Cashflow Diary™

Troy R. Underwood is an industry disruptor. Part technologist, part economist, and all innovator, he revolutionized the motor vehicle industry with the nation’s first electronic title system for financial institutions, which was later sold for $106 million. His healthcare venture, benefitsCONNECT, innovated healthcare benefits administration and resulted in a highly successful acquisition. His new book is How to Launch Your Side Hustle: Start and Scale a Business with Minimal Capital. Learn more at troyrunderwood.com.  Podcast Highlights Who is Troy Underwood?  Troy considers himself a necessity entrepreneur and has been doing the entrepreneurial thing since elementary school. Troy has sold all sorts of products including greeting cards, seeds, and computers. Whatever the opportunity was, Troy was willing to take advantage of it. For the average entrepreneurial minded person, the problem is having too many ideas. They need to take these ideas and pick one, then execute, and then when they get bored they have to keep pushing instead of flipping to the next one. Ideas are everywhere, execution, perseverance, and discipline is what’s rare. Even a mediocre idea, when executed well, can work out. Troy’s original plan was to become a doctor, not an entrepreneur. It wasn’t until Troy took an economics course on a dare that he realized that he loved the study of economics and completely switched tracks. He kept up his involvement in computers and software development, and found himself in the right place and the right time to offer a solution that jump-started a business.  Is now the right time to start something? Now may actually be a great time to start a new business, especially for those who have been laid off with nothing to go back to. If you’ve been thinking about it for a while and you have an idea, if everything else is relatively stable, now could be the right time to give it a shot. Being an entrepreneur isn’t an exact science, you just have to take the cards you're dealt and play them the best you can. If you’re someone who craves certainty and security, don’t be an entrepreneur. You are able to mitigate some of that risk by being a business owner instead of an entrepreneur, for example opening a franchise which has a higher rate of success. If you’re looking for certainty, you’re not going to find it in your own business.  Who should be an entrepreneur? Creative thinkers and risk takers are the people who should be entrepreneurs. There is a lot of risk and opportunity cost in building a business and you need to be okay with taking that on.  If you’re driven by necessity you are going to have much more motivation to push through the difficult times and figure out solutions to complicated problems that can keep a business running. Why a side hustle instead doing something BIG? Troy compares a side hustle to a rocket ship launch. It’s not just about keeping a side hustle, it’s about building something that you know will be big eventually, something that replaces your full time job in time and is worth investing in. For Troy, it’s not abou

Mark Willis, is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, a #1 Best Selling Author and the owner of Lake Growth Financial Services, a financial firm in Chicago, Illinois.  Over the years, he has helped hundreds of his clients take back control of their financial future and build their businesses with sophisticated, tax-efficient financial solutions.  Mark Willis specializes in building custom-tailored financial strategies that are unknown to typical stock-jockeys, attorneys, or other financial gurus.  As co-host of the Not Your Average Financial Podcast, he shares some of his strategies for investing in real estate, saving and paying for college without going broke, and creating an income in retirement you can’t outlive. Mark Willis works with people who want to grow their wealth in ways that are safe and predictable, become their own source of financing, and create tax-free income in retirement. Podcast Highlights Who is Mark Willis?  Mark’s college years are where the story begins. It was then that Mark met his future wife as well as the first woman they rented a room to. The year that they graduated school was 2008 and they left with $120,000 in student loan debt. With no jobs in the middle of a recession that was a big problem. Over the next few years the goal of Mark and his wife was to figure out a way to build true wealth and be better than debt free.  Since then Mark has learned how to become the banker in his own life and become financially immune to recession.   What was the plan you were thinking about going into school pre-2008? Like many students, Mark assumed that the money would keep on coming and didn’t think too much about the future. Studies have shown that the area of the brain associated with our future selves is the same part of the brain that’s associated with thinking about strangers, and how much are you going to save for a stranger’s retirement? The problem is not just the 18 year olds being handed thousands of dollars of student debt, the entire country has been on a trajectory to become a nation of debtors for generations. We have become a nation enslaved to bankers, credit cards, and debt and it’s not the interest that’s the problem, it’s the volume of debt that we are carrying around. Unfortunately the current crisis has hit us at a moment in history where we are completely unprepared for it at a financial level. Mark didn’t graduate with a finance degree and their journey began by taking baby steps towards becoming debt free. They went lean and put as much towards their debt as possible while also doing whatever they could do generate additional passive income. Figuring out the money situation became such a passion that Mark wanted to dive into on a professional level and started working for a CPA in the midst of the Great Recession. That was when he realized that the whole financial industry was a house of cards. Where is it written that we have to put all of our money into things we can’t access, have no control over, and multiple people with our hands in our pockets? The moment where things completely changed was when a mentor of Mark’s suggested that the path most people follow could be wrong.  What needed to be different from what you were previously doing? There were two things. The first was taking action immediately instead of waiting for the perfect conditions. You might make a few mistakes but it’s better tha

Stu Heinecke is the Hall of Fame “Father of Contact Marketing" and Founder/President of the Contact Marketing Agency and Cartoonlink, which helps sales teams break through using contact marketing solutions to produce critical contact with accounts and prospects. He is a longstanding senior cartoonist for the Wall Street Journal and the bestselling author of How to Get a Meeting with Anyone: The Untapped Selling Power of Contact Marketing and the new book Get the Meeting!: An Illustrative Contact Marketing Playbook.  He hosts Contact Marketing Radio and the How to Get a Meeting With Anyone podcast, and is Co-founder of Cartoonists.org, a coalition of famed cartoonists dedicated to raising funds for charity, while raising the profile of the cartooning art form.   Podcast Highlights Who is Stu Heinecke?  The ability to get meetings with anyone is a kind of superpower. Every great thing that happens in our lives is due to having the right connections at the right time. Stu studied marketing at USC but cartooning had been something that he always loved, so much so that by the time he was in college he was getting some of his work published in the newspapers in Los Angeles. Cartoons have an incredible power to captivate people’s attention so they became a fundamental element to Stu’s marketing strategies.  Back in the early days of marketing, David Ogilvy used to say “humor doesn’t work in advertising, and people don’t buy from clowns.” Stu was one of the people proving him wrong. Initially there was a lot of resistance against the idea, but Stu was able to convince a couple of his first clients, including Rolling Stone, to give it a try and they ended up getting extraordinary results. Contact Marketing In marketing you are always testing a new campaign against a control group, usually the most effective thing the company has ever put out. Stu’s first test campaigns beat out the controls of both Rolling Stone and Bon Appetit and became their new records. He realized that he needed to reach out to some of the key players in the magazine industry and sent each of them a customized cartoon. Most marketers use the 1% rule to measure a response rate against the performance of a campaign, for Stu’s campaign he got a 100% response rate, and they also all became clients of his, so his conversion rate was 100% as well. That initial contact marketing campaign launched Stu’s business and career. How can we cut through the noise with contact marketing? Contact marketing is not just about cartooning, that’s only one way of breaking through.  One of Stu’s favorite contact marketing examples involves a guy named Dan Walshman. Dan is a turnaround specialist and works with CEOs of companies that are in trouble. After combing the business news each day looking for earnings reports, when he finds one that looks to be suffering he gets a beautiful sword created that’s engraved with the CEO’s name on it. He sends that to them with a handwritten note and has been getting a 100% response from that campaign

As founder of Money Ripples, host of The Chris Miles Money Show, and co-author of the book Entrepreneur on Fire, Chris Miles is a leading authority on quickly creating wealth by increasing monthly cash flow and creating passive income. He has shown hundreds of thousands internationally how to free up or generate tens of thousands of dollars each year! Chris has been featured in US News, CNNMoney, and Bankrate.com and has a reputation for getting his clients fast, proven results.  Many of his clients have the option to retire in less than 5-10 years, and Chris himself was able to retire twice by age 39! Chris’s passion is helping entrepreneurs, and high-income employees become financially prosperous by finding and fixing their money leaks and creating passive income. Chris and his family live in Utah, but enjoy escaping to warmer weather during the winter months. In addition to helping his clients increase their cash flow, Chris is a talented ballroom dancer, choreographed ballroom dance routines for Utah Valley University, and got 5th place in his third grade spelling bee.  Podcast Highlights What’s going on in your world today?  Since the last time Chris was on the show nearly five years ago Chris was able to retire for the second time in his life. The first time he retired was at the age of 28, this time around at the age of 39 Chris was looking for something new. He never wanted to be full time again and as an educator at heart Chris continued working on his podcast and teaching people the same strategies that he used. Chris is looking at the current situation in the world and seeing all the opportunities available to those that have been prepared. Preparation The previous recession caused Chris a lot of problems and that’s when he learned the key lesson of never relying on only a few streams of income, because when those get shut off you’re out of luck. Chris has a number of clients that are currently unable to work but because they have set up multiple streams of income beforehand they are able to ride out the problem.  If you weren’t prepared for the coronavirus, you need to do whatever you can. So many people have no idea what to do right now it’s like they’ve been stunned. There are several areas that people are not taking advantage of their money right now. One is the money in mutual funds and retirement plans, people pouring more money into the stock market right now are making a big mistake. What should people do right now? Get lean, get liquid, and get out. Even during the great depression there were people that prospered and those that did were the ones who got lean and were looking for opportunities. Liquid cash is where you want to be right now, having enough cash on hand to weather the storm is crucial. Money never comes from the government in the time you expect so don’t rely on them for help right now.  If you have time, start looking for ways to create value and make money. That could be short term rentals or other forms of real estate. Creating Passive Income The one big mistake that Chris made in the prior recession was in aiming for growth instead of plain old cash flow. The result was he went way too big on his deals and ended up losing the properties. This time, instead of going for sexy Chris went for certain. The trouble is flashy $80,000 che

Kyle Stanley is the host of the Fearless Flipping podcast where he educates new hungry real estate investors about best practices for getting started. We flip the roles into today’s episode with J being interviewed for Kyle’s podcast. Find out how J is conquering the coronavirus and adjusting his short term rental business to be even more successful than before.  Podcast Highlights How did you get to this point and what brought you into the short term rental business?  The keyword for J is cash flow, everything he’s done in terms of business is around generating an income without physically going to work. Due to some very challenging physical ailments where both J and his wife were unable to work and earn money, they needed to figure out a solution which is what led him to real estate. Everything he should have been doing should have been geared towards creating cash flow. The next two years were transformational for J’s business. He had no money, terrible credit, no way to earn an income, and was selling his possessions on eBay when a friend recommended he start investing in real estate. His friend didn’t let those obstacles stop him and in a relatively short amount of time J closed his first subject-to deal. How did you find your first deal? You need to move at the speed of instruction. We need to be more like Walmart. Walmart perfected just in time inventory, we need to perfect just in time learning. There are certain parts of a real estate transaction that you don’t need to know yet, you need to learn the first step and then go out and take that step. There is no real benefit to understanding everything before you take any action.  Trust yourself to learn what you need to know when you need to know it and go out there and take action. That’s exactly how J found and put together his first deal, one piece at a time. Real estate is a skill the marketplace rewards. We can all learn to play the real estate game once we’ve been told the rules and practiced a bit. Within 3 weeks of closing his first deal J closed an additional 10 deals in the span of a week, which was a complete mindset shift for him. Fear is what holds all of us back, but we like to tell ourselves that we’re just being prudent. When you’re afraid any excuse will do. You have to ask yourself has anyone overcome the thing you’re afraid of because if that’s the case, the fear is not an excuse.  How are you operating right now? Most short term rental operators think about the business incorrectly and they need to understand what the problem actually is. Changing your thinking from “I have an Airbnb business” to “I have a short term rental business” will unlock your mindset and allow you to see new opportunities. The short term rental business has existed since the American Civil War. When the coronavirus hit, J’s business took a significant hit but that hasn’t removed the need for what his business provides.  J’s business is still on all the marketplaces like Airbnb and Booking.com and he’s now adding additional channels that he planned on including later in the year. He’s also increasing the amount of online advertising he’s doing and offering coupons and discounts to previous customers. At the end of the day it comes down to whether you understand the problem. It’s not like the business is bad, it’s just that the person with the need doe

Let me introduce you to Scott Smith, a new breed of real estate attorney with a great sense of humor and a gift for simplifying the complex. His Austin startup, Royal Legal Solutions, has a different take on protecting your assets including real estate investments and already serves thousands of clients across all 50 states. As a former litigation attorney, Scott has a deep understanding of how lawsuits really work. More importantly, he is a real estate investor himself, with property in 10 states. Now he’s sharing his information with the world and is committed to helping other real estate investors protect their futures. Podcast Highlights   Who is Scott Royal Smith?    At the heart of it all, Scott is a guy that likes to solve hard problems and then show people the solutions he’s found. He can then connect with people in an empathetic way and help them make positive changes in their lives.  Spiritual development is very important to Scott, the biggest KPI that Scott focuses on is his sense of well being and how he shows up in the world. Awareness of your own being is the only way to connect with other people. It doesn’t matter how great your ideas are unless you can connect with what’s true with somebody else. Scott’s mindset was passed down by his mother who taught him that there are two types of people in the world, people who think things happen to them and people that think that things happen for them. When life happens for you, you have a responsibility to reflect on and grow from your experiences.   Why did you choose to become an attorney?   Scott started his career as a litigator suing insurance companies with the overall goal of trying to change the industry. One thing he found along the way was you have to be really careful about what you want because you just might get it, and if it turns out you don’t like it you’re in trouble. Scott had been investing in real estate at the same time and was making more money investing than he was in his career, so he just decided to make the switch on what he was focusing on. It was in the process of learning the real estate investing ropes that he encountered a bunch of interesting problems that a lot of people were constantly asking about and that was the seed for Royal Legal Solutions. Now he teaches people how to make complex real estate investing problems simple. Scott doesn’t consider himself an attorney now. He may hold a law license, but what he does now is focus on helping investors.   From a business owner perspective, what are the things that we should be thinking about but are overlooking right now?   Real estate investing is also a business once you get to a certain point and protecting your assets becomes absolutely crucial. The things that impact business owners will also impact real estate investors. The first step is to tap into any established lines of credit you have. Long term secured debt is ideal with low interest rates. Pull out as much cash as you can because we don’t know what’s going to happen with liquidity markets and they are probably going to seize up. If they do and you have cash, you will have money on hand to take advantage of opportunities that come up. If

With a diverse career crossing professional services, mining services, civil construction, manufacturing, industrial relations Jacqueline has used  public speaking-centric strategies extensively to launch, pivot and manage both growth and crisis across all of those organizations. For 15 years Jacqueline has successfully trained consultants, professionals, business owners, executives and the C-Suite in public speaking, sales, presenting, core messaging, negotiating and positioning, before turning her attention more specifically to the craft of speaking in early 2017. Since then Jacqueline has worked with 100’s of emerging and established speakers across Australia and the USA. Jacqueline’s training has been delivered to some of Australia’s major corporate brands including Tattersalls (The Lott) and Anglicare, and her programs have been picked up by the Australian Institute of Sport Gold Medal Alumni Program in Canberra, and she has recently been awarded Certified Speaking Professional.   Podcast Highlights Who is Jacqueline Nagle? Jacqueline is a girl that had a plan for her life, one that involved becoming a lawyer in New York. But life happens and in her early 20’s she moved to Melbourne and fell into a job in recruitment where she discovered she loved the work. What originally started out as a temporary six week position turned into a sixteen year career.   Much of Jacqueline’s later success can be attributed to all the different things she learned in that career. It was where she found her first mentor and learned that one of the best ways to excel is to be insatiably curious and constantly learning. Her mentor also instilled Jacqueline’s love of story for conveying lessons and that became the foundation for how she operates now. Jacqueline’s moment where she decided to venture out on her own occurred after she made herself redundant as CEO at a company she was working at. After a three month transition period, Jacqueline was in her early 40’s and had a moment to consider what she really wanted to do. She tapped into her love for public speaking and decided to go to every speaking event within a 50 km radius. That was when she found that there are actually very few good public speakers in the world and that something was missing. She put together a pilot program and got some great success teaching people that they have something powerful to say and when they know how to say it, they can create something powerful as a result. Plans Change Sometimes our plans change, but that doesn’t mean that the goal stops existing, just that the way you get there becomes different. For Jacqueline, she didn’t become a New York lawyer but she found that the skills she learned over the course of her career allowed her to operate similar to a lawyer. It wasn’t until she realized that was she comfortable with the fact that her plan had changed. We need to recognize that this is a moment in time, and it may be hard and difficult and your path may change, but the goal is still there. We have to let go of follow a rigid path and adapt to changing circumstances. The thing that we love to do and the way that we bring value to the world hasn’t changed. What does it mean to honor the audience’s time? Even if you’re speaking for free you have to honor your audience’s time because they are giving you their most precious commodity. You have to be there to serve, not to be self indulgent. You have the privilege of the platform when you’re speaking. Explain to people what you know to be true about the world through story and give them something of value. Storytelling is not about you, it’s about creating belief and trust and connecting with the people in front of you at an unconscious level. How can today’s entreprene

Kyle Stanley is the host of the Fearless Flipping podcast where he educates new hungry real estate investors about best practices for getting started. Kyle is also a master with AirBnB and believes it's the best form of almost-completely-passive income in today's economy.  Podcast Highlights   Who is Kyle Stanley?    Kyle doesn’t like the term “serial entrepreneur”, he prefers the idea of FOCUS (focus on one course until success). Kyle had to make a lot of adjustments over his career based on his skills and what he enjoyed. Kyle started out as a sports anchor in Colorado for a local news station, started a sports videographer company, and moved into the MLM world where he got his first taste of the idea of passive income. In 2018, Kyle’s dad’s health took a turn for the worst and ended up in a hospice which led to Kyle slowing down and reflecting on what he really wanted to do with his life. He began to listen to podcasts on real estate investing and found the idea to really resonate with him which was how he ended up getting involved with fixing and flipping homes. Coincidentally Kyle had been house hacking his home with an AirBnB business without realizing that that it would also count as working in real estate. Once he really started to look into what else he could do with an AirBnB business, Kyle went from earning $1000 a month to $15,000 a month over the span of five months in 2019. Even in the days of the coronavirus Kyle’s short term rental business is still doing very well.   Why videography?   Being a sports anchor means being a one man band so Kyle learned a lot of different skills as part of the job. He also learned that he didn’t particularly love being on the news and he saw an opportunity to make videos for athletes to help them get into college. He took what he learned working in news and put it into a business that he believed he could thrive in, but lacking mentorship at the time was a serious downside.   The Passive Income Transformation   Kyle hadn’t even heard the words passive income until he was 26 years old. Kyle’s model for entrepreneurship was his father who ran a very successful business, but running the business meant extremely long hours. When Kyle got older he realized that his father was a slave to his business, something Kyle did not want to be, and it wasn’t until Kyle started working in the MLM did he get exposed to the idea of outsourcing and making a business more passive. Getting around people on a higher level that had learned how to create systems that can automate income is what first changed Kyle’s mindset around business. The missing piece was something that he was passionate about and real estate ended up being the key. Kyle now helps more people in the short term rental industry than he ever did pushing vitamins and supplements.   The Allure of Real Estate and an “AirBnB Business”   The big thing for Kyle when he got started flipping properties was helping people get a better return on their money. Creating all the job opportunities at the same time was a nice bonus as well. Kyle is also a numbers person, so analyzing a deal and crunching the numbers makes him excited. When he started looking at AirBnB as a business and he found that he could make $20,000 to $30,000 on one project,

Chad Peterson is an expert business broker and the founder of Peterson Acquisitions, an award-winning M&A firm. Chad’s firm handles transactions in the $1 million to $25 million range, with some deals exceeding $25 million.  He works with companies all over the United States and has completed international deals as well. Peterson Acquisitions was recently named by one publication as the #1 ranked business broker in the United States. What sets Chad Peterson apart from all other business brokers is his aggressive style, work ethic and tenacity that are rooted in his humble beginnings.  Chad Peterson is a self-made entrepreneur that has been in the trenches. He has started, built and sold 6 of his own businesses. Chad wrote the book “From Blue to White: A Working Man’s Guide to Self-Employment”. Best-selling author Scott Alexander of “Rhinoceros Success” wrote the foreword. He also wrote the book “Swinging Doors: A Guide to Selling Your Business” and is the host of the podcast:Business Brokers: Buying, Selling & Growing Businesses Podcast Highlights   Who is Chad Peterson?    If you study people who are driven you will always find a point in time where it all began. For Chad, he grew up in a tumultuous house with a difficult upbringing and early on his defining moment was realizing that he had to do things on his own. In his words “if it was meant to be it was up to me.” He worked hard as a kid, earned his own money and quickly enough people started to recognize that and praise him for his effort.  As a natural entrepreneur, Chad had difficulty in school and found himself in the work program. He eventually became a commercial pilot but that career was cut short by 9/11 and he quickly went back to his entrepreneurial roots. He built several companies and sold them over the next few years until the second inflection point of his life. In 2008, Chad had built a company that had 120 employees and was making $7 to $10 million a year. The trouble was the company was in the subprime mortgage industry and was completely destroyed by the crisis. In only a few short months, Chad went from a millionaire to broke. Instead of being defeated, Chad picked himself up and built a different company selling home services and things carried on. Eventually people started asking him how to build and sell businesses, which is how Chad ended up where he is now and a top business broker in the United States.   The Impact of Mindset   Chad feels that his mindset of his life being up to him is responsible for at least 85% of his success. When you’re hungry in your soul, you will make things happen. Success is survival, and for Chad if he doesn’t feel like he’s progressing he feels like he’s dying.   Why $700 to $1000 a day?   Home services between $700 and $1000 are still affordable for most Americans, even during a recession. By going for volume instead of a high price tag he knew that more people would take him up on his offer. During hard economic times, volume will beat out margin and a steady flow of income is important to keeping things going.   Taking Risk When There Is Fear In The Marketplace   There are people who act now that will make a huge amount of money during this crisis. It may seem logical to wait when you’re afraid or uncertain, but that’s what kills an economy. We are in a collapse scenario and fear is only going to

Annie Dickerson and Julie Lam are the co-founders and managing partners of Goodegg Investments, a premier real estate investing company that helps people learn about and invest in real estate syndications (group investments).   They are both moms (Annie has 2 kids and Julie has 3) and are passionate about helping other families build passive income so they can spend more time with the people they love, doing the things they love, and living a life by design.  Podcast Highlights   Who is Annie Dickerson and Julie Lam?    Annie started as an elementary school teacher and after setting out to buy her first house with her husband she was exposed to the idea of house hacking. They purchased a row home, something pretty common in DC, and rented out the bottom portion to help pay down their mortgage. After that experience they started looking at investing in other properties out of state, and that later developed into property syndications and getting to know Julie in the process. Julie started investing in real estate in 2009 with her husband. They purchased a number of properties in the Bay area and as the market started to mature they sold off a number of those properties in 2013 and 2016. It was then that Julie started to really think about the best way of investing that will work the hardest for her lifestyle. That’s when she realized that investing for cash flow could be the solution. She quickly realized that that’s a long term strategy and she wanted to be able to scale. That led her to the idea of getting into passive investing in multifamily real estate with syndications. Julie and Annie met at a real estate conference and being among the few women at that conference, they hit it off. Partnership wasn’t discussed at that point but as they got to know each other and found that they each loved complimentary facets of the business, partnering up seemed like a great idea. Annie loves the content creation and education portion of the business and Julie loves the deal making and negotiating aspects, so they work very well together.   Why GoodEgg Investments?   GoodEgg is about building your nest egg and investing for good. It’s not about just putting your money to work for you, it’s also about leaving a legacy for your family and having a positive impact on society. Coming up with a business name can be a major challenge for new entrepreneurs. The process that Annie went through involved looking at the existing names of businesses in the space, and then thinking outside the box to try to find something really unique. The idea behind the name and the concept was what really brought Julie on board.   Creating Content As A Real Estate Investor   Before working Annie, Julie spent a huge amount of time on the phone with potential investors answering the same questions over and over again. What was missing was a better thought leadership platform that allowed people to get to know them. After establishing their platform and making content creation the foundation of the business model, those conversations became much easier as the investor often felt like they already knew them, liked them, and trusted them.

Gina Bianchini is the Founder & CEO of Mighty Networks. Her mission at Mighty Networks is to usher in a new era of creative business built on community. Mighty serves “creators with a purpose” selling experiences, relationships, and expertise to their members via community, content, online courses, and subscription commerce–all offered in one place under the creator’s brand.  Before Mighty Networks, Gina and Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen launched Ning, a pioneering global platform for creating niche social networks. Under her leadership, Ning grew to ~100 million people in 300,000 active social networks across subcultures, professional networks, entertainment, politics, and education.  In addition to Mighty Networks, Gina serves as a board director of TEGNA (NYSE: TGNA), a $3 billion dollar broadcast and digital media company, and served as a board director of Scripps Networks (NASDAQ: SNI), an $12 billion dollar public company which owns HGTV, The Food Network, and The Travel Channel that merged with Discovery Communications in 2018.  Podcast Highlights   Who is Gina Bianchini?    The seed that ultimately became Gina’s mission in her work was growing up in a time and place and a family of incredibly curious people. Gina’s father had a passion for restoring old cars and her mother was always curious about the world around her, so much so that Gina can’t remember a time when she wasn’t reading a book.  Growing up in Cupertino gave Gina incredible opportunities because she found herself surrounded by people who would go on to be involved with things that would become LinkedIn, Facebook, and other major social networks. It was then that her friend came to her with the idea to create a new platform that gave people the ability to create social apps the same way they could create websites.  The common thread in Gina’s work has been the realization that people are awesome. Being able to bring people together around an interest or passion or goal is something that unlocks people’s abilities to create and participate in the world. One of the most powerful ways to go from point A to point B is through connecting with other people.   What is so different about Mighty Networks?   Gina has a very specific definition of community that helps describe what she is doing, namely “bringing people together to master something interesting or important together”. The real power is when there is a person leading a community and curating it to create those conditions of mastery.  The network is the evolution and refinement of what’s going on at the intersection of online courses, podcasts, and communities. When you move away from thinking about all of those as separate pieces and start thinking your mission is to create the conditions for people to master something interesting together, that’s when the magic happens. People are craving transformation in their lives, and being able to master something interesting is how they do that. If they could do that on their own by reading a book, they would, but that isn’t always the case. That’s why they pull out their credit card and pay for courses and communities. People will pay a premium for being a part of courses or communities that master som

How do you house hack your way to financial freedom with hardly any money down? How do you build a best-in-class property management company? What is the best day to do a home inspection? What does it mean to be #rentready? Jimmy Murray has all the answers and he is ready to share them with your podcast listeners today.  Over the past ten years, Jimmy’s multifamily real estate investments have blossomed into a successful property management company, Lyon Property Management Group. An investor himself, Jimmy intimately understands the needs of an investor landlord. And that’s why Lyon Property Management is tailored to the multifamily investor.   Jimmy is also an investor educator along with Lyon Property Group co-founder Frank Patalano. Jimmy and Frank host a podcast called The Cashflow Kings where they have been known to pass out free golden nuggets of real estate wisdom.  Podcast Highlights   Who is Jimmy Murray?    Jimmy Murray was always a thoughtful kid but he also had an entrepreneurial tilt. Real estate didn’t come along in Jimmy’s life until 8th grade when he wrote a letter to himself where he imagined what real estate and stocks he owned by the time he was finished high school. Jimmy tends to over analyze everything, which fits perfectly with his INTJ Myers-Briggs result.   Acorn Theory   Jimmy Murray recently learned about Acorn Theory, where we all start as a small acorn with a guide that helps us grow into a massive oak tree. Sometimes it takes longer to accomplish that, but your goal should always be to realize your oak tree potential. For Jimmy, he didn’t know what the path was that he would take, but he knew that Real Estate was going to be the shape of things. It doesn’t matter where you start, it matters where you finish. Jimmy’s degree which helped him land a job at a well respected financial firm came from Ohio State University, but he started off in a local community college. His original strategy was to get a job on Wall Street, make a pile of money, and then invest in real estate but it didn’t work out that way. Instead, he found himself failing the CFA exam and being forced to decide whether to invest more time and money in passing the test, or just jumping into real estate and buying his first multifamily property.  Small, daily habits are the foundation for long term success. Progress happens a little bit each day, your goal shouldn’t be to get there immediately. Failures are the stepping stones on your way to success. Sometimes your closest mentors will tell you not to pursue your dream goals, but if you believe in it enough you should be willing to chase what you want.   Is there anything you wanted someone to say to you when you were starting off?   Not everyone is going to believe in your vision along the way, but as long as you do, no one else has to. Jimmy wouldn’t change the way things played out when he decided to get into real estate.   Why did you go into property management?   When Jimmy Murray bought his first property, he also started wholesaling with the belief that wholesaling would be the way he was going to escape his cubicle. Despite being an

We’re exploring the question that almost everybody considering short term rentals asks, how much money can you make with a short term rental unit? The answer may surprise you. We’ve also got a recent Roadmap student on the line to tell us about their experience in securing their very first units, and yes, that’s plural, as in multiple units their very first deal.   The Cashflow Diary Roadmap   J and the Cashflow Diary are dedicated to providing hands on and direct training to students that want to create their own six and seven figure short term rental businesses.  Members get access to hundreds of hours of content covering every aspect of building a short term rental business including cash flow, negotiations, operations, lead generation, seller financing, and more. Everything you need to develop the skills you need to become the bravest entrepreneur you can be. The content is one thing, but knowledge alone isn’t going to get you to your goals. That’s why the program is designed with hands on training and accountability built in, training that shows you how to use expert tools expertly. As Roadmap members you get access to every course and training J has produced over the last several years, some of which people have paid upwards of $5000 for, but you also get assigned a dedicated accountability to make it all happen. They will take you on a 12 month transformational journey through all three phases of the short term rental business, holding your hand each step of the way. Members are also the first people who will get access to the Cashflow Diary app which will tie everything together. The app will connect the content and the community in a way that we’ve never been able to do before. When it comes to short term rentals, things change every 90 to 120 days. Your customers will change, there are high and low seasons, and there’s always something new to learn. This is why the accountability coach is so important, they will make sure that you stick to the plan and hold you to accomplishing your goals.   When I got started I set a goal of getting 10 units a year, and have had some interesting interactions with landlords so far and I may have to reevaluate my goals.   This caller just started their entrepreneurial journey and ran into a little opposition right off the bat, but that quickly turned into an opportunity to pick up 3 units right now, with the potential to pick up an additional 40. He used the scripts exactly as provided by the training program to get to his first game changing yes. In doing the research for his area in preparation of setting up his business he found that the other short term rental operators are barely putting in any effort at all. After having some conversations with people, he was asked to join a local BNI group and speak on what he’s doing with short term rentals and has been generating a lot of excitement around the whole idea.   How much money can I make with short term rentals?   Go to rentometer.com and enter in whatever address you think may be a good spot to open up a short term rental unit. Whatever the rent number that comes up, multiply that number by 2. That’s a conservative number for the rest of your calculations.  A good rule of thumb is that you can expect to earn around $800 per bedroom each month. You do have to keep in mind however that your firs

You’ve tried reading a book and watching a video, you’ve also probably tried going to a couple conferences, and the trouble is that’s not enough for you to make transformational changes in your business. That’s why J developed the Cashflow Diary Roadmap program, to provide short term rental entrepreneurs the hands on training and accountability they need to succeed in this business. Questions and Answers   A question about wholesaling a property    Inside the wholesaling course within the app is enough information to walk through everything you need to know when it comes to marketing and closing a wholesaling deal. The more important point is that when you are on the path of becoming a short term rental entrepreneur, you have to stay focused on short term rentals. You’re not going to get the success you want by constantly being distracted by other deals and opportunities. You need to focus on achieving a specific result, and members of the Cashflow Diary Roadmap are held accountable to those results. If you chase two squirrels, both will escape. It doesn’t mean the other squirrel isn’t valuable, but you need to focus. As you learn more, you will begin to see more opportunity, and that may actually become one of the biggest challenges for the accountability coaches. Their job will be to keep you on track so you can keep making progress instead of constantly starting new projects without finishing them.   If we want to purchase an apartment for short term rental purposes, how are we going to make the bank recognize the performance and count as part of the income?   You’re going to work with your CFO so you can get the correct type of financial statements together so that it ties into your tax return properly, but also when they are going to look for the raw data obtained from your bookkeeper, everything matches. The first step is to get a bookkeeper if you haven’t done that already. If you can’t present clean and accurate financial statements yet, there is no reason to talk to a bank.   Is the “Add tax” feature on AirBnB additional?   It is and the challenge with the feature is that it’s being done automatically for some people and not for other people in different areas. This can actually put you at a disadvantage in the search results.   Got my first booking, what application should I be using to communicate with my guest?   It comes down to setting up a separate email address that everyone on the team has access to that allows the team to communicate with guests directly. There is always a new pricing tool in the works that we are going to be talking about shortly that allows us to unify communication with all the different platforms.   When the Q&A’s move to the app, are you going to make announcements when the transition happens?   Yes and keep in mind that nobody is losing access to anything, only the platform and delivery mechanism is changing. Putting everything on the app will allow members to communicate with each other much more easily and that means we all get to take advantage of the increased network effects.   Always make sure a property works as a long term rental as well as a short term rental. What do you think of that advice?   The real question

Humans don’t transform overnight. Most people can’t just read a book or watch a video and completely change their life immediately. You’re not going to be able to pick up a bunch of short term rental units right away. That’s the reason that J developed the Cashflow Diary Roadmap, the Roadmap is a program that combines an immense library of content and training and accountability coaching to make sure you achieve your short term rental goals. Questions and Answers     Moving at the Speed of Instruction    When you’re moving at the speed of instruction, you don’t have the time to question your capacity to do something. With a little bit of trust and follow through, you can accomplish more than you would believe is currently possible. Humans tend not to value as much as they should. If you want to achieve anything worthwhile, you need to be willing to fail. Fail frequently, and fail forward.  One of the things about schooling that prevents you from getting ahead is the belief that you must learn everything in the program or book before you are qualified to act. It’s much more effective to read a chapter, then put the book down and put what you learned into action. You will get much more out of what you learn by combining it with actual experience.   How do we secure POE cameras to prevent them from unplugging?     The cameras that J recommends are hard wired directly into the electricity of the house so they can’t be unplugged. In the case of the caller, the installer didn’t run the wire through the walls so the simple solution is to bring them back in and redo the installation.   I currently have a couple short term rental units and trying to figure out where to be next, where should I be looking?   New Jersey is a good place to look since it’s one of the most short term rental friendly states in the country.    I’ve been talking to a couple of landlords but have been having trouble conveying what we do, how do we approach this conversation?   If a landlord has concerns about the number of people that are going to be staying in their unit, the key is to assure them that you screen guests just as thoroughly as they do and care just as much what kind of guests stay in the unit. Talk about the fact that you are always available because of your systems that you have in place and that it’s more common for you as a short term rental operator to have issues with long term tenants than they will have with your guests. Avoid telling the landlord the range of the number of people who could potentially stay at the unit, it’s better to describe a specific use situation so they can easily imagine the kind of guest you are describing. They don’t know that you have the capacity to screen people just as well as they do, so you have to be able to communicate that in a way that makes them feel more secure about doing business with you. If something does happen, you can also tell them the systems you have in place allow you to remove a guest from the property and involve the authorities if necessary much faster than they could due to the restrictions around their business model. Being detached from the outcome is also very important. If that particular landlord doesn’t take you up on your offer, that’s okay. You can move on to the next l

How would it feel to earn an entire year’s salary in only one month? When you understand the power of a short term rental business and crunch the numbers involved, the path becomes clear. J is going to break down everything you need to know about your Magic Number and how the Cashflow Diary Roadmap can help you achieve your business goals.   If your short term rental business magically tripled overnight, how much more time would you have to spend running your business?    If your answer is anything other than 0 extra time to deliver your service, you’re not operating as efficiently as you could. You’re not earning the highest revenue, or your expenses are higher than they need to be, or you’re investing too much of your time into delivering the service. With the right systems in place, you will be able to deliver more value to the marketplace without having to spend more time doing it. If the thought of your business tripling in 24 hours causes you anxiety around a particular area, that’s where the broken system is.  The more systems you implement the more reliable and consistent your business becomes.   Your Magic Number    Math equals money. The one way you can measure how much money one unit can make compared to another is a metric called Revenue Per Available Room, also known as RevPar. To calculate your RevPar, you take your average daily rate and multiply it by your occupancy. This gives you a metric that tells you how much you’ve earned per day, per room. The occupancy rate for the entire hotel industry in 2019 was only 66.1%. The average daily rate for those hotels was $138.21 per stay. The average Revenue Per Available Room for hotels in 2019 is $86.76. The average customer review score for those same hotels was 80% with Marriott and Wyndham being tied for first place since 2008.  To compare, J’s numbers for 2019 was an occupancy rate of 70.17%, an average daily rate of $128.34, a RevPar of $90.26, and average customer review score of 92.55%. Think of all the things that you believe are holding you back, now imagine what would happen if all those obstacles were gone tomorrow. How many units would you have by the end of the year with nothing in your way? Take that number of units and run the numbers, multiply by both the average hotel RevPar and J’s RevPar and that will give you a range that will tell you exactly how much money you could make every day if you accomplished your goals. Multiply that number by 365 to get your earnings per year. You can also break that number down even further and determine how much of an opportunity cost you’re paying each and every hour that you let those obstacles hold you back.   The Cashflow Diary Roadmap   J and the Cashflow Diary are dedicated to providing hands on and direct training to students that want to create their own six and seven figure short term rental bu

The short term rental industry is waiting for people like you who want to be professional operators delivering a high quality experience. The hardest way to do this business is to go through the first year with only one unit. Putting the right short term rental systems in place that allow you to grow past that point and start running more units is the secret to long term success. Learn what systems you must implement in your short term rental business.   Have you ever asked a traditional real estate investor or landlord about short term rentals?    A good analogy is imagining what a person who owns a Costco franchise or someone who owns a vending machine business. Each person will have firmly believe that what they are doing is the best option, but the Costco person probably thinks the vending business is too much work, and the vending machine owner thinks the Costco is too much money upfront. The traditional landlord is like Costco, they are wholesaling their property in 12 month terms. Short term rentals are like the vending machine business, you’re both selling the same product, just with a different package and sales channel. The differences are the customers being served and the level of services you are providing. Short term rental operators are the retail version of real estate, we sell the property one day at a time, and the power is in our ability to be efficient. It’s the system that delivers the service, and that’s the difference between the two. As a resource becomes more available and efficient, demand for that resource starts to go up. Cell phones are a good example, they started off big and clunky and difficult to manufacture, but now they are small, powerful, and ubiquitous. Short term rental operators make real estate more efficient. The more efficiency we bring to the table, the more revenue we can drive in our businesses and other people’s organizations as well. The key to your future is putting this principle into effect for your life.   Putting Short Term Rental Systems In Place   There are a few key short term rental systems that have to be in place if you’re going to capture this efficiency. This includes a system for cleaning the unit on a regular basis, a maintenance and repair system for fixtures like doorknobs, a communication system for communicating with your guests, and a system for managing the availability of multiple calendars per property. Most of the time, we recommend people start out with AirBnB because they have the absolute best system for customer acquisition. But there are other platforms as well, and if you can operate efficiently on those platforms, you can make much more money per booking.  If you’re going to make the maximum amount of profit in this business you need to have a system in place for availability 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is probably the easiest area for us to outperform the market because the average short term rental operator has no system in place to handle inquiries and can sometimes take days to respond. You have to provide more value to the marketplace than just you are able to provide. It has to be bigger than you. That kind of thinking is how you unlock five figure paydays, six figure success, and seven figure freedom. Learning how to provide value to the marketplace efficiently allows you to scale and reach levels of income that most people have no idea how to achieve, in

Get the lowdown on the Cashflow Diary Roadmap program and how the program has been designed to get students to six and seven figure businesses as quickly as possible. Find out what makes the Cashflow Diary Roadmap different and how becoming a student in the next enrolment period could completely transform your life.   What is the difference between what’s offered to Cashflow Diary Roadmap students versus traditional students?    Cashflow Diary Roadmap students are the first to take advantage of the new Cashflow Diary app, a one stop location for training materials, networking opportunities, and additional features like a vendor marketplace. The app also allows us to bring on subject matter experts to provide help with specific areas. The app also connects Roadmap students to their accountability coach in a real time format.  There are also a number of assessments that your accountability coach will help you get through, all of them designed to help you become a bigger, better, badder entrepreneur and keep you on track. You will have access to a monthly 45 minute coaching call and additional tracking tools to keep you on target. Cashflow Diary Roadmap students also get access to 3 weekly training calls that cover topics and tactics that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. Everything in the Roadmap is centered around facilitating the transformation necessary to create six and seven figure businesses.   Who are the accountability coaches?   Each accountability coach is someone who has accomplished the things we are helping Roadmap students achieve. They have proven they have mastered the same material you will be studying as a Cashflow Diary Roadmap student. The whole point of the accountability coaches is to provide real time help for the students and eliminate what they perceive as roadblocks that are preventing them from moving forward.   Does the Roadmap focus on a particular market?   There is no one market that the Cashflow Diary Roadmap focuses on, but for the more exotic use cases of short term rentals there will be either additional training or resources made available for them.   Will you be discontinuing the Q&A’s?   The short answer is no, but where they are done and how they are done is changing. They are only going to be made available to members only. The previous format came with a lot of restrictions that prevented it from really solving the problems we are looking to solve. By changing the format we will be able to better serve the members and help them advance in towards their goals.   Will there be a Facebook presence after this transfer?   There will be a presence on Facebook, it will be focused on the other group. We will be doing more free training for members of that group but our primary focus will be on working with existing Roadmap students. The challenging thing with Facebook is disseminating information because Facebook gets to determine who sees what, which can make things difficult. The Roadmap is our effort in providing a solution to that problem. All the recommendations we have made in the program are tailored to help you get results as fast as possible without getting distracted by the next shiny new object.   What is the opportunity cost

One of the unique things that you need to understand is that people do things for their reasons, not theirs, and their reasons make sense to them. Be careful about assuming that the way you think is the way that everyone thinks. When it comes to talking to landlords as a short term rental operator and getting them to say yes, there is a proven process that you can use to start the conversation and close the deal.   Why do you think that landlords want?    If you’re the one offering a solution to a problem, you’re in business. That means you need to understand the pain of the problem in order to make a sale/present yourself as the solution to the problem. If you’re not getting the answers from the people you’re talking to, it’s not the business model that’s broken, you’re probably just approaching the situation incorrectly. Many of us put off our pain until the last possible moment, landlords have pain too, you just have to understand what that pain is. When someone is in pain, they don’t care about a person’s pedigree as long as they believe they can solve their problem. When it comes to talking to landlords, their biggest problem is vacancy and as long as you can speak competently by understanding that the landlord conversation becomes much easier. The conversation is only difficult because you don’t yet have a thorough understanding of their problems yet. As you continue to have a better handle on the problem, you will run into another set of challenges. Namely, getting the person to admit that they have a problem. The average short term rental guest stays at a venue for 5.6 days. That means that roughly five times a month, the unit has to be cleaned from top to bottom, which is an interesting point you can bring up in conversation with a landlord. How often does that happen with a traditional long term rental situation? The answer is almost never. Another benefit to the landlord is a general decrease in wear and tear on the unit. Guests typically spend their time somewhere other than the unit itself, especially compared to long term tenants. Your relationship with a landlord is a symbiotic relationship where you are both helping each other.   What do you think the landlord gains by working with you as a short term rental operator?   The benefits of a consistently occupied unit not only leads to more reliable payments for the landlord, the building is valued based on its net operating income and if they can show that vacancy is going to be consistent, it can add up very fast for the landlord.  The landlord also gets the advantage of decreased leasing fees and management fees. Working with you as a short term rental operator can save them thousands of dollars in leasing fees and every day the unit is vacant they are losing money, which is a problem you can solve directly. As a short term rental operator, the landlord can be confident that their property will be sufficiently covered by the right insurance, which is not something they can always rely on with traditional tenants. Short term rentals also get to take advantage of all the technology available that most landlords have no idea how to make use of, including increased security and fire protection. We can protect their property better than they or their tenant can. Professional operators can’t be taken advantage of in the way that the scare stories on the news are saying they can.   How To Star

Do you want a six or seven figure real estate business that will actually allow you to retire from your job? Raising capital is a key skill you need to understand. The window of opportunity is wide open and there is more opportunity than you think in the short term rental business, now is the time to take action and get started.      Why would a landlord allow you to lease their property and make more money than them?    Landlords are in different places in their lives and the value different things, that’s what creates the opportunity for us. In fact, most retail businesses do exactly the same thing. The lease a location where they operate out of, in order to make more money than the cost of the lease. The principle is basically the same.     What do you believe investors are looking for? What does it take for investors to say yes to giving you money?   There are basically two things you need in order to get investors to say yes to you. Character and confidence. There are many different ways you can demonstrate those, producing content like a podcast or Youtube videos and they show up consistently. Demonstrating competence is also very important, because he who educates the market, dominates the market. Always answer at least one question with your content and actually helps people.  When it comes to raising capital, there are three types of people that you want to be in front of: guests, landlords, and investors. Another thing to keep in mind is that investors are often the people right next to you, they are not always the person in the fancy suit. Every person has an investor identity and the most interchangeable piece of the process is the deal. Even if you don’t currently have a piece of property under contract right now, you should still be able to talk about who you serve, how you serve them, and everything the customer prefers. If you can’t talk confidently about that without having a particular address in mind, that’s where the problem in raising capital lies. You must become a professional information gatherer because that will put you into a position to diagnose, make a prognosis, and then prescribe. You can’t do it any other way because you will never know what the investor wants. The challenge is you can’t ask them directly because most people don’t even know they have an investor identity. If you walk into any given Starbucks, there is probably several million dollars in investable capital sitting around. You are the operator and the one with a solution, make sure they know that. There are many different reasons someone will choose to invest, and your job is to figure out what that is and solve their problem. Invite them into your world and show them that you are an expert by educating them. If you lead with a deal based on what you believe is great without uncovering what the investor is actually looking for, you both lose.   The Profit Analysis Quadrant Conversation   There are four areas of profit: appreciation, amortization, depreciation, and cash flow. Each of those can be manipulated to create the outcome that the investor is looking for. You have to know how to use these tools to create a deal that solves the investor’s problems. Show them you’re an expert by educating them and asking the right questions, find out what they are doing and what problems they are trying to solve, then explain how your tr

When you understand the “why?” behind your business, it can often help you with the “how?” of your business. In this episode of the podcast J reveals the story of how he came to realize that short term rentals are perhaps the greatest opportunity for people getting into real estate investing in a very long time, but also why the window to take advantage of that opportunity is closing a little bit every single day.     The Power of Real Estate    Prior to getting into real estate, J and his wife went through some incredibly difficult times personally. His wife was unable to eat or drink due to a condition she developed while pregnant, and J suffered an injury where he punctured his lung which prevented him from walking and talking at the same time. His back was against the wall with no money and a terrible credit score, and that was when a friend recommended he look into real estate investing. At that point J’s best ideas are what got him into that position, which is something you should consider as well. Wherever you are now, your best ideas got you to where you are. It wasn’t until J left his comfort zone and stopped pretending that everything was alright that things started to change. J started doing what he was being asked to do and after closing his first transaction in June of 2008, he realized that his beliefs around money were holding him back and preventing him from seeing the opportunity that was around him.   You can play any game if you are taught the rules, and real estate is no different. Once J got started, everything snowballed and accumulated and in the course of the next 12 months his life was completely changed. His business eventually developed into buying apartments and multifamily units, billboards, cell towers, and other types of property all over the United States, all along the way he fine tuned the systems that allowed him to scale. As great as that success is, J wasn’t satisfied. J started thinking about how he could make more of a difference in the world which lead him to create the Cashflow Diary and started helping other people with their own entrepreneurial journey. It was actually one of those people that introduced him to short term rentals. One of the interesting things about real estate is that it’s a great way to build wealth, but a horrible way to build income. A lot of landlords lose money on long term rentals for quite a while. Short term rentals are a response to the change in consumer habits and change the way we look at real estate. Short term rentals have been around for a long time, but what is new about the industry is the impact that technology is having on it. Technology is transforming everything about real estate and the short term rental industry is leading the way.   Planning For The Future   The rules of money have changed and most of us were never taught them in the first place. People are finding out the hard way that social security is more like social insecurity and their 401(k) isn’t going to last as long as they thought it was going to. We all must have a way to produce income not only when we are awake, but passively as well. Inflation and tax increases are coming in the future, and we need a way to protect ourselves from that.  For most people, their first transaction is real estate is about taking on a massive obligation with almost no experience, but one of the game changing realizations with short term rentals

We are talking about making short term rentals happen for you, making them easier and faster, bigger, better, and badder. If you feel the need to get started and need that extra push to make things happen, you can go to cashflowdiary.com/roadmap to finally build your business. J reveals the 10 things he wishes he knew before he got started in the short term rental business as well as answers a number of questions from the viewers. How many units does it take to retire?  When you’re in pursuit of an outcome, you may not know what the goal is. When people are getting started in real estate, they often have a dream of retiring but have no idea how many units they need to achieve that goal. If you want to know exactly how many short term rental units you need to retire you can go to cashflowdiary.com/howmanyunits to calculate your magic number. Is it possible to get my first unit in the first month? The most reliable answer is it depends. If you follow the program and do exactly what it says, you shouldn’t have any problems landing your first unit, it all depends on whether you are willing to put in the work and how comfortable you are with failing. You may have to hear a large number of ‘no’s’ before you get a yes, but if you can push through and put in the work, it’s definitely doable. You just have to move at the speed of instruction. This program is best suited to people who are okay with leaving the ‘why’ for later so that you can provide value now. Even people who have been in the short term rental real estate world can get stuck if they don’t have a system for scaling and the tools and team to support their growth. It takes time to learn systems, but they can’t be implemented just by reading a book or watching a video. It requires hands on experience to make them work. Will we be able to plagiarize all the systems and everything you do in your short term rental business? You not only get to plagiarize everything, the program literally contains the exact messages that J sends his guests. It’s easy to replicate the ingredients, but we also give you the recipe. You need to learn more than just tactics. As the marketplace matures, you’re going to need to have the skills to build a real brand that will allow your business to continue growing. Do short term rentals work in Chicago? The short term rental business works everywhere there is a need for housing. Is the app available to current students or only people in the Roadmap? People joining the Roadmap get access to the app first but it will be coming to existing students that are currently in Facebook. Do I have to under price if I’m new? You don’t have to approach this the way you would with traditional real estate, you would be doing things in the wrong order and costing yourself some opportunity. You also have to be aware of how difficult it is to get accurate data to set your prices and they can be manipulated. #10. I was not aware of the use cases for short term rentals The real secret to the short term rental business is specialization. Who you are trying to serve will determine so much about your business and is really the foundation for everyth

J Massey was the featured guest on the Capital Gains Tax Solutions podcast with Brett Swarts recently and they talked about everything from how J got started in real estate investing, to key short term rental strategies, growth mindset, the Cashflow Diary, and more. Questions and Answers What is your background and what’s your current focus?  J started out from a very difficult situation in life. J’s wife has a condition that when she’s pregnant she can’t eat or drink, and at the same time as her pregnancy J had a punctured lung and brutal asthma. The challenge was that neither of them could earn income by going to work so they needed to find a solution. A friend recommended that he look into real estate investing so with literally no money and terrible credit J began wholesaling properties.  After being introduced to taxes, J started keeping the properties and that developed into a portfolio that included single family houses, mortgages, and cell phone towers. Eventually people started asking how he’d been able to achieve all of that, so J began teaching others how to do the same thing. One of J’s students introduced him to the idea of short term rentals, and three years ago J switched his focus to teaching people how to create their own short term rental business. What is your super power and how does it shape how you help others today? J grew up as a military kid outside of the States and growing up overseas has given him the ability to adapt to new situations very quickly. J is autistic and has ADHD and he considers those his super powers as they help him connect the dots and learn new things surprisingly fast. It’s also a gift being able to share that information and help other people as well. How did you transfer the idea of a weakness into a strength? Being able to provide for your family is great but when that’s accomplished there’s not much else to do. At the age of 38, J found himself functionally retired and with nothing to do until one person came to him and asked to learn everything he knew. In the process of teaching this person the skills of real estate investing, both J and the other person went through incredible transformations. He realized how fulfilling and valuable it is to help other people achieve their dreams and that ultimately put him on his current path. Does your approach to life filter into your basketball game? J judges his success in a basketball game by the number of rebounds and blocks he made, the things that enable someone else to be able to be great. Setting the example of helping other people is very important to J. In many ways, entrepreneurs can be some of the most selfless individuals and since they are so connected to so many different people, they have the ability to make fundamental positive changes to their communities. Walk us through the tactical parts of what you do and how you help people create more wealth. One of the things that people rarely tell you is that owning real estate long term is a great way to build wealth but horrible for building income. Income doesn’t materialize until the debt servicing is complete. When J had 450 units, there was always something to repair and something to do, so they started looking for ways to increase income and reduce the work. This is where short term rental units come into the picture. Short term rentals have a number of advantages to the user compared to a traditional hotel room th

Thomas W. Jones is the Former Vice Chairman, President & COO at TIAA-CREF, the largest pension system in the country. He was the former Vice Chairman of Travelers, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Freddie Mac, and the Former Chairman & CEO of Smith Barney Asset Management. He was the former CEO of Global Investment Management at Citigroup and Former Treasurer at John Hancock Insurance Company. Thomas W. Jones is currently the Founder and senior partner of venture capital investment firm TWJ Capital and author of the new book From Willard Straight to Wall Street: A Memoir.  Podcast Highlights   Who is Thomas W. Jones?    Thomas W. Jones was on the cover of Newsweek in 1969 as an iconic revolutionary while studying at Cornell. As a student, Thomas felt that America was at a crossroads and that his generation was tasked with the job of raising the price of oppression. Due to his effort and the effort of countless others, America chose to embrace the spirit of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and has made significant progress over the last 50 years towards equality. In a certain way, Thomas’s life story and career in business is like a microcosm of the story of the growth and development of America as a whole.   Did the fight look like what you thought it would?   Thomas was pleasantly surprised when America took the path of opening up opportunity instead of the path of oppression. He believed the toughest fight would be in the business world and he figured that he would have almost no chance at success, but he needed to try. He had to approach business in a way that he provided his own psychological support, because he knew he wasn’t going to receive any from the outside. He discovered that if you actually deliver a true 100% commitment, there is a large gap over time between the people who are delivering only 95%. The 5% gap seems small but it compounds over the years and people start to notice. For Thomas, this meant people in the upper echelons of business recognizing that he was getting the job done and eventually taking him on in a mentorship type of relationship.   Where does your motivation and fortitude come from?   It takes a certain level of self belief and self confidence to take on tough challenges. For Thomas, his confidence came from his experience in school. At that time, the philosophy of school in dealing with a gifted child was to accelerate them, and that meant that Thomas had skipped two grades. This meant that he was much younger than his peers and once he had entered high school he encountered a number of bullies. It was then that he decided that he wouldn’t let others define who he was. That self possession developed into the mentality that even if he was facing insurmountable odds, Thomas might as well try to get it done. Most people never figure out what they are capable of because they never actually put 100% into trying to be their best. You can never know what you can do until you give 100% effort. It’s a wonderful gift that you can give to yourself to learn what your highest potential is. When you learn what your capacity is, you will be able to channel and master it, and you will find arenas where you can give 100% and be successful. Thomas’s faith discipline has been another crucial element. Even in the midst of a crisis, praying and trying to see the good in the situation allowed Thomas to continue to fight. Life is going to have times of trial, and having s

Co-founder of TaxDome - a cloud based practice management solution targeted to small/medium sized firms (1-25), helping entrepreneurs scale quickly & easily. TaxDome is an all-in-one solution for tax and accounting professionals to manage their business.  Podcast Highlights   Who is Ilya Radzinsky?    Looking back Ilya always had an entrepreneurial spirit and when he was younger he wanted to own a restaurant. He managed to get a job as a busboy but found it was much harder than he thought it would be and didn’t last more than a week. He pivoted his focus and got creative with his first business of selling digital items on eBay. With some encouragement from his parents, Ilya followed the footsteps of his brother and went into finance as a banker and financial analyst.  Several years into his career, Ilya’s boss shut down the hedge fund he was working at and took a three month sabbatical. During that time, his brother was getting into product development and found a big opportunity. Ilya decided to team up with him and that’s how we get to present day with TaxDome. Generally, Ilya tries to adapt to the times and look for new opportunities.   Getting Into Finance   Finance has a bit of a bad reputation but in many ways it’s like Medicine. There are a number of different roles that you can play within the industry. Ilya enjoyed his career in finance and if it wasn’t for his boss getting divorced he would have probably just continued working at the hedge fund and wouldn’t have gone on to start a business.  Oftentimes, the experiences that feel uncomfortable lead to better things in the future. Adversity often refocuses your vision of the world in a more clear way than before and the successful person usually follows a winding path with plenty of setbacks before they get to where they are.   Why TaxDome?   In 2010, the trends were moving in the direction of more people completing tax returns online in some way and back in the day, Ilya and his brother started working with a firm that was looking to go fully remote and scale their business. They started building that product for them and it went on to transform their business. A few years ago, Ilya and his brother saw an opportunity with the emergence of SaaS companies and that’s when the idea for Taxdome came alive. They created a similar platform to the one they created before specifically for accountants that allows them to access a plug and play solution for their business without requiring a major IT investment. If you’re an accountant, you need a lot of different services in order to run your business and TaxDome is an integrated solution that aims to eliminate as many of those services as possible. TaxDome is trying to reduce the software burden for accountants and allow them to better compete with other businesses as technology changes the way transactions occur.  In a lot of ways, small businesses are facing a large challenge of cobbling together a number of software solutions to be able to compete with larger businesses and their economies of scale. TaxDome is championing small businesses and trying to give them the tools and ability to compete and win. Adopting a new software solution can be daunting so in order to lower the barrier to entry and give clients an idea of what to expect, TaxDome offers a simulated account without having to sign up. The simulated account allows people to experience the soft

J is answering all your questions about business, short term rentals, personal growth, and whatever else it is you’re curious about. We’re also exploring the subjects of insurance and occupancy in particular, how much insurance do you need and what metrics should be looking at to maximize your occupancy. Insurance is one area that you don’t want to cut corners so make sure you understand how to make it work for you. Questions and Answers   How do we handle bad guests?    The first step is to breathe and realize you will survive. Everyone will experience this at some point. The process of removing an unwanted guest that has broken your rules is the same no matter the infraction. One thing to note is if the person is willing to pay the fees for breaking the rules, take the money and move on. If you have to file a resolution with Airbnb you’re going to need to do it immediately. Your window of opportunity is very small to file a claim so don’t wait to do it. If the guest wants to write a bad review, waiting to make a claim is not going to stop them from writing the bad review. You will have to rely on the content policy to protect you from an unfair negative review.   A question about improving a listing’s rankings   The caller has multiple listings but is wondering why a couple of them aren’t performing at all. Before a booking can happen, inquiries must happen, before that views must happen, and before that impressions have to happen. Each one is a statistic that can measured and looked at to identify where in the process the problem lies. For this caller there seems to be an issue with the inquiries on her listing. The words in the listing itself may be the problem since people are clicking on the listing at a high rate, but something is turning them away at that point in the conversion process. A lack of reviews may also be a barrier for converting people that are landing on the listing.   A question about guests receiving packages at the unit   It’s always better to have guests route their packages to a local UPS store instead of the unit itself. You don’t need the liability of a guest receiving potentially illegal packages and the UPS store is insured against those kinds of things. That also comes a paper trail for an extra level of protection.   Does insurance cover lost business income?   The caller had a unit that got flooded which required a rehab and resulted in 12 months of lost income. In her case, the insurance only paid out for the days that were already booked that were canceled. She had the right insurance coverage at the time. When it comes to down to getting insurance there is replacement cost and actual cash value and it’s very important to understand the distinction. When it comes to lost business income, J sets the limits at $120,000 and the contents limit at $40,000 because he knows the insurance company will always try to minimize the pay out. The caller also made the mistake of registering her insurance under her own name instead of an entity like an LLC. That means she is paying more than J is on each unit, despite having considerably less coverage than he does. Since the caller hasn’t deposited the insurance checks yet, she still has the opportunity to make further claims. A public adjuster is someone who can help her claim additional pay

One of the most important things to understand about the short term rental business is that it gets easier with the more units you have. If you’re ready to scale up your business and start acquiring new units, you need to take the steps necessary to set yourself up for success.  Questions and Answers   What do we with units that have carpets in them?    Carpets can be challenging because they are gigantic sponges for bacteria. If your unit does have carpets you need to have a process for keeping it clean in place. Establishing a relationship with a carpet vendor that your cleaning crew can contact to get the work done without getting the approval from you will save you a lot of time.   How many customer service managers do you have and how many hours do they work?   J has a pair of customer service managers working for him that cover a total of 16 hours a day. He chose each of them to hire as managers and he trained them directly through a screen sharing app like Zoom or Loom.   I have some people interested in working with me and my short term rental business but they are wary of marketplaces like Airbnb. Is there anything I can do to help them be more comfortable with them?   You would think these people would be more comfortable with markets like Airbnb and HomeAway than they would with Facebook. If the caller wants to reassure these people, showing them the listing so they understand what details are being revealed is a good option. Starting with Airbnb as your first platform also gives you the advantage of benefitting from their existing background check process. What the landlord really wants to know is the contact information of the person in the case of an emergency, and that can be solved by simply automating parts of the reservation process. If you explain to the landlord that you are on the same side of the table and will be making major investments in the unit and don’t want unsavory guests as well, things will go much smoother. In many cases, you have the ability to correct the issue if it does come up than the landlord could with a traditional tenant.   Should I use Guesty if I am bringing on three additional units?   J recommends using Smartbnb and Lodgify instead of Guesty to his students. Everybody who brings on multiple units at the same time gets overwhelmed but it gets easier the more you do it.  It’s also important to understand the difference between using a tool and using it expertly. If you don’t know how to use the tool well, it’s not going to be able to help you scale your business.   We’ve got our first short term rental unit up and running and want to scale. Should we wait until we’re making more profit to scale or push ahead now?   The short term rental business is easier with more units than it is with less. Starting a new unit in a slow season can be very challenging bu

Robert Vocolla guest hosts the Q&A show with J today and they’re talking about some very important short term rental business questions. Find out about security processes, managing VA’s, marketing your business, getting out of problematic leases, and more. Questions and Answers   A question about processes around security technology    Rob uses a simple analog process to make sure his guests don’t run into issues with the security system in his units. He uses sticky labels on each panel that warns the guest not to tamper with it and has a basic template in Smartbnb that gets sent out that lets the guest know how to interact with the security system. This has drastically reduced the number of false alarms.   I’ve got three VA’s covering 18 hours a day, seven days a week and they’re great at following SOPs but not so good at doing customer service work?   Hiring is always a major challenge, if you want to find someone that can handle managerial level tasks it’s going to take a lot of searching. You may have to review, hire, and fire a number of people before you will find that gem of a person that checks off all the boxes. For this particular caller, they have multiple units in multiple cities and that’s adding to the stress of working with his team. A good rule of thumb is to be prepared to train someone for 30 hours for every hour a task would take you to do. A quick tip for your customer service manager is to look at what time of day your business is getting the most messages because that will inform what hours you should assign your team.   What are the most important marketing KPIs to track?   There is a whole set of metrics around leads, around customer conversion, and average order and frequency. All of them should be measured and tracked and each one can have a compounding impact on the growth potential of your business. Another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of your marketing on Airbnb is about working with the algorithm correctly. Make sure you have the right pictures with good descriptions because your search position in the rankings will determine your success on that platform.  Tools like Smartbnb are crucial to understanding the most important metrics in your business. The only way to have metrics to look at and measure is to gather data.   What is the difference between Basic and Pro in Lodgify and Smartbnb?   The biggest difference between the two is one uses and API to communicate with other apps and the other uses the older iCal method. Since the caller is using Smartbnb, they should just stick with basic because they already have a built in sync feature that makes Pro unnecessary.   What are you guys doing to get more bookings from booking.com?   Getting guests on booking.com is similar to the other channels even if it feels like it’s more work. One of the secrets is to have every single field filled out for your listing and setting your prices correctly with Lodgify. Keep in mind that guests from booking.com may be more seasonal as well. Mirror the same types of policies on booking.com that you have on other channels to keep everything consistently.   How do you guys do your messaging for booking.com?  

Jonathan Slain is the Founder and CEO of Recession.com, an author, a highly respected keynote speaker, and an expert on recessions & why business owners don’t need to fear them.  Jonathan spent the last Great Recession huddled in the fetal position on the floor of his office. He borrowed $250,000 from his mother-in-law to survive. Jonathan paid his mother-in-law back and is now a highly sought-after consultant (and, yes, he’s still married!).  Jonathan understands not only how to prepare your business for the next major recession but also how to turn it into a profitable opportunity.   Podcast Highlights   Who is Jonathan Slain?    Much of Jonathan’s life has been spent in the metaphorical Batcave, doing the research and preparing for whatever it was that he was working towards. Deep preparation has been the common thread in Jonathan’s life all the way back from high school. Studying people who were successful during major recessions is what drew his attention and his experience during the recent Great Recession is what put him on his current path. Jonathan is also a recovering investment banker, studying different companies and economic indicators for 100 hours a week over the course of two years. He learned that as entrepreneurs, we all always have a recession coming, even if it’s not an economic recession. There are a number of personal events that could put your business into a recession and Jonathan’s focus is on being prepared for the next one, whatever shape it happens to take.   How does one plan for things we can’t control?   One major change recently in California has been the recent regulations around single use plastic. These regulations are going to have major impacts on many different kinds of businesses. In these situations, there will always be a few entrepreneurs who see the signs and put themselves in a position to take advantage of the coming changes.  There have been 11 recessions since World War 2 and they last an average of 11 months. When they do come around, they create a massive amount of disruption in the market that also comes with a number of opportunities. Every business can do things to prepare and position themselves for the major recessions.   The Next Recession   We should be looking forward to the next recession, it will happen eventually so you should be prepared. All it really takes is a little forethought and some work upfront that will allow you to pounce when the recession hits, instead of spending the first few weeks or months of the recession trying to catch up. Every major recession shares some common elements that you can look at historically and predict what may happen in the future. Marketing dollars go extra far during a recession, can you put some money aside now that will allow you to take advantage of this? What if you had a war chest available to buy distressed businesses and assets?   The #1 thing to do to prepare right now   The first step is to assess where you are in your recession readiness. You can go to recession.com and take the free survey to get your recession readiness score. It will also let you know which areas you need to start improving.  The second step is to tune up your personal and business finances. How much debt are you carrying right now? Do you

This is a review based business, and that means you will probably get some bad reviews at some point. The question is what do you do about them? More than bad reviews, we’re talking about preparing for the holidays, click bait photos, and more. Questions and Answers   For the inventory checklist, how detailed do you get?    You can be as detailed as counting the silverware, the question is “at what point will you file a claim?” It probably doesn’t make sense due to the manpower and hours it would take to follow up on that. A better way to think about it is “is there enough silverware in the unit?” The benchmark for detail should be somewhere around where you would file a claim for.   Preparing for the upcoming holidays   Now is the time to get ready for the holidays. Change the batteries for any automatic door locks, replace the pilot lights for any gas furnaces, get blankets into the units where the climate gets chilly. Have a chat with your crew now to find out if they are going to be working during the holiday.   We had a guest break the do not obstruct the camera rule. How long should we wait to leave a bad review without the guest retaliating? How is the guest punished for not paying the fee?   Many of the platforms have a content policy and if the guest leaves a review that violates the policy it will be hidden. The review is basically the guest’s experience with your service so that means it can be very subjective. When leaving a review, neither party will be able to see the review until both have posted it. Ideally you should wait until the last minute of the fourteen day period to avoid a retaliatory bad review. If the guest has already left the review, then you have to rely on the content policy to help you out. In terms of fees and guests not being willing to pay, just state the facts of what happened. Remove the emotion and Airbnb may be able to take care of the fee for you.   I have a new short term rental unit, how long should I need to wait to get my first booking?   The first issue with the caller’s unit is that since they are targeting business travelers their unit may be too large. Two bedroom units that are pet friendly don’t usually have vacancy issues. They tend to be perfect for small families going through an insurance claim so linking up with a local insurance company may be a good move. For J, if he’s going to be working with a two bedroom unit, he’s going to gear it towards a market that he knows works well with that much room. Take a look at the events that are happening locally and focus on the kind of customer you want to serve. Another thing to note is that the winter season is slow for the area where this caller is from. There is a stream of revenue that’s right in front of you, you just need to get clear on who they are and get in front of them. What are they searching for and how can you appeal to them?   Being insurance friendly   Note in your titles for your listings that you are insurance friendly. This has made a big difference in the occupancy rates of J’s units.   Regarding an arbitrage unit, are you protected by your lease if there is a change in ownership?   If you’ve done your lease correctly, they can’t end your lease early as long as you pay your rent and follow t

Jonathan Levi is an experienced entrepreneur, angel investor, and lifehacker from Silicon Valley. Jonathan is known for speed learning his way to all achievements in life: from entrepreneurship to podcasting and even dating. Since 2014, Jonathan has been one of the top-performing instructors on Udemy, with his course Become a SuperLearner® (now retired) earning him over 60,000 students.  He has since snowballed this success into the launch of his own brand and platform, SuperHuman Academy, which produces such products as the award-winning SuperHuman Academy Podcast (3 million+ downloads) and numerous online courses. He is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, preparing to release his 3rd book “The Only Skill That Matters”   Podcast Highlights   Who is Jonathan Levi?    Jonathan grew up in Silicon Valley and was always meant to be an entrepreneur. In many ways he struggled in school because he couldn’t learn the same way that everyone else seemed to do. Deep down, Jonathan is a maker and a creator that is focused on solving problems and learning new things all the time. Jonathan was always a bright kid but he had problems in the classroom environment. The only way he made it through high school and got through the curriculum was by being medicated.  When he got into business school, he knew that medication wasn’t going to cut it. He needed to figure out another way to learn that made sense for him. It was around that time that he found someone who had developed a methodology for speed reading and accelerated learning that completely changed Jonathan’s life and gave him his first real world super power. After meeting multiple real world super humans, Jonathan learned that anyone can do these incredible things simply by learning the techniques and practicing. Jonathan is a big believer in the law of attraction, but he’ll be the first to tell you that it only works if you implement the law of action first. There are very few things in life that can’t be accomplished if you put in the work to learn the ropes. Whatever challenge you are facing in life, the difference between excitement and anxiety is knowledge. For Jonathan, it was a series of individual moments that culminated in his super power. He didn’t plan for online courses to be his business, it just sort of happened after moving to Israel and exploring entrepreneurial opportunities. After discovering a course on coding and seeing how successful it was, Jonathan dug into what it took to create a course and put out his first one on Udemy. Slowly but surely, it developed into a full time business.   Learning Is The Only Skill That Matters   Learning is the ultimate meta skill and the only skill that matters. There are proven techniques to improve your ability to learn. There is no genetic advantage that

Sometimes your technology breaks on you! Even so, we’ve got a number of listener questions tackled today including a couple brutally honest (but helpful) short term rental listing reviews. We always come from a position of honesty in hopes that you will make more money, so we’re not going to tell you comforting lies just to make you feel better. Listen in to learn why the bad photos can sink your listing and what you can do about it. Questions and Answers   A question about a 37 day booking and the importance of reviews    One of the things to know about the short term rental business is that it is definitely a review based business. Experience in this business is generated specifically by scaling up and doing the work more often. For this caller, they shouldn’t pass on the 37 day booking unless it is going to hurt their business long term. A long term booking will always make that unit’s performance suffer when compared to other more short term reservations. But if it allows them to add another unit financially, it may be a good move because it will allow the caller to achieve Super Host status by the end of the quarter.  It can also be important to run an AirDNA report on your zip code to understand the trend for your area. That will allow you to understand whether your prices are on point or if you’re leaving money on the table.   How do I get an affiliated link from Uber and Lyft?   Inside the app, you can find your share code which is the code you can use for your bookings and guests. Working with restaurants by sending them business instead of getting paid for the referral may actually be superior to an affiliate relationship. Having them on your side in political or municipal issues will probably be more important than having an additional revenue source.   J reviews a caller’s first post on Airbnb   When creating a short term rental listing, lead with photos with the inside of the unit instead of the amenities. Photos of the exterior can also lead to security issues if it’s possible to identify the address of the unit. The caller’s photos should probably be reshot due to the handheld nature of them as well as the general poor quality. They suffer from lighting and focus challenges and the caller’s bookings will probably be lower than what they could have achieved. Another good tip is to stay away from vertical photos at all times. The caller has definitely put in some work on the short term rental listing, but seems to have skimped on a few crucial elements like the photos and design. In order to tell the right story with your photos, you have to make the investment and do them right. The ideal reaction to your short term rental listing should be the reader feeling like they must stay at your unit.   I’ve got a meeting with the zoning department, do you have any pointers for me?   Since the caller only has three minutes to talk, he should be using his time to instill doubt in his listeners because right now they are certain that the caller is the bad sort of short term rental owner. He should show them that he’s a professional and has systems in place to deal with all the common issues that people complain about with other less professional short term rental owners.

There is no definitive good deal in the short term rental business. If you want to know if your deal is good or not, you need to know one simple thing first. It’s something that’s going to drive your reviews and the growth of your business, and that’s meeting your customer’s expectations. Figure out who you want to serve first and that will make the answers to your questions much clearer.  Questions and Answers   Are you still hunting for apartment deals?    J still loves apartments, he’s just changed who he puts in them. With apartments, net operating income is the name of the game and most importantly, if you can manage that properly the value goes up as well. J is not getting out of the apartment game anytime in the near future.   Do you think it’s a good idea to incentivize guests to do a load of laundry before they end their stay?   Quality control becomes an issue here. How do you know the laundry was cleaned correctly? There are other ways to lower your cleaning costs if that’s the goal. J tends to shy away from asking his guests to do anything, some guests will actually become offended by getting the request to do additional work. For this particular caller, the issue may lie in the cleaner that he’s using and their method of billing for work. Ideally, with a linen service, you should only be paying for your laundry that has been weighed while dry. When it comes to a guest checking out, if you have a checklist for them to complete, be upfront with the reasoning for the tasks so they don’t have to wonder why they are putting in some extra work.   What’s the best way to avoid bed bugs before they appear?   Bed bugs tend to come in with a guest, they don’t typically just appear. A good tip is using a metal luggage rack to reduce the incidence of a guest putting their luggage on the bed directly. Protecting the mattress with a casement is also a good precaution. Bed bugs are typically pretty rare, but there are still steps you should take to minimize your risk. Insurance is one example of a way to cut the cost, the trick is making sure the coverage is actually what you need. It’s not uncommon for a bed bug infestation to cost you thousands of dollars to remediate. Be sure that your insurance actually covers bed bugs specifically. You don’t want to get into a situation where you save some money on your premiums but aren’t actually covered from the risk you’re trying to mitigate.   How do we get around the key fob issue?   We tend to leave the key fob inside the unit and the trick is getting the guest to the unit for the first time. Module 3 of the Mastermind product covers this in more depth. Go to cashflowdiary.com/star to learn more.   Pricing in the Short Term Rental Business   As you enter into your slower season, pricing becomes even more important. If you aren’t doing dynamically adjusted pricing, you’re either leaving money on the table or having a lower occupancy than you should.   I have an opportunity to buy an eight unit apartment building and I want to use them for short term rentals, do you think this is a good deal?   There is no definitive good deal. What’s a good de

If you’re thinking about starting the “Airbnb process” and aren’t sure if you’ve missed the boat, listen up. Real estate is changing but it’s not too late. Airbnb is just one of many marketplaces that we use. Short term rentals are here to stay and if you want to learn how to build your real estate portfolio, now is a great time to start putting the systems in place. Questions and Answers   I’ve been able to get the landlord to agree to the short term rental business model in general but I’m not sure I can make a profit, what should I do?    Step one always comes down to understanding who it is you want to serve. When you focus on who you want to serve, one of the criteria you’re looking at is their income. That will help you understand what area of town to be in and how much they will pay for certain experiences. All your streams of income will be based on how much income your ideal guest makes.  Once you know all your potential areas of revenue, you will be able to subtract out all those things and complete the picture of profitability. It can be difficult to use aggregated data to determine what your prices should be. The spread is so wide that it’s not very useful for identifying a specific case like your listing. Once you complete the exercise of figuring out who you’re serving, it becomes much easier. Keep in mind that your revenue is much more than just your room rate.   How do I automate my messaging system?   Lodgify has a rudimentary system for messaging. What we do to shortcut that is provide our guests with a link to an electronic house guide where all the relevant data is included. Everything except the dynamically generated door code because we still want to be able to maintain control of the access to the unit.   A question about a listing review   The caller’s photographer did a good job on the photos for the listing. Since the caller has followed the system closely most of the details are on point. One area that could be improved on is the copy detailing the neighborhood. Your listing is your first line of customer service, if you answer the question before the person asks you have one less question to answer later on. This can really help save time once you have a number of different units.   Which program should I consider to learn how to manage resort properties?   In terms of execution, resort units are very different from residential. In some ways resort units are easier because the kinds of customers you are serving are more obvious. For this particular caller and his thirteen units, the Mastermind Product is his best choice. Go to cashflowdiary.com/star to learn more. When it comes to negotiating with the owner of the property, the structure the caller is using is the same one that we use. If the owner wants a cut of the business, they have to be able to contribute more than just the space. Otherwise, renting the property from them is the right way to go.   How do you dynamically generate a door code?   It depends on the platform you’re using. Sometimes the software you’re using can integrate directly via an API to create the door code, other times a personal assistant can do it.  

Shawn Harper is a former American football offensive tackle in the National Football League. Harper was drafted by the Los Angeles Rams in 1992. He also played for the Houston Oilers, the Indianapolis Colts, and three years in NFL Europe with the Amsterdam Admirals and Frankfurt Galaxy. Shawn Harper appeared on the hit MTV show Made. He has helped transform thousands of corporate environments, built leadership, trained teams and impacted youth development in schools, and churches with high energy keynote speeches that activate winners.  Shawn Harper is the bestselling author of The Winning Edge: 8 Principles That Will Bring Out the Winner in You! and founder/CEO of American Services and Protection, which has provided Ohio small and medium-sized businesses, corporations, municipalities, non profits, government agencies, colleges, and universities and organizations with a wide range of security solutions that focus on providing highly-trained professionals, tailored to the specifics of each job.  Podcast Highlights   Who is Shawn Harper?    For Shawn, it’s very hard to define who he was looking back from today’s perspective. We tend to gloss over the story in the process of becoming who we are. Shawn was plagued with setbacks and adversities in his youth, he was actually voted most likely to fail in school. Adversity can make you or break you. Shawn’s school days were tough and early on he believed himself to be the loser that everyone else thought he was. It wasn’t until he changed his mindset from victim to victor that everything changed. Never allow people to create your world because they will always create it too small. When Shawn made the decision to focus on his dream of playing in the NFL instead of listening to what other people thought he was capable of, nothing was the same. Once you change your focus, you change your life.   What was the transition like from playing football to the world of business?   In the case of the NFL, there is an established system in place for growth and development. For many people, when they leave that team and system to go do something else on their own the result is usually failure. Even superheroes have friends and support to help them achieve their goals. When athletes leave the game, they must build a team and find mentors to help them in the new arena. That was the secret to Shawn’s later success.  It took years for Shawn to come to that realization. All success in life comes from people having a team around them.    Playing To Win   We are created to win. Your perspective is everything in this regard. We are attracted to winning and nearly everything we do is geared towards winning. In third or fourth grade we are introduced to a different concept called success. Success teaches you production, but winning teaches you re-production. Successful business people are productive, but winners scale their business. A lot of people get dismayed, depressed, and angry because they know they are successful but deep inside they know they are not winning. Winning has been hijacked by success. The secret is to start moving, get out there and start connecting with people in whatev

Get unstuck and get one step closer to making short term rental real estate a real thing for you. Get answers to your questions so that you can keep moving forward towards your financial and business goals.  Questions and Answers   We are entering into the slower winter season, what additional things can we give to our guests so they book with us over others?    The first time experiencing a slow season can be a challenge. The caller has been leveraging his membership with his local BNI group which is a great place to start. Another potential avenue is to connect with the travel agent in the group and ask them about working together. It’s possible to start generating instant book specials that allows you to acquire a guest at your advertised rate while also creating a referral for the travel agent.   How would you pitch to a BNI group?   It takes a while to get any sort of response from a BNI group because their reputations on the line. As you build your relationships in that group you want to focus on creating a power team, where each individual has different strengths.  Think about your centers of influence, like doctor’s offices that are members of the BNI group and start building those relationships.   How do you deal with a secured building?   There is a module is the Mastermind Course that members of Cashflow Diary can access that helps with this issue. The key question to ask is “if I order food, how does the food delivery guy get to the front door?”. Whatever the process is, that’s how your guest will access the unit.   How can we have properties in a state that we are not even in?   To have a property all you need is a lease, so it doesn’t matter where you are located. If you run the system properly, it only takes around an hour a day of your personal time to manage your business. If you have to do everything yourself, you don’t really have a business, you have a job. With the short term rental model the business is completely location independent. That being said, start where you live.   How would you offer the instant book special on the platform?   You would simply change up the title and description of your listing to describe what your extra offerings are. It’s also possible to set up an automatic sequence that connects the guest to your offering once they make a reservation and then sets up the connection with the travel agent as well.   How soon should I be negotiating for first right of refusal for a property?   Since the caller is willing to purchase the remainder of the units in a multifamily property, it should be very simple to ask the landlord for the first right of refusal if at some point in the future they consider selling. Now’s as good a time as any to start negotiating.   What are your feelings about incorporating in another state?   This is not legal advice, but since the person resides in California incorporating in another state may save them some costs. They should consult an attorney.   What are some ways to identify the city and zip codes near me so I will be profitable?   Rather than focusing on the money, think about the perso

Taking the right photos can make or break your short term rental listing. In today’s Q&A episode of the podcast, we do a full review of a caller’s listing photos and everything their designer and photographer did right, and all the things they did wrong. We also cover why it’s so important to have your spouse on board with your business, as well as the pros and cons of bringing cleaners in house. Questions and Answers   What is the best way to see if the HOA is okay to turn my home into a short term rental?    The best way to figure this out is to read their Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions (CC&Rs). They will typically let you know what they like and don’t like, be aware they may not use the words “short term rental” but they will probably mention something along those lines.   A question about setting prices across multiple platforms   The caller currently has Price Labs connected to Lodgify, which is then connected to Booking.com and Airbnb. In order to change their prices between Booking.com and Airbnb, the caller needs to take Price Labs and connect it directly to Airbnb. Once that’s done, she can create a child listing in Airbnb.   I have some photo violations on my listing, what should I do?   It appears that the caller’s designer and photographer need to make some changes. Photos where the angle is not level or where the property appears dirty because of poor lighting are going to be major problems. Be aware that when your photographer uses HDR, it’s going to reveal lots of imperfections so it’s probably best to avoid it.  If you’re not providing a laptop with your rental, don’t take photos with a laptop in it. People will make assumptions about that sort of thing. Same goes for sheets and towels of different colors. Avoid lights that don’t have a daylight balance for your photos.  Short term rentals are a review based business, and reviews are primarily about setting the correct expectations at the beginning. Poor photos can end up costing you money, because what you photograph is what your guests will expect. If you deviate from that, that’s when you run into bad reviews. Be careful with the wording on your post as well.   What are your thoughts on the Airbnb custom URL link for listings?   It’s a band-aid at best. You want to have control and if you’re going to take the time to promote a listing, you should drive that traffic to your domain. That’s what is going to build your business long term.    The importance of having your spouse on board   As entrepreneurs, we tend to believe that things will work out for us. It’s just how we’re wired. Having a spouse whose perspective you trust on your team will make a huge difference for you. If you’re spouse is not already on board, keep in mind that they are mainly concerned with whether or not they will be okay, especially at the beginning of a new business.  This business is a team effort, just like raising a family. Make sure they know what contribution they are making, because without them, things would not be where they are. Go find your right hand person.   What calendar rules should we set for the holidays?   When it comes to the holidays, your calendar rules

Al Williamson is a professional engineer, full-time real estate investor and the author of several real estate books. He began investing in 1996. Al is best known for publicly documenting his quest to create enough secondary income streams to cover the 1st mortgage of his eight-unit apartment building (which he accomplished in September 2015). He is now trying to figure out how to maximize the cash flow of a small portfolio so it can generate enough income to replace a middle-class job. Al is a proud family man who now spends his day managing and expanding his corporate housing business in Sacramento, California.    Podcast Highlights   Who is Al Williamson?    Before everything that people know Al Williamson for today, he was training to become a professional gymnast. That was until he broke his arm on the high bar and realized that he was going down a risky path. He switched course and learned to be an engineer and started creating things. It wasn’t until meeting his wife did he consider getting into real estate. He met a guy at a church picnic that turned him on to real estate investing and after reading everything he could about the subject at his local library Al realized that it was exactly what he was looking for. Al Williamson and his new wife purchased a triplex and it eventually quadrupled in price. That early experience brought his wife on board with the whole idea and taught them plenty of valuable lessons. He leveraged that into his next purchase where he had a major focus on cleaning up the local neighborhood. It was a relationship with a local health center that later got Al into the short term rental space. One of the easiest ways to get into the real estate game and put yourself into a profitable position quickly is by leveraging short term rentals.   Was it a challenge in making the short term rental model work in California?   Initially the numbers didn’t work out for Al because of maintenance costs. Owning property is a great way to build wealth but a bad way to generate income because something is always broken that needs to be replaced. You don’t get to keep the money because it has to go back into the property until that debt service is finished. In a lot of ways, short term rentals were the answer to Al’s problems. There are a number of different ways that short term rentals solve the issue and there are tons of opportunities to increase your cash flow. By experimenting with one unit for short term rentals Al was able to generate the same net income as his three other units. The extended stay model is changing the way Al is structuring his business because the trend of people wanting to live in one place and work in another is taking off.   How do you market for long term guests?   Al has 14 different marketing strategies that he uses to bring in extended stay short term rental guests. A good indicator that your market can support the model is if there is an extended stay hotel in your area already. From there you need to get out from behind your computer and have a conversation with real people. Talking to the bartender at the hotel can yield some valuable info. Extended Stay America is doubling down on the one month and two month guests. It’s a big business and major hospitality companies are beginning to recognize that. If you’re working with Airbnb you’re going to have to put y

Dr. Joseph Michelli, Ph.D., C.S.P., is an internationally sought-after speaker, author, and organizational consultant. Dr. Joseph Michelli is the author of numerous national bestsellers, including The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary, The New Gold Standard: 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a   Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, and the New York Times #1 bestseller Prescription for Excellence: Leadership Lessons for Creating a World Class Customer Experience from UCLA Health System.  He was named as one of the Top 10 thought leaders in Customer Service by Global Gurus. His new book is The Airbnb Way: 5 Leadership Lessons for Igniting Growth through Loyalty, Community, and Belonging. Dr. Michelli is an opinion columnist for the CEOWORLD magazine. Podcast Highlights   Who is Joseph Michelli?    Joseph was a kid raised in a small town in Colorado and his parents imparted a key lesson to him when he was young. Namely, the responsibility of being raised in that family was that he would give more to the world than he took, and if he did the world would give more to him than he could ask for. Being accepted into graduate school was quite an achievement for Joseph, no one else in his family had graduated from college at the time. He was pretty focused on his own success in his career for a while until he realized that it wasn’t really about him at all, it’s about telling the stories of the clients he worked with as a consultant. Ultimately, those experiences helped Joseph write books about other people to tell their stories. All of the art of success is taking great principles and celebrating the victories of people you work with and people who are doing inspiring things in the world. The world is hungry for uplifting positive leadership and tools that enable them to experience their own greatness.   Inspiring Greatness   We are in a world where short term rentals have blown up and AirBnB is a point in that journey. They created a marketplace that unlocked incredible potential for millions of people and now they are on the same playing field as historical giants like Marriott.   What is hospitality?   Hospitality is taking the basics of service like being responsive, acting with urgency, get it right and make it right, and consistency, and then adding on the understanding of human needs that go beyond a transaction. It’s about an emotional experience where someone cared for and about me in a world that is often very lonely and strange. The real estate itself is the table stakes of getting into the game. The experience is far more important and that’s the element that’s missing in the corporate way of doing things. In many ways the big hospitality companies are trying to emulate the more successful short term rental operations. Solopreneurs will always have an edge over massive businesses because they’re more nimble and can provide a more

Ryan Vet is an innovative leader, entrepreneur and author. He has presented to audiences around the globe on four different continents on leadership, marketing and reaching your maximum potential.  Ryan’s experiences range from start-ups to well-established multi-national, Fortune 500s. From starting his first business at age 14 to launching and successfully exiting start-ups, Ryan is a serial entrepreneur. Currently, Ryan serves as the CEO of Boon—an on-demand, temporary healthcare staffing platform (imagine Uber meets eHarmony meets healthcare staffing). He has been featured in countless publications for his entrepreneurial endeavors and has been inducted as an official member into the exclusive Forbes Communication Council.  In addition, Ryan hosts The Dental Experience Podcast.  As an experiential marketing and branding consultant Ryan has worked companies from start-ups to iconic household brands. And in his spare time, he co-owns a series of craft beverage lounges called The Oak House. Ryan also sits as an advisory board member for a number of organizations including Elon University’s Doherty Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership  Podcast Highlights   Who is Ryan Vet?    Ryan has always loved creating and it’s been at the core of his career. His first real business was a lemonade stand where he learned how to diversify his products and captivate his audience with marketing. Somewhere in between his petting zoo and his lemonade stand, Ryan also developed a trading card business at the age of 11. It was a long journey from the lemonade stand to Boon. When Ryan was younger, some local businesses realized that he had some talent with websites and basic graphic design and this actually lead to his first real business. He built a marketing company that served 200 clients in 25 different countries, and eventually this led to his first startup software company. Every startup yielded additional skills and connections that allowed Ryan to build his next business. One such startup was in the medical and dental space. Ryan began building his platform and started speaking at dental conferences about patient experience. It was there that he saw a common need for staffing. About a year and a half ago he started researching how to provide temporary team members for the medical industry. During the research he found that the industry size of medical staffers was 16 times the size of Uber and Lyft combined. Boon is the system that Ryan came up with, it provides innovation in healthcare that allows hospitals and health care providers to connect directly with practitioners that are open and available.   Not Taking No For An Answer   Ryan’s always had a driving passion to get things done. If Ryan wanted something, his parents rarely told him no but they also didn’t get him things very often as well. Ryan had to earn the money to get the things he wanted and his parents would help him out. If more people interpreted “no” as “not yet” or do it yourself, more products would come to market.   Why did you get into software?   At the advent of web based software, Ryan found his passion for enabling people to solve their problems using technology. He wanted to be able to use platforms and apps to solve people’s problems.   Digitizing vs. Innovating   Ryan’s first start up was straddl

Francis Greenburger is the legendary real estate developer who is Chairman & CEO of Time Equities and owner of the literary agency Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, which has represented noted authors such as Dan Brown, James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, and Nelson DeMille. He is the founder & chairman of Art Omi (previously Omi International Arts Center) and The Greenburger Center for Social and Criminal Justice, and the bestselling author of Risk Game: Self-Portrait of an Entrepreneur.  Podcast Highlights   Who is Francis Greenburger?    Francis Greenburger grew up in New York City where his parents were upper class but his father as a solopreneur never really made a significant amount of money. The first thing that Francis was blessed with was the confidence of his parents in his ability to achieve his goals. That went together with his natural knack for business. He started working for his father after school when he was 12 years old. His innate qualities gave him the early characteristics and motivations to be an entrepreneur. One of the things that Francis has said is that if you don’t like risk, you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur. For Francis, risk is just part of the gig.   Do you see any parallels between cell phones and digital communication and the advent of television?   The evolution of digital communication has changed the nature of communication. It’s also made it more personal with social media and email, there is a lot of interpersonal communication happening now. Humans have a basic need to communicate and now there are more ways than ever.   Parental Confidence   There are certainly people who have parents who are not encouraging or present. Francis recalls a comment made during a tennis match, where two different players of equal skill are compared, and the observation was that the deciding factor will be self confidence. Having parents that believe in you alongside his mentors empowered Francis and gave him the confidence to face the challenges that all entrepreneurs have to face. The buy in that someone gets from mentors they respect can be very empowering and confidence building, even when parents haven’t provided that.   What do you consider risky?   Francis uses the term “intelligent risk” to describe the process of evaluating risks. Intelligent risk is not a gamble, it’s a calculated and measured action with research and analysis behind it. Francis has a theory that if you’re going into a generic marketplace where you are just offering more of the same, it’s very hard as an entrepreneur to compete on price and that’s all you’re really left with. Look for markets that aren’t being addressed and try to find solutions to meet those unmet needs. Imagine what you could accomplish if you weren’t afraid to fail.   What would you say are unaddressed needs in the real estate space?   Under occupied office buildings are one such issue. Sometimes an office maybe be under occupied because of a reputation problem from the past but it may have the features that allow you to lower your cost basis, which means you can also rent out the space for less. These can be the ingredients that allow you to be competitive in the market.   Why did you go into real estate?  

Dan Kryzanowski is an active real estate investor and fundraiser, leveraging Self-Directed accounts - SDIRA and Solo 401(k) - to create a diversified real estate portfolio yielding double-digit returns. He specializes in self-storage investments, multi-family and hard money residential property loans. Dan has personally raised millions of dollars from family offices and individuals, and empowered his partners to raise seven-figures on multiple occasions.  Dan serves as Executive Vice President at Rocket Dollar, unlocking the $10T pool of untapped retirement assets for the real estate community. He is also a Capital Partner for Pinnacle Storage Properties and Corporate Board President for Hugh O'Brian Youth Central Texas. Dan, a Wharton graduate, previously led commercial real estate initiatives for GE Capital in Mexico and South America.  Podcast Highlights Who is Dan Kryzanowski?  Dan attributes his business success to his magic afro and his early basketball success. Dan had a very blessed life for his first 30 years, he followed what would be considered a pretty normal path that most people in his generation would follow, right up until the crash of 2008. That made him rethink things a bit and Dan found that he wasn’t particularly interested in working for General Electric for the next 30 years of his life. He and his wife moved back to Texas and started looking at alternative investment. There were a few signs that GE wasn’t going to be a great place to spend the rest of his career at. Ultimately it was a personal decision to change the path from following everyone else and being led by fear or having the confidence to do things on his own. Why Real Estate and self directed retirement accounts? While working his traditional career Dan had always been interested in things he could do with his 401(k). When he had a fateful conversation with a guy that flipped houses at a wedding, Dan was exposed to the world of self directed retirement accounts. Once he realized that there were a number of benefits using your retirement funds to invest in real estate, it all just made sense. Instead of making 2%-3% with a traditional bond or fund, he can earn double digit returns working with someone he trusts and can look at the real estate and see the asset. Using self directed retirement account was the key that unlocked everything. The idea has been around since the 70’s. Self directed retirement accounts are where you take full control of where your retirement dollars go. There are an infinite number of investments you can access and there are no fees or early withdrawal penalties. Rocket Dollar has completely eliminated the friction involved in using self directed retirement accounts to invest. Dan’s company is very focused on education and informing people the options that are available to them. You have full control of your money at all times for a low monthly fee. If you’re self employed, you are eligible for the Solo 401(k). Not only can you contribute ten times as much as an IRA, you also get full checkbook control by default.  What if my HR department said my 401(k) is already self directed? By one definition your 401(k) at work is self directed, but it wouldn’t count as Self Directed. You get a handful of choices in what you invest in but you don’t have true freedom in where yo

Questions and Answers   I have a person that wants to book through February to November but I’ve already got someone with a reservation in the middle of that time. Do I offer the other guest to switch to another short term rental unit to accommodate the person who wants to stay longer?   This can be pretty common with new short term rental units or you are new to operating. When you put up a new listing it often gets promoted and for people looking for longer stays there often aren’t a lot of options. You should offer the current reservation the option to move to another short term rental unit, even if you don’t have another unit in that particular area.  The ideal situation would be to get all the days booked with both individuals while also getting the money upfront. The revenue from the long term reservation can actually be used to acquire another unit for the shorter reservation if necessary. There are also a number of incentives you can offer to close the deal.   A major cancellation issue with AirBnB   J has had a similar situation occur with a guest that said they were going to cancel but didn’t. We continually sent the person messages as well as keeping in communication with AirBnB. In both cases we were paid in full for the days that were stuck in limbo but only because we were being hyper diligent about following up and making sure the reservation was actually cancelled. If you’re at the 70 bedroom stage like this caller is in, you really shouldn’t be involved in this sort of issue. Your staff should be able to handle everything. Your business should also have an established system for making sure your guests actually arrive for their reservations. For the caller, they need to have a customer experience manager that should be able to handle all aspects of this sort of issue. When you encounter something new, create an SOP (standard operating procedure).   My fear of not being sure of where to begin is holding me back. What should I start with first?   All of our short term rental  mastermind students get a six hour kickstart session with J specifically to address this problem. Outside of that, the very first question you have to answer is “Who do I want to serve?”. Once you answer that, you can figure everything else out.   What if I can’t find a management company for one condo that’s out of town?   Remote management is challenging. If you are going to do it remotely you must have a cash management system in place to make sure that no money gets released without a verification that the work has actually been done. Find someone who can be your eyes and ears on a job site. If you can find an actual landlord in the area to assist you that has experience with rehabs that would be ideal. You can find them through the local real estate investors association or meetup.com.   If a guest leaves a review but you haven’t you reviewed them yet, can people still see it?   Nope, not until either you review them or 14 days pass.   Are the metrics you used in the SmartBnB training available to the public?   SmartBnB is great for their ability to see data and metrics and then use that to drive higher revenue. It’s not currently available to the public.  

Questions and Answers   How do I improve my rankings so that I can be viewed more frequently and more often? Also do you have any tips on attracting last minute guests?    The first step is to run a Market report using SmartBnB on the caller’s location. Start making incremental changes to the pricing specifically for the available dates coming up in the future. The market report will reveal the low, high, median, and average prices for any comparable listings, you should be pricing your listing relative to the market for your available weekends. You should also adjust for seasonality. The change from August to September can be quite drastic. Since the optimal booking window for the caller is 25 days, it may make sense to start experimenting with the discount curve beyond 14 days. Being on page 11 of the rankings is basically the same as not being present at all. Look at your title and thumbnail as possible places to improve alongside pricing.   My closing was put off because of the hurricane, can I go ahead and list the property but not go live?   There is a window of time when your listing is considered new and it gets a boost in exposure and rankings. You should maximize the SEO bonus when it’s available. We also have a number of students that have optimized their locations as possible shelters from bad weather or natural disasters. If you have a property in an area that is exposed to bad weather, a good tip is to have a generator so that your property doesn’t lose electricity when everything else does.   Any updates regarding automation getting agreements signed?   J had to put this project on the backburner due to some issues scaling out the customer service team. The goal is to have two way communication through as many channels as possible. Once we’ve worked through that we’ll be making more steps towards automation.   What do I do about bed bugs?   Ideally when you are building a business you want to build in systems so that your amount of time working in the business instead of on the business is as minimal as possible. Hopefully you never experience bed bugs but having systems in place will definitely help. We have only seen one instance of bed bugs in all the history of tenants that have been our guests. It occurred in a two bedroom unit where the guest reported the bed bugs to us. We learned that you should hire the best pest control company you can right away, even if it’s delayed by a day or two. It’s better to resolve this properly, even if it costs you some revenue. Before a unit is sprayed, cleaners should strip the beds, vacuum and clean the unit, and while doing it they should be wearing gloves and masks. We originally thought we would have to throw out all the linens in the unit, but that wasn’t necessary. Just bag the linens up and mark them as contaminated, the cleaners will wash them in extreme heat in order to eliminate the infestation. Sadly there is no guaranteed fix for bed bugs. In order to get a heat treatment on the unit we had to hire a company that can drain the fire sprinkler system. The outlets should also be dusted in the adjacent units because bed bugs move quickly and get into the walls as well. Another major lesson is to notify your insurance company immediately, and if possible y

Questions and Answers   Our short term rental bookings have been plummeting recently and I’m not sure why. Am I discounting too early or too slow based on data?    You have to decide how far out in advance you want to be comfortable with for your bookings. To really know what’s going on you need to get the right data in front of you. In the case of the caller’s short term rental unit, the average number of guests is 4.1 with a 7 day booking window. Since all the data came from the one platform, one solution may be to get on additional platforms that will increase the booking window. If there is a conversion rate decline, the question becomes “what changed?”. If customer preference is what has changed, that may mean you have to adjust the way you are describing the rental and modify who you are trying to attract. It’s important to look at last year’s data as well so you can compare. If your conversion rate is down to 56% from 70% in Q4, maybe that’s what you should expect based on historical data. If you have the same number of leads, it may be something to do with your listing, or your communication, or your response time that is affecting your conversions.   For a house, do you put a camera in the backyard?   When it comes down to an expectation that a space is going to be private you can run into issues. You can put a camera in the backyard but you should make sure it’s looking at the backyard and not into the house. If you do do it, make sure you disclose it to your short term rental tenants.  If there’s a pool in the backyard, you have to be especially careful. You are probably concerned about the number of people coming into the unit at that point and if that’s the case there are other solutions to that problem. You could use devices that detect cell signals or wifi connections that would indicate the number of people present. Links: cashflowdiarypodcast.com Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

Questions and Answers   Does AirBnB work the same globally?    The idea is the same, but some of the functions will be different. For example, payment systems will be different depending on the country you live in. Same with cleaning services. The basic idea of offering someone a place to stay in exchange for a fee is the same.   I have a landlord concerned with a privacy issue regarding a camera on the door, what should I do?   Since the unit already has cameras pointed at the hall in the building, there shouldn’t be any issues. The important legal idea is where there is an expectation of privacy you can’t place a camera, but that doesn’t apply in this case. You would just be adding what is essentially another security camera to a hall that already has them. From a privacy standpoint, having a doorbell camera pointed at another unit’s door can be a problem since the camera could potentially see into the other unit when the door is open. This could lead to complaints from the other tenant which is why J tries to avoid those kinds of units. If you can control both sides of the hallway, that removes the issue so that’s a good strategy if you can swing it.   How long does it take to get started in short term rentals?   This is a hard question to answer because of all the variables involved. Some markets are more difficult than others, but in general for most people it won’t take too long to get started. Cashflow Diary students get a big advantage because they get the knowledge to select the best properties for their business, so they can earn the most money and continue growing. Having had the privilege of teaching a variety of real estate strategies, short term rentals is the one that has allowed people to learn the most the fastest and get their business up in running very quickly. It is possible to go from lease signing to operation in 72 hours if you have the systems in place.   Can you talk about your process for finding and training cleaners?   Finding the right cleaners is a big piece of the puzzle. Ideally you don’t go looking for cleaners, you make them find you. One way to find a cleaner is to make a reservation at a short term rental you don’t own, and when the check out happens just wait until the cleaner shows up. Another method is to join your local BNI, because that organization is referral based and a cleaner is likely to already be vetted by the person referring them. Chances are you will have to work with a few different cleaning companies before you find one you can rely on.   How do you recommend I leverage the leads I’m getting from a real estate broker with other local businesses?   It’s a great idea to try to leverage your existing leads with other local businesses, but it really depends on the size of your business. The simplest way is to just go into the store and tell them who you are and what you do. If you can show them that you can help lower their customer acquisition cost, you’re set.   When is a good time to start a new unit?   It’s always a good time to start a new unit. When you start a unit into the low season you are building up a profile so that in the high season you will have enough reviews to maximize your profits in the high

Questions and Answers   We currently use two different pricing platforms. If I’m using a tool like Price Labs, how do I set it up so the price is good for relocation companies and change it so I’m netting all that I can from the other booking websites?    Since direct bookings to relocation companies yields the highest net profit, the ideal set up would be to have Price Labs reflect that in the Lowest price. You should also have an anchor for the Base price. In general, because of the way things are set up and connected this way, price for your highest possible outcome. If someone books at that price, that’s great but that’s not the end goal. You want every customer to feel unique and special, and you accomplish this by giving them a personal discount code or adjusting your mark down so they see a price closer to the natural price. This way you will always be in a position to make the adjuster look good.   Is Hawaii completely out for nightly short term rentals?   No, we have active students in Hawaii right now who are doing quite well. If you desire to be an entrepreneur, you are making decisions where the outcomes are completely uncertain. The environment we all play in is uncertain and every business has regulations and changes, it’s unavoidable. Some people will quit, some will keep going, and some will waffle back and forth and get bought out. At the end of the day, entrepreneurs adjust.   How do you price listings that require a minimum 30 day stay? What if there is a 15 day gap, do you keep a 3 month booking window?   Pricing is the most complicated aspect of a short term rental business. There are too many pieces to give a quick answer because you need to know all the variables first. The key is to always price it profitably, whatever that means for you. It comes down to a pricing strategy that accomplishes your goals and who you are trying to serve.   Do you have any tips or tricks to attract small apartment owners and property managers without actually driving around the neighborhood?   Loopnet.com is a good tool for researching an area. You can use the site to look for owners and operators that have the most listings and use that info to get on the phone and talk to them about the listings that are not yet on the site. Even if that particular realtor has nothing in their inventory that you want to purchase, they can help you get in touch with the top three property managers of that class of real estate. Once you get them on the phone, you do the same thing and find out if they have problems you can solve.   Have you ever marketed to landlords?   J avoids direct marketing at all costs. It has always proven to be too expensive and take too long, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, just that he doesn’t like it.   How has your faith affected your business outlook?   J’s faith has directly affected his business outlook, it’s a major reason he’s even in business. To whom much has been given, much is expected. If you’ve been given any talent, the expectation is that you will at least double it. It doesn’t matter that you succeed, just that you attempt it.   Can you offer daily/nightly rentals between monthly rentals?   If you’re in a 30 day market, proba

Questions and Answers   How many units do you have and how long have you been in the business?    J currently has 37 units and has been in the process of getting to this point for nearly 15 years. He had to find a way to make money without trading time for dollars and real estate was the path he took.   How do I have my prices on Lodgify use AirBnB and Booking.com but ignore the prices on Home Away?   If you’re on the basic plan for Lodgify, it automatically ignores Home Away. J currently still uses the basic plan since the professional plan is still in beta. If you have multiple accounts, you will need to work directly with them to avoid certain errors.   How should we structure a deal for a 100 units if the other party wants to sell the property in five years?   It’s all down to the contract and how the services are signed for. To make things easier, use two separate entities, one for the property and one for the services involved.   How do we add a 0 to our income?   We will never out earn our personal growth. The image you have of yourself is part of the challenge. Part of the process in business is personal growth and consuming information with the intent of being a better person in all areas of life. Personal growth doesn’t just happen. Any idea given to you has a certain level of value to you. What you need to do to make sure you becoming better over time is to not just collect ideas, but also implement them. The majority of us don’t realize what might be in the way that is holding us back from the results we want. You have to set aside time dedicated to self improvement and find those blind spots. When you’re ready to take on that task, you will find the information that will move you further along the road. It’s not a three day process, it will take time to get there but it can be done.   Is the sofa bed you have in all your units custom made?   The sofa bed is custom made each and every time. One size does not fit all in our market.   A question about Ring camera and AutoLock   Anytime we talk about a system, it’s about efficiency and a single point of failure. You can save money buying an individual system, but you will pay with additional power requirements or lack of redundancies. Especially once you start to scale, this is why we’ve put together packages that help with that.   AirDNA gives my area a B+, does that rating bear any weight?   It all depends on how the data was collected, you won’t know for sure until after operating in that area for about 12 months. Scott and his team have a ton of work to improve the service, right now J puts more weight in their trend data instead of absolute numbers.   I want to run a short term rental business with my parents basement, should I speak to the HOA first or just do it?   We try to run everything above board and documented. Typically HOA’s are something we avoid but that doesn’t mean you can’t work with them. Get a copy of the CC&R’s so you can find out exactly what the HOA says about short term rentals. It can mean having to only run a 30 day minimum model or having a conversation with the HOA if you w

Questions and Answers   What’s your system for rewarding or getting rid of cleaners that work for you?    The best way to make this work is to make sure that everybody you work with understands the metrics that you are measuring performance by. You should know what your revenue was before you hire someone, and you should see a reflection of that person’s productivity in that after you hire them. You should have a minimum standard for review scores the you require your cleaners to maintain and then keep that number in front of them.   If the landlord feels the negotiation around the lease is too much work, is there a better way to go about it?   There isn’t much to deal with a lease other than the specific clause around being able to use the property as a short term rental. Other than that there is a clause around marketing and making sure the lease is in the company name. Those are the three main things that you need to address, other than that there shouldn’t be much you should have to fight for. The more units and the more revenue you’re bringing to the table, the easier it is to have this type of conversation. Start using future language to help your side of the negotiations. Failing fast and failing frequently is the secret to success in the short term rental business. You won’t be able to get the ball rolling if you are trying to get it right the first time and are unwilling to fail.   Do you find you have more success when you are having a conversation with someone in person or is more of a numbers game?   Being in person is a major advantage when you’re getting started because when you’re new, you have a lot working against you including the mainstream media. You have to overcome a bunch of assumptions which is a big challenge over the phone, which is why your only goal on the phone should be to secure a face to face appointment.   Can you talk about how many towels, sheets, and linens you put in your units for each stay?   There is a file in the program that breaks down what you need based on the number of beds and bathrooms. Basically you want to stock for maximum occupancy.   Can you speak to the Cashflow Game, where do you find it, host it, why do you consider it important?   The Cashflow Game was developed by Robert Kiyosaki and his wife but the best way to buy it now is through Amazon. Being an introvert, J had to figure out a way to increase his odds of attracting customers. The way to do that is to filter, and the kinds of people who are willing to show up and play a Cashflow Game are self selecting as people who are willing to take action. He or she who educates their market, dominates their market.   Can you talk about obtaining guests that are looking for short term rentals due to being displaced and using insurance claim to fund the rental? Who do we need to build relationships and how do we meet them?   You tend to need a lot of inventory to meet these people. You won’t typically find them, they will find you, but once that happens, developing the relationship is crucial. When someone comes to you ask them who their adjuster is or if the adjuster is contacting you, get to know them and their company.   Do you have any ideas to generate more income from

Questions and Answers   We are making our first short term rental unit listing tomorrow, when should I set up Wheelhouse and AirBnB?    That should be done now since that all happens at the same time. If you are ready to make your listing live go ahead and get that done now.   What is the best way to attract guests to stay one month or longer?   When it comes down to length of stay, being able to attract someone who wants to stay longer has a lot to do with what platform you’re on and your pricing strategy. Each site markets to its database differently and displays your listing differently. Booking.com is a discount marketplace, so your ranking depends on how much of a discount you’re giving. Craigslist is not recommended for this purpose. The best way to get a 30 day reservation is to work with insurance companies. When a homeowner gets displaced during an insurance claim, it will often be for 30 days or longer.   Should tenants have list agreements signed?   There are times when a list agreement makes sense, for example a deal with a corporation. If you want to protect yourself from a tenant’s rights issue a listing agreement can be a good idea.   What is considered an automatic cancel with regards to someone’s reservation of a short term rental?   If someone causes a disturbance and then becomes belligerent, that creates a completely different issue and can be subject to cancellation without any sort of refund. Within the house rules list it outlines what the words “our discretion” means. Typically that means the process goes from warning, to fee, to cancellation, but there are some issues that warrant an immediate cancellation.   A question about using a four-plex as a short term rental   The more you can divide a piece of real estate, the higher your utilization rate becomes but it is a double edged sword. This kind of rental requires different levels of services and a much higher level of management. Pricing can also be pretty cutthroat and can make screening more difficult. You will also probably need someone on site 24/7 and there may be a separate license required. Depending on the layout of the four-plex, it could be possible to get away with less management. Finding someone to actually manage a hostel style short term rental is another big challenge.   Should the damage waiver fee be the same when your in the 30 day market?   The damage fee should be increased to closer to $300. In a traditional market where you get $59 you would get in theory five or six reservations, so you should try to make up for the potential lost revenue.   Now that AirBnB is currently favoring businesses as hosts instead of individuals, should we rearrange our inventory?   J has started putting all the inventory onto a single host account for AirBnB.   When you have your team document resolution income claims do you find value in having the unit added to the spreadsheet?   Yes. If there are multiple claims from the same short term rental unit, that may indicate it’s priced incorrectly and attracting the right client.   Are there any corporate

Joey Mure decided to join Russ Morgan and co-founded a company called Wealth Without Wall Street.  They teach people to stop trading time for money to achieve financial freedom by following the 5 Pillars of Wealth Without Wall Street.   Russ, aka, The Idea Guy, started his career in the financial industry.  With 4 years of planning under his belt, Russ was stunned in September of 2008 to see the DOW Jones plummet 800 points.  He had no idea that the market could react in such a volatile manner and knew this was something he could never have control over.  Russ began a journey that day to passionately understand more about how to take back and gain control over his money, as well as his clients.  Joey, aka, The Stallion started his career in the mortgage business in 2003.  He grew to become a branch manager with one of the Nation’s top mortgage lenders leading 25 loans officers. By 2010 he had achieved national recognition.  Despite earning an impressive income he still had significant questions about how to save for the future without having to borrow from banks. How does anyone save aggressively for retirement AND simultaneously pay for automobiles, save for college, weddings, and vacations?   In 2010 Joey met Russ, who shared the Infinite Banking Concept and everything changed. IBC allowed Joey to get completely out of debt besides paying off his mortgage, he started saving four times the amount he had previously been saving, and now had a clear plan of how to save for all our life’s expenses without giving up retirement savings. Podcast Highlights Who is Russ Morgan and Joey Mure?  When Russ was a kid, one of his favorite uncles used to give him green Tic Tacs, but he called them Hulk pills. Imagination has always been a part of his background, he was constantly envisioning things as they could be if they were bigger and better. The motivation to help out his family as well as other people has been a key driver in Russ’s personality. For Joey, the Italian Stallion Rocky Balboa is his unconventional hero of choice. Rocky was the constant underdog taking on Goliath, and Joey always felt that way, especially about his education. His parents wanted him to get an education but they didn’t have the money to pay for school, so Joey had to make it happen on his own. They’ve given him the vision and he put in the work, became valedictorian of his high school, and secured a scholarship to university. The vision of wealth in the future and being able to take care of his family is what drove Russ to get into the financial world. For Joey, having the end goal in place and then achieving it showed him what was possible. While in school he encountered a number of mentors that helped guide him towards the mortgage industry. While working in the mortgage business and generating a significant income, Joey realized that there was still something missing and it was around that time that he met Russ which changed the course of their lives. Wealth Without Wall Street Success leaves clues, as a financial advisor Russ saw what wealthy people did with their money and it wasn’t going into Wall Street. When the market crashed in 2008, nobody knew what was going and he realized that he couldn’t be a part of an industry that just pretended like they understood how wealth was built. The wisdom is in wealth, and the wealth isn’t on Wall Street. Real estate, business ownership, and private lending were the main asset classes that Russ saw his clients using to build their wealth.  There are five main pillars in the Wealth Without Wall Street plan. There first is about keeping more of the money you make, also known as cash flow. Where are you unnecessarily spending money that you don’t need to? That involves optimizing your tax strategies and paying down certain kinds of debt. Invest in w