34. Finding Community with Will Jordan

Brock Briggs  0:00  

Hello and welcome to the Scuttlebutt podcast. Today, I'm speaking with Will Jordan. Will just separated from the Navy two weeks ago and is ready to pursue his destiny full time. He's the founder of BnB Interiors, a company that offers interior design focused on the short term rental market as well as property management. I first found out about Will when his brother Rich recommended I talk with him. This conversation can stand on its own, but we do talk about their differences and approaches. If you haven't listened to that yet, it may give you some context to this talk. 

I spoke with Rich on episode 23. Feel free to check that out and listen to that if you haven't already. Will has some great advice that's widely applicable to several walks of life. We talked about him living in a van for two years to save money, starting a backyard concert venue, his plan to travel and work abroad for 2023 and how he's going about building a short term rental business. We don't get too philosophical, but Will is a person that knows what he wants. He's not out to build the biggest business empire like a lot of folks are. 

He says multiple times in this talk that he's looking to build the business that supports the lifestyle he wants to live, an approach that's extremely underrated and not discussed enough when it comes to life and career planning. I have to apologize a bit in advance here. The sound quality of this recording leaves a little to be desired. There is a bit of scratchiness throughout the recording. I wasn't able to edit out, wasn't present when we recorded so I'm not sure where it came from. 

And the quality of our conversation not been great, I wouldn't even be releasing this episode. I know that I couldn't replicate this call with Will again if I tried though, so bear with me. Will has some great things to say. And it's well worth it. As you're listening today, I think it's worth taking some time to consider what your life goals are. For some people life is their work, but I'm willing to bet that's not the majority. Enjoy this conversation with Will Jordan.

Brock Briggs

So I wanna start out a little bit and just kind of like ask you some like predecessor questions like because I talked with Rich before you, a couple episodes ago. And so this is gonna be like an interesting like compare and contrast conversation. How do you guys think that you're different?

Will Jordan  2:50  

Oh, wow. Yeah, so I think for Rich, the big differences between the two of us is he is just so naturally analytical. He was an engineer in college and I was an English major. I'm also very analytical, but I strive to be like Rich. Rich approaches everything from a really, from the bottom and always makes sure that he's an expert by the time he's done. We've had a great relationship our whole lives. It's always been big brother-little brother relationship. 

And he is absolutely my mentor. And I call him for just about everything. It's been really fun kind of ride with him from kind of growing up playing sports. He was always kind of the guinea pig who would try his hand at new sport. I'd watch from the sidelines and then maybe the next meeting, I would give it a go. And the same thing happened with the military, was an infantry officer. 

And I was a surface warfare officer but he entered the service about five years prior to I did and I'm sure we're doing pretty different things. He was leading the Marines. I was leading sailors so there's many times I called him for advice and he was able to provide some great insight and help steer me in the right direction. So definitely a good bit different but I'm a product of my environment and Rich has 100% been a big part of that.

Brock Briggs  4:37  

Yeah, no, that's cool and awesome that you guys have like such a great relationship like on multiple levels there. Kind of leading into this and as I was reading about you, I'm kind of in my head comparing and contrasting. I'm like, okay, so I talked with Rich and he's like, you guys are from PA, right?

Will Jordan  4:59  

So we say that we're from Philadelphia. 

Brock Briggs

Okay

Will Jordan

But the truth is we're from Newfield, New Jersey, which is a little town, South Jersey. 

Brock Briggs

Okay

Will Jordan

Rich lives in Pennsylvania now, but we're from South Jersey.

Brock Briggs  5:13  

Gotcha. Okay, so I'm like imagining that I'd like talk with him he's like kind of got that very like Northeastern type of like, just everything about him was kind of screamed like I live in from the northeast. And then as I'm like researching you, I'm like reading your Twitter and stuff. And like even we get on video here, you've got a surfboard in the background like you're into like music. Did coming out West like do that to you? Or do you think that you've always kind of like been that way?

Will Jordan  5:48  

Yeah, I don't think anyone who knows me from home would think that I'm any different. 

Brock Briggs

Oh, really?

Will Jordan

Was growing up. I've always been one who loves adventure and pretty laid back. For the most part, I think I can like turn on turned off, especially the military was definitely turned on. But yeah, I think coming out to San Diego was just like the perfect environment. Yeah, it's been great. I definitely, very quickly got involved in surfing and haven't really looked back. 

I absolutely love surfing. But yeah, the funny thing is, Rich was born in Rhode Island. And I actually was born in California. 

Brock Briggs

Okay

Will Jordan

Yeah. I mean, I didn't, we never really, I was I lived in California as an infant. We very quickly were living on the East Coast. By the time I was like three years old. But maybe California rubbed off on me as an infant or something. And I really didn't necessarily have that. So

Brock Briggs  7:04  

That might have been it. We were talking a little bit before this, you said that you have some like really big travel plans. Are you a big traveler? What do you have in store like that's coming out?

Will Jordan  7:16  

Yeah, so over the past nine years, so for those years being at the Academy and five of those years being active duty, I've taken every single chance I possibly can to get away and travel. And now and I'm sure as you know, traveling when you're in the military is quite difficult especially to try and meet the country. So now kind of the restraints are off. And yeah, I got, I've been kind of dreaming of this trip for the past couple years. 

And so me and my girlfriend are going to take off this spring and travel for about a year to driving through Central and South America. And the goal there is to spend about a month or so in every country along the way. And we want to do it in a manner where we're working. So there's an organization called Workaway that does kind of like room and board type situations where it's kind of like a massive Craigslist for people to put job postings on. 

So you can look up any country and it'll be someone in Mexico saying, "Help work my botanical garden, will provide you room and board and like a living stipend or something.” So we wanna do that in every country. And hopefully, by the end of it, we can learn a bunch of interesting trades and maybe I'll find some interesting thing to be compassionate in. But yeah, we're gonna take off the spring. That's the plan.

Brock Briggs  9:12  

That sounds like so much fun. Like quite literally like the adventure of a lifetime, probably.

Will Jordan  9:18  

I hope so. I mean, that's how I've dreamt it up to be

Brock Briggs  9:22  

It really sounds like I just watched the movie. I don't know how I missed this for so long, but just watched the movie, Into The Wild. Have you seen that? That's kind of what that reminds me of. He's just like setting off and like trying to get to I think it was in Alaska. And he's like working at all of these stops just kind of like in pursuit of this like greater adventure.

Will Jordan  9:43  

Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen that movie in years, but I can definitely say that it rubbed off on me in a big way. Probably when I was like an eighth grade or something. I don't know if it's been what inspired this trip but I'm sure it plays a role.

Brock Briggs  10:01  

Yeah, absolutely. What kind of like financial preparation are you doing to kind of like lead up to that? Because obviously, you're planning to like work part of the way but I'm sure that there's some type of like obligations. I don’t know, you got a house or like what you're leaving behind. I'm sure that there are bills, generally. You're not going full off the grid, are you?

Will Jordan  10:29  

No, no, very much be in touch. The biggest thing that I have to kind of get in line is my business, the property management and interior design piece. So the company is BnB Interior, like I said, we're interior designers and property managers. The property, the interior design piece will probably be put on pause. Just because that's kind of like our little side passion project of the business. And with us as a pitcher, it will probably put a pause on it. But for all the properties that we manage, we're working right now to kind of bring someone in as a manager to kind of fulfill our roles. So that's the biggest piece right now is to scale ourselves appropriately that we can step away from the day to day.

Brock Briggs  11:32  

It seems like money just from our little conversation and certainly some influence from Rich talking to me, he had mentioned that you had always been kind of had a different way about you when it comes to money. Like it kind of maybe wasn't your ultimate goal. And like you had a bunch of money saved up and you were actually able to go in as a limited partner with him on one of his first like real estate deals. What kind of is your outlook or thoughts about money, the purpose of it? What's it mean to you? Anything really, like stand out?

Will Jordan  12:12  

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, money for me is definitely kind of a means to an end. I'm not trying to make it super Mega Racer, honestly, like climb some sort of power ladder. For me, my goal is to support my lifestyle. So yeah, I’m ultimately been trying to get to the point where I can make enough money in a passive manner that can support how I want to go about my life. So that's kind of unfolded in some interesting ways. When I first moved out to San Diego, I did what a lot of junior officers do especially when they get the first taste of freedom. They get really nice house and spend a lot of money to live there, use a lot of their base housing allowance. 

But very quickly, I realized two things. One, my work tempo was absolutely insane. I was working about 16 hours a day, Monday through Friday and I was working most Saturdays. So I took a step back and realized I'm spending so much money to live in this place. And I hardly lived there. Truthfully, all I really do is just show up at night and sleep there. And the other thing is that I live in San Diego and when I'm out of work, I wanna be outside most of the time anyway. So all this place is just a place to store my bed. So yeah, I moved out of that place and I bought a van and I moved into a van full time for two years. 

And I saved all my BAH and at the time for me the kind of the name of the game was to save my money and invested into index funds. Truthfully, I kind of got that play from my brother. And then he started getting into real estate and I started to see that I really love the idea of real estate and kind of the control that you have. So yeah, I quickly kind of pivoted from index funds into real estate. But yeah, I guess that is a little bit of the interesting approach I took there. But yeah, I wouldn't trade it for the world. I actually loved those two years living out in the van.

Brock Briggs  15:11  

That's so cool. This is big time into the wild vibes now. I like pictured in like living on the bus. And that is so cool. And I think that the realization there of understanding what your home provides you and how many substitutes there are for the things that we have. And in the grand scheme of things, we don't have a lot of real true need for much of the stuff that we'd like surround ourselves with in terms of like material things, you know.

Will Jordan  15:50  

Yeah, no, absolutely. I agree with you. I've always considered myself a minimalist. Living in a van was kind of a true test to see if I really was a minimalist and I think I was able to prove that. Funny enough, I moved out of my van. And I was going to move into actually the apartment that I'm sitting in now or the house I'm in now. And I moved all my stuff out of the van and I moved it into the garage of this house because there was like I had to wait for the roommate to move out.

And then I was gonna come in and within like a few days that I would say 95% of my belongings were in that garage. The garage burned down. And I lost everything. I had a duffel bag of clothes. I lost everything. But I'll tell you what. I think I just I kind of just laughed it off. I mean, everything was just material possessions. Luckily, I didn't have anything that was too sentimental in there. But yeah, I realized that I can move on and I wasn't too upset about it.

Brock Briggs  17:23  

That was crazy. I have to think that that really like shapes like that kind of big event is probably helping to shape some of the things. Like I can't imagine you go into a store like seeing like little knick-knacky things now and you're just like, ah, I don't need that. Like that's, is that kind of like how you feel? Or do you, how do you feel that in particular event kind of like influencing stuff that you'd like by now?

Will Jordan  17:54  

Yeah, I mean, that example that you gave of going to the store. I think my girlfriend might agree with you. She, I mean, she's an interior designer. So she loves the knick-knacky stuff. And she loves constantly rearranging the house and buying new, cute little things. But I think we do a good job of keeping each other in check. Because like you said, yeah, that doesn't necessarily interest me making the small little purchases like that. Yeah, I mean, that was absolutely a big life lesson about what really matters. Truthfully, the funny thing about that morning when the garage burned down, me and the roommates were all standing out there like trying to figure out what we should do. 

And I don't know if it was me or one of my roommates. But there's like, should we go surfing? And we're like, yeah, we should go surfing. And then we all just went surfing and had a great time. And like enjoying each other's company and kind of like the community that we were in at the time. And I think like such a great little lesson that yeah, we just lost a lot of material things. And we just went through like a mini little tragedy there. But we still have each other, we still have this great community and let's go enjoy ourselves.

Brock Briggs  19:30  

That’s so aspirational. And I think that sadly, it takes a lot of people to have those types of like really terrible, kind of like life-altering experiences almost where something happens to really reflect on what the values and like what you think is important. And, you know, looking back on any memory that anybody ever has, it's almost always about the people you're with. 

I talk to people regularly or people ask about my time in the Navy and they're like, oh, you know, it must have been so cool to like go on this deployment and like stop in all these ports or whatever. And every time I'm like, you know, none of it almost meant anything because I didn't have anybody there that I cared about. None of my friends were there. None of my family was there. People kind of pay you lip service on like looking at your photos and stuff. But it doesn't mean anything.

Will Jordan  20:30  

Yeah, no, I completely agree with you. For me, I think that was been in the past five years the kind of biggest takeaway that I learned about myself is that community is everything. And truthfully, there was a long period there where if you asked me, I'd say, like a lone wolf. I like to travel alone. And a lot of times when I would travel the country, I would travel by myself. 

But I was never by myself. I was always staying at a hostel and meeting new people, having great experiences with these people. And when I look back at those times, there was never one time where I was by myself. A lot of times, I was always gravitating towards like the group at the hostel. And when I look at my favorite travel experiences, I'm just thinking of the people that I met in hostels or in some weird situation and then like had a great day with them. Yeah, so I completely agree with you.

Brock Briggs  21:45  

You're a big music guy, too, I'm hearing. Is that right?

Will Jordan  21:54  

That's an interesting question. I love music. Am I a music guy? I have zero musical talent.

Brock Briggs  22:02  

You can be a music guy without having talent, I'm pretty sure. Cuz I think I'm also in that book.

Will Jordan  22:08  

You can’t find me on Spotify or anything or anywhere playing music. You're not going to. You can get me, you can catch me singing like Big Girls Don't Cry by Fergie like a karaoke bar. But that's about it.

Brock Briggs  22:21  

Is there a beer requirement for that? Or will you just walk in and play?

Will Jordan  22:26  

Yeah, that one, I would say I don't need beer. I can channel Fergie’s energy into that song at any given time.

Brock Briggs  22:33  

Oh, perfect! I'm tempted to call on it right now. But we might have to hold off on that.

Will Jordan  22:40  

I think to save your podcast, we should move on but 

Brock Briggs 

Yeah, yeah. 

Will Jordan

The music has been a pretty interesting discovery for me. My roommate, who's actually in the backyard right now playing guitar is Mark Shiiba. You can find him on Spotify. He's awesome. And he lives and breathes music. He's constantly writing songs, constantly playing music. So I've kind of had my introduction to the music world through Mark. Mark’s also an active duty nuke swell. 

So yeah, he lives like a pretty dual life with music and nuclear power. But yeah, it's been awesome living with Mark. We actually converted one of the bedrooms into a music studio for him. So most of my day, when I'm in this house is listening to Mark write music. So that's been pretty fun. But that's kind of manifests itself into a bunch of different things. 

And we've actually turned this property into a music bit or sorry, a music venue. That's actually got blown up in the past couple of months. That's kind of like an underground backyard concert scene that a lot of artists are very interested in playing it. So it's been fun. I'm kind of the lead admin guy for that. And yeah, it's been really fun.

Brock Briggs  24:16  

Is there any particular like type of genre that you guys are like booking or is it just like a little bit of this, a little bit of that?

Will Jordan  24:23  

Yeah, so we definitely had a kind of methodical approach about acquiring artists. One, so to backtrack a little bit the way it all started was Mark was falling this one musician. The guy's big fan of on Instagram. The artists post on their story saying like looking for a backyard venue for my backyard tour through the west coast but looking for one in San Diego. 

So Mark messaged him saying like, hey, we'd love to host you. And so he came in played, we got all of our friends together and put on that awesome show. For that person, we're able to bring together about 50, 60 people. And afterwards, Joe, the musician who performed pulled us aside and said, like, you guys have something special here. This was, it was really worthwhile to him, was really worthwhile to us.

Brock Briggs

This was like your house, right?

Will Jordan

Yeah, in my backyard, just down the

Brock Briggs

Okay

Will Jordan

And he said that we should continue to try to book artists because there's no shortage of artists out there that are looking for venues like the backyard that we have. So I actually went on, our roommates came together and we just started DMing our favorite artists, just kind of starting shot in the dark place to see if anything would manifest from it. And I reached out to, truthfully, my favorite artist. It's Emily Brimlow. She's amazing. 

Also, you should check her out. Reached out to her saying, hey, we have this backyard venue. We hosted one concert, went really successfully. We were able to have 60 people. And I think if you were to play, we could have 80 people. It's all donation based, but we have a really supportive friend group. And she seemingly named it bad and I was like, yes, I absolutely like to play. And she lives about two hours North West. So she came down and performed and we actually had 90 people come to that show. And we've just been receiving unbelievable feedback from the artists, from the people coming. 

So we've continued to and so what I did after Emily was actually went through every single one of her followers on Instagram looking for artists with like the blue checkmarks. And started reaching out to them saying, hey, we had Emily Brimlow play at our venue. We had 90 people. She made this much off of donations, we'd love to have you. So I reached out to about like 50 artists. And funny enough, like 40 of them responded saying that they were interested but not in the area. And then some said that they would probably come through on tour and be interested in some wanting us to book them as soon as possible. So the last performer that we had was this guy, Titus Haug spelled h,a,u,g. And yeah, he put on an amazing concert. And we had about 115 people in the backyard. 

Brock Briggs

Wow!

Will Jordan 

Yeah, so it's been awesome. I mean, the funny thing is, our marketing approach is none. We have a blast email of all of our friends. So it's one thing to go to a concert where it's a cool venue. And it's good music. But it's another thing to go to a venue where it's cool venue, it's good music, and you're surrounded by 115 of your friends. So it's been really, really cool. And the artists have felt like they've been able to like tap into our network. And for all three artists that have performed here, none of our friends were necessarily fans of theirs but have all walked away as big supporters of theirs, following on Instagram, donate to their cause, etc. So it's been really worthwhile experience for everyone involved.

Brock Briggs  29:07  

That is so cool. Well and we were talking about the power of community before this. And that's why I brought up the music thing because so much of music is based around people. You know, you come together to like listen to an artist or you go to a show together or whatever. And what a cool kind of like an intimate experience, you know, to like just hanging out in the backyard and you know, maybe you're grilling or I don't know what else you guys are doing. But like who wouldn't want to come play at that, you know?

Will Jordan  29:40  

Right now, we're actually getting to the point now where, I think our backyard can hold 150 people. So we're actually getting nervous that we might have grown too big. People are having too good of a time that they're gonna bring all their friends and now like yeah, we’re trying to figure out how to approach the next concert. The next one is pretty interesting because the artist is Daniel Rodriguez. He's pretty big time artist. But he's currently on tour of the Lumineers. So he's opening for the Lumineers every single one of their concerts over the next like three months. And he's gonna play here with the Lumineers in San Diego on a Wednesday and then he's gonna break off tour for one night and play in our backyard.

Brock Briggs  30:30  

Wow, how cool is that? You guys are going big time.

Will Jordan  30:34  

It's crazy. But yeah, it really is the power of community, you know, so.

Brock Briggs  30:41  

Well and I bet that there's something so special and unique just a round like a backyard experience. Like you take those maybe 150 people and put them in like a concert venue and it's probably not gonna be the same. You know, if you can, it's something about just like the closeness and like the environment, but maybe like a really big factor and like your guys are a success there.

Will Jordan  31:05  

Yeah, absolutely. It's such an intimate environment that by the end of the concert, whether you spoke to the artist or not, you kind of feel like you're his best friend or her best friend. 

Brock Briggs

Yeah

Will Jordan

Which is awesome for the donation piece too because like it's so intimate that, like you almost feel like you really care about this artist and like supporting them. So yeah, I actually think that the artists that have played at our venue have financially benefited from it substantially more by receiving donations than if it was ticket based. 

Because I think they really are able to like tap into this really intimate environment where they capture the audience, where I think if you like pay for a ticket, you just pay for a ticket and then you enjoy your time. And then you leave. Where this is like, it's an experience. And yeah, it's been really fun. We haven't monetized it all for ourselves. And we're not really sure we want to just because it really has been such a special environment for everyone.

Brock Briggs  32:28  

Well, I think that this comes at a time when people are really missing their network and being with people and you guys are taking something that's a concert is like a fun thing. But it's very impersonal. You know, you go and especially like a big name artist. Like this guy opening for the Lumineers you know, they probably sell out 100,000 seat, you know, venue. And you know, you're sitting in row. I'm looking at, I'm going to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers in September and I'm in Section 420 like row 11 like way up there. You know, like, there's just no personal, you know, connection there. But I think that focusing on that really can, it just changes for people, you know.

Will Jordan  33:21  

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think you're onto something. And I think the artists would agree with you. Because, I mean, there's a reason why Daniel Rodriguez was so excited to play in our backyard and kind of break away from the big venue. So I'm super excited to actually talk to him about that. Because, yeah, I mean, he's playing the small percentage of people with us than what he's gonna be playing with the Lumineers. So that's actually a conversation I'm really looking forward to having.

Brock Briggs  34:05  

Yeah, I'll be curious to follow up with you and ask about how that goes. Because that I'm sure that you get some like interesting insights from like the artist’s perspective. 

Will Jordan  34:15  

I’ve learned so much about the industry just from these artists and Mark. My roommate has benefited a ton from us having artists here.

Brock Briggs  34:25  

Oh, I bet that such great exposure for him. You know, you get to talk in and then, oh, you play! Like you know, and he kind of, you know, fosters those networks and like those relationships and who knows? Like what comes of that, you know.

Will Jordan  34:40  

Yeah, Mark is the opener always for our venue. So he also gets to kind of show off a little bit.

Brock Briggs  34:46  

Hell, yeah. That's super cool. Hearing like you're just very like relaxed demeanor about a lot of things like this. You're not even charging. It's all donation based. Just to touch on like the kind of lack of drive towards just like pursuing this dollar figure of money. You're more about the lifestyle and making money to support what it is that you wanna do. I'm really having a hard time like picturing you as a SWO. Those are not clicking for me. Was the Navy like, do you feel like it was a good fit for you?

Will Jordan  35:30  

No, I don't think it was a good fit for me. I knew that pretty early on.

Brock Briggs  35:36  

How early? You just got out two weeks ago. So

Will Jordan  35:39  

I found a lot of success in the Navy. I did very well. I was always respected by my crew and were driven. And it always reflected on kind of our fitness reports. But I always felt out of place. And I think the people around me kind of are always shocked. They say there's something similar to you like, wow, you're great but I can't believe you're as well. I hear that all the time. But I do think I am able to kind of flip a switch. 

And I take a lot of pride in what I do. And I take my job very, very seriously. I think the most important thing for all of us is our reputation. And I care a lot what people think of me in terms of a team player and doing my job. So that was always kind of my driver to be the best, best way I could be. But at the same time, I always kind of knew that I was on the wrong path. And I just put my head down and kind of just did my job the best I could. But yeah, there was from day one of entering the fleet, I knew that I was probably going to seek the first available out I could. And that was at the five year mark. So here I am.

Brock Briggs  37:24  

Was it the lack of autonomy or the structure of how the military works? Or what was it that told you that this is not what I'm supposed to be doing long term? 

Will Jordan  37:41  

Yes, absolutely. The Navy organizational structure was always gonna be a rubbing point for me. Having a boss who has a boss, who has a boss was always kind of discouraging. I'm actually someone who loves efficiencies. I do not like wasting my time in projects where I could see that there's a better solution. But in the Navy, there seems to be a lot of systemic inefficiencies that you'd have to reshuffle the whole organizations to kind of tackle. 

And for me, it was enough for me to yeah, just know that I really want to be, I want the ball in my hands. And I want to take the shots. And the Navy's organization wasn't really gonna be able to fulfill that for me. I will say that I actually had a lot of autonomy in the Navy for Navy standards. I always put myself, I actively sought autonomy and I approached my work in a certain way that all my superiors knew that they could trust me to kind of operate autonomously. And for the Navy, they actually gave me a lot of rope and I am very appreciative of that. But it just wasn't enough.

Brock Briggs  39:24  

Yeah, somehow still like having to route a piece of paper asking to like go out of town for the weekend still is like not a, it's a friction point or a rubbing point as you call it.

Will Jordan  39:38  

Soul crushing. Honestly soul crushing like

Brock Briggs

Yeah

Will Jordan 

Yeah, for me, especially someone who loves travel. Going through the process to go overseas or out of the country was discouraging enough for me to honestly want to scrap my plans entirely. Sometimes I was like, you know what, it's not even worth it. I'm so over this. I don't even wanna get anymore. Normally, I was able to conquer my frustrations and route that piece of paper. But it was an issue. It's something that definitely factored into me wanting to get out.

Brock Briggs  40:15  

You mentioned that some of the larger inefficiencies that you saw would have taken like really large scale reshuffling of like the whole Navy just as we know it. Was there one in particular that stood out to you that you think is just maybe like outright wrong or maybe the most important thing that ought to be fixed?

Will Jordan  40:46  

Yeah, so one thing that I don't know if this falls directly under the category of efficiency, but it was something that really bothered me that I would love to see change. And I will preface to say that this is more tailored to officers than it is to enlisted, but still does play for enlisted. Is that for officers, our promotion status is not based on performance. It largely is based off of timing. Yeah, it's based off timing especially for like the first four ranks. That was really frustrating for me. 

And in almost all my fit reps. It says there's a line that says something similar that says, Will is performing to a level at insert the higher rank above me. And the Navy does that. It's like this guy's performing like out of his paygrade and out of his weight class. And one day, we'll promote him based off of timing. But for me, it was always like, okay, you're writing these things. And I truly mean it that I should be at the next level around performing at the next level. Why don't you promote me to the next level? 

If my performance is sufficient enough to be operating at the higher level, like, give me that responsibility. Like put me in that position. And, yeah, that really kind of rubbed me the wrong way. And I think the inefficiencies play into that because we have some really amazing talented officers who are just kind of sitting at like kinda low level low rungs when we could promote them to a spot where they could like really succeed and bring the command to like the next level of success. But instead, we just say, oh, well, you're that rank. So you're that rank. And that's that.

Brock Briggs  43:20  

A lot of that advancement structure, certainly on the officer side and a little bit on the enlisted side, it certainly doesn't promote ownership. Like, it doesn't promote you pushing authority down, you know, it's like, hey, we've got these people that are hitting above your weight class or whatever, but we don't wanna give them the juice to be making those decisions because of just how we have this setup to work. 

Compare and contrast that to like a regular business, if you have somebody come in and they have a bunch of ideas and they are like literally improving the business day by day, you want to give them more, right? Like you wanna put fuel on their fire and promote them and pay them more and pay them in accordance with like the value that they're bringing to the organization. But you just can't do that in the military like at all. It's I mean, you've got like some kind of meritorious advancement things for enlisted but I don't even think that exists on the officer side.

Will Jordan  44:34  

Yeah, it doesn't necessarily in the service worker world. I know in the Marine Corps, they are more apt to do frockings where they'll promote someone kind of entitled. But yeah, it's not very common in the surface Navy, but I absolutely agree with you. That there's a level of ownership that the Navy misses out on because of the structure that we're referring to. 

My brother actually talks about it all the time of how he's been able to build such great culture at his company by providing incentive structures and really being able to provide benefits to people who are outperforming their peers. And yeah, it sounds like a no brainer to me. But I do understand that the Navy organizational structure is in place for a reason. And it's also one of the main reasons why we're like a naval superpower. So I don't, I think the Navy is doing a good job. I really don't have a bad thing to say about the Navy. I just know that it wasn't necessarily the right fit for me.

Brock Briggs  46:06  

You said from the moment that you hit the fleet that you were already understanding and accepting the fact that this wasn't like a long term thing for you. Were you mentally preparing and like even doing things physically that were preparing you for getting out that entire five years?

Will Jordan  46:27  

Oh, yeah, yeah, knowing I was gonna get out was a driving factor in most of my decisions, especially when it came to finances. The biggest one was the moving into a van like that really was a decision driven by the fact that I wanted to set myself up financially to be able to transition out of the Navy comfortably. I knew that I was gonna be able to save a lot of money by moving into the van. And I knew that by saving that money, I was gonna be able to deploy that capital towards investments that furthered my ability to transition comfortably. Yeah, so 

Brock Briggs  47:20  

You mentioned a couple times, sorry to interrupt you, but you mentioned a couple times like transition comfortably. What did that mean to you? Is that like, I wanna get out and like not have to worry about working for a year or what does transition comfortably mean to you?

Will Jordan  47:36  

Yeah, that's a great question. Transition comfortably to me means being financially stable enough to be able to pursue my own desires. And whether that's feeling comfortable to really kind of go full steam ahead with my business and then also financially stable to be able to kind of travel the way I hope to. But yeah, transition comfortably for me, it is financial. It really is rooted in finances, making sure that I have enough put away to kind of support the travel and the lifestyle I like to live and also enough income coming in passively support me so that I can continue to grow my small business.

Brock Briggs  48:41  

One more thing, talking about like your Navy transition and then I wanna dive into your business. And when you got that started, you officially got your DD 214. Is that two weeks ago? 

Will Jordan

Yeah

Brock Briggs 

Can you talk to me about why or what was happening in like the weeks and months leading up with your transition? You kind of, you probably were already personally prepared but kind of separate your personal preparation to what the Navy's preparation was giving you. Can you talk about what like, I'm assuming that you went through like the Taps class? And what other things did you do like a SkillBridge or talk to just the transition resources generally that were offered to you and whether or not they kind of measured up to, I don't know, maybe what you think might even be helpful or useful?

Will Jordan  49:41  

Yeah, no, no, definitely answer that. I will say that my experience transitioning was relatively, I wanna say unique because a lot of people do this too. But it wasn't great timing because I was on deployment not too long ago. My last eight months in the Navy, six of them were deployed. I pretty much got back from deployment and went right on to my terminal leave. But yeah, so you touched on Taps classes. Because I was deployed, I had to do my Taps classes online. And that I mean, that is my fault because you can take Taps classes 12 months prior to separation. 

But leading up to deployment, it kind of escaped me. I would have loved to go to in person Taps classes prior to deployment. But I kind of, I missed that opportunity. So I took them. I took the Taps classes online and there is unbelievable amount of information on those courses. But at the end of the day, you are kind of sifting through PowerPoints and little like animated videos. So keeping your attention span and during that is quite the challenge. 

So yeah, it's anyone transitioning, absolutely I recommend going the in person Taps classes and I've heard great things. Anyone who I know has gone through these classes has really enjoyed it and taken a lot out of it. I can't really say the same about the online courses just because I was underway with terrible internet connection trying to click through the slides. So I definitely didn't get the same experience. You mentioned SkillBridge. SkillBridge is an absolutely amazing program. And if your command is going to support it, then you absolutely should take advantage of it. 

I've had friends who have done SkillBridge and just absolutely rave about it. Funny enough, Rich's company is just SkillBridge, a guy. And then they just hired him afterwards. And it's a great story. So yes, SkillBridge is awesome. For me, there's a couple factors in there. I actually had, I could have extended my transition date to try to push for SkillBridge. But my command was pretty unique. I was on a LCS littoral combat ship and there are minimally man's crew. So they're 100 feet shorter than a destroyer. A destroyer has over 300 people on board and my LCS had less than 80 like right around like the 70, 80 mark. 

So I mean, I was wearing a ton of hats, had a very like critical role with my command. And I wasn’t gonna ask to go on a SkillBridge because I knew that honestly, my captain was a nice enough guy and really, really supportive that he probably would have granted to me. But I really would have put the command at disadvantage and I would have had to offload a lot of my responsibilities to other people. I honestly just didn't think that was fair.

Brock Briggs  53:44  

That's a really humble approach of you at just because talking to so many people and myself included, a lot of people are getting out with kind of a bad taste in their mouth a little bit and when it comes time to get out it's like I'm here to get like what's mine and it kind of you almost become at odds with your employer where you're like you've give, give, give, give like this whole time and then it's finally time to like try and get something so I think that that really speaks to your humility and understanding of like the mission so that's admirable.

Will Jordan  54:24  

Yeah, I appreciate that. I knew that I was given the Navy five years and I was comfortable giving them all those five years. That's not to tell anyone going SkillBridge like you shouldn't do that because your command needs you. You know, it's just a unique situation that I found myself in and I was very comfortable kind of just doing my time and transitioning out.

Brock Briggs  54:58  

Well and I think that it's really easy. And I'm guilty of this to talk to how the Navy or maybe the military like doesn't leave us super prepared getting out. But I'm eating my own words because I've said that and I felt that, but like talking to you as kind of like shown me like, you know, there are obviously people who get out in a good enough position to be able to do this. And maybe I like wasn't really preparing in the way that I should have, you know, wasn't setting aside the right money or, you know, starting a business or any of these things. I think it's super cool that you really owned your transition. And you were thinking about it from day one and maybe not everybody will have that luxury but taking ownership and responsibility for that, that's a cool thing and a unique perspective. I do not hear if at all.

Will Jordan  56:01  

Yeah, well, yeah, I don't know if I've really thought about it that way. But I think I'm a kind of a control freak. And I really, I just like to kind of be like command of my own fate in that manner. So yeah, I don't think I ever really looked at the Navy for answers and transitioning out. I just knew that like is my responsibility to take it on as my job to make sure I was ready.

Brock Briggs  56:40  

I really liked that. I've got some thinking to do on that personally. A lot of the past episodes, it's been easy to catch myself like kind of ragging on the Navy. But I got some thinking to do on that all off to get back to you at another time when I've thought through it some more. I wanna talk about you starting this business. When did you start? It's BnB Interiors?

Will Jordan  57:06  

That's correct. Yeah, BnB Interior.

Brock Briggs  57:09  

When did the idea come about for that in your service? And like what was kind of the inspiration for it?

Will Jordan  57:19  

Yeah, so I think I should start with how I got into short term rentals because that’s kind of like the foundation. So funny enough, Mark Shiiba, the musician playing guitar behind me. He was the first one in our friend group to buy a property for the purposes of short term rental. And I think a lot, this happens a lot in the Navy where success travels fast. And then everyone wants to get in on kind of the action. I absolutely fell into that. So Mark bought a property listed on Airbnb and it was just absolutely crushing it. 

And I followed suit. I have the ability to be very impulsive. I think we were talking about the differences between my brother and myself earlier. I am definitely more impulsive than my brother. And I was like, Mark’s having success. I buy a property in like the same area. And I'll have the same success and kind of just kind of went for it there. That was the approach. So my buddy doing it and I thought I could do it too. So I bought a property in the same area as Mark and listed it as a short term rental. I hired a property manager to help in that, to help manage and kind of do it all for me. And I thought it was gonna be a very passive experience. And it wasn't.

Brock Briggs  59:11  

The narrator at the background. It wasn't passive.

Will Jordan  59:14  

I'll get to that a little bit more. But the good thing is, though, it wasn't necessarily passive, it was a proof of concept that wow, this is awesome. I'm making a lot of money and things are going really well. I want to recreate the success and do it again. So I bought my second property. But I had learned a few things from my first purchase. And one of them was that I hired interior designer for the first property. And the interior designer did a great job but I kind of learned three lessons about the interior design industry that I wanted to carry into my second property. And those were, interior designers are expensive. Interior designers don't really work on time constraints. 

So when you tell them like, hey, I'm closing on this day. I want to have the property furnished and outfitted by this day. That's not really how the interior design world works. And the third one was that interior designers aren't familiar with what Airbnb needs to be outfitted. So that was a learning curve that the first interior designer had to kind of go through with the property. And I was pretty intimately involved with the property manager during that process. So for the second one, I wanted to find a way to mitigate all three of those issues. And I knew that to be able to do that I needed to partner with kind of the right person. 

And Bailey was, backstory, is my girlfriend. She was not my girlfriend at the time, was the perfect person for that. The second house was purchased in 2020. And that's like in the heart of COVID. And Bailey had some really unfortunate timing with COVID, where she quit her job with the intention of spending one year or not one year, one month gap taking a bit of a breather and she actually had a really great job lined up. After that, one month, we will gap. That is, this was in January of 2020. 

So right when COVID was like in full swings or just rearing its head. And so that's when everyone stopped hiring. The job offer that she had got rescinded. So she very quickly found herself unemployed in a market that wasn't hiring. So Bailey started pursuing her passion of interior design, just doing little, small gigs for friends and family. And she was based in Denver at the time and I'm in San Diego. And we have, at this point in time, me and Bailey had formed like a pretty close relationship. 

But the biggest issue was distance for us. But anyway, so I knew that she had the skill set to be able to do a great job designing my property. And then I had learned all the knowledge I needed for outfitting the Airbnb. The third piece was just making her agree to kind of a fair but lower rate than your average interior designer, which, I mean, she was unemployed. So I might have taken advantage of that a little bit. But no, we ended up striking up like a great partnership. And we were able to turn out an unbelievable project with our product with this property. I'm super proud of that property and what it came out to be. 

And yeah, we both learned that we actually, we both love interior design. She already had known that and I learned that along the way that I love kind of the creative environment that the interior design is. It was really fun for me. So at the time, a lot of my friends also other military guys were getting involved in buying short term rentals. And they saw what we were able to do with our property so they brought us on to design an outfit for their properties as well. And so that's kind of how the interior design piece was built for BnB Interior. We kind of ran with the momentum, the word of mouth referrals that we were receiving and it's grown from there and now we consider ourselves a full scale interior design company. 

However we do recognize that our specialty is with Airbnb outfitting are short term rental outfitting. Yeah, and we think that we've kind of mastered that little niche in the market. The second piece to the company, the property management side, came from kind of similar situation where we kind of organically stumbled into it. That came about because that first property manager, things just didn't work out. I was very unsatisfied and felt like he had let me down from like the property, like the core of property management, in the sense that, yes, he was cash flowing a lot for me. 

But he was not a good shepherd or steward of my property. It kind of fell into shambles, like pretty quickly that short term rentals have a tendency of doing that because there's a lot of wear and tear that happens. But he was never on top of it. So I showed up to the property like eight months after we had gone live,and I hardly recognized the property. It was in horrible shape. And so that was enough for me to know I wanted to switch management. So I did. I switched management. And sadly, I found the same exact situation happened with the next property management company. 

And what was worse about that one is that like I warned him. I gave him the tale of the first property management company was like, hey, this is why it didn't work out. please make sure that you're on top of these things like this is like my priorities that I have for property manager can like, if you hit these, will have no issues. And very quickly I found the same story with the first property manager showed itself with the second. So at that point in time, I did like all staff and said, I want someone that I trust to be my property manager. And Bailey, once again, was the perfect person for that. 

And we decided to tag it together that we're going to, I was going to step in and be like an active manager with her. And we're going to kind of learn the ropes together. And we found pretty instant success. I mean, luckily, I had like two years of experience with Airbnb from kind of the sidelines to kind of step in and feel pretty comfortable. But we were able to bring in more money than the proper property managers were doing. 

And we were able to keep higher reviews. And we were able to keep the properties up to the standard that mattered to me. Once again, my friends kind of took notice of what we were doing, brought us on as their property managers. And the same story kind of played out with interior design where we've just kind of rolled with from there. So yeah, there was never a blueprint from the start for this company. We kind of just organically stumbled into it. But it's been great. And we're very happy of where we are now.

Brock Briggs  1:08:03  

Well, I think that that's a classic story of like solving your own problem. And then, you know, solve your problem that other people have for other people, you know. And people can kind of see your success and they wanna like hitch their horse to that wagon or maybe it's the other way around. 

But you mentioned that the interior design spaces like different outfitting a short term rental versus like maybe a traditional home. Can you talk about a little bit of the differences of that? I'm sure that people listening, a lot of people have short term rentals or maybe just a rental home in general like a second property. What are the differences in that? And like what would an interior design or do differently?

Will Jordan  1:08:55  

Yeah, yeah. So there's no question that any interior designer can probably produce a great space for you if you hire them. However, it seems like the average interior designer is it's gonna be a new environment for them when you tell them that you want to be an Airbnb because the big thing for Airbnb is that the interior designers working with an investor and investors don't want to spend that much of their money. They wanna spend it very efficiently so that they can maximize their profits as fast as they can. 

Interior designers normally for the most part, work with people that just want like a beautiful space for their home or office, etc. So yeah, when you talk to an interior designer, saying like, because an investor is probably gonna be like, this is my budget. Please make it work. That doesn't translate into the interior design world as much as you think. And the other thing that is pretty interesting about interior design in general is that most interior designers make their money on the resale of the furniture. 

So interior designer has a resale license so they can buy furniture at wholesale price and then sell it to the client at retail. And then they collect the margin between. That's actually where most of the money that interior designers make. That's kind of their approach for the thing especially right now and kind of the world that we're living in is that buying wholesale is so timely. Yes, you can get these like beautiful pieces that are like relatively unique and custom. But they take a while to come in just the manufacturing piece for furniture right now is so backlogged. 

So interior designer, when you approach them to design a property, they're gonna give you extremely long lead times because they're going to be waiting for all the pieces to come together. And someone an investment property or someone who buys an investment property doesn't have that kind of timing and flexibility. They need this property to be cash flowing as fast as possible. So you kind of need somebody to come in like a Picrew by the furniture really quickly, and stage it very quickly. 

And that's not necessarily the traditional world of interior design. And the other thing that is pretty interesting is that interior designers across the board are charged an hourly rate for all things but planning, logistics of like. And then the on site actual designing, they charge an hourly rate. And a lot of times that's over the course of like six months of them just kind of like putting their time here and there and then billing you for it. 

In the model that we use where we are kind of like the Picrew coming in staging as best as possible for you. We do more of a flat rate fee, which is, it's good for the investor because they know exactly how much that they're going to pay us from the start of the project. Whereas traditional interior designer can ballpark how many hours that they'll probably put into it, but they won't be able to give you a flat number and truthfully their hour and their wage might exceed what you anticipated.

Brock Briggs  1:13:21  

I can see that being super valuable to somebody like you said an investor, hey, I just bought this short term rental. I need to have somebody design the space, get the stuff and have it in there as quick as possible with transparent pricing right off the bat so that that can be worked into the numbers of hey, this is what I'm gonna need to like break even or or whatever. I could see how what you were talking about, how this might not be for somebody that's not in short term rentals as much.

Will Jordan  1:13:56  

Yeah, absolutely. I think that another piece to touch on is my lens and Bailey's lens for choosing furniture, is probably a little bit different than the lens that a traditional interior designer takes. Obviously, everyone cares about high quality stuff, items, and furniture. However, we very intimately know the wear and tear that goes into the short term rental world. So we want to find high quality items at a budget so that when it does get damaged, ruined, you're not upset that your West Elm piece of furniture that you bought for a ridiculous amount just got damaged. We pride ourselves on being able to provide a really high quality product at a price as very satisfying to the investor.

Brock Briggs  1:15:13  

If it's a trade secret, you don't have to share. But where are you guys sourcing a lot of your products from? Because you mentioned like West Elm, like that's a very high quality, expensive brand. If I'm a new short term rental investor, like I don't even have West Elm in my own house. I'm certainly not putting that in Airbnb where people are gonna come in and thrash the place. Where are you guys looking into like source things that meet that criteria budget friendly, but also high quality?

Will Jordan  1:15:43  

Yeah, so our company also has a resale license. So we can pretty much buy from anywhere as any other interior designer, but we run into the same headaches that they do with the timeliness of receiving the furniture. So a lot of times, we actually don't even invoke our resale license because we have to be quick about it. So our company doesn't necessarily profit too much off of our resale license because we normally are buying closer to retail prices. 

But in San Diego, we have, we can't, sorry, let me backtrack for a sec. We have a hard time relying on shipping in general, even if you are buying at retail just because shipping furniture has long lead times. So a lot of times we are going through kind of store by store in buying furniture. So kind of the process for us is we receive a project. We know when our start date is. The week before, Bailey and myself have like 20 stores that we know are just like ace in the hole kind of stores that will go and will make all the purchases that and most of the stores have like a pretty great policy of holding on top like you purchase it, you can hold on to it for like two weeks. 

And then so right before our start date for a project, we'll rent a truck, go to all the stores that we made our purchases at, fill a massive truck and then shops to the property day one and just start outfitting. And then I think another piece there's that your traditional interior designer probably won't be doing but it's the best play for investors often is, we look at places like Facebook marketplace, and we look at places like offer up where you can get some really really high quality stuff that a lot of people are trying to get rid of at very reasonable prices, especially with the large items like couches, and pool tables, etc. 

These things sit for a while on these platforms. So you can get them at great prices. And a lot of times people are just trying to offload it. And anyone who's willing to come pick it up, they're happy with and they're willing to sacrifice a lot of profit. So we definitely save our investors a lot and homeowners a lot of money by going those routes. And then we can be very timely about it as well.

Brock Briggs  1:18:54  

I'm not in this business at all and not even really affiliated. So I don't know anything about it. But it seems to me that there's a lot of value to be had there for a investor like which I'm guessing that that's kind of who you're targeting here, saying, hey, we can come up and we can do this all on day one, you know and get this all squared away. We're not gonna mess around and we're sensitive on price and quality. 

But then also, it's kind of a one two punch because even you guys do flat pricing on the interior design. But that's almost the gateway to like the property management thing too, where you can like, hey, we'll give you a good price on this. And they're probably gonna love the experience so much that they're just like, hey, oh, you guys also manage properties. Why don't you just do it all? Do you find that happening?

Will Jordan  1:19:48  

Yeah, I mean, the handpiece and mouth in this relationship, for sure. And that scenario that you just described has played out multiple times where we were able to show our kind of expertise and competency in the design stage that it's a no brainer for the owners to approach us about property management. So yeah, that has happened a couple times. And it's really exciting to see that the two parts of the company kind of feed each other.

Brock Briggs  1:20:23  

Where do you see the pros and cons of like short term rental versus like a long term rent like year long lease? Like it's probably, maybe it's market based in San Diego. I'd imagine that there's a lot of people that need to come stay for a weekend or whatever on vacation. But that also is like 10 times more work too, you know. You're not only up keeping the property, but you're also having a cleaning company come every couple of days, more wear and tear, constantly needing to replenish certain things. In your mind, what do you think about and what are your criteria of looking at like, oh, this would be a good short term rental versus not?

Will Jordan  1:21:08  

Yeah, I think there's like four major differences that separate short term rental versus long term rental. One is revenue, expenses, wear and tear, and then how passive it is for the homeowner, investor. The revenue piece is pretty interesting. So if you don't mind, I'm gonna just give an example of one of my properties.

Brock Briggs  1:21:38  

Yeah, that was gonna be one of my next things to see if we could, you could like walk us through a deal. So that would be cool.

Will Jordan  1:21:45  

Yeah, so let's talk about my one property. So it's a four bed, four bath property. The average rent for short term, the Airbnb world is $12,000 a month on average. If I were to long term rent that property, it's 6000. So there's a significant revenue difference there. But don't let that fool you because there's a lot more expenses that are involved with a short term rental than a long term rental. So the margins are actually a little bit closer. And so I can jump into the kind of the expenses piece. So let's assume I wasn't my own property manager. Let's assume I hired a property manager for short term rental with my four bedroom property. 

So the industry standard for short term rental is that the property manager is gonna take 15 to 25% of gross revenue. So example, let's say that the property manager that I went with takes 20% of gross revenues. So that means that my property average is $12,000, they're taking 20%. So $3,000 is now going to the property manager. So that brings my net profit down to $9,000. The other thing you got to factor in is cleaners. Let's assume that for a four bedroom house, I pay the cleaners $250 a stay, every time they clean after a stay. 

And let's say that I had four stays during a month covering the weekend and change during the month. So that means that that's $1,000 that I'm paying the cleaners a month. So that brings the net profit down to $8,000. And those two expenses, the property manager and the cleaner or things that you wouldn't be paying for a long term property. The next thing is that ordinarily, long term renters are going to pay utilities. But for the short term, the homeowner is gonna pay the utilities. 

So that's like another $500 that you're putting towards the short term rental that you don't see for long term. So that puts our net profit at $7,500 for the short term rental, whereas the long term rental has pretty much just stayed at the $6,000 mark. So originally, there seemingly was a marginal difference of $6,000 between the 12,000 and the 6000. But really, it's much smaller than that in the example I gave you. It ends up being $1,500 margin difference, which is relatively significant over the course of a year, that's a lot more capital that you can rack up and kind of play elsewhere. 

So yeah, I covered the revenue and expenses piece, the next one is wear and tear. Your house is gonna get destroyed with a short term rental, it's not, but you are gonna have to probably put money into that property faster than you would with long term renters. Short term renters have a more of like a abusive relationship with the property where they're coming in to maximize their experience. They probably don't have a relationship with the property. It's just a means to an end for their vacation. Long term renters, they live there. They care about the property. Anything that’s damaged in the property is going to affect their way of life within the property. 

So yeah, there's definitely a relationship difference there. But yeah, so you're gonna have to put probably a little bit more money faster into the short term rental to keep your property at the standard that you want it to be. And then the last piece of the big differences between short term and long term are passivity. I guess that's a word, I think it is. Where, let's say that you are the owner and property manager of a long term property. That can be a very passive experience being the property manager of a long term property, that can be very passive. If you have the right renters, you may never hear from them. 

I mean, they might just send them money on time. And at the end of the lease, you talk to them about whether they wanna renew or kind of go over any potential damages or whatever, maybe. But it can be a very passive experience. And also, a lot of times I had people come to me, asking me to be their long term property manager. And I'll never turn them down. But I will tell them that I think that they're capable of doing this. But if they really don't want to, then yes, I'll happily have all. 

But I really, I always tell them like, even if you're at a state, even though the littlest amount of bandwidth, you can accomplish this. But so being the owner and property manager of a long term rental can be passive. If you're the owner and manager of short term rental, it is never gonna be passive. It's just impossible for it to be passive if you're the property manager yourself. Because you have, ideally, you have guests coming in all the time because you want max occupancy because that just means cash flow. But yeah, with guests coming in all the time coordinating cleaners in between the guests, is a very active operation. 

But it is manual. It is absolutely manual and anyone can do it. But there is a level of bandwidth that you do need to have. And then I guess, let's say you have a short term rental and you hired a property manager, you probably are gonna speak with your property manager more than you would if you were more than you would hear from your tenants as a long term owner property manager. Just because naturally there's just things that come up that require the owner's consent, whether it be hiring a plumber, taking care of wear and tear items, etc. There's a bunch of little things that pop up. But even the best property managers for short term rental are going to require speaking to you probably once or twice a month.

Brock Briggs  1:29:15  

You mentioned that the short term rental managers charge 15 to 20%. Is that like pretty standard for that? I haven't talked to any so I have no idea if that's normal or not. I know that most property managers that manage long term rentals usually rent in like the 10% range. Is that disparity because of the fact of it takes so much more hands on, it's scheduling, it's getting people in and out of there much more often?

Will Jordan  1:29:49  

Yeah, I would say that your money is well spent paying that kind of premium with a product manager, they are. A good property manager who was taking care of your property is really putting in the hours to kind of warrant that. That said, I'm under the impression that it is geographic, that percent varies where you are in the country. But in like the high profile, short term rental markets, it's actually it's more. I said 15 to 25. It really is more 20 to 25% that the property managers are gonna be requesting. I do 15% because it's competitive being a property manager is very competitive. 

And it's kind of hard to stand out amongst the pack for property managers mostly, because we all are using the same tools. Every property manager can actually cash flow your property about the same, if they know what they're doing. The big difference is the person ability and the attention to detail with your actual property and just being a good steward of your property. That is where you really separate yourself but it's very hard to prove that to people. Because every property manager is gonna be like, yeah, your property is gonna be my absolute priority list like, we are going to make sure that eyes are on your property and we will keep an inventory of any damages. 

Everyone's gonna say that to you. From my experience, the property manager companies that I used never rail to deliver on that promise, something that I take very, very seriously and is like the foundation of my company is that we really do go to the property between every single day and assess the property and make sure it's at the standard that it needs to be. But once again, everyone's saying that pitch. I just know that I am able to deliver it. So where I am able to stand out is my monthly fee. 

So I'm actually, I come 5% under everyone that I compete against in San Diego at 15%. And that's a pretty easy sell for me. Because kind of going back to that scenario that we were talking about going the 20% route you're handing over in that. Example was $3,000 to the property manager at 20%. And I get to keep a little bit more money in the homeowners pocket by coming at 15.

Brock Briggs  1:32:54  

Well, and that is such a duration game. You know, like you're the money that you make as a property manager, you're not gonna make a ton in the first six months, but where it really comes is oh, I've been managing this property for three or four years, you know. And over time you'd like you need them to stay with you over a long period of time, I'm guessing. Again, I'm not in this business. But just from what I perceive, I think that that seems to be the value and you need to consistently deliver. 

Will Jordan  1:33:27  

Yeah. I will say kinda scary thing about finding the right property management company is that kind of the point that you just made is that a property manager needs to have multiple properties to be able to be like relatively profitable and make a good living. But where property managers really run a huge risk is scaling too fast. Because the property managers that I use, the ones that I eventually fired, I don't think that they were bad property managers. But I think that they scale too fast. And they probably had the intention of wanting to put eyes on my property. 

But they ran out, they ran their bandwidth dry and they just couldn't, they couldn't afford to send someone to the property like they just didn't have the time to do it. So for me, my takeaway for that with my own property manager company is that scaling has been the most important thing and I've actually turned, I've turned away a lot of clients because I wasn't necessarily, I just didn't think their property was a good fit in my scaling model.

Brock Briggs  1:34:58  

Well, maybe this is a good time to ask, what is your kind of like long term strategy? It sounds like you don't wanna compromise the quality of the service that you're offering by getting too big too quickly. How many properties do you have now? And how many are you maybe looking to have in the next couple of years?

Will Jordan  1:35:23  

Yeah, so I have been managing four properties right now. 

Brock Briggs

Two of your own? 

Will Jordan

Only one of my own, I actually. And this like, I switched one of my properties to long term just because it made more sense. When I went through all the expenses, it was like, okay, it's cash flowing a little bit, but it's not doing enough. But I make a great margin between my mortgage and the rent that I charge. So it just made sense. And that's another thing that I really like to try to convey to potential clients is that I'm gonna steer them in the direction that I think is best for them. 

And a lot of times clients come to me and say I wanna use short term rental. I run through all the numbers with them and I say, do I actually think your play is long term. And so I think that's your best move. But to go back to kind of my plans for the company, I think this is Will Jordan property management theory here. I think that a property manager can only successfully manage at most 10 properties at a time keeping the quality. So I want to grow it to 10 properties, while keeping the company small but with my girlfriend myself. And once we get to the 10 properties, which thou if I had 10 properties and they are the standard of the four that we currently have now, I would be doing very well for myself. I'd be very happy with how much I'm bringing in. 

And I think I would be able to manage my bandwidth enough where I wouldn't be infringing on my lifestyle. But once I get to that 10, that 10 number, that's where I intend on hiring a full time support manager to take over the roles of Bailey and myself. And then they are now the ones overseeing the property day to day. And then Bailey and myself will go out and acquire the next 10 properties, overseeing ourselves, maintain the quality and standard that we have. Once we get that next 10, hire someone else to come in oversee that 10. And we continue to grow that way. 

But truthfully, I think this kind of goes, sorry, back to our original conversation of money is not everything for me. I wanna keep like a nice balance between my investments and my lifestyle is that at that 10 mark, I very well might. I might just stop there and just manage 10 extremely high quality Airbnbs. I'm gonna make that decision at that point. Yeah, I really want, the thing that I want to be most attention is on scaling.

Brock Briggs  1:38:57  

I don't think that I can think of a much better way to end than that. I kind of have one final closing in that same vein. Do you think that people chase after a career or job title more than the lifestyle that they're pursuing and actually want?

Will Jordan  1:39:19  

Yeah, I think that statement might be correct. And truthfully, I don't think it's because they're chasing that title like intentionally, maybe they are. But I think it's mostly is that they actually don't know the lifestyle that they wanna live. You know, they're chasing what's right in front of them because they don't know what they actually really want. I mean that was the stream of conscious right now, right there. But yeah, I think that’s my answer.

Brock Briggs  1:39:55  

Some good food for thought. Well, I really appreciate you coming in and talking to me today. Where can people go to follow along with you, your journey, support you, maybe get some interior design or property management services in San Diego?

Will Jordan  1:40:13  

Yeah, absolutely. The best place for people to kind of reach my contact and kind of see what we do is our website. That's www.bnbinterior.com. And then we have an Instagram as well, @bnbinterior. You can follow us there. And then the last piece would be Twitter. But I'm sure you know, I've been a little quiet in the Twitter world. But I do plan to come back. I was trying a different social media approach and putting a lot of time into it. But now I think I'm gonna be coming back to Twitter pretty soon. So you can find me on Twitter @BnBinteriorSD.

Brock Briggs  1:40:58  

Perfect! Will, thank you so much!

Will Jordan  1:41:01  

Great. Thanks, man. I really appreciate it.