SPEAKER_02 0:00

Some of my tenants were getting upset that I was doing Airbnb, so I was like, okay, you know, you could get out of your lease if you want, you know, there's no problem at all. So so I could uh you know put it right back on the Airbnb and that's what some of them did. And um I s it just the same success I had for the basement as I had started having for nicer units, you know. They they would be renting for, you know, 1400, 1500, 1600 uh from a long-term tenant perspective, and I started doing two, three times rent. And I was like, whoa, this is really, really huge.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

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_03 0:42

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

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Your favorite Airbnb um chair economy uh VR or VR VRBO, whatever. Podcast in the world back at you.

SPEAKER_03 1:01

Yeah, we are back. Uh not only are we back, we're back to episode 67. 67, and we got a special guest coming at you all the way from Chicago, Sayed Latif. Give a big round of applause for him.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Hey guys, how are you guys doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Good, all the way from the ORD, huh?

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Yeah, we are from the ORD.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Uh two things real quick. Sorry about your cubbies, and congratulations on your bear on your bears doing really good.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Yeah, they are doing real good. Um defense is stepping up right now, so that's good.

SPEAKER_03 1:39

Definitely shout out to John Gruden for that.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Ha ha yeah, you paid enough for him.

SPEAKER_03 1:44

So, man, let's hop right to it, man. So uh me and Sayed actually he actually I actually met him at an Airbnb meetup here in Arlington. He actually came to one.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Oh, all the way from Chicago.

SPEAKER_03 1:56

Yeah, yeah, all the way from Chicago.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

He was actually in town, I think, looking were you looking to get units in Dallas or Yeah, you know, potentially I wanted to see what other opportunities there were outside of Chicago. You know, um I am growing in Chicago but looking to grow in other cities as well. So um my wife was on a business trip for for work, she works at like a Fortune 500 company, and I was like, hey, I'll tag along and see what Airbnb opportunities there are over there, like understand the neighborhoods. So um yeah, it was it was a it was a cool experience. I got to see some some neighborhoods meet with like some good people, you know. Yeah, got to meet with you, so so it was good.

SPEAKER_03 2:32

Definitely. So how many how many units do you have in Chicago?

SPEAKER_02 2:36

So right now I have 49 units and growing.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

Man, are you now are you managing, arbitraging, renting, owning? What are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 2:47

So I do all of the above. Um my primary business is lease arbitrage. Okay. Um I started the bus I started the business doing property management, uh-huh, but um I transitioned into lease arbitrage because I like that business model significantly better.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

Wow, man. And you up to 49. How long have you been doing it?

SPEAKER_02 3:09

So I started Airbnb in February of 2017 and it was in one of the buildings that I owned. It was one of like the basement units. I um, you know, it had low ceiling heights. It's not not like a legal conforming unit, so I was like, hey, you know, let's see what it would be on Airbnb. Um I listened to like a podcast on um bigger pockets, and um some one guy was killing it on Airbnb, so I was like, hey, you know, let me let me try it out, see how it goes. You know, I'd probably make like maybe eight hundred dollars per per month rent on this like basement unit. Uh and I put it on Airbnb in February, and which was like the slow season, and you know, I I barely made my monthly rent. I'm like I'm like, okay, you know, not not bad, you know. It is a slow, slow month, let's see how it picks up. Then the next month in March, it doubled from what I would make from rent. And then April, May, June, it started tripling from what I would make from long-term rent, and I was like, whoa, you know, there's great opportunity here.

SPEAKER_03 4:13

Wow, man. That is crazy. I started in February twenty seventeen too, man. Tw 49 units, that's crazy. So how so like you jumped to 49 units. So from that February of 2017, and you're all the way what, a year and what, six, seven months out, how f how did you get those 49 units so quickly?

SPEAKER_02 4:34

Yeah, so so after after I saw the value in Airbnb, I was still working corporate and um I had a building that's you know five units, so I was like, hey, I should make all my units Airbnb if I'm getting such large premium on it. And so I started adding units on within like a few months of having Airbnb. Some of my tenants were getting upset that I was doing Airbnb, so I was like, okay, you know, you could get out of your lease if you want, you know, there's no problem at all. So I could uh you know put it right back on Airbnb, and that's what some of them did. And um I s it just the same success I had for the basement as I had started having for nicer units, you know. They they would be renting for you know 1400, 1500, 1600 um from a long-term tenant perspective, and I started doing two, three times rent. And I was like, whoa, this is really, really huge. And then my sister who owned the building at the same time in maybe a nicer neighborhood. I was like, you have to get on this as well. And she started um making her units into Airbnb. And then from there, I was like, you know, there's a great opportunity. I have the systems in place, like I have cleaning ladies, I have um the I know how to like check people in, check people out, and handyman, things like that. Maybe I should start up my own little business. And at that time, there was like only one like player in the market that was doing Airbnb property management in Chicago, so I was like, you know, I I want to eat into some of his market share. So that's when I started my company in September of like 2017, and I started um onboarding new clients, um, which was great because um I somehow, somehow got to number one on Google through my SEO. So I started getting a lot of leads. And and because of that I started onboarding a lot of clients and I quickly grew um in like three, four months, maybe uh ten, fifteen units. And um it sounded good at that time, but I partnered up with the wrong people and and there were some, you know, needy clients or very difficult to work with clients that um I didn't want to continue business doing business with them. So I took a huge spike to grow my units, then I took a s like quick a quick dip as well to um get rid of units. And I started realizing slowly I you know, uh the property management model is not something that I like as much because at the same time I was doing the lease arbitrage model where I, you know, just rent a unit and I have no boss or anybody that I report to about it. Nobody telling me how to do things, when to do it, and nobody down my back about, you know, why did the picture frame get moved from one place to another, you know. Um so so basically what what I what I'm saying is the in the lease lease model is how I grew so fast. You know, I started off with this one investor in Chicago, he has maybe like fifteen hundred units in in pretty nice neighborhoods in Chicago, you know, it's it's like B minus neighborhoods in Chicago. And um he's a big time investor, so he has a lot of volume of empty places. So I came to him and I said, Hey, you know, allow me to rent two units and I will pay the rent, allow me to run my business. He he was already doing Airbnb for himself, so he's like, Okay, you know, go ahead. So um in and towards the end of the year of twenty seventeen is I added two units, and then two months later I was hitting the rent, so I was like, hey, let's grow some more. Went up to him again and he's like, Well, you know, um I don't want to grow so many units and have so many leases connected with you. I said, Well, uh how can we come up with a way to make it work? I said, Maybe we could do a share sharing model, you know, fifty percent of revenues, and he said, Alright, fine, let's do that. So that's when I went from, you know, two units with him to six units with him. And then a couple months later I was like, Hey, you know, let's do some more. And I just kept on working with the same guy. Um eventually now um I said, Hey, let's do ten more. Hey, let's do twelve more, you know, and eventually getting to thirty-five units with him. And I'm looking to grow more and more with with him too as well.

SPEAKER_03 8:58

Wow, man. Just one connection got you all the way that high. That is that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Yeah, so so yeah, so basically maybe like eighty percent of my units is with one investor, you know. And um I star yeah, I s I'm started looking to to similar type people as him. You know, I started reaching out to other big time investors who know him, who could call him and speak to him to show how I am doing my business and how I'm hitting my rents. You know, I I'm committed to my current investor, half a million dollars a year in rents. So I s I reach started reaching out to others, letting them know, hey, you know, I'm looking to take on five to ten units, you know, what can you do for me?

SPEAKER_03 9:38

Yeah. Wow, man. So with you managing 49 units, because you know, we in the Airbnb professional host group, a lot of people think it's impossible. What what systems are you using to uh manage those?

SPEAKER_02 9:53

So I use a lot of software that helps me with my Airbnbs. Um I use a property management software called VREasy. It helps me sync all the calendars from all the different platforms I'm on. Um I'm on Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking.com. I'm looking to uh make my own website to avoid like city taxes from Chicago and you know Airbnb fees. They're around like you know, city taxes in Chicago are like 24%.

SPEAKER_04 10:21

Good.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

Yeah, so I'm looking to, you know, get around that kind of. So VREasy has been a good way for me to um, you know, get that going. Also, uh an important thing that I have is a pricing software. Uh I use price labs and it syncs with VR Easy and it has it has um great like uh dual sets that you could include. It has great data and algorithms to know like what's going on in the market at the time. It knows when there is you know events going on in the neighborhood, when weekends are prime weekends, or if there's low demand during the week, it you know increases or decreases the price. It also has last-minute discounts as you get closer to the date. It has orphan days discount, and one thing I really like is uh above and beyond 20 days, I have a rule set that I only want minimum four-day bookings. So if that allows my calendar to get booked up with big chunks versus a random, you know, one or two day booking out in the future, like two months from now, um, is something that you know all Airbnb hosts don't do not want.

SPEAKER_03 11:34

Wait, hold on, that that that sounds like a really good strategy. You said so if it's more than twenty days out, you have a minimum of four nights.

SPEAKER_02 11:42

Yes, correct. So uh um yeah, it's just exactly what how you said it. That's it it's very helpful for my calendar to get like these big chunks um booked up versus like small little bookings because yeah, you don't want that out in the future.

SPEAKER_03 11:56

That is smart, man. I'm definitely going home to my beyond pricing for pricing tools and setting that up. That's pure genius.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Now we're we're we're diving deep into the PhD of the Airbnb world on in this episode. So everybody pay attention and you might want to listen to this one a few times. Yeah. Real real quick, um, go ahead. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 12:18

Go ahead. Um, and just the last software I use is Smart BNB. Um VREasy has automated messages for booking.com and VRBO, but they are through like email and text. I wanted something through the actual eight like Airbnb app. And so Smart BNB, you know, sends those messages before checkout, before check-in, after checkout, you know, uh it checks on on them during the stay and it automatically reviews people, and you know, this allows people to, you know, have the same consistent type communication. So that's like my software stack, you know, that's what I um use day in and day out. Those are the things that help me grow my business.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Man. Oh, sorry. How much does that software, what kind of percentage does that software stack take away from your business?

SPEAKER_02 13:11

Um, so it doesn't do it by a percentage basis. It does it all I all the softwares that I have is per listing. I would never do anything that's a percentage of my revenue because in the Chicago market, I would say your revenues are pretty high, and the amount of money they would take if it's even one percent or half a percent is significantly more than what I pay for these softwares. So at a high level, like I don't know exact cost, but it's about you know ten dollars per listing per month for each and one of these softwares that I'm using.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Oh, it's not that's cheap.

SPEAKER_02 13:44

Yeah, it's not bad at all, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Yeah. Um also uh going back real quick to the um twenty-four percent city tax at Chicago. Um Right. Now now I automatically because I was gonna ask you before this, you know, are you afraid of Chicago um gonna eventually ban Airbnb like a lot of the big cities? But then I thought, damn, they're getting twenty-four percent of every single Airbnb, so that might be a uh that might um prevent them from actually wanting to ban Airbnb.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Right. That's probably what is allowing people to do Airbnb because the city does take that type of tax from the hotels, so to make it a fair playing field and to make some money, the city is also gonna be taxing Airbnbs. But that doesn't mean the city of Chicago doesn't regulate Airbnbs, which is which is fine for me. Um so like a high level the rule is for every two to four unit building, you could have one Airbnb in it. Um so basically it's 25% of your building can be Airbnb. And if you have a building that's like a hundred units, um you could cap it at like six units max. So it they do allow you to do Airbnb, but they do regulate it the amount of Airbnbs you could have.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Now how how do they enforce enforce that?

SPEAKER_02 15:00

They enforce it by every time you create a listing on Airbnb, you have to register with the city of Chicago, and they look they look up like your address, see if like your zone you're you're zoned in the right area and how many other Airbnbs there are, and then they provide a registration, and that registration comes on your s on your Airbnb site. If they deny it, then they'll give you seven days to appeal it, and if you don't appeal it, they will remove your listing off Airbnb.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Damn, they got some power.

SPEAKER_03 15:31

Yeah, New Orleans. That's what New Orleans does. Whatever you have a strong, I've been noticing with cities with strong hotel presence. Yeah, they can easily enforce the Airbnb rules and regulations.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

And you're saying that like smaller cities or smaller cities like Arlington, for example, would have a hard time enforcing it?

SPEAKER_03 15:47

I I I could see them having a hard time enforcing it. Um I just don't think Arlington's gonna put the money behind it to enforce it. A city like Chicago, man, they're their hotels stacked up down there. So yeah, man, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

All right. Yeah, well, I I've heard I've heard two sides of it too, where um there's not enough people that the city like there's not enough resources that the city budgeted for to be able to manage all like 7,000 Airbnbs in Chicago. So from my understanding, like it takes maybe some people like six months to get the registration from like the city of Chicago, and you're allowed to Airbnb throughout that time. And then like the whole appeal process takes weeks and months, so you know the city is pretty backed up.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

Wow. Yeah, I mean they gotta solve all those murders, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:44

I would say that's fake news.

SPEAKER_03 16:46

You know what? Fake news. You know what though? Because I was actually I called him when I went to Chicago.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:52

And uh the first thing I asked him, hey, what can I stay in one of the units? I think he was fully booked, but that was one of the things I kept talking to the locals about all the crime, and they're like, Yeah, man, that's just on the news, man. I was like, really? Most people said that too. They're like, it's not that bad up here.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

No, definitely not. You're yeah, you're in you're in high-end areas in a lot of areas in sh in the north side of Chicago, you know. You're talking about there's five million dollar homes, ten million dollar homes, so you can imagine that there are good neighborhoods in Chicago.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. So you're not in you're not in the hood or nothing.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

Yeah. No, I'm not.

SPEAKER_03 17:28

I was out in the uh yeah, because I was out like a navy pier downtown and all that, yeah. And it was it was pretty cool. I I liked Chicago. It was really cool. I went on one of the little boat tours, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

Yeah, definitely. It was a good time.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Yeah, I um I still I mean, I've flown through Chicago before and the middle it was kind of it was well, it's winter most of the year there, right? Not most let's say 70% of the year is winter. Or it's cold. It was cold when I went. And um, so I didn't I didn't really get to I mean I I I flew through, I had a layover, I stayed at a friend's, you know, just for a few hours and went back and hopped on the plane back. But uh I've been wanting to visit. I've been um I r I really wanna I really want to put the bed to bed the debate, you know, who has the better pizza, New York or Chicago, because I've had New York pizza that's pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

I don't know about that. I think Chicago pizza is much better.

SPEAKER_03 18:19

Yeah, Giodornos, man. You can't beat that. You can't beat Giodoros.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Or is that the tourist trap? Is that the real deal or is it the tourist trap?

SPEAKER_03 18:27

It was the real deal.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

It was the real deal.

SPEAKER_03 18:29

Yeah, my wife, she had a thick pizza, man. Yeah, it was a real deal. So you ate like one slice and it was like a little round thing, and then we ate that. I was like, dang, they got some good pizza. I haven't had New York pizza though, so I can't.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Oh, it's the bomb.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

So um what was I gonna ask? Um so uh well to me, you know, it's and I was gonna tell Michael this before I talked to you, because you said you deal with booking.com. And I've had I've I guess it's it's uh it's a to me, it's it's not as a friendly uh platform as Airbnb or even VRBO. And so and and the way and I think it's getting a little bit better, especially with the payments. They're pretty much uh you you're on your own with that, collect your own payment, you know, at first. And now um and I and I figured that would be like uh for for what how many you're doing, that would be like a huge headache trying to go after people trying to get the good get your money, you know. But but now they're they're doing it kind of like Airbnb, right? You can charge your guests, you know, a few days before and get paid, right?

SPEAKER_03 19:28

I it's a good question to ask.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

Yeah, so I I do agree that booking.com and home away is not as good as Airbnb. But I have a property management software that the mothership of what I go to is a property management software. I have never logged into booking.com since the first time I created an account or home away, you know. I respond to all guest communication from my property management software. It automatically, you know, charges their credit card through Stripe and it and accepts like their credit card payments, so I'm not ever putting in some type of like you know, credit card number and charging somebody. Um but I I've had the downfalls of it is I've had people that have done fraudulent credit cards and you know, a month later I have had chargebacks where I lost all the money in it. You know, I don't even f waste my time fighting it because um it's just a learning, learning mistake that I I had to do, you know. And then now going forward is I I don't accept like locals like around the area that do one day bookings nearby from booking.com, you know, or even Airbnb or anybody, you know, because y they're just gonna come to, you know, not do the good things in your unit. And and that has allowed me to, you know, have better guests and allow me to accept booking.com and be happy with it. But even with that I do charge a premium on booking.com just to deal with the extra headache that I have. And the property management software allows me to, you know, in Airbnb if I it's charging hundred dollars per night, in booking.com it'll charge uh 125 per night, you know, 25% premium or any percentage that I want to put on it to deal with the headaches and issues. And sometimes I get some crazy bookings for you know a week long that is significantly more than I would ever get in Airbnb. And it's worth it, you know, for having you know booking.com as part of your business as well.

SPEAKER_03 21:37

No, you said you use software that you've never logged into booking.com or VRBO. Now that's one thing I'm looking to get into. Is that the VR Easy that allows you to do that?

SPEAKER_02 21:48

Yes, correct. So my goal is eventually get on every single website ever, you know, just market it everywhere, you know. As long as the only place I log into is VREasy.com, I don't care what website I'm on.

SPEAKER_03 22:02

Okay. So now with VR Easy and it's pretty much putting all these is the integration process long with Homo and VRBO or is it pretty quick?

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Um I would say it is long. It was I didn't believe in the product for until like, you know, two, three months in. Um I had a lot of issues um during the onboarding process. But I'm glad I stuck to it because now it's like the best thing ever, you know. Um maybe maybe they were much younger when I started you know with with them. Well I didn't start with them too long ago but maybe they've gotten better since then. I did I did have a couple of my people on my team help me with the process so I wasn't totally involved with it um on a daily basis but it was a long process to get everything up and going but in the end it was all worth it.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Wow. And and you mentioned um um stripe because um booking.com you know like I said before I you know I would take payments whatever and I even j uh uh signed up for Square so I could take people's payments and when I took the first payment with Square I was like damn they take a bite and um so so your um V res it charges it uses Stripe to charge these people it it can't just charge them through the booking.com format so I I don't exactly know what the customer how the customer does it I've never been on the customer side of it.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

Oh okay um at the at the end of the day I just know the money's coming in my account you know and um stripe is charging them and Stripe is like a real like good platform too you know I I'm always looking at Stripe as well and downloading my data to see how much money is coming in and it's nice that it's all inclusive of one it combines like my VRBO and booking.com into one by listing you know so it's not like on a monthly basis I have to keep on logging into these websites and finding out like by listing how much money I'm making and downloading the data and like putting it into tables and stuff. Stripe does it all for me and has like nice exports to be able to analyze see how much money I'm making how much money I have to give to some of my clients things like that.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

That makes a lot of sense because I mean because it I mean if it's working it's kicking butt the money's going in there I mean yeah just keep rolling with it because I was thinking uh right away when when when you said that um I'd be you know I'd be I'm worrying about that stripe hit and I'd like but that's that's like the saying what penny penny um penny smart dollar foolish or something like that. I don't know what that saying is but you know I'm saying where you're worrying about the pennies but but the dollars is what you need to worry about, you know the big the big bucks and so exactly yeah you gotta roll an M and then it would be like such a headache trying to chase down every penny.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

Right definitely yeah and I'm okay with definitely paying for the service of Stripe you know um paying for the credit card transaction fee I don't know what it is like three percent at the end of the day I'm worried about the money that comes in into my account and if it's still much more than I'm getting in other places then it's definitely worth it.

SPEAKER_03 25:02

Cool cool man you you you've made me possibly hop back on the booking.com train. Yeah man so if VR Easy can do all that I may be hopping back on the book train I'm back on it.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

I'm back on the booking.com train. Really because I mean you know I kind of like blocked every single you know I I had a few questionable experiences. I blocked I told him block all the listings blah blah and but I'm gonna I was I told you I was gonna play it out because I still had like three more people coming. And with the changes you know it's been more smooth and you could charge them a few days out and the money goes through if it don't go through I hit them up and they and they go change whatever card they you know they some people might book it like once a go on on a on a different card is like oh okay I'll just update my card boom it goes through it's been smooth and I'm like man I'm getting I'm getting back on this booking.com thing.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

Okay I think I might play with it too you gotta pay your bill first bro yeah yeah yeah they sent me a bill I still ain't paid it no but I've never had someone stay through booking.com that's why I haven't paid it but the um you and VReasy so how do you communicate to these guests in VR Easy through booking to Booking.com as well right yes so there there is a function in VReasy where like basically you click on the calendar and you click on the guest and you know it's from booking.com because it has like a little blue um B logo next to the guest name and straight from like the VR Easy platform is where you communicate with the guests and you can reply to them and their messages come in and they get saved on like the dashboard as well. So um the the good thing about it is it's not that much communication that I'm doing it's basically the same the same exact information like thank you for booking my place I'll keep in touch with you three days before your stay um for the check-in instructions and then it automatically will send that message and it'll send the check-in instructions three days before their stay and then it it'll send them the check-out instructions you know those are like the most important instructions um and messages that I give to the guest and it's all automated so it's not a lot of me um sending a messages and if and s and your issue of payments getting declined or not working it'll send them automated message saying like hey you know your payment has not been accepted you need to re-enter it. So I've never been or I have I once in a while where I have to call the guest and be like hey what's going on are you gonna put in your payments but VR easy does it all for you.

SPEAKER_03 27:33

That's sweet.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

Oh yeah man Guestie might get fired and you you're putting on a duty I'm I'm really against um guestie especially when you have so many units and um the amount that they're charging and you know in my opinion you don't get like the personal touch of like a VA of having him do everything that you want them to do. Um so you know I have hired a handful of VAs to help me with my business and I think I think the cost is similar to what I'm paying as what people are paying for Guestie but I am making him do a lot of other tests that I think that you are not having people on Guestie do.

SPEAKER_03 28:15

Wow well yeah I'm definitely VR Easy's definitely calling my name on the case.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Yeah I've never heard of that one. Where where did you where did you find VR Easy?

SPEAKER_02 28:25

So um again on my on the forums that I'm on on bigger pockets is a lot of people are always talking about what property management software people are using. And I just asked people hey which one are you using? Do you recommend them yes or no? And this is one of the people that um said like hey I'm using VR Easy and he had a handful of units like okay you know I'll give it or I'll give him a demo get get a demo from them. And we had their demo and I started doing demos for all the other property management softwares out there too and getting the prices and stuff and VR EZ was the cheapest. So I was like hey you know let's try it with them and see how it goes and so far so good.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Ten bucks a month per listing right? Yeah correct. That's cheap dude my time is worth more than ten bucks a month. Definitely That is true. That is awesome man.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

Um so you and how old are you first of all you know I I forget how old I am sometimes after you get to a certain age you you you you have to ask your wife like how old you are um I I think I'm 30 years old 31 years old somewhere around there too busy making money to worry about haters my hair is falling falling out so that's something I gotta work on. Oh just shave it it's all good so you've all I mean you're young you're kicking butt at this you've you've always been like entrepreneur you've done other businesses and stuff before this no I was corporate um but like you know my my family my father he he's all into different type of businesses in real estate and um other manufacturing businesses that he did and I guess like a lot has to do within my culture you know in the Indian Pakistani culture a lot of people are you know entrepreneurs so I have like a group of friends that are always talking about doing like investments and things like that and I always had an interest in it. So when I actually started making money I was like whoa this is like significantly better than my corporate job you know I did like my corporate job before but I started losing interest in my corporate job after I started making money for myself and so that you know made me well quit my job.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

You know I was making good money at I was also working at like a Fortune 500 company as a manager in finance so let me ask a a a stereotypical stereotypical question. Did you do a spelling bees when you were young?

SPEAKER_02 30:53

No never I I was bad at reading bad at spelling that's rare that's rare man yeah decent MF.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Um and also and also um the Indian Indian Pakistani background I it just made me think right away uh this this cool app that I'm using now to pass some time which you know I probably should stop using it so much but it's called Robin Hood the the stock app we heard you heard of that? No I haven't oh okay well it's it's like a stock a a stock you know stock trading app where it's it's like no no commissions no fees no nothing it's it's like too good to be true but but these guys it's like young um pack um Indian and from you know their parents are from India they were born here they they just met in college started thinking of these ideas and came up with it and now it's like it's gonna be this they're gonna be billionaires from it it's pretty sweet.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

Oh very cool very cool yeah I'll send you a link so my question yeah because you said your dad was into real estate how is the Chicago real estate market like would you suggest buying uh arbitraging waiting till the market goes down how how how is the Chicago real estate market so the Chicago market um obviously it's a very big market um there is tons of different strategies that everyone does you know there's people that do like the low the low price point strategies where they're buying you know big buildings in like the south side of Chicago that are not um that good of neighborhoods you know and on paper they make like huge returns on your investment I am not into that you know I'm more interested in the north side of Chicago um they are at a higher price point lower lower cap rate but there's even a cap rate that I can't even um get into like there are neighborhoods in Chicago that I can't buy a building because it's too expensive you know um so I I have I have a balance you know I'm in like B minus type neighborhoods and B minus type neighborhoods like to buy a three to four unit building you're talking about you know five fifty six hundred thousand dollars and a cap rate of you know a good cap rate is like six or six and a half percent and then again there's like cap rates at like five percent four percent three percent you know all over good air neighborhoods in Chicago so I do think prices are pretty high right now um so I mean it's up to the person buying if they feel comfortable you know I always buy assuming like long term rents just in case like Airbnb doesn't work out the city comes down on it you know you have something to fall back on.

SPEAKER_04 33:31

Smart.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

Um and you know I like I'm always looking into the market to buy buildings so it's just prices are so high right now nothing makes sense for me. So we'll see how it goes.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

With you on that man now have you um thought about taking on investors to get uh to pick up proper more properties so I I would want that you know definitely at some point soon um I just paid off my like last two loans that I had I I had a small dollar amount that I had to pay out.

SPEAKER_02 34:03

So now I have you know 49 units with no loans and no partners. So you know potentially I'm thinking about you know maybe raising some money to you know grow in maybe another city or or something like that. You know there's big seasonality in Chicago from you know the prime times in March through October. You know, there's a slow time during like November, December, January February and I heard there's markets out there that are you know inverse to that completely opposite. So like the the prime time is from October to you know April and that's something that I'm interested in it you know diversify a little bit in different cities.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Yeah come to Dallas we're waiting for you Yeah 'cause that's our prime time October to like March April yeah right right and um another question just came to my head what about like um kind of like a turnkey you'll set up yeah because it seems like you got it you got your game down but do like a turnkey type business where you set someone up with their own Chicago Airbnb and stuff and and you ever thought of something like that?

SPEAKER_02 35:10

Uh I never thought of that you know I don't know how much I could charge for something like that. It has to be worth my time. Um it's it's difficult even for me to find units to allow me to lease you know it's not as easy as um it happened for me because I just got lucky with one good investor. You know I got one guy to give me those units so I need to find other people just like him and so it's not super easy for me to get get into different leases. Obviously I have a now that I have a track record I am I'm able to say like hey you know I have 49 units you know allow me to rent five and or ten and me not look stupid in a room so so we'll see it's it's challenging so I don't know if I could do that for other people because you know I want to grow myself and um what one one thing that uh has allowed me to grow like pretty fast is when I talked to the um investor that gave me thirty his 35 units is I asked for you know six to eight weeks free of rent. Oh perfect because because my startup costs are you know like seven thousand dollars per unit and within those six to eight weeks I would recoup that startup cost. Um usually like payback period if you have to pay the lease right away and the startup cost is like you know two years but um there's no way I could grow to 35 units without having some type of free rent to allow me to recoup my startup costs to you know continuously do that over and over again. That's what allowed me to not take out too many loans or you know um not wait two years to start making money. I'm making money today.

SPEAKER_01 36:49

Man what gave you that idea that sounds like a brilliant idea asking for six weeks free I I had to work to it.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

You know I've I when I started I didn't get anything free you know I had to pay um you know security deposit and first month's rent and then after you go from two to four you can start discussing like hey um how about you know two weeks free and then when I went from four to fifteen I was like hey I need one month free and then when we're going to the slow season and I'm like hey let me take on like fifteen more or whatever I'm like hey I need two months free for all these and uh he obviously it's a negotiation he says no I say I have to you know we go back and forth but eventually he agrees you know and it works it works out good for him it works out good for me he has so much quantity in the market he he charged premium on his rent and um I'm paying that premium. You know I'd rather pay premium but get two months free than you know pay a little less and have to pay right away. And what um what percentage premium do you pay so he he I I don't know if it's premium or not it's it's what he's he's advertising online to other other people in the market. So there are tenants that are paying it as well so you can consider it market value or a little higher than market value but maybe plus or minus five to ten percent you know oh okay that's not that's not bad at all. Yeah it's not bad. I I don't know exactly what the market rate would be it's just this is what he's advertising this is his target rent that he wants and other people are paying for it. That's why he has people like occupying his place. But if it was up to me finding a place to rent I would not rent rent his places at his price point. So it was for me to live.

SPEAKER_03 38:38

I I I know you were talking about how Chicago has a lot of limits. So when you said you're trying to grow your business have you thought about approaching just apartment you put complexes and just getting a corporate lease and getting like five units from them yeah it's that that's exactly what I'm looking to do.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

Um that's exactly what I did with um this investor you know he has like twenty something buildings all over Chicago so in every building I I try to go get at least six of them. Um because that's what we need to cap out at. So yeah I would love to get building owners who own huge complexes in like good neighborhoods in Chicago to allow me to you know take up you know five units at a time but again getting that you know break in rents for the first month or two to allow me to recoup my startup costs.

SPEAKER_03 39:27

Hmm hey if you want to come down to Dallas and grab a few that I'll tell you where to go so yeah I did I did like neighborhoods in Dallas.

SPEAKER_02 39:36

You know I want to stick to a high end product so I saw a a neighborhood I think it was called uptown it's right next to downtown it was it was an awesome neighborhood you know nice cars nice restaurants um I want to focus on high end Airbnb's and high end neighborhoods.

SPEAKER_03 39:54

Yeah I got a few units in uptown it's a good area oh nice very nice yeah yeah if you get maybe maybe we should talk some more yeah maybe we should talk some more definitely man I got a few places over in uptown deep elum actually I'm about to get one I'm actually consulting a client that's opening one in Deep Elm so yeah it's a few places like Deep Elm Uptown Oakland that's a good one yeah that I wanted to focus on Deep Elm's pretty if you can get a one over in Deep Elm it's pretty good too. So yeah man definitely we'll have to talk man I uh you may have to put me onto some things in the Chi Town market too.

SPEAKER_02 40:31

Yeah definitely we could do that.

SPEAKER_01 40:33

And and now in the in the buildings over in Chicago that you say that you you want um what is it how many how much percentage of the building you can do 25% of the building was it?

SPEAKER_02 40:42

Twenty twenty five percent of the building um capping at six units.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

Okay cool. And so and so they have um long term uh renters there too is there any other is there ever any issues with the long termers and the Airbnbers you know any conflicts?

SPEAKER_02 40:59

Yeah definitely there's always issues um even in my own building there was issues in in uh my in the buildings that I'm in that I'm leasing and um like the lease arbitrage I have problems with the long term tenants saying like hey you know who are these people um I didn't rent this place to be in a hotel. So so that's something that the the owner of all the buildings have come to me and asked me how do I approach them about this. And you know I put together a handful of things saying that um you know he he did hire a corporate housing company they are insured and they have a lot of experience. They have a lot of units all over Chicago. They do background checks on all the guests you know sex offenders list like terrorist terrorist lists. They screen all guests to ask them why they're coming um who's coming and they only allow a certain minimum amount of days stays. They have they price it at a high point so you don't get bad people. So all these different things you tell the like the the tenant and see if they're okay with it. A lot of times they just gotta live with it, you know if they want if they're not happy they can move and once yeah right um buy a home if you're not happy basically you can't control what the investor does. It's real tough um yeah but in in time I think it'll be the norm in all buildings and any building you go to will have Airbnb in it.

SPEAKER_03 42:35

Yeah I think so too. Because you know I was actually at one of my units downtown the other day and um this guy had lost his key and I had I had I didn't have mine in my pocket at the time then I found it and my wal mo Mahogany's like go go go talk to him and let him in and see if he's here with as an Airbnb guest right I'm like that's a good idea because I was just kind of wanting to figure out how many people are just doing Airbnb. And there was a group of them and I was like hey I found my key and I opened the door I was like hey man are you in an Airbnb too he's like oh yeah man I'm an Airbnb I'm like wow man this whole apartment complex is Airbnb so yeah I mean it's it's really growing a lot of people are you know hopping on that Airbnb train and man taking over.

SPEAKER_01 43:17

And real quick um the like okay the the 25% of the building kept down to six units now now is there I don't know if this is a a good question or not but is there like a certain like pla places in the building you put the Airbnbs or you try to put them like try to get them up top a nice balcony I don't know is there like is there strategies?

SPEAKER_02 43:40

Yeah you know I brought that up to the owner the investor that I'm working with like hey give me a floor and I will just put Airbnbs on that floor so I'm not bugging other other tenants and he he he didn't yeah he didn't give me a response to that at all. Oh but yeah that that makes that makes sense to me like have it in a certain area where they're not interfering with other people Um yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:03

Yeah, that's a good idea. If you can get a floor, oh man, you could kill it.

SPEAKER_04 44:08

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 44:10

And okay. So let's say you did you you look in other cities. Now you've got your you you you're confident you have your like business model so tight that you can manage anywhere from afar, anywhere in the country or perhaps anywhere in the world.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

Yeah, I think so. You know, you have to have boots on the ground, obviously. We could we could give um the example of my units over here. After I s initially set them up, um I don't step back into the units too often. Obviously there's there's rare occasions where I have to. Um, but there are units that I've had for more than a year that I have never stepped into after making it initially. Because I have, you know, good good cleaning staff. Um I have you know people that have boots on the ground. I'm trying to set up a system in place to have a supervisor um and cleaning lady, you know, to like review like the cleaning ladies' work, to drop off like missing items and stuff. So I think I can do it, definitely. There's no there's no I have I have these 49 units and I'm not stepping into any of these units right now.

SPEAKER_03 45:19

Wow. So yeah, that's what I I was trying to get at to a point where you're not stepping in them, because I'm finally to that point. And a lot of that actually came from the advice you gave me at that meetup when I asked how to exchange keys if I can't change the lock, and you should told me about Key Cafe. Man, that was a lifesaver because I pretty much own almost all the boxes at the Key Cafe here. So like I didn't know anything about it, man, until you told me, and like, yeah, no one uses it here. So I like own b I own a few of the boxes up there, so very nice.

SPEAKER_02 45:51

Um for me, for me, the keys, keys are a death of me. You know, a lot of people lose keys, like hotels, like you would imagine, like a lot of people lose like the card. So keys are the worst thing ever. Um I have backups to backups to backups, and even that gets like lost and just keeping track of all the keys, and especially with like getting into like these other owner buildings, it's I have to deal with their key process. In my own buildings that me and my partner have my sister, we have key pads where we have never issues of somebody losing a key because they don't have a key. They just you put in the key code and they come into the unit. So I wish I could have that for all my units, but um for the time's sake, like uh for the time being right now, we have to use lockboxes, uh key cafes, things like that. So I'm glad I gave some good advice to you. Definitely, man.

SPEAKER_03 46:45

I uh I actually I put a little fine, well not in fine print, big bold letters, capital letters, if you lose the key, it's a hundred dollar fine. So I haven't I haven't had too many people lose keys. I've had people take 'em. I've had people take them and have to bring them back, and that's it so far. Oh gosh. Yeah. But man, anything else, Steve?

SPEAKER_01 47:06

Yeah, we got you got maybe. I hear you make a lot of money. Is it can you talk about how much money you make or give us a ballpark? 'Cause I mean I want to I want the listeners to be like, wow, is this even possible?

SPEAKER_02 47:21

Well, um I don't make that much money because all the money I make goes back into the business.

SPEAKER_01 47:28

Smart man, right. You hear that IRS? You hear that?

SPEAKER_02 47:31

There's no there's no there's no way for me to have grown so fast so quickly if I took that money and, you know, bought nice cars and bought homes. Um my wife does get upset at me when I tell her, like, you know, I have, you know, seventy thousand dollars a month worth of expenses, you know. Um sh she she gets worried because she because it is a lot of expense. And um so I I don't make a lot of money at the moment. In the future I hope I can uh enjoy the fruits of my success.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

Oh, you're setting the foundation right now. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 48:11

Yeah, definitely, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:13

But I mean Dave Ramsey will be mad at you because you know, all the expenses. But screw Dave Ramsey.

SPEAKER_02 48:20

But yeah, but um at a at a high level, um I should net maybe twenty to twenty-five percent premium on on what I would have paid long-term rent, net my expenses. So maybe I make two hundred and fifty dollars per unit per month net, and you could multiply that by you know fifty minutes.

SPEAKER_01 48:46

250 times 50.

SPEAKER_03 48:49

He's doing his math. He didn't even pull out the calculator. He wants to do it on the calculator, Micah. Yeah, I mean that's that's good though.

SPEAKER_02 48:56

Um I personally Yeah, I do I I have my my in my business, it's not just me, you know, so I do have salaries that I pay for. So um it's not uh if somebody it's uh if it's a one-man shop, if somebody's starting off or something, they might be getting premiums of fifty percent more, you know. But I have a handful of VAs, a lot uh a couple assistants in Chicago, I have 12 cleaners, you know. I have I have a pretty um big operations that I have to be paying people for. So uh that's why my premium is not as much as what other people would get.

SPEAKER_03 49:32

See, but still, like this actually brings up a good point. You said you're netting 250 off of 49 units. So that's reason why me and him were actually some guy told some other lady in one of our little forum posts that $500 net wasn't good money. And I was like, that's that's great money. I said, if you can I just said you just need to go get more units, and the guy's like, no, that's not good. I'm like, okay, man, that's good money. So, you know, and he's telling you, hey, I'm making half of that, and I just got forty-nine units, you know, so keep on striving. I tell people if you can make five hundred and up off one arbitrage and go for it.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

Definitely. So has has this allowed you to quit your corporate job?

SPEAKER_02 50:16

Yeah, I've been doing this full time, yeah, this since January 1st. I left the last day of the year. Um, I was working part-time for six months and then finally I took the leap and I've been doing this full time now.

SPEAKER_03 50:29

That's good, man. Sweet.

SPEAKER_01 50:38

That was pretty good. That's genius right there. Yeah, yeah. That's genius.

SPEAKER_02 50:42

Um you you could do it to any um day amount, five days, ten days, twenty days, you know, uh minimum if you want thirty days out thirty days out, you could put a minimum of thirty-day stays. You know.

SPEAKER_03 50:54

And you set this up through pipe price laps?

SPEAKER_02 50:57

Price laps, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:58

Beyond pricing doesn't offer this, they're getting fired tonight.

SPEAKER_02 51:02

Yeah. And beyond pricing takes one percent.

SPEAKER_03 51:05

I know.

SPEAKER_02 51:06

But but from my understanding, Micah, you have a huge volume of Airbnbs, so I don't know if that per listing per month would be good for you. Yeah. Because the amount of Airbnbs you have.

SPEAKER_03 51:19

That that was the thing with uh even ten bucks a month. I was like, oh crap, you know, that that my chunk goes up. So yeah, the percentage thing does work for me at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 51:28

It's perfect for me. It's perfect for that. Not a lot of yeah, not a lot of people are like you though, Micah. You don't they don't have that many, you know.

SPEAKER_01 51:35

So they don't got that swag. Um what um another question I I'm always curious about like entrepreneurs that take the leap out of the corporate world. What do you do about insurance?

SPEAKER_02 51:48

Good question. So, yeah, I find that out that my wife got a job at the same company that I worked at right before um I left. So now she is working and she has an insurance, and I'm under her insurance, and my kids are under her insurance as well.

SPEAKER_01 52:04

So that's perfect, man. Yeah. Doing it like I was doing, man.

SPEAKER_04 52:09

Right.

SPEAKER_02 52:09

Yeah, see, and like ha has your wife ever decided, like, hey, she eventually wants to get out to the corporate world too, or yeah, we talk about it sometimes, like um I tell her that it's good for her, you know, to have like a nice routine every day. Um, you shouldn't think of it like how I thought of it on how to try to get um keep on increasing my my salary every year, try to get promotions, like do that. I said, you know, make it a lifestyle thing where you just you keep your routine, you be happier where you're working, you know, you you work from home whenever you want, you come home sometimes at 3 30 p.m. to take care of the kids, things like that. So um I think I think it's good for her um to continue that corporate job. She likes it, and that's all that matters.

SPEAKER_01 52:55

See, see, Sayez real soft spoken, right? But he's like a master negotiator. He just can he convinced me I wanna I want to work at a corporate job just right now. That sounds great. Do I get lunch breaks too? Those oh cool, lunch breaks.

SPEAKER_02 53:11

Yeah, but being an entrepreneur, you are working from the s the second you open your eyes in the morning, you're you're looking at your phone to a hundred notifications till till um when your family goes to sleep at ten o'clock, eleven o'clock, you're working till like three a.m. So that's something that I didn't expect. At first I I loved I love the freedom, but now it's like um it is draining. But I'm looking at create systems, bring people on board to help me um manage operations of the business to allow me to you know not get burned out.

SPEAKER_03 53:45

Where are you getting your VAs from?

SPEAKER_02 53:48

I use online jobs.ph.

SPEAKER_03 53:50

Yeah, me too. That's the way to go, man.

SPEAKER_02 53:52

Yeah. Yeah. So like this this last time around. Show notes. Um I go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 53:59

Oh, we're gonna put the show notes.

SPEAKER_02 54:01

Okay, nice. Um, so this last time around, um, I'm looking to h bring on five more VAs full time. Um I pay 'em about six dollars an hour, um, which is premium to what other VAs get paid, but I expect higher quality VAs. And I expect them to um be dedicated to me and not do like other work at the same time. Obviously I can't control that, but um, I try to do my best. But I'm looking to onboard five of them so um the process was through going through three hundred applicants, and um, you know, after reading all the applicants, we sent questions to a hundred of them. After sending questions to a hundred of them, we had interviews with thirty of them, and then we told ten of them that we're gonna have one month paid probation period where I'm gonna pay you um, you know, a part-time salary of $100 a month, and you're gonna do part-time work on your own time, and I'll be giving you a handful of projects, and I will be reviewing your results with you. And um, my goal based off this is to minimize a 10 to 5 and cut off the people that you know can't communicate properly, can't can't tell me um their ideas, they don't do the work right, you know. I'm trying to I'm trying to find the best candidates from doing this.

SPEAKER_03 55:19

Yo, train me on your process. I mean your process. That that that process was legit dope CEO level type work right there.

SPEAKER_02 55:31

It it caught it costs it costs money, obviously, because you're paying so many people, but you could start cutting them off um immediately after a week if you're not liking the way that they're doing, you know. A lot of a lot of them were scatter brains where I was uh they I hired them for a finance position and they started talking to me about SEO in the middle of like after a couple days. I'm like, what is this guy talking about? You know, um like cut them off. So but so far out of the ten, three are super duper strong where I'm super excited to bring them on board um to help me with all sorts of things from um the finance aspect of it. Like I I want to know every month exactly how much money I'm making, you know. Um because a lot of things that I'm doing is like uh, you know, I have I just gotta get control of my business. It it grow it grew too fast too soon, where I need somebody dedicated to help me understand the finances. And um with this hire, I am hoping that I'll be able to do that. I've already seen seen some of his work and it's like super promising, so I'm very excited for him.

SPEAKER_03 56:34

Man, like so when you say, because I'm happy you brought up growing too too big too fast, because I kind of ran into that situation. Um, what did you learn from that? Like you grew too big too fast, whether what were the downfalls of that?

SPEAKER_02 56:48

Um definitely quality of the Airbnbs and cleaning has significantly decreased as I've been growing. Um I now need to get a like a supervisor system in place where after the cleaner is complete, I need somebody to just hop in to like give it a thumbs up. And I think I have the volume to be able to do that now. Um so that's in place right now. Um so quality of cleaning is like the biggest one. And um number two is understanding the finances of it. Like um, there's so many bills coming in, and um you have like you know, forty-nine com com ed or sorry, electric bills, and you have forty-nine gas bills, and you have forty-nine internet bills, and you have four like thirty-five rents, and there's so much money coming out, and I have to set it to auto pay. I don't even know how much they're charging. I need to get down to understanding the finances. And the thing is I'm coming from finance, so you know, my wife gets mad at me, he's like, You don't even understand your business and and you have a finance degree, so it's just I don't have time, you know. Um I'm worrying about all this other stuff. And you know, growing to so many units, like the biggest problem that I have is like unhappy guests. They're I've been dealing with um a lot like almost on a daily basis, like somebody's unhappy about something. And I have just realized that's just the nature of human nature. People are some people are always gonna be unhappy. It's nothing you could do. And you know, sometimes I read on like the the Facebook groups on this person gave somebody a four-star and how upset they are. Yeah, man. It's just it's just it's just funny to me.

SPEAKER_03 58:32

Yeah, when you got 49 minutes, man, the four star becomes normal to you. You're like four star moving on.

SPEAKER_01 58:42

It was it was from Grant Cardone. You know Grant Cardone, right?

SPEAKER_02 58:45

Yeah, I do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:46

And and and he and they were talking about I I some came up with like haters and stuff like that. And and then Grant Cardone, he's a he's he's funny. He's funny as hell, he's a genius too. He goes, he goes, Oh, look at this. He goes, look at this. He goes, if I could get half the country to hate me, then I can be president of the United States of America. Some real talk, man. You know, so screw the haters. I mean, it's like a badge of honor if you start getting big enough to where people aren't, you know, people are complaining or this or that or hating on you. I mean, that just means that you're being you're getting more and more successful. And then, like you said, the people on those groups are just oh my god, I got a four-star, and I treated them so well. And like, screw them. Worry about the dollars, not the stars. Hey, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 59:36

I agree 100%.

SPEAKER_01 59:37

Quote that, quote that.

SPEAKER_03 59:38

It's not the dollars, not the stars. There you go. People that go to management or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 59:44

They'll be like, no, it's hospitality.

SPEAKER_03 59:46

Like, all right, oh my god. You said you were having some troubles with the cleaners and people popping in. I have a question. Have you onboarded your cleaners to turnover BNB or hired any from Turnover BNB?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:01

Sorry, repeat the question.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:02

Uh you said you needed you needed someone to pop in after your cleaners. So have you ever looked at turnover BNB?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:12

Um tell me about that.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:14

I feel like I have uh it's pretty much uh it's the Airbnb for cleaners. So let's say uh you hire a cleaner, you can hire a cleaner with five stars, four stars, and then and then they're rated off their cleaning, so then you can just fire them if they have a low rating. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:32

Oh, interesting. No, I haven't um seen that one. And I will look into that definitely. I've seen um the other softwares out there, um, like I heard um, I think it's called Properly. Um where they it has you like take pictures of each and every single thing after they clean it. Um I thought about doing that, but it's just the cost to get that in all my units, it'll it'll be a lot, and then training all the 12 cleaners and some of them don't speak English that well or like have their phone on them, so um I just yeah, so I I ended with deciding not to do that. So I think uh I think a manual effort of somebody going going to check up on them after is good because um I could always have them do extra things that other cleaners don't have time to worry about, like hey it's like um like the the Roku remote doesn't have batteries anymore or the somebody logged off Netflix to log back in or fix the Wi-Fi, you know, a lot of the cleaners they don't have time to sit there trying to figure that out because they want to clean the place and get to the next unit, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:43

Um so let me let me try to tell you what I did. Uh I was kind of having that situation. Um what I did was I got on turnover B and B and I found a five-star cleaner. And what I did was I was like, look, can you commit yourself to me and I'll give you more and more units? And she was like, Okay, cool. So she just committed, and I think you have enough units to do it in one area where you have 49 units. You say, Hey, if you commit yourself to me, you know, start your own cleaning company, whatever you have to do, if you can cater to me, I'll give you more units, and then we can actually take our business outside of turnover B and B, so neither one of us are getting charge of the fees and you just work for me. Right. And then I th I think that'd be a lifesaver for you, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:25

Right. I'm gonna check turnover B and B out. That that sounds awesome to me to be able to see like um have having like cleaners that have some reviews out there, you know. Because I probably can offer the these cleaners much more than anybody else could offer around that area. Exactly. So yeah, that that's a very good idea.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:43

Now now you being from business and finance, uh I'm pretty sure you've heard of the 8020 rule.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:49

Yeah, I always talk about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:52

Okay, and have you explained okay, uh real quick, I I guess an overview would be you know the uh 80-20 rule being like 80% of your units are producing 20% of the income and 20% are producing 80% or vice versa, whatever. So that means that you you know, in every business you got produ you got things that are making you money, things that are taking money, whatever. Have you have you experienced and doing fifty almost fifty units, have you experienced uh something similar to the eighty twenty?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:18

Yeah, I have experienced that significantly when I talked about moving from the property management business to the um lease arbitrage business, where um there was that one client that gave me a handful of units, um, but I was spending eighty percent of my time uh uh dealing with those units and dealing with her. And I realized that I need to fire this client or else I will never be able to grow my business. And I realized, you know, the property management aspect just takes too much time and I could grow much faster and easier doing the lease arbitrage. So I have experienced it in that sense. And I'm sure if I've yeah, that's that's basically what I wanted to say. Wow.

unknown 1:04:04

Wow man.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:05

That that that's that's great. I mean it's um the firing process is just as important as the hiring process, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:12

Yeah, so now b at one point I might might have had ten ten clients and then now I have reduced it down to three only, and these three people are people who are easy to work with and they are making h high revenues on their Airbnbs. So it allows me to, you know, make me interested in making my like, you know, twenty twenty-five percent commission on their place. So there's an example of my one client who has a apartment in downtown Chicago, like in a ten out of ten neighborhood. Um his his rents from a long-term rental perspective would be five thousand dollars per month. Beautiful unit, you know. Um it's called Full instant it's in Fulton Market, um, with all these high-end restaurants on Yelp where it's like you know, four dollar signs. And in the month of June, he made seventeen thousand dollars in one month off his plates. And I was in shock, you know. You know, Airbnbs.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:19

Wow. Wow. Wow. So people are gonna start coming to you now, right? Saying, hey, you're the Airbnb guy, come do my do do my units. You know, are they is that starting to happen?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:31

Yeah, um, I do get that, but I'm very selective on who I want to do it with. Like I said, I don't want to get in with a bad partner because um you you're you're almost partnering up with them and you're gonna be reporting them on a monthly basis. So they have to match your style of how you're gonna manage your business. Some people are not motivated by money, they're motivated by, you know, preserving their property in like the best way possible, you know. And um sometimes that doesn't match with how I want to run business.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

Definitely. Definitely. Yeah, you gotta get good partners. Um so you it's so you you kinda you kinda um scared me a little bit. I'll bring it back to me again. Um well because I have I have friends at work and and so they call me, oh, he's the Airbnb guy, because you know they you know they've heard of of uh you know, because you know, you you you cross Facebook pages with people at work, then you know, word spreads, oh you have a podcast, you do you know Airbnb. They always ask me questions. People are always so interested in it, but always afraid to you know make that leap. You know, a lot of the most most people are 90% of them are afraid to actually do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:33

Right. But um I would say more in 95, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:36

Exactly. And then those that do it only do it for like a few months and say, ah, screw this. And so um, but but like I have a buddy um at work, he's like he's got a spot in Irving, which is right by DFW Airport, and he and he's and he's bought a house and he's like a three bedrooms that he wants to rent out out of the house that he that he ain't using. And he works like he works two jobs, whatever. He he's never hardly there. So he's gonna he's kind of kind of wanting me to help him set it up and and manage it for him. So but I'm kinda scared. Is it worth it? I mean, do you charge the 20% is it worth it for the 20%? I don't know. I mean Micah says yes, of course.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:13

So so if it if it was like his whole his whole house, then I would say it is worth it. But doing like the three room private rooms, I don't think it's worth it. And but and also for me, um the the the friend and business partner relationship, like if you if you're willing to like let that go, then um go ahead and do it. Um I prefer keeping my friends separate because I don't want any issues. I always hear situations where you know friends don't are not friends anymore because of getting into business situations.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:46

Whoa, that that's I'm happy you said that, man. That's a deep one right there. Some big business owners looking at this like, yeah, that that's true. Yeah, you that's true. You have to let that friendship relationship go.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:00

Yeah, I had to fire a cousin for doing some crappy um hardwood floors in my units, man. Screwed me over out of some money.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:08

Yeah, you could definitely help him out and set them up and let them know that like, hey, it's not it's not gonna be that much work if it's just your one place. Um and I could give you some ideas on it, and you know, you you won't make money on it, but you could help them out, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:23

And if you don't want to manage it, I'll do it for you.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:25

I might throw them at you, because it's my buddy Sammy, my African buddy, older guy. The thing is, he asks, he's always asking so many questions, and I think, oh man, he'd wear me out.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:33

Tell him to hit my line. Tell him like Micah, don't play though. You ask too many questions, man. Yeah, don't worry about it. No, for 20%, I'll I'll take uh I'll I'll run him up.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:47

Oh man. Uh what's the name of your business, by the way? It's Hostly. Hostly?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:55

No, H-O-S-T-L-Y Hostly. Uh so my my website is hostlybnb.com.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:03

Hostly BNB.com. We're definitely gonna look it up, man.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:07

Yeah, we'll definitely be sending some people over there to get your services if you're still offering them.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:13

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:15

And we'll be hit we'll be um going to Chicago and trying out that pizza challenge on our you know. We'll we'll hit you up when we go. Well, how about that? Sounds good.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:24

Give me a call when you're done here. That's awesome. That'll be awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:27

And um yeah, man, so where do you want to go with this? What do you what do you want this business to be? How big? I mean, what's what's your goals?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:35

Um, I want it to become as big as possible. You know, I don't I don't have a dollar amount or anything. It's it's almost like I like the game of it. You know, I'm I'm I'm just a player in the game and I want to see how big I could get it. Um there's not like a certain dollar amount that makes me happy, a certain unit amount that makes me happy. Um I see these news articles come out with like these big companies like um Saunder who raise hundreds like maybe I think like the valuation was like in the hundred million dollars for for Sonder. Jeez. Um and I want to do something like that maybe one day, you know, who knows.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:10

And you're you're headed in the right direction, man. Definitely. You're very inspiring. You've inspired me to get off my ass and do more in this Micah always inspires me because he has so many units and he's and he's kicking ass, but man, yeah, this is this is legit. I mean, especially the systems. That's that's to me, I uh that's the hardest. I'm I'm so unorganized. I'm an unorganized dude. And but I just I just man, if I maybe you can write some kind of, you know, uh say like a like a guidebook or something for people how to set up systems. That would that would be helpful. That would be great. Because he definitely helped me with mine. Yeah, he's been oh yeah, Michael's been taking notes feverishly over here. I'm over here doodling, but he's taking notes like crazy. Um so where can people uh reach you, man?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:54

Yeah, you could um you could go to my website. Again, it's www.hostlybnb.com. It's H-O-S-T-L-Y BNB.com. And uh my phone number's on there and my emails on there as well. You could contact me through that.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:12

Awesome, man. Sounds sounds awesome. Hey, uh, any more questions for our amazing guest Sayed?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:20

Anything else, man? You got me with a whole page full of notes, so I'm good, man. I'm not gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:25

I always got homework tonight.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:27

Yeah, there you go. Straight schooling.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:30

Well, thanks so much for hopping on with us, man. And uh, yeah, you've been you've really opened our eyes to a lot of things. We really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:38

Yeah, definitely. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:40

Uh thanks for having me. Well, take take care. All right. Later.

unknown 1:11:45

Bye.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:46

Hey man, that that was a hell of an episode. Dude, dude dropped some gems, man. Um like, but he he he he really knows this stuff. Like, he was the one who when I first started doing my art, when I first left the corporate world, uh, he was actually one of the first people I ran into. And he started talking about uh how to do key exchanges, and once I've he actually helped me automate my Airbnbs in Dallas, so he is the truth. So if you go to Hostly B, check this dude out. He is the truth.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:15

Sayed Latif.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:17

Sayed Latif. Straight out of that shy town.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:21

Shy town. So man, this is this has been a great episode. I I hope you all enjoyed it. And um, it's good. I mean, see, with us, it's good, you know, we do the we we get into the the you know the what are they called? The nuts and the brass or nuts and the bolts. Nuts and the bolts and the the gold and the brass. I don't know, whatever. I just make things up. But um, and then you know, some episodes we really dig deep, other episodes you and I just you know go go through our experiences and and what we're learning and stuff like that. And and we're all over the map. And so and so what I want to bring it up on the next episode for sure, so listen to the next one for sure. And after you listen to this one like five times. Um but but I looked at the I looked at our um at our um uh iTunes, you know, iTunes page, and and you know, you can see you know reviews or whatever. I hadn't looked at it in a few days, but I looked at it the other day and I was like, wow, someone gave us a two-star review. What's up with that? You know, so it because we've got all five-star reviews, and I'm like, a two-star, ooh, you know, I got that little um that little twinge, that little Airbnb twinge, and someone gives you a bad review. And but I was like, well, you know, and like I said, we're out of the all over the map, and some maybe they hopped on an episode and you and I are just cutting up, drinking rum, and talking about, you know, prostitution. And I'm like, I can understand that. Maybe they didn't give us a fair shot, but but like I said, you know, soccer mom driving. Oh my gosh, what is this? This is an Airbnb at all, you know. Not that all soccer moms are innocent. Some of you know they got the tramp stamps going on. I don't know where I'm going with this. It's rum time, and um, thank y'all for listening to this. Y'all know where to find us. LivethefDrive.com. Um, hit us up, call us up, live the thrive at gmod.com. Thanks for being the fans, and thanks for sticking in there. We're gonna pump these shows out more and more.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:10

By the way, we got two heavy hitters coming to the show. Just wait. We got two heavy hitters, two more heavy hitters. Saeed, Saeed was one. We got two more, so definitely tune in. Sweet!

SPEAKER_01 1:14:21

All right, live let thrive out. Peace.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:25

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.