In The Lab with Ruben Kanya

Sarah Weaver is a multi-faceted professional known for her expertise in coaching, public speaking, real estate investing, and writing. She is the author of the bestselling book "30 Day Stay" published by Biggerpockets Publishing, which shares her insights on how to succeed in real estate investing. With her extensive experience in the industry, Sarah has become a sought-after speaker, delivering i...

Minoan is at the frontier of a new shopping experience they call “Native Retail.” At the forefront of this retail concept is founder Marc Hostovsky who leads an incredible team that is pushing the boundaries and shaping the future of what the retail experience will look like. We are more likely to purchase a product that we have experienced “in the wild” ourselves from sleeping on a good pillow, l...

Madison is a startup genius, born and raised in a family of entrepreneurs and a third to triplets. So already this is going to be three times more interesting because of her background on tech startups and how she’s transitioned that experience into the short term rental industry, as the founder of Mount. A company she essentially started when she was only 12 years old. At just 25 years old today...

I have two practitioners today in the lab and they come in with a craft, purpose and partnership. The core pillars when experimenting in vacation home rentals. We use the word practitioners intentionally because we believe in doing the actual work and then offering it as a service. It means they understand the industry deeply having gone through it themselves, starting outside their comfort zones...

Zeona is a true real estate experimenter and a skilled investor who’s walked the walk, AND talked the talk. She is the co-host of the INVEST2FI Podcast and the co-author of the “30-day Stay”, which is all about mastering the medium term rental industry. Zeona has hands-on experience in many aspects of real investing, from arbitrage to buy-and-furnish. It all started when Zeona's best friend rented...

Michael Chang is a recovering investment banker, now turned high scale short term rental owner and operator as co-founder of TrustBNB Vacation Rentals. Mike got his MBA from Cornell in 2009, and spent a decade on wall street as an investment banker. While the pay was great – what he now calls the golden handcuffs, he got over the lifestyle overtime. Today, he  reflects that he should have lef...

Derrick's story started like many investors but took a very unconventional route creating a very unconventional real estate financing company. Derrick started flipping units out of state with other people’s money with his partners who were also college friends at Harvard based out of Boston. They did this all out of state, hitting the ground running. The other people’s money that they used came fr...

The short-term rental industry is a niched real estate industry of its own, and Jeffrey Ilouilan started to solve his own problems as a short term rental host trying to source quality furniture for his multiple units as a short term rental arbitrage operator. During his time he launched multiple units that ranged from luxury homes and apartment buildings. Jeffrey Ilouilan, then Co-Founded HostGPO...

The short-term rental industry is a niched real estate industry of its own, and Dave Goodfellow was able to scale his operations within a unique niche of what he calls ApartHotels — giving him the most cash flow through a lean repeatable model. An Aparthotel is a concept of building multiple units under a single roof. Dave began his short-term rental experiments first off in the rental arbitrage a...

Entrepreneurs are the true creators of new products, services and business models — and Tatianna Taylor-Tait has done just that in the niche of interior and furnishing properties, including private room rentals. Tatianna found a way to use her interior designing background to help her break into the short-term rental industry, which has become a huge asset for her services. But she not only does i...

Laura Villamor, a nurse along with her husband, has proven the importance of selecting a market that has consistent flows of traffic year round, serving Marines and their families. From being in healthcare to now real estate, Laura, a superhost, uses her strengths, patience, responsiveness and charisma to host families across the nation in their very niched short-term rental market. Laura and her...

Entrepreneurs in their respective industries always strive for great marketing strategies, but a real estate investor like our guest, believes that the greatest marketing of all time is in your branding. Today, we have the pleasure of having Arthur Colker in the lab, who is the CEO and founder of StayFi — the #1 provider of WiFi marketing services for vacation rental companies. Vacation rental man...

While most investors focus on sharing their passion, Noble on the other hand, emphasizes the importance of being able to solve problems, hence why his business model is business to business – making him a true Entrepreneur. Noble Crawford is an Entrepreneur, Investor and Consultant who is passionate about building profitable businesses, technology, marketing, real estate and most importantly – inv...

While some have niched into short-term rental investing, Alex Jarbo niches down even deeper and specifically develops and builds short-term rental properties to the tune of cabins and tiny homes including land plays for multiple lots to build large short-term rental communities. Alex Jarbo was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. After high school, he felt that going the traditional route of coll...

There’s a significant difference between branding and marketing, and Jordan Kahana, our most recent guest will tell us why. Jordan’s first break was by a desert dog video that went viral on The Dodo with 120 million views! That’s what started Jordan’s journey into marketing but how did he go from that to the short term rental marketing platform that is Stayamo today, a marketplace that has over 60...

Bill Faeth has been an entrepreneur for most of his life, and it all started with his love for sports. It started with an opportunity as a kid, when both he and his mother were invited to a Lakers game. From then on, he did every business venture you could think of from pizza for his college roommates all the way to 2008, where he discovered inbound marketing, and the rest is history. There is no...

Today marks a milestone for Experiment Nation as we’ve reached our 200th episode mark! This means you now have 200 vetted experiments of knowledge that you can use in your respective lab. Join Ruben as he takes a look back at the numerous resourceful interviews from practitioners in the lab and recaps his most notable and favorite ones. During these 200 episodes Ruben has had the chance to extract...

Alex Sabio is a respiratory care practitioner turned real estate investor who not only lives and breathes real estate but he does so while still having his profession as respiratory therapist. Alex has grown his portfolio while hiring the best resources to help him and selecting the right kind of properties to maximize thousands of dollars in net cash flow per month to optimize for freedom and ess...

Ryan Luke is a real estate investor with a very unique model of rental arbitrage baked into his portfolio of properties that he owns as well. Ryan uses his arbitrage model to scale quickly combining cash flow for ownership. He spent months perfecting his business before coming up with a very niched concept in the short term rental industry doing it uniquely overseas, primarily in Dubai. Fast forwa...

Knowledge is truly power. Traci Gagnon who had only $21 in her bank account, bought a book for $14 that became the catalyst of her success. Now she is a real estate investor and an author. When you're on the edge, you'll do anything to survive—and survived she did. They also say that, ‘the master appears when the pupil is ready’,  and Tracy is an excellent example of this. She studied under t...

Stay humble and work hard - Moriya Rockman, Co-Host of the Hospitable Host and Founder of Triangle Luxury, Smiling House Luxury and Villa Tracker. She fell in love with hospitality by chance when she immigrated to the Swiss Alps with her husband. There they had this very old villa where she hosted a friend; her friend introduced her to Airbnb and told her to put it on the market. And then things j...

Be courageous enough to face rejection. Liam Carolan, a real estate investor and co-author of the Hospitable Hosts started out with humble beginnings as a product manager. The thought of leaving his job began weighing heavily on him so he devised a plan for how to do it. He listened intently to podcasts, audiobooks and invested in a mentor which essentially gave him the knowledge needed to start h...

We got another experiment here at the lab for y’all. Andrew Street is both an entrepreneur and a short term rental host. His company, BnB monthly provides a new model for short-term rentals. His brand’s vision is to innovate midterm rentals: a 30-day plus stay. It's an elevated way of investing through a flexible leasing strategy. Plus, another factor is that it's an automated business, a marriage...

Today we have masters of design. The Karwells, creatively derived from a name combination of this powerful duo, is taking the STR world by storm. Emily with her background in fashion and retail, combined with Sarah's creative tenacity. They are a perfect example of polar opposites working perfectly together. There are levels to this, or should we say, fundamentals to design, and they get a bit tri...

One of the most dominant property management softwares is Guesty For Host App which helps  short term rental operators automate their front, middle and back office operation as short term rental hosts regardless of size of their business. As a matter of fact, Guesty for Hosts is the app that we use internally to manage all of our short term rental units that we own and manage. Guesty for host...