#166 - Fly-Inn Rentals for Pilots and Investors with Carollyne Carmichel & Kenya Hodson

[00:00:00] You know, the one thing that pilots talk to us most about is paying too much in taxes. And as income's gone up, taxes have gone up. And so we talk about this on the show all the time. But we're actually going to dive deep into how pilots can execute tax mitigation strategies and investment tactics alike at our Passive Income Pilots Conference. Tait, when are we going to have it this year?

[00:00:24] It's in Las Vegas, Nevada on October 8th and 9th. Everybody's going to fly in on the 7th. It's going to be a jam packed two days of sessions with expert panels and over 250 of your colleagues who are like minded professionals who are looking for those exact same tax mitigation strategies. Join us in Las Vegas. It's going to be an absolute blast. So if you want tickets go to PassiveIncomePilots.com or you can go to the link in the show notes. But with that, let's get to the show.

[00:00:52] You know, this summer I did a, I probably flew my 185 about 100 hours and I went to destinations all over the place, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana. And I did everything from going on dinosaur expeditions where we literally were digging for dinosaur bones. And like my kids were digging up vertebraes of real dinosaur bones in Montana to flying into like very remote dirt airstrips to go on 10 mile hikes.

[00:01:21] And, you know, one thing that I really struggled with was where do you stay? What do you do? Who has a car? And the more remote you get, the more difficult the logistics can become. Right. Right. And I stumbled upon this website called FlyIn. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I'm looking for. I'm looking for the destination more than I am necessarily trying to find the airport.

[00:01:49] And, you know, we talk about this a little bit in the show, but, you know, my wife isn't really into aviation, but she likes going on really fun trips and destinations. And so, right. I thought, man, wouldn't it be cool to have a site you can go to and basically find the perfect lodging destination place to have to go to where you can actually land and have a place to stay.

[00:02:12] That's awesome accommodations right there at the airfield. And I found flyin.com and I thought we got to get the founder of flyin.com on the show because I think it ties two things together really well. I know a lot of our listeners want to get an Airbnb or they want to get really a short-term rental. Well, that's what this is. This is basically combining a short-term rental at an airport that you may already own. And guess what? It doesn't cost anything to list on their site.

[00:02:39] So I just thought this concept was super cool, but what did you take away from it? I just love the consolidation. You know, I've seen some really great places to go and fly in and visit on maybe social media, but it's so fragment. Right. So you, you see it. And if you don't save it, it disappears. You never see it again. It was like, God, where was that place? And of course, you know, you might only see two or three in your entire life, you know, coming across your social media feed.

[00:03:07] This aggregates everything in one place and they're constantly growing and adding new properties. And it's just, it expands the ability of where you can take your plane, which I think is a challenge for general aviation pilots. You know, even though there's 19,000 airports in the U S a lot of them are private. A lot of them are, you know, you have to have a preauthorized permission and this just opens up more destinations.

[00:03:34] Yeah. And you know, one thing I've noticed, and I have no statistical data around this other than just gut feeling, which is we have, there's so many Facebook groups now, like for airline pilots being getting back into general aviation. And I've seen a massive uptick of airline pilots, and I think it ties directly to economics, right?

[00:03:56] I think we all really enjoy flying airplanes, but we haven't been making the salaries and income and wealth generation to actually be a go out and really enjoy it and get one. And I think now that the industry has rising salaries and better pay, better benefits, maybe even more days off, I'm seeing a huge uptick of people going and getting a 172, 182, a tail drag or whatever it might be.

[00:04:22] And people are getting back into it. And then once you get back into it, it's like, okay, I really love flying. Where do I go? And so flyin.com is the answer to that. It's really cool. And just to be clear, we're not, they're not advertising. We're not getting anything for this. It's just free promotion because we think it's cool. We think it's a cool business model. So just want to put that out there.

[00:04:43] Yeah. They're not sponsoring the show at all. And I actually, though, I want to spread the word because I want you guys to put your Airbnb, or I keep saying Airbnbs and I get corrected on that. I want you to put your fly in on the site so I can go because I want more places to like selfishly. I want more places to fly. I want more cool destinations. And man, you, you look at their website for a few minutes and it's like, there's some cool, really cool places. There really are.

[00:05:09] And one of the requirements to be on their site is you got to transportation sorted out, which in general aviation is your Achilles heel. I mean, I think when you take friends along for you, when you fly general aviation, you know, when you roll into the FBO and you grab that old courtesy car, I think that's like, you know, the eighth wonder of the world to a lot of people.

[00:05:28] Like, wait, they just, they just, they just throw you the keys to a car and you can just drive it for a couple hours. But you know, when you get really remote in areas around the country, like there is no rental car place. There is no FBO. Right. So you got to have a host that understands how to make the rental happen with a pilot that's coming in that, you know, doesn't have a car available to them. So I think it's really interesting. So Ryan, who do we have on the show today?

[00:05:53] So today we're talking to Carollyne Carmichel and Kenya, mother, daughter duo who started flying.com. And like a lot of us listeners, she's a pilot. And her daughter grew up around general aviation. Her husband flies. They have a 182. It's all souped up. She'll tell you all about it. And she ran into the same problem that I've been talking about, which is, you know, Hey, like I want a place fun to go. I don't want to just burn holes in the pattern or go on my a hundred dollar hamburger. I wanted another destination.

[00:06:22] So they started aggregating about five years ago, a bunch of properties on a listing platform, and she launched it. And so we simply reached out to her and we're really excited to introduce her and bring her on the show. Fantastic. Let's get to the show. Sweet. Welcome to Passive Income Pilots, where pilots upgrade their money. This is the definitive source for personal finance and investment tactics for aviators.

[00:06:49] We interview world renowned experts and share these lessons with the flying community. So if you're ready for practical knowledge and insights, let's roll. Well, Caroline, welcome to the show. We're really excited to have you. I love flying my airplane and going to really fun destinations. I know a lot of our listeners have actually got back into general aviation flying or already general aviation flying.

[00:07:11] And what's really fun is going to a really cool place to fly your plane. And I stumbled upon your website, fly in, and you provide basically really cool Airbnbs at fly in destinations. But before we get into the show, would you mind telling our listeners a little bit about who you are and a little bit about your business?

[00:07:29] Absolutely. So we don't provide Airbnbs. We provide fly ins. And we are a short term rental platform just like Airbnb or VRBO or Booking.com are. We're another short term rental platform, but ours is very, very exclusive. Ours is the one that you use as a general aviation pilot seeking travel destinations for both leisure and business.

[00:07:57] So we're the ones that you want to go to when you're searching for short term fly in rentals. The ones that have that are in an air park or have their own runway or maybe, you know, a couple blocks away from a municipal airport or something like that. It's just super, super pilot friendly. And not only that, but when you land, every host is responsible for letting you know how you're going to get around when you land.

[00:08:25] And we have a motto that's that goes keys in hand when you land, because we want you to be able to go explore. So as soon as you arrive there, many, many hosts will either let you borrow their car. They'll rent you the car. They'll give you whatever it takes. It's one of their promises that they will have that figured out for you.

[00:08:47] So they might have they even if they have to pick you up and take you to a car rental agency, whatever they have to do to make sure that you have wheels once you get there. And this is so cool. That's amazing because we all we yeah, we all know as pilots, you know, general aviation planes. It's like, you know, we get to these destinations and it's like, OK, how do we get around? You know, we may find a super fun remote area to go, but then how do we go explore? And I think that's just such a great pairing.

[00:09:13] And so apropos to general aviation where, you know, FBOs have courtesy cars and things like that that allow you to get around. That's great. Start from the beginning. Like, like how did you stumble upon this? Like, tell me a little bit about your background and who you are and kind of how you found your way into this really interesting business. So so really, the story is not about me. The story is about all of us who use the platform, me included.

[00:09:36] I just got tired of going to the same little airports or flying the pattern, you know, to my husband asking me, you want to go fly, honey? And it was just I love flying. But when the destinations start getting boring, then it's it just becomes less fun. So I would say as long as we don't land, honey, yes, let's go fly.

[00:10:02] I was in it for the for the flying part, not for the landing part anymore. And and we we started accumulating all these rentals. But it started out with us letting people use our property. And we had a truck there and and people could come and do airplane camping there. And and then people wanted me to list their property. And it just grew and grew. So and now it's it is what it is.

[00:10:28] And we have a curated list of all these places that we all would love to go to. That's amazing. You know, I remember when I first saw something like this. And, you know, we've been talking a lot about airplane camping recently because Ryan's got his 185 and he's been doing a lot of that. But years ago, I saw this a frame. I think it was out in West Virginia or something. And it's on a grass strip. And it's this beautiful a frame. You know, your classic Airbnb. And I thought, God, that would be so fun to fly out to.

[00:10:58] And I didn't realize that there are hundreds of places that, you know, maybe not not an airframe, an A frame, excuse me, but all of these places that you can fly to. And and there just wasn't a platform for it. So this is spectacular. Yes. In fact, there are hundreds of A frames that we can that we're trying to get on the platform. We have 2000 listings that are trying to get on right now. And Kenya Hodson has been talking to them as much as she can, getting pictures ready.

[00:11:27] And just it's a process. It's just, you know, sometimes people have their houses under construction still or they're remodeling or furnishing it or whatever is going on. But we have so many. We're now in in multiple countries even. So if you ever want to go to Argentina, Canada, Mexico, I'm here in Germany right now and I'm visiting a couple of airports and trying to get to know people over here. We have a whole bunch opening up in the UK.

[00:11:55] We're just we just are so excited about all the places we can go to now. It's just a dream come true for Kenya, for me, for my husband. And Kenya, I'm sorry, you're on the podcast, too. Can we get your background as well? Sure. Yeah. Well, Caroline is my mother. Amazing. And yeah, so it's a mother daughter effort.

[00:12:16] But it's been really, really fun to, you know, build this website platform, whatever you guys call it for pilots. I'm not a pilot myself. But, you know, being in general aviation all my life because of my mom and my dad, we just we said, you know what, this is this is necessary. And like she said, we started out with like a small little Facebook group.

[00:12:44] I started doing it like out of college and it was just like small little thing. And it just grew, grow, grow and grow. And then after four years of crazy legal work and just getting all this set up. Now we're here and now we have AI to help us make pictures look spectacular and things. And it's so it's so fun just seeing how technology has grown and seeing what we can do with with the business and how pilots are just loving this.

[00:13:11] And are most of these private strips or are they general aviation airports that have Airbnbs next door? So most of them are, I would say, two thirds of them are either private airstrips or are in an air park. And then the other third are, you know, across the street, down the street. Right. Just, you know, within within a very short distance.

[00:13:35] Or they might be in, for example, if you wanted to stay in in Park City, Utah, for example, you're not allowed to land there. Even if you wanted to have a runway on your property, you couldn't do it. So like city ordinance wouldn't even allow it. So you have to land in Heber, which is 30 minutes away. But we're not going to exclude a beautiful home in Park City just because you can't land right there.

[00:14:01] So the host, for example, would have to have a car there waiting for you at the Heber City Airport. So you park your plane, get in their car and drive to the house and bring all your ski equipment with you. That is amazing. So I actually booked a reservation on fly-in. And so I, unfortunately, the weather canceled and you guys were kind enough to allow that credit to roll to a different future stay.

[00:14:29] And I'll tell you, it was really interesting. The runway that I was going to go to was in Montana, just outside Glacier National Park. And what I found so cool about it was it was this beautiful, rustic log cabin. And you literally pulled, you landed and you pulled the airplane up to the driveway. Right. And so here's your cabin. It's beautiful. Yeah. And to your promise, the host walked me through exactly how I would get my car. Right.

[00:14:59] Like there was a car that you can go get and it would give me the transportation. And then, you know, it would allow me to get around, you know, the Glacier Park area. So I just think it's fascinating that, you know, I love hearing stories about entrepreneurs starting a business because there's such a need. Right. And, you know, I think as listeners and as podcasts, so sometimes we like, we have this feeling of, man, I wish, like, I love flying airplanes. I love general aviation airplanes.

[00:15:29] I just wish there was a few more places to go because kind of once we look at our local, you know, sectional chart, we kind of realize we've kind of been to everywhere. So, like, where do we go next or what was the place that we'd go back to? And for those that have spouses that aren't really into aviation, like my wife, she doesn't get the enjoyment of the flying part, but she gets the enjoyment out of the destination and the uniqueness of it.

[00:15:54] So I'm always, like, really thinking, like, okay, which one of these destinations is going to pass the spouse test for me, the non-aviation spouse test, right? Like, because she doesn't care. Like, it's funny. And, you know, it's great. We have a great time on these trips. But, like, when I fly to Johnson Creek, for example, that is just an aviation nerd fest, right? And, you know, she is just not interested in that.

[00:16:19] Like, I could go to Johnson Creek for months and talk to people and nerd out about airplanes and watch airplanes fly by. But at the end of the day, she's like, okay, now what do we do? And I'm like, well, you just sit here and watch airplanes. No, no, no, no. Like, what are we doing? You know? And it's like, there's got to be, like, a hike and a hot spring to go to and, you know, somewhere cool to go for dinner. And the kids, you know, have to have a fish, you know, swimming hole and, you know, all this stuff, right?

[00:16:47] And so, for me, when I found flying, I was like, jackpot. Like, here's a bunch of really cool places to stay that are right off airstrips. So, I get to scratch my itch of just being around planes and being a nerd about it. And B, like, I can bring my family, enjoy a vacation. And I just think it's so awesome that you guys built this out of a passion and a need.

[00:17:10] And, you know, I love what you said, Kenya, about, like, and now AI is basically turbocharging the situation where it's allowing us to aggregate more data and accelerate. Because really, what it comes down to is, like, you just need someone with the vision and the passion. And then now you can use all these tools to really accelerate your business into something amazing. And, like, somebody has to put it all into one spot. Carollyne Carmichel, I know you and I were going back and forth. And I think I sent you, like, 15 places to add to your website.

[00:17:41] And I was like, yeah. And it was awesome. It was actually with me. Oh, was that with you? Okay. Okay, cool. Well, Kenya, thanks for entertaining me. I mean, I... Oh, totally. It was awesome. Yeah. I mean, and, you know, like, I actually used to fly a Cirrus quite a bit. And I just got bored of the destinations, frankly. And I was like, well, hey, how do I, like, make this a little bit more extreme, right? And that's why I turned to a Cessna 185.

[00:18:09] Because now I can go into shorter runways, mountainous terrain, a little bit more challenging places to get into that a Cirrus maybe isn't necessarily suited for. I mean, you can still go fly a Cirrus to a lot of these flying destinations. But, and I've found so many fun places to go. And it's like, I want to tell, I mean, and I know some people say, well, don't tell anybody because then everybody will come here. But, I mean, guys, like, I think part of this too is like, we got to keep airports open.

[00:18:35] We've got to have people who are passionate about going to these places because, you know, people need to be advocates for these airports. Because if we don't use these airports, they're going to go away. It's so true. Yeah. And so, like, you know, some of the places I've gone this summer, it's like, I mean, just imagine now if you've got, you know, a property owner down the street that can benefit from people flying in. And these pilots love flying and they're looking for any excuse to go to these destinations and just have a really cool experience.

[00:19:05] And especially around Washington, there's just tons of places to go. And it's just kind of like no one is catering to this special purpose pilot that is going to show up without transportation. And, you know, there just isn't a rental car place and, you know, things like that. So I just think it's so fascinating. That's what we're here for. Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. How do you guys make money, if you guys don't mind? Like, how do both sides make money, right? If I'm a pilot, we talk a lot about short-term rentals here.

[00:19:35] And I'm sure a lot of pilots are saying, oh, man, I own a property right next to an airport. How do they make money? And then how does fly-in make money? I would love to answer that question. So pilots, so I should say hosts make money by, we don't charge hosts anything to be on a platform. There's the whatever, let's say that there is that, let's just use round numbers.

[00:19:59] So $100 a night rental, which, you know, our rates on our platform go from $10 to $5,000 a night. So we have, like, you know, we have from campsites to luxury yachts to mansions to everything in between. But let's say $100 a night, the host keeps $97. 3% goes to the credit card processing fee. So the host keeps all of it.

[00:20:23] The way that we make money is we charge a service fee to the guest, and it's 11%, which is roughly half of what all the other booking sites charge. And we're doing that because, honestly, Ryan, and, you know, we want to leave a legacy behind for all of us. I wish that somebody would have done this for me. I'm having so much fun doing it myself and providing this to all of us pilots out there.

[00:20:47] But, you know, I really, how sad that we didn't have this all those years ago, you know, that it's just a few years in the making now. And that, you know, that we've been flying the pattern to stay current instead of going to these beautiful places to stay current. So, anyway, it's just, it's, the host gets to keep it all minus the credit card processing fee. And then the 11% to the, gets charged to the guest. And that's how flying makes money. And that's how hosts make money, too.

[00:21:16] They get to keep all of, all of the rental rate that they charge. Cleaning fee, all of that. Wow. I'm sitting here on your website and just browsing all of these places, and I'm, I'm jazzed. You know, I, I fly Bonanza once in a while. And we, you know, we have a few destinations to go to. But Bonanza isn't really a, it's certainly not a coast-to-coast airplane, right? So, so we're kind of limited to the West Coast, you know, Southern California, Northern California. We've taken it up to Idaho before, but, you know, it's a long trip.

[00:21:46] The fact that you said that two-thirds of the destinations on your website are private airports is just so cool. Or an air park. Sorry, an air park. Exactly. Because, you know, I've only landed on a few grass trips ever, and it is so cool. And there's all of these private airports. Everybody could see those private airports on the, on the sectional chart.

[00:22:12] And you go, oh, man, you know, I guess I can't go there unless it's an emergency, right? And this opens up all of these, all of these air parks that are private that you normally just can't drop into, right? How does that work in terms of landing at, let's say, somebody's renting their house at an air park, and it's technically private. It's not like, you know, GA pilots are just dropping through, right? How do you get clearance to land there? And real quick, for listeners that have no idea what we're talking about.

[00:22:40] So there is public airports that anybody can land at. There's private airports that are privately owned by individuals that are publicly available to use. And then there's private airports that are restricted and by permission only. Yes. So, so when we, we talk about the United States, I think has about 16,000 airports.

[00:23:09] And as a layman flyer, you probably, what's that? More than that. 19. Over 16,000. Yeah. I think there's like 16,000 in the state of Michigan alone. But it's crazy. Like there's a lot of airports in America, but, but as a layman flyer, we only know like, like pilots, we know this, but, but if you're listening to the show and you're not a pilot, you probably know about 50 airports exist. But what you don't know is there's tens of thousands of airports beyond that.

[00:23:37] And then they fall into these different categories of publicly available owned by the state or owned by the Bureau of Land Management, managed by, you know, basically the government. Some of them are privately owned, but publicly available. And then there's like these further restricted ones where you have to have permission from someone to actually land there.

[00:23:58] And what Tate is saying is that, at least I think what you're saying is fly-in has these really restrictive airports on their platform that you can now gain permission through renting a property. And I, and I think that's, I think that's what you're trying to say, right, Tate? Exactly. Exactly.

[00:24:14] So when there's a property for rent on, on fly-in, fly-in.com, the owner automatically is giving you permission to land on that grass strip or on that, you know, it could be a paved runway, but whatever it is, even if it's by permission only, by, by virtue of having it for rent, you can land there automatically. Now there might be some special instructions that come with that.

[00:24:42] And the host sometimes wants the guest to call in to get the instructions from directly from the host. But most of the time they just put it right on the, on the listing itself. You can just read them right there. Amazing. But you don't need special permission to land if, if it's being offered for rent. Yeah. I'm looking at, at these listings. I'm having a blast just browsing your website as we're talking here.

[00:25:07] You know, you've got 30 listings up in Alaska and just this, these unbelievable properties that are on grass strips next to rivers and fewer. I mean, it's just like, this is blowing my mind. This is amazing. I'm so happy that you're, that you love browsing as much as I love browsing. This is exactly what I envisioned when I started the company. I just wanted so many places to go. And I'm in the same boat with you.

[00:25:35] You have a 185, so that's a tail dragger. I have a 182 that we've turned into a bush plane with these gigantic tires, vortex generators, stole kit, everything, you know, you name it. And just, it'll go anywhere. But we get to go to all these places now. It's so, it's so neat that so much is available and so much more to come.

[00:25:58] By the end of the year, we're hoping to, to get to those, you know, to those 2000 listings that are on standby, trying to come on and waiting for, we don't allow anybody on unless they meet our five host promises. Ryan started touching on that earlier. And the five host promises are, number one, obviously the accommodations. And it could be from mansions to campsites and everything in between. Even a yacht, like I was saying.

[00:26:27] And that was up in Alaska. If you guys want to take a look at that, it's absolutely beautiful. The number two is a place to land. And it could be a runway, whether it's grass, asphalt, anything, a seaplane base, a float pond, lots of those in Alaska, a helipad for rotorcraft and a place to secure your aircraft, whether that be, you know, some kind of mooring, tie down, hangar, just a way to secure your aircraft.

[00:26:56] Number four is the ground transportation component. You can't get around unless you have a way to get around. Some properties are exempt, such as Mackinac Island, for example. No cars are allowed on that island, so no car is necessary. But they might provide a bicycle, for example, on the properties that are there. Then number five is what you experienced, Ryan, when you rented.

[00:27:23] You know, the hosts are, I think 99% of them are pilots. And if they're not, they're like a pilot's daughter or a pilot's wife that's running the show. And they understand what general aviation looks like. And if there's, you know, for safety's sake, you're not going to be condemned, I should say, to, because you're trying to be safe and you're trying to avoid a storm. We get it. We all understand each other.

[00:27:51] And that's what it takes to be part of what we call the fly-in family. We're just a huge, huge family of pilots here. We all understand each other. We're all in the same boat. So that's the beautiful part. So, Carolyn, we talk, as Ryan said, a lot about short-term rentals on this podcast because of the tax benefits. And if you're not familiar with those, we've got lots of episodes that you can go back to and learn about the tax benefits using cost segregation, bonus depreciation.

[00:28:19] And if you run it as a short-term rental with an average length of stay of seven days or less, then you can take that depreciation to offset W-2 income, which is just fantastic. And so I know that a lot of pilots out there have put this strategy into their own personal portfolio, whether it's buying a ski house or a lake house.

[00:28:35] If someone likes this and they, let's say, they own a general aviation airplane, they've been interested in buying something on an airpark, how can they do research to ensure that, you know, A, the community allows for short-term rentals? How can they do research in terms of what would be a good property to buy if they wanted to kind of convert their short-term rental strategy to something that would nest in nicely with this?

[00:29:01] So that would be the first thing to do is if you're going to be in a community, like, you know, you really want to make sure that the HOA allows it before you purchase something in that community. And I'm not, I have to say this legally, I give myself an honorary JD because like Kenya was saying earlier, it took four years of legal work to prepare this website for the public. And so I'm not allowed to give advice as a lawyer or as an accountant.

[00:29:29] You'll have to speak to a lawyer or an accountant yourself to, you know, to figure out your own tax situation, your own legal situation. But I can say that if, that if you want to have a short-term rental and you're going to be in an HOA that doesn't allow it, then that's obviously not a good choice.

[00:29:44] So do the research on that and then just really talk to your lawyer, talk to your accountant and find out what your specific tax situation is, what bracket you fall into and all of that so that you can know how to best handle it. But just like you were saying, yes, if it's seven days or less, that's what I've heard also.

[00:30:07] And I can't confirm one way or the other, but that gives you a significant tax advantage, especially for W-2 people like you were talking about. And there are a lot of commercial pilots who are in this boat. You know, they're W-2 employees of a major airline. They want to get into the short-term rental business. We've seen a large influx of hosts that are in that category. And that's what I hear from them.

[00:30:35] What is your number one highest grossing property on the platform? If you can say that. What's been the most popular or flying destination? Yeah, I think I'd rather not disclose that because that would be unfair to the other hosts. But I will tell you what categories seem to do the best or what. And I can also go into regions of the country.

[00:31:02] So, for example, the properties in the south seem to do better for more weeks out of the year because the weather seems to be better. There are more flying days, it seems like. Except that sometimes this year we didn't. I live in Utah and we didn't have a winter at all, which was absolutely remarkable. I miss the skiing. We got zero skiing days, it feels like.

[00:31:32] But we had, you know, every single day in the winter we weren't flying practically. But the south seems to do great. And then obviously the properties that you can fly into that are in an air park that are not like down the street or down the road from one, obviously those do better. How many properties do you have on the platform as of right now? So that fluctuates day to day.

[00:31:57] Sometimes the hosts deactivate them because they're fixing them up or, you know, or they're making changes to their pricing or their pictures. So on average about 300 right now. Yeah, roughly 300. We have many, many, many more to go.

[00:32:18] And it's a work in progress, just getting people onboarded, making sure they keep all five of the host promises that we ask of them. Now, if I wanted, you know, I kind of caught you on Facebook, I think on your Facebook group, and I reached out to invite you on the podcast. And then I bombed you with like a gazillion places to put on your site.

[00:32:40] But if somebody, somebody with my passion wants to like refer you destinations, places, how would they go about doing that? Do you have like a, I know I see how you can become a host and advertise, but is there like a, you know, make a suggestion, you know, like for example, I flew into Stahecan, Washington, which is a remote air strip, you know, on North Lake Chelan, only accessible by boat or airplane.

[00:33:06] And, you know, the host that I had, you know, provided me with a ATV at the airstrip and a cabin down the way. And I was like, Oh my God, this host needs to be on your site. This is amazing. She accommodated the pilot. She gets it right. Yeah. Um, if I, you know, but obviously like I don't own that cabin, but I just would have loved to have shared it with, you know, the flying community. Do you guys have like an intake form for that or something? You know, that's a great idea. I'm so happy that you brought that up. What we do is we just, you know, just the conventional ways are great.

[00:33:34] Just, we have the contact form fly-inn.com forward slash contact. You can go right there and, and, and submit a, you know, all the information, any information that you have on that host. You can also just give us a call 833-IFLY-IN 321-IFLY-IN and, uh, and just call us. We're always available. Send us messages, DM us all the normal ways. We take them. We take them all. Wonderful. Wonderful. The intake form though.

[00:34:04] I really love that. That's a referral form. I love it. Yeah. I mean, I think I, you know, cause I share the same passion that you guys have. I mean, you guys took it to a, an, another level here by launching an entire company around it. But, you know, I, I love like leaving reviews on airports and explaining what you can do. And I even have a, I just started a YouTube channel, um, that talks about my flying adventures and what I do at certain destinations.

[00:34:31] And I kind of joke that like, um, I have something called the spouse test. Like it has to pass the spouse test now. You know, and what I mean by that is, you know, maybe your spouse loves aviation, but if they don't, you know, you have to have like enough to do for the spouse test. And then the family test, right? Like if you're bringing children along, you know, that's kind of like a filter for me is like, okay, are the kids going to have enough to do when we get to the destination? You know, I just really love that a lot. So. I think that's great. Yeah.

[00:34:59] We talk about that all the time at the booths at sun and fun and Oshkosh. They're saying pilots come up to us all the time and say, oh my gosh, my life, my life is going to be so much better. My wife is going to be so happy. I'm so glad I found you guys. So we get it. As much as I love camping. She actually like, that's one of the requirements is like, we got to be in a cabin or a lodge or some kind of hotel accommodations for that, you know?

[00:35:25] And for those listeners who are tuning in, who are like, okay, you know, they can't speak specifics on tax laws or how to structure an Airbnb rental. The best place to learn about that is our upcoming conference in Las Vegas on October 8th and 9th. We actually, Tate and I are hosting a passive income pilots conference live and in person in Vegas.

[00:35:49] And we have tax attorneys coming to that, strategists, people that can help you structure setting up your Airbnb and preparing your taxes to be strategic about making sure you're taking advantage of these tax breaks that you get from running an Airbnb. So if you're a listener and you're like, huh, this sounds interesting. Like I want to get into this. I want to deduct some depreciation against my airline income. Like we actually walk you through how to do that in person. So check it out.

[00:36:16] There's tickets for sale in the show notes as well. You can click on that for the PIP live event. Thanks for mentioning that, Ryan. Great information. And do tell them about fly-ins versus Airbnbs. Absolutely. You know, Airbnb, the air part, I don't understand that. I mean, see, Airbnb would seem to be even more fitting for something like this, right? Like an air bed and breakfast. But fly-in is great. Fly-ins are my go-to now.

[00:36:44] The fun little backstory on Airbnb was originally the founders put an air mattress in their spare bedroom and rented that out. Oh, interesting. So that's where Airbnb came from. But it's too bad the name is taken because that would have been great. I love flying. It's perfect. It is. It is. It's a great website. It's exactly what you're doing in. You're flying in to fly-in destinations. I just, I think it's just perfect. Fantastic. Well, this has been fantastic.

[00:37:13] Thank you so much for sharing. I think our listeners will definitely get a lot of use out of this. Hopefully we can continue contributing to the platform and getting more and more destinations on there. I love it as well that, you know, I mean, I host an Airbnb with my wife and the fees that Airbnb takes are quite high. So, again, you know, if you're thinking about buying a short-term rental, this could be a great strategy. I love it. So thank you so much.

[00:37:40] Or even if you have a short-term rental and you're willing to meet the five-part test, right? I mean, this is pretty straightforward. I mean, I think a lot of, I think a handful of our listeners are going to have properties they could probably submit to the platform tomorrow. Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. We would absolutely love to have everyone on the platform that meets those five criteria.

[00:38:01] And even if you're not a pilot and you own one of these properties and you qualify with all, you know, and you meet all those five criteria, we would love to have you. We would just have a conversation with you so that you can understand the pilot mentality. And you can accommodate pilots the way that they would want to be accommodated. So just give us a call. Right. And we do sync calendars with Airbnb and Vrbo.

[00:38:27] So you can keep your short-term rental for the other guests that you have. And then you have pilots coming in as well. And booking.com. And we sync calendars with everybody, with all the other platforms. That's great. That's amazing. Well, thank you so much to you both for coming on and sharing a little bit more about your business and background.

[00:38:49] And for those pilots out there that are listening, get your properties on this site and get in your Cessna or whatever you're flying, your Beechcraft and go fly in somewhere. Thanks for joining us and catch you guys on the next one. Thanks for joining us and that's it.

[00:39:13] for the PIP live events in October 8th and 9th in Las Vegas, Nevada. If you enjoy our content, what you're hearing, what we're talking about, and you want to network with other pilots that are doing what you're doing, tax and legal and investment professionals, see you in Las Vegas, go to passiveincomepilots.com to get your tickets. Ticket prices do go up in August. So jump on that as soon as you can. Thanks, everybody.