Tentmaking Tips

Now, I know what some of you are thinking.

“I don’t have a guest house.”

“I don’t want strangers in my house.”

“I don’t have the time to manage it.”

The truth is, Airbnb is flexible. You can make money on Airbnb in so many different ways. Most of your initial objections could likely be overcome.

Since you already own your property (land and home), you might as well make some money off of it & let it pay its own bills.

Let me give you some different ways people make money on Airbnb using their own property.

1. Rent out a room on Airbnb
   1. Don’t get tripped up here. This is not the only option. But this is a great option for some.
   2. When my parents would drive 5 hours to visit my sister, my Mom would usually stay at her house, but my Dad would find another place to...

Here’s what I told them (and what I’d tell you):

1. Sell it “For Sale By Owner”
   1. In other words, try to avoid real estate agents. Just to clarify, we love real estate agents around this blog. I’m an agent and so is my wife. We also have a brokerage that employees agents. Nothing against agents, but you often won’t make the most money if you use them (especially at full commission on both sides of the transaction). Real estate commissions will eat up a huge chunk of your profits.
   2. The summary of how you sell it by owner is: buy a FSBO (For Sale By Owner) sign at Home Depot and put it in your front yard, post your home for sale on sites like Zillow, Redfin, Trulia, etc, take phone calls, set-up showings, accept an offer on the property, and then close a month or so later. I’ll go into more detail in the following...

I want to start with a crazy one because it highlights the potential of real estate.

Let me give a disclaimer right here at the beginning.

Most deals among our students are not this big. Most students average deal size would be somewhere between $5,000-$20,000 (which is still really good, especially if you do one or a few each month). Several students have had six figure deals like the one I’m highlighting today, but it’s more uncommon. Still, it’s fun to hear the stories when they happen.

This student joined the Flip Hacking Course & Mastermind when he was overseas as a missionary. He was wanting to generate extra income to eventually replace the money he had raised to go overseas.

Here are the details:

Profit

He made $140,874 on this deal! Wow!

The whole Flip...

That’s simply not true. Tentmaking is not an all or nothing proposition. Some people want to continue getting paid by their ministry but want to generate some extra income from tentmaking for family vacations or other extra costs that might not fit in the budget. Tentmaking allows you to generate additional streams of income & how much you make in tentmaking is really up to you.

2. Tentmaking will take way too much time.

This is also a myth. I generate full-time income through tentmaking and it takes me a few hours each week. From the beginning of my tentmaking journey, I made sure I never spent so much time that I felt distracted from my ministry. I wanted tentmaking to be like a hobby and I only...

My oldest daughter wanted to go skiing.

Our family loves staying in Hyatt hotels, so we looked for a Hyatt near good ski slopes. We found a Park Hyatt, one of our favorite Hyatt brands, in Beaver Creek, Colorado. My wife and I grew up skiing in Colorado but neither of us had been to Beaver Creek. What we loved about this Park Hyatt was that it was a ski-in/ski-out resort. Meaning, you could basically ski up to the hotel. Often on the ski trips my wife & I took growing up, you’d have to drive 45 minutes down the mountain to where you were staying after you finished skiing for the day. We thought it would be fun to get to stay right on the slopes.

We booked the trip for this upcoming...

As the kids started growing up, she was interested in finding a way to make some extra spending money without giving up her dream.

We didn’t need the money, but she thought if she could work for herself a few hours on the side, it would be more like a hobby than a job. And it would give her some extra cash.

Her mom was a real estate agent. She was a full-time teacher but became an agent for extra money on the side. Her mom helped friends and family buy and sell houses and she made some great money doing it.

Her mom always told her she wished she had been able to be a stay-at-home mom. That’s probably part of what influenced by wife’s dream.

My wife has always loved house projects and so watching her mom in real estate inspired her to give it a try herself.

She took an in-person class to get her real estate license while our daughters were...

Staging is the process of furnishing and decorating a house to appeal to current retail buyers.

One mistake people make when they sell their homes, in my opinion, is selling it vacant or with furnishings/decor that won’t appeal to buyers.

Sometimes people think that moving all of their furniture/decor out & selling it vacant is best because the buyer will see it as a blank slate. In most cases, this isn’t true. Or people think that they have great taste & just leaving their stuff in there should be fine. This can also be untrue.

Most buyers will pay more for a house that is professionally furnished & decorated, also known as being “staged.”

A seller in my neighborhood, who is also a real estate agent, recently had an updated rental property he wanted to sell. The tenant had just moved out, so the house was vacant. He also believed it was not...

There is such an investment that I’ve used over the years and I love it!

It’s called a Health Savings Account or HSA for short.

You can invest in an HSA if you have a qualifying high deductible insurance plan with your employer (or with your own insurance provider if self-employed). You should check to see if your current health plan has an HSA option or if it makes financial sense to switch to another health plan with an HSA option.

The contribution limit for an HSA each year is $7,300 for a family (this is the 2022 rate & it usually goes up each year).

So, check this out:

- When you contribute $7,300 over the course of the year, it reduces your taxable income by that same amount - awesome!

- Then as the $7,300 grows in a good, low-cost index fund,...

Longer Answer:

Retail real estate and investment real estate are two different businesses.

In retail real estate, you are representing clients who are buying or selling houses.

In investment real estate, you are buying and selling houses for yourself for some investment purpose.

In retail real estate, you need a license because the state regulates the industry to ensure you are a qualified fiduciary for your client.

In investment real estate, since you are working for yourself, your activity isn’t regulated in the same way.

Getting a real estate license is typically for the purposes of engaging in the retail real estate business.

Quick Flipping is buying and selling houses yourself for a profit which is the investment real estate business.

The reason I’m making these distinctions is two-fold:

1. Sellers who are selling you a distressed, off-market property at a discount are usually looking for an...