Table of Contents
Podcast Transcription
Sandy Mackay [00:00:49] Breakthrough Real Estate Investing Podcast Episode 39.
Rob Break [00:01:13] Hello and welcome to the Breakthrough Real Estate Investing podcast. We put this show together to inspire you and help you break through to the life that you want to live through the power of real estate investing. My name is Rob Break, and here with me is the co-host with the most Sandy Mackay.
Sandy Mackay [00:01:35] Happy to be here again. You come up with those lines beforehand or is that on the spot? My co-host with the most?
Rob Break [00:01:40] What’s that? It’s the co-host with the most
Sandy Mackay [00:01:44] It’s a new one I like it. Yeah.
Rob Break [00:01:46] Don’t get don’t get carried away. How are you doing?
Sandy Mackay [00:01:50] About the co in the area? Don’t worry. How are you doing? Fantastic man.
Rob Break [00:01:56] Good, good. I had an awesome time at the investor forum last weekend or the weekend before. Whenever it was, it was great again. They do a fantastic job with those. I mean, there is a ton of people out there learned a lot, got to talk with all kinds of cool people. And you know, Sandy, I’m pretty sure you know this, but I lined up a bunch of great guests for four upcoming shows, including Julie Broad and Stuff in our audience. So, I’m super excited about those two interviews coming up, so everyone be on the lookout for those as well and then set this one up at the investor forum. But today we have Glenn Carter, author, and real estate investor, on the show with us. How are you, Glenn?
Glenn Carter [00:02:40] I’m good. I’m good. How are you guys today?
Rob Break [00:02:42] Very good.
Sandy Mackay [00:02:43] Awesome. And it’s our first guest drive from Greg.
Rob Break [00:02:46] First guest from Quebec. That’s right. Montreal, right?
Glenn Carter [00:02:49] Yes, absolutely. That’s that. I didn’t realize you. You only stuck with Ontario.
Rob Break [00:02:54] No, we don’t. I didn’t know. I didn’t
Glenn Carter [00:02:56] realize you guys were discriminatory
Rob Break [00:02:58] and well, you know.
Glenn Carter [00:03:00] Well, listen, guys, I’m a longtime listener to a number of real estate podcasts. But when I heard about the Canadian real estate one a few years back, I almost did a backflip. So, thank you, guys. I’ve been a longtime listener and I’m especially happy to be listening tonight because otherwise they’d be watching the big primaries in the U.S. and I’m just sick and tired of hearing about Donald Trump. Hmm. Mm hmm.
Rob Break [00:03:23] Unless it’s a Saturday Night Live skit, I’m not really all that interested either.
Glenn Carter [00:03:27] Yeah, they do a really good job at that.
Rob Break [00:03:29] They do. You know, when we first started out, Sandi and I, it was more the idea was more of a local thing. And then we quickly realized that we well, the show actually caught on pretty quickly. So. So that was the incentive to push things out a little further. It didn’t seem right to just be talking local when we do enough of our local talk for sure to, though still,
Sandy Mackay [00:03:55] well, we’ve had we’ve had some B.S. people. We’ve had Kobach now. Have we had like in Alberta one I don’t even think we have.
Rob Break [00:04:03] No, but Stephanie Rodeo and I’ve got another guy lined up who runs a real estate investing club out in Winnipeg, so he’s coming up to Ben Acco Davis.
Sandy Mackay [00:04:15] Well, we’ve hit up Ontario everywhere, right? So, I guess it’s time to move on.
Rob Break [00:04:19] Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. There’s nothing more to learn from anyone out here. OK, so today’s tip of the day. I know we’ve said this before, but I think it’s worth saying again because I’ve started just practicing this and actually putting it into my life, and that is to reward yourself for jobs. Well done. We don’t do enough of that. I think it’s pretty easy to get caught up in work. There’s always something else that needs to be done. But instead of pushing on right away, which I tend to do a lot of need to take a step back and reward yourself, give yourself something and make some fun out of life, right, sandy?
Sandy Mackay [00:05:01] Absolutely. Yeah. OK, now we’re just talking, what are we going to do to celebrate this Flipboard? We’re just about to list this property we’re flipping. Really, it’s been a long one, so we’re getting ready to celebrate St. on what we’re going to do yet, but I’m excited to do something.
Rob Break [00:05:17] Well, give me an example of what you’ve done in the recent past. Anything.
Sandy Mackay [00:05:22] Kind of depends how big it is, I suppose. I mean, we’re going to go crazy. You’ll have a night out or something.
Rob Break [00:05:27] Oh, yeah, I know that’s great. That counts, right? And if it’s something you wouldn’t normally do or you’re doing it specifically for that, and that’s great. What about you, Glenn? What have you done lately to reward yourself?
Glenn Carter [00:05:40] Well, my wife and I have two young kids, so the biggest reward we get is pretty much the same as saying, you get a night out, maybe go check out a movie, but that that does wonders because we don’t get to do that very often.
Rob Break [00:05:53] Now was that in celebration of the book that you just released?
Glenn Carter [00:05:57] Yeah, yeah. That or, you know, a promotion my wife just got or, you know, whatever we like to go out and have fun on the town where we’re actually we live in Ottawa. But my full-time job was in Montreal, so I commute back and forth. So, I guess you could consider me still, you know, half Ontario.
Rob Break [00:06:13] Oh, I see, okay. OK, so you’re crossing borders every day.
Glenn Carter [00:06:18] Yeah, well, Quebec has the cheap beer, so. That’s the best way to do it.
Rob Break [00:06:25] So then I guess you have to get home with it or do you just you just wind up spending the night?
Sandy Mackay [00:06:33] I just for one
Rob Break [00:06:34] or the other. Right? Okay. So yeah, no, that’s our tip of the day. Reward yourself. Try to remember that everybody. It’s a good practice to get into. I know it’s a really tough one sometimes, but well worth it once you actually do it a few times and realize that you’re working for something, not just for the next, for the next goal in your business. Cindy, you want to talk about our free gift that we have on our website.
Sandy Mackay [00:07:05] You got a bit of housekeeping, I suppose. Yeah. I always want to recommend people to head over, break through. All right. Podcast IRCA. Pick up our free report there. Seven Freedom Time you can trigger in your property starting right now. Some great advice on their other amens properties. How to set them up properly So you’re getting some time back in your life and some freedom and also want to recommend everyone to head over to iTunes, as always. Give us a five-star review. Always appreciate that it helps us get this content out to more people throughout Canada, and that’s our goal here. So, we’d always appreciate if someone can do that
Rob Break [00:07:42] and actually got an email asking how someone can leave a comment not on iTunes. If they weren’t on iTunes and they wanted to leave a comment and that is, go to our website, just click on the episode you want to make a comment on and there’s a spot right there. Just leave us any of your feedback. Mm-Hmm. Go real quick. Since you just said you were finishing up a flip 180 and tell us a little bit about what you’ve got going on, as well as that right now.
Sandy Mackay [00:08:09] OK, well, I guess, you know what people can if people are listening, they want to add me on Facebook or something and see it. We got some folks up there now starting to creep outs. We just did some staging. It’s going to be listed within the next few days. So maybe if you’re listening to this now, it might be almost too late, actually. But you can probably still see some photos up there and it’s cool, really nice property. We went kind of crazy with it. Probably the biggest renovation we’ve done on a on a flip so far right in Hamilton downtown area near Gage Park. If anyone knows that and it’s a single family, bought it for two. Twenty-three. Probably going to list that for sixty-four fifty-nine guys. It’s a total got everything we spent, so we’ll be close to 150 all in.
Rob Break [00:08:56] Oh wow. OK, yeah, that sounds like a substantial, substantial renovations. Good job. How so? Now, how do you what is your Facebook name?
Sandy Mackay [00:09:09] I think my normal name. OK, well, I don’t know. Sandy Mackay, people should be able to find it just Google near M.A.C K-Y. That’s true. That’s the one thing everyone misses, right?
Rob Break [00:09:22] OK. Yeah, I’ve got three rental projects on the go right now, so my head is spinning off and I’m hoping to rack up at least one of them up this week. So that would be fantastic. And just selling a bunch of real estate, having a good time. Well, all right. Let’s get into this interview. I’m very excited about today’s guest, Glen Carter, who is a real estate investor from Ottawa and Montreal. He has written two books Secrets of the Sharing Economy and Secrets of the Sharing Economy Part two, which has just been released. Glenn has five investment properties, but his main focus is the sharing economy and how landlords can use it in their business or to just make some extra income. Glen is a family man investor, full time employee in that order. He makes side income through various sharing economy platforms, real estate, and small businesses. Glenn has learned from the best entrepreneurs in the world that you don’t need silver bullets to become wealthy, just discipline and action. Welcome to the show gone.
Glenn Carter [00:10:25] Thanks for having me, guys.
Rob Break [00:10:27] So what is the sharing economy, Glenn?
Glenn Carter [00:10:31] This is a tricky one. There are so many misconceptions out there, and there’s so much media attention now surrounding it. Some good, some bad, but it’s really easy to get distracted. Before I get into exactly what I feel it is, you know, my philosophy is that, you know, the sharing economy is here to stay. There’s going to be growing pains and this is good. But in the meantime, we want to show people how to profit from it. So, you I mean, you probably heard all the synonyms for sharing economy. There’s, you know, access economy, collaborative economy sharing marketplaces. But really, in its simplest form, the sharing economy is the entirety of hundreds of online websites that enable people to turn otherwise unproductive assets into income producing ones. So, this includes their homes, their cars, parking spots, clothes, consumer items, hobbies, whatever. It’s about finding value in wasted or underused capacity. So, everyone’s heard of Uber, Airbnb, TaskRabbit and others. These are all sharing economy platforms. And interestingly, in a vote of confidence, Merriam-Webster added the sharing economy this year to their online edition. And I have the definition here. Just look. Yes, here we go. Sharing economy and they define it as economic activity that involves individuals buying or selling, usually temporary access to goods or services, especially as arranged through an online company or organization. Now these companies or organizations are essentially websites that act as intermediaries between consumers. For instance, Airbnb’s business revolves around linking up travelers with owners who engage in a transaction for short term access to that property. So that’s really the academic definition of sharing economy. What I’ve argued is that the sharing economy is really the fundamental shift between the scarcity principle to one of abundance. That is, how can we capitalize on abundance on the abundance of a consumer generation? So, the old mentality of excess consumption is now moving more to excess consumption? So instead of owning a car, you can use one only when you need it. Instead of owning a thousand consumer or retail items, you can rent them from others. Instead of paying for a taxi or hotel, you can leverage the excess of others. So, this new business model is not about sharing at all. It’s really about access. And really, business is booming. There’s the I’m sure a lot of people have heard who are up to speed on the sharing economy. The PricewaterhouseCoopers estimate that the value of the sharing economy sector by 2025 is going to grow to 335 billion, and that same number for 2013 was fifteen billion. So, you can just imagine that growth. And I just read in the Huffington Post actually this morning that that the sharing economy is being labeled the Fourth Industrial Revolution. So, I mean, that’s a fancy definition. Next explanation of this macro shift. You know, we have chosen to term the sharing economy. But really, what does this mean for us when we bring it down to the micro level? According to number of economic studies, the sharing economy is paying out tens of millions of dollars every day to people just like us when this number is growing exponentially. So, my goal is really to teach people how to take their slice of that pie and really stay away from those that in the whole macro academic study of this economic shift.
Rob Break [00:13:55] So now I have just sort of an outside overview of what is going on with sites like Uber. Let’s say in my understanding of it, is that you more or less just OK, today I’m going to drive into Toronto from here in Oshawa where I am. So, I go on to Uber and somebody says, Hey, I need a ride from Oshawa to Toronto today, so that I can say, Alright, well, I’ll do that. Is that generally what someone would do?
Glenn Carter [00:14:24] Yeah. Well, it’s typically more frequent than that. I mean, it’s, you know, there’s riders and drivers and this is just talking about Uber here. And on that platform, the riders and drivers have their pre-established. Ratings and feedback, so they have a rating system, so that will inform the decision both way by drivers and riders on who will drive. But yeah, you would. You would open your Uber app if you need a ride anywhere, just like you would call a taxi. And Uber’s algorithm will automate the fare estimate, and in all, the money will be exchanged via the platform. So, there’s no physical money handed between the driver or the rider. Yeah. So, it just it’s just basically a platform that connects someone with a vehicle who’s willing to share that with others to someone who needs a ride somewhere.
Rob Break [00:15:14] So that’s pretty interesting to me. But does it replace an income, or would it be more useful? Or just if I happen to be going somewhere and just looked it up and thought, OK, make a couple extra dollars driving somebody there while I’m on my way? Or would it make sense to say, all right, I’m going to, I’m going to work as an Uber cab for the day and replace my job?
Sandy Mackay [00:15:35] I think, yeah.
Glenn Carter [00:15:36] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Sandy, it could certainly be both. I think very few people would consider that their full-time employment because of its flexibility, you know, you can just turn on your app and say, I’m ready to drive for two hours. People use it as supplemental income. So, I wouldn’t. I would say that the majority of Uber drivers definitely aren’t full time. Obviously, if you get into bigger markets like, you know, New York City, where you can actually make like 90 K, you’re driving for Uber, then there’s a lot of people do a full time. But yeah, it’s definitely both San Diego interrupted.
Sandy Mackay [00:16:10] You know, I think I saw I think I read an article. I didn’t read the whole article. I think maybe you saw the headline maybe a month ago, somebody wrote, a guy’s
Rob Break [00:16:19] sorry, go ahead.
Sandy Mackay [00:16:23] There’s nothing about a guy in the US. I don’t know where exactly the number was like it was a million plus. I think he was making as an Uber driver, and I don’t think it was just himself. Obviously, I think maybe he had some sort of a team aspect going within Uber like he had employees to himself, kind of thing. I don’t know if he got a call. I don’t know. I didn’t read the whole article I should have, but it was interesting.
Glenn Carter [00:16:42] I’ve heard people do that for not ridesharing, but car sharing where they’ll have a fleet of vehicles that they that they rent out and sort of make a small business out of it.
Rob Break [00:16:52] Well, everyone has heard of Airbnb and Uber, but what other platforms are out there that people should know about?
Glenn Carter [00:17:00] There’s literally hundreds and every day, you know, we see something materialize new in the sharing economy space. I was just reading an article the other day and I got beyond the headline, and it was one. It was it was one called air pump. And it’s actually a sharing economy, platforms where you just share your bathroom. So, if someone’s in your area and you’re sharing your bathroom, they could pay you a dollar or two dollars to use your bathroom. So, I think I think we’ve gone a little far with this, but like I said, there’s literally hundreds of these platforms out there, but there’s major categories that we’ve tried to try to break them down into. And these are actually chapters in the books you mentioned earlier. But I mean, just a few of the major ones. I mean, you mentioned Airbnb, so that’s a part of the broader home sharing category in the sharing economy. There’s office space rental, there’s ride sharing with Uber, and Lyft would be a part of there’s clothing, there’s art artistic platforms such as cargo. There’s ones for animal lovers, one called dog vacay, another one called Globacom. Or you can, you know, basically pets. It was tasking services like TaskRabbit. That’s the biggest one, but there’s one based out of Toronto called Ask for Task. I’m not sure you’ve heard of it. There’s meal sharing, there’s car sharing, there’s parking, there’s delivering goods, there’s travel, tutoring, cycling and the list goes on. There’s all of these. And within each of these categories, there’s at least, you know, half a dozen websites that operate in that space.
Rob Break [00:18:34] So I would have called it Air B, M and P, but that’s just me. What was so those so the travel one, what?
Glenn Carter [00:18:43] How would that work? Yeah. So, for travel, there’s a couple of platforms in there, but our favorite is one called viable and you act as a local tour guide in your particular area and you list what they call experiences on their websites, which are essentially tours. And people will book through the viable platform. You and you will take them out on a tour. They’ll pay you; it’ll go through the viable platform and then the rating goes both ways. Again, like I mentioned on Whooper, where the tourists will get rated and the tour guides will get rated,
Rob Break [00:19:16] this is pretty crazy. There’s lots going on.
Sandy Mackay [00:19:18] And what got you so interested in the sharing economy? Glenn, how did you get so involved in it?
Glenn Carter [00:19:24] Just basically being a user and seller on it? I mean, I have a lot of experience with Airbnb. And Rob mentioned you guys, it was, you know, originally and still am a real estate investor. So, the Airbnb concept really made sense to me and I. Now properties solely for the purpose of renting it on Airbnb and doubled and sometimes tripled my possible monthly income through Airbnb. So that’s I got my start through Airbnb, but I’ve worked on TaskRabbit as well, and I’ve been a user of dozens of sharing economy platforms. So, but I really, really, really started with Airbnb.
Rob Break [00:20:01] Well, that’s interesting. So, you walk us?
Sandy Mackay [00:20:03] Oh yeah, I was going to say the same thing. Go ahead. Well, that was one of my next questions. Coming up was how landlords could incorporate the sharing economy in the business, and I think Airbnb would be a big part of that most likely. Walk us through what a type of property you’d be looking for to do that and how you go through the whole process.
Glenn Carter [00:20:21] Yeah, that’s a very good question. So, for yeah, that’s sort of two separate questions I’ll start with. Start with the Airbnb one. So, for us, we purchased two properties that were solely for renting out on Airbnb. One was in Orlando, Florida, and the other one was in Montreal. And really what you’re looking for, most people are booking through Airbnb to go on vacation or to. Now it’s becoming a lot more popular with business travel, so you have to make sure like if you’re not in it like you can’t be in the suburbs, you have to be in, you know, either a downtown core or near a certain tourist destination. Like in Orlando, we weren’t in Orlando. We were, you know, five miles from Disney. Yes, it was, you know, technically be a suburb, but just the fact that we were near Disney. So, you really have to be in that prime location that people are going to want to book. Because when you go on Airbnb and you know, Sam, you know, I’m going to San Francisco and a map, it’ll pull up a map of, you know, 10000 Airbnb listings. You know, you got to stand out, so you really have to be placed strategically. So, I would say that’s the most important thing for if you’re going to if you’re going to buy a rental property solely for the purposes of rent to get it on your baby.
Sandy Mackay [00:21:35] Now, how do you like, is there any restrictions on that as far as properties are buying? Like, are you buying freehold properties, condos, anything specific in that way?
Glenn Carter [00:21:45] Yeah. Well, the one in Florida was freehold and the one in Montreal was a condo. So yes, it hasn’t happened to me, but there are a lot of condo boards that ban short term rental and then you’re sort of hoop. So, if you have to make sure that you check the condo bylaws, and if it’s a new development, you’ve got to be pretty certain that they’re going to ban it at some point once they set up the condo board. So, you got to be very careful about that, certainly. But if you can get like, you know, some kind of terrace home or, you know, a townhome or something like that, then it typically is OK. But yeah, with condos, you definitely have to make sure you ask that question before you buy it about the whether they allow short term rentals. Mm-Hmm.
Sandy Mackay [00:22:32] And what kind of money are you looking at like? Is it something where you could make substantially more as opposed to renting it out? You know, a typical month type of strategy. How’s that look?
Glenn Carter [00:22:44] Yeah, it’s a great question. The biggest thing is that it’s a lot more work, so there’s a lot more tenant turnover. A lot of people think that, you know, it’s a lot riskier. But as I mentioned before, with the ratings systems that these platforms have developed, they’re really dependent on them. So, they put so much work and effort into them that, you know, when I get a request from an Airbnb renter, I can see exactly what, you know, 20 other landlords or Airbnb hosts set above them. So, I can be pretty darn sure that they’re that they’re going to be good if they have, you know, a five star rating from 20 different people. So that’s not the biggest risk, the biggest risk. The biggest challenge is the turnover, the amount of work you have to do. You know, you have to spend at least an hour a day responding to inquiries, you know, communicating with guests because they’re going to have questions before they come, you know, showing up to give them the keys if you don’t have some sort of key exchange system. So, it is an it’s a lot more involved. You get a clean or hire cleaners and organize that. So it’s a lot more involved, but certainly a lot more profitable are one in Florida. Every month, we’ve at least doubled what we could get for a long term renter. We have neighbors who are renting theirs out long term for twelve hundred a month, and we always get well over $2000 a month, sometimes more again. But it’s a lot more involved with the Montreal one. We’re right downtown, so the summer months are just fully booked. And I remember last year, August, we made over three thousand dollars for a really small studio in downtown Montreal. You know, if I rented that out long term, I’d get maybe a thousand if I was lucky in the fall months. And, you know, in the lower season, there’ll be less. But you know, in the lower seasons, we’re still getting about two thousand bucks. So. And I know we’ve been we’ve been lucky and we’ve picked it’s about picking the right spot because if you pick the right spot, you’re really not going to have many challenges because people are just going to pop it up or Airbnb’s growing substantially. They have more bookings. I think I read a couple weeks ago that after Starwood or Marriott bought Starwood, they’re now the biggest hotel chain in the world and they have 1.1 million rooms globally. Airbnb has two million, so they’re almost double. If you buy right and you advertise right. Take good pictures. You’re really you’re almost guaranteed to earn substantially more than you would get for a long term renter.
Rob Break [00:25:07] So aside from Airbnb, I know you mentioned that you can use a bunch of other ones. Why don’t you just pick a few of those and explain to everyone what they are and what the kind of money that you can make off of each of the different ones you’re going to talk about?
Glenn Carter [00:25:22] Sure. Well, I mean, there’s ones you can use in your real estate business, but there’s also ones that you can use to earn supplemental income. I could start with the Supplemental Income. I mean, we’re the biggest ones. Obviously, Airbnb, Uber, we like TaskRabbit. That’s one where you can. You’re essentially completing someone else’s to do list, whether it’s handyman work, yard work, painting anything to do with the trades. And you can even do online tasks with TaskRabbit. So that’s a good way to earn money. Or even if you’re a real estate investor to hire contractors because you have all that social proof of how they’ve done in the past with all the ratings that they’ve done. Another new one that we really like for both incorporating into your real estate business and earning money, and it’s a good one for realtors too. It’s called We Go Look, it’s basically an inspector type platform where they will dispatch what they call their lookers to go, look at something that someone selling. So if you’re trying to purchase something remotely like it’s a vehicle or property or land or, you know, big ticket consumer item, you hire someone to this platform who lives in that general vicinity. They’ll travel to that site, take pictures, fill out a report with all the questions that you’ve asked them to ask. They’ll talk to the seller and then they’ll submit that report back to you to see. There’s so many. I mean, really, there’s parking sharing platforms. There’s the biggest one in the world. It’s called Just Park, where if you’re a landlord and you have a bunch of extra parking spaces, you know you have a multifamily residence or something, you can rent out those spaces through to the just park platform. I know in Toronto there’s a great service called Rover Parking, and it’s a it’s a similar idea to just park where you can, you know, it’s parking sharing a website where you can rent out a spare parking spots in the Toronto area and surrounding area, I believe. And I think that’s where over parking icon, that’s a great one. There’s another big category in the sharing economy now is delivering goods is very similar to Uber, where you can turn on your app and someone will show up and deliver you whatever you want. You know,
Rob Break [00:27:31] it’s often called
Glenn Carter [00:27:33] that one’s called Postmates, but I’ve got to figure it out. And if you do,
Rob Break [00:27:38] yeah, I got to figure it out here. OK, see you as we go, look to go, check out the property that you’re going to buy to put on Airbnb, right? And so your place down in Florida, let’s say you get them to go check it out. You say, I want one that’s close to Disney. They then make sure that it’s good for use on Airbnb. So then they go, Look, they send you the pictures, the report, everything you decide to buy, use TaskRabbit to take care of all the turnover and all of the in between the rentals and then use Postmates to deliver the keys for you.
Glenn Carter [00:28:09] Turnkey.
Rob Break [00:28:11] You know, I love it. It’s all right there.
Glenn Carter [00:28:14] And actually, just to touch on like specifically what you can make like the amount of money you can make, it really depends on, you know, how many hours you work and what platforms you use. Drivers on Uber and Lyft earn approximately 19 bucks an hour. I was reading the other day, too, about Uber drivers in Toronto, and they picked March of 2015, for whatever reason. But in that month alone, Uber drivers in Toronto earned over $6 million in fares. The TaskRabbit average hourly rate is $40 an hour to put it on car sharing platforms. The biggest one is called Turo. It was formerly called RelayRides, but the average renter on that platform makes about 400 bucks a month for renting out their vehicle like you would with Avis or Hertz or another car rental service. The parking spot, one that I mentioned, I’m not sure about rover, but I know one just park. The average is $4 a day per parking spot that people get on the tube or tutoring websites. There’s the biggest one called Why isn’t tutors earn about 40 bucks an hour? And Airbnb’s trickier because it really depends on whether you’re renting out a room or your entire home. But if you’re just renting out a room in your home and you’re trying to rent it out full time. The average is about $700 a month and. If you’re trying to rent out your home, I mean, it really depends on, you know, the size of your home where it is and all that, but there’s actually a really good website called Air DNA Dot SEO, I believe. And you can actually put your city’s name. And then it will filter through all the Airbnb data and tell you the average that people earn in that particular city. It’s a really great, really great statistics website that if you’re thinking, Oh, Airbnb might work for me, how much can I earn? Check out DNA dot com. That’s a really good website.
Rob Break [00:30:12] Great. This is good info. You have written a couple of books you want to tell us about your books.
Glenn Carter [00:30:19] Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the opportunity. I’ve written two books, as you mentioned in the intro, both of which are on how people can make money in the sharing economy. I started writing Secrets of the Sharing Economy is one book, but quickly realized that it would be a thousand pages because of so many different websites. So I broken it down into several parts. The first part was released in August, and the second part was just released last month. And really, what the books are about are bringing all of these platforms together in a comprehensive way so people can pick and choose which ones best apply to their lifestyle. Part two of the secrets of sharing economy is available on Amazon. It’s ninety nine cents right now. It’s going to be bumped up to nine ninety nine shortly. And for listeners of the Breakthrough podcast, they can get the first book for free by going to our website, the casual capitalist dot com slash secrets, one that’s s e c r e s and the number one. Just go to that link and you’ll get the Free first book delivered to your email inbox.
Rob Break [00:31:21] Yeah, that was awesome, and I had to do that and thank you. You sent me the second book and then as I start reading the second one, it says, Hey, don’t read this book yet. Go read the first one first. Then I had to do that.
Glenn Carter [00:31:31] So that’s how we get you.
Rob Break [00:31:33] Yeah, that’s how you get us. But now everyone can get it for free. Who’s listening to this? It’s great. Thank you for that. Thank you. I appreciate you sharing all that. What would you say is the first step for somebody who’s looking to get started in the sharing economy?
Glenn Carter [00:31:48] Yeah, because this can be pretty overwhelming with all the different websites that you can tap into. So I usually suggest three things. The first one is a selfish one. You know, go check out our website. We’ve got a bunch of free resources to help get you started. Number two is Take our quiz. We have it’s like a personality quiz that will ask you questions about your lifestyle, and then it will tell you which sharing economy platform is best, best for you and your particular lifestyle and what you do on a on an average day. It’s about a 20 question yes or no. It takes about three minutes. That’s number two. And the best one out of all these three, if you don’t do the first two, we always suggest people become a user of the sharing economy before they become a seller. You know, if you’re thinking Airbnb, Uber or some other platform might interest you, then start using it. You know, talk with people who are selling in it, you know, take an Uber ride a dozen times. Talk with all the drivers, you know, because the big thing with Airbnb and Uber in San Diego alluded to it earlier that there’s regulations that might make your life miserable. So talk with talk with the sellers because every jurisdiction, especially when it comes to Uber, you know, for instance, in Montreal, Uber’s technically illegal as it is in most other cities. And just in 2015, they confiscated over 400 vehicles from drivers. But the flip side of that is that Uber is winning the PR battle because they’re actually paying for all the impound fees, all the legal fees for everyone who gets dinged by bike, by law in all municipalities, not just Montreal also. And they’ll even rent you out a car while your car is impounded so you can continue hoovering. Wow. Wow. So, it’s a bit of a middle finger to the municipalities. But yeah, no. So, you don’t get yourself into trouble because it is. The sharing economy is really the operating in this gray area right now. And we, you know, legislators haven’t really caught up. There’s some great work going on now in Ontario with Tim Hudak, and he’s got he’s got a private member’s bill to try and help governments figure out this whole sharing economy business and how can we regulate it so it’s safe for everyone and accepted. So yeah, it’s certainly become a user and in the particular platform, you want to start selling it before you start, sign it.
Rob Break [00:34:05] And then do you know what is that regulation entailed? Do you happen to know?
Glenn Carter [00:34:10] Yeah. Well, and your listeners can check it out. It’s opportunities in the sharing economy dossier. But Tim’s particular legislation focuses on four different categories the big ones like home sharing and ride sharing, and a couple of others. It’s trying to set a framework for which the discussion can start happening. How can municipalities and provinces start dealing with these businesses? Because really, no one really knows. Where to start, the provinces are looking at the municipalities and municipalities are looking at the provinces, and meanwhile, you know, the taxi lobbies are getting in fights with Uber drivers and it’s going on YouTube. So, it’s really it’s just a it’s just a starting point. So, we can set up a framework on how the discussion is going to happen because the discussion hasn’t even happened yet.
Rob Break [00:34:58] And I saw there was some kind of protest in Toronto not too long ago, which I saw in the news, probably roughly a month ago. I would say where they just parked on the street, got out of their cabs, and left them there.
Glenn Carter [00:35:12] Yeah, yeah. I mean, and they don’t do themselves any favors. I mean, I find I’m obviously biased, but you know, any major economic disruption brings with it. Opposition might think back to the advent of online shopping in the early 2000s, where everyone, you know, a lot of people said This is a dumb idea. No one’s going to buy anything virtually that they can’t see. It’s going to be a playground for fraudsters. But people started buying, buying anyway, and we’re in this early stage now with the sharing economy. People are afraid of change and constructive opposition is good. I mean, we don’t want to run away, run away sharing economy where you know, it’s just the wild west and there’s legitimate concerns. You know, for instance, when you’re thinking about, you know, liability insurance, these are really legitimate concerns that we need to talk about. But there’s great work being done on this, and we just need to keep talking about it. Mm hmm.
Sandy Mackay [00:36:07] Glen, Airbnb is going back a bit. First of all, you mentioned insurance. It’s up. There are liability. Does that affect insurance at all in any way when you’re buying these properties and renting them on Airbnb? Is everything the same?
Glenn Carter [00:36:21] It depends. For me, if I buy a property and I’m renting it and like, I’m buying it as an investment property, then the insurance is going to cover it. As you know, it’s a rental as a rental. If I’m buying a property and renting out a room. I’m not sure I would suggest everyone talked to their insurance providers because I’m not sure that you’re going to be provided now. All of these platforms and Airbnb is included. They have their own built in insurance liability, and it’s usually upwards of $1 million. So, if something happens, you can go through Airbnb, and I know people who have had have had to go through them and they’ve all had really good experiences. So hopefully that’s not the case for any of your listeners. But I mean, it’s really hard to say because you are operating in a gray area, you’re if you don’t have the proper insurance and something happens, then you could be liable.
Rob Break [00:37:16] Do you happen to know? I mean, you said that Uber’s covering all these costs for people that run into the issues with the impound and that kind of thing. Would you happen to know what kind of profits Uber is making?
Glenn Carter [00:37:28] Yeah, actually, they just released their profit statements for 2015, and it was actually very disappointing. It was only a billion dollars
Rob Break [00:37:39] that was disappointing to them.
Glenn Carter [00:37:40] That was disappointing because there’s some economic projections of what they were going to earn. This year were upwards of 10 billion, but they so aggressively expanded into new markets like Europe. And in China, the three biggest Uber cities now by drivers are Chinese cities. So, they did so much aggressive expansion into China and to Europe and paying all of these legal bills and stuff. And that’s not even the end of it. I mean, there’s the big Supreme Court, they’re not Supreme Court. There was it was a higher U.S. court. Now, you know whether, you know, sharing economy workers or contractors or employees, and they’re fighting strongly against that. So, Airbnb or Uber is a profit was $1 billion. Yeah, all
Rob Break [00:38:25] things considered; I think that sounds pretty good. How like, it’s not a very old company. How long has it been around?
Glenn Carter [00:38:31] I think it’s really starting to hit the stage in five years, but I think I think it’s been around under a different name. I’m not sure if it started as Uber, but anyway, it’s been around its it’s. I mean, it’s one of the, you know, the founders of the sharing economy basically say that
Rob Break [00:38:46] yeah, and we’re not here to focus on any single platform or any single service, really. But I was just interesting. I thought I would ask because if they’re covering all of these costs and like, sure, OK, I’d like to make $10 billion to you, but expanding at that level and in doing what they’re doing as far as covering all those costs and impound charges and all that stuff. Sounds pretty good.
Sandy Mackay [00:39:15] Sounds great. Yeah. Here’s Caribbean view on where do you buy your next property and focus on that being an Airbnb like, would that be your next purchase? It’s a good question. I’m doing it, I guess, is my question.
Glenn Carter [00:39:25] I wouldn’t keep doing it just because there’s only so many hours in the day. So having to know on Airbnb is sort of occupying that time just enough that I probably wouldn’t want to do it again. Now there are a lot of. Because Airbnb is becoming so popular this week, there’s a lot of middlemen, businesses developing. So, yeah, yeah, now you’re getting property management companies that are solely based on a virtual property management companies that will run your Airbnb listing. I think one’s called pillow once called guest. And I haven’t I haven’t looked into this in greater detail in great detail, but I’ve heard from a lot of people, and you know on the website who email me who are big fans of these services, so I may look into that. And if that works out, then I would buy more. But it’s sort of there’s a cap on how much time you have because they are so, so time intensive. The next one we’re buying, we’re buying another one in Montreal, and it’s still it’s a condo and we’re strictly going long term just because it’s going to be easier.
Rob Break [00:40:23] Sure.
Sandy Mackay [00:40:24] Yeah, I can see the middleman property management style companies popping up pretty easy. I can see that becoming pretty substantial business like that with the amount of business every does. And those numbers you’re saying, I mean, the cash flow has got to be pretty sweet. If you can just get that leverage, the better man it is for you. I could see building a pretty big portfolio using that. Yeah, I mean,
Glenn Carter [00:40:44] when you’re earning that kind of cash flow, then, you know, paying a couple hundred bucks a month to another management company I wouldn’t be an issue.
Rob Break [00:40:55] It’s really interesting. Like you guys were just saying, I can see incorporating quite a few of these and building something pretty interesting, getting a lot of your time back and just taking advantage of all of what this has to offer.
Sandy Mackay [00:41:06] Yeah. Glen, what’s the number one tip or suggestion you can share with our listeners regarding the sharing economy or if you want something more specific?
Glenn Carter [00:41:15] I think the biggest tip that that I like to give for people who are already operating in the sharing economy where I think you could get involved in the sharing economy is to manage your reputation capital. I’ve talked a lot about accounting, accountability, and feedback. All of these websites rely on some sort of feedback system. This is this is accountability, and it’s extremely important for the sharing economy. Like I said, it’d be like the Wild West. You would know you’re buying from what you’re selling to all that kind of stuff. So, although the sharing economy emphasizes access over ownership, you really need to own your reputation. And we have a number of resources on the site related to reputation capital. You know how to react to a bad review. And I’ve certainly had my fair share. So, strategies on how to manage your reputation. It’s not about being perfect. It’s really about molding it and reacting in a manner that other people are going to view as positive and professional and all that. So that would be my number one tip
Sandy Mackay [00:42:15] offs, and that’s really good. I mean, not even just for the sharing economy. Any business you’re running, it’s got to be some valuable tips and stuff on that. So, I mean, we encourage everyone to go check out your sites and get up to speed on how they can manage there. What do you call it? The reputation capital? Exactly. All right. Rob, any other questions for him?
Rob Break [00:42:34] Well, how can people learn more about you?
Glenn Carter [00:42:37] They can go to our website. Our platform is called the casual capitalists or the casual capitalists dot com, and everything you need to know about the sharing economy. Getting started and about me is on there. You can follow me on Twitter. My handle is casual, underscore Glenn, or even fire me and email directly. It’s Glenn, not the casual capitalist dot com. I’d love to hear from people who have had positive and negative experiences because, you know, certainly there’s two sides to the sharing economy going and really are. Our focus is how can people leverage it to make money and avoid the risks? So, yeah, thank you guys very much for having me on the show.
Rob Break [00:43:14] And I think that sounds really interesting to that quiz. I’m going to have to take that quiz and see which things fit for me because I’m pretty sure that Airbnb doesn’t do it for me. I can’t. But then again, like, well, I mean, I would never use it as a hotel service, I guess kind of thing. I don’t think for myself to go out and rent a room from somebody else. But maybe, you know, they do offer the long term, longer term like a week vacation spot, that kind of thing I can see doing. So, you know, I’m going to go and take the quiz and see what it has to tell me.
Glenn Carter [00:43:47] Yeah, and that’s the quizzes easy to get to. It’s the casual capitalist dot com slash quiz. Yeah. Based on the answers, we have about eight or 10 different categories, and it’ll give you a little bit more information about that particular category, but it’s really just about getting started. You know where to look first, because you know this can be overwhelming when you’re just sort of looking at it from a beginner standpoint
Rob Break [00:44:08] Oh yeah. And you were also telling me that you’ve been contributing to bigger pockets of real estate related articles on there now.
Glenn Carter [00:44:16] Yeah, we just started. Actually, we’ve posted our third article there a couple of days ago. And yeah, it’s all about the sharing economy. But from a real estate perspective, you know what the sharing economy means for real estate investors and landlords and how they can use it to not only earn supplemental income, they’ve got a lot of stories of people who didn’t have enough. Cash to quit their job, but they wanted to quit their jobs so they could focus on real estate, so they use the sharing economy as sort of a stopgap to earn some money. So yeah, a lot of stories about that. And then also, how can you incorporate sharing economy services into your real estate business to make it easier? So, you know, I mentioned a few before, like the week of work, the TaskRabbit. There’s a bunch of others that that we list on the BiggerPockets articles.
Rob Break [00:45:01] Very cool. All of Glen’s info is going to be over on our website under his episode number 39. You can go there and find all of the contact information that Glen just gave. So, wow, man, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of that, and everyone should go and grab that free book, which was at the casual capitalist dot com slash secrets one. Definitely go over there and get that. Thanks again, man. Thanks again.
Sandy Mackay [00:45:29] This is I got a page of page of notes here. I usually don’t have to have these other sources, but rarely dreaming. I love this.
Glenn Carter [00:45:36] Well, Rob and Sandy, thanks so much for having me on, and thanks for everything you guys do for my, you know, fellow Canadian real estate investor. I really appreciate it. So, keep up the good work.
Rob Break [00:45:44] Awesome stuff. Thanks so much. Again, if someone wants to get in touch with me, they can go to break through property investments. Dot S.A.. And I guess, Sandys Facebook. Sure. Sandy a day or OK, everyone have a good night. Now.