Hey, good evening everyone, and welcome to the Ekabo Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Group. Super excited to be joining you guys on the 1st of March, which officially marks the third month of the quarter, right? The first quarter of 2023. And so if you have goals that you set at the beginning of the year that you're striving toward, you're already two months in or one six of the way there.
And so we highly recommend that you really get on that horse, stay motivated, and keep striving toward those goals. I'm excited to just host an open session today. Cannot wait to see who joins and what conversations happen and kind of where it takes us from there. And this is gonna be an open session tonight, so anybody please feel free to join.
I've got some cool things to talk about, but I really want to hear from the rest of the Financial Freedom Mastermind Group about what you're working on and, and cool things happening in your market. So please feel free to join. There we go. Eric, what is up, man? Hey. Hey. How you doing Eric? Can you hear me? There we go. Hear? Yeah. What's up man? Oh, I'm good. I'm just, Kind of getting the final touches on the, the b set up.
So finally, I, I've been waiting for the text, like, Hey, it's live, you know, I wanna see the link. I, I'm, I'm gonna believe it when I see the link live. Yeah. It should be this weekend or Nice. It's not of this weekend. Wow. That's gonna be cool. Did you, did you end up getting, well, well, have you gotten the photos yet, or not yet? No. No, not yet. Okay. That is fair. That is fair. That's cool, man. On, on that note.
I got some pretty cool like news or software that I'm getting ready to take live for some of our properties. Have you ever heard of something called Auto Host? No, I haven't. Okay. I hadn't either until, you know, recently where I had to, we're getting ready to take on one of the largest properties that we've ever taken on as from a management stand. And this one is gonna be more on the the luxury side, like really high end luxury.
And so we're trying to find a way to verify guests and you know, really take security deposits and figure out a way to like protect the houses. And so we came across this thing called Auto Host and it links into hospitable and long story short, we're going live with it next week. But it allows you to verify guests right through ID checks, and they have to take selfies.
Kind of like you've probably done something where you had to like do a selfie on the phone and take a picture of your ID or something like that remotely. So it does that, but it also allows you to take a security deposit off platform.
So now instead of having to negotiate with Airbnb to say, Hey, this is what the guest did, here goes the evidence, you have a agreement with the guest, you get the security deposit up front like a hotel, and now you can just subtract from it and give the rest back to the guest. The piece with it though is it's only available if you have like 25 or more units that you can give to them at a time, it's it's a game changer.
Like we were, we, me and the team have been sitting through about three or four sessions so far. We got our last one scheduled for Tuesday, which is gonna be the goal live and like testing and all that. So excited to, to take it to the next level here. Hmm. That would be cool. How does that work with I guess, I know Airbnb has a setting where, you know, the, someone requested and immediately goes on, but there's the other one you can like, validate the person.
Do you have to do the, the validation setting if you want to use like that software for it? And you're saying on Airbnb where they say, Hey, request that the guest has an id Like that little, the check mark or, or which part are you talking about? I guess maybe I'm not saying clearly. I think there's like a, like a auto. Make an auto reservation where they just like, you know, they can one click, they, they have your, your party booked up right away.
And there's other thing where they have to put a message, you know, I'm coming in for this reason. And then you get to choose if you want to accept that, guess they're not. Yes. Yeah. And so you're talking about Instant book, which is awesome. So, so with the instant book, what we've done right now, because Instant Book is great, but you know, you can get people that have never been in the platform or people that are 18, 19 trying to come in there and throw a party one night.
Local people booking really quick. Right? And so with the Instant Book, they have certain settings in there. Where you can require that the guests have an ID that's verified by Airbnb and you can also require that they be you know, have good reviews and things of that nature before they can instant book. And that anybody else that doesn't have that will will need to send a message or inquiry in and you would have to accept them first.
And so that's how we've kind of been protected against it right now. That being said, there's still a lot of guests that are newer to the platform on Airbnb, D R B O, et cetera. And so when they send a message to us and they're like, Hey, I want a book, what we've been doing so far is just telling them, Hey guys, we have this little can message where we say, Hey, would you please send us your driver's license? Right. And verify that you've read all the rules.
Mm-hmm. And so what I'm saying with this auto host piece is we're gonna be able to really. Open this thing wide open, right? We've been scared to just put Instant book without the other qualifications, right? Mm-hmm. . But now with this piece, because we're gonna be getting the ID verification because we're gonna be holding a security deposit and security deposit can vary depending on level of risk. Like there's four different stages.
And it judges that based on the person's age based on anything, it can scrape from the internet and based on if their picture matches them we can take any type of security deposit from, you know, as little as a hundred dollars. If somebody's green, they've been verified, they've got great reviews to, you know, upwards of a thousand or so. If we are, we're, we're talking about the luxury properties and things of that nature.
So it's gonna help us to get even more bookings coming in because now we don't gotta worry about that front end piece. We can just get 'em in, get 'em to see the software, and then it'll weed out some of the other people. Okay, so you can use Instant Book, but you have, now you have more protections. Okay. Yes. And now we can take off the protections on Airbnb and more importantly, in Desmond Just Joined, which is perfect timing.
We're getting ready to get live on booking.com with a lot of different properties. And this was a big concern of mine and thank you to Desmond. And this was a big concern of mine was like, Hey, how do we verify the guests? Because that's all instant book. That's literally like a hotel where, I mean, Marriott's not gonna verify you, right? You just, Hey, I'm booking this. And then you come there and you pay the fee and you're good to go.
And so with the booking.com, with the VRBOs of the world, with the Airbnbs, because we're getting this auto host link up and running, now we can really open the floodgates and have a lot more bookings come in and, and kind of go from there. Hmm. That's cool. Desmond, how you doing, man? What's up man? I'm good. How are y'all? Super good. Super good.
We were just talking about the, the whole auto hosting and, and Eric is getting ready to join the ranks of b and b. He's got one going live this weekend. That's awesome. Congrats. Dope. Yeah, man. Yeah, man. Let me see this. And Alpha, if you are on, you're more than welcome to join, man. We just got an open session today.
But when you look at, when you look at just the market in general and kind of the busy season for BMBs, Desmond, I, I, I know you've been filling it, but March through September is the huge season of metro Atlanta. So be ready, start raising your prices. Right. This is a perfect time to start trying out the cleaning prices and things of that nature, because it's gonna get busy very quick. And I've started to see people starting to, to book out kind of that spring and summer. Mm-hmm.
What are you seeing man? Excited to see that. I'm excited to see that. Lemme see. So I've had my first, like, consecutive vacant days today, so yesterday and today one of the apartments is like, been vacant. So I'm wondering like, man, I need a lower the price or something. No. But , it's been, it's been cool. Like, you know, like, yeah, January and February pretty booked up. I'm curious to see how, how it does going into the summer.
But yeah, man, I'm, you know, trying to start thinking about the next property and what I might want that to look like, what I'll, you know, kind of be able to afford where the, where that cash might be coming from. But yeah, otherwise things are good. I'm, I'm curious to know about the auto host piece. If you had looked at other softwares before jumping into that, right? Cause I know that you said that they. Kind of require you to have 25 properties or more.
Right. So I'm wondering, had you kinda do dove into some other ones to kind of compare or, or not really. So the piece with that one is I was looking for something that could integrate with hospitable, right? Mm-hmm. And so I went straight to their app section, was like, Hey, help me , I'll verify guests and have it all sync through this cuz I don't want to have another system.
And so, no, that was like the first one that I saw and started doing research on and saw like, okay, this is a pretty reputable company. But as an offs spin of that, when I started kind of looking into other softwares to compare the pricing, I realized that a lot of them kind of connect up to it. So, long story short Auto Host is the one that requires you to have at least 25 or more units. But there's other systems, and I'm blanking on the names right now.
And I can, I can look it up, but there's other systems that can do a little bit less, but they kind of link into it as like a backend app, if that makes any sense. Okay. But yeah, there should be other systems that can handle that piece. But I can tell you what we were doing beforehand is just taking IDs via email and making sure that, you know, it matched up and that the people were of age to book the place.
And so with that said, right, like you, it's not just you helping out with the management, right. Like I saw on some of your Airbnb listings, it's like Dominic and you have some other like folks I guess like the owner as well. So are there, do you have one person kind of being the point person for like making sure, like the guest is being verified and whatnot?
Cause it almost sounds like at times you'd be like chasing the guests around saying, Hey, like can you send your, can you send your ID or what not. You are a hundred percent correct. And at times it is like that. Like we're like, Hey man, and, and you know, we got that 24 hour thing where if somebody's pending, you've gotta cancel 'em within that time, right? And so we'll give 'em a couple shots.
But to answer your question, it started out with just me and I realized very quickly after we got to like five, you know, four being mine, another one under management. I was like, Hey man, I'm not gonna be able to help any clients from a realtor perspective, but keep going like this. And so from there went to being able to have one person, which is Don that you mentioned. Mm-hmm. And he's the guest experience manager. So now he's the point person for all of this. I meet with him once a week.
I kind of jump in through something like, you know, huge. Like, Hey, this person requested the book for six months. I was actually talking to somebody earlier who's at one of our places and they're like, Hey, can we extend for another six months? And they got great reviews. I'm like, wow. Heck yeah. But this place is booked, right? It's booked like right after. Wow. So, So I'm trying to work them into another one of our properties. I was gonna say, look at it right now.
Do you go cancel that next guest, right, for that six month? But then your super hub status. That cancellation man, because it's not just one, it's like over that period, there's a V R B O, there's like three Airbnb bookings and I'm like, Hey man, we, we can't do that. But there's other homes that we just listed that are close, you know, maybe 10 minutes away, a little bit further out. But I'm like, Hey, if you want a book here for say two months, then we can get you back over here.
So I'm trying to, trying to work that piece, but long story short, that's where I'll step in. But now underneath him, because we've grown so quickly, I've got two VAs, one that's based in Pakistan that works from 4:00 AM our time until 4:00 PM and then he kind of handles the four to eight. We need to get another VA at some point to handle that little timeframe. And then we have another VA that's based out of Philippines, right? Who's awesome. Oh, okay.
She just came on board like last month and they're the opposite schedule of us.
00 AM and the other person takes over and then Dom kind of works that four to 8:00 PM where everybody's checking in. But we're gonna get another VA and have around the clock coverage eventually. But the whole team's incentivized by kind of guest reviews and things of that nature. And it's not a job that requires you to be active all the time. It's really, you just gotta be able to answer like a text message, right? And so these VAs actually enjoy it once you teach them the processes.
And now Dom's the one teaching them cuz I talked about 'em. So, and, and so you're incentivized them and guessing by like bonuses or. Monetarily Exactly. It sounds like, right? Yeah. So that's very cool with the, with the VAs, right? There's a, a set payment per month, right? Our payment per week, sorry, to where it's like, Hey, you got something coming in and at the end of the month and you just reminded me, actually need to send that out.
But at the end of the month I look at how many five star reviews we had across the platforms, and that's the bonus, right? You get X amount for how many five star reviews. Everybody's incentivized off of that. And then Dom, who's my guest experience manager, is not getting a set payment. He's incentivized over the overall dollar run. He gets X percentage of the overall dollars that we bring in as a management company. I've been in sales for a long time.
That always worked for us when we were sales. Mm-hmm. . And so it's like, all right, how can we make sure that everybody's bought into this because you're getting X percent of whatever we bring in. Right? That's, that's really cool. I like that. I want to eventually like at least bring on one VA and try it out. You might have yours in like a full-time capacity, right. It sounds like, like they're, yeah.
From, you know, four to four, whatever their time window is, they're working that whole time for you, or at least expected to be. Yeah. We, we have it pretty tight. Like, Hey, within I, I'm curious, well, sorry. And not to interrupt you, like, what else is there, what, what else do you have been taken care of, right? Like, so what else have you delegated aside from like answering guest communications around the clock, which is a really cool, like, way to do that.
How, how else are you putting into work, I guess? Well, as you mentioned, right, with guest communications, there's gonna be issues as well. There's gonna be maintenance stuff, there's gonna be like some cleaning related stuff. And so we've got everybody on these WhatsApp group chats, and thankfully I can put 'em on silent now. When it first came on, I was like, all right, I gotta, I gotta still jump in and kind of answer some stuff.
But long story short, we have metrics for each of the, the team members. And for guest experience, the metric is 20 minutes or less. You need to be able to get responses back, and that's, that's kind of long, but 20 minutes or less, just in case there's like internet or something, you gotta get a response back. And so anything above that, we're like, Hey guys, and, and kind of making sure that people are back on it. But to answer your question, they're the point person for all the guests.
They're answering any inquiry questions, they're able to accept, d eny. They're asking for the IDs right now, but the auto host is gonna make that so much more seamless. Cause now we're just gonna get an automatic, you know, verification or not, and we can just decide on that.
And then if there's any maintenance related items, they're taking a screenshot of that, letting us know the address and putting it in the maintenance chat so that my maintenance manager can act on it and start, you know, figuring that piece out to get it fixed. And then we have the cleaning chat, right? So if somebody's checking out early, they can send a message so that the cleaners can get in there early if they want to.
So hopefully we take the next person early and get some more, some more dollars from there. And also, if there's any cleaning related mishaps where somebody comes there and they're like, Hey, da da da da da, we can send it to the group and kind of go from there. So those are the, the real main pieces that they're handling. Also the overnight piece was huge cuz you know, people will come in at like
00 AM forget their code and, and then try to blow your phone up. Like, Hey, I can't get in. Right. So, right. They're able to remotely unlock cuz we, we've got them set up on all the locks as well. So if somebody needs that, Or a code deactivated or, or something of that nature. They can create the codes and unlock it for somebody. That's huge. I feel like that's like huge. Like, and I, I was saying this on Thursday, dude, you're like starting to, you know, become like a bae casa, right?
Where they have like, you know, 24 7 support and like you would expect that, right? And that's what, that's totally what guests expect, right? 24 7. And I've luckily, I, you know, consider myself a nine owl and I'll be up at like weird times of the night. But I've had guests call me two or 3:00 AM I had a guest who got locked out at like midnight, right? And luckily with me living on site as well, it makes it much easier. I, I send Abby down cuz we don't want them knowing that we live here.
So I send her as like the house manager who lives on site, right? But that's been super helpful. But in the future I feel like it's crucial to have that like VA piece and having them be able to run like, you know, do the unlock. I feel like that saves you from a lot of like headache or like bad reviews on b and b. That's sweet. And, and literally what you're saying, like it, it's just taking it one step at a time. Right. The first piece was the cleaning. Right.
You know, you get that piece going and then you know, hey, I guess experience manager that can help alongside, and it wasn't a lot of money to begin with, right. It was like, you know, there's five, six properties, but you're learning and you know, we're gonna grow, right? Just believe a vision we're gonna grow. And, and now it's like, okay, hey, we grew and, and it's good. It definitely works. Nice. And you've had them on for a while.
Yeah. So this has been since, I wanna say I hired my first guest experience manager in like, it was May of last year. You know what happened? It was. Was it May, it may have been April of last year. And then I hired a maintenance manager in May of last year.
And the reason I got both of them on board and said, you know what I need to give them percentage is because I was in Chicago with my girlfriend at the time just hanging out and it, it was in May, so all the summer kind of kicked in and literally three HVACs went out, like out of nowhere, three HVACs, they were working fine, three separate calls. Now I'm like, Hey, I can't do what we are doing.
I'm making calls to all these guys trying to coordinate with the guest access, coordinate with the HVAC person. I'm like, you know what? There needs to be somebody that's responsible for this so I can just shoot a text message off and go do my own thing. And so, it's, it's expanded and grown to that point, but literally you just gotta start by being comfortable delegating one task and then the next, and then the next. Especially as you continue to grow. Right now, it's fine.
Cause you're on site, you know, it's, it's right there. Like, I mean, I handle a lot of stuff for mine cuz it's right under me. Like I can, I can do that. I need the maintenance manager coming out. I can go downstairs and do it. But as you continue to grow, it's gonna be crucial if you wanna stay in this game. For sure. It's good to keep in mind. Alpha, what's up man? Hmm. Since May of last year. Since May of last year. Yeah, he's been a solid member of the team.
He's based actually out of Florida. And we haven't actually met in person yet, which is kind of crazy. But we're taking on this huge, this huge, huge project. I'm super excited about it. There's gonna be a lot of posts about it. And you guys already probably you've heard about it, but I'm not gonna mention on here. But planning to get him out here for the first time to actually meet the rest of the team, walk all the properties, and definitely walk this one.
Cause we all gotta be on point to make sure that this one goes well. So a lot of your folks are virtual. You don't even have them in person, which is like, so I mean, and I feel like nowadays, like you almost can expect that or like look, but that's pretty common. But it's just kind of crazy to see that actually like work out and like know someone who does it.
Cause I, I hear a lot about using VAs and I've heard of a bunch on podcasts and I hear like Tony Robinson talk about it a lot, but I haven't actually known someone to use it in, I guess. Actually have that in place. So that's, that's pretty cool. I like that. Dude. It, it, it, it will change your life. So like, the whole reason I started using VAs was if you listened to one of, like the earlier podcasts, there's our first guest experience manager who was a rockstar.
And better yet we started doing that in, was it May of last year? It might have been the year before that. But either way. Our first guest experience manager, who is a rockstar or maintenance manager who was a rockstar. His name's Marcus Mayfield. He's a former veteran and or is a veteran, and he owned a couple B and Bs. He does a lot of event spaces and he's moved fully into that like event space field. He's got like five or six of them and he's crushing it.
But he's the one that was using VAs first. He's like, yeah, man, I've, I've built my whole event business off of VAs, like I just taught them. Yes. Is it a lot more work upfront? Sure. But once you get your SOPs in place and you start teaching them to update it, anytime you give them new information, that's when it really starts to take off. And so last year I made the commitment just one little piece. I said, you know what? One of my goals for 2022 is to use a VA. Right?
And so last year I, I actually contracted with a bookkeeping VA cuz my books were all off, right? I think we talked about this before. And, and that was the first one I used. I was like, man, this works out. And then I got like a personal assistant VA one that can help me with like coordinating guest. So when we put in the podcast, all I do is send them an email, my, my va an email like, Hey, this is the email, this is the person. Can you coordinate with them? He has them fill out this thing.
He coordinates a date that works, gets him scheduled and then sends me a PDF like, Hey, here goes the background info. So I'm good to go for the call and kind of go from there, right? But it used to be me and it may not seem like a lot, but it was taking, you know, maybe an hour total to go back and forth with schedules and try to figure it out. So now he does that, he does all the invoices, so it may seem like something small too, but we put a lot of B and Bs together as you've seen.
We've got three active right now, gonna have a fourth one active that are actively getting built and kind of get ready to go live over the next month or so. And so what I do is just take pictures of invoices, put the address, send it to him, and he puts it into the QuickBooks system, invoices the right owner, and kind of gets that going. So, so I don't gotta spend time doing that. And and another side piece that got added to the team recently, and this was like late last year.
As we now have an operations manager who's incentivized based off of the units going live. Right. And she's kind of responsible for, hey, any deliveries from Amazon or furniture places, she's on point to do that. So we can, we can send stuff from anywhere and kind of get that going. And you met her on site at that last property. Gotcha. But it can grow quickly man. Dude, it's, it's, it's, do you have time ? That's the question. That's the que I'm, I'm, yeah. I'm, I like, I like doing this.
This is fun. You know, not gonna say, I'm not gonna do that down the road, who knows? But, but this is, this is fun to me to be able to collaborate with you guys who are actively in it, right? And we can just keep pushing each other to get better and better and keep growing. Coz I don't know if you've seen, but a, a lot of people are, I, I'm part of a couple of those Facebook groups and a lot of people that were doing rental arbitrage and things of that nature in the city.
They're running for the hills man. They're getting outta here. And so whoever's left over, like the people that are left standing that have solid reviews and solid properties, I think we're gonna continue to crush it for years to come. Yeah, for sure. I hope so. Now that I'm, Hey, come on now. Trying to, trying to build up those reviews and I just wanted to go back to the bookkeeping VA piece cause I'm curious about that.
And that's something I've been kind of slowly thinking about as well as I've started to like get tired of logging in ESSA and seeing something categorized wrong and having to change it and whatnot. I've just been thinking about having someone to like make sure that, you know, categorization is right and maybe even like I can send the receipts to and like log them in for me.
How did you get started with your bookkeeping VA and like kind of what were some of the tasks you were having or doing or having them do and like, I guess another question would be at, at what point did you feel like you needed that? Right. And like at what point, or maybe even how many properties did you have when you got that? Yeah, and I'd be happy to share the contact info with you. You can connect with him. He's based in Pakistan, works hard.
He actually is attending Harvard online right now. Oh shit. I think he's gonna be graduating soon. He's a sharp dude. Wow. But it was, it was after when I realized that we were gonna really build up this short-term rental management business because in 2021 I just had my couple and I was managing like two others and I was like, okay, this is, this is cool.
But then early 2021 or early 2022, it started picking up pretty quickly and that's when I was like, Hey, I need to actually get some help because, this is all going through the same account. Like this is, I know this isn't wrong. I, I definitely do, I don't do this with any of my other properties, but I was expecting to just use this LLC for my properties, and all of a sudden I'm using it for everything. So I'm like, okay, this isn't good.
And so the bookkeeper helped me straighten out the year before, and then he put everything in order and forced me to get my books right. Like before using him, I was just, I was using QuickBooks a little bit, but I didn't have it separated. And so working with him forced me to, okay, let me link this account two QuickBooks and have, you know, all the receipts for this go through here, all the things for the realtor business go through here, everything for the podcast come through here. Right.
And so that's the, the major piece that he helps with. And then on a monthly basis, he's automatically categorizing everything for me, like to your point, to make sure like it's all tight. And then he sends any things that are outstanding, for example, for a wrote a check and I forgot to upload like a picture of that to our shared Google Drive just so we can see what it is and categorize it.
Then he'll send like a, a condensed list of maybe like 10 items a month across the board where it's like, Hey, what are these items? Can you let me know so we can get it categorized? And the best thing about all this is at any time he can give you like a, a profit and loss year to date. And so right now my CPA was asking for that, for the property management business, for the realtor business, for a lot of other stuff, the personal real estate.
And so to be able to send a message to him and say, Hey man, I need the profit and loss for these four items, and to have him just email that over, it's, that's the piece that I like not having to dig through again. Yeah. So do you have those in separate bank accounts or is it all going through the same bank account right now? Yeah, I mean, if you got the separate bank accounts, I think that's enough right now. Especially like when you start getting more and more and more.
What I keep doing is just adding on, especially if it's separate entities, different bank accounts, and I link it all through my QuickBooks. So it's just very easy to pull a report and see, okay, for this, this is what we got going on over here. This is what we got going.
But from the bank accounts, I think you could log in there and pull an Excel file or a CSV file from there as well, and use that to kind of give, the only other piece you'd want to add to that is maybe, maybe you could merge it with the income that you've made, some of the expenses from the credit card, so that it can all like appear where it needs to. And then the only other piece that you're missing outside of like as Stellar or QuickBooks, is that it's not quote unquote categorized, right?
Automatically, like in QuickBooks you can see, okay, this is, you know, supplies. So we can, we can write that off immediately. This is cleaning costs, this is, you know, furniture costs, so this is, you know, capital expense, things of that nature, right? You can, you can write it off and kind of categorize it like that. So that's the only piece that's gonna be missing from yours when you pull it, is the categorization.
Yeah, and that's one where I would just hang on for that email from him or shoot him a message for that he can get back to you, to your point. He is, he's, he's battling a little bit, but Kevin will pull through and and yeah, no, that would be solid to get that list so that you can start to just categorize it. Cuz that's what I was doing with just even the Louisville properties. Right. I was just, Getting the list from the property managers.
And then I was adding a couple other things like, hey, okay, we paid for a roof this year. We did the gutters, we did the siding, we did all the structure work that they didn't know about. Right. And I would just add it into the spreadsheet there to where we could keep track of it and make sure that we have that ready for when we either sold the house, refinanced it, or just wanted to take the tax right off.
And so with that in mind, right, and I know we're just grilling you on the question, so I appreciate you answering them. No, this is good with the categorization, right? Because this is something I've been kind of struggling with and it's been taking me more time than I would like it to in terms of doing the individual categorization.
I know you say you have a bookkeeper for it now, but in terms of what they're doing, going on that a little more, like when you're ordering stuff from Amazon, right? So like, you know, consumables, right? Or like distinguishing that from. You know, something else. I guess my question is how in detail are you going in with the categorization, right?
Like, are they looking at all the Amazon purchases and like saying, oh, this was supplies versus like, oh, this was for maintenance, you know, and is that something that kind of needs to, that that needs to kind of continuously be done, right? I feel like, yes. And I just wanna kind of see what other people are doing in terms of that. So I try to keep it, I try not to go crazy with it. Right? Yeah. So you don't need to like, you don't need to say, Hey, I spent a hundred dollars in paper towels.
You could say paper towels, toilet paper, trash back. This is all consumables, right? Just put that as consumables and leave it at that. So when I'm doing Amazon orders, typically that's not for furniture and things of that nature. Mm-hmm. , it's really for the consumables. Or if it's the initial order, then it'll be for maybe some pots and pans and things of that nature. And I just take pictures of the detailed receipt, you know? You know like when you get ready to check out.
I take screenshots because it'll show you like a list and like, Hey, this is the cost of that. I take screenshots of that and I upload it to a shared Google Drive folder. For that and for my personal properties. And boom, we're good to go. For properties that are under management, I take screenshots of all that.
Place the order, take screenshots of the final, like purchase price, and I just email it to that one VA I told you about, and I taught him to upload it to that other Google Drive folder right underneath that property so that my bookkeeper can do it. And it sounds complicated, but it's not. But I, I just, I email it to him. Gotcha. He uploads it to the file. Cause I told him like, Hey, this is what I want you to do.
And then he also invoices the owner and attaches all this stuff so that there's no questions on, Hey, what is this invoice I just received? And the bookkeeper has exactly what he needs. Itemized, well at least screenshots of it underneath that folder so he can keep it up to date every month. And we keep different months for the different folders. And every month he gets that stuff completed and then he reaches out.
If there's any other items that were kind of not fully categorized to make sure that we're staying on track throughout the year, did that help? Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And I, I think that's kinda how the point on, no, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I think the point on not going too crazy is important cuz like when I started out, especially when I was like setting things up, I bought like tons and tons and tons of stuff from Amazon and like Ikea and whatnot and I was kinda getting lost in the weeds for a second when I was doing the Categor categorization, I was like, no, I'm just gonna count all this stuff as like capital expenses, like set up costs, you know, and kinda like move on from there and not really look too in detail.
Oh, this paper towel, oh, these are like pillow covers. Like, no, I'm just gonna count this as one thing. So, Yeah, I, I wanna look into having a VA cause I mean, even what you explained I think sounds helpful for me, even just with having two properties. Cause I, I want it to be done right and requiring myself to go in there and do it right. Every month is even now starting to get tedious. So it's something I've been looking into. The sooner, the sooner you can do it, the better.
It's tough cuz it's a, it's a cost thing, right? But the sooner you can look into it, the better. And it's actually cheaper than you would, you would think. And I've actually, while we were talking, I just pulled up 2017 taxes for my first property. And I'm gonna share my screen here just so we can like show you. So this is kind of a list, Alpha, that I got from Kevin back then. And your situation's gonna be completely different, right?
You're, you're doing a b and b, but I was doing a long-term rental house hack, things of that nature. You could see a whole bunch of stuff. So I got this from my system cuz at that point I was managing my own property. So I was using buildium, using Buildium. So I pulled this from Buildium, I color coded it and I just asked him like, Hey man, what are the different, the different things that we need, right?
And so Desmond, to your point, this is keeping it super high level, hey, maintenance, repair. And I put these other pieces for like me, like, Hey, this is what I borrowed this cash, I put in rent collector tenants, all that stuff. And so I was just kind of putting it all together and I just categorized it like that and sent that to him so that he could knock that piece out. And then I put like personal expenses cuz I didn't have everything separated at the time.
So , so like, Hey, I paid for this on my card so it's not in the system but it is for the property. Can you help me out? And that was, that was how it got started. So you don't need it to be crazy, even if just getting like the information from Kevin and kind of just putting together a key that's gonna help you out and then just. Just categorize it as quickly as you can. Sure. See, I I haven't even jumped into, sorry, go ahead, alpha. Go ahead.
Yeah, and, and, and I think it was the other address, right? That Can you text it? Can you text it to me? Okay. Yeah. Yep. I'll take a look. I'll take a look. We're doing a little, a little a little CSI work , but no, I just sent you the categories as well, and yeah, it's, it doesn't have to be crazy, man. Does not have to be crazy. Eric, what are you thinking about all this? You haven't, you haven't dove into all the categories and stuff.
You're probably buying stuff from like 15 different cars, but, but what, what are you thinking right now? I'm like, I got a separate, I got a separate credit card and separate bank account that I'm using for it, but I haven't dived into what I need to do, so I'm just worried about how, how difficult it might be done round with that later. It's not too bad. Hey, come on now.
The main, the main piece is one, you've got the whole year and you've got busy season, so we don't gotta worry about this yet. We're worried about last year cuz we were all collecting money and now tax seasons here. But, but two the main piece is just getting up and running, man. So I, I can't wait to see the photos and things of that nature.
After it is up and running and I think that you're gonna crush it cuz dude, every time I I'm around that area, I keep seeing more progress with kind of those, is it gonna be town homes? Yeah, the town homes. Yeah. I think they got a lot of the framing set up right now. Mm-hmm. Hey, gonna, wants to buy that from you, man. So, hey, keep in mind don't, don't without to mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. , are you, are you too alpha Alpha's in alpha. You're in East Point.
Okay. Yeah. I'm, I'm blanking right now. Yeah. I just, I know East Point hate, it's like, it's right in that, that mix. . Yeah. Well what else you guys got man? What's going on? I'm just thinking about how I need to get on my taxes now. . I know I've been kinda dragging my feet. It's coming quickly, man. Taxes. Like I think I'm meeting with Kevin here next week.
Cuz I sent all the stuff in kind of hodge pods this year cuz there's, there's some other things that I completely forgot about and I was like, oh yeah, I gotta send that in. So . So yeah. Yeah, try to see that happen. And also I can't wait to see what this cost segregation does. Cause that was a huge new thing for this year and so I could definitely give you, you know, some feedback on kind of how it goes once we get this thing filed. Yeah, definitely. I'm curious to see how that goes.
Cause it's something I'm, I've heard about and I have like, looked into it a little bit. I know it's pricey, but I heard it can be worth it. So I'm curious to see how it goes for you. . And in terms of what you sent in too, right? Cause I haven't, I haven't jumped into it at all.
And I know I've been, I've been needing to, when we're talking about the categories and whatnot, is it typical, I mean, do they really just need a spreadsheet of all your expenses and just kind of have 'em categorize like you did, and that's enough for them to calculate the write offs? Is that right? Yeah, that's pretty much it. If you have it tight and that's all bookkeepers doing, just keep it it tight. Like, Hey, because you could do it, it's just gonna take you probably 10 minutes every day.
And nobody, nobody does it, right? It's like, if I bought all this stuff off of Amazon, it's gonna take me another 10, 15 minutes to categorize it myself, but so annoying is he doing other things right? And every single day it's like it adds up. So literally all the bookkeepers doing is, okay, the receipt came in categorized, everything's organized, it's under this property. Okay, next one, next one, next one. And they keep you good so that at the end of the year you have a clean book.
For your CPA and now you can actually strategize with them. Now on a quarterly basis, we are having one of those, you know, gold member calls that we talked about. Alpha, you actually have clean books to look at. It's not like, Hey, I have no, no idea how much I made and how much I spent, you know, I think it's around this much. You have like, okay, well me, if you go buy this property, this is gonna be a tax write off to make sure we can get you at net zero.
Or hey, if we go use the cost segregation strategy, now we can write off all this income that you made. Or, Hey, you should do this, you should do that. So you can have more meaningful conversations that actually save you money. Yeah. And yeah, and that's probably like one of the biggest benefits, right? Of having the CPA, cuz kinda one I, I, I'm asking right?
Because one, one thought that went into my mind was like, okay, I could have someone do my taxes for the first year, but then after that I have my taxes. You know, I can see kind of what was done right? So in theory, like you could almost, you know, and this is me trying to like do everything myself, right? But you can, in theory, almost like, you know, like do it yourself, I guess, right? If you kind of know the strategy.
But it's really just like that, that time saving piece most likely, right? Of like, yeah, I guess having someone do it all right. Dude, that's spot on. Spot on. And I, I think about that in a lot of ways. Like, we'll stick with this example, but that, that's exactly it. Like they should be able to save you more money than you're spending. And also, like they do this for a living, so they're, they're constantly looking at it.
And if you get the right ones, I, we've talked about it before, but I like to surround myself with people that are experts in their field or that are also investors, right? If you're an investor, I'm an investor, I'd love to work with you as a CPA. Even my realtor in Louisville, she's an investor. That's, that's what we're partnering on a deal. And it's like, okay, so you know, you understand the type of needs that we have to make this happen.
And for the CPA piece, if they're already looking at this, it's their profession. It's what they do every day and they're looking at this to save money on their investment properties. I believe they're gonna do a, a, a great job, at least better than I can with the time that I have to get it done. But Desmond, it's one of those things where if you just were doing like, cause I did TurboTax for the longest, right? Until I started getting more properties.
If you just were doing, you know, your W2 and maybe stocks you, that's so easy, you can do that yourself or 401k.
But when you start adding properties to the mix and then you start thinking about buying more and more, the sooner you can start working with the CPA the better because then they keep it all clean and they usually have some type of guarantee where if the IRS comes back right to any of your books, they can go and defend and protect you against that cuz they're a qualified CPA as opposed to them coming back and looking at you and saying, Hey, you know this $500 that you said
you you filed, where'd this come from? Terminated . Yeah. Where'd this come from? It's money too, right? I got, and that, that's what I'm trying to avoid, man. I don't, last thing I need is IRS knocking anywhere there, so I'm like, you know what? I, I've been using a CPA since 2015 and I, I just have all the documents since then and it's been pretty clean. And you, you wouldn't have known to do that. You wouldn't have known to do that. Right. That's beautiful.
And that's the piece, dude, that is the piece. That is the piece. Shout out to Brooklyn. I, I . I like that you went, you know, back, back home to go get the person for real, you know, say, Hey, I can't trust the way, lemme go to Brooklyn. Go get it . But that's the piece right there. Literally, they should be able to save you significant amount of money. And even taking that a step further, given another example.
Alpha, I think we might have talked about it at the time, but there was that bigger pockets episode where they were talking about cost segregation. It was a couple months ago and this was like probably middle of last year. And it just, I was like, wow, this is amazing. I definitely wanna do this. I had no idea. How do you even get started with this? Who do you reach out to? I just hit up my CPA and said, Hey man, I wanna do a cost segregation. I got these two Airbnbs. What are your thoughts?
He's like, yeah, I just did that for somebody. This is the company they used. They work Nationwide. Hit them up, hit them up, paid about six grand, and then got about 150 K in depreciable or like in cost segregation depreciation, right. That I can use this year. And so it's like, okay, you know, to be able to have a professional that you can bounce ideas off of and just send something to and say, Hey, I heard about this. I wanna learn more.
Or even like, I was gonna do a 10 31 exchange earlier last year. And he actually advised me out of it. He's like, yeah, you spent enough money on this property with everything in there that the only taxable amount you'd have is like, you know, 75, 80 k. He's like, I would actually recommend spending tax on that, eating that tax, which is not a crazy amount.
And being able to use the whole amount of the money for whatever you want, as opposed to, you know, getting tied in to going buy, you know, a bad deal. So, yeah, it's, it's good to have CPA. Still, no, I still, still running my own cleaning company.
But as the, as the year goes on, you know, the credit card's getting paid off, the one I use to kind of set everything up and as the year goes on I wanna experiment with the cleaner and, you know, have one come in and, you know, do a full due diligence with 'em. Like stick with 'em for at least a month and like, be able to train them on the practices and whatnot because it's gonna come to a point right where I'm looking about the next crib.
And then once we move outta this one, deciding if I want to keep it as short term or, you know, move it to, to long term. If I have a solid cleaner, I, I think that I could reasonably, you know, keep it as short term and keep that money coming in. Cause like looking at this past month in February. I don't ever want to give up the short term game. Like it's, it's, it went well in February and, and, and January. It didn't do bad either.
So now that I've gotten a little taste of it, I'm like, man, like I wanna do whatever possible to keep this going. So over time, I'm, I'm most likely gonna bring in a cleaner and have them you know, handle things. How Turn five does it where they, you know, handle everything for you. Cause if I can get that piece, that'd be great. It's clutch, man. This clutch. But guys, anything else? We got about five minutes left. Anything top of mind?
You wanna share me your bookkeeper's information, that would be great. Thank you. Done. Yeah. Let me, let me drop that. You'll actually drop it in the chat so everybody has it too. This dude is, is amazing. , it's definitely, I heard the VAs, especially outta like outta different countries aren't as, aren't as expensive. Right. It's like pretty cheap. It's, it's, yeah. It's, it's, you know, don't tell anybody that. All right. Don't do that. Alright. But yeah.
Yeah. It's, it is, it's compared to here, it's definitely it's definitely not as expensive or, and I'm gonna drop his email. Yeah, you saw it so it's in the chat. But yeah, it's definitely a lot less expensive than you would think and, it's all about just getting rid of the repetitive tasks, right? If you can create like a step-by-step or a Loom video to say, Hey, this is what I do. Mm-hmm. those repetitive tasks.
Now every Monday actually have two hours set aside in the morning, and it's called Delegate and Elevate. And all I'm thinking about during that time and throughout the week is like, Hey, what could I delegate to somebody else to free up more time to do stuff like this, to have more calls and, and things of that nature, right? To do my highest and best go negotiate more deals like I, like.
Before, before this call I was negotiating a deal with a, a client where we're with not a client with a realtor where I think we're gonna be able to get this property fully furnished and closing costs added. They were nervous about like an appraisal contingency piece, and so we were going back and forth like, How do we get this wrapped up? But long story short, a fully furnished place, they could get up and running in like two weeks. So I wanna do more of that.
And so there's a lot of tedious tasks that have to get done, and I'm constantly thinking, okay, how can I get this to someone else or to a VA or just record one thing to where it's like, all right, you don't, not gonna do that again. Right. You're talking about as a long-term rental? As a short-term rental. What platforms are you on? Dude, let's get another platform. I've, I've seen Desmond's calendar and it's impressive.
And he's also doing some consulting now and helping kind of get those live. So I would, I would connect with him cuz he, he got all of our set up. I think we set up like, don't ask me how many, but it was, it was all agenda was jumping a zoom, click a two, click a couple buttons today. I was like, okay, we're good. Yeah, I bet . And oh, and by the way, I actually drove to two of the properties and got the letters and, and I uploaded it in. So like now it's, it's ready.
I'm just waiting on the auto host to go live before making that go live. But long story short, alpha, I'll get Desmond with Desmond and it's a nominal fee compared to what you're gonna get for like being on booking.com. Cause you get three times as many bookings, you know, from, from what all the statistics say. Right? And so that will allow you to raise the price on all the platforms and kind of go from there.
But that's, if you wanna keep it as a, b and b, I would just expand to another platform. So we gotta find a way to boost the price. Yeah. For a two bed, one bath. I wanna say we have a two, one. The two you, you saw the two one? We got that two one out in Decatur. Right. And I wanna say we have it in between like 99 at the minimum and like 1 25 is the base, something like that. And then, and then we, we add a little bit on the cleaning fee as well.
Cause we don't want to eat, eat stuff there, but you can't make it all up on the cleaning fee. That's, that's kind of where we're at. And so yeah, if you can get another platform just to boost it a bit and just raise the prices across the board, I think that could work. Let me ask you, Let me ask you this. What is the the long, and, and, and we can get in on this note, but what's the long-term rent for the upstairs? Right now? Have you run those numbers? Mm-hmm. Okay. Eight.
Eight. You, you, you mean Cleveland Avenue? Hey, that's it. That's it. Literally, no, it's, it's one of the things to keep an eye on, cuz you never know when that piece could start to play in, right? Because if it gets to like a two grand, all of a sudden you start offsetting, okay, now I can charge utilities to this person. Now I can charge X to this person, or I can charge a premium because I'm gonna give you internet or, or something of that nature, right? So it's something to think about.
But I think the first step is if you can get with Desmond and, and work on the on the the booking.com, that's, that's one I'm excited about. Like super, especially right now. And as far as raising the prices, dude, if you, if there's ever was a time we're heading into the, the spring and summer right now, you just gotta have little faith. But boost that thing, man, put it, put it to that 99 minimum. All right guys, you got my number too. Just me up.
Put, put yours at 98. Eric all put yours at 97 now I'm playing, I'm playing. No, I love, it'll, it'll be good's. No, I'm playing. No, I'm playing, but All right guys. Hey, I appreciate y'all joining today and next week. The next two weeks we're gonna have a couple guests joining us, so it'll be exciting.
I'll send out some details ahead of time, but just con, continue to really just push this man, I think it's gonna be an awesome season because last year saw a lot of these rental arbitrages leaving the city. And this year, I think even more so anybody that's in this game, there's still so much demand for Atlanta. Like I told you, I just talked to somebody who's trying to book for and extend for another six months. They need to be out here for work.
So it's, it's one of those things where if you can stay in for the long term, we're gonna get all the upside benefit. Please, I would recommend applying for it. They said it, they, they literally wait until the last minute before they extend and things of that nature. It was supposed to be last March, then they pushed it back, pushed it back, pushed it back. Now it's this March.
I would go through the application process especially cuz you're a owner occupant, you have literally nothing to worry about. Go through the application. They're gonna give you a short a, a temporary short-term rental license that you can plug into your Airbnb profile until they get you approved. And then once you're approved, you just plug that new license in. And you just reminded me, I actually need to renew my license. Which is, the renewal process is easy.
You just print something off, walk through a notary, sign it and say, yes, you want to continue and, and email it in. But yeah, I, I would go through the process. All right, y'all Cool. I'm gonna catch you a little bit later. Talk to you next week.