Forged In Fire
Hosted by Nate Pharmer-Eden and Cole Farrell, Forged In Fire is where real entrepreneurship meets raw, unfiltered stories. This isn’t your typical business podcast—we skip the fluff and dive straight into the heat of what it really takes to build, run, and grow a business. From late-night doubts to game-changing wins, we explore the trials, setbacks, and breakthroughs that entrepreneurs experience at every stage of their journey.
Whether you’re a seasoned business owner navigating new challenges or someone with a burning desire to launch your first venture, this podcast offers powerful insights and practical lessons for everyone. No sugarcoating—just honest conversations about what it takes to forge success through the fire.
Get ready to be inspired, learn from real-world struggles, and gain the tools you need to make your entrepreneurial dreams a reality. This is your front-row seat to the highs, lows, and everything in between. Are you ready to step into the fire? 🔥
Forged In Fire
Episode 51: Luxury Vacation Rentals: Building a Portfolio That Creates Memories
What if your biggest vacation frustration became your next business breakthrough? That's exactly what happened to Troy Evans, founder of LRVP (Luxury Residence Vacation Portfolio). After years in corporate America, Troy found himself increasingly annoyed by inconsistent vacation rentals that never matched their photos and failed to deliver the experience his family deserved.
In this captivating conversation, Troy reveals how he transformed this personal pain point into a thriving business that's disrupting the luxury vacation rental market. Rather than accepting the status quo of unreliable vacation homes, he built a portfolio of carefully selected multi-million dollar properties and a service model focused on creating unforgettable family memories.
"We're not really selling vacation space, we're selling memories," Troy explains, highlighting the emotional connection that drives his business philosophy. "When you're with your family, creating memories that literally last the rest of your life – you don't want to leave that to chance."
The genius of Troy's model lies in its dual approach: LRVP raises capital from investors to purchase luxury properties worldwide, while Oasis Vacations handles the rental management and exceptional customer experiences. Investors enjoy attractive returns (projected 30% IRR) and even complimentary vacation stays, while travelers gain access to consistent, high-quality accommodations without the $150,000 membership fees charged by exclusive destination clubs.
Beyond the business model, Troy shares profound insights about entrepreneurial success that apply across industries. He articulates the critical difference between necessary perseverance and continuing with a flawed business model, emphasizes the importance of thinking "who not how" when building a team, and reveals why wealthy customers will pay a premium for time savings and certainty.
Whether you're a real estate investor seeking new opportunities, an entrepreneur looking for inspiration, or simply someone who values exceptional travel experiences, Troy's journey from corporate employee to innovative founder offers valuable lessons and a compelling vision for the future of luxury travel.
Ready to learn how Troy is reinventing vacation rentals while generating exceptional returns? Listen now, and discover how solving your own problems might lead to your next big breakthrough.
Forget what you've heard. Forged in Fire is where real entrepreneurs come to share the untold truths of success the late nights, the crushing setbacks, the moments that change everything. No fluff, just fire, ready to step into the heat and unlock what it really takes to build a business. This is where legends are made.
Speaker 2:Ladies and gentlemen, welcome, welcome, welcome. It's good to see you all yet again for another exciting episode of Forza and Fire. I'm your host, mae Farmer. Eden Cole was unable to make it today, but we're going to continue to rock and roll. We are going to be joined today by Troy Evans. Amazing brother does amazing things for the community. He also is the founder of LRVP. He's going to tell us all about it.
Speaker 2:But before we fully dive in, one thing that I want to make sure that we touch on, one thing I want to make sure that we talk about is I want you guys to think about your why. I want you guys to think about your reasoning behind whether you're trying to found a company. Rather, you have that idea in the back of your mind of starting and moving forward on an idea that could potentially become the next I don't know eight figure business. Who knows? But figure out your why. Because you guys hear us joke time and time again and when we come on here, we're going back and forth and we're like, hey, entrepreneurship is not the faint of heart and things are on fire. It's like that meme that we always often joke about, where you got the character sitting in the middle and everything is on fire all the way. Are you just like I'm fine? Well, it's the reason behind that is trying to figure out what that is for your motivation and your why. What can help you push through, what can help you dive deep and be able to persevere when times are getting tough? Find out your why. Find out your motivation. Use that as a catalyst to continue to drive forward.
Speaker 2:All right, I want you guys to think about that. I want it to resonate. Leave a comment down below. If you've got your reason why, all right, I want you guys to think about that. I want to resonate. Leave a comment down below. If you've got your reason why, all right. So, without further ado, let's go ahead and bring this amazing brother on stage. Troy, what's going on, man? How are we doing today?
Speaker 3:I'm doing all right. Nate, Appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 2:Of course, the pleasure is all ours, man. So please tell us a little bit about yourself, man. What got you here? What brought you here?
Speaker 3:Please tell us a little bit about yourself, man. What got you here? What brought you here, nate? That is a super long story. My brother, let's see I from an entrepreneurial perspective. I kind of start in the most recent times. You know we could go back as far as you want, but I've been an entrepreneur in some form or fashion all my life. But then I've got three kids.
Speaker 3:About 12 years ago I had some ups and downs in entrepreneurship and about 12 years ago I had my first child and said you know what? I'm going to go into corporate America because my wife is an entrepreneur too and I was like one of us needs to have a steady income while the other one is taking the risk. In hindsight, I wish I didn't do that. I I started thinking you know what I really need to scratch that itch again on entrepreneurship. I knew that I had a ceiling as far as my income potential when it came to working in corporate America.
Speaker 3:I don't like having caps on my income, and so I wanted to really take advantage of the shift in the way business was being done after the pandemic and lean back into entrepreneurship, which for me was taking a dive back into real estate, for me was taking a dive back into real estate, and so I had been investing as an individual in real estate for over a decade doing fix and flips, buying holes, a little bit of new construction, but always whatever I could find.
Speaker 3:I decided I wanted to do it at scale. I decided I wanted to do it at scale, which means I was going to need to attract capital and me to starting really a co-company situation of LRVP, which is a capital raising company for luxury vacation homes, and then Oasis Vacations, which is the company that allows us to rent out those luxury vacation homes. So we have the investor side of raising capital to buy the homes, lrvp, and then we have Oasis, where we put people in those homes for luxury vacations all around the world. So that's the short and sweet of how I got here, but we can dive into any aspect of it that you want.
Speaker 2:Man, holy cow brother. First and foremost, man hats off to you. I love how you kind of painted the picture and sort of took us on your journey. We're definitely going to dive in, because I got a slew of questions that are not even on the script that I want to ask you about. But also you guys were able to think ahead to where, not only were you like, hey, we can get these luxury rentals, but now, on the terms of raising capital and finding funding, we'll also be able to place people. So I think it's awesome that you guys are on both sides of the spectrum with that. But before we dive into what it looks like right now, let's take a few steps back and take us on kind of that decade journey. And you mentioned a little bit of new construction. You mentioned fix and flips. You mentioned like a lot of things in the residential, what drove you to real estate initially when you guys got started.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so a few things. I've been no-transcript. But real estate in the beginning, to be honest, was something that I was a little scared of because it seemed like a lot of terminology and aspects that I just wasn't familiar with, and so I stayed away from it, but I was always fascinated by it. I was fascinated by having an asset, a physical asset, that could generate revenue for you and cashflow for you and that you could get someone else to loan you 80 percent of the money to buy Right. So I was fascinated by that. And then, as I started to do well in corporate America and started doing a lot more finance and my job and things of that nature and understanding how that worked, decided to again use my own funds to start investing in real estate Slow at first, would do one fix and flip project at a time and learned a lot in that process right, learned about how you have to really vet your vendors that you're working with. Right, because you don't know what you're going to get in the process. Learned about. You know you make a lot of money on the buy Right, so you have to make sure that you're negotiating your prices right and what have you. Ultimately, I didn't like fix and flip as much as I thought I would, primarily because you know you are always buying, as is properties, and you never knew exactly what you were going to get behind those walls, and so you always had some unforeseen circumstances pop up and again the vendor process was a little less than scrupulous, and it was something that was decent but was a little bit frustrating at times.
Speaker 3:Then I started dabbling in more buy and hold. I like the cashflow aspect of buy and hold, and I think there's two types of real estate investors. There's numerous ways that you can be associated in the real estate game, but I think you're either going to be a person who likes to have a project in and out you know, one time big cash infusion hit or you're going to be a person who likes steady cashflow. I've found that I like the steady cashflow game right, and so I did buy and hold and that worked well for me, right. So you know I had tenants and single family residence homes and you know I like the cash flow. As long as you can manage to turn over, it will work out well. And what have you?
Speaker 3:Then I started dabbling a little bit in new construction. I have some partners that were developing communities and they'd be trying to raise capital. So in that standpoint I was just a financial investor. I was not managing the projects. But I got to learn a lot about it and I liked it better than fix and flip, because you knew what you were building right. Because you knew what you were building right, you weren't getting surprises as much once you got out of the dirt. But again, I like the cashflow aspect of things more. So then I started looking at multifamily. I never pulled the trigger on multifamily because then I started looking at luxury vacation and short-term rentals and so a few things happened that really made the pivot more ideal.
Speaker 3:I'll talk about it from a business perspective and then I'll also talk about it from a personal perspective. From a business perspective, a few things happened. The first is that people changed the way they wanted to vacation right. So, especially after the pandemic, there was safety issues and concerns about potentially, you know, getting sick in large public spaces like at a hotel, and things of that nature. Two people got pent up demand. There was pent up demand because they were getting cabin fever from being in the house for six months when we were on lockdown during the pandemic, so they were really excited to get out and vacation again.
Speaker 3:Three there's been more of a push towards luxury and wanting vacations booked for you, and I like to tell people we're not really selling vacation space, we're selling memories, because when you are with your family, that is a time that on your deathbed you are going to remember more than all the other moments you had in life, when you're spending time with your loved ones and you're creating memories that literally last the rest of your life. And so you don't want to leave that to chance, right, you don't want to leave that to, you know, go in going someplace that someone hasn't vetted or can't tell you what the best attractions are to participate in and things of that nature. And so those are more bespoke vacation opportunities that we offer and take place in luxury accommodations. But also on the personal side, I was starting to take more vacations with my family. Like I said, I've got three kids and it was becoming extremely frustrating for me to find one that you know suited my family's needs, because hotels just wasn't working for the size of my family.
Speaker 3:Two the homes never lived up to the pictures, so there was not brand consistency that took place.
Speaker 3:Right, we would get there and you know that room was a lot smaller than it looked like on the pictures.
Speaker 3:Or you know that room was a lot smaller than it looked like on the pictures, or you know they had a set of rules that were pretty, you know, intrusive or what have you.
Speaker 3:And so you know, I started to really not like booking single family residences for my own family, and yet we needed the space and we needed the privacy and what have you, and I started thinking it's got to be a better way to do this. And then I looked into it further and I found out there it was. It was called Destination Clubs, where they had vetted homes for you in the multimillion dollar range. Problem was they wanted to charge one hundred fifty thousand dollars just to join the club, to have access to the homes, and that was beyond what what I was comfortable spending as my initiation fee. But I knew the math worked, and so I thought I could set up something similar that didn't have such a high barrier to entry but still offered those luxury accommodations. And so that's what we focus on is two to five million dollar homes and vacation destinations around the world.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. I am infamous and notorious for saying this, but everybody that's listening. I need y'all to pause, rewind, play this whole thing all the way back. Troy is dropping so many golden gems that I hope that y'all are picking up on. One that I'm going to highlight right now is the fact that after Troy told us a little bit about the business side and the business mindset and the business framework behind it, took it to a personal level. He's like, hey, my family got large Hotels don't work for us. He found a problem. Then. Not only did he identify what the problem was, he figured out what the needs were to be able to identify and then act on productivity. I love that, brother. That is awesome, and you were able to solve for that variable man.
Speaker 2:So before so many different things, so many different directions, I want to go, but before we dive next, talk to me a little bit more about what it looks like. Kind of bring it full circle on finding these properties, rather be markets. I know you mentioned all over the world what it looks like in terms of being able to acquire. I know we talked a little bit about Oasis and being able to place folks and you've got the capital raise side. But are these like turnkey rentals? Did you develop a team? And the reason I'm asking all this is because we're going to segue into some of your trials and tribulations and so we're going to go right into that. But I want to kind of finish the thought on, to take us from what it looks like, from somebody interested in finding the properties, to how you found them to. Did you work on them? Are they done? I don't know. Fill us in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and so we're still in the early stages of a lot of this, but I'll tell you kind of the pathway to it. So it started first with, you know again, solving that turnkey vacation scenario that I was experiencing and colleagues of mine were experiencing, who were in the same position with their families that I was in, because we would often, you know, vacation together, because what happens when you have little kids is you know when their breaks are, you know when fall break is, you know when Christmas break is, you know when spring break is. Now all you need to know is where to go, right, and you're either the type of person who wants to go to the same place over and over again because you've had success there, or you want to explore new places. I'm an explore new places type of guy. So you know my family, we want to go to different places, and so I knew there was going to be a multi-stage step process to this, and so the first thing I started doing was I actually partnered with companies that had villas you know, thousands of villas all over the world to resell their product, of villas all over the world to resell their product. Right, that was my first step because I knew that it was going to take me a little bit of time to raise the capital and start acquiring my own portfolio, and so so that's what I did. I partnered with a company that had villas all over the world. They were, they were a little, they were a little light in the United States, they were more international than they were domestic, and so I started looking at those opportunities, did a partnership agreement with them where I could market those homes to my network and database and start renting them out and earn a commission on that.
Speaker 3:So that was my first step, and there was a few things that I learned in that process. The first thing was you need to own the product and not resell someone else's, and the reason why is because you don't control the pricing or the margins. When you do that and ultimately I was like a second middleman, so you. So it makes it hard to compete on price when you've got two middlemen putting margin on top of the nightly rate, right. So that's the first thing. The second thing is when you have a large portfolio of a thousand homes and what have you like my, like my partner did my partner company did you have a hard time controlling for brand consistency. And that's what I wanted to sell was brand consistency Because, again, when I go on so to make the problem plain my wife is from San Diego. We would go to San Diego all the time. She has a really big family. We needed to have a house because it would be like 15 of us in it, right? Well, if you don't know what you're going to get, you spend a lot of time vetting it and trying to figure it out. Then you get there and let's say it's great. Let's say it's perfect. Well, next year we want to go to Miami, but guess what? The people who own the house in San Diego don't own the house in Miami. So now you have to start the vetting process all over again because you don't have a brand consistent product on Airbnb or VRBO, right? So you know, in a hotel game, you know, people normally have like loyalty points.
Speaker 3:I was a Hyatt guy. I knew what a Park Hyatt was, what a Hyatt Regency was, what a Hyatt Place was. I knew what I was getting. But in VRBO, airbnb world, you don't know what you're getting and so I wanted to solve for brand consistency. When you have a thousand homes in your portfolio, it's hard to solve for brand consistency, especially if you don't control the end product right. So that means that some houses are going to be super nice and some houses are not. So I didn't want to do that and so, with my partner, I would go through and vet the homes and narrow them down to like 10 out of a thousand right and say I knew these homes were going to live up to what, what I was selling to my close customers and the type of homes that I eventually wanted to purchase with my own money. So that was step number one. And it was a lot of just understanding the travel space and because, again, I really wasn't trying to get into it from a travel perspective, I was really getting into it as a real estate play. But we wanted to offer this extra amenity as a differentiating factor for why somebody should book with us. So that's the first thing and learned a lot about what some people are going to shop on price. Those are not really the customers we're going for. We're going for the people who are shopping on value right, who are shopping on wanting that luxury amenity.
Speaker 3:Okay, so that was step one. Step two was I knew I needed to raise capital in order to acquire the homes that that I wanted to get when you're doing so. Previously, if you wanted to buy multifamily, you, if you got a unit that had over a building that had over five units in it, building that had over five units in it, the cash flow from the building was sufficient enough to qualify for a mortgage right To qualify for capital from a bank. You could not do it previously. If you had less than five units, you could only do it five units and more.
Speaker 3:Well, that changed when Airbnb and VRBL came on the scene and the bank started offering DSCR loans to individuals for buying single family properties right. So now I can buy a $5 million house without having to have the income personally to justify the mortgage. The house can justify the mortgage based off of the projections in the cash flow. So that change in financial instruments made it available for me to start to go out and raise capital, because I knew the banks would take care of 80% of the financing and I only needed to raise 20% for the equity If I'm buying a $5 million house. 20% is still a million dollars, though, so that's where I realized if I didn't want to buy one house at a time and I wanted to buy five, 10 houses at a time, ultimately getting to about 75 to 100 houses in the portfolio. I was going to have to create a vehicle to raise capital to do that, and so that's when I launched LRVP Luxury Residence Vacation Portfolio and that a majority of those funds and tax advantages that come through from rentals go back to the investors right.
Speaker 3:And so we are in stage one of that where we're getting ready to close out fund number one and then we'll go and do fund number two. So fund number one is to buy domestic properties in the portfolio. We're looking at 24-7, 365 vacation destinations, so that's Florida, southern California, hawaii and maybe some ski rental type places, international, like the caribbean, uh, and central america, and then in fund three will expand into the rest of the world. Um, when you start talking about where you want to start placing it's you know what. I don't want it to be seasonal, so where are they going to be able to vacation all year round? Who already has laws in place so that they don't change the law and say, oh, now you can't do short term rental Right and things of that nature. So those are some of the criteria. I only want relatively new construction because I do want it to be turnkey. I don't want to have to do maintenance or fix up the houses or what have you. So those are the criteria that we look for.
Speaker 3:Some other people do it, but do it different ways. And one more point the reason why I also looked at this is, as opposed to like multifamily, which you can also get, you know money for is multifamily, you're going to make about 15%, you know, return on your investment because the margins are low. Right, but in single family, short-term rental, the margins are high. You're often charging three to four times more per night of what you would get in a long-term rental and multifamily. And so I just thought that, with the banks providing the loans, you still have the houses, the asset to back it up. Why not go for three to four times the revenue and it's sexier? I mean, who wants to go visit their apartment? I want to go visit my house in the Dominican Republic, or something like that.
Speaker 2:Wow, okay, I love it. Now I'm not saying like especially for your investors, and it looks like you guys are taking during this first fund. It's like a fund to fund model. Are you letting the investors then invest solely for equity, so that way they're following along every step of the way? When the property then appraises way higher due to just natural appreciation, they get a piece of it? That way, are you putting maybe a preferred return on it? I don't know how much you can go into depth. We come from the multifamily space, we do syndications, we primarily invest in Pennsylvania and then the Sunbelt area, so we're very domestic with our stuff. So it's awesome to be able to hear about a fund of fund that's got different layers, different tiers to where you're like we'll start here and then we'll start expanding and then we're just going to take over the world. So hats off to you. That is awesome, but talk to me a little about what it looks like from an investor standpoint and why somebody would want to invest with you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I mean I think there's. You know it's similar, right, like some of my investors are multifamily investors, right, and they participate in syndications. That, way and again, most of most of our family is tried and true, so there's nothing wrong with that. I think the single family aspect is new. But people have been renting out a home since Joseph and Mary was rented out 2000 years ago, right, so there is no, there is no lack of proof of concept from that standpoint, right? So from an investor standpoint, yes, we are equity on this fund. We're going to evaluate at the end of this fund if that's the model we want to go with in the future or if we want to switch to debt. But right now we're equity on this fund and we made it a very generous fund. What do I mean by that?
Speaker 3:So I did a lot of research on funds before I set it up. I did a lot of research on REITs, funds, llcs, just for this. But I settled on a fund and the typical funds were offering like 6% hurdle rate slash, preferred returns with a 70-30 split, and if they had been in the game for a long time, they were doing a 60-40 split. I knew I wanted to attract capital fast. So I wanted to use terms that were more generous because, again, it's just step one to get to the rest of the portfolio. So I made an 8% preferred return with an 80-20 split right. So there's obviously, you know, some advantages to doing it that way. And, yes, they do benefit from the appreciation of the property, since it's an equity deal and we assume a 4% appreciation rate annually. So, depending on the market, that could be spot on or that could be conservative. But ultimately we plan on holding for five to seven years and then liquidating. So, everyone, their break-even point should be about three point five with a 30 percent IRR.
Speaker 3:You know, based on the numbers that we use, we use relatively conservative numbers because, again, the beautiful thing about short term is because that nightly rate is going to be so high, your occupancy doesn't have to be 100 percent%. All of our numbers are based on 65% occupancy, so a little more than half the year we expect the place to be rented out to yield those types of numbers that I just mentioned. And then again, we offer some benefits. If someone is investing at least $100,000, we'll give them the opportunity to use properties in a portfolio one week out of the year for free. That's also nice as a little extra benefit to be able to visit the property and take advantage of it with your family, because if you were going to go rent it out on your own, that'd be $30,000 out your pocket.
Speaker 3:So not only did you get to save that money, you get cashflow and you get the tax advantages and all of those things. And at the end of the day, I wanted to make sure that a single family home is going to be it's not liquid, but it's going to be more easily sellable than a multifamily building. Right and so. But at the end of the day, I wanted to be able to look investors in the eyes and say look, your money is going into that physical asset. If the world comes to an end tomorrow, we can sell the house and give you your money back, right? So we wanted to have asset-backed investments.
Speaker 2:I love this method, troy, that is awesome. Hats off to you. So talk to me a little bit about and then we'll get into our next segment. But talk to me a little bit about initially, when you got started, you had partnered with a company that already had a thousand houses inside of the portfolio. Now you guys are kind of branching off. You guys are selective on the houses that you want to pick. Rightfully so I think that's amazing, but what does it look like in terms of the team?
Speaker 2:So an example of that for me being from the outside looking in if you've got a house on the East Coast and another house on the West Coast, do you have to start from ground zero when it comes to like I don't know? In our realm we call them property managers. I guess I'm not too sure what you guys refer to them as. Let's just say, somebody rents it for a week. Who's going in taking care of making sure that the turnover is done right, making sure that that brand is staying intact? Do you have to do that every single time? Are you vertically integrated or how does that work?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the good thing is, when we use our partner companies, all that's already set up for all of their houses. How do we plan on rolling it out for ours? We're going to use property management companies, just like you said, in the local areas, because one of the things you give up in this model because we being able to hire, like, your own local handyman and cleaning crew and stuff like that, because with one house you just wouldn't have enough volume to keep them busy, right? So the downside is you don't get to hire your own people and control costs that way. The upside is you only got to find one house that works in that market, right? You don't need to find 50 houses that work in that market, you just got to find one that's the best one that people are going to want to stay at, right? And so you pay a little bit of premium to hire the local property management company to ensure that it works well across all the markets you're in that works well across all the markets you're in. Eventually, we will have a method, hopefully, of bringing some of that in-house and negotiating down the price points, because one of the things that so a property management company is going to charge you for two main things. One is for taking care of the house for you while you're not in the local vicinity. But the other thing they're really charging you for is marketing and getting your house sold directly, without going through a third party platform like Airbnb and VRBO.
Speaker 3:The reason why we had Oasis set up next to LRVP is so that we could get a lot of the bookings direct ourselves, right. So we're going to negotiate down over time the property management fees, since we won't need their marketing aspect, because the more you can get repeat customers, nate, if you were to stay in one of our properties and have a great time next year when you want to take a vacation one of our properties and have a great time next year when you want to take a vacation, you're not going to start at Airbnb or VRBO. You're going to start with us and see well, where else does LRVP have a property at, or where else does Oasis have a property at? Oh, we got it here now and so maybe we'll have one in where you want to be at. Maybe we'll work with our partner company because they got houses everywhere, or maybe it's not a good fit for you for this particular vacation. But what we like to think is that we'll get at least one vacation out of you a year for your family, for on average, a week. That's what our hope is. And so, yes, we, we will use property management companies locally and and then, as we expand and go into to other locations.
Speaker 3:Because another thing you have to think about when we start getting international financing doesn't work the same as it does in the United States, so they don't have DSCR loans in the Dominican Republic or in other places, and sometimes it's better. Like we've been looking at Dubai. It's actually easier to finance a house in Dubai, but we've been looking at Panama and Costa Rica and you got to bring a lot more cash to the table in those scenarios. Now, the good side also is it's a lot cheaper per square foot, right. So a house in the DR is one third the price of cheaper per square foot, right. So you know, a house in the DR is one third the price of a house in Florida, right, but I can finance the house in Florida and I got to bring all cash to the table in the house in DR. So it's just things that you have to continue to weigh, but at the end of five to seven years, we should be financially doing pretty good when we sell the house, no matter what scenario we use.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I love it, I love it, I love it. And I lied, I definitely have a follow-up question to that. I knew that's what we're going to get into our next segment, but bear with me. So we talked about the capital side, we talked about your story, and it's an amazing one and, again, hats off to you. But talk to me a little bit about and without giving up all the secret sauce, what it looks like from a customer satisfaction standpoint, from a cause, and you had brought up an amazing point to where, hey, you were like Nate if you rented over here, instead of starting from ground zero and from square one, you're just going to come right back to us and say, hey, what, what you, what do you got no-transcript.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So there's a few ways that that we and there's a few important KPIs that we focus on and there's a few important KPIs that we focus on. So ultimately, right, the major KPI is renewal. You know, come back business, right? So if you come back to us and we have a membership based product, so if you renew, then we know that you're satisfied from that standpoint. So that's the ultimate one. But that's, you know that's a lagging indicator because you know you might not know until they don't renew. So what steps do you take to make sure that they do renew?
Speaker 3:So there's a few things. So one, you know, we're focused on providing a good experience all the way through the process of you joining us, from a member perspective, to booking your vacation, to renewal, and part of that is so we have a concierge team and part of that is getting to know you and what your criteria and desire is for your vacation. So in the beginning it's going to be a get to know you process and we're still, you know, building this out ourselves. But it's really focused on, you know, who are your kids, what are their names, right? What's your wife's name, what's your husband's name? You know, do you focus on your school vacations all the time, or you know, or holidays with the family, more important to you. So just kind of understanding. You know school vacations all the time, or you know, or holidays with the family, more important to you. So just kind of understanding. You know what is your motivation for traveling most of the time. The second thing we like to do is okay, what do you want to do when you go someplace? Are you more focused on being around the house, since it's a really nice house, right? Do you want that refrigerator stocked, you know, for you? Do you want cleaning people to come in on a daily basis? Do you want a personal chef? Do you want a masseuse to come in, or do you want to be out doing adventures? Do you want us to find you jet skis or you know tours that you can go on and things of that nature? So really just making sure that you're feeling like you had the best vacation of your life and also that you feel like we understand what you're trying to accomplish right on the vacation, you know, is it a rest and relaxation or is it adventure or what have you? And then again, ultimately, right, it's about, do you renew with us? And we want to provide some value. And again, the main thing we want to provide value in is saving you time. Okay, we're not here to save you money per se, because you're going to pay a premium for this opportunity.
Speaker 3:But wealthy people want to do two things. One, they want to save time, because time is valuable and it's a more expensive currency than money. But two is they want to purchase certainty. They want to purchase certainty, right. They do not want to have variables in play that could throw their whole vacation off. Right. They want to ensure that the limited bandwidth they have, or time they have to take a vacation, is going to produce the result they want. They want to buy certainty. And so I use an example.
Speaker 3:Sometimes, when I'm talking with people, I say if you are going on a, if you got to go to the airport and you know, catch a flight, and it's kind of like you're going to, you know you're going, you're going someplace that you can get there today, you can get there tomorrow. What have you? Maybe you, or actually let's, let's take a flight out of it. Let's say you need to go to the grocery store and for some reason, you don't have a car available. You can call up an Uber and catch a ride to the grocery store, and it really doesn't matter which Uber comes to get you, whether the driver is blasting music, whether they know how to drive or they're all over the road Because you're just going down the street to the grocery store, chances are you're going to make it back safely. And it wasn't the end of the world if the experience wasn't good. But let's say you needed to get to the airport to catch a flight for a very important business deal. Some people are going to still trust Uber, but I wouldn't. Right, like, I'm calling a car service at a point in time because I need to know that I'm going to get there on time. The car's not going to smell like weed. I'm not going to get out of the car, you know. Whatever the music wasn't going to be loud, you know. I need to know. I need to decrease my risk and increase my certainty that I'm going to make it to that flight on time, because it's important. Increase my certainty that I'm going to make it to that flight on time because it's important, right? Same thing with vacations, right, like?
Speaker 3:I did a vacation with my kids a couple of years ago before I had all this in place and we went to Lake Tahoe and I had only gone to Lake Tahoe during ski season. Well, we went in the summer and I kind of forgot that. You know, the lake was going to be there and we could go out on the lake, because I'm used to skiing right in Lake Tahoe. So we get there and we were only there for two nights and it's like, oh man, we should get a boat and go out on the lake. I got my kids.
Speaker 3:They'll remember this for the rest of their life, but I didn't do the homework ahead of time to find out what's the boat company I should rent from, what's the best time to go. You know the places were booked up. You know how much is it going. I didn't do any of that work, so we didn't go out on a boat where that opportunity was missed, you know, and I didn't get to spend that time that creating that memory with my kids. And so I tell people when they're booking vacations look, book with people. That's going to make sure that you don't waste those opportunities mic drop moment.
Speaker 2:Holy cow, anybody that's listening right now, pause this rewind, play it all the way back. I'm saying it again I love it, I love it. So with that, let's jump into our last segment, and this is the part of the show where I'm going to do the best that I can to not interject, not interrupt, not have any rebuttals, and you can answer as succinctly as you want to. You can be as long winded as you want, it doesn't matter to me, but my job is to ask you six questions in succession, back and back, and back and back and back, and I want the first thing that comes to mind. You ready for this? Yep, let's do it All right, so let's jump in. So first question what separates top performing entrepreneurs from the rest of the crowd?
Speaker 3:Execution. So do what you say you're going to do on the timeline you say you're going to do it.
Speaker 2:Gold, love it. What is a daily habit that's contributed to your success?
Speaker 3:Walking. So I walk in the mornings after I drop my kids off to school. It allows me to get some exercise in and move around. I um. It gives me a chance to kind of declutter my mind, and I simultaneously listen to audiobooks while I'm doing it. So I, I read about, I listen to about, you know, 45 books a year that way, um, and it allows me to get a lot more information in, uh, and learn a lot more than I would if I was trying to read them at home in bed. After I read two pages and go to sleep.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it. I love that. Look, we are so much alike. I do the exact same thing, so my office it's about a 45-minute commute for me. I've already failed, guys, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:I fail every time I knew it was going to happen. So I listen to audio books on the way in and the way outside of where it just sort of gives me that time to sort of think, decompress and then soak in a lot of knowledge before I have to put on the work hat. So I love it. We were one of the kind brother, so with that, my next one. What is a piece of advice that you give yourself if you were starting again?
Speaker 3:Start sooner. So, like I said, I did a. I was doing some entrepreneurial things younger and I'll say this is kind of a more, a little bit more complicated one, but I was doing some entrepreneurial stuff younger. And there's two principles that you will be a successful entrepreneur if you can figure this out, and it's not easy to figure out. The first one is understanding that perseverance is going to lead you to success. Sticking with something for a long time, right. But what is contrary to that is understanding when your business model is not a viable one. So you need to understand the difference between a viable business model and quitting too early. Right, if you got a good business model, then you got to stick with it until you're successful, but if you have a bad business model, you need to quit as soon as you can, and knowing the difference between the two is the trick to success. So starting earlier and understanding those things are the things that I would say I would do differently.
Speaker 2:Bonus question this is cutting it all the way in the middle, but just for our listeners, because I know they're eating this up, man, you can't leave them on a cliffhanger Can you give us a little bit of insight, just to dive a little bit deeper into how you know rather, you've got a viable business plan or a business model versus some folks that are just like, hey, you just keep going, keep going and going, because you know we're all going to fail, but you just want to keep growing. But what if you're walking in the wrong direction? What if I'm digging, I'm going in successes over here and I'm just going the wrong way? So give us a couple of pointers and a couple of insights to be able to help us understand when it's time to be able to say, hey, I need to pivot and go another direction. Or when it's time to say you know what this is working me, I need a boss.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So that's the secret sauce, man. If you know that, then you could bottle that and sell that for billions. But I'll give you a couple of thoughts. I don't think I have it mastered yet. The first is your business model Is it scalable?
Speaker 3:If whatever you're doing is selling your time, then I'd quit that Right. So, like, I know a lot of entrepreneurs who are, in essence, just selling their time for money, so they're their own boss. But you know, if they stop working, the money stops coming in. That's not a business that I would say is worth pursuing because it's not scalable beyond you. So is it scalable? It's not scalable beyond you, so is it scalable?
Speaker 3:Two, is it forward looking versus in terms of the market versus retro looking? So, like you know, I wouldn't invest in a newspaper right now. Right, you know like those are going out of business left and right, you know. So you know. Does it like right now, do you have AI as a part of what you're looking at? Right, you know. So you know, does it like right now, do you have AI as a part of what you're looking at? Right, so you know what is the trend, the overall trend, and where is the business going to be 10, 15 years from now versus you know what has it been over the past 10 to 15 years. I would look at that. The other thing is thing is I would look at the demand again from the market. You know who's willing to spend money on it.
Speaker 3:I would focus on price, in terms of more expensive solutions versus volume. It's harder to do the volume game. If you got to sell a million or something at $3 a pop. I'd rather sell, you know, 300 or something at. You know $10,000 a pop or something like that. I don't know if that math was right, but you know what I'm saying is go sell more expensive luxury items and then you know understanding and then more of what you asked in terms of is it, is it? Are you cut out for it? I mean, listen, you have to understand that failure is part of the game and you are going to fail probably 95% of the time. Like, like, if you are not comfortable with that, if you have to, if you have to see, you know.
Speaker 3:I heard Kevin Hart say that this part of being an entrepreneur is working on something every single day without seeing the results and knowing that you still got to get up and work on it the next day too. Got to get up and work on it the next day too. If you can't be comfortable with that, then it's not for you. You need to be able to embrace uncertainty, but also this is a little bit more philosophical Understand. That's the name of the game in life in general. Right, if you want to know what the outcome is going to be for anything, what's the point of playing the game at all? Right, so embrace the risk. Know that the only way you're going to lose is if you give up. And you know, welcome those challenges and learn from them. Like Nelson Mandela said, you either win or you learn.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, Anybody listening's listening. This is again it Three-wide playback. This brother came on here dropping knowledge gems. I hope y'all are writing this down. If y'all are driving, make sure that you pin this episode and run this all the way back. So much secret sauce. Let's keep moving forward. That was a bonus one for y'all. What is your favorite business book Doesn't have to be real estate related.
Speaker 3:Man, there's awesome. There's a lot of awesome ones. My absolute favorite is Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. That book is the truth when it comes to business. I've read hundreds of business books and it is, in my opinion, hands down the best. But I'm going to give you a couple of bonus ones. Read the Go-Getter. It's an old book, but it has showed you the type of mentality you have to have in order to do it. I like Delivering Happiness, the book by Tony Hsieh on Zappos how he built Zappos, Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, and these aren't business books, but I think the lessons are good from them. These aren't business books, but I think the lessons are good from them. Kevin Hart's you Can't Make this Stuff Up. And Trevor Noah's Born a Crime.
Speaker 2:Both of them just give you lessons that are applicable to business. We asked for one. This brother gave us six. For those that are listening, if you have read any of these books, let us know the lessons that you guys have gathered from these, down below in the comments. And if you have not yet picked these six books up, make sure that you do so and then come back and let us know what you gathered from them. Life-changing, inspirational. I love it. Next question what's your favorite part about owning your own business?
Speaker 3:The freedom to. You know you don't have to ask nobody to do nothing. You know you can. You can go on vacation when you want, you can get up when you want, you can go to sleep when you want. Now you know it might be reflected in your bank account. So you gotta be. You gotta be wary of the decisions you're making. But I've never been one to someone else's permission to do something, so controlling my time is my best thing about it.
Speaker 2:Love it. Last question what's something new that you've implemented that's helped drive the success of your business?
Speaker 3:That's a good question, um. So I think one thing that you could have as an entrepreneur is key man itis, um, and there is a. There is a book out who, not how? Um, that talks about you finding the right people to solve the problems that you have and understanding that you know this business and entrepreneurship is a team sport, allowing me to grow quicker than I could otherwise, by really thinking about who the person is first, instead of what we're going to do first or how we're going to do it first, but thinking about who is the person that does two things for me.
Speaker 3:I'm always looking for two things has the expertise that I don't have and has the bandwidth that I don't have, right, so, so they can do they can increase the bandwidth of the team. And has the bandwidth that I don't have right, so they can increase the bandwidth of the team and increase the expertise of the team. And actually, a third thing that should be added onto that it has the network that we don't currently have. So if they have people that they can introduce us to that we don't currently have on our network, then that's the right person to bring onto the team.
Speaker 2:Troy said it best. If you guys have been here before, you guys have known that is one of my favorite books. Who, Not how, Dan Sullivan, Benjamin Hardy Listen to it, read it, write down, take notes on it, and if you're new here, welcome in. We greatly appreciate y'all here in Forged in Fire and, yes, that is one of my all-time favorite books. Who not how, pick it up. Read it, as well as the other six bonus books that we have discussed a little bit earlier on this episode. Man, we want to hear from y'all on it.
Speaker 3:Can I mention one more thing? Actually, of course, please do, brother, it's your show, I'm here. So one thing I also did that's been really helpful is I started my own podcast in order to interview entrepreneurs who were more successful than me, and that allowed me to do three things ultimately. One learn from them and I've had like entrepreneurs that worth like half a billion dollars on the podcast right, it's called. It's called give them the business, but learn what they did so they can teach me to. It puts me in network with them, because since I'm asking for their advice now, they want to contribute even beyond the podcast to my success. And three, it allows me to give back, like you're giving back, by sharing that individual's expertise with a larger audience. So that was something I implemented, you know, a year and a half, two years ago, like you have. That has allowed me to learn, give back and increase my network.
Speaker 2:Giving away game every step of the way. I love it, I, I love it and give us, give us the name one more time of the podcast it's called give them the business, uh, and it's on all the all the platforms all the platforms.
Speaker 2:So that's what we're gonna do for y'all. Man. Since y'all are already here that y'all already listened to this one at fours and fire, we're going to pin this other podcast right down below. I want you to go ahead and take a listen, hopefully, hopefully, you guys are able to get some more gems, get some more knowledge and get some more inspiration to be able to tackle y'all goals, y'all hopes, y'all dreams, and knock out these milestones, moving that needle every step of the way.
Speaker 2:So, troy, before we get out of here brother, it's been about an hour, man, I didn't want to take up too much of your time. We just got two final things for you. Number one, where can people find you? And then, number two, if you have any last piece of advice that you want to give to our listeners. Maybe we've got somebody that's chilling on the couch right now rocking the W2 job. They've got that spark that's like, hey, I have an idea of something that I want to do, but they're just lacking the motivation, they're lacking the confidence, they're lacking that mindset. What kind of advice would you give somebody to be able to take that next step?
Speaker 3:So they can find me on. They can just go to my websites. They can go to lrvpfundcom or they can find me on LinkedIn, troy D Evans, so that's the easiest way to find me. I'm trying to be off of social media is draining me, so I'm not checking that really that regularly. But my final piece of advice is don't be afraid. Normally, when you boil things down, you're going to make decisions for one or two reasons. One is going to be fear, one is going to be love. Don't operate out of fear. It's going to keep you on that couch, it's going to keep you in that W2 job. You're on this planet to experience yourself and your greatness. So don't be afraid. Take the risk, make the leap fit greatly from it, even through the struggles, because there will be struggles, but you will it's going to be the struggles that you appreciate.
Speaker 2:So don't be afraid, take the chance. Don't be afraid, take the chance. I love it. Amazing and great words of wisdom. Thank you so much for coming through, brother. This has been an honor, a pleasure and a privilege, man, to have you here in Forrest and Fire. So thank you so much.
Speaker 3:I appreciate you. Nate Forrest and Fire, so thank you so much. I appreciate you, nate.
Speaker 2:Thanks a lot, of course. So for those that are listening, if you are driving, if you're doing this on your daily commute, get to where you're going, get to your destination safe. Again, check the footnotes, make sure that you guys write to us, let us know your comments so as you continue to develop. Maybe it's not the end of fund number one, maybe somewhere between fund number two to fund number three, but our house is your house, meaning we want to see you back here. We want to know what it looks like from an expansion standpoint as well as from a team standpoint, as well as from an operational standpoint and everything in between, man. So anytime you want to come back down and bless the people with some words of wisdom, you just say the word brother, we're going to have you right back here. Sounds good? All right, y'all. Y'all take care. Y'all stay safe out there, and we will catch y'all on the next episode of Forged in Fire. Y'all Take care. Peace.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Forged in Fire. If you enjoyed today's raw, unfiltered stories, don't forget to like, subscribe and leave us a review. Your feedback helps us bring more real-world insights to entrepreneurs like you. Be sure to join us next time for even more lessons, struggles and breakthroughs on the road to success. Keep forging ahead.