C. Suite Unfiltered: The Boys Go MAGA, Airbnb, Business Acquisitions vs. Sports Betting

Welcome back to the Mike Andes Podcast, where we discuss the ins and outs of owning a small business. If you're new here, the Mike Andes Podcast is all about taking your business to the next level. We're back with another episode of C Suite Unfiltered with Lee park and Mike Andes. The boys are going full maga. Well, not really. It's a clickbait title. But they do get into some political discourse, talking about Trump in Ohio, Biden in Ukraine and much more. How do you run a good Airbnb? And what's the difference between a business acquisition and a good sports bet? Out now in this off the cuff chat. You can find all this and more over at the SeaSuite Unfiltered YouTube channel. But let's get right into it. Here's Lee park and my candies.

Little things like that get me off my rocker.

Yeah, sorry. Sorry about that. It's all good. How's. How's your rocker?

Oh, man.

You rocking over there?

Oh, yeah. Dude.

Dude. What's up, man? How's it going?

Pretty good, pretty good.

Welcome back to another episode of SE Suite Unfiltered.

I haven't been looking at comments or anything. How's the reaction lately?

You know, reactions have been good. You know, steady flow of comments. We broke 200 subscribers.

Oh, let's go.

So very excited about that. Only 800 off our goal of a TH000 by October.

That'll work. I think we can do that.

Yeah, we'll see. We'll see what we can do.

Look at his. His request.

Yeah. People were excited to hear about your dating life. You know, using Bumble. So exciting. Even though he's just incognito. But yeah, dude, the last two weeks.

Is the reason why that would never work out. The relationship thing. Back to what we were talking about.

Yeah, yeah.

The last two weeks have been hell, dude.

Yeah.

You'll.

Copilot is officially launched. Getting started. A lot of signups. People seem to like the product.

We expected bugs, but they just. People figure out ways to make them more.

Yeah. So that's how.

It's very long.

How many users right now?

I don't know.

Man. I don't know. Every day we're getting back like paid Enterprise level is what I'm tracking. Almost everyone's enterprise level, which I'm very happy about. It means we're stick. They're stickier users. They're going to use the product to its full extent. All our powerful features are on the enterprise side. So I'm working like six Five, six a day, every single day, signing up and paying. So I'm not tracking the free. The free is like crazy amounts of people. 20, 30, 40, 50 people a day are signing up for that. So, yeah, hopefully they stick around, they watch what's happening, they see the updates, and then they. They join down the road.

Cool. I love it. That's exciting. You seem a little tired.

Yeah, like, my head's hurting. Everything's. Yeah, it's not good.

Well, we can take it easy today. We can talk on lighter topics, you know, like train derailments in East Palestine, Ohio.

I've heard about it. I just haven't tracked. I've just been out of loop, man.

No, I want to jump right into that. And I don't really want to talk about the chemical spill because I am not educated enough. I don't know enough about that Stu stuff, but. And I also don't want to make this political, but I do want to be unfiltered.

So you do want to be unfiltered.

Last week in Palestine, Ohio. So if you don't know what's going on, hopefully you do.

But train derailed. A bunch of stuff that was, like, flammable and all the rest.

Yeah, Very, very toxic chemicals. And then they were like, well, we'll just do a controlled burn. And then all these toxic chemicals and particles are floating around in the air. So basically a massive disaster. Like federal government should get involved. Like, huge cleanup, major environmental impact and implications going on. So anyways, I'm not making a political statement. I'm just talking strictly from what happened. So last week, President Biden.

Dude, I knew you were going to bring us up. That is political, dude.

It's political, but I'm not going to.

Trump pulled it off.

Yes.

By showing up there, dude. Oh, that was clutch.

Exactly where I'm going. So if you don't know, President Biden went to Ukraine and met with Zelensky and.

Such a pathetic political move.

Yeah. And then Trump decided he was going to come out of whatever cave he lives in, and he went to East Palestine, Ohio, and started handing out like, Wal water and a bunch of stuff and just trying to help people softball politically. Oh, yeah. So easy. But. But unless you want to talk about the political positioning, like I said, I'm trying to not make this positional political, but what I do want to talk about is this was hilarious. So Trump was handing out his Make America great again hats.

Right?

The red hat that everybody hates. And he's handing out this hat and someone zoomed in on it and noticed something and I thought this was awesome. Nothing. Not because I'm like a big Trump guy. I just think this is. This shows Trump art of the deal greatest assume the sale of all time. On the side of his hat, it said 47.

What's 47? Oh, 47.

So the first time Trump was president, he was 45, and then Biden is now president 46. And so he's handing out hats with 47 on the side.

Here's another thing to add to the mix is maybe he didn't want to get the second term so he could come back again and sell a. A whole bunch of merch that says make America great again. Because you can't say keep America great this time. So you gotta switch it back up, get that new hat back on.

With the 47. I was just like, that is the. That is the ultimate assume the sale. He's just assuming the sale. He's like, I'm number 47, baby. I'm back.

Dude.

Man, that was such a bad move by Biden. Yeah. Horrible. Every president that goes overseas and fights wars instead of focusing on stuff on the home front loses.

Yeah.

So that was just a stupid, stupid move. He just literally left the door open for everyone that's going against him. And so I haven't looked at it, but I don't know if, like, Desantis or any of the other potential candidates went over there, but it was a softball.

Yeah.

Dude, you just.

You literally need to go up for 10 minutes, hand out some water, pat some people's heads, shake some hands, and you're good.

Yeah.

And just dropped it. It was such an easy one. Come in there, be really heavy handed, like, politically. That's all he had to do. Show up, like, make a little speech, bring. Be really heavy handed, make promises that they're gonna take care of everything. And that's all you had to do. And you went over to Ukraine and promised billions of dollars to people we don't know and don't care about. Yeah.

What's. Isn't it.

Valuetainment? Patrick bet David, what do you say? Well, you know who that is, obviously, right? No, he just had a guy on, like, a political pundit, if you will. And the guy was like, Trump is the biggest joke in all of presidents. And he's like, what? You know, Patrick bat. David gets very defensive and he interrupts him and he gets very aggressive. That's just his style. And he goes, well, what makes him a joke? And the pundit goes, well, all the promises that he never followed through on. And I'm like, that's every politician I have literally ever heard speak. They all just put all these grandiose promises and don't follow through. And if that qualifies Trump as a joke, then every politician or anyone who's ever made a promise that they didn't keep as a joke. So, yeah, but it's just funny.

Well, now that we're on this Trump panel, because that's going to be the title of this.

This hat says Augusta. This hat. I just want to make that very clear.

You spin those around.

How was I going to say? Oh, yeah, like you can't argue with some of the things that Trump said. Like, there's one thing that if he would have pulled off that everyone thought. Who's a joke about? If you would have pulled it off, would have literally set America up the next few decades in an incredible position. He wanted to make 100 year treasuries that would have reached basically refinance the entire debt of the United States and would have put us in such a powerful position going now in a high inflation environment, whereas now the interest rate is going to be on these, where most of our debts on this 2 and 5 and 10 year cycles. Like, it would have completely changed the debt structure of the United States. And everyone laughed in the scorn. But when he proposed if we would have done that, we will say literally the balance, the debt, if you were to take the change in interest rates that we were paying now on our debt balance, we would not have a debt crisis right now. So things like that. He said that everyone laughed out. Same thing with the Wuhan thing. And all of a sudden like now it's kind of like true. So it's just fun, but not fun. It's funny. I don't know, it's just. He's just a goofball. If you just didn't do some stupid stuff. He. I think his policies are mostly on point and actually people agree with, but like, he's just a joker in terms of like some of the things he says and you know, his morality and things like that, which just kind of stinks, you know, because like, I think, I think he makes a lot of good decisions in terms of politically. Like he, like that was such. I saw that and I was like, dude, Biden, what are you doing? Dude, Half your country doesn't even agree with the war over there and supporting them. And you have massive inflation. You're over there like, all right, I spend more money. We're going to do this. We're basically going to push the Russians in the corners. They declare nuclear war. Like, what do you think? Thinking. Yeah. Anyways, just go hand out water bottles, dude.

Essentia. Yeah. Into your own country. Like, hand out some water bottles.

I saw the shiny object syndrome for presidents is wars. Oh, yeah, I did. Same thing with entrepreneurs. Like, all this and this, like. No, no, just focus on your thing. You'll do better that way.

Just do it. Just stay in your lane. That would be nice. Yeah. You know, I mean, it is what it is, but, you know, you know what they say about conspiracy theories and history. What's the difference between them?

I would say something like, you know, like, hindsight.

Six months.

That's pretty good.

That's the difference between conspiracy theories and history. Just six months.

There you go.

Let's go.

Yeah, so we'll see. But there. There you go. There's your political talk with Lee and Mike.

This could be like a MAGA on the title. We might get flagged and then demonetized.

I could Photoshop and make America great again. Hats on us. Yikes. Oh, please. No. All right, well, let's. Let's. Let's move to.

Some people are gonna be very offended about what we just said there.

Yeah, they can't.

They. People cannot reconcile the fact that a politician can have horrible. Morales and I do not support it, but yet I support their policies. And not all of their policies, by the way. Like, it's so. Everyone's so binary. They can't just, like, distinguish that there's. There's pros and cons and people make good and bad decisions and, like, that actually they might be wrong. Right. And, like, I could be wrong about the whole Ukraine thing too, because I don't have all the information. Right. So, you know, maybe that's the best thing for Biden to be, is be over there. Right? So, you know, whatever.

Maybe. Maybe it is. Or maybe it's people telling that's where he needs to be so he looks worse. You know, Put on your tinfoil hats. Let's just see.

Thank you so much for making landscape summit 2023 an amazing experience for all of us. We had such a good time that we can't wait another year for the next one, so you don't have to either. Coming this October 16th, we're holding a whole new landscape summit. We've outgrown our hometown, and we need a much bigger and better location to host the largest business conference the green industry has ever seen. So for the first time, we're holding Landscape Summit in Louisville, Kentucky. Start your week out with great talks from industry experts and keynotes from Mikandys that will completely change how you do business. And then head over to Equip Expo just down the street at the Kentucky Expo Center. This isn't like any event we've held before, but we need your help to make it happen. So get your tickets now@mikandys.com summit.

All right, let's switch to something not controversial whatsoever. Dave Portnoy and Barstool Sports.

What happened?

No, they're extremely controversial. No, actually, I wanted to talk about it from the business side. So they just got bought out. Did you guys know? 100% pen. Yep. Pen. Pen gaming. So they originally bought a 33 or 34%, but the whole thing. And now they just bought the whole thing.

What was the valuation?

Yeah, so I pulled up an article here from CBS.

I'm going to guess 200 million. No, the whole thing. Oh, I'm way low.

You're way low.

2 billion.

Now it's almost double your original guess, or 400. 388 million was the final sale, so.

That was pretty close. 200 million, 388.

Double. It's basically double.

I was a shot in the dark, bro.

I mean, that's pretty good. That's pretty good.

Yeah.

I guess because it's a media company, it's completely different, but yeah. So basically established by Dave Portnoy in 20, or, excuse me, 2003. He was literally just doing, like, blogging back in the day when the Internet was just blogs and just words. And then he did a print newspaper and he would go to the subway stations and train stations in Boston and he would just hand it out to people. And in early 2020, Penn bought in for a 36% stake and that was 136 million. And then they paid the rest. Just.

So their valuation is actually higher back then.

Yeah, probably. Yeah. So Penn. So I was looking at some of their, like, some of the meetings they did release that, you know, town halls.

Right.

With like, Barstool employees. They were like, well, what's that mean for us? Like, we're a media company. Penn is a casino, entertainment, gambling, sports betting company. And they were like, well, we bought Barstool because you guys reach an audience, we don't. And Penn was looking at a lot of their users and people, the stuff they use. And obviously casinos and sports betting, their average consumer age is 52 years old. And Barstool's average consumer age is like mid-20s. And they're like, that's a completely different market. We don't have access to those consumers. So definitely, I think a good acquisition for Penn to get younger, interested, to see how much it does affect Barstool. Because, you know, whenever there's an acquisition, it's like, oh, we're not going to change anything. Just do you guys. And it's like, well, now it's a publicly traded company. Are they going to have that much freedom?

Well, yeah, no, it's like, it just, it's. You know, what it reminds me of is like, why CRMs get bought out by credit card processing companies is because of the infrastructure of the CRM. They don't care about that. They just want the processing fees. It's like they make their money in the back end. It's the same thing with all of these sports gambling companies. They don't care about the media. They just need the eyeballs so they can pitch their. The very, very lucrative gambling side of things. Right. So like FanDuel, for example, with Pat McAfee getting millions and millions of dollars, it's not because, you know that they're. They're so, so nice. It's because they want the attention around something that's now becoming legal and sports game. It's super profitable. Right? Yeah. So the fact that they're buying assets, though, that's incredible. They're now actually buying out rights and actual, you know, media assets. And it just proves that, like, the money is in the gambling. The same thing is true with CRM. The money isn't in the software, it's in the credit card processing.

Yeah, yeah. So it's just. It's just insane because I was looking at some of the stats. Like, Barstool last year had over like 3 billion plays on all their podcasts or something. It's like ridiculous.

Podcast only?

I think so May. Maybe it was on YouTube too. I'm not sure. I. It was like one little clip. It was. It was somewhere between 2 to 3 billion. And I was like, that's nuts.

So they basically paid a 10 cent per view valuation. 10 cent per view? Annualized view. Okay, all right.

Something like that. Yeah.

You have to get a hundred views. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

So. And that's primarily where Barstool is, right? Their media, their bloggers, their podcasts. They're getting more into video format. And then part of their partnership with Penn, when Penn took the 36 stake, was so they could open the Barstool Sports book, which is an online and mobile betting app.

Interesting.

So now they can do that. It's our. It's up in like 10 states.

I think that'll crash.

Oh, it's up in like 10 states.

Really? Pretty much.

Pretty much every state that has online sports betting that. It's in there.

See, that's what I think these big brands that are buying out should do instead of me. Like, okay, we're going to buy all this meteorites now. You're like, come to pen gaming. It's like, no, no. Use the brand you just bought because everyone knows it. And take your technology and like, legal, in this case sports. Sports gambling and throw it over here. Yeah, it's what again? CRM. And they do with the credit card processing, like monopolize, but then use the CRM's name. It's. That's what's happening.

Yeah.

That's cool.

Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I mean, obviously, Dave Portnoy, it's cool to.

Have you ever done gambling for sports?

I have.

You just.

Just for fun.

I've never done it.

Yeah, yeah.

It's actually like market research. Like me and bubble.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here we go.

Perfect.

Flip the script on me. You try to get a way out there. You're like, no, I'll own it. I. I can say hand up, though. Total amount I've ever bet is less than $300 guaranteed. Super bowl parties with buddies. Yeah, well, super bowl parties with friends. It's like, dude, let's. Let's all put in 20 bucks, like, and just see, you know, so it's fun. Now. It just became legal in Washington state in person at casinos. So as of last year. So you can go to, like, where we are at Washington state, you can go to certain casinos and do sports betting in person, but you can't mobile. You can't do it from your phone.

Really, man? Now you can't?

No, no, I have. So the. My first kind of try of sports betting. My. My wife's from Tennessee. The producer of the pod. She's from Tennessee.

Yeah.

And we go down there for like, Christmas, and we have a couple friends down there we always hang out with. We go to, like, topgolf or grab dinner with them. And my buddy Nate, he's like, hey, man, you. You want to get you. I don't know, Fanduel or whatever. He's like, you want to download this? I was like, yeah, sure. He's like, cool, yeah, one of them. And he's like, yeah, I'll send you this promo. We each get 50 bucks if you put $50 into your account. I was like, okay, Well, I put 50 and I got a free 50. He gets a free 50. Might as well. So that was my introduction, but in Tennessee.

Sound like a Ponzi scheme. But.

But as soon as I put 50 in, all of a sudden there was a matched 50 and he got his 50, which. That's an easy way to get people addicted. I got played with house money.

Right.

2% odd.

So in Tennessee is. So you have to have your GPS and everything on. As long as I was in Tennessee, I could place a bet wherever I wanted to. And then if I turned that on right now on my phone in Washington, it wouldn't let me place a bet, even though I had an active account in Tennessee. It geo locks.

What if you did a vpn?

I don't know. I'm sure there's workarounds. There has to be. Yeah. So. But yeah, I've in my whole life, probably less than like 300 bucks. I put 20 on Navy to win the Navy army game. Army. Navy. Because my dad was Navy and I was watching it with him and I was like, hey, I got you a birthday present and hand him a bet slip for 20 bucks on Navy. He just thought I was so dumb. I was like, you know, this is fun. It's a good bit. No, sports gambling is dangerous, though, especially if you can have it in your pocket. Like, if people already have addictive tendencies, I would be very scared of people using it because literally, when I'm in Tennessee, I can just. Like I was watching at the Alabama football game and I was like, yeah, I can put five bucks in Alabama right now. And I did. And of course, it was like, the one time they lost, but it's. It's that easy. Like, you can whip out your phone and put $5,000 on a game.

It's.

It's nuts. But very lucrative.

So. Yeah.

Barstool fully acquired by Pen Gaming. So. Right on. Well, let's. Let's switch it up. I got a few just random things. There's, you know, this is just the junk drawer, if you will, of podcast today. But you. You or the media team messed around with AI. Was it you or the media guys? Which part that produced pictures of you and AI?

Oh, yeah, we did that. We use AI a bunch now. We use it for. Yeah, we're actually going to create a whole book using AI that's what I heard. Yeah, we're going to create a book using AI we use it for thumbnails. We use it for a whole bunch of stuff. We're going to start writing every Single video is going to be. Create a blog post in like 10 seconds using it and then just throw it and make a blog post just for SEO. So. Yeah. And then they have. The book will come out using AI. We're trying to. Yeah. There's a bunch of stuff we're working on.

Yeah. What I wanted to talk about was this. And I'll throw it up on the screen.

Okay.

What's up with this?

I know dude. The Jimmy Neutron. There's a better picture. If you ask the mutine, they can get the full head shot there.

That was. I'll throw it up on the screen so you guys can see it doesn't have the green.

I don't have green eyes, dude. Yeah. I don't know where it got that.

That is scary. You're. You're a 12 year old man with a mustache.

Yeah, dude, let's go.

That one threw me for a loop though.

That was. There's better ones. We just. In that case I believe we just use mid Journey. There's. There's better ones that more or less take like more actual and then just add paint to it basically and make it more realistic. This was like you wanted. I asked for like cartoonized kind of whatever.

Yeah. So making a book with AI that are writing a book with AI. So you're writing the book. Are you using AI to write the.

Book or is it give all my secrets.

Give us a teaser, you know. So you mentioned it offhandedly and my ears perked up.

Basically. You can take the take of. I. I was helping with Sean Spencer the other day because he was like really struggling with some. Some stuff on his website. I'm like dude, just. Just copy this into chat GPT have him rewrite it. And then he's like oh well it said like it's all in third person. Like just tell it to write in first person. And he's like this is crazy. And what's cool. I don't mean to call Sean out or anything but like we talk occasionally and so he's kind of afraid of AI stuff and like what we're doing with copilot tracking and like measuring properties from aerial and he's like I don't know about that. So it was really cool to see him like switch on. All of a sudden he's like using it for other stuff and like customer emails. So I made a video today.

Yep.

About AI how it's useful like right now, how it's helpful, not what the future is going to be and. But yeah, we're Using it for a ton of stuff. But yeah, the book is basically you take the. When you. On a video, you can go to the bottom right hand corner, there's a little three buttons. There you go. Video transcript. It's going to have all the transcript based upon the time codes. Take the time codes out. There's a button to do that. Copy that text, paste in the chat GPT and then tell it like take this video script and turn it into a, whatever, a blog post, whatever. And then I'll just. It'll spit it out. So there's limitations in terms of size. So what we're struggling with the book is like we're gonna have to break down the audio because what we're doing is we're taking that video I made last week, the marathon video. That's like three hours. We're gonna make that in a book. It's gonna be great.

Let's go repurpose content. Dude. So are you saying that you could theoretically, as a content creator. Yeah, kind of stepping into those shoes. You can just take your videos, you could do audio recordings. So you could essentially be driving and just do an audio recording and then turn it into a blog post, turn.

It into talking and knowing that like you're, you're. You're not gonna have good grammar or punctuation or whatever. And then just throw the script and take the, take the script and it'll make it into a, like paragraphs and well thought out. Now you do have to be still careful like editing it because like it'll sometimes go off in a director. It's like we don't need to talk about three paragraphs about that. Like. Right. So what we're probably actually going to do we decided on though is like just for the sake of time, we're probably just going to do the audiobook for now. But we definitely have the technology to make the book pretty quick. So we could theoretically make books like what about hiring? And just take all my videos about hiring category, order them correctly, take the scripts, make those each into chapters and make a book, no problem. So I really think though, the problem is that this is the dilute what's on it. Like writing a book is all about. Right. I think honestly, who reads books? Like, seriously, audiobooks are going to take over the world. So. So we're gonna probably just do an audiobook for now because it's really easy because we can just take the audio literally. Master the audio a little bit. I already have the intros and everything for the video. Like literally. I Won't have to touch it. They'll cut it all up, make it into an audiobook and then we'll just give it away basically.

Dude, that's awesome.

The big debate right today is do we call it the lawn care millionaire or the lawn care billionaire? Because I. So the lawn care millionaire used to be John the Patocin. And everyone compares me and him a lot. Right. And it's kind of his brand. Everyone knows him as the Lawn Care Million because that's his channel name. But he doesn't made videos for a long time. I feel like I need to like reinstate the brand.

Yeah.

I have two URLs. The long care millionaire dot com. I have that and I also have the Long Care Billionaire. So the big debate today was does it sound too arrogant to say billionaire? And we came to the conclusion it did sound disagree. I know but like if you say billionaire when you say lawn care, you're going to alienate people because like, oh, this person is like so stuck up or arrogant.

That's fair.

And then we were like, we just had fun with it. We're like, yeah, we do. Like the longer billionaire. That's right. With a B.

Yeah.

Well, I think most of your core audience knows like it's. It's semantics at that point. Like they're. You're just having fun with it. It doesn't. We don't take ourselves too seriously. I don't think at Augusta, I don't think you and your content like, yeah.

But people in the public.

Yeah. Oh, that's just dumb.

This kid thinks he's got. Yeah, I've been sure. I've gone on stage now twice now saying I'm going to become a billionaire in longer.

I love it. That gets me fired up.

Dude.

Someone you posted. So you've been posting a lot of clips. Media teams have posted a lot of clips of your keynotes from Landscape Summit. And have you noticed, do you ever see the comments on your like shorts or reels? I know you see comments on like your main channel and things of that nature.

Depends which like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts. I try best. Yeah.

Dudes, like multiple people have commented on shots of you speaking at Landscape Summit saying like, too bad the room's empty or like no one's even in the room. Like this staged. I'm like, what?

I. I think I saw a couple I put put in light. They're like, I guess we'll never know. Yeah, I just got to try it.

It makes no sense. It's like yeah, no, there's no. There's no video that would dispute it's in a room of 300 people or anything, but just go off a reel and, you know, that's all you need sound bites, man. That's all we need to make opinions now.

Dude, it's good. People are cynical, especially when someone's spitting business advice. I think it's good to have a.

Little bit of cynicism. Yeah, that's fair. That is fair. I do agree with that.

You only know the work that went into the event and you know what I do and everything, but, like some random person saying the real for the first time or TikTok. Like, I think it's a good thing. People are like, he's giving me business advice. He's young. You know, he's yelling. He's all over the place. Like, I'd probably be like, this guy's voice is cracking. He's a jerk, man.

Wearing yellow. Yeah, that's fair.

White belt. Some guys, like, I, first of all, don't listen to people wearing a white belt.

What does that even mean? I don't know. Wherever that guy gets his life advice, I would love. I would love to learn. There you go. He's got it. Yeah. I don't know. Well, I heard from a little birdie completely switching gears, and I want this to stem to a larger, I guess, more educational topic. Oh, you heard from a bird? Heard from a little birdie.

Twitter.

No, no, no. Just a reliable source who will not be named.

Okay.

Dude, I can't reveal my sources, right? I've protected sources. I'm in the media game now that you had some Airbnbs that were rented that did not get cleaned.

Oh, dude, are you going to bring this up on the podcast? I mean, yeah, they didn't get cleaned, right. So I ended up going and clean them. I asked Liz to come help me.

Yeah, so what. So what happened with that? So you had a booking and then they just didn't get cleaned.

So they all run on. Like, I never deal with them.

Right.

So in 2022, I did make sure I. I materially participated so that I could do the cost segregation on the property and take like 150 to $200,000 less taxes. That was great. But now I don't really need to. And like, we have cleaners and they, they track. They are. They're in the app and they see all the messages, they see the calendar. So they. They do everything and then the property manager pays them. Like, I never deal with it. I Literally have not been these units for months.

So.

Yeah. It just so happens that the other day someone called, contacts me and like, this unit's not clean. I was like. So I. It's the one right next door, right? Yeah. And they're over there right now. Dude. So. So I came back. I came back, basically, hey, here's money, go. I give him 240 to go. Go have dinner and I'll clean this place out. And I asked Liz to come on over.

Yeah.

And we cleaned it up, made him happy. They want to stay an extra four months now.

Oh, well, there you go. That is. Yeah. So that's, that's wild. That's. That's fun. So you just have to hop in and clean.

Yeah, dude.

From the front.

I can clean, bro. So we, yeah, we'll tighten down systems a bit. It just. Liz and I are both really busy, so as typically happens with employees that are not managed, like they got to be brought into correction a little bit and so tighten things up a little bit. Yeah.

But I cannot reveal my sources.

Yes.

I will not.

I gotta. I gotta keep them confidential. They're trust.

Allegedly.

They're vetted. Allegedly. Allegedly. Okay. But honestly, it's a funny story and I didn't know they were right next door and I didn't know it was that fresh.

Your voice is loud, dude.

Yeah, dude.

Very sorry.

These are thin walls.

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Well, let's talk about. In general though, more about Airbnb. So if you are, you know, if you follow any sort of business content and you're scrolling through socials, you're gonna see some dude, some bro in his 20s being like, Bro, Airbnb arbitrage.

Yeah.

So explain. Let's. Let's start a step point one, you have a property you wanted to open, Airbnbs. Explain how that works. I think it'd be very educational.

Well, the vast majority of Airbnb arbitrage is Illegal, because what they're doing is they're getting a lease and then they're subleasing to people on Airbnb, which is 99% of leases. That's illegal. The real estate put it in service in, like, November of the year and then materially participate in their Air1 Airbnb unit, like I did in this property, and then I can write off the whole thing as a short term rental. It's a quote unquote business. I can take way more deductions. Totally legal. I think it'll be closed. That loop will be closed pretty quick, I think. But Airbnb is, you know, pretty new and the government's slow at closing these loops. So that's one way tax more from a tax perspective. And I went a little bit deep, but for someone, like, looking at Airbnbs number. The one thing you got to think about is regulation and licensing. Like, everyone, like, oh, you can do it anywhere. You can't.

Yeah.

The vast majority of places, you can't just throw up an Airbnb. You can't just.

Honestly, most Airbnbs are probably unlicensed and unregulated and not allowed. So someone actually called on this place and then we, like, we had to submit stuff to the city and get all the permits and everything.

But you got to be in the correct permitting. Like most residential zoning will not allow it. There's some cities that will completely ban it. There's some places that only allow one unit per owner to have Airbnb because they want to be like bed and breakfast, not like a business of 30 people. So the hotel chain is obviously lobbying for a lot of this stuff too, because they don't like it. So you just could be careful. I think, you know, the arbitrage thing is an absolute joke as it is with like, seller financing and all these other things. With real estate, there's just so many people that make money because it sounds good. It's low money down. When you hear low money down, think high risk. And so, yeah, if you're doing that arbitrage, like, yeah. If your landlord catches you, you're probably going to be homeless, so. And not going to get another landlord to sign a lease with you because they're. That's the last thing when you have is a subleasing.

Yeah.

Tenant.

Yeah. Like, like I saw this one very recently and he's like. It's like he's in front like a, like a luxury condo and he's like, since I've never bought a home, I can use first Time, home buyers, fha and then through Airbnb arbitrage. And I'm just like, brother, you're speaking fast. Like, this is. I don't know about this. So I figured I'd ask you about it. So arbitrage seems very legal and from my very limited knowledge. And then how would someone get started, like the legal way? Like if someone were interested, what's the process and what's the safe process? Not the get rich quick.

Go to your city's account, short, type in str short term rental regulations. See what areas are allowed to have and what those regulations are. They'll typically have a page worth of requirements in terms of like separate access. Is there like, there's a whole bunch of stuff. Every city is different. There's some places like, there are way less regulation. If you're living in an urban area, guarantee you it's a lot more regulation. Places like.

Los Angeles, there's a couple of cities now where you can only have one. And it's like literally in certain neighborhoods, there's none. And so you get shut down really fast. So I would say first and foremost, if you're not going to go that very legal route and go get a permit for it, don't spend a lot of money, don't spend so much money on furnishing that. When you get, if you get in trouble, you can't just be like, okay, I'll turn into a long term rental, right? Because that's like the less legal way to do it is like, look, I'm going to put a divider in my house, I'm going to rent the site out and if someone tattles on me and I get in trouble, great, I'll just turn into a long term rental. Because like the government's not going to get involved as much with long term rentals. As much to do with these short term rentals. People are mostly concerned with these short term rentals. So that would be the number one thing. Go to your city, ask for the regulations, make sure you're doing it by the law, make sure you have insurance for it correctly. It's totally different. If you have a short term rental person that's under 28 days, typically rent, your insurance changes. Also the, the, in most states when someone stays over 28 days, they become a long term rental, even if they are.

Not a resident, not even if they're on Airbnb. Okay. Short term rental, no, no. If they stay like two months, they have most times legal protections if they were a long term tenant. So like what this happened with COVID is when everyone shut down and everything, there was a bunch of tenants on Airbnb that just stayed in their units and if they had been there for less than 28 days, they're considered a short term rental. And they got kicked out. The people that had been in their units like a couple months and then that happened. They were to stay there and not get, not get evicted. So wild. There's a lot of little things like that. I just read a couple books, right? Do books, don't do videos. I. This is one area where, like, it's so new and like frontier. Like, go after the books. They have a whole bunch of reviews and people have done this before. They have really good information. Like all, all of it's automated. Like, I don't ever like, text someone like the code to the front doors. I don't tell them like, the wi fi password. Like, it's all automated. It asks for reviews automatically. It does everything automated. So you just read a couple books, educate yourself, make sure you're doing it right. A good one or two books on Airbnb will clear up a lot that.

Yeah. Why did you get an Airbnb?

Taxes.

Taxes. Yeah.

So I was able to get the. A price. Saved about $175,000 last year in taxes just by doing it. And then.

Is that property taxes or.

No, income taxes.

Okay, income taxes. Got it.

Yeah. Because. Because what's cool about a. When you do this is I can take that against my, my income. So like, if, if I am doing a regular real estate deal and I'm losing money because I invest into like putting new carpets and, and, and paint and I rent, remodel a house or the facility.

I can't take all of that as an expense like a business and say, oh, I lost money in this business, so therefore I can take that against the gains in my other business. Can't do that. Real estate, you've got to, you've got to amortize that over the course like 27 years. So there's not a lot of benefit to like remodeling a unit for tax purposes.

Okay.

However, if I take that same unit and say, okay, well, actually 40% of this property, I can depreciate all this year. Accelerate depreciation, it's called, because the windows, I gotta replace those. The carpet only lasts a few years, the appliances are on their way out, then you can depreciate way more. So on this property, it's, you know, worth. Or it's like 2.6, let's say. So typically, I would be able to get, like, about a hundred thousand dollars a year in depreciation. Well, I'm going to take about $700,000 in depreciation from last year because I just had an assessor come through. You pay an engineer, they come look at all of the appliances, the whole unit, they take pictures, the whole nine yards, and they figure out what can be accelerated in the depreciation. Sorry, it's, like, really deep.

No, I like it. I'm trying to follow real estate and all that. Like, it just stick us over my head.

Yeah, but, you know, real estate. Real estate is a tax game. Like, you do not make a lot of cash flow. Like, I did not made a lot of cash flow. I made some good money on the sell of the units we did last year. And if we sell this one, like, I'd make a really good money on it too. But, like, you don't make a lot of cash flow. It's not great, like, comparatively to the businesses. Right. I'll make more, like, from the gym than all my real estate combined from cash flow, like, on a monthly basis. But it's the taxes, dude. You save so much in taxes.

Nice.

That's kind of why I want to do it.

Yeah, when? When do you think you'll get out? Or you think you'll just do it as long as you can?

I don't know. These smaller deals are annoying. Like, even the 10 units, it sounds bad, but it's just. It's just too small. Like, it. Like, the next deal I will do is 40, 50 units, and it's gonna be a ways down the road. It'll be when I have, like, a massive tax liability. I'm like, oh, sick. We need to build something or we need to buy something, get in operation by October, do the whole accelerated depreciation so I can get this tax bill taken care of the same way that people buy jets. Like, I'm just not gonna buy a jet. I'm gonna buy a massive, you know, 40, 50 unit apartment complex and be like, that's how I'll get rid of my taxes.

And then you start Andy's capital.

No, no, dude, I don't want to do that. You know, it's very tempting. I. I don't know if I've ever said this before is. I know we're doing this thing with. With Chuck, right, To really prove out the executive model at Augusta. But I think what would be cool down the road is the ability for people to invest and do A pool of, say, 20 locations. Say, hey, we're going to start this chain, 20 locations. We need $2 million of raise. You can join as an equity partner. The thing is this. It's not worth the headache. It's like, I'd rather just spend my own 2 million. Right. But it would be cool to get, like, other people involved, other people want to invest. There's people that I think over the course of time would see that as a. I know it could beat the returns of the stock market. I just don't like the feeling of selling people as security, because that's what you're doing. You're selling them security. You're selling us like a stock. And so it changed the dynamic of. Of the trust and. And just the dynamic of. Of a. Fewer. But I also think that, like, I would love to give them that opportunity. It's just the legal headache and, like, then the financial pressure it puts on me. Like, I don't like taking people's money, dude. I hate it. Like, everyone's always asked me to give money and, like. And you asked me to give. You asked to invest in myself.

Oh, yeah. Geez. I thought you meant. Yeah, I thought you meant the other way around. I was like, I' for money.

No, no, you. You asked to invest, and it's just.

Like, I can't take, like, early on. Early, early on. Like, that's not a recent thing, but. Yes, but I think. I think I was three, four years ago. Yeah, it was a long time ago. It was probably three years ago. And it was a. It was. Yeah, I'm five and a half years working for you at this point. And I think it was like two. Two or so years in. I was like, yeah, this is the real deal. And this is right when you started franchising. I was like, can I get in? Can I do something? So, yeah, I get it.

But I would like to have something to do that, like, I generally believe if I did that, that'd be probably something. You're like, okay, maybe instead of starting my own location, I can do this and at least put my money to work. Right. But it's just like, it's the headache of, like, all the legal stuff. And then I'd have to take. I have to make a money. So, like, you'd have to take a management fee. And then, like, then you're being scrutinized for how that's being spent. It's like I was doing myself.

Yeah.

So I don't know. I would like to one day, though, down the road be like, okay, let's start a chain of 20, have a couple of regionals, have all the GMs, and then just be like open, have like investors. But again, it's like, it's just not worth the money. The headache of all the legal stuff.

People want to make money with you. They just have to join Augusta or sign up for Copilot.

For now. For now, like, it just. It just. I know we could do that down the road. I would love to be able to have a capital fund where we just start Augusta locations. Like, we nailed it. Like, it's gonna be way better return than like Cardone Capital or 3 1/2 to 4% return. Like, nothing. Right. I would probably do something along the lines of like, you get no returns for 12 months, then you get a specific, like 4 to 5% for the first year or the next year, and then after that it's a even split of profit. So then they literally see the profitability. And then if you bought like a 1%, you get 1% of profits. And they'd just be. It'd be like a open book management with your investors. I think we could crush it.

Yeah.

It's just a matter of, like, is it worth the management fee that I'd be getting on top of it? And it's not just. I'd rather go start half as many locations myself with my own money and not have to deal with all the legal stuff and the accounting, extra theft and people saying you're a fraudster and all the rest of it. But I know we could get 15% return for people. I know that. So anyways.

Yeah, dude, that's exciting. I don't know that just. I would love to do that.

Yeah, I know, dude. I'm pretty excited about that. Like, okay, dude, this is kind of like. So my thought is, if we have the bank with the FDIC stuff, that would be our wedge, our way in. Because then you could say, okay, people put money into the bank. Then like, what every other bank does is they do a 9 to 1 split and they get. They can leverage $1 and make $9 of investment. If you're FDIC and go through a whole rigmarole rule, we could then do that, take the money and then go invest it. But we control the whole process. But then have better returns for the people that do savings, checking account, and give them a higher percentage. That's one way to do it. I don't know that just probably what will end up happening.

I like that. It's exciting. Yeah.

Because I think that's what Cardone Capital is going to do. He's going to start a bank. So that way he can get money from people and not have to have an investor, but he can use their capital and pay them half a percent or a quarter percent instead of 0.1% that they're getting in the bank. So you can literally say, I'm going to use three times as much interest. Then he takes the money and doesn't have to give 4% interest because they're not investors. They're just putting their money in the bank. Like, banking is where the money's at, dude. All the money in the world revolves around the banking system.

Yeah.

When you actually grasp what actually happens with the bank, people would start banks. Yeah. So I would love to one day have that and then have it as like, though where they can actually invest and get a piece of a security in, you know, 20, 30, 50 location, Augusta, long Care.

Yeah. What's that?

I'd be way more passionate about that than real estate. Like, that's what. Yeah, all of that. Because you said Andy's capital.

Yeah. No, it's good. I think it's good that you show that that's what you're passionate about. And yeah, I think I. When you first started getting into real estate and then Liz was like, well, I'm gonna do some property management. I did look into it and started doing, like, free online courses and stuff. And I was like, this is not for me. I could just care less about it. Like, the most I know about real estate is my own mortgage.

Yeah.

Like, that's it. And I'm happy with that.

I think it's just one of those things. It's like, even if you look at, like, how much you're. You're making in terms of, like, your salary, you. If you went and got duplex, you would make such a small amount compared to your salary. And you're going to invest all this capital into it. Like, it's going to, like, suck up all your cash and it's going to make a very small return compared to what you're just working your job. Right. This is what I talked about with Liz. Like, look at your salary compared to what you would make on, like, a killer duplex of, like, a few hundred dollars extra a month in profit on top of, like, your mortgage maintenance. You literally, you'd be lucky to get a few hundred dollars a month right now. Like, just spend that time working on the career, growing the cash position, and then like a business doing that Will just do way better in terms of return. So I just got, I just got to prove that like that the executive model works. That it is copy and paste. Copy and paste. And then that gets very interesting after a few years.

Yeah, there's that going back to the bank once you understand banking system. So I can't, I can't think of what it's called. It's like one of those. It's a fallacy. And it's. I can't like the technical term of the money fallacy, but basically it's like, like if you break it down to its simplest extent. It's like if I'm a baker and I own the, you know, the, the. I'm trying to think of the analogy, but they take it down like olden times. Like, so if I'm a baker and I own the carpenter $20 and then the carpenter owes the steel worker $20 and then the steel worker owns me, the baker $20. Is money even real? It's some fallacy. It's like an ancient trope. And I was like, like it is interesting when you start to think about it that way.

Well, and if you actually break down what money is it all is a Federal Reserve note. Yeah, it's just the promise to pay from the government. Yeah, $20 bill. It says it right on there. It's a Federal reserve note. It's a loan debt or it's passing debt between people.

Yeah, it's very weird. Ray Dalio.

It's all fake.

Ray Dalio has some really good videos on that stuff. Like central banking and how global economies work. That stuff's mind blowing.

Dude. If people really understand how banks work work and how they make their money, they would be mad that they go to the bank and put money there.

Maybe we dive into that on the next pod. Yeah, dude, I'm down for that.

I'll make the non financial advice.

Yeah, well that's what, that's what I was getting to do. You have any non financial advice?

Dude, here we go. Oh, here's some non financial advice.

Let's go.

There's some really cool places right now. You can make money.

Just parking your money back to this banking thing. For example, like if you're in Robinhood, you can leave your cash in there and make 4% return on investment right now. Like return interest.

How?

Because interest rates are so high.

Oh, right.

Right now the. In the risk, risk free investment of bonds, you can make four and a half percent.

So that's another, you know, non financial advice is go get treasury bonds. Right now it's 4%. It's like if you're like I don't know about the economy, the wars, whatever, if that's what you're, you're feeling, go get 4% of your money. That is like literally has not been the case for decades. You can make 4% of your money risk free. That's insanity.

How does one buy a Treasury bond?

Oh there's a lot there. So there's ETFs that buy them. That's the easiest way to do it. So electronically traded funds you can go onto like Robinhood and just type in a 10 year treasury, two year treasury, five year treasury. That's the easiest way to do it is electronically traded fund. You're gonna have a little bit of a fee because etf. But the fastest, easiest way to do it it cool. Yeah but then like savings accounts, people have seen your, your savings account's probably like 1 1/2 or 2% interest now. But then if you go to like a morning market fund or something like Robinhood where you could put in your, you're just storing your capital there, they're going to give you like 4%. So interesting.

I like that.

I'm not like, I think when there's high interest rate there's mean there's opportunity out there. Right. When there's low interest rate, that's usually when I'm like the opposite. It's like well if no one is willing to give me money to store the cash, probably a good idea not to be you know, storing cash.

So that's, that's your non financial advice.

I'm not financial advice.

Great.

Non financial.

Dude, I think we got a little bit too deep on this one. This is not like, this is this, this pod is not meant for like things about rental arbitrage. Yeah.

But we, we, we hooked them with Trump. You know Trump and Biden got the click. Yeah. Did we get the click? And massive retention, massive drop. This is the, our we have a.

Well okay. So we need to have a vote. Comments? Do you prefer the edgy controversial stuff? Because we do have some pretty good takes.

You know I feel like.

Right. You know and then. Or do you do, do you want the in depth kind of boring what we talked about like arbitrage and taxes. Like that's, that's pretty deep stuff, dude.

I think it's about banking though.

Okay.

I think that like, I mean I know you know Brent the great.

Yeah.

Long time follower.

But he said like you guys should, should ask for questions from the Audience. And I know I have said it probably at the end of pods or randomly in the middle, but yeah, if you guys have questions, just throw it in the comments.

What's your financial advice?

Oh, dude, I got some great non financial advice.

You got ready?

Oh, yeah, dude. You know, it's just when you're in the content game, everything's your inspiration. All right. So my wife and I did a recent little weekend to get away. It was, it was, it was her birthday, the producer's birthday. And so we stayed at a hotel over the. The weekend recently. Just a little getaway locally, A nice little, you know, seaside town in Washington. You know, spend a little time together. And here's my financial advice. Check the hotel alarm clock before you go to sleep.

Oh, just make sure it's correct.

It should be illegal to use a hotel alarm clock if you are a guest. My alarm clock went up at 4:30am in my hotel room and I was very upset.

I'm the same way. If I get woke up, I'm so.

Mad and I wake up at 5, typically 5, 5:30. But I was like, that should be illegal. I want to know who stayed in this room last. That is, you don't do that, you know, and then it's middle of the night. It's not. It's on my clock. I don't even have a bedside like clock. I don't, I don't like complete darkness in my room when I sleep. And so I'm like, where's the snooze button? Like, how do I turn it off? And I'm trying to find the light.

SW just pull up their thing. That's why.

Yeah, I almost, I almost did that. I got it turned off. That's my financial advice. When you stay in a hotel. Check the alarm clock. Make sure it's not set.

Let's go. Some people check the alarm clock for things other than there's a camera or noise detector.

Yeah, dude, Biden's listening to you.

That's all I got.

Is that the pod?

That's the pod. Let's go like and subscribe.

This has been the My Candies podcast. Now you have some ideas on how to take your business to the next level. And if you liked what you heard, we have tons of lectures, interviews, and more over at the Mike Andes YouTube channel. That'll be right up your alley. That's all we have for you today. We'll see you next time.

Sam.