Cold open

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Are you ready to run your short-term rental business like a superhost? If so, look no further than Guesty for Host. Guestie for Hosts offers listing management for all three major OTAs, Airbnb, Booking.com, and Verbo. With Guestie for Host, you can create a branded direct booking website in minutes. I've been able to hit 61% direct bookings in my business and automate daily tasks such as communication with cleaners and communication with guests. Click the link in the show notes to get an additional $20 off your first month.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

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_02 0:39

Hello, hello, hello. And welcome back to another exciting episode of Live Let

Lauren Havens intro - 160+ managed units, 28 personal doors in three years

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Thrive.

SPEAKER_05 0:50

What is up, Micah Man?

SPEAKER_03 0:52

I'm chilling, Stevie Stacks. We just got back from the bank and all that good stuff. How you doing on your end?

SPEAKER_05 0:57

Oh man, getting some money from the bank, huh? I like that. Trying to put money in or whatever that is. Um, how am I doing? It's been an interesting couple days, uh, you know, dealing with a little squatter situation. But yeah, that'll be for uh well we might touch on that a little bit today, and it might be for another cast. But it's um hey man, they finally got us. They finally got us, but we persevered, I believe.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

No such thing as squatters in Texas. We got shotguns and pit bulls, not jumping on.

SPEAKER_05 1:31

Oh lord. Well, this is your favorite Airbnb, VRBO, Uber Lyft, Share Economy, all that podcast in the world. Short-term rentals is what we do, and this is episode 207, Micah Man. Oh, 207. Let's go. 207 episodes. That's insane. Anyways, we have a special guest today. Who we got? We got uh Miss Lauren Havens. Lauren Havens, who's that you ask? Well, here's the bio. Lauren has built one of the largest short-term rental management companies in Utah in just three years, along with an impressive 28-door personal portfolio. Home Havens also includes a cleaning company, design team, real estate photography, development, property sales, and acquisitions branch, soon to be launching Home Havens nationally. She knows the short-term rental market inside and out with a focus on automation and

Work-life balance with two toddlers under three

SPEAKER_05 2:32

efficiency. If there's a way to do it faster, easier, less expensive, that's her jam. Home Havens serves primarily serves. You did serves twice. My you threw me off a little, Lauren. Investors who also who always want services better, faster, and for cheaper. That is true. The balance home havens has found between the personal touch and automation has been the key to their growth and success. Lauren also loves playing at the splash pad with her one and two-year-old boys hiking in southern Utah and watching F1 races. Some fun facts about her include that she's mostly deaf in her left ear. Her favorite color is gray and loves any dish that has mushrooms. Yay! Welcome, Lauren, to the show.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Thanks, guys. I'm thrilled to be here.

SPEAKER_05 3:25

Yeah, I like mushrooms too.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

You now know way too much about me. So this is a great place to start.

SPEAKER_05 3:32

We know a lot about you like staying the still, you know. That's the that's your jam too, right? I see your fridge behind you. First fridge I've ever seen on the show.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Well, that's great. That's great. You're good. This is my my office is in my living room because I work while my kids play. Well, a couple of days a week they go away to daycare, but I work while they play, and this is the best for you to watch them play.

SPEAKER_05 3:54

See, that's something we really need to touch on because I got kids. Micah has kids. How does how does the the whole work balance with kids go? Because you're and I see you're trying to take over the world, yet you have little ones. I mean, that's got to be uh a little challenging.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Yeah, and I've built my business while also growing kids. I was a lot of people thought that I was pregnant for like two years because I have kids back to back and they kept seeing me and I kept being pregnant again. So I freaked some people out that way. But they go to daycare a couple of days a week. But we just really I really value that. I at the end of the day, we came to the point that if somebody, if an owner's not okay signing contract with me, if title's not okay, if I'm sitting there with two kids closing, then I don't know if I want to do business with them because my people are the kid people. So it took me probably a year and a half to get there to not feel like I had to like be fully professional all the time and I couldn't have a phone call with kids in the background. But now that I've gotten there, I'm really with my people, and I highly suggest.

SPEAKER_05 4:55

Oh, that's lovely.

First duplex in 2017, pivot to Zion National Park short-term rentals

SPEAKER_05 4:57

That's lovely. We're your people as well, Lauren.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Welcome to the yeah, we have to be a little better on the podcast for the audio, so we can't have too many kids, but I can I know, right?

SPEAKER_05 5:08

Every now and then you might see one behind me or Micah just you know getting in the office, but it's all good, it's it's all family here.

SPEAKER_03 5:15

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_05 5:16

So have you met Post Malone?

SPEAKER_01 5:19

I've not.

SPEAKER_05 5:19

Have you? He lives in Utah, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:22

He does, but I don't think he comes out much in Utah.

SPEAKER_05 5:26

Well, he's from Dallas and now he lives in Utah, so it's a weird place for a rock star to live, you know. Utah, it's beautiful. I've been there.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

General, general area of where his house is, but I've never like stalked and were driven by. If you need me to, let me know.

SPEAKER_05 5:40

Yes, please. Uh well, fun fact about uh Utah. I've been there one time in my life. I was like, I was 20 years old. Uh Michael Jordan was playing, which was gonna be his last game as a bull, uh, game six. Uh, they played against um Salt Lake City. Uh, I'm sorry, the the Utah Jazz. And I said, and that's when I barely started America Aaron's. I said, I'm gonna jump on a plane and get over there. If I was watching the previous game, if they lose this game, they're supposed to win it at home, coronation and all that stuff, you know, happy ending. But they lost. And I said, if they go to Utah and play, I'm gonna go get a ticket. And I flew over there, got me a ticket for 50 bucks for some reason. It was on a Sunday. A lot of Mormons can't go to the games on Sunday, so I was lucky enough to get a ticket, and I saw Michael Jordan kind of guide that guy away and make the last second shot. And that was um, that was one of the my greatest memories of my life. So I was there. If you watched The Last Dance, I might be like a little blip on in the background on there. That's not what we're talking about today, Micah. What are we talking about today?

SPEAKER_03 6:36

Yeah, Lauren, I got a bunch of questions after I read your bio, I was like, dang, you did a lot. So you do you are but you own and you manage. So when did you hop into the real estate ownership space? That's what I want.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

So, first ownership, I bought a bank-owned duplex with my husband. We'd been married for six months, and we decided that was the best time to remodel a house and shower at the gym. I don't know if I really suggest. We basically did it, we made money, it was fun, we kept it, we still have that property today, but we decided that was probably the worst way to do it. And so then we started really kind of our real estate investing journey. So that was my first, and that was five years ago now. Um, but shortly after we bought a couple of investment properties outside a national park in southern Utah, outside Zion National Park. And that also began my Airbnb short-term rental journey because we knew nothing when we said, Hey, I think these might do better on Airbnb than like a traditional rental. And that just started it and just rolled from there. It's been awesome.

SPEAKER_03 7:38

Now you scaled to 28 doors since 2017.

DSCR commercial loans - underwriting on property income, not personal credit

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Yeah, yeah. So 2019, we started buying the investment properties. Um, lots of creative financing, lots of a couple of partnerships, but we are majority partners on everything, which is cool that we've been able to hang on to so much. Uh, got into started buying multifamily within the last year and a half, and that definitely helps you scale quicker once you can break into commercial financing, especially short-term rental commercial financing, where they're doing loan to value because of the income of the property. It's just it starts scaling really quickly. You can see it open stores the things you didn't think you could buy.

SPEAKER_03 8:18

Whoa, can you go into one of those loans? Yeah, that's what I want. You said a short-term rental commercial loan. How does that work? And like what it's like, what are the qualifications for that?

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Yeah. So most of them are DSCR loans. So if you Google DSCR, which basically means they're not checking your credit, they're loaning on the business and the property. There are a number of lenders. I actually have a list, I sell a list on my Instagram because when I was trying to get all of these loans, I literally, when I made the list, I went through 1,200 emails from all of these short-term rental lenders. Probably 50% of who we reached out to were scams. But when we actually got it filed down to like the actual legit lenders that we'd spoken to, that we'd gotten full financials appraisals from, there were there's like 18 that I would work with. I have somebody who does one in all 50 states, but I know obviously my wins here better. I actually have a really good friend who does them in Texas. So, Steven, that might be a really good suggestion for you.

SPEAKER_04 9:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

But yes, both. Um, so basics of it are that instead of looking at the value of the property and you as an individual with your own uh debt ratios and your own credit score, they're looking at your business. They're saying, cool, this property is going to perform well. These are the projections. Most lenders at this point are using the data you provide them or air DNA. Some are using hotel data to kind of supplement that, to say, okay, cool, this is how much the property is going to make. There are lenders that will project forward. So if you buy a place and it's not rented out short-term rental yet, there are lenders that will project that into the future for you, which is awesome. There are also some who want to see it retroactively for a year or two years, which is one of the reasons if you're doing arbitrage. I don't do arbitrage, but if you are trying to get an option to buy the property, because then if you already have the historical, you just call the lender and suddenly you own multifamily, and that is huge. Micah's like, yeah. So those are basics, but ask more questions if you have more.

SPEAKER_05 10:26

I I guess the the the blurring question in my head is that all we've heard like from people doing multifamily is that let's, for example, they're gonna sell this uh small apartment complex or whatever.

The $380,000 gain on a converted senior center

SPEAKER_05 10:39

They don't want they they don't want hardly any short-term rentals in it, you know, and they could to go to get a loan from a bank, someone's gonna purchase it. They don't want to see any income from short-term rentals, they want it all to be long-term rentals.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

So this is like this is way different than 80, 90 percent of the lenders you talk to, most of the more forward lenders are lending from different sources, though. So you have to think about the banks and the lenders. If their sources say no short-term rentals, then they can't lend out that money. They're stuck by their rules too. But if they have less rules, there's a lot of life insurance investing money that's more flexible than traditional bank rates, like banks are borrowing money to then loan to you. Those they're gonna say no. But more creative investments or private firms like private equity, they can do those things. So we've gotten some really weird ones done. We bought an old senior center that had been shut down for 10 years and converted it into a 24-person corporate housing short-term rental. And we actually just sold that one and we made about $380,000 on it. And we made great returns for the couple of years we had it too. So lending in that way allowed us to purchase that property, allowed us to hold it, and allows us to sell it for that premium as well. So definitely something you should look into.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

Now there's oh go ahead. With a property like that, 20 X amount of units. Why did you sell? What did was the did you were you was like time stamp on the money that were you had to, or was it like a syndication, or you just thought it better to sell it?

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Just thought it better to sell. Um, if you want to get like really personal at it, I feel like my value to the market is seeing the opportunity, taking that weird property that no one knows what to do with, right? So the senior center, we have a rural multifamily property that we fixed up and it's awesome. Seeing that opportunity and turning into it a more obvious opportunity for someone else. So we've made a lot of money and been able to see a lot of units and what we like about different units by kind of cycling through and buying things. We don't sell very often. We chose to sell that one because uh we decided that we didn't want to keep it long term. We didn't want to keep it for longer than five years because not all the units had kitchens. Some had like kitchenettes, but they didn't all have full kitchens. And that is something recent that we decided of ourselves that we only want to keep things with full kitchens. So we decided to sell it, but more so than that, we wanted to take that funds that we made, roll them back into the market and create that opportunity and again and again. Cause that's what I love the most is when you see something, no one knows what to do with it, and you turn it into this super sweet place. That's like my jam.

SPEAKER_03 13:32

So

Creative financing - hard money and private lenders holding 12 to 18 months

SPEAKER_03 13:33

hold on. You so you was that a 1031?

SPEAKER_01 13:36

No, we just sold it.

SPEAKER_03 13:37

Just sold it. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yep. Our taxes looked okay this year. So we thought if we're not gonna 1031, that's probably the time.

SPEAKER_03 13:44

Gotcha, gotcha. So you said you did creative financing strategies. Like, what have you done? Have you done like sub two owner financing? What did you do?

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Yeah, so that one, a lot of the ones we've done so far, we have bought with private and hard money. And then we refinance it out like a Burr strategy. And we refinance it out within, I mean, one month to a year and a half is kind of been our hold range on how long we've kept that before we've been able to refinance it out with a short-term rental friendly lender sort of situation.

SPEAKER_03 14:17

Now, now what are you saying you have lenders that allow you to hold for that long before refinancing? Is that more private, or do you have hard money lenders telling you to do that?

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Both. Okay. Now, here's the here's the magic of management. I manage for most of the hard money lenders in Utah. So I'm good friends with a lot of them. So I don't know if that's kind of like shady black market dealing. I really don't think it is. A lot of hard money lenders here will hold for a year or longer. Um, a lot of our private money guys that we work with, we've just met through doing real estate. And they're like, sweet, if I can get 9% return, just keep it coming as long as you want to hold it. I'm making money. And most of them retired, and that's kind of their attitude. So good friends. Again, you need better friends. If you haven't found a couple of those yet, you'd be to keep looking.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Your network is your net worth. That's gonna be the name of this episode.

SPEAKER_05 15:08

You need better friends, and that's that's great because most people they they hit up one or two banks, maybe three, and then whatever. Okay, I guess I can't get the loan, or I guess this one has the best thing, I might as well go with them. But but you want to be able to 1200 emails.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

1200 emails tell me normal people don't send 1200 emails. Oh no, not gonna let that die.

SPEAKER_05 15:30

That's no, no, normal people don't do that, and for that reason, if y'all if y'all want um Lauren's list, you know, you're gonna have to pay her for it, and people will hit you up and they're gonna ask for that list, all right, Lauren. So don't just give it to them for free. Don't get it, you give it to us for free. That's fine.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

It's on my Instagram highlights, it's cheap too. I think it's up there for like 130 bucks. That is not spendy. I just it's one of those things where it took too much time to just give it away for free. But I do on my stories occasionally give away one or two for free. So if you really want to be that person, you can't.

SPEAKER_05 16:02

Oh, nice, nice. Now, now another thing that you mentioned, um, you're investing by the the national park over there, right? And what what's that what's that one called?

SPEAKER_01 16:12

So there's five national parks in southern Utah. The one specifically is Zion National Park, but at

Portfolio mix - condos, multifamily, nothing bigger than three bedrooms

SPEAKER_01 16:18

this point, I have properties around every national park in southern Utah, and that is a strategy for me.

SPEAKER_05 16:24

That I'm hearing that more and more from the big from the big boys. They're they're all trying to buy uh short-term rentals by national parks. So you're ahead of the game.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 16:35

Now, what what kind of units do you own? Like, do you do houses? Are you just doing multifamily? What kind of units do you actually own? And then we'll go for the management.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

So me personally own is variety. I have a condo, I have a town home, I have a couple of multi-units, I have a duplex, I have a single family home. So kind of spread out. I don't own any huge properties though. I don't own anything with a unit bigger than three bedrooms, which might surprise you. So I do the smaller properties more often than I hold personally the larger ones.

SPEAKER_03 17:07

Wow. And then what what do you manage? Is everything or yeah?

SPEAKER_01 17:10

I manage the gambit on that. I only manage inside of Utah. Um, I don't have a ton of super huge properties either. Um, I do have a couple of six bedrooms, but which might sound big or small depending on where you're from. Here in Utah, there's a lot of really big homes. And so our sweet spot's probably a two, three bedroom. We have a lot of those, but we do have a couple of like studios that are downtown. I would say the size of home varies in distance to the proximity from the airport. We have a lot of smaller places downtown, closer to international airports, bigger places that are more rural.

SPEAKER_03 17:48

Now, uh, I know Steve, he he does Steve does the owner's own own the managing thing. How do you vet who do you're gonna manage for?

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Oh, me or Steve? I was like, sure, I'll learn. You, yeah, you. How do you vet? That's a great question. Um, so my onboarding process, when you're onboarding an owner, you kind of need a lot of information from them. And we keep a lot on files so we can be really responsive to repairs and we keep air filter size, tons of information. So, to be completely honest, my onboarding process is just the

Vetting owners through a one-hour onboarding gauntlet

SPEAKER_01 18:24

right amount of friendly to get you through the fact that we need a ton of information from you, but it's also kind of hard. So if you're not really dedicated or if you're not gonna do your homework or call us back, then you're not actually gonna make it through onboarding. And it is a little bit intentional. We keep a ton on files so we can be really responsive to guests and repairs, but it does take like probably an hour of them sitting down and filling out the paperwork to get signed up. And we find those aren't dedicated, don't make it through the hour.

SPEAKER_05 18:54

That's a great way to bet. That's that's that's amazing right there. Um, man, so so property sales also says on your bio. You're a you're an agent as well.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Um, so I'm an I've never sold or bought a property in my life, and I am an agent. I hold one because our property management laws require me to have one in Utah. Um, so I push all of that stuff through my husband. So I run the management company and he runs like purchasing our personal portfolio as well as helping other friends, good friends, buy properties that then we in turn manage. So we'll shoot out deals that we see on the MLS, we'll see deals that private sellers. There's a lot of people, if they're selling a short-term rental, they'll reach out to us and say, Hey, do you want to buy this or how do we sell this? And so we kind of facilitate a lot of sales that way. But we've really just tried to be experts in our space in our city and in our state, and it's paid off for that.

SPEAKER_05 19:52

So you so you facilitate you facilitate the sales, but you're you're not the agent that's selling the whatever the property is.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

Sometimes we are. I never am. My husband is frequently. So it just kind of depends. So, yes, we'll end up being the buyer or seller agent on a property that we've been working on, I mean, most of the time.

20 percent management fee, 15 percent for multiple properties

SPEAKER_03 20:12

Sounds cool. How much do you guys charge for management?

SPEAKER_01 20:15

Yeah, so we charge 20% of gross income if you just have one property with us, and 15% of gross income if you have more than one. And that's a fairly all-inclusive product. So that means that you're not taking calls, texts, you're not buying supplies. That covers everything.

SPEAKER_03 20:34

And you only manage short term, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Yep. We used to manage long term for a little bit there. We did a little bit during COVID just to make sure that we could stay flexible if anyone needed to switch to long term or anything like that. But nobody ever did. And so at that point, we sold the long term. We built up the long term to about a hundred units and we actually sold it a few weeks ago because we want to focus on what we're good at, and that's always been short term.

SPEAKER_05 21:00

I love that. I love that. So too many people try to juggle too many things, right? And then um, but but by focusing on what you're the best at, you're gonna get the the best return possible, I believe.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Yeah, that's what we were thinking too.

Team size - seven Filipino VAs, one handyman, 20 to 30 cleaners

SPEAKER_01 21:14

So we parted with that and kept it just long enough to sell it, and then now just short term.

SPEAKER_03 21:20

How big is your team to manage? I think you said you're managing what 166 and you own 28. Now, how big is your team to manage all of that?

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Yeah. So I have cleaners, I'm never really going to be able to answer you because I swear it changes weekly. I have one cleaner manager, I have a small army of cleaners. I think right now it sits at like 20 to 30. Um, I have seven virtual assistants that are all in the Philippines. I have a one full time handyman and one part time. And then me, of course. And then the others are contractors that I use very little. So I have a real estate editor that edits all of our photographs that's just upwork virtual. Um, and I have a couple other folks like that that help with development web sort of things. Um custom coding, but uh they're just more I consider them more like expenses than genuine employees, even though I do bug them weekly.

SPEAKER_03 22:23

Now you have seven VAs. Now what's their schedule? Because I want to know how do you how do you manage that schedule?

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Yeah. Um I hired a VA manager. Okay, I have to tell you this tip because it's gold. If you are hiring VAs out of the country,

Hiring a VA manager from the Philippines through Albert

SPEAKER_01 22:40

out of the country that you have lived in. If you've lived in the Philippines and you know the culture, then great, hire your own VAs. But if you don't and you're just on upwork looking at South Africa or the Philippines and trying to figure things out, hire a hiring assistant from that country because you don't know the culture, and it is going to be very difficult for you to internalize everything, everything you can't see in the listing and when they're messaging back and forth. You don't know what's culturally appropriate. You just don't have that spidey sense, right? That you do about your own culture. So my VA staff changed entirely when I hired his name is Albert, and he does it for other people too. So I don't know, maybe we can link it in the show notes. He helps people hire in the Philippines and he is freaking gold. So that was my that changed my VA staff. And I hired a VA manager who manages the other six, and she is really amazing. And Albert helped me find her, and she's run staffs like this before. She actually ran a company that was purchased by Airbnb, and so has had a lot of experience for a long time. And she runs my shifts, she runs everything. We do have a 24-hour shift on most days, but Tuesdays in Utah are super slow, so we don't run a middle of the night on Tuesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, absolutely. We have two people on till midnight, but on Tuesdays, we don't even run that shift. So I think a lot of people get in their head too. If I'm gonna run a 24-hour shift, I have to run it, and that's not always true.

SPEAKER_05 24:17

I love that, I love that hack. We're gonna I'm gonna get Albert's information from you after this.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

Great, let's do it.

SPEAKER_05 24:23

It sounds that's just um, and that's where we're at. I mean, we got we got three VAs, we just onboarded a fourth one, and we've been we've been on and off with VAs, you know, having to let some go because it just didn't fit. They started off gangbusters and they just kind of like it didn't fit too well and started dropping the ball. And and I was like, and I'm talking uh to my partner Federico and the companies like we need to it needs to be a leader, right? And then and then kind of keep and teaching and training and keeping the other ones, you know, going in line or whatever, however you want to put it, because it is just like there's there's three right now, three or four separate entities we're dealing with, you know. But if you have that, like you said, the the one that's leading the rest of the six, that's just that's how you want to you want to set it up.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

And company culture, you need that person to like really get them when my team speaks with each other, they all speak in their native language. And when they speak to me or the guests, they speak in English, but a lot that allows them to have like a fun, casual culture, which is gonna help them not burn out and stay, which is problems that I was having too until I made that switch. And it's been game changing for us to be able to like implement that and let them have that culture. I think it helps a ton. Can you imagine? I can't even imagine doing all of my work in another language in the middle of the night. I think that would be something I would burn out doing. So I don't know. People don't think about it because VAs are easy to hire, but I think burnout's real.

SPEAKER_05 25:54

You see it in their shoes. That's pretty, that's pretty interesting.

SPEAKER_03 25:57

Yeah, I like how you do that.

SPEAKER_05 25:58

And so um, go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 26:01

Oh, I was gonna say that VA management company that's really really helped me a lot. Like hiring someone who to do it for you, that has made my life so much easier. Um, that is a great

One full-time handyman covering 160+ units with a Monday.com tablet system

SPEAKER_03 26:11

tip. I hope you guys caught that, the listeners, because that is an awesome tip.

SPEAKER_05 26:15

Cool, and and you said you had one full-time handyman and one part-time. That's it for how many units again?

SPEAKER_01 26:22

Yeah, so we have 160 something, I don't know. I think it was 166 that I said that too. I haven't checked today. Um, but yeah, he just basically cruises around. We also have a lot of contractors. We have our list of contractors we use in different areas, but he just works for us and just, you know, hauls around and fixes stuff all day long. We have a really cool custom system set up that we built through Monday.com. So handyman has like a tablet, everything he needs to do. It has the address he needs to stop by, it has the code, the Wi-Fi password, what he needs to do there, takes pictures before, he takes pictures after, puts his receipts in. So it's all very loaded. That took a lot of time to develop, but it has made it really smooth.

SPEAKER_05 27:04

What was that uh website again or the app or whatever?

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Yeah, so it's called Monday.com. It's just a task management system like Asana or Trello, and it makes it really easy to code. There's a lot of like custom coding that's very easy within it. So that's the software we chose to build that out, but it's been really helpful. So I that was something I was so afraid of for so long, too, is of like, I cannot do this, I can't track it all myself. There's too many sticky notes on the wall. But I was afraid that it would be like a hundred thousand dollars to build anything custom. And it's just not so. Like I did a ton of custom software integration this year, actually. That's what I've been focused on in like the first quarter. And I think it cost 8,000 total. And I didn't know what I was doing, and I was just figuring it out, and I'm shocked at how much I was like able to squeeze out of eight grand.

SPEAKER_05 27:56

Wow. Money well spent for sure. And yeah, I guess, and so he's able to handle all 160 plus units with a part-time with a part-time um handymap.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Yep. And so they split it, and then if we have people like out of area, then the VA's just coordinate that with the system online. If we need to like reach out to somebody extra to help, or if we have something really weird with like a specialty sewer backup and we need like a specialty plumber, then they'll help with that. But just small things like hey, the drain's clogged and you know, towel rack fell off the wall, all of those are done by the handyman.

Tech stack - Hospitable, PriceLabs, Monday.com, Bill.com, Properly

SPEAKER_03 28:34

Now, you you were talking about, you know, setting up systems and stuff. What tech stack do you use to manage that big of a portfolio?

SPEAKER_01 28:43

This might surprise you. I want to hear your reactions. I use hospitable to do okay, there we go. We got some love out there. I love hospitable, like I really do. Um, so they are what I use as they're not technically a channel manager, but they're a messaging software. Um, they sync all of your calendars, they have a lot of automation. And what I love most about them is they are developing so quickly. So if you have a feature you're missing, like you can quite literally just like email the developer. And I love that they're that small and that I'm that big with them because I have a little bit of sway there, which has always been really nice. And that sticks me there. I use price labs for my pricing, um, Monday.com, I use bill.com to pay people direct deposit for my owners and my cleaners and everything. Um try to think properly to manage my cleaners and we can all take pictures through properly. That's pretty much the tech stack. It's not awful. It's I mean, I guess it is a lot of things, but they all integrate really cleanly.

SPEAKER_03 29:46

So now you said you use hospitable. Now, what OTAs are you on? Are you mainly on Airbnb or are you on any other OTAs?

SPEAKER_01 29:54

I'm on Airbnb VRBO. Every year I try booking.com for like a week and a half, but in

Airbnb and Vrbo only - Booking.com fails every annual test

SPEAKER_01 30:01

Utah, it just doesn't pull like worst quality guests, no better pricing, and it's hard to get reimbursements. And so I give it a test. I give it a good honest try every year, and I just don't use that.

SPEAKER_05 30:12

That's that's not just Utah, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

Okay, good. I think that's probably like the Western US, but my whole everything off booking.com.

SPEAKER_03 30:20

Don't worry.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

I don't want my east coasters to come for me. Apparently, in the northeast, it just slays. So I just don't come for us, okay? I also do private marketing and we take private bookings as well. So not a ton, probably like 20% of our total bookings, but it helps.

SPEAKER_03 30:36

Now, those 20% are those repeat gifts?

SPEAKER_01 30:40

No, almost never.

20 percent direct bookings from cold-calling corporate travel departments during COVID

SPEAKER_01 30:41

They're usually company connections. So during COVID, I built a lot of connections here. Basically, everyone's calendar was empty and Airbnbs were shutting down and selling, going out of business. And I just called everybody, I searched Google Ads for job descriptions that had per diem in them. So jobs that included housing and traveling workforce. And I just reached out to their employers and said, Hey, can I do housing for you? Like, do you need places to stay that are COVID safe and CDC clean? And I built some really great relationships with local companies that have traveling workforce. And we just stopped housed their workers. So that's been sweet. So interns, refinery workers, water workers, they all travel for six to 12 weeks at a time and just repeat from them.

SPEAKER_05 31:31

I see a theme here, Micah. She's putting in the work, she's putting in the work, reaching out, calling people, emailing.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

Not afraid to be embarrassed, right? 1200 emails, 60 calls, whatever it is later. It's just it's only embarrassing for the half a second. And then it's just either a funny memory or a success.

SPEAKER_05 31:52

Were you always extroverted enough to do that? Are you an introvert?

SPEAKER_01 31:55

I'm an introvert. I have just learned that there is power. I have my people limit, right? Like I couldn't do this all day long. I couldn't run a podcast like you guys do. But I love people. I'm an introvert, but I love people. And I've also just realized that it's just not worth it. Like whatever insecurities that I have calling somebody or cold calling, it's just not worth it. They need what we're selling, and that's the buck stops there. So if you just have that attitude, the more you do it, the easier it gets.

SPEAKER_03 32:28

Man, that is so true. My my mentor stays on my butt about cold calling because I am an extreme introvert. So yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, you definitely have to step outside of just outside of yourself.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Micah, what do you do to like hype yourself up before you call? Because I know you do.

SPEAKER_03 32:45

Uh, no, no, no. So what I did was I wrote my why on my board.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

Cool.

SPEAKER_03 32:49

So I know my why is like, I want to spend time with my family, I want financial freedom. Um, I do it for my family, and that's what makes me go to the next call and keep cold calling. That that I have to I have to write it down so I always see it. So if I'm up and I'm like, I don't want to do it again, I'm like, nah, I want my freedom. So that that's that's what makes me keep going doing it.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

Amen. I love that.

SPEAKER_05 33:10

Yeah, I'm I've always been an introvert too. I always consider myself, I was always the quiet kid in class and stuff like that. But but I do I do get most success from actually calling people and talking to them on the phone, you know, instead of just an email or a text message. And and um, I don't know. I try different strategies, you know. One strategy I'm experimenting now, like someone will answer the phone and I'm like, hey bro, what's up, man? How you been? You know, I start talking to them like then they're like, you know, is this a long-lost friend or something, you know? And then I dive into slowly dive into the pitch. I just kind of like get them a little bit on their heels and say, uh, is it uh he sounds like a cool guy, you know? And then yeah, I go into the to the arbitrage pitch or the or whatever it is that you know I'm trying to do. And so I don't know. I just I think it's always good to try different things, experiment and um just just to make the call as nerve-wracking, like, oh it's ringing. Oh oh my god, I forgot everything fell out of my head while it's ringing, you know. What was I gonna say? But but um yeah, that's that's the most success. I I tell people it's the old-fashioned phone call is is the thing that gets me the most business, and and and it's not even close, man. You know, I I've I've had people that were you know on the fence about staying at one of my places, like a travel nurse type deal, you know, trying to stay at one of my places and on the fence about it. This and that, we're going back a thousand text messages. I just let me just call them, and then I just called them, explained, you know, this is what we have, this is what we have to offer. We think it'd be good for you. And I think, oh, is it safe for my wife? Oh, that's what he's concerned with. You know, he never ex he never expressed that on the text message, whatever. Oh man, we got you know, gated parking, it's uh it's a nice community, this and that, you know. So now I knew what he was his biggest concern was, yeah, yeah, sounds good. I'll you know, I'll sign up with you guys. And so it's just you don't get all the information from text messages.

SPEAKER_01 34:58

It's so true, and everyone's lonely after the pandemic. You talk to any of your friends and family, they're like, Oh, yeah, I want friends, so be a friend, like really, yeah, yeah.

Why no arbitrage - refusing to move furniture repeatedly

SPEAKER_05 35:11

I wouldn't hang up on you, Lauren. I wouldn't hang up on you.

SPEAKER_01 35:13

Well, thank you. I I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_05 35:15

Unless you're calling about a student loan, I think Biden's handling that.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

I don't know who's handling that card shirts that you don't have or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 35:25

So, question for you You said you aren't in the arbitrage space, and I'm starting to notice more and more people aren't in it. So, what why haven't you hopped in it?

SPEAKER_01 35:34

Oh man, I've been preaching this for years and now it's just getting popular. I don't want to move furniture. That is like as easy as it is for me. That is like my number one. Okay, I don't know if you can see me, but I'm like a five foot-nothing female, and it gets old, like convincing friends, family, employees, whatever to like move an entire house repeatedly. I'm just not into it. I basically looked at my resources and I'm like, I think I can just be nice to people and they'll let me manage their units instead. And at the point that I got into management, that was about like the profit that we were looking at was about the same to run a management company versus to arbitrage. And I had some friends who were arbitraging and they're like, Yeah, we just moved three units. I'm like, three houses? That's awful. And then I just never got into it. And I've been I will die on that hill, apparently, of not moving furniture.

SPEAKER_03 36:31

I'm loving you said that because me and my mic, my partner Mike were talking about that. That is one cost that people don't ever talk about is moving. You know, if you don't, you know, if you have even if you have a long lease at the end of that lease, you're gonna have to move if you don't renew, you know, and that is a huge cost that no one talks about. I'm happy you brought that up.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Yeah, and coordination, there's so much time that you can lose with that too. Like people think, oh yeah, I'll just move it in the weekend. It's like, did you set it up in a weekend? Then there's no way you're taking it down and moving it and setting it back up in a weekend.

SPEAKER_05 37:05

Exactly. People overestimate as much uh how much they can do in a day or two, man. Oh, big time. Um, moving sucks. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

Oh, you're good. If I could sell, if I could like set up arbitrage units, have them for a couple years, and then like sell them with the furniture and profit, then I might be interested. But I've never really seen a good like sales marketplace for that. So I don't want to move.

SPEAKER_03 37:29

You're bringing up so many good points because that's one thing I've always talked about too. Usually, when you see people selling arbitrages because they ain't making no money, so yeah, like you know, how do you sell that business? You know, and that's when when I talk to people, like I've talked to people really big in the industry and they talk about their arbitrage business. And then when we talk about is it sellable? They're all like, well, there are people that buy them, but they never have the numbers on what people are offering for these things. So I don't know if it's a crack of crap, but uh I just haven't seen the market for it yet. That's a really good point.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

And I haven't seen banks that'll loan on it. That's the other part of it, is I've found some really awesome lenders that allow me to hold property and do it. And I think I might have a different attitude about it if I hadn't found those lenders in that strategy, but I have, and so of course I'd rather own it.

SPEAKER_03 38:21

We're trying to, I'm trying to hop on the Lauren train with that one. Um seriously, because in order to really get a loan behind the art, well, there are companies now that are coming up with loans behind are there?

SPEAKER_01 38:31

That's cool. I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_03 38:33

Yeah, but I don't know if they're really worth stepping into because most of them want profit sharing models, right? So then you're taking a percentage of it and you're giving it back to them. And then the other side about the only way to I've seen really to make it loanable is to really get business lines of credit and do it that way. So you're just building up the business through lines of credit, but then you have to make sure you're paying everything back, there's no equity in it. So that was my biggest thing. I'm like, I can't keep doing this if there's no equity, but yeah, there's definitely the loan thing is is huge.

SPEAKER_04 39:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 39:03

Now, one argument for arbitrage, because we do arbitrage and we do management as well, is that it's it's kind of if you're dealing with an individual owner of a house and uh or a condo or whatever, uh, and you kind of

Arbitrage as a path to owner-financed purchases

SPEAKER_05 39:17

alluded it to alluded to it earlier. Once you get like a good relationship with them, you know, you you take care of their place, you you mean you pay on time every time, first of the month, early, whatever, and then um, and you take care of everything that gets broken, that's not not too crazy. Um, you start they start liking you. Like, this is a cool guy, this is he's taking care of my place, and um, and so if they ever, ever, ever consider selling it, right? And it's very tempting to sell something right now. Um, I'm the first one they ask. And so we've already had um like three owners ask us if they if we were interested in buying their place when they're gonna sell it. And like, yes, we are because it's great because we already know the numbers, right? We already know the numbers that it hits, and we're like, yeah, it's a no for us, it's a no-brainer. If we buy it at this price and we're profiting at this price already, I mean we're hitting four or six percent, whatever, you know, it's way past the one percent or two percent rule. So that's the that's my argument for arbitraging, but own not at an apartment complex or somewhere that they're not gonna sell you that the dang thing. So you want to, yeah, yeah. You want to you want to get a nice, a good relationship with with an uh directly with the owner, and they're gonna like you and they're gonna consider selling it to you. So that's that's my end right there.

SPEAKER_03 40:31

Yeah, I like there, yeah, because you're looking at it from the angle. Hey, I can eventually get the equity out of this property if I own it. You know, I have three things that I like about arbitrage. You touched on one Steve relationships, contracts, and business credit. Those are my three favorite things about arbitrage. That that's other than that, I like the ownership side, but yeah, those are my three favorite things about arbitrage.

SPEAKER_05 40:54

And mine are money, money, and money.

SPEAKER_01 40:59

Money, money, and fixing toilets.

SPEAKER_05 41:01

Oh, god.

SPEAKER_02 41:02

Have you been listening to the podcast? Yeah, no, we like fixing toilets. That's what Steve likes doing. Fixing toilets.

SPEAKER_05 41:11

I've resealed a toilet or two. It's it's it's not something I'm proud of, but the show must go on, right, Lauren?

SPEAKER_01 41:18

It must.

Starting the in-house cleaning company because everyone else sucked

SPEAKER_01 41:19

It must.

SPEAKER_05 41:20

So here's a huge question. So, what what made you want to start your own cleaning company?

SPEAKER_01 41:28

Everybody else sucked.

SPEAKER_05 41:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 41:35

How do you no? Okay, go ahead, City.

SPEAKER_05 41:38

No, yeah, yeah. I want to expand on that. Everybody else sucked and just said, I'm gonna start my own darn cleaning company.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

I couldn't find anyone. So I have the most units in northern Utah. There's one, I think there's two companies that are bigger than me that they're in southern Utah. And um I just couldn't find anyone. I was reaching out to some of the best, biggest cleaning companies. Like I have a friend who owns the biggest janitorial company in Utah, and she didn't want to touch it. And I was reaching out and working with the people who manage the most. And they were missing things, or I couldn't control them. I couldn't say, Oh, hey, since this guest is getting there first, you want to go to that one first. Like I just it got to a point where they weren't hiring staff fast enough. Like I just outgrew them and their quality wasn't there. And so I was forced to hire independent, even though I was trying to like mesh together several larger cleaning companies. And I've really tried it all with cleaning in my area. And I so far I'm best the best solution. If there was a better solution that came up, I would be so on it. Like, I don't love running a cleaning company, and I don't. I hired a manager who helped me do that. She was the cleaner who was with us the very longest. And I basically went to her and I said, I really suck. Can you help us? And I'm like, you don't have to manage because I don't always think that the person who is best at a job is necessarily always a good manager. I think that's most often not true. But she said, Hey, I've been feeling the same way and I have been dying to help. Like I see this cleaner struggling with this, or I see the laundry system breaking in this way. And I have ideas, I'm just shy. And I'm like, okay, do you want to raise? Do you want to try it? And so I gave it to her. This is the other thing I have to share about anytime I put somebody in management, everybody in management in my company has access to an assistant through my VAs. So it's also really nice to be like, hey, you're going to be the cleaner manager, but you have backup. Like, if you don't want to like click through everything on properly, just tell them what to do and they'll do it for you. If you don't want to call somebody, just tell them what to do, they'll do it for you, which I think allows you to tag team without actually hiring two people.

SPEAKER_03 43:46

I like that. Oh now, this how did you find your cleaners? So outside of the manager, she was already working for you. How did you find the rest of the team or did she do it?

SPEAKER_01 43:57

No, um, we did it and it's always turning over. I think you're lying to yourself if you're gonna tell yourself you're gonna run a cleaning company and not constantly be hiring. There's high turnover business. Um so we market on Indeed. We post stuff on Facebook, um, on Instagram. I market when kids go back to school in the fall. If any stay-at-home parents need a job, um, everyone just kind of knows I'm always hiring for cleaners. And then that same hiring manager turns out he's also awesome at hiring in the US. So he works with our cleaner manager to help hire in the US too.

SPEAKER_05 44:35

Do you do you just clean for your units or other people's units?

SPEAKER_01 44:38

No, only mine. If they want my cleaners, they have to let me manage.

SPEAKER_05 44:42

Aha! I love that.

SPEAKER_03 44:45

Okay, good idea.

SPEAKER_05 44:47

She's got her tentacles everywhere, Micah.

SPEAKER_01 44:49

I know.

SPEAKER_05 44:50

I love it. Here's what here's one of the favorite, my favorite things that that keeps coming up on this on this podcast, and why you're so successful is because you're not afraid that you're that you you're not afraid to admit that you suck at something and and then to hand it off someone else that's better at it, right? There's so many people that want to just keep going and trying to do everything themselves, you know, juggling too many things and just dropping too many balls. But but you like you admit, no, I'm not good at managing this cleaning company. I'm gonna hand it off to my best cleaner and she's gonna run with it. And that's that's a beautiful thing. That's that's that's how you work, what they say, on the business instead of in the business.

SPEAKER_01 45:28

But I have to tell you the truth of that is it hurts. Like that is not a painless process to hand things off. And nothing is more frustrating than when you've handed something off and you like open back up your can of worms and you're like, oh crap, everything's going wrong. Like, what happened? What did they do? But you also have to be just like I'm kind to myself and I allowed myself to fail and improve and hand things off.

Handing off the cleaning manager role and accepting failure as growth

SPEAKER_01 45:51

You have to have that same expectation of your teammates, or you're never gonna succeed. And that's a fine line, right? At what point are they failing forward and at what point are they just not a good fit anymore? That's a harder line for me. But these are all things that I've learned as I've grown and I'm still learning now. Sometimes you have to jump back in and help them fix it. And that is working in the business, but at the same time, I kind of also see that as working on your people, and your people are your best asset.

SPEAKER_03 46:20

I like that. I noticed you dream big, like you got a big, huge place and turn it into a 24 unit. I probably would have been scared of shit to do that, but like, no, no, no, like you have to dream big. That's what I love about it. You dream big and you go and execute, and that's why you're you're so successful and you're killing it. I um you it's crazy to believe you bought your first property in 2017, and this is how far you've grown. Congratulations to you. There, that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_05 46:47

Big time.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Thanks.

SPEAKER_05 46:49

So so photography, who you have a photography uh person as well, or you do the photography?

In-house photography with a formulaic process and Vietnam-based editing

SPEAKER_01 46:54

Uh, there's a couple of us that do photography. I hired a local photographer that teaches classes to come to buy us a camera and teach us how to use it. So the the photography we do is very formulaic, like set it to this setting, this, this, this is the only thing you can adjust, and all of our editing is done by the same person in Vietnam, actually. So he makes sure he can edit it cohesively, but it is like a step-by-step process by the book to take the photos. And it's literally like we need three photos of each bedroom, stand in the corners, and da-da-da. Like it's and that's it. That's what we do because I couldn't find any photographers with fast enough turnaround times. We want to turnaround in less than two days, and that was tough for us. Do you guys have good photographers who do that for you fast, or have you struggled there?

SPEAKER_03 47:46

I have a really good one who'll do fast turnaround in my Arkansas market. Now, my one in Dallas, he does a slower turnaround, but his photos are pristine. Okay, like he goes and edits on his next level. So, but yeah, it depends on which photographer I'm using.

SPEAKER_01 48:05

Yeah, makes sense.

SPEAKER_05 48:06

Yeah, I have a couple that um that do the 24-hour turnovers. So, um, and they do a really good job as well. Um, yeah, it took a while to find them. I mean, some of them would say, Yeah, we'll get them to you in in a week or so. And I'm like, I no, I need these now. That's yeah, that's for like I'm not selling a house, you know. That's an old school, you know, way of doing it. But I said, I I need you know, I want to get bookings rolling in with these brand new photos, so I need these, I need these pictures quicker. But so I was able to find people. The thing is, with the with the photographers out there, they start getting more you know known and in demand, and then their prices start going up. So I could, I mean, I could see a benefit to doing it in-house, you know. So I think that's um Federico, he's he's an amateur photographer, I think. When he gets here to the States, because he's in Buenos Aires, but once he gets here, he's gonna start wanting to do all the pictures and learning and doing all that stuff, which is cool, and you know it's creative side too. So it's fun, it's fun. And I like how you you found an editor in Vietnam, that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 49:04

Yeah, he's awesome. And it's something I can offer to like like my cleaner manager's training on how to do photos in a couple weeks, so it just does like a little spice it up, allow you to do something else with your job. Like, I don't know. Did you guys ever work office jobs? Anyone ever get to run to the store? You know how you feel like a freaking million bucks to do the Costco run? Like, photos are kind of the same thing where it's like, what I get to do something different today. Sign me up. It is cool, right? One of the reasons too is culture that we keep it in-house.

SPEAKER_05 49:34

That is cool. I like that. There's always a there's always an ulterior motive, right? And um wow, we've gone we've covered a lot of things. So so to to wrap it all up, you got all these things going on, right? All these things in-house, even your home cleaning company and everything. Um, how how does somebody take uh a company? How do they take it national?

SPEAKER_01 49:58

Yeah, so I got accepted to this really

Goldman Sachs 10,000 program and the national Host Assist rollout

SPEAKER_01 50:02

cool program. It's called the Goldman Sachs 10,000 program, and it's a sponsored program by Goldman Sachs, it's how they give away the money that they have to as a bank. Um, and it's like an entrepreneurial program. So you have to have certain revenues to be able to get into it. And I got into it the year of COVID because everyone else's business was kind of going down and mine was going up, luckily. So I don't even think I should have gotten in, but I got in. And they have some amazing resources, they flew in resources and they make you analyze a new business opportunity. And that was my new business opportunity was managing out of state and like a co-hosting model. So we called it host assist. And so we've spent a lot of time building that out and deciding exactly what that is gonna be and and how it's gonna launch. And we're still thinking of launching it late in the summer. It's pretty much ready, but I've just not quite ready. There's a couple other things I want a couple of my folks here to be a little bit more trained before I have to divert my attention to the new baby that will be host assist. Um, but I've just built out a lot of my automation, is my strong point. Um, with the, like I was telling you, the handymen and the VAs and the work-life balance that I offer. And so, and my most profitable part of the business is not the cleaning company, it's not the management handyman fixing toilet work, right? It's that VA assisting. And so that's what the product that we've built out for national.

SPEAKER_05 51:27

Wow, that's big time. And um, so that yeah, I was gonna ask you earlier, I forgot about about education. I mean, how do you are you do you value education while you're doing all this? You're trying to like uh I don't know. I was I was gonna talk about masterminds and things like that, but this Goldman Sachs thing, I mean, that's that's a huge education right there.

SPEAKER_01 51:45

Yeah, so I've always participated in a lot of networking education. So, like my local real estate investor association, RIA, there's a lot of RIAs across the US. Um, I've attended local real estate events for probably five years now. They kind of know me there. I'll never do a mastermind of my own. I'll never teach a course of my own because it just doesn't fit my personality, but I'm always happy to share it others. I speak for free at least once a month, and I love that. I think it's a great way to plug in and like network and educate at the same time. I'm a big fan of educating from the people that you can see the widesor of their eyes right in front of you, because I think that's the most honest education. It's really easy for somebody on a stage to sell you something that might not be 100% true, right? Might not include those moving costs. But when you're with the people, I think it's really easy to get the information the quickest and the best information possible, which is I use most of my networking as my education.

SPEAKER_05 52:42

You've put on quite a mastermind today. Thanks. We do our fans, our fans appreciate it, and they'll they'll be hitting you up, I'm sure. They're gonna want that list, they're gonna want that list, they gotta get that money. Uh but this is inspiring, you know. This is inspiring. You got you got two little ones, and I'm always like, uh man, how how did people do this? And I see you know, all the people on on the Instagrams and this and that. I'm like, they all gotta be single with no kids doing all these things, you know. But no, yeah, you're doing it all, and and with little ones, and that's that's so inspiring to me.

SPEAKER_01 53:17

Can't do it until you try it once. I think there's a lot of things that you're like the first time you did it took an hour and a half, and now it takes two minutes. I social media is one of those for me, right? I thought, how in the world? And then you do it a couple of times, you learn a little bit, and you get better at it. I think that's kind of the message of life, right? Just don't beat yourself up along the way.

SPEAKER_05 53:38

That's the hard part. Yeah, I'm I'm bad about beating myself up, but you know, it's you just gotta persevere. That's it. Just like this podcast, we persevered, we just we just kept going with it, and um, and just like you with your company, and you'll be uh national national, national, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 53:55

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 53:56

Well, what do you have any? Yeah, okay. I know you've given us a lot of gyms today, but do you have uh a Lauren hack for for people out there doing short-term rentals? Is there like something unique that you've done that you've discovered? It's it's just something that you know, oh, if I do this, and that's gonna save me so much. This or whatever. Is there a Lauren hack you can share with you with the the fans out there?

Lauren hack - keep batteries in every kitchen drawer for midnight smoke alarm calls

SPEAKER_01 54:15

Oh, that's a great question. Um this is super simple, but we keep batteries in the kitchen drawer of all of the units.

SPEAKER_03 54:25

Oh, that's a huge one. I need to write that one down because I'm running through right now. We have so many remotes that don't have I love that one.

SPEAKER_01 54:34

I go to Costco and I buy a thing of Ziploc and a couple of things of batteries, and we just put a couple of them in there and we throw them in the kitchen cabinet. Cause then when the guests reach out at midnight and says, Smoke alarm's going off, what's going on? And you're like, There's batteries in the kitchen. Do you mind just they're like, heck, I don't mind, it's going off. I can fix that. Let me stand on a chair. So that saved us like so much money in handyman costs and sending people out at midnight.

SPEAKER_05 55:02

I love it. That is a great one. Thank you so much, Lauren, for hopping on. Um, and where can people find you?

SPEAKER_01 55:10

Yeah, so I'm pretty active on Instagram. I repost everything from Instagram on Facebook, but I'm on there every single day. I do a lot of free things.

Where to find Lauren - Instagram at home_havens and the free projection calculator

SPEAKER_01 55:19

So I'll I had just finished deal week where I posted 14 deals that are active available in Utah that made 10% or better. And so I really big into the investment scene as far as my Instagram goes. I share the list, I'll share like me reaching out to lenders with past deals that I've done, examples. That's a really great resource. Other than that, you can visit us on our website, which is home-havens.com. Our Instagram handle is home underscore havens. We also have a really cool projection calculator just for free on our website. Um, so you can see it's like air DNA plus a couple of other things that I've like added in. Um, kind of our secret sauce on projections that will show you nationwide projections that's just up there for free. If you're trying to figure out what an area would pull, then that's a great place to check too.

SPEAKER_03 56:07

That's awesome. Okay, I'm definitely gonna be putting that in the show note your projections calculator. Cool, cool.

SPEAKER_05 56:12

Well, thank you so much for hopping on. Uh, we're excited about your journey. And hopefully, yeah, we get to hop on again in the future and and keep us updated.

SPEAKER_01 56:20

Awesome. Thanks for sharing the time with us, guys. This was really fun.

SPEAKER_03 56:23

Yeah, it was. Thank you for coming on.

SPEAKER_01 56:25

You vet.

SPEAKER_03 56:26

Bye. Another great episode in the bag. That was a lot of good stuff, man. I got notes for days on that.

SPEAKER_05 56:33

Yeah, I was gonna say, I got a lot of notes too.

SPEAKER_03 56:36

Yeah, I'm just like overtaking notes, like, man, they scaled quick, man. Anything is possible, right? They scaled quick to 28 units. That is dope. I love that.

SPEAKER_05 56:46

There's no excuses, Micah. I mean, two little ones, two little ones at the house, and she's still doing all that.

SPEAKER_03 56:51

Of course, man, there is no excuses.

SPEAKER_05 56:54

It's just about doing it, it's just about doing it, man, and not be and facing your fears and making those phone calls and sending 1200 emails out to find the right bank to find the right money. Most people stop at at one or two or three, you know.

SPEAKER_03 57:10

I'm definitely gonna, I'm definitely gonna be sending out some more emails and definitely using my network, man. For sure.

SPEAKER_05 57:15

Man, that's that's amazing. And systems, everything you you heard along the way is it's systems this, systems that you know. She she put the even taking pictures is there's the system how to do it. Anybody can do it. My cleaner can go grab a camera and start taking pictures. I'm like, because it's the systems, the systems runs the company, the systems are what makes the company, right?

SPEAKER_03 57:33

Yes, sir. Without systems, there's no company straight up, gotta have systems, man. So ps.

SPEAKER_05 57:39

SOPs. Oh man, another great episode 207 in the books, and that was Lauren Havens. Hit her up and get that list, get that money.

SPEAKER_03 57:48

Yep, episode 207, Lauren Haven's how to manage and operate 160 plus Airbnbs. Let's go.

SPEAKER_05 57:58

All right, Michael Man. Where can folks find us?

SPEAKER_03 58:00

You can find us on IG at Live Let Thrive. You can find us on join the Facebook group. You got to get in the Facebook group, the Live Let Thrive Facebook group, not the fan page, the group, the group with the people in it. You can get in, provide value. Um, we're always asking questions in there. Um, join the Facebook group. Remember to subscribe on YouTube and leave us a follow on IG, follow our personal pages and our live let thrive page. And thank y'all for continuing to listen to the Live Let Thrive podcast. We are out. Peace later.

SPEAKER_00 58:32

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.