183. Teaching Others to Start a Short Term Rental Business with Michael Elefante

Hey, Welcome back to the Average Joe Finances Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Cavaggioni, and today's guest is Michael Elafante. So Michael, super excited to have you on. Also good to have another Michael on the show. Welcome and thank you for joining me,

Mike, thanks for having me. Super stoked to talk to you today.

Yeah. Awesome. Hey, I am super stoked to talk to you, especially with what we're gonna talk about. So speaking of, I wanna start this off the same way I start every podcast episode and we wanna know more about you. So if you could share a little bit about yourself, share your story, go into as much detail as you want, or share as little as you want. We'll get into it and tell me who is Michael Elefante.

Yeah, for sure. I'll start with the end. I currently live near Greenville, South Carolina with my wife. We have two dogs, German short hair pointers. They're crazy. We love to travel. And, just four months ago we gave, she gave birth to our first child, little baby girl. So she's four months old as, the beginning of February here. But rewinding it back a few years, I was a college athlete, paid, played. I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. So when that career came to a screeching halt, I just had to pick something and go for it. So I got the first job, at a college, or when my career was over, in a, as an entry level business development representative, making up cold calls, 70 to a hundred calls a day for a tech company that I had no interest in doing. But I heard you could make some money in tech sales, so I was like, I'll give it. So initially it was like, Hey, I'm just gonna work hard, and improve up, build up the corporate ladder, and eventually start making it what I thought at the time was like, really good money and I could just live the life of my dreams quickly. Came to hate that and hate that mindset. Really learned to value my time over income. So over the next several years, I side hustled a little bit. Started to work up corporate ladder, went for business development to inside. I've got another inside sales job and then I switched companies several times. They got an outside sales job that's focusing on my income. Enabled me to save up at a much more efficient and quicker pace so I could figure out what I wanted to invest in, whether it was a business, whether it was real estate, the stock market. And I listened to a ton of YouTube podcasts, read a bunch of books, and the one thing that just made sense to me was investing in real estate, probably cause it's a tangible thing you can invest in and just, it would, I the simplest terms, invest in this asset and you have revenue minus your expenses and you'll ultimately lift over with cash flow. You could also create wealth over time. So it made sense to me. So fast forward, this is from 2016, leaving at the end of college to several years just bouncing around between all these different ideas. I learned about short-term rentals and Airbnb, and I moved from Dallas to Austin to Nashville. Three very hot touristy towns, growing cities. So we moved to Nashville. I started just to crunch numbers. My wife and I were staying in this little condo, while we were looking for, to buy our first home for ourselves to live in. When we move. And I started to look at the nightly raid and online about what the rough occupancy number was, and then what they probably bought the place for, I was like, if these numbers are right, this is insane. Like, why wouldn't I do this? So long story short, we eventually grew the courage to buy our first property at the end of 2019. By the third month, we were set to cash flow, $7,000 on a single property, in one month. And then Covid hit and then, we had 40 grand in cancellations, but we were still, I was all in on this strategy. I didn't think Covid would last as long as it did, as far as how it'd affect the travel and hospitality. But liquidated our 401k and IRAs got our second property saved up for a third, partnered on our fourth, and we became financially free in 12 months of making our first investment. Quit our jobs with in, I think, under 16 months and traveled in a camper van for a. Managing four properties from our phone, making all this money and just like working a couple hours a week, living the dream. And then toward the end of our camper trip, we actually acquired two more properties. So at that time it was, six properties, doing around 80 to a hundred thousand dollars a month in revenue and clearing between 30 and 50,000 depending on the month. Did cash flow? My wife got pregnant. We ended up buying a house settling. It was either a bigger van. A bigger van or a house. So we all opted for the house and that's where we wound up today. And then we just closed on our seventh property. We also have one rental arbitrage deal as well. It's been a wild ride. Hopefully that wasn't too lengthy of an introduction, but that's how, where everything started and stemmed from and where we ended up today.

No, that's awesome, Michael. So I'm sitting here jotting down notes as you're going. And I feel like you were in that same spot that I feel like a lot of people get into, they get into that nine to five job or that typical sales job or something after they finish school and they're trying to figure it out and they're like, man, this kind of bites. I'm not sure I really want to do this. And then you started exploring like doing different side hustles, right? And you were like, I definitely wanna invest in something. And, you were looking at the stock market and then you found, real estate. And I think you and I like real estate for the same reason, because it's a tangible, real asset, that. It's just there. It's not like paper money, it's not like this, you log into a brokerage account to see what's going on, and you can't really touch or feel that right. Real estate. You can go to the property, look at it physically, touch it, feel it, see what it looks like. See what it smells like. Those are all, very important things. I, yeah, I think you and I really have the same mindset when it comes to that, so That's awesome. But anyway, so you bought your first property, when was it? 2019 is when we closed 2019. Okay. I thought you said 2013. And I was like, dang, man, that's crazy. And it took how long to get your next one? No, that doesn't sound right. Okay. So 2019. And the crazy thing about that is, I was closing on my first property at the end of 2019 as well, I first got back into real estate investing and literally closed in February of 2022, I'm sorry, February of 2020. And we all know what happened the very next month. So I feel like you felt that same pain in the beginning too. You're like, okay, we got this place, it's doing great, and all of a sudden punched in the face by Covid. But yeah, but the thing is you didn't let that hold you back. A lot of people that got caught up when Covid first happened, that's the reason why a lot of investors got a lot of really good deals, is people were liquidating their real estate because they were just so scared of what was coming. And they didn't see the opportunity that was there. You did the opposite. You said, this kind of sucks, but we can keep going, right? And you picked up, more properties, which is fantastic. So you guys hit the road. You're managing four properties on your phone, living out of a van, right? You said? Out of a van? Yeah. That's pretty cool, man. That's like that nomadic dream that, I see a lot of people doing that. There's a lot of Instagram creators and just influencers out there that, that do that, right? They live out of a van and they live this mobile life, so that's fantastic, but, You had the baby settled down, so congratulations on that. That's an amazing thing. I have two daughters myself, so I know that is one thing that, sometimes you might have to take a step back and say, okay, let's settle down and have a little bit of normalcy here. But it didn't stop you from doing what you're doing. You're, you just picked up your seventh property. So that's amazing. And you said you have one rental arbitrage as well, right?

Yeah. It's a rental arbitrage. It's not a long lease but yes. Yeah, we have one arbitrage deal.

Okay, cool. So that's the recap there, everybody. If you weren't paying attention to what he said now you just heard it from me too. That's awesome, dude. As you're doing all of this, especially when you guys decided to live this mobile life what I'm curious about is, you're living out of a van. Did you move into the van after the first property or was it after the second?

It was after the fourth actually and.

After the fourth.

But our jobs, we didn't even have time to breathe. We bought our, again, our first property end of 2019. We acquired three within the next 12 months.

Okay, great.

And 11th and 12th month live on Airbnb and vrbo. I think we net 15,000 and then maybe over 20,000, those two months. And I was like, this is crazy. I'm not even working like at all. And I think it was like. I took advantage of the Covid situation for better or worse, but I was working remote. I didn't have to travel to see customers for over a year and a half.

Yeah.

So I could, I. Traveled to Gatlinburg and it was Smokey Mountains where we set up our third and fourth property. I just lived in the house for 30 days while we set it up and worked remote for my day job, in the hours of today. And it wasn't too bad. But yeah, it was about 16 months after that, we actually quit our jobs and within a week we left our home and hopped in the van at the road.

Yeah, that, that's a beautiful area too. I've been there before. Really nice Pigeon forge, Gatlinburg, just the Smokey Mountains. Just really nice. And a lot of, a lot of tourism, you get a lot of people visiting that area every single year. And it's not really seasonal, right? You get people that want to go there in the wintertime too, because it's just, it's beautiful year round. Yeah, definitely a great place to be. So you guys got the four properties now. What made you decide that, hey, let's pack everything up and be nomads and live out of a van. Like what was it like after that fourth property that you guys were just like, Hey let's do it.

Yeah. So my wife and I both love to travel. She more or less gave me the travel bug when we first met. She's been to like 26 or 27 countries, so she's did a ton of travel abroad in college. Traveled with her mom a bunch and then I traveled with her some in the past several years. But I was always wanted to see the whole US I think most people get so caught up in traveling abroad. They just forget how beautiful most of the United States are and how diverse the landscape is here. So I wanted to go explore the Western Hampton, us. I've been all over the east coast growing. So that's ultimately was like the deciding factor. And my wife laughed at the idea of moving into a van at first and minimalizing a bit with all aspects of our life. But I think we, we really enjoyed it. It was like 80% of the time it was exactly what it was kicked up to be. And then 20% of the time it is pretty brutal band life. Like you're just sitting in a parking lot or trying to find, cool weather shade. But for the most part it was fun. It was a cool experience.

Yeah no, that sounds like a great experience and it, it's a good thing she gave you that travel bug because now you got to, go out and live that nomadic lifestyle. But now things have changed, right? So what was the decision factor after you guys had your child that made you say, Hey, instead of getting the bigger van or an RV or something let's actually settle down and get a place to, to raise our family.

Yeah. We loved Van Life. I think we were ready to move into some, a bigger space and just unwind a little bit. But yeah, it was more or less just, I didn't see having an infant in a van being super mobile. And I'm really glad we didn't do that, because that would be super tough. So that, that was ultimately what it was. And we moved back toward the East Coast and we both grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, so a little closer to family which helps as far as like visiting. Her grandparents to be super involved and be able to see her grow up. So we didn't wanna be on the road constantly, at least not right now. So that, that's why we ended up choosing to settle back down.

Okay. No. Hey all good reasons, man, and close to family. And, the beautiful thing about that is that you had the freedom to, to make that decision to say, you know what let's go move over here and be close to family. That's great. Now I wanna ask you, when you went from that first deal to, you bought three more in a 12 month period after that, what was that process like? Like how did you find the deals and make that happen, especially in such a short period of time?

Yeah, for sure. So the first deal I was looking at Gatlinburg and Nashville. We lived in Nashville, so it was just the easy two markets growing, bustling towns, high tourism. I worked with a realtor in both markets and the first two we bought were in Nashville and the second two in Gatlinburg. The first two is, was more or less working with a realtor who understood the permitting in Nashville to be a non-owner occupied permit for vacation rentals. So I just said, Hey, can you just handpick properties that were met my criteria and send them over? Then I would run the little quick deal analysis on them and if it made sense from an ROI perspective we went after it. The first one, like I've, a lot of things I wish I knew start. I wish I knew how to forecast how much it cost to furnish a property starting out. So we bought a four bedroom house over our heads a little bit and I sold my truck that I had just finished paying off as a dream truck at the time in order to have enough money to furnish the property. And then the second property we were all in just cause we saw the results from. The first one was the bookings came in. Liquidated my 401k and my wife liquidated her IRA so it was funded through that. We bit the tax penalty. Not financial advice to anyone out there, but best decision we ever made. And then the third one was we just buckled down on work and we were both in sales, so just saved up some of our commissions and salary and then cash flow from our two properties in order to fund the third. And then the fourth one, we actually did a cash out refinance on our primary home in Nashville and took that money tax free, pulled it out and moved it into to that fourth opportunity. And we actually partnered with somebody on the fourth one, 50-50.

Nice. Right on. Great way to do it. And you kept finding a new way to make that next deal happen. And I think that's one of the great things about, people that are really creative with their financing and real estate because, you'll find a way to, to make that deal happen. Even on that fourth one, when you were like, okay, how are we gonna figure this one out? You partnered it up with somebody right. To make that work. So that's fantastic, man. Now, That's how you got those first four. Now, how did five, six, and seven happen? Because now you know that 12 month period happened, life's changing. You guys moved into a van, you're managing it from a phone. How did the other deals like come to fruition?

Yeah, for sure. Honestly, when we moved into a van, we had virtually tiny living expenses, like almost nothing, right? It was just the van. We actually rented out our primary residence as a, to a long-term. And we had a lot of cash flow coming in. I think our third month in the van, it was July of 2021 four short-term rentals brought in over $80,000 and we cash flow over $50,000 in a month. And we worked like a few hours that month. And that was just like, it felt ridiculous. I was like, how is this even possible? Like I would work my ass off to try and make $50,000 in a year, let alone a month. So seeing that come to fruition was really, But I just say that to frame the next steps, I was like, Hey, we'll just save up as much as we can. We don't need to buy anything. We don't have room to buy anything. We bought it. Where are we gonna put it in the van with us? Low living expenses, high income from our rental properties. We just saved up for the next one. And then what we did since the real estate market went bananas, and we also did rehabs on two, two of the four initial properties we had significant equity position and multiple of. So we actually did three cash out refis and repositioned some of the equity into, to a new property or two new properties. So we were able to pull out over $600,000 in equity through cash out refis and move that into new properties and take some of it also to buy our primary house that we currently live in.

Nice. So you guys essentially did AirBNBers.

Yeah, that's right. Right there that's right. Exactly.

No that's fantastic, man. Now what does your organization look like right now? Do you guys have a team? Do you outsource to anybody? Especially now that you've settled down, you've got the baby. So what does it, what are your operations look like today?

Yeah, for sure. So in each market we have a local, cleaner, maintenance, handyman, landscapers, those type of, those types of folks that we contract. We actually, my wife and I were operating on our own. We didn't hire VAs or anything for the first three years. And then one of my students of my short-term rental investing course, BMB Investor Academy, he's one of the first people actually to take it in 2021. He had scaled very quickly to six properties in a year. And who's crushing it? He proposed co-founding a property management company for vacation rentals. And I've always been a big proponent of self-managing. I still. But there was a huge void in the industry with really poor management. A lot of legacy property managers that did not do justice for their clients and their homeowners. So we cofounded that. We very quickly grew over the past probably eight months now to about a hundred properties under management. And now I delegate a lot of the day-to-day work and management to our team. For my individual properties. I'm still active, especially on the pricing side. But all the day-to-day communication, like 99% of it is through our team.

That's awesome. So like in a, just over three, almost four year period not only did grow and scale to have seven, Airbnb properties yourself, but you also have a property management company that has over a hundred properties under management, right? That's fantastic. And you have a course too, right? You have the Airbnb Investor Academy, right? In just, under four years to be able to build what you've built is just absolutely amazing, man. Well done. Congratulations man.

Thanks a lot..

That's pretty dope.

Yeah. A lot of it honestly sprouted from creating content online. I never thought, I, sure, I still don't even like creating content to be honest with you, but I started pushing content on YouTube cause I learned so much from other creators on YouTube in the finance and real estate realm. So I was like, I'm just gonna start sharing whatever. And that's what they all encourage you to do. Just share and see if it resonate.. And it took a while. YouTube is hard and I just I wasn't good at it, to be honest. So I started doing TikTok in November of 2020, and at that time I had finally gotten to a thousand subs on YouTube. And I had a couple of, I was, I did a competition with a friend. We did a TikTok a day for 30 days. I had a few videos, get several hundred thousand views. All of a sudden I'm at 10,000 followers in a month and I'm like, this is crazy. YouTube is so hard. I pour so much hard work into it, editing and all that. My whole mindset with TikTok was to get people to come over to YouTube and watch my videos, which I provided the most revalue in. That was like the wrong mindset. Like I didn't see the writing on the wall. That short form content is now becoming king. Long form content.

Even on YouTube. With YouTube and shorts.

Shorts.

Yeah.

A hundred percent. And Instagram and Facebook, meta and YouTube they're all mimicking. They all mimicked TikTok as soon as they saw that. So my mindset was completely wrong, but I still continued to push a bunch of content on TikTok, and all of a sudden I had a few hundred thousand followers. Now I'm almost at a million followers on TikTok and had an audience. And I was, I do consider myself to be one of the leading, short-term rental educators in, in the space and influencer, if you will. But for a long time I was like, this is crazy that like I'm in this position now. So I just tried to provide as much transparency on my own business as possible and it resonated with people. Here's how much money we're actually making or not making each month. Here are the breakdown from each property. People love seeing behind the scenes instead of just, I'm in my Rolls Royce, cause my Airbnb business is crushing it. Click my link in my bio. So I think it was more just like the organic. And it felt like people knew me in a way. So I was doing free coaching for a year and then a bunch of people were like, why don't build a course or do coaching? I'm like, nah man, I don't do that. And they're like, you should. I'd buy it. And I'm like, really? So my wife convinced me, Hey, why don't you build something? So I built a few iterations of a video course, some coaching programs, and I was helping people like crush it. And I was like, I'm probably not charging enough for this. Cause I'd have people come back and tell me they cash load over 10 grand on one property in the first month. But it was motivating. I was like, this is so cool. It's fulfilling for me to help other people succeed. So the content thing just grew and grew and all these other businesses sprouted from it, and I just took it and ran with it. And I now I do stuff that I enjoy, which is great. So I have the property management company. I have the Academy, which is grown to, it'll be a multi multiple seven figure business this year. I have a bunch of coaches and a sales team, and it's been a great operat. I also have a short-term rental design company, summer led designs. I'm a small partner and the two girls that run it are incredible. And they turn properties into cash flow machines through epic design and staging of photography. And then I'm about to launch a website here soon, which I'm bringing like a bunch of resources online for people to use to help them along their journey with short-term rentals.

That is phenomenal, man. Like that's the definition of crushing it right there, Michael. Absolutely. Yeah, you definitely were able to take advantage of the short form content on TikTok. I'm still trying to figure that out myself. I think I'm at like 1800 something subscribers and that's about it on TikTok. But yeah it's. That's what people want. They want those short bites, right? They want that quick hit of information. But I think what people really like about what you're putting out too is the authenticity and the transparency in what you're doing. Like showing, Hey, here's our actual numbers. Cause there's a lot of people that'll be out there and they'll say, yeah, I'm doing A, B, C, and D. Click my link and take my course, or whatever. You're like, Hey, yeah, you could take my course if you want, but here's what we're actually doing, right? Like here. Here's numbers, here's what this looks like, right? So if you're interested in that, now come hit me up. And I think that, it's a lot more appealing to somebody that's just swiping through. And this is, in the niche that they're looking at, they're like, huh, this might be a good a good thing for me to check out. Yeah I believe in like courses, coaching, all that stuff. If it's from the right person in the right niche and it's, and it's good content, it's a hundred percent worth it. There's a lot out there that are kind of garbage. got to watch out for that. If I come out with some course, it's probably gonna be garbage. No, I'm kidding. But it's those are the kind of things that you want, you wanna look out for, right? You wanna make sure the person that you're getting that information from is legit. And dude, you're legit, man. You're killing.

Thanks. I appreciate that. I love it.

So now with your actual content, sharing the stuff that you're doing on Airbnb and everything have you started to outsource any of that? Like you have people that help you with your content, like video editors or anything like that? I know, I started outsourcing my stuff to a va and my VA is phenomenal. She actually takes care of everything for me, and I'm actually starting to gain more followers because of that, because now I could spend more time on other things while, she's creating this short form content for me. Have you found anything like that's useful?

Yeah. I outsource all the editing. That was the time, most time consuming thing, and I was terrible at it.

Yes. And I encourage, oh my goodness.

I encourage anyone who wants to create content, I would outsource that first, because then you could focus on content. Then you could also outsource maybe as you really grow and monetize on some other things. But that was the first thing. I'm probably gonna hire a social media manager who can come out to my house and professionally, A bunch of videos, like two days a month, and then take those videos, do long form and short form and chop them up. And then also post them for me. So I still post everything on my own except for Instagram. I have a team that handles my Instagram and Twitter and runs threads for me. And I work with them, weekly on, on creative. And then they go post and help with call to action. And then I have a team also that helps with a lot. I have an over overwhelmingly amount of dms. Currently my brother actually. Helps with that. And address any questions people have and make sure we're getting them the right information.

Awesome, man. Yeah that's what you got to do. I have my VA also handles all my social media. She'll post everything. She has access to my Instagram, all that good stuff. And it's phenomenal, man. I'll tell you one of the things that helps me out a lot that, and I think people that are listening would appreciate this too. I don't know if you've ever heard of AppSumo, but on AppSumo, there's this software that I got called Postly. And Postly is a way to link all of your social media, all your social media accounts to this one specific thing, and you could post from that to every single one at the same time, right? You can change the content, like if you need it to be. Like real length or TikTok length and stuff, you can have it look like that, all that stuff. And you can post it separately if you need to. You can schedule it. So that's actually what my VA uses to schedule everything except for Instagram. She actually will go in and do it manually because I guess the algorithm likes that better. But yeah, man, Postly is phenomenal. And then it won't post to my TikTok, but it will upload it. And all I have to do is go into TikTok and I see that there's something pending and I just post it and it's done.

Nice. That's awesome. I need to look into that.

Yeah. Lifetime license I think was 59 bucks when I got it. It might be a little bit more now. And I don't know how much longer they're gonna do the lifetime license. And by the time this episode comes out, my listeners, I don't, hopefully it's still there. But yeah. AppSumo, I absolutely love it. Great stuff there. You got to watch out though, cause they have so much good stuff that you might spend too much money. You got to watch out, yeah. All right man. So cool. Now what are you doing now? So you. All these things going on, are you still actively looking for that next Airbnb to purchase? What does your process look like for that? How are you finding the next deal?

Yeah. We're going all out on this upcoming one we're about to dump probably half a million dollars into this will probably be one of the most epic properties in all of the North Carolina mountains.

Is this number seven?

Yeah. It's gonna be so sick. We just committed to doing a putt course on the front terrace of the house. And we have a what? Supreme Court with a full court basketball court and pickleball court. We'll have a theater room, a game room. It'll be like 19 like roaring twenties themed Biltmore estate esque type theme. But it's gonna be like to the max, it'll sleep like 20 people. It's gonna be bonkers.

This is one of those high end. You and your friends are all going to this place.

Yeah. It won't be cheap, but, 20 people it would be worth it for sure with what we'll charge. But what we're focusing on though, at this point in time, is I wanna create killer experiences to give travelers like a, the experience of a lifetime. That's what I'm after, and it's gonna be a timeless property. That's what I want. I don't want to compete on price. I wanna compete on value and experience. So that's what we're focused on now. But yeah, we're certainly, I'll try and get at least one, if not two more I think throughout the rest of this year in 2023.

That's cool, man. That's one of those properties. Like you, you book that place just to go there. You're not going anywhere else. Maybe you'll pick up some groceries, like to cook and stuff, but you guys ain't going nowhere. You got everything you need. That's pretty cool, man. Yeah. That's a good thing. That I like about a lot of Airbnb, a lot of short-term rentals right now are going more for that experience versus you're like, oh, it's like a hotel. No, it's not like a hotel. It's like you're going here this place is awesome. I got a buddy of mine who's got one down in Orlando that's completely themed, like different rooms are themed a different way. He's got like a Mario room. They've got a Star Wars room that like the beds are like at ATS and stuff. And it's just super cool, man. Like when you get to experience something like that and people dig that, and they'll pay more money, they'll pay a premium for the experience. And I think that's the biggest thing. That's the key word right there. That you're creating an experience for them. Not just a place to, to put their head at night and sleep.

Exactly. Yeah, totally.

Awesome, man. Cool. Yeah, man I'm trying to figure out what else I want to ask you about the Airbnb side. So after you finish this one a actually what's the timeline? Look on that. When's this one gonna be available?

The goal is six to eight weeks. Six would be.

Oh, wow. Okay.

Pushing it a little bit because we're doing quite a bit of reha rehab to the property and making some updates. But six to eight, so what is it? February 2nd. We're recording this today. I'm hoping to have it. By April.

Okay. Yeah. And by the time this episode comes out, it'll be around that timeframe, so it's usually about a three month turnover yeah. Oh, okay. Cool man. And that's a pretty quick turnaround for it sounds like, for the amount of work that you're doing as well, so you must have a really good contractors on the job.

Yeah. We have a contractor that actually one of my students in the course had used in the past. He said she was a rockstar and she's been great so far. So knock on wood, everything should go as planned, but she's loaded with contacts in the area and if she doesn't know, she'll find out. So she's already had.

That's awesome.

The day we got the key, she met us at the house. It was like the third time she's met us there and she's took the key and she said, I'll take care of everything.

So nice man. It's funny. I was gonna ask you too, that was gonna be my next question is like, how did you find her? Really awesome that you were able to find her through one of your students. And the thing is, like everything that you've built, from the time you started. And now, especially with this course that you have and the students you bring in, not only are you getting like really awesome students that are going out there and crushing it too, but you got like this tiny little network of like insiders, right? Like that, that have that think the same way you think, right? Because they're following your process. So when they find something really good, they're like, Hey Michael, this is the contractor you need to use. And I think that's very powerful and I think a lot of people don't really think about that too much. That's one of the things I like to talk about too, like my podcast itself, the network that I've built just from meeting amazing people and bringing these guests on my show like you, man. Like I know if I've got some stuff with Airbnb and I want to do it in a specific area, and it's an area that you're in, I'm gonna hit you up Hook me up with some contract, give me some contacts, man what's going on? That's that's really important, man, is it's about who you know as well, and building relationships. A hundred percent.

Yeah, for sure. You guys have probably heard your network is your net worth. And as cheesy as that is, it couldn't, it really couldn't be further from the truth. If you have, can foster relationships with people who are influential in whatever industry that you in. If they're gonna know somebody, if they connect you with that person, they're gonna know somebody. And just be on the value first mindset. If you can provide value to somebody else without the expectation that they should automatically give you something in return, those people are more than likely gonna be amazing people to have a really strong relationship with long-term. And they'll elevate you, your game. Like you wanna be surround yourself with people. What you're doing or what you wanna be doing. So you wanna be around people that lift you up and not to, and not bring you down.

A hundred percent man, I love that. And you know what's funny? I was literally speaking at a conference two weeks ago and I was talking about the power of networking. And I even said it too. I said, it's a very cliche saying when you say your network is your net worth. But it's cliche for a reason because it's true. It wouldn't be something that's cheesy and overused if it wasn't something that carried a lot of weight behind it. People say that for a reason and there really is power in a network. I a hundred percent believe that man Yeah, dude this was awesome, man. This is great. Really love what you're doing. You're crushing it, bro. Just keep doing what you're doing, man. I wanna transition this now into something that I call the final round. It's where I'm gonna ask you the same four questions I ask everybody that comes on this show, and gives us an idea of how you are when you're put under pressure and put on the spot, which I'm pretty sure we know how this is gonna go because you're killing it, man. So if you're ready to go, we'll get this party started.

Yeah, let's do it.

All right, let's go. Hey, so Michael, first question of the final round is, what's the biggest mistake you've ever made in real estate And we'll keep this specific to Airbnb.

The biggest mistake I ever made was not leveraging software and data when I first started. It's all readily available. And it's cheap to use and it frees up your time. And it allows you to scale faster at a much quicker pace. So leveraging tech to automate the operations, even leveraging data and tech before, to make data informed decisions on where to invest, what type of property, what location, what amenities to provide those types of things. I did not leverage for my first prop, first really two properties. And I couldn't regret it anymore. Luckily we were successful on those first two, but I rely on those. Those items that I mentioned heavily now in every single investment I do.

Awesome, man. Actually, I wanna dig a little bit deeper into that. What would you say is the top pieces of software or tech that you use that helps you with your business?

Yeah, so before making the investment, you wanna leverage data in the industry. AirDNA is probably the market leader. There's several other sites out there as well, but that's the one. Used the most. And that gives you the historical data on occupancy rates every single month. You could use filters. I could look at a certain zip code in a city, in a state and look at three bedroom properties that accommodate six to eight people and see every single month what the app, the market was occupied, like what percentage of days they were booked. Over the past several years. Same with daily rates, same with revenue. But most important thing for me is looking at the supply in a market and then also what, where the top properties are located. And they'll show you on a map, you can look at their listings, what they're charging, what amenities they have. So that really helps me understand, hey, this is my exact criteria for this market. And then on the management side, property management software, and then a dynamic pricing. The two biggest things. And then a certain app I used, they just changed their name to turnover actually today. But turnover, Airbnb is what they previously called themselves or resort. To sync calendars and communication with your cleaners. So those are like the three biggest things on the management side.

Awesome. Great, man, I appreciate that. A lot of value there. All right, cool. Next question is, what is something that you've learned that you wish you knew when you first started?

That you don't need to know everything before actually taking that first step. And it's cheesy and you might hear a lot of people say it, but I would be worth like 20 million if I just made the first investment and not cared so much if it was perfect, years before I started. I also wish I knew I didn't need a ton of money to start. You hear that all the time, but like I was like, that sounds impossible. It's really not. You just have to take the time to learn what that means, whether it's partnering, whether it's rental arbitrage, whether it's leveraging creative financing. There's a way to start and you don't need to know it all. And you don't need to know what happens after you make the acquisition entirely. You're gonna make mistakes, but I'd rather fail sooner. Fail fast, so I could be more successful quicker as well.

I love that man. And with all the things that you're saying are cheesy, my lactose intolerant listeners might be getting sick by now. No, I'm kidding. Hey actually, I literally was just talking to somebody the other day about that as well. I think that was the same exact answer they gave me to that question about, not. It doesn't need to be perfect right, in order to make it happen. And a lot of people chase perfection and get stuck in a bubble because of that. And I think that's a very important thing. So I appreciate you pointing that out. Okay. The next question I have for you, Michael, is do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to someone that is just getting started out in this business, today?

Honestly, and it's something I did not do early on cause I always thought I could just figure it out on my own, is find a mentor, whether it's free or paid. Find a mentor or coach who's doing and operating at the level that you honestly seek to operate at. There, like the coaching industry for real estate, for business, for sales has exploded. And there's so much there's some bad, but there's a lot of really good. Coaches and programs out there. I offer one now, and I wish I took one when I first started. And I've invested nearly $100,000 in myself and my businesses in coaching and consulting. Well over a $100,000 actually in the past four months alone. And it has taken me, it'll help, it'll 10 or 20 x my business this year alone. So I kick myself for not doing that sooner, but the most important investment you can ever made. Is in yourself.

Appreciate that answer, man, because that, that provides a lot of value to like somebody who's just getting started outright. They might not know to even think about looking at that, right? They want to just go in right away and be like, I need to get this first property and not worry about some of the other things that might be able to be very useful to them. When they acquire that asset. So awesome man. I have one more question and then that's it for the final round. And the last one is, do you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast or both?

Yeah, I think you know what got me initially started in, in creating content, I really Graham Stephan's channel. Mainly cause he.

I love his channel.

Yeah. He's so awesome. Good. He's so good. Crafting videos and holding audience attention. But what actually intrigued me the most was just that he was open and transparent about, Hey, here's how I make money on YouTube and some other things with affiliate marketing and partnerships and other business ideas. And that's what actually made me eager to be more or less a social media entrepreneur. And then on the real estate side of. There's several really good books, but the one thing that personally got me over the hump was cashflow Quadrant, which is a sequel essentially to Rich Dad, poor Dad. And there's a lot of man monotony in that book. It drags out like a lot of books due. But there was like a few really good takeaways. And the biggest thing for me was addressing risk and what I thought was risky in life. I thought having a nice, safe, secure job was less risky than investing because if you invest your money inherently, sure you could lose some or all of your money. But what really got me over the hump was understanding what is the risk of not investing. It became a lot riskier to risk working 40 to 50 years of my life doing something I didn't want to do. And I didn't wanna have regret, at, on my deathbed like, man, I can't. I worked 40 years just for the sake of hopefully retiring one day. So the risk almost melted away completely. And ever since then, I've been like, all in and way more receptive to taking risks on the investment front.

All right. Yeah, that's the, that's great recommendation. And I just wanna point something out too so Graham is probably one of the first like YouTube channels that I actually subscribe. And followed religiously. When I, when I first started looking at just investing in general and trying to get better in my finances and learning myself his channel was definitely super helpful. So the fact that you pointed that out, man, I think that's awesome. So not a podcast, but he does have a podcast, actually it's called the Ice Coffee Hour. So we can just, settle that there. And say that's the podcast. But but yeah, man, great recommendations, great book as well. And the monotony of that is, is what's important about that is because it's so repetitive. And what it's talking about, it just like sticks it in your brain. And a lot of those books are like that because that's the whole point is to when you finish reading that, it's in there and it ain't going away. Yeah. Awesome man. Thank you so much for that. Great. Recommendations. This has been a fantastic conversation. We had a little technical hi hiccup, but we got over that and we're finishing this thing up and. I do have one more question for you. I just realized that I almost skipped without asking you the most important question of all, and that is we, so throughout this entire conversation, we've. There's a lot of great golden nuggets and gems that you've dropped for everybody. For somebody that's wanting to get into short-term rentals or just learn more about what you're doing, they're like, Hey, I really like that conversation with Michael and really wanna check out his stuff. Where can they find more information about you and your academy and things like that. Do you have a website you could share with us? And of course, all your social medias. We would love to be able to follow you.

Yeah, for sure. Appreciate you asking. bnbinvestoracademy.com is where you'll find all of the information. If you guys want to take the leap into short term rentals and really scale that business into something substantial definitely check that website out. And then my social media, just, it's the same across all accounts, but it's @melafante6, and there are a lot of spam accounts out there. So just make sure you got the right one. But yeah, feel free to shoot me a DM on Instagram. Usually I'm the most responsive on that channel.

Awesome. I will make sure we have all the links in the show notes to make it easier. And a direct link to your Instagram, not one of the spam accounts. It'll be easier for people to just click and copy and paste away. Just don't do it while you're driving folks. Okay. Michael, again, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Yeah, I appreciated.

All right, awesome. And hey, to my listeners, thank you so much for joining me and our special guest, Michael Elafante, on the average Show Finances podcast. Go leave us a five star review and tell us what you liked about today's episode with Michael. Aloha from Hawaii and have a great rest of your day.