Episode 025 - STRR - Did You Just Create a J-O-B for Yourself? Plus, Our SmartBNB Messages

In this episode, Michelle reminds you how and why you must create your business' SOP (Standard Operating Procedures), your Systems, and your Processes.  The only way you are ever going to be able to step out of your role as an employee of your business is to create a way for others to step right IN.  Otherwise, you are stuck trading time for money and that's not good.  Plus, she goes over how to save time and automate your messages using SmartBNB.  She shares her automated messages with you, too.

Transcript of this Episode:

Hi, this is Michelle, the master of money mindset, and you are listening to.

The short-term rental revenue podcast. And in today's podcast, we're going to be talking about the difference between an investor as self-employed person, a business owner, and an employee. Our show today is brought to you by audible. Audible is where you get your audio books online and get a 30 day trial into the audible membership for free.

By going to audible trial.com forward slash S T R revenue that's audible trial.com forward slash S T R revenue. You'll get your first audio book for free and 30 days into the audible membership just for trying us out. You'll love audible. Right [email protected]. You can find our $7 courses available for you to try out, find out how to cohost, how to do rental arbitrage, or how to invest in real estate.

We're all three, by going to be in bead-boss.com and clicking on our store. And you'll find our $7 courses right there. Try us out. You'll love it. You'll love those courses and they're only there for a limited time. So do it. Also, don't forget our contest. We've got our contest running right now, and every week we're picking a winner.

And everyone's names are going to be put into a drawing at the end for a final prize of an Amazon DOD with a little clock on it. And your guests will love that. There'll be able to walk right in, ask Alexa to connect to their account, and there'll be able to play their favorite music, ask for the weather or whatever else they want to ask Alexa to do pretty darn awesome.

And I would really greatly appreciate. You going to iTunes and leaving me a five star review. I appreciate it. So please do take a picture of it. Send it over to me at Michelle at BNB dash boss. Let me know that you did and we'll enter you in those drawings. Okay. So I guess we've got a lot of people who haven't read Robert Kiyosaki's book.

Where have you been? I mean, I've been talking about this since the get go. You guys know what a huge fan I am of Roberts. Love him and Kim they're amazing people. And they made such a difference in my life. The seven years that I was with rich dad seminars and the friends that I made there and mentors too.

And still have. The thing is that there are some lessons that you learn and you keep for ever, and you build upon, and these are those lessons. So I really want to make it crystal clear to you as business owners and as short-term rental owners, that. You don't want to just create a job for yourself. And that's totally cool for some people they're like, oh, I've got nothing else to do.

I'm going to rent out my room or a part of my house, or maybe just the downstairs and I'm going to do it all myself. But I want you to know when you do that, you're really creating a job for yourself. And there's a big difference between being a business owner and investor and being an employee. Even if the employee is you being a self-employed person, even my husband, as a doctor.

Even my son's fiance. Who's an attorney. These people guess what? They're still trading time for dollars. If they don't work, they don't get paid. They might be getting paid a higher daily, hourly rate, a higher wage, but they still have to work. Okay. There's a big difference. They're still trading time for dollars.

And when you are a true investor and a true business owner, you do not trade your time for dollars. Now, when you're first getting started, holy crap, you work for free. You basically work like a slave in your own business and you do everything. So I don't know anyone who works as hard as entrepreneurs work.

Especially when you're starting your first business, it's crazy. How many hours you will put into your first business? The same thing with your first property? Probably right. When you are the one doing it when you are the one going in. Same thing. When we did our first flip, we did pretty much everything.

Shoot, not even our first flip. Let's say our first half dozen flips the first dozen properties that we did. We did everything ourselves. We tiled, we painted, we spackled. We did everything ourselves. And then once the money starts coming in, then you can hire other people. So the whole point is to get away from doing all those little activities yourself, and being able to move away from your business and manage it and own it, and then be the business owner.

So when you think of a business owner, I want you to think about people like, sir, Richard Branson from Virgin. Because he is probably what everybody would aspire to be. He's one of those guys, one of those business owners that represents his company, but he is not just the brand of his company. He kind of is he's the heart and soul of Virgin.

So Virgin airlines, Virgin records, Virgin, you know, phones and mobile. All of that stemmed out of his brilliant little mind, or maybe the mind of his employees, but he is the man behind the brand. Right. You have to remember too that when you're building a brand, everybody's telling you you're going to build this company brand, blah, blah, blah.

Guess what? Company brands are fantastic. They're great. But nobody relates to a company like nobody goes, I really want to be McDonald's friends. No, they might say I want to be Richard Branson's friend, right? No one relates to anyone as well as they relate to a person. So it's great that you have a brand like your company like Virgin, but you also, as a person represent that company and you also have to have people relate to you and your story and what you're about.

So everybody's using buzzwords like your authentic self and your story and your story brand. And those are great things. They really, really are. But honestly, you have to be true to who you are that you believe in, and you really have to stand up for it in this day and age, because if you are lukewarm, as it says in the Bible, I will spew you for my mouth.

That's why God says you're either hot or you are cold. You can't be lukewarm. You can't. I try to be everything to everyone. You have to be one or the other. So it's really, really important. You get a good idea of who you are. What you believe in what you represent and what you want your company to represent and the story behind all of that.

What drives you and your why? Again, I'm going to recommend start with why. Great book. StoryBrand great book. Obviously, if you haven't read rich dad, great book and cashflow quadrant, those are some brilliant, brilliant books to get started with when you are first building your company. So let's talk again about what the difference between an employee and self-employed person is and a business owner and investor.

When you are trading your time for dollars, when you are getting a paycheck, you are still getting paid. You are still trading time for dollars. If you get sick, you will not get paid. If you are working in your business and you are the one doing all the cleaning, and you're the one setting everything up and you are the one sending all the messages and doing everything that has to be done within a short-term rental business and something, God forbid happens to you.

Your business stops. And it's over. And that's why we talk about building a real business because being a self-employed business owner is not the same thing as being an investor or a business owner, a business owner can walk away from their business and the business will still run without them. And how do they do that?

Systems and processes, they done it all before. They learn to delegate different jobs to other people, and they no longer have to do everything themselves. They've got other people who are ready, willing, and able to do those jobs for them. And that's what you have to be able to do. Now, if you are happy being a short-term business owner, if you're like, you know, I, I really don't want a business.

I just am doing this for fun. I love cooking and I want to host people out of my home and that's all I want to do. And then God forbid, anything happens to me and it's over then. It's so it's okay. It's over. I'm totally cool with that. If you're cool with that and be cool with that. That is awesome. But for the majority of you out there, you don't need another job, nor should you want another job.

And if you're young or old, it doesn't really matter because honestly, no matter where you are on that scale someday, you want to be able to walk away. If you're older, you're going to want to walk away a little bit sooner. I do not want to be working into my seventies. Right. My parents did that. My parents literally worked practically until the day they died.

Till the day they died, it was very, very sad and the same with my father-in-law. He worked up until he was too sick to work, and then he died soon after. So he never really got the retirement that most people dream of, actually, most Americans don't get that retirement that they dream of. And that's a really sad thing.

So planning and we've got tons of podcasts about planning. We've got a whole retirement section inside our membership because of this, but I can never stress enough to start planning your retirement. Now, no matter how old you are, especially if you're young, especially if you're 18 working at a McDonald's or something, obviously you wouldn't be listening to this podcast or something, but.

Those kids, those kids are getting their first paycheck and everything that goes into your IRA has to be an earned income anyway, come from a paycheck. So allow that paycheck to start funding your IRA. And then when you're old enough and you begin investing, you can use your IRA as self-directed into a lot of different investments and build your retirement from there.

So you can be not just earning a living, but. Be earning a retirement saving and planning for your retirement as well. And that is a very smart move. So start with those four books. I'm going to have them linked up in here. And employee is something that everybody is pretty much familiar with. Believe it or not the education system in the United States and actually in most countries was developed by rich, wealthy businessmen.

This is very true. And you can go back. There's a ton of books about education, which I love to read. They tell you about the history of how schools and universities were all formed and how, you know, things get accredited and blah, blah, blah. But the whole thing is they start with big businesses who needed to create employees.

And that's why we have schools. Schools were literally created to make people good employees. They needed them educated in math and reading, writing so that they could follow directions. And pretty much in the belief system of being an employee, for the most part, when we were growing up, it was like, grow up, get a good job and earn a good living.

And if you wanted to make a lot of money, you're like, okay, well then you should become a doctor or an attorney. Both of them. Those are some bullshit things. I mean, you think about it now. This is the very true. My husband laughs because he's a doctor. And guess what more than 80? What is it? 85 or 87%. I forget what the statistic is on it, but it's in the high eighties, probably 90% of doctors would not recommend becoming a doctor to their children.

They would tell them not to do it. What kind of profession would you be in? What does that say about the profession that you're in? If you would tell your children not to be it, if you would tell your children stay away from this, it means it's not a very good thing. It means they work their ass off. They don't get the time off that they need, and they realize that they're trading their time for dollars.

And there's a lot of bureaucracy that is inside. Medicine right now there's a lot of rules and regulations and all that. It's just a bunch of fricking red tape and nobody wants to be in it. So even doctors don't like being doctors, you know, you think that let's say you had a parent or grandparent who had cancer.

And so you decide I'm going to become a doctor or a scientist, and I'm going to cure cancer and you go out there and you're all going ho about it. You're like I am going to cure cancer. You go to this best Ivy league school, you get a job with a great science lab and you start looking for the stuff, and then they start telling you how you can't say this, or you can't do that.

Or we have to take this and put this away because of such and such or this and that. And you'll realize that they don't want a cure for cancer. And. Suddenly your heart will break because you'll realize there's a great book. Oh my gosh, that I read this week called science for sale. Now, don't read that before you read the other business books, but if you want to read how sad it is, this science for sale talks about how the EPA is basically for sale and how they have really just traded money for the health of American citizens.

And they know it. I mean, they've allowed us to be poisoned and there are laws. That protect the air. There are laws that protect the water, but not laws that protect the land. And so they're dumping this toxic sludge on our foods. It's kind of weird too, especially here in Arizona, we have quite a few recalls in Arizona.

For lettuce, it's the most bizarre thing, right? Cause you think, how can they get like some vanilla or e-coli on lettuce? Like what the heck? How in the heck did somebody like get sick and touch the lettuce and how did he get sick like that? Well, it gets sick like that because they dump a toxic sludge. On the crops all across the United States and that sludge is made up of, it's made up of poop.

It's made up of human feces and yucky sewage from cities all across the United States. New York's sludge and sewage. Gets split into a liquid and a solid, and that solid is made into a fertilizer toxic as shit in it is shit. And it's sprayed all over crops and they look for nine chemicals, nine, just nine.

They test it for nine chemicals. And when they've tested the sludge afterwards, when independent scientists went in and tested it, they found 2000 different toxins inside this sludge that were dangerous to humans and it's being dumped on our food and then we're eating it. And I don't even want to tell you, but there are also aborted fetuses in this.

So we're literally eating humans. I mean, it's really kind of like a scifi movie out there. I know it sounds really gross and disgusting, but the whole thing is. When you are young, you have these ideologies that you're going to go and save the world, and then you find out just how AFT up it really is. And it's sad.

And we, as people are right now, we're in a big, huge awakening because we're finding out just how corrupt our government has been for decades and all the things that they've been doing. And. There are people in the government now trying to clear that up and it's going to get cleared up and the, all the truth is going to start coming out and it's going to be an eye-opener for a lot of people.

A lot of us that they've called conspiracy theorists for a long time, are sitting there going? Yeah. Yes. We knew about this. Yes. We told you about that. And everybody looked at us and called us. All kinds of names and you know, oh, you guys are conspiracy theorists. And you're like, this is not a conspiracy.

There's all kinds of proof of that stuff. But now the proof is coming out. Now, all these things that they told us were conspiracies. At one time, they've got more and more proof about them. It's all coming out to life. So that's kind of cool. But the whole point of all of this is when you are young, you are told to do certain things and that will make you money.

And that's because they don't want you to be rich. There's an elite system set up and it's set up against you. And what was really cool. And my life was the fact that I was blessed enough to work for our man. And his company, Robert Kiyosaki, and those guys actually wrote a book together. I don't know if you guys realize this, but Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki wrote a book called.

We want you to be rich a long time ago. And they really, really did because those two men would stand up there and say, here's the rules that they set down and here's. How you get around those rules because all the wealthy people have something called loopholes and the loopholes are created on purpose.

And if they can play the game, you can play the game. If you know the rules, you know how to get around the rules and that's what we want you to do. And so. I want you to do the same thing as these rules are set up right now, anyone can win and people do. This is a great country and it has been a great country.

And you know why? Because it doesn't matter if you're a man or woman, it doesn't matter the color of your skin. It doesn't matter your religion, any way you come to this game, you can play it and you can win. What matters is what is in your head and your determination and your chutzpah as they like to call it, right?

What are you doing? Are you a quitter? Because if you're a quitter, then you're going to fail because you're going to fall down a lot of times in this game, but your whole purpose, if it is to win. Than it is to get back up again and play again and get back up again, dust yourself off and play again, get back up and dust yourself off and play again, because that is the only way you win is you keep on trying, you keep getting up, you keep playing the game and then eventually you will win.

So an employee, like I said, everybody knows what an employee is. You're going to have a job. You might get paid commission, or you might get paid hourly. It's basically working for somebody else. You're fulfilling someone else's dream. You're never going to be independently wealthy working for someone else.

You have to be your own business owner. So then comes something called self-employed. So you think, okay, well, I'm going to own my own BMB, right. But if you're working constantly in your BNB and you're doing all the work by yourself, you've just made yourself an employee again, just for another company and you can't walk away from it because you're the only one doing all the work.

So being self-employed, like I said, being a doctor or an attorney, those are both self-employed. If you can't walk away from your business and have your business keep running, then you are definitely not a business owner. You're just a self-employed Superman. And it depends on you and you will never ever make it big unless you're doing one of two other things.

So what are the two things that can make you independently wealthy? And I want you to feel good about saying independently wealthy that doesn't. Necessarily mean you have to be a millionaire, but it just means that you have enough money that you decide for you to be successful. So if being successful to you is owning your own home and having no debt and your car's paid off.

And a small income, you know, maybe 50,000 a year or a hundred thousand a year, or whatever you say, whatever you decide. It doesn't matter. My aspirations are a little bit bigger. And so I know how much I want. I know how many properties I want. I know I want the properties to be, it's my decision, what is wealthy and prosperous and successful for me, I get to set those goals myself.

And so you right. So the whole point is can I walk away and have my businesses and my investments sustaining themselves. If I were to get sick, would everything just fall apart? So obviously with the podcast, guess what? If I'm not doing my podcast? I'd have to sell it to somebody or have somebody else do it for me.

Right. Nobody would just get on here and go, Hey, oh, Michelle's not feeling good today. I think I'll go on and do her podcast for her. That's not, that's not how it works. If I were to get somebody to do it for me, I could hire somebody to do it. Right. But it's not going to get done unless I do it. I have to be the one to do it.

So it's basically like being self-employed. But my investments, my rental properties, my B and BS, they all run without me. I have everything in my business done without me. So there are people who do my acquisitions for my real estate. They get my properties for me. There are people in property management companies who fill up my long-term rentals for me, and they take care of all the maintenance and everything that.

Is due on them and there are bookkeepers and they pay the taxes and get everything going. You know, some making sure that all the businesses running by itself. So those things run fairly easy by themselves. Now this, the short-term rental business, what we're teaching you is, and all the things that we've talked about is how to get this to start running by itself for you.

Things like hiring virtual assistants or using something like smart BNB, you can get your messaging done using properly so that you can have your cleaning companies working and all that messaging going between them when there's a booking. Having that service booked right away using things like Guesty so that you aren't always the one who has to call and set up the cleaners to be there at a certain time, or have your maintenance crews.

There's tons of ways to get all of that done for you. Your job as the business owner, the main CEO of your company is going to be to acquire more properties and put them into your hopper so that they can create more income. You can even hire people to do that. And then at the end, just kind of oversee it and walk in like the CEO boss that Richard Branson is right.

He walks into the boardroom and says, How's shit going here. How's it all move in. It's flowing very well-served we've got this business doing this and this business doing that. And these guys are doing this and these guys are doing that. See, he doesn't do any of that stuff anymore by himself, but in the beginning he did.

Of course he did when he was first skinny, his business has started. Absolutely. He did. He went out and got his first contracts and record deals with the talent and he had to go do that by himself. And he had to be, had to face those nos and that rejection, the scary stuff. When we go out looking at properties and we offer somebody money for something and they say no to us.

Wow. That was scary. So what, so what. You don't get to be a Richard Branson without hearing a shitload of nos. Without being rejected a million freaking times. I've read a couple of his books and you know, he'll talk about it over and over again. And he'll tell you that you have to be willing to get rejected.

You have to be willing to get yourself picked up, back up and go out there and do it again and again and again and again, until it works, just readjusting it every single time. To make sure that you're doing it the right way, tweak different ideas until they work, handle all the nos that you can get knock on all the doors you possibly can until you get the yes.

That is what a business owner does. And then they create the systems and the processes. That's where the rubber meets the road. Now we've got some podcasts in here that you guys can go back to. If you haven't listened to them already about systems and processes, setting up your own SOP. That's your standard operating procedures.

That is an important aspect of your business, because that is going to be basically a manual that you can hand anybody when they're coming into your company. So let's say you were to go work for a company like Chick-fil-A you walked in there one day and they were like giving you your uniform and they were ready to train you.

Do they train everybody differently? No, they train them all the same. They're like, okay, if you're going to be the cook, they're going to show them how they prepare the sandwiches each and every time it's not different for each cook that walks in there. It is the same each and every time it is a system and there is a process to it.

And you have to follow that procedure. So when you are a business owner, your job is to create those systems and those processes so that you can just put somebody in there and they know exactly what to do. So let's say for instance, you're hiring somebody to do your messaging. Between you and your potential guests and your guests on just let's use one platform for now of Airbnb.

So when somebody is looking to book with you and you've got them, let's say, you've got, okay, I've got my auto booking on, but it's on very strict. So it only allows people with good reviews and who've had at least this many reviews, right? Anybody else, if they tried to get on with you, they're going to get a message and it's going to become a request.

And it's going to get sent to you. You can have a virtual assistant who gets those messages, or you can have a company like Guesty, or you can set up automatic emails, like from smart BNB, where you have certain responses to every request. So let's say you had, let's just use the easy one. Let's use smart BNB.

Cause what is that? It's like 16 bucks a month or something when you first get started. And it's usually roughly goes to eight or $9 a property, right? For eight or $9 a property. So worth it, you can set up a set of messages that basically say you can have a message for, Hey, thanks for booking. That kind of message.

Nice long little, Hey, thanks for booking. We'll see you as time gets closer to your reservation and then you can have one. Hey, you're coming in a few days. Here's our check-in procedures and that is sent a few days before, and then you can have one on the day of arrival for when their code gets created and sent to them.

So here's the code for your door, blah, blah, blah. And then maybe a few hours after they check in. Hey, we're just hoping that you checked in. And the check-in went smoothly. If you need anything, contact us and let us know. And then maybe the day before they check out, it's like, Hey, your checkout is tomorrow.

Here's our checkout procedures. If you have any, or maybe there's nothing to do. And our, we have nothing to do. We don't even make people take off the sheets of their beds and things like that. Honestly, that shit pisses me off. So I don't do it. I know a lot of you do, and it's totally up to you. And you don't have to be afraid that I'm going to come and be pissed off because if I see, I have to take the sheets off somebody's bed, I don't even go.

I'm like, dude, I did not go on vacation to do laundry or even starter for somebody that's not my job. That's somebody else's job. That's how easy. That's what, it's not really lazy. I've had five kids and I've done enough fricking laundry to last me five lifetimes. So I'm not doing it. So I just feel that way about it.

So, but. You can have with your checkout one, you're like, okay, Hey, take the sheets off the bed, leave them in the hamper by the, you know, whatever, whatever you want to do for the checkout. And then after they check out, we also send one that says, Hey, we hope your stay was fantastic. That your checkout went smoothly.

We're just wondering if there's was anything else that you can give any suggestion you can give us, that's going to improve the quality of. Your stay the next time you are in town or other guests days. And in each one of those, we ask for a five star review too. So those are all automatic messages. We write those out once and then we set them up and they're automatically sent.

So there's a lot of messages people get from us. That we don't even like, we don't send them, it, it just goes automatically to them. Everything is sent automatically and they'll tell people, I mean, we get in our reviews all the time. What great communication we have. And it's kind of funny because we only have a few people who are in charge of.

Communications. There's a, uh, an onsite manager that manages each set of properties in different locations and they get the messages if there's anything to get. So usually that's going to be a request that did not get accepted all by itself. And that's probably because they're a brand new member of Airbnb and.

That is, um, one of our red flags. We don't usually accept new people. It's just not our thing. There are times that we do, um, closer to the university properties. If it's a parent who doesn't travel often, but they'll give us, you know, they'll say we have a son who's staying there. We have never used Airbnb.

This is our first time, but we. You know, we heard about blah, blah, blah, or, you know, some kind of story you'll hear. And as long as it's not coming up in the near, near future, then we don't mind. And we also ask them to please do what we want them to verify their ID. So they have to verify their identification.

They have to link their Facebook account. We have to see their. Picture, which is really crazy now because we can't even see their picture until they do book because Airbnb changed that all. And then we asked for references, which is kind of funny because Airbnb blocks the references. They block the phone numbers until they book.

So we can't check their references anymore. I know it's such a crock of shit. Right. But we still ask for those references. If we want to get them, if there's some kind of reason, we're like, you know what we need to references and we can see that Airbnb has blocked it out. And as soon as they book, we call those references and then if everything's kosher and on the up and up, then we take it.

And if it's not, we have 24 hours to change our minds without any penalty. And we'll use that. So remember again, if you're new to this, you never ever take reservations from new people, if you can help it, because those are going to be the challenges that you have. They're going to come from people with no reviews or they're brand new to the platform.

Those are, those are going to be the ones. And if they live in your same, the city, no, no, no. What the hell are they staying at your property? If they live in the same city? I don't care. We've heard enough story. Chris had his story on there and the people were saying that they had something with the fire and stuff.

And so he was feeling bad in his heart bled. And then what did they do? They trashed his place and cost him all that money in time. And, you know, to fix it up. So that's a, no, nobody gets sustained your place from the same city and nobody gets to sustain your place. If there's no lead time, meaning if they want to stay tonight or tomorrow night, bullshit, uh, you are not booking our place.

We make sure that people are booked out and if we're not booked out, we block it. Because we make sure that we're not getting any people who are just on the spur of the moment, decide they want to have a party and use our place or anything. We're really careful about those things. And I want you to be careful about those things as well.

So we've got the employees, the self-employed now investors, what do investors do that are different than business owners? Will investors invest? They invest their money into other opportunities. So it could be investing in your BNB. It could be investing into a property. So an investor takes their money and has their money and create more money and business owners they've already invested the time, but now they take the other people's time I E employees and have them trade their time for money.

And pay them money to earn back their time. So I know that sounds confusing, but think of it this way. I get to buy back by time. When I hire somebody to clean my house. So if somebody is cleaning my house, I'm not spending the time cleaning the house and I'm basically buying back my time by paying somebody else for their time.

So that's what a business owner does. A business owner pays people for their time and that that money will create more money. And. Create a business for them, and it will keep growing and changing and turning other people's time into money and revenue. So as a business owner, it's other people working for you, it's having employees.

Kiyosaki used to say, I think it was at the time when you have between 50 and 200 people, then, you know, you're a good business owner. So that could be across the board. It could be, you know, whether you're doing rental arbitrage or whether you're doing co-hosting or property management or property acquisitions, whatever you're doing, it can be all of those things.

It's really easy nowadays to do things virtually you don't even have to hire these people yourself. You're going to hire people from other places. And so that's really good. So that's the way the world is changing. Now it's easier than ever before to hire people from, even across the globe to do things here in the United States.

So you can hire people in the Philippines to answer your phones and your messages here in the United States. So it doesn't matter where you are. The internet has made the world is a much smaller place and that's good in a lot of different ways, but. A business owner is not trading his time for dollars other people's time for dollars.

Got it. And investors are trading money for more money. They're investing money into other companies and opportunities and real estate in order to create more money. So investors invest money and business owners invest other people's time by way of employees. So. You really want to move into that arena.

You want to move from where you're doing everything. You're creating a system and a process for other people to do it. So besides your messages, the next best thing is definitely going to be your cleaning, having somebody else clean for you. And for that we recommend using properly. And they have different cleaning companies in there, and you can see what their rating and you can get bids from those companies on your properties.

And they'll even when you hire them, they'll even take little pictures of your property so that you can see that you are creating a brand for yourself, that they're doing it exactly the same way each and every time. So if you have, let's say you have the towels folded like little swans on the front of the bed each and every time, whatever.

You have that you do each and every time you can have it the same each and every time. And you'll be able to see that from your cleaning crew, because they're going to take pictures and boom, there'll be timestamped and everything. It's going to be wonderful. So you can have a companies do that. What's the next thing besides cleaning.

So we've got messaging, we've got cleaning. What are the things you don't like to do? Like some people like cleaning. Actually, I like cleaning my own house sometimes not all the time, but sometimes when I'm kind of mulling something over and I want to think, I think really well when I'm cleaning, it's just like one of those things, because I've always.

Had five kids and I've always been kind of OCD. So cleaning is one of those times where you get to think about a bunch of stuff. So sometimes I'll clean on my own. I like it. So if you're one of those people and you want to clean your place, you're happy to do it. Just make sure that you know how not to do it when you're ready to hand that chore off to somebody.

But if you want to do it, what are the things you don't like to do? Like some people really suck at bookkeeping. I recommend if you suck even a little bookkeeping, if bookkeeping and managing your checkbook, and if you have not balanced your checkbook and more than a few months, you might, it's like, that's that guy, you might be a redneck.

If you, you know, do any of these things, it's like, you might need a bookkeeper if you've never. Balanced your checkbook. You might need a bookkeeper and it's not, you might, you do you need a bookkeeper because bookkeepers are the number one thing that are going to keep your ass out. How does the IRS is office and make sure that you don't get audited, or if you do get audited, which don't be afraid of because a lot of people do get audited, but if you do get audited.

And you have a bookkeeper. No, everything was done, right. There's nothing to fear. You know, screw him, let him come looking because there's nothing to hide. If you've got nothing to hide, you are in really good shape. So I recommend things like bookkeepers and accountants. There are some online that you can get.

There are some companies that do the bookkeeping for you when they do your property management. I like those companies too. We've used a couple of those. We don't have them any more right now. We go through cleaning companies and property management companies quite well. It's not quite often, but it does seem quite often because of all the different locations of properties.

So it seems like somewhere is always doing something, but. You know, it just depends on where you are. And remember too, when you find companies to work with, make sure those companies are paying their employees. Well, you want to make sure that you're not a part of a problem. So for instance, and I've talked about this before, is our cleaning companies in Florida because the minimum wage in Florida is eight 50 an hour.

Is a crock of shit who in their right mind can support a family on eight 50 an hour. I mean, eight 50 an hour. Great. If you're a kid we're going to burger king flipping burgers, who gives a shit. Yeah. If you're making a 50 an hour, but if you're a mom, especially a single mom and you're cleaning houses for a living and you're making eight 50 an hour and you're trying to feed a bunch of kids.

And that's a bunch of shit. It really, really is. So here in the state of Arizona, we got kids flipping burgers and they're making 13, 50 an hour. I think that's ridiculous because they shouldn't be paying those type of wages to a bunch of kids. I'm of the mindset that, yeah. Okay. Minimum wages should be a fair minimum wage, but there should also be some kind of something that says, okay, these people are supporting families.

And these people are kids in fricking high school and they're doing a shit job. And I flipped burgers shit. I waited tables and we paid, we were paid a buck 95, an hour waiting tables back in those days, I was fricking crazy. So I honestly. I think that people need. To make enough money to feed their families.

When they have families, the kids in high school should have high school jobs that have high school type responsibilities and high school type wages. There should be a definite difference. I do not think that a child. Especially my teenagers or anybody else's teenagers. And I know quite a few, I don't think they should be making 15 bucks an hour.

They don't know what the hell to do with 15 bucks an hour. They blow their money on a bunch of bullshit already. So, you know, thousand dollar phones and shit. That's ridiculous. Honestly, I'm one of those parents. I did not even let my kids have phones until you were 15 and you can ask my kids. It was, they all were pissed about that, but I was like, you know what?

You don't need it. But here's the deal. Those people down in Florida working for eight 50 an hour, trying to support their families on that guess what they go through. So many people in those jobs, why? Because that's hard work and wherever those parents can get a new job getting paid just a little bit more, they leave.

And so the turnover in those jobs are incredibly high. So what can you do as a business owner? You can pay your people, good people, a good wage, and you won't be having to train them over and over again. And they won't be a liability to you because you won't have to hire tweakers and people that it's hard to get them licensed or bonded.

You can hire some good people and keep those good people and they're making your company look good. So pay your people and make sure that the businesses that you hire are paying their people. Decent living wage. I mean, it's imperative that you do that. Especially. I mean, if it's a bunch of kids, but there's not going to be a bunch of kids and there shouldn't be a bunch of kids cleaning your properties, it should be adults cleaning your properties and they should be earning enough to make a nice living that they can support their kids.

And I just, I'm just one of those people I want to know. I ask it's one of the questions I ask, how much do you pay your employees? And if they say we pay them minimum wage, I'm like, well, that's going to be a problem for us. Oh, well, there were licensed and bonded. I realize it. What's your turnover like.

And as soon as you say that, then they look at me like, and I go and go ahead, finish that. Because if you are paying them shit prices, you're going to have a shitty, shitty turnover and track record. You need to pay people a decent living wage, and you won't have that high turnover and you won't be training them over and over again.

Which takes time and cost you money because you're going to have to use two people. One that's getting trained and the other person who's training them. And that's two people getting trained for one person's work and that's not good. So anyways, you got to hear me bitch about that, but the whole point is the E the S those guys are working for a living, and if they stop.

The money stops and you do not want to be on that side. And you've got to realize by reading those books, you're going to see, they have set us up for failure, but there are people who are giving you the keys to the city, and they're telling you how to make money, how to create wealth. And the way to do that is not trading your time for dollars.

It's definitely thinking in doing smarter, right? It's doing better and pain people and training people to do what you need to have done. So it's creating your SOP is your standard operating procedures. It's setting up your systems and your processes and getting them all in order, and then getting people to fulfill those pieces one at a time as you begin to grow.

You can afford more and more and you'll build your business bigger and bigger and bigger. And there you go. There you go. That's how it goes. It is a process. It does take time, but the more properties you have, the better it goes. Now there's going to be, Hmm. I don't know what you call it. Like an itchy point.

Um, I'm trying to remember when we had. Like I said, remember when I was talking about us flipping our first rental properties and I can say probably the first four to six that we did on our own before we were able to start making enough money to hire people, to do things for us. So maybe the first four properties you do, or the first half dozen properties that you do, you're going to be doing alone.

And you're going to know. You're going to get this, oh God, I can't do this. I don't have time for this. The message thing is super easy to do and super cheap. You can do that right away. And I'm going to tell you right now, just getting something like smart BNB is going to free up so much of your time.

It's incredible. You're not going to be sending all those messages out yourself. They just go out automatically. And people will get a bunch of messages. You'll still have to have somebody answering, like I said, any kind of requests you get or being right there, 24 seven to make sure that when somebody is in your property, that in case something goes wrong, you know, water Pipers or blah, blah, blah.

You've got somebody there and that they're being. Monitored, but at the same time, it doesn't have to be you and it's going to be quite easy. That's why we have our property managers in each location so that those can be monitored, but that's going to save you a bunch of time at first. And obviously cleaning is the other area that we hire out right away.

We hire cleaners first. That's the first thing we do and make sure you're, you know, go to that podcast and listen to that because. Three, you want to interview at least three companies. You want to make sure that those companies are online and properly is a great place to look for those companies. They have a whole list and every different city that you can use and you can get bids on.

So you're going to love that. So make sure you're thinking about all this stuff, because. Remember. I mean, if it's something you really want to do, like I said, don't worry about it. I mean, that's, that's great. If you're just trying to keep busy, some people are just trying to keep busy and they're like, you know, I like gardening.

I like hosting great goodie for you. That's awesome. But if you are trying to make money, You're serious about it. Then you have to think like a business owner. And that means you're going to have to get employees. You're going to have to have those systems and processes and create your SOP and get your business running so that you can walk away every now and then.

And you'll test the waters. You'll do it for a day. You'll walk away for a day. How did that go? What happened did we do? Okay. Then you can go for a weekend someplace then maybe you can go for a week on vacation. Who knows? You just, you keep upping the ante, right? I really want you to think about growing your business in a smart way and start with those books.

Okay. Those are the beginning of this process. So if you're farther along, I apologize, but thanks so much for listening. God bless you so much. Have a great day. Go and grow.