STRSS 51 – 9 Airbnb Rentals While on A Tennis Coach Salary w/ Tom Lewis

Video Transcript

 

 

00:00:00

So we, we did quite a lot of work on converting those people that stayed into direct bookings next time, you know, leaflets in the rooms, that kinda stuff, you know, thanks very much for staying with us. Hope you had a great time either way. If you ever come back, get in touch directly, you know, that kind of stuff. So last year we were able to get 49% of our bookings were direct bookings.

 

 

00:00:21

This is episode number five, one of the short term rental success stories podcast. Are you an investor that’s looking to have your home professionally managed, go to cohost it.com for more information,

 

 

00:00:32

Welcome back to short term rental success stories. I’m your host, Julian Sage. This is a show where I talk to hosts about their journeys and starting and growing the short term rental business. Michael, is that you’ll be able to walk away with practical information. That’ll help you become a better host and learn how to scale your business. Like any exceptional host. We all strive for five star reviews. So please going over to iTunes and let us know what you enjoy. This really helps support the show. If you haven’t done so already going over to our Facebook group, the host nation to connect with the community,

 

 

00:01:02

Hey, what is going on? Host nation. I’m super excited to be back again with you this week. You know what I love so much about this show is that we can get on some of the most unique stories. Airbnb and short-term rentals has changed so many people’s lives. And really it’s because of what the power of this business model allows for just regular people like you and I, to be able to leverage real estate and, and be able to make so much from it. One of my favorite new things that I like to tell people is that if you wanna retire in a long time, invest in long-term rentals, but if you wanna retire in a short amount of time, then invest in short-term rentals. And I’m just so excited to be able to teach people the different models and the different ways that you can invest in this business and ha actually do it yourself.

 

 

00:01:40

So what Jon and I are gonna be doing is we’re gonna be hosting a special live training where we’re gonna be going live for you guys and talking about the different models and how you can actually scale to a six or seven figure business using only other people’s properties. So John and I are gonna be hosting this training for our early Birtch. So if you are on the early Birtch wait list, you get to join Jon and I, as we are gonna be doing live training and answering your guys’ questions live, and this is gonna be an anticipation of our new program, the VRM Formula program, where we will be teaching you how to start automate and scale your own Rental arbitrage cohosting business. We have a really cool thing in there where we’re actually gonna be giving a certification. So when you do complete the program, you are gonna be a certified co-host that you manage other people’s properties.

 

 

00:02:25

It’s a whole lot of really cool stuff. And we’re really excited to present this to you guys, but we also do have a training because we do want to teach you how to do this and get you excited. So if you go to shorttermsage.com slash early Birtch, you can find out when the next training is. And actually today we are gonna be doing a live training for you guys. So if you to join us, we’re gonna be doing it today, which is March 5th, at six PMT. So go ahead and register because it is unlimited training. We are not gonna be doing this training very long, especially because the early Birtch program will be closing off. And once the program is available to the general public, we will be raising the price. So this only is for our early Birtch adopters, where we will be offering it at our early Birtch adopter price.

 

 

00:03:07

I’m really excited to show you the program. So definitely go to shorttermsage.com slash early Birtch to find out more when the next training is gonna be available. And of course, today we have the special honor of speaking with Tom Lewis. Tom is a full-time professional tennis coach. And five years ago, he was looking for a way to get extra money for his pension. And that’s how he got into short-term rentals. Now Tom manages nine properties, three of which he owns for our Rental arbitrage. And then two are co-hosted units. This is a really, really cool episode. And Tom shares some really creative ways on how he’s been able to partner with Esther to be able to get those into Rental arbitrage units. The things that Tom shares in this episode, I have not heard anybody else talking about the way that he’s able to partner with these investors to be able to get them ready for Rental arbitrage and the way that he goes about it is super creative.

 

 

00:03:53

Tom also talks about how he was able to get 49% of his bookings with direct bookings and how his job as a tennis coach is helped them in building a reliable team of cleaning and maintenance staff. Tom is just a super cool guy. There is so much in this episode, I am excited to be able to share with you. Of course, if you like my show notes for this episode, go to Short Term Sage dot com slash STR five one. Or if you like my show notes sent directly to your inbox every week, then go to Short Term Sage dot com backs slash show notes with all that being said onto this week’s conversation. Hey, welcome back, host nation to another episode of short term rental success stories. In this episode, I have these special, special honor of speaking with Tom Lewis. Tom, would you please introduce yourself to the host nation and let them know who you are and what inspired you to get into short-term rentals?

 

 

00:04:33

Okay, so hi everybody. My name’s Tom Lewis. I am professional tennis coach and was looking for a way to sort of get a better sorted out for, as I get a bit older. So we started buying and renovating properties and then just, you know, kinda fell into this really. We were looking for a way to make a bit more money. I traveled a lot with work and stayed in quite a lot of Airbnb and stuff and thought it was something we’d perhaps like to have go at. So it sort of grown from there.

 

 

00:05:03

So a tennis coast and, and just to give a little of pre context you’re in Lestershire England, you have three properties that you own, four that you’re doing the, the master release Rental arbitrage model, and then two that you’re doing the cohost management model from tennis coach to now having nine properties scaling up to 13 of a that’s. That’s pretty crazy. How, how has Airbnb shortterm rentals changed your life?

 

 

00:05:29

It’s made me be a lot more organized, filled up my diary. I dunno, it’s, it’s brought a lot of new challenges, which I’ve actually really enjoyed. It’s been a chance to like learn some new stuff and constantly keep sort of delving how to do better. Some of that’s like the service that you provide. And I guess some of that’s like the hospitality that you’re able to, how you can make people feel when they stay at your places, as well as the day to day problems of, you know, management and dealing with cleaners and maintenance crew and you know, all that kinda stuff. Having to rely on a team is a bit more tricky, I think.

 

 

00:06:08

Yeah, you’re, you’re, you’re figuring out all the processes that it takes to be able to run, you know, a successful short Rental business. And one of the things that we were talking about before we recording was you said you actually went to this thing called the key world conference. And, you know, if you wanna tell a little bit about the story of, of you talking with some of those, those people there.

 

 

00:06:25

Yeah. I mean, it, it was crazy. They, they all kind of kept their cards to their chest the first day or so. And you, you know, you’re having a chat with people and people, this one guy in particular that was sat at our table, kept asking me about what I was up to and you know, said of units. And we were in a town center and it’s a lot of business travel and stuff. And we’re like, what do you do? And he sort of said, oh, I’ve gotta, I do like beach villas. So if you wanted to come with your family for your summer Vacation, you come and stay with us. And he gave me this little business card and then it was like time for lunch. So he went after, go and have lunch and I kind fired up the laptop and was like, let’s have what he gets up to.

 

 

00:07:00

And this, this Villa was like, the photos of it on this is a sort of dream Instagram perfect model that you look at, you know, sleeps 15 on the beach. It’s a night like beautiful. And then he sort of comes back. And so I casually sorts the conversation I look at it’s how many of these have you got? And he’s like, oh, we’ve got just under a thousand. He’s sort of like, you know, what am I, what am I doing? I’ve got six. And yeah, just everybody that I met while I was there was like, sort of on that scale of, you know, they’d got 600 properties and 500 ski lodges and stuff all over the world. So it, it was just in interesting to sort of mix with the people on, on that scale. They, they brought very different solutions and the way they thought about solving some of the problems was, was excellent. Cause it wasn’t always just throw loads of money at it and it’ll work. They, they figured stuff out really nicely.

 

 

00:07:54

Very cool. And I, I wanna talk about it a little bit about your backstory, about how you even got into the short term rental space. So you said you’re a tennis coach. You’re looking, you know, to, you know, supplement your income, you know, kind of save towards something to help you with your pension. And then you started getting into traditional real estate investing. What, what made the conversion from, you know, doing the traditional, you know, fix and flip style to now doing short to rentals and management.

 

 

00:08:18

Okay. So I guess we, we both them up to keep rented them out on long term rents. And I guess we had one tenant, the wasn’t like malicious or nasty. They just didn’t look after the place very well. And it was like our baby, we just literally finished it. We thought it was the nicest one we’d done. So they left and it left us with quite a few things to, and the, we were a little bit about, maybe we have a go, something like this, some of the more short, the benefits, you know, it’s eye on people, you know, having to pay up front, no danger of not being paid. You know, lots of, lots of those little reasons made it seem. And the fact that we both travel a lot, my wife works with a company where she has to travel quite a lot. We both stayed in a lot of Airbnb. So we kind of felt we had a good understanding of what made a good one and what made a bad one and, and the things to sort of add in and avoid and stuff. So we said, well, give it go for six months and see how we get on. We got 3000 pounds worth of bookings in the first weekend that we went live. So we’re like, yeah, well we’ll give it a roll. And, and yes, just gone from there really. So,

 

 

00:09:31

So you know, that, that, that, that I love, I love hearing the backstory because you got into it, you, you, you know, you, you bought into what everybody’s saying, you know, it’s all about long term rentals and passive income with the tenants. And then you got your tenants and they didn’t treat the place the same way that your short term rental tenants are. And that that’s the case with a lot of people that I hear is like, they get these people in, they don’t, they don’t treat the property the right way. And this is something that you put a lot of time and money and energy into. And then they just kind of like, you know, deface it and it’s it almost, it almost hurts. And then when you get those short term rental tens they’re in and out, they treat the property a lot better and you’re making a whole lot more about how big of a difference was it from what you were making with long-term rentals versus when you swapped over to start doing shortterm.

 

 

01:10:12

So, I mean, in, in terms of long-term Rental, we were maybe making, you know, a hundred, a hundred pounds a month after all the bills paid and stuff, which, which was fine because the, you know, our goal was just to keep it and hold it mortgage be paid off. By the time I retire, then it’s a little, you know, pot of money sitting there for retirement. Now we make like, say anything from 600 on a bad month to probably a thousand, if you have a great month every month. So, you know, it’s a massive difference really sometimes 10 times more. So it’s just really helps you, which has helped us to then keep momentum going with getting the next one a bit more.

 

 

01:10:55

So you started off with doing, you know, the long Rental you decided, you know, the, the benefits of short-term renting outweigh, you started short-term renting your, the ones that you own. And then what happened when you started scaling to the Rental arbitrage, the master lease model and cohost thing.

 

 

01:11:11

Okay. So all the ones that we do on the Rental arbitrage are owned by friends of ours. They saw what I’d been doing. So one of them is owned by my business partner. Two of them are owned by my financial advisor. They really like how, you know, we were to keep properties. Really. It meant that they could have a guaranteed investment. You know, they’re not gonna have any problems with me not paying the, not looking after the place, you know, I guess because we’re friends as well as I, I didn’t have any track record when they came on board, we’ve been doing it about a year. So, you know, perhaps now it’s a little bit easier to attract people in, but back then it was just that they knew me and they had worked with me, you know, for many years. So that helped, helped a lot, you know, they invested their money, bought the properties, did them up exactly how we wanted them done up. And then just, you know, we signed a three year contractor to run it going forward. So,

 

 

01:12:10

So, so these, these were you for you was, it was a lot easier to get into these units just because these were close, close friends. When he said that they, they did them up the way that you wanted to are these like investor friends, people that were purchasing properties and then fixing, like re doing the renovations so that you would be able to sublease them or, or what, what was that relationship?

 

 

01:12:34

So I found the properties for them. They bought them, they were pretty rundown. Cause one of the sort of goals we’ve had with all the stuff we’ve bought for ourselves to add value. So we managed to find stuff that was, you know, a little bit below market value. They could spend a little bit of money bringing it up to spec and then sort of almost mortgage it and get their money back out anyway, if they wanted to, because they’ve made it worth so much more by, you know, putting in a new kitchen, a new bathroom, redecorating it all. We just asked them to do that to the level we’d done our flats. And so in a couple of the cases, we managed the refurb or helped out considerably with it to help them get it done. Right. Cause we got like a team of friends that are builders and plasters.

 

 

01:13:17

One of the really good things about being a tennis coach and working with so many children is that you also get to find out what all these kids, parents do, you know? So you get quite a good list of plumbers. And you know, if I figure, if they trust me to look after their kids, I can trust them to plaster the ceiling in my house and not mess it up sort of thing. So know we’ve got quite a good network of people like that, that perhaps these investor friends didn’t have. So we were able to really help them get that stuff done. So yeah, that’s kind of how that, that relationship went.

 

 

01:13:47

Tom you’re you’re, you’re brilliant. I love that. That is so cool, man. That, that is awesome. So you had, you, you were basically, because you said that they were these or under valley, so you were out there going and saying like, Hey, you know, I don’t have the money to be able to purchase these properties myself, or I don’t wanna put up the cash for it, but I do know people that will, so you would actually do all the legwork for them and then even manage the, the build out for them just so that you could be able to rent it out. Is, is that basically what you’re were doing? Was that your strategy? Yeah.

 

 

01:14:18

Yeah. That’s, that’s what we did with those, those four properties. Yeah.

 

 

01:14:20

And were, are you like charging because if, if they were purchasing these properties kind of under your, under your management, under your supervision, are you, was that, was that basically the deal like you would help do the whole project for them? Did you have to like pay like extra rent or anything like that?

 

 

01:14:39

No, I probably missed a by not sort of almost selling them that deal that we, but, you know, we felt that actually we wanted to the, they were helping us out buying didn’t to do that at the time. So yeah, we just sort of, I guess we get a pretty good deal on the rent. It’s probably a little tiny bit below the market value for rent. So we get a slightly better, you know, rate and especially now looking at what people are paying to try and get into that market. People are paying way more than market value these days. Cause people are of heard about Airbnb. Think you’re gonna make a lot more money, you know? So I think people getting into it that I speak to finding it much harder. Cause they’re having to pay such high rent. That’s a big barrier to entry or a big risk, you know, on. So

 

 

01:15:27

When, when did you start, when did you start doing this model with, with your investor investor, friends, investor clients was this about how, how long after you got into the short term rental space, did you start doing

 

 

01:15:39

About year? We, we kind of sounds bit really. I guess we bought property the best deal ever. I mean, got it’s so cheap from someone that was desperate to get rid of it, did it up, you know, it looked really nice and a couple of my friends, so one of the guys that owns some of the properties is my business partner on the tennis coaching company. He saw, it was like, ah, this is a great plan for your pension. If you ever find anything similar, you know, let me know and I’ll buy one. So just by chance, one came up for sale long after. And it was like, well, if you want one there’s one right there, next door to ours, you know? So he bought that. And then we wrote to all of the owners in the building where we’d got them, there’s like quite a few flats and a couple people came back and said, yeah, we’d been willing to sell up. We’ve been looking to get rid of them for a while. And I ended up by three more, all at the same time from, from one guy. So I got a crazy good deal on him. Cause I was buying three at once.

 

 

01:16:43

And then probably maybe a year after that the other people came on board buying, you know, buying them because they’d seen how well it was working. And the fact that they’d come to look at them when we first did them to sort of just be nosy and see what it looked like. And then they came before they bought to see how they still looked. And it was like, wow, look, it still looks brand new, like a hotel room sort of, you know, you’ve kept it beautiful. It’s like, well, yeah, it gets clean twice a week. You know, we always in here it’s after and I suppose that’s you make so outta it, you can actually really, you keep your properties in really nice, Nick. You’re not worrying about paying for maintenance and things cause there’s always enough money to cover all that stuff. So

 

 

01:17:23

Yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m looking at, I’m looking at your, your direct booking site and your units and wow. They, they are beautiful. I love the, the style it’s and you, you have the same branding throughout all of them, which is really, which is really cool as well. It’s, you know, the darker colors with the white, the black and the white contrast. That’s got this very, you know, this very polished, very clean look, are these all within like the same building or are these a lot of different units?

 

 

01:17:48

Most of the ones on that side are all in the same building. So we’ve tried to, I mean, I guess the long term plan for me would be to gradually just buy the whole building. So every time one’s come up sale, since we’ve tried to buy it or we, it I’m currently negotiating on two more, which would, you know, be ones we would than do management. So

 

 

01:18:09

With, with your, with your, the clients that are purchasing these properties, and then you’re just doing a long term lease with them, did they not see like the profits that you were making and say, Hey, well, instead of you just renting it, can you, can you, you know, manage it for me, I’ll pay for the furnishing and do that. Or was that not something that they were interested in?

 

 

01:18:27

It wasn’t something that was probably on my rate. And I think they’re, you know, they’re quite happy with the, the way it’s going. You know, perhaps if they, perhaps, if they bought more going forwards, they would want that management model. But obviously if they take that on, then they also take on a fair chunk of risk, the way they’re doing it, the moment there’s not really any financial risk to the, and they’re getting the market rent for a long term rent there. So their mortgage is paid. They’ve got nothing else to pay out or worry about. So they’ve got a bit of security and I guess the reason they wanted me to work with them and do that was that they didn’t have time. It wasn’t that they perhaps didn’t have money. They just didn’t have the time to, you know, so my business partner is slightly different, but the other two guys that we run stuff for they’re brief to us was look, you know, I don’t want a phone call about them being the boiler, not working, you know, just if stuff breaks, just get it fixed and send us the bill. It’s absolutely fine. But we just, you know, our day job is so busy, don’t want anything to do with it really. So that was kind of the, the reason it went that way. So they’re quite happy for me to make a bit more money, but on the fact that they don’t really ever do anything, they just get paid every month. And that’s, you know, easy as that.

 

 

01:19:44

And you, you brought up that there’s more people coming into the space and looking at the, the Rental arbitrage model and saying, man, there’s profit there. Have you noticed since you started a larger increase, one of the things that you said was that you were able to get a little bit more of a fair market price on, on your units. And some of the other people that are coming into the space might be paying a little bit more. Is, is that what I heard correctly?

 

 

02:20:07

Yeah. I mean, I, I think some of it’s like an education thing. I think people hear Airbnb and think crazy money. So therefore if you tell, if I go in and say, I’m gonna run these places in Airbnb, then they’re very much, you know, oh, well you gonna making a lot of money. So therefore you pay more than, you know, so it’s perhaps that education of going, yeah, but your property will be kept, you know, this contract you signed with me basically says that the condition it’s in, when I take it off you is how it’ll Bell reliable for any repairs damages or anything like that will fix it, or, you know, selling on the fact that it’s three years with no voids. I mean, even if you don’t have any damage and you have great tenants, if they leave every year, you’re still gonna have at least one month where there’s no rent coming in.

 

 

02:20:50

You know? So it covers a lot of those little things. It’s just educating that. And then it’s like the worst case scenario is of Rental you’ve and you’ve perhaps showing on the other side of the story of going well. Yeah. You know, I’m taking on a lot of the risk here. Therefore I should make a bit more reward out of it, but there’s a lot more people doing it. Now, when we first started our first property, there was five places on Airbnb. You could rent in Lester there’s, there’s now more than 500. So, you know, the competition bit fierce as well. So,

 

 

02:21:29

And wow, that that’s a, you, you started, there was five when you first started and now there’s 500, you said. Yeah.

 

 

02:21:35

Yeah.

 

 

02:21:35

Holy can. Only, that is crazy. And how, how is that? You know, one of, so one of the big fears that people have when they’re getting into the spaces, one is regulations and then two is the competition. So you’re saying you’re going into these properties with these three year long leases. If you wanted to touch on the regulation. Is that something that you’re concerned with or is that something that, how, how do you handle that, that initial fear?

 

 

02:22:02

So the regulation stuff, I, you know, I kind of figure it’s coming, you know, there’s no, it won’t do. It’s just, you dunno when, so we have it in our contracts with people that, you know, if, if regulations change and we’re not allowed to do this model that, you know, we can give you a month’s notice and leave, but you know, everybody I work with, I know reasonably well. So I think they see that as fair that you like. Yeah. You know, you can’t help it. If the government come in and say, you can only do it for 90 days a year, it’s not really your fault. You’re not, you know, roll with that. So that’s the sort of deal we’ve got on to help with the regulation side of things. I mean, you comply with what you can and work, work around the rest.

 

 

02:22:48

And, and if you’re building and if, if you’re building a business model around this, what, what are some of the exit strategies that you would have in place if, if those things do come up?

 

 

02:22:56

So, I mean, I guess we’ve been trying to be sensible with, you know, kinda keeping, keeping some money on one side, making sure you’ve got, you know, you’ve, you’ve paid out all the bills, everything that might, you don’t wanna be taking on terms of debt and then find, you know, business model stops, but you still got 50 grand debt sort out. So taking care of all that kinda thing, you know, all of the properties we’ve bought, we went with several exit strategies. So exit one, I could buy it, do it up and sell it and make a profit exit two. I could buy it, do it up, rent it out long term and it still to profit. And then obviously three best case scenarios. I can do it at Rental on Airbnb and make a much bigger profit. So that’s kinda how we’ve worked. Everything we’ve taken on would still make a decent profit per month. If it was just on a long term Rental, it’s just not quite as fun, I guess, or you not making as much money, but you’re not losing money by doing that. So,

 

 

02:23:53

And then the competition, you know, from five to 500 people, if they heard that they would probably think you’re not making any money anymore. You’re, you’re charging $25 a night. What, what has been the case with how you’ve been able to, or earned from when you first started and to where, you know, the competition has, has increased?

 

 

02:24:11

So I guess, yeah, there’s a lot of competition which I kind of look at and go, you could be really threatened by that. Or you could go actually, it means there’s a really strong market for people wanting to come here and then have a really good look at the and go actually, how many competitors have I got? There’s 500 homes I can rent, but I’ve probably got 25 competitors that go, these guys are offering decent quality. You know, I would stay there and feel like it was a great place to stay, you know? So there’s not that many comparable properties. And then I guess it’s, it’s looking at what level of service you get from the, you know, I think more and more about the, as it gets bigger and more people into it, it will become more about the hosts and the hospitality they’re able to provide and the service, as opposed to just the, oh, I’ve got the brand new house, you know, that’ll be a part of it, but I think going forward, so having some like longevity in the business is helping, you know, having a lot of reviews really helps having your own website branding.

 

 

02:25:20

So people know that you not just like one man and his dog renting out his garage kinda thing, I think really helps.

 

 

02:25:28

Yeah. And it’s like looking at constantly trying to improve, trying to be a little bit better, setting yourself apart from the competition. When people stay, we set ourselves the goal last year of, we tracked a little bit of data for the first few years, but not loads, but we worked out that 83% of our bookings came from Airbnb, Airbnb, which is excellent, but also that you were totally dependent on Airbnb. So we, we did quite a lot of work on converting those people that stayed into direct bookings time, you know, leaflets in the, you know, very, for staying us, with by the way, if you ever come back, get in touch directly, you know, that kinda, so last year we were to get nine of our bookings direct bookings. So it was definitely worth the effort in that regard.

 

 

02:26:27

Wow. 40 of your bookings were coming through direct bookings.

 

 

02:26:32

Yeah.

 

 

02:26:33

Wow. And, and that was all just from, from just changing, from changing things, putting little leaflets in your, in your, your units and, and, you know, having a website and saying, Hey, come, come, stay with us. How, how is, how do you do that? Is that just because of the type of clientele that are staying there? Or, or is it like a lot of Vacation people that come on back to your units? Like how, how do you do that?

 

 

02:26:54

No, I think a lot of the people that come stay are people that are working in the town. So, you know, by default you kind of think, well, if you’re working here, you’re not working it for two days a year. You you’re probably coming more often than that. So little things we try and put a handwritten note in for everybody that stays, you know, dear Chris, thanks for staying with us. Hope you have a great time. You know, if you ever need anything, here’s our number, give us a call, you know, that kind of stuff, trying to make sure that you taking care of a lot of things that those travelers might one, you know, that perhaps other places don’t so that when they stay with you, they’re like, oh, great. I didn’t have to think about that. It was just done for me. Perfect.

 

 

02:27:34

24-hour check-in remote check-in so people haven’t gotta wait for me to come and let them in. And that kind of stuff, you know, lots and lots of little things. I think, you know, like the way you, your messages that you send out when, how many you send out what you send out, they’re all little things, but they add up to, you know, a great experience, hopefully. So just finished reading a really good book called setting the table about the difference between service and hospitality. And that’s been excellent. That’s made us change a lot of the, the stuff that we send out and things, because they’re sort of like service is what you should expect. And hospitality is how that made you feel. And they’re like, if it doesn’t matter how good you service it, it doesn’t make the people feel great about being there. So we’ve done lots of little things to try and, you know, get that stuff. Right. And I think that’s started to really pay off for us,

 

 

02:28:25

Tom, Tom, this, this is this brilliant. I love, I love talking with you because it’s to hear the contrast from when you first started getting into real estate and you were thinking that this was gonna be some type of easy passive form of investing, and then you got the, the trouble, a headache, you know, tenant, and then you switched over to your business when you started seeing all the benefits of the short term space. But now it’s, you’re, you’re running like a, a, a full on like, you know, corporate housing company. Like you have this apartment complex that you have multiple units out of. You have, you know, 49% direct bookings with repeat clients and you’re increasing the hospitality of your business. How, how big of a contrast, like, could you, do you think that, you know, people that are interested in real estate investing that if they are like hearing about all these numbers with Airbnb, everybody wants to get into the Airbnb space. Do you think that those same types of people that are just looking at the hard numbers can actually run a successful business in the short term rental space without, you know, reading hospitality books and providing this next level service that like, that we’re all trying to do?

 

 

02:29:30

Yes. Would be the, I think, but I’d probably say you’d need somebody front of house. That’s good. That wants to please your customers. You know, you don’t necessarily have to do that. If you’ve got the money to keep buying the place and send it up, then, you know, crack on and, and get somebody with you that fits that kind of thing. I guess I’ve worked in the, as a tennis coach, 25 years. Well, that’s the service industry face to face with the customer every day actually equips you with quite a lot of the skills that you need to be the front of house staff in business. What I’ve tried to, the people I’ve tried to bring into our business are, you know, like a bookkeeper, someone that manages the cleaning team, you know, I’ve tried to actually bring in the business numbers, organization side to the business rather than perhaps being that person and bringing in someone to deal with the hospitality side. So,

 

 

03:30:24

And, and when, when did you, because you said, you know, being, you need that person, that if, if someone, if there’s a real estate investor, who’s looking to get into the space, maybe they don’t, you know, want to be the actual manager. You, you also started taking up some, some co-host property management units yourself. So these are people that are looking at the space saying there are returns here, but I don’t wanna deal with the management myself. When did you start adding on that service to your, your portfolio?

 

 

03:30:52

That was sort of middle of last year. So quite recently, maybe six, seven months ago. I basically there’s like a property network meeting in our town at once a month that I go to occasionally. And the host of that asked me if I would, they did like a mastermind round tables, you know, where, and there was one group that was on like, you know, building houses, one group on student houses and things. And they asked me if I chair the table of service, accommodation and short term rental. So I’d someone through that that was like, I really like what you’re doing. I’ve been sort of sneakily following you on Facebook and looking at what you’ve been up to for a little while. Like quite, you know, I’ve got a really nice property that I would like to rent out. Would you be willing to try on a management deal rather than a, well, they would’ve taken the management or rent to rent deal, but the location was a little bit away from, we knew the market. So we agreed to management cause we felt it was less risk to us. It was great. They gave us a nice budget to go and furnish the place, how we wanted and you know, just let us run with it really. So,

 

 

03:32:00

Wow. That, that is, that is so cool. And I love what you said there about you, you weren’t comfortable going to that new location and yourself, if you’re doing the rent to rent as much, because it just wasn’t a familiar area, but the investor client, your investor, client was willing to take on that risk cuz they saw the returns and they just let you basically be the quarterback and set the unit up exactly how it is cuz I’m, I’m looking at all your units right now. And they, they all look, you know, the branding and the style of is all the same, which, which is really nice. And this person, they give you two units.

 

 

03:32:33

They give us one, one to start with. So they basically, they bought like a commercial building. It’s a big cafe deli kind of shop downstairs. And then upstairs is this really beautiful, big three bedroom apartment. And they asked us if we, we could do something with that. I think they’d had similar experience. They’d had long-term tenants, they got the keys back, gone in and were a bit disappointed that, you know, it wasn’t as nice as a, it had been when they’d let it out, you know, 18 months previously. So they had it redecorated, but didn’t really have any furniture other than just beds in the bedrooms. So they said, you know, here’s a, we agreed to budget. Cause we sort of give them an inventory. Like this is all the stuff we think need in place. This is how much we would pay all that stuff. And they were like, you know, and here’s a bit of extra for soft furnishings and pictures and things, you know, go to town. So they just let us get on with that. So we got all that bit done for them and then started from there.

 

 

03:33:32

And, and what, what were, what were they able to see from a return from going from the long term to the short term?

 

 

03:33:39

So I think, I think long term wise, I don’t know for sure cuz I, I haven’t asked them, but I think they were maybe getting 650 pounds a month in rent on the long term. And I think they pay the bills now. So they pay like the, you know, electricity, TV, license, internet, stuff like that. But I think the worst month we’ve given them, we’ve given them and it’s been, you know, better than that on, on quite a few months. So we’ve sort of talked to ’em and said, look, we we’re sure there will be some months where it doesn’t hit those, but there’ll also be some months where it hits out of the park. So just, you know, keep a little bit of money back on one side. So the, on the months where it doesn’t cover itself because of the location, you know, it it’s in a, a village outside of the town.

 

 

03:34:28

There’s not too many reasons to go there unless you’d had family or friends or, but what we have managed to do is get some contractors that we’ve been working with in the town that wanted somewhere, this place has got great park. It’s really quiet, you know, not any worries about or anything like that. So they can bring their works van and all their kit and stuff while they stay there, it’s all secure. So we’ve managed to get those guys to come. They have Monday to Friday every week. And then we just rent out the weekends occasionally to people that are coming to visit friends and family and stuff like that. So,

 

 

03:35:00

So you’re taking your corporate clients who are looking for something a little bit of the city and placing them in your cohost units.

 

 

03:35:08

Yeah. I mean this one was a little bit by chance. We actually were just fully booked when these guys rang up and asked if they could come. But we were like, ah, actually we’ve got a place that’s, you know, 10 minutes further away. But so they were like, I think they were bit desperate for someone to stay. They were like, yeah, we’ll give it a go, asked them straight what the feedback was like. And they loved it because it’s much bigger apartment than they would’ve got in town. I mean, this place is huge, very similar price. And they were like, actually for where we are working, it only takes like five minutes longer to get there in the car. So absolutely fine. Fine. So they’ve loved it. They’ve booked for like 16 weeks and then following on from them, we’ve had another group of contractors take it straight away. Cause I think they’d heard from the other guys. I think the first group was sort of like the guys building it and then the guys we’ve got now are probably like the electricians that have gone in after them. So I think they’d recommend that’s kinda gone from there. So

 

 

03:35:59

Tom, that, that is so cool. That is so awesome. Yeah. For, for your investor client, the one that, that put up the risk put up the, the front, you know, they’re, they’re making more money now than, than they were with a long term tenant and you’re, you’re making a good amount of money. How, how much, how much are you charging? 20% of growth. What’s 15. Wow. Very, very, very competitive. And that’s full service.

 

 

03:36:25

Yeah. So we manage the cleaning, all the changeovers, all the guests, you know, communication and stuff.

 

 

03:36:32

Okay. Wow. That, that, that is so cool. So you’re, you’re, you’re making a, you know, good penny off of that. And then you’re actually able to take those, those, those corporate clients that you would have that you would’ve had to turn away cuz you were fully booked, but you were able to place them into another unit is with your, is like what’s your strategy with taking on more cohost management type clients? Is that something that you’re looking to expand on or is it, you know, looking at the Rental arbitrage model, are there, what, what, what’s your, what’s your thought?

 

 

03:37:02

I, I think going forward we’ll we’re so that you talked about how we’re going to 13 units. So that’s, we’re taking on three more on a management agreement with somebody else sort of issues. We’ve got, we’re fully booked at the moment in our apartment, which is awesome. You absolutely love it, but it’s a problem because you turn people away because you, you know, and that kind of plummet you down the rankings on all the sites. Cause you’ve got no availability. So we looked at taking on some more units. And I think now, from now I, I don’t think we would take too many more Rental arbitrage ones on, but we would buy more units for ourself and we would take or management ones on. And two reasons really. I guess if everything, if all the regulations change and we had to stop doing it, the stuff we would buy for ourselves, we would buy refurb, you know, add value. It would still work as a long term Rental. So it would still fit the pension. It would just as a bit of, and if them there’s very little risk to us financially, if suddenly we have to stop you go, okay guys, you know, that’s the way it works. Not much we can do about that. Here’s your keys back. Thank you very much. So it kind of just de-risking things a bit, rather than having a giant, monthly rent role that we have to find and then not being able to do it. So

 

 

03:38:20

I, I love it. And, and one of the, one of the things that we kind of teach is this, like this trifecta, you know, you have your buying hold, your Rental arbitrage and your cohost, you know, and you’re basically using that to, to feed itself. So now what you’re doing is you’re taking the profits from these arbitrage and cohost units and you’re gonna be using it to basically purchase more properties. So your risk is a little bit more 50 50. If, if the regulation change, you can still throw a long term tenant in there, you can sell it, you know, with the Rental arbitrage. If, if something happens, you just have to cut your losses.

 

 

03:38:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like you say, it’s all about managing the risk now as we go, you know, we could have taken a lot more units, but we’ve tried to grow a bit slower to sort of, I kind feel like reputation is gonna become a big thing for people left in the market. And so, you know, having a load of terrible reviews because you cleanness couldn’t manage the, that you suddenly taken on 20 more in a month and I didn’t want in all those kind of problems, you know, but maybe that’s me, they’re sort of perceived problems rather than real problems that might not happen like that. But we, we took sort of a slow and steady approach

 

 

03:39:25

And, and with your cleaners, because I mean, as, as you’re growing, you know, you’re keeping up the good reviews. What, what are you, what are you doing with your cleaners as you expand your operations?

 

 

03:39:36

So we kind work with, we found a cleaner that, you know, was just a one lady that had a couple of her friends work for her. And we’ve just tried really hard to work with them to sort of, they’ve been really great, really willing to sort of learn what we wanted to work with us. They do way more than ever sort of ask them to do they’re brilliant like that they manage, we work with like a laundry that do all our linens and do all our ironing and stuff. They manage all the, all of that side of things. So we don’t have to deal with it. Really. They get linens delivered straight to them. What we have done is produce like, like a little couple of sheets for each apartment going, right. You know, this is what the lounge should look like with everything where it is, you know, throws on here, pillows on here, plants there, cause stuff gets moved around all the time.

 

 

04:40:27

And here’s a checklist for that room of all the things that should be cleaned and you know what you need to do. And so they’ve got that for each apartment. And then they’ve been able to use that with their staff when they’ve taken new people on to help with the, that we’re growing to be able to go. Right. You know, here’s how it’s done. You’ve had a few at it now you’re on your own in that place. And here’s the manual and I’ll come back in and just that you’ve whilst we’ve ours, there’s still problems we have. That’s the problem I’m trying to solve at the moment is, you know, I go in and spot check every time we have someone come in and you know, I still find stuff wrong and missing and things occasionally. So it’s, it’s how you deal with that. Cause it it’s a drain on my time to have to go back to the apartments every day to check that stuff’s been done. Right. So

 

 

04:41:22

Yeah, I think, I think you’re, you’re in that, that position right now where a lot of hosts face, you know, when, when you have one or two units, you can, you can do everything yourself. It doesn’t take that much of a time suck, but when you start scaling up to around five to like, you know, 15 now it’s like the same operations that you had when you first started, don’t really fit the same mold. Yeah. And if you play on taking that up to another level, it’s like, I, I don’t have the time I don’t have, I can’t maintain that high level of hospitality service with 30 plus properties. It, it, the, the same frame work doesn’t doesn’t fit the mold.

 

 

04:41:54

Yeah. So it’s, it’s sort of what, what we’ve done in the meantime, cuz we haven’t been able to solve that is we’ve we’ve tried to solve some of the other things that take lots of time. So rate management, you know, dealing with that. So it doesn’t take so much time guess communication automating some of that stuff. So it doesn’t take so much, which is sort of freed up a bit more time to be at the apartment, but going forward, I really do wanna solve that problem. And it might just be that cuz we’ve taken on these three units and they’re in a slightly different location that will add a lot more time. And it might be that you actually, some of the money that we make from those units will go into employing somebody to do this job. I won’t really be any better off. I’ll just be a bit more, a bit more time, but I can perhaps use that time then to go and find some more units rather than

 

 

04:42:44

Tom, Tom, you, you are brilliant. I, I just gotta reemphasize this Tom you’re, you’re a full-time tennis coach that is running a hospitality, you know, nine units scaling up to 13 on the side. That, that, that is, that is pretty wild. Could you ever imagine that you’d be that you’d be managing five or nine units scaling up to 13 while having a full-time job?

 

 

04:43:04

No, no, not at all. I mean the one thing I will say is that probably looking after all these units is a lot easier than looking after the 600 kids a week that come to tennis lessons. So, you know, it’s the, it gives me quite a nice perspective on, you know, yes, you have to work hard in the apartment stuff, but it’s not that hard and it’s not stressful most of the time. There’s the odd moment where yeah, all right, things go wrong and you have to drop everything. And, but generally speaking, it’s pretty nice way to make a living.

 

 

04:43:37

What, what has been the most challenging part of starting your short term rental business?

 

 

04:43:42

I, it sounds really then, but like just getting started just like some of the things that have stopped me from doing it for a long time, turned out to be so simple to solve, you know, just by, even after things like joining all the Facebook forums for Airbnb hosting, getting involved with other hosts in the area, I set up a WhatsApp group for all the other hosts that have in Lester that I know. And we sort of worked together. That’s been brilliant for, you know, if you get a double booking and you need to find somewhere else to put it or those kind of things, we’ve we set it up primarily for a lot of sharing. So often times I’ll get someone get in touch, go to, can I come on Monday? And I’m like, no, I’m fully booked, but actually I’m put it out to my group of colleagues and see if someone can take it. And the deal is that we always give each other sort of 10% commission or take em out for a cour or something. There’s a thank you. That’s been quite, quite good, but also really good for, you know, like, oh, I’m having this problem with this. Has anyone else encountered it? You know, and finding out all those little answers, that little tiny things that kind stop you from doing a bit more.

 

 

04:44:48

Yeah. Wow. That, that is so cool. And I, I love that because a lot of people think I’ve, I’ve never heard that before Tom, but I, that, that is really brilliant. You you’ve taken something where people might be thinking, oh, I’ve gotta just keep everything myself. And you’ve opened it up to where it’s like, Hey, if I don’t have, if I’m fully booked, I’ll, I’ll give it to my network. I’ll give it to my, my, my, the people that are kind of within my community. That that is something else that I’ve never heard before. What about, what about scaling your business? What’s been the most challenging part of scaling this, this business,

 

 

04:45:18

Perhaps getting comfortable with the risk. It’s probably the, the thing that’s held me back the most of the kind of not wanting to go out to a point where I couldn’t get out of it, you know, up to now, if things had gone real wrong or we’d have to pay out for massive bills or something, you know, we could always do it. Whereas it’s getting to a stage where you go, actually, it’s now kind of got to work because it doesn’t, I couldn’t buy my way out of trouble. I would have to make it right. So that element of that attitude, tos taking that, those steps to rely on other people I’ve found a little bit difficult, you know, like if a boiler breaks and I need someone to come out, I, you know, you need ’em to come out now. It’s not like, oh yeah, you come on Monday.

 

 

04:46:04

That’s fine. It’s no, like when can you be here today? So that kinda, stuff’s been challenging to find the right, build the right team up around you for that. Yeah. I mean, I dunno like anybody, you have good days and you have bad days and you just have to try and keep going, just do a bit more and do a bit more. And I dunno whose quote it was, but I absolutely loved it. And he just said, you know, the rule is you go as far as you can see, and when you get there, you always be able to see a bit further. And so it’s been getting this attitude of, you know, when I get stuck with something it’s like, well, do as much of it as you can and then see what it still looks like. And you always figure it out. You always just get through enough to do that. And it might be that other people help you, or it might be the, you get so far and you go, oh, that’s how you do it. I’ll just carry on. So, you know, and is,

 

 

04:46:53

Is there, is there anything that you include in your, your tools that saves you time and money? Like, are there any tools that you use that you, that you recommend or like any, any particular like, like a quick drying towel or something someone might bring up?

 

 

04:47:10

No. Nothing really, nothing. Nothing. I don’t think that would be obvious. You know, we’ve got cupboards in each apartment that have like a code lock on them, so the cleaners can leave linens and towels and all the change in the can’t so that, you know, if someone checks in at 11 o’clock at night and they ring up and they’re like, oh, you know, there’s, I dunno, there’s not enough towels left out or there’s a, on the, you can be like, okay, that’s new cupboard. Doesn’t somebody to go out to have keys and deal with all that kinda stuff. We’ve had coded locks on all of the apartment. So, you know, like handyman, the cleaners, anyone in my team can get into all the units without having to come and get keys from the office and things like that. That’s been quite useful, almost everything. Now I’ve got an app for on my phone, so can run, you know, with my phone and my laptop, I can run the, the whole problem from anywhere.

 

 

04:48:14

I don’t need to be on site, so that’s been good, but I don’t, I don’t think we’ve got anything specific where you go, oh, that’s been, I think one of the best things we’ve done is we’ve put little extension lead in each bedroom, in the bedside table with like a four plug socket. So people can plug in phone, laptop, you know, all that kinda stuff. We’ve got all the plugs by, in the bedrooms and in the kitchens where you can plug a USB cable straight into the plug socket, you know, you don’t need a plug. So you don’t the socket plug your phone in that’s about it, really.

 

 

04:48:47

And is there anything that you do to help your guests leave positive reviews?

 

 

04:48:53

Okay. So yeah, we, the day after they check in like 24 hours later, or the morning later, we send them a message saying, you know, thanks very much for staying with us again. We hope you’re having a great time, by the way, we expect all of our guests to, you know, have a five star, stay with us. If there’s anything that’s not right or not, please let us know straight away so we can fix it. That I think that sets the tone, then that you’re expecting a great review. Cause you’re expecting to give them great service. And if they don’t feel they’ve got that, then I don’t want them to sit quietly on that for a week and then leave and be really grumpy. Give us a terrible review over it. I’d rather tell me straight away, because you oftentimes you can fix it. You know?

 

 

04:49:34

So we had some guests there with us at Christmas and messaged them. They came quite late at night, so I messaged them in the next morning and they got, they didn’t like the fact that they couldn’t open a couple windows. He’s got one of apartments, got like ginormous windows, three meters high out onto the main road, but you can’t open them because of that, you know, it’s pretty scary dropdown, but because they told us straight away, we could just check them into one of our other apartments. So it was like, guys, look, here’s the code for this apartment. Go and have a look. If you like it, you can swap straight away. So they swapped straight away and give us a great review because we were able to sort of solve their problem. So I think, unless you sort of know that stuff in advance, you can’t do anything about it and it’s they’ve left then sort save that relationship. We do that. We send a just before they check on to check out, you know, hopefully nothing that they wouldn’t think of themselves, but, you know, da things like, please turn off the light, turn off the heating, check in the drawers for any belongings that you might have left in the bedside table. That kinda stuff. And by the way, again, thank you to staying with us. Please remember to leave as a review, join us on Facebook, Twitter, all that kind of and stuff. And that seems to be, seems to be working. So,

 

 

05:50:52

And, and what are you doing with your, your corporate clients? The ones that keep on doing the direct bookings. Are you doing anything else to capture those reviews since they are just coming to your website? Do you have like a, like a Google or, or Facebook group that you’re trying to have them like or, or leave reviews on there?

 

 

05:51:10

Yeah, so we have a, a Facebook page that we ask them to join. If they want to, obviously they’ve got the option to review on that. It’s not something we’ve pursued lots. We’ve been looking at, maybe we like, you know, have a Google business listing. So it shows up that way a bit, a bit more, but kind feel like you’ve gotta pick your battles and you go, no matter how much money I spend on marketing my website, it’s never gonna outspend what Airbnb or booking.com are willing to spend. So actually use their site to get your new business. And then when that new business arrives, convert it into people that want to stay with us and they can use the website almost like they found it, cuz we showed it to them rather than because they stumbled onto it on the 12th page of Google. So yeah, we we’ve sort of gone down that, that approach of, you know, never gonna beat Airbnb terms of coming up top listing. So why try, I’ll just work with them.

 

 

05:52:04

Love it, love it. And is there one rule that has saved you before

 

 

05:52:10

So much a house rule, but I think just like things like we don’t do same day bookings, so need 24 hours notice we don’t do one night days or certainly not very often more to fill gaps in the calendar in advance. I certainly wouldn’t take like a one night booking on a Friday next week sort of thing. Feel like there’s just a lot of red flags. We don’t let anyone stay generally. That is from the same town, unless their messages are quite compelling as to, you know, if I get a nice message from you saying, hi, Tom, I’m having an extension built at my house and they’re knocking the back wall down next week and I stay Friday, Saturday, Sunday, while that work is done. Absolutely fine. Totally reasonable. You know, if it’s like a, Hey man, your place looks great. It’s like, Hmm, get a little bit more information before. So I think perhaps that side of things gets it rather than stuff. Your house rules.

 

 

05:53:08

No, I, I think, I think that’s brilliant and I think what you’re doing, Tom, every, everything is just so, so, you know, I don’t, I don’t know personally what you have going on behind the scenes, but from what I’m seeing, you’re, you’re doing everything the right way. You’re setting this business up and you’re not, you’re not just say, you know, coming out there and putting a bunch of listings online and trying to make a quick bucket. You you’re, you’re scaling a real business, which, which is really good. And you have all the, all the safety precautions, like you said, the, the, you know, no, you know, you’re reviewing all the messages. You have the, the one, you know, no single night bookings, the locals. I think that’s all really great stuff. What, what would you do differently though? If you did have start from scratch?

 

 

05:53:47

That’s a good question. I think probably the thing I would do differently is almost like have that way of thinking. I think it’s grant Cardone. That’s like, I dunno that you’ve seen his books about 10 X stuff. You know, I, I really like that idea that if I ask you to double your business, you work harder. If I ask you to a hundred times better your business, then you have to think very differently about how you would achieve that. I think I would do that. You know, you go, okay, right. I’m starting from scratch, but I’m not gonna start with one unit. I’m gonna start with six or 10. And so how’s my cleaning team gonna deal with some of these issues. How are we gonna deal with the volume of work because you’ll come to those problems anyway. So you might as well just head on right at the, it’s no different that problem in A’s time as in you’ve, so might as well.

 

 

05:54:41

And actually having units in things, you know, it’s, it’s easier to ride the bad times because you never gonna have all your apartments empty. You might have a couple of them empty over Christmas, but most of them are booked out your cleaners like it. Cause they just go to one location, take all the kit and it’s easy, you know? So probably going forward, I’d say, you know, if we stopped everything we’re doing here moved to a different place, I’d, I’d go for, or I’d be looking for developers that were building like a whole block and go, right guys, look, I can really work with you to make the most outta this development. I’d go after that kinda market rather than just individual. But I suppose that depends on your location. You know, obviously if you’re in nice beach in Florida or something, then probably very different market that you probably go after any city center wise, I, I would go for a lot of units all in the same place, somewhere where you can really manage the whole of the guest experience.

 

 

05:55:37

So it doesn’t matter how beautiful my apartments are. If you come into the foyer of the building and there’s graffiti on the walls and post all over the floor and stuff that you can’t really control very easily, whereas own such a big chunk of the block that our cleaners take care of. A lot of the corridors and a lot of the, all that kinda stuff, you know, and as we buy more of that building and gradually one day own the whole thing, then we’ll be able to really make it, you know, absolutely bang on. So

 

 

05:56:03

I love, I love it. I love it, Tom. I love, I love that mindset shift that you’re, you’re saying, you know, instead of just thinking, how do I operate one unit, how do I operate, you know, 10 or a hundred, instead of learning how to pick up one unit at a time, how can I pick up, you know, 10 or a hundred units? And with that mindset of, you know, maybe I could even potentially buy out the building or maybe I can, you know, become the mayor of a city, whatever your, your grand idea is. It’s, it’s that mindset shift from not just thinking small, to thinking big that that is really key. And where, where do you see short rentals going in the future? And, and specifically let’s say, you know, the, your, your particular area in England.

 

 

05:56:42

I still think it’s booming here. There’ll be way more growth in the industry. There’s so many more people coming into the market. I think by default that’ll be a good thing. I think that’ll almost the competition will sort of strengthen the herd cuz the people that are doing it badly, you know, without doing all the right checks without looking after their guests will gradually just go out of the market because you wouldn’t choose to stay there. You know, cause there’s gonna be so much choice. I think the regulation that will come in will probably as long as it’s not completely restrictive, you know, I, I don’t think the 90 day rule is the best regulation they could have brought into parts of England, you know, things on safety and you know, all that kind of stuff. Would’ve been a far better thing cuz it would’ve got rid of a lot of people straight out the market.

 

 

05:57:32

Anyway, I kind of think that’s the way it’ll go. So I think the people that offer the best quality products and then the best service will be the ones that stand the test of time. You know, probably the same as hotels have done historically, you know, the, the best places to stay are still the best places to stay. You know, I don’t think that’s always just because they’re in the best location, it’s just because of the experience that you get when you stay there makes you go back. So that repeat business will be really important. I think for people,

 

 

05:58:01

What question would you have for another professional host, maybe someone that’s at a similar level than you, or maybe that next level where you’re trying to go.

 

 

05:58:10

Well, first one will be, how do I get someone that’s a good housekeeper once I’ve solved that problem? I feel like I’m doing a bit better. I don’t know. Really. I think so much of it depends on the individual in terms of what it is you personally wanna achieve from it. You know, so I think ours probably started out as earning more money and trying to, you know, have a slightly better life. But actually it’s now becoming more about, you know, how can I build a business that I’m proud of and that, you know, if any of our friends or family or anyone came to stay would be like, oh, I had great time. That’s you’ve done really great job. How do I provide that on a bigger scale? You know, how do we keep that quality? How do we keep that sort of slightly personal touch on a much bigger scale?

 

 

05:58:58

You know? So it’s probably growing your team alongside your units to keep that going and bringing on board people that are like like-minded people, you know, that have that attitude of wanting to do the best they can do. You know, despite the fact that they’re, you know, a lot, I dunno, lots of people around here talk about cleaners, like slightly in a negative way. It’s just the cleaner and you go, man, they make or break your business. If they do a terrible job, you’re getting a terrible review, you know, but finding a cleaner that wants to do a great job. I, you know, I’ve got a lot of time for that for people that like that, you know? And so building a team of those kinda people takes a lot of effort and a lot of getting out there and meeting a lot of people and trying stuff. And so it been interesting to talk to people and say, how did you solve those problems going forward? Or how did you bring people in that solved those problems for you? You know, cause some of the, like we talked about some of guys I met that units and there’s no way you all of the people over and over again. So how you put people in place that would hire people that had similar values to what you wanted in your business. So

 

 

06:00:06

I love, I love it. Thank you. Thank you so much, Tom. And one last thing being in the, the less Lester area, if anybody does wanna reach out to you, if they have any other questions, maybe they wanna join your, your WhatsApp group. If they are in that particular area, what’s the best way that people can reach you.

 

 

06:00:22

Okay. So, so other than several ways, I’ll send out my Facebook page. If they get in touch with me on that, you know, I’m quite happy to, for them to have my phone number, WhatsApp group and all that kinda stuff. So if I just send you the link to that and then, you know, you can distribute it, however,

 

 

06:00:39

Definitely, definitely. Yeah. I’ll include, I’ll include the link in the description as, as your direct booking site. If anybody is planning to go to the Lester area, your places are beautiful. I really love it. And you’re doing a bang of job, Tom. Thank you so much.

 

 

06:00:53

Thank you.

 

 

06:00:55

All right. Until next time everybody keep on hosting. Hope you host benefit from the show. If you found value, please going over to iTunes, leave us a review and let us know what you enjoy about the show. If you’d like to talk to hosts that have been featured in these episodes, as well as the community, going over to our Facebook group, the host nation.