Finance Freedom: Simplifying Rental Finances for Stress-Free Living

Hi, welcome along to the Boostly Podcast. The podcast that gives you the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly, the confidence to go out there and get more direct bookings. We usually talking all about direct bookings, but today we're actually shining the Boostly spotlight on something a bit different. This is for our us hosts. It's a software which sits behind your business and it's a really important one. It's one which gives you everything you need to make your rental finances easy. Best of all, it is free. So let me introduce Saad, the head of business development and Torben, the co founder at Baselane. And yeah, I'm excited to dive into this and it's definitely one to stick around for, for the next 20, 30 minutes while we talk about the wonderful things that this piece of software is going to do for your business. So thanks for joining me, guys. Should we introduce if, if we go to Torben? First of all, if you introduce yourself where you are in the world and anything you'd like to share. Yeah.

Hey Liam, thanks so much for having us on the show. I'm calling from New York today, based in New York. So thank you for having us. I'm one of the co founders, as you mentioned, of Baselane, started the company about three years ago now. And really the company, the idea for the company, which we'll talk about today, it came from my own experience being an Airbnb host, being a landlord myself, had a lot of financial pain points and prior to starting Baselane, spent most of my career working in financial services and tech and really just saw an opportunity to streamline this and really make managing your finances easier as a landlord.

Nice, nice. And if we move across to Saad.

Yes, thank you for having me. Yeah. I'm originally from New York and recently moved to Atlanta. So I'm actually now in the south of the United States and my background is actually in accounting and finance and strategy consulting and I'm also a real estate investor. So that's a passion of mine and I've been investing for the last five years, own about 20 units right now with a mix of long term and short term rentals. So dabble in a bit of both. And for me, I think I was extremely frustrated with the lack of technology and just tools that were out there and I got lucky. I got introduced to Torben through a friend of ours and he told me that they were starting this company and they were going to help solve all these problems that I had as an owner, an investor. So yeah, I decided to Hop on board and really help build the, you know, the platform that I need to.

Run my own business.

So super excited to be here to tell you more about it.

Awesome. And you know what? That's what I love about these kind of softwares and the things which come around in both, you know, real estate and also in hospitality, that a lot of the softwares are born out of genuine pain points that people suffer in the first place. And that's why they know how to go and solve them. So, so let's start off with the first question. What is baselane?

Yeah, absolutely. I can take that one. So really what baselane is. Baselane is the number one and the all in one banking platform for real estate investors, for landlords, for hosts. And we really help you streamline and simplify your finances, whether you're a host or a landlord, focusing on short term and midterm rentals or long term rentals. And I can tell you a little bit about kind of, you know, how the idea came about. It really came from my own journey as a host. I have multiple Airbnb properties. And basically the way that I was running that was, you know, very. I kind of got into it kind of casually. It was, you know, I had initially, I just started actually renting the apartment I was living in. Then from there, I kind of expanded and got a few more, made a few more investments and had kind of a small portfolio of Airbnbs. And I was really focused on, as I think, a lot of kind of hosts or people also in the hospitality space, you're focused on running your business. You're focused on managing the property, getting great guests. And that was kind of the part of the business that was fun that I wanted to focus on, but then I also had to do the whole financial management of it. Right. So, you know, if you're an Airbnb host, you know how it works. You have your rent basically coming in from Airbnb into the platform. And then especially in the US there's all kinds of kind of tax tracking that you have to do for the deductions. You gotta, you know, all these expenses, your, your mortgage, your cleaners, the people, if you're using a property manager, all of that becomes deductible at the end of the year. And essentially for me, the way I was running this was I had just the rent coming into my bank account, and then I was kind of manually tracking all of these expenses. And at the end of the year, I would have this mess at tax time, and it would just be this massive pain to deal with to actually figure out, like what, what were my deductions, what were my taxes? And the other thing I kind of realized pretty quickly was, you know, while I liked running the Airbnb business, I never really knew where I stood from a cash flow perspective. So that's kind of where I said to myself, like, is, you know, is this thing really profitable? Is it growing? Is it going right direction? There's going to be a better way to manage the finances here. And prior to starting Baselane, I spent most of my career working in financial services, working in tech, in particular, kind of working with large banks to launch new digital financial products. And basically myself and my partner, we said, look, there's got to be a better way to build this. And then we really started Baselane to simplify and put all in one place, a banking platform for the financial management of real estate properties to basically help landlords help hosts, save time, save money and increase returns. So, yeah, excited to dive into the details of actually how exactly that banking platform works today.

I mean, saving time is one thing that all our hosts, all our listeners really want to do. So anything that helps them do that is going to be a great success. So can you give us more idea of what is the actual sort of core of the product and how does it help the hosts or the real estate sort of owners?

Yeah, absolutely. I think Torben hit on this. So just to kind of summarize how we think about building products, it's giving you back time, but also financial peace of mind. And the other thing is like management of expenses so you can actually reduce and optimize your expenses. So we think about those three things when we're building our products. So what we offer today, our core is a business checking account with an unlimited amount of virtual accounts, virtual cards, and we can talk a little bit more about what those products are because they're new to this space and we offer, you know, no fees, no minimums, free wires, ach transfers, a lot of really cool features that allow you as an owner to get better organized but also earn some rewards for that. A traditional incumbent bank won't offer that. So that's at the core. And from there, you know what's really exciting and my favorite part is the bookkeeping. So you can, the banking is set up in a way that it ties into our bookkeeping software. So we've built bookkeeping analytics and reporting and all of the money movement that happens, you can set up rules to auto tag transactions coming out of those virtual accounts. And cards into the bookkeeping. So that really that's getting done for you as you're running your business. And I'll give some examples. For example, like if you are running your short term rental business and you have to pay a cleaner, you can issue a virtual debit card to the cleaner or to the property manager to manage it. And what my property manager does is she's able to issue, take the virtual debit card, it's got spend control, it's got security and all of that, plug it into like a Venmo, which is a, you know, app in the US for payments and then pay the cleaner in real time. The really cool thing is the bookkeeping gets done automatically as a transaction happens because it's tagged to the unit and it's tagged to the type of expense, let's say in this case it's cleaning, cleaning fees. And so that's the idea. From there then you can analyze your portfolio. You can imagine once everything is tagged, you can actually look at in real time analytics that show you, okay, once the inbound revenue by total, you know, cash flow and expenses and what's the net that I earned. So that allows you to also generate financial statements which we provide like income statement for example, or NOI reports. And we also provide schedule E which is like in the US used for tax reporting purposes. So really we take you from all the way from tracking your revenue and organizing that all the way to your bottom line. And the cool thing is you can export these reports, you can share them with your cpa, your lender, your partners, your investors, whoever you want to. And so we've got different types of users, some users obviously who are direct hosts or people that own properties that are using baselane, but also co hosts or property managers also find value in baselane because they can again get better organized for their stakeholders. So that's a quick overview and we can tell you more about some of the other features that we have.

That's cool. And just before we move on from that point, I mean already I know a lot of hosts from the masterminds and the groups and all the networking events around the US who one of the biggest problems they have, they, they put everything perhaps on a spreadsheet or perhaps they just don't. And they just work it out when the, you know, tax is due and they've got the big messes sorted out. And so many people, especially hosts who are busy, put that sort of stuff off. So it sounds as though this is an ideal solution for them to stay Organized first and foremost, but then also to make day to day things easier. So like you say you're not having to tag transactions and stuff like that. It's very, very clear as to, as to where all that comes from.

If you're struggling on how to get direct bookings and overwhelmed on where to start, then I recommend you go and book in a call with Boostly and our team right now. We can walk you through exactly what we're offering, how we can help you and give you a portfolio of websites that we have worked with that are matching not only your niche but could be in your location as well. Boostly has helped over 2000 hospitality businesses all over the world including increase their direct bookings. And if you are interested then all you need to do is go to Boostly B o o s t-l y.co.uk forward/call and book in an appointment with one of our sales team.

One question I know people will be shouting down the the sort of devices or on YouTube to it's why is all this free? Why? Why is it free? Why is there not a monthly charge?

Yeah, absolutely. And that's a very common question that we get and I can absolutely speak to that. And really Liam, I think you nailed the value prop. It is like what fundamentally we're trying to achieve is to automate your finances and put the finances in the background so that you can focus on what matters for running your business. So now why is that free? You know, Baseline is a banking platform. So the way that we make money is the way that, you know, banks make money. Our customers hold their balances with us, we are able, we those balances get hold in a fully FDIC insured account with, with our partner bank and we are earning what's called kind of net interest revenue off that. So the vast majority of the interest is actually shared back with the customers. We pay very high apys across the board, much, much higher than any kind of regular bank or even the large banks in the US and we keep a small margin on that interest revenue. We also, as Saad kind of mentioned, we have a debit card spend platform. So on Baseline you can issue both physical debit cards that you can use to run your business. You can also issue unlimited virtual debit cards and as Saad mentioned, you can issue those to your property managers, your partners, people you work with, you can use them to pay your utility bills, et cetera. And really the unlock there is you can get really granular and have a lot of spend control and spend management across your business with these dedicated kind of virtual cards in the spend management platform and the way that the, the kind of card systems work in the US when you spend money on baseline debit cards, the merchants actually pay a fee for that as with kind of any Visa or MasterCard. So we earn a part of that fee as well. So again it's not paid by the customer, but we're making revenue off that. And then the other component is really with kind of all of the kind of engagement that we have from our users on the platform. Really we're aiming to help users not just save time, but also save money. Now one of the, if you think of like the big expenses for real estate investors in that category, there's also insurance. The majority of real estate investors need some form of rental property insurance as well as financing and lending products. We also have partners on the insurance side, partners on the lending side that we work with to actually help optimize those financial products for the landlords and the investors on our platform. And if you go and you purchase an insurance policy through Baselin, then we also earn a commission on that. So all of the revenue, it's really, it's transactional revenue and that enables us to provide the platform for free. Just like you know, banks are typically kind of freeze as well with a difference that we don't actually charge any of these hidden fees.

I mean there's, there's lots of different strings there, isn't there? Carry on. Saad.

Yeah, I was going to add I think look like any platform, right? We will launch like a premium tier which is a pro tier with certain features that are on a monthly fee subscription basis. We haven't launched that yet but that, that's in the cards for most likely next year. But really our goal is to like what Torben saying is to provide seamless modern UI UX easy to use experience with embedded financial products throughout the journey so that you can really run your entire business there. That's our vision.

I really like it. I mean anything which makes hosts life easier and isn't costing them, you know, it's actually enhancing the, the ability that they've got to run their business and focus on the hosting, the hospitality side of things instead of having to worry about all the other tasks that come up with business, the, you know, finance and that kind of admin side of things. But one thing I'd love to just really clarify is there's lots of different hosts probably listening to this but as well as there's midterm rental hosts there's probably long term rental hosts. Who does this help the most? Just so we're really clear on, on who you want to, you know, come and find out more about Baselane.

Yeah, I could take that one. So it's, it is really built for like across the spectrum of hosts. So our product works very well for long term and midterm hosts. So if you think of kind of what the core product is, right, we have banking, so we have, you know, all your banking fully end to end. You can use this as your primary bank account. That's how the majority of our customers use it. It's the primary bank account for their real estate business. Then we have the bookkeeping and accounting suite of software that Saad also spoke about. And then we actually also have integrated into all of that. There's an online rent collection tool as well. So if you're a long term or midterm host and you're collecting rent directly, and even short term hosts that are collecting rent directly from their customers, you can buy your renters or if, if you're in the short term business, your guests to pay rent directly on Baselane. And your, your guests or your, your renters, they can pay rent either by connecting their bank account. This would be more in the case of like a long term tenant or in the case of kind of short and midterm tenants or guests, they can pay rent by credit card or they can pay the, the guest fees by credit card. So we really enable you to do kind of the full spectrum of the financial journey that, that you're doing as a, as a real estate investor host a landlord. No matter whether you are long term or midterm or short term, for the short term side of the market, we actually integrate directly into Airbnb as well. So the way that you would set it up on Airbnb is basically you create a virtual bank account for each of your units on, on the baseline platform. And then you can go and link those one to one directly to your Airbnb properties. And that really kind of solves the pain point around, you know, streamlining your finances. Now, all of the rents that come in for say, property A, that all goes into one dedicated bank account, Property B goes into a separate dedicated bank account and it really, really simplifies and cleans things up. But yeah, short answer to your question, we really do serve kind of the full spectrum of landlords, hosts, short term hosts, midterm hosts.

Sounds good. Sounds really good. So I think I've got the kind of value add and can really understand, you know, all those different strings to the product there, which is amazing. Looking back, obviously you've gone through this problem yourself, then you've developed this product which is then launched. But what's been the biggest challenge? And then we'll flip up and ask what the biggest win has been for you and what did you learn? How did you handle it?

Yeah, we started the company, as I mentioned, three years ago, as I think in any startup journey, there's a lot of ups and downs, there's a lot of learning that happens, a lot of iteration. I think the biggest challenge for us is always, you know, in a way, it's the biggest challenges, it's the biggest opportunities. Our product roadmap with the vision of what we have, what we want to build, the value that we want to provide for our customers, for our users, There's a lot to build. And sometimes the biggest challenge is just understanding and prioritizing. Of all of those things that I can build, where do I start? What is the most important? What's going to provide the most value today, in the near future? And then what are the things that kind of further out we're building? So I think that the biggest challenge, and this is where we spend a lot of time as a team, is really prioritizing and focusing on where we're adding customer value. And that's a challenge because it's hard to do, but it's also the opportunity, because if you do it properly and you do it well, you're really unlocking a lot of user value and a lot of user delight, which is the ultimate goal is make people's life easier, save time, save money, and ultimately enable investors and hosts and landlords to grow their business and not worry as much about the finances. Yeah, that is the biggest challenge. And the second part of the question was the. Yeah.

What's been the biggest kind of wow moment so far in the journey?

Yeah, yeah, right, the wow moment. Look, I think, you know, when we started the company roughly three years ago, there was a lot to build. And if you think about it, we were really building kind of three products out of the gate, Right? We were building banking, we were building bookkeeping and accounting, and we were building rent collection. And we always had this vision that the big unlock and the beauty of this product is in having all of this together. And we would speak to other founders and investors, and, you know, sometimes they would look at us and say, you know, you guys are crazy. Like, that's so much product to build. Like, just focus on one thing and build that. And you know, we were kind of stubborn and we said no, the vision here is like the unlock comes from having all of this together. So what we did is we basically kind of spent, you know, around a year or so, the first kind of year or so building the company was really kind of heads down, building the product, really investing in product. And then I would say for, for us and I think for, for the team, that the big wow factor was really around a year and a half ago when we kind of fully went live with the initial MVP banking product that had the rent collection, that had the bookkeeping and accounting. We just saw customers flowing into the product and really experienced like very, very strong market, product market fit out of the gate and just strong user feedback, loving the product and also strong user feedback saying this is amazing and here's like the next 10 things I want to. And for us, I mean especially for me personally, that was really a big wow moment. Just getting all that user engagement on the platform and really seeing it come to life. And now in the meanwhile, you know, we have tens of thousands of customers on the platform. It's just been an amazing journey for that.

I love seeing some go from an idea to a, you know, concept to the first kind of, first kind of trial of it and then to see it go all the way through like you say, three years later. To see this amazing business and software that's helping so many people, that's amazing to see. Was there anything to add to that, Saad?

I wanted to actually share one or two stories related to our customers that might give give you an idea. One of my, I think products flow was that there was a customer that wasn't a new investor either. They had I think seven or eight units, been doing it for a while. And this person wrote to us and said, you know, I just bought a 16 unit building. And he said, you know, I, I've never bought something that size before, but after I started using Baselane and you can't make this kind of stuff up, it's like after I started using Baselane, I got the confidence to see that I can actually execute and I can see where I'm performing and I was able to go and buy this bigger property because I know that I can do this again and at a bigger scale. And that to me was a huge deal for us because it kind of showed the full vision, you know, kind of coming to life of the whole point of this was to help everybody that's trying to achieve financial independence grow their portfolios and scale it and make it easier for them. That was a, I think that was a really a highlight for us. And the other one is that recently we had one of our customers who's like 70 years old investing in all kinds of rental properties leave amazing review about how easy the platform was to use and also complementing our customer success team. So it gives us the indicators of some things like you know, we talk about modern UI ux, but does it, what does it really mean and does it really simplify things for people and those that to me also was a standout moment where we said wow, we had to like take a step back and really make sure that we understand what happened here. I just want to share those two stories for you just to give you a better idea.

Thank you for that. I mean giving those people self belief and making them realize that hey, you know, it is simple. Once you've got taken care of the back, you know, the back end sort of stuff and once you've taken care of the systems and the business, that actually these are the things which give you the confidence to go out there to do more of what you actually want to be doing, which is hosting more guests, gaining more properties, you know, as hosts out there. So thank you for that.

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What would you say you're most excited about at the moment? Whether that is with, with Baselane, you know, things which are coming in the future or things in hospitality or things in real estate. What can you see? Or even things in tech. You know, what, what are you excited about? What, what gets the, the juices flowing.

I can share some thoughts on that. I think, you know, there is a lot more technology that is coming into this space. I think we've noticed it especially in the last couple of years. So whether it's in our space, which is more on the banking and you know, the bookkeeping and accounting and reporting side of things, or it's just more data Insights as well. Like, I'm very excited about that personally. When we think about underwriting deals, being able to look at a lot more real time current data and be able to feed that in and compare that in your pro formas, I'm actually very excited about that. And I think not right away, but maybe in the future that'll be another aspect that we add into baseline. Being able to now you know, your performance of your current units, maybe we can benchmark that with available high quality data from places like Air DNA, plug that in and show you how you're performing versus how somebody else is performing. So I'm very excited about that aspect of where this whole thing is headed.

I mean, it sounds exciting and just to do what you've already done is great, but just seeing where you guys are going and how many more people is going to help, I'm excited to see that as well.

So there's a massive, just opportunity to unlock true automation here. And to Saad's point, the data angle of that is massive. Right? As a, as an investor, as a host, like, you don't want to be spending your days crunching data and figuring out all this stuff. The vision is really put it on autopilot, make it easy and help you not just make it easy, but help you make the right decisions rooted in data for your business.

That's really cool. That's really cool. And I'm sure there's lots of people who are going to be asking, sort of how can we get in touch? And we will be sharing that towards the end of the podcast. But before we do, is there any tips or any kind of advice you'd like to give the audience, the hosts that are listening to this or anything else you'd like to share?

Yeah, I can take that on. I would say I'll keep it to three things. I think that helps. So one, I say that definitely separate your bank accounts from your, your business accounts from your personal. Like those should be always separate if you haven't done it already. Even if you, you know, you're just starting out and it's one unit, it's important to do that for several reasons. Performance, tax reasons, etc. The other thing I would say is to stay on top of your numbers and make it fun. So at least check in on that one to two times a month. We spent so much time analyzing deals, buying properties, managing them, you know, doing all that work. And then if you don't really understand what you did in terms of performance, then you kind of lost the Track, right. You don't really know how you're doing. So that's, that would be the second thing. And the third thing I think is, especially in this environment and this economic climate, is to manage your costs. And you know, that means like, don't overspend, really understand what your budgets are and how to like, stay on top of your budgets and track them. So keep that in mind. In this high inflation environment, you can easily overspend. You think you're making, you know, three, $4,000 a unit, but you end up making only 500. That's a huge problem. And so hopefully the tools that base on this build can enable all of that. But I would say those three things.

I love that because especially point number two really resonates with me. I was one of them hosts who was so busy doing everything else other than worrying about the bottom line and the numbers, that it's easy to just get to a stage where it's like, oh God, now I've got. That's a bigger task to look at. And one of my mentors said to me that you wouldn't, you know, get into a plane if the pilot had no idea where they're going. And that's exactly the same thing with, if you don't know what your, you know, base numbers are. Well, how do you know where you're going to end up? If you want to achieve, you know, a certain level of financial freedom, or if you want to achieve a certain number of properties or take on more staff to reduce the day to day workload, all of that stuff comes down to one thing and that is, is there income and is there profit within the business that is going to allow you to do all that other stuff? And that is where great tools, great software like Baselane can, can help you do it. It sounds, Is there anything you'd like to, to add to that?

No, I think that that really hits it on the spot. It's, you know, just be, be on top of the numbers. And it is a, that's at the end of the day, like that is why you're in the business. I think that that really resonates with me because, because that's a big part of where I was five, six years ago when I was running my Airbnbs. I love the whole kind of the guest aspect, the organizing it, the getting the bookings, setting the places up nice. I didn't love the financial aspect of it, but obviously it's super important because that's what your business is at the end of the Day, your business is the bottom line, so you got to manage for that. And I think especially in this environment with cost increasing inflation, you do have to be careful on. On the costs. You do have to carefully manage your bottom line. And really, that. That. That's our goal. Our goal is to make that easier for you to do.

Absolutely agree. Well, we're about to share details, but before we do, we'd like to have a couple of fun questions, just because it breaks the, you know, the sort of. The mood of the. The different questions up there. So a couple of questions for you. First of all, where do you both like to go on holiday? We've got thousands and thousands of hosts listening to this. So where do you go on holiday and why. Or where would you like to go on holiday? Why?

I recently moved to Atlanta, which is in the south, so I. I would actually like to go to the Smoky Mountains, which is a local destination a couple of hours away. I haven't had a chance to do it yet, but that's on the. On the books.

Nice. When. When you do. Literally last night I was talking to another host who is based in the Smokies. So there's so many hosts out there, and if you go and post in the hospitality community. Facebook. Community on Facebook, loads of hosts from the Smokies. I know there's always loads of hosts in the Smokies, but hopefully you'll be able to get a good deal if you book direct, which is what we're all about. What about yourself, Torben?

I'm. I'm one of those strange people who actually, really, really loves winter and. And. And the cold and. And snow and winter sports. So my dream holidays are honestly anywhere, always where. Where there's snow, where there's some mountains. So, you know, recently I was. I went skiing in. In Quebec in Canada. It was. It was freezing cold. That was great. I love going upstate New York as well. So many beautiful places in the Adirondacks up there. So anything. Anything outdoor and preferably in the winter as well. So it's kind of my time of year coming up.

Right now, you're talking my language there. I'd snowboard and put me in on the Rockies or any mountain range, and I would be happy as anything, so. Awesome. Well, I'm gonna throw open the mic. How can we find out more about Baselane? And of course, we will share the links around however you're consuming this media, but just so verbally. How can we get in touch?

Yeah, so you can. You can find us on Baselane.com. so it's B A S E L A N E dot com. That's Baselane.com and yeah, free to sign up. Takes two, three minutes to get started. Super easy.

So.

Baselane.com.

Awesome. Awesome. So we love to end these podcasts by just discovering what, a mantra or a motto, something which really resonates with you or something that's, that's helped you on your journey. Would you like to share one?

Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, one thing that, that I, you know, personally try to live by and that I think we also embody a lot in the company is, is really just having a bias to action and just, just getting out there and doing things and trying things. And, you know, as I, as I think about that and as kind of, you know, we've been on this journey together as a company, you know, sometimes what you learn is, you know, initially you try to do everything perfect and you want to, you know, obviously you always want to put your best foot forward, and you absolutely should, but sometimes you also realize, you know, perfection is the enemy of just good and getting started. So really just having that bias to action and taking risks, and I think, you know, that applies whether you're. You're building a business, whether, you know, when I think of my Airbnb business and how that got started, it was like, you know, just one day just know, go, go and try it and, and do it. And, you know, you'll often be surprised where, where that leads you. And I think in life that. That often applies as well.

That's a nice sentiment to, to take away. And, yeah, this has been really fun. I've really enjoyed finding out about Baselane. I didn't know a huge amount before this, so hopefully all the listeners as well, you've. You've discovered something new. And I know as a listener, there's lots of places you can put your attention. I really thank you for putting it with. With Boostly.

Guys.

Was there anything we missed along the way or was there any last moment shares before we bring it to a close?

No, I think that's perfect. Thank you so much for having us. Liam.

Thank you so much for your time, guys. And we'll see you on the next one.

Thank you.

Nice to see you next time.