STRSS 50 – Growing an Airbnb Business From 0 to 2000 Properties w/ Shannon Hyde

Video Transcript

 

 

00:00:01

Had a pretty interesting strategy in that what we did is we, we hired maybe one or maybe one person in each city. And we, we launched in six different cities at once. The plans were always very ambitious. So I, to yeah, a you, and that’s kind of been our strategy.

 

 

00:00:23

This is episode number 50 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,

 

 

00:00:34

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 Rental business. My goal 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 on 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.

 

 

00:01:04

Hey, what is going on? Host nation? I am super excited to be back again with you this week. Firstly, I wanna say thank you so much to the host nation family for allowing me to be able to share all of these success stories with you. This podcast has truly changed my life and if it wasn’t for everybody, that is a part of the host nation and constantly supporting me, you know, over 70 reviews right now on iTunes, the host nation family, we have over 3000 people in our group. We’re getting tens of thousands of downloads and listens a month. I love seeing and welcoming everybody into our community. You guys have really just changed my life so much and because of this show and because of all your support, I want to just keep on moving forward and striving for more. Because of this, I met my business partner, mentor and friend John Bell, who started another podcast, Vacation Rental machine.

 

 

00:01:50

I was able to get myself from struggling, just getting by now being to almost financially free all of this while still serving in the coast guard. And now we have a management company together and we’re also coming out with our course, the Vacation Rental machine Formula. We have a book that’s coming out really soon. We have an awesome super tight-knit community of BMB empire builders, which is our private mastermind group. All these things in 50 weeks. I never would’ve imagined that my life would be where it is right now. And it’s all thanks to you, the host nation family. So from the bottom of my heart, I thank you so much for the impact that you’ve had on my life and what you’ve allowed me to do, which is to help change other people’s lives. That’s really the biggest calling on my heart is helping other people be able to change their lives and claim that time, freedom back this business has truly changed my life.

 

 

00:02:39

And my goal is to help at least a hundred people, if I can help a hundred people claim their time, freedom back. So the, they don’t have to struggle the same way that I did when my dad was passing away from cancer. And I just needed to be able to spend more time with him, but because I was stuck with the job and when you don’t have money, you have to pay with time. I was in a situation that I did not want to be in. So now my mission is to help other people claim that time. Freedom back these past 50 weeks has been me trying to claim my time, freedom back, but we’re right there. And now that I’m able to take care of myself and my family, I wanna be able to help other people change their lives as well. So like I said, Jon and I have been working on a program called the VRM Formula.

 

 

00:03:15

And what we wanna do is give you guys a special training where we’re gonna be appealing back the layers of the VRM Formula and exactly what it is. When people come into the space, it can be overwhelming with how much information there is and all these different things that you need to learn. And there wasn’t ever really a clear path, but in this training, you’re gonna be learning about Rental arbitrage, cohost thing, Jon, and I’s own stories. And then exactly how to go for, start to finish for building your own Vacation Rental machine Airbnb business. This program that we’ve been working on is really the culmination of months and months of hard work. I’ve been investing so much time and money into this program because I really believe, I truly believe that this is going to be a thing that will change your life. I don’t want people just listen to content and the, and not take action.

 

 

00:04:01

We’ve been designing this program so that it really is step by step. This isn’t general information. I mean, we cover a lot of information on Vacation Rental machine podcast and the short Rental success stories podcast, but what’s more important than information is implementation. And that’s the goal of the VR Formula is that we can walk you along every single step. So that by the time you are finished with the program, you’ll have your very first and profitable Vacation Rental machine that is able to run on autopilot. Being able to pick up a property is one thing, but being able to automate it so that you do truly have that time, freedom is completely different. So if you like to join our live training, go to Short Term Sage dot com, that’s the early Birtch. And when you subscribe to the email list, we will let you know when the next live training becomes available.

 

 

00:04:48

And you’ll also get our special early Birtch price. And since this is episode 50, I wanted to do a very, very special episode. So in this episode, we have the special honor of speaking with Shannon Hyde. Shannon is the head of global operating for the property management company, guest ready, which is one of the largest property management companies in Europe with over 1600 properties, up to 2000 under management, all around the globe. He was one of the first employees in their London market and helped grow the company from three properties to the over 1600 that they have. Now, this is a really special episode because I’ve been able to talk to somebody that has over 1600 properties. That is crazy. And Shannon is just such an awesome guy. He shares so much information in this episode and I’m really, you can tell in this episode, I’m really trying to just dig and find out as much information as I can.

 

 

00:05:37

So I hope you all benefit. Shannon shares a lot of really good insights on building both a property management and company and the PMs software to automate and run their business, which has fueled their growth. And Shannon actually did something really special for us, which he allowed us to be able to look at his property management software behind the scenes. This is something that have developed in house and how they manage their over 1600 properties. I’ve never seen anything quite like this to be able to see such a large player in the space, just revealing so much information. So if you’d like to see a behind the scenes, look at the property management software that Shannon talks about in this episode, then go to Short Term Sage dot com slash Rental ready? So like guest ready, except Rental. Ready. If you can check out that bonus episode after the show, if you like my show notes for this episode, go to Short Term Sage dot com slash STR five zero.

 

 

00:06:28

Or if you like my show notes sent directly to your inbox every week, then go to Short Term Sage dot com slash show notes with all that being said onto this week’s conversation. Hey, welcome back. Host nation two another, the episode of short term rental success stories. In this episode, I have the special honor of speaking with Shannon Hyde. Shannon is working with guest ready. He started at the foundation. I’m super, super excited. This is gonna be such an awesome episode. I highly recommend you listen to this one once more, but Shannon, would you please introduce yourself to the host nation, let them know who you are and what inspired you to get into short term rental?

 

 

00:06:59

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Julian. And great to be on the podcast. It’s awesome to, to share my story and hopefully give you guys some interesting insights ready. So my background, I I’ve been working at guest ready for a bit over three and a half years now. I joined when we had about five properties in London and like over the last three and a half years, we’ve grown that company to about properties in, in total. So it’s been a pretty crazy ride, pretty, you know, lot ups and downs, lot sleepless nights type thing before I was working for a company, stay do like luxury Rental in, in London and a few other, but London like footprint and ACOR in. So they movers into like you Rental space, you Airbnb tubs throwing. And so, so yeah, that’s, that’s in terms of why I into short term rental, I mean, I thinking in terms of like monetizing, you knows like being able to sort, and you know, when as to why you would do short term rental.

 

 

00:08:44

So, so you started with guest ready when they had five properties. I mean, did you become a founder or was it, was it just like, Hey, they saw you working at one fine stay and they’re like, Hey, this guy is rocking it with their operations. Let’s just pull ’em on over. How did that relationship turn out?

 

 

00:09:00

Yeah. Start by something in a bit more sort of early stage. Cause I mean, one was kinda pretty well matured at that point and they were just sort about to get acquired. So yeah, I, I didn’t really know what I was up for and getting myself a bit of naive with that, but you know, the same exciting prospect. So yeah, when he reached out to was like, you know, do you build this thing? And I was like, yeah, that sounds awesome. Do it,

 

 

00:09:38

You know, I’m, I’m looking at the, I, I remember seeing guest Ready’s name before we, we talked to him cuz I was actually looking online at, you know, world’s top 20 Vacation Rental companies. There’s this blog article on medium and they have this really cool like infographic with like the map and then guest ready is actually on that. It says you guys are based out Paris, but they say that you have 2000 rentals.

 

 

01:10:00

Yeah. Yeah. So it, it kinda fluctuates. I mean, you know, in Europe there’s a big high season in, in the summer, so we sort scale and scale down the summer and we have a lots that, you know, on and off like properties when they’re that type. So 2000 properties like yeah, Alexa on a, on a good month, that’s what we would get to, you know, but we probably, I, I dunno like how many have in our software that sort like, you know, hosts can come back and that type thing, but we do have a lot of sorts that come and

 

 

01:10:32

Okay, so you, you guys, you know, at the, at the moment you have around 1600 properties, these are full service management or what, what, how, how do you do your management?

 

 

01:10:42

Yeah, so we, we provide like a full management model for that. You know, we, you know, a sort solution for an owner, like completely, I mean, manage at the Rental. So we provide furnishing solutions in some cases, but we do, you know, like full cleaning maintenance check in checkout pricing, optimization, guest communication, like the sort services that like,

 

 

01:11:14

And, and how many states or, or countries are you guys operating out of?

 

 

01:11:20

I think it’s six different countries. It could be more it’s six or eight Portugal. UAE, Hong Kong. Malaysia. Yeah. One. So yeah, six different countries. I think we’re in about maybe 12 or 13 different cities, but we’re like, you know, mainly focused around London and Paris, probably two biggest,

 

 

01:11:51

You know, three, three years you started in August, 2016, you know, right now this, this interview it’s January of 2020. I mean that that’s some fast growth. What, what, what did it look like when you first joined the team at five properties and someone’s reaching out to you on LinkedIn saying, Hey, you know, we’re starting this company, you know, would you wanna join our startup? Could you even have guessed that you would’ve been over 1600 properties in this short amount of time and spanning, you know, across the globe at this point?

 

 

01:12:21

Yeah. I mean, when, when we first started, guess we had a pretty interesting strategy in that what we did is we, we hired maybe one or maybe one city and we, we launched in six different. So launched in Hong Kongs, lump Amsterdam, and quite clearly, we some really good growth in, in some, some markets like London and Paris is always really good for us. But then some of the other markets we had to shut down after a few months or like six months after we launched, I guess, for various reasons. But like, and hosts wasn’t maybe expected initially. So I mean like the growth plans were always very ambitious from the beginning. So I mean to say, yeah, its still a surprise because you know, it’s still pretty things like that’s but the, yeah that’s

 

 

01:13:36

You guys had like a macaroni plate approach. You just threw everything out there said, Hey, we’ll see which markets are gonna pick up. And that’s where you went from.

 

 

01:13:44

Yeah, exactly.

 

 

01:13:45

What, what does it take to be able to scale to that many properties? I mean, you guys, you guys are doing something right. If you were able to, to do, is this, is this just like a different type of, of, of are you guys doing like a different model or a different type of business? Cause lots of people, they start property management companies, but you know, a lot of times they just, it’s just the smaller operations, you know, and if they do scale, maybe it’s like maybe a hundred, hundred properties, maybe 200 properties, but you guys have just like blown up. How, how do you do that?

 

 

01:14:13

Yeah. So I think we’ve always really focus on, on service quality as being like a, a really key, important part of our business, especially to our, our hosts because the, the owners, the at the end of the day are the ones that if you around that’s what’s gonna, you don’t that’s. So we always focus on, I guess what we were able to do is, you know, by launching in sort of six different cities, we had this like really big mentality of like sharing knowledge between all the cities, whilst we were sort of finding best practices. And so we were able to really share knowledge across like different parts of the business to try and like optimize like our marketing strategy or like, you know, our guest experience strategy. And that was, that was pretty cool to be able to do that. Cause it meant that like we had a lot of different ideas, especially people from like different cultures as well that, you know, would give us like a lots into the business.

 

 

01:15:10

I mean, in terms like the growth itself, like we, we, I guess we, we, we we’ve done that through sort of two different channels. We’ve done it through like organic growth, which is like, you know, in terms of building a sustainable business, but also like getting more hosts from like, you know, different marketing channels, but also promoting referrals internally. And I think that that all itself like has been really good. And you only really get that from, from providing a good service to, to your hosts. But also we have made a few acquisitions as part of our journey, which has allowed us to grow our portfolio in size, but also grow our team and knowledge.

 

 

01:15:49

So you said there’s, there’s two aspects, there’s the app operations. And then there’s the, the marketing without good operations. Your marketing, you know, is kind of pointless cuz you can’t, you can’t grow if you’re not able to produce as far as operations go. I mean, when you started at five properties and you were the operations head of head of operations, what, what were you doing that was so unique or that was able to stand out and compete against everybody else? Because I mean three years ago, I mean, Airbnb, wasn’t, wasn’t new, short-term renting wasn’t wasn’t new and I’m sure that there was a lot more, a lot of people in this space, but you guys have been able to, you know, make a, make a serious impact.

 

 

01:16:29

Yeah, sure. I mean, we, we always, like, as I said, like we focused really on like on, on ours and you, or a few times a year type thing, those ares that really need like attention connection to their asset. So we were differentiate ourselves from competitors by doing that. And I think we a, the sort of proposition stayed the same. Like we’ve always had personalized account managers for each property and those like, you know, account managers go to the properties and they have good relationships with the owners. But as we got, I think our, we were able to provide a different, a different of services that are more geared towards say like, or like, you know, revenue management, like really to, you know, centralize those functions and like, you know, people that, can you dedicate all the time into that.

 

 

01:17:42

What did the, your team look like when you first started out? Was this, was this a company that was just kind of funded with, with venture capital right away? Or was it after you got to a certain point that you started really just skyrocketing when, when was the tipping point?

 

 

01:17:57

Yeah, I mean, like to begin with, it was, we didn’t have like venture back. We went venture back for like maybe a year, year and a half until after we started. So we had the founder, like they did raise a bit of Steve money to begin with. It was only very small amounts. So we were, you know, pretty much like pretty scrappy to begin with. Like, I mean like all the, all the founders and stuff were getting involved in the business quite heavily in terms of like, you know, the operations and that I remember like London, you know, after about like, was like, to me, I’m not gonna do anymore. Check-ins you need to like solve this problem type thing. And I was like, oh no, like what do I do now? Something. But yeah, like from, from the beginning it was like, it was super scrappy, which was which a lot, you know,

 

 

01:18:45

What did your team look like if you were, if you were, you know, preparing to launch, what did that look like? Because you were operations, but you also had a CEO. What, what else did you have?

 

 

01:18:57

Yeah, so I, I launched like the London with, with one of my colleagues who’s our now. So we sort split focused on like the guests and everything sort of like supplier related, like, you know, maintenance, cleaning and that type of thing. He would deal with the property owners and then sales, like new leads would come in. So we, you know, our roles, like over time, like as the company group changed quite quickly, we sort of had to things like a, almost like a monthly basis, just to make sure that like, you know, the accountability for certain tasks was getting you thin. So we would, we, the resources and people, and then three people and then four people. And then after that, you kinda start to get a bit more structure in place and have people more accountable for specific departments. And that’s kinda how it grew up from there.

 

 

02:20:03

One thing that we, we did, which was interesting, we like those like functions were very much localized from the beginning. So for example, you know, the guys in Paris, they would be dealing with all their guest in Paris and, and the guys in London would be dealing with and guest. And after a certain point, we did start to centralize those functions so that we could have like, you know, better, better like standards across all our markets, but also like, you know, specialized people more in those, those, so we set up like a big in Malaysia, so we’re in lump a guest there. And then that was quite good for us because then we were able to sort of grow in different areas of, of like, you know, different cities and it wasn’t like impacting, you know, those, those, that team that’s like highly localized there

 

 

02:20:59

Being across the country just to start off. I mean that that’s gotta be, you know, a lot of people get overwhelmed when they have, you know, maybe different people, different cleaners in, you know, just like another, another state, another city, but you guys were across the world. Did, were you just repeating what you were doing at like one centralized location at different locations? Or did you have, like, what does that look like when you have multiple locations and different amounts of properties under man?

 

 

02:21:28

Yeah, so I think one thing that we’ve always tried to localize is the host relationship. You know, we have local account managers in all of our cities and, and that type thing, I think property management is a very like relationship driven business. And to try have say for that, I don’t really think works that well. I mean, you can do it, but I, I don’t think in terms of like creating a good experience with your host and a good brand, that’s not necessarily the best choice for guests. I think maybe it’s a bit different because like they have, you know, when you’re trying to standardize like a product that the guest is getting you kind, the actually works pretty well. So that’s kinda the way I would look at it. How, how we dealt with it internally.

 

 

02:22:14

What did your team look like initially? Like how, how many people did you have and what were their different roles when you just had, like, let’s say five, five units in the Paris market.

 

 

02:22:24

Yeah. So we sort of split it into anything sort of host related and anything guest related guess for us was like operations. And then like host stuff was like account management sales. So it was sort of split. I mean, when we first started in some cities, like if we had sort of less than five or 10 units, we might have just one person sort of doing all those functions and that in and itself, a lot of challenges because you know, like you have, you’re effectively trying to provide sort 27 or like good support, but that person works Monday to Friday. And so like pretty soon, I think it’s, it’s pretty tricky to do that with just one person in the city we weekends. So yeah, that’s kinda how we, we separated things between hosts and guests. And then as the business grew, we, those functions like finance, marketing and even sales. And that thing

 

 

02:23:27

A lot, lots that are trying to start their own manage companies, you know, growing and marketing is always a challenging, challenging issue, you know, marketing and finding reliable cleaners. We’ll get to the cleaners, but marketing. How were, what were you guys doing? Were you guys like door knocking on every, you know, these 1600 properties? Or how did you get, how did you start to scale?

 

 

02:23:48

Yeah, we, I mean, we started by just contacting landlords via this channel spare in the, it’s kinda similar to like Craiglist where, you know, landlords properties on there, we outbound outbound Airbnb, Airbnb just, know, you that look like they either were getting bad reviews. Cause they might have like three outta five star, like property or something like that. So you could contact them and say, Hey, you know, like you need help hosting. Not that you’re getting bad reviews, but you know you to do those, like, I’m sure they’re most like type marketing initiatives in, but through big, I suppose,

 

 

02:24:47

Can you kind of help us visualize what, what your guys’ growth was? It was from like five properties when you joined and then you said you were bootstrap for about a year and a half. What, what was the, the progression of the units and at, at, you know, to where you are today at 1600?

 

 

02:25:06

I mean, I remember we were just always busy. Like always just try thinking the next month, next month type thing. I mean, I dunno, like in terms of numbers, like what it looked like, it, it was, it wasn’t like this, it was pretty, pretty steady growth. Like each, each month, from what I remember, I mean, I, I guess, you know, at certain points you just start to run into different problems. And I remember getting like 50 or 60 units and in terms of, so we always to like things and I, I I’m, don’t like of like, oh yeah, this was, this is how, how it was at that point. But it just, it just kinda grew a similar pace each month is what I felt like. And it was always, it’s always busy. You always sort of catching your tail.

 

 

02:26:02

There wasn’t any like pivotal moment where it’s just like, you, you figured something out. And it was just like, wow, all these new properties started coming in because you know, really you started out a little bit, a little bit different, you know, you started across the us, but you, you know, this Paris, London area, you know, you, you started off with five and then you got to 50 and then like everybody else that is hosting, once you get to a certain number, things start to break the same processes that you didn’t have that you had before, when you were at five, it’s not gonna be the same when you had 50, but there was a point where, you know, you really started probably taking off or something maybe clicked. What do you remember when that was?

 

 

02:26:38

I mean, I think we just, we’ve just consistently grown like steadily over time. Like it hasn’t been like this BLI screen thing of like, you know, we we’ve doubled in one month or something like that. I mean, like when we were, when you have small cities yeah. You could double in size, but I think like the main thing is minimizing churn. So like taking on the right owners, like I think, yeah. I mean, just thinking about it now, like we out at some point like, like Rental Rental. And so we, we started to get a better handle on like our unit economics in terms of like, OK, this is located here. It’s gonna generate this, this amount per, per month and that to X profit or loss. Right. So properties and that I like, because then you’re targeting the right properties that, you know, you’ll have for say like longer periods of time, you know, you’re spending, you’re getting a more efficient spend on your marketing and your sales efforts. So yeah, I would probably the main thing.

 

 

02:27:57

So when you, when you first started off, it sounds like you were, you were really trying to just pick up any property that, that anybody had, but then what really started to work best for you is when you figured out what exactly your target customer is and how you can best serve them. And then once you knew how, you know, the, even down to the specific type of property that you were targeting, that’s when you started like marketing towards those people.

 

 

02:28:21

Yeah, exactly. And I think like all of those, it’s not to say that when we started, we took on everything. It’s just more like we didn’t have the awareness to say, this was like, this property’s gonna be a loss leading property. Or like, you know, this is not a good deal for us, for X, Y, and Z reasons, or like, you know, so, I mean, I think that’s maybe something that’s important to early on. And like, even if you have a portfolio, you’ll get a good, like what properties the, for you. So that maybe that, that, that research can be, and even like, like, and management to easier to do that. Now it’s something that we, we could have done better than begin with

 

 

02:29:10

Going off of that. What, what is, when you’re working with a property owner at this point now, what, what does it look like? How are you able to still provide that same level of service to your clients? Are you, when you reach out to them, are you like helping them analyze their property? Or are you going for completely new people that don’t even know about the space? How do you, how do you take a person along that, that customer acquisition journey?

 

 

02:29:34

Yeah. Like we have on our website, we have a calculator where you can input your address and it’ll tell you, you know, on a per monthly basis, what, you’ll, what you should generate, you know, per property per month. So that helps host like, get a good sense of, you know, whether this is like a viable, alternative to, you know, long term renting or, you know, they’re have you, when they do with us, you know, like we, we, as I, we have a, like a dedicated account manager who, you know, is in charge of that host and can help them to, you know, their property and help them to furnish the property and that type thing. And like, they they’ll provide as to like, what, what sell the, you know, whether it’s like adding extra likewise available. And then basically after that, like, yeah, we have like a team that’s available, you know, Monday to Friday, you know, in terms of account management, but then host like, you know, we have a 27 guest communication team.

 

 

03:30:34

So, you know, even if there’s like a big E something like that’s account managers that we have, you know, they have a very good relationship with each owner. So it’s, it’s more of a, like partnership than it’ll be, you know, a sort strict like customer client relationship. So we work with the property owners to also like try and their properties, because for us, it means that we, we can make, make, so like the feedback loop for reviews and stuff like that. It’s quite good in terms of owners like can see all their reviews for their, for their listings on our, you know, on our system and that type of thing that helps to, to make those changes.

 

 

03:31:13

When you first started, you had around, you hit five, you get 50 figured out your processes, then you really started figuring out how you can best serve your clients at that point. What, what did your, how to, did you start to scale? Was it, you were, you were the properties that you knew that were performing well. Were you just like targeting those specific locations and how, how were you, how were you getting more people that you knew that you wanted into, into your business?

 

 

03:31:39

Yeah. I mean, we, we, I guess defined in our cities, like where it is that we wanna operate. And so, like when we had interest from different areas, like we, that weren’t inside those, those locations, we would reject a lot of leads. So I guess that’s one, that’s one, you know, way that we did that. I mean, I think that’s, we, we haven’t really gone down like a model of like doing leases, you know, this master model that some other companies like do where they, you know, leases sublease, like our main business is so commission, revenue, split model. So for that, like it’s weed, like, you know, properties per, per month. And then sublet after that, it’s more been a case of like filtering the, the interest that we get through, like the channels.

 

 

03:32:34

But what’s your, what’s your primary method of finding those ideal clients? Is that like a Google or are you doing ads or do you have like a blog? How, how are you acquiring these new people?

 

 

03:32:45

Yeah, I think I’m not sure how much I can maybe go into that, but it’s, it’s like, I would say it’s it’s, we were quite successful through online campaigns

 

 

03:32:57

On online campaigns. And you were getting, getting very specific with the types of people that you were looking for.

 

 

03:33:03

Yeah. I mean, we, for us, like, we we’ll take sort of, there’s two kinda types of hosts, I guess there’s like the primary residents host and then the investor hosts, like the investor hosts, I think are great because, you know, like they’re generally they yield focus, but they’re not also like, so if you provide a really and you get them, the returns that they’re for, then, you know, they’ll stay with you for a cause. So if you, that I, that that’s win-win so, you know, we really like, I, and, and so we, you know, we really like to work with investors if we can find them. So that’s, yeah, definitely something we target. If we, if we, you know, are doing sort of like outreach and that type of thing,

 

 

03:33:53

I’m going on your site, you know, guest ready.com. And I mean, it’s very, it’s very minimal, very simple, just got a bunch of different, different cities that you guys are operating out of, but when you’re targeting people and you’re, you know, you said, what I really love is you said you have your, your, your typical home owner, and then you have your investor clients. These two different types investors are typically, you know, more, more analytical. They’re more numbers driven. The homeowner maybe needs a little bit more handholding along with them. But when I go to your site, I, I don’t, I don’t see too, too much information. Do you, are guys like creating a different type of resource or a different site that is like a landing page for people that you’re driving them to? Or, or what?

 

 

03:34:31

Yeah, I mean, I would say most of the, most of the leads that come through our website are like, I guess typically primary residents owners, we probably get, I mean, like, I think that this, the investors and like the sort of big Phish clients, you know, are more, we, we generally are able to get them not through like inbound leads more through like networking and that type of thing. So for that, you know, that’s why our website’s pretty simple. Yeah. I guess like strategies can work. It’s just, it’s just a case of like where you put your resources. And I think that having a good website is pretty easy to do nowadays. And I mean that for us, it’s just been, you know, a, a really easy way to reach a lot of people.

 

 

03:35:18

You said, networking for investor clients. Are, are you guys going out? Is everything online or are you doing like boots on the ground going to events and stuff like that for networking? How, how are you expanding your, your investor client base?

 

 

03:35:31

Yeah, yeah, we do. We participated a few events in different, like we try and create like partnerships with real estate companies as well. A lot of real estate companies are looking, get into, or do get from companies or from, sorry, not companies, but from like, you know, owners thats. So we’re able to partner with that quite a, you know, to, to have that sort of win-win relationship with them in terms of like, maybe sharing the revenues with them and that thing. But yeah, otherwise, you know, like in, in big cities, like, you know, London, Paris, Dubai, and stuff, like there are a lot like you and Rental. So like we, we do try and, you know, have good relationships with those types of people.

 

 

03:36:23

What, what are some of the biggest differences from when you first started operating to where you’re operating now? I’m sure that, you know, lots of things have changed, but are there like things that are like completely, completely different from when you first started off?

 

 

03:36:35

I would say probably on like the, on the operation side, we are just like a lot, we’re just much better, you know, much, much more efficient, much more like the processes are just much more advanced on the tech side as well. You know, like we, we have a and effort into buildings and that’s, that’s really helped us to scale on the operations side in terms of keeping cost low in terms of providing a, having really what’s properties. Yeah. When just, I still can’t link things together that well, in that type of thing. So probably like the tech side is, is, is the big one in terms of operations. And even, I guess on the account management side, I think it’s really helped a lot

 

 

03:37:32

From, you know, where, where you guys are right now, 1600 units, you know, obviously you, you, you know, you have to be able to cut costs in different ways. There’s a lot of tools out in the market right now that, you know, probably weren’t around, they’re still in development. When, when you first started, you know, we have tools like, you know, properly turnover, B and B for cleaning, you know, there’s like Guesty and your Porter, Hostfully all these different tools for PMSs. But when it comes to, when you get to a certain point, you, you know, being able to implement your own systems and create your own processes and your own like PMs or your own task management software, seems like that’s the logical way to go. Is that what everybody else is doing though? All these other companies that are, you know, these heavy hitters in the property management space, are they all utilizing other people’s software or are, do they all start their own in-house suite of tools?

 

 

03:38:23

I mean, I think it depends on the, on the company. Like, I know, I know some big companies, these, at least in Europe that are still, they still use third party tools. And I know big companies that have their own software. We, we mean, like, we were always like a tech enabled property manager. So we, like, we were always looking for ways in which we can use technology to help us be more efficient and scale. So we started off by using a lot of third party tools and there are a lots market. What we found is like a lot of those tools really at like niche, like things like, you know, properly is really good for, for task management. But there, we really wanted to have our own system because like, there was a lot of things that we still couldn’t do. So we started to build system and, you know, you can link a lot these apps, but in some cases you’re sort of able to automate the workflow maybe 70 to 80%.

 

 

03:39:22

So we really looked at like, you know, each process, like, you know, step by step and how we can automate that process. And I think that when you sort of do things over and over and over again, especially when you start to get a lot of properties, you start to notice like where the inefficiencies are. And so we, we built our own PMs software that links in with a channel manager. And, and now we sort of have like a pretty full suite of, of, of functionality that kinda covers really of the Rental, like in terms of like what we, them, it’s not really any sort that we use for like on the property management side that, that, that we haven’t got in house now.

 

 

04:40:04

So you don’t is, is there like a certain point when it’s it’s best suited? Because I imagine when you’re working with third party, you know, things might break when you’re, when you’re managing 1600 units and you’re using someone else’s software, if something breaks, that’s gonna cost a lot of money. And it’s also going to, you know, beat troublesome because now you have to deal with another company, their tools, are they integrating with other tools, you know? And when you’re scaling to 1600 units, you know, your whole business revolves around how you’re able to handle your operations. Were there ever, ever any instances where like, just something broke and then just like all hell went loose? Cuz you know, even as a smaller, even as smaller managers, like if, you know, let’s say, you know, Airbnb has an issue like everybody, the whole, the whole world freaks out, you can’t, you can’t log into your portal. Is it, does that happen when you’re at 1600 units?

 

 

04:40:58

I mean, I think, I mean, I’m not gonna name, I’m not gonna name names. We were using another software. Like when we first started, we didn’t have our own software. So we were using PMs software that I remember one day, like they were using Airbnb unofficial I’m but Airbnb, you use the unofficial one because like the, some functionality you can’t access to the official API and cause of that, the unofficial one is much more unstable sometimes. And I remember, I think this was like maybe we at 500 or so, but I remember it was like coming into the weekend and basically we realized that like we had about, I dunno, couple Airbnb, Airbnb, Airbnb accounts, and we weren’t receiving any messages. So we were just kinda like, it’s coming up to three check and we’re like, oh God, like we know guests are gonna be us contacting saying, you know, I’m, I’m outside or I’m stuck or I’m out. And we just have no visibility on it whatsoever. And that went on for about days and it was really, yeah, it was really, really to, so I thinks likes otherwise, like yeah, the issues get compounded really, really fast and, and it’s, it’s really hard to have like a consistent level of service. If you, if things break,

 

 

04:42:24

Like you were saying, I mean, two, two days, two days of not being able to send messages and because you were using a tool that was using this unofficial API, how, how do you, you manage all of the, the hosts that, and the people that you’re helping them make money. Because if you’re, you know, this is somebody’s property that you’re working on and you’re trying to, you know, help them maximize their return. And because you know, maybe you’ve scaled a little bit too much now, you know, things are kind of breaking. How do you handle that with your investor clients?

 

 

04:42:56

Yeah. I mean, I guess it just comes down to having, having good risk management procedures in place. Like, I mean, if we’re using, if we’re, if we’re using any tools, they need to be good, they need to be robust and they need to reliable, I guess. And you know, we don’t use that software anymore. I mean have our own and it, it works really, really well. So I guess like, yeah, that, that sort of just comes into the, into the, you know, the forefront of our minds when, when you get to a certain point, it’s like, OK, if we, if things do go down for one day, one hour, like what impact that’s mitigate

 

 

04:43:34

For people that are, let’s say at that 50 unit mark, how, how do you start to scale operations? Like what are the, what are the people that you need in place? Or what are the things that you need to be able to do to be able to get up to, you know, that hundred, 200, 500 unit count?

 

 

04:43:50

Yeah. I think like what we, what we did initially was we partnered with a lot of third party provide that like, you know, things like cleaning companies, maintenance companies. I think if you can get some really good partnerships and really good connections with good quality companies that do a really good job, then you can, then you can scale. And I would say, you know, when you are, even when you’re small, when you’re big, like don’t rely on just one partner to be able to, to do that job, you need to have backup plans in place. Like I know in some markets like in Paris, like when, when we were growing, there was a lot of companies using the same cleaning company and that for a lot of companies like they’re to on, on the day, you know, to deal with that, because I think as a short term rental manager, like you kind six or seven businesses and one you’ve company, you’re like a guest, you know, concierge company, you’re a revenue manager.

 

 

04:44:50

So to outsource those functions, if you can do it well, I think like saves you a lot of time. And I would say, you know, on like the, on the guest communication side of things, I see a lot companies have like outsourced that’s there’s, there are some companies you can go through to do that, but, and there’s other companies you can outsource that too, but if you can find, you know, good people in the Philippines or, and that type of thing, I think that’s a really low cost way of providing like, you know, a really long level of support. And I mean, like covering more the day, you know, if you’re in Europe and you have the Philippines, you know, they can cover the nights when you, when you’re, you know, and that means that you don’t have people on thing. So that’s probably something I would think about if I, if, if you’re especially in a city where like, you know, the margins are it’s, it’s it.

 

 

04:45:50

So, you know, in the space, like you said, there’s like six from businesses that you could essentially have that you’re managing as a short term rental property manager for a business at scale. Does it not make more sense to keep things in house? Like you said, the, the, the technology you’re, you’re building that inhouse and we’ll, we’ll talk a little bit more about what you’re building and, and what you’re offering as well in a little bit. It, but for, let’s say like cleaning, I mean, you have 1600 units and he said that you’re outsourcing it to other companies. Does it not make more sense to keep it in-house and have your own full-time cleaning staff or, or, or what’s, what’s your perspective?

 

 

04:46:27

Yeah, so I, I mean, for our business now, we pretty much, most of our city are in house. It really depends. It’s very, it’s very case by case basis. Like, I think, you know, there are some locations we work in where we’re able to find really good partners and it just, it’s just easier for us to outsource that. I mean, now we’re at a stage where, you know, like we have some really good knowledge of how to, you know, train, manage and retain cleaners. So like, you know, in terms of bringing that in house, I think that’s like something that we can do well now, but, you know, when we were smaller, it was a lot, it’s a big learning curve. So we just, you know, we look at it on a case by case basis. Like if it’s getting really expensive, we can look at it and say, okay, is it gonna be cheaper in how, how we going to do that?

 

 

04:47:16

And just sort of tackle case by case, but I don’t think it’s a one size fits all sort of solution, you know, in the, probably the biggest cities we’re in, we have got it in house. And that’s mainly, mainly, yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s probably just because like, we have worked with partners and then, you know, we, we realized we could do it either cheaper internally, or we wanted to, you know, strive for quality or different things. I think housekeeping is something that’s really, it’s really tricky because like, those cleaners are like the backbone of your business. So to outsource that, that you need to do it well, you need to make sure you find good partners and otherwise yeah. It’s just, if you can find a really good cleaner, like, it can make a world of difference in terms of the headaches you can,

 

 

04:48:01

How do you guys manage that? Because, you know, cleaner cleaners are such an essential part of the business and being able to have the same standard across the board at every property, making sure that every property is checked. Do you have someone that’s going and actually viewing the units after every cleaning? Or do you just like do, is there like a separate, like onboarding process for these cleaners whenever you take them under your guys’ company? How, how does that whole process work?

 

 

04:48:28

Yeah, we, we operate in a few different way is like we in, in markets where we’re doing in person checkin, the person who’s doing the checkin can, can quality control the cleaning in like when our cleaners are, that can check over those. I mean, you’re not see things like dust and that type thing. And that’s kinda that in place say we do like do a of checkings. We also, our pair ratings, thats, Airbnb, Airbnb. so And for each cleaner, like what score they’re getting from the guests. So it’s easy to identify which cleaners are doing a really good job and which ones are underperforming. And in some cases we also do videos like they’re starting and also, or like in the oven and just making sure that they have a really good understanding of what they need to do. I think like having a few of those sort of processes in place has really meant we can consistently do a good job.

 

 

04:49:44

Do you have a dedicated person that is interviewing cleaners and, you know, verifying cleaners when they do the first cleaning? Or are you just finding like agencies that already are operating that you can trust?

 

 

04:49:57

Yeah. We, we have like a housekeeping manager. That’s like a central housekeeping manager that, that helps out with recruiting and that type of stuff. I mean, in the big cities, it’s been pretty easy to finds. Like there’s like, it’s sort of, of, of suppliers that sort of, you know, hasn’t been like crazy hard to find like good players. It’s just about retaining them, I think is like the challenge. And I’d probably say for that side of things, like, don’t like, you kind of get what you pay for when it comes to cleaning and you need to those cleaners as if they’re like the backbone of business IRES or accounts, we try those, those, those, like you in business in terms of like the recognition that they get from guests and hosts and that type thing. Cause yeah, if you get goods and retain them, it’s, it’s, it’s like the core of your business.

 

 

05:50:58

Do, do you do the linen for units or are, are you outsourcing that

 

 

05:51:06

We have, you know, some cities where operate, where its it’s, you know, in house and then somewhere it’s outsourced. So it sort just depends on like, you know, the local partners that are available in the, you know, the, and then the cost and the economics of each property.

 

 

05:51:27

And for, let’s say a days, are you as part of your full service, are you replenishing amenities and how, what does that look like when you have different amenities in different units, you know, across the world, even, I mean, are you using like Amazon to like, you know, basically reorder stuff for these different places? Or do you have like different lists for different about what they need?

 

 

05:51:51

Yeah. I mean, like we do it’s, it’s, it kind of works on a city by city level, again, just depending on like, whether we sort of run things like remotely where say we have like companies that can deliver that sort of stuff with linen, then they might do the, or if we have like a, our own central storage, we can, we can do it through that, which is a lot easier generally I would try and provide the same sort of amenities across the board for guests across like different markets so that the experiences is larger the same, but there are some cases where we provide different things. Like in Dubai we provides for guests because the water’s not that good there. So small things on that. And also Dubais like outside, I appreciate some water. Whereas like, you know, in London that’s not as, you know, as needed,

 

 

05:52:42

What’s been the most challenging part of scaling this business,

 

 

05:52:46

I think at different points. Like the process it’s usually when you get sort of three Xs, like every time you, you go up through it, three times, it starts to get tricky again. Like, I mean, when we, when we, another thing that we sort of did was like, when we started, we knew that we were going to try and scale this like pretty fast. So every time we sort of review processes, we try and implement something that’s relatively scalable. But yeah, I mean the is new markets. It is like a people management business like this, you know, and it’s relationship driven. So like having really people is, is really critical, but yeah, I’d say like the operation side of things is definitely, you know, as you get bigger, it’s become bigger challenge of getting it right.

 

 

05:53:43

Is there anything different from, I mean, is there anything really different from a person that’s managing a portfolio of five or 50 properties versus 1600? Is it, is it like a totally different beast or is it essentially the same thing? Just a little bit more complex.

 

 

05:54:00

I would say like on the host facing side, it’s probably pretty similar in terms of like the day to day challenges that owners have and dealing with those and, you know, and, and their needs, I’d say on the operations side, it becomes, yeah, like a big beast of different challenges. Like just, you know, when you, when you get to a certain size, you need to start to have really robust, like quality control processes in place. Cause you, you kind lack visibility on the local level when you’re not able to know your property portfolio just by being, by going to every property. Like that’s when it starts to become a bit, a bit in terms of, you know, what, what can happen and like that control. So that’s something that we focused a lot on and also just like building in like scalable processes in terms of like documenting your processes and standardizing them across, like all of your, all of your properties is, is really, really important

 

 

05:54:58

Is the, the way that you document processes and implement processes the same as if you are a smaller manager versus, you know, six,

 

 

05:55:09

Well, I mean, like if we were to change any, now it becomes like a big project, right? I mean, even something as simple as like adding a, adding a bottle of, to guest becomes like a, that you different stakeholders. You. So I say, when you’re small, you know, most of the stuff’s just in your head and you can coordinate really easily between internally, internally between people and say, Hey, now we’re gonna a bottle of, and everyone’s like, cool, great. But you know, when you get bigger, you need to have like a lot more structure in place. And otherwise like it’s slip.

 

 

05:55:48

I imagine that it’d be very, very challenging because you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re so focused on trying to grow the business, but at the same time, you have to have that same level of care that you had when you had five units. How, how do you, how do you manage that, that relationship between being able to still have an awesome, awesome service and be able to help your investor is, and your clients and the guests, as well as, you know, scale, exponentially or scale, you know, very, very rapidly to a large amount at the same time.

 

 

05:56:22

I mean, I think as you get bigger, it maybe becomes easier to provide like a more consistent, good service. Maybe what you lose or is harder to achieve is that really personal connection with guests? Because, you know, they’re not texting like, you know, Airbnb who like, you know, lives in New York, whatever. It’s like, they’re they’re to like people, we, we try and internally like promote like this center that like route calls based on whether you’ve spoken to someone before to that same person. So that there’s issues, they can follow up pretty easily in our inbox. We have like a way of like every interaction it’s really we’ve to, to facilitate that. But it’s definitely a challenge. If you get bigger that you need to sort of address

 

 

05:57:30

And talking about that technology, because you’re, you’re actually doing something pretty interesting is you’re actually taking the, the things that you’re using internally and you’re planning on releasing that to the public as well. What’s what, what, what, what is that, did you, how did you, how did that even come about? Like, did you identify something that was lacking in the market that you decided to fill? Why, why are you releasing something that was internal that, you know, allowed you to be able to, you know, scale and manage effectively to, to the public.

 

 

05:58:00

Yeah. I mean, like, as across like our journey of last three years, like we, you know, we’ve been building this, this software that is mainly for internal use and we were able to solve some really like big pain points that we had as a business that we weren’t really getting with the external tools that were available in the market. So it kind came out a, an identification of that, that, you know, look like what we have is really, really it’s an all in one software and we’ve been able to bring in like, you know, like all the sort of tools that need run this business in one place. And so we thought, you know, let’s, let’s see what demand there is on the market. I mean, there companies liked providing of, and like, you know, at the moment we we’ve, we’ve, we’ve only just sort of started releasing that to the, to the public. We have, we’re working with other property managers now that, that use the software and it’s been, it’s been really good feedback. So we’re like looking to really to grow that this year. So yeah, it’s gonna be pretty exciting to see what, what comes with that?

 

 

05:59:05

Who is this for? Is this for the, the 1600 plus property managers? Or is this for the people that just have one or two units? What, what’s the, what’s the target for this?

 

 

05:59:14

I mean, I would say probably it works really at any sort of size. We we’ve built some really good talk to like monitor quality in terms of like the ING checkin review management and this type thing. So I, for property managers maybe sort of units plus, but in saying that, you know, if you have five units and use software you’ll that provides, you know, like all the, that you need run this in place and means as you don’t, if you’re like don’t

 

 

05:59:58

So, so this is channel manager or is it just the PMMS?

 

 

06:00:03

So it’s a PMs and channel manager. Yeah.

 

 

06:00:06

And, but you also said that it has other features. Are you kind of going for like the Guesty feel where you have the, the, the automated messaging? Are you including like dynamic pricing in there and all these different tools?

 

 

06:00:18

Yeah. Yeah. So we have, we have quite a lot of automation tools, like things like the auto messages, the auto reviews, we have some processing automations that also like split the money to each. So like you, the from say, like Thetas a virtual wallet and then its it’s got like, like, you know, automated pricing tools, like things like the revenue management tools. Like you can build an algorithm based on your market, have it like fluctuate based on seasonality and try and target like specific bookings, like long bookings, if you want with, with of doing it. It was a developed way of sort of hacking Airbnb S by like changing availability each just in terms of like the price, if you, you update it sort of one Euro, one pound each day, it boosts your, your ranking. So we’re sort hack that. Yeah. We have like a really good like task management system. That’s like an iOS and Android app that cleaners and meats can use to their tasks and they upload like feedback and that type thing. And then like on the owner side of things, we have like a really good portal that, you know, like owners can open close dates. They can book in and change their prices if you wanna see like all theirs from guests. So it’s pretty comprehensive tool. I’d say probably to, like you knows, is like,

 

 

06:01:46

Is this for people that are looking to simplify their operations or people that are looking to save money? Or is it for, you know, the extra little suite of tools that maybe are for optimizing the business? What, what are, what are the benefits of, of using this, this internal tech you are now gonna be releasing to the public?

 

 

06:02:08

Yeah, I think it, it kinda covers a few different, like there’s like on the generation side of things like algorithm booking for your homes. We also have ways on that side to upsell services to guests, which you can do really easily through like affiliate marketing links that you can add that, you know, just generate extra. I mean, we, we built up more as a case of like, you know, efficiency terms of like simplifying things. And so I think on that side of things, that’s probably where we’re strongest at that’s where we’ve built, like the most automations and, and that type of thing. So it’s really like the, I guess like our, our product market fit is probably like, you know, these, these tech enabled property managers that wanna grow their portfolio in like a really lean way.

 

 

06:02:59

How much have you guys been able to save by, by turning things internally versus having to outsource using all these different services?

 

 

06:03:08

Yeah. I mean, that’s pretty hard. It’s hard to say like, cause there’s so many different things we’ve done to sort of save costs, but like, I mean, we have been able to, to grow our portfolio sort of with like a really similar headcount for, for a certain amount, like, and a certain amount of time, I should say. So like have noticed like, you know, in terms of a lot of the time we have everything sort of on one page, we have the information that you need to make that decision in front of you. But again, it’s, its pretty hard to quantify, you know, when it comes to like time.

 

 

06:03:53

Well, I mean like even just talking about like for, you know, smaller hosts when they’re just starting off maybe a dynamic pricing, tool’s gonna charge them 1%. Once they take up some more units, maybe it drops down to like, you know, point 75 when they’re using your tool though. Cause everything’s included, should this be saving property managers, a lot of, a lot of fees that they would have to pay towards all these other tools.

 

 

06:04:19

Yeah, exactly. And I mean like what I find just from speaking to other property managers is they use probably five or six different tools to manage their business and like you Euro so side, but also I think that the, because we have everything in one place, it, it really starts to become a lot easier to manage. Cause like those tools, they have APIs and things that like, you know, are getting pushed and to them, but in a lot of cases it’s not perfect.

 

 

06:04:58

Yeah. And like, like, like you were talking about earlier, when you, when you have all these different tools that your business to depends on and then one of the APIs just doesn’t work or one of the, one of the tools just isn’t working. Right. You know, let’s say the dynamic pricing, just all of a sudden it changes and now all your places are a dollar like, like some, you know, maybe, maybe that wouldn’t happen, but if it does, I mean your whole business is, is, you know, dependent on these other services.

 

 

06:05:23

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And like you also don’t have as much influence on like the, on the roadmaps of what those companies are going to do in future. So, you know, we work pretty closely with our property managers of them, you know, either, either grow their business and in a few different ways, but we also like if they need things we’re able to, they’re also able to influence our roadmap and, and, and a lot of the time, like the things that they say they need are, are things that we need or other property managers need.

 

 

06:05:53

Awesome. And do, do you guys have a timeframe on when, when this should be out?

 

 

06:05:58

Yeah. I mean, I think we, we, I mean, we are, we are sort of like in a, a release at the moment, like, you know, we with other property managers on this, on, I think like in terms of a release, probably like the middle of February we’re

 

 

06:06:15

Okay. So by, by the time this, this episode is out, it should be out our, include a link down in the description for those that are interested in, in finding out some more information about that. Yeah. This, this has just been so, so awesome. Shannon. I, you know, it’s very unique to be able to talk to one of the people like I’m, I’m looking at this list of some of the other competitors in the space and, and you guys are like right up there where, you know, all these other heavy, heavy, heavy hitters are like Saunder, Saunder lyric bungalow, some, some of these other management companies. So it’s, it’s really, really cool and really special to be able to talk to you. We’d love to get you on another show at some point to talk more about your, your process and, and, and definitely talk with you some more. You’re just a wealth of knowledge. And I just think it’s, it’s, it’s so cool for you to be able to share this information with, with the community. Is there any, anything else that you’d like to share Shannon before we, we head off one? Oh, the, the question that I forgot to ask that is so important that I love asking people is what would you do? What would guests ready do if you had to start from scratch?

 

 

06:07:16

I mean, we, we definitely like launched in a few markets where like, those, it was either unfavorable for like regulation or like the market opportunity and this type of thing. So probably having a better understanding of the economics of the market in terms of what our costs would’ve been, what the market would’ve generated, what, you know, that yeah. Closed down after a certain amount of time that sort of went viable for us for a variety of reasons. But that was, yeah. So I, I think like knowing your market is super key,

 

 

06:07:48

Knowing you to market and, and what does that look like when regulations do change, if you’re managing, you know, all these properties in, in the Paris London area, and then let’s say, you know, regulations do change and you’re, you know, how, how does that impact the business at, at scale like this?

 

 

06:08:03

Yeah. I mean, I think regulation is, is, is good. Like there needs to be a responsible level of hosting. So we are, we are happy to, to work with, you know, like government agencies or like, you know, boards that are sort of looking to enforce good standards across the industry to make it a more sustainable model for, for everyone in, in the business. Like, I think, you know, the, in big cities like London, there are areas that are like overpopulated Airbnb, short term rental. And I thinks it’s like important as a, as a property manager to be responsible for that. So I think like ultimately, yeah, like we, we, we have a model that’s like, you know, sustainable within the realms of, of, of, you know, of the legislation in terms of how’s that, so, yeah, I’m really, yeah. That there is regulation

 

 

06:08:57

When, when you are at, at such a large scale, is, are you just completely dependent on the regulations changing? Like let’s say things change is your whole business kind of like, you know, Sol at this point, or do you, when you have scaled to a certain level, are you working a little bit closer with local legislation and how your business operates or is it just completely up to their win?

 

 

06:09:22

No, I mean, we do, you know, like we do participate in, in, you know, helping to like professionalize the industry and working with like regulators and that type of thing to, to enforce good standards. I think, you know, it, it’s, it’s, it’s good to have a finger on the pulse in terms of what’s going on just for your own, your own sake. And I think like, as well to have, you know, there’s some good like alliances in, in the UK of, you know, membership boards that sort of help to lobby, you know, like, and, and, or not so much lobby, but just more a case of like, you know, educating, you know, people that are in the, in, in, in city hall and that sort of thing as to like, you know, what, what stance like is a good sustainable model for the city and not sort go one way, just on say like some, some issues that like, you know, neighbors might have that type thing. So yeah. Like it’s definitely something that we would actively and,

 

 

07:10:18

And what what’s, I’m curious as to what you, what you would say. I always ask hosts, what’s the, what’s the question that you would ask the next professional or another professional host, maybe someone that is at a similar level than you, or maybe the next level, what, what would you ask them? Like if you, if you could pick the brain of any of the other companies that are maybe a few steps ahead of you or doing something different, what, what would you ask them?

 

 

07:10:42

I mean, like our company’s been like very much focused on growth, so I guess it would like hack question of like, you know, are the you’re differently to us. Like I do a, of companies in our space. It’s really interesting to like the challenges they face. I mean, they’re usually the same sort of stuff that we we’re dealing with. Yeah. Probably on the growth side would be the most interesting

 

 

07:11:09

Is that when you get to that, when you get to where your level is, is, is, are all the, for all the other managers, basically the same, is it customer acquisition and expanding your portfolios or is everybody kinda have different challenges?

 

 

07:11:22

I think there’s always different challenges. Like, you know, there’s just, you know, a company starts to like the challenges start to get, they become different, you know, like it for us, you know, it’s not just about acquisition of customers. It’s about, you know, like having a really, really good team and, and that sort of thing. It depends also what your strategy is, right? Like if you’re, if you’re a company that’s like just looking to grow, grow, grow, then like growth is gonna be number one thing. If you want to be like super profitable, then you know, like your objectives are gonna be different. So yeah, maybe for, for us, like, you know, we’re still looking to grow quite a lot. So,

 

 

07:12:03

And, and, and last real quick question is from, from where, where do you see short term rental Vacation rentals and this, this whole property management business going in the future? Is this a pretty, pretty fresh space? Is it too late for, are people to get in? What’s your thoughts?

 

 

07:12:18

I mean, I don’t think it’s too late to get in because, you know, it’s, it’s a very hyper localized model in terms of working with owners or real estate agents. And that type thing. I do see a trend at least in Europe. And I guess also in the like, consolidation of like over the last couple years, I, I don’t really see why that won’t continue. And you’ve got companies like rounds that are Europe and operating in like the key markets, like in Europe and us, but still, you know, like there’s a lot of opportunity. If you’re a small property manager, you can still, you know, make really good business out outta hosting and, and, and growing like from a small scale.

 

 

07:13:10

Well, thank, thank you so much, Shannon for, for taking, I know we’ve gotten a little bit past their time, but you’ve provided such a wealth of information. I’ll include all the ways that they can reach out to you, how they can find out about this tech that you are gonna be releasing by the time this episode goes out and the website and everything. Do you, do you guys already have a name for it? What, what are you guys calling this? This tech?

 

 

07:13:29

Yeah, it’s called Rental. Ready?

 

 

07:13:31

Rental. Ready? Okay. So Rental ready. I’ll include that in the show notes. And thank you so much again, Shannon. And until next time, host nation, keep on hosting. Hope you host benefited 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 host that have been featured in these episodes, as well as the community, going over to our Facebook group, the host nation.