[00:00:02] This is short term rental management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Carl.
[00:00:16] Here we are. Here we are. We have gathered here today to talk about this thing called cash flow.
[00:00:23] That's what I'm talking about, man. Here's the deal. It's landlording. It's not walking on the moon. We didn't reinvent anything here. We didn't create anything. It's been going on for centuries. We just talk about how to be better at it. On short term rental management with gasflow. Carl, the reverend of real estate preaching it. Grateful to be here with you on a Tuesday morning or whenever you happen to be listening. Today's topic is going to be repairs. Handy people, handy men, handy women. There have been a few advancements in the space and also I think that you're doing it wrong. But if you're brand new and new to trying to get some repairs done at your house, we're going to cover that topic today on short term rental management.
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[email protected] that's strlistingadvice.com, handy people, hiring a handy person, et cetera, et cetera. Here's how this topic came about. I had a budy of mine from high school, known him basically my whole life, text me and say he had friend that had a house in an area that they were looking to maybe Airbnb it and wanted to know if I knew a handyman which opened a giant can of worms in my brain. Do people really think that all you need to do is put it on Airbnb and hire a handyman and you're done? I mean, to a certain extent that is true, right? I think it's better to have that kind of outlook on it than the I need to have 77 softwares and a petting zoo before I go live. I think that that is not as good of a way to do things as just throw it on verbo and hire a handy person.
[00:02:25] But when it comes to handy people, there is a long conversation to be had there. There really is. And my brain started going like, dude, you don't even keep in mind this gentleman and conversation is a very good around a house. He's very handy himself. So the kind of guy that would know how to do such things or tell somebody how to do such things, which is something you got to keep in mind if you don't know how these things work around a house. You know what I mean? It doesn't make sense in my brain that you're just hiring somebody to go over there and fix something that a guest told you needs fixed. To me, I want to get to the bottom of it. What's wrong with it? What is it?
[00:03:07] What's actually going on here and what actually needs to be done? I just don't understand that kind of that, I guess, for lack of a better way to put it, house husband or housewife mentality, where you just call somebody to do it for you and you don't even think about it. That doesn't really work in my brain as I'm fixing my hair on a Tuesday. It just always needs to be fixed if you happen to be on YouTube. But anyway, so a lot of this stuff, I like to learn how to do it myself. And I'm no expert. I'm no expert. If I go in and try and fix something for the first time, I'm going to break it. But I'm going to learn why I broke it and then I'm going to fix it so that I don't break it the next time. Perfect example has nothing to do with a house. But I've got an old car. I've always been a bit of a car guy. And I have a 1970 Buick GS, which is not the most famous muscle car of all time.
[00:04:04] Your grandma probably doesn't really know what that is, or maybe she does if she's got some class. But it's a muscle car, basically. And I had a headlight out. So I went online and I've got a guy. I've got a guy from my car.
[00:04:19] He's like the guy. And we made friends a little bit over the years and he actually listens to my radio station. I don't know if you know that I'm a disc jockey on Sirius XM and I have been for many years, and I'm on two different channels and I still do that occasionally. So anyway, this gentleman in the car world is a fan of one of my channels, I should say one of the channels that I'm on. And we made buddies. And so I posted on a little group, Facebook group, for this car. And I said my headlights out. And I can't figure out what the part number is on this damn thing. It had like six numbers, none of which were googleable. And he said, don't worry, Luke. I got one on the. So, you know, he had my address because I'd placed prior orders with him. And it's all about, I got a guy. I got a guy. I got a guy. And I happened to have the guy in that space that I made friends with. I was able to provide value to him because he likes the music I play on the radio, and he provides value because he knows a lot about my car. And I also have a very nice example of the type of car that is in his wheelhouse. So, anyway, he sends me, actually, four headlights to replace all of them. And I get in there, and I start replacing the headlights. And, of course, one of the screws, each of the headlights has three screws. One of the screws is stuck. And what happens? I stripped a screw. It's just a phillips screw. And it is, man, quick math. It's 30, 53 years old. 54 years old. And it's been sitting in there for 54 years, rusting. So it was stuck. And sure enough, I stripped ahead of it, and I was able to take the entire assembly apart and get the screw out through unconventional means. And the new screw went in. But I did break the bracket on the bezel. I don't know the name of all these items. I'm making up names. Bezel sounds pretty good. And so that one screw is now no longer doing anything. So that's kind of how it goes with me. I will take shit apart. I will figure out how it works. I enjoy being frustrated in that process, and that's kind of how my journey goes with handymanning. I would rather kind of make sure I know how to do it myself first. I've spoken about this in the past, and I've used the example of a ceiling fan. Perfect example. It really is. If you can't swap a ceiling fan, you have no business being in rental real estate. Hello. That's just me. That's just me. Now, some folks have a lot of dough. You got, like, an anesthesiologist that has a billion dollars.
[00:06:54] Listen, I know you guys work hard, and it's not literally that much, and it's a terrible preconceived notion to even talk like that, but you got a lot of money, and you probably don't know your way around a house. Or maybe you don't. I don't know. I mean, hell, if you know how to cut up a human, you should be able to swap a damn ceiling fan. It's a whole lot easier. It's more simple to me. I don't know, that's just kind of the way I approach repairs around a house. And the first thing I want to mention is that you don't hire a handyman. Everybody says, and I've been preaching this for years, so forgive me if you've heard this before, but everybody says I got to hire my handyman. And again, this podcast, before I get any deeper, this is fairly geared towards noobs. Matter of fact, we should probably put this in our noob playlist. We have a noob playlist on our YouTube channel at the short term shop on YouTube. So keep that in mind. If you've been doing this a hundred years, I'm sure you've already got a fantastic handyman system. And this is probably not something you need to hear, but maybe you need to hear it again. So my point was, now that we've gotten it out of the way that we're talking to noobs here, brain bouncing around as usual. You don't hire a handyman, you just don't. The way it more realistically works is every single person that you come in contact with that may or may not be able to turn a screwdriver, you save their number in your phone, okay? Especially if you've only got one or two houses. Obviously this process is going to change if you have an ass load of houses. If you've got 50 houses in one market, you're basically kind of hiring your own guy. He's not maybe going to be on the payroll or anything like that, but you're paying him by the job and you likely have enough work to keep him busy so he doesn't really have to go out and look for work elsewhere. And that's a pretty good little relationship. That's one reason to scale. You get sick and tired of people not wanting to answer the phone for you. You don't own enough real estate. I'm sorry. And eventually, I know it's very difficult to get to that point, and it is.
[00:08:58] We preach about that around here all the time. It is very difficult to get to the next property and the next deal and the next deal. That is the hardest part of all of it. But the truth is, if you don't have 50 houses in the same market, or 50 units in the same market, I'm making that number up. Maybe it's ten, but it can be difficult to get a hold of people. So anyway, keep that in mind as I continue. When it comes to hiring, you're not hiring. It's not like a cleaner that is working for you regularly and they're coming back three, four times a week. Handy people.
[00:09:30] Basically, you're trying to get phone numbers for anybody with a damn heartbeat that'll answer their phone and knows how to turn a screwdriver or use a plunger. It's as simple as that. It really is. So, I mean, if you go through my phone and if you grab my phone and go to the contacts and put handyman, there's going to be 200 of them and they all have little notes next to them.
[00:09:51] Now, I'll take it a step further. I'm more in that 50 houses and 150 units in one market category. Not with my short terms. To have 50 short terms in one market would be insane. You're talking an average purchase price in a vacation town of something like, I don't know, $750,000 to have 50 of those. You're an extremely wealthy person. You're not listening to this podcast. You're not. You're using a property manager and you're on your yacht and you're flying in clients to do surgery on them on your yacht or whatever you're doing, or you won the lottery and it's all going to be gone in two years anyway. I don't know. So step one is take note of every single handy person you come in contact with. Write it down. Network, network, network. It's all Facebook. But I will also say that we are getting to the point where we're seeing some of these kind of boutique type folks.
[00:10:47] In Covid were so many people that wanted to get into real estate that hated their job. Okay, let me back that up. In Covid, we found out just how many people there are in the universe that hate their job because we gave them a taste of working from home. And next thing you know, they didn't want to go to work anymore. And it was rampant. There was so many people in my life that just. Maybe it's because I never really had a job, right? I've always had just 1099 lifestyle and entrepreneur since day one. I owned a bar in New York City when I was 25 years old. So I've owned my own business basically my entire adult life. And so I think a lot of these folks, these Covid type folks that were sick of working for the man kind of gravitated to me to try and figure out how to do it. And the truth is, you either have it or you don't, because it's a lot easier to work for the man than to not. It really is. It's difficult to manage a life, a happy, functional life, not having a w two paycheck, it is. It's difficult, and it's not for everybody. You got to be born with it. I mean, it's either in there or it's not. So, anyway, during COVID we saw a lot of these folks come out of the woodwork that didn't want to work anymore, and some of them bought two or three houses, and now we're seeing a lot of them turn into handy type people, and we're seeing some boutique type handy people. And I think, honestly, that's probably the way to go. Specialize. I only do hot tubs. We're seeing a lot of that. I only do thermostats or. Well, you got to be an HVAC guy for that. Right? Which we're going to get to that. I had an idea a couple of weeks ago to start a handyman company. Not for me personally, I don't have the time, but for somebody to start a handy person company that only does doorknobs and deadbolts, like, basically a modern day locksmith. We even had a name for this business. We were going to call it the knob mob. You're not allowed to steal that. That is trademarked intellectual property of Luke Carl, Inc. But I think that there is a space for that. If you got people calling you up constantly saying, I need somebody to do this, that the other. It wouldn't be a bad idea to say, sorry, I only do knobs, and I'm happy to come to your house and swap out every knob in your house with matte black doorknobs, and I will swap out your deadbolt. And I think that would probably be the bulk of the gig, is swapping out all these fancy deadbolts and such that everybody is so obsessed with having these fancy. The schlage encoded and then the Yale, et cetera. Again, modern day locksmith is really what it is. Nobody calls locksmiths anymore. It doesn't make any sense anymore because a locksmith traditionally is there to get you in the house. And quite frankly, in 2024, you're better off just putting a new damn lock on there so the knob mob can come put the new lock on, and you got a brand new deadbolt, and he's smart enough to know how to put it on the app, on your phone, and then he can swap out all your closet knobs to matte black and make your house look cooler while you're at it. Little upgrades, things like that. I think we're headed in that direction when it comes to handy people, because we have so many people, thanks to Covid. There's been a great lot of great things because of COVID And I think it's a wonderful thing that people decided they weren't going to work for the man. But again, it's wonderful and it's also a curse because a lot of these people aren't cut out to not work for the man. Hold on a second. Time for a cold one. There we go, baby.
[00:14:06] This episode of the short term management show is brought to you by short term rental, long term wealth. This is the book in the STR space written by my lovely wife, Avery Carl. It has hundreds of reviews on Amazon and it will teach you literally everything you need to know about STR.
[00:14:26] Short term rental, long term wealth. The book. Wherever books are sold.
[00:14:34] You got maybe a Boutique handy person doing just fire extinguishers. There's a great need for that. I've been through fires. I went through a fire not that long ago. It was absolutely horrible. If there was somebody in my market that because really all you're doing is getting. Here's what I do. I get a five gallon fire extinguisher and I put it out in the open. Putting it under the kitchen sink ain't going to get you anywhere. They need to know where it is as soon as they walk in the house and they need to know where it is. If a fire breaks out, I put it in the most obnoxious, obvious place in the house. I do it in the house I live in. If a fire happens, I want everybody to know exactly where that fire extinguisher is. If you're hiding it under the cabinets and there's an emergency, there's too much room for error. Also, I go with the five pounders. The little ones are worthless. Again, I'm not here to offer any kind of fire. I'm not a licensed fireman or anything like that, but I could see a need for a handy person who specializes in smoke alarms and fire extinguishers, that kind of thing. Probably need some sort of license for that. I don't know, but it would need to be done right. I think that's where people fail. That's why we're not quite ready for that. People aren't doing this stuff right.
[00:15:43] Let's face it, people just don't really know how to run a business that well, and myself included. I'm always trying to learn and get better at it. So that is a space where. Let me put it this way. Let's say you bought one or two vacation rentals and then you realized, holy crap, I'm out of money, I got to go back to work. I got to have a w two and answer to my boss and I hate it and whatever, because I'm broke and I need more money to go get more down payments. Well, instead of going back to work, you could become some sort of boutique candy person. Let me tell you something. If you want to be in the house business and you are out of down payments and you are handy around a house, there's work for you. Endless. It's endless. If you answer your phone and you are in a market. Well, especially if you're in a vacation market, you're going to get work. Most of these guys don't answer their phone or they tell you they're going to show up and they don't. And that's a pretty good way to make people mad. So if you're willing to answer your phone, and here's another thing, be honest. I'll be honest with you. You want to have success doing what I'm talking about, be honest.
[00:16:47] I don't have time for that job. Sorry. Call somebody else. That is going to keep you in business.
[00:16:53] Mr. Handy people. Mr. And Mrs. Handy people. These handy people that you call and they say they're going to do something and they don't show up, that's infuriating. And those are the people that are going to be gone. Be honest. Tell me the truth. I don't want that job. It's not enough money. I don't want that job. It's a stupid little job. I'm busy today. I don't have time for it. You don't have to be brutally honest, but I'm sorry, I don't have time for that job. Please give me a call in the future. But right now I'm pretty backed up. That's going to get you a long way. You'll stay in my phone if you're like that, if you're honest, if you tell me you're going to show up and you don't, you're getting out. You're deleted out of my phone. Bye bye, worthless. You suck. But anyway, I think in order to combat the fact that you're too busy, would be a great way to do that, would be to specialize, narrow it down. I only do this this and know again, I've never done the handyman thing, so I'm sure there's a lot more to it than that. And I'm going to be completely honest with you, I have tried, I think I've told this story before. I have tried to get a handyman on this show. There was a gentleman in Texas that was recommended. He was supposed to be the greatest of all time to handyman and I tried to get him on the show. He canceled on me. I gave him a second chance. He canceled on me, I gave him a third chance and he ghosted. If that isn't a handy person in a nutshell, I don't know what is. I mean, it's insane. I gave him three chances to show up to promote his business. Didn't show up. He didn't show up. A handyman didn't show up. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? It's like, well, he just did your job because that's what most of the handy people I deal with do now. Okay, I'm going to take it the other way. I love my vendors. I love all my vendors, my handy people, but we're in business together. I can't do it without you. You can't do it without me. There needs to be a mutual respect. I'm showing you respect. I show my folks respect. I do. So when you disrespect me by not showing up, dude, come on, man.
[00:18:45] Anyway, but again, I want to go further down that lecture. I do want to mention again that these people are indisposable. Find somebody you have a great relationship with and treat them with respect. I send Christmas cards to my guys. I send them little happy happies with like summer sausage and crackers and stuff. You find somebody good. Again, you're probably not going to find somebody good that you have a working relationship with like that unless you've got a bunch of doors. But is it worth it to send $100 snack pack to a guy when you only have two houses? Maybe not, because you could go eight months before you need this guy and he might not even remember who you are. That being said, let's play a devil's advocate there. If you've only got two houses and you only need somebody every eight months, a good way for him to remember who you are is a snack pack. Like, oh, you're the guy that sent me the summer sausage. Cool, what do you need? But again, let me go the other way one more time. In eight months, it's a pretty good chance that guy moved or took a steady job because again, it's difficult. A lot of people get into this and they think that it's going to be their answer to not have to work for the man, and then they find out it's hard as hell. And what's hard as hell about it? 1099, working for yourself, self employed, which is a quadrant on the cash flow quadrant, is extremely difficult. If you're trying to do this type of work and you've never read the Emyth or cash flow quadrant, you're not going to make it. That being said, if you've read the Emyth and cash flow quadrant, you're probably working your way up to a better high dollar paying gig.
[00:20:17] That's the conundrum. It's a difficult deal. So, back to my noobs. All right, let me get back to back on topic here. As we're going off on all these rabbit holes, as usual, what I want to point out is a lot of times you think you need, like, a handyman when you really need, again, a specialist. In other words, a boutique handyman that only works on outlets and electrical panels. We call that an electrician. Isn't that exactly what that is? It's basically a boutique know tradesman, and a lot of times see it all the time where somebody posts, I need a handyman. And then you're, oh. Because nobody ever listens to me on Facebook anymore. I've got three of the biggest short term rental Facebook groups on the planet. I created them, I curated them, I babied them, I worked my ass off to get them where they are, and now nobody listens to me. Well, tough shit. I've got a microphone, so I see it all the time, and I'm to the point where I can't even deal with it on Facebook anymore. But I see somebody posting in one of our big groups, and they say, I need a handyman. Can you give me a handyman? And I'm like, oh, my God. It's going to be a three hour process to get to the bottom of this. To get them what they actually need, you got to post and you got to say, oh, I'm sorry. Can you elaborate? What are you looking for? What's the issue in the home? And they say, my hot tub doesn't work. And then you're like, oh, boy, here we go. Here we go. And then you got to ask more questions. Well, what's wrong with it? I don't know. My guest told me it doesn't work. Oh, lord, you're a crappy landlord. You are a crappy landlord. Now, again, if you're brand new and you don't know any better and you got to go through that process to get better. That's fine. Okay. And I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt. So maybe that's you. But the guest telling you your hot tub is broken is no reason to post on Facebook saying, I need a any man. Why don't you ask the guests a bunch of questions? Well, I'm sorry, can you elaborate on that? What do you mean it's broken? Well, since it's not getting hot, which means, my friend, it's in economy mode. If you don't know that a hot tub is in economy mode and it's not broken, then you're a crappy landlord and you need to listen to my show and listen to me on Facebook. Nobody listens to me. But I appreciate you. You're here listening to me right now. And I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. Okay, so then you got to take it one step further. Well, it's not lighting up. There's no numbers on the keypad.
[00:22:38] So then maybe you need an electrician. It's probably the broker flipped. The broker. The breaker is probably flipped. Now, I will say, before I get any deeper on that conversation, 90% of items that are broken in the house, 90% of the time, it is the most simple solution to the problem.
[00:22:58] Like 95%, I would say the vast majority of issues, it's always the easiest little thing. Not always. Okay. For instance, I had my truck, my truck recently, I've got a fairly new Chevy truck. Nothing fancy for the old reverend here. Okay, it's pretty fancy for a Chevy, but not rolling around in some kind of escalade, which I would like that, to be honest. But that's a conversation for another time. Anyway, I mean, I do have the Buick, but we were out of town visiting family for the old holidays, for the new year. And wifey says, your truck is making a noise. Okay, so it's exactly like that person posted on Facebook about the handy, the hot tub. So then I have to ask her questions, okay, what kind of noise? And I'm like, is it a growl or is it a tick or is it a whistle? And she says, it's like a tick. And I said, okay, well, it was really cold, right? It was the first time. We live in Florida, so it might have been the first time my truck had ever been in the cold. And I thought, okay, it just needs to warm up. The lifters are sticking a little bit. No big deal. So I let her keep driving it. I was in the woods with the buddies, with the boys. And so a couple days go by, I get back to my truck, and sure enough, the damn thing's ticking like crazy. Like a damn box full of marbles. And if you rev it up, it was ticking even harder. And I'm like, we've got a problem here. This is a lifter issue of some sort. I call my buddy, who's my car, budy, you got to have a know. And I call my buddy, and we discussed it because we were getting ready to leave. Should we leave town or not? He said, I don't think I would trust it. I took the truck. I dropped it off at the nearest Chevy dealer. We rented a car, we went home. Chevy dealer calls me after the holiday was over, they said, we started that truck, moved it around back to the garage, and between where you parked it and the garage, the engine seized up. This was a 2022 with 29, 27,000 miles. So I will say that 97% of the time, it's the simplest, easiest little thing. Like, I was a little low on oil, and it was cold for the first time. No big deal. It just needed to warm up. This particular circumstance was the 3% where the damn motor blew up. I mean, come on. Come on, Chevy. So anyway, my point is, when the guest tells you that your hot tub is broken, 99% of the time is the easiest thing, which in that case will usually be that the fact that the breaker is stripped or it's in economy or sleep mode, which, by the way, there is a way to override economy and sleep mode. Maybe I'll do a podcast on that here in the near future. I don't know if there's a whole podcast worth of content there, but, man, it would be really helpful to a lot of people to get that sleep mode disabled. So, anyway, the bottom line is, when these items come up, you've got to do research, figure out who you need, if you even need anybody, and you probably don't. You probably don't need anybody. And I'm going to tell you another thing. Nine times out of ten, it's better to just wait until this person checks out and then have your cleaner assess or something like that. Now, of course, we've got to have great customer service. Hot tub needs to work in the property. Otherwise your guest is going to be upset, and they have a right to be. But when I hear my buddy from high school send me a text and say, hey, do you have a handy person in this market? Because I'm starting an Airbnb, makes me nuts. There's a lot more to it than that. And the truth is, you probably don't even need anybody if I give you a guy's name. That is not the solution to your problem.
[00:26:26] Might make you feel warm and fuzzy because you got a guy's name in your phone and, hey, man, maybe that's all you need, is a warm and fuzzy. Let me put it this way. If the handyman's phone number puts you over the top to buy a property, then take the damn phone number, because buying the property needs to be priority. That's the goal, right? A lot of people say, well, Luke, your company sells real estate. Of course you say that. You're damn right we sell real estate, man. If you want to close deals, you come to Luke's company, man. You come to the short term shop. If you don't want to close deals, don't come to the short term shop. Because we close deals. We're proud of that because closing deals has changed our lives. We don't want that to be a. You know, if closing deals didn't change my life, why do I have so many damn deals? All right, so you want to close deals, you want to get the job done? You want to be a better landlord? Get better rates, better reviews? Come hang with me. I'll teach you how to do all this stuff. Class called management. Monday. Every Monday, free for short term shop clients. I love you. Don't overthink it's you.
