How Leo set up four Airbnb units in Cleveland and is adding nine more

0:00 in today's episode we're going over the extraordinary journey of Leo we're going to take it back to the beginning where he sold on eBay at the age of 15 to creating and selling a successful children's company we're also going to talk about why he's jumping into the short-term rental space and also how he's able to negotiate a 13 unit deal in one go Leo is an extremely successful entrepreneur is stun and seen it all so with that being said let's get into the episode all right we got Leo here so wanted to bring Leo on just CU you know he has a you know really cool story able he's in the negotiation phases of locking up 13 units in one deal and this is for your very first deal right Leo yeah no so I have four units already that I kind of going and then the nine more units that I am negotiating right now the same building yeah okay awesome so I mean 13 deals you know within like the span of a few months crazy story so before we get into all that let's first kind of take a step back and talk more about your background you know what you do for a living and then you know what kind of made you transition into wanting to start your own business here yeah for sure so I started like way back so I'm I'm 35 I started when I was probably my first Venture was when I was 15 or 16 years old and I was doing eBay so you know just buying Blu-ray B jerseys you know just a whole bunch of just different jeans and things like that and basically reselling them on eBay and eventually that turned into a little company me and my cousin started called Snap and so and I'm not proud of it cuz it didn't do well what we're going to do is just basically gather everyone's Garage items and try to sell them on eBay and give him a little bit

1:16 of of money and then eventually that didn't didn't work out for us so we did close that down and then I guess my my biggest work on my biggest success so far has been a children's company nlight company that I built and sold it's called L world and maybe if you had children you've seen a little silicone little nightlights made out of like rubbery soft materials and they're rechargeable you tap them and and kids like love them and parents love them and so I built that company but in between that and eBay I had the opportunity to kind of travel and I've worked in different countries and done just a whole bunch of different stuff in in just general e-commerce um and not physical businesses as well I up set up in cafeteria and nail salon is in a different country and then I got into Amazon and that's kind of how I identified like this opportunity in this children's NightLight space and so I started developing creating this NightLight which eventually became really popular in the US and so a couple years ago I I made an exit out of that and I thought hey you know what you the US is not that great I'm going to go live in Europe for a bit so I moved to Europe for two years didn't really like it it was a little bit too slow for me I'm you know I like to I like to work and and and you know to build things and stuff and where I moved in Europe in Spain was a little bit too slow for that like they don't really you know there it's more of a relaxed lifestyle there and not so much trying to progress and so we moved back here and so I just basically just got started this summer with this whole thing I guess the reason I got started in this is because I've

2:33 had sort of the opportunity in my life to travel from like the very very budget like $5 a day you know no cell phone staying in places with no electricity eating you know chicken fresh chicken eggs and and Beads and just exploring world and then I've also had the opposite end of that where you know I'd apply private Place mald South FR all that stuff and so I feel like I probably stayed in close to a thousand hotels and everything these right now and so when I walk into a new place I really know like depending on the type of guest like what exactly that guest is going to need in order to kind of create that you know that perfect experience for them and so that's kind of just you know I just I love travel I love setting I think that eventually want to do more unique experiences than I want to do like Arbitrage because I feel like that's kind of where the passion really is so yeah that's the I basically just took a whole bu you know I took courses I signed up to yours a couple others went to a few seminars over the summer and then maybe two months in I was already in uh sort of in Cleveland you know signing these units there's lot to unpack there you know kind of always had that entrepreneur Story the spirit all the way from when you were like you know pretty young let's shift gears a little bit and talk about like what made you want to go all in on this business you know versus cuz obviously you've started so many other you know e-commerce you know had successful exits like what why what made you kind of you know made your focus on on this business here this I mean Prest you're looking at a guy who was like

3:50 fully in the zone of what they want to do like there's nothing else I want to do like I want to build unique experiences I want to transition into like hotels and resorts like I don't you ever if you've seen like put a few cabins and you connect them as like I want to create basically an unforgivable experience for people in the US I feel like all over Europe and the rest of the world you can go somewhere and have this amazing experience but in the US we're kind of deined on that a little bit and I just want to yeah just want to create like this is fully passion like I want to do this like no matter you know I'm going to I'm going to like Risk Everything to try to do this and I feel like I'm equipped enough with just all the experience from travel and business that I should be I should be able to do okay but yeah just the general drive here is that I want to build like truly unique hotels experiences like I don't know if you've ever seen like in Switzerland they have those like slow moving roller coasters that go through the mountains really slow and they're like absolutely beautiful and so like we don't have anything like that in the US like why we have all these amazing national parks the US is full of like natural like beauty that the rest of Europe just like for example in Europe they don't have that and we just don't really you know and there so many people I I noticed that like in America we don't really like to go outside of America to to travel very much like we like to stay in America we want to do like a weekend getaway and we just don't have a lot of that and I feel like there's just so much of like we know there's so many different preab homes coming out and unique structures of all kinds that are just amazing and awesome and putting them together and adding

5:07 some humidities in the middle and then creating like you know building on top of that maybe there's a supp later maybe there's you know a restaurant or something and and it just all combining into this one amazing unique experience that could be well known all over the US and I know I'm thinking pretty big here but this is kind of this is kind of the gene right here so that that's kind of what got me into it and I I love travel I love to sell you you places that people you know don't know and and spiritually growing from you know the types of these new test places that's why I did the whole like budget trip in Central America where you know I was just going from place to place and yeah it just it really helped me it really helped me grow and I just I want to provide that kind of experience to others yeah I mean just the way hearing you talk it sounds like it's kind of like your passion meets you know like an opportunity right and like that when when those two things Collide you know magic can happen for sure so super excited you know we can obviously talk about that here as well so let's talk about those four units I know that currently have so how did that deal come to be like how did you you know kind of get what gravitated you towards the market and also you know how did you talk to you know the management company to secure those yeah so again I'm not like I do not recommend getting it this way but basically what what I did was I'm sitting at a conference in Texas and this is before I get started and I'm feeling really good like you know I'm learning all this stuff and I I feel really conf and one of the other attendees is who are a little bit more experienced you know they have more units and and everything and they they were telling me about this you know

6:24 Cleveland and this these units that they have but they don't really want them like they're going to elsewhere and and so he you know he starts telling me like he can give you the units for a small fee like I refer and the person who was giving the sort of the conference you know we did the numbers everything everything looked good I'm like okay I'll take the units and so you know I buy the units off of him and right from that conference I fly directly to Cleveland keep in mind there's literally there's nothing there's no business there's no there's nothing so on my way to Cleveland I'm trying to like figure everything out because I'm going there to apparently receive what was supposed to be five units so I get to Cleveland I go into the admin office and you know we talk and everything and apparently what turns out to be is I'm not getting all five units cuz they only allow four units per operator and you can only get one every two weeks so my original thought was that you know I'm feeling so good after this conference I'm going to fly in there 10 days I'm going to be dark I'm going to have you know all my units set up everything's getting 10 days and I'm going to go back home so I get to Cleveland you know I find out you know now it's one every two weeks the terms W kind of what I was you know what I initially went into it thinking that they were and so I had to kind of refigure out how I'm going to do this because now all these units are coming on you know two every two weeks and now you have to stay here where I have to find an oper operational manager on the ground who kind of built out the units and so I started doing I mean I started you know looking for a cleaning Crew looking for an operational person and in the end of all of this I stayed in Cleveland for three weeks to set up the first two units and then the rest of

7:43 them actually got set up without me and so the way that it went is I basically did most of the things myself for the first two units picking out the furniture and all that type of stuff and then I did manage to find somebody on the ground over there based on the formula I had already created over the three weeks was able to just repeat it for for the future for the next two units so for those four units they have live right now what are like the cash flow numbers looking like on those properties so the revenue for the one bedrooms is about 4500 two bedrooms 5500 and then as far as like my expenses go the one bedrooms are 3K and the two bedrooms last one was still in 200 I have noted parking yet which I think is going to do really good as well so I guess througho it right now one bedrooms around, 1500 two bedrooms about 2500 this where I'm currently standing and as any better long right I only have really one month in just September pretty much and so I mean you get you know nine more of those multiply that by what 15 2500 each you know like that's like a fullblown business you know and you're going to continue to scale so I think a lot of you know for me initially when I started getting to you know short-term rentals like my first fear number one because I've been in real estate you know done flipping wholesaling all the you know business models within it like I was worried about the operational side of the business right like I have to go and clean these units if like someone calls them sick like all these worries and so people like don't believe me when I'm like I literally spend you know 30 minutes sometimes like an hour per week

8:59 to manage you know my portfolio you know once you kind of hire the right teams in place so like how how often do you spend per week on this business and then it once everything set up obviously and then you know how do how did you build out those you know Sops those teams and all that if you're talking about the whole business as a whole so right now I'm not just doing the Arbitrage I have I built out sort of my own custom research process for where I went to with cabins so I hired a team to just basically do like data entry research pretty much all day and so I'm going to leave that to the side as far as just those units with the Arbitrage what I'm getting as a whole is it's full time I mean I'm working pretty much all day every day but as far as managing those more units goes if I didn't wasn't negotiating try to add more units and stuff it's probably honestly maybe an hour maybe two a week if I didn't if I wasn't trying to grow it right because I how did I so basically when I was in Cleveland I was building out the Sops you know just getting things onto like monday.com figuring out like creative a slager town going to hire like the vas like a lot of these networks I'm in like you yeah we have vas you know they're 800 800 a month and you know you get two vas 600 a month but I didn't want to do that so and I as the previous business experience I knew that I could do that quickly without me and probably cheaper and so I found all these BS that I needed at 400 a month to do the pretty much the same thing a little bit of training but okay I'm saving you know 800 a month so I hired you know I hired someone plugged her into slack plugged her into monday.com once I had already

10:15 written out all the you know the SS and everything and so she just started following and you know me and her kind of you know the first unit came on and the second unit came off and and we just co-managed it I guess um until the fourth unit which I added a second person at that point and before that it was just me and her I was on the ground in Cleveland you know try to hire this operational person so that when I left someone could take over the cleaning team honestly I got super lucky like I the very I think it was the first it was the first or second cleaning crew that I spoke to I didn't do tour or anything I wanted to work with like a solid like team like who actually C in like in Cleveland and as like you know like multiple people I could just talk to one person and I have to I don't know how T works like I looked at it it looked like it was a bit complicated like every single time it's a different cleaner and so they're not going to know exactly like where they in like what what inside the apartment needs to go where and you can make checklists and stuff and I don't all that but I just basically met with the cleaner the guy lo as that company went over exactly like I have I told them like it's you know it's going to be this is super high standards like I this a this is exactly how everything used to be placed like we did the video we did the checklist together and he was able to just Prem muching know haven't had any issues with cleaning then we went and with the operational person that I hired together to a storage unit we found a storage unit we liked signed up for it you know I had the the VA route all the Amazon account all that stuff to storage unit so that for future units we can just have everything go

11:32 directly to storage the operational person comes in there with with the the assembly team they assemble everything in the storage unit and this is because we do not want to clog the building's mail room with 50 like all the other elron see refes for they building your packages are the mail not for M anymore mine are not B anymore but like everybody else's and so they have to I feel like if you're clogging up their mail and the go package you're not really providing value you're taking away value from their Opera and so I've been work that and it's just it turned out to be easier just to assemble everything in the storage yet cuz it's less trash so they assemble everything in storage put it on a truck take it to the unit assemble it cleaner comes in does you know we do the count so I'm on the phone where the VA is on the phone and he's over there we're doing like the inventory count making sure everything's good putting all the sheets on the beds operational manager comes in make sure everything's clean looks good you know to to the standards that I TR to her like exactly how things need to be we do a little video tour next day photographer comes in takes all the pictures that we need and the cycle I guess of the next day we list conect to to guesty and all that stuff afterwards and then that's pretty much it that's we just pretty much repeat after that for for future units so any new units that you know I get in Cleveland I just plug them into this exact system and you know just yeah that's awesome and like you know that's a lot of good stuff you know rewind the past three minutes or so Leo talking like that's a lot of good stuff about thinking about this from a business perspective right like what are you going to do to make sure that this

12:48 is streamlined especially if you're going to continue to scale you know within that market having those Sops and procedures all that stuff in place is just going to be plug-and playay for you know future for future units so love that you're thinking you know from the big picture there and obviously the entrepreneur background helps for sure for sure yeah otherwise I don't Che for sure there's definitely help in the entrepreneur I was already facing before I even you know open the LLC I want to make sure that I make this so that it's comfortable for me to scale to like 100 plus units or you know do this other thing that I won't with the Calin or other things potentially as well so yeah it does it did definitely help so to wrap this up what would you say to someone that you know is like playing with the idea starting this business what's some uh pieces of advice that you would you would give them yeah I would say that if you've had a business before go for it if you haven't had a business before still go for it it's it's great it's just don't do I would not recommend doing like an out of state where you know you're flying over there and and try to do it somewhere else I would say that it's probably going to be easier if you do it locally at first I honestly I'll think like coming from the other company that I was running that they just had so many moving Parts breasts and inventory and warehouses and then some like Disney approach and GameStop one of are the unique L for them and there's so many moving parts that it was just I was just overwhelmed all the time with this business I feel like the the model isn't as complicated there's as many moving parts so literally if people just follow exactly what you teach

14:05 obviously there's a little more to you know to like when you start to get into it a little bit there's a few things but if they follow kind of exactly what you teach I Del you what I did which is don't don't buy the ferals it's it's stupid I only did it because like I was like so excited and I I fly there and just do it don't do that you f your own units the research isn't not complicated don't get into like analysis paralysis you know if you find something good in your area just kind of just go for it I think those are those are probably the main things