Cashflow Diary | Influenced By Robert Kiyosaki Of Rich Dad About Real Estate Investing, Cash Flow And Passive Income.

When you understand the “why?” behind your business, it can often help you with the “how?” of your business. In this episode of the podcast J reveals the story of how he came to realize that short term rentals are perhaps the greatest opportunity for people getting into real estate investing in a very long time, but also why the window to take advantage of that opportunity is closing a little bit every single day.     The Power of Real Estate    Prior to getting into real estate, J and his wife went through some incredibly difficult times personally. His wife was unable to eat or drink due to a condition she developed while pregnant, and J suffered an injury where he punctured his lung which prevented him from walking and talking at the same time. His back was against the wall with no money and a terrible credit score, and that was when a friend recommended he look into real estate investing. At that point J’s best ideas are what got him into that position, which is something you should consider as well. Wh

We are talking about making short term rentals happen for you, making them easier and faster, bigger, better, and badder. If you feel the need to get started and need that extra push to make things happen, you can go to cashflowdiary.com/roadmap to finally build your business. J reveals the 10 things he wishes he knew before he got started in the short term rental business as well as answers a number of questions from the viewers. How many units does it take to retire?  When you’re in pursuit of an outcome, you may not know what the goal is. When people are getting started in real estate, they often have a dream of retiring but have no idea how many units they need to achieve that goal. If you want to know exactly how many short term rental units you need to retire you can go to cashflowdiary.com/howmanyunits to calculate your magic number. Is it possible to get my first unit in the first month? The most reliable answer is it depends. If you follow the program and do exactly what it says, you shouldn’t ha

J Massey was the featured guest on the Capital Gains Tax Solutions podcast with Brett Swarts recently and they talked about everything from how J got started in real estate investing, to key short term rental strategies, growth mindset, the Cashflow Diary, and more. Questions and Answers What is your background and what’s your current focus?  J started out from a very difficult situation in life. J’s wife has a condition that when she’s pregnant she can’t eat or drink, and at the same time as her pregnancy J had a punctured lung and brutal asthma. The challenge was that neither of them could earn income by going to work so they needed to find a solution. A friend recommended that he look into real estate investing so with literally no money and terrible credit J began wholesaling properties.  After being introduced to taxes, J started keeping the properties and that developed into a portfolio that included single family houses, mortgages, and cell phone towers. Eventually people started asking how he’d been

Thomas W. Jones is the Former Vice Chairman, President & COO at TIAA-CREF, the largest pension system in the country. He was the former Vice Chairman of Travelers, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Freddie Mac, and the Former Chairman & CEO of Smith Barney Asset Management. He was the former CEO of Global Investment Management at Citigroup and Former Treasurer at John Hancock Insurance Company. Thomas W. Jones is currently the Founder and senior partner of venture capital investment firm TWJ Capital and author of the new book From Willard Straight to Wall Street: A Memoir.  Podcast Highlights   Who is Thomas W. Jones?    Thomas W. Jones was on the cover of Newsweek in 1969 as an iconic revolutionary while studying at Cornell. As a student, Thomas felt that America was at a crossroads and that his generation was tasked with the job of raising the price of oppression. Due to his effort and the effort of countless others, America chose to embrace the spirit of the Constitution and the Bill of R

Co-founder of TaxDome - a cloud based practice management solution targeted to small/medium sized firms (1-25), helping entrepreneurs scale quickly & easily. TaxDome is an all-in-one solution for tax and accounting professionals to manage their business.  Podcast Highlights   Who is Ilya Radzinsky?    Looking back Ilya always had an entrepreneurial spirit and when he was younger he wanted to own a restaurant. He managed to get a job as a busboy but found it was much harder than he thought it would be and didn’t last more than a week. He pivoted his focus and got creative with his first business of selling digital items on eBay. With some encouragement from his parents, Ilya followed the footsteps of his brother and went into finance as a banker and financial analyst.  Several years into his career, Ilya’s boss shut down the hedge fund he was working at and took a three month sabbatical. During that time, his brother was getting into product development and found a big opportunity. Ilya decided to team u

J is answering all your questions about business, short term rentals, personal growth, and whatever else it is you’re curious about. We’re also exploring the subjects of insurance and occupancy in particular, how much insurance do you need and what metrics should be looking at to maximize your occupancy. Insurance is one area that you don’t want to cut corners so make sure you understand how to make it work for you. Questions and Answers   How do we handle bad guests?    The first step is to breathe and realize you will survive. Everyone will experience this at some point. The process of removing an unwanted guest that has broken your rules is the same no matter the infraction. One thing to note is if the person is willing to pay the fees for breaking the rules, take the money and move on. If you have to file a resolution with Airbnb you’re going to need to do it immediately. Your window of opportunity is very small to file a claim so don’t wait to do it. If the guest wants to write a bad review, waiting to

One of the most important things to understand about the short term rental business is that it gets easier with the more units you have. If you’re ready to scale up your business and start acquiring new units, you need to take the steps necessary to set yourself up for success.  Questions and Answers   What do we with units that have carpets in them?    Carpets can be challenging because they are gigantic sponges for bacteria. If your unit does have carpets you need to have a process for keeping it clean in place. Establishing a relationship with a carpet vendor that your cleaning crew can contact to get the work done without getting the approval from you will save you a lot of time.   How many customer service managers do you have and how many hours do they work?   J has a pair of customer service managers working for him that cover a total of 16 hours a day. He chose each of them to hire as managers and he trained them directly through a screen sharing app like Zoom or Loom.   I have some people intere

Robert Vocolla guest hosts the Q&A show with J today and they’re talking about some very important short term rental business questions. Find out about security processes, managing VA’s, marketing your business, getting out of problematic leases, and more. Questions and Answers   A question about processes around security technology    Rob uses a simple analog process to make sure his guests don’t run into issues with the security system in his units. He uses sticky labels on each panel that warns the guest not to tamper with it and has a basic template in Smartbnb that gets sent out that lets the guest know how to interact with the security system. This has drastically reduced the number of false alarms.   I’ve got three VA’s covering 18 hours a day, seven days a week and they’re great at following SOPs but not so good at doing customer service work?   Hiring is always a major challenge, if you want to find someone that can handle managerial level tasks it’s going to take a lot of searching. You may

Jonathan Slain is the Founder and CEO of Recession.com, an author, a highly respected keynote speaker, and an expert on recessions & why business owners don’t need to fear them.  Jonathan spent the last Great Recession huddled in the fetal position on the floor of his office. He borrowed $250,000 from his mother-in-law to survive. Jonathan paid his mother-in-law back and is now a highly sought-after consultant (and, yes, he’s still married!).  Jonathan understands not only how to prepare your business for the next major recession but also how to turn it into a profitable opportunity.   Podcast Highlights   Who is Jonathan Slain?    Much of Jonathan’s life has been spent in the metaphorical Batcave, doing the research and preparing for whatever it was that he was working towards. Deep preparation has been the common thread in Jonathan’s life all the way back from high school. Studying people who were successful during major recessions is what drew his attention and his experience during the recent Great

This is a review based business, and that means you will probably get some bad reviews at some point. The question is what do you do about them? More than bad reviews, we’re talking about preparing for the holidays, click bait photos, and more. Questions and Answers   For the inventory checklist, how detailed do you get?    You can be as detailed as counting the silverware, the question is “at what point will you file a claim?” It probably doesn’t make sense due to the manpower and hours it would take to follow up on that. A better way to think about it is “is there enough silverware in the unit?” The benchmark for detail should be somewhere around where you would file a claim for.   Preparing for the upcoming holidays   Now is the time to get ready for the holidays. Change the batteries for any automatic door locks, replace the pilot lights for any gas furnaces, get blankets into the units where the climate gets chilly. Have a chat with your crew now to find out if they are going to be working during the

Jonathan Levi is an experienced entrepreneur, angel investor, and lifehacker from Silicon Valley. Jonathan is known for speed learning his way to all achievements in life: from entrepreneurship to podcasting and even dating. Since 2014, Jonathan has been one of the top-performing instructors on Udemy, with his course Become a SuperLearner® (now retired) earning him over 60,000 students.  He has since snowballed this success into the launch of his own brand and platform, SuperHuman Academy, which produces such products as the award-winning SuperHuman Academy Podcast (3 million+ downloads) and numerous online courses. He is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, preparing to release his 3rd book “The Only Skill That Matters”   Podcast Highlights   Who is Jonathan Levi?    Jonathan grew up in Silicon Valley and was always meant to be an entrepreneur. In many ways he struggled in school because he couldn’t learn the same way that everyone else seemed to do. Deep down, Jonathan is a maker and a creator that is focused on s

Sometimes your technology breaks on you! Even so, we’ve got a number of listener questions tackled today including a couple brutally honest (but helpful) short term rental listing reviews. We always come from a position of honesty in hopes that you will make more money, so we’re not going to tell you comforting lies just to make you feel better. Listen in to learn why the bad photos can sink your listing and what you can do about it. Questions and Answers   A question about a 37 day booking and the importance of reviews    One of the things to know about the short term rental business is that it is definitely a review based business. Experience in this business is generated specifically by scaling up and doing the work more often. For this caller, they shouldn’t pass on the 37 day booking unless it is going to hurt their business long term. A long term booking will always make that unit’s performance suffer when compared to other more short term reservations. But if it allows them to add another unit financ

There is no definitive good deal in the short term rental business. If you want to know if your deal is good or not, you need to know one simple thing first. It’s something that’s going to drive your reviews and the growth of your business, and that’s meeting your customer’s expectations. Figure out who you want to serve first and that will make the answers to your questions much clearer.  Questions and Answers   Are you still hunting for apartment deals?    J still loves apartments, he’s just changed who he puts in them. With apartments, net operating income is the name of the game and most importantly, if you can manage that properly the value goes up as well. J is not getting out of the apartment game anytime in the near future.   Do you think it’s a good idea to incentivize guests to do a load of laundry before they end their stay?   Quality control becomes an issue here. How do you know the laundry was cleaned correctly? There are other ways to lower your cleaning costs if that’s the goal. J tends to

If you’re thinking about starting the “Airbnb process” and aren’t sure if you’ve missed the boat, listen up. Real estate is changing but it’s not too late. Airbnb is just one of many marketplaces that we use. Short term rentals are here to stay and if you want to learn how to build your real estate portfolio, now is a great time to start putting the systems in place. Questions and Answers   I’ve been able to get the landlord to agree to the short term rental business model in general but I’m not sure I can make a profit, what should I do?    Step one always comes down to understanding who it is you want to serve. When you focus on who you want to serve, one of the criteria you’re looking at is their income. That will help you understand what area of town to be in and how much they will pay for certain experiences. All your streams of income will be based on how much income your ideal guest makes.  Once you know all your potential areas of revenue, you will be able to subtract out all those things and comple

Shawn Harper is a former American football offensive tackle in the National Football League. Harper was drafted by the Los Angeles Rams in 1992. He also played for the Houston Oilers, the Indianapolis Colts, and three years in NFL Europe with the Amsterdam Admirals and Frankfurt Galaxy. Shawn Harper appeared on the hit MTV show Made. He has helped transform thousands of corporate environments, built leadership, trained teams and impacted youth development in schools, and churches with high energy keynote speeches that activate winners.  Shawn Harper is the bestselling author of The Winning Edge: 8 Principles That Will Bring Out the Winner in You! and founder/CEO of American Services and Protection, which has provided Ohio small and medium-sized businesses, corporations, municipalities, non profits, government agencies, colleges, and universities and organizations with a wide range of security solutions that focus on providing highly-trained professionals, tailored to the specifics of each job.  Podcast Highli

Get unstuck and get one step closer to making short term rental real estate a real thing for you. Get answers to your questions so that you can keep moving forward towards your financial and business goals.  Questions and Answers   We are entering into the slower winter season, what additional things can we give to our guests so they book with us over others?    The first time experiencing a slow season can be a challenge. The caller has been leveraging his membership with his local BNI group which is a great place to start. Another potential avenue is to connect with the travel agent in the group and ask them about working together. It’s possible to start generating instant book specials that allows you to acquire a guest at your advertised rate while also creating a referral for the travel agent.   How would you pitch to a BNI group?   It takes a while to get any sort of response from a BNI group because their reputations on the line. As you build your relationships in that group you want to focus on cr

Taking the right photos can make or break your short term rental listing. In today’s Q&A episode of the podcast, we do a full review of a caller’s listing photos and everything their designer and photographer did right, and all the things they did wrong. We also cover why it’s so important to have your spouse on board with your business, as well as the pros and cons of bringing cleaners in house. Questions and Answers   What is the best way to see if the HOA is okay to turn my home into a short term rental?    The best way to figure this out is to read their Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions (CC&Rs). They will typically let you know what they like and don’t like, be aware they may not use the words “short term rental” but they will probably mention something along those lines.   A question about setting prices across multiple platforms   The caller currently has Price Labs connected to Lodgify, which is then connected to Booking.com and Airbnb. In order to change their prices between Bookin

Al Williamson is a professional engineer, full-time real estate investor and the author of several real estate books. He began investing in 1996. Al is best known for publicly documenting his quest to create enough secondary income streams to cover the 1st mortgage of his eight-unit apartment building (which he accomplished in September 2015). He is now trying to figure out how to maximize the cash flow of a small portfolio so it can generate enough income to replace a middle-class job. Al is a proud family man who now spends his day managing and expanding his corporate housing business in Sacramento, California.    Podcast Highlights   Who is Al Williamson?    Before everything that people know Al Williamson for today, he was training to become a professional gymnast. That was until he broke his arm on the high bar and realized that he was going down a risky path. He switched course and learned to be an engineer and started creating things. It wasn’t until meeting his wife did he consider getting into real

Dr. Joseph Michelli, Ph.D., C.S.P., is an internationally sought-after speaker, author, and organizational consultant. Dr. Joseph Michelli is the author of numerous national bestsellers, including The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary, The New Gold Standard: 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a   Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, and the New York Times #1 bestseller Prescription for Excellence: Leadership Lessons for Creating a World Class Customer Experience from UCLA Health System.  He was named as one of the Top 10 thought leaders in Customer Service by Global Gurus. His new book is The Airbnb Way: 5 Leadership Lessons for Igniting Growth through Loyalty, Community, and Belonging. Dr. Michelli is an opinion columnist for the CEOWORLD magazine. Podcast Highlights   Who is Joseph Michelli?    Joseph was a kid raised in a small town in Colorado and his parents imparted a key lesson to him when he was young. Namely, the respo

Ryan Vet is an innovative leader, entrepreneur and author. He has presented to audiences around the globe on four different continents on leadership, marketing and reaching your maximum potential.  Ryan’s experiences range from start-ups to well-established multi-national, Fortune 500s. From starting his first business at age 14 to launching and successfully exiting start-ups, Ryan is a serial entrepreneur. Currently, Ryan serves as the CEO of Boon—an on-demand, temporary healthcare staffing platform (imagine Uber meets eHarmony meets healthcare staffing). He has been featured in countless publications for his entrepreneurial endeavors and has been inducted as an official member into the exclusive Forbes Communication Council.  In addition, Ryan hosts The Dental Experience Podcast.  As an experiential marketing and branding consultant Ryan has worked companies from start-ups to iconic household brands. And in his spare time, he co-owns a series of craft beverage lounges called The Oak House. Ryan also sits as