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April 18, 2023

How Lucas Piper Is Building 70k / Month Through Purchasing & Managing Luxury AIRBNBs

How Lucas Piper Is Building 70k / Month Through Purchasing & Managing Luxury AIRBNBs
Lucas left his W2 to launch a Vacation Rental Management Company (Five Star Vacation Home Rentals). Lucas is now able to help provide 5-star experiences and memories to travelers and families at 20 within Central Texas. Lucas is a leader in the short-term rental industry and loves mentoring and helping others on the path of financial freedom through real estate and vacation rentals.

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Transcript
brian:

Lucas Piper.

lucas:

Hey buddy. Hey buddy. We made it. We made

brian:

it. Finally, man. Sorry.

lucas:

Hey man, this is meant to be. Today was the day.

brian:

Today was the day. No, it's actually funny because whenever we reschedule podcast, I. And anything comes up, I just know immediately I'm like, we need to reschedule it. Cuz sometimes there's gonna be like things that come up on my end. Sometimes there's things that come up on the guest end and every time it's always like the biggest guest that you've ever had and they reschedule the last second. But 10 times outta 10, the interview is always so much better. The day that you rescheduled, then it would've been that. Always. So fate, baby. It's fate baby. So man I'm excited to get into it today. You've got a very interesting backstory. You've got a very interesting vision for what is in the future for you and your family that's a bit non-traditional. From what we hear from a lot of these entrepreneurs and investors on podcasts, talking about their thousands of doors, there are thousands of units. My name is so-and-so. I've got 10,294 units under management. Yeah, so . Talk about your strategy and your vision for the future, and then let's dissect what it took for you to get.

lucas:

Cool. Yeah. I'll tell you where we're at right now is we we manage and own 25 properties in that luxury Airbnb market or short-term rental market. So we're at about, 2.5 mill in, gross rava year right now. And it's cool, man. Like I was just trying to figure out how to shuffle things around and really create, a vision that, that you talk about all the time on here. And we talk about in the go bun interims, like what does that look like for my family And I, and when I was really breaking it down, like the math became pretty easy, where it's okay, if you have 40 luxury properties that you're managing for other people and just 10 of your own, it's a pretty easy. 50 to 70 K, which I know is a huge range there. It depends on how high end luxury you go with those 10 properties. And of course with the 40 you're managing, but it's a pretty easy 50 to 70 K per month. W even after I step out of the business with a, with an operator in there That's kinda, for me when we've been looking at it and just thinking about our life and what we want, it's like we get these houses and these places, we really wanna be, we don't wanna be in Austin in July and August personally. The house in Colorado and, have the beach house and things like that. And you're cash flowing on those. And then, to be able to step out in two or three years and then say, all right what's next? What else do I want in my life? And so that's not like the end all, be all for. But that's a really good place for me to be able to have this goal of okay, I can step away, step out, and now I can look at everything and decide do I wanna scale to $10,000 or are we good here? And I want to take my life into service or whatever, start a new business, whatever that might look like. So

brian:

I, I love that. And I love that because we had Rachel Gainsborough on here. Yep. And she was talking about, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter about the door count, vanity metric, it just feeds the ego. What she cares about is cash flow. How much is each one of these properties cash flowing? And then her target is like 20,000. $20,000 a property per month. Yep. Now granted, that's gross. Yes. That's what we're looking for. Before we dissect how you got here and the philosophical ways, the rooms that you were able to get into, how you were able to navigate through those, through mentorship and service. Yeah. Let's talk about how did you, how were you able to finance these originally when you were working your w2, and then how do you plan to finance the remaining moving forward?

lucas:

Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, so Basically all of last year since I've started, like the goal has been cash flow. So for we, we haven't actually acquired too many. We only have three. We're about to buy four, right? And so my idea was, okay, use other people's money, right? To buy these properties. And so what that looks like is if I'm managing someone else's money, or sorry, with someone else's property, Then that's gonna, get our cash flow to a place where it needs. So that was the concentration that last, the last year and a half, was how can we build this up to a point where now I have enough finances coming in where I can start to acquire more properties. Obviously the market has shifted, significantly. So we're trying to figure out, where to buy, how to buy and things like that. But the properties we have buy, bought we try to buy as personal properties, live there for a year and then move out. It seems to be, the easiest way to do that. But right now we're transitioning into, I should say, I'm transitioning into kind of partnerships. And what that looks is obviously as a manager I have a 20 to 25%. So if I can find someone, that has a significant amount of money that wants the short term rental, the way I'm able to structure that with them is, Hey, you come with most of the money. I'll bring some of that, and then I'm able to manage this for free for you for the next year and a half as basically whatever my management fee is that's paying off that down payment and that money that they put into the house. So I'm able to structure these deals and structuring 'em right now to where I'm able to get these houses. Pretty little cash down cuz it really helps the cash flow for them upfront. And they know now they have a vested manager, right? Who has shared ownership in this house and someone who's really gonna take care of this property for 'em. So that's what it looks like going forward, is now we have enough cash flow in the business where I can, acquire at least a property or two a year on my own. But if I can bring in these partners and do it that way, then you know that, that. Is gonna bring it from, you know what, maybe would've taken five years to only two or three.

brian:

So what you're saying is you're basically like Jing with other people on these properties, and then you're saying, Hey, for my down payment, I'm basically giving you like x amount of months of free management service for your Airbnb at this rate. That's, and this will serve That's right. As my down. That's right. Got it. Okay, cool. So what does it normally end up to? Like a year's worth of free management

lucas:

or? Yeah, it that totally depends on how, high end, the property is right in that cash flow, but usually it's gonna be about a year and a half of free management is what that would look like. Dude, that's such

brian:

a sweet deal. That's such an awesome idea because think about a new Airbnb owner, especially somebody that's got the money in the capital to put down on an Airbnb. What's the last thing that they want to do? Manage it. They don't have time.

lucas:

Yeah, they don't wanna manage it, but they also don't necessarily trust managers, right? Correct. And so it, it switches that whole environment where it's now we're like definitely on the same team. Mo most people feel like they're managers on their team regardless. Just because, how I get paid is to have higher, revenue. But this really, puts us together in that same team where it's dude, I'm gonna do everything possible. And it would be biased for me to say if it's your own property, are you gonna put a little bit more love and energy into it? Probably, so that's what that looks like for both sides. So that's the goal this next year is to structure a few of those, get that going. I'm pretty. I've seen a, through GoBundance, through, a lot of people that we know. I've seen some really bad partnerships, man, I've seen some things not work out and so I'm pretty picky when it comes to that stuff. Because, my life, my fulfillment, my joy that's more important than just like growth. But there's so many great people out there in our circle, and so I think this is gonna be a win-win. For us for sure.

brian:

What equity percentages are you aiming for? Is it like a 50 50 or are you taking a minority 50. 50 50. Dude, that is genius. That's so smart. I love that strategy because people listen. For you guys listening, remember every single time that this example gets brought up, I'm gonna bring this framework up. The deal triangle. You need the knowledge, you need the money, or you need the hustle. Okay? If you have two of three of these things, you're unstoppable, you are paramount to the deal. So what Lucas is able to provide is the knowledge and the hustle. Somebody else is providing the capital. So if you have one of the points of the triangle, then yes, you could probably get some capital. But if you provide two parts of the triangle, then all of a sudden you're unstoppable. You're gonna have all the capital available to you. Dude, that is freaking genius. That's a great idea. Thanks

lucas:

man. Yeah, and it's cool because like we have the structure built, right? Like I'm just bringing into a system that we know so. From our end of things, like a year when we first launched, like I wouldn't even thought of this idea cuz it was like the idea of another house and how much work that is, it was like man, like I'm gonna be doing everything. But now that we have our team, it's like we can bring this into our system pretty easily, and it's not gonna cause, a ton more workforce because we have those systems built out and from a capital perspective, like I'm still okay if it's if they came in with a hundred K and I need to end up paying 120 in the long run I'm okay with that. Because for me to have 50% equity in house, with zero down that's a win for me in my book and really where I want my portfolio to push. And so happy to do that if that's what they wanna do too. So it's always different with each owner and each investor in terms of what their goals are, right.

brian:

Yeah, ironically, I care much more about the business and dissecting that part of it with you than I do about the actual real estate. But for the sake of this being a half 50% of real estate show, let's dive into, let's finish, let's punctuate like the real estate side of it. And I wanna dive into the business cuz I think the business is the true value add here and that's the area of opportunity for people listening. What is your buy box for these Airbnbs What are you looking for geographically? What areas, like what price range? What are you looking for in a quote unquote luxury Airbnb, and why should somebody choose the luxury model in this economy in kind of this macroeconomic environment?

lucas:

Yeah, so it's interesting, and I think the word luxury is loose. Yeah. Is loose, right? And I do wanna frame that of I don't think we probably have one, we have one property, I guess two that could be considered like as Airbnb puts on there like L U X E, yeah. But it's looks Yes, exactly. It's looks, I was gonna say it with a lisp because it's yeah, you almost have to, yeah, I think it might be French let's say. Yeah, exactly. So we probably only have two that fall into those categories. But when I say luxury, it's like they're freaking nice, and you show up and you're happy. And a lot of what that means is have a pool, have luxury amenities, have things that, that, that really make people happy. And so where we're looking is really like Central Texas still San Antonio, Austin, the coast. Hill Country, Fredericksburg, and any of those areas. And there's still a ton of opportunity here, man, just cuz there's so much growth and so many people traveling here. And To be honest, like my favorite price house is probably between 600 and eight 50. And doing a little bit of additions to that. So having, 50 to 75 to put into that house. And if it doesn't have a pool, then how can we put, a $30,000, plunge pool in there. We're always seeing that like massive. With a pool. So just to give you an example, our house here in, in East Austin, east Riverside, I bought three years ago for two 90. And right now it only sell for. 4 8500. So still, under even what I'm talking about from that price range, we put a pool in the back and right now we're doing a theme. So you can see this crazy wall behind me. So this is one of the walls. This is like the Santorini view right here. So this is gonna be Grease room. So we've named this house wander list. And we're doing four themed, international rooms downstairs. We have this basically music gallery when you walk in, LEDs, stren, records on the walls that they can actually use from some of the best albums, ever created. So it's an experience, so it's it's not always like the area, the this, it's people want something crazy now. They want something cool they can take a picture of. So now we're gonna have this, $300,000 house that we just put an extra a hundred thousand into. It's gonna be $15,000 a month, man. Do that roi, like it's, yeah it's a solid one, like 70%. So that's the stuff that, that we're looking at is always, What can we do special to these houses to create as luxury? So this is never gonna be a $2 million house close to downtown, right? But we are three miles from downtown and we do still consider it luxury because it's gonna be fucking awesome. I don't know if I can swear on here and understood. And we have a great pool. We have a spa that you can heat up. And so we have all of these additions that make it like these luxury. Amen. And now all of a sudden people are willing to pay the same price for this $300,000 home with a hundred thousand dollars addition. Then they are for a 1.5 million house, in the same area. So we're always looking up how can we do the best with what we have? How can we maximize our roi?

brian:

Dude, that's freaking sick. So when you're funding these, are you doing like traditional like Fannie Freddie loans or are you doing dscr.

lucas:

Yeah. We have a few of our investors are doing Dscr right now. But it's interesting, man. It's, this is where it's getting tougher in that Airbnb world of you look at the dscr rates, right? And then you look at taxes now, in Texas. And you all of a sudden you include those in there and the furnishing costs and then, all of my investors at this point that we're managing their properties we're taking 20. You know what I mean? So for them, it can be a little bit harder to find those deals. They're maybe finding a 15% cash on cash because they're having to take out my 20%. But when it's me and I'm owning it, and I don't have that 20%. All of a sudden now, instead of that 15, now we're looking at 35. So it's pretty easy. Go ahead. But

brian:

in context, dude, in context, like true profit, we don't talk about true profit enough. We talk about profit. Yeah. Which is, revenue minus expenses. But what true profit is revenue minus expenses, minus headache. Yes. If you can, if you, if a bad deal for you is a 15% cash on cash annual with somebody full-time managing it, yes. That knows what they're doing. You're not worried about it, dude. Excuse me. Duh, what are you gonna go do, get a freaking six month treasury for 6% 12 month treasury? Yeah. That's the best return that you're gonna get at the safest investment. Plus this is an equity play in an appreciating market. Come on.

lucas:

That's right. Yeah. No, and I love that you frame it that way, man. It's because like we got, and it's funny when I talk, right? Because I'm just like so used to these crazy COCs that like, and ROIs that, When I share 'em, sometimes I forget, like most people are looking for Hey man, I'm looking for that 8%, 8% press that 5% I'm looking for. And I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah, because my first arbitrage deals that I had, it was like 3000% cash on cash. It's yeah. Bringing no money into the deal and just crushing it. And then we're used to these crazy numbers and yes, there's been a saturation in Airbnb and yes, we've seen those numbers come down and not every single owner is winning, but that's something that we do really well is figure out like what is the property that is going to win? Run the numbers. Run them in terms of everything I'm running this year. Whatever it was last year, I'm taking off 15% to make sure that we're, as the economy I think is slowing. So we're really careful when we look at all that stuff and running the numbers.

brian:

Dude so I. Kudos to me, man. Shout out to Brian Lubin cuz I'm an awesome podcast host because this transition's about to melt y'all's faces. It's about to melt y'all's faces. Alright, I can't wait. So yeah, shout out to me man. Number one fan. So do you. Thank you. Thank you for noticing. Yeah. I did it for you. Yeah, of course. So to use that transition point of which we'll get into the business in a second, but you said that you're so used to these high numbers that when somebody talks about a 5% or an 8% preferred return, you're like, Oh, what is that? Like nickels and dimes. I'm talking like 3000% cash on cash over here because you're used to it. That's your environment because you were intentional about your environment. And I want to get into that really quickly because right now, today I went on my Facebook page my Facebook account, which everyone thinks that Facebook is so dead. But I have over the last three years unfriended slowly. Everyone that doesn't like fulfill like my life and doesn't add anything to my life, I've unfriended them. And now my entire Facebook feed is just full of insanely rich people that are like doing really cool things in life. And freaking Mark Moses, the c e o of c e o Coaching International popped up and he was like, oh, you're five in my Miami Beach front mansion. I love it over here. And I'm just like, oh, that's a normal Facebook post on my. And I'm just like, when the hell did this transition happen? Somebody's oh, I just took down a hundred million dollar deal, or I just took down 2000 units. Oh, cool, dude. Congratulations. Yeah. Talk about your, talk about how you placed yourself in these rooms, in, in these environments for this to be normal to you.

lucas:

It's a great question, man, and I think it's a good like preface just to say, I didn't grow up in these rooms by any means. Like the family structure I grew up in was really one of if you're wealthy, you're a bad person. Yeah. And so that was my mentality. And so I went to school for social work. I was a helper through and through. I worked with homeless youth. When I came to Austin 10 years ago, I was working with people on the street, making 28,000 barely getting by. And I really had to fight through this mentality that was like, if I have money, I'm a bad person. How are you gonna make money if you if in the back of your mind? You feel like you're a bad person if you have it right? So that brings me to like the go bun story of meeting Diego Corso, which you know, I'm sure his name's mentioned all the time on this podcast. He's a great connector and great person and I met him, he got me this first house. We are gonna house hack it. All of a sudden I'm Airbnb in it and two weeks later there's a GoBundance event in. And his brother was supposed to serve his Go crew, which is like the person that kind of just shows up and is just. Service there. What can I help with? Can I pour your wine? Can I, whatever it is you're there to serve. The guys that have paid to be at that event, and so his brother was supposed to be there, there's a hurricane. He wasn't able to make it. So four days before he calls me, he's dude, I know we don't know each other well, but I think you're a good dude. I think you're definitely driven and you just want more outta life. Do you want to come to a GoBundance event? I. I trust this guy. I don't know what that is. I don't know who these people are, but Sure. So showed up man. And just, and intro

brian:

of that as well. Intro. Intro. What Go Abundance is for somebody that maybe is, yeah,

lucas:

so GoBundance is a, is an awesome group that's made of kind of high net worth individuals. And really the motto is grab life big. So it's to live this life this epic life. And here's where I'll go with that story is I thought it was just, all right. Just bunch of wealthy dudes that are gonna be sitting around and just like counting their money together, yeah. But it's Hey, how can we be a whole life? Like how can we do this at a high, how can we do life at a higher level in every single aspect of life? And that's what switched my mentality, man is and it wasn't right away. Like I wish it was, I wish I walked into that room in that first weekend. It was just like, I want to be this person. But it took me actually like a few events and serving and gaining trust in these guys cuz I was always, I was in country clubs. I was in a couple other environments where like wealthy people did treat me pretty poorly. And so I had, and then my parents' background, so I did have this really big subconscious thought that everyone with money is an asshole and they're pretty miserable. So it took me a few events. It took me putting themselves, putting myself in this room to all of a sudden see like, Man, some of these guys really have life figured out. Like they're not going to the strip club, like when they're out of town with these guys, like cheating on their wis. Like they're talking about like, how can I be a better dad? Their physical health. They're talking about what health fat are you doing, right? Like, how can we be how can we exercise in the morning? Like, how can we be better people all around? And so for me that was just mind blowing and all of a sudden I'm like, wow. This word of whole life millionaire and this second word of freedom, which now I feel like is just used all over the place. But like I had never heard financial freedom. Like those two things for me were like, Okay, how can I do this? I'm ready. So that's what that looked like. And I can, get a little bit more into kind of what that's turned into today, but I'll stop there for now.

brian:

No so Yeah. Walk us through it, man. So you go from serving on the Go Crew, so you're basically running operations people. The Go Crew is the ones that are like running the event, like they're handing microphones off, they're making sure all the schedules are together and they're making sure all the golf clubs are together for the golf outings. And all the events are ready. So you go from there and you transition to now you are what for GoBundance?

lucas:

Yeah. So right now I'm the local chapter leader here in Austin. Yes, I was in San Antonio as well. I handed over the baton there since I don't work in San Antonio as much anymore. So it's been awesome, man. You know what a great group. We have one of the biggest chapters in Austin. Two of the founders here, so it's just like an amazing atmosphere and yeah, to now, I guess we have the CEO here too, right? Yeah. So to be here and to be able to lead these guys, plan the events and lead some of those masterminds, it's just Dude, what am I doing in these rooms? But that's where it's transitioned to. And again, for me, it wasn't overnight. That didn't happen just from five years ago. And then all of a sudden a year later I was like, I'm worth 10 million. I got 10,000 doors. It's taken a slow transition. And like a lot of, for me, I just had a lot of trust issues and so it was like, Hey, are these people actually good people? Like I'm always looking for that. All right. Where are they gonna f up, where's these defects? And instead now trying to see dude, These guys are awesome. And let's try to find that more in life now. Instead of trying to find the bad. So yeah, it's been an awesome transition, man and again, to be around these guys that are just doing life at such a high level in every arena of their life. And as I come is we're pregnant right now. And facing one of the biggest transitions in my life. I'm so excited to have those guys around me, man, to just be like, obviously the financial stuff, but dude, I wanna be the best. And these guys are great models for that as well. So what's some

brian:

advice that you can give to somebody that's listening to this and they're lone Wolfen, financial freedom. They're lone wolfen life, obviously. Besides join the Action Academy community and book a fif 15 minute free coaching call with me. Uhhuh Plug baby. No. What's some advice you can give for people that are looking, that are seeking to serve? Because Gino Baro was on this podcast and he gave a great analogy that I use all the time. He said to get mentors or coaches or to be in these rooms that you don't deserve to be in or haven't earned the right to be in yet, you have to pay to play or seek to serve. Yes. So what's some advice you would give on the

lucas:

service? Man. Yeah. See, that's what sucks. You have guys like that say things like that. I'm like, I don't really have much to add to that. That's, it's amazing. Exactly what he said is like, those are your two options, right? So do your homework and figure out like, how could I actually help this person? Because all the time you talk to these guys that are up here and they get, dms in their IG all the time and it's Hey, I'd love to help. With what? Cool. With what? Like I'm too busy to figure out how you're gonna help, yeah. But if you see them post Hey, I'm looking for, someone who's good in logistics, or I'm looking for someone who can clean my house, whatever it is, right? Yeah. Can you find that for them? Can you bring in that person and be like, Hey, man, I was looking around, I interviewed a few people. Here's three good candidates. You do that for me and like I, I'm probably cool with this, I'm gonna sit down with coffee for you. And so I think it's I think we make it too hard where it's just And everyone just does the same thing where they're really not even trying, they're just expect to get rejected. So they're just like, yeah, I'd love to help you. And it's no, figure out like what is a good way that you can actually help this person without them having to figure that out for you. Exactly. So I think that's one way, and two, and now there's so many amazing communities. And so just do your research. I think there's, there, there's a lot of frauds out there. There's a lot of people that are teaching before they know what the heck they're teaching. So see who they're, who's in their community, try to find out a few people that have been through that program if you can, do a little homework with that. And then it's like the magic just starts to. And here's another example, man I didn't even mention this. I guess six years ago now, seven years ago, like when I met Diego, when I met Matt King, who's now be, GoBundance ceo and I had a few other buddies here I was thinking about in my life, I was seeing all these mastermind groups, and a lot of them were pay to play. I'm like, man, I'm, I was just starting my like upward trajectory. I didn't have a lot of cash. I'm like, how can I make this? How can I make a mastermind? So all I did was found those overachievers that were at a much higher level than me, and I said, Hey, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna schedule this meeting every three weeks. I'm gonna facilitate it. I'm gonna pick where we're gonna meet, and I'm gonna keep us all accountable. So for three years, I'm meeting with these badass dudes every three weeks. We're looking at each other's goals, we're keeping each other accountable, and I'm being brought into these incredible networks that I wouldn't have been brought into just because I was the one with the idea that said, Hey, get the facilitator. Hey, let's do this. Let's do this mastermind, and I'll hold this accountable. That was it. And that was where really my life started to take off because I had these higher level guys looking at my life and dissecting it. And I have the consistency, week in and week out with those.

brian:

Yeah. And a great way to punctuate that is to say, if you can't get an invite to the party, host the party. Love it. Something that I do now in Austin, ironically I always try to have a standing like pickleball reservation. Because everyone loves playing pickleball, and I've starting to learn like in networking circles and everything, if you can sweat with somebody, this is a cheat code, by the way, for people listening. If you can find a way to meet somebody for the first time, one-on-one, and sweat in some way with them I think there's actually literally a chemical thing that happens to where you bond. I think there's there has to be some neuroscience to it or something, but

lucas:

like when you're sharing those endorphins, it's like endorphins are getting from working out and then you're doing that with someone. Competitive nature.

brian:

Yeah, there's somebody that said something about doing he, he invites people to go do like sauna and cold plunge at his house, and that's where they meet. Instead of doing coffee, he's like, when your bodies are going through like a physiological change, like it bonds faster. So dude, I go play pickleball with people and I'm just like, I'm gonna book a court for four people and I just invite people and I've got new people coming all the time. Every single week. That's awesome, man, dude. So it's if you can't get an invite to the party, like host the party and everyone's excited to come. So yeah, dude, that was awesome.

lucas:

Great advice. Yeah, I'm sure that helps too, that that, you're letting them win each time. So yeah, that's it.

brian:

Yeah, absolutely.

lucas:

No, just getting your ass kicked on the pickleball court. Oh, yeah.

brian:

Oh yeah, absolutely. 100%. No, not me, man. Never. No, it's a good 50 50. But anyways, man, for the sake of time, let's let's wrap this up with going into your business, because I think it's very important that we list that because there's a lot of people, like you said, that are having issues with manage. They're having issues with doing it themselves, let alone for other people. So walk me through, how are you able to figure out what worked and what didn't work and then scale that into a team, because I know that's very

lucas:

difficult. Yeah, that's a great question. And and here's what I'll say about the s t R world short term, rental space is a lot of what we're talking about or a lot of the business structure, like it's not real estate. That initial buy is, but it's hospitality, it's hospital. And I have to be really honest when I talk to people about that is like that, 90% of what I'm doing day-to-day is hospitality. And it's a different animal to manage that, it's 24 7, 365. And so building that team was definitely a struggle of putting people into place. And so what our team looks like currently is we have three VAs in the Philippines that kind of have different hours. Pretty much provide like 24 7 coverage for our guests in terms of communication and covering our cameras and things like that. And then I have a boots on the ground full-time employee in Austin, and then a team in San Antonio as well. So they're the ones that are going in and looking after the cleaners, working with maintenance quality control, all of that stuff. Put out fires hopefully. So that's what the team looks like right now. And, it's been a struggle, man. I'm not an, I'm not a natural operator. I'll be completely honest about that. This is, no, I'm terrible. Yeah. I'm definitely a visionary and so at this point in time, like I think that's what I'm looking at for this next year is I need an operator. I need someone to come in and start doing that. And I have things set up really well for us and some great systems, but it can be better. And someone who, that's their, it takes so much energy out of me to put those in place that I'm excited to, to bring someone in, that can start doing that stuff for me. And I think we'll be able to grow a lot faster and more efficiently as well. But that's what the team structure looks like right now to be able to provide all of that stuff. We have. 10 different cleaning teams, five, six different maintenance guys. Every industry, right? I mean it's just connections and coordination all over the city for sure. Cuz again, and it's like in the Airbnb world, it's like the expectations are here now. It's like it's started with mattresses on the floor and then it went to renting out a room in your house. And now it's like we want like JW Marriott quality. We don't want a hair on the bed. Like we don't want a hair in the sink. And it's easy enough when it's 180 square foot hotel room, but we have 4,000 square foot homes. Yeah. So making sure every inch of that is clean to their satisfaction is, it's hard. And so we've had to, create some pretty efficient SOPs to make sure all this shit is getting done and checklists, and then, again, the quality assurance that comes in after to make sure that quality is there.

brian:

So can you walk us through some of the SOPs and your creation?

lucas:

Yeah, for sure. What that looks like, from our virtual assistant side of things are, and I'll say too, man I don't want to take all the credit for this because I one of my virtual assistants in the Philippines is awesome at this stuff. And so at this point in time, like he's managing the team of virtual assistants, so I have very little interaction with them. This is like my.

brian:

I keep trying to do this and I'm hoping that the one I just hired can fulfill this role, but it's already they're so systems and process. Like I did a I put this one through a disc profile and she's a high sc so I finally got an SC one. Cause my first mistake was I kept hiring IDs that were like me. Yeah. So that didn't work. And then, so now I've got an se, but now she's Hey, I need way better instructions than this. You need to be way better at telling me like what to do and when to do it. And I'm not used to that. So this is all like a learning curve for me.

lucas:

Yeah, man. So I built out his stuff and then he's built out everything for the rest of the team, which is awesome. So what that looks like is like they get on shift and the first thing they're doing is check through all of the previous notes from the from the person that was just on shift, right? So what are the problems? What did they not finish? So they're doing that first. Now check for all the check-in and checkouts today. Do we have any ear early check-in request? Do we have any late checkout requests? Now it's looking through all of those messages in the last 24 hours to see if anything went un unanswered or anything is missed. Then it's looking at all the temperatures in the houses to see if you know anyone has it at 64 degrees. If they're not checked in anymore. Then it's checking the cameras to see if anyone, snuck in a dog or, brought 10 people there and said only have five. All of those things. And then from there it splits off depending on who's on shift. So we have one person handling our social media. So on her time she's creating videos for us, creating content. The other one is doing a little bit of marketing stuff. And so we have it all split up, man where their shift is pretty covered. Throughout where we. SOPs built out. And again, expectation of being logged in. And the number one thing for us is that every question that's asked is responded to in five minutes. Which, is obviously a lot of urgency there. So they're always attentive and ready to handle that. So

brian:

what I'm working on right now is creating a very clearly defined like top 20%. For every role that I have love. And that's something that I'm going through with my coach right now where he's okay, what's their top 20% actions? Like I love that an e o s traction, all that. What are the rocks? There's different names for 'em, but what are their rocks? And then how do we know that they're winning? So what would the rocks be for your team, like for your assistants?

lucas:

I love that man. Yeah, a lot of it would come down to, urgency. The urgency for sure of like how fast things are getting responded to. If they're using if they don't need to ask me, so like how many times did they come to Lucas? Like that would be definitely one of the highest things that we're ranking them on is did you use all of the resources and all of those indexes and things like that, that we have built out for you to find the right answer? Did anything slip past us? So did the, were the cleaners not informed in terms of. 95% compliance rate in terms of, cleaners getting the information ahead of time on late checkout or any of that stuff we talked about. So yeah, I think those would be some of the rocks. But that's a really interesting thing to think about, of I, I think it's always like that extra incentive for the team to keep them engaged, right? And for them to be like, cause, cause oftentimes then what. It's like you're only talking to them when things go wrong, right? Instead of dude, you guys are nailing these rocks. And so I think it's amazing from that side of things. So something I'll need to think about more.

brian:

Yeah. What we're trying to do for my team is I've got Caitlin, so Caitlin is like, I've got Caitlin and Eloise. So she's, Eloise is my Va Caitlin's basically my operations director. Yeah. So it's I view I made it like a whole diagram. I was like, I want to be like the pilot in the. And it's I wake up in the morning in my nice hotel, I put on my suit that's like nice and clean and pressed. I go down and I know I got my coffee and I've got my breakfast ready and I've got my flight plan. And I walk to the plane. I do my pre-flight check, and then I'm, yeah, taking everyone in the plane into the air. And then, so Caitlin is the air traffic controller, so she's like the Matt King to The Osborn. She's okay, like the runway's clear. The sky's clear. You're good on runway seven, go to runway 7, 7 45. I've got everything clear. Sweet. And then the Eloise is on the ground. She's the ground crew, so she's got like the little batons and she's like making sure everything's good. She's making sure the coffee's ready and everything. So that's how we have the organization rolling right now. And I've got a couple other people, so it's like we're determining what the 20% wins are. So that's a process we're actively working through currently. But yeah, man, that's freaking awesome. So where can people find you? Where can people find out more about your.

lucas:

Yeah. Instagram, we're at Five Star, written out, five star vhr. It's a great place to contact me or rentals@fivestarvhr.com. If you wanna shoot me an email, so always happy to help. We're I'm doing some cool things right now and some consulting and helping people with pricing structures and how to analyze, st r deals, which I think is, can be one of the harder things. Things like that. Always happy to give back. Man. I think you know, the Chris Lockhead quote, from an event, I think three or four years ago, he's dude, if you get to the top, and I'm not at the top, but if you're at the top of the bridge, like my own bridge and you're not willing to throw that rope down, Or as he would say, throw the fucking rope down, what are you doing? And so I'm always help, try to help as many people as I can and throw that rope down and just, will willing to offer advice or look at deals or whatever I can do to, get people to that next step.

brian:

Let's rock and roll, man. And that puts us at 40 minutes on the dot. Bam. Beautiful. All right, Lucas, thank you for coming on, buddy. This has been awesome. Everyone go check out five star v h r, that is five star written out, and then v h. Go check out the Instagram, give him a follow. If you're ever in Austin, Texas, use him to book and give him a shout if you need any help with the management or anything like that. So Lucas, dude, appreciate you coming on, man. Love it

lucas:

brother. All right with that. Appreciate you having me man.

brian:

This has been Lucas and Brian with the Action Academy Podcast. Sign in off.