Ekabo Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Podcast
A podcast for those who do not believe they were put on this earth to work 40 to 50 hours per week for 40 to 50 years, to hopefully retire at the age of 65.
Ekabo Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Podcast
157. How Smart Real Estate Investors Win in Any Market
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🌟 Scaling Smart with Short-Term Rentals, Team Building & Real Estate Strategy 🌟
Welcome back to the Ekabo Home Investor Hour! In this episode, host Niyi Adewole sits down with investor Justin Parham (with a live drop-in from AJ) for a real, unfiltered conversation about scaling real estate the right way.
From optimizing short-term rentals and preparing for major events like the World Cup, to delegating smarter, leveraging AI, and transitioning properties from short-term to long-term rentals—this episode is packed with practical, boots-on-the-ground insights.
🔥 Quote of the Episode:
“Your dollars are made in the margins.”
A powerful reminder that profitability isn’t always about charging more—it’s about operating smarter.
🎙️ What You’ll Learn:
- Short-Term Rental Optimization
Learn how small upgrades—paint, furniture, amenities, and guest experience—can increase nightly rates and occupancy without buying new properties. - World Cup & Event Pricing Strategy
Hear how seasoned investors are preparing pricing strategies for major events, balancing premium rates with competitive positioning. - Short-Term → Mid-Term → Long-Term Strategy
Understand how to stair-step properties over time to reduce management intensity, stabilize cash flow, and scale without burning out. - Team Building & Delegation
Discover why freeing up mental bandwidth is one of the highest-value activities an investor can focus on—and how to do it with VAs, bookkeepers, and rock-star team members. - AI & Automation in Property Management
Explore real-world use cases for AI tools, guest messaging automation, and why simplifying systems leads to fewer guest issues and better reviews. - Margin Management & Cost Control
From pricing software decisions to cleaning costs and supply management, learn how tightening operations can dramatically increase profitability.
🏡 Key Takeaways:
➤ Optimize before you acquire — your current properties may have untapped upside
➤ Guest experience beats gimmicks — simplicity wins
➤ Scale teams strategically, not emotionally
➤ Long-term wealth is built by reducing friction and complexity
➤ The best operators win in the margins, not the hype
⚛️ Why This Matters:
As interest rates fluctuate and competition increases on platforms like Airbnb, investors who focus on systems, experience, and operational efficiency will continue to win. This episode breaks down what that actually looks like in real life—not theory.
🗓️ Tune in every Wednesday at 7 PM Eastern! Don’t miss out on our journey toward financial freedom through smart investments.
👉 Hit that subscribe button and turn on notifications so you never miss an update! Let’s unlock your potential together!
Our Links
➣ Financial Freedom Mastermind Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/53083...
➣ Peer Space Host Referral Link https://www.peerspace.com/referrals/g...
➣ AirBNB Host Referral Link https://www.airbnb.com/r/niyia41
➣ Ekabo Home Network (IG, Youtube, Email) https://linktr.ee/ekabohome
Niyi Adewole is a licensed realtor in Georgia, brokered by EXP Realty. Feel free to reach out at Niyi.Adewole@exprealty.com if you would like to work with an investor friendly real estate agent.
Welcome And Mission
SPEAKER_00Welcome to the Financial Freedom Mastermind Group Podcast. Here we're all about breaking free from the 40 to 50 year work pride and accelerating our journey towards financial freedom. Join us every Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern as we explore different types of investments that can fast track your path to financial independence. We serve as a hub for connecting with fellow members during our sessions so you can share successes, ask questions, and keep the momentum going.
SPEAKER_03I'm doing all right, man. Glad to be here, having a good day. I just got two checks in the mail, refund from the IRS and a refund from my escrow. So we're moving right along the line today. It's a refund from 2023. I had to amend that return, but still, money, money back in my pocket.
SPEAKER_01Man, you got everybody excited for a second. I thought it was a 2026, 2025 return. I'm like, hold up, how how'd you get it submitted so quick when we just got the documents? And how are you getting paid?
SPEAKER_03Haven't even started it. Haven't even started that one.
SPEAKER_01It's one where when I look at it, it's all just it takes so much time, man. Like honestly, like I have it on my calendar. I'm like, hey, I need to start turning this stuff in. And I just I just don't, right? I just leave it off to the last minute. But this year, I'm definitely gonna get it before the end of this month. I have some time set aside next week to actually start knocking it out just a little bit at a time.
SPEAKER_03I feel like every year I'm like, I'm gonna be better prepared next year than I was this year. And then you know, as the year comes, man, like those books very quickly they can just start to fall apart. And I I feel like I do a really good job of it, but it's just so much stuff that you're buying and selling throughout a year, man.
SPEAKER_01True, true. That's why I started hiring like a bookkeeper. And are you using that yet? Are you using like a virtual bookkeeper for some of the stuff you're doing?
SPEAKER_03Not yet, but I need to start actually crazy enough. My mother-in-law, she is a bookkeeper. Not my mother-in-law, my stepmother, excuse me. She is a bookkeeper for large corporations. So she's been telling me for a while, you know, whenever you need some help with your books, let it let her know. And I just haven't circled around to it because I do everything by a certain credit card, so it normally kind of takes care of itself, but you know, you have the nuances of things that need to be taken care of, and like it's just getting more convoluted for me as I'm adding more businesses. So I do need to get someone dedicated to that so I can just free my mind up.
Delegation, Coaching, And Inbox Triage
SPEAKER_01That is the piece. What you just mentioned is so huge. Being able to free your mind up. I spend more time on that on a week-to-week basis than I'd like to admit, right? Like, hey, how can I focus on just the highest dollar activity and delegate everything else? And so even if things aren't getting done to the hundred percent max, as long as somebody can do it about 75% of the way, I'm good to offload that task. And now I've hired a coach, uh a real estate coach, who's helping me do that even more. So one of the questions he asks on a weekly basis is hey, what should you not be doing anymore? And so one of the things that I'm actually training my executive assistant now to work on is emails. Like, I should not be looking through a hundred emails at the end of each day, right? It should be maybe like a top 20 or or 10 that actually have something to do with me. A lot of this is just spam, right? As you get out and you start doing all this business stuff, you just get a subscribe to a bunch of emails. And so I'm gonna start over this week training her via Loom videos on like, hey, these are the ones that I need to keep, these are the ones that we can get rid of, and and that should free up even more time to where I'm not spending, you know, an extra 20 minutes going through emails, and that extra 20 minutes every single day adds up.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, I got you. Yeah, it makes it makes a hundred percent sense, man. Like it it is, like you said, it's compounding, and time is something we can't get back. So figuring out how to allocate and delegate that time as best as possible is something that's huge, it's something that I'm definitely working on in my own entities. And to your point, you said getting 75 75% of it, you know, to quality. A lot of times, what I found out is sometimes you can find some people that can do stuff better than you can. And so you're doing all this stuff thinking that you can do it the highest and the best, and then there's somebody else that can come in and can do it better than you and faster than you. I think we kind of understand that from the standpoint of hiring trades. But even for you know, those small mingling tasks, like some people they can get through that the email inbox very quickly and efficiently, versus you when you're doing it and then you got something else you're doing. If they can focus on it 100%, they can do it better than you can.
Finding Rock Stars And Team Systems
SPEAKER_01I think you're spot on. And I gotta give a shout out to uh the person who's editing this video, which is my guy Michael Ungab, who is our our transaction coordinator, slash our short-term rental guest experience manager, slash kind of the the jack of all trades. He helps us with so much. And and what I gotta say, machine. And and literally the thing I love about Michael is he's a problem solver, right? He will bring an issue to you, but only if he's already tried this, that, and the other, or just to let you know, hey, this popped up that I figured it out. I'm like, dude, that's awesome. And so you can name a rock star, like you can you can quickly in your mind say, okay, this person's a rock star. And when you find just a few of those, it makes life so much easier. I don't even have to go into deep detail on things that I need. I'm like, hey, you know, shorthand, is there any way you can help with this? And he just figures out the rest. And so you're spot on. If you can find some of those team members, it makes it fun to build large teams and and and go out there and conquer the world together.
SPEAKER_03You know, me and you, we come from a team background, you know, playing ball out of our all all of our lives. We know, like sometimes you need that three technique that's just gonna take on two guys and free somebody else up, and that's that's the same thing in business, man. So having those people, like you said, I think that'll always make the people at the top successful. That's why you always have a laundry list of people that support those people that are at the top.
Airbnb Upgrades For Higher ADR
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, absolutely. And one thing I wanted to ask you about, right? Is I know you were doing updates. I was looking at the gram too. You was doing updates to the whole unit. What did what was the vision? What did you execute on? What did you end up doing to the B and B?
SPEAKER_03So we we renovated our living space just with some paint. We got curtains in every room now. We replaced all of our rugs, we redid our bathroom, wall color, updated some fixtures in there just to give a better vibe as we head towards the World Cup. We're just hoping to add about you know$25 to$50 a night additional in our ADR because the small things over time, like we said earlier, they're compounding. So being able to squeeze a couple more dollars with a couple more better finishes out of these things, making it more photo ready, I think it'll put us in a really good spot because we have a great location. We have a ton of stuff coming to downtown Atlanta. So we really want to make sure that we're capitalizing on this investment that we've already poured money to. Like what little bit of sweat equity can we continue to put into it on the weekend to make sure that we're getting the highest and best value every night when we're renting it out.
Increasing Occupancy And Backyard Amenities
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And this is something that's not talked about enough, or I think executed enough. A lot of times everybody's focused on the next deal, next deal, next deal. In the slow season, especially if you're running short-term rentals, that's an opportunity to optimize that short-term rental and put a few more dollars that you can get back that same year into the property. So, similar to you, I did the same thing over at the art gallery house. Oh, nice. Uh, the one where we have like the Muhammad Ali and all stuff painted on the wall. And we went in there and we did a couple updates. So, one, we changed that back room that was an office before into a bedroom with a bunk bed. So now you take the occupancy from you know, before it was six people or yeah, six people, and now we've been able to take it up to 10, right? Just with that small move. So that's that's one piece. And nobody's gonna miss that desk. We just moved it to one of the other rooms. Yeah, two in the backyard, we had an in-law suite, and then we have the main house, and there was this ramp that ran between the two that was kind of blocking off half the backyard, and it looked a little bit weird. We removed that whole ramp, we made the in-law suite its own self-contained thing, and then in the backyard, we put a fire pit, a pergola, a huge chest set, and redid pictures. And lo and behold, we're able to boost those dollars just a bit, right? As we start to head into the the busy season, we're gonna see exactly what it can do this summer, especially with baseball and things that nature starting to pick up. And so, yeah, I'm with you. Just the the updates you can do the house. One other thing that we did, and this was a tip that we got from one of our team members who stayed at a BB down in Florida, is we bought a Nintendo Wii and or not Nintendo Wii, no, a Nintendo Switch. Sorry, a Switch 2. And we bought this little like contraption that you can hook it onto the wall with and you can lock it, so it's essentially locked to the wall. Like when you go to you know a store and you play the game, but you can't remove the game.
SPEAKER_03Not anymore, but back in the day, you know, Walmart, you break your nick trying to play them games.
SPEAKER_01Yes, you do, yes, you do. I haven't actually looked for a game in a while, so I don't know if they still do that. But they're gone. Dang, yeah, that's that's that's sad. That's sad for the kids. But long story short, that small little change, which is not a crazy expense when you look at the grand scheme of an Airbnb, is gonna set us apart. Like, this is the house where you can go and play Nintendo uh Switch, right? And kind of have fun with the family, yeah.
Experience Over Hotels And Direct Bookings
SPEAKER_03100%, man. And like all those upgrades are important, like you said, and the name of the game with Airbnb, man, you know it is heads in beds. How many people can you sleep? Because a lot of people are looking for that that price break of being able to get a good bit of folk in one home because now we can spread out that cost amongst the whole party and it makes it a whole lot easier. So, what I've seen with we run a cleaning operation, so what I've seen is that a lot of my high value clients they're able to sleep a lot of people in bed. So it's like it seems like yo, these people are paying a crazy amount to stay at this property, but when you got 15 people that all can contribute to the cost, you start to realize they're paying less than a hundred dollars a night sometimes. Way cheaper if you went to a very, you know, cost-efficient hotel, and now they all get to stay together, they get to interact in the backyard, they get to play the Nintendo Switch together, they get to go into the hot tub, they get to use the sauna, they get to use the mini putt, they're getting an experience that they've never had before because Airbnb is a new niche or short-term rentals in general. Let me not just say Airbnb because we don't want to build our legacy on their land. Obviously, we're doing direct bookings and we're doing VRBO, all sorts of things of that matter. But I think the key caveat to this is building an experience for the guests, right? What can we sell them that a hotel can't? That's how we're gonna stay profitable and that's how we're gonna do great business.
SPEAKER_01That is spot on. Could not have said it better myself. I guess shifting gears a little bit of question for you. So you've built out the short-term rental portfolio now, right? Like pretty well, and you're continuing to grow. Have you ever thought about long-term rentals? And and if yes, or just give me some elaboration on that. Have you started about long-term rentals? Is that something that you want to have in the portfolio down the road?
SPEAKER_03I think the shift that we want to go to first before we dive fully into long-term rentals, we want to really target that midterm rental space because we've had a couple insurance guests so far, and those are great, they're very similar to long-term rentals, but they fetch a little bit of a higher price point. And with it being an insurance client, you know that someone else is brokering the pay of that. So as long as you make that home comfortable and you make it to where people don't want to leave, they can get the most dollars out of that insurance company. So that's something that we're really looking at right now. We're looking to possibly convert our space indicator to being a midterm rental, so you know, we won't have as much management on it, and then eventually we'll convert it to a long-term rental. So we're gonna kind of stair step it on all of our properties. We'll go short term, we'll go midterm, and then we'll go long term, unless someone just comes in, you know, and says, Hey, we'll pay almost midterm rental rates to go ahead and lock your property up long term, because that's the thing about location. If you have the great location, you can kind of get those better rates on long-term rental in kind of you know those places. Like if you look at your summer hills, you look at your uh your Kirkwood areas, places like that, even on a long-term rental, when you got people that are transitioning to the state from New York, California, the places like that, they'll pay a much higher price point if you already set up that home set up that home into a great amenity.
SPEAKER_01You are spot on. And it's one of those where I like the strategy that you have because for a long time, especially with the higher interest rates, you needed to get creative. And short-term rentals, one of the ways that whether it's a higher price home or high interest rate, you can still make it happen with a short-term rental. Uh, but when you look at like the long game, being able to get your properties to long-term rentals is how you scale up to multiple, multiple, multiple units without having to scale your team to a crazy size as well, right? Like one person can manage it. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_03I just got I we got another investor coming into the house right now.
SPEAKER_01So I like it, I like it.
SPEAKER_03Come on in, man. Let me get you a chair. We are on with Ni Yee out of Wale. Hey, what's up?
SPEAKER_02Hey, look at AJ. I'm making a guest appearance, man. Hey, I love it, I love it. Let's do it.
Case Study: Fourplex Pivot And Refi
SPEAKER_01Hey, welcome to the hot seat. It's all good. We in here. We were just talking about the whole strategy of going from short term to midterm to long term. And similar to what you do, Justin, that's what I did with that fourplex, right? Like that fourplex I purchased in in uh Snellville. Now it's been three years. When I first got it, the numbers didn't make any sense as all long term. The previous people had been renting it for$6,000 total, so$1,500 a unit, but they had bought it for$120K in a bag of chips like a decade ago, right? And so when I purchased it, I bought it for$800K, which is the value it was on that day. And that$6,000 wasn't cutting it. And so the way to creatively make that deal work is I gave the 60-day notice to two of the tenants, took them out, updated those units, turned them into short-term rentals, and that made up the delta. We were able to pull in roughly nine grand a month when you factor in the long terms and the short terms, but the short terms take a bit more. And so once it got to a point, which was really this past year where the rents eclipsed 2,000 per month to where I could rent it for, I ended up converting one of those back to a long-term rental. And now I was able to refinance the whole property to a lower interest rate, and the mortgage has gone down by about a thousand dollars, and so I don't need to make as much. And so I'm literally going to probably convert that last unit as soon as we don't have somebody who's in there, right? Somebody just booked it for like 30 days or something like that. But at some point, I plan to convert that last unit as well, move that furniture to another property or sell it and just make the whole thing a long-term rental, set it and forget it.
World Cup Pricing Strategy In Atlanta
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and that you know that's just gonna take a lot of overhead, you're gonna reduce the cleaning cost, you're gonna reduce the management time that you're having on the property. So it's just gonna be a lot freeing yourself up to go invest into another property, like you said.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And AJ, what about you, man? I I know that Justin was putting in some work at his property, and I know that you put in a heck of a lot of work last year at your property. But what's going on new with you? What you what you doing getting getting ready for the World Cup?
SPEAKER_02No, yeah, World Cup, definitely getting prepared for that pretty soon. I actually pulled up on Justin because I was in the neighborhood. I was at one of my other rental properties getting some work done for the short-term rental. So I knocked that out, and then I hit up Justin. I said, because our properties are probably only like 15 minutes apart, give or take, with traffic. So I hit him up and I said, Hey, what's going on? And boom, pop right in and right on cue, you guys are in the podcast talking about it. So I'm like, I'm in the right space, right time too. But yeah, no, the the the World Cup, definitely excited for it. I'm starting to try to look more at like market trends, looking at other listings out during that time frame. So I believe in Atlanta, the World Cup is gonna be from June 15th to July 15th. So right now I'm kind of just I want to get my pricing strategy down. And I think one of my strategies right now is to try to undercut the competition a bit. And I say that because like right now, I think there's a lot of hype for the World Cup in Atlanta, which like fair enough. But ultimately, like I think as an investor during that time frame, as you know, with short-term rentals, you just kind of have to know what your numbers are, what you're comfortable with, and not trying to like overshoot it and shoot to the moon to the point where you're like extremely like overpriced and nobody's gonna want to book with you because they can get a better deal somewhere else. So I'm looking at the market trends. I still want to be priced premium because it is a premium event, but at the same time, if I can get, you know, my bottom line or my number or something I feel like that I'm comfortable um receiving during that time frame um while still like you know beating out the competition and filling up my occupancy, I think that's a win. So that's kind of what I'm focusing for uh on during that time frame right now.
Margins, Costs, And Dynamic Pricing Tools
SPEAKER_01I mean, absolutely, especially if somebody books it early to try to lock in a deal, yeah. That's a win in and of itself. I think some people, at least those that are familiar with Airbnb, like me, I end up not booking my Airbnbs until last minute because I realize you're gonna get some of that best pricing. And so there may be some of that going on too. People that realize, like, hey, as we get a little closer, it's probably gonna be easier to negotiate price as opposed to booking it this far out. But for the premium properties, if you have some of those amenities that that others don't have, you can absolutely command that price.
SPEAKER_03Well, and kind of to piggyback on what AJ was saying, something that I was just realized, you know, just being a business operator in other spaces, like your dollars are made in the margins. So if you can make sure that you realize what your property can fetch and make sure you can make that money in the margins, I think you can always win in this environment. It's not always about getting that golden ticket that's out there, it's about making sure that you're making money every day your property is on the market. So if you can make sure that you're making money and you make that money in the margins, I think you can always win. To his point, I think some people think like, yo, I got this house, it needs to be rented at$300 a night. It's like it's not always gonna be$300 a night. You can make money at$150 as well if you got everything else tight and you're making sure you're making money, making money in those margins. So I think that's something as business owners and investors that we really have to make sure that we're keeping our systems tight to make sure that we're making money in the right places, making sure that our cleaning costs are at the right point, making sure that we're not overpaying for supplies. All those little things are what hurts your returns in the long run. So if you make sure you take care of those, you maybe don't have to charge as much, very similar to what you're saying, being able to convert those properties to long-term rentals because you realize what your fixed costs were. So now you can reallocate those dollars now that you know when the money's coming in.
SPEAKER_01And that's that's literally spot on. And Justin, you have actually helped me do that in a lot of ways, right? I remember it's probably been two years now. I was the one using Beyond Pricing, like, yeah, this is the one I use, and had everything set up. And Justin's like, No, you idiot, you gotta go use Price Labs. So I went and checked it out, and literally, just by making that one switch, it was like a six to seven hundred dollars per month savings because one was charging by percentage of the bookings, and we have some large houses that pull in a lot, whereas the other was charging just by how many listings and the cost went down by each number of listings you went up. So it went from paying close to a thousand a month to like two hundred and something a month, which was an amazing, amazing deal.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, man. You can't, and those are just dollars you can't get back. Like once you keep those in your pocket and then you put them into the market or whatever you're doing with them, they reinvest and they generate more dollars. That's the thing about money. How can you make it generate more dollars? So being able to keep that money in your pocket and putting it to work elsewhere, you're always gonna win.
AI, Automations, And Simpler Homes
SPEAKER_01One question for both of you, and this is fresh on my mind because I just got off a call right before this with actually Rich, the president of Amstra. He created this new app where it's essentially helping him answer all the guest inquiries, but it takes it a step further than what Hospitables does. And this is one where guests can actually call it. And yes, it's it tells you it's an AI, but it sounds more like a chat GBT talking to you, and it essentially is able to take all the issues, respond to some of them, but then get it to the right person. Like it's got all this automation on the back end. And so, what are you doing from an AI perspective? And how do you think this is gonna help you continue to streamline some of your property management or properties in general?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I recall this kind of being brought up in one of the previous podcasts. Like, I think right now I'm just kind of leaning into hospitable. I really don't have too much input on this. I really I'll probably pass it back to Justin because I'm I'm curious to see what he's using. I think last time we talked, you know, I was just kind of picking your brain and kind of seeing what ways you're leveraging AI at this point in time. But I am using hospitable. I'm not letting it fully off the leash by I and I think that's something that you know you're doing right now is um using the VA uh along with uh hospitable automation and AI, um, but pretty much letting it do automated responses. I'm still not comfortable to let it just you know send a reply automatically at this point in time because sometimes I get concerned about you know if it's the actual right response that I would want to send to a guest, but I I am still curating it. Uh, I think one thing that I picked up from that previous call that we did talk about this topic, I've been feeding into the the property's algorithm or or just the knowledge portal. Yeah, the knowledge portal, that's what it is. I've been definitely feeding into the knowledge portal, and I have been seeing some benefits of that. Um, it's still not all the way there, so I'm just gonna continue to kind of tweak it. And I think I've been adding more information as guests have been sending me like, you know, different kinds of questions, and I'm like, oh, okay, that's something that I'm missing in the knowledge hub. Let me just throw that in there. So anytime those things pop up, I'll just throw it on in. But at this point in time, you know, that's just that's just about it. Uh, nothing, nothing fancy for me. I'll pass it off to Justin.
Standardizing Gear And Preventing Guest Friction
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I would say for me, man, I would say we're pretty stabilized. Like, with all my guest messaging that I have on the forefront that comes out, I typically don't get many questions. Like, if I do get questions, it's just someone that's just asking questions, basically to be asking questions. So it's something that AI probably really can take care of anyway. So, like, I've delegated that task to other members of my team, very similar that you've done with the VA, but I I encourage them to use AI to respond to those questions, right? So, like, you don't need to spend so much time trying to curate the right answer. It's like let AI craft that answer for you. You give the information to AI and then you pass that along to the guest. Um, you know, there are some very nuanced cases to where like you may have to put your own input on it, but for the most part, in our house rules or in our first messaging that goes out, everything that you need to know about the property is there, and everything else inside the property is self-explanatory. We try to make it as simple as as possible. Like, we don't have a ton of odds and ends that could trip you up in the home because we don't want all those messages, right? The TV is very simple to use, the ceiling fans are very simple to use, like, even to the point of like removing remotes for ceiling fans, like we've gone to removing those because they cause more issues than they help. Because now someone's off the remote, the battery's dead. It's like, let's just go back to the pull strings on the ceiling fan. You turn it on, you turn it off, or right there at the light switch. We don't want all of this confusion of how to work things. We want it to feel as if it's your home at home.
SPEAKER_01And honestly, like it. It's funny, but it's it's true. Like the simpler you can make it to where even you know an eight-year-old could walk in there and figure out how to work everything. My goodness, it's gonna save you a lot of headache. AJ, what are we gonna say?
SPEAKER_02Man, you guys must be lucky because hearing him and his response, I'm like, I am not at that spot or place yet. Because guests will ask me questions about absolutely anything under the sun, even if it's listed in the house rules, I'll message them, you know, before their trip, I'll tell them the address, location, all of the whole nine yards, and I still get the same questions. So I think I hope one day I'm able to get to a point where you know Justin is at, or maybe he's just getting better guests than me at this point. I'm jealous, I'm envious, but I definitely want to get to a point where, like, you know, I don't think I'm ever gonna just not get any questions, but some of the repetitive questions are definitely like, you know, just like, come on, I've already I've already included that in the listing, you know, I've already messaged you about that.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, and and I've gotten to the point where I just hand that whole thing off. So I don't get any questions anymore. The team's getting a lot of questions, and I hope they don't question me. I go from there.
Airbnb Address Policy And Host Security
SPEAKER_02I'll tell you one thing just to add on to this. Is this pretty funny? So I would get questions at my one property about TVs like all the time, right? Like, is there a TV in this room? Is there a TV in the living room? Is there a TV? So I got to a spot where I'm like, you know what? I'm just gonna upgrade the property and put TVs in literally every room because I guess when you guys travel on Airbnb, you just want to sit in the room and watch TV. Personally, when I'm traveling on Airbnb, I want to go out and explore, and then I come back. I really don't need a TV. But again, this is hospitality, so you have to cater to the guests. And I ended up putting a television in every single room in the house. It's three bed, two bath. Um, I probably still missed out on the room. I probably could have put a TV in the bathroom, but I I'll just leave, I'll just leave it there.
SPEAKER_01Hey, that is gotta have one in the kitchen. Hey, come on now. Listen, no, yeah, hey, it gets to a point where it's too much, and then to your point, the remotes get lost, the battery's done, and it's just a lot to keep up with. But yeah, simplifying is definitely key. We order the same locks for everywhere, we order the same cameras for everywhere, so we're not switching between systems. We even when we're taking over for owners, they're like, Hey, I already got a camera system. Here's the login, like, listen, man, we're putting our own cameras in there so we don't gotta switch logins. And then, even when it comes to uh the TVs, right? Ordering the exact same TV so that we all know how to work it, and it's very simple because we've had the properties where they have different TVs, and my goodness, that can actually ruin a guest experience if they can't get on and watch the Super Bowl. What in the world, Justin? How many investors you got coming over here, man? Now's my wife. There she goes, and Kenyon, what is up? She's not down. Oh, that is fair. That is fair. That is fair. That's that's what my guy's doing right now. He is conked out.
SPEAKER_02I really just came to see Kenyon, not not anybody else.
SPEAKER_01That's fair. That's more than fair. Listen, no, Justin. AJ, this has been good. Anything top of mind?
SPEAKER_03Nah, man, I ain't got nothing. Uh we kind of went through a lot before AJ made it. So I've pretty much, you know, discussed everything I had, got a couple wins that came in with some of those credits coming back from the real estate. But other than that, just trying to keep going, man, trying to keep striving, trying to keep building upon what we've already started because right now I feel like I'm at the stage where I'm kind of I'm kind of in the middle ground to where you know things can go well or things can go bad. So I'm trying to just make sure that I'm keeping editing going forward.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. No, that's awesome.
SPEAKER_02Hello, she's tired. I know I'm jumping in kind of late in the conversation, and I'm not sure exactly like what you guys touched on, but of course, Airbnb is always making updates, and most of the time they don't favor the host. So, with the most recent announcement, I saw my email, and Airbnb is making changes again. They are now once a booking is confirmed at this point, now a guest can get your properties address, and this update isn't gonna go into effect until March. I have some personal concerns about it, but you know, I was I was looking around in the in the host community. Some people aren't as concerned about it, but for me, it's kind of like you know, say there's a a situation sometime in the future, and a guest books a reservation three or three or four months out, right? And then they just have your address, but then they just cancel immediately afterwards. I kind of find that to be somewhat of a safety concern as a host, but I'd be willing to hear your thoughts if you're concerned about it at all.
SPEAKER_01They're getting more and more like hotels. Like when you book a hotel, you know the location, right? And you can still cancel ahead of time, but you know the location. And so I think that the the main piece is that you have all your security features set up and not necessarily an alarm because guests are gonna forget the alarm and then you're gonna have police over there. We get that at the mansion about once a week. Uh or once a month, sorry. Once a week, I was like, wow. No, once a week would be crazy. But but about once a month there'll be a guest who just forgets, like, hey, how do I disarm this? And the police are calling all this stuff. But at least having your camera surround and then having the codes, you know, that activate and deactivate. No, it's not ideal. It's much better to actually be able to send it to them when when they can no longer cancel without having you know funds taken from them. But honestly, I think that will eliminate some of the questions because I'm sure you get the messages too on the day of, hey, what's the address? It's like, gosh, you can click into the link, you can see it, but people still are are gonna ask you.
Closing And Weekly Mastermind Invite
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I and I hear, you know, some people's responses, you know, like you just mentioned, they're trying to make it more like hotels, but that's the difference, right? It's hospitality industry, you know, in terms of you know, hotels and Airbnbs, but our properties aren't, I wouldn't consider them hotels. I think they provide, you know, a different level of amenities. These are, you know, single-family homes, right? Like hotels don't and cannot provide that automated, like uh self-check-in, you know, you have to see somebody at the front desk for a hotel. Now, uh, some people could look that at look at that as a uh a pro versus an Airbnb, but ultimately what I'm trying to say is although they're both in the hospitality industry and market, I do think hoteling and Airbnb should have their differences. And uh personally, I don't I don't necessarily know if I'm a hundred percent comfortable with that at this point in time, but I don't know. I'll just I'll I'll think on it more.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it's one of those things where Airbnb still accounts for 60% of our business, so it's it's like, yeah, these things are changing and we're not actually fans of it, but you kind of you gotta roll the punches until you can get that percentage to where it's not the the the most dominant thing, right? And that takes time because they've built up a lead over everybody, correct.
SPEAKER_02Man, we're trying to get like you uh 60 hospitable bookings, man.
SPEAKER_01Hey, come on now. We're gonna have it sooner or later. Sooner or later, it's coming. No, AJ, I appreciate you jumping in, man. And I hope that you guys have an awesome rest of this Wednesday. Please give Kenyon a kiss for me, and I will catch you guys a little bit later.
SPEAKER_00All right, big doll.
SPEAKER_01Be safe.
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