Cold open

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Live Let Thrive, a podcast about the Airbnb life, the share economy, and everything in between. Here are your hosts, Micah and Steve.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to another exciting episode of Live Let Thrive. Uh, what is up? It's Micah here. I'm coming at y'all with a solo episode today. Um as we're preparing for our big meetup tomorrow in Grand Prairie. This episode will probably be released probably after that meetup. I don't know. I might see if we can get it released tomorrow. We'll see. But um, yeah, so I've been telling y'all, I'm just gonna come with to y'all with an AI-based episode because I know we're in this phase of AI where it's like, okay, how do I use it? Some people are already using a lot of people are using it in their business actively, but I think we're in this phase of okay, I know what AI is, I know what it can do, but how does it relate to me? And I told y'all before, I just was in Vegas for like a week at this AI-driven conference, and it was for like everything, you know, government, uh, in government, small businesses. Uh like I'm a network engineer, you know, how to automate networks. Like, I'm talking this showroom floor was just packed with all these companies, companies that show you how to reduce your token usage. Um, but I don't want to go deep into stuff like that, like the advanced. I just wanted to like talk about like the small stuff, like, and

The Claude dashboard that secured multiple midterm rentals

SPEAKER_01 1:26

I'm gonna particularly be talking about short-term rentals, mid-term rentals, and just real estate in general, and just ways you can use AI to basically enhance your business, 10x your business. Because like I've been telling y'all before, I have basically used AI to like secure a bunch of midterm rentals, and I was able to like literally do that by just building a dashboard and a pricing calculator, right? Because you can connect Claude to connect to basically anything, you can have it connect to price labs, connect to your PMS system. I know I know I told y'all and before, like by the way, I did get rid of my PMS system, but I'm starting to see a lot more uses for Claude with the PMS. So I am probably gonna go back to hostfully here soon. Um, get back with them because uh their API can talk to Claude's API, and that's real powerful because that's when you can start automating like more guest messaging. Um, your API can connect over to Stafi. You can automate your um automate your uh your email communication to your guests because most of my midterms right now are coming in either directly through like email, email, and through my our phone line. So they're all coming in direct, and then we get some through Airbnb. So we haven't really done much outreach for marketing. We we're gonna have to get back on top of it because we do have a unit that's about to come available. Um, so yeah, I'm just basically showing you, I'm gonna show you guys real quick. So I create a dashboard, and this dashboard basically runs my entire business. Um, I can set up my pricing from there, I can look at my PL,

Connecting Claude to QuickBooks and Price Labs via API

SPEAKER_01 2:51

I can look at what my profit margins are, what my revenue forecast is, and all this is done inside of Cloud, and I'm just connecting it to like QuickBooks. Now it gives me everything from QuickBooks. I'm connecting it to Price Labs. Now I can connect everything from Price Labs, how to set up my pricing. Uh, it's just a bunch of stuff in there I did, and anybody can do it. And the the the the powerful part about AI, and this is what where people like think AI is taking over. It's not AI. This is the most powerful quote from the conference. AI can only rise to the IQ level of its operator, right? So if you don't know that stuff, you can't really train an AI to go any far beyond that. So, like I have it now, I can basically build my uh my my um my invoices. AI does all my invoicing for my business, it does my well, it still has some manual intervention. That's where I go. Like, if you know AI, you're powerful because you know you're still gonna require some manual intervention. Like, I can have it build my invoices, I can have it uh pull like uh pull my leads out of Monday.com. It can manage all that, but I'm just gonna show you guys, I'm gonna share my screen. So anybody who's just like like if you're in your car listening, go back and listen to the YouTube because watch the YouTube because I'm gonna share my screen and I'm just gonna show you this dashboard I created. And it's just a simple dashboard, but it's very, very powerful, right? So this is the dashboard straight up to this is my dashboard for my entire business. So like I can look at my PL, I can it's gonna pull that from QuickBooks. But the most powerful piece I'm gonna talk about here is this pricing dashboard. This right here, what I did was, and I'll just kind of I'm gonna go high level and then I'm gonna come back down. So, like high level for someone who wants to build like this dashboard.

Pricing dashboard pulls live vacancy and market data

SPEAKER_01 4:36

And right now you see it's processing and pulling all my uh it's pulling all my listings. What it's doing when it's pulling the listings, it's pulling how much my prices are, what my vacancy is, and then what it's gonna do is it's gonna allow me to come down here to like Airbnb, VRBO, and I can choose what my discount is gonna be based upon what's being booked in the area and based upon my current occupancy. So it's getting very granular. So I like if I know, so for example, if I want to make sure, like it's high season, right? High season, I know I can get like 3,600 a month. So I'm gonna lower my monthly discount to like 10%. But I know low season's coming. Um, so like right now, after school, like most people, like in my area, I don't know about your area, but my area, like once it hits like August, school starts picking back up, it starts going into low season. That is actually why I like to have midterms, like right at the end of like right in the beginning of August. I like to have a midterm so I can start covering my low season. And once it starts slowing down, so like what I do is um, so it's pulled all my properties, right? And it this is connected to um price labs through my API key. So you have to get your own API key. But anyway, what I'm doing is I'm pulling my data from Price Labs, what I'm priced at, and then I go into Price Labs and I pull my market dashboard. And I take my market dashboards, I upload them into cloud, and I have it analyze what's being booked in the area and what's actually bookable. So then what I do with that, what's actually bookable, I can adjust my price to match that. Like let's say they say 2700 is actually bookable in the slow season, right? I could just go here and set up a let's say 27, 28. I could set up a 30, I know to set my discount to 33%. And it's pulling live data straight off of my like my uh off of my um calendar, like so it knows what my calendar prices is. So I can set this up to 33%. And I've been doing it and it's been working like a charm on Airbnb, like Airbnb and VRBO, and like um,

Pricing Vrbo 30-50% higher than Airbnb with automated discounts

SPEAKER_01 6:40

and then what and also you'll see I have an Airbnb tab and a VRBO tab. So my VRBO, and I've talked about this on the podcast a bunch of times, I always price my verbo like 30% higher than Airbnb, 30 to 50 higher. Um, so my VRBO, you can set see how this number is really high. I would have to set it higher. Like if they know, hey, on VRBO, you can get 5,000 a month. So I can lower my discount down to 17% for a monthly discount. Um, I even have it doing um weekly rates. Hey, what do you want if like we know, hey, people are booking for $700 a week or whatever the number may be. Let's say they're booking for $1,200 a week. I can set my weekly to, well, I can't set remember you can't set your weekly higher than your monthly, but you know what to set your weekly to to get that weekly rate. Let's say it's $1,400. I set that 13% discount. Um, and then this is going based off what's on VRBO. So this is like really powerful. Um, I've been using it, it works like a charm, but these are just small things you can use to like like help your business, right? Um, it we're we're in this era where people just don't know what to do. And then what I tell people is write down like things you do compet like repetitively, like something I do repetitively. Most of the time, if it's something you do repetitively, you can have AI do it for you. Um, I just got my Mac mini. I don't get my got my Mac mini. My Mac mini will be here in six days. I just got the email. Took forever. I've been waiting for two months for that thing, but I got my Mac Mini coming, and that is gonna basically run everything for me uh full time. I don't ever have to turn it off. I'm gonna turn it to non-sleep mode. We actually have one at my nine to five, and it's been working really well. Um, and I'm just I may see, and then the cool thing about it about it is if you're using Claude and you have a Mac mini, you can just talk to it straight out of your desk out of your out of your phone, right?

Mac mini running 24/7 automation with VA oversight

SPEAKER_01 8:23

So you can do claw dispatch and talk to the Mac mini and have it do whatever you need to do. So if you're on vacation, whatever it is. Um, and then if you have an assistant, this is where that human interaction comes in. You need an assistant to be able to manage it. So that's why I'm like one of my VA, I'm like running to get trying to teach my VA and start teaching it how to manage Claude. So you can like manage what's going on, manage the agents, what is it doing, making sure it's doing the right stuff because it does make mistakes. And the thing about agents you have to be aware of is while you're teaching, it's like a it's it's very human, it's like a human-based a little bit because if you teach it something, it's probably gonna start learning what it is and then look for shortcuts. So you have to retrain your agents. A lot of people, I learned that at the conference. You have to like retrain them because it will take shortcuts. Sometimes those shortcuts are good, but sometimes those shortcuts are bad and it might cost you. So you got to be aware of that. Uh, but like if you have like anyone, if you're if you have like a uh like a um what is it, like a PMS, like a property, like a PMS or PMP, like a hostfully or owner res or guestie. I will my main question would be is like, what is your API? Like if you have open API, can I connect my claude? Because once you start doing that, you get real powerful. You can start really automating everything because the PMS is already the engine behind it, right? So if you can take the PMS, connect it to Claude, and like Claude or OpenClaw, open claw, you got to be a little bit careful. But if you can connect one of those, you can be real powerful. You can like start really targeting guests, uh, sending out really good emails. You can because I know uh Stafi, I think they just offered like $200 a month, they'll take care of your entire email marketing. That's something to look at too. Um, or you know, have Claude do it, you know, have Claude do your email marketing, you know, and because it can see your calendar. Once you connect to a PMS, it can see your calendar, what your vacancies are, what your pricing is, and it can start really being on top of those emails, you know. Um, but uh right now I would tell everybody don't get left behind on AI. Don't get left behind because right now it's powerful.

Small businesses have no red tape for AI adoption

SPEAKER_01 10:26

It's like it's taking over. Like, and it's people who just like, uh, I'm not gonna learn how to do it. Uh, don't be the guy at a nine to five, sit next to the guy that's using AI and you aren't. It's like a performance thing. Now you're seeing this person 10x everything you're doing, and you're sitting there manually clicking around, you know. Um, but because you know, it's not gonna take jobs, but it's you have to at least know how to use it, be proficient in it to make yourself a value to like the workplace, even for your business. Like small businesses, I'm gonna be honest, because I work in the nine to five, I work in government, corporate, whatever, there's like a lot of you know, there's red tape. In small businesses, there's no red tape, you just need to protect your data, of course. That's the main thing, but like there's no red tape on what you can do, you know. Of course, you're gonna have budget constraints because it gets expensive. But the more APIs, MCPs, it's gonna get expensive. But if you learn how to reduce like your token, like your usage on it to be just efficient, man, bro, you you can really be powerful with it. So um, I would definitely say, man, see if you can learn how to use AI in your business. Uh, I've been using Claude as of lately. I use my chat GPT was my thing for like the first few months until Claude came out. They came out with Cowork, Claude Code. I've been hearing good things about Codex. I haven't started using Codex yet. Um, I have it, um, but I pay for like the hundred dollar a month version of Claude and I pay for the $20 a month version of Chat GPT, and I'll switch back and forth depending on what's released, you know, what features are released. But um, yeah, definitely check one out. Um, and then there's a bunch I haven't started using yet. I've been hearing about Herms, Hermes, Herms, however you pronounce it. That one, Grok, I haven't used those. I've just been using like the Claude, Chat GPT, but it's like I got a bunch of programs too. And this is the reason why I got the Mac mini because you guys know I rent out timeshares and I built a program to automate it, but I can't run it on my MacBook because it just kills it, right? But if I have my Mac mini, I can run that program. That's like money being made in my sleep, right? Um, but yeah, definitely learn how to use it. And like you guys know, I just became a real estate agent. I'm definitely gonna be finding ways to use it in there.

Automate your workflow by mapping what you do repetitively

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Uh, finding ways where I can, okay, how do I be more efficient with my clients? How do I be more efficient with follow-ups? All that stuff can be automated, but you just have to know like what it is that you do. A good prompt you guys can use. I'm gonna be honest with you, a really good prompt you can use, just go into Claude or Chat GPT and give it your everyday workflow. You know, this is my workflow. What are some things I can automate? How can I automate it? You know, they can connect, Claude can connect to like make.com or Zapier, and it can just automate tasks like social media marketing, can automate that stuff. Um, it's a bunch of stuff that you can do, and and it connects to dang near everything. So, yeah, y'all be definitely take a look. I'll I'll create a few more of these episodes. This is just like that, was just like my dashboard that I created, and that dashboard basically it's runs my entire operation. Like I can look up government contracts out of there, what government contracts are coming up. I can um, you know, send invoices off, collect it to Stripe. It's so many powerful things you can use it for. But uh yeah, I hope this was helpful to y'all. Um, I got another call to hop on, but um hopefully this is helpful to y'all and uh I'll make a few more of these. Uh I'm out.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Live Let Thrive. Be sure to tune in next week for all the latest in the world of Airbnb and all that entails. Bye bye.