Troy R. Underwood is an industry disruptor. Part technologist, part economist, and all innovator, he revolutionized the motor vehicle industry with the nation’s first electronic title system for financial institutions, which was later sold for $106 million. His healthcare venture, benefitsCONNECT, innovated healthcare benefits administration and resulted in a highly successful acquisition. His new book is How to Launch Your Side Hustle: Start and Scale a Business with Minimal Capital. Learn more at troyrunderwood.com.  Podcast Highlights Who is Troy Underwood?  Troy considers himself a necessity entrepreneur and has been doing the entrepreneurial thing since elementary school. Troy has sold all sorts of products including greeting cards, seeds, and computers. Whatever the opportunity was, Troy was willing to take advantage of it. For the average entrepreneurial minded person, the problem is having too many ideas. They need to take these ideas and pick one, then execute, and then when they get bored they have to keep pushing instead of flipping to the next one. Ideas are everywhere, execution, perseverance, and discipline is what’s rare. Even a mediocre idea, when executed well, can work out. Troy’s original plan was to become a doctor, not an entrepreneur. It wasn’t until Troy took an economics course on a dare that he realized that he loved the study of economics and completely switched tracks. He kept up his involvement in computers and software development, and found himself in the right place and the right time to offer a solution that jump-started a business.  Is now the right time to start something? Now may actually be a great time to start a new business, especially for those who have been laid off with nothing to go back to. If you’ve been thinking about it for a while and you have an idea, if everything else is relatively stable, now could be the right time to give it a shot. Being an entrepreneur isn’t an exact science, you just have to take the cards you're dealt and play them the best you can. If you’re someone who craves certainty and security, don’t be an entrepreneur. You are able to mitigate some of that risk by being a business owner instead of an entrepreneur, for example opening a franchise which has a higher rate of success. If you’re looking for certainty, you’re not going to find it in your own business.  Who should be an entrepreneur? Creative thinkers and risk takers are the people who should be entrepreneurs. There is a lot of risk and opportunity cost in building a business and you need to be okay with taking that on.  If you’re driven by necessity you are going to have much more motivation to push through the difficult times and figure out solutions to complicated problems that can keep a business running. Why a side hustle instead doing something BIG? Troy compares a side hustle to a rocket ship launch. It’s not just about keeping a side hustle, it’s about building something that you know will be big eventually, something that replaces your full time job in time and is worth investing in. For Troy, it’s not about having a second part time job to make some extra money. It’s about building something that can make a big impact over time. What is the self assessment? Being an entrepreneur is like climbing Mount Everest, it’s not something you do on a casual whim. You need to be mentally and physically prepared for both endeavors and take stock of your temperament and if being an entrepreneur is really for you. Troy spends just as much time talking people out of being an entrepreneur as he does strategizing how to launch their side hustle.  Even if you think you’re unprepared, there is a point where you need to stop reading and start doing. Reference: How to Launch Your Side Hustle: Start and Scale a Business with Minimal Capital, Troy Underwood Troy’s Takeaway You have to be all in and make sure you also have your partner’s buy in as well. There will be bad days and having a support system is very important. Remember that the downsides are more likely than the upsides and if your family isn’t on board with your idea, it’s going to be a struggle. Your mindset and the mindset of the people around you is going to be more responsible for your success or failure than how smart you are. Links: www.troyrunderwood.com How To Launch Your Side Hustle Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

Cashflow Diary™

How to Launch Your Side Hustle with Troy Underwood

Mark Willis, is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, a #1 Best Selling Author and the owner of Lake Growth Financial Services, a financial firm in Chicago, Illinois.  Over the years, he has helped hundreds of his clients take back control of their financial future and build their businesses with sophisticated, tax-efficient financial solutions.  Mark Willis specializes in building custom-tailored financial strategies that are unknown to typical stock-jockeys, attorneys, or other financial gurus.  As co-host of the Not Your Average Financial Podcast, he shares some of his strategies for investing in real estate, saving and paying for college without going broke, and creating an income in retirement you can’t outlive. Mark Willis works with people who want to grow their wealth in ways that are safe and predictable, become their own source of financing, and create tax-free income in retirement. Podcast Highlights Who is Mark Willis?  Mark’s college years are where the story begins. It was then that Mark met his future wife as well as the first woman they rented a room to. The year that they graduated school was 2008 and they left with $120,000 in student loan debt. With no jobs in the middle of a recession that was a big problem. Over the next few years the goal of Mark and his wife was to figure out a way to build true wealth and be better than debt free.  Since then Mark has learned how to become the banker in his own life and become financially immune to recession.   What was the plan you were thinking about going into school pre-2008? Like many students, Mark assumed that the money would keep on coming and didn’t think too much about the future. Studies have shown that the area of the brain associated with our future selves is the same part of the brain that’s associated with thinking about strangers, and how much are you going to save for a stranger’s retirement? The problem is not just the 18 year olds being handed thousands of dollars of student debt, the entire country has been on a trajectory to become a nation of debtors for generations. We have become a nation enslaved to bankers, credit cards, and debt and it’s not the interest that’s the problem, it’s the volume of debt that we are carrying around. Unfortunately the current crisis has hit us at a moment in history where we are completely unprepared for it at a financial level. Mark didn’t graduate with a finance degree and their journey began by taking baby steps towards becoming debt free. They went lean and put as much towards their debt as possible while also doing whatever they could do generate additional passive income. Figuring out the money situation became such a passion that Mark wanted to dive into on a professional level and started working for a CPA in the midst of the Great Recession. That was when he realized that the whole financial industry was a house of cards. Where is it written that we have to put all of our money into things we can’t access, have no control over, and multiple people with our hands in our pockets? The moment where things completely changed was when a mentor of Mark’s suggested that the path most people follow could be wrong.  What needed to be different from what you were previously doing? There were two things. The first was taking action immediately instead of waiting for the perfect conditions. You might make a few mistakes but it’s better than no plan at all. The second was the realization that you finance everything you buy. You are already in the banking business. Either you buy something by getting a loan and paying interest on the money or you buy something with money that you could have been earning interest with. Another big wake up call for Mark was that our relationship with the Wall Street machine is very similar to an abusive relationship. He realized that he needed another way to become financially free and the truth is anytime you lose money is unacceptable. Mark needed to find a place where he could get uninterrupted compound growth on his cash. There are two things that can interrupt growth. Outside influences like the regular decline of the stock market and personal emergencies. Mark’s tool of choice became dividend paying whole life insurance after looking at over 450 different financial products on the market. Whole life insurance allows you to access your money before you retire, grow your money on a guaranteed basis every single year, and use the cash value of the policy as a source of money to buy back your debt.  Mark’s Takeaway It starts with the understanding that you have the same 24 hours that everyone else does. The question is what can you do today to leverage those 24 hours to put you in the best position to maximize your potential. Lift off and activate your potential, now might be just the moment to do that. Links: www.nyafinancialpodcast.com www.growmorewealth.com Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

Be Your Own Banker and Grow More Wealth with Mark Willis

Stu Heinecke is the Hall of Fame “Father of Contact Marketing" and Founder/President of the Contact Marketing Agency and Cartoonlink, which helps sales teams break through using contact marketing solutions to produce critical contact with accounts and prospects. He is a longstanding senior cartoonist for the Wall Street Journal and the bestselling author of How to Get a Meeting with Anyone: The Untapped Selling Power of Contact Marketing and the new book Get the Meeting!: An Illustrative Contact Marketing Playbook.  He hosts Contact Marketing Radio and the How to Get a Meeting With Anyone podcast, and is Co-founder of Cartoonists.org, a coalition of famed cartoonists dedicated to raising funds for charity, while raising the profile of the cartooning art form.   Podcast Highlights Who is Stu Heinecke?  The ability to get meetings with anyone is a kind of superpower. Every great thing that happens in our lives is due to having the right connections at the right time. Stu studied marketing at USC but cartooning had been something that he always loved, so much so that by the time he was in college he was getting some of his work published in the newspapers in Los Angeles. Cartoons have an incredible power to captivate people’s attention so they became a fundamental element to Stu’s marketing strategies.  Back in the early days of marketing, David Ogilvy used to say “humor doesn’t work in advertising, and people don’t buy from clowns.” Stu was one of the people proving him wrong. Initially there was a lot of resistance against the idea, but Stu was able to convince a couple of his first clients, including Rolling Stone, to give it a try and they ended up getting extraordinary results. Contact Marketing In marketing you are always testing a new campaign against a control group, usually the most effective thing the company has ever put out. Stu’s first test campaigns beat out the controls of both Rolling Stone and Bon Appetit and became their new records. He realized that he needed to reach out to some of the key players in the magazine industry and sent each of them a customized cartoon. Most marketers use the 1% rule to measure a response rate against the performance of a campaign, for Stu’s campaign he got a 100% response rate, and they also all became clients of his, so his conversion rate was 100% as well. That initial contact marketing campaign launched Stu’s business and career. How can we cut through the noise with contact marketing? Contact marketing is not just about cartooning, that’s only one way of breaking through.  One of Stu’s favorite contact marketing examples involves a guy named Dan Walshman. Dan is a turnaround specialist and works with CEOs of companies that are in trouble. After combing the business news each day looking for earnings reports, when he finds one that looks to be suffering he gets a beautiful sword created that’s engraved with the CEO’s name on it. He sends that to them with a handwritten note and has been getting a 100% response from that campaign as well. You don’t have to spend a large amount of money per person to create a visual metaphor for your business, it just has to be an item of fascination that conveys a message. Examples include ultra realistic fake food and other similar items. Generally speaking, contact marketing is not about scale, it’s about effectiveness. Creating a top ten list of people that you want to get through to that would be your dream clients is the best target for contact marketing.  Is there a type of business where Contact Marketing doesn’t work? Direct to consumer businesses are probably not the best place for contact marketing. If you’re doing business to business selling there probably isn’t anyone that couldn’t benefit from this kind of personalization. The thing you want is for people to receive your marketing campaign and think “Wow! I love the way this person thinks.” Right now is the opportunity of a lifetime to make connections with people.  Is there a wrong way to do Contact Marketing? If you’re trying to go for humor you do have to be careful. The intent along with the depth and quality of thinking with what you come up with is crucial. One way you could make people mad right now is sending them something without their permission. Giving half a gift may also not be a great approach.  If you send the right thing to the right person, it will end up in their office for the rest of their career. You’re trying to create flip moments, where the person goes from not knowing who you are to not being able to wait to meet you, which is a high bar so you need to do more than just send them a box of candy. How does the person respond? You are the follow up path so the strategy is dependent on you making contact. This can be automated somewhat with advertising but it really needs a personal touch. With the right approach you can actually turn a CEO’s assistant into a valuable ally. Reference: How to Get a Meeting with Anyone: The Untapped Selling Power of Contact Marketing, Stu Heinecke Stu’s Takeaway The easiest and quickest thing you can do is something called deep personalization. Social media has made it easy to gather a lot of information about nearly anybody. Discover what they are interested in and use that as a starting off point. This isn’t scalable, but you don’t need scale right now. You just need something effective that you can start right now. Links: stuheinecke.com Stu Heinecke on LinkedIn Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

Contact Marketing Secrets: How to Get a Meeting With Anyone

As founder of Money Ripples, host of The Chris Miles Money Show, and co-author of the book Entrepreneur on Fire, Chris Miles is a leading authority on quickly creating wealth by increasing monthly cash flow and creating passive income. He has shown hundreds of thousands internationally how to free up or generate tens of thousands of dollars each year! Chris has been featured in US News, CNNMoney, and Bankrate.com and has a reputation for getting his clients fast, proven results.  Many of his clients have the option to retire in less than 5-10 years, and Chris himself was able to retire twice by age 39! Chris’s passion is helping entrepreneurs, and high-income employees become financially prosperous by finding and fixing their money leaks and creating passive income. Chris and his family live in Utah, but enjoy escaping to warmer weather during the winter months. In addition to helping his clients increase their cash flow, Chris is a talented ballroom dancer, choreographed ballroom dance routines for Utah Valley University, and got 5th place in his third grade spelling bee.  Podcast Highlights What’s going on in your world today?  Since the last time Chris was on the show nearly five years ago Chris was able to retire for the second time in his life. The first time he retired was at the age of 28, this time around at the age of 39 Chris was looking for something new. He never wanted to be full time again and as an educator at heart Chris continued working on his podcast and teaching people the same strategies that he used. Chris is looking at the current situation in the world and seeing all the opportunities available to those that have been prepared. Preparation The previous recession caused Chris a lot of problems and that’s when he learned the key lesson of never relying on only a few streams of income, because when those get shut off you’re out of luck. Chris has a number of clients that are currently unable to work but because they have set up multiple streams of income beforehand they are able to ride out the problem.  If you weren’t prepared for the coronavirus, you need to do whatever you can. So many people have no idea what to do right now it’s like they’ve been stunned. There are several areas that people are not taking advantage of their money right now. One is the money in mutual funds and retirement plans, people pouring more money into the stock market right now are making a big mistake. What should people do right now? Get lean, get liquid, and get out. Even during the great depression there were people that prospered and those that did were the ones who got lean and were looking for opportunities. Liquid cash is where you want to be right now, having enough cash on hand to weather the storm is crucial. Money never comes from the government in the time you expect so don’t rely on them for help right now.  If you have time, start looking for ways to create value and make money. That could be short term rentals or other forms of real estate. Creating Passive Income The one big mistake that Chris made in the prior recession was in aiming for growth instead of plain old cash flow. The result was he went way too big on his deals and ended up losing the properties. This time, instead of going for sexy Chris went for certain. The trouble is flashy $80,000 checks are interesting and people like seeing that. No one is particularly impressed when someone makes another $400 this month because their renter paid again. Nobody is showing off the time they lost $20,000 on a deal. When the market is good, it’s easy to show up as a winner but now is the time when we’ll see who the real players are. If you’re concerned about getting into real estate or short term rentals right now because of the state of the market, you have to realize that it was actually harder before. Before people just had to show up, but if you’re actually providing a good service you have a tremendous opportunity. The key principle is always looking where you can create value for people. What problem can you solve. Listen to what people are complaining about or desperate about, those are the best areas to tackle. What’s never coming back? Commercial real estate like office space is going to completely fall apart. The area that Chris is paying the most attention to is multifamily as he thinks there will be a push from people trying to get out of the urban sprawl in favor of moving to more rural areas. Many multifamily operators were over leveraged so there could be some opportunities there when those people look to sell at a discount. What’s going to become bigger than it was before? Telecommuting is going to become more prevalent with more companies realizing they can shrink their office size and make more profit. The companies that are willing to adapt are the ones that are going to win. Transportation is going to change. Even Tesla is struggling right now because of falling gas prices and changing driving habits. What would you say to someone who’s feeling like they are in a bad place right now? You are exactly where you’re supposed to be right now. In the last recession Chris was over a million dollars in debt and wouldn’t have learned the things he knows now if he didn’t go through that time. He lost his house, his car, and most everything else but he learned that there are always opportunities and ways to create wealth if you understand the right principles. It always comes down to how you can create value for other people and solve problems. Who do you know and what can you provide? If you’re not the one with the solution for someone’s problem, who can you refer them to that can help? Chris’ Takeaway Remember that there is a reason behind your pain that will lead to a better gain. You can be a positive change in people’s lives by understanding and sharing the core principles of prosperity and wealth and creating passive income. Links: moneyripples.com The Chris Miles Money Show Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

Creating Passive Income with Chris Miles

Kyle Stanley is the host of the Fearless Flipping podcast where he educates new hungry real estate investors about best practices for getting started. We flip the roles into today’s episode with J being interviewed for Kyle’s podcast. Find out how J is conquering the coronavirus and adjusting his short term rental business to be even more successful than before.  Podcast Highlights How did you get to this point and what brought you into the short term rental business?  The keyword for J is cash flow, everything he’s done in terms of business is around generating an income without physically going to work. Due to some very challenging physical ailments where both J and his wife were unable to work and earn money, they needed to figure out a solution which is what led him to real estate. Everything he should have been doing should have been geared towards creating cash flow. The next two years were transformational for J’s business. He had no money, terrible credit, no way to earn an income, and was selling his possessions on eBay when a friend recommended he start investing in real estate. His friend didn’t let those obstacles stop him and in a relatively short amount of time J closed his first subject-to deal. How did you find your first deal? You need to move at the speed of instruction. We need to be more like Walmart. Walmart perfected just in time inventory, we need to perfect just in time learning. There are certain parts of a real estate transaction that you don’t need to know yet, you need to learn the first step and then go out and take that step. There is no real benefit to understanding everything before you take any action.  Trust yourself to learn what you need to know when you need to know it and go out there and take action. That’s exactly how J found and put together his first deal, one piece at a time. Real estate is a skill the marketplace rewards. We can all learn to play the real estate game once we’ve been told the rules and practiced a bit. Within 3 weeks of closing his first deal J closed an additional 10 deals in the span of a week, which was a complete mindset shift for him. Fear is what holds all of us back, but we like to tell ourselves that we’re just being prudent. When you’re afraid any excuse will do. You have to ask yourself has anyone overcome the thing you’re afraid of because if that’s the case, the fear is not an excuse.  How are you operating right now? Most short term rental operators think about the business incorrectly and they need to understand what the problem actually is. Changing your thinking from “I have an Airbnb business” to “I have a short term rental business” will unlock your mindset and allow you to see new opportunities. The short term rental business has existed since the American Civil War. When the coronavirus hit, J’s business took a significant hit but that hasn’t removed the need for what his business provides.  J’s business is still on all the marketplaces like Airbnb and Booking.com and he’s now adding additional channels that he planned on including later in the year. He’s also increasing the amount of online advertising he’s doing and offering coupons and discounts to previous customers. At the end of the day it comes down to whether you understand the problem. It’s not like the business is bad, it’s just that the person with the need doesn’t have your number and that’s fundamentally a marketing problem. The only reason you feel what you’re feeling right now is because you don’t have a plan of attack to be able to replace what’s missing. J is changing his approach to finding customers and that includes talking to local city governments to house police, firefighters, and other first responders that need to be quarantined. This period of time is when we are seeing the weak being weeded out and the one’s with an “Airbnb business” fall away. The economy is going to be hit when the virus finally goes away and we’re going to see areas with active rentals disappear, but that means that the ones that survive will have a major opportunity.  J is not offloading any of his inventory, he’s actually looking at expanding his business over the next few months. What do you say to the person that is thinking about pausing their short term rental plans right now? It was your plan before so that hasn’t changed, you just have to change your perspective. Maybe you thought it was going to be easy before and you need to adjust your expectations but you were going to jump in before when the market was 40% more saturated and expensive. There are many aspects of the business that may be more challenging or scary, but the numbers have been made much better.  Every entrepreneur on the planet is undergoing the same changes and looking at making adjustments to how they work. This is an opportunity that’s going to take more mental and emotional work than it would have two months ago, but if you can protect your mindset you can be successful. Links: www.cashflowdiary.com/howmanyunits Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

Conquering Corona With Kyle Stanley

Let me introduce you to Scott Smith, a new breed of real estate attorney with a great sense of humor and a gift for simplifying the complex. His Austin startup, Royal Legal Solutions, has a different take on protecting your assets including real estate investments and already serves thousands of clients across all 50 states. As a former litigation attorney, Scott has a deep understanding of how lawsuits really work. More importantly, he is a real estate investor himself, with property in 10 states. Now he’s sharing his information with the world and is committed to helping other real estate investors protect their futures. Podcast Highlights   Who is Scott Royal Smith?    At the heart of it all, Scott is a guy that likes to solve hard problems and then show people the solutions he’s found. He can then connect with people in an empathetic way and help them make positive changes in their lives.  Spiritual development is very important to Scott, the biggest KPI that Scott focuses on is his sense of well being and how he shows up in the world. Awareness of your own being is the only way to connect with other people. It doesn’t matter how great your ideas are unless you can connect with what’s true with somebody else. Scott’s mindset was passed down by his mother who taught him that there are two types of people in the world, people who think things happen to them and people that think that things happen for them. When life happens for you, you have a responsibility to reflect on and grow from your experiences.   Why did you choose to become an attorney?   Scott started his career as a litigator suing insurance companies with the overall goal of trying to change the industry. One thing he found along the way was you have to be really careful about what you want because you just might get it, and if it turns out you don’t like it you’re in trouble. Scott had been investing in real estate at the same time and was making more money investing than he was in his career, so he just decided to make the switch on what he was focusing on. It was in the process of learning the real estate investing ropes that he encountered a bunch of interesting problems that a lot of people were constantly asking about and that was the seed for Royal Legal Solutions. Now he teaches people how to make complex real estate investing problems simple. Scott doesn’t consider himself an attorney now. He may hold a law license, but what he does now is focus on helping investors.   From a business owner perspective, what are the things that we should be thinking about but are overlooking right now?   Real estate investing is also a business once you get to a certain point and protecting your assets becomes absolutely crucial. The things that impact business owners will also impact real estate investors. The first step is to tap into any established lines of credit you have. Long term secured debt is ideal with low interest rates. Pull out as much cash as you can because we don’t know what’s going to happen with liquidity markets and they are probably going to seize up. If they do and you have cash, you will have money on hand to take advantage of opportunities that come up. If it doesn’t happen the worst case scenario is you pay a few percentage points. Once you’re in a liquid position, just sit on the cash. The second major risk in protecting your assets is facing a lawsuit. When economies go down, people start to look for ways to use the law to take other people’s stuff. Taking steps to put anonymity into your assets is a good way to increase security. Insurance is only your first layer of protection, creating a system that anonymizes your assets and keeps them all separated is much more effective.  The third step is to figure out your estate planning and making sure your family is taken care of in the event that you die. It’s important to be strategic about estate planning because you don’t want the government making those decisions for you. Without a plan in place, your wealth can get locked up without your family being able to get access, possibly for months or longer.   What if you don’t have lines of credit, how should you be protecting your assets?   There are ways to take all the money out of your retirement account without paying penalties. Take that money and all your various retirement accounts from other employers and roll them into a Solo 401(k), once that’s done you can loan yourself back up to half the value without a penalty.  Scott has also created a network of investors to remove the risk of people doing mutual loans to each other that essentially allows people to access all the money in their retirement accounts. All these steps are just things that you should have been doing already, ways to shore up your life. Incremental benefits are going to be things that allow people to survive this crisis because there is no silver bullet right now.   Scott’s Takeaway   Connect with the smartest people you can find who are also high action people. The people who are taking lots of action to solve problems are the ones who are going to survive and thrive. The people just talking are not going to make it. If everyone is talking about something, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be wrong. Remember, if the popular opinion were right everyone would already be rich.  Links: royallegalsolutions.com scott@royallegalsolutions.com Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

Protecting Your Assets In A Changing Marketplace

With a diverse career crossing professional services, mining services, civil construction, manufacturing, industrial relations Jacqueline has used  public speaking-centric strategies extensively to launch, pivot and manage both growth and crisis across all of those organizations. For 15 years Jacqueline has successfully trained consultants, professionals, business owners, executives and the C-Suite in public speaking, sales, presenting, core messaging, negotiating and positioning, before turning her attention more specifically to the craft of speaking in early 2017. Since then Jacqueline has worked with 100’s of emerging and established speakers across Australia and the USA. Jacqueline’s training has been delivered to some of Australia’s major corporate brands including Tattersalls (The Lott) and Anglicare, and her programs have been picked up by the Australian Institute of Sport Gold Medal Alumni Program in Canberra, and she has recently been awarded Certified Speaking Professional.   Podcast Highlights Who is Jacqueline Nagle? Jacqueline is a girl that had a plan for her life, one that involved becoming a lawyer in New York. But life happens and in her early 20’s she moved to Melbourne and fell into a job in recruitment where she discovered she loved the work. What originally started out as a temporary six week position turned into a sixteen year career.   Much of Jacqueline’s later success can be attributed to all the different things she learned in that career. It was where she found her first mentor and learned that one of the best ways to excel is to be insatiably curious and constantly learning. Her mentor also instilled Jacqueline’s love of story for conveying lessons and that became the foundation for how she operates now. Jacqueline’s moment where she decided to venture out on her own occurred after she made herself redundant as CEO at a company she was working at. After a three month transition period, Jacqueline was in her early 40’s and had a moment to consider what she really wanted to do. She tapped into her love for public speaking and decided to go to every speaking event within a 50 km radius. That was when she found that there are actually very few good public speakers in the world and that something was missing. She put together a pilot program and got some great success teaching people that they have something powerful to say and when they know how to say it, they can create something powerful as a result. Plans Change Sometimes our plans change, but that doesn’t mean that the goal stops existing, just that the way you get there becomes different. For Jacqueline, she didn’t become a New York lawyer but she found that the skills she learned over the course of her career allowed her to operate similar to a lawyer. It wasn’t until she realized that was she comfortable with the fact that her plan had changed. We need to recognize that this is a moment in time, and it may be hard and difficult and your path may change, but the goal is still there. We have to let go of follow a rigid path and adapt to changing circumstances. The thing that we love to do and the way that we bring value to the world hasn’t changed. What does it mean to honor the audience’s time? Even if you’re speaking for free you have to honor your audience’s time because they are giving you their most precious commodity. You have to be there to serve, not to be self indulgent. You have the privilege of the platform when you’re speaking. Explain to people what you know to be true about the world through story and give them something of value. Storytelling is not about you, it’s about creating belief and trust and connecting with the people in front of you at an unconscious level. How can today’s entrepreneurs get their message across with public speaking? The stage has changed, we have podcasting, video channels, and public speaking at conferences when the world goes back to normal. No matter what the channel is, the very first thing is to be crystal clear on your message. What is the throughline in what you do and what do you want to be famous for? Another important question is whether you have the right to speak on a topic. Do you have the experience and learning around a topic to be able to speak confidently? If not, you should hold off. If you’re building a craft and focused on the learning of that it pulls your head out of the drama and the trauma that you’re currently in. Being heard is still important, and if you haven’t built the skill of messaging and language, you won’t be able to adjust your positioning and be authentic. Language skills are vital in a crisis, without the ability to articulate your thoughts you can’t really think. The ability to unpack your thinking and repack in a way that the world wants to hear is always in demand. Can anyone learn how to speak in public? Jacqueline started out believing that everyone has a voice and deserves to be heard, but she’s shifted from that to “everyone has a voice and some people should shut up”. If you’re speaking from a place of ego you should stop, which is something that we see often on social media. If you’re a natural speaker, imagine what could happen if you honed that skill. The biggest challenge that stops people from speaking are the internal words within someone that hold them back. Jacqueline’s Takeaway Go and find your three favorite public speakers and listen to them. Figure out what it is that you love about them because whatever that is is a mirror into yourself if you were to speak. If you don’t know your three favorites, watch the top 10 TED talks and pick three of them. Who you like and how they speak are the keys to understanding who you are as a speaker.   Links: Jacqueline Nagle on LinkedIn speakableyou.com/interviews Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

Public Speaking Tips and Strategies with Jacqueline Nagle

Kyle Stanley is the host of the Fearless Flipping podcast where he educates new hungry real estate investors about best practices for getting started. Kyle is also a master with AirBnB and believes it's the best form of almost-completely-passive income in today's economy.  Podcast Highlights   Who is Kyle Stanley?    Kyle doesn’t like the term “serial entrepreneur”, he prefers the idea of FOCUS (focus on one course until success). Kyle had to make a lot of adjustments over his career based on his skills and what he enjoyed. Kyle started out as a sports anchor in Colorado for a local news station, started a sports videographer company, and moved into the MLM world where he got his first taste of the idea of passive income. In 2018, Kyle’s dad’s health took a turn for the worst and ended up in a hospice which led to Kyle slowing down and reflecting on what he really wanted to do with his life. He began to listen to podcasts on real estate investing and found the idea to really resonate with him which was how he ended up getting involved with fixing and flipping homes. Coincidentally Kyle had been house hacking his home with an AirBnB business without realizing that that it would also count as working in real estate. Once he really started to look into what else he could do with an AirBnB business, Kyle went from earning $1000 a month to $15,000 a month over the span of five months in 2019. Even in the days of the coronavirus Kyle’s short term rental business is still doing very well.   Why videography?   Being a sports anchor means being a one man band so Kyle learned a lot of different skills as part of the job. He also learned that he didn’t particularly love being on the news and he saw an opportunity to make videos for athletes to help them get into college. He took what he learned working in news and put it into a business that he believed he could thrive in, but lacking mentorship at the time was a serious downside.   The Passive Income Transformation   Kyle hadn’t even heard the words passive income until he was 26 years old. Kyle’s model for entrepreneurship was his father who ran a very successful business, but running the business meant extremely long hours. When Kyle got older he realized that his father was a slave to his business, something Kyle did not want to be, and it wasn’t until Kyle started working in the MLM did he get exposed to the idea of outsourcing and making a business more passive. Getting around people on a higher level that had learned how to create systems that can automate income is what first changed Kyle’s mindset around business. The missing piece was something that he was passionate about and real estate ended up being the key. Kyle now helps more people in the short term rental industry than he ever did pushing vitamins and supplements.   The Allure of Real Estate and an “AirBnB Business”   The big thing for Kyle when he got started flipping properties was helping people get a better return on their money. Creating all the job opportunities at the same time was a nice bonus as well. Kyle is also a numbers person, so analyzing a deal and crunching the numbers makes him excited. When he started looking at AirBnB as a business and he found that he could make $20,000 to $30,000 on one project, life changed overnight. Getting comfortable with the reality of earning on a monthly basis what you used to earn on a yearly basis is one of the first mindset shifts that you have to get through when it comes to real estate and short term rentals.  Generally speaking, most entrepreneurs never actually become entrepreneurs. They want to have control and are actually technicians in their business with the work dictating their life. 99% of business owners essentially just own their job. The great thing about real estate is Kyle can take the talent out of it and teach it to people. Until recently, Kyle was only putting in an hour or two a week of work to manage 11 different listings, the majority of which was communicating with his personal assistant. The majority of the skills involved in the business is basically outsourcing particular tasks, which is much simpler than trying to teach someone something like how to sell.   Is the short term business model dead?   March 12 was when everything became real for Kyle. He got 11 cancellations that day and then a short two days later got hit with another wave of cancellations. He realized that he needed to plan ahead and figure out the worst case scenario for his business in the event that things shutdown in his area. Right now Kyle is only focusing on month to month rentals for locals who need a place to stay. He started contacting realtors, loan officers, and pretty much everyone he could to let them know that he’s looking for month to month renters to weather the storm. He managed to adapt his business to the current situation and is now back in the green. It’s not that the AirBnB business/short term rental business is over, it’s just different and you need to figure out what you need to do to adjust. It takes time and work to adapt but it can be done. Kyle has managed to change course in a way that allows him to avoid switching completely over to long term rentals.   Kyle’s Takeaway   In the next 24 to 48 hours, spend the time crunching the numbers and figure out what plan B and plan C looks like before you jump into anything. You need to understand the dynamics of a deal beyond the numbers and if it can still work out if the coronavirus breaks out. Having someone by your side that can help you make decisions is also a huge benefit. Mentorship and guidance is one of the most important things you can have in life. Links: www.fearlessflipping.com Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

What To Do When The AirBnB Business Changes

Chad Peterson is an expert business broker and the founder of Peterson Acquisitions, an award-winning M&A firm. Chad’s firm handles transactions in the $1 million to $25 million range, with some deals exceeding $25 million.  He works with companies all over the United States and has completed international deals as well. Peterson Acquisitions was recently named by one publication as the #1 ranked business broker in the United States. What sets Chad Peterson apart from all other business brokers is his aggressive style, work ethic and tenacity that are rooted in his humble beginnings.  Chad Peterson is a self-made entrepreneur that has been in the trenches. He has started, built and sold 6 of his own businesses. Chad wrote the book “From Blue to White: A Working Man’s Guide to Self-Employment”. Best-selling author Scott Alexander of “Rhinoceros Success” wrote the foreword. He also wrote the book “Swinging Doors: A Guide to Selling Your Business” and is the host of the podcast:Business Brokers: Buying, Selling & Growing Businesses Podcast Highlights   Who is Chad Peterson?    If you study people who are driven you will always find a point in time where it all began. For Chad, he grew up in a tumultuous house with a difficult upbringing and early on his defining moment was realizing that he had to do things on his own. In his words “if it was meant to be it was up to me.” He worked hard as a kid, earned his own money and quickly enough people started to recognize that and praise him for his effort.  As a natural entrepreneur, Chad had difficulty in school and found himself in the work program. He eventually became a commercial pilot but that career was cut short by 9/11 and he quickly went back to his entrepreneurial roots. He built several companies and sold them over the next few years until the second inflection point of his life. In 2008, Chad had built a company that had 120 employees and was making $7 to $10 million a year. The trouble was the company was in the subprime mortgage industry and was completely destroyed by the crisis. In only a few short months, Chad went from a millionaire to broke. Instead of being defeated, Chad picked himself up and built a different company selling home services and things carried on. Eventually people started asking him how to build and sell businesses, which is how Chad ended up where he is now and a top business broker in the United States.   The Impact of Mindset   Chad feels that his mindset of his life being up to him is responsible for at least 85% of his success. When you’re hungry in your soul, you will make things happen. Success is survival, and for Chad if he doesn’t feel like he’s progressing he feels like he’s dying.   Why $700 to $1000 a day?   Home services between $700 and $1000 are still affordable for most Americans, even during a recession. By going for volume instead of a high price tag he knew that more people would take him up on his offer. During hard economic times, volume will beat out margin and a steady flow of income is important to keeping things going.   Taking Risk When There Is Fear In The Marketplace   There are people who act now that will make a huge amount of money during this crisis. It may seem logical to wait when you’re afraid or uncertain, but that’s what kills an economy. We are in a collapse scenario and fear is only going to add to the speed of things falling apart.  As an example, Chad recently started a new business that is going to be heavily impacted by the coronavirus, and has decided to pivot his strategy by creating another business that’s more catered to the current situation. Just because times are tough, that doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities out there. Now is the time to test your entrepreneurial nerves.   Is it a good time to buy or sell a business?   It’s not the right time to buy every business, but it is the right time to buy some businesses. There are a number of businesses that are going to thrive in this kind of chaotic environment, you just have to find one that’s recession proof.    Why do people miss their zone of genius?   Fear is often the reason that people don’t discover what they are truly good at. Sit back and think about your life and what you’ve done and you might find the answer for what you should be doing. There should be some fear involved mixed in with passion and excitement. Where there is no passion, there is no profit. When you’re doing well is the time to sell the business, don’t wait until you lose the passion for what you’re doing and for revenues to drop before looking to sell your business. Reference: Swinging Doors: A Guide to Selling Your Business, Chad Peterson   Chad’s Takeaway   Right now is the time to go inside yourself and figure out where you are at. Right now is a defining moment for people and it’s the time to decide where you can assert yourself in this market. Now is the time to take an inventory and reach out to people. Most failures exist because the person hasn’t done what it takes to get behind their idea. Be ready to take massive action once you decide what the answer is. Links: petersonacquisitions.com Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

This Is Your Defining Moment with Chad Peterson

Annie Dickerson and Julie Lam are the co-founders and managing partners of Goodegg Investments, a premier real estate investing company that helps people learn about and invest in real estate syndications (group investments).   They are both moms (Annie has 2 kids and Julie has 3) and are passionate about helping other families build passive income so they can spend more time with the people they love, doing the things they love, and living a life by design.  Podcast Highlights   Who is Annie Dickerson and Julie Lam?    Annie started as an elementary school teacher and after setting out to buy her first house with her husband she was exposed to the idea of house hacking. They purchased a row home, something pretty common in DC, and rented out the bottom portion to help pay down their mortgage. After that experience they started looking at investing in other properties out of state, and that later developed into property syndications and getting to know Julie in the process. Julie started investing in real estate in 2009 with her husband. They purchased a number of properties in the Bay area and as the market started to mature they sold off a number of those properties in 2013 and 2016. It was then that Julie started to really think about the best way of investing that will work the hardest for her lifestyle. That’s when she realized that investing for cash flow could be the solution. She quickly realized that that’s a long term strategy and she wanted to be able to scale. That led her to the idea of getting into passive investing in multifamily real estate with syndications. Julie and Annie met at a real estate conference and being among the few women at that conference, they hit it off. Partnership wasn’t discussed at that point but as they got to know each other and found that they each loved complimentary facets of the business, partnering up seemed like a great idea. Annie loves the content creation and education portion of the business and Julie loves the deal making and negotiating aspects, so they work very well together.   Why GoodEgg Investments?   GoodEgg is about building your nest egg and investing for good. It’s not about just putting your money to work for you, it’s also about leaving a legacy for your family and having a positive impact on society. Coming up with a business name can be a major challenge for new entrepreneurs. The process that Annie went through involved looking at the existing names of businesses in the space, and then thinking outside the box to try to find something really unique. The idea behind the name and the concept was what really brought Julie on board.   Creating Content As A Real Estate Investor   Before working Annie, Julie spent a huge amount of time on the phone with potential investors answering the same questions over and over again. What was missing was a better thought leadership platform that allowed people to get to know them. After establishing their platform and making content creation the foundation of the business model, those conversations became much easier as the investor often felt like they already knew them, liked them, and trusted them. Content is your marketing. You can’t skip it because you have to make sure that people know who are and what you’re doing.    How did you identify what kind of customer you’re serving?   In the beginning, Annie and Julie tried to appeal to everyone with money which lead to their content feeling very generic and boring. They needed to change things up and started thinking about the investors that resonated most with their message. They decided to narrow down their audience to young working parents that have been climbing the corporate ladder for a while and aren’t living the lifestyle they want.  They created a customer avatar named Jen that helps them create content whenever they need direction. When they don’t know what to talk about, they think about where Jen is in her journey and think about the questions she has or where she’s stuck at the moment and what piece of content they could make that could help. Once you understand your customer avatar at a deep level, when you talk with potential investors it’s almost like you are reading their mind. You are able to answer their questions before they even ask them and easily take a cold lead to an excited investor.   How does your customer avatar influence your deals?   Annie and Julie’s avatar is a mix of both of them so she guides them in their acquisition process very closely. This leads them to look for conservative investments that they would have wanted to invest in seven years ago when they didn’t know as much about the business. It also helps them understand if a deal is too risky or just doesn’t fit the kind of deal they are looking for. They can also keep in mind the win/win nature of a deal and being able to feel good about their investments, that their money is being put to good use in their community. One of the first things that Annie and Julie look for in an investment is that it cash flows right off the bat. It’s the same whether it’s a multifamily property or a five hundred unit syndication, just on a different scale. Multiple backup plans contribute to the conservative aspect of the deals they look for. Most of the properties they buy are typically 80%-90% occupied with an LTV of 60%-80%, it’s important to Annie and Julie to hedge against any kind of downturn in the market. As an investor, it’s important to understand the definition of conservative for the person that you’re talking to because the word can mean many things to many people.   What is your plan to deal with a future where taxes and inflation are on the rise?   By investing in assets that allow you to leverage your money and take advantage of certain tax benefits, the kinds of deals that Annie and Julie are hedging against just such a scenario. With syndication deals, you can get access to a lot of the upsides of real estate investing without having to deal with the responsibilities of being a landlord.   Annie and Julie’s Takeaway   The first thing to do is sign up for the GoodEgg Investor Club. Most people don’t stop to think about their investing goals, so your first step is to understand what you want from your investments. Think about what your “why” is, because when you’re clear on your “why” the voice in your head that’s going to try to stop you isn’t going to be able to prevent you from taking action. Links: goodegginvestments.com Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

GoodEgg Investments Founders Talk Real Estate Syndications

Gina Bianchini is the Founder & CEO of Mighty Networks. Her mission at Mighty Networks is to usher in a new era of creative business built on community. Mighty serves “creators with a purpose” selling experiences, relationships, and expertise to their members via community, content, online courses, and subscription commerce–all offered in one place under the creator’s brand.  Before Mighty Networks, Gina and Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen launched Ning, a pioneering global platform for creating niche social networks. Under her leadership, Ning grew to ~100 million people in 300,000 active social networks across subcultures, professional networks, entertainment, politics, and education.  In addition to Mighty Networks, Gina serves as a board director of TEGNA (NYSE: TGNA), a $3 billion dollar broadcast and digital media company, and served as a board director of Scripps Networks (NASDAQ: SNI), an $12 billion dollar public company which owns HGTV, The Food Network, and The Travel Channel that merged with Discovery Communications in 2018.  Podcast Highlights   Who is Gina Bianchini?    The seed that ultimately became Gina’s mission in her work was growing up in a time and place and a family of incredibly curious people. Gina’s father had a passion for restoring old cars and her mother was always curious about the world around her, so much so that Gina can’t remember a time when she wasn’t reading a book.  Growing up in Cupertino gave Gina incredible opportunities because she found herself surrounded by people who would go on to be involved with things that would become LinkedIn, Facebook, and other major social networks. It was then that her friend came to her with the idea to create a new platform that gave people the ability to create social apps the same way they could create websites.  The common thread in Gina’s work has been the realization that people are awesome. Being able to bring people together around an interest or passion or goal is something that unlocks people’s abilities to create and participate in the world. One of the most powerful ways to go from point A to point B is through connecting with other people.   What is so different about Mighty Networks?   Gina has a very specific definition of community that helps describe what she is doing, namely “bringing people together to master something interesting or important together”. The real power is when there is a person leading a community and curating it to create those conditions of mastery.  The network is the evolution and refinement of what’s going on at the intersection of online courses, podcasts, and communities. When you move away from thinking about all of those as separate pieces and start thinking your mission is to create the conditions for people to master something interesting together, that’s when the magic happens. People are craving transformation in their lives, and being able to master something interesting is how they do that. If they could do that on their own by reading a book, they would, but that isn’t always the case. That’s why they pull out their credit card and pay for courses and communities. People will pay a premium for being a part of courses or communities that master something interesting or important together in pursuit of results or transformation in people’s lives.   What was your first step into entrepreneurship like?   Gina passionately believes that it’s as simple as taking on one or two new risks every week. If you can take one or two new risks each day, you will progress more quickly than you would believe is possible. The role of curator and community builder and designer is going to become more important to people’s ability to create passive income. You will be providing them another source of value in the connections they are able to make and the journey they’re on to mastering something interesting. When Gina got started with Mighty Networks, it was just about getting to the point where they had a product that delivered what they promised to the community creators. Now it’s about being on the journey with creators and mastering the ability to create new connections. Once Gina started doing one thing she was afraid of each day, she noticed that momentum was building in her life. Now she always looks for the things that she’s afraid of and just does them right away. We often spend time planning the perfect party instead of just having a party and dealing with what happens.   Would this work with a physical product or service?   The idea of a network does work with physical products or services, but it does have to have some element of education or information to it. Nobody wakes up in the morning thinking that they really wanted to meet other Coca Cola drinkers, but if you’re talking about making Coca Cola together you’re on to something. Events and memberships in real life can be very powerful as long as it’s still centered around the idea of mastering something interesting together.   Have creators been using your service in the way you thought?   The way the information market works most of the time is with a number of tools and trying to get them all working together. Creators often contort their business so that Facebook is the central pillar and everything else revolves around that, but there are so many better ways to build a business. By putting people and content together in one place, you create something that is greater than the sum of its parts. In the beginning, online courses weren’t part of the plan and many of the features actually come from suggestions from Mighty Network users. The platform as it exists today has been co-created with the very people that use the software. Being an entrepreneur and business owner means there is always another level and a next step to get better at what you’re doing.    The Downsides of Facebook   Facebook was not built for people to master something interesting together, it was built to keep you there as long as possible which is why so much of the content is based on outrage. Facebook’s interaction model is the equivalent of going to a retreat to focus on the things that you care about in the middle of Times Square. You also never get a holistic sense of the groups that you are a part of. They are designed for broad interests with a light touch. Facebook groups are terrible for someone who has paid money because they can’t get a certain result on their own to actually meet the promise of the transformation. As a group admin, only 3% of the group will even see your posts. The real tragedy of a Facebook group is that people will not be able to really get to know each other. In an age of isolation, the power of creators is in bringing people together and facilitating relationships with one another.   Gina’s Takeaway   The number one thing is that if you found anything Gina talked about interesting is to join the Community Design Masterclass. Experience the community and see what it means to be part of the journey to mastering something interesting together. Every single online course that is successful is built around the community first. Remember that the guru’s are not always right. When you put people first and experiment, you can achieve incredible things. Links: Join the Community Design Masterclass mightynetworks.com Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

The Power of Mighty Networks with Gina Bianchini

How do you house hack your way to financial freedom with hardly any money down? How do you build a best-in-class property management company? What is the best day to do a home inspection? What does it mean to be #rentready? Jimmy Murray has all the answers and he is ready to share them with your podcast listeners today.  Over the past ten years, Jimmy’s multifamily real estate investments have blossomed into a successful property management company, Lyon Property Management Group. An investor himself, Jimmy intimately understands the needs of an investor landlord. And that’s why Lyon Property Management is tailored to the multifamily investor.   Jimmy is also an investor educator along with Lyon Property Group co-founder Frank Patalano. Jimmy and Frank host a podcast called The Cashflow Kings where they have been known to pass out free golden nuggets of real estate wisdom.  Podcast Highlights   Who is Jimmy Murray?    Jimmy Murray was always a thoughtful kid but he also had an entrepreneurial tilt. Real estate didn’t come along in Jimmy’s life until 8th grade when he wrote a letter to himself where he imagined what real estate and stocks he owned by the time he was finished high school. Jimmy tends to over analyze everything, which fits perfectly with his INTJ Myers-Briggs result.   Acorn Theory   Jimmy Murray recently learned about Acorn Theory, where we all start as a small acorn with a guide that helps us grow into a massive oak tree. Sometimes it takes longer to accomplish that, but your goal should always be to realize your oak tree potential. For Jimmy, he didn’t know what the path was that he would take, but he knew that Real Estate was going to be the shape of things. It doesn’t matter where you start, it matters where you finish. Jimmy’s degree which helped him land a job at a well respected financial firm came from Ohio State University, but he started off in a local community college. His original strategy was to get a job on Wall Street, make a pile of money, and then invest in real estate but it didn’t work out that way. Instead, he found himself failing the CFA exam and being forced to decide whether to invest more time and money in passing the test, or just jumping into real estate and buying his first multifamily property.  Small, daily habits are the foundation for long term success. Progress happens a little bit each day, your goal shouldn’t be to get there immediately. Failures are the stepping stones on your way to success. Sometimes your closest mentors will tell you not to pursue your dream goals, but if you believe in it enough you should be willing to chase what you want.   Is there anything you wanted someone to say to you when you were starting off?   Not everyone is going to believe in your vision along the way, but as long as you do, no one else has to. Jimmy wouldn’t change the way things played out when he decided to get into real estate.   Why did you go into property management?   When Jimmy Murray bought his first property, he also started wholesaling with the belief that wholesaling would be the way he was going to escape his cubicle. Despite being an introvert Jimmy had managed to market well and generate some interest but he didn’t really know what he was doing. He realized that the best source of his deals was a list of high equity leads so he went back to the well. After doing another deal, Jimmy realized that managing the property and tenants was something he was good at so he doubled down on that. He also noticed the net income from managing properties is similar to the amount that real estate investors make per door, but it comes without the same level of risk.  Beginning in 2015, Jimmy started focusing on growing Lyon Property Management and found that there were a number of things that you can add to the business as it grows to create additional sources of revenue. This is an idea that many entrepreneurs and investors don’t realize and if they understood it, they would be able to explode their businesses. If you’re an investor, it’s really important to find a property manager who shares a similar investment philosophy as you. When screening an investor, Jimmy asks them about their approach and mission statement first.  Jimmy wouldn’t have been able to predict how his life would have turned out but he wouldn’t change anything about the journey he’s been on either.   Jimmy’s Takeaway   The power of visualization is huge. Create an alter ego for who you want to be, really think about who you want to become and make a name for it. That will really make your visualization much more powerful. You’re not always going to bat a 1000, just get out there and take constant action. If you fail, those are the best learning opportunities. Links: @thenotoriouscfk Cashflow Kings Podcast The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz lyonpropertygroup.com Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

Jimmy Murray and the Power of Visualization

We’re exploring the question that almost everybody considering short term rentals asks, how much money can you make with a short term rental unit? The answer may surprise you. We’ve also got a recent Roadmap student on the line to tell us about their experience in securing their very first units, and yes, that’s plural, as in multiple units their very first deal.   The Cashflow Diary Roadmap   J and the Cashflow Diary are dedicated to providing hands on and direct training to students that want to create their own six and seven figure short term rental businesses.  Members get access to hundreds of hours of content covering every aspect of building a short term rental business including cash flow, negotiations, operations, lead generation, seller financing, and more. Everything you need to develop the skills you need to become the bravest entrepreneur you can be. The content is one thing, but knowledge alone isn’t going to get you to your goals. That’s why the program is designed with hands on training and accountability built in, training that shows you how to use expert tools expertly. As Roadmap members you get access to every course and training J has produced over the last several years, some of which people have paid upwards of $5000 for, but you also get assigned a dedicated accountability to make it all happen. They will take you on a 12 month transformational journey through all three phases of the short term rental business, holding your hand each step of the way. Members are also the first people who will get access to the Cashflow Diary app which will tie everything together. The app will connect the content and the community in a way that we’ve never been able to do before. When it comes to short term rentals, things change every 90 to 120 days. Your customers will change, there are high and low seasons, and there’s always something new to learn. This is why the accountability coach is so important, they will make sure that you stick to the plan and hold you to accomplishing your goals.   When I got started I set a goal of getting 10 units a year, and have had some interesting interactions with landlords so far and I may have to reevaluate my goals.   This caller just started their entrepreneurial journey and ran into a little opposition right off the bat, but that quickly turned into an opportunity to pick up 3 units right now, with the potential to pick up an additional 40. He used the scripts exactly as provided by the training program to get to his first game changing yes. In doing the research for his area in preparation of setting up his business he found that the other short term rental operators are barely putting in any effort at all. After having some conversations with people, he was asked to join a local BNI group and speak on what he’s doing with short term rentals and has been generating a lot of excitement around the whole idea.   How much money can I make with short term rentals?   Go to rentometer.com and enter in whatever address you think may be a good spot to open up a short term rental unit. Whatever the rent number that comes up, multiply that number by 2. That’s a conservative number for the rest of your calculations.  A good rule of thumb is that you can expect to earn around $800 per bedroom each month. You do have to keep in mind however that your first year in business will have the most variability because there are a lot of things you won’t know right off the bat. That’s also one of the advantages of becoming a Roadmap student, as it will help you maximize your revenue year one and stay ahead of the trends. There is no one tactic or silver bullet that will lead to your success and achieving six figures, it takes time to learn the systems but if you have the will to make it happen and the persistence to stick with it, we’ll make sure you get there. Links: cashflowdiary.com/roadmap rentometer.com Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

How Much Money Can I Make With Short Term Rentals?

You’ve tried reading a book and watching a video, you’ve also probably tried going to a couple conferences, and the trouble is that’s not enough for you to make transformational changes in your business. That’s why J developed the Cashflow Diary Roadmap program, to provide short term rental entrepreneurs the hands on training and accountability they need to succeed in this business. Questions and Answers   A question about wholesaling a property    Inside the wholesaling course within the app is enough information to walk through everything you need to know when it comes to marketing and closing a wholesaling deal. The more important point is that when you are on the path of becoming a short term rental entrepreneur, you have to stay focused on short term rentals. You’re not going to get the success you want by constantly being distracted by other deals and opportunities. You need to focus on achieving a specific result, and members of the Cashflow Diary Roadmap are held accountable to those results. If you chase two squirrels, both will escape. It doesn’t mean the other squirrel isn’t valuable, but you need to focus. As you learn more, you will begin to see more opportunity, and that may actually become one of the biggest challenges for the accountability coaches. Their job will be to keep you on track so you can keep making progress instead of constantly starting new projects without finishing them.   If we want to purchase an apartment for short term rental purposes, how are we going to make the bank recognize the performance and count as part of the income?   You’re going to work with your CFO so you can get the correct type of financial statements together so that it ties into your tax return properly, but also when they are going to look for the raw data obtained from your bookkeeper, everything matches. The first step is to get a bookkeeper if you haven’t done that already. If you can’t present clean and accurate financial statements yet, there is no reason to talk to a bank.   Is the “Add tax” feature on AirBnB additional?   It is and the challenge with the feature is that it’s being done automatically for some people and not for other people in different areas. This can actually put you at a disadvantage in the search results.   Got my first booking, what application should I be using to communicate with my guest?   It comes down to setting up a separate email address that everyone on the team has access to that allows the team to communicate with guests directly. There is always a new pricing tool in the works that we are going to be talking about shortly that allows us to unify communication with all the different platforms.   When the Q&A’s move to the app, are you going to make announcements when the transition happens?   Yes and keep in mind that nobody is losing access to anything, only the platform and delivery mechanism is changing. Putting everything on the app will allow members to communicate with each other much more easily and that means we all get to take advantage of the increased network effects.   Always make sure a property works as a long term rental as well as a short term rental. What do you think of that advice?   The real question is “do you have a secondary exit strategy?” Turning the unit into a long term rental is one strategy, but there are a number of other strategies you can employ that are just as valid.   When you change the security code on a unit, do you have somebody go and test it?   The short answer is no, because there is a set process that your team can use to verify the code was actually changed correctly. You can also use an emergency code that prevents most problematic situations.  Changing the door codes is actually one of the very first processes that J and his team outsourced because of how tedious it is. Once you establish the right systems, you can just hire a VA to manage that aspect of the business for one to two hours a week and not have to worry about it anymore. Pro Tip: Don’t make your personal code for the door the same as the code for the panel.   Is it better to run the business yourself or hire a company?   The best way to answer this question is to ask yourself how much you care about your revenue. Part of how Cashflow Diary came about was because J had tried working with a number of companies and they couldn’t outperform in terms of revenue what J and his team could do themselves.  As a short term rental entrepreneur, if you want to expand your portfolio, maximize your revenue, minimize expenses, and deliver the best service possible hiring a company is not a great option. Also, hiring a company to manage your business won’t absolve you of liability so that’s not a benefit either.    Do you ever do profit sharing with a landlord?   Never, there is no reason to structure a deal this way. The way to make this business work and have control without running into trouble with the Department of Real Estate is to get the lease. Profit sharing is an advantage for the landlord but it doesn’t help you at all.   For the inquiries that don’t want to book, should we decline them or just leave them alone?   Your decline rate matters most when it’s a request to book, not an inquiry. For the most part, we will only use the decline button on a request to book. Inquiries that are not moving forward we just leave alone.  One of the things you’re going to want to implement will be a follow up process because sometimes people get distracted by life and forget they were in the middle of a conversation. Those inquiries aren’t necessarily lost if you have a process for following up with them. Eventually you will be able to automate large parts of the communication process and when you start to scale your business, those automations can lead to huge amounts of additional revenue.    Is MPP included in the Roadmap program?   Pricing is always part of the conversation because pricing trends are always changing every 90 to 120 days. We can have two short term rental entrepreneurs running in the same complex and their pricing structure will need to be different. Every customer segment will have different pricing requirements and you will need to understand the tools to manage everything correctly.   After 12 months will we still have access?   Pricing is always part of the conversation because pricing trends are always changing every 90 to 120 days. We can have two short term rental operators running in the same complex and their pricing structure will need to be different. Every customer segment will have different pricing requirements and you will need to understand the tools to manage everything correctly. Links: cashflowdiarypodcast.com cashflowdiary.com/roadmap Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

The Short Term Rental Entrepreneur’s Roadmap To Mastery Q&A

Humans don’t transform overnight. Most people can’t just read a book or watch a video and completely change their life immediately. You’re not going to be able to pick up a bunch of short term rental units right away. That’s the reason that J developed the Cashflow Diary Roadmap, the Roadmap is a program that combines an immense library of content and training and accountability coaching to make sure you achieve your short term rental goals. Questions and Answers     Moving at the Speed of Instruction    When you’re moving at the speed of instruction, you don’t have the time to question your capacity to do something. With a little bit of trust and follow through, you can accomplish more than you would believe is currently possible. Humans tend not to value as much as they should. If you want to achieve anything worthwhile, you need to be willing to fail. Fail frequently, and fail forward.  One of the things about schooling that prevents you from getting ahead is the belief that you must learn everything in the program or book before you are qualified to act. It’s much more effective to read a chapter, then put the book down and put what you learned into action. You will get much more out of what you learn by combining it with actual experience.   How do we secure POE cameras to prevent them from unplugging?     The cameras that J recommends are hard wired directly into the electricity of the house so they can’t be unplugged. In the case of the caller, the installer didn’t run the wire through the walls so the simple solution is to bring them back in and redo the installation.   I currently have a couple short term rental units and trying to figure out where to be next, where should I be looking?   New Jersey is a good place to look since it’s one of the most short term rental friendly states in the country.    I’ve been talking to a couple of landlords but have been having trouble conveying what we do, how do we approach this conversation?   If a landlord has concerns about the number of people that are going to be staying in their unit, the key is to assure them that you screen guests just as thoroughly as they do and care just as much what kind of guests stay in the unit. Talk about the fact that you are always available because of your systems that you have in place and that it’s more common for you as a short term rental operator to have issues with long term tenants than they will have with your guests. Avoid telling the landlord the range of the number of people who could potentially stay at the unit, it’s better to describe a specific use situation so they can easily imagine the kind of guest you are describing. They don’t know that you have the capacity to screen people just as well as they do, so you have to be able to communicate that in a way that makes them feel more secure about doing business with you. If something does happen, you can also tell them the systems you have in place allow you to remove a guest from the property and involve the authorities if necessary much faster than they could due to the restrictions around their business model. Being detached from the outcome is also very important. If that particular landlord doesn’t take you up on your offer, that’s okay. You can move on to the next landlord who is interested the solution you’re offering.    In Ottawa, the city ordinance proposed an ordinance restricting short term rentals to residents only. Would it be easier to operate in other cities with fewer restrictions?   Operating at a distance may prevent you from growing your business as fast, but it’s definitely possible. If your local area is not conducive to the short term rental business model, it’s totally possible to build it out in a separate city.   Where does one learn these conversation techniques?   All these techniques were originally taught during a live event but now they are all available within the Roadmap program. Putting a little bit of effort into the research before speaking to a landlord will put you miles ahead of the average short term rental operator and make the conversation you have much smoother.   The Cashflow Diary Roadmap   J and the Cashflow Diary are dedicated to providing hands on and direct training to students that want to create their own six and seven figure short term rental businesses.  Roadmap members get access to hundreds of hours of content covering every aspect of building a short term rental business including cash flow, negotiations, operations, lead generation, seller financing, and more. Everything you need to develop the skills you must have to become the bravest entrepreneur you can be. Links: The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson cashflowdiary.com/roadmap cashflowdiary.com/howmanyunits Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

Move At The Speed Of Instruction Q&A

J. Massey, real estate investor, entrepreneur, sales coach, instructor, master facilitator of Robert Kiyosaki’s CASHFLOW™ 101 games and creator of Cashflow™ Diary, offers free training courses for new and experienced investors. Break through the clutter of learning real estate and business investing and become a successful entrepreneur. Listen to beneficial strategies to improve your skills in prospecting, placing offers, closing deals, buying, selling, wholesaling, fix & Flips, rehabs and much more. By way of Cashflow™ Diary, J. Massey basically gives away current industry strategies by simply teaching what he does daily as a real estate practitioner. Start Learning For Free Today.

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