Brett and Ashley Nobles have a location rental business that they started six years ago when they moved to Los Angeles. They are both originally from Ohio. They were both working nine-to-five jobs at the time, and Ashley was laid off, so they really began the business out of necessity because they needed to generate additional income to keep themselves afloat. They started renting out their own apartment through Airbnb, but eventually they shifted to location rental or hourly rentals in which customers are renting out spaces on a daytime basis, rather than overnight with Airbnb.
During their first year, they went through a lot of growing pains with being new entrepreneurs, but they were able to grow their business to the point where Ashley’s income was replaced and then within the second year they started to scale the business to multiple locations which enabled Brett to quit his job as well. Over the past five years, they have been able to grow it to over 700 bookings, meaning over 700 film productions, TV shows, movies, corporate offsite meetings, overnight Airbnb rentals, and so on. They have done things both big and small and created a half a million dollars in yearly income.
They began to have a lot of clients, friends, and family asking how they accomplished this and how they got into this business, and they found a real need to teach people how to do the same thing and create a substantial income stream, as a side income or a booming business for yourself. They went on to create yourincomespace.com as a resource to educate and empower entrepreneurs to become short term rental or location rental hosts and create income streams in their lives. They have over 1,000 students now that we help and create educational content for on an ongoing basis.
Why did you decide to create your own business?
We were both working nine-to-five jobs, but we were at a point that we really need to replace a lost income after I (Ashley) was laid off from my sales and marketing job. Brett is a CPA by profession, so he is knowledgeable on accounting and financial matters. We paired our skills together and it has been a great balance, like a yin and yang scenario. Our previous jobs and backgrounds prepared us in a lot of ways, but it was still an adjustment to run our own business. Most of what we’ve learned has been through actually doing and learning along the way.
We started with a need to generate an extra $2,000 per month when we were at our lowest point, but in a couple of years we have been able to grow this much by ourselves and even using properties that we did not even own.
What do you love most about the industry you are in?
We love our community, our students, our businesses family we have through yourincomespace.com.
We also love the flexibility in this industry and the unlimited potential. Whether you want to take this part time and create a side hustle or a supplemental income stream or scale to a six or seven-figure business with multiple spaces, a location rental business is completely adaptable to your goals, your lifestyle, and really the greater vision that you have for yourself.
For a lot of real estate strategies that are out there that people use to create income, you have to own property or buy property. With what we teach, you can just rent an apartment. We love the flexibility with that. It is easy for anyone to be successful based on the flexibility alone.
With other rental real estate ideas, you may need to be booked up all the time or use a ton of your to do it. With this, you can do just one or two bookings a month and still substantially change your income. Whether you rent or own, or even if you want to just work with other space owners if you don’t have a space yourself, there are many ways that you can use the methods that we teach and implement them in your life in the way that makes sense to you.
What does a typical day consist of for you?
Since our business has provided a lot of freedom and flexibility, we are able to spend a good majority of our time pursuing things we are passionate about and things we love. Obviously, that is not to say that we don’t have to work because we most definitely do. We have a solid work ethic but gone are the days of 60-hour work weeks when we were caught in the nine-to-five grind. We give a few hours each day to our location rental business and our “Your Income Space” community.
We like to start with a good workout early in the morning to get the endorphins flowing, meditating, making a good breakfast, and getting a good playlist together to set the tone for the day. We are huge beach people, and we love taking our dog for a walk to the beach.
Then we come home and get to work. We have a huge community and there are plenty of emails to always answer, a lot of quality content that we putting out, and oftentimes we usually have some sort of prep work to do for an upcoming booking we have at one of our location rentals. When it is the day that we actually have a booking, one of us is going to be onsite at that location, making sure it is clean and ready to accommodate our guests. We are super hands on even to this day because we like to give that personal touch.
Our days can be pretty flexible, but the coolest part is that no two days are the same, which is what we love. We have built our lifestyle around that flexibility and that allows us to give time to our community, but also work out and have hobbies and passions.
What keeps you motivated?
Being our own boss and teaching other people how to become their own boss is the foundation of what keeps us motivated. Money is great, but freedom and autonomy is the bigger goal. There is nothing more fulfilling and more empowering than being the architect of your own life and being able to dictate what your life looks like in every aspect. We have it our mission to educate, enlighten, and empower other people to do the same and that has been the most fulfilling part of our journey as entrepreneurs.
When our students and our community share their success stories with us, when they are able to turn some struggles in their life to now dictating what they want their life to be, achieving their goals and their dreams, it reinforces the significance of what we are doing and that we are on the right path. The work that we do is impacting and improving their lives. When we get that great feedback from them, it is an empowering thing for us that encourages and motivates us to help more and more people.
How has your company grown from its early days to now?
Our business has grown, but it has changed a lot too beyond just the growth itself. In the early days we were very much still caught in the no sleep, grind mentality, which can help when you are first starting a business, but it created a lot of burnout for us. We did not learn the power of saying no. We did not learn the power of setting goals, but also setting goals with boundaries for ourselves to keep things in balance.
The biggest change has been the way we approach our business and how we adapt our business to our lifestyle. We used to take literally every single booking that would come in and stay up late for days in a row and that did not have a positive impact on our health, our business, or our community. We now have a much healthier balance for ourselves, and we really try to pass on that work/life balance to our students now as well. The real reason why you do anything should be to aim for happiness. We are all striving for stability, peace, and happiness. If you just create something that you want to run away from, that does not accomplish your goal. We try to teach not just the business, but also the mindset and the approach because it is just as important as the business strategies.
How do you maintain a solid work life balance?
We take what is known as an essentialist approach which is really rooted in the power of saying no more than yes. I know in the entrepreneurial world that is not very popular, but for us it has worked so well. We are able to just focus on a handful of priorities, less than five, then we can really balance out our life and do those five things really well. Whereas we were saying yes to everything, every opportunity, and it created a lot of burnout, a lot of confusion, and we were not really clear with our vision.
Time blocking has also been super helpful on a daily basis and on a weekly basis to help us to be more productive. Since we do juggle two different businesses, it is important to look at a full week and plan ahead. When we have a booking on Thursday, we make sure that on Monday through Wednesday we dedicate to our community, get some content going, handle emails, and work on affiliate partnerships, and then Thursday is fully dedicated to that booking and that guest.
What suggestions do you have for someone starting in your industry?
A lot of people don’t know about our industry. A lot of people do get intimidated when it comes to real estate strategies and they don’t realize this is business they can start right where they are and go forward with it. You can see success quicker than you think and that will motivate you and give you the confidence to keep going. We made quite a few mistakes when we first got started, mainly because we did not have anyone to guide us through what to do. Our teacher was Google and a lot of trial and error. We had to really wing it as we went along, but a lot of students have direct knowledge of this industry that really does not exist anywhere else and they have a leg up on getting started. If you are considering this, take the doubt out of your mind and follow what we teach and start from where you are at. Little by little, you will get reinforcement and some positive feedback with some early success. You will see that you can really do this.
What trends in your industry excite you?
The growth of the short-term rental industry as a whole is really exciting. We’ve seen how much it has grown over the last 10 years, and we see a lot of potential for growth in the years coming up as well. We see a huge expansion in the way people convene, create content, travel, and throw events. There is a huge shift happening right now. Smart entrepreneurs will be able to take advantage of the opportunity of this growth.
People now have more tools and resources to reach each other that have evolved more recently with marketing websites, but there has also been a shift in the way people use space. When social media was not as prevalent, you did not have individual people creating content the way they do now. Now people need spaces to create content, whereas 10 or 15 years ago only large corporations or large home productions who were the only ones creating content like that.
Now more people can reach each other through social media, but also there has been an evolution in how people have meetings, put on events, and where they have those events. The short-term location rental industry provides more avenues for them to get together, and people really want really cool, unique spaces that are inspiring and creative and make a really great experience. The short-term location rental business gives people the chance to get access to amazing spaces they otherwise would not have known existed. It also means there is so much opportunity for you as an entrepreneur to fill that need.
Where do you see you and your company in 5 years?
We went from not knowing how to make a dollar outside of a salary six years ago to starting two different businesses that have the ability to generate income in two different ways. There are many ways to earn income that fly under the radar and that people do not know about. We want to expand what we are teaching right now and teach about even more income opportunities and creating other income streams. As we learn more opportunities we want to pass that along to our community so they can pick and choose what works for them and level up in different ways and really expand so they can take control of their own lives and their own income streams.
Our priorities have definitely shifted, not just to increasing our own portfolio, but to getting that messaging out there and teaching as many people as we can and empowering and educating. Our mindset has shifted, and we see so much value in getting the knowledge out there versus just bringing more business to ourselves.
Explain the proudest day of your professional life.
It was receiving the very first email from someone that took our program, trusted us to learn from us, implemented what we taught, and it impacted his life in a way that significantly changed it for the better.
I will leave his name out, but we have one student in our community who was even a few months behind on his mortgage, and he had two small little ones and his wife. They were in a really tough spot. He used his bit of change on our course and trusted that it was going to work and trusted us to help him. He was able to not only get caught back up on his mortgage, but I think he made a little under $6,000 just on one booking. He saved his house. He saved his marriage, he always jokes. The gratitude and excitement he had and really the empowerment that he felt from being able to do this for himself and his family, really touched us. I cried when we received that email about that. There’s nothing that feels like that. That was a proud moment that cemented for us why we do what we do, why it is so important and powerful, and why we will definitely continue to do it.
It is amazing to see that every person we are touching is a real person. Their lives are all different, but they all are looking for something. For us to have an answer for them is really empowering for us and it makes it all worth it.