Mike Stohler is the managing partner at Gateway Private Equity, which creates and manages income-producing hotel real estate investment portfolios for investors. In this episode, he tells us why he made the switch to hotels after accumulating 1400 multifamily doors, how thinking outside the box helped him keep his hotels afloat during the pandemic, and why he is now shifting his focus to hotel development.
Mike Stohler | Real Estate Background
- Managing partner at Gateway Private Equity, which creates and manages income-producing hotel real estate investment portfolios for investors.
- Portfolio:
- 8 single-family rentals
- 3 hotels
- Based in: Scottsdale, AZ
- Say hi to him at:
- Best Ever Book: Money Secrets of the Rich by John Burley
- Greatest Lesson: People say your investor comes first. The asset should be first. Don’t jeopardize the asset.
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TRANSCRIPT
Ash Patel: Best Ever listeners, welcome to the best real estate investing advice ever show. I'm Ash Patel, and I'm with today's guest, Mike Stohler. Mike is joining us from Scottsdale, Arizona. He is the managing partner at Gateway private equity, which creates and manages income-producing hotel real estate investment portfolios for investors. Mike's portfolio consists of eight single-family rentals and three hotels. Mike, thank you for joining us and how are you today?
Mike Stohler: Doing well, thanks, Ash.
Ash Patel: Hey, it's a pleasure to have you here today. Mike, before we get started, can you give the Best Ever listeners a little bit more about your background and what you're focused on now?
Mike Stohler: Yeah, I started my first real estate adventure with single-family homes back in a small town in Indiana. I call it the PG days, pre-Google. The greatest thing that you guys have now is all this plethora of knowledge that people can grab a hold of. Back when I first started, I failed miserably, man. Buying homes was easy, but how do you become a landlord? How do you do the leases? What are all these things? And what was I gonna do, go through the Yellow Pages to find the answers? So it was a very hard lesson learned.
Ash Patel: You had encyclopedias back then too, right?
Mike Stohler: Encyclopedias and Yellow Pages. [unintelligible 00:01:58.02] that was all I could do. But I just knew that real estate was it. I took a break, became an airline pilot, just because it was my dream, and then when I started making more money, paid off the debt from failing miserably, I started getting back into it. I went from more single-family, eightplexes, twentyplexes, fiftyplex on up... I owned and managed 1,400 doors, and then started selling those off whenever cap rates started really coming down. And then I was like "Well, what in the world should I do now? I don't want any more multifamily at 3% cap, 3.5% cap."
So from networking, which everyone should do, and through mentoring, I found a guy that was into hotels. And ever since 2017 we've been focused on hotels, and I love it.
Ash Patel: 1,400 doors, and you saw the cap rates going down... You saw them reversing. Sorry, you saw them going down.
Mike Stohler: Yup.
Ash Patel: And you figured "Hey, I might as well cash out at this point."
Mike Stohler: I bought at 8% to 10% back in the day, made a lot of money the last recession in '07, '08, '09, when the commercial loans -- everything kind of crashed in '07 and '08, but those commercial loans were starting to come down around '11, '12, because they were on 5-year balloons, things like that... And there was 100% occupied complexes that made money, but because they didn't value, the banks wouldn't refinance them. So I came in, and bam, started picking things up. And then the cap rates started to get down in like the threes, the fours, and I started selling them off. But then I was like "I don't want to buy anything at 3% and 4%." So I made the switch.
Hotels again were 8 to 10+, if you did cap rates. You really don't do cap rates on hotels, but if you did, it'd be 8% to 10%.
Ash Patel: Mike, you're very opportunistic. I love that. Did you buy these multifamily properties from the bank, or a court receiver?
Mike Stohler: Great question. Yes, and others were seller financing. And some were where I just picked up the note and I said "Hey, you're three months behind, and I'll pay that three months, and I'm just going to take over your loan for you." I did that on some smaller ones, seller-financing on some of the bigger ones, because I was like "Look, you're not gonna be able to refi. The bank's going to grab this. I'll just start paying your mortgage as it is, and I'll be able to come in with the extra money down, because now they're evaluating it at 60% instead of 80%." They didn't have that difference. I'd come in with the difference, and just buy it that way. Just negotiate it with the banks.
Ash Patel: Mike, did you get into hotels during Covid, or before?
Mike Stohler: It was before, yeah. I had [unintelligible 00:04:46.28] prior to Covid.
Ash Patel: So Mike, hotels were not in distress before Covid, right?
Mike Stohler: Correct.
Ash Patel: Why were you attracted to buying hotels
Mike Stohler: I like the business aspect of hotels. Multifamily, once you get into a lot of doors - it's kind of funny; it's not that I started hating people. As all landlords, just sit there and just sit there and just wrap your heads around "Oh my God, why do I have to put up with tenants again?" But I really liked the business aspect of hotels, and I've loved the fact that I could change my "rent" every day, instead of being [unintelligible 00:05:26.02] Every day I'd get to pay people to work for me, so I'd get the satisfaction of creating income, and the paycheck for my employees. I liked the fact that the government and the states consider the hotels a business, instead of real estate. So there's just a lot of things I like about the hotels... And I like the fact -- I do franchise hotels, so I like that I can just put up the Hilton sign, or put up a Wingate sign and pay them a small fee, but they bring in everyone that stays. I don't have to do any advertising or marketing.
Ash Patel: So you listed a lot of positives about the hotel business. What about numbers, the returns pre-Covid? Were the returns much higher than multifamily or other real estate assets?
Mike Stohler: Yes. Pre-Covid if you'd take let's say a 100-key hotel and a 100-unit multifamily - I don't have a calculator; let's say it's $1,000 a month, 100 units. You're getting X amount per year, and it's stationery. That's just what you're going to get. My gross is so much more, because one day it'd be $80/night, but then something comes up and it's $250/night. So instead of 100 yearly leases, I'm doing 100 times 12 months times four weeks every day. So let's say I stay at 80% and you're at 80% with the multifamily; my gross is just so much more. Granted, I have more expenses, I have vendors, I have breakfast, Wi-Fi and all that sorts of stuff... But the cash at the end of it is higher on hotels.
And the appreciation back then was really good, because you could buy -- the land that hotels sat on, they appreciated a lot more, because I could get them in tech parks, I could get in really high-value land. So that was another thing that was also going up in appreciation. So when we started selling some hotels, it was just unbelievable, the appreciation.
Ash Patel: Basically, you were the original short-term rental before that phrase was coined, with short-term rentals, right?
Mike Stohler: That's true. And I love the fact that -- I like what's called limited service hotels. I do kind of higher-end limited service; that means I give you free breakfast, free Wi-Fi, and get out. You're not gonna stay usually for a week or two. It's not a resort. So I don't have to deal with a lot of things. I don't have conference rooms, I don't have restaurants.
Ash Patel: What about a pool and a gym?
Mike Stohler: Yeah, we have a pool, we have gyms, 24-Hour Fitness, we have the little snack shops, marketplaces, things like that... But it's geared towards -- you're coming in for a couple nights, and that's why we don't compete with the Airbnbs. I get that question a lot... We deal more with work people coming in for a couple days. If we have two or three gentlemen, a couple ladies, you're not gonna rent an Airbnb. There's just so many wrong things with the business, you know, in the corporate world.
Ash Patel: That's how rumors get started.
Mike Stohler: That's how rumors get started. So you're gonna stay in our hotels.
Ash Patel: Yes. Funny you mentioned that. We were traveling, looking at some property in Northern Indiana. By the way, where was it in Indiana that you were?
Mike Stohler: Anderson Pendleton area.
Ash Patel: Sure. I went to IU in Indiana.
Mike Stohler: Hey, I'm a fellow [unintelligible 00:08:48.02]
Ash Patel: Awesome. So we Merrillville and Valpo Indiana to look for property... And it was three of us. We all get along very well, so I thought it'd be fun to get an Airbnb; we just couldn't find anything. But you're right, if there was females along, if my assistant was with us, that's not an option, right?
Mike Stohler: It's not an option, because even if something didn't happen, you make someone upset three months down the road and all of a sudden something could happen.
Ash Patel: Yeah, I get that.
Mike Stohler: And then you have to prove that something didn't.
Ash Patel: Yeah. Mike, how did the hotels fare during Covid, and where are they?
Mike Stohler: Arizona, one in Georgia, and we're ready to do some development in Northern Arizona. Here's what I've learned. Prior to Covid I'd buy anywhere. During Covid, I really learned to look at different aspects, just like "Which of the hotels did well, and why did they do well?" Some of our hotels did extremely well during Covid. Number one, they're in what I call now free states. I don't wanna get into politics; it's a business decision. So don't take this as a political attack, but you have to now look at business.
Everyone knows hotels in California had to shut down for 6-7 months more. Banks gave them 3-4 months deferment, so that means they had 30k, 40k, 50k dollar loans plus that they had to start paying, and they were not allowed to stay open.
So thank God our hotels were in number one tourist destinations. A lot of people that were shut down went to Arizona, went to Georgia, went to Florida, went to Texas, went to what I call the free states, where we were allowed to stay open. Hotels - we're actually essential businesses. So those did really well. Truckers were essential during Covid, so our hotels that were along the major interstates that had truck driver parking did extremely well. The hotels that I thought would do very well, that did extremely well pre-Covid, stunk. They were the ones that were in high-tech business parks that rely on people coming to work, people visiting tech centers.
Ash Patel: Interesting. What states were those in?
Mike Stohler: We have a very big tech area in Chandler. Intel's there, microchips facilities... Just a lot of manufacturing things, and it was empty. That's when as a hotel you have to think outside of the box... And we did day use rentals. Now all of a sudden you have to work at home; you have three kids, a stay-at-home spouse, and you are now at the kitchen table trying to do Zoom calls and get business. We're going like "Hey, $50 a day, come to our hotel room and you get the nice, quiet office, free coffee", and that really helped.
And another thing that really helped those hotels was because California was shut down, they couldn't even do outside sports - soccer, volleyball, they couldn't do anything. They shut the entire state down. So we had team clubs that were four miles apart in San Diego travel all the way to Arizona just to play each other, and then go back. And I'm like "Okay, thank you, California", because that kept us going.
Ash Patel: I love the day use idea. I would even take it a step further, "Hey, if you want a quiet night's sleep away from your family, you might as well spend the night here, too. Take turns with your spouse."
Mike Stohler: Yeah.
Ash Patel: That's brilliant. Where did you get that idea from?
Mike Stohler: It was just thinking outside the box, because some of the people, friends of mine that were 9-to-5ers, that used to go to [unintelligible 00:12:28.13] for meetings, and for different calls, and they were complaining that they couldn't go to those; that those were even shut down. So I'm thinking, "Well, wait a minute... I am a [unintelligible 00:12:42.29] plus I have a shower... Free coffee..." It just came to me. It was like "Why would I not become the next day-use office space?"
Ash Patel: Yeah. Which also is a reason that small offices are on fire right now. The large, high-rise office buildings - I get it, they're struggling... But small, one, two-person offices - very easy to rent, for those reasons. Like you mentioned, kids were at home, spouse is at home... The kitchen table can only serve so many cubicles, right? Really, in the summer time, when the kids are off school, you've got pets running around... Is that a conducive work environment?
So how did those hotels that were not in the hot spots - how did you dispose of them? Or do you still have them? Have they recovered?
Mike Stohler: Yeah, we still have them, and thank God that none of our hotels had to close. One of them we got down to 8% occupancy. What we did is we became -- instead of a four-story hotel, we became a two-story hotel. We just shut two stories down; turned off the air, turned off everything and just became a 20-unit hotel, or a 25-unit. But they're doing well.
Another thing, thank God the states that they're in just love the tourist-type areas. The business ones are starting to come back; there's been a lot of growth, a lot of construction... We're in a hot spot, we have a hotel where electric vehicles are being manufactured, so there's just a lot of booming industry around there...
So when I said earlier that we didn't have to any marketing or anything like that because we have franchises, that's a little misconception, because our [unintelligible 00:14:22.26] do go to the city councils and the chambers, and trying to find out who's coming in and who's building this, so that we can kind of get in front of grabbing that labor. So that is something that's really helped us, is construction.
Ash Patel: You're an opportunistic individuals. So there are still hotels that have not recovered. Does something inside you wanna chase those deals, and buy them for pennies on the dollar?
Mike Stohler: Yeah, right now - it's kind of funny; you have two sides. You have what the real numbers are saying, and then you have the owner that says "Well, it could do this", the performance. It's in every industry, it's in everything.
So right now, there are some that are going to auction, that I'd love to pick up, but the ones that aren't going to auction yet, I want this year's numbers, last year's numbers. The owners want to sell it based on 2018-2019 numbers. With the economy going like it is now, smart investors - ladies and gentlemen, if you're listening, don't every buy anything based on emotions. "Oh my God, I would love to have this hotel, multifamily, this area... It's the perfect investment, it's the perfect asset." If the numbers don't work, don't buy it. Because I've learned a long time ago that I cannot speculate -- I don't know if the economy is gonna recover to what it was four years ago, so I can't buy something based on 2018, 2019 numbers, because I don't know when it'll get back to that.
But yes, right now I'm looking at development, ground-up, because I know that I can put in the technology where I don't have to worry about employees showing up, or if they wanna work. That's another thing that we have to deal with. We had Covid, now we have the great resignation, and then now people don't wanna work, and now people want ten bucks more an hour... Such as this, over and over and over again. So I wanna build some hotels where - look, I don't need a front desk; I have a little kiosk, I have a computer, the computer never sleeps, the computer never wants a raise, so we do that... So I like that. And they're going to be built 2-3 years from now, and that's my speculation, I guess, is that I'm thinking that the economy will correct itself by then... So that's what we're focused on now.
Ash Patel: And are the major flags - Hilton, Marriotts - are they going away from employees as well? Are they enabling this technology?
Mike Stohler: They are. It's a great question... The bigger ones are a little more onboard; the Marriott's, the Hiltons, the Wyndhams. They like that. The smaller ones say "We like the interaction. We want someone to say "Hi, how are you?" and they want the front desk, they want the concierge, they want all this stuff.
The trademarks, the autograph collections, which were kind of the higher-end, and some of the things we're looking is what's called the Trademark by Wyndham, which is their higher-end boutique, but it's still limited service. It could be a bar, but there's not gonna be a restaurant. It could be mixed-use... They could have a robot clean the room, I'd do it, but it is what it is. But yes, to answer your question, the bigger brands embrace -- if you walk into most Marriotts, you can check in via your phone, you can grab your key via your phone... You don't even need the front desk.
Break: [00:17:43.10] to [00:19:38.17]
Ash Patel: Mike, can you still find deals on hotels in those touristy areas? Or have they all readjusted to market?
Mike Stohler: They have not readjusted to market. It depends on what kind of loan the person had with the ownership. If they had just a regular loan, a conventional loan, or an SBA loan, they're doing okay. If they had what's called a CMBS loan, which is very popular in the hotel space - a CMBS is basically a stock market fund that is your bank. You can't call up Wells Fargo, your stock broker and say "Yeah, I need a deferment on my loan." There's just no way of doing that. So they're the ones who really suffered. And it wasn't until it was too late. I think it was Trump in his last year, all of a sudden they figured out that "Oh my God, there's these loan out there", and they said "Well, you don't have to pay them", but you still had all of this money that accumulated, and was drawing interest. So they're the ones that can't recover; they just don't know how to recover. Their asset's not worth what it was 2018, so they can't refi for what their balance is. So they're the ones that I can find deals...
Ash Patel: Is there gonna be a lot more pain coming in that sector based on the future outlook of loans coming due?
Mike Stohler: Well, the pain is that the banks right now are starting to kind of pull back because of the economy and the inflation. Multifamily - I don't know what their flavor is for that, but with hotels right now if I wanted to get some new stuff, they're kind of pulling back a little bit, because they just don't know if people are gonna be traveling six months from now, because the inflation -- the cost of gas, the cost of airfare, the cost of everything... It's a little bit easier if you stay in Florida, Arizona, because I can prove that people are still traveling to Arizona, especially now that it's 70 degrees outside, and pretty soon it's gonna be 20 and 30 degrees out in the North-East.
Ash Patel: Mike, with hotels there's that dreaded PIP, the property improvement plan, right?
Mike Stohler: Yeah...
Ash Patel: How big of a deal is that? From what I understand, they come up every 5 to 10 years...
Mike Stohler: Five, yeah.
Ash Patel: ...and yo're overhauling the entire hotel. Artwork on the walls, towel bars, showers, vanities... And it just drains all of your profits. So how big of a deal is that?
Mike Stohler: The truth about PIP is it's usually in stages... Every couple of years I'm doing something. It could be sofas this year, the pull-out couches... It's always something. And it can be draining. For instance, I have a Quality Inn... They changed what the Q looks like in the signage. Just a little hash; that's all they did. Instead of a little curly Q, it's a straight line. Nobody in the entire freakin' world is gonna ever notice, but I have to change everything. $60,000 just for the signage that I have to change because the little Q's different. So you just have that, and you're just like "Wow..." That's just what you have to do in order to have a franchise. And there are some things that I fight back on, and I just don't do it. Artwork, for one thing... A lot of times they don't even notice.
Ash Patel: Yeah, one set of generic artwork for another.
Mike Stohler: Yeah. What you have to do is you have to know other vendors, because the franchises want you to use their approved vendors. And they more than likely get a cut from those vendors. "Okay, you have to replace this X, Y and Z, and you have to choose between these two vendors." Well, these two vendors know that they're the only ones in the world, so it's like $45 a square foot for wallpaper, instead of $8. So I force the waiver. "Here's what I'm going to buy, and here's the one that you want me to buy. You tell me which one is the vendor-approved and which one's not." And if they can't do it, I'm going with the cheaper one.
Ash Patel: Good. I like it. Are you building cheaper than you can buy right now? Because that's what's going on with multifamily, right? A lot of times multifamily prices have gone through the roof, cap rates are so low... And people realize they can make more money building. Are you gonna end up making more money, and are you buying at a comparable cost of what used hotels are going for?
Mike Stohler: Great question, and the answer is yes. And there's two different ways we're actually looking at building hotels. The lumber prices are now starting to come down a little bit... But another option that we have, which is really good, is building hotels out of steel, instead of lumber. The steel costs a little bit more, but you get a lot less insurance costs, no maintenance... There's no termites, there's no fire... There's just a lot structurally to last a lot longer. But yes, the highest cost right now that we worry about is not necessarily the building part, it's finding the land... Because land is expensive.
Ash Patel: What's the minimum acreage you need for your run-of-the-mill hotel?
Mike Stohler: We like 2,5 acres, minimum. We can do 1.8 to 2 if we stack it tall. More of the regulations are you have to have so many parking spots for keys... But to get a nice-sized floor, I like 2.5 acres.
Ash Patel: And what kind of returns are you seeing? Cash-on-cash returns on hotel investments.
Mike Stohler: Prior to Covid it was a lot higher. On the ones that we're talking about, that are along the highways and have truck driver parking, we're seeing 10% plus. It's really good. The one that's in that business park is still struggling. We're still up six figures for the year, but do I need to keep saving a little bit because I don't know what it is, or do I do the disbursement to the investor? So that one - it's still the one that has lost a lot of money during Covid-19; we just burned through our reserves. Then all of a sudden it came back really well; we were able to save a lot of disbursements, and then bam, it was starting to cut again because the businesses and corporates were starting to pull back on travel again, because they can't afford to fly people out, and they're doing a lot more Zoom calls, and things like that. So that one, we're looking at probably 4% or 5% return on that one. And what we're hoping is, because now we're coming into the busy seasons, we'll probably hopefully gonna make a little bit more than that.
Ash Patel: Do you typically raise the entire downpayment amount from investors?
Mike Stohler: Yes.
Ash Patel: What types of returns do the investors see?
Mike Stohler: Well, in the ones -- not that business one?
Ash Patel: Yeah, let's take the good ones.
Mike Stohler: So in the good ones... What we do is a 12% to 15% preferred return, and then what we try to do is after that's done, then we do an 80/20 split. 80 to the investors, 20 to the general partners.
Ash Patel: Okay. Why do you give such a high pref?
Mike Stohler: Well, the way that syndications work - let's say that I give that 15%, and I do, and the hotels that I'm allowed to do that, I can do that. But then let's say I can only give a 10%; well, it just rolls into the next disbursement. And I do it because the appreciation hits so hard. So if I can't do it during the year - and there were some years during Covid that I wasn't able to do it - then they still get it on the backend, and the appreciation of those assets is just so nice that they'll end up getting more than that. The overall return is 2.3 to 2.5 times your initial investment...
Ash Patel: Over how many years?
Mike Stohler: Hotels are a little big longer, so we like to do seven years. I can sell within 5, I can't hold it for 10. We may have to hold two of them, just because of Covid... But they're longer. Because it's a business, I can't go in and put lipstick on it and flip it. You have to sit there and say -- it's an X amount times to gross. So I don't sell it based on the cap rate. You look at this type of hotel, and this type of an area, in this zip code, a hotel sells for 4.5 times gross. That's how you do businesses. You don't go buy a McDonald's based on a cap rate. It's an X times gross, and that's how hotels work.
Ash Patel: Yeah. So Michael, what's a normal day look like for you? Because now you're running businesses. So what's a normal day?
Mike Stohler: Good question. A normal day is -- each hotel has a general manager, and then I have an area person that kind of oversees the GMs. I have a plan, I call it my default [unintelligible 00:28:26.26] and I just go through them and say "Okay, this hotel I'm going to look at what's coming up, what we have going on at that hotel." Am I doing a PIP? Am I doing some type of renovation? What kind of businesses are coming through? So I just kind of go through each hotel and what is going on with each individual and hotel, and then I'll spend a couple hours on each hotel. And that's half the day. And then towards the end of the day I look at the emails, and then a couple times a week I have the actual meetings with the GMs for the area, director...
So it's just kind of making sure everything's rolling through. We have a bi-weekly revenue and sales and marketing, with calls with the actual franchises... For instance, right now the Arizona hotels were prepping for the Super Bowl that's coming up. And we always look at what kind of concerts... Then we go through all that sort of stuff. Give me a reason why I can raise the bar. So that's a lot of it... And then it's putting out fires, making the big decisions.
Ash Patel: The usual of leading an organization.
Mike Stohler: Yeah. Some of it is big. One of the hotels - all of a sudden we had to put six rooms out of order, because we don't know why, something's really wrong with the plumbing. So it's just dealing with stuff.
Ash Patel: Yeah. Michael, what is your best real estate investing advice ever?
Mike Stohler: Find your Why. Why are you doing this? Why do you want to do this? When I was young, in my 20s, I wanted to make a lot of money. That was my Why. That's the wrong Why. The money will come. So my best advice is to find your Why. And my Why is I wanted to build a life that I didn't have to take a vacation from. I'm sitting in my cabin up in Northern Arizona right now, and I could do my business. I can be on a yacht, I can be on a cruise ship... My vacations - I can do anything I want now. That's my Why.
Ash Patel: You love what you do, which is why you do it.
Mike Stohler: Absolutely. My God, if I was in an office somewhere... Every job I've ever had -- I was an airline pilot, and I've been in real estate investing, so I've never been stuck in an office, and I think I'd just go nuts.
Ash Patel: Listen, I was for 15 years, and it's not fun. But what's funny is people that I've worked with, and even me - we would all lie to ourselves and we would say "Man, I love my job." And in hindsight, anybody who says "I love my job", you need to ask them "Well, look, if you won the lottery, would you still go back to work because you love it so much?" You don't love your job; it's a necessary evil.
Mike Stohler: Absolutely.
Ash Patel: But yeah, we've found our calling with real estate. There's nothing I'd rather be doing. I choose to do this...
Mike Stohler: Yeah. And I choose when I want to work.
Ash Patel: Yeah. I still work 12-hour days, but...
Mike Stohler: Well, I do too, but if I wanna get off in the morning and then work till 10 or 11 o'clock at night, it's my choice.
Ash Patel: Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. And good for you. You've found your Why. It's so important to find your Why. Michael, are you ready for the Best Ever lightning round?
Mike Stohler: Sure, absolutely.
Ash Patel: Alright, Michael, what's the best ever book you've recently read?
Mike Stohler: The one I love is called "Money secrets of the rich." A good friend of mine wrote it, his name is John Burley. Again, when you find your Why, and you start making money, don't go out and spend it. Learn from people that have money, and that have a lot of money, and find out what they're doing. They're not buying the $3,000 purses, or the $200,000 cars. That really changed my life, is "The money secrets of the rich."
Ash Patel: And back to your original point, Michael - if you've found your Why, those materialistic things really have diminished returns.
Mike Stohler: They do. What you find out as a real estate profession is like if I buy this, can I make money off of it? And we turn into this crazy -- I'm not gonna buy a house in Florida unless I can make money off of it. It becomes this obsession of "Everything I buy, I wanna make a return on it."
Ash Patel: Yeah, and then time plays a factor in it as well. Look, it'd be great to have an RV. Man, we've got to store it, we've got to maintain it, you've gotta do all this...
Mike Stohler: Better to rent it.
Ash Patel: Yes. So great perspective. Michael, what's the best ever way you like to give back?
Mike Stohler: Great question. One of the absolute joys of finding my why and being successful is giving back. I'm on the board of directors for seven charities. I'm a rotarian, if you can believe that... I'm under 80 years old... I'm just kidding, I'm actually going to be the president of a Rotary group next year, and I love it. It's a way to give back. I'm on the board of directors. I'm a veteran, so I do a lot with veteran charities. But to me, that is better than making money, is a charity that we do - if it's a fallen veteran, we give their children college scholarships; just looking at the spouse's face when they know that their child's college will be paid for - that to me is just so much more gratifying.
Ash Patel: That is amazing. Michael, thank you for your service and thank your family for all your sacrifices as well. Finally, Michael, how can the Best Ever listeners reach out to you?
Mike Stohler: Our website, gatewaype.com. I'm on LinkedIn under Michael Stohler, and just let me know how you've found me and I'll answer any question you have.
Ash Patel: Michael, thank you so much for your time today. You've given us a tremendous amount of insight. Not only into hotels, but also mindset. So I've gotta thank you again for your time, man. We've learned a lot, I've got so many notes here... I feel like somewhat of an expert now in hotels because of you. Thank you.
Mike Stohler: Thank you, Ash.
Ash Patel: Best Ever listeners, thank you so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a 5-star review, share this episode with someone you think can benefit from it. Also, follow, subscribe, and have a best ever day.
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