KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Financial Freedom, Strategic Budgeting, and Effective Networking in Real Estate

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

SummaryThis episode provides a comprehensive guide for real estate agents on achieving financial freedom through strategic budgeting and effective networking. We explore how a well-structured budget can eliminate financial stress and create a foundation for wealth. You'll also learn proven techniques for building a powerful network, which is the key to generating consistent referrals and scaling your business.Key TakeawaysBudgeting for Success: A proactive budget is crucial for managing expenses, saving for taxes, and reducing the stress of an unpredictable real estate income.The Power of Referrals: A strong network of contacts can generate a steady stream of leads, making your business more sustainable and reducing the need for expensive marketing.Effective Networking: Focus on building authentic relationships, not just collecting contacts. Provide value to your network and stay top-of-mind by consistently engaging with your sphere of influence.Financial Discipline: Implementing a 'Profit First' style of budgeting allows you to pay yourself first, ensuring your business is profitable and funding your desired lifestyle.Keywords/PhrasesFinancial Freedom, Real Estate Budget, Networking, Referral Marketing, Profit First, Real Estate Business, Lead GenerationCall-to-ActionReady to take control of your finances and build a thriving real estate business? Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and learn the secrets to financial freedom and effective networking!

Welcome to the Financial Freedom Mastermind Group podcast. Here we're all about breaking free from the 40 to 50-year work grind and accelerating our journey towards financial freedom. Join us every Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern as we explore different types of investments that can fast track your path to financial independence. We serve as a hub for connecting with fellow members during our sessions so you can share successes, ask questions, and keep the momentum going. Good evening, everyone. My name is Ni Aduale, host of the Akaba Home Financial Freedom Master. Mastermind group, and I'm excited to be joining you on this Wednesday, and it's the last Wednesday of May. And on this call today, I'm actually going to be joined by my co-host, Leibon, and we're going to be talking about making the transition from W2 to 1099, some of the key tips and tricks and things to watch out for, because Leibon and I have both made that transition to 1099 full time as we're open. And so we're going to jump in that in a second. But Lebon, how you doing, man?

I'm doing well. How are you doing today? I am super good. I just got back in last night from Boston. My old stomping grounds, I was out there for a wedding over the weekend and definitely got some lobster in here, some my old spots, right? So it was pretty good. What about you, man? Nice. No, just same. I've just been working. Unfortunately, not like you at my desk. You know, we haven't gotten to have some cool scenery around us like we saw you had. I guess what were some of the notices, the differences you noticed, kind of in Boston, I know doing travel, you kind of start to see what you miss about home.

What was the first things that you noticed about Boston having not lived there for so long that had changed or that was different? Man, first thing I noticed is, hey, I am happy that I'm in Atlanta now is the prices of everything out there is crazy, right? I was taking it in and kind of having conversations with different people. And when I lived there, you could get a one-bedroom for maybe 3,000 or so. Now you're looking at closer to $4,000 for one bedroom. It's still crazy packed and crowded.

And I keep trying to figure out, like, why is everybody coming to Boston? But it's all good, right? And so the thing that I missed up there was mostly the food. Like, that fresh food is amazing. But as far as everything else, I'm happy to be in Atlanta. I think this city has a lot to offer. Awesome, awesome. Yeah.

Seems like you made the right choice then. It's only a firm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of the goals when I was up there was, hey, we got to kill it in this role, but I want to get back to the southeast. I mean, I was born and raised in the southeast, right, in Tennessee.

So being able to move back to the south, that's more my flow. I just took a detour to Philly and then a couple of other spots. No, 100%. That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. But we talked about it a little bit.

One of the things that we wanted to discuss today was shifting from W2 over to a 1099, and we have just a couple items here, and Libon and now are going to go back and forth, right? on different pieces that you really want to think about and start to plan ahead for. And the first one right off the bat is making sure that you manage your time effectively. And so LeBon, you know when you're working in that W2 world or working for someone else, right? You have a set time schedule, right? But when you move into this 1099 world, the schedule is your, it's up to you to decide what you're doing from time to time. And so how do you manage that and how is it different?

So I think the most important thing is allocating a consistent time. And I would say even planning out your time. So for instance, when I was, when I had another job, I knew what my hours were, what times I had to be at work. So I had already pre-allotted the time outside of work to do things. So for instance, whether it be in the beginning, just learning about stuff, allotting like maybe like an hour of time, whatever you feel like you need. but having it planned out what you're going to do. So, for instance, if you work mornings and you're, you know, free in the afternoon, what are you doing in the afternoon?

I feel like you have to be very systematic about what you're doing specifically, planning out your time. When I was in it, I had it literally by the hour of what I was doing. That way, you know, I wasn't wasting any time because, unfortunately, you're competing with other people, especially when you're starting. And they have way more hours than you. So I always say if you don't have as much time, you know,

got to dedicate more focused time. So that's, I think, the most important aspect. And what you just said is key. Focus time. It's crazy. If you want to see somebody that's focused, give them a whole bunch of work the day before a vacation. That's going to be a focused individual that's getting everything done quickly and efficiently.

And the hard part is consistently doing that. And so I even find myself starting to drift at times. And so one of the things I implemented many years ago that's worked is I learned it from one of the podcasts that Brandon Turner was on. but it's the MINS system, I-N-S, right? Most important next step. And so what I do is whether I end the day with it or I start the day with it, I write out, okay, what are the three most important things that I need to accomplish today, right,

to really move the whole agenda forward of life, right? And that was even when I was working with W2 as well as the realtor piece. I would just put like, okay, if I'm working with a client and, you know, due diligence ends tonight, we need to finish negotiating due diligence. It's just abscessantly. It has to be done. Not losing somebody's earnestly. I'm putting that down.

Okay, I need to search for a property for this client. Okay, we're going to write that piece down. Something's going on with our shoulder mental management. I need to correct this issue. I just think of the three most important things within the whole realm of moving things forward in that day. Write that down. And if I've accomplished those three, I know I've done something for the day to move the ball forward. And then the rest of the day can kind of take form.

And then to your point, trying to schedule as much. as you can, right? If it's not in my calendar, it's probably not going to get done. And so I try to schedule as much as I can. The most important three, I try to get done before noon each day, because that's that time I'm blocked off. There's not really many meetings unless it's like our team meetings and things that nature and kind of go from there. Yeah. Additionally, one thing I would like to add to is when you are sitting on that plan, you have to make sure it's sustainable because you do want to avoid that burnout. I feel like that is, especially in the beginning, I tried to do too much at once, and it felt overwhelming. And so, you know, it's very nice to have an idea of how much work

you want to get done, but at the end of the day, it has to be realistic and sustainable. That way, it's something that you continuously do. It's kind of like going to the gym. You know, you don't want to kill yourself day one, and then all of a sudden you can't do anything in the next day. You want to slowly build up that workload. Agreed. It's much better to go to a gym for 45 minutes, five days. than it is to go, you know, for one four-hour recession. You're back in the couch not doing anything for the next four days. Yeah, 100%. So the next one that we have here is separating your personal and your business finances.

Did you have a take or did you want to take a take on this? Yeah, so I actually had, well, I think you know this in the beginning. I did a whole, I did a wholesaling background. So I actually already had a wholesale in a LLC set up. So a lot of the cost associated specifically with like realtor fees, and all that stuff. I just kind of used that account to pay it off. And so it kind of created separation because come tax time,

it kind of helps too additionally. And you are very helpful in warning me beforehand. So we appreciate that. Hey, come on now. The tax bug, man, it's, it's, it's, it's getting me a couple times to where I see coming around the corner now, right? And when you talk about, like, separating, you know, personal and business, I really like to think about understanding what

your expenses, right? And so one of the things that I do from time to time is I'll actually sit down and write out, okay, what are the monthly fixed expenses of just living? All right? So this is my fixed amount for just living, X amount for fun, X amount for putting away for savings, things that nature. And I determine it by percentages based on what we made last year or what I believe we were going to make this year. And I put that aside in a quote unquote profit first method where anytime income comes into a bank account, it gets split, right? And split to all these different pieces. So we don't commingle funds so that when we have a really up month, right?

And it's like, man, we're on top of the world. It doesn't come crashing down if we have a down month, right? You have the money set aside because 1099, unlike a W2, it's a roller coaster, right? Yeah. W2 is going to be pretty slow and steady. There may be a couple jumps here and there, maybe get a bonus or increase things that nature. But 1099, you can have a month where it's like, dude, we are flying high. And then you have a month where it's dry.

And so you really got to make sure that you have kind of your set base amounts set aside so that you can feel comfortable in each of those months and kind of even out that curve. Yeah. You definitely want to prepare for winter, you know, because especially in the beginning, I always say the first couple of months of anything is going to be the time where you're the least profitable, you're the least knowledgeable. and you want to have a safety net, that way you have a runway for failure, you know, because it's going to happen.

It's going to happen. It's just how much can you get away with? And if you're not failing, right, you're not risking enough and you're not striving hard enough. Yeah. You should fall down and have to get up and get better. One of the things, I mean, we're in the NBA playoffs right now. So one of the things I like to equate it to sports, right? When you look at some of the players that are out there that are incredible,

they weren't like that in year one, right? It's only in business that we think, hey, year one, I need to go and start, you know, Microsoft or Facebook. Year one's going to be tough. Year one's going to be tough, right? It's not until you really get into the groove of year five, six, seven, and have that longevity in the role where we're starting to, you know, really figure things out, that you start to have that rocket ship acceleration, right?

The reason that we're seeing some of these guys really dominate right now is because they've been in the league for a minute, right? And they've been able to kind of get. acclimated to the speed and things of that nature, and now they're just ready to shine. And so the same thing when it comes to moving into that 1099 journey, give yourself some grace, right? Year one may not be that rocket ship, but you've got to have a long-term vision. And to your point, you need to make sure that you're building in a runway so that you

can achieve that long-term vision. Because the longer you can stay in it, the longer you give yourself an opportunity to be an overnight success. It's 100%. I keep looking down here because my phone keeps locking. So the next piece that we have here is, and this kind of goes with what we were talking about before, but creating a financial plan, right? And kind of elaborating on what we said before.

I'm a fan of the book, Profit First. Levin, have you read that book yet? I actually am going through it currently. I got nice. Yeah. Come on now. Amazing book. And long story short, it's talking about what LeBan and I just talked about.

Being able to understand what are your expenses, where you want to put funds, what are you trying to achieve for your goals, whether it's investing or just put money aside, things that nature, and then set yourself up for success. One of the best things I did when I first got out of college and got into the W2 was getting with people that were financially a lot smarter than me and understanding like, hey, you can set aside X and not for a 401k, you can do some of this back your stock, which is deferred. You can put this amount toward, you know, your savings. And so what I did, because I was not the truck this tool in the shed of trying to do all this stuff myself is I actually had them direct deposit to two different accounts. One account was one that was in the cloud or if I needed to get

money from it, it would literally take three days to have it transferred to my account. So by that time, if you needed the money, you're probably going to figure out a way to get around that or maybe you didn't need to buy that thing. So that saved a lot. And that actually became my seed money for putting this a down payment for the first property. And then the other piece was my operating account, right, which is where I spent my day to day and kind of did that thing. And taking it a step further after reading profit first a couple years ago, now I actually have the bank account where it's like, okay, this is my operating expense account, this one's for profit, this one's for taxes, right, set aside X amount for taxes, and if I don't spend

all that for taxes, that goes to profit and now you can go have fun with it and things that in nature. Do we find anything that under? Yeah, no, 100% I agree. I agree completely with the fact that, for instance, me, when I first did it, I essentially worked the out of the hour. I needed to just have my bills to be paid. You know, to your point, making sure you know your kind of burn rate every month, how much it costs to keep me alive. And I would even say if you're in the beginning especially, you know, you really want to lean out as much as you can because the more time you're able to sacrifice towards, you know, the secondary thing you try to build, the more kind of time you get to buy back. But a lot of times you're not seeing it in the moment. It's more like, hey, I'm kind of going through the grind right now, but I'm buying back

my future time. It's kind of how you have to look at it. That is the key. Literally, you're spot on. And the cool thing about being in this world, in this realm, is that you can now control a lot of that time, right? And you can determine, hey, where do I want to push my efforts? And you realize that you're plant seeds, right?

These relationships that you're building, these investments that you're making right now are going to pay off not only right. now, but over the long term, if you continue to nurture and continue to grow that. And that brings us to our next point, which is networking and building relationship. Who are excellent at this? There's some individuals where I see you connecting them. I'm like, dude, how the heck do you know this guy? Like, I just, you know, like, even some of the people we've interviewed, like, kicking it

back to a Rich Monroe. I'm like, dude, how did you meet this dude who owns like 60 rentals around here? And it's been in the game for forever. So, did you talk to us about the importance of networking and building? relationship. Yeah, I mean, 100%. I think, especially in the field that we're in, it is, I think, arguably the most important skill that you need to have. Because at the end of the day, the more I'm in it, the more I'm learning real estate is a people business. And just knowing the right people can drastically speed run, not only your knowledge, but also your ability to kind of,

I always say the amount of tools you have in your tool belt, right? Kind of, a lot of people are scare to network with people because they're thinking, I got to go in a sense, talk to people that aren't interested in anything. A lot of it is just quite literally, hey, it's like being a kid in the playground. We all did it. We just didn't think it was networking. You know, we were as all little kids, we were all used to do it, but then all of a sudden, once we become adults, it becomes kind of this weird thing that everyone's kind of scared to do. but in reality, I'm a fan of the uncomfortable is what's going to make you better. And I think in a lot of that sense, the network you have, we hear all the time your network

is your network. Making sure you're talking to people, I think is the most important thing. And that's quite literally as easy as it sounds. It's just you literally going out and talking to people. And at first, yeah, again, like everything, you're going to be bad. But it's one of those things as you keep doing it, you're going to get better and better. 100% agree. And to your point, we did this. We did this growing up. Naturally, and there was nothing awkward or uncomfortable about it. It's getting comfortable with the uncomfortable until it

becomes comfortable. And it's also putting yourself out there, right? Because the answer is always no to any opportunity unless you ask for it. Right. And so you've got to be comfortable kind of reaching out for what you're looking for. And also, if you're uncomfortable doing that, put yourself in a situation by signing up for something. Like, one of the things that I've been doing recently and plan to do a lot more on the second half of this year, first that's been a little bit crazy. But second half of this year I plan to do is sign up for a lot more in-person events, right? Like last year did the BP con, did the EXPcon. This year, plan to do both of those, but also looking at a couple of other conferences. Because when you get around other like-minded individuals

for people that are in a different space from you, just one small idea could change your life, men like, hey, you know, what if you did it this way instead of that way? Like, oh, man, I never thought about that. And so I'm always excited about that networking and kind of building relationship standpoint because you never know where it's going to go. A relationship that I built, you know, when I bought my first investment property with my realtor down in Louisville, blossomed over seven years into multiple, multiple units. And now we both own a self-storage in our building townhomes together. That's pretty incredible. It never would have started if we didn't make that initial connection and grow it over time. And so even when we're working with

a lot of our different clients, things that nature, it gets me excited about also our clients being investors. Dude, we could be partners at some point, right? Like, right now it's just, hey, do deliberate tremendous service as best you can. But who knows? Ben, if they come up with some crazy idea or a big deal down the road, I'm down. You know, you'll be down too. So it's nurturing and kind of building that piece. And you never know who knows who. So, you know, So, yeah, exactly. Add to that point, I mean, you can think about it. A lot of people think, you know, all the people I want to, quote, unquote, no, people have influenced, people who, you know, you want to build relationships with because, oh, they have access to all this information.

A lot of the times, they're at these in-person events. You know, for instance, Rich, the person we brought on, who's president of Anstrom, right? I literally met him randomly on a Sunday at a bakery, you know? And it was just a meetup, and he was there. And then we were able, hey, you know, what do you do, et cetera? And then we find out, hey, he's the lobbying, all's on these short-term rental. So literally just going out there is kind of what's putting you in positions where you're able to meet these people because that's what these people are doing, you know?

And a lot of that times, they're just as willing to talk to you as you are to them because you have something that they a lot of times don't or you have information that they don't. the end of the day, the I've learned people who are really, really super successful are always putting themselves in positions to where they can learn stuff and specifically be in the local economy because they'll know more of what's kind of going on closer on the ground. 100% agree. And I love the fact that you still get out there to a bunch of these different events. It inspires me like, dang, I need to get back out here.

I have a couple of these events because it does help you grow. Yeah, I'm in face. Yeah. No, it's going to be good. Good. So no. And we're trying to put on more, too, to kind of help build that piece. Mm-hmm.

Exactly. The next piece, and it kind of goes along with that, is continuously educating yourself, right? You talk about, you know, listen to a couple of books in an audio book. I know that you've read a lot of books around real estate, but what are your thoughts around continuously educating yourself in whatever field you're in as a 10-9-th? I kind of think that's the difference maker between, you know, good to great, because, you know, you can learn as much as you can learn, and it will keep you at a specific level. to continuously grow and kind of be on the consistent path of progress, it requires consistent

learning because the economy changes, strategies change, the way to do things change, kind of systems and place, you know, some people go, oh, you know, there's a better one. And I'll, you know, we can name, you know, a ton of people who have been in the real estate game a really long time and I've kind of just been doing what they've been doing and they've succeeded at it. But they didn't know about tools like, for instance, hospitable, you know, AirDN, all of these more online tools that, you know, is just about more so continuously educating yourself, being online, you know, looking at videos, because that's kind of what I'm noticing

separates the people who are able to really scale things up to that huge, huge level. 100% agree. And it doesn't necessarily have to be reading a book, although that's an awesome way. It could be listening to a book podcast. It could be just talking to different individuals. But I truly believe you can learn from everybody, whether that's learning what to do. or what not to do, I truly believe you can learn something from everybody that you interact with and even just from reserving people.

And so I'm always a fan of if I see that somebody's excellent at something, I don't really care whether it's. It could be, it could be, I don't know, bad, right? If I see somebody's excellent at something, I just want to see their mindset, how they work and how they go about the day-to-day. Like, I'll sit there and watch, like, man, this is pretty incredible because you may be able to glean something from that that will help you out in the future. No, 100%.

success does leave clues. Sure. Come on now. No. Success leaves clues. And the last piece we have here, before we open it up to the group, and again, this is an open session, so feel free to join live or throw questions or anything you have in chat. But the last piece is about dreaming big, right?

Within a W-2 or corporate setting, there's typically different levels that you have to achieve in different milestones before you can get to X level. And so at times, it may hamper your belief system. stuff, right? But at 1099 world, it's up to you and kind of your dream, how big you want to go. And so what are your thoughts about that dream big piece? I think 100%. It's very important to not only one dream big, but have a vision for it. And then kind of consistently go the path because you can succeed in anything as long as you just do not quit. You know, I think that's one of the big things that's very consistent

and I'm seeing across all the people that have succeeded, you know, throughout all the downturns is no matter of the adversity, they kind of kept going. And at the end of the day, this, especially in the beginning, is going to be a grind for a lot of things. And there's a ton of days where you're not going to feel like wanting to do anything. But I feel like that's where the discipline aspect of it comes in. And that really is the thing that you have to be able to lean back on. And this is also why it's very important to have a strong why, because your why is going to be the thing that kind of keeps you going. on your journey. You know, 100% agree.

It's one of those where when we talk about dream big, you really have to get out of your normal life, go on a trip somewhere, go for a long walk, sit down and really write out your dreams. Like, what are you looking to achieve? And put it over time.

A lot of people tend to do like a one year, two year goal. I would say do like a 10 year goal or a five year goal, something where you can ramp up and get to it. And you'd be surprised if you get really clear in your dreams and goals, how quickly you can achieve. it, right? Like, for example, we've talked about it briefly, but we're going to roll this out

with our whole team, but one of our goals from a real estate team, but one of our goals from a real estate team is to be able to transact. A transaction. Is that me? Yeah, AJ. Okay. I think it's, yeah, there we go. Okay, we're good. Okay. So one of the goals of the Akapa home team is to be able to transact a billion dollars worth of real estate by the end of 2032, right? Now, when I look at the board, we're not close to that, right? We're accelerating and we're building, but we're working toward it. And so some of the decisions now, when you put that on the board and say, hey, this is what we're looking to get to. And Lou about, I'm going to put this on everybody.

I'm looking for you to kick in at least 100 mil. Minimal. I'm sorry. But long story short, when you look at that goal, it helps you make decisions. Like, hey, we got an opportunity to expand to Florida. Are we going to do that? Yes, we are. We actually just got our first team member that's based in Florida, right?

that I've been talking to for a while. He's familiar with our systems. We're going to teach him, train them up, things that nature. But it's like, okay, can we expand to other pieces to achieve that long-term vision? And it's all about dreaming big. And then also, when you're doing that, I would also recommend starting to, like, map out a structure. What would you need, or what pieces did you need around you to make it to that level?

Because you can go fast alone, right? As the old African proverb said, but to go far, you're going to need help. And it's better, honestly, to have help when you're going far because you guys can celebrate the wins together. And you can pick each other up when there's losses and kind of keep going forward. And so, yeah, three big is huge. And Justin, AJ, how are you guys doing? I'm doing good, man. I can't complain.

Just living a dream. Come on. I see you wrecking Clark in Lennon tough, man. He got the full fit, man. He's ready. We can go play football right now, man. He's ready. Got to love a team every once in a while.

Absolutely. Got to do it. AJ, what about you, man? How are you doing? Good, man. Yeah, Justin, let's drop on the quits. Let's do it like the old times. Hey, man.

Let's do it. Justin's doing what's going on. I don't know what I'm going. I'll be sure before I speak further. Is there echo that I'm that that you had or is that taking care of now? It's coming from we can hear ourselves. I don't know why. Is it me?

Okay. I'm going to try to hang up and rejoin. I think it's a speaker. I think it's a speaker. Yeah. I thought it was me for a second. But no, no, Justin, what's you in your world, man? How are the B&Bs coming?

You still accelerate through the summer? Speaking of the B&Bs, man, I got over at one of my properties, AC went out. I went over there. It froze up. I defrosted it, did the whole nine. But the reason why I froze up because the guests turned it down super low, but they turned it down super low because it wasn't cooling probably. Had HVAC gag rider today, check it out.

It's low on Freon, so we got a leak somewhere. So now we've got to track down that leak. He's a little tied up this weekend, so we just went in and topped it off so we can keep the doors open for the guests coming in. But we're going to try to go back Tuesday and track down that leak. See if we can figure it out. It's funny how that it always happens during the turn of the season. Legit, the reason that we have maintenance managers with the Akaba home for the rental team

is because two years ago, I was the maintenance manager, quote unquote, and I was in Chicago for like, and I was still working at W-2 and doing the road to stuff. So I was in Chicago. at a meeting, corporate meeting, my phone's blowing up. There's three guests, three separate guests, different properties. HVAC goes out. And it's like 80 degrees that day there. And I'm just like, I'm calling all the people I know like, hey, can you get out here?

They're like, nah, man, we're tied up. We're tied up. And that's when I knew, listen, we got to get some help here because it can't be on me because it is. Nobody can't get an AAC. But yeah, man. So what we started doing now, though, is in April, we actually have our HVAC specialists go out and service all the units. and then they let us know if there's something wrong, right?

So I got the service last month, but I mean, it's one of those things. I guess he said when he checked the last month, it was all good. Quay, same guy, went back out of the day. He said when he checked the last month, it was all good. Came back to the day, he said I was about a pound low on Frion. So he said it's leaking somewhere. He said he'll try to track it down, but who knows. Bang.

Okay. Well, the Friani put in and get you through the weekend? Yeah, that's what he said. So we'll see. we're being hopeful. Come on now, fingers crossed. Cam, how you doing, man? Dude.

Oh, can you hear me? We can hear you now. Okay, all right, cool. Yeah, no, I'm doing good. How are you doing? Super good. And the more important question is, where are you been at, man? I ain't seen you in the gym at all.

What's going on? I know I was afraid to join because, like, I knew you'd ask about that. Cam is an early morning warrior like myself. So we usually in there at 6 a.m. I ain't seen him in a couple of them. I feed them in a couple weeks. Yeah, I've got fitness equipment at home. So, like, I've been keeping on top of it.

But, like, my job has just been very busy lately. I'm not even using that as an excuse. But, yeah. That's true. You got to keep you honest on. But how is the house happening, man? It's been pretty good. I mean, it's been really good.

So everything's been going pretty well. We did actually last, just last night. We actually had to have the police come out. and, like, remove the tenants in our property. Because they were, like, smoking inside and just doing all this stuff. And I talked to them, like, multiple times, like, trying to get them to stop and they wouldn't. So I eventually, like, canceled the reservation on Verbo. And then, like, I told them, like, hey, you guys got to leave and they weren't leaving.

So I had to call the police. But other than that, it's been really good. So, yeah. Listen, we've called the police probably four times. over the last 18 months. So it happens to the best of us. And if the guess is not leaving, it's a good, it's a good solution, right? When they pull up, typically people are like, hey, we'll roll.

Yeah, for sure. So I don't know. I was going to ask to, like, on Verbo, we have a damage deposit that we, like, take from people before, like, when they make the reservation. But I don't know if there's a way to, like, charge them for smoking inside. Like, I don't know if anybody's encountered that or, like, what they've done. but, like, I'm not sure. Just take that damage deposit, right? Isn't that in your house?

No smoking? So I just take the damage deposit. Okay. Because as damage smoke, yeah. Yeah. I would equate that as the damage deposits out if it was me. Okay. Yeah, I didn't know if I had to, like, somehow quantify it,

because, like, you can't quantify, like, smoke damage, I guess, obviously, but, or it's, like, difficult to, but, yeah, I mean. That's a point. Yeah, true, true. Well, Justin said. AJ, is there a way that you quantify that and people smoking the house? Can you guys hear me better now? Is there any echo?

No. No. No. Yeah. So luckily, I don't think I've had to file any smoking claims. I've had guests that come. Sometimes they'll ask. Honestly, I prefer if guests, they do ask up front.

And then, you know, most of the time, they'll just want to smoke outside because I do have a balcony at my Airbnb. And most smokers, they just kind of like an outside area. But I make it clear, very clear that, you know, I really don't. care about smoking. And that's what people don't understand, like, smokers sometimes. It's not that we care about you smoking or not smoking. It's about the odor and the smell. That, I mean, that's the biggest thing. I haven't had any experiences with damage claims in terms of smoking. I've had plenty of those with Turrell, but that's like a whole separate thing. But Airbnb, I've been lucky enough to,

you know, to run into that issue. But I would imagine, you know, you should have something in your house rules like Justin said. I've never had a verbal booking. I'd imagine if it was an Airbnb booking of mine, I would definitely just charge them, hey, a smoking fee, you know, make sure it's a reasonable amount. I think personally, I, you know, I would come up with something that is just reasonable for yourself. I've seen some extremely excessive ones online, like sometimes up to like $500. But honestly, that's up to the discretion of the host. Honestly, you know, it's your property. So you set the rules. Yeah. I mean, that's what we have in our like, listing and house rules and stuff is it's actually $500 just because we wanted to like

have something kind of extreme so people didn't do it but I mean it still happens maybe yeah maybe I'll charge them part of that I guess I don't know our damage deposit is like 300 so I can't really charge them 500 anyways but yeah I mean I can't blame you for that like I said is that each host's discretion um but you know it's kind out to you on that on that one if you wanted to hit them with 500 you go right ahead but honestly I mean it's up to them you know they you set the rules and They were the ones that went ahead and, you know, went against those rules. Yeah. Yeah, something you can do.

Oh, my go ahead, me. Please. And if there is an odor, a thing you can do, you can go to the auto part store. You can get a thing called Oseum. You can spread in your vents or you can go to like a smoke shop and you can get some blood spray. And it'll clean it. It'll clear it all up like pretty much instantly. Oseum works really good once you spread in the vents.

And then the blood spray just kind of makes it freshen up there. Okay. Oh, Z. OZM. Oh, Z. Okay. This is a PG channel, so we're not going to ask how you know that. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen.

Yeah, message. So, so to your point, to everybody's point, Pam, we have similar rules. And I'm happy that AJ said 500, not 350 as being excessive. Because we do starts the 350, right? Like, we have it right here. We got it clearly written. And the fact that you have a message chain, we're going back and forth with them. I think you have

a clear, and you had to cancel the showing, or the booking. I think you should charge them the full amount, right? And I think that if they leave a bad review, you'll have grounds, depending on what the messages say, to call VRBO and get it removed. Right. Just because, hey,

you know, so yeah, I would charge from the full boat and say, hey, it's clearly listed. And I usually take a screenshot of our rules, not put that as the picture. If there's not a picture of, like, you know, evidence enhanced. Okay. Yeah, we had a I was just going to say I lie, so I take that back. It's just been a while since I've had a smoking claim, which I'm happy about.

I've had maybe about three or four roughly. You know, I think it's for me, you know, I just, I'm going to charge the guest based on, you know, if they've been a troubled guest the entire time of their stay. So sometimes it varies. Maybe I should be a little more strict on that. But that's just, you know, my personal thing. I'm not like out to just get people for money on smoking claims. The rule is there to deter people from smoking, right?

So that's kind of what I mean by, you know, says something that I think is reasonable, but not like too excessive. Yeah, part of it though, AJ is just whatever he has in his house rules, like you just send those standards and procedures up front. That way once it gets to the point to where you can't be the quantifier of it, you know, say once we, you know,

we always talk about scale here. Let's say two years down the road. Like if you got $3.50 in those house, rules and they smoke and that's what they get charged or whatever the 200 150 whatever it is just kind of trying to keep it consistent that way even you know working with Airbnb they'll see like hey every time this guy has a smoking claim it's always the 150 that he's charging the guest you know those things are changing just kind of your standards and procedures yeah with that being said don't listen to go with just and said because that that sounds a more clean like you know as you as you want

to scale you don't have time to be sitting here and uh having discretionatory manners and thinking know if this guest was a good guest or things like that. This is something that I personally do right now, but definitely I will go with that, like just go by the book, the best way to go about it. No, that's kind of, we usually kind of are a little discretionary with it. Like, we've had other people smoke inside, but this was definitely a troubled guest. There were, like, other issues too, so, yeah, I'll probably charge them. That is fair.

That is fair. Anything else top of mind, guys? What you got going on? I recently just switched over to Instant Book today for on Booking. Booking.com and Airbnb. So this is a little experiment that I'm running right now. My occupancy has been really solid. I'm starting to dive into some of the other metrics within Airbnb.

For example, the conversion rate is one. If you don't know what the conversion rate is, I'm sure you guys, you know, you've been with Airbnb, so you know kind of a little bit about the conversion rate. But the conversion rate is basically the ratio of actual bookings compared to like your unique views on Airbnb. So, for example, out of like 100 views, right, you got two bookings out of those 100 views, then your conversion rate would be 2%.

Obviously, that's just a hypothetical example. I forget exactly what my conversion rate is right now. It's usually a pretty low number, but I'm trying to look and see if I can get that up. I'm switching on to instant booking. This is an experimental month. I've been doing well for the past couple months, so I'm just trying to see ways that I can just, you know, do a little bit of incremental improvements to just, you know, hit the next, hit the next level in my stride. Yeah. And I want to say Airbnb actually rewards you for,

and all these other sites reward you for turning on that instant book. I know specifically VRBO, and that's the one that I've had issues with early on in the past before we got everything set up. But VRBO specifically will push it out to the whole Expedia network if you turn on instant book. If you don't have it on, then I think it's just on VRBO. So yeah, I like it, man. And this is, this is a good time to do that, right? With the summer, people are booking like crazy. And have you seen an uptick almost immediately? Or is it too early to tell? It's too early to tell. Like I said, I literally just made the change today on Airbnb. And booking.com I made maybe just a couple days ago. So I'm hoping to see if that would change just how many reservations I can get

and then get in the offer. Definitely, you know, talk to Desmond a little bit about this. So I got a little encouragement from him. And I'm just, you know, looking forward. to seeing what we can get out of making this an instant booking. Nice. And speaking with Desmond, welcome, man. How you doing? And Desmond, you may be on me or maybe me. Can you guys hear it?

I can't hear him. He's not on mute, though, because it was on the screen, but I can't hear him. He's expecting us to read his lips. That's all. That's all. It's the end of the day. All right. Maybe Monday morning when we're fresh.

Wednesday, end of the day, my reading abilities are shot. Here we go. Coming in live. There's a good. You hear me? Yeah, I am. What's up? What's up?

What's up? AJ, I'm glad to hear that. Let us know. Keep us posted on how it goes. Keep me posted, too, specifically. Because I'm interested to see because your case is almost like a case study in, you know, request to book versus instant book. And I would be really curious to know, like, what are your numbers in the request to book space?

Like, how many declines did you do? You know, how many, what's your acceptance versus, you know, decline rate? I don't know if you have those stats readily available, but I'd be super curious to know how that has gone, how that affected your business and what it's going to look like going forward. Right. Yeah, because your premise is basically, and it's a solid premise that, you know, out of all of the inquiries, or I'm sorry, not inquiries, but booking requests, direct booking

requests on your B&B, how many of those do you actually decline? and the answer to that is, I mean, it's really slim, honestly. I can't remember the last time I've declined a direct booking on Airbnb. Yeah, I think that's a solid thought process, and I definitely keep you guys updated on how that goes. Yeah, and I think Airbnb has some good tools built in to where, like, they have to have a good track record and those things of that nature.

It kind of makes it a little bit easier for those people who can instant book. So that's why I never really worried about it on Airbnb. B's front. I think if they don't have that track record, that's where I get the request, but normally I'm approving those two because I'm just trying to get the dollars of the role in, man, man. Yeah. Honestly, I've had just some apprehension. It's kind of just like my little baby that I've been watching grow and, you know, age. And as I've been progressing with my property, I'm starting to, you know, just step back a little bit and see what it can do on its own. but, you know, I'm definitely starting to just, is this a comfortability thing?

You're always just thinking about what could possibly go wrong, what kind of bad guess you to get. But I'm starting to get a little bit more comfortable. Hopefully I don't get too comfortable to the point where you and everything, but that's just kind of like what I've been thinking of lately. Yeah, I definitely understand that, man. I have, I've only had one party in one of my properties. It was some teenagers. For some reason, Airbnb, I don't know why they did it. I think the girl was like 18.

They let her book my place. I have an age limit, but I guess something just kind of got tripped up on their end. And she was able to book my place. She threw a rager for some high school kids. But my neighbors let me know what was going on. So I just kind of, I have floodlight cameras, the ring cameras. So I hit the siren. Then I activated the voice thing and told them this was an unauthorized party

that the authorities have been notified. And within five minutes, all those kids were out of there. I didn't even call the police. It's just like, all right, let me say this. They'll get out of here. and everything was all cool. Was this on an instant book? Yeah, this was a bad.

Yeah, it was, uh, I can't remember if it was an insta book or not. It's just, uh, I don't have it to order, uh, I have an age limit to where, tell them that under a certain age, you can't book my property. But for some reason, uh, she was like 18, she was able to book. Adrian just flipped it back. He's like, no. That's man. I don't know.

He's what that shit. Fun off, man. And we got, uh, we got to, we got to accept an excessive cleaning fee on that because with The green camera, you'd seen like 40 people going in the home. But, you know, my cleaners didn't charge me any more money to clean the home. So we got the excessive cleaning fee. And we got the one day booking. We made, we made money.

Nothing got burned down. Everything was all good. Yeah. And see that point? I like the instant book. The one thing that you can do on there, though, there's a setting. I forget exactly where you can make it to where there's a cutoff on that same day. Because that personally and Justin probably booked that day, that same day.

I actually don't think they booked same day. I think they just kind of in the party. And they probably had been open out the property. They were like, all right, cool. I'm going to get this one day. And this. I don't have a book. We go over there.

This. Like, God. Yeah. And it was like on a Sunday. So I don't have the one day, the two day minimum on the Sunday. It's like, who's throwing a party on the Sunday? But I think Monday was a holiday weekend when they did it. I can't remember what holiday it was.

So they're probably, we're out of school on Monday. So they're like, all, cool. It was just booked this spot for Sunday. And I had guests that had just left that Saturday. So I was like, I'm getting an extra day on a Sunday. I was all game for it. You got to.

You know, boys. No, no. Hey, we all have a lot of interesting stories when it comes to this Air B&B game. But the main thing, and that's why I love kind of coming back in these conversations, is that we own the property. That's the key. Hanging on to the property over time, especially with all that's happening in the metro of Atlanta and all the improvements that are being made to these different neighborhoods.

However, we got to hang on to it right now. It's the Airbnb and midterm rental game. Eventually, the long-term rentals will come back once these rents continue to appreciate. The main thing is that all of us are in the game. We're in the arena and we're playing. And so nobody can judge us, right? Because we're in the arena. So I just wanted to wish everybody an awesome Wednesday.

Thank you for joining tonight, and we will catch you here next week. See, guys. See, guys. See, much. Join us every Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern as we explore different types of investments that can fast track your path to