Cashflow Diary™
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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 Learn more at troyrunderwood.com https://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 youre 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 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 and the 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 __ __ 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 them and people that think that things happen them. When life happens for you, you have a responsibility to reflect on and grow from your experiences. __ __ 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. __ __ 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 __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __
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 its the best form of almost-completely-passive income in todays economy. PODCAST HIGHLIGHTS __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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 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 __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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). https://goodegginvestments.com/blog/an-introduction-to-real-estate-group-investing-aka-syndications 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 __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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 http://www.mightybell.com/. 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 __ __ 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. __ __ 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, https://www.lyonpropertygroup.com/. 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 where they have been known to pass out free golden nuggets of real estate wisdom. PODCAST HIGHLIGHTS __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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 __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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 __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ New Jersey is a good place to look since it’s one of the most short term rental friendly states in the country. __ __ 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 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __
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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __
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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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 http://cashflowdiary.com/howmanyunits to calculate your magic number. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ The short term rental business works everywhere there is a need for housing. __ __ People joining the Roadmap get access to the app first but it will be coming to existing students that are currently in Facebook. __ __ 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. __ __ 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 __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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 __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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 __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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 __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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 __ __ 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. __ __ 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 https://zoom.us/ or Loom https://www.loom.com/. __ __ 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. __ __ J recommends using Smartbnb https://www.smartbnb.io/ and Lodgify https://www.lodgify.com/ 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. __ __ 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 __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __
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 __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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 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 __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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. __ __ 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? __ __ 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. __ __ If you’ve done your lease correctly, they can’t end your lease early as long as you pay your rent and follow t
