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I have recently been looking for new site locations for my co-warehousing business, Blue Co.  What an eye-opening experience that has been over the last couple of months, rife with ups and downs and business lessons for all. The short story is: as a startup, you only have a few opportunities to open a new location, and you have to get it right to impress your investors. 

No opportunity is perfect, and you may need to make some sacrifices. But knowing what elements are non-negotiable could be the difference between keeping your business growing and potentially “sinking the ship.” 

Allow me to explain.

What was Blue Co searching for?

Blue Co was on the hunt for 50,000 to 70,000-square-foot buildings in major metropolitan markets of the Southeast at terms its unique co-warehousing model could afford. The locations needed to be within the beltways of those major markets (e.g., under 10 miles from the city center), with nearby highway access and plenty of parking for its members. After reviewing over 200 listings and not a single signed lease to show for it, it became clear that this search would be a lot harder than expected.

What were the challenges?

There were so many decision points in picking a new location. The city, the location, the property, the surrounding neighborhood and demographics, the building type (e.g., industrial, retail, office), the floor plan, the building features (e.g., number of docks,  number of parking spots), the lease terms and the capital required, to name a few. 

On this last point about capital, there were a lot of variations, including financing the real estate, tenant improvements, lease securitization, startup costs, etc. And to make matters worse, there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all investor — some preferred real estate investing, some preferred venture investing in the operating company, and some preferred lending debt secured by needed equipment. 

Even if you found the right building, there was no guarantee it would come at terms you would be happy with or with financing partners that shared the enthusiasm for that location.

Some screening decisions were easy — decisions made by me

For our business, having enough parking was pretty important. If the property wasn’t at least 5 acres to accommodate parking for over 150 cars, it was largely a non-starter and could quickly cut those properties from the list. If we really liked the location, maybe we could find a nearby satellite parking lot, but that meant we couldn’t do one without the other, adding complexity to our search and discussions. Other simple decisions could be made quickly to ensure the property had an entrepreneur-friendly landlord, affordable rent, sufficient square footage, nearby highway access, etc. The point here is that the better you can screen these properties for the most important need, the less time you will waste.

Some screening decisions were easy — decisions made by them

Sometimes, a building would check all the right boxes for us, but we didn’t check all the right boxes for our landlord. Maybe they didn’t like our co-warehousing model in their building.  Or their lending banks didn’t like having a start-up as a tenant. Or our financials were not as “pretty” as those of other larger companies. Whatever the case may be, it is never fun to find a great building only to have it shot down by the other party. So ask those questions early in the process to ensure you do not unnecessarily spin your wheels.

Issues with the landlord

Not all landlords are created equal. Institutionally owned, big, billion-dollar buildings were typically the hardest to work with. Their requests of a tenant were pretty much the same regardless of the tenant’s business size, making it much harder for a startup to secure a building with them. But, on the other hand, even if you found an entrepreneur-friendly landlord, that doesn’t mean they will give you the best terms. As an example, we had one such landlord try to charge us 33% higher rent because they knew we didn’t have much negotiating power as a startup. Just make sure whoever you decide to work with will do so in a win-win way and have your back in good times and bad.

Investor issues

We have had a couple of situations where we found an investor for the building, but something didn’t work well for them. They liked to invest in Raleigh (not Greensboro, too far away). They like to invest in industrial buildings (not the converted big-box retail site were looking at). They won’t look at any building with rezoning risks. We had one investor say, “We’ll fund the building you like, but we are going to need to take this other, less desirable building as well,” which didn’t work for us. Or we needed to hit some operating metrics on our old buildings, before they would consider the new buildings. Fundraising is never easy, but make sure you do your due diligence on them, at the same time, they are doing their due diligence on you.

Issues with the building and lease terms

Every building brings its own set of challenges: floor configuration, ceiling height for racking, office build-out, climate control, system age, dock type, and whether the exterior matches your brand image. You need to know which of these are genuine deal killers and which you can live with.

Commercial leases have just as many variables: term, base rent, operating costs, free rent, tenant improvement dollars, and securitization demands such as guarantees, letters of credit, or deposits. All of these pieces must fit together for both parties to close. Get these terms on the table early, before you fall in love with a building, so you do not waste time chasing a deal that will never work.

One case study worth calling out: The perfect building at less than perfect terms

We found what felt like the perfect building in the perfect location with a landlord who understood our business. But once their bank stepped in, the required letter of credit was so high it effectively blocked us until we completed our fundraising, and the only way to reduce it was to cut back tenant improvements to a point where we would not have enough office space to support clients or the P&L.

We tried every angle to make it work, but signing that lease would have created an underperforming location and drained our cash cushion at the same time we were raising capital. Moving forward before the fundraise closed felt like putting the cart before the horse, so as painful as it was, we walked to avoid putting the business in a bind if things did not go according to plan

Closing thoughts

So, why did I share all these excruciating details about our site selection process? To basically say three things: (1) know what the priority levers are in any business decision to save you from spinning your wheels on a lot of unnecessary work; (2) when you do find something that could work, quickly assess it to ensure the terms and partners are to your liking; and (3) never “force it” — if your gut is telling you moving forward would be a stretch for your business, walk away to live another day, no matter how much you like it.

I have recently been looking for new site locations for my co-warehousing business, Blue Co.  What an eye-opening experience that has been over the last couple of months, rife with ups and downs and business lessons for all. The short story is: as a startup, you only have a few opportunities to open a new location, and you have to get it right to impress your investors. 

No opportunity is perfect, and you may need to make some sacrifices. But knowing what elements are non-negotiable could be the difference between keeping your business growing and potentially “sinking the ship.” 

Allow me to explain.

Higher education has spent the last decade going digital. Most universities now have application portals, CRMs, student information systems and automation tools meant to make admissions faster and smoother. On paper, everything looks modernized.

But inside admissions offices, the reality feels very different. Recent research from AACRAO’s 2025 staffing survey throws light on the growing strain within admissions offices. It raises an alarming issue of lean enrollment teams managing increasingly complex workloads, sans a corresponding increase in resources or support. The same research has also highlighted that staffing challenges and excessive workloads are becoming perennial concerns for enrollment leaders across institutions.

Teams are busier than ever. Not because applications are harder to access, but because they are harder to process. Applications are harder to process because they no longer come in a standard format. A single application can include transcripts, identity documents and academic records that all need to be interpreted and verified. 

Transcripts vary widely across countries and grading systems, so teams often need to decode formats and convert GPAs before they can even evaluate them. On top of that, information is usually scattered across different systems, which means a lot of time goes into assembling and validating data rather than reviewing applicants.

The problem is not visibility or access anymore. It is operational overload that has quietly scaled with complexity.

Admissions didn’t get simpler; it got heavier

Admissions workflows have grown substantially heavier in both scope and complexity in recent years. Transcripts come in different formats. Grading systems vary widely. Identity documents need validation. Transfer credits need to be mapped across institutions.

Every application is slightly different, and each distinction adds time.

At the same time, application volumes continue to rise, especially in international education. Studies on global enrollment patterns show a steady increase in cross-border applications, which has added both volume and complexity to admissions pipelines. Institutions are no longer processing uniform applications but highly fragmented and diverse documentation sets.

So the workload is not just complex. It is multiplying. And yet, most admissions teams are still operating within systems designed for bygone era.

Most of the work is not decision-making

A common misconception is that admissions teams spend most of their time evaluating candidates.

In reality, a large portion of their day is spent on manual processing.

That includes:

• Reading and extracting information from transcripts
• Checking and verifying identity documents
• Converting GPAs across different grading systems
• Evaluating transfer credits manually
• Responding to repetitive student queries
• Coordinating information across disconnected systems

None of this is optional. It is essential work. But it is also work that takes time away from higher-value decision-making and student engagement.

Research on administrative burden in higher education has shown that as processes become more compliance-heavy and documentation-intensive, staff spend significantly more time on coordination and validation tasks than on core evaluative responsibilities. This shift increases cognitive load and reduces the time available for meaningful admissions decisions.

The cost is not always visible, but it is real

This overload does not always show up as a clear failure point. Instead, it shows up in smaller, cumulative ways. Students often experience longer waiting times before receiving responses, which slows down the overall admission journey. Decision-making cycles have become more time-intensive, leading to delays in final outcomes. Workloads tend to become unevenly distributed during peak admission periods, creating operational pressure points.
Experienced staff end up holding a disproportionate amount of institutional and contextual knowledge. New team members often require more time to ramp up because much of the process knowledge is not systematized. And over time, teams feel it.

A 2024 research study published in Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education highlights a significant and under-recognized burnout crisis among non-academic administrative staff in universities. The study warns that sustained overwork among professional services teams risks destabilizing institutional operations.

Turnover in admissions roles also remains a concern across institutions. Many professionals stay in these roles only for a few years, which creates a recurring cycle of hiring and training that further adds to operational strain.

Burnout is not sudden. It builds gradually. Most importantly, institutions do not always recognize that this is a systems issue, not a performance issue.

Most universities are not without technology. CRMs, SIS platforms and application systems exist almost everywhere now. But digitization is not the same as simplification. In many cases, what used to happen on paper now happens on screens, but the underlying process remains unchanged.

Information is stored digitally, but still processed manually. Systems exist side by side, but do not fully work together in a unified way.

So instead of removing effort, digital transformation has often just relocated it.

The real gap is operational intelligence

What is missing is not more software. It is intelligence that connects the workflow. Operational intelligence means systems that help structure, interpret and move information in real time, instead of just storing it.

It means reducing the need for manual extraction, repeated validation and disconnected decision steps. And it means shifting from a world of batch processing to one where information flows through a connected system.

What changes when this problem is solved

When admissions operations become more intelligent, the entire nature of the work begins to shift in a meaningful way. Instead of spending the majority of their time manually processing documents, extracting information and reconciling data across systems, teams are able to focus more on higher-order responsibilities such as evaluating exceptions, applying institutional judgment and engaging directly with students in a more meaningful and responsive way.

Instead of constantly chasing missing or fragmented information across emails, portals and disconnected systems, staff can work with structured and readily available data that is already organized, validated and easy to act on. 

This reduces the friction in everyday workflows and allows decisions to move forward without unnecessary delays caused by manual coordination.

Instead of reacting to backlogs that accumulate during peak admission cycles, teams are able to manage a continuous flow of applications in real time, where information is processed and surfaced as it arrives rather than being handled in large, delayed batches. This creates a more stable and predictable operational rhythm across the admissions cycle.

The role of admissions teams does not diminish in this model. It evolves. Work becomes less about repetitive execution and more about meaningful decision-making, student support and institutional impact, making the function not only more efficient but also more strategically valuable within the university ecosystem.

Why this matters now

Higher education is becoming more competitive, more global and more time-sensitive. Students expect faster responses. Institutions are competing across borders. Application complexity is not going down anytime soon.

In this environment, operational delays are no longer just inefficiencies. They directly affect enrollment outcomes. Speed, consistency and clarity are becoming part of institutional competitiveness.

Closing thought

Admissions teams are struggling because the system around them has quietly become heavier than it was designed to handle. And the longer that reality is treated as normal, the harder it becomes to change.

The encouraging shift now is that institutions are beginning to rethink not just the tools they use, but the structure of the workflows themselves. AI-powered systems and operational redesign are helping streamline repetitive tasks, connect fragmented data sources and reduce the manual effort required at each step of the admissions process.

As these changes take hold, enrollment workflows become faster, more transparent and more predictable. Teams are able to move away from constant firefighting and instead operate within a more structured, real-time flow of information. This creates space for better decision-making, stronger student engagement and a more sustainable working environment for admissions professionals.

The direction of change is already clear. With the right combination of AI and thoughtful process restructuring, admissions operations can shift from being overloaded and reactive to becoming streamlined, responsive and far more effective in supporting both institutions and students.

Higher education has spent the last decade going digital. Most universities now have application portals, CRMs, student information systems and automation tools meant to make admissions faster and smoother. On paper, everything looks modernized.

But inside admissions offices, the reality feels very different. Recent research from AACRAO’s 2025 staffing survey throws light on the growing strain within admissions offices. It raises an alarming issue of lean enrollment teams managing increasingly complex workloads, sans a corresponding increase in resources or support. The same research has also highlighted that staffing challenges and excessive workloads are becoming perennial concerns for enrollment leaders across institutions.

Teams are busier than ever. Not because applications are harder to access, but because they are harder to process. Applications are harder to process because they no longer come in a standard format. A single application can include transcripts, identity documents and academic records that all need to be interpreted and verified. 

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Britt Riley, founder and CEO of childcare company Haven, designed her company with rest in mind. She has spent the past seven years creating a network of clubs that offer daycare, workspace and fitness for families. The company has raised about $20 million in funding and recently started franchising. 

Since launching the company in 2019, Riley has prioritized well-being for her team of about 60 people. To that end, she closes the company for an entire week every summer and for the last week of the year so employees can completely unplug without the pressure of meetings or emails — and still get paid. She says these summer and winter resets have proved foundational to the company.

The following as-told-to interview has been edited for clarity and concision. 

When I realized that mandatory time off was a good idea

It goes back to the beginning of my career. I wrote my college thesis on company culture at Patagonia, where I had the great privilege of spending some of the earliest days of my career. There, “Let my people go surfing” wasn’t a slogan or an empty promise. I was able to see the elements of that mindset in practice and witnessed a company that literally operated on a whole different playing field than any other. 

Witnessing a serious and profitable company trust its people with their own time and seeing how that produced dedication and willingness from employees to give their best work every day formed my own values set. I could see no other way after that point. 

Fixing a broken system

Our teams have always been happy to be given the time; some are pretty taken aback by our general approach to “benefits” and our culture — in the best way. I didn’t have a background in childcare prior to starting Haven, so I came to every element of it with an outside perspective and an appetite to help evolve what I had come to understand was a broken industry. 

From my conversations and research, it felt that early childhood educators were used to being treated as coverage, not as people, and many of our team members expressed that they were coming from settings where taking a personal day meant guilt and apologizing.

The resets become something people protect by giving their all when they are inside our walls. Our teams plan their own vacations around it, and they feel valued and appreciated knowing that we see them as humans who are living their own lives. We show up for each other; in this case that means not showing up at all for a week. 

There were some skeptics and drawbacks

Childcare is an industry where the unwritten rule is that you never close, and I heard concerns, but once people realized that parents understood it immediately, the arguments ended. At the end of the day parents know better than anyone what running on empty does to a person who cares for children. The skeptics were asking, “How can you afford to close?” Our members were happy to support their hard-working Haven family with this time.

For one week, families who count on us need another plan, and for dual-income households that is a real ask. We owe them enormous notice, and we give it. The balance of two separate weeks of time off, when weighed against the turnover we avoid and the energy our team is able to bring to the table, makes the time a small cost in the long run.

There are also some clear advantages

Retention, of course, but this also supports our goal of showing up wholeheartedly for all of the children in our care each day. It shows up in recruiting, because the best early childhood educators see that we take their work seriously and want to work where they are treated with the appreciation and support that should be afforded to anyone committed to such a critical career. It takes committing to your values to then determine what is necessary to achieve the end goal. 

Doing that has helped make decisions like this easy. It feeds into the main advantage of showing up for your team. They are then more able to show up for their crew of children. We are a Great Place to Work certified company, and 100% of our team this year said that Haven is a great place to work. You don’t get a number like that with pizza Fridays; you get it from seeing each person as an individual and showing up for them. 

Our closures are predictable. We schedule them more than a year in advance, families learn about it during their enrollment process, and we anchor it to two of the historically slowest weeks of the year. In the run-up, we over-communicate and set expectations clearly so it does not creep up on anyone. For inquiries, it is actually a great indicator of our commitment to quality service when a family that reaches out about membership sees our out-of-office reply and gets to know who we are at our core a little better. 

Why I created Haven

Haven is childcare, workspace and fitness under one roof, built around one idea we call familycare: care for the whole family. 

A parent can drop their little one into a fully licensed, play-based classroom where they will benefit from our proprietary Haven Method curriculum. They are then welcome (but not required) to walk 30 seconds to our intentionally designed workspace, take a fitness class, go for a run or jump on a bike between meetings, get a massage, a facial or even just a hot shower. And, most importantly, save tons of time by not having to shuffle between everything. They can be present for the moments that matter, all in one community built for whatever their day requires. 

I started developing the concept for Haven when I had my own newborn and toddler and a need for that “village” everyone has always talked about. We built our first club in Middletown, Rhode Island and opened when my youngest turned 2. Today we have clubs in Rhode Island and New Jersey and have recently begun franchising so passionate local owners can bring Haven to their own communities.

Revenue has grown every year since we opened in 2019

Our established clubs operate at healthy margins. With our growth program underway, the next five years will see Haven evolve into a national network. The interest in opening Haven clubs has been overwhelming. Our lead volume has quadrupled since January, and demand from families continues to outpace supply both locally and at an industry-wide level.

By 2030, our plan calls for more than 100 Haven clubs open across the country. In people terms, that’s thousands of jobs: educators, directors, general managers and dozens of empowered Haven club owners. Women have submitted 86% of all of our new club opening leads. 

On satisfaction, my target is genuinely unreasonable, and I don’t care: Keep the Great Place to Work score at 100% as we scale. Most people will say that’s impossible past a certain size. But the entire Haven platform has thrived on doing what folks have balked at in childcare; we plan to keep that up. 

My advice for founders

First, build your values into the fabric of every element of your company, not just something you hang on the wall. Anyone can write “we value wellbeing.” Your culture is the sum of what you’re willing to do at the expense of “it’s always been done this way” or simply the bottom line. You can’t fake authenticity or a healthy culture.

Second, stay curious always. If what you are working towards has a solid purpose, that curiosity will allow you to keep doing the next right thing. I wasn’t a childcare expert or an expert in brick and mortar businesses, or even technical development when I started, and that blank slate and open mind has become one of Haven’s superpowers. 

If you pair curiosity with surrounding yourself with experts who are incredibly insightful and passionate about what you are doing, you’ll keep winding up way beyond wherever your wildest dreams took you. There are so many things I have learned that I would share with founders, but at the end of the day, the last thing I’ll share is: As long as you believe wholeheartedly in what you are doing, as long as you have no reasonable doubt in it, keep going. 

Sit through enough award stages at real estate conferences, and the script starts to repeat itself. Three hundred deals closed last year. Twenty-five agents on the roster. Two hundred million in volume. Everyone claps, a few people scribble the number down, somebody asks for a business card on the way out.

It’s a real accomplishment. It’s also not the question worth asking. Try this one instead: What happens if the founder disappears for six months?

For a lot of teams, the answer isn’t pretty. Referrals dry up because they were tied to a person, not a brand. Recruiting slows because agents joined to be near someone specific, not to be part of an institution. The momentum everyone mistook for business growth turns out to have been one person’s output running under a company name. That’s not really a business. It’s a personality with a payroll.

A recent study tracking over 184,000 productive agents across major MLS regions found that the top 10% of agents who switched brokerages controlled roughly 45% of the total transaction volume tracked in that period. That kind of concentration isn’t an outlier in this business. It’s closer to the default setting. Most teams have an outsized share of production riding on a small handful of people, frequently just one. When that person walks away, retires or even just slows down, the business doesn’t ease into a smaller version of itself. It can come apart fast, and the founder is often the most surprised person in the room.

Growth hides a lot of weak foundations

When the market is good and the founder is producing at full speed, almost everything looks healthy. They’re recruiting, closing, marketing, fielding every referral and putting out every fire personally. From the outside, that reads as a well-oiled operation. From the inside, it’s frequently one person doing the job of an org chart and calling it a system. Growth papers over that completely. As long as the numbers keep going up, hardly anyone stops to ask whether there’s actual infrastructure underneath them or just a very fast person running very hard.

The truth tends to surface later, once growth slows down or the founder simply runs out of capacity to keep absorbing everything. The National Association of Realtors’ most recent member profile put the median realtor age at 57, and the organization is projecting membership could fall by roughly 150,000 agents by the end of this year. A large piece of that decline will be experienced producers retiring, and 21% of agents with more than 25 years in the business are already actively planning their exit, according to the same research. A lot of teams built around one of those careers are about to learn exactly how dependent they really were on it.

Top producers often become the bottleneck

Here’s the part nobody likes saying at the team meeting. The person who built the business is often the same person now holding it back. Clients want that person specifically. Major decisions route through them because that’s simply how it’s always worked. Recruiting pitches lean on access to them because that access was the actual sales pitch. None of this is a character flaw. It’s just what happens when a business gets built around one exceptional performer instead of around systems anyone could run.

Many teams don’t really scale. They stretch. Those two things look the same on a chart showing year-over-year growth, but they’re not the same thing at all. Scaling means a team can take on more volume without putting proportionally more pressure on one individual. Stretching means leaning on that same individual to absorb more, with less room to breathe, until eventually something gives out. Usually it’s the founder.

Institutions compound, personalities burn out

Real businesses build in repeatability. They develop a culture that holds regardless of any one person’s mood or bandwidth on a particular day. They build a genuinely recognizable brand. None of that means stripping out the personality that built the thing in the first place. It means building something larger than that personality, so growth doesn’t stall the second the person at the center steps back.

Law firms that last figured this out generations ago. Family offices that survive across decades figured it out, too. The strongest brokerage brands work the same way. Nobody is immune to losing key people. What separates the ones that endure is that losing one person, even a critical one, doesn’t threaten to take the whole structure down with them. Businesses built entirely around a single individual don’t compound the way people assume they will. They just get older, and eventually the bill comes due.

The next great brokerages will feel like institutions

The teams and brokerages that matter a decade out probably won’t be the loudest or even the largest. They’ll be the ones that made it through something. A leadership transition. A rough cycle. A founder’s retirement that didn’t drag the whole business down with it. Durability like that doesn’t happen by accident, and it doesn’t get built during the good years when everyone’s too busy producing to think about it. It gets built deliberately, usually well before anyone believes it’s necessary.

If your business stops growing the moment you stop showing up, you may have built a career instead of a company. Those aren’t the same accomplishment, even though they can look identical from a conference stage. One of them is worth real money to someone other than you. The other one was always just you, with a bigger title attached.

Sit through enough award stages at real estate conferences, and the script starts to repeat itself. Three hundred deals closed last year. Twenty-five agents on the roster. Two hundred million in volume. Everyone claps, a few people scribble the number down, somebody asks for a business card on the way out.

It’s a real accomplishment. It’s also not the question worth asking. Try this one instead: What happens if the founder disappears for six months?

For a lot of teams, the answer isn’t pretty. Referrals dry up because they were tied to a person, not a brand. Recruiting slows because agents joined to be near someone specific, not to be part of an institution. The momentum everyone mistook for business growth turns out to have been one person’s output running under a company name. That’s not really a business. It’s a personality with a payroll.

Every entrepreneur hopes that a great product or service can stand on its own; that it can be successful enough to help them grow their business and personal profile.

Unfortunately, such successes tend to be the exception rather than the rule. As Tyler Wagner, founder of Authors Unite, explains, entrepreneurs typically need much more than a great product to achieve long-term results. They need a platform. And by delivering value through personal, authoritative content, they can achieve exactly that.

The Danger of Product-Only Thinking

While the product or service is usually the baseline for a successful business, Wagner is quick to note that entrepreneurs have a tendency to focus on the product itself, rather than the people behind it — and that can be a detriment.

“Many of the most successful entrepreneurs didn’t get that way because of their products alone. They achieved their influence, and in some cases fame, because of the platform they were able to build around themselves. They built a personal brand, and the products were an extension of that personal brand. At the end of the day, we’re attracted to ideas that come from people, rather than faceless businesses. When entrepreneurs only focus on the product itself, they miss out on half the picture.”

For example, one recent study found that readers rated AI-written stories significantly higher when they were told the stories had actually been written by humans. A study by Baringa found that 81% of people preferred human-created content because it was perceived as more authentic, original or personal.

Without taking the time to showcase the people behind the product, rather than just the product itself, entrepreneurs miss out on crucial opportunities for connection with their audience.

Creating a Platform Through Expertise

Wagner notes that there is no shortage of opportunities to build a platform: “Decades ago, entrepreneurs had to rely on traditional media to get any kind of attention and coverage for themselves and their products,” he says.

“Now, we live in a completely different environment. Entrepreneurs can start podcasts, publish a book without going through a traditional publishing house or even start a YouTube channel. There are so many different opportunities to create a platform that plays to your strengths, where you can share your insights and expertise in a personal and meaningful way.”

As Wagner explains, many entrepreneurs are tempted to ignore such activities because they don’t always deliver immediate, direct revenue. But he says that ignores the point of platform-building activities.

“Whether you’re investing in a book or a YouTube channel, these things are rarely going to become your primary source of revenue in and of themselves, even though they can add to your total revenue. Instead, these platform-builders are powerful lead generators that drive warm leads directly to your business. Your audience comes to know and trust you because of the expertise you’ve shared, and now they’re even more ready to pay for your other products and services.”

One need only look at how the success of Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People helped turn FranklinCovey into a global enterprise to see this principle in action.

Books as Your Entrepreneur Platform

From short social media posts to longer video essays, the opportunities for platform-building are plentiful. But for his part, Wagner highly recommends that entrepreneurs consider the power of a book for building their platform. “Few things can build your niche authority like being able to say that you’re a bestselling author,” he says.

“Being a bestselling author is an instant indicator of social proof, as well as the trust and authority you have in your area. Even as other platform-building opportunities grow, there’s an inherent credibility and level of expertise that comes from being an author. And that social proof is what can move you from someone’s ‘maybe’ pile to a ‘yes’, both for using your products and services and for booking you for speaking engagements and other lucrative opportunities.”

In Wagner’s experience, a book can become a tangible springboard that can power an entrepreneur’s status to new heights, even as it also creates an ancillary product that can directly contribute to revenue. The book itself becomes an ongoing marketing tool that is available to a global audience, which can greatly expand your reach — especially if the book itself is marketed successfully to achieve that bestseller status.

“The same level of thinking and care that goes into building a great product or service should also go into building your platform,” Wagner says. “This way, you can deliver maximum value to your readers, and that positive first encounter with you will lead to meaningful business growth.”

Building for Growth

No business idea will succeed without a great product or service behind it. But as Wagner’s insights reveal, focusing exclusively on a product or service at the expense of an entrepreneur’s personal platform can greatly limit its potential. 

By using your specific niche expertise and experience to build a platform (whether through a book or other format), you can build industry authority and generate downstream revenue that takes your business to new heights.

Every entrepreneur hopes that a great product or service can stand on its own; that it can be successful enough to help them grow their business and personal profile.

Unfortunately, such successes tend to be the exception rather than the rule. As Tyler Wagner, founder of Authors Unite, explains, entrepreneurs typically need much more than a great product to achieve long-term results. They need a platform. And by delivering value through personal, authoritative content, they can achieve exactly that.

Dave Meyer:
Do you want to rent out your house and start producing passive income? If you do, you can go two different paths. The first path is what most people do. They don’t want to sell their home, so they post a listing on Zillow, except the first tenant they find and forget about it until of course their property is trashed, they’ve lost money, and then they swear that they will never try real estate again. The second path, the path that I’m teaching you today is when you do it the right way, you find great tenants, you get paid rent every month like clockwork, and you control a property that can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to your net worth. And with just this one property, you can put yourself on the path to financial freedom. This is what I did 16 years ago. I had no experience, but I bought a property and needed to rent it out.
Years later, that one property allowed me to buy a second and then more and then more. And today I’m 38 and financially free. In this episode, I’m sharing the tips I really wish someone had told me when I first got started, and I’m going to walk you through the steps you need to take to rent out your house successfully so that you get wealthier instead of work.
All right, so here are the steps that you need to go through if you want to rent out your house and become a first time landlord. The first question you should ask yourself is should I actually be renting out this house in the first place? Because a lot of people assume they can rent out their home and make a lot of money. And a lot of them are right, but some are just wrong. Luckily though, you don’t have to guess. You can actually do the math and figure out if your home makes a good rental. The best way to do this is just to analyze it like it was a rental property that you were going out to buy. And this is super simple. You can run your numbers through a rental property calculator like the one that we have at BiggerPockets. You can check it out at biggerpockets.com/calculators and see if it cash flows.
See if it will perform better than other things that you can do with your money. Because let’s just imagine you’re living in a home and trying to figure out whether you want to sell it or rent it out. There’s probably a lot of money. You probably have equity trapped up in that house. And so you need to decide, am I better keeping my money in this home and renting it out? Or should I sell it and put my money in the stock market, buy some bonds, buy some crypto? Whatever it is you would do as an alternative, you do need to weigh those two things against each other. So if it won’t perform better than the alternative options, you should do those alternative options. You should sell and put your money elsewhere. But if it does perform as good or ideally better than those alternatives, then you should rent out your house.
And I’ll explain exactly how you do that in just a minute. But first I kind of just help everyone do this analysis for themselves because the trick to this analysis is not the math. You can do that with the calculator. It’ll do all of the math for you. The thing you need to focus on and get right are your comparables. You need to understand what you can actually rent your property out for because the number that you put into the calculator is super important. If you’re just guessing that you could rent your house out for 2,000 bucks a month, that’s not good enough for this analysis because you might find that you’re not cash flowing down the line if you don’t make that rent. So I want you to do something else instead. Go and find rent comps, rent comparables for your specific property. And this isn’t hard.
There are a couple of different ways that you can do it. The first is using some sort of automated system that uses an algorithm to pull your rents. We have a BiggerPockets rent estimator. There are other products out there that can do it as well. Or the other two ways I recommend you doing this is one, asking a real estate agent, make sure it’s an investor-friendly agent because they’ll understand rents more than just a run-of-the-mill real estate agent. Or ideally, ask a property manager. Call a property manager in the area, say, “I’m thinking about renting out my home. What do you think this would rent for?” Or talk to renters in your neighborhood and ask them what they are paying for rent. Getting a good estimate, an accurate understanding of what your rents might be is the most important part of this analysis because it’s going to help you decide definitively if you want to rent.
And it will also help if you decide to go out and rent knowing what you can charge. It’ll make listing easier. It will help you understand the quality that your property needs to be in to get the best rents. If you go out and look on Zillow and see that everything that’s renting for $2,000 is in nicer condition than yours, you can start to think about, do I charge less or do I bring my property up to that better condition that my competitors have? And if you do all this, you’ll learn whether or not to rent out your home, but it’ll also help you get a great tenant quickly by pricing your property accurately. The other thing you need to do and put into the calculator other than your rents are your expenses. And luckily, this should be really easy for you. It’s your house, right?
You should know what most of your expenses are. Just gather your mortgage information, your tax information, your insurance information. That might all be together in one payment. If so, even easier. If not, gather all of that information and put it into the calculator alongside a couple of other expenses you might not know off the top of your head because if this is a home you’re living in, you know all the stuff I just mentioned. But if you are a first time landlord, you’re going to need to figure out what repairs and maintenance costs, how much you need to keep and set aside for things like vacancy, what a property manager will cost if you’re going to use a property manager. And for most people, you can use rules of thumb because you’re not going to know precisely what each of these things is going to be.
I think that on an average home, if it’s in decent good shape, you should set about 10% of your rent every single month aside for repairs and maintenance. I personally like to use 8% for vacancy, but if you’re in a single family home in a good neighborhood that’s going to have high tenant demand, if you’re going to have families that want to stay a longer time, you could go down to six or maybe even 4%. If you rent to young professionals or young folks, they move more so you might have higher vacancies. So those are things that you should keep in mind, but usually between four and 8%. If you want to self-manage your property, that’s great. It will save you a lot of money, but if you’re going to hire a property manager, eight to 10% is what most of them charge. So you can just put those directly in the BiggerPockets calculator, press the button, and you will find out whether or not you should be renting out your home.
Once you see the results of the calculator and do this analysis for yourself and see all these numbers, here’s some things that you should look for to make this decision. First and foremost, I think your property should cashflow. It does not make sense in my opinion, especially if you’re a first-time landlord, to hold onto an asset that doesn’t cashflow. So I think you need at least a two or 3% cash on cash return. If it’s in a good neighborhood and you think it’s going to appreciate two, three, 4% cash on cash return, good enough. At least in my opinion, I think that is good enough. If you’re in an area that’s probably not going to appreciate, and you should be honest with yourself about this, but if it’s not going to appreciate that much, I would want you to see a cashflow number that’s going to be six, 7% cash on cash return.
So just think about that and do that analysis for yourself. The other thing to think about is whether or not holding onto this deal will get you better returns than an alternative investment. If you only have a 3% return on equity, and the BiggerPockets calculator will show you this, but if you only have a three or 4% annualized return, that’s not good enough. The stock market returns eight to 10% on average. So why would you hold onto this property, do the work of being a rental property investor if you could make more money elsewhere? Go to the stock market or sell the property and go buy a rental property that earns a better return than your home. Just because you already own this home does not mean that this is necessarily the best real estate investment for you. And so that’s what you’re trying to figure out in this analysis.
The other thing is there’s a non-math component to this because if you want to keep your property for personal reasons, that’s fine. If you’re like, “I’m moving for a job and I might move back in three years,” hold onto the property. That’s fine. That’s a totally different thing here. But if you’re looking at this from a financial perspective, you want to make sure it cashflows and you want to make sure your aggregate return when you add up the tax benefits, the cashflow, the amortization, the appreciation, when you add all of that up, it should be better than alternative investments like the stock market. Personally, I like to use a 12% return as my benchmark for that. So you want to see 12% or higher for your average annual ROI. So at this point, once you’ve done the calculator report, you should know for sure whether or not renting out your house is actually a good idea.
And if it is, I’m going to show you exactly how to do this in the right way. We’ll do that right after this quick break. Stick with us.
Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. Today in the show, we’re talking about how to rent out your house. Before the break, we talked about how to do this analysis like an investor, thinking about it in terms of math and deciding for sure whether or not it is actually a good idea for you to rent out your house. Now let’s turn to how you actually do it. If the numbers make sense and you think this can be a good investment, a good financial decision for you, let’s talk about the things you should do to make sure this goes well. Step one is fixing up your property. So you live in your home, you probably love it. Maybe you don’t care that there’s some splotches on the wall, that there’s some dirt under the baseboards, stuff like that. You live in a house for a long time, these things happen.
Tenants who have a choice of where they want to live are going to see those things. So spend a little time, spend a little money getting your property into a presentable condition to be listed. For some homes, this is as simple as a deep cleaning, which you can do yourself or you can pay someone for. Paint goes a really long way if you’re willing to do that. In some places you might want to put down some luxury vinyl plank flooring to make sure that it’s really resilient, ripping out carpet because that stuff gets really dirty when you have tenants. Those decisions are up to you, but I recommend you make those decisions based on two things. First and foremost, those comps that we talked about before. How are you going to be competitive in your market? Because yeah, you could just throw something up on Zillow or apartments.com, but tenants have choices and you should figure out how you want to position your property compared to everything else they might be seeing.
The second thing is cost efficacy. You want to make upgrades that number one will help you generate good rents. Number two will be safe quality products for your tenants and they’re going to love living in their place. And three, are durable and hopefully are going to last a long time. Now it can be tempting and easy to spend a lot of money on that. You want to do that in the most cost-effective way. But if you’re in this for the long run, if you want to rent your property out for several years, making those investments upfront really does pay off because you’re going to get higher rent, you’re probably going to have lower vacancy, and you’re going to have fewer headaches rather than one-off fixing things and improving things. If you just do it now, it can save you a lot of hassle over the next couple of years.
So that’s step number one, getting your property rent ready. Step two is actually going out and listing your property. This is marketing your place to tenants. And there’s two ways that you can do this, and this is sort of where you have to make this decision. You can either self-manage, this is sort of the DIY approach where you just go post it on Zillow, post it on apartments.com. It is super easy. I’ll tell you, it takes five to 10 minutes presuming that you have pictures. You can take pictures with your iPhone. Make them good pictures though, by the way. Take a couple of minutes to make them look nice. But if you spend 15 minutes taking pictures thoughtfully, you can definitely do this yourself. But with self-management also comes property management, right? You have to do all the coordination, the lease signing, you have to answer maintenance requests and calls.
You need to do all that stuff. Self-managing is great. I did it myself for 10 years, and it can be a great way to save money because you’re keeping eight to 10% of your income that you would normally be paying a property manager to do, but you have to do the work. Now, if you’re just managing one unit, if this is your former home and you live nearby, that amount of work is not that much. I will be honest, it will probably be a couple of hours a month at most. And for a lot of people, it is worth that time to increase their income. If you are interested in this approach, doing this DIY sort of self-management approach, check out a book we have. It’s called The Self-Managing Landlord. It will basically teach you everything you need to know. But don’t worry, people are so dramatic about how hard property management is.
It’s really not that hard. If you want to do this yourself, if you’ve got five hours a month, you absolutely can do it yourself. And it can be really helpful early in your investing career to build up some reserves, to build up some cashflow, and to learn the business. Honestly, if you want to be in real estate for the long run, doing self-management is so valuable because you learn everything about tenant management, everything about asset management and managing the repairs and maintenance on your project. And eventually, most people down the road in their investing career wind up hiring a property manager. But by self-managing first, you know what to look for in a property manager. You know who to hire, who’s going to be a great steward of your home and who might not do the best job. And so this is a great option.
The second option for going out and listing is going out and hiring that property manager right off the bat. This is also totally fine. If you are busy, if you just don’t like dealing with tenants and people, if you know nothing about property maintenance and repairs, go out and hire a property manager. It will cost you eight to 10% of your rents every single month, but you’ll regain time. And I’ve found that by hiring a property manager, it can also make your business more scalable. If you want to go out and buy more rentals, you’ll have more time to do all the other work that real estate investors need to do because the property manager, they’re going to do the comp research for you. They’re going to figure out what to charge for rent. They’re going to market it to tenants. They’re going to communicate with those tenants.
They’ll do the lease signing, they’ll handle repair and maintenance calls, they’ll do renewals, they’ll do all of it for you. So if you want to err on the side of more passive real estate, go out and hire that property manager. Now, whatever option you choose, whether it’s self-management or hiring a property manager, they’re probably going to use the same tools to market it. It’s not like property managers have some secret database of tenants that they’re going out and finding like you’re going to go and put it on apartments.com. You’re going to put it on RentReady, you’re going to put it on Zillow, Avail. These kinds of companies, they will put it across all of these websites. And when you’re doing it, spend a little time on the listing, right? Whether you’re approving something your property manager wrote or writing it yourself, be specific. Be thoughtful about the amenities and benefits of renting your property because you have competition.
Is it close to schools? Is it close to a grocery store? Is there high walkability? Is there off-street parking? Is there a really nice yard? What is it that you love about the property that you think tenants will love about the property? You can use ChatGPT if you want, but I recommend editing that and just really putting some thought and care into it. People want to rent places that feel special or unique or that they’ve found something that has all the amenities that they really, really love. So make sure you highlight what yours have. If I were a tenant, I would want to rent from a property manager who cares enough to take good photos, who cares enough to write a good description. When I see these one-line descriptions, I’m like, “This person is not going to be a good property manager. I don’t want to live in their home.” So just spend a little bit of time.
Again, 30 minutes, an hour, making sure that your listing is as good as possible. Once you’ve done that, you can move on to step three, which is evaluating and screening tenants. If you have done your listing right, you are going to get people contacting you. You’re going to schedule tours so people can come see the property in person. And then the crucial part of the process comes, which is finding the right tenant for your property. You cannot control many things about rental property investing, the economy, eviction timelines, all of that, but you can control how you screen tenants and make sure that you find tenants who are a good fit for your place. Now remember, you absolutely have to follow fair housing laws, but you can also implement some of your own requirements. For example, a lot of investors have criteria similar to this. These are a good place for you to start.
Number one, having a minimum credit score of 650. This is usually a benchmark. Some people use 625, but having some credit score in the mid 600s or above is what many investors do. The second thing is having an income-to-rent ratio of at least 30%. So most budgeting experts recommend that renters spend maximum 30-ish percent on their rent. And so you want to see if their income will cover their rent in that sort of proportion. Because if someone is saying, “I want to rent your property,” they could be great. But if they’re going to have to put 50% of their income to your rent, that’s not good for anyone. That is not good for the tenant. They’re going to be stretched on their budget. You don’t want that because that means the likelihood that they pay on time and as agreed is lower. You don’t want to put yourself or the tenant into that situation.
And so go and check their rent to income ratio. Third, you definitely want to call references. So many people skip this. Do not. Don’t just call their last landlord. We’ll tip about the industry. If you just call the last landlord and they’re a bad tenant, that landlord might tell you that they’re a great tenant because they just want them out of their property. So don’t just call their last landlord, but you should do that. Call their two landlords ago. Call three landlords ago. So make sure that part of your application process for renting out your home is that they list the names, phone numbers, and emails from their past three landlords. Call them and ask them. And then the last step is to pull any sort of report. So pull a credit score, you can pull eviction background, you can pull criminal records. Again, make sure that you are following all local laws and regulations about doing these things, but go and learn as much as you can about your prospective tenants and pick a tenant who can afford to live there, but also really wants to live there.
I find that when people are really excited about living in the property, they tend to be great tenants. They take good care of the place. They usually renew. You have lower vacancy. It really can work out. So be patient and diligent about this. There’s nothing really that hard about it. It’s just kind of doing a little bit of research and some common sense. You can absolutely do this. Once you’ve done that and pick the right tenant for you, this is when you go through the lease. I really recommend you get a professionally made lease. You could do this by going out and hiring an attorney. Or if you are a BiggerPockets Pro member, we actually have leases for all 50 states. They’re updated by attorneys every single year to make sure you’re compliant with all rules and provide maximum amount of protection for both you and your tenants.
It creates a mutually beneficial document that everyone can agree to. You can check those out at biggerpockets.com/leases. Now, once you have your lease in place, you need to do a walkthrough of that lease with the tenant. And you can do that in person. You could do it over the phone. What I usually do is send the lease to the tenant a couple days ahead of a meeting, and then I meet them in person at the property or at a coffee shop and just walk them through it. I find that sitting with someone and talking to them about the lease dispels a lot of this legalese that goes on through the lease. I think when you send someone this five-page document with a lot of big words that are super hard to understand, it’s legal mumbo jumbo. It’s hard to understand. It can often feel for a tenant like, what are they trying to hide in here?
What if I don’t fully understand it? I sit with tenants and I go through paragraph by paragraph, this is what this means, this is what this means. I send it ahead of time too. So if they want to run it through ChatGPT or talk to an attorney or talk to a friend or whatever, and they have questions, I can answer them. And I think the main thing that I always try to convey to tenants is that this document is here to protect both of us. It’s here to protect the property owner so that people pay on time that the property is taken care of. But in the leases, there are also provisions that protect the tenants and make sure that their privacy is respected, that their security deposit gets returned on time, that landlords don’t just barge into their property without announcing themselves. It is a mutually beneficial document.
And so talking through it person to person, face-to-face, I think really helps establish a good relationship between the property manager and the tenant. So if you are self-managing, I really recommend doing this in person if you can. Once you’ve done that, pretty simple, sign the lease, then keep a copy of it, make sure that both of you sign it and that both of you have copies, and then collect the security deposit. In your lease, you will say when the security deposit is due. Usually it’s on the first day of the lease, but sometimes you can do it like a week before or if it’s far out, you can ask for a deposit a couple months ahead of time. Get that deposit, but then I need you to do something here. Take that deposit and do not put it in your checking account. You need to create a separate bank account for your security deposits.
This is really important. A lot of people miss this, but that is not your money. A security deposit is not revenue. It is not income. It is actually, if you want to get into the accounting of it, it is a liability on your balance sheet. It is money you actually owe the tenant back. So you should not put this in your checking account. You are not legally allowed to, so you should do this. Go open another savings account, stick it in there, and don’t think about it until the tenant moves out and you have to figure out whether you’re going to return the full amount or not. So that is just one step that a lot of people miss that you need to do. Next, step five, another thing so many people miss here is you have to switch your insurance. Your normal homeowner insurance will cover some things, but is not sufficient.
It just is not enough for a rental property owner. You need landlord insurance because it covers things that landlords have to think about where normal homeowners don’t need to think about. So the number one thing I notice in this is loss of rent. So I’ve made this mistake. I’ve had landlord insurance that didn’t have loss of rent. They might call it business interruption insurance is another thing that it’s often called, but I want this crazy story. I had someone break into one of my homes and damage the water heater. I had to move the tenant out. I put him up in a short-term rental for, I think it was like a month. And I didn’t make the tenant pay because I couldn’t provide the service that he was paying for. He was paying to live in my unit. He wasn’t. So I had to come out of pocket for that.
And I didn’t get my rent that month. And so that was sort of a double hit. If you get business interruption or a rent insurance, the insurance company, when something like that happens, actually pays you your rent so it can help make you whole. So I really recommend you go out and get a good quality insurance. It’s honestly not that much more expensive than normal homeowner’s insurance. It might be a couple hundred bucks a year, but in my experience, man, it is well worth it. If you want a recommendation for a good insurance company, I use steadily. And if you’re a BiggerPockets Pro member, you can actually get increased insurance coverage and 5% off your premiums just by being a BiggerPockets Pro member. So if you’re a Pro member, go check that out. Or if you need landlord insurance, maybe go check out Pro and see if the package of perks, which are many, are worth it for you.
All right, so those are all the things you need to do before the tenant actually moves in, before you collect that first rent check. But there’s still stuff you need to do once the tenant is in the property. We’ll cover that right after this break.
Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m Dave Meyer talking to you about how to rent out your home the right way. So far in the show, we’ve talked about whether or not you should rent out your home. And if you do decide to do it, what you need to do prior to a tenant moving in. These are things like creating your listing, screening your tenants, getting your lease written, and getting the right insurance for your property. Now comes the fun part, right? Now the tenant is moving in, you’re going to start collecting those rent checks, but you got to figure out how you’re going to do that. That is step six here. Figure out what system you want to put in place to collect your rents. I laugh at myself all the time thinking about how I collected rent when I first started being a landlord.
I had people mail checks. This was 16 years ago. All right? So it’s not like we had all these systems, but there were so many better systems. And sometimes I would literally lose the rent checks and I would have to ask my tenants to write them again. It’s so embarrassing. It was totally my fault. So figure out a system better than that. And there are many of them, right? There are digital management platforms like RentReady or TurboTenant or Avail. This is much more convenient for the tenants too. It allows them to pay digitally. Tenants don’t have to pay for these things, and you just get all of your income coming in. You also get a lot prepared for taxes and for accounting all at once. It just makes the system so much easier. You’re watching a YouTube video. I can’t imagine this is hard for you to conceive of, but using a digital system is better than analog.
So go check out a couple of these management softwares. We have some on ProPerks. You can go in BiggerPockets and read reviews and see which one is right for you. Most of them are good. A lot of them can meet your needs, but they have individual differences. So go check them out and figure out which one is right for you. If you are using a property manager, I should mention, they will have their own digital system. So the way it usually works is you’re not going to collect rent directly. They’re going to play the property management company and then the property management company is going to give you distributions monthly. So I have some out-of-state rentals where I have a property manager and the way it works is that every month they collect the rent for me through their system. I honestly don’t even know what it is.
They use some digital system, but it works. Then they take out one, their fee, and they also take out any repairs that came up that month, and then they give me the difference. They send me an ACH, they just deposit it directly in my bank account at the end of the month. But either way, it’s all automated. That’s really what you want for your rent collection system. Hopefully this shouldn’t be hard. This should take, again, 15, 30 minutes to set up. It’s really not that hard. And then you move on to the long game. This is where you manage your property and make sure that you’re taking care and optimizing your financial performance. Because now that you’ve got a tenant in place, you need to do the work. They are paying you for a service. You need to provide that service. You need to keep up with proactive maintenance, make sure things aren’t falling apart.
I find that one of the best ways to keep tenants is to show that you care about the property. You should care about your property and you should be going over there, looking at the outside, making sure that things are looking good. If something’s on the verge of breaking, fix it before it breaks. These things go a long way. If a toilet breaks and someone’s without a toilet for a day, that’s super inconvenient. But if you replace it proactively, they will be like, “Wow, I I love living in this place because they take care of problems before they even come to fruition. So try to be proactive about maintenance. Even when you do that, it is absolutely inevitable that you are going to have problems come up. Reply to them quickly. That is the number one thing you can do. Sometimes, unfortunately, you can’t fix the problem overnight.
I have unfortunately had problems where heat goes out and I can’t get a tech there for three days. So number one, be communicative. Be understanding. Don’t get defensive. Say, “I know this sucks. I’m sorry.” That’s true, right? You don’t want your tenant to not have heat, but sometimes things break. What do you do? Ask them what they need. Do they need space heaters? Go to Home Depot, buy a couple space heaters, go bring them over. Show that you care. Show that you really want them to have a good experience in your property. It will mean a lot to them and it will help you in the long run. I know buying three space heaters is going to cost you a couple hundred bucks, but I bet you, you have a much higher chance of keeping that tenant at the end of their lease if they saw that you were willing to do what it takes to make their experience as good as possible.
Now, one thing you can do and really should do from the start to minimize these interruptions is to build up your vendor list. This honestly, it took me years and it’s a constant battle. It’s something you always have to be doing, but you should know before something goes wrong who the good HVAC people are, who the good plumbing people are, who the good contractors are, who the good handymen are. You want to be able to call these people right away because honestly, speaking from experience, it is a bad feeling when something goes wrong, when there’s a leak, when the heat goes out, like I was explaining before, and you’re just calling around to a million different people and you don’t know who will actually show up. And the best way to do this in my experience is ask for referrals. Ask for referrals from other investors, other homeowners.
It doesn’t need to be from investors, but investors usually know cost-effective people. You don’t want to buy the cheapest person. I promise you this. It is such a big mistake people make is to go with the cheapest contractor. You also probably don’t want to go with the most expensive one. You want to search for value. Who is going to answer the phone? Be communicative. Show up on time and charge a fair and reasonable price. You need those people in your business. And again, I think the most important ones are HVACs, plumbers, electricians, and a handyman. If you can get those people, have a good reference, put them in your phone, who to call if something comes up, that’s going to make your life so much easier as a landlord because people, I think, dramatize the difficulty of being a rental property investor because like, oh, there’s a toilet breaks.
Oh, you don’t want to deal with that? No, I’m not going to go change the toilet myself. I’m going to pick up the phone. I’m going to call a plumber that I trust and say, Hey, I need a new toilet. And they’re going to go take care of it. I’m going to pay for it and everyone’s fine. It’s not that hard if you know who to call. So just spend a little time asking around and build up that list of people. And ideally, think about getting a primary and a backup because some people are on vacation. Some people are super busy that day or that week. So have two HVAC people, two plumbers that you can call in a time of need. And that’s really it. That is what you need to do to manage a rental property effectively. But there’s one more thing I do want to mention here, which is taxes.
Because if you’re going to go through the effort in doing this, the passive income is great, but there are a lot of tax advantages to renting out your home that you do not want to miss out on. A lot of newer investors don’t take full advantage of the tax code and the advantages that are written into it for people who hold onto real estate and rent it out. So this is not tax advice, but you should talk to a CPA about the following things. Number one, writing off your interest on your mortgage, right? This is what you can do with your primary. You could do it with rental properties as well. Depreciate the property. This will allow you to not pay much or any tax on the rental income that you generate each and every year. This is amazing. You do have to pay depreciation recapture when you go and sell the property, but most tax advisors recommend you do this and it could be really great for generating more cashflow.
Third, make sure you’re writing off expenses, right? Create an LLC. I’m a fan of creating an LLC. I know there’s a huge debate about this. I like creating LLCs. Every property I buy is in an LLC, and I don’t think it is worth the risk for like 400 bucks or whatever it costs to create an LLC. If you’re going to invest in this giant asset, protect it. Protect your financial life by putting it in an LLC. The other thing is if you open an LLC, you can open a business banking account and you can write off your expenses easily. So driving back and forth to Home Depot. If you need to go buy a tool to make a repair yourself, these are write-offs that you can charge against your business that will save you money as well. Also, if you have to do any big capital expenditures like replacing a roof, you could depreciate that as well, and that will lower your overall tax liability.
So I guess that’s a bonus step is go talk to your CPA. If you’re going to go rent this out, go talk to a CPA about what tax moves you should be making to ensure that you’re optimizing your performance. So that’s it. That’s how you rent out your home the right way. First thing to do, make sure that your renting out your home is actually a good investment. Go do the analysis. It shouldn’t take you that long, but figure out if this actually makes sense and it’s worth your time and effort. I think for a lot of people, especially people who have really low locked in mortgage rates over the last couple years, it is worth it. And if it is worth it to you, make sure you follow the steps that we’ve outlined in this episode so that you do it the right way.
You protect yourself, you maximize your opportunity to make money, and you provide a high quality place for your tenants to live. If you do all that, renting out your home can be a phenomenal investment that can really genuinely be a launchpad to your financial freedom. That’s our episode for today. Remember, if you are interested in doing this, our pro memberships, specifically our pro perks, have tons of benefits that you can take advantage of. Discounts on insurance, discounts on mortgages, discounts on property management software. So if you’re going to go out and do this, check out BiggerPockets Pro. It is designed for people who are managing their own rentals and can give you a huge leg up and help ensure that you’re successful when you go out and rent your home. Thank you all so much for watching this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m Dave Meyer.
I’ll see you next time.

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The 2023 Barbie movie grossed $1.4 billion worldwide at the box office, making it the highest-grossing film in Warner Bros. history. Now new details have emerged about Margot Robbie’s payday as the movie’s titular character. 

According to Variety, Robbie reportedly made a staggering $50 million from starring in and producing Barbie. The publication added that Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has not been able to bring on the core Barbie team, including Robbie, Ryan Gosling, director Greta Gerwig and her co-writer husband, Noah Baumbach, for a sequel. 

Talks have reportedly stalled because Zaslav and the team have not been able to agree on pay. The creative team has rejected more than six offers for sequels in the three years since Barbie debuted. 

Variety noted that the latest offer Warner Bros. made was the “highest ever” from the studio. One source called the offer “life-changing money.”

A separate source downplayed the offer, saying that the individual compensation for each member of the team is not as “historic” as the combined amount. 

Gosling is pushing for $20 million to play Ken again in the sequel. Sources told Variety that Gerwig made “tens of millions of dollars” from the 2023 movie. 

Variety confirmed that Gerwig and Baumbach have a concept in mind for a sequel, but they are not revealing any details and will not start writing it until signing a contract with Warner Bros. 

What the team has said about a sequel

After Barbie became a billion-dollar success, the core team talked publicly about possibly making a sequel. At Time’s Women of the Year event in March 2024, Gerwig spoke about her guiding principles. 

“My North Star is ‘What do I deeply love? What do I really care about?’ Like, ‘What’s the story underneath this story?’” Gerwig said at the event. “And I think with Barbie, the story underneath this story was I loved Barbie. I remember going to Toys R Us and looking at Barbies, and I loved their hair. And I loved everything about them, and my mom was not sure about it. And I find that’s the story, that’s the generational story…I’m always trying to find those undertows.”

Gerwig wasn’t able to give a definitive answer about a sequel, but noted that she “loved” making the movie. 

“I loved the world that we built so much and all of the actors and the idea of getting to be with that group of people again is very exciting,” she said at the event. 

Meanwhile, Robbie told the Associated Press in November 2023 that it was “really important” that Barbie did well at the box office. She said that the “biggest takeaway” for her was that original films can still “hit huge.”

“It doesn’t have to be a sequel or a prequel or a remake,” she said. “It can be totally original. It can still be big.”

Robbie added that the team “put everything” into the movie. 

“I can’t imagine what would be next,” she said. 

The 2023 Barbie movie grossed $1.4 billion worldwide at the box office, making it the highest-grossing film in Warner Bros. history. Now new details have emerged about Margot Robbie’s payday as the movie’s titular character. 

According to Variety, Robbie reportedly made a staggering $50 million from starring in and producing Barbie. The publication added that Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has not been able to bring on the core Barbie team, including Robbie, Ryan Gosling, director Greta Gerwig and her co-writer husband, Noah Baumbach, for a sequel. 

Talks have reportedly stalled because Zaslav and the team have not been able to agree on pay. The creative team has rejected more than six offers for sequels in the three years since Barbie debuted.