How Micah found his first Airbnb deal through one Facebook message

0:00 when you're looking at real estate deals it's easy to get stuck in research mode you analyze one market then another and then another and months go by without taking any action Mike has spent 2 months trapped in this exact same cycle but then he made a simple change that led him to find and launch his first property making $5,000 in his first month all while keeping his full-time job in this deep dive we're going to break down how he found and Clos his first deal through a single Facebook message his complete process for setting up and automating the property for under $115,000 and the exact systems he uses to manage everything with less than an hour per week these interviews used to be part of my paid membership but I decided to share them here on YouTube Just because these strategies are just too valuable to keep private my name is Preston I built a $15 million real estate portfolio I make over $400,000 per year and net profit for my short- ter rentals so that being said let's jop right into it all right we got Micah hydrick here thanks for taking the time man I know you've been crushing it with your business so I just want to you know hop on here to kind of do a breakdown of you know who you are we'll get through all the numbers and all that here in a second but U before we get into all that if you want to just introduce yourself Che a little bit about your journey who you are and we'll take it from there my name is michah hydrick name of my company is homes so basically I started earlier or later in last year I guess currently manage one property that went live in February this year I officially began with air beam Arbitrage signing up for the Launchpad in September 23 and then upgraded to the road map in November of the same year and I found Preston just kind of going through

1:17 Instagram I saw one of his kind of short videos inviting to participate in a workshop and during that video he just kind of explained some of the same things that I felt like in life that wanted to accomplish and be like financially free and be there for the more time with the family and stuff like that is very aligned with what I have been looking for trying to figure out a way to get the cash flow to start that all I don't normally go for those but this was time I did pausing there and thanks for you know kind of preparing all this is super helpful for people that are you know watching this so when it comes to you know you saying that you know you usually don't go for things like this so do you have kind of like a background in entrepreneurship whether that's like through your parents family or was this just something that was never really on your radar and like you know the video that that you were referencing that was kind of the the Gateway into diving into something like this yeah for sure entrepreneurship does have a influence on our family my parents started a Paintball Park actually in Houston Texas a while back and so they they grew up to like three or four different areas and it it was going pretty well and he partnered with one of his friends but left it to do other things but so there there has been some entrepreneurship my my brothers and I we always did entrepreneurial type things you know making paper stuff and selling it at school or buying candy on sale and then reselling it at school stuff like that so it has been a big impact in our lives and then especially in college I like had a research paper

2:34 where I studied the statistics and journal academic journals and stuff and wrote a report on how much time is actually spent in the average lifespan of like an American uh person and after realizing that like 30 years total of our life if you work a 95 from 18 to retirement isn't even with the people you love you know that really hit me hard so at the end of college I was like you know what I need to set up a system that brings me in cash flow to be able there money money to be able to pay for the liabilities of life and the bills of life and stuff while still having the time and the freedom that I want and so ever since I graduated college I had to get a job still but I was still looking out and I was still coming up with ideas my brother and I we actually started two other companies that both failed uh in Amazon FBA and then we did a true Drop Shipping Company trying to sell fireplaces and that didn't work either so I had kind of just like started denying or not denying ignoring all the different things you see on Instagram Facebook that's like hey here's C how you can make it in stocks here's how you can do it buying you know five houses in two years and all this stuff and but then I just I don't know I I go with my gut a lot of time and I saw your video and it just appeared trustworthy and stuff so I just felt like that was a good move so yeah I mean that's interesting because we have similar backgrounds where you know I was the same thing I start tried to start a clothing company Drop Shipping Amazon not to say like these things everything

3:51 does work right it just all comes down to like your personality how much time you're willing to commit how much Capital all that stuff so so I mean I'm sure we'll talk about that here in a little bit but what what do you feel like you know this business in particular like why why do you feel like you were able to turn this into something successful a big part of it is like I very much get nervous with new people so like there isn't too much sales that goes behind it and you don't have to be like face to face on the doorstep right so that was a a really big one for me because a lot of businesses you start you really have to you have to like start that initiate that rapport with people and so being like an introvert SL shy and all that stuff this one was an easier thing to do cuz it's over call or like the listing I got we'll talk about more but that was through Facebook so I didn't even have to you know know talk to the person over the phone call and so it that was actually one of the big reasons why I thought this went well for me and then but once I do have that initial connection established I just talk to people like they've been my friends for a really long time and it helps me mitigate some of that nervousness and so moving forward with the company that's how I was able to do it pretty easily and without hesitation all right so for the first Airbnb Market we wanted our first one to be in the city we lived we understood that that might mitigate a little bit of potential profit but it was more just like you know kind of that nervousness of like not really knowing how it's going but that was a choice that we wanted to date on personally that way because of our personality right because of our character and how we how we work so we did choose Houston which has potential there are a lot of

5:09 people who are doing it here but it definitely depends on which which part of Houston and stuff after deciding Houston and then looking at all the other areas around what I really got stuck on for like a month and a half was the analysis paralysis yeah that that sucked yeah and I I think especially you know when it comes to something like this where there's so many different markets out there that could work right and so you're like okay and I think fomo I feel like from more than any other business that I've tried there's more fomo in trying to select the perfect market and heads up like there is no such thing as a pro a perfect Market but like there's no more fomo than in this business in particular just because there's so many different markets you can go after so how did you eventually and you said for a month and a half you're kind of stuck on that how did you finally overcome that yeah that's a great question super simple actually and it's super hard to do but I had to trust that if the numbers are there you just do it right I think you you mentioned it a few times throughout your your classroom videos I just remember someone was saying you would just follow the numbers if the numbers are there you just you're going to be a part of those of those numbers so at the end of the day uh the region the neighborhood I picked the numbers were there the potential was there it all worked out the equations the you know the the calculator and everything it was just a matter of just moving forward and so I just had to make a conscious decision no matter how scary it was or risky I thought it was or whatever the other excuses or reasons were I just had to go

6:27 and I think think you said something really important there a lot of people think that you know you're just going to put all your chips on red or black that's not what mik is talking about here he's talking about making the calculated decision so he did all the upfront work and then of course like there's going to be some risk involved right even if you do thousands of hours of research but he just knew that you know he's just going to trust the process trust the numbers and then just take that that take that leap of faith and then you know eventually you know it worked out um and obviously we'll kind of Deep dive into the numbers here in a bit but just to you know kind of for people that are on the fence about anything whether that's asking the girl out or you know starting a business there's always some sort of risk involved but you know eventually you just have to take that calculated risk and just you know move forward with it I I think you know the next part is you know how did you you know do this like how did like the research go when it comes to selecting the property and then also you know talking to the landlords that's something that a lot of people get hung up on as well so if you want to talk about that basically the research itself wasn't too bad I just picked areas around kind of where we lived and then some that I knew were more touristy like galon towards galston we even looked at like maybe College Station cuz there's a lot of things throughout the year that happen and especially sports stuff there's a lot of alumni that we know that comes for A&M and stuff they have a huge alumni base you know we looked at all those we really just followed how the how your videos were in doing the research plugging it in the numbers seeing what came out of it and then at the end of the day we decided on

7:44 oh yeah so we looked at Zillow looked at realtor.com I put all those filters in for rent and everything and and put our budget and I can't tell you how many times I researched the same darn region or neighborhood over and over again part of that analysis par in the same homes comparing the same and that was a lot of the time wasting that happened but we did we just followed and we did and at the end of the day we for my first one I definitely was nervous to start making phone calls so like straight up I took the Facebook Market messaging approach which you do we you have a video on that too but so I saw that and I was like you know what I I can't handle talking to someone so I'm just going to actually start messaging people and I don't know I just got super lucky it was literally the first message I sent 5 minutes later he messaged me back I think that was an outlier for sure that does not happen normally from what I understand and we just kind of hit it off from there right off the bat he was just like yeah no that sounds like a cool like an interesting idea let's let's talk about it more come over love that and you know a lot of people might be like oh you were lucky but you know Micah put himself out there and you know I I'm a firm believer and that you create your own luck right you're not going to Get Lucky by just sitting there and running a bunch of numbers you're going to Get Lucky by actually putting yourself out there and putting in the action which is what M did you know sounds like the landlord that you first contacted seemed open about it every single deal that you go through there's always some sort of you know things that you have to

9:00 overcome right like objections and stuff so what did you do like how did that conversation go from you know that beginning conversation to when you were able to finally you know negotiate and finalize all the agreements there were definitely a few hiccups and I got them listed in a couple other slides few barriers but the main thing was the the timeline Crunch and he was like leaving to buy another house but essentially he had to stay in the house because they hadn't moved out it was just this weird thing of timing and essentially I just had to negotiate a little bit and we had agreed on like you know the rent price and the security deposit and all that stuff and in one of your videos you're like you know get a lower security deposit if you negotiate this and so I we had done that but then I was like hold on to SEC like if you're starting the lease but you're going to stay in it for it was like a week or two or something I can't even remember exactly but it was just really weird and and he wanted to stay in the home so he could get everything moved out because of the closing date for his house his new house anyway so I was just like you know what here I'll just what if I you know do a normal security deposit I essentially just negotiated that was my overcoming was negotia the the price and so that way he moved out on the date that the lease started but the biggest barrier was he didn't feel comfortable cuz I was just kind of upfront and honest about it not that you're not if you don't say it but I just from the beginning is what I mean like I brought it all up essentially and said was like you know this is my first house I've run other

10:16 companies before but not like an Airbnb or real estate type company so that's what he was really nervous about and so we went back and forth on on that and at the end of the day what it came to was just essentially I agreed to put my personal name on the lease alongside the company as the financial responsibility party the contingency was if you know it failed or whatever and the company wasn't bringing in the revenue to pay that I would pay personally out a pocket but that all the liability and stuff would obviously be in the company I don't know if that makes sense yeah that makes sense so you're just basically just being a financial guarantor essentially for for the BS yeah makes sense there were a few big mistakes because we got like we had that we had those barriers but at the end of the day we actually got along really well our families like got along and everything and so there was this kind of trust that was established and there were some verbal agreements made so like my big thing is like if I could go back I get everything everything in writing everything in the contract basically it pushed back and these were some of some of the barriers that I was talking about earlier pushed back the listing about 3 weeks a few extra bucks out of pocket to kind of clean up and fix things that he didn't like the day we were supposed to move in was like February 3rd the Saturday nothing was clean they had moved everything but they didn't vacuum they didn't wipe down they didn't repaint nothing and so that set us back I hired people because he wouldn't technically he wasn't liable in the

11:32 contract like all this stuff and so I also trusted them and they said that everything was working fine they just Reven renovated replaced the heater replaced this this and that but at the end of the day that was not 100% true maybe with a lot of the main stuff but there were like the pool heater like that has a leak in it so not only am I using even more gas I'm using even more water stuff like that there were those barriers and that was a lot more money out of pocket but at the end of the day it it did work out we got it we got it sorted out and the landlord was the one that drafted the rental agreement so I just would have been more if I had known you know had more experience I would have been more involved and Hands-On and in all that getting writing yeah I think that's a huge one um you know no matter how nice the guy seems or how many promises they make over the phone or messages you have to make sure to get everything in writing which is you know something that you've learned and you'll you use for future properties moving forward I'm sure if you want to just go on I know you know the next thing we want to talk about is just like the design stuff what your budget was how you know you were able to coordinate all that Etc we just hired a friend who has a degree in interior design everything was pretty much from Amazon and Ikea per her recommendation to infer the entire house and the outside fire pit deck pool was all about 15,000 uh so we went more definitely on the budget friendly side we did splurge on a couple things but nothing major you know it's pretty big property so 15,000 for all that stuff and then having that interior design

12:49 person is is key especially in this market where you have to have properties that stand out and so I'm I'm assuming you're going to be showing some of the pictures of your listing here in a little bit right so after you watch through this maybe we can just you know share the screen of you know some of the pictures of what your property looks like so basically when it came to creating enhancing the Airbnb I really just followed Preston's videos as much as I could uh to do the description and a couple other like summaries and stuff I did chat GPT uh just put in like the info and then I tweaked it a little bit for the photographer I I'm just a networker too like when it comes to like business stuff and so like everyone I did for and I'll talk about those a little later too but handyman cleaners the photographer you know interior designer like we just went over all those people were who who I've networked with over the last uh year or two years um so the photographer is actual real estate photographer on the side and he's someone I work with so we just hired him you know discounted of course and just like interior designer to be able to maximize and optimize our input on that financially the property is about 30 minutes away we moved in we moved it all in set it up all our on on our own like I said we wanted to be more Hands-On we wanted to see it moving forward we don't I don't think we really care but for this first one we just wanted to see it all in person physically so to do the cleaning we h people we know from our congregation and our religion and then the landlord specifically only wanted contractors working on his house I did

14:06 have his contractors I did have a handyman that like our family excited family used but then he was like hey I need to do it unless you want to pay out of pocket so that was how that worked how was up gone with the the landlord's handyman is there any issues there or do you feel like they they've been pretty good no definitely and it's caused a few barriers I would highly recommend getting that and writing as well like a timeline on when repairs when things need to be installed or replaced or whatever they get to it but the turnaround time is way too long and I've actually had a few issues with like guests because of the turnaround time yeah again kind kind of goes back to get everything in writing leave nothing to the chance right and you know just going by off what the landlord says um I think that's super important just to make sure everyone everything's on the same page it is a little bit tedious at first but once you have everything in writing at the very beginning then it just you know we'll make sure that everything else is streamlined um oh totally worth it yeah yeah so good lessons there all right so we got M's property pulled up here so if you want to just kind of walk through you know maybe whether that's your ideas or your interior designer ideas on you know why you put the things that you did and you take you from there so here's our first picture it's the it's picture of the pool in the spot we got cornhole on the side too just as like kind of an accent to try and you know make it a little bit more exciting we're going to go back in actually and retake some of these photos but we were just trying to get it in place in time for the the movement and everything but in the

15:23 meantime it does what we need and everybody has that's contacted us says that it looks fun and exciting and inviting so has been good the interior designer recommended these she originally wanted six but I thought that that was too many so we just brought it down to four here's the living room fireplace TV it was really honestly the interior designer we ended up putting some green eray here just to give it again more of a comforting more inviting feeling everything that we got was from the interior designer all the recommendations and everything there were some things that so I don't know if you can tell there's some paneling along the walls and stuff she was trying to put a Decor like halfway but it comes off like a/4 inch so a lot of that we actually to we said hey let's not do that at the end of the day she agreed she was very open to getting suggestions and everything too which I am still open to getting suggestions and feedback as well like for example one of the things this trie he was supposed to take out before we even moved in and it's still there and then we got like you know warning for pools and stuff warning signs and everything there's an umbrella here now just kind of put up some of those Cafe lights and stuff Easter lights yeah this is a really cool property with you know you did a great job highlighting the backyard with the pool the spa in the interior looks super clean and inviting I mean really really great job on the on the property here appreciate it yeah I mean they did so the the owners renovated like and repainted and stuff like the colors and stuff so that was all them which they did a decent job and then we just came

16:40 in with the pressure but yeah it it came together at the end of the day so yeah let's talk about how you're able to you automate your business right just because when I first started off this business I was just like man I don't know how I'm going to operationally run this business just because it's going to take me it's basically to turn into you know part-time to full-time job so what are some of the tools that you're using to be able to automate your business and we can just start you know going into what your occupancy rates and some of the numbers there as well I do everything as much as I can as recommended cuz that's what's worked so why not do it so I do use price Labs I do the dynamic pricing I use guesty I'm still trying to figure out the venmo interface it's a little different than Airbnb it's not as newbie friendly I don't know if that makes sense like you know Airbnb is very beginner friendly and stuff and so so we're going on the B most stuff but I have it linked really and then the guests have just been pretty good respectful and understanding I have my first bad guest that was a whole thing but once my cleaners though they they're moving so I will be using too I got the account set up and everything and I got someone on my team as a backup as well so once my cleaners are gone then I will be using Toro per Preston's recommendation again yeah so the what what does the busy season look like and then what's what's kind of like the slower season in your market for sure so busy season is definitely like March and then holidays in terms of like Thanksgiving Christmas and then in the summer so basically March because of spring breaks people come to visit their

17:57 families a lot and then head down to to galliston and they'll stay here and travel to galliston cuz it's only like an hour an hour and a half away and then during the holidays again it's it's a lot of visiting family slow months like April's pretty going to be pretty slow the fall month like school starts right September the end of August a little bit of October so there are going to be some slower months but the end it's interesting here here in here in Texas or at least Houston the end of April and the end of May have these spikes and I didn't realize this before and this is something I wish I had gone into in part of the research too is just to have that much of an edge on the numbers but weddings a ton of weddings happen like at the end of April and at the end of May so I did get a booking for two nights that's like I think it's like a $1,200 booking just because they're having a wedding here it sounds like you know the numbers pretty well as well you know when to expect the slow season so you're not freaking out like you know why not am I not getting any bookings right it's it's like us typically you know just a market related thing and then you can try to you know adjust your pricing to you know try to pick up a couple of days here and there but you know again it's all about you know managing the expectation and then you know you kind of like I like to always go back the 12-month aggregate so if the numbers from the last 12 months don't aren't meeting your expectations then you might have to you know figure out okay what what can you do to tweak things to maximize you know occupancy and also revenue or you know is it is something else related um so that's always good to kind of have like that

19:14 full 12mon picture before you know making like a rash decision on on something so yeah let's uh kind of move forward with the financial breakdown of just you know what it looked like for the month of March or you know what whatever you have prepared here for sure and I will say that the days that we were actually booked we did over our average daily rate almost every single night like that that kind of surprised me as well we were doing almost like 300 a night and our nightly average rate was 250 so that we were anticipating we did the numbers for so we grossed a little over 5,000 for the one month we were live we estimated about 4500 4,000 conservatively 4,500 and so that was pretty good turnaround the profit is zero but I I don't think that that is a long-term obviously we've only been live for one month and we had to cover you know February as well and the issues with the landlord all that stuff which is Lessons Learned so maybe not zero profit yeah that the numbers worked out that way but I fully anticipate that moving on will probably we'll bring in about 15 to two a month is what I'm estimating yeah and again definitely learning lessons you've only been live for you know a month or so so that's definitely you know things that you can use to move forward but you know now that you've had some guests you know you seem like March was a pretty strong month you're getting those reviews in and then that's going to ultimately help boost your listing for when the summer months come along your you know your listing will be humming along and so you know obviously I'm sure you're excited about that here oh yeah 100% and one thing I did too is like friends and

20:31 family I would offer you know them to go stay the night and stuff so that they could leave reviews obviously they have to go stay the night but and and be honest about what they thought about the house and stuff like that so so yeah let's let's see what's uh you know what are you're looking at for the end of the year and you know with this business in general like what we what are we looking at here so I'm hoping to have about four properties total by the end of this year so three more bringing in about $88,000 total profits net profit planning to invest about 4 to 6 hours a week to get get to get the houses each Airbnb set up and then about a half hour to an hour per week maintaining that's what we're going for the end goal is I want to do that in order to accomplish this which I want to to leave my job I do plan to do it in three years just because there's a lot of benefits with the job that I signed on for so the the job I signed on for gave me a lot of like great bonuses and and stock options and stuff like that so there's probably too much detail for anybody but I will be staying with my job for those benefits but I do plan and if I didn't have these I would 100% quit at the end of the year when I'm bringing in 8,000 a month cuz that way I have the time with my family I can cover my bills and I don't you know I don't need that anymore so that's my plan go man you know before we wrap up here appreciate you know all the insights breaking everything down um anything else you you know you want to you know end with here my big things honestly that I would just say is make the decisions like give yourself timelines

21:49 make decisions don't get stuck and then follow as perfectly as you can every single video all the classroom teachings like at the end of the day I I did skip a couple things because I well personal life stuff going on and so I thought you know I could conserve time here or there but really just take the extra time that's where and you're going to get them you're going to get more money out of it at the end of the day because I I wish I had done that and I know that that now and that's what I'm going to do moving forward but those are my big recommendations and suggestions awesome man well appreciate the time breaking everything down um best of luck with this property and your business you know excited to touch base with you seem like a hungry dude ready to you know make these real uh these goals of reality so looking forward to your journey and we'll talk to you soon man appreciate it thanks okay you m hey so if you're just tired of watching others succeed with airb beam and you're serious about building your own business me and my team can help you make that happen if you're interested you can shoot me a DM or you can click the link below to apply and we'll set up a time to chat about how we can work together to build your airb business and scale to $10,000 per month and Beyond link should be right below this video or again you can shoot me a DM talk to you soon