How He Went From 18 to 140 Airbnb Units by Buying a 40 Year Old Company

**Cameron Masters** (0:00)
We went from 18 units under management to over 140, and then we did a friends and family raise for some money, and then Jeremy and I came in with about 30% of the deal between the two of us. We get in there, and our insurance costs are up 35k a year. We could still lose X% of the clients and still come out on top. I'd rather spend 10 grand and back out of a deal than spend a million dollars and buy a bad deal.

**Michael Sjogren** (0:23)
All right, Cam, welcome to the show, brother. How are you doing?

**Cameron Masters** (0:25)
Good, thanks for having me. I'm stoked to be here.

**Michael Sjogren** (0:28)
Absolutely, man.
So you've done something pretty impressive over the last few months. We've been sharing it internally in the mastermind, but you just did a pretty sizeable acquisition for your management company.

**Cameron Masters** (0:40)
Yeah, I just acquired a company. We went from 18 units under management to over 140, and 10 full-time slash part-time employees.

**Michael Sjogren** (0:49)
That's pretty sweet, man. So you went from 18 to 140 pretty quickly.

**Cameron Masters** (0:54)
Yeah.

**Michael Sjogren** (0:55)
Kind of walk us through that whole process. We were just talking offline, but what triggered you to start looking to buy another company, and then we can get into the details of where did you look, how did you find them, what was that whole process like? Then even more importantly, what's been the integration now going from 18 to 140 pretty much overnight?

**Cameron Masters** (1:13)
Yeah. I think a big thing was I'm also in Patrick Switek's mastermind for acquisition. I think like three or four years ago, I was at an event for a different mastermind, and I was like, hey, I want to go all in on something. I know what it was. I picked co-hosting, and got into STR secrets after that, and started building my company. And then I went to Vrbo on the recommendation of Patrick, and I got there and there was people with 150 units, 6,000 units, and they have these entire companies. And I was like, oh, I'm thinking small. I want to go bigger, and I want to get there faster. So I think I text Patrick on the way home from that event, I said, hey, I want to be at 10 million in gross bookings by the end of 2028
So that's kind of been, or by 2028 So that's what I've been pushing towards. And so at that time, I started pulling lists from AirDNA of property managers, seeing who I wanted to reach out to, etc.
And then I actually had a buddy send me this deal. So I underwrote some of the cost to go deals and a few others that those just didn't work out. But a buddy of mine who's now the partner in this business sent me this over and I had met that broker at Burma. So I reached out to the broker and took about five months to get across the finish line. I think we first sent our LOI like two days before Christmas. I signed it in February and then closed in May.

**Michael Sjogren** (2:22)
Sweet, man. So somebody that's not aware, how does that whole process work? How do you buy another business? Most of the listeners are familiar with how you do a real estate transaction. Do you go to a bank? Do you go to the SBA?
Do you pay cash? How do you structure something like this?

**Cameron Masters** (2:37)
I mean, I think it's just like any other real estate deal in some aspects where you can get as creative as you want, right?
So some people do finances through SBAs. Ours wasn't eligible for an SBA. So your next option is some sort of private lending or seller financing. And after dealing with the seller, he wanted something particular. So we found a way to make that happen for him. And then we did a friends and family raise for some money. And then Jeremy and I came in with about 30% of the deal between the two of us.

**Michael Sjogren** (3:03)
Love it, dude. So walk me through. You get this listing, right? You get this referral from, was it Jeremy that sent it to you?

**Cameron Masters** (3:12)
Yeah, Jeremy sent it. It was from Raincatcher. They're a broker kind of like C2G. They do a handful of property management companies. And he just sent it over. And I went, oh wait, I know, I think I know this broker. So we reached out to the broker. I started to underwrite it and just said, hey man, do you want to do this with me? This seems like it'll be a heavy lift. And I really wanted to have a business partner. What's the saying? If you want to go fast, go low. If you want to go far, go together. And I think there's just certain things that are hard to figure out by yourself with just quote employees and with two people. You have someone to bounce it off and tell you if an idea is a good idea, a bad idea, or someone even split the work with. So it's been great. So we got the deal that way and reached out to him. And I think our first LOI was probably a low ball.