Welcome for secure decentralized optimization. Great. So if you're debating whether to be in this room or up in the main hall, we can cut to the chase. The topic of my talk will be discussing how to solve hard math problems off-chain. How can we actually address problems in machine learning, market clearing, operation scheduling? How can we use smart contracts to be able to bring those problems into consensus on a global optimum? And then how can we guarantee security, feasibility, and optimality of this type of problem? The general outline, I'm going to be talking about optimization problems. And I don't mean compiler optimization here, but a couple of different classes of problems that I work on. I'm a PhD student at UC Berkeley. And then talk about how we can integrate smart contracts to really improve the application of these types of optimization tools to a wider set of problems. I come from an energy background, energy markets, and the electricity market specifically. So I'm going to be discussing an application of this that I've researched in electricity market formulation for small microgrids. So optimization, just so that we're all on the same page. Who here has heard of convex optimization before? Oh, good. A few hands. That's great. So in general, optimization problems have the goal of minimizing or maximizing some function, the dark curved line here, subject to some constraints. So we can't be in this dark blue area. In general, these are pretty hard. We might end up in this local minima. We'd like to end up in the global minima. Convex optimization problems make this a lot easier. We can prove that a type of problem basically looks like a bowl. As long as we follow the slope of this downwards, we'll end up at the right global optima. So there's a lot of tools that we can bring to bear when we know that a problem is convex. One of the more interesting components of this is that we can think of it in a decentralized optimization form. Conventionally, we just have one system operator who has all of the information about all of the data, all the constraints in the system. So even if these are, say, individual households who have mobility constraints on their electric vehicles, individual participants who have different investment goals for portfolio optimization, individual factories that have constraints on production, one system operator would have all the knowledge about all those constraints and run a centralized optimization problem. This is great if all of those entities are owned by the same person.  And to reach a global optimum, you need some sort of way of decentralizing this problem into a trustless, cooperative system. So decentralized problems break that into a set of local optimization problems, these blue dots, that then coordinate back and forth with an aggregator until they reach consensus on that global optimum. And this is really important. We're actually able to guarantee that we're going to hit the global optimum even though we start up with these local problems. Why would we bother with this? So one really beautiful part of this is that we can actually take a hard, big problem, break it into a set of analytically solvable sub-problems. So you can get a thousand X speed up in computation time, even while running it on the same computing node. Another part is just breaking a hard problem that has, say, greater than quadratic compute complexity and break it into a set of small problems, even though you're breaking it into n smaller problems, you've drastically reduced your compute time. Then the other part is that if there's those privacy and trust issues, you don't want to share all that information with the global aggregator. So the aggregator, that person who coordinates between all of these nodes, has a really easy job, fortunately. These nodes have hard compute problems subject to local constraints about which they have private information, but the aggregator only has a very simple arithmetic update problem in a lot of these formulations. So even though this can be something that takes minutes or even hours to compute off-chain on a CPU or a server cluster, this is just a really simple update problem. So this is just adding all those numbers together and broadcasting the update to the rest of the network. It's sort of like a market. So individuals have a sense of their value functions for a particular good. They can propose how much they'd like to sell or buy. The market operator aggregates all those together, estimates what the market clearing price would be, broadcast that price out to everybody. People can update their estimates of their bids or asks for the object. And when you iterate back and forth with that, you're able to reach consensus and for these comics optimization problems, we can prove that that's the global optimum. So going from these decentralized, sorry, decentralized problems to a fully decentralized model, one of the challenges with this model of architecture is the aggregator has to have direct lines of communication with every single node. So not a problem when you just have three nodes here. For the types of electricity market problems that I consider where you're trying to control say 10 million electric vehicles, you don't want to have one server that's trying to talk to 10 million electric vehicles all at once. You need a more decentralized model. So fully decentralized optimization has become a tool that's in vogue in particular for these really large, decentralized optimization problems. One of the challenges though is that you're only sharing information with your neighbors and those neighbors might be lying to you if they've been compromised. So while you might be communicating with your neighbor, that neighbor may have had his electric vehicle hacked by somebody and that hacker is attempting to cause a blackout in the electricity grid, for instance. So we have a question of how do we identify the nodes that have been compromised? How do we reach stable operation and then can we guarantee feasibility or optimality of the system when these nodes have been compromised? So we have this bi-directional communication between each neighbor. So we just see messages that our neighbor is sending us. In this case, the red node has been compromised. So rather than the normal operation of the system, the red node could distort its private optimization problem. So it solves some problem that doesn't actually reflect reality. In a machine learning or data science problem, this could be that you're throwing in junk data and the network doesn't necessarily know that. It just sees some message from you. It might not have been entirely expecting that message but it can't know whether that's because you're acting strange or whether that's because your upstream participants have sent you bad data. So there's difficulty in identifying where the flaw in the system is. Also, a compromised node can just send a bad signal to its neighbors, like unidirectionally. And if it knows that there's certain types of problems that this node cannot address or like certain areas where this node would be infeasible, it can send a signal that's always going to be infeasible. This node basically freaks out, is never able to reach consensus, it's never able to reach feasibility and the system fails to converge. Then also a compromised node could just inject noise into the system so that at every update step, you have a noisy signal and you're failing to converge because of that. So what can we do to prevent these modes of attack? What we'd like to do is perhaps bypass any node that might be compromised. If you're trying to make your system redundant or resilient to attacks up to end nodes, this ultimately would mean that you need a fully connected graph with secure communications channels. The other way that we could address this would be have some other centralized database that provides a global information layer on all the state variables. Now this is starting to look a little bit more like a blockchain. So taking that information from peer to peer communication and having that passed trustlessly between all the peers on the network gives us global insight into the state of all the variables in the network. This allows us to perform security checks on the signals that we're receiving from our neighbors and thus identify the nodes that have been compromised. This is really powerful because it means that we no longer have to trust either an aggregator, somebody who's holding the database or just trust our neighbors but we get the benefits of both of those. So one of the things that's really interesting about this is we think of blockchains as these iterative computations that reach consensus. Also decentralized optimization also is the same model of iterating between local problems with an aggregator update step or the rest of the network and reaching eventually consensus on the system. The research that I've been doing is highlighting the similarity to be able to create a sort of combined model where these local update steps are coordinating with a smart contract to be able to create or to process a secure verifiable update step. Ultimately reaching a solution that is auditable, you can see how you got to that solution. You can prove the optimality of that and know whether or not there were attacks along the way and then that solution can be stored on the blockchain for everybody to access. Thinking about a couple of the different ways that these different models fail. So we first talked about aggregator coordinated decentralized optimization prone to monopoly distortions. So anytime that there's a market operator, a scheduler who has their own incentives and you may not trust their incentives, you wouldn't want to trust some monopoly aggregator. They're prone to communication dropouts. If there's say an outage in the electricity grid, that monopoly or that centralized aggregator wouldn't be online, wouldn't be able to coordinate between these local nodes. Conversely, the fully decentralized models addressed those but had exposed us to these other weaknesses. And by using a blockchain to provide a global information layer between all of these, we're able to have the benefits of the centralized aggregator problem while also avoiding the pitfalls of the fully decentralized problem. So let's take an example. This is where my research is in electricity markets. And this may be a field that's unfamiliar to a lot of you, but as we looked ahead at larger penetrations of electric vehicles and photovoltaic solar systems, we'll end up with these big swings in power flows on the local distribution network. So going from a model where you can always plan for the power consumption because you know that people just have small loads like toasters and electric light bulbs, to a world where you have, the sun might go behind a cloud. Everybody's photovoltaic generation cuts off. At the same time, people's electric vehicles are plugging in. And you have these massive imbalances in generation. Utilities would like to be able to address these imbalances in a way that minimizes the cost of electricity generation. That cost to minimization means that we're dealing with an optimization problem here. The other challenge though, is that the electricity network is constrained. We can't just have some generators off 100 miles away that are going to make up for this. We need to be able to respect the local constraints in the system, particularly in what I'm modeling, the distribution network within a neighborhood. One of the challenges though, is that the utilities have market power and all of the people who provide your smart devices may be competitors with each other in the marketplace. So there's a lack of trust, not only between perhaps you and the utility who wants to sell you power, but also between all of the participants in this marketplace. So you might have a household that has a Tesla electric car, a Ford electric car. Both of those are competing with each other to sell regulation services on an energy market. You might have different smart thermostats who are competing to be able to provide energy services on a market, while also provide these household level services. We'd like to be able to reach consensus on the way that most equitably provides compensation for energy services that each of these devices gives. So taking that same paradigm that I described earlier, we're breaking this big scheduling problem with a bunch of trustless participants into a set of local problems where each household or each node on the network, as defined by the actual physical constraints of the system, solves a private optimization problem. This is harder than something you would want to run on the blockchain, but a lot cheaper than solving it all as one centralized problem. Those work together through this smart contract that coordinates the update step, to be able to eventually reach consensus on the best schedule for all of these devices. So the goal is to minimize the power cost for everybody, provide compensation for all of the devices that are participating in this network, and do so automatically. So we have a model of our network. This is the physical network that actually provides these constraints. That gets fed into these smart contracts. So we have the optimization problem, the smart meter, and then the optimization updates get communicated with smart contracts on the blockchain, one for actually coordinating the update step. Once we reach consensus, that can be bounced over to a smart contract that does billing and any reconciliation between expected schedule and the actual realized schedule. And so with that, we're able to eventually identify when we've hit consensus on the global optimum, we can guarantee the optimality of the system along the way we're performing security checks to make sure that none of these nodes have been compromised in a way that will push us into an infeasible region, cause a blackout, and ultimately end up with basically a self-scheduling, utility-free electricity system. So just to sort of show some pretty graphs because we have results to share, we can see how we're actually shifting around the behind the meter batteries, the shapeable loads in the purple lines, deferrable loads like smart washers or smart appliances, and moving all of those around to make sure that we're taking advantage of all of the photovoltaic energy that's being pumped into the grid. Across the whole node, we're actually monitoring the physical constraints of the system at every point in the distribution network. We're making sure that the voltage doesn't go out of our acceptable bounds. This is the physical constraint that defines the system. And we're able to converge on a schedule that is only suboptimal in price by 0.4%. So really close to what you would get if a utility were solving all of this privately. And then we can also guarantee that the constraints are satisfied, that this isn't going to blow up, that our electricity system is still going to stay stable. So we've solved a hard optimization problem with physical constraints, with an algorithm that respects local privacy, and can guarantee the optimality and the feasibility of the solution. Challenges and opportunities looking ahead. So these mirror the three big areas that Vitalik was talking about yesterday. One is privacy. So I'm very interested in the sessions tomorrow on zero knowledge proofs, to be able to identify how can we actually make sure that the information we're sending back and forth is not sensitive. So in the model that I just described, the actual power consumption for each household ends up getting stored on the blockchain. There's concerns about, say, a thief being able to identify when somebody is away from home and thus could break into the house if they know what everybody's expected power consumption is. The other part is there's a potential for data leakage through the iterations back and forth. So that even if the information that you're sending is not fundamentally sensitive, that the information that is leaking out of the system by how much you're changing your estimate at each of these steps might indicate something about what your private optimization problem is. So the security, we've been working on like provable guarantees of the feasibility with untrusted nodes. One big comment here is that these proofs generally have much weaker conditions than BFT would give. So in these constrained systems, your ability to guarantee feasibility is going to be dependent on the topology of how faulty nodes are connected. And in general though, because it's going to be dependent on that, we can't guarantee the same one-third proof against attack that BFT systems generally have. Scalability, so currently looking at converging in about 20 iterations of the system, each of those iterations requires update steps or variable updates sent to the aggregator node, performing that, or the aggregator smart contract, performing that update, and then broadcasting that back. So each of those is at minimum two to three secured blocks. So in net, this could be a relatively long, slow process. That's an area where, again, like looking at plasma or other ways of speeding this up could improve the system. With that, I think we have some extra time, sure. One of the general techniques for dealing with blockchain scalability is only going to the blockchain when necessary. Are there equivalents here where you could sort of determine that some subset of the network is behaving badly and only go to the blockchain in that case? Yeah, so one area that I'm interested in looking at is state channels to be able to identify basically what are the portions that we need to update, and which portions of the updates need to be saved to the blockchain, which portions can just be done through state channels, and not have all of that constantly back and forth on the main blockchain. You mentioned there are some nodes that might be untrustworthy, but it seems that every node corresponds to a household, and every household has, you know, is in their own interest to act, you know, in a trustworthy manner, so why is that an issue here? So if you think of, say, the hack against the Ukrainian electricity grid, where an outside party was interested in actually just bringing down the whole grid for malicious intent, you don't care about the private household reasons for the attack, there might be somebody who just wants to cause a blackout. So this is a really unique challenge of this type of work. The private problem of the household is dependent on constraint information fed to them by all the devices. So somebody could hack an electric car and pass bad information to the, even if it's a secure enclave that does the actual computation, if that secure enclave is getting garbage, then it needs to, you effectively can't expect that the messages being passed the network are trustworthy. Great question, though. Yeah, maybe one last question. Any more questions? What about offline, when the devices are being offline? So this is a great question. I'm interested in looking into models of sharding and being able to split this up. That is one of the big benefits of the fully decentralized algorithms is that you don't care where there's a break in the system, those can still reach local optimality. When you have a blockchain, being able to bring those two basically forked chains back into consensus is something I haven't yet looked at but want to. Thanks, Eric.


Aloha everyone and welcome to Hawaii together on the Think Check Hawaii Broadcast Network. I'm Kaylee Ikeena, your host and the executive president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, delighted to be with you today. And we're talking about something that's on everyone's heart. That is, how do you make a living in Hawaii? The cost of living is skyrocketing. Our residents are leaving. And there are ordinary folk that want to use their homes in order to rent out a room or two in order to make additional income. Today we have the privilege of talking with a couple, but who are doing this independently of each other to individuals. However, their problem as it is the case with many people who have short-term rentals is that that business is in jeopardy on the island of Oahu and throughout the neighbor island. There's a bill that is in our county council now that could wash short-term rentals. I have with me today and we'll introduce them to you in just a moment. Ed Jones and Peggy Oran are on Oahu. But we're going to talk about what the Honolulu County council members are considering right now. It's a measure called Bill 41. And what that would do basically is limit short-term rentals on Oahu no less than 180 days at a time. That's six months. That's a very long short-term rental and finding tenants for that period of time makes it quite difficult if you're simply trying to let your room out for a very short period of time. Vacation rental owners, Ed Jones and Peggy Oran say the bill, if enacted into law would be devastating for Hawaii's rental agents, vacation rental industry. Now imposing strict restrictions on short-term rentals may hurt Hawaii residents more than it actually will help. We're going to talk about both sides of the issue, but we're going to also discuss better policy approaches with Ed and Peggy that will benefit vacation rental owners on Oahu and all residents across the island. I do want to stress that today we've decided not to go with subject matter experts per se or with corporate representatives, but ordinary folk, people who have homes want to rent out a room or two. And so I want to introduce to you today Ed and Peggy. Ed Jones, Aloha Ed, thanks for joining us today. Aloha, glad to be here. Ed, where do you live? Over in Coloma Valley and my responsibility is probably the simplest case. It is just two rental rooms under the Unpermitted Use that is allowed under Bill 89. We can have up to two rooms with some requirements and basically we have been doing this for around 35 years. My goodness, so you really are a Kama'aina family and I want to welcome Peggy to the program. Peggy Oran. Aloha. Aloha to you Peggy. Peggy, you're also where you located Peggy. I'm located in Hawaii Kai. I have a four bedroom home. It's been in the family for 50 years and I have a small cottage behind the garage where I live and I rent out the whole house four bedrooms. And I've been doing that for five years now. Before that, when I was working on the mainland, I rented it out long term. But now I'm retired and I need the short-term income to be able to live. Now, Peggy, when you say that you need the income in order to live, you're not really exaggerating, are you? I mean, what is the reality of that statement here in Hawaii? I have a small social security check, but it wouldn't pay the taxes and the bills. Well, how much of a difference does it make that you can rent out some of your property? Well, I figure if I went with the long-term rental thing, long-term rental rates are a lot lower than short-term rental rates. If I did, if I followed this bill, okay, and usually I can get people here for a week, if I followed the bill 41, I could make $7,000 in a year, okay? I can't do that. I wouldn't be able to pay my taxes. I wouldn't be able to pay the expenses of running this house, and I'd have to sell it. So what you're talking about really is managing life here in Hawaii, being able to afford the high cost of living. That's right. Okay. Ed, when you're not a corporation or a big company or anything like that, you're just handling a private property. What is your feeling about that? People talk about property rights that owners should have the right to be able to rent out a room or two. What are your thoughts? Yes, the bill 89 really struck a basic, this is our ordinance, 1918, and this is what we're functioning on. It was passed in 2019, so just before COVID, and it provided the infrastructure so that we can operate legally. So we operate under the Unpermitted Use Section, and we comply with things like making sure we have the parking and the room space and access and place to enjoy outside, and very quiet, and quite a cheerful piece of paradise. Well, you know, let's zoom ahead now from bill 89 to this current bill being considered at the county council, bill number 41. Peggy, what is the situation with vacation rentals here on Oahu and the impact of bill 41? Well, if we can only rent twice a year, which is what 180 days means, first of all, the city would not get a cent in transient accommodations taxes, tax. I would file returns for zero, zero, zero month after month after month. So I don't think they've considered that, but if I can only rent to two tenants a year, I might as well just go to an all-long-term rental because I can't charge the $500 a night that I get for renting out those four bedrooms. I can sleep 10 people. You know, it's a bargain for them, really. And if I'm forced to do the two six-month leases, I might as well just say, well, I'm just going to rent it long term. And that would bring me probably $7,000 to $8,000 a month to that particular house, because it sleeps a lot of people. But that's still barely enough to pay the taxes and keep the place running and keep it well repaired and looking good from the street. Ed, would you have anything to add to give us some background on bill 41 and the impact you think it would have? Yes. Bill 41 is an effective ban on renting. This kind of renting is month-to-month renting that we do here. And it is under state law, a 30-day renewal month-to-month renting. So the tenant has the option to renew for the next month, as most of them do. We've had tenants here for them anywhere from just the one month to 10 years. So it provides them with a great deal of flexibility. But the most important thing is this is an implementation of affordable housing. And I hope that that will be considered as Bill 41 continues to get more attention. And we consider the wide range of what we do. I hope that folks will in the City Council and in DPP and in the proponent groups will gather around the table and talk about what we do and the benefit that it has for the community as a whole. We believe that we're part of the solution here when it comes to affordable housing. Not the problem. I'm at a loss because no one is providing me with any kind of evidence at all that renting rooms has a negative impact on the community. Well, what do you say? Because it's often cited by opponents to vacation rentals, short-term vacation rentals, that this uses up our valuable resources of housing and it increases the cost of housing and making it unaffordable to many of our locals. You said you've not seen the data on that. Ed, let me switch to Peggy. Do you have any thoughts on that? Well, what do you say? They have a very interesting and rare opportunity during COVID when the government are shut down vacation rentals for seven months. My house stood empty. I lost $100,000 and had to sell my home near my grandchildren in California and move in behind the garage to cope with it. But it provided us on the upside with an opportunity to look at what happens with the market for potential affordable housing when the number of houses on the market increases. The number of houses that could be affordable rentals did increase. I had some friends that had to bail out and move to the mainland and shut down their businesses. It did increase and you would expect the prices to go down since the number of houses went up, supply and demand. But that didn't happen. The prices went up. I think that's very interesting. I think most affordable rental projects feel good, look good things that politicians put on the table to get elected. Once they get elected, they base reality and it gets too expensive. I think there have been more cancellations of affordable rentals in that department and there have been people buying houses that are otherwise vacation rentals. Mine is not an affordable rental house anyway. Well, thank you, Peggy. Ed, your further thoughts on what you'd say to people who argue that short-term vacation rentals really heat up our affordable housing and then the prices through the roof were locals? Well, with this ban on affordable renting, the results would be that we would be down through rooms to be tenant. We wouldn't be allowed to rent to those tenants. It is really unreasonable to ask someone to up front 90 days or 180 days of rental payment. That's not the affordable housing model. In the case we use Airbnb as our platform, so folks easily go on to Airbnb and they just pay that one month up front. There isn't even a security deposit because we know who they are. We can see the reviews. We don't need a security. Now, I understand that there's a further draft of bill 41, the latest draft. Are you familiar with that? Does this latest draft increase the minimum days allowable to rent, either of you? It does have a proposal for, so this is a draft. It does not mean that the base of 41 is dead. Our discussions are with each one that is being considered. Now we have at least two of them that are being considered right now. The number of days is 90 instead of 180. It is still not compatible with a month-to-month renting model. So dropping the number of days has not been helpful from 180 to 90 as a solution for affordable housing. If either of you could fix bill 41 in any way, what would you do to it? What would you tell council members that they need to do? The first thing I would ask them to do is to do appropriation. The request is there for $1.3 million in a staff estimate. I think we've talked about three of the four revenue streams that they can draw revenue from. TAT, GAT, real property tax, real estate investment. If the next governor signs a bill for real estate investment, those are all revenue streams for enforcement, subsidized affordable housing, to make it possible for more people to find a place to live. Peggy, would you add anything? Yes, those are all great ideas. I think part of the increase in whatever we have to pay to do business should go to an affordable housing fund. So these projects that are proposed can be built. Right now that's not happening. We're sort of a scapegoat, a whipping boy for the politicians in Honolulu. If there's a problem with affordable housing, let's blame the vacation rentals. If there's a problem with the noise in the neighborhood, let's blame the vacation rentals. I have a situation in my neighborhood where I have noise from 4 a.m. to 1 a.m. I have drunks in the middle of the street in the middle of the night throwing trash in my yard. We have naked trespassers invading people's houses.  And no, Larry Bartley, it isn't a vacation rental. It's a beach park. And guess who put it in place? The city and county of Honolulu. Well, Peggy, we're going to segue from what you've just brought up and take a break. When we come back, I want to ask both of you about some of the concerns that members of the community express regarding short-term vacation rentals and how you would respond to that. But first, we're going to take a one-minute break. This is Kaylee Akeena on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. Why are you together with my guests today, Ed Jones and Peggy Lohrund discussing short-term vacation rentals? Don't go away. We'll be right back. Two major crises have descended upon humanity. I'm a change and the coronavirus. They may seem independent of each other. In fact, they are very closely linked. The emergence of COVID-19 on top of climate change is a spiraling crisis. And it's just the beginning. But for 33 years and you have to have a nickname, I get to host on Think Tech Hawaii two shows. Figments, the power of imagination, and figments on reality. The power of imagination introduces you to some of my incredible friends and their life experiences. Astronauts, war heroes, Hollywood writers, you name it. They're on it and you'll be inspired and entertained. In on reality, I'll give you something hard to find, non-political commentary on today's events. That's right, non-political because the vitriol doesn't help folks. So figments, the power of imagination, figments, on reality, both on Think Tech Hawaii. Welcome back. This is Kaylee Iakina. We're on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network Hawaii together. And my guests today are discussing a very important issue and that is short-term vacation rental. Just before we left, Ed Jones and Peggy Oran gave us some of their experience and their concerns about bill 41. Now I've got a tough question for you. Whenever we turn the news on, there's a segment if short-term vacation rentals is being covered in which people are interviewed saying short-term vacation rentals are a blight on the land. They result in strangers coming into our neighborhoods. They result in noise, pollution, late into the night, partying. They result in trash, overuse of utilities. I could go on and on. And I'm sure that you are confronted with this from time to time. I just want to hear what you both have to say in response to that. We'll start, Peggy. Okay. Of course, I hear all of that stuff. The opponents of vacation rentals like to smear all of us with the same black brush, right? However, most of us want to comply with whatever laws there are. Most of us are law-abiding people, and our aim is to make people happy. I try to make my guests happy. I try to keep my neighbors happy. I've had some neighbors for 35 years that have never lodged a complaint. And I'm not a super host or a premier partner on websites I use to book guests because I refuse to do instant booking. Everybody who walks through my door has been vetted. I know they're not going to be a kegger for a week of noisy, shouting people. The people I have are good neighbors. They're going to be a credit to any neighborhood, wherever they are. And I want them to be good neighbors while they're at my house. All of my parking is off street, and I make sure my people are quiet, and they observe the noise, refuse. They know this up front. I tell them. I said, I don't want noise. And if you're not willing to be quiet, then go someplace else. I'd rather just have it set up front. And I think there are many, most of the vacation rental hosts on a are just like me. I think the problems come from a very small group of people that are giving our opponents a field day as far as things to complain about. The rest of us, I don't think you'd even know my vacation rental is there. Thank you, Peggy. Ed, your thoughts? To add to that, now for our owner-occupied situation. So it is really not hard to accomplish this goal in an owner-occupied for rooms. But I would point out that our tenants were yet to rent to the first tourist in 35 years. Our tenants are from all walks of life in the military, in nursing. They're small business owners themselves. The tenant we have right now is returning from last year to write the second half of her book. It needs a quiet place in paradise to do that. And this is where she can think clearly. Those are the kinds of requirements that we respond to. There's a high degree of skill. But in addition to that, there has also been many, many rentals that have occurred with folks local, with their regular job working in the community. I should talk a little bit about misbehavior, though. The ordinances we're talking about are ones that apply to all of them. So it is important to, when there is a complaint, to call HPD and to support those that come here to carry a badge. In addition to that, I'm understanding that for any of the other kinds of violations that are occurring that are in DPP's jurisdiction, I believe that they should also follow a community policing model. In the latest draft, there is an extensive discussion on a binder that we maintain information about the rental or the benefit of tenants, and also DPP. A regional DPP enforcement officer should be completely aware of the contents of that binder for all the properties in the region. And when that kind of dialogue occurs, I think we'll see that complaint evaporate from the impact community. How about taxes? Do vacation rental home owners pay taxes for the visitors who come? Thank you. You want to take that one? Yes. All right. There are three kinds of taxes that can be levied on a rental home. One is the general excise tax or get. They get it. We don't. And the hat, that is the transient accommodations tax. If you're renting for less than that magical 180 days, that's the only place, incidentally, in state law, where 180 days comes into the law as it is written. Right, Ed? We're talking about that. That's correct. I was referring to the landlord tent code, which allows and defines the parameters on month-to-month rent. And that's where the long-term rental of 180 days starts. When I rented long-term last year in desperation, it was a long-term rental. So I had zero on my tax returns for about a year, but I filed them. Anyway, you've got get, you've got tap, and you've got property taxes. So I pay my property taxes. They've just increased my assessment by 38%. And I have tax taxes when I have short-term guests, and I have get taxes for all of them. There's a question here about the difference between what hotels pay and what a vacation rental owner like me pays. The only difference is the value of the hotel for property tax purposes. They have a higher assessed rate. It's $1390 per $1,000 valuation. Mine as a bed-and-breakfast home would be $650 per $1,000 of valuation. And I think they were revamping this code in the latest iteration of Bill 41. And I think the one thing they want to slip in there is Classification J for bed-and-breakfast homes. You pay more money than you would for a residence. The lowest fee for a residence is $350 per $1,000. And that's for an owner occupied home with an exemption. We all pay the taxes. It's just how much one or the other. In what way beyond the tax revenues that short-term vacation rentals generate, in what way do short-term vacation rentals help the community at large? What are some of the positive features of having this available? One, for example, being that it may not be only tourists who take advantage of them, but locals as well. That's right. Ed? Yeah, so I guess there's a couple of categories to that. There is more that we have to purchase to maintain a vacation rental property. So there's a whole lot of vendors from pest control to a maintenance of the property. I do some of that myself, but there is a lot that goes out to the local businesses in the community. The other category there is monies paid out by renters themselves. Every time they purchase a meal. Costco is probably pretty busy today, and we have a record number of Kobe cases, but we still have a considerable number of people in Costco who are residents here or in a variety of residents that are tenants in our short-term rent. Peggy, do you see any other advantages as well? Yes. First of all, a lot of tourists are vibrant, smart people, and they are interested in the culture here, and I try to educate them as much as I can on that. Sometimes I take them places that they wouldn't have known of otherwise. The average visitor to Oahu spends $201 per day per guest, and I figured out the economic impact of my vacation rental on Oahu's economy for the last normal year we had, which was 2018. I spent $150,000 keeping the place running, and that's paying things to City Mill, where local people work. It's a local company. To the local food stores, all of my workmen, day laborers, yard men, the pest control, the pool man, et cetera, et cetera. They're all local people. Hiko, Oiantelcom, Board of Water supply, all the people that work for those people are benefiting from that $150,000. I paid $5,000 in taxes, all three kinds, and then there's the spending by my guests, and that adds up to, for one little old lady's house, $625,000. You multiply me times $4,000, and you've got in excess of $2 billion a year. Well, Peggy, wipe us out. Thank you very much. I want to thank both of you, Ed and Peggy, for being with us today. It was very insightful to learn from you, your experiences, and to get to know you. Thank you very, very much. And to our listeners and viewers, we'll be back again on Think Tech Hawaii, Hawaii Together. But keep in mind, Bill 41 and the short-term vacation rental industry, it's ordinary people. Take care. Aloha.


Okay, David. I'm sorry. It's all good. How you doing busy, huh a little bit a little bit Right on. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. Oh Yeah, definitely. I mean I just made a switch That's why you got the notice to like my new Facebook page nice because I left call will banker and I'm now with better homes and gardens Okay, let me pull up that page Okay, cool. So then Have you ran any Facebook ads or like what are you doing as far as like trying to promote or market on this new page? So, I mean right now, I don't really do too many ads or anything I think I maybe have done maybe three ads in my whole Like in the last year. I think I maybe ran three ads For listings, but I don't really I don't really promote myself that much. I'm like old-school So I Got you. Yeah, for sure. Are you are you looking to promote on social media? Are you kind of just fine with with offline and referrals? I Like offline and referrals personally because again, I Kind of know those people yes for sure More concrete I tried I guess Buying leads per se Gosh, I was what 14 maybe 14 or 15 2014 or 15 with Zillow and It just ended up being like a whole bunch of like No win leads Yeah, I think I might have closed maybe like two or three of them, but it was just not really in my best interest. So I Haven't really targeted. I mean you have my interest when you're like, oh, yeah, you can have thousands of leads Because I work primarily with military I Am a military relocation professional and so Jacksonville we have three bases, I guess here Technically two but three that they can go to and Actually more than that because I do sell Georgia too. I'm not licensed in Georgia But most of the people that are stationed at Kings Bay They live in Jacksonville because no state income tax. Gotcha Really cool. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I guess I guess social media It's what a lot of what a lot of local business owners try to do is they try to just have some type of presence on quote-unquote social media But as you start to build your your brand on just social media The facts the facts are is that as you like this personal page as you take your friend count up and and It's the same for every platform whether it's Instagram LinkedIn or Twitter, whatever as you scale that number from 1200 to let's just say 2400 and then 3200 and 4000 and the only reason why a person would even do that is because they're building a business Like that's the only reason like if if it wasn't for you being in business You'd probably be straight with the 200 people that you actually know, you know, I mean But as you take this right across a thousand 90 plus percent of your 1200 don't know you and They don't even live in your area So that's the reality when it comes to social media And so as a local business owner starts to post on this page or whether they start to post on this page 90 plus percent of the people seeing it don't care And so when it comes to inviting our friends like this 210 It came from you inviting the 1200 But you're doing deals in your backyard and the 210 90 plus percent of them don't live in your backyard Because there are people like me who are just in you know, just receiving an invite will like your page I'm gonna like you to support you but anytime you post a listing or an open house It's just it's just not relevant and that's why as I post no one's liking it because no one's in the area You know what I mean? So I guess social media that everyone has has has just the whole Goal or whole idea that we have to be on social media When that that could not be further than the truth What a person has to be doing is running Facebook ads if they're looking to build it on social media So the only reason why you even need this business page is if you're running Facebook ads If you're not the 210 that like it They're part of the 1200 over here. So you might as well just post over here and not even worry about a business page You know what I mean? So I guess where I'm coming from is just speaking to thousands of rotors on this topic I've been doing this for a long time, but I come from mortgages I was a lender for six years, but I before that I was into marketing So now all I do is kind of just consult real estate agents on on the best way to approach social media But that's for those that are looking to approach it You know what I mean? If you're if you're straight with just referrals and what you're doing offline, you know You can for sure keep keep doing that But if if anything on this page, you you definitely would want to run an ad targeting your local area That's kind of the biggest advice. So anytime you post on this Post it as if you're gonna post it and run to your area Because that's the only only way you're gonna ever see any type of engagement or any type of ROI on these posts Okay, yeah, so like I mean I got a couple of listings coming up So when it says run an ad and I can reach a thousand people and they charge me 35 books like Is that what you're talking about? Yes, but you don't want to you don't want to buy into that because that that's simply a boost You don't want to do it from a cell phone You don't want to you don't want to you don't want to click that boost button What you want to do or what you're gonna have to do is simply come to your your your page and click on create and Then you can click on ad and you're gonna set up the ad through your ads manager And the best way to get here is through an actual computer not on your cell phone So so this is Facebook's back end. This is the ads manager So every ad you see on Facebook so as we're just scrolling through our news feed And we're just kind of seeing what our friends are up to and then we come across a sponsored ad This is an ad that was ran through the ads manager through back here. Hmm So to answer your question Yes, if you have a listing because here's what every agent is doing and the reason why I know this It's not just because I come from marketing our mortgages in 2016 when I started helping you guys that's when it that's when all this started for me is 2016 I started consulting real estate agents on social media marketing and Facebook advertising in 2016 I started requesting nothing but real estate agents. So when you look at my friend list right here 48 10 Like it's a public list like you can look at every single one of my friends Every single one of them just is a real estate agent every single one of them except for one and you can look at all of them So that's 4809 that are actual real estate agents The only one was not is my wife, which is this one right here Malina So she's only one out of 48 10 who is not a real estate agent But the reason why I tell you that is because that started in 2016 I came over here Rather than cold calling you guys rather than door knocking rather than trying to promote my marketing services any other way Because I didn't want to pitch it that way I just simply started requesting you guys and as I started doing that in 2016 2017 2018 2019 I don't know about you But but if you're in any type of Facebook groups when you're in a group It's most likely a group of people on Facebook a Facebook quote-unquote group It's most likely a group of people in that Facebook group that have an interest in something So when you're following thousands of people that have a quote-unquote Interest you start to see you know patterns You know what people are interested in but when you follow thousands of people that literally all have the same job Start to see different things and so since 2016 all I've been doing is seen by the thousands how agents are promoting their business and I'm here to tell you 99.99% are Doing it wrong and it's not that they're doing it wrong just from the technical standpoint They're just missing the basics. They're missing the absolute basics So to answer your question what every agent will do and this is what you're gonna end up doing You're gonna take that listing.  They just don't care because they're not in the area They're not in the area and we don't know you and so let's just keep it real the 1200 people 95 plus percent don't know you so the same way you're on this call one and who the hell I am I'm on this call one and who Jessica is Because I don't know you either and the and that's the majority of the 1200 So what every agent is doing by the thousands is posting it here when no one cares Posting it here when no one cares So the absolute best ROI that you can ever see on that listing if you're gonna post it on social media It's gonna be a Facebook ad So and and let me show you an example what everybody does is so everybody will simply take that listing and I'll show you a Clear example of what everyone's doing and this is what I advise you not to be doing Everybody will simply take that listing just like this and they'll post it in these Facebook groups or again They'll post it on their personal page or business page and whenever we see it all this person Krista She's in a completely different state so she's posting all this is is throwing spaghetti against the wall That's all that is you're hoping someone's gonna comment But again 99% of people on social media. We all live across the country So that's why ain't nobody liking it ain't nobody commenting because ain't nobody in that area She's throwing it up to people who are not in the area what she should have done That's what everybody's doing so everybody everybody's just posting away posting away and then when I click on anything I come to a page and most likely it's just some random web page where there's absolutely Nowhere on here to put in a name and number So you're trying to capture a lead you're you're posting it not you but just in general people are posting it In the moment we click on it. You're taking us to this page over here where there's nowhere to capture the lead So that's what everybody's doing and I'm telling you everybody's doing it by the Thousands by the thousands so what you want to do is simply post it But at the same time the only people that need to be seen it is in your area So wherever this listing is listed you run a Facebook ad targeting that area and when we click on it You you're bringing us to one page that looks similar to this so I see your pay I see your I see your ad it's a it's a listing that addresses four miles away from me. You're running an ad I'm seeing it in my news feed. I click on it and you bring me to one page like this Get instant access to the price and photos of this property homes in this market move extremely fast simple page a few bullet points View all 17 photos now That's how you capture a lead. It's not posting it like this Taking me to a page like this Or there's nothing there's nowhere to capture the lead so right here this this person Crit or let's just say it was Krista. She's taking to a page and giving me all this information Before she even asked for my information So now that I came here. I got all this information. Okay. I'm cool. I'm gone When she paid for that ad she paid to to give me to cry So if you're gonna pay to get me to click Take me to a page where you can capture my information and when you're targeting that directly to your local area That's where the ROI is that And so the 20 bucks the 25 bucks that that would have cost would have been worth it You know, I mean that that would have been worth it. So Go ahead. I'm sorry No, I was just saying so like I know one of the ladies here She kind of has something like that. It's like Jackson will real estate. So like Can she like post or can you post? Properties that aren't technically your listing. Oh, yeah, for sure. That would be that'd be a great way to capture leads You know, just just running running running this as as an ad and it's someone else's listing I mean if whoever that listing agent is Number one, they ain't gonna care and number two, they'd probably want to go have something out with you You know, I mean like why not if I was the listing agent and you hit me up and said hey David, I ain't got no listings, but I want to run some ads. Do you have any listings? I'd like heck. Yeah, I got listings. You run it on this one. I'll even go house with you. I Mean, that's what I would she does it. That's the thing. She but she doesn't she's like listing And maybe I'm wrong. It's like Jacksonville homes Search Jacksonville homes or whatever and then when you click it it lists all these homes and like orange part And I'm like, how can you get around there? How can you market someone else's property when it's not yours? Well, you couldn't you could market it But again, if you're not if you're not taking them to a landing page to capture To capture the lead then it's it's a waste You know, it's just a waste you got it you got to capture the lead So so you that's what I'm saying. So how can she I Don't know. I guess I don't understand that part As far as like what she's doing or as far as the just the yeah Yeah, just the strategy as far as like landing pages and you know Listing someone else listing. That's not yours. Like I would be mad if I found my listing Well, yeah, I mean if they if you if that listing agent didn't grant them permission or if they didn't hit them up first Then yeah, I mean that'd be kind of crazy, you know, but but at the same time You're the listing agent. So you have that property under contract you you have the agreement So, I mean if anyone else wanted to advertise it Why not? I mean, but at the same time most most people wouldn't do that most agents wouldn't do that Yeah, but even if even if you got that person's consent, I don't see how that would be, you know, an issue at all But that's if that's again, that's if you're marketing listings There's there's other ways to capture a lead of a potential seller For example, but my whole my whole thing is here my whole thing with all of this with telling you all this is that This is how everyone's doing it. They're just posting on social media when you absolutely have to run an ad to your local area So whether it's a listing whether we're looking for listings whether we're looking for buyers Whatever whether we have an open house coming up this weekend, whatever it all comes down to a Facebook ad Targeting that area That's that's that's that's the bottom line And and that's what people don't do, you know, so I've spoken to thousands of agents and they all struggle with this one part because they think organic posting is gonna do something When when that's it's not, you know, it's it's just not so You know, but if you're if you're straight with offline and referrals This might be just, you know, too much for you, you know overwhelming to actually run Facebook ads But at the end of the day branding is everything getting the attention of your local area is everything and You're gonna have you know, I mean, you're gonna have to do something whether it's offline. Let's say it is offline We're gonna have to either do direct mail. We're gonna have to door knock. We're gonna have to buy leads We're gonna have to hold events We're gonna have to do open houses. What else can we do to get the attention of our local area?   I mean you it's all Facebook like my whole thing is not to run them for you like I just teach agents how to run them themselves, but Normally the daily budget is around five bucks a day. So oh wow, okay. Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm saying It's not like you're spending thousands on advertising like you would spend literally a couple hundred maybe for the month But but again the whole Focus of all this is the attention. How do we get the attention of that area? this this property is an is in actually I don't even know where it's at but Rescue in Florida. Ruskin Ruskin. So again what Krista should be doing is running a and maybe she is but in this case She's not and that's what everybody is doing. They just post it and ain't no one seen it in Ruskin so a Facebook ad Targeting Ruskin Would have made her style that property sooner than later and Again, when I when I click on it, I'm coming to a page Where I'm capturing the lead because that person might be interested in that in that listing and they may not that person may inquire But the next day it goes under contract So at least I actually captured a lead of an interested person that happens to live three miles away from me Then I can show them future listings Right, you know, I mean, so that's why even though I focused on referrals and word of mouth I'm that I'm talking your area like over here on social media You don't know who the hell is hitting you up Everybody's you know from a different area, but if we focused on just targeting your area Then at least there's just more comfort there and more security there at least it's it's people that live, you know In your neighborhood, you know what I mean? And even referrals with you if that's your whole approach and in way you do business That's that's fine. But how much more powerful is it is how much more powerful would it be if your face? Or if your image or if your video was in the news feed in your local area Throughout the month and as people start to refer. Hey, I saw her in my news feed And it's your it's your it's your it's your cousin's girlfriend And it's a referral But she's been seeing you in her news feed.  You know what I mean? So I Tell people all the time like are you married? No, okay, you got a boyfriend or anything? Depends on what day you ask The only reason why I'm asking the only reason why I'm asking is because If you had a man or or even a chick whatever you do, it's all good If you had a partner and you and your partner went out to dinner tonight, okay? If you guys went out to dinner tonight, here's here's keeping it real as far as the cost of what this all takes You guys would spend more at dinner tonight than what it would take to run an ad targeting your local area for the entire week So to get my face in front of people who where I close deals, it's it's almost a joke on how much it cost So it's either that it's either that or we just keep posting everywhere and crossing our fingers that someone in Ruskin sees the property That's a crit. That's crazy. Like there's no way. I want to build a business that way, you know, I mean like Holding my breath forever If everyone that's following me and seeing this lives in a completely different area That is not targeted one bit So that I wrote a whole book about this, you know, because again following thousands of agents I started seeing patterns and habits and what everybody's doing and everybody's doing the same damn thing And so I ended up writing a book about it in 2018 and it's called the social real estate agent Five steps to implement on social media to capture more leads and build your personal brand fast So it's just five basic steps five steps and and and so Facebook ads targeting your local area is what I call step step 3 And then step 4 is taking them to a landing page and then step 5 is capturing the lead and Having an email autoresponder Automatically send emails out to these people on your behalf and so When you when you take a step back and you look at step 3 the Facebook ad is running 24-7 while you're chilling with your family They're clicking on the landing page entering their name and email while you're at lunch These emails are going out to these leads and nurturing the list while you're sleeping That's how you automate your business. That's how you run Facebook ads That's how you automate the entire thing is is by running ads to your area Because if it ain't that then you're gonna be over here You're gonna catch yourself on social media trying to post on this trying to post on Instagram Trying to post on LinkedIn just to try to keep up with the Joneses when again ain't no one caring 99% of your connections live across the country So the way to really leverage it is to is to is to simply take these posts and run them as ads So they constantly get exposure while you're out doing what you do That's leveraging Advertising and I'm just saying, you know When you compare it to what what we actually make per deal It's a joke on what this actually takes as far as the cost You know, it's just a joke. It's it's a joke on how cheap it really is So that's kind of what I wanted to share with you and then there's I mean, that's there's five steps That's step three Facebook ads step for the landing page and then step five email automation But then there's step one and two that are super basic and that's what everybody misses But again, that's kind of more for for people that are really trying to build a social media brand You know, I mean if you're not really trying to build social media, then it might not even before you But at least at least I gave What's yeah, yeah, then that's the thing I mean you hear so many things again, I mean it just depends on the person. It's like When I initially got in the real estate, it was like this was nothing Like I saw the value. I got in real estate in 20. I mean 2000 and Like I saw where it was going, but it's like over the last what I don't know 10 years late I haven't kept up with everything that's going on So like I feel a lot like I feel like one of the agents probably that Felt the way I feel like maybe the agents that felt when I got started in 2000 with computers Like they were so used to doing it one way and it's like 20 years later It's like, you know, we have younger agents in the office that are like Very tech savvy and stuff and it's like I don't feel like I'm there like I'll do a video here or there but as far as like Where you're talking about creating an ad and doing this back page and this and the other I'm kind of lost Yeah Mm-hmm That's we're obviously you probably need a little bit more help on the technical side, right as far as just the overall Concept, you know that that's just what I want you want you kind of thinking is just if you had a listing Instead of posting it here run it as an ad that that that's that's just that's just as simple as it as it gets And I'm here to tell you looking at thousands and thousands of agents ain't nobody really doing that You know number one They maybe not know how and the number two they cost a lot of money when it when it actually doesn't you know like I mean If I had this listing, I mean this listing is listed at 2 17 How can I not put at least a couple hundred bucks into marketing to get the attention and exposure of my local area? Right like like that. I mean, I'm gonna have to market it somehow like this listing like the person that's hiring me to list it That's gonna be one of the criterias David. What are you gonna do to market my property? It's like I got it. I'm gonna have to do something Right like right Is that I actually got one coming that I need to run an add-on Yeah, I'm sorry.  So yeah for sure and in here I might as well take the next maybe four minutes just to just to show you step one and two real quick Here, okay So so what we talked about and I'll just say one and two and closing because that's really all I got for you What we really covered was step three running that as an ad and then step four Taking them to a landing page to capture the lead because the reason why a landing page is so important is because if you don't take me to a Landing page and you don't capture the lead then you have to be on your Facebook all day Micromanaging these comments that are coming in and in the majority of these comments that are gonna be coming in are gonna live across the country So so so I ain't got time for that like I ain't got time to just check my Facebook all day But but I can I can I can I can spend time on leads that are actually coming in that's different Right, so so I don't want to just post it and just depend on people commenting because that's what she's doing That's all she's doing That's the only thing that she has here is that I'm gonna comment and then she'll hit me up Hey, David, I know she comment on my post. Hey, are you in the area? No, I'm actually in San Diego so You would have to micromanage it if it wasn't that landing page to capture the leap and that's step four in Go ahead. I guess I'm with once I create the pad Once I create the ad Does it automatically link to a landing page? I don't that's no disconnect me Okay, well actually yes. Yes. Well, you have to have the landing page first So first like for example this one that I showed you This right here is a simple landing page now that now then you'll need software So landing pages are only for for agents that have that run run Facebook ads If they're not running Facebook ads, there's no need for landing pages because this whole landing page software is about a hundred bucks a month So yeah, you're you can create as many landing pages like I like listings Like open houses like if we had an open house coming up this weekend, I would be running an ad Targeting my local area. Let's say it's Tuesday I'd be running an ad Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday, and then we have this open house coming up this weekend I'd be running an ad and this is the page. I would take them to this is the button They would click on that's the lead I would capture But so but but it all comes from running the ad so to answer your question this link right here at the top Yes, when you set up the ad that link is what connects to the to the ad Okay, for example, here's here's the news feed Like if you're just scrolling through the news feed whether you're on your cell phone Whether you're on a computer and you're looking at Facebook and you're just scrolling through seeing what your friends are up to and all of a sudden You come across a sponsored post. This is an ad So there's the learn more So people would see your video they would see your image There's your text and then they would click on this learn more when they click on learn more They're coming to a page like this Okay, so yeah, so the link this is the URL This is what you would connect to the page or to the post I should say to the ad and that's all done through the ads manager back here but see that that yeah, so that that's the technical side of it all but Before you even get there before you even get there here. Here's just basic steps. Here's here's what I would leave you with Okay, when it just comes to overall social media branding because in real estate branding is everything Your name your license number your even maybe your website address your overall branding Maybe maybe most agents have some type of logo some most are trying to build their brand somehow some way It's branding and and and we know the importance of it offline like if you if I met you at the store You're gonna hand me a business card and that business card is gonna look pretty professional. It's your branding Mm-hmm on social media. It's now called social media branding So as I look at thousands and thousands of real estate agent pages When we come to the page this intro on the personal page is the first impression Because I don't know Jessica yet, so I come to her page. We just become friends. We're now connecting on Facebook This is the first impression. I can obviously look at the image. I can tell you're a cool lady I could tell your professional real estate agent She knows her thing, but the intro is gonna give me information because you're building a business So there's information in that intro that needs to be there and I'm telling you right now looking at thousands 99.99% missed this basic step, which is step one So this is step one and it's this intro. So when I come here This is what you're showing me works at better homes And it's that link right there and then you got former studied went goes and and joined Let me show you an example of my friend candy. She's a real estate agent. She's across the country She's with another company, but here's the difference. I come across Jessica's and this is what I see I come across candies and This is what I see so what you're doing is You're sending all the attention and all the all the traffic your 1200 friends You're sending them all to this link majority of those 1200 people are normal people who are not in the industry Unless you're recruiting other agents and those are 1200 real estate agents, but if you're not recruiting agents most likely a 1,000 out of your 1200 friends are normal working-class people meaning they're not in the business. They're not lenders They're not title reps. They're not escrow officers. And so I was gonna tell you probably of that half of them are real estate agents, okay So this is the last link we care to drive anybody to Because we're gonna click on that link because you're showing it It's the first link you're showing and you're sending us to this page and whenever we like this page It does you know good Okay, so we don't want to show this link even though. That's where you work. We want to send them to your business page Not your brokers So again with candy I come to her page and there's the link to her business page So all the attention goes there. It's not going to former. It's not going to anything else It's going to her business page That's the first impression and so as I scroll down went lives from married Now that we're in this social media world She's showing me her Instagram her Twitter her Pinterest her LinkedIn her website address And so for someone like you who is not exactly social media savvy or tech savvy or whatever the heck you want to call it Here's here's here's all you need to know as a business owner as you are Billions of people are on these five Facebook Instagram Twitter Pinterest and LinkedIn Now you don't have to be a social media butterfly and posting all the time on all these platforms as a business owner You just need to have them active. You need to have them active You need to have them listed and if you look closely every single one of them is matching That social media branding so as I come here, I don't know candy no more than I know Jessica But when I come here candy showing me a little bit more and and just because Jessica and David connected on Facebook How do you know that David doesn't spend 57 hours a day on LinkedIn? Had I seen your link I Would have clicked on it I would have followed you on LinkedIn And if I saw some listing and if I was more comfortable messaging on LinkedIn, I would have messaged you And you better hope you get that message So that's basic branding and again and again looking at thousands of agents pages. That's what I called step one I'm like, wait a minute. Everyone's trying to promote their listing. Everyone's trying to market their open house Everybody's trying to look for a lead because let's keep it real And the only reason why you're even here is to look for that next buyer and seller It wasn't for that you'd probably you probably wouldn't even be here So so because we're on social media looking for that next lead That's what I call step three, but we got to back up a little bit Let's let's at least cross the T's and dot the I's and that's what I call basic. That's step one It's just stepping up your branding and letting people know. Hey, man. I'm not just on Facebook I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on pictures you and I'm not under I'm not on these platforms under multiple different names I got one name So if you if you search my one name, you're gonna find me And and so that's what I'm saying. This is what everyone's looks like. I'm you know looking at candies. It just looks a little better Yeah, that's basic. Definitely does. You know what I mean? That's the other thing is like all my names are different. We got to change them We got we got to change them that that's that's my point. We got to change them We got to change them. They all got a match and and and whatever whatever website you got keep the website But rather than promoting the link that your broker probably gives you with that website You want to customize and get your own comm You want to get your own? Oh, I do. Okay, perfect. So whatever comm you have a point it to my own Yeah, perfect. So then what is let me let me go back to it. Jessica So whatever whatever that link is Um, whatever that domain is maybe use that to match with all your other platforms Because once we get them all listed on the personal page that's step one We also want to bring them over here to the about section on our business page and get all those links listed over here So right here. This is perfect. Jessica Dills jacks.com. That is perfect Change every single but here's the deal this Facebook page You put it you customize the username under JW sells jacks Mm-hmm. You want one we're already mix matching That needs to match That needs to match and So choose one if you already have the comm go with that and just and just create Instagram LinkedIn Twitter Pinterest And and and that and that would be it and and so as people click on about because that's what they're gonna do If you ever do start and this is step one step three is is the local Facebook ads If you ever do get to that part, let's say you never even get to that part But if you ever do get to that part people are gonna click on your page They're gonna click on about because they never seen you on Facebook before they friends with you on Facebook They don't like your business page. You're running an ad to a cold market And and they're gonna click on about so we just want to have everything listed right there So if I click on candies like if I come to her business page Over here and I click about This is what I see so everything again is just matching hedge properties hedge properties hedge properties hedge properties Yeah, basic right. It's basic, but that's branding that stands out to the consumer's eye and it just looks a little better That's one that's one Everyone by the thousands looks like looks like this and it's just it's just there ain't nothing there Now now the about is there and that's cool your story. That's all good, but here's the reality People don't care about that They're gonna follow you on social media before they ever pick up the phone and call you over for that or before they ever care About a story or a bio they're gonna follow you on IG They're gonna follow you on LinkedIn and I just want to have that link there when they do Okay, you know what I mean? So so that's step one here's step two and then that's all I got for you Here's again my my Facebook page. So if I come back to my page, those are all my friends right there These are my notifications. So just like you if I click like or if I start commenting on Any of your stuff you get a notification Because I have thousands and thousands of agents every one of them is an agent here are my notifications And here's how we got here Monica Aaron Kristen Ingrid Dana Lynette. I can go on for days Every single one of my friends is a real estate agent every single one of my notifications all day every day is an Invite to like the business page and whenever I go to any real estate agents business page The most I will ever see is that many that's the most so most 99% of agents are around 200 to 300 likes That's where you're at Now just like the personal page this intro is the first impression when I come to the business page This light count is the first impression So I'm gonna come here and again every agent has a couple hundred likes. I come here to Jessica's page I don't know Jessica. I don't even know she's a top producer. I don't know. She's been in real estate forever I don't know. She's number one in the state. I don't know any of that because I don't know her your 1,200 friends. They don't know you so they judge us on that number So when I come to Jessica's I see 2 11 when I come to Candy's page, I see 3,500 Well, you see that look at that and that wasn't just a word Wow that came out of your mouth. There was actually some emotion in that you said you were like damn Right like you were like wow There was a motion behind that that's that that's perception and you don't even know Candy I don't even know Candy for all we know. She just got licensed and having been closed her first escrow for all we know We don't know her But we look at 3,500 thinking that she's the queen of real estate That's step two. So before you start running ads, which is again what I call step three This is step two every agent in the in the country has a couple hundred all you want is a couple thousand Take that two hundred to two thousand and call it a day. Like that's a one-time ad That's not an ad you run every month that that could be a one-time Facebook ad We're that number just goes from two hundred to two thousand in the next few days And at least now our page and our brand looks good Step one all of our links are listed and everyone is matching step two We got twenty one hundred likes compared to every other agent in your state who has two hundred And if you wanted to stop right there, you could stop right there As long and at least when when these referrals and and and your cousin's cousin's friend starts to hit you up And want to do business and then they connect with you on Facebook because that's what's gonna happen I don't care if it's a referral or someone you just meet called at the grocery store They're gonna connect with you on Facebook And so again if those basic steps are there at least your brand looks good And you haven't even got to step three yet You know I mean So step one listing all those links and step two that like ad is is is what you should do You should have done that yesterday, you know, I mean that that's like that's that's what you want to do as soon as possible That's where your next dollar should go is running a Facebook ad to take this light count up And then and then after that maybe focus on running ads for the listing But if but if you don't even get to that part at least you got a comma in that number and your brand looks good on Social media, you know what I mean Yeah, I'm gonna figure out how to change the name Well, I have a video I can easily send you I have like a ten minute video that that will show you how to how to customize all the links and And how to get everything listed like I can easily send that video and then and then on this ad I mean I can easily I can easily run it for you. I mean You just pay for the ad like you tell me whatever your budget is like you just pay for the ad I'll run it for you and You can give me a good review and That's kind of that's kind of what I've done with with pretty much my last I don't know how many 50 60 clients like I literally will teach them how to do step one and Then I'll run the like ad for them. And then this is my business page over here They'll come over here and they'll just give me a review. So the last 62 real estate agents have given me a review Wow, so that's what I kind of you know charge is a review. I'll run it Well, I'll show you how to do step one and then and then later on if we plan on Running Facebook ads, you know, that's step three then we could talk about that later I can coach you and start teaching you on that but that ain't that ain't right now like I would say If you have any budget like that's where it should go first is increasing the likes Just so we can get our brand alive, you know what I mean? Okay, so Yeah, that sounds fair do we have what's our budget like what what can we put towards that like it? It doesn't have to be a lot like it don't have to be it's a one time Was the average would I mean what what most do is for every most will put like let's just say five bucks a day Like five bucks a day. They'll run it for a month So and that would take if you ran that for five dollars a day for a month That would take that number up to 1500 likes And that's all you would really need like you don't really need more than that Now that's that that would be if we ran it for five bucks a day for 30 days I'd be 150 like you can either you can either do that or you can do a little less like I have a lot of clients That will maybe put a hundred dollars towards that ad and it'll still go up, you know a thousand likes So that's my it just depends on I Can do the hundred, okay, cool. So here's all I need to do real quick is Now, but you're gonna owe me a good review to I'm gonna give you a review too, but you're gonna give me a review for sure Okay, so here's Are you are you on your Facebook? Are you on a computer right now or like an iPad or whatever? Yeah, I'm on my iPad. Okay All I'm going to do is just simply request access to the business page so I can run an ad That's all I'm gonna do and let me let me yeah, that's all I'm gonna do So let me you so you're gonna get you'll get a notification here in the next few Seconds and then I'll just walk you through how to how to approve that way I don't have to know your passwords or anything like that all I'm gonna do is just run the ad from your page and then Once the ad is over which will be over within I don't know a couple weeks Like it's not gonna take really much longer than that like we'll be at 1200 in the next few days But once we're done once we hit that number or whatever the number may be which is which is about 1200 That's where we'll be then you can for sure remove me and and I for you know I won't have access but all I can really do is run an ad so I mean that's all I'm gonna do so Do me a favor go to your go to your business page And I'll just walk you through this real quick So I need to be on a computer you can you could just hit Can you hit escape on your arm?  No, I'm on my iPad. I don't have Facebook hooked up to my And that sounds weird, but no, it's all good.  No, it's right here. Okay. Cool. Just go to go to Facebook from your actual computer Okay, and then I'll walk you through Connecting me to the page and then I have as I mentioned I have I have the video for you like I'll email it to you on on step one, but if you still have a hard time Connecting everything just let me know and I'll offer sure help you with it But the video that I that I made it should it should pretty much be self-explanatory because pretty simple once you open up all the platforms You just it takes like literally two seconds to customize all the names and then add them to your pages And I walk you through all that in the in the actual video and I just updated the video I recorded a new one today, so it's actually a new video and then I'll show you from my page over here I'll walk you through Click on settings. Yep. Click on settings right then the top right and then To the left you're going to click on page roles Okay Okay, cool, and then all you're gonna do is scroll down just a bit and then right here in the middle You should see inspired at digital and it should say respond to request What's up, I got a snap for you Ain't gonna play on me. All right. Give me a second Okay, babe, thanks Okay And then just like mine looks right here like in a couple weeks like once we hit because that that budget's gonna take us for sure Above 1200 so once once we're above 1200 on that like count then you can just come in here and you can just remove me Okay, okay So give digital access Yes, so it should ask for your password and you just grant grant access It just says approve request. Yes Perfect. Okay. Cool. So all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add myself to this page Right there and then we're good Okay, perfect. And then just just what what card can I use for the ad? I just need a visa master or a mix Okay And we'll go downstairs. I'll be down in a minute. Okay Okay, cool. I'm ready Will you use a gift card? Do you know a visa gift card? Yeah, for sure as long as as long as there's a balance on there like 100 bucks for example on this. Yeah, yeah for sure Is there a three-digit code on the back? Yeah, yeah, it should it should what it does ask for is a billing address So maybe we can I don't know if it's tied to a billing address, but we can for sure try Okay, okay. Yeah


Hi everyone, Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com. Happy Monday, coming at you with 2021 Leaf Valiant Football. Full case, break, random team, number one. A lot of fun stuff in here, including some graded cards. Going strictly by the checklist on groupbreakchecklist.com. That's where we'll be working with that. Drop the link in the chat if you're watching live. View dice. And here is the list right here.  And there are all 32 teams in as well. Let's go, let's roll it, randomized names and teams. One and three, four times. One, two, three, and once more, fourth and final time. We got Austin all the way down to Ryan Redman. What's the highlight there, there we go. And one and three, four times for the teams. One, two, three, and fourth and final time. We got the Jaguar's up top and my Raiders on the bottom.  Let's alphabetize by team. And we're gonna pause the video and when we come back we're gonna see if there's any trades and then we'll pop open that case and hopefully we'll pull some monsters. Stick around, we'll be right back. All right, welcome back everybody, no deals were done. So that list remained the same, a little bit of trade chatter though. So this list right here remains the same. Steven ended up with that last Bob Mojo Titans. For him, let's see how that works out. There's the case, 2021 Leaf Valiant Football. All right, so three autograph rookie cards, plus one autograph rookie card, graded nine, five, 10, or black label. It's nice, they kind of set that minimum. We're not gonna see any BGS nines in here, anything like that. First one out of the gate is Javon McKinley, 33 out of 99. Now that's Fuente Williams, McKinley is a Lion. Just to make life easier for the shipping team, going to get your head sorted out and shipped a little more quickly to you. That's for Nick L and the Lions. We've got Asante Samuel Jr., all American, two out of 15. Let's see where Junior goes. Chargers, that's right. For the Bolts, that's gonna be Carl with the Chargers. And we've got Micah Parsons. I know where he goes. 15 out of 35 for Dallas. Here comes the boom, boom. I like that. That's Rick T. with Dallas. He had a great season. Boom. And the Graded Card is stuck. Graded Card is gonna be a 9-5-10 Rashad Weaver. I think there's a way to look up subgrades, right? And that is 46 out of 99, 9-5-10. And that is a Tennessee Titans, even flat last spot mojo. Fox one in the books. Here comes the boom. Carlos Basham Jr., Buffalo. Chris M. with the Buffalo Bills. And that is out of 10, two out of 10. Next up is Jabril Cox. Here comes the boom, 87 out of 99. This is a Dallas Cowboy. Another one for Rick T. Is Elijah Mitchell for the Niners. 10 out of 15. Had him on my fantasy team last year. On my early waiver wire pickups. He's had a pretty good year. Carl with the Niners.  All right, next graded card is a 9-5-10 Radarius Williams to 99. That'll be the New York Football Giants. G-Men, that'll be for Michael Gallucci and Giants. Next up is Rakeem Boyd, 94 out of 99. Rakeem Boyd is none according to the checklist. Should I assign him to a team? Make an executive decision? Yes, I will. He signed with the Lions as an undrafted free agent. And it was waived later that, a few months later, some sort of injury settlement, but that's the last protein he was with. So Nick L, with that one. I don't know, maybe ends up with someone else. Take it to the house. Demetric Felton, 81 out of 99, who I believe is a Brown. Yes, Cleveland, this is for you. Kevin M, with Cleveland, 81 out of 99. And take it to the house. Chuba Hubbard, for the Panthers, 15 out of 50. That'll be going to Allen Murdock in Carolina. Carolina, I feel like they've been looking for a quarterback. Do they chase after, I think they chase after Baker Mayfield? Maybe Seattle chases after Baker Mayfield? All right, and we've got another Rakeem Boyd. Nine, five, 10. That's another one for Nick L. Maybe he comes back and plays. Makes a name for himself. Yeah, Rebel thought maybe Mayfield would go the Colts, but they got Mattie Ice instead. Here comes the boom, Dylan Moses, 12 out of 35. That is a Jacksonville Jack UR. That's gonna go to Austin. Austin Caruso, Alex's brother. Rising stock, Amari Rogers. 157 out of 99. Amari Rogers is a green Bay Packer. Tried to trade, couldn't trade Mojo for Arthur Peru. Going to go Arthur on the board. Rising stock, Jamar Jefferson. 20 out of 99. Jamar Jefferson is a lion as well. Does Detroit have a low-key good team? They maybe add some pieces here and there? Look at all the one-score games that like the Lions lost. Some of those turn into wins. It'd be interesting. There is Sam Ellinger. Nine, five, 10, eight out of 10. I think on the checklist should still be Colts edition. Is he still Colts edition? Has he always been Colts edition? Indianapolis. For the blue horseshoes, that's gonna be for Steven Flatt. He's gonna have to wait before he gets a crack at a starting job. More rising stock, Anthony Schwartz. Nine out of 10, Cleveland. That's gonna go to Kevin M. Cleveland, this is for you. Deshaun Watson's out there now. Taking it to the house, Josh Johnson. 90 out of 99. Josh Johnson is a Seattle Seahawk. And we got Terrace Marshall Jr. to 35.  That's another one for Alan Murdoch. Another Carolina panther. All right, we've got, here comes the boom. A nine, five, 10, Jacobi Stevens. 14 out of 99. Jacobi Stevens is a fly eagle fly. And that's Rebenet and the Eagles. Still have not seen a big quarterback name in the grade and card area. And that's what I wanna see. All right, we've got Christian Barmore. Patriot, right? Yeah, New England. That is for Thomas and New England. We've got Tillin Wallace. Three, eight out of 50. I think Tillin Wallace is a Raven check. Purplebird for Ryan Redman. Purplebird for a red man. There you go, Ray. We've got Amanra St. Brown. Three out of 99. Nick L with Detroit. And the graded card is a quarterback? Yes, I was kind of fooled because he was running the ball. That's T-Law, Trevor Lawrence. From 2021, Leaf, Valiant, Purple, Parallel, nine, five, 10, 17 out of 25. I'm hoping for big things for Trevor Lawrence this year. I think everybody who's been collecting Trevor Lawrence thinks that. Austin with the Jaguars. The Urban Meyer experiment was a bit of an S show. So now, he's got a new coach. He gets his old teammate, Travis Etienne Jr. back and hopefully 100% and better than ever. I'm sure we'll hear quotes like, I'm in the best shape of my life, you know? So hopefully that's happened. I think they signed Christian Kirk. So that's another weapon for Trevor Lawrence to throw to. There's Cade Johnson to 50. You know, if they keep adding in the draft, this is a Seahawk, by the way. Add some other pieces, add some positions in the draft. And I'm sure and hopefully he'll be in a better position to succeed. Seahawks, that'll be for Nick Galvin. There's Puka Williams Jr., 27 out of 99. And Puka is a Cincinnati-Bangled Carl with Cincinnati, we're on Cincinnati. And we have, is that another quarterback? It is, Trey Lance, all American autographs, seven out of 35. And that will be for Carl and the Niners. He's gonna get a chance to show what he can do. Hopefully he does well. I'm rooting for all these guys. It's good for the hobby. All right, and we've got, looks like a rival of mine. Yes, Givante Williams, take it to the house, autograph. Green parallel, nine, five, 10, 10 out of 99. Ryan Redmond Denver. And that AFC West is gonna be like a hornet's nest, right? All right, next box. All right, we've got Asim Rose Jr., 25 out of 50. Vikings, Minnesota with that one. That'll be for Victor. Victor and the Vikes. We've got a Kellen Mann, another Viking. 48 out of 50. A plate, a train whistle, yes. Is that Sage Serrat? It is Sage Serrat. Magenta plate, one of one, an autograph. I think he is a, yeah, a lion. I was gonna say Saint, but no, he's a lion. And that's a train whistle for Nick L. and the Lions. There you go, Nick. All aboard the Big Head Express. Woo-hoo. And we're just gonna have to pop all these out, huh? There we go. That's Remandry Stevenson for the Patriots. Orange parallel, nine, five, 10. Now they do say that there are black labels in here too. It'd be cool if we saw one of those. There's Sage Serrat again, 21 out of 25, Detroit. Once again, Nick, peach color. We got Trayvon Grimes, 62 out of 99. Philadelphia Eagles. We got Jalen Waddle, nice all-American autograph green. 60 out of 99. Stephen Flatt with Miami. We've got a, we've got an Elijah Moore for the Jets. Pink parallel, nine, five, 10. Seven out of 15. And that is Michael Guluchi with the New York Jets. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. I thought there was gonna be some NFL total access after this, maybe not. Do I need to see a replay of this game? Atlanta fans don't wanna listen to this game. Go back to Little Baseball, Cardinals Nationals on MLB Network, I think recorded previously. Where's the slide, I don't know. Rising stock, Chris Evans. One out of 10. That's Bangles, and that is Carl Wesson-Snattie. More rising stock, Marquez Stevenson. One out of 25. And he is a Bill. Chris with the Bill. Buffalo! We're at the Mint Collective Show in Vegas. I might have to hit up some of that Buffalo gold slot machine. See if I could make a winner out of me. We got Shane Bouchel, all-American. 27 out of 99. And Shane is a chief, Kansas City. Ryan Redman with Kansas City. We've got a nice 95-10 Rondale Moore. Cardinals seem to have a bit of a crowded, wide receiver core, but without Christian Card, maybe does that open up some space for Rondale Moore to show off his talents this year? Next box. Spray is going faster than I expected. I think I was thinking of a different break that takes a lot longer. Maybe I was thinking of leaf metal. Anyway, Warren Jackson, rising stock autograph. 12 out of 15. I think he is a eagle? No, none, according to the checklist. Let's see if he was associated with a team. Looks like he's with the Rams now. I don't know if he put up any numbers here, but I don't think he was associated with any other team before that. Yeah, I guess we'll send him to the Rams. That's where he's currently because he is none on the checklist, but we try to attach the nuns, not nuns, but N-O-N-E's to a team as much as possible. There's Daz Newsom. Daz is a brown? No, Daz is a bear. That's gonna go to Eric. And see a guy throwing the ball. We got Mac Jones. Nice Mac Jones for the Patriots. Thomas Mosley. Not the Remandry Stevenson earlier. He gets a 28 out of 99, Mac Jones. 28 out of 99. Graded card is Cadarius Tony for the Giants. Take it to the host. 9, 5, and 10, 9, 5, and 9, sorry. Three out of 15. Come on, Cadarius. Don't work on that. Michael Gallucci with the G-Men. There you go, Mike. See if, let's see if his talents, along with Daniel Jones can be unlocked. This upcoming season. All right, last box. Good luck, everybody. Got a rising stock autograph. Jamon Osbon. 34 out of 35. Who is a Philadelphia Eagle? Bennett with the Eagles. We got Amir Smith-Marcett. Three out of five. I think a Viking. Yes, for Minnesota. Train whistle for Victor. Three out of five. And all aboard the Big Hit Express. And you got 2-2 Atwell to 99 for the Rams. Los Angeles Rams, 2-2 Atwell. Eric with the Rams. And your final graded card is a, here comes the boom. Jason Oah, 9, 5, and 10, 17 out of 25. And Jason Oah is a Raven. So nice little color match with the parallel. Ryan Redmond with the Ravens. Here comes the boom. And there you go, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for watching. Thanks for bringing with us. Let's do a quick little recap. Here are your non-graded cards. Nice Mac Jones. Got a Jalen Waddle in there. The printing plate. Trade Lance. You got a couple of the nice quarterbacks there. Some solid players here as well. Elijah Mitchell. Of course, we had that Jason Oah. Here are your other in-case cards right here. Cadarius Tony, 9, 5, 9. Randale Moore. Elijah Moore. Ramondri Stevenson. Javonte Williams. T-Law, Trevor Lawrence, 9, 5, 10. Jacobi Stevens. Sam Ellinger. Keem Boyd. Radarius Williams. And Rashad O'Weaver. There you go, gang. We got another valiant case in the store right now. If you want to check it out, jaspyscasebrakes.com. I'm Joe. I'll see you next time for the next break. Bye-bye.