Ekabo Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Podcast
A podcast for those who do not believe they were put on this earth to work 40 to 50 hours per week for 40 to 50 years, to hopefully retire at the age of 65.
Ekabo Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Podcast
108. From W-2 to 1099: Financial Freedom, Strategic Budgeting, and Effective Networking in Real Estate
Ready to embark on a transformative journey from W-2 employment to the flexible world of 1099 contracting? Discover how we've mastered the art of time management and overcome the hurdles in this transition. Join me, Niyi Adewole, and my co-host Liban, as we unravel the secrets to maintaining focus and productivity. We’ll share personal anecdotes, including the eye-opening experience of my recent trip to Boston and how it reaffirmed my decision to move back to the Southeast. You'll hear about the MINS (Most Important Next Step) system, a game-changer in maintaining momentum in a less structured work environment.
Financial stability as a 1099 contractor is more than just a necessity—it's a science. We dive into strategic financial planning, emphasizing the importance of separating personal and business finances. You'll learn to categorize your expenses and set up a safety net that can withstand the initial, leaner months. Drawing parallels between business growth and sports, we’ll illustrate how consistent effort and a long-term vision can lead to substantial success. Whether you're just starting out or looking to refine your system, our insights will help you maintain a steady financial course.
But the journey doesn't end there. We also explore the pivotal role of networking and continuous learning in achieving financial freedom. Inspired by the principles from "Profit First," we discuss managing finances post-college and the benefits of direct deposits. By sharing our experiences and emphasizing the power of relationships in the real estate and investment world, we hope to show you how knowing the right people can fast-track your success. Finally, we underline the importance of dreaming big, setting long-term goals, and fostering teamwork, whether you're managing property rentals or aiming for a billion-dollar real estate transaction by 2032. Tune in for practical advice, real-life stories, and strategies to fuel your financial freedom journey.
🗓️ Tune in every Wednesday at 7 PM Eastern! Don’t miss out on our journey toward financial freedom through smart investments.
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Our Links
➣ Financial Freedom Mastermind Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/53083...
➣ Peer Space Host Referral Link https://www.peerspace.com/referrals/g...
➣ AirBNB Host Referral Link https://www.airbnb.com/r/niyia41
➣ Ekabo Home Network (IG, Youtube, Email) https://linktr.ee/ekabohome
Niyi Adewole is a licensed realtor in Georgia, brokered by EXP Realty. Feel free to reach out at Niyi.Adewole@exprealty.com if you would like to work with an investor friendly real estate agent.
Welcome to the Financial Freedom Mastermind Group Podcast. Here we're all about breaking free from the 40 to 50 year work grind and accelerating our journey towards financial freedom. Join us every Wednesday at 7 pm Eastern as we explore different types of investments that can fast track your path to financial independence. We serve as a hub for connecting with fellow members during our sessions so you can share successes, ask questions and keep the momentum going Good evening everyone.
Speaker 2:My name is Niyi Adewale, host of the Acaba Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Group, and I'm excited to be joining you on this Wednesday and it is the last Wednesday of May and on this call today I'm actually going to be joined by my co-host, Lebon, and we're going to be talking about making the transition from W-2 to 1099, some of the key tips and tricks and things to watch out for, because LeBron and I have both made that transition to 1099 full-time, as we're open, and so we're going to jump into that in a second. But, LeBron, how are you doing?
Speaker 3:man, I'm doing well. How are you doing today? I?
Speaker 2:am super good. I just got back in last night from Boston, my old stomping grounds. I was out there for a wedding over the weekend and definitely got some lobster in here some of my old spots right so it was pretty good. What?
Speaker 3:about you, man? Nice, no, just same. I've just been working, unfortunately not like you, at my desk, you know we haven't gotten to have some cool scenery around us like we saw you had, I guess. What were some of the notices, the differences you noticed kind of in Boston? I know, doing travel you kind of start to see what you miss about home. What was the first things that you noticed about Boston? Having not lived there for so long, that had changed or that was different?
Speaker 2:Man. First thing I noticed is hey, I am happy that I'm in Atlanta now because the prices of everything out there is crazy, right, I was taking it in and kind of having conversations with different people and when I lived there you could get a one bedroom for maybe $3,000 or so. Now you're looking at closer to $4,000 for one bedroom. It's still crazy packed and crowded and I keep trying to figure out, like, why is everybody coming to Boston? But it's all good, right, and, and so the thing that I missed up there was mostly the food. Like that fresh food is amazing. But as far as everything else, I'm happy to be in Atlanta. I think this city has a lot to offer.
Speaker 3:Awesome, awesome, yeah, seems like you made the right choice. Then it's only affirmed yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, one of the goals when I was up there was, hey, we got to kill it in this role, but I want to get back to the Southeast. I mean, I was born and raised in the Southeast, right In Tennessee, and so being able to move back to the South, that's more of my flow. I just took a detour to Philly and then a couple other spots. No, 100%, that makes sense. That makes sense. Start to plan ahead for, and the first one, right off the bat, is making sure that you manage your time effectively. And so, lee Bon, you know, when you're working in that W-2 world or working for someone else right, you have a set time schedule, right. But when you move into this 1099 world, the schedule is your. It's up to you to decide what you're doing from time to time. And so how do you manage that and how is it different?
Speaker 3:So I think the most important thing is allocating a consistent time and I would say, even planning out your time. So, for instance, when I was, when I had another job, I knew what my hours were, what times I had to be at work. So I had already pre allotted the time outside of work to do things. So, for instance, whether it be in the beginning just learning about stuff, allotting like maybe like an hour of time, whatever you feel like you need, but having it planned out what you're going to do. So, for instance, if you work mornings and you're free in the afternoon, what are you doing in the afternoon?
Speaker 3:I feel like you have to be very systematic about what you're doing, specifically planning out your time. When I was in it, I had it literally by the hour what I was doing. That way you I wasn't wasting any time because, uh, unfortunately you're competing with other people, especially when you're starting, and they have way more hours than you. So I always say if you don't have as much time, you know you got to dedicate more focused time. So that's, I think, the most important aspect.
Speaker 2:And what you just said is key Focus time. It's crazy, if you want to see somebody that's focused, give them a whole bunch of work the day before vacation. That's going to be a focused individual that's getting everything done quickly and efficiently, and the hard part is consistently doing that. And so I even find myself starting to drift at times, and so one of the things I implemented many years ago that's worked is I learned it from one of the podcasts that Brandon Turner was on, but it's the MINS system. I-n-s right, most important next step.
Speaker 2:And so what I do is, whether I end the day with it or I start the day with it, I write out okay, what are the three most important things that I need to accomplish today? Right, to really move the whole agenda forward of life? Right, and that was even when I was working with W2, as well as the realtor piece. I would just put like okay, if I'm working with a client and you know due diligence ends tonight, we need to finish negotiating due diligence. It's actually has to be done, not losing somebody's earnest lane. I'm putting that down. Okay, I need to search for a property for this client? Okay, we're going to write that piece down.
Speaker 2:Something's going on with our short-term rental management. I need to correct this issue. I just think of the three most important things within the whole realm of moving things forward in that day. Write that down and if I accomplish those three, I know I've done something for the day to move the ball forward. And then the rest of the day can kind of take form. And then to your point, trying to schedule as much as you can, right, if it's not on my calendar it's probably not going to get done, and so I try to schedule as much as I can. The most important three I try to get done before noon each day, because that's when my time is blocked off.
Speaker 3:There's not really many meetings, unless it's like our team meetings and things of that nature, and kind of go from there yeah, additionally, one thing I would like to add too is when you are setting up that plan, you have to make sure it's sustainable, because you do want to avoid that burnout. I feel like that is well. Especially in the beginning, I tried to do too much at once and it felt overwhelming, and so I you know it's very nice to have an idea of how much work you want to get done, but at the end of the day, it has to be realistic and sustainable. That way, it's something that you continuously do. It's kind of like going to the gym. You know you don't want to kill yourself day one and then all of a sudden you can't do anything in the next day. You want to slowly build up that workload.
Speaker 2:Agreed. It's much better to go to a gym for 45 minutes five days than it is to go for one four-hour session. You're back on the couch not doing anything for the next four days.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 2:The next one that we have here is separating your personal and your business finances. Did you have a take, or did you want to take a take, on this?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I actually had well I think you know this in the beginning I had a wholesaling background, so I actually already had a wholesaling LLC set up, so a lot of the costs associated specifically with like realtor fees and all that stuff. I just kind of used that account to pay it off and so it kind of created separation, because come tax time it kind of helps too. Additionally, and you were very helpful in warning me beforehand, so we appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Hey, come on now, the tax bug man. It's nipped me a couple of times to where I'm coming around the corner now, right, and when you talk about separating personal and business, I really like to think about understanding what are your expenses, right? And so one of the things that I do from time to time is I'll actually sit down and write out, okay, what are the monthly fixed expenses of just living? All right, so this is my fixed amount for just living, x amount for fun, x amount for putting away for savings, things of that nature, and I determine it by percentages based on what we made last year, what I believe we're going to make this year, and I put that aside in a quote, unquote profit first method, where anytime income comes into a bank account, it gets split right and split to all these different pieces, so we don't commingle funds.
Speaker 2:So then we have a really up month, right, and it's like man, we're on top of the world. It doesn't come crashing down. If we have a down month, right, you have the money set aside, because 1099, unlike a W-2, it's a roller coaster, right. W-2 is going to be pretty slow and steady. There may be a couple jumps here and there. Maybe you get a bonus or increase things of that nature, but 1099,. You can have a month where it's like dude, we are flying high, and then you have your set base amounts set aside so that you can feel comfortable in each of those months and even out that curve.
Speaker 3:You definitely want to prepare for winter because, especially in the beginning, I always say the first couple of months of anything is going to be the time where you're the least profitable, you're the least knowledgeable and you want to have a safety net. That way you have a runway for failure. You know, because it's going to happen. It's going to happen, it's just how much can you get away with.
Speaker 2:If you're not, if you're not failing right, you're not risking enough and you're not striving hard enough, you should fall down and have to get up and get better. One of the things I mean, we're in the NBA playoffs right now. So one of the things I like to equate it to is sports right, when you look at some of the players that are out there that are incredible, they weren't like that in year one, right. It's only in business that we think, hey, year one, I need to go and start. You know, microsoft or Facebook, year one is going to be tough. Year two, three and four is going to be tough, right. It's not until you really get into the groove of year five, six, seven and have that longevity in the role where we're starting to, you know, really figure things out, that you start to have that rocket ship acceleration, right.
Speaker 2:The reason that we're seeing some of these guys really dominate right now is because they've been in the league for a minute, right, and they've been able to kind of get acclimated to the speed and things of that nature, and now they're just ready to shine. And so the same thing when it comes to moving to that 1099 journey. Give yourself some grace. Right Year one may not be that rocket ship, but you got to have a long-term vision and, to your point, you need to make sure that you're building in a runway so that you can achieve that long-term vision, because the longer you can stay in it, the longer you give yourself an opportunity to be an overnight success. It's 100%. It's 100%. I keep looking down here because my phone keeps locking. So the next piece that we have here is and this kind of goes with what we were talking about before, but creating a financial plan right, and kind of elaborating on what we said before. I'm a fan of the book Profit First. Lebron, have you read that book yet?
Speaker 3:I actually am going through it currently. I got eyes yeah.
Speaker 2:Come on now. Amazing book and long story short. It's talking about what LeBron and I just talked about being able to understand what are your expenses, where do you want to put funds, what are you trying to achieve for your goals whether it's investing or just putting money aside things of that nature and then setting yourself up for success. One of the best things I did when I first got out of college and got into the W-2 was getting with people that were financially a lot smarter than me and understanding like, hey, you can set aside X amount for a 401k, you can do some of this extra stock which is deferred, you can put this amount toward your savings. And so what I did because I was not the shakest tool in the shed of trying to do all this stuff myself is I actually had them direct deposit to two different accounts.
Speaker 2:One account was one that was in the cloud, or if I needed to get money from it, it would literally take three days to have it transferred to my account. So by that time, if you needed the money, you're probably going to figure out a way to get around that, or maybe you didn't need to buy that thing. So that saved a lot and that actually became my seed money for putting this down payment for the first property. And then the other piece was my operating account, right, which is where I spent my day-to-day and kind of did that thing, taking it a step further after reading Profit First, a couple of years ago. Now I actually have the bank account system where it's like okay, this is my operating expense account, this one's for profit, this one's for taxes, right, set aside X amount for taxes and if I don't spend all that for taxes, that goes to profit and now you can go have fun with it and things of that nature. Do we find anything there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, 100% I agree. I agree completely with the fact that, for instance me, when I first did it, I essentially worked the hours I needed to just have my bills be paid. You know to your point, making sure you know your kind of burn rate every month, how much it costs to keep me alive. And I would say, if you're in the beginning especially, you know you really want to lean out as much as you can, because the more time you're able to sacrifice towards you know the secondary thing you're trying to build, the more kind of time you get to buy back. But a lot of times you're not seeing it in the moment it's more like, hey, I'm kind of going through the grind right now, but I'm buying back my future time. It's kind of how you have to look at it.
Speaker 2:That is the key. Literally, you're spot on. And the cool thing about being in this world, in this realm, is that you can now control a lot of that time right, and you can determine, hey, where do I want to push my efforts? And you realize that you're planting seeds right. These relationships that you're building, these investments that you're making right now, are going to pay off, not only right now, but over the long term, if you continue to nurture and continue to grow that. And that brings us to our next point, which is networking and building relationships who are excellent at this. There's some individuals where I see you connecting and I'm like dude, how the heck do you know this guy Like I just you know, like even some of the people we've interviewed, like kicking it back to a Rich Monroe. I'm like dude, how'd you meet this dude who owns like 60 rentals around here and has been in the game for forever? So could you talk to us about the importance of networking and building relationships?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean 100%. I think, especially in the field that we're in, it is, I think, arguably the most important skill that you need to have, because, at the end of the day, the more I'm in it, the more I'm learning. Real estate is a people business and just knowing the right people can drastically speed run not only your knowledge but also your ability to kind of I always say the amount of tools you have in your tool belt, right, kind of a lot of people are scared to network with people because they're thinking I got to go, in a sense, talk to people that aren't interested in anything. A lot of it is just quite literally, hey, it's like being a kid in the playground. We all did it, we just didn't think it was networking.
Speaker 3:You know, we were as all little kids, we were all used to do it, but then all of a sudden, once we become adults, it becomes kind of this weird thing that everyone's kind of scared to do. But in reality I'm a fan of the uncomfortable is what's going to make you better, and I think in a lot of that sense, the network you have we hear all the time your network is your network. Making sure you're talking to people, I think, is the most important thing, and that's quite literally as easy as it sounds. It's just you literally going out and talking to people and at first, yeah, again like everything, you're going to be bad, but it's one of those things as you keep doing it, you're going to get better and better, 100% agree.
Speaker 2:And to your point, we did this. We did this growing up, naturally, and there was nothing awkward or uncomfortable about it. It's getting comfortable with the uncomfortable until it becomes comfortable, and it's also putting yourself out there, right, because the answer is always no to any opportunity unless you ask for it, right? And so you've got to be comfortable kind of reaching out for what you're looking for and also, if you're uncomfortable doing that, put yourself in a situation by signing up for something like one of the things that I've been doing recently and plan to do a lot more on the second half of this year.
Speaker 2:First half's a little bit crazy, but second half of this year I plan to do is sign up for a lot more in-person events. Right, like last year did the VP con, did the EXP con? This year I plan to do both of those, but also looking at a couple of other conferences, because when you get around other like-minded individuals or people that are in a different space from you, just one small idea could change your life, man, like, hey, you know what if you did it this way instead of that way? Like, oh man, I never thought about that and so I'm always excited about that networking and kind of building relationship standpoint, because you never know where it's going to go. A relationship that I built when I bought my first investment property with my realtor down in Louisville blossomed over seven years into multiple, multiple units and now we both own a self-storage in our building townhomes together.
Speaker 6:That's going to be incredible.
Speaker 2:It never would have started if we didn't make that initial connection and grow it over time. And so, even when we're working with a lot of our different clients things of that nature we'll get to be excited about both of our clients being investors. Dude, we could be partners at some point. Right Like right can be partners at some point, right like right.
Speaker 1:Now it's just hey deliver tremendous service as best you can. But who knows then if they come up?
Speaker 2:with some crazy idea or a big deal down the road. I'm down, you know you'd be down too, yeah, yeah, so so it's nurturing and kind of building that piece, um, and you never know who knows who, so yeah, exactly to that point.
Speaker 3:Um, I mean, you can think about it. A lot of people think you know all the people I want to quote unquote know people of influence, people who you know you want to build relationships with, because, oh, they have access to all this information. A lot of the times they're at these in-person events. You know, for instance, rich, the person we brought on, who's president of Angstrom. Right, I literally met him randomly on a Sunday at a bakery, you know, and it was just a meetup and he was there, and then we were able, hey, you know what do you do, et cetera. And then we find out, hey, he's the lobbying all's on these short-term rentals.
Speaker 3:So, literally just going out there is kind of what's putting you in positions where you're able to meet these people, because that's what these people are doing, you know, and a lot of the times they're just as willing to talk to you as you are to them, because you have something that they a lot of times don't, or you have information that they don't. And, at the end of the day, the I've learned people who are really really super successful are always putting themselves in positions to where they can learn stuff and specifically be in the local economy because they'll know more of what's kind of going on closer on the ground 100% agree, and I love the fact that you still get out there to a bunch of these different events.
Speaker 2:It inspires me like dang, I need to get back out here. I still go to these events because it does help you grow. Yeah, I'm going to pay your dollars.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no, it's going to be good. Good so no, and we're trying to put on more too to kind of help build that piece Exactly. The next piece and it kind of goes along with that is continuously educating yourself, right? You talked about, you know, listening to a couple of books in the audio book. I know that you've read a lot of books around real estate, but what are your thoughts around continuously educating yourself, in whatever field you're in, as a 10-night hunt?
Speaker 3:I think that's the difference maker between good to great, because you can learn as much as you can learn and it'll keep you at a specific level, but to continuously grow and be on the consistent path of progress, it requires consistent learning, because the economy changes, strategies change the way to do things, change kind of systems in place. Some people go, oh, there's a better one. And we can name a ton of people who have been in the real estate game a really long time and have kind of just been doing what they've been doing and they've succeeded at it, but they didn't know about tools like, for instance, hospitable, you know, air DNA, all of these more online tools that you know is just about more. So, continuously educating yourself, being online, you know, looking at videos because that's kind of what I'm noticing separates the people who are able to really scale things up to that huge, huge low 100% agree, and it doesn't necessarily have to be reading a book, although that's an awesome way.
Speaker 2:It could be listening to a book podcast, it could be just talking to different individuals. But I truly believe you can learn from everybody, whether that's learning what to do or what not to do. I truly believe you can learn something from everybody that you interact with, and even just from observing people, and so I'm always a fan of if I see that somebody's excellent at something. I don't really care what it is, it can be, it can be I don't know bad right. If I see somebody's excellent at something, I just want to see their mindset, how they work and how they go about the day to day, like I'll sit there and watch like man. This is pretty incredible because you may be able to glean something from that that'll help you out in the future.
Speaker 3:No, 100 percent Success does leave clues. Sure Come on now.
Speaker 2:No success leaves clues. And the last piece we have here before we open it up to the group and again, this is an open session, so feel free to join, live or throw questions or anything you have in chat but the last piece is about dreaming big. Right Within a W2 or corporate setting, there's typically different levels that you have to achieve and different milestones before you can get to X level, and so at times it may hamper your belief system, right? But at 1099 World it's up to you and kind of your dream, how big you want to go. And so what are your thoughts about that dream big piece?
Speaker 3:I think, a hundred percent. It's very important to not only one dream big but have a vision for it and then kind of consistently go the path, because you can succeed in anything as long as you just do not quit. You know, I think that's one of the big things. That's very consistent. I'm seeing across all the people that have succeeded. You know, throughout all the downturns is, no matter the adversity, they kind of kept going and at the end of the day, this, especially in the beginning, is going to be a grind for a lot of things, and there's kind of a ton of days where you're not going to feel like wanting to do anything, but I feel like that's where the discipline aspect of it comes in, and that really is the thing that you have to be able to lean back on. And this is also why it's very important to have a strong why, because your why is going to be the thing that kind of keeps you going on your journey.
Speaker 2:Dude, 100% agree. It's one of those where, when we talk about dream big, you really have to get out of your normal life, go on a trip somewhere, go for a long walk, sit down and really write out your dreams Like what are you looking to achieve, and put it over time. A lot of people tend to do like a one-year, two-year goal. I would say do like a 10-year goal or a five-year goal, something where you can ramp up and get to it, and you'd be surprised, if you get really clear on your dreams and goals, how quickly you can achieve it right, for example. We've talked about it briefly, but we're going to roll this out with our whole team.
Speaker 3:But one of our goals from a real estate team is to be able to transact yeah, aj, okay, I think it's. Yeah, there we go, okay we're good.
Speaker 2:Okay, so one of the goals of the Acaba Home Team is to be able to transact a billion dollars worth of real estate by the end of 2032, right Now, when I look at the board, we're not close to that. Right, we're accelerating and we're building, but we're working toward it. And so some of the decisions now, when you put that on the board and say, hey, this is where we're looking to get to, and I'm going to put this on everybody I'm looking for you to kick in at least 100 mil Minimum. I'm sorry, it's all right, but long story short, when you look at that goal, it helps you make decisions Like, hey, we got an opportunity to expand to Florida. Are we going to do that? Yes, we are. We actually just got our first team member that's based in Florida, right, that I've been talking to for a while. He's familiar with our systems. We're going to teach him, train him up, things of that nature.
Speaker 2:But it's like, okay, can we expand to other pieces to achieve that long-term vision? And it's all about dreaming big. And then also, when you're doing that, I would also recommend starting to like map out a structure. What would you need? Or what pieces did you need around you to make it to that level, because you can go fast alone, right, as the old African proverb said, but to go far you're going to need help. And it's better, honestly, to have help when you're going far, because you guys can celebrate the wins together and you can pick each other up when there's losses and kind of keep going forward. And so, yeah, dreaming big is huge and Justin, aj, how you guys doing.
Speaker 6:I'm doing good, man, I can't complain, just living the dream.
Speaker 2:Come on, man, I see you wrecking Clark and learning the tough. Man. He got the full fit. Man he ready. We can go play football right now, man he's ready.
Speaker 6:Gotta run with the team man once in a while.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Gotta, do it.
Speaker 7:AJ, what about you, man? How you doing, Good man.
Speaker 6:Yeah, Justin, let's drop on the queets, let's do it like the old times. Hey man, let's do it. Justin what's up? I don't know.
Speaker 7:I'll be sure before I speak further. Is there an echo that you had, or is that taken care of now it's?
Speaker 2:coming from. We can hear ourselves. I don't know why.
Speaker 7:Is it me? Okay, I'm going to try to hang up and rejoin. I think it's the speaker. I think it's the speaker.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought it was me for a second, but no, no, justin. What's new in your world, man? How are the B&Bs coming?
Speaker 6:You still accelerating through the summer. Speaking of the B&Bs, over at one of my properties AC went out. I went over there. It froze up. I defrosted it, Did the whole nine. But the reason why it froze up? Because the gas turned it down super low. But they turned it down super low because it wasn't cooling. Probably had HVAC guy go out there today check it out. It's low on Freon so we got a leak somewhere. So now we got to track down that leak. He's a little tied up this weekend so we just went in and topped it off so we can keep the doors open for the guests coming in. But we're going to try to go back Tuesday and track down that leak, See if we can figure it out.
Speaker 2:It's funny how that it always happens during the turn of the season Legit. The reason that we have maintenance managers with the Acaba home for the rental team is because two years ago I is because two years ago I was the maintenance manager, quote, unquote and I was in Chicago for like, and I was still working at W2 and doing the roadster stuff. So I was in Chicago at a meeting corporate meeting my phone's blowing up, there's three guests, three separate guests, different properties, hvac goes up, and it's like 80 degrees that day, and I'm just like I'm calling all the people I know, like, hey, can you get out here? They're like, nah, man, we're tied up, we're tied up. And that's when I knew, listen, we got to get some help here, because it can't be on me, because it is Nobody's going to get an AAC, but yeah, man. So what we started doing now, though, is, in April, we actually have our HVAC specialists go out and service all the units, and then they let us know if there's something wrong, right?
Speaker 6:on right. So I got the service last month. But I mean, really that's one of those things I guess he said when he checked the last month it was all good. Uh quay, same guy went back out of the day. He said when he checked the last month it was all good. Came back today he said I was about a pound low on freon. So he said it's leaking somewhere. So he'll try to track it down.
Speaker 2:But who knows, dang okay, well, the freon he put in and get you through the weekend.
Speaker 6:Yeah, that's what he said, so we'll see.
Speaker 2:We're being hopeful. Come on now, fingers crossed, cam how you doing man, can you hear?
Speaker 4:me we can hang out okay, all right, cool. Yeah, I know I'm doing good. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:super good. And the more important question is where you been at, man. I ain't seen you in the gym at all. What's going on?
Speaker 4:I know I was afraid to join because, like I knew, you'd ask about that.
Speaker 2:But cam is an early morning warrior like myself, so we usually in there at 6 am. I ain't seen him in a couple weeks.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I've got fitness equipment at home, so like I've been keeping on top of it, but like my job has just been very busy lately, I'm not even using that as an excuse, but yeah, no that's right, you gotta keep you honest, then I gotta keep you honest.
Speaker 2:But how? How is the house?
Speaker 4:happening. Man, it's been pretty good. I mean, it's been, it's been really good, so everything's been going pretty well. We did actually last just last night, we actually had to have the police come out and like remove the tenants in our property because they were like smoking inside and just doing all this stuff, and I talked to them like multiple times like trying to get them to stop, and they wouldn't. So I eventually like canceled the reservation on verbo and then like I told them like hey, you guys gotta leave, and they weren't leaving, so had to call the police. But other than that, it's been really good.
Speaker 2:So yeah, listen, we've. We've called the police probably four times, uh, over the last 18 months. So so, yeah, it happens to the best of us, and if the guest is not leaving, it's a good solution, right. When they pull up, typically people are like, hey, we'll roll?
Speaker 4:Yeah for sure. So I don't know. I was going to ask too, like on Vrbo we have a damage deposit that we like take from people before, like when they make the reservation. But I don't know if there's a way to like take from people before, like when they make the reservation, but I don't know if there's a way to like charge them for smoking inside, like I don't know if anybody's encountered that or like what they've done, but like I'm not sure, just take that damage deposit right.
Speaker 6:Isn't that in your house? No smoking, so I just take the damage deposit, okay.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6:I would equate that as the damage deposits out.
Speaker 4:If it was me okay, yeah, I didn't know if I had to like somehow quantify it, because like you can't quantify like smoke damage, I guess obviously, but or it's like difficult to. But yeah, I mean, that's a point yeah, true, true what justin said.
Speaker 2:Aj, is there a way that you quantify that and people smoke in the house.
Speaker 7:can you guys hear me better now? Is there any echo? No, no, no, yeah, so, uh, luckily I don't think I've had to file any smoking claims. I've had guests that come. Sometimes they'll ask.
Speaker 7:Honestly, I prefer if guests they do ask up front and then you know, most of the time they'll just want to smoke outside, because I do have a balcony at my airbnb and most smokers they just kind of like an outside area, um, but I make it clear, very clear, that you know I really don't care about smoking and that's what people don't understand, like smokers sometimes. It's not that we care about you smoking or not smoking, it's about the odor and the smell that I mean. That's the biggest thing. I haven't had any experiences with damage claims in terms of smoking. I've had plenty of those with Turo, but that's like a whole separate thing.
Speaker 7:But Airbnb, I've been lucky enough to, you know, to run into that issue, but I would imagine you know you should have something in your house rules. Like Justin said, I've never had a verbal booking. I'd imagine if it was an Airbnb booking of mine, I would definitely just charge them, hey, a smoking fee. You know, make sure it's a reasonable amount. I think, personally, I you know I would come up with something that is just reasonable for yourself. I've seen some extremely excessive ones online like sometimes up to like $500, but honestly, that's up to the discretion of the host. Honestly, you know it's your property, so you set the rules.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean that's up to the discretion of the host. Honestly, you know it's your property, so you set the rules. Yeah, I mean that's what we have in our like listing and house rules and stuff. It's actually $500 just because we wanted to like have something kind of extreme. So people didn't do it. But I mean it still happens. Yeah, maybe I'll charge them part of that. I guess I don't know.
Speaker 7:Our damage deposit is like $. There's like 300, so I can't really charge them 500 anyways. But yeah, yeah, I mean I can't blame you for that. Like I said, it's at each host's discretion, um, but you know, it's kind of up to you on that, on that one, if you wanted to hit them with 500, go right ahead. But honestly, I mean it's up to them. You know, they, they, you set the rules and, uh, they were, they were the ones that went ahead and, um, you know, went against those rules. So, yeah, yeah something.
Speaker 6:Yeah, I have something you can do. Go ahead, nii, please. And if there is an odor, a thing you can do, you can go to the auto parts store. You can get a thing called Ozeum. You can spray it in your vents. Or you can go to like a smoke shop and you can get some blood spray and it'll clean it. It'll clear it all up like pretty much instantly. Instantly, ozeum works really good once you spread in the vents and then the blood spraying just kind of makes it freshen up the air. Okay, that's good advice, ozeum.
Speaker 2:This is a PG channel, so we're not going to ask how you know that I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. So to your point, to everybody's point, cam, we have similar rules and I'm happy that AJ said 500, not 350 as being excessive, because we do charge the 350, right, like, we have it right here, we've got it clearly written. And the fact that you have a message chain where you're going back and forth with them, I think you have a clear ending. You had to cancel the showing or the booking. I think you should charge them the full amount, right.
Speaker 2:Had to cancel the showing or the booking? I think you should charge them the full amount, right. And I think that if they leave a bad review, you'll have grounds, depending on what the messages say, to call VRBO and get it removed, right, just because, hey, you know. So, yeah, I would charge them the full boat and say, hey, it's clearly listed and I usually take a screenshot of our, of our rules, not put that as the picture If there's not a picture of, like you know, evidence.
Speaker 4:Okay, yeah, we had a witness sensor in there.
Speaker 7:Oh, go ahead, I'll go ahead. I was just going to say I lied, so I take that back. It's just been a while since I've had a smoking claim which I'm happy about. I've had maybe about three or four roughly. You know, I think it's for me. You know, I just I'm going to charge the guest based on, you know, if they've been a trouble guest the entire time of their stay. So sometimes it varies. Maybe I should be a little more strict on that. But that's just, you know, my personal thing. I'm not like out to just get people for money on smoking claims. The rule is there to deter people from smoking, right? So that's kind of what I mean by. You know says something that I think is reasonable but not like too excessive.
Speaker 6:Yeah, part of it, though AJ is just whatever he has in his house rules. Like you just send those standards and procedures up front. That way, once it gets to the point to where you can't be the quantifier of it, you know, say once we you know we always talk about scale here let's say, two years down the road, like if you got 350 in those house rules and they smoke, then that's what they get charged, or whatever. Two hundred, 150, whatever. It is just kind of trying to keep it consistent. That way, even you know, working with Airbnb, they'll see like hey, every time this guy has a smoking claim, it's always the 150 that he's charging the guests. You know those things are changing just kind of your standards and procedures.
Speaker 7:You know those things aren't changing, just kind of your standards and procedures, yeah Well, that being said, don't listen to me Go with Justin and say because that sounds more clean, like you know, as you, as you want to scale, you don't have time to be sitting here and having discretionary manners and thinking, oh, if this guest was a good guest, or things like that. This is something that I'm personally doing right now, but definitely I will go with that. Like, just go by the book, the best way to go about it.
Speaker 4:No, that's kind of. We usually kind of are a little discretionary with it, like we've had other people smoke inside, but this was definitely a troubled guest. There were like other issues too. So, yeah, I'll probably charge them.
Speaker 2:That is fair. That is fair. Anything else top of mind, guys, what you got going on.
Speaker 7:I recently just switched over to Instant Book today For Bookingcom, bookingcom and Airbnb. So this is a little experiment that I'm running right now. My occupancy has been really solid. I'm starting to dive into some of the other metrics within Airbnb. For example, the conversion rate is one.
Speaker 7:If you don't know what the conversion rate is, I'm sure you guys you know, you've been with Airbnb so you know kind of a little bit about the conversion rate. But the conversion rate is basically the ratio of actual bookings compared to, like, your unique views on Airbnb. So, for example, out of like 100 views, right, you got two bookings out of those 100 views. Then your conversion rate would be 2 percent, right? Obviously, that's just a hypothetical example. I forget exactly what my conversion rate is right now. It's usually a pretty low number, but I'm trying to look and see if I can get that up. I'm switching on to instant booking. This is an experimental month. I've been doing well for the past couple of months, so I'm just trying to see ways that I can just, you know, do a little bit of incremental improvements to, just, you know, hit the next, hit, the next level of my stride.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I want to say Airbnb actually rewards you for, and all these other sites reward you for, turning on that instant book. I know specifically VRBO and that's the one that I've had issues with early on in the past, before we got everything set up, but VRBO, specifically, will push it out to the whole Expedia network if you turn on Instant Book. If you don't have it on, then I think it's just on VRBO. So, yeah, I like it, man, and this is a good time to do that. Right With the summer, people are booking like crazy and have you seen an uptick almost immediately, or is it too early to tell?
Speaker 7:It's too early to tell. Like I said, I literally just made the change today on Airbnb and bookingcom. I made maybe just a couple of days ago, so I'm hoping to see if that'll change just how many reservations I can get in a given month. But definitely, you know, talk to Desmond a little bit about this. So I got a little encouragement from him and I'm just, you know, looking forward to seeing what we can get out of making this an instant booking Nice.
Speaker 2:And speaking of Desmond, welcome man, how you doing and Desmond, you may be on mute, or maybe me. Can you guys hear Desmond?
Speaker 6:I can hear you. I can't hear him. He's not on mute, though, because he's on the screen, but I can't hear him.
Speaker 7:He's expecting us to read his lips. That's all, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's the end of the day, all right. Maybe Monday morning, when we're fresh, wednesday end of the day, our reading abilities are shot. Here we go, coming in, live You're good, you hear me.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I am what's up. What's up Difficulties, my bad. What's up? Aj, I'm glad to hear that. Let us know. Let us know, keep us posted on how it goes. Keep me posted too, specifically because I'm interested to see, because your case is almost like a case study in you know, request to book versus instant book, and I would be really curious to know, like, what are your numbers in the request to book space? Like, how many declines did you do? You know how many? What's your acceptance versus you know decline rate?
Speaker 7:I don't know if you have those stats readily available, but I'd be super curious to know how that has gone, how that affected your business and what it's going to look like going forward, right, yeah, because your premise is basically and it's a solid premise that you know, out of all of the inquiries or, I'm sorry, not inquiries, but booking requests, direct booking requests on Airbnb how many of those do you actually decline? And the answer to that is I mean, it's really slim. Honestly, I can't remember the last time I've declined a direct booking on Airbnb. Yeah, I think that's a solid thought process and I'll definitely keep you guys updated on how that goes.
Speaker 6:Yeah, and I think Airbnb has some good tools built in to where they have to have a good track record and those things of that nature. It kind of makes it a little bit easier for those people who can instant book. So that's why I never really worried about it on Airbnb's front. I think if they don't have that track record, that's where I get the request.
Speaker 7:But normally I'm approving those two because I'm just trying to get the dollars rolling. Yeah, honestly, I just I've had just some apprehension. It's kind of just like my little baby that I've been watching grow and you know age and, as I've been progressing with my property, I'm starting to, you know, just step back a little bit and see what it can do on its own. But I'm definitely starting to just it's just a comfortability thing. You're always just thinking about what could possibly go wrong, what kind of bad guess you could get. But I'm starting to get a little bit more comfortable. Hopefully I don't get too comfortable to the point where everything's fine, but that's just kind of what I've been thinking of lately.
Speaker 6:Yeah, I definitely understand that man. I've only had one party at one of my properties. It was some teenagers, for some reason, airbnb, I don't know why they did it. I think the girl was like 18. They let her book my place. I have an age limit, but I guess something just kind of got tripped up on their end and she was able to book my place. She threw a rager for some high school kids, but my neighbors let me know what was going on, so I just kind of uh, I have floodlight cameras, the ring cameras, so I hit the siren and then I activated the voice thing and told them this was an unauthorized party, that the authorities have been notified, and within five minutes all those kids were out of there. I didn't even call the police. It's just like, all right, let me say this They'll get out of here and everything will go cool.
Speaker 6:Was this on an instant book? Yeah, this was my dad. I can't remember if it was an instant book or not. It's just, I don't have it to where. I have an age limit, to where. Don't tell them that Under a certain age you can't book my property. But for some reason she was like 18. She was able to book. Adrian just flipped it back. He's like no man see, I don't know, that's it.
Speaker 6:And we got an excessive cleaning fee on that because with the ring camera you'd seen like 40 people going in the home. But you know my cleaners, they didn't charge me any more money to clean the home. So we got the excessive cleaning fee and we got the one-day bookie made. We made money. Nothing got burned down. Everything was all good, yeah and see that point.
Speaker 2:I like the instant book. Uh, the one thing that you can do on there, though there's a setting, I figure exactly where you can make it to, where there's a cut off on that same day, because that personally, and justin probably booked that day that same day I actually don't think they booked same day.
Speaker 6:I think they just kind of went in the party and they were. They probably had been scoping out the property. They were like, all right, cool, I'm gonna get this one the one day. And it was like on a sunday. So I don't have the one day, the two-day minimum on a sunday. It's like who's throwing a party on a sunday? But I think monday was a holiday weekend when they did it. I can't remember what holiday it was. So they they probably were out of school on Monday. So they're like all right, cool, we'll just book this spot for Sunday. And I had guests that had just left that Saturday. So I was like, oh man, I'm getting an extra day on a Sunday. I was all game four and then you had the team.
Speaker 5:Yo boys.
Speaker 2:No, no, hey, we all have a lot of interesting stories when it comes to this Airbnb game, but the main thing and that's why I love kind of coming back in these conversations is that we own the property. That's the key Hanging onto the property over time, especially with all that's happening in the Metro of Atlanta and all the improvements that are being made to these different neighborhoods. However, we got to hang on to it. Right now it's the Airbnb and midterm rental game. Eventually, the long-term rentals will come back once these rents continue to appreciate. The main thing is that all of us are in the game. We're in the arena and we're playing, and so nobody can judge us right Because we're in the arena. So I just wanted to wish everybody an awesome Wednesday. Thank you for joining tonight and we will catch you here next week.
Speaker 1:See you guys. See you guys. Join us every Wednesday at 7 pm Eastern as we explore different types of investments that can fast track your path to.
