The Hotel Investor Playbook

How a Pilot Bought a $10M Hotel With Zero Hotel Experience | Curt Marker E66

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Think you need hotel operations experience to invest in boutique hotels? That belief may be the only thing standing between you and building serious commercial real estate wealth.

In this episode, you'll discover how a Gulfstream pilot raised $1.5 million and became co-GP on a 130-room boutique hotel in Tennessee's Smoky Mountains - without managing a single employee or making a single bed.

A private jet captain who flies billionaires by day reveals his exact framework for partnering on commercial deals, vetting operators, and bringing value to the table through capital raising and deal analysis - not daily operations. When a USDA loan delay tested the partnership and threatened investor confidence, his communication strategy and the GP team's quick action turned a challenge into a case study on how strong partnerships weather any storm.

In this episode, you'll discover:

  • How to add massive value as a hotel investor without operations experience (the skills that actually matter)
  • Why 80% of Curt's $1.5M came from his existing network (not Instagram followers) and how to leverage yours 
  • The critical questions to ask operating partners before co-signing on a major hotel acquisition 
  • Why booking 3,000 additional room nights and raising ADR from $85 to $129 proves the value-add model works 
  • The monthly communication framework that kept 100% of investors confident during an 8-month loan delay
  • How GPs can inject capital at 10% interest to avoid diluting investor shares during unexpected shortfalls

If you're ready to stop letting "lack of operations experience" keep you out of hotel investing, this episode shows you exactly how to raise capital, structure partnerships, and protect investor relationships, even when deals don't go according to plan. This is proof that you can build commercial real estate wealth without being the operator

About Captain Curt

Curt Marker is a 15-year veteran pilot and the CEO of Captain Capital, a commercial real estate firm specializing in developing high-demand assets such as small-bay industrial flex space and boutique hotels. As a third-generation aviator and active private jet captain for billionaires, Curt translates elite "cockpit discipline," safety checklists, and high-level service into rigorous risk management for his real estate projects. He is widely recognized for his radical transparency and "skin in the game" philosophy, focusing on building long-term trust and resilient wealth for his investor partners. Curt also hosts The Captain Curt Show, where he educates professionals on transitioning tax-inefficient income into high-performing, cash-flowing commercial portfolios.

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Michael Russell:

If you've been on the sidelines of boutique hotel investing because you're worried about operations, like how the hell am I supposed to manage this thing? Here's what you need to hear. You don't have to. My guest today is Kurt Marker. He's a professional pilot who raised a million and a half dollars and became a partner on a 130-room hotel deal without ever talking to a single employee. He brought capital raising, strategic guidance, and his balance sheet to the table while the operating partner handled the day-to-day. And that's a real lane that you can play in. And we don't just talk about the highlight reel, we get into what happens when a deal gets messy, specifically a loan delay that dragged on, created real pressure, and forced hard decisions. The most valuable part is how Kurt and the team communicated it to investors month by month without losing trust. So whether you're looking at your first hotel deal or you're already in the game, this episode gives you a real-world look at roles, risk, and what professional communication actually looks like when things go sideways. Let's get into it. On this podcast, we talk story about everything you need to know to make money investing in hotels and in hospitality assets. My guest today is my man, Kurt Marker. This is a guy who flies Gulf Stream jets for billionaires by day and raises millions for commercial real estate deals by night. So, Kurt, you're a pilot who's built this real estate portfolio. It includes everything from boutique hotels, flex space. Look, I want to know all about your capital raising efforts. I want to know about how you've built a personal brand. I want to jump into some of the deals that you're investing in from residential to commercial. So we're gonna get into all of this. But first of all, welcome to the show. Thanks a lot. Excited to be here. Yeah, so a little fun fact, right? We went to the same high school. We grew up in Carlsbad, California. Kurt, what are you? Are you like a year younger? You were a grade below me. Is that right? Yeah, yeah.

Curt Marker:

I think you're 98. I'm 99. And uh I think you were football, right? I played football before, but I was a water pollen swimmer, so kind of hung with that crowd.

Michael Russell:

And yeah, you know, we didn't really quite cross paths in high school, but you know, it's interesting. Like later in life, we've got a lot of things in common now. I mean, from just being from the same town, but investing in real estate, a lot of the same personal connections. You know, we've talked now. It's like we're kind of in that same path with kids and investing in real estate and balancing work, life, and trying to sneak in trips to Fiji and things to go surfing. And so it's interesting how although in high school we didn't necessarily hang out, now it's like, well, man, like I feel like we we've got a lot in common. So it's good to circle back later in life.

Curt Marker:

Yeah, it's it's a funny, long, long story, long story coming up. But it's great when you, you know, you connect with people that what you're doing at that time. So a lot of my high school friends are great people. We were friends for a long time, and then now my friends are business people, right? People that are growing wealth and I'm dedicated to my kids just like you are. It's the struggle being a parent, but being, you know, a little bit of a workaholic, right? I'm still trying to build but balance life. So, like after this Zoom call we're having the podcast, like I'm going family time, going to Legoland or Chuck E. Cheese for the rest of the day, and I'm shutting work down. So I'm still learning the balance, but it's real fun to reconnect and uh really talk about growing wealth and providing for a family is the reason we're both growing wealth, right? So I think we have a similar, similar look on life when I think it's a big deal.

Michael Russell:

Yeah, different chapters in life. You you've got friends like that that fill a very important role at different points in time. But like you said, right now it seems like you know, I follow you on social media and I I see a lot of what you're posting. And some of it relates to like, well, finding out your why, right? There's this uh mindset piece that you often talk about. Like, what am I working so hard for? You know, am I just a hamster or a tread wheel? Or am I is there a larger purpose? I definitely want to unpack that a little bit. I think you got a lot to offer, especially for for perhaps younger listeners that are trying to figure out who they want to be. I mean, you've you've got some whiskers, right? You and I are not necessarily the youngest guys in the room, but we've gained some experience over the years, and so I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned, and I'm excited to pick your brain a little bit about where you are now and where you plan on being and how you got there. It is 2026. It is the first week in January, and I'm stoked that you're actually so this is the first episode that I'm recording this year. You know, obviously these episodes are not live, and so I took a couple weeks off for the holidays and I'm back in the podcast seat. And I want to start out with a banger episode, and I'm so pumped that it's you, Kurt, because you got a lot to offer. So let's get into it. Well, let's start with a little bit about what you got going on in 2026. Like, what are you focused on? What's on your plate for this year?

Curt Marker:

Well, I'll start with the most important part to me. I've kind of dedicated my 2026 to charity. As I get older and as my kids get older, you know, I'm leaning into not just making money and providing for the family, it's about giving back to other people. So the first thing I tell everybody right now, 2026, I'm raising money for kids that are critically sick. One of them being is my son's teacher. He's 10 years old, he's been battling leukemia for five years. Does it relate to real estate? No. But as I get older, like I want to get more out of life than just money and buying things and going on vacation. So it's some I'm I'm not a runner, so I'm turning into a runner to raise money for sick kids. I have a child of the 10-year-old I just spoke about. I'm gonna grant him a wish this summer, which is a beach house and oceanside for a week for his friends to visit. And then we're flying him on a private jet. I have a client that donated that up to San Francisco to go to the Pokemon World Championships. So I'm excited about charity for 2026 and bringing the people that want to change people's lives along with that. So honestly, I'm probably dedicating like 25% of my time to learn using my fundraising techniques before charity. A lot of people want to give, they just don't know or trust where they're gonna give. So that's the biggest thing for me in 2026. The second piece of that would be business. 25 was a challenging year for a lot of people with rates kind of still high for development or acquiring assets, as you know. Rates are finally coming down in 2026. I believe they're gonna come down a lot more, especially in May when Jerome Powell gets replaced. I believe we'll have a very real estate friendly nominee as long as the Senate approves. So, my focus in 2026 is to buy more land and do some of my industrial developments that I really enjoy. They're pretty simple projects, and I like kind of being the quarterback as a CEO or developer. You're kind of the quarterback of a lot of moving parts. The second piece of that is I'm gonna go ahead and acquire, I haven't acquired anything, an existing building in over two and a half years, just over two and a half with the last hotel. So I'm gonna probably acquire one or either a hotel or an industrial building like mine and use the bonus depreciation since we got 100% back. The last thing I will comment is I I'm going into a new asset class. Uh, even though I like staying in my lane and I'm really an expert in industrial, which I'm building now. I focus on it every day. I'm learning. I'm partnering up with a friend of mine who actually was on my podcast, and he's a broker in San Diego, and he builds a lot of the ADUs near San Diego State University. So we're closing on our first development project February 1st. Thing I like about this is number one, he's already a broker that sold 30, almost like 26 million in 2025 in his first year at his new brokerage. He's the ADU expert. There's multiple people in San Diego doing it, but he has a lot of experience. So what you do is you buy a single family home. The one we're buying is a five bedroom already, and we're gonna add an ADU that's six bedrooms in the back. So now you got 11 bedrooms near San Diego State University. They rent them out by the room. Investors are buying those like a commercial project, like a commercial product on a cap rate. There's a lot of money to be made because ADUs were building them for $350 a square foot and selling them for about $700. So it's just the the uh same, the same square foot price as the main house.

Michael Russell:

Well, what I noticed that you are are doing, and I've just kind of followed along your journey a little bit on social media. You have a really big presence on Instagram, you've got a lot of followers and things. But what I can tell is you're pretty much real estate agnostic. Like if the deal makes sense, hey, you'll you'll pursue it. You're not just stuck into one particular asset class. And depending on your theory, that could be a good or bad thing. Some people argue, like, look, stay in your land, be hyper-focused. I had folks that say the key to productivity is becoming a master in one thing, but you're kind of a you know, jack of all trades in a sense. Like you've invested in flex space, you've invested in boutique hotels, you're now getting into the ADU play. And so, how do you kind of balance all these different shiny balls? Do you feel like this is a distraction or do you feel like it's an advantage that you're flexible?

Curt Marker:

So I would say it's a little bit of both because in my past, as a newer investor, I was flipping homes, then I was flipping fourplexes and then managing fourplexes. Then I wanted to get I bought a mobile home park because I wanted to scale, right? It was an easier way to scale. A lot of seller financing in mobile home parks. That deal went well, except for my partner. So I think it's you got to be careful how quick you jump to an asset class. And it is hard if you're trying to manage four different asset classes, four different states. I have projects in multiple states, but with zoning regulations or operations with STRs, right? We're talking about short-term rentals starting to get outlawed in certain cities. I think it's good to be flexible, but you really got to have a base. So I've been I've been investing for 10 years now. I had a finance and economics base before that. So what I'm learning is I kind of mentioned I'm a good quarterback. So if I can find the right partner, which I have failed at that before, when a partner is they've talked how good they are at this. And then as soon as you bring the money or you close, they kind of like don't do what they promised. So I found myself in a couple deals that didn't go well, and I wanted out of those deals for months. So you got to be careful of that if you're dipping around. But what I'm doing is I'm partnering with people like our hotel. Blake Daly is the main operator of that hotel. I'm not on the phone with employees all day long. I think we have 12 staff over there. I've never talked to a single one of them. So I brought a lot of money to the table. I signed on the note with Blake. So there's a lot of liability there on a $10 million note.

Michael Russell:

Let's pause there for a minute because I want to dig into this a little bit. So yeah, I mean, you've got a lot going on, man. But look, let me just summarize your investment journey here. So sure, you started investing in residential real estate. You were doing some house hacking, from what I understand. You did some flips, then you transitioned into mobile home parks. And then you decided at one point, hey, you know what? I'm gonna get out of residential and I'm gonna, I'm gonna go into commercial real estate. What was it about commercial real estate that you felt, okay, that's the path for me to go? Where were what were the advantages in commercial real estate versus what you were doing in residential?

Curt Marker:

The commercial real estate, I mean, I fly private jets for some people that are commercial real estate individuals, or I've been at conferences with people that do residential and commercial. What I found is commercial are just bigger projects, and most of them you need partners for. They're hard to do by yourself if you go to a larger one. But it seemed like there's a lot more money to be made in commercial and quicker. So even though you can make 100 grand, 200 grand on flipping a house, it's nonstop every day on the phone with contractors, this and that. I like to draw of commercial, but because I'm kind of a high net uh high income earner, commercial banks love loaning me money now. Where when I was flipping homes, I was making a hundred to two hundred grand a year. That's about all the loans I could get were enough loans to flip two homes a year. Yeah.

Michael Russell:

So do you own any short-term rentals?

Curt Marker:

I only own one and I really use it more as a personal vacation house, but I do operate it as a short-term rental.

Michael Russell:

Hey guys, people have been hitting me up asking if I have a mastermind or a course. I don't run one right now, but I do know the legit operators in this space. If you're thinking about paid education and you want my honest take on who I'd talk to for your situation, just email me info at hotelinvestorplaybook.com. I read every email and I'm happy to point you in the right direction. I mean, the thing is like short-term rentals are cash cows, right? There's very there's like a low barrier to entry. I mean, I love short-term rentals. Honestly, if I could buy more short-term rentals and be successful, like I know that commercial real estate has its perks in terms of like getting additional loans and equity appreciation and all this, but I mean, there's cash in short-term rentals. Like you can you can buy a home and immediately start seeing a nice, healthy cash flow return on it. I don't know. What are your thoughts on short-term rentals?

Curt Marker:

Yeah, I mean, I like them. What I have found is like I thought I was gonna scale and buy more of them. I bought mine in March of 2020. I did very well for about two years, and then everyone bought them in my town. I picked that place because I wanted to go on vacation there. So it's a house that I'm gonna hold forever. It's a 2.75% interest. But if you're doing short-term rentals, you're right, it's a low barrier to entry. I think I put down 20 grand on that house and then I remodeled it and furnished it for 40,000. I refinanced 50 grand back out. I was 10,000 into owning that house. That's a pretty good deal. But if you're gonna go into STRs, I feel like Airbnb and VRBO are always changing that platform. So you really kind of need to focus on it or have a manager manage it for you that's an expert with all the different little things. I was very into it for the year I was operating it. And that's right before I started flipping home. So it's kind of like my one thing I focused on at the time. I have friends that are doing very well in the short-term rentals, and I also have friends that are not doing so well and may want to get rid of them. But I think the key difference is during COVID, people like were kind of over going to hotels. They all wanted the bigger homes with pools and all the amenities. So, right now, if you're gonna do short-term rentals, the ones that are cash cows, in my opinion, have a bunch of amenities, whether it's a pickleball court, a nice pool. I've seen like golf simulators going in. They're definitely more money, but they're equivalent to kind of running a hotel, in my opinion.

Michael Russell:

Yeah, I think that's a natural progression. I call short-term rentals kind of like the gateway drug for me because once I got a taste of the cash flow, I was addicted. I was like, oh my God, hospitality. This is an asset class that I want to be a part of. I want to show, I want to demonstrate an example because what you just said is, hey, look, if you are gonna go into SDRs, you need to pick something that's got some sort of amenities, got to have some sort of maybe it's a larger home. I've got two short-term rentals in Hawaii and they're they're cash cows, but there's there is a barrier to entry. You can't just go buy a short-term rental, at least, not a four-bedroom and a nice home in in Maui where I live, because there's rules and there's regulations and there's a limited, there's a finite supply. So I have this moat where I got something before it's just not like an endless abundance of supply. So this is very unique. Now, compare that to my home in San Diego. So I recently just started short-term renting a home. I've owned it for 20 years. I had it as a long-term rental, and it was kind of, you know, it was a little bit beat up over time. And I put about a hundred grand, 150 grand into it to spruce it up, new roof, backyard, redid the backyard, just really kind of gave it the love that it needed. And so this property, you know, I bought it many, many years ago. It's gone up. I've got over a million dollars in equity over time. That's just appreciated. A California home in San Diego is gonna go up. I, you know, I'm fortunate in that regard. But when I'm short-term renting it, I'm doing the math on this. It's nowhere close to the type of cash flow that I'm getting for my Hawaii properties. I think, you know, and this is a good beach property. I mean, it's in a beach area, so you would think, oh man, this thing's gonna kill it. I'm projecting around $30,000 a year for that short-term rental. Hey, that's not chump change. I'll take it. I'm grateful. But I've got a million dollars tied up in this thing. $30,000 on a million dollars, like the the return on my investment's not fantastic when you put it in that perspective. And that's why I'm starting to shift my focus more into hotels. This is one of the big reasons why I'm looking at investing and taking that money. I'm thinking about selling this premier location property in San Diego and doing a 1031 exchange into a hotel. Currently, I'm about to enter into a transaction in Idaho and I'm gonna transfer a million dollars of 20 years of equity into a commercial asset. And why would I do that? Well, it's because with commercial real estate, there's levers that you can pull. And when I do the math on the equity multiplier, commercial real estate isn't always about cash flow. It's oftentimes about pulling the lever where you can generate massive equity. And I think that's the unifying principle when you look at all of these different assets that you're currently evaluating. It doesn't matter if it's hospitality, flex space, if you're doing the ADU thing. I mean, regardless, you're looking and you're referring to constantly how do I build equity? How do I build massive wealth over a shorter, relatively shorter period of time? In my opinion, it so look, it took a million dollars to generate, I'm sorry, it took 20 years to generate a million dollars worth of equity for this single family residential home. I believe, and I am positioning that this next hotel I'm buying is going to produce $2 million of equity in a seven-year period. So it's just reframing your mind about how what is your target, what is your goal, and how are you gonna get there? And that's that's what I like about what your philosophy is. I'm kind of paraphrasing what you're saying here, but you're agnostic. You're like, look, I run the numbers from an objective perspective. I'm a pilot. So pilots are very like checklist oriented, right? They're to a degree, they're risk averse, right? You know, you gotta follow a process. And what you've done now in multiple deals is you've partnered with people that have credibility that can follow a process because your goal has been equity growth. So I just wanted to provide my perspective on what you're saying, because I think that there is that unifying sense of what you're doing, despite that, the asset. It's a unifying principle. So, you know, I'll pass it back to you, but we were starting to talk about that Tremont Lodge with Blake Daly. And you said, Hey, look, this is a big project. I think there was like what, a three and a half million dollar renovation, right? This was no, yeah, this was a big deal. Can you walk us through that a little bit? Like what you saw, who were the partners, what was your role?

Curt Marker:

Yeah, so I'm I'm one of the main GPs in that. Blake came to me because he needed to raise extra capital. Daveier is also a GP in that deal, the military to millionaire. He's a great guy, has a great community for veterans and people in the military. So they needed someone to bring more capital to the table. Blake was so focused on the underwriting, his back was kind of against the wall. I had heard him actually on Rich Summers podcast and was very impressed by Blake Daly. His episode was, I mean, oh, more than two years ago, two and a half years ago. And he was a younger guy in the Air Force that he handled acquisitions of buildings for the Air Force. So I kind of like that already. But he had already owned six hotels. He had a bad partnership where they didn't agree. So he sold some of the hotels. I had been there already. So we hopped on a bunch of Zoom calls and I just started asking business questions. What would you do in this scenario? I really liked the uh the hotel was a mom and pop. There was no marketing. They were on one platform, booking.com, and that was it. So I said, Blake, what's your strategy? I understand marketing well, but I'm like, well, if you're gonna pay 7 million, how are you gonna exit it at? You know, what's the exit price? So he's thinking 14 million, 14 to 17. I said, Well, what's the plan to get there? And he's like, Well, day one, we can go in and put it on 14 platforms, which already, which is Going to cost any money. The average daily rate at the time, I think, was $85 a night. We just had our meeting today, and right now we're at $129 a night. Wow. So we're happy with that. But the biggest thing is in 2025, we booked 3,000 more rooms than 2024. Expensive expenses have come up for replacing sheets and maids and and things like that. But so far I like the project.

Michael Russell:

But wait a second, though. 3,000 more nights. Break that down for me just like relatively. How many nights were you booking before? Like I want to know what you have doubled your occupation.

Curt Marker:

Number we just went over today. Basically, it's 130-room hotel times that by 365 nights. That's like your total available nights. But we just finished the major reservation in July. So a lot of the hotel, the buildings were down. It's an eight-building hotel laid out over 15 acres. So two buildings at a time, we renovated completely and then opened those up. Long story short, I like the operator part, operating partner. They asked to use my bank debt or my personal financial sheet because the bank liked that I was a high income earner compared to everybody else. And I also raised $1.5 million to bring to the table at closing. And $300,000 of that is my own money. It's not, it's not a small chunk of change, but I believe that much in the project. Why I believed in the project? I like the property. We want to add value. The thing needed a remodel. The pools got redone, the lobby. We were able to get rid of the manager's suite and open that up to a bridal suite. They weren't really using it that well for weddings. And we had 22 weddings last year. Our goal is 40 weddings this year. So I saw the project as like, wow, this isn't a great area. I'd already visited the area. It's the smoky mountains of Tennessee. When I started doing my research on it, even though I'm not a hotel expert, I understand finance and business, and I relied on the hotel expert to teach me how are you going to raise the rents in the room, the nightly rate in the room. And so I just kind of learned the language pretty quick. I went out and visited and I said, Yeah, I would put my dad's money, who is also in the deal, in friends' money as well. So I like the boutique hotel because it was a mom and pop ran. It wasn't a national brand. And it was like you go in there, you add a bunch of marketing, you throw three million dollars, room rentals, new mattresses. We got two pickleball courts. We added a big fire pit, gazebo, barbecue area. And we target a lot of the former guests. We we had got the email list when we bought it. And a lot of these guests are returning every year, twice a year. So it's been really great so far. What I like about it is that I'm not involved in daily operations. I'm on monthly calls, or if I have questions and I call Blake personally. And so far it's been great where he's very open.

Michael Russell:

That's a good point. That you know what, right there, I think you just you just struck a chord, at least with me, because I like putting deals together, right? I I like looking at the numbers and I like figuring out areas of opportunity, but I don't really like dealing, frankly, with people and issues and challenges and emotional states. Like I'm kind of, you know, a little bit more of an introvert. And so it's difficult sometimes for me to like lead manage people, like human emotional beings. And so I think that this is a natural point, an area of pain for people when they think about buying a hotel, they go, operations, how the heck am I gonna do that? But what you're demonstrating is you can have a role in investing in hotels and bring a skill set, bring a level of experience, bring a bank role, bring a balance sheet, and be a partner without necessarily having to be responsible for operations. Now I know Blake, and we had a conversation last week about this because I talked to him about, you know, hey, Blake, just out of curiosity, like, why are you doing the operations? Like, why not hire a third-party manager? You've got this how many hundred plus what how many rooms is it? 130 at Trim Lot. Okay, this is this 130 plus room hotel. Like you've got enough scale to go hire a property manager. And he has a mastermind, great mastermind. And you know, he wants to be involved because he wants to, if he's gonna teach, he wants to know how to do it. And so he's operating that. That's his dream, not mine. And I think that a lot of people get hung up on the idea when they start investing in hotels that, oh my gosh, like I'm gonna have to operate this. And it's not actually always the case. And Blake is demonstrating how he's operating this very effectively. And if you want to learn how to do that, he's a guy to reach out to for education in that regard. But there's third-party operators that can do this. And there are, in your case, there are people that want to do the operations. You can be a partner in a deal. You just gotta find the right people to connect with. So I just wanted to touch upon that because it resonates with me that you're applying your skill sets. You're a great capital raiser, you're a networker, you're in touch with high net worth individuals through your job as a pilot all the time. And you, you know, you have experience and the ability to analyze deals. So you bring that to the table and you don't necessarily have to be the operator yourself.

Curt Marker:

Yeah, I agree. And you know what's funny? I had someone on my podcast recently, and he's a he's similar to me. We love the chase of the deal, the underwriting, the sourcing. How do you find it through relationships? And it's kind of a challenge to close. This hotel was a challenge to close. We were raising capital until the night before we closed the deal. And I love the chase and the thrill and the close and the big picture of it. And then he said to me, he goes, Hey, I kind of get bored once we're done. So he hands it off to his operations team. And I'm realizing that's kind of where I what I like to do. I like to bring people together, raise money, educate people how we can help them make more money, more than their 401k. And I like to source the deal and vet the operator, vet the deal, and then kind of put my stamp of approval on it. And how I do that is say, hey, I'm putting 100 grand, hey, I'm putting 200 grand into this deal. I think you should come along for the ride. So I agree, people should know what their skills are. And I bring certain things to the table, and there's certain things I don't want to bring to the table. You know, Blake said, Hey, you need to come out here and help operate the hotel. I want to come out, you know?

Michael Russell:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This deal, I want to talk about this. This deal had some hair on it, right? I don't know the exact details. Maybe you can shed some light on this, but there's some opportunity with uh getting a USDA loan that is very attractive, right? It's appealing. And so the draw is you know, you can get a very low interest rate in great terms, but I think these USDA loans, they're complicated and they can be time consuming. Can you walk us through what happened? Because you guys were in this bridge loan situation, right? You're paying this high interest rate, like 14% interest while you were waiting for the USDA loan. So what happened? What got delayed? And then how much extra an interest did this cost you? What were the what was the impact of this delay?

Curt Marker:

Yeah, it was supposed to be a four-month bridge loan. For those that don't know, that don't know. It's basically a hard money loan, short term. And so the they came out and met us all out at the hotel. 14% is a lot of money. But we were already in discussion with USDA before we closed the hotel. They said their process is six months. They couldn't get it done in two months or whatever. Okay, so we'll take the bridge loan, we'll pay the high fee. And then they had told us, okay, we'll have it done by April, which is like three and a half months after we close the hotel. So you're doing your underwriting, but the bridge loan at the time, I think it was like $75,000 a month, right? And that's a lot of money when you're operating the hotel. So the hotel is already going into the red because of the debt. Uh, so you're trying to operate the hotel really well. Well, they had to do like an agricultural, like civil soil samples. And I believe, I can't remember right, but I believe Blake, number one, they found some skeletons of an animal on the site, if I remember right. Archaeological. That's what it was, a survey. So that paused everything for like a month or two to make sure it wasn't like Indian remains and some kind of weird thing. But then what we had learned is once that we got past that, that was like a two-month delay just for that. So now we just lost another compared to the regular loan rate, we were losing like, let's just say we're bleeding 30 grand a month between the bridge loan and then what we thought the USDA loan would be close. So we're just losing money. The USDA, I guess the guy that we were talking with ended up leaving and quitting his job. The file sat there on no one's desk for like two more months. All in all, Blake was pulling his hair out, but we're also just losing money trying to operate the hotel as best we can. And the USDA loan, I think, took an extra six months. So we paid that bridge loan. I can't remember the all-in cost, but it ended us costing us like an extra $200,000. Damn. Which is a lot of money on a $7 million purchase.

Michael Russell:

You know, yeah, and and that that money doesn't just come out of thin air, right? Like, where's that? Did you guys have reserves that you had saved up?

Curt Marker:

So we had some reserves, but some of that, the GP's loan back into the business at a very low interest rate just to kind of save the cash flow of the deal. The hotel was kind of breaking even on cash flow. So one of the GP partners has actually put up 150 grand. I didn't want to do it. I had other deals going, you know, I didn't return.

Michael Russell:

And dude, I love this, bro, because this is the real deal. Like, right now, you're spilling the beans on like this is the kind of shit that happens behind the scenes that no one's glorifying on Instagram. Like, if you're gonna invest in hotels, dude, you gotta understand and realize that and have contingency plans for when shit goes sideways. So, but you guys pulled through. Like, look, the hotel right now is doing well. Real quickly, though, how did you handle communicating this negative, like these this negative news to the the investors without causing them to be like freaking panic?

Curt Marker:

Yeah, I'll tell you, like, I think I'm pretty good at the communication fact like side of things. I actually enjoy it, even when it's bad news. I don't say enjoy bad news, but we had a GP call, general partners call, and some of the people on there were like, hey, we just shouldn't say anything because we don't know an answer yet. And I said, I think we got to talk about the delay. Like every month you gotta be updating your investors. We do monthly updates, we're only required to do quarterly, but I don't think that's good communication. So every month we're writing letters, and first off, we're starting with the positives, right? Hey, the average daily rate was 90. We're at 120 before the remodel. We couldn't even remodel before the USDA loan was closed. They said no construction until then. So here we are thinking we're trying to get these weddings and everything booked on a remodel hotel, which didn't happen for quite a long time. So it didn't just delay the loan, it delayed remodel and it delayed new hotel rooms, right? Remodeled retrofit hotel rooms, and it delayed some of the profits, in my opinion. I will say this it also delayed profitability on the hotel. So we thought we had 12 months we would start giving investors a small return, right? Profit of the cash flow. It has yet to start. We're two years in. We're over a year late of investor disbursements, but we put that out in email. Hey, we have money right now to disperse, right? We know it's taking a while because of the loan, because of construction, but we want to keep some reserves in the bank for January, February, which are the two slow months out there. So as long as we're talking about the positives. So what we do is we re-relay all the positives. Hey, we booked way more weddings last year. We have six tours today going on at the hotel. It's the most we've ever had in one day. So we talk about the positives. The average daily rate is up, the new general manager is great, like the so, and then you got to break it down to the negative. And you don't have to just go super negative with it, but you got to tell them the truth.

Michael Russell:

Yeah.

Curt Marker:

So I'm always about people want to invest with you again if you're telling them the truth and you're communicating. If they feel like through your email or videos and your photos, you supply that you're working your butt off and you're trying really hard and you're protecting their money. The other thing is they all they know that we all have a lot of money in the deal as well. And it's just we haven't got disbursements either, you know. So I feel like as long as you give some positive and it's not just all negative, negative, negative, there's no win, then that looks bad. But if you have some positives, hey, these are the positive. We got some new staff. We fired some of the cancer in the staff, and uh, we have higher average daily rate. We booked more rooms this year, but we made 500,000 more in revenue than we did the year before. We like that number a lot. Now and now this year has a nice ring to it. So that was our meeting this morning. I love having the monthly meeting and just talking about hey, what can we do? What can we do on marketing? And what that comes down to is all the partners have different backgrounds. Blake's the operator, but I'm 15 years older than Blake. I got a lot more business sense. I've done more loans. I may not be the hotel expert, but it's like, how can we improve marketing? How can we cut costs? Like, so it's a balancing act forever with hospitality, I think.

Michael Russell:

It's let me ask you, I want to dig in so real, real briefly here, just for my own curiosity. But why go through all this pain and and headache and distress of trying to secure this USDA loan? What are the advantages of a USDA loan versus a conventional loan?

Curt Marker:

I mean, honestly, it's the lowest rate at the time, but I think right now they just let us drop a point, which was $10,000 a month without having to refinance. They just said, hey, you know, we want to protect our assets, so we'll drop the rate, save you guys money. They're still profitable because the rates are coming down. I'll tell you right now, I think, I think if you looked at a regular conventional loan, we could probably refinance out right now below the USDA rate, which is our plan to do, but we're gonna wait about another year. We want to show the next bank the highest year over year, which is gonna be 2026, and then we'll go into a refi because they want 12 months of solid use of the hotel. What's the right word? Because our remodel kind of just finished in June, July. We don't have 12 months of like so yeah, they want a trailing swell. Yeah, so so right now we're just kind of pumping that up for uh 2026. The reason at the time was the USDA loan provided the construction, also, and not all companies would do that. Some would we had a seven million dollar purchase price, so the USDA loan was kind of the only loan at the time we could get at 10 million dollars, but allow us to draw 3 million for construction.

Michael Russell:

Dang, okay. So how much was the purchase price? We purchased it for 7 million. 7 million, and then you put what three and a half into it?

Curt Marker:

Yeah, like 3.2. Yep.

Michael Russell:

3.2, okay. And what's the projected? What do you get? So it's 130. Oh, 130 units. So like $80,000 or so a key. A key, yep.

Curt Marker:

And then what the projection was 10 years out, like you do with most commercial, but the projection sale price is 17 million.

Michael Russell:

Wow, 17 million bucks. Okay. Well, if we take I mean, yeah, I mean, that's just comes down to NOI. We could go through that exercise, but I was just more curious what that was. So, just real quick, what what is the interest rate for this USDA loan currently?

Curt Marker:

7.85%.

Michael Russell:

Oh, that's high, dude. That's higher than I thought it would be.

Curt Marker:

Yeah, it wasn't like wow, you know, I believe it was actually eight and a half, and then they they helped us by decreasing a point, and that point just got decreased in October.

Michael Russell:

So the advantage was hey, look, you got to go get a construct, you got to pay for this renovation. And so they were open to financing the cost of the construction, but not necessarily at the lowest rate. It was just about facilitating the capital for the renovation.

Curt Marker:

Correct. Yep, and that was the best way to do it. And then our overall plan was to refi out within two years, but it was really to capture that 3.2 million. So we didn't have to bring as much equity to the table for a normal construction loan.

Michael Russell:

Okay. And so you had to communicate this bad news to the investors. What was the response? Did anyone squawk and be like, what is this? This is BS. Was anyone pissed off?

Curt Marker:

I mean, they had questions like, Hey, what is the reason the loan has taken so long? And you know, you like you can place blame on USDA, but we have no control over that. So most of them understand because number one, we provide photos and really good monthly updates. I'm available by phone call for all my people. And if I'm hanging out with someone like my dad or a friend that's in the deal, I talk to him about my call today. You know what I mean? So it's like, hey, the monthly thing is great. So I just I feel like communication is key. But yeah, some investors, I mean, my myself, I want to refi and get my capital back out and go get more projects.

Michael Russell:

Yeah.

Curt Marker:

As long as you portray to the investors, you guys are all working your ass off, which we are. Blake's there every day.

Michael Russell:

Then the end result was you didn't have to do a capital call because you guys for well, not you personally, but others on the GP, the general partnership, forked over the cash to meet the shortfall. So that speaks volumes, right? You're not doing a capital call. The general partnership is so invested in the outcome that they're willing to invest their own personal funds to help float the deal. And so that was loaned. The investors did technically have to pay a portion of that cost because the GP capital was loaned to the investment fund there. And then was that all that money returned to the GP once you guys refinanced?

Curt Marker:

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's already been returned because we had some really good profitable months. And so what they do is, as far as I know, and what we do on my deals as well, is the GP can loan at a max of a 10% interest. So there's no like advantage. You have to pay an interest rate by law. You can't just input money or it's a cash call. So if you're loaning the project money, it's actually cheaper and more beneficial for investors for the GP just to loan it at 10% annual and get the money back because there's no equity, or else you're you're liquidating people, or you're you know, downsizing their percentage in the deal. If you just invested another 150 grand into the deal, yeah, you're diluting their share. Diluting. There you go. Yeah. So so no one's shares got diluted, and the 10% on a hundred and fifty thousand dollar loan that we use for six months is a pretty minor number. It's what 7,500 bucks.

Michael Russell:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, on a deal that size, yeah, yeah. You know, but dude, that I mean, that's that's a lot. That's a lot to go through. And now it's a learning experience. Every time you go through this exercise, like you build confidence in yourself and your investors. If they come out on the on the positive side of this, they build confidence with you, your ability to communicate. So there's always a silver lining, but you know, we all should we all wish that we could just mark up how everything's gonna go smoothly and perfectly. And, you know, I I think we all realize it doesn't always work that way. So that was that was a hard lesson, but I think a valuable one. And man, I'm I'm really I'm I'm grateful that you shared that experience with us because we don't always get the true grit of what's going on behind the scenes. So I appreciate that. Hey, but I do look, I want to talk to you a little bit about just capital raising in general and how it relates to you building your own personal brand. This is kind of an area in my life right now that is that is relevant because I've been building my own personal real estate portfolio over the last 10 years or so. And, you know, I've I've done pretty well, but I've I've built in silence. And honestly, man, I was looking at your stuff and it was helpful because like I'm a 45-year-old man. And when I go on Instagram and I see like people that are young and attractive and doing, you know, fun stuff, and it's like it seems like it's a very like young cultural thing. And I'm like, oh, like how do I fit into that world? You know, and do I even want to do this? And what you've demonstrated, you've inspired me that you can do so and be your own, be authentic to yourself. You've built a personal brand partly off of maybe some entertainment aspect. I think what you started with and gained a lot of traction with was marketing yourself because your brand is Captain Capital. It's a little play on words for you being a pilot, but a lot of your social media initially was you demonstrating and showcasing what it's like to be a pilot for private jet charters, for chartering people that you know are very affluent. And so I'm I'm curious, you know, about that journey that you went on. Maybe you can lend some advice, things that you've learned about building your own personal brand, where you were and kind of where you are today.

Curt Marker:

Yeah, it's a great question. So when I first started building a personal brand, I saw other people in the real estate building it. And there's a lot of people in the real estate space trying to build a brand. It's all good stuff, but it's almost like I felt like it was kind of overplayed or overdone. It's a lot of the people saying the same things. There's probably 50 people in the STR space just only talking about STR. So I just said, well, hey. I fly private jets for billionaires, which is true. It's what I do for a living. There's credibility in that. Like they trust me enough with their 20 to 40 million dollar airplane. I run flight departments. So there's credibility there. But also, I find private jets, even for me, still interesting. And so everyone that meets me at lunch or a real estate meetup, they're like, wait, you fly private jets. Like, I got a question for you. So what I did was I started putting out videos of like, hey, this jet from LA to New York cost this much just in fuel. And people were flabbergasted. And private jets are for wealthy people. I mean, you can break it down to like splurge for yourself, but it's still expensive. I got a lot of traction with that. Some of it is good. And then a lot of it was good. I got really good views. Some of it was humor, like you said. I have a good personality. I like comedy and entertainment and things. So I made some videos that were like, hey, the worst, these are the worst three things about flying jets for billionaires. And it made them funny, like going on, going to Tahiti for eight days and having to eat steak and fish. And I got a lot of like laughs at it and whatever. But so it got me a lot of attention, a lot of follows, and I blew up really quick. And I was like, holy crap! Now the downside of that is it wasn't real estate related. My whole content goal, build a brand, help people make money. I was a financial planner before I was a pilot. So I just I've always wanted to help people make money, including myself, but bring other people along with me for the ride. So it brought a lot of attention to me. I got a lot of pilots DMing me, hey, how do I become a pilot? This. And then all of a sudden, I honestly got sidetracked because people on my content team are like, you should build a pilot community. So I did that and I spent so many hours. And it ended up that like everyone that wanted pilot advice is just new in their career and they're broke. So there's there wasn't a way to monetize it. And I was spending like four to five hours a day between shooting content, giving pilot advice, building all this stuff. As much as I enjoyed it, it took away from family time. And it wasn't, I'm not saying it won't long term, because right now I have a lot of pilots on Instagram that maybe have been following me for two years and now they're hitting me up because I shifted fully about real estate and family things and just regular life, that now they're wanting to invest in real estate.

Michael Russell:

If you were to summarize that though, like what's the key takeaway? Like, what did you learn? What was the key lesson from that experience?

Curt Marker:

The key takeaway is getting attention is good, meaning follows, messages, all of that. But it was too much attention in the wrong way that I wanted it because my DMs were flooded with no real estate topics. So just be careful with what you wish for because it's great that I will say I'm probably selling a couple aircraft because of some of those. But my main focus on content is hey, I'm still a guy that flies private jets for billionaires, but I don't want a bunch of DMs from pilots that are 21 years old. It sounds nice. I only have so many hours in the day. I'm running a flight department, I'm trying to build real estate. So I want to focus my content. I guess I'm still Captain Kirk, Captain Capital. I love that stuff.

Michael Russell:

But I want to you got attention, but it was a bit of a distraction. Now you've had success, you've raised millions of dollars. Where would you attribute your capital raising success from?

Curt Marker:

I would tell you, most of the people investing with me currently, I would say 80% of them know me at some capacity. They're people I used to fly airplanes with, family, friends, this and that. But I will say a lot of them have reached out. And now, because I've shared it on social media, that's where everybody's watching Facebook, Instagram, whatever their uh choice is. And it's I've shown credibility after so many years. I'm sharing more of my deals. And honestly, I don't have time to share all of them and everything that goes on. Like if I set a camera up here in my office, it would just be nonstop meetings, phone calls, negotiations. I want to share more of it, but it's a lot of time, it's time consuming, it's expensive, you know. But really, 80% of people that you know, but when you put it out there online, now they're actually gonna come to you. It may take a year, it's not gonna be day one, but they're gonna go, wow, you know, can I tell you something that's been I want to tell you something that's been frustrating for me?

Michael Russell:

And you know, part of it may just be ego and just as a human being, but man, sometimes I'll go and I'll I'll scroll on Instagram and dude, I'll see people on there that are having success. Like, hey, hats off to them, right? They're gaining a lot of attention, they're gaining awareness. Some of them are starting communities in which they sell education, and it's hard for me sometimes because not to take anything away from what they're doing, okay? I'm just setting the context, but I'm like, dude, I know a lot of stuff, and not many people even know I exist, relatively speaking, because I haven't been out there. And sometimes it's frustrating for me when I see people that are less qualified, less experienced, less knowledgeable, that are gaining way more attention and accolades or gaining opportunities simply because they're out there posting content. And so those that are active are not necessarily more skilled. They're just, they're just putting themselves out there. And that's kind of the realization that I had for 2026 is like, dude, you gotta just get out of your skin, your comfort zone a little bit and start posting stuff because the more people are aware, like what you're describing, the attention you got from all of the interesting stuff about being a uh private jet pilot, that puts you in a position to where you got enough reps to be like, I feel comfortable doing this. And then you started hyper, you started refining and started focusing on what are the things that are going to move the needle for what you're ultimately trying to accomplish, which is raising money for investing deals. But the first step was you just got started and then you refined it, and now you're starting to see more success. And so for me, that's been a challenge. I've been reluctant to go on social media. I've just started posting on LinkedIn and realized, okay, you know, hey, there's some opportunity here. I'm curious from your perspective, what channel has been the best for attracting an investors? Like LinkedIn, Instagram, you've got a podcast. Like, what do you think?

Curt Marker:

Yeah, I mean, for me, it was Instagram because it's the largest, right? And so a lot of people are on there, but I'm kind of shifting that. I'm shifting more focus to YouTube and LinkedIn. The podcast, I love doing podcasts. I love learning and learning about my guests and getting their expertise as well. It just makes me smarter. It's a little selfish. But podcast costs money and a lot of editing and all that. I haven't got really, I'm not saying I can't, I guess I can't track investors through the podcast just yet. I have an investment form, but because I don't have a lot of investment opportunity, like I said, I didn't close a single deal in 2025. I did it on purpose. I was overloaded with my pilot community and everything I was doing. I offloaded a couple of assets that were a pain in my butt that I just was tired of operating. So I kind of did a clean slate 2025. I revisited my goals, and now 2026, I'm going to implement. But for me, LinkedIn and YouTube are going to be my most sought-after to get after people. People listen to your podcast, they start trusting you based on the hour that they spend with you on each episode, right? So I can't track like, oh, I got five investors from there. On my form, you can, but not everybody puts where they found me from, you know?

Michael Russell:

Well, let's make this practical for anyone listening. Let's say, look, they're presumably working a job, they've got a full-time responsibility. Maybe they've got family and kids. And so the idea of running a podcast, it's not really remotely close to what's feasible. So if they want to raise capital in order to purchase real estate, whether it's hospitality or other asset types, in your experience, what is the best way for someone to gain that exposure and to make people aware of what they're doing?

Curt Marker:

I would say target Instagram. And even like the tweet posts that you see people put out, I put out a bunch myself. They take three minutes to come up with. It's like, hey, I want to do some mindset stuff. Right now I'm focused on charity. You'll see more giving back tweets. Those tweets take three seconds. You don't have to have a camera, you don't need editing, and those can go out. I mean, once you post it on Instagram online, it can just accelerate some other day. It could have a hundred thousand likes. The first day I put stuff out, sometimes it's 2,000 thing views, sometimes it's 3,000, and then all of a sudden, a month later, it's 100,000 views. And so it just has to get shared around. Not all of them hit, like one out of 10 hit, but honestly, repetitions they get easier. So I would say, like LinkedIn and Instagram, just make tweet posts. LinkedIn loves text posts. If you have some ideas or thoughts, throw them on there. Use the AI feature on LinkedIn. There's a lot of professionals, working professionals on LinkedIn, and start connecting with people. I'm on my LinkedIn daily, at minimum every other day, connecting with pilots because I can really connect with another pilot and say, look, this is what I do on the side. I invest all my money that I earn as income and I build wealth that way. So that's my plan for 2026.

Michael Russell:

But I think also like reading into what you're saying, like if someone right now wants to get started in real estate, they don't necessarily want to be some influencer and gain like half a million followers on Instagram. That's not the goal. The goal is to raise money to buy real estate. And you've been successful at that. And I think listening to what you're saying, what I'm gathering, at least as it relates to myself, is really the people that are most likely to invest with me are not unknown strangers on Instagram. It's the people that are already connected with me, that know me as a human, as a real person, and just see me on Instagram and see me often and regularly posting. And they might not, they may never even engage with anything that I post. But it's crazy. Like I was over, I don't know, the summer break. This is a little bit ago. I ran into some friends and I had very sporadically posted. And people that I haven't seen in years, they never even responded to any of my posts. But I was at a you know, like a barbecue and there was a collection of people that I knew, actually from Carlsbed, folks that you would also know as well. And, you know, sure enough, people brought up, oh man, how's the hotel investing going? How's the hostels going? I'm like, how the heck did I register? Like, it didn't even, they had been following on Instagram. And so it's incredible. Like, if you just start posting and you're not necessarily seeing the results in terms of like likes and shares and follows and all that stuff, that doesn't really matter. It's your initial network. Like we had a business coach who once made me go through this exercise where we were talking about raising capital for this deal we had in LA. And we're like, okay, how are we gonna do this? You know? And he's like, I want you to open your phone right now, and there's like some way to go through your iPhone and look at your contacts. And sure enough, I have like over a thousand contacts on there. He's like, export that to a spreadsheet and methodically go one by one by one and start identifying people that might have an interest and start by just sending a text that says, Hey, I just thought I'd let you know I'm investing in real estate. I should have some deals popping up in the next few months. If you have all, you know, any interest in it, I'm just letting you know this is what I'm doing. And so it's uncomfortable. Man, it was really kind of like, what's the word? Not like um, yeah, cringy, you know, to reach out to someone. But the people in your network, they want to support you. They know you, they like you, presumably, and they they want to trust you. And so if you just post regularly, it's not that you're gonna be insta famous, you know, immediately. It's the 300, 400, 500 people that you already are connected to in a combination of LinkedIn and Instagram. Those are the folks that are gonna invest in with you for your first deal. At least that's what has been told to me. That's the key takeaway that I see with you, Kurt, is you've been successful raising millions of dollars. You are expanding your network. But at the end of the day, the people that have invested with you, they they kind of already know you, right? They know you in person. So that's the takeaway I see.

Curt Marker:

I think for me, 2026, I'm flying a little bit less, which is nice, meaning I'm home more. And my focus is gonna go to a few more in-person meetups because even though I'm an introvert at home, I just like to work and I like to hang out with my kids. I'm strong in person. So at a couple meetups, I pretty much get one investor at minimum, every meetup. I want to get their number, whatever. I just do really well in person. So I want to do more of that. So people should know their strength. If you're not like outgoing and you're not a people person, maybe you're analytical, then just stick to the emails and the texts and posting on social media, like you're saying. I honestly have not gone through my phone and text everyone in there. I've texted like the 10 people at top of my head that I'm close with that I know that have some money and deals. And guess what? They've invested in deals. So my next deal, I will probably be going through my phone. Why do I say that? I'm gonna be going through my phone for my charity fundraising for this uh leukemia child in the next three months. So I'm gonna probably start that this week and I'm just gonna be singly texting people. Is it time consuming? Yes, but I think it's well worth it. And like you said, targeting the right people that have some finances, they're not a college student that's broke, targeting the right people that may be interested. So I think that's great advice that you just share.

Michael Russell:

Yeah, love that. Okay, I want to ask you one last question as we wrap this up. You've had a lot of success, you've invested and you own a large portfolio of real estate with on your own and with partnership. If you could go back to the version of yourself who was just getting started and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?

Curt Marker:

You can do it. It's give yourself confidence. When I first bought my first duplex, even though I had read so many books, I'd wanted to invest for years. I wanted to be rich, dad, poor dad. That was the book that turned it for me. It started my investment. It I mean, it's scary, but I I kind of surrounded myself with an appraiser and a contractor at the time to go visit this house that I bought. And you don't know if it's gonna work. It's like, well, I need a place to live. It's a duplex. I don't know how to manage a tenant, I don't know how a lease works, but at the end of the day, you figure it out as you go. I think just knowing that you can do it. Every time I look at an asset to buy, all it is now is do the numbers look good enough to bring along and will investors come in on this deal. It's not if I can do it anymore. But back when it was the first deal, the second deal, the first mobile home park, the first hotel, my first development. I'm literally in the middle of my first in industrial development. It wasn't a if I can do it. It is okay, I've got enough confidence. I know I can make this happen. So I think you build confidence. Just even if you think you do, you don't have enough confidence on your first deal. You need to just go with your gut and realize any issues that come up, there's people that you can call on, there's people that you can pay to coach you, there's CPAs to talk to. Just have the confidence that you're gonna make it work out.

Michael Russell:

Yeah, yeah. Learn by doing. I like to say that all the time. You know, people get so hung up reading books, and oh, if I only just join this next workshop, then I'll have the information I need. No, sometimes you just gotta jump in, even if it's uncomfortable. So love that, man. Kurt, this has been great, man. For folks who want to follow your journey, learn more about Captain Capital, or connect with you, where should they go?

Curt Marker:

Yeah, Instagram's probably the best place. It's the Captain Kurt with all C's. And then my website's CaptainCapital.com. We got development info on there and updates with photos. And uh, those are my two uh most spent places, you know. So easiest way to find me, and thanks for having me on. It was great.

Michael Russell:

Yeah, man. Appreciate you sharing your story. Thanks for being here for our listeners. We'll catch you again next week. Aloha.