CFD 596 – The Short Term Rental Entrepreneur’s Roadmap To Mastery Q&A

March 2nd, 2020

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.

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