idea quite often and it probably is gonna happen. It's, I definitely wanna do different regions, you know, the Southeast region, the Northwest region, I know that those two areas are a little hot spots for short term run all day, I think. And I'd like to get into those places. The time to get to do that, I've got two young kids. The next five, six years I have right now, I wanna make sure I'm spending every second I can with them. - No. - So that, things might explode or I might retire, you know, or no. - Yeah, hey, you're speaking my language, man, I'm in a similar situation. I've worked hard to get to where I'm at and I've got two young ones and I just cherish the moments with them. So I can definitely understand why you wanna take the time, you know, the challenge which you've described, I think people can out up, it's like, you've got something really special that is unique because it's curated, it's a special jewel, right? These few cabins. If you were to expand or maybe you've looked at others that have expanded, do you fear or do you consider that that delutes the specialness? If it becomes more of a commodity where you can find these types of unique stays everywhere, do you think that actually works against the model that you've built? - I don't, no, because I think there's a lot of people that they would like to stay in them that can't. Maybe they don't have enough time. You know, we get more years, they can't get away from their job long enough to go that far away. Although we have had people fly from all over the world and stay, but that's a little bit different avatar, I guess. But I think it would help. Just the brand recognition that the people have and the trust that they would have and I've knowing that it's in a different place, I think it's gonna help. - Yeah, well I can tell that you are a dedicated craftsman that you actually care about the quality. This isn't just about making money and that it is nice to be able to live a life where you're not stressed about finances. I mean, the story that you led with about starting this brand with this company, this hospitality asset with a portion of the funds came from a settlement, from a car accident. Like, that shows that you've really come a long way and I can appreciate where you're at with being comfortable. For someone that's listening to this right now who makes decent money but doesn't have necessarily like several million dollars of equity in terms of like real estate assets. If you were to go back to your previous self or to advise someone like I just described, what would you say to that person? What kind of tactical advice would you give them so that they can reach the same level of success that you've had? I would tell them to set 10% of their, no matter how much they make, even if it's paycheck, paycheck to paycheck. Set 10% of whatever they make aside. So my son right now, he's 14 years old and he's flipping cars. My point is, you can make extra money to be able to do this. So he's flipping car, you're able to earn $30,000 within the next year and a half before he gets his license and buy a piece of property and build a shed on it, a tiny home. He wants to do it all by himself. So I don't believe anybody would have a reason not to do this if that's what they really wanted to do. Opportunities are everywhere to be able to make money when they're not at your job. You're only at your job eight hours of the day. You're sleeping six to eight hours. So there's quite a few hours left of that to hustle. I would say just hustle and set 10% aside for a project. Sound advice. Chris, this has been an excellent conversation, man. You've built something really special. If anyone is listening to this, go check out the Evergreen cabins. Really, if you're considering wanting to build a micro-resort or some sort of hospitality business that really is unique and sets itself apart, then the Evergreen cabins of what Chris has built really is inspirational. Outside of that, Chris, if someone wanted to follow what you're building or reach you if they wanted to work, connect with you, how can they do so? They can reach out at my website, which is EvergreenCabins.co. Or my email is info at Evergreen Cabins. And if they wanted to follow me on Instagram, that's Evergreen_Cabins. - Excellent. Well, let's listen to this episode, it's helped you, man. Sharing this episode with somebody who could benefit, who could be inspired, who would possibly, it could help them get off of the sidelines and go out there and start fulfilling their dream of being hospitality entrepreneurs. I am Michael Russell. He is Chris Brumfield. This is another episode of the hotel investor playbook. And we will catch you again next week. Aloha. (upbeat music)