How Michael Elefante Built A $15M / Year AIRBNB Business EMPIRE Step-By-Step (Vertically Integrated)

Michael (@melefante6) owns and runs multiple 7 figure companies in the STR space. Today we break down how he launched and runs them all while raising young kids and traveling!

Michael's Book: https://www.amazon.com/Investing-Short-Term-Rentals-Financial-Freedom/dp/1963793897

Want To Quit Your Job In The Next 6-18 Months Through Buying Commercial Real Estate & Small Businesses? 👔🏝️ Check Out Our Action Academy Community

Schedule A Free 15 Minute Coaching Call With Our Team Here To Get "Unstuck"!

Check Out Our Bestselling Book : From Passive To Passionate: How To Quit Your Job - Grow Your Wealth - And Turn Your Passions Into Profits

Want A Free $100k+ Side Hustle Guide?

Follow Me As I Travel & Build:
IG @brianluebben
ActionAcademy.com

Transcript

0:02

All right, all right. Michael Elefante, you got this, got this European tan going, man. Got this European tan. What's going on, brother? How are you? I'm good, Brian. Good to connect again, bro. I'm jealous. I'm just like living vicariously through your travels recently. You say that as you literally just got back from France. So who's counting? Yeah. not, two months or however long you were gone, but, yeah, man, it's a little different when you have a toddler, but yeah, we had a big time. Yeah. How did that, how did that go? Like, were there any tantrums, meltdowns, or did it go pretty smooth? Didn't start off great. You know, I have a bunch of credit card points. we booked first class on the way over, especially before she turns to, because you have to pay for a seat after your kid is two. so we're like, she'll sleep the whole way. took a red eye, over to Paris and she didn't sleep a single minute on the plane. So get there and she falls asleep on the jet bridge walking off. So none of us slept. So that was really fun, but, it's funny. Then we took coach back and she slept like half the plane. Of of course, that's how it always happens. Yeah. So, other than that, it was pretty good. I mean, you just gotta work around like getting used to her getting used to sleeping a little bit in a different setting. but overall, man, it was, went well. She's, does, she travels pretty well. Yeah, besides first class. She just doesn't... Yeah, you just need to do a couch. know, the problem was for people listening, like some of the planes they have, like in the middle row for first class, they'll have a barrier with a button that goes up and down, you know, in case you're sitting next to like your spouse or something and you want to hang out or a stranger, you put it up. She pushed that up and down for like four straight hours. So that was what kept her going. Dude, first world problems. It's just like, there's always, there's always something and every like problems never go away. They just look different. Sometimes it's in the form of a, of a screaming two year old in first class, but Hey, you know, we got pretty cool lives, man. So talk to the people about where you're at today, who you are, what you do. And then I want to go into this brand new book that you just wrote and it's really cool strategy that you do within the short term investing space. So who is Michael Elefante for people that for one of the 400 ,000 people that don't follow you. yeah. So I got started in investing in real estate, specifically short -term rentals. think Airbnb back in 2019. And the main reason I started doing that was because I didn't want to work the jobs I was working. was in tech sales, didn't particularly enjoy it, spending time traveling away from my wife, especially before kids. I was like, I need some type of passive or semi passive income so I can leave my job. And long story short, I fell in love with short -term rentals because the cashflow potential was far greater than any other type of real estate investment, especially if you create an awesome experience for travelers that, know, they're willing to pay for, for special occasions. So we went all in, sold my truck to furnish the first liquidated our retirement accounts shortly thereafter, battled through COVID and then refinanced our primary home to invest more. And we just kind of. Continued to compound this, but we were able to quit our jobs within 16 months of our first investment. And we traveled in a camper van for a year. And then I started posting content, teaching others how to do short -term rentals and Didn't really know where that was going to lead, but that led to a lot of other businesses that just kind of like sprouted out from it because I started coaching people. And then some of the people I coach brought business ideas to me and we partnered together on in the social media and personal brand helps just exacerbate everything else we're doing there. so yeah, now we have about four, four or five businesses. three of them are doing multi seven figures and Android figures now. So it's just been a wild ride, but it all started. Literally just because I did not want to trade my time for money working. All I wanted to do is create financial freedom. all of these other things were never even a thought in my mind until I had the freedom to like. Think and do as I please every day. And I just kind of like saw an opportunity, multiple opportunities and just like went after it. And now I wake up and kind of make my own schedule, do what I want, have a ton of awesome employees and just try to live the most kick -ass life possible with my wife and my daughter. And our son is on the way in less than a month. So. Life's going crazy. Yeah, man, that's awesome. So what's the vertical suite of companies? So I know that you have your community, your education. like, us down these companies that you guys have formed. Yeah. So at the coaching business where we teach people how to do short -term rentals, coached a lot of people over the years. And then we have a interior design business and project management business. So we design over 300 properties a year across the United States, virtually and do some in-person installs as well. that summer led designs and that's an amazing business because. People need to go live fast, like traditional design. might take a year or two for a nice home. We're doing them in two weeks. So we're like turning them out and helping people maximize their return on investment. So that's an awesome business. And then have a property management company where we do a whole slew of things. So home team collective is the overarching company and we have home team vacation rentals. manage over 300 short -term rentals across the country. and then we have a B and B construction, which is a new business really to support our other business called B and B turnkey, but construction basically. Manages contractors and like helps do like garage conversions to theater rooms, those types of fun things for short -term rental owners. and then we have the B and B turnkey, which is done for you offer, you know, so for people like yourself, entrepreneur who may not want to take the time or do anything when it comes to short -term rentals, we'll literally find the property under right at summer. That'll design it. Home team will set it up, manage the contractors and then manage the property on the backend. So those are the main suite of companies. And then the last one, which I just became. a part of is beyond homes. And this is basically a kind of a competitor to Airbnb and Verbo, but it's strictly for corporate travel. So we just announced this and we're just now available to take on, homes like hosts. So we're targeting a few cities. Austin's one of them to start. and this is basically going to help corporate travelers who are, may not like staying in hotels for an extended period of time and want a home to like. Unwind after work and maybe have a home gym home office, that type of thing. so we just, just launched that man. Dude, that's awesome. We need to talk more, man. Like, what are we doing? Like, because we both follow each other. We're always talking back and forth on Instagram, but we need to do this more. This is freaking awesome. Talk about the benefit and talk about your intentionality with how you've built these businesses and how you've created these vertically. And what is vertical integration and why is this so important? Because it's what we're doing over here. And I think you're a really good example, if not one of the best examples that I've seen recently of somebody that like gets it and you think you're, you think me and you think the same way. So talk to the people about how you think about these businesses sequentially. Yeah. Well, vertical integration really is just aligning, you know, each business operation supports kind of supports of each other and aligns, with a customer's, a customer's needs. Right. So it really just came out of necessity, both for the customer and for us and to, in order to drive down costs for the customers, hit timelines or deadlines, boost efficiencies, things like that. So started off with coaching and then people were like, I don't know how to design properties. So it's like, okay. these interior designers and marketing experts that I coached, you know, they came to me and they're like, I think we want to do interior design business. I said, that sounds amazing. There's a need for that. So we plugged that in. another person I coached brought the management to me, said there's no good property managers out there except for like the small ones that are only niche down to certain cities. So let's create a national company that can perform. So that's how that was born. Well, then we started doing the turnkey offer, which was done for you. We already had the design business, but then we started outsourcing all the contract work. And we were getting ripped off. were like marking up like 40, 50 % margins on contract labor. And that was like crazy. And we're like, and we're missing deadlines for clients and they got mad. So they're like, why don't we just bring that in house? And we brought procurement in house. It's like all these things started getting vertically integrated so we could serve the customer better. and also just help scale more efficiently over time. And it's more profitable for us as well. I love it. It's taking every single part of the customer journey in -house and taking every single part of the supply chain. So like you see an Amazon or someone like that and what they do is they'll go and say, okay, cool. All the way to, you know, where are we mining the materials from? Like let's go buy the mine and buy the transportation, buy the freight, buy the airlines, you know, buy every single thing. And so that's how we're doing. So we're just a couple of years behind y 'all. So we started and we did... Two years, we were finishing up our two year kind of, you know, foundation plan of the skyscraper. And now we're going into more like vertical integration. So we started up Sexton. So Sexton media is my, is my, action academy. And then we got Sexton world spun up in Sexton world is going to be a seven figure company here, early, early next year, Q1 of next year. So we'll do it in a year. It'll be a seven figure company. And that one's just our events company. So that one's. You know, we're throwing Tulum here in, I think, like two weeks and we've got a hundred some odd people coming in. It's like $4 ,000 ahead. Now it's not a profitable business, but still it's a, it's a business in and of itself. I'm like, this is insane. And now we're starting up sextant capital, sextant hospitality. And then we're going to have a fund that's within that to buy businesses, to buy, you know, large commercial real estate, hotels, stuff like that. That's all within the family. And so you're probably doing the same thing as me where I use. Action Academy, another kind of selling point that I don't talk about enough is it's like a talent pool. It's an operator pool. So it's like, why would I go invest with anybody else outside of my own fam? Like I could just get all the capital I need and all the partners and all the operators I need here. Like I'm in the process right now of funding, fully funding a business for one of our people. And I'm going to be a minority owner in the business. We're buying it together and he's going to be the person that runs it. So do you have any advice you can give on that too? mean, I guess just the importance of community and if you could go back, what would you start with? I'm assuming you would do it the same way, but like, I think it's like you go from the community first and then you branch out. Is that what you would agree with? Yeah. Yeah. I think personal brand is really important to you just have to talk about what you're doing and what, like where you're going. you'd be surprised even if you have like 500 followers, there's probably at least one or two people who might are probably interested in what you have to say. And you just will never know unless you make it known. So like the personal brand super important. It kind of just accelerates everything else you're doing. And then community is also really important. So when I first launched a coaching business, it was just a course. Which was fine. A lot of people found a ton of success with it. Right. And I got a lot of good feedback, but I think the missing piece was like the active mentorship and the community. So once I built that out and actually built a team around me, because I couldn't do it all myself. I think you'd agree. Right. So once I did that one customer success happened faster, skyrocketed, and I was doing less work. And people were coming to me less, which is the weirdest thing ever. Cause I would expect people to only want to talk to me, but it's quite the opposite. Most people don't even care to talk to me. They just want to talk to people on my team, which is amazing. That's the Testament to their skillset and their ability to coach coach under me. So, but community is great. And now you have people that want to work with me. They work together, they partner on deals. but it's like the coolest thing. Yeah, for sure. how big is the team and then how much is the top line that's coming in from all of the different things combined. all the different businesses. Yeah, so sorry to rack your brain on your riches. know, man. mean, this year between all the businesses, should... That's a high credit score answer, Michael. That's a high credit score answer. I don't even know how many millions we're bringing in. Yeah, I don't know, but I haven't looked in a while, but probably between 15 and 20 million, between all the businesses, yeah. And the team, but the teams are big, you know, have like 15 or so employees in the coaching business on the design business. I want to say we have between 30 and 40 employees and a lot of contractors, we contract, you know, it's a service based business. So it's heavy. Yeah. like on your on your payroll or are they just all sub 1099? 10 99 most, you know, like our managers, I think are mostly W2 and then a lot of the designers are contract based. it's just per. Per design period and per property they design, excuse me. that's what they're focused on. then on the management side, we have about 60 employees between full -time W2 and maybe like 20 out of those are offshore talent. What makes you decide to do like for me as a business owner today, I can't decide why I would do a W -2 unless I had to. Is there any particular reason? Yeah. I mean, I think it really just comes down to, you know, the job itself. And if you want, if you have a business where you need people in an office setting and you need to be able to control their calendar and kind of what they're doing. and as we grow to, know, a lot of people want some form of benefits and people, some people want W2 just to feel like they're more in line with the company. don't know, but a lot of people, especially salespeople. who understand the value of being 10 99 actually prefer that because they, you know, they can, it's almost like running your own little business as well. they have freedom, freedom of schedule, but most of our employees are remote. So it works and it's kind of like, Hey, you just have to get the work you need to get done according to the contract, but otherwise you're free to make your own schedule and work as you please wherever. So it's kind of the best of both worlds. Yeah. So screw the short term rentals for a second. This is the fun stuff. so let's talk about, let's talk about your, your org chart, man. So do you have like a hold co that you're running like core team that's kind of delineating out to these people and you have like five or six top people or. Each company is, different. So I solely own the coaching business, and my S corp, which some other stuff runs through and then the design company, I have two business partners. and I had ups a lot of like the marketing and the business lead Jen and some other things, and they head up the day to day. So one is more or less the CEO, COO, and then the other, I call her the chief design officer. She's in charge of all of the fulfillment and design, and, hiring and firing any. contract -based work and designers, design managers, type of thing. And then on the management team, my business partner, we're 50 50 on, he's the CEO runs the day to day. and we've made some strategic hires recently, such as a COO with much more experience in the management business than, than we have. And he's been phenomenal. so having him kind of head up, you know, people operations and then operations within each of like the subcategories of the business, has been massive. so helping build SOPs, making sure the right number of people are staffed, projecting where we're going with the business revenue wise and how we support that fulfillment. we're kind of just like projecting a talent and who we need to staff. Right. So staffing needs is important. and then we have a fractional CFO. yeah, and eventually maybe we'll have a CEO under my business partner, Elliot. So he could focus on just other stuff. really just depends on how his day to day goes, but right now he's he's. focused a lot on sales and eventually we'll offload that from his plate. Yeah. So you're basically the CMO seat on most of the businesses. Like your, your function that you own is sales kind of marketing. Yeah, I would say marketing and sales. You know, I help out with sales, sales process. I invest a lot into business and sales coaching and consulting. So that has helped me and I just kind of help teach the other companies what I'm learning day to day within the coaching business. sometimes intertwine them. we just hired a CRO that split time between, my coaching business and the management company. Cause he's great. He can help. train up employees, build SOPs, help us with our CRM and all these other things that he just has frankly more experience in. so that's been a huge weight lifted off our shoulders recently, in terms of growing and managing the sales teams. For people that are listening right now, you may notice that we're not talking about short-term rentals. We're not talking about Airbnb's because like this is what a 10 million to 20 million to$50 million conversation looks like. these are what the conversations look like. We're not like, how do you buy in the house? It's like, okay, wait. like who, who is running what? Like how are you building your org chart? How are you building your team? are there any specific like sales and business like coaching like, that you can refer to me? Like what are you doing for that? there certain programs that you hiring anybody? Like, what are you bringing in? Yeah. So we talk about hosting our own communities, but I've invested. don't even know, man, multiple six figures into other coaching and consulting businesses the past two years. And that is 10 X everything we're doing, but the one that I've got a ton of value from still work with is Cole Gordon's group closers IO. And I originally started investing in them so I could learn how to build a sales organization. Cause it was just me before I started working with them. And that was like less than two years ago. and then learned, okay, this is how I need to structure the sales or who I need to hire first, how I need to train them cadence. eventually, thank goodness worked up enough to where I could have a sales manager manage the team day to day. And once you get to that certain point, you can really buy back your time. and that has been a huge weight lifted off my shoulder. So I have somebody who's better than me at sales management and better than me at sales, managing a team of salespeople who are better than I am at sales. Right. That way I could focus on what I'm good at. Magic. But it takes a while. does take a while to get to that point. know, you can't really just like buy that out of the gate. You, you still have to build the foundation in my opinion and make sure you build a company with good core values and hire the right people. You know, so. Exactly. So for Leadgen, are you just, is it all organic? Are you doing pretty heavy and paid to funnel all of these? Because that was my thing with Cole. I've tried to get him on the podcast for some reason he hasn't been on yet, but I think he's just kind of like taking a break from podcasts in general right now. But overall I was wanting to do him and for people listening, his whole thing is like sales and fulfillment. That's what Cole does. But I just didn't have the lead flow. I haven't figured out the lead flow, like the steady and consistent lead flow yet. Yeah. So last year, 2023 was like 99 % or 99 .9 % organic. but what I realized is it's like heavy swings and you know, crazy. You can't keep up with it to three days, seven days of like ghost town and the salespeople are like too busy. And then they're like, where, where's my appointments? You know, so that Is great. Organic is amazing. And the personal brand is something that's invaluable. But what I figured out this year is hiring the right, basically a CMO to the company who does all the paid traffic. He's my media buyer. and that has added so much stability to our business. It's crazy. And he handles like some email marketing. a lot of most of the money we spend is on Facebook and Instagram. and that has been. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And honestly, it. I, what I did not understand earlier, I should have been doing meta ads first, but I started on YouTube because I thought, I'm good with organic. So I might as well try another platform. That was dumb because we can retarget, you know, I already have a huge following on Instagram. You could do retargeting and it's like, people will then go to your profile after they see an ad and associate this guy knows what he's talking about. Cause he has a bigger brand there, right? Where YouTube is a little bit smaller. So that has, they can kind of grow in conjunction with one another. But ever since we figured paid out, it's been phenomenal. Yeah. So it's kind of like what comes first, the chicken or the egg, you know? So for me, it's like my background is in sales and now with marketing, you know, we're doing about 2 million top line and we're like our North star for next year is 5 million top line, 2 million EBITDA. So like that's our, that's our North star that we're aiming for. And so we went through all these different business ideas and we all just came at the end of a 90 minute conversation. Me and my core team just came back to it. Let's just double the lead flow. You know? to a numbers game. but if the numbers get out of control and you don't have the other pieces to the puzzle, like if you don't have enough salespeople or fulfillment, it's like, that's where it's tricky is, you know, as your business grows and you're able to do two, three, four, five X or 10 X year over year for the first few years, it's really challenging to forecast staffing needs and you almost hire at a necessity. So the biggest thing I did the past four months actually went to one of Cole's events recently. And my, brought my sales manager as a young stud. He's like 20 years old, but I brought him and the biggest takeaway we got was we need to be constantly interviewing, especially on the sales front to more or less build a bench. You know, sales does have turnover. Some, some, you know, industry's more than others, but high ticket coaching and consulting there is turnover. So if we hire somebody and they don't pan out, I've held onto people too long and that really hurts the business and it's not doing them any good either. So we've learned to like hire slow and fire quicker. fire fast, and then also just building a bench because let's say ads are going really well. Leads are double tripling. We're booking appointments 10 days out. That's not efficient. So then we have to make sure we're able to plug in new sales reps and train them up quick. So SOPs are important, right? Standard operating procedures to make sure onboarding can happen and it can be replicated without having your time constantly. You know, focused on every new hire. So the more consistent, those processes can be the quicker you're able to scale when you need to. What is your calendar like? What does a week look like for you managing these? I stack appointments. I never, I shouldn't say never extremely rarely ever take a call before 10 AM. So I wake up early, have coffee with my wife. Here's this before two. Nah, I that's just saying over here. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I should probably back it up, but I try and stack them on Mondays and Tuesdays, like all of my business meetings, my business partners, sales, marketing, all that stuff. then Mondays and Fridays are mostly blocked. especially Fridays. I usually just don't try not to do anything. And then Thursdays I have like one or two meetings, but I don't take a meeting before 10 ever. just cause that's my time with my daughter and my wife, like uninterrupted. And then throughout the day, if I have plenty of breaks, usually aside from Monday's Tuesday, it's usually like four or five hours straight. And then I usually don't have anything to do structured past like four or 5. So I always get tied into stuff though. You know, I mean, I'd be lying if I said, you know, 7 PM rolls around and I'm not looking at my phone if I have to, you know, I I'm getting better at that. As I've hired more strategic or excuse me, it's a place more strategic hires within the business. It's like, I, now, like you just said, you went on vacation for like a month, right. And didn't really do much. that was new. Last year I was doing sales calls. I was doing sales calls in Europe because I did a thousand sales calls myself when I first started the company and I'm glad I did it. And it, it's what I would advise to people because how, the only reason that you were able to do these businesses is because you talk to your customer. You know? So it's like, I know my customer better than, cause here's what grinds my gears, dude. So. somebody starts a company and the first thing they do is they outsource all their sales and they outsource all their marketing. And I'm like, then what the hell do you do? Like you think that's going to work? Like even with a brand new company. you have to find where you're most valuable and usually it's marketing or sales for a new CEO or a founder. Right. And two, to your point, you have to get a process dialed in and figure out what actually works. You know, most people, and this is what Cole teaches too, in his group is most founders and CEOs were once the best salesperson for their company because they had to grind their teeth, figure it out. So then they could bring someone in and make sure they're, they stay on. process. So I think it is important for, for you to do some stuff on your now marketing. I'm good at organic paid traffic. was just like, made sense for me to outsource day one because they would have taken me months to figure it out and too much time at that point. I already had sales going. had organic leads. I was busy enough to where I wish I did that sooner, to be honest. Hmm. Yeah. So I think the biggest difference between you and you and I right now is like, you just seem to let go of control a lot more easily. And that's something that I'm working on right now where I don't do any new businesses. I say no to everything because I'm just like, anything that I do, even if I'm a quote unquote passive partner, I'm still going to be involved. Like there's no way I can't like just take my brain away from that. Mm there's mental bandwidth and mental energy. And I say no to a lot of hotels. I say no to a lot of businesses. I say as I'm buying a business, possibly buying a hotel right now, but it's just like, it distracts me so much that I can't compartmentalize, but you seem to work through other people so much better. that, has that always been that way? Or is this something that you developed? Is there any, any resources that I can go to, to, learn this skill? Because you've got what? Like six, seven companies. and they seem to be running pretty independently. Yeah, I think the biggest thing is having a business partner. For example, for me, I have business partners that they're the CEOs of the business. I know what I'm good at and how I can help drive business or leads, or I can help with my following or people that I've coached. have like a really easy access to talent pool that I feel like I can trust. So I've helped staff in certain roles, through me, but The day to day and operations, just simply don't have the bandwidth or frankly, I don't, I would not work in a new business if I had to be involved in the operations at all. I don't have the bandwidth. I don't want to do it. The whole point, the whole reason I got into short -term rental. So I didn't have to work. Of course, like I fell in love with entrepreneurship, just fell into it. and I love growing a business and seeing profits, you know, go up hopefully more times than they go down. Right. But, yeah, man, I don't. I wouldn't do any more business. I'm learning to say no more now. Cause at first it's like shiny object syndrome, especially once you have a personal brand and at least one successful business, people will bring ideas to you. Hey, I have this. Cause they think you have the magic bullet, right? Everything you touch turns into a $10 million business. That's really not the case. Like you need, you do need to, whether it's you or somebody else be able to have that be your sole focus. So learning to say no, I think you'd agree you've interviewed. I don't even know at this point, hundreds of millionaires or billionaires. It's like. The people who are higher up in net worth, every single person I've ever talked to said they learned to say no 99 % of the time, because anything serves as a distraction to what made them their wealth and is going to continue making their wealth. likely. Correct. So what they do is they say they do one, they spend a decade on one thing. They build up an astronomical amount of wealth and liquid capital from that. And then they distributed that with strategic partners across other ventures and then turn that into more cashflow. Like that's, that's the game. So, you know, I think it's really interesting that you said about the fulfillment piece, because that's something that people don't think about where it's just like, okay, cool. If you figure out, if you Pull a magic lever and you double your traffic to whatever business that you're doing. You need sales and you need fulfillment on the back end of that. I have a friend, Logan Rankin, who I took his systems from with multifamily. He's like, when I got 200 doors, he's like, was building my systems in my team for 2 ,000 doors. He's like, I'm already hiring them. I'm already building my systems. That way I just elegantly grow into that thing instead of hiring from necessity. Like you said, that's what we're doing right now. So we just brought on a few other roles to where I'm like, okay, cool. This is the extra support that we need to take on. Cause that, that was the question we asked. It's like, what does it look like to maintain the magic with double lead flow? Like, what does that look like? And so I'm like, well, let's start with the fulfillment side. Let's hire there and figure out what these processes look like. Maybe instead of an individual onboard, it's a group on board, you know, and maybe instead of this is this. And like, let's go ahead and get that set. And that's what our big rocks are for this quarter. moving into December is then then we're going to start really pushing into the sales machine. So I think that's really interesting that you brought that up. Yeah. And no, what else is interesting too? I used to read more books. I'm starting to get back into it, but, I've heard people say this, that it's, it's harder to go from zero to 1 million than it is from one to 10. And it's also easier to go from 10 to a hundred or a hundred to a billion. And I used to think that was like a load of crap until I was going up the ladder. And the reason I think it's truly easier is because building the systems and making your first few strategic hires is really challenging. Right. But once you have strategic hires in place that can then do the hires under them as needed, where you don't have to be at the forefront of every decision the business makes, that is where you can experience growth without your time being involved in every decision. Cause that's what you're going to hit bottle bottlenecks. Right. So I think that's why it's like, you get to a point and it's say you're doing 10 or 50 million a year. You know, you have a CEO, maybe a CMO, maybe you hire a CEO. I don't know. Right. And then you have a manager of sales, a manager of this manager of this. And so it's kind of like they hire their teams and maybe it's approved by the person above them, but ultimately it's not you unless it's a key role in the company at that point. So they can manage expectations, onboarding, fulfillment, whatever it is, to where you don't have to be doing that every day. think that is where. That's why the growth I feel like can grow more exponentially. And it's, it feels easier than it was at the very beginning. Mmm. Yeah, that makes sense. And you're working with more, like, just high quality people. Yeah. And people that frankly are probably doing at that point, those individual roles better than you could. And those is interesting from Dan Martell's book. just, I'm reading right now. You've probably read it by back your time, but yeah, he said, it's better to have somebody do 80 % of the quality of work in a role than you're 100%. I never thought about it like that. was like, I need someone to do as good or better than me, but that makes total sense because if they can run at 80 % of your level and you have a hundred percent of that time back to then go do something else at a hundred percent of your level, that's where you, again, you can just experience that growth without like hating, hating the business. That's a super important point though is, and it was something that I was guilty of in the beginning where it's like you buy back your time, you do it. And then it's just like, okay, cool. Now you have your time back. It's not, that time is not meant for you to, like you do a million a year. Like your time is not meant for you to go just like prance around and like lay on the couch. Your time needs to be invested into something that's more revenue producing and more high impact for the business. So then there's this giant can of worms where I'm like, okay, well, what is that? And so that giant turned into a giant journey of me figuring out what the heck does a business owner do? And the best answer I came up with is you set the vision and direction for the company. You hire and you attract and retain top talent and you make sure you don't run out of cash. Like that's what you do. What answers did you come up with to that question? When you bought back your time, now what do you do? What's your highest and best use? Well, honestly, I think when my head was so in the weeds of just like putting out literally putting out fires every day or aiding the sales team or doing X whatever, insert task that I shouldn't have been doing. actually started spending days on a whiteboard, which I've never done before. And all I did was, okay, here's how we're here's how much we're doing monthly revenue. For example, the coaching business is one example. Here's where I want to go. And how do I get there? I need. Okay. Well, I need this many more leads at this conversion rate and this close rate with the sales team. And if I have that, I need this many appointment centers and this many closers. Okay. If I were able to close that many deals, I also need this many people on fulfillment client success managers. So what comes first? Like the chicken or the egg, right? So first it was, Hey, we need to interview and build a bench for sales. So we're ready to start spending more money on marketing and generating more leads. And then once we start converting sales, then we could start building a pipeline for the client success team. So for me, it was really just strategically thinking, just like you said, where do we want to go short and long -term? And then what are the actual steps we need to get there? And for me at this point, it was just focusing on like increasing our capacity. And that was it. So it really came down to like a simple thing, but if I didn't have time to like sit there and contemplate all of these things, and it really was such a simple thing. I just need to figure out how to get this many leads and then having the right amount of people. So I just communicate that with my sales manager. And my CRO, and then also the VP of coaching who manages the fulfillment. I was like, here's where we need to be. So when we crank this one knob, you guys know what to do. And so now it's like, this is our first month. might cross a million in contracted revenue in the coaching business. And it was more than double than what we did last month. And the whiteboard happened two months ago. So it's like crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. So we're doing the same thing with the other businesses too. We're trying to like. Forecast, Hey, what do we need to do to double our capacity and double the leads? Right. And that was really it. So it's just really more strategic planning with the business partners on okay. Same exact practice, almost like the whiteboard session, but with each business. So that that's all it was like a simple task, but I needed to have that process and thought process going on in my head in order to actually get there. Cause if I didn't, I'm the one like steering the ship. We probably just would have been putting out fires doing the same thing every day. I never been able to increase. capacity. What operating system are you guys running? you doing EOS or what? Cause we're, we're getting on EOS right now and something I'm struggling with is figuring out like, what do my people do? Like what is your actual job description, you know, and what roles and what rocks do you own? So that's been difficult. That's something I'm immediate, my entire morning, you're it. Like it's me and you and the rest of my morning is blocked off to sit here like with nothing but a piece of paper. And just write, cause that's how I do it best. It's like a whiteboard or paper and write out, okay, like who, who owns what function? Like who owns sales, who owns marketing, who owns fulfillment and like, what is your roles and responsibilities look like? Who do you report to? What is your weekly scorecard look like? That type of stuff. That's what I'm going through right Yeah, I just went through that recently a little more in depth because I think I failed at that early on. I was just running flying by the seat of my pants. Right. So I was, hired someone, Hey, I need you to be sales manager now. And I didn't exactly know what I needed the day to day, right. The end of day reports end of week, like targets, how do I build you a quota? I don't even know, you know, so was really more like, I need you to help figure this out with me. And I think that was not a mistake, but like a learning thing for me. and then recently with the strategic hires, I spent a lot more time, like with the chief revenue officer, what do I actually need your roles and responsibilities to be? And what do I need you to own? Because someone coming into that role, like, yes, I need them to come in and like, tell me what to do, but I also need them to have like a vision and like, okay, this is where we're weak and we need to improve or. You know, building SOPs like what is it? Right? So had to like, went much more in detail so that he had a more clear understanding of what he needed to tackle when he first started. and that was important. So I do think that, and for me, that's really just on like a Google doc. Like it's nothing crazy. Yeah, dude, the game is so interesting because then once you unlock different levels of entrepreneurship, then you see things at that level forever from every business. so it's like, now I can see businesses at seven figure level. Like I can see all the different business. I can start up a seven figure business. like, I know exactly what to do to get here. And then now you're at the eight figure level and Dan's like at the nine figure level. He's like, okay, cool. And like, so it's cold, like cold. Like, okay, I know how to do 50 million, you know, so. It's just different, different levels. for the sake of time, I want to go really quickly. you're, you basically have an eight figure content funnel machine here, just from your Instagram. How do you think about content? Like, what is your strategy? Is it just, you know, like, is there any intentionality? I'm sure there's intentionality to it, but is it just like many chat keyword, and then you're just having appointment centers and the DMS? Like that it. you know, I did my own content for the longest time, but now I work with an agency and some are really bad and not aligned, do not align to your brand at all. I've been through a couple. Yeah, it's really hard. So I do have this one agency that actually is very strategically aligned and they work on curating my content for me. But it's not them just like guessing and posting. It's like a collaboration constantly of here, the angles were working. Here's something you said in an old YouTube video or a podcast, and they just spin up pieces of content for me around that. It's a mix of threads, posts, and then reels. and the reels are more focused on viral, like storytelling aspects with call to actions. and then IG shout outs helps just exacerbate like your reach. Right. So I don't know if you do much, much of that, but If you get on the right big pages, basically you pay for advertising of your organic content that you declare winners based on certain metrics and you pay to post them on other pages. And the CTA is just to like, Hey, if you want to learn more about short term rentals, follow Michael's page. And so that can help if those hit really well, all of a sudden you can get an extra like five or 10 ,000 followers a week. on top of what you're doing organically. So it's just like, it's not getting fake followers. It's just increasing the reach you have, right? Advertising. I just, what I just did was I went through my videos and I looked at what videos yielded. Cause like for me, the static posts never hit ever. Like I've had ones that are like they bang on Twitter, but then I post them on Instagram and then it's just crickets. It's like, okay, cool. I've got 277 ,000 followers. got 200 likes on this. And it's just like. Nothing, but I post a reel and I'm like, every reel I post is going to get in front of 50,000 people. So, or a million. And so, you know, for us, it's been, it's been a struggle figuring out kind of like what to do and like what message and like how to go through it. And so what I did was I took the videos that yielded the most followers and it's normally the stupid six second video. That's like, yo, like if you want to do this, follow me. And it's like a six second with a stupid sound. And I'm like looking at it, it's like 30 ,000 followers from this freaking video. And so I'm like, okay, well let me put $2 ,000 behind this to boost it. And I boost it. And of course it works. Like it gets sent out to more people. Like it already hit 2 .1 organically and it gets sent out to maybe what? Like a hundred thousand more people and people followed. But I was just like, the juice isn't worth the squeeze of me paying that for only this amount of followers. So it's like. that your strategy sounds much better. Or I say, I'm going to spend money anyways. I might as well spend money just to have the big accounts shout out and then you get eyeballs that way. Is there any like, do you just do that through the agency? there any like, they, you know, they have some of their own pages they've built up and they actually do tests on those. And if it does well, then they'll go pay and post on certain other small and big pages. you know, every page, depending on the quality of reach and success that people have by posting on a page, they charge a different amount. could be 50 bucks a post. could be a hundred bucks. Could be a thousand dollars a post. You know, so you have to be very strategic. And again, it was something I've tried to do on my own. And frankly, it was like more of a time suck for me and I wasn't great at it. So I hired them now. I do pay them a percentage of profit share from anything that they helped me generate. So again, it's very aligned. know the agency that you're using. We'll talk offline about it. I'm pretty sure I know the one that you're using, but dude, it's crazy. yeah, but it works in it. Basically I worked with them and then there was like a downturn in like results. So I let go of them and I did it on my own for a while. I worked with a different agency that did not work at all. Then I did it on my own. And what I did, I was like, cause I felt like I was paying them too much, frankly. I told them this, but when I really dug into the numbers, because once I started running paid ads, if I'm getting a five X row as, which is what our target minimum is return on ad spend, then it's about 20 % of revenue goes towards advertising. And it was between like 17 and 20 % at the end of the day, what I was paying them and they're on their rate plus shout outs, plus the profit share. So in my mind, I was like, why wouldn't I work with them if they're helping me get results because it's no different in terms of marketing costs and it's less for me to do, you know, so that's how I looked at it and hired them again. Yeah, right now we've got really good margins, but we have no marketing spend. So that's my intention is like, how do I maintain our profit margins while increasing and like adding that line item of like 20%. Is that kind of where you cap it at 20 %? your, what are your margins right now? About 40. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I don't know where your other expenses lie. Like mine right now is probably between 45 and 50%, including, the ad spend and marketing costs. All right, Michael, we need to talk more. We need to talk more, I do. Yeah. my number, bro. Let's talk. I also need to get down to Austin and hang because I used to live there and I really miss it. I need to get back more often. Dude, we're coming up on the top of the hour. I want to be conscious of your time too. So let's talk quickly about the book because we've already gone by this and like this is, we'll make an intro for this, but this is the difference for people. It's good for people to hear this stuff because it's like, they think people are like, I'm going to go invest in real estate and I'm going to make, I'm going to be worth 10 million. I'm going to make millions of dollars just being an investor and having the investor hat on. That's not how it goes. The people that make $10 million, the ones that are an entrepreneur, they get the business owner hat. That's just a real estate company or real estate companies, which is what you've done. So talk about the book. You know, what does it teach? Where can people get it? And then where can people follow you in general? Yeah. The book is called investing in short -term rentals, the fast path of financial freedom. and I did that and that was like my sole source of income before I started all the other businesses. So the reason I love short -term rentals, cause the cashflow potential is amazing. You know, we scaled to like 30 to 50 K a month net, within a year and a half, which is pretty crazy. and I believe anybody else can do that and you can really start on any budget. So in the book, just, delve into all the different strategies, regardless of your budget and how to like find properties in the most sustainable markets and then set them up to be as profitable as possible. Then automate the day -to -day management on the backend, like what system, software is and teams you need in place to do it. and then how to scale at that point with none of your own money. So if you're interested in that, it's a quick read. It's really more tactical than philosophical. which I feel like a lot of books are really more like Fluff. your energy. It's really exciting. You could do really well here. And it's just like you read, read, read. And it's like, okay, well, what do I actually do? So this one was really built more for like a condensed version of what I mentor and teach people on. So if it interests you, you can probably pound it out in a weekend. You'll probably want to reread it. but yeah, hopefully it has a big impact on, on you. If you end up reading it. Dude, awesome. then we're going to put that in the show description and we'll include that in the intro as well. Anywhere else that people can follow you, where can they go? honestly, Instagram is probably the best place. You shoot me a note. This is at L. Lafonte six. Make sure it has a little blue check Mark. Unfortunately. How have you not changed your username by now? I don't know. I just, it was always that and I've been on like so many podcasts and all this. I just never changed it, but it's funny because people will DM me and they'll be like, Hey Mel. And I'm like, bro, did you just, you could have clicked on the profile and at least said it, says Michael Elifante right there. But if you search my name, you'll find me too. That's just the handle, you know, fair, fair. I say that as I just spent freaking $26 ,000 on the domain actionacademy .com. So I'm like, yo, and I'm glad I did it. Like when I was doing it, I was just like, my God, what am I doing? Like there is no return on this. Like, but now that, like, now that we're like five months removed and I created a really cool website around it, like now I'm excited about it. But dude, no, man, you're awesome. Let's, let's talk. Way more offline. dude, this is, I didn't think that the episode would go this way, but I'm glad it did. Like this is insane. just like, how do you do short term rentals and okay. how do you. Yeah. I talk about that enough. do is get your book and they're done. All right. Perfect. Well guys, this has been Brian and Michael with the Action Academy podcast. Get the book, follow Michael and Elifante6. Everything will be in the show description. Of course, go follow. And if you guys learned stuff like I learned today, like I got my mind blown, a five star rating and a review and follow Michael everywhere. Thanks guys and talk soon.