Make Six Figures In Remote Income with a Short Term Rental Business

Moving Abroad Resources:

👉 Moving Abroad Relocation Roadmap Guidebook that walks you through the five phases of moving abroad ($27): https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/relocate

👉 Moving Abroad Relocation Blueprint Course which offers step by step guidance on everything from choosing the right country to immigration to taxes and everything in between: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/blueprint

👉 Want us to handle the details of your move abroad? Apply for our white-glove relocation services here: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/consult

👉 Free Moving to Mexico Guide: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/mexico

👉 Free Moving Abroad Checklist: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/abroad 

Remote Work and Online Income Resources:

👉 Expat Income Accelerator course which shows you the multiple ways you can make money globally based on our 15+ years of experience in online business, investing internationally and living in multiple countries: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/income

👉 Get Your First High Paying Client Online Bootcamp which walks you through the first four foundational steps of creating and monetizing an online business based on 15+ years of experience in online business: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/firstclient-yt

👉 YouTube Mastery Workshop which shows you how we’ve built two YouTube channels that bring clients and passive income from digital course sales (including turning Entrepreneur Expat into a six-figure business in six months): https://www.YouTubeMasteryWorkshop.com

👉LinkedIn Mastery Workshop which shows you how to use LinkedIn to find remote work, clients and connect with recruiters based on Justin’s experience building a six-figure business and finding remote work on LinkedIn: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/linkedin

👉 Free Make Money From Anywhere Guide: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/money-guide 

V I D E O S    T O    W A T C H    N E X T :

Online Business Tips to Working and Traveling In Mexico: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zGH0voCyOc&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_IA6s3KvB_g9Cc9Ze1eji8j&index=2

Moving to Mexico: 10 Reasons Why We Chose to Live in Guadalajara https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK23vD8_xjc&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_LAY7UV78YMgms-f2e1UcwN&index=23

Tips for Moving Overseas: Top 5 Remote Work Skills That Make Money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFzjCrlNAL8&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_IA6s3KvB_g9Cc9Ze1eji8j

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Inquiries: community@entrepreneurexpat.com

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#livinginmexico #movingtomexico #digitalnomad #makemoneyonline #expatsinmexico #digitalmarketingtraning #geoarbitrage #moveoverseasfromus #digitalmarketingcourse #guadalajara #costoflivingmexico #digitalnomadvisa #digitalnomadnews #workandtravel #locationindependent

Transcript

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if your rentals can run without you, you can live absolutely anywhere. Today I'm gonna give you the exact system to manage us short-term rentals from Mexico or anywhere else in the world without babysitting guests or bleeding your profit margin. What I'm about to share is based on my multiple years of experience with Airbnb and other vacation rentals, during which I made over a hundred thousand dollars in revenue from those rentals. So we're gonna talk about how to do that, how to strategically manage things in a way. Where you don't have to necessarily be in the same city as those rentals and you can live anywhere in the world. That's exactly what we're about here. My name is Justin. For those of you that are new and on this channel, entrepreneur, expat, we talk about everything having to do with moving overseas, living the life of your dreams in another country and building a location independent. Income or business or anything else that supports you while you are doing so. So if you're interested in that, make sure to hit the like button. So that we can reach more people like you and hit that notification bell and subscribe to this channel so that you don't miss a single video. We really appreciate it. So lately we've been flooded with a lot of messages from American hosts who wanna move abroad, but they feel chained to their properties. If that's you, this episode is gonna be your playbook because we're gonna go into exactly how to lock in the operations, install the right team, stay compliant on your taxes, and keep. The cash flow stable while you're running this from overseas, of course, a quick disclaimer, I do help business owners build location optional and location independent lives with systems that actually do work for them. This is all education. It's not legal advice. It's not tax advice. Obviously, your own facts drive your outcome. Depending on how you run this. Obviously that's gonna determine the amount of money that you make, and I'm not a CPA. If you do wanna learn more about specific tax strategies, including international tax strategies, then book a consult below this video or go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult. And if you're looking for. Just a little bit more information about how to move to Mexico specifically, you can download our starter kit, uh, our Mexico guide@entrepreneurexpat.com slash Mexico, and those links will all be right below this video. Now, the first thing we're gonna talk about is the remote ops stack. So these are specifically the things that you need to have in order to be able to effectively manage your property remotely. So ideally. You wanna pick one dashboard for messaging, calendar sync, owner statements, and automated rules. There's a lot of different tools here and there's a lot of different ways that those sorts of tools interact. Uh, but some examples of these booking management systems are guesty, host away, owner res and hospitable. I can tell you, I did personally have some experience. Using guestie, which is a service that, that helps you manage those bookings. When I was running several Airbnbs in the California uh, area, we had Airbnbs in, in a couple different cities in California. So we were using Guestie to help us manage them. And uh, we'll talk a little bit about the smart access as well, because that's really important. So whenever you're running a property, especially if it's remotely, but even if you are in the same city, obviously you want to minimize. The amount of effort required to, uh, get people in and out, especially if maybe you're not able to meet them or if your assistant's not able to meet them at the property Exactly. When they're checking in, you want the ability to, uh, give, you know them a code or something like that. So what you want to purchase. Our keypad locks with time bound codes. Schlage has some examples of this. I personally have had really good experiences with Ultra Lock. Uh, they're very sophisticated. You could control them remotely with a bridge, but there's a bunch of different brands and options and things to choose from. But specifically, you want to make sure that those guests have time bound codes. So you wanna have a unique four digit code, make it secure. You could use the last four digits of their phone number. I've, I've used that before and had. Uh, we're actually managing some properties here right now in the Lake Al area, so we're, we're occasionally doing things like that just to make it easier for guests. To remember their codes so that they don't need to contact us. Of course, auto rotate the codes after checkout. And then we also recommend an offline fallback. So you can have something like a lockbox for emergencies, although most of the time, uh, you're not gonna need it, but have something like that maybe hidden away, uh, in the case that they do get locked out for some reason. Have a lockbox. Um, one note about this as well is. Uh, before we even go into all of the, the optimization strategies and things like that, one very important note is that you want to do this ideally in a place that actually does allow Airbnb. They don't have like an explicit issue with Airbnb, um, because they're gonna make your life miserable. I'll give you an example from my own experience. One of the apartments that we had on Airbnb that we actually did. Sublet. Uh, they had issues with us using their apartment as an Airbnb, and so we had issues with the access control. Like for example, we had to duplicate key cards and that was very complicated. And if they went to the leasing office and mentioned anything about Airbnb, we got a hard time. So even before you dive into like all these tools, make sure that either this is your property. Or that ideally you have explicit permission from the owner of the property or whatever. Uh, if it's a multifamily or apartment or something, whatever company is managing that, that you can do this because otherwise, take my word for it, it's gonna turn into a nightmare. So you don't want to be doing this under the table if you can at all avoid it. Now, one thing that I'll also say about noise and other types of risk management. Is that you want to have sensors for different things. So one thing that I recommend, and you may want to disclose this to guests as well, because it'll help to actually, uh, lower the level of noise, and it'll probably also dissuade guests that maybe we're planning on partying or things like that, is you can have noise sensors. So, hey, when this goes above a certain number of decibels, which would be like, you know, a, a very loud conversation or like music or whatever, for more than a certain period of time, you'll get notified that way If they've got. More people then were, were set up to check in at that property, or you're playing really loud music or anything like that. Uh, you are notified so that you can avoid issues with things like neighbors, right? Or HOAs that, that maybe don't want you doing Airbnb or that, uh, perhaps, you know, have restrictions and things like that with noise, just like we do in our HOA here. In Mexico, you wanna also look at having some water leak sensors. So there are certain sensors you can buy. You can find them on Amazon, you can find'em on Ali Express. A lot of these will like plug into a smart home ecosystem like, like Tuya, which just operates off of the cloud. Or if you want to get really fancy ZigBee or or wifi or something else, uh, that runs locally. But you can buy these water leak sensors. They're not very expensive and put them in like low lying places. So for example, at the, uh, you know, right next to your toilet in the bathroom or at the. At the bottom of the cabinet in your kitchen underneath the sink so that if there is a water leak, you find out about it first and you don't have guests frantically calling you and saying, Hey, like, Hey, there's a leak here and it's getting out of control and I don't know what to do. You find out, uh, when those problems are just. Starting. And then I also recommend, uh, obviously in compliance with local laws and things like that, that you have cameras on the outside of your property. You wanna see who's checking in, make sure that they're complying with the number of guests that have actually booked, make sure they're not doing any illegal activities there, or bringing more people than they're allowed to. And check on the devices at least weekly so that you can make sure, hey, are these, are these sensors, are these cameras and everything else? Functional, or is there something we have to do to fix them before the next guest? You also wanna look at messaging automation. So you're gonna want to have templates for, here's the message that somebody gets when, uh, they just booked. You want a pre-arrival, for example, when they're supposed to check in, because people tend to be very lazy and it's, it's difficult for them to just kind of remember, oh, hey, I'm supposed to do this and this and this. So send those messages proactively, say, Hey, your check-in is coming. Here are the instructions. You can check in after this time. This is the code to get in. Here's how you enter the gate. Here's what you need to do to find the property. If it's a little bit more complicated, et cetera, uh, maybe mid stay, you send them a message, Hey, how's it going?'cause that can proactively find issues. Okay. Maybe the water heater's not set up perfectly. You've gotta do some things with the water heater. Or perhaps they're having some problems that you'd much rather have them tell you. During their stay, then write like a scathing review at the very end. So mid stay, maybe if it's a four day booking, send, it's a couple days in. And again, automate it. You don't wanna have to manage this manually'cause it's a pain in the ass. Say, you know. Hey John, uh, we, we, uh, we just wanted to check in. How's your stay going? Uh, do you have any issues? Is everything good? Let us know. Uh, we'd be happy to help. Something like that. And then at the end, write them a review request perhaps when they're checking out. Included and then have a follow up if they do not write a review. And, uh, another thing that I recommend that's a really good tool is dynamic pricing. So there are tools like Price Labs, wheelhouse and Beyond pricing. I used, uh, used to use Beyond Pricing when I was managing my Airbnbs in the US and we're looking into that now here as well. And set floors and ceilings and minimum stay rules, uh, perhaps tied to events, tied to weekends, things like that. Uh, we also recommend having an owner dashboard, uh, especially if you're scaling. So you wanna look at. Getting systems to give you a one page weekly report. Look at your occupancy numbers. Uh, look at your cleaning turnover times issues, refunds, your guest quality, uh, scores and things like that. You wanna run this like a real business now. Section two here we're gonna talk about the team structure and the compensation plan. So you always wanna have on the ground one accountable person who handles the issues, perhaps light maintenance and coordinates with vendors, we found that a flat monthly stipend plus a rate per call, like, Hey, you've gotta maybe go over and fix something or coordinate with someone. Uh, so we're gonna, you know, pay you a small stipend, we'll give you a per call rate, and then you also perhaps may incentivize. Them, uh, to, to do their job well. Uh, and we'll talk a little bit more about incentives for managers and people like that in a second. So, cleaners, this is a mistake that, that we made, uh, when we were managing our properties, is that we only had sometimes one cleaner that was assigned to a given property. That's a big stake. You always wanna have at least the primary and a backup per property. And one thing that I recommend is that you wanna. Make sure that you, you give them like photo checklists and say, Hey, this, this bathroom should look like this. And have them take pictures after every single clean and send them to you, ideally before they leave or send them even better yet to your operator, to your manager, so that they can look everything over and say, oh, hey, like you, you missed this thing over here. Or We need the bed made like this, or whatever it is. You wanna make sure that you're not micromanaging them, but you're giving them enough self-governance so that they can do a good job well without being like overly managed. But at the same time, you wanna make sure that people are being held to a very high standard because one little hair in the bed that's not supposed to be there, even if the sheets were washed, you know, there's a, the hair that's stuck there somewhere, um, people pay attention to those things and. It's very hard to like recover from a lot of negative reviews and things like that. So really important to make sure that cleanliness is done well, and perhaps give them a bonus as well. So maybe it's five, 10,$15. Every time you get a five star review for cleanliness, you'll send them a bonus. So, hey, they might be able to make five or 10 or 15% more as long as they're meeting those standards or exceeding those standards every single time. You also wanna make sure that you have handymen and specialists handy. So pre-book those relationships for things like hvac, if, especially if you've got a house where you're not, uh, using a property management company. To manage, you know, things like that or where, where there's not, uh, already Abu you know, a building maintenance in place, right? So if you're in a multifamily, maybe they cover things like HVAC or plumbing issues. But if it's your own property, like a lot of these will be, you've, you've gotta have those specialists there on lock. You've gotta have the, the plumbing, the plumbers, the electrical people, uh, everyone like that. And then. Keep W nines on file as well. Of course, you're running this like a business. You want to be able to get a write off, so if you need to send W nines to those contractors so that you can get the proper tax credits for them, and then perhaps you have a co-host or a manager. So if you've got someone that's a little bit more full service that's managing your property, you don't wanna deal with it too much. Typically those people are paid anywhere from about 15 to 30% of booking revenue, depending on the scope and lighter cohosts roles. Like maybe they're just just doing messaging or checking in people. Um, that could be perhaps between 10 and 15%. So you want to interview for their discipline. You wanna see, hey, have they actually had proven experience? Managing properties before. Do they have references that we can talk to? You want to make sure that they're gonna adhere to all of your SOPs, your standard, standard operating procedures. Not that, Hey, this is a really nice person, or I'm gonna hire my cousin to run this. Like, do they actually have the ability to do this, do this effectively, make sure that people are happy. Customer support is a really big part of this business and hospitality. It's pretty much everything, right? So you want to have someone, if you are gonna. Gonna have somebody like us, for example. So we do property management all the time here in Mexico. And it's not just about preventing issues from happening or making sure that a property is maintained proactively. Yes, that's a big part of it. But more importantly is problems are always going to arise. Problems will always come up. So you wanna make sure that you hire somebody that's very disciplined, very experienced, and that they know how to resolve things both with the client and also with the vendors. So both of the guests that's staying at your house and also with anybody else they need to coordinate with, to make sure that the issues are actually resolved. Now, uh, perhaps with the, the property manager or co-host, you wanna have something like a 45 minute call every single week to review those KPIs. Uh, you're gonna want to do at least one property walkthrough once per quarter via video, if not more, so that you can actually see the property. Maybe you notice something that they don't that needs to be fixed. Now we're gonna talk about the cash flow levers. So this is what really moves the profit and loss of an Airbnb or a short-term rental business. So you want to have things in place like pricing rules, specifically. You wanna make sure that you're protecting weekends and events. Events are a really big deal. So one of the things you want to do so that you don't lose out on a ton of extra revenue is look at. All of the events that are in a given city, so that you've got those on a calendar well in advance. One example might be in, if you're in Austin, south by Southwest, there's tens of thousands of people that are coming into the city for a couple weeks for, for that, uh, for that event, for that conference. Uh, I, I went once, when I was living in Austin. It was quite fun, but man, the, the Airbnbs and everything else are very expensive, so you don't wanna keep your regular nightly rate. That's not gonna be competitive. If there's an event in town or a sports game or something like that, you wanna make sure you've got, uh, all of those events on a calendar and that you price appropriately by researching the market. You want to typically enforce minimums, uh, especially. Uh, when you are, you know, running this business remotely, you don't just wanna have people coming in, checking in every night. Sure, you, you might break even or make a little bit of money on the cleaning fee, but it's a lot better when you find people longer term. The exception might be things like last minute gaps. So if you've got, you know, people booked, let's say from Saturday to Tuesday, and then you've got another booking, uh, Friday, you know, you might be able to, to allow, it a two night stay or something like that in between there. But with the exception of that, you want to, you want to also enforce, uh, minimums and you can give discounts dynamically, both in Airbnb and also with special pricing software, like I mentioned earlier, so that if you do have last minute blocks of time available in your booking calendar, that those can get filled fairly quickly. And you also want to have a mix of channels. So we recommend that you start with something like Airbnb. Or VRBO or both. And those can be integrated together, uh, with a central calendar system so that bookings are, not overridden and things like that. And then once that's proven, once that's working, you can add a direct booking site. If you do need help with that, you can reach out to us because we do also do a lot of business consulting. We help with things like e-commerce websites, performance of this website setup, et cetera. So if you get to that point where you need support, definitely feel free. To reach out to us, you can just email community@entrepreneurexpat.com and we, we can gladly direct you to, where the best place is to, to find resources there or help you if we can, and make sure on that direct booking site you've got e-commerce set up. It's very fast, it's optimized, and you could set up something like Stripe or another merchant account and have. Uh, policies in place for chargebacks, in terms of service and things like that, you are going to make a lot more money overall as a, as a percentage when you do have people book directly. So always give people, Hey, here's a discount code. If you wanna book again, uh, you know, go and follow us on Instagram. Um, typically you don't want to put your, you know, booking link out, uh, your private booking link on Airbnb because they can shut you down for things like that. But if you just give a subtle, oh, hey, go in. Follow us here. Maybe they'll end up getting to it. And we highly recommend anytime somebody does come and stay, give them a card with your phone number, with your direct link, uh, to be able to book directly, because you're gonna save a lot on all of those Airbnb fees. And, uh, also it's just better practice. Like you want to build your own book of business. You're not just dependent on those booking sites for those, all of those people, uh, checking in with you. Another important thing is insurance. So Airbnb does come with a tool called air cover, which is sort of their, their version of short-term rental insurance. But it's definitely not flawless. And the last time I checked, you also typically had to actually shut your listings down temporarily while they processed your claim. There are a lot of little gotchas like that. Uh, I think the reason they do that is because they realize you're gonna lose a lot of revenue. So unless it's something major, you're probably just gonna go with business as normal and not even use their insurance service. So you wanna make sure that you've also got proper short term rental insurance. Discuss this with your insurance agency because the air cover is not necessarily. A great substitute for like a proper short-term rental insurance policy, especially if you've got very expensive property. Uh, you've got things that can break. Maybe you've got pools, you've got hot tubs, um, or just expensive things in in the property, whether that's TVs, whether that's art. You wanna make sure that those things are covered because air cover will not always cover that. And if you are also offering guests the ability to book directly, you wanna have a policy in place that does account. For that. And next, you want to turn your costs into standardized checklists. So you wanna look at standardized cleaning checklists. You wanna make sure that you know exactly how much money you're spending on a given cleaning. You want to have linens and all of those things documented, uh, anything that is a consumable, like perhaps you're giving them a gift basket when they check in, uh, with like fruits and things like that. You wanna make sure that that's documented, you know how much it is. And also buy in bulk from somewhere like Costco. And you can store all of those items like the soaps and maybe, uh, pantry type of foods in a storage closet, cleaning supplies, all those other things. And if you really wanna get fancy, you can even QR code your inventory. That might be a little excessive unless you're managing a bunch of properties. But you wanna understand exactly what your inventory is, what you have to buy, what's missing, so that you're not scrambling and having the cleaning la lady, for example, go to go to CVS. Uh, to have to go and buy soap and pay three times as much as it's supposed to cost. Ask me how I know that, you know, we've had issues where there weren't even supplies there when the guests checked in and we had to reimburse the guests after they bought them. Trust me, you do not wanna deal with that with guests, and you definitely don't wanna have that in an Airbnb review. Now we're gonna talk about tax compliance that you cannot ignore. You always wanna make sure that you're planning for taxes. Now, again, this is not tax advice. Consult your professional, set up a consult with us if you want us to refer you to a tax professional in the US or Mexico, or multiple. Countries. Um, but you wanna know a few things about the general rules here in terms of how taxes work. So if you're familiar with the tax code at all, you know that there's a little bit of a difference. Between short-term versus rental activity specifically, the way that the IRS typically will look at this is that rental activity is more of a passive income. So let's say you've got a house that you purchase, you're renting it out every month, or you're renting it out monthly to, to a long-term tenant, that's gonna be considered a passive income activity. And if you are renting it on Airbnb for short term, which typically is more lucrative, that's more of an active business. So they look at that more of. Uh, self-employment or corporate income, depending on how you are structured. So if your average guest stay is seven days or less, or 30 days or less, with a lot of services provided, like it's a, you know, maybe furnished obviously, and it's, uh, you're gonna be doing cleaning and you're gonna be doing things like that, it's not considered a rental activity under the IRS's passive loss rules. In that case, separate rules are going to apply. So you wanna understand that there's a Schedule E and there's also a Schedule C. So if you're doing long-term rentals, those are going to go under Schedule E because it's real estate, it's passive income. But if you do hotel like services. Uh, or you're doing short term stays, then that's going to be a Schedule C. And you can also, uh, have potential reporting requirements for self-employment, uh, taxes and things like that. There is one small exception, so if you use a place as your primary residence and you only rent it out for fewer than 15 days in a year, this is called the 14 day rule, then that income isn't reported. But you also can't take any rental deductions, so that is important to know. And if you are trying to depreciate a property that you own, typically residential rentals are going to be depreciated over something called M-A-C-R-S. You can look that up for more information, but you're gonna depreciate that building only, not the land over 27.5 years. That's really important. That's really important in terms of cash flow as well as future recapture. And there's also another thing to note that if you are a high earner, you may be paying something called NIIT, which is net investment income. And you can owe a potential 3.8% of tax on your rental properties, uh, on those profits, depending on your adjusted gross income. So that's another thing that you wanna talk to your accountant about if you haven't already planned for it. And another thing to note, and this is. This is the, the US government just maybe being a little bit more broke than it was before. Y'all know how that's going. Uh, but they're also planning on lowering the 10 99 K thresholds from third party platforms. So that's not just Airbnb, that's also other platforms like Stripe that are processing payments on your behalf and then sending you these reporting forms at the end of the year. So in 2024, it was only over$5,000 in income. They were sending you a form for. 2025, it's 2,500, and now it's only$600 starting in 2026. So this includes like Airbnb. This typically includes platforms like Stripe, like Venmo. They're gonna be sending you those 10 99 Ks. So even if you don't receive that form, you still have to report the income. But it's important to know that they are cracking down a lot and they're starting to track this now more and more. So that's something that you definitely want to be aware of. Next we're gonna talk about lodging and occupancy taxes. So Airbnb and VRBO typically will collect and remit certain occupancy taxes on your behalf and many, but not all jurisdictions. So even if they do collect, you still might have to do business registration or file. You wanna make sure that you talk to your city, county, or state and check their rules based on where your property is located. That's another thing that you cannot avoid, and you, you're gonna get into some really hot water if you don't think about those things in advance. So, very important. Another thing that's super important is your security, your risk, and the guest experience. So you wanna look at things like ID checks. Make sure that when guests are checking in, either you or whoever. It's gonna be checking them in once you're somewhere else or perhaps living abroad, you wanna make sure that whoever's bringing them there is looking at their government IDs, matching the name to what they paid with. And then another thing is you want to ideally. Try to not accept any sort of third party booking. So when somebody says, Hey, I'm booking this place for X, Y, Z friend, that's something to immediately be skeptical about. Does it happen? Sometimes somebody doesn't have an account. Sure. Maybe we try to avoid those things because they tend to, to not have good outcomes. The exception, of course, would be like a third party corporate booking. Uh, so a company perhaps is booking for their employee, but you wanna make sure you ask them, Hey, can we see a. You know, a copy of, uh, some documentation because we need to, to verify, hey, like some, some data showing that, hey, this is your employee. Some sort of letter, uh, perhaps something on the businesses letterhead, at least to, to make sure that it is legit. And then you wanna also make sure that house rules are really clear and enforce. I mentioned earlier like noise sensors and things like that. Uh, so typically if you're in an HOA or even just a, a neighborhood, you wanna have quiet hours and like no loud music after 9:00 PM. Things like that, you want to enforce the maximum occupancy. So if you say, Hey, I'm renting this place for four people, and they show up with 20 to have a party, that's a big no-no. And, and typically you want to note in the listing that those sorts of things will be, uh, immediately canceled and they'll immediately be asked to leave with no refund, no parties, nothing like that. And then other fees. So if they, if they do perhaps, uh, break some of the rules, you can put fees and things like that. Uh, obviously don't get too crazy, you know. Uh, there's a lot of Airbnbs now that say, oh, you need to take all the linens off the bed and put them in the washer before you leave and wash all the, I'm like, why are you making people do that? That's, that's ridiculous. Like, they're literally paying you a cleaning fee, right? Don't be crazy and excessive. Uh, but you do want to have very specific rules and fees for breaking those rules are consequences for. Breaking those rules. Also have an emergency playbook to make sure that the guest experience is good. So what happens in a lockout? Maybe have that lockbox somewhere in the back, uh, with the code that you give them. If, if they have issues with the lock or something like that. What happens in the event of a flood, a power outage? You also want to have a vendor list pinned somewhere in your property management system or whatever system you use to keep track of all of this. Data, and maybe you've got like a$500 petty cash buffer with whoever's operating this. Just in case, you know, a plumber needs to be called for an emergency. You've got some cash to be able to pay vendors like that, and they're not blowing up your phone when you're on the beach trying to enjoy a margarita or something, right? The whole idea is to make this as passive as possible. So now I wanna share our 10 day remote ready sprint. Here's a summary of all the things you wanna do in the first 10 days to really get this going. So day one, you wanna choose your property management system and connect all of your channels to it. You're gonna wanna load your message templates up as well as your escalation rules. Day two, you want to install smart locks, set up code automation. Ideally get a lock that you can connect to that property management system if possible, or make sure that whoever's going to be responsible for that is properly trained. And then stage your backup lockbox. Day three, install your noise and your leak sensors and test alerts. To your operator. Day four, implement dynamic pricing with minimums, floors and event calendars. Day five, finalize your SOPs for your cleaners, your photo checklist, as well as your backup crew, and then set the bonuses that you have tied to five star cleanliness. Day six, you're gonna hire or formalize your local operator and make sure that you sign a. Uh, bonus agreement, a scope and bonus agreement so that they know exactly what's expected, how much is getting, they're getting paid for that, as well as what bonuses they will get, uh, as an incentive to do a really good job. Day seven, build your weekly KPI report and your owner dashboard. Day eight insurance checkup. Confirm that the insurance policy you have, or that you're looking at actually is. Proper for a short-term rental. Get the policy details and make sure you also document the limits of the platform coverage you have from Airbnb or other sources. Day nine, you wanna look at your tax hygiene. So C, based on what, what sort of business you're trying to run with us based on what you're going to be doing. Are you a Schedule E or a Schedule C in terms of how the IRS views you look at your depreciation schedule. For the property to make sure you've got the tax savings there, your NIIT exposure, check that with your CPA and then load a folder that you're gonna put all of your receipts and all of your statements in. And then day 10, look at your lodging taxes. Do a lodging tax check. Look at which platforms are gonna collect what in your jurisdiction, see whether you still need to register and file. In a lot of cases, you do see if there's any other permits or restrictions or things like that where you're planning on doing this and make sure all the paperwork for that is. In order. And finally, here are some common mistakes that remote operators make. So one of the biggest things, and this is a problem that I had, is, is no local accountability. So if you've just gotten multiple vendors all over the place, like you're trying to coordinate your cleaning lady yourself, right? Or your cleaning team, if you've got plumbers, you're trying to manage them directly. Uh, you've got all, all of these different things going on, but nobody really on the ground to run that property for you. You're gonna have a lot of issues. So before you even move abroad with this as a business, bringing you income, you want to test it and see how hands off you can be, take a vacation, make sure everything is gonna run without you, because the ultimate goal is for you not having to visit. That property almost at all in order to be able to run this remote short-term rental business. Another mistake people make is over automation without rules. So there might be a lot of messages going back and forth, guests and whatnot, but no human to catch edge cases. You want to. Ensure that you're providing really good customer support because that way you get repeat business, you get good reviews, and good reviews are like the most important thing, uh, in terms of people coming and booking more on your platform, whether that's that same guest or other guests, and you wanna get people coming back and booking with you directly as well. Another really common mistake is people will ignore. Tax form changes and thresholds. You don't wanna wait for a surprise 10 99 to decide what your income is. You want to make sure that you're planning for taxes in advance, you're being strategic about it, you're consulting a professional, and that you're reporting all of that as taxes and keeping all of your books. Clean. That's very, very important and you don't wanna assume that the platform is just gonna handle all of your taxes a lot of the time. They don't handle business registrations, they don't handle the short term rental registration. They don't handle necessarily all of the layers of your lodging tax. So you want to contact Airbnb or VRBO or whatever platform you're using. You wanna contact your CPA, uh, you wanna get specific advice on what you need to do in your area to make sure that you're fully compliant. So you really don't need to choose between living abroad and running great rentals. We were getting a lot of demand for for this topic, so we wanted to do this video, but it's absolutely possible to live abroad as well as run great vacation rentals. You just need clean systems, you need the right local operator, and you need really solid compliance. If you want help installing some systems like this to be able to build this, to add these systems into your portfolio, apply for a consult with our team. At entrepreneur expat.com/consult, or perhaps you're looking for more specific guidance on moving abroad. Go to that same link there, entrepreneur expat.com/consult, and we can help guide you along that journey. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you again very soon. Don't forget to like and subscribe.