STRSS 30 – How to build a million dollar Airbnb business in 3 years w/ Julie George

Video Transcript

 

00:00:00

And I was always a bit reluctant to tell the people about what I’m doing and give you the, give people the split, but it’s a formula that works. So what we do is we charge 25% of the accommodation rate to our property owners. So the property owners know that they’re getting 75% of the Airbnb payout.

 

00:00:21

This is episode number 30 of the Short mental success stories podcast. Welcome back to short term rental success stories. I’m your host, Julian Sage. This is a show where I talked to hosts about their journeys and starting and growing the short-term 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 hosts. We all strive for five star reviews. So please go on over to iTunes and let us know what you enjoy. It 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 30 episodes host nation that’s 30 weeks, 30 weeks. We have been doing this podcast and I just want to give a few little highlights because I’m really proud.

 

 00:01:03

I’m really proud of the community that we’ve built up. We just reached over 1000 members and the host nation family that is wild in six months, a little bit over six months, we’ve built up. It’s just awesome community or getting so many people in it. We started Vacation Rental Machine. Again, like I mentioned, in the last episode, it’s a new show that we rolled out with John Bell and we have, or over like, we have a lot of episodes on there. We’re at like 25 episodes. We’ve been doing two episodes a week. That one is just rolling out. We’re just putting out so much content and providing, trying to provide as much value as we can. So thank you. If you haven’t listened to that with John Bell and I, that is a great show. It’s very actionable, very action oriented. So very, very awesome, really good content.

 

00:01:46

This show. I love it. It’s just so fun. Speaking with so many awesome people like our guests today, Julie, George, but I definitely wanted to talk about some of the highlights because this is 30 weeks that we’ve been doing this. It’s just, we’ve reached some awesome, awesome numbers that, you know, there, there are other shows that are in the space that have been around for years and they are such awesome shows really, really good shows. There’s, you know, get paid for your pad with a Jasper and then Vacation Rental success with Heather bear. Those two have been podcasting for, they have like over 300 episodes each and you know, so we’re, we’re still a new podcast guys, but we are doing awesome. We have over 39 reviews. So many of you like everybody that leaves a review, they also leave a comment, a message, which is really sweet.

 

00:02:27

I love reading those. It definitely makes my day guys. So if you haven’t done so because we are a new show and we’re going for it, we’re going to try to become the number one rated short term rental podcast. I would love, I would love for us to become the number one. And that’s saying a lot because there, there are some really awesome podcasts out there, but I feel with this community that, that we are just a really tight knit. We’re very engaged. We’re a very positive atmosphere, all about helping people and helping people grow and highlighting their successes. So definitely in the community, join that lever review. That would mean so much. Another announcement is that in the last episode, I was talking about a little surprise about what John and I have been doing. So we are actually starting a property management company that is going to be a little bit more, more across the U S and we’re working with property managers.

 

00:03:13

So if you’re a property manager and you’re looking to maybe take on a few more clients, that is definitely something that we can do go to a co-host it co-host. And then it co-hosts it.com is a new site that we recently put up. We’re offering full service, property management, and we’re providing a lot of cool, extra little features in here. Some more services that will really make it more of a hands-free experience. So if you’re listening to this show and maybe you don’t have the time, maybe you don’t want to, you know, scale this as a full-time business, then we can definitely assist you with that co-host that is a full service management where we’re going to be doing like direct booking page, you know, having cleaners, we can purchase the amenities, do linen service. We’re trying to do like everything to make it as completely hands-free so that all you have to really do is, you know, find a property and then you work with us and we can actually help you like furnish it because we do have an interior designer that can go out there or, you know, just take the measurements, furnish the place.

 

00:04:13

So this is really for the people that are looking to, maybe if they have properties that they’re looking to, you know, better optimize and have us manage, then we can do that. Or if you’re a new investor and you have the capital and you’re looking to get into the space, you know, to maximize your revenue, then, then we can definitely help you. There. We’re we’re working with property owners, investors, people that are already managing properties. So we’re looking to provide like a whole service to people and we’re not taking on anybody. It’s this isn’t just like some of those property management companies that will take any property under the sun. We’re a little bit more selective because this is you’re working with an advisor. You’re working with someone one-on-one to help you scale a business. So this isn’t for the people that, you know, just want to pick up any random property that’s, you know, in the slums or anything, and then just, you know, try to make money off of it.

 

00:04:59

No, because we’re trying to fit everything within our brand. We only want to take on certain properties at the moment, maybe as we grow that that might change. But right now we are just aiming at working with people. One-on-one investors, people that are serious that want to have a little bit more hand hold and not be very involved in the business, but still wants to be a part of the short-term rental business. Then definitely, definitely go check that out. We have a cool referral program. We’re also offering services to other hosts. So if you’re a host and you’re looking to maybe take on some more properties by yourself, we do need local people, local managers, to be able to help with the stuff that we might not be able to get to. So if you’re a cleaner, if you’re a concierge, if you’re into staging photography, anything like that, then we also have a service providers to have, you can fill in an application, it’s the co-hosts that partner program.

 

00:05:49

And, you know, we’ll, we’ll provide you with free leads and you can actually work with us. And there is a split with that. So some really cool stuff. I’m very excited for this new program that we’re rolling out. So definitely check that out, check it out if you’re interested in having your property manage, or if you’re just, you’re just curious and you want to see what the site and what we’re offering, but I think it goes really well with today’s episode with Julie George. So today I had the honor of speaking with Julie, George Julie is a rock star based out of Cannes Australia. And over the course of three years, Julie impressively built up a portfolio of over 120 listings through co-hosting bringing in up to 550,000 a month. That is mindblowing. Julie recently sold her management company, hosted my home to a larger conglomerate Hometime for over seven figures.

 

00:06:38

Julie’s now working as a consultant for property managers, promoting her new book million-dollar hosts, which you can see in the description and sharing way too much information that I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten her into trouble yet. So she shares a lot of information in this episode, guys. And even as we’ve been messaging back and forth, I’m just like, Julie, I don’t think you should be telling me this stuff. This is a little bit too much, but she was just like, Hey, I have nothing to lose that. Like she’s doing this thing. She’s just, you know, talking, sharing information. So I said, okay, I respect that Julie. But in this episode, Julie shares her strategies on identifying gaps in the market, the, her super unique way of scaling a co-hosting business and just a lot more. So definitely this is an awesome episode. I’m super glad that this is our episode number 30, because I think that it just, it summarizes like our accomplishment that, you know, our first million dollar host are, you know, such an awesome person on the show.

 

00:07:30

Definitely. If you’d like my show notes for this episode, go to Short Term Sage dot com backslash STR three zero. Or if you like my show notes sent directly to your inbox every week, then go to Short Term Sage dot com backslash 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 the special honor and privilege of speaking with miss Julie, George, Julie, if you please wouldn’t mind introducing yourself, letting the audience know a little bit more about who you are and what inspired you to get into short term rentals.

 

00:08:02

Sure. Thanks, Juliana. Really, I’m honored to be on your show today. I guess I should say good day from Australia. Look, I’m based in Australia and I have got a short-term rental property management company, or I should say I did up until a month ago when I sold, but there’s a whole whole part of the piece of the story that we’ll talk about today. And of course I’ve also written a book and I hope you don’t mind my shameless plug here, but it’s million dollar host. It’s, it’s a story about what I’ve done, how I got to, where I am with the Airbnb market and basically gives tips and advice for anybody looking to create a business on the back of the sharing economy. So, but yeah, really excited to talk to you today and to the audience.

 

00:08:49

So what, what got you first started? I saw in the notes that you started in 2016, November, 2016. So basically You’ve scaled up to 120 properties before you sold it. So what started all of this before you got so large and the site itself? So,

 

00:09:10

So I guess three years ago, I’d heard the buzz word of Airbnb. I thought I wanted to find out what the phenomenon was all about. I had a one bedroom apartment in Cannes, so we’re in final Queensland near the great barrier reef of Australia. And I have a one bedroom apartment that was bringing in $240 a week. My longterm tenant decided to move the property was already furnished. And I thought, well, to try Airbnb, I just need to put the power on and get the power sorted and then get, of course Wi-Fi on and put some linen in the property. Did that listed it on Airbnb and went from two 40 a week to $600 a week. Now that just blew me out of the water. It was consistent. The guests were fantastic. I was able to use my own property and it suddenly dawned on me that there could be an opportunity here to make a business out of this and help others, other budding property investors make some really good money and have a really positive experience out of their rental properties. So that’s where it all sort of got started.

 

01:10:19

And what were you doing before that, that kind of led you to hosting your first home?

 

01:10:24

Sure. So I was, I was working as a real estate agent as a sales agent and broker in Australia and market. Our real estate market was very flat. So there wasn’t. So every day I was dealing with investors who were frustrated, they weren’t making enough money that couldn’t sell for profit. And a lot of them were coming to me saying, find me a great investment, find me a cashflow positive investment. Of course I couldn’t do that. There weren’t any out there, but I did say, look, I can create one for you. We can go and find a property that you would like to holiday in yourself Vacation. And, and then of course we can actually furnish it and I’ll charge you a fee. We can then manage it and I’ll charge you a fee. And of course, you know, and then you just have to sit back and your luxury apartment down in Sydney or wherever you live. And of course we will just pay you once a month with the income that comes in from Airbnb. So that’s how it really got, got started. But I was working in real estate sales, formerly advertising, I guess my first job ever was feeding crocodiles in kacadoo in the Northern territory. So anybody who’s saying crocodile Dundee, that’s been the female version

 

01:11:41

That is very Australian view there yesterday. Okay. Very cool. So you actually were able to leverage your, your network and your experience and is that how you kind of scaled up your business? How did, what, what, what was the challenge of starting and scaling after you kind of caught onto this business model?

 

01:12:02

Yeah, that was probably one of the trickiest parts of, of growing the business was knowing when I needed help. So I needed to realize that I couldn’t do everything. I couldn’t go out and get the properties, furnace, the properties, clean the properties and repeat that process without getting a bunch of very good people on board. So I really had to, you know, I remember at one stage I was doing 17 bids that I’d made in one day. And so it was hard work. It was really hard work, but then I had to Syrah, I need some help. I then decided to take a step back, not only in work hours, but also in income. So you had to really recognize that, yes, you have to take a step back to then move forward. And I was able to put more and more people on and you’ll see the whiteboard up behind me. That’s just half of my team that I’ve got in cans. We’ve got about 18 people that are out there helping, and I wouldn’t be able to do this on my own for sure.

 

01:13:03

So when, when did this kind of turn from just like Julie managing a few properties to Julie, just like running this major organization,

 

01:13:12

It didn’t take long. It didn’t take long at all. I think it was probably me doing it on my own for, it would have only been a, maybe six or eight week period. Once word got around. And once people realize what I was doing, I had so many people coming and knocking on my door finding and wanting our assistance that I actually reached out. First of all, I put on a mum, she had a couple of school-aged children. She just wanted to work 10 to two every day, which was our abuse busy period. She did a lot of the cleaning for me. Then I found another gentleman that had finished his career. He was actually 17, so he wasn’t a spring chicken, but he was at the end of an advertising sales career. He wanted something new. He wanted to be his own boss essentially.

 

01:13:57

And I said, well, if you’ve got a mop and a bucket and a, you know, come and give me a hand. So I essentially then built a property portfolio that I was able to give to to Glen. And Glen then has basically taken ownership of those properties. He does everything from messaging the guests. So he’s actually, so I’m a primary host on Airbnb. He is my co-host. He messages the guests, he meets the guests in person. So that’s one of the other things that we do very stringently that we must meet in-person we must eyeball that guest. He meets them. He looks after them during this day, cleanse the property or gets a cleaner to help him. And he also reports any maintenance through. So he was probably my first person that I was able to say, Glen, here’s a business that I’m going to give to you. His 12 properties that you’re in charge of. And of course, then I paid him a set fee plus a commission. So he was able to that enticed him to be able to keep the guests longer, respond to those inquiries very quickly, but also get out there and find new properties as well.

 

01:15:08

Now, in order for you to be able to pass on those systems that you already had in place, I imagine that, you know, this one person that you did tag on, it would have to kind of be within the same kind of area. How, how did, how, what it was, was it just because you have these properties in this particular area that you were able to do that, or what if you had multiple properties in different areas and not enough to just kind of pass it on to someone else?

 

01:15:33

So, interesting, interesting question. They, I guess originally it started that I just had so many properties that I couldn’t take them all on a board myself. So I put Glen on a, we now cover an area in the Cannes region. Our city region probably it’s about, it might be about 50 miles from one end to the other. And what I do now is each person that I have working for me actually has a set location. So I have somebody on the beaches, I have somebody up in the mountains and they, it makes it easier for them if they don’t have to travel too far to, to help those people, it’s really convenient too. So it’s, so that’s what we, we look at now locality and where people want to be.

 

01:16:19

And how do you, what’s your vetting process when you are taking on these, like these clients are these, these people that are going to be working with you?

 

01:16:26

It does well, in fact, I’m actually looking for two more now. So if anyone wants to move to Australia, give me a call because I’m yeah, you’re ready. Julian. I’ve got work for you. So we’ve actually just had such an influx of properties in the last week or two that we have looked at it, actually, everything in red that you can see up behind me are brand new properties that we haven’t even put officially on our, on our list. So lots of new properties and the vetting process. Gosh, so that’s evolved over the years. It used to be, if you’ve got two legs in a heartbeat, I would take you in. Now I’m looking for a little bit more. I’m looking for people with cleaning experience. So essentially the best type of people that I can find to teach them about Airbnb and hosting would be cleaners.

 

01:17:12

So cleaners, whether they’re commercial, cleaning, residential, cleaning, but anybody who has a real eye for detail, who is an entrepreneur who would like to, to build their business a little bit more and maybe, maybe step out of what they’re currently doing. If they’ve, self-employed fantastic because I’ve already got some ideas, but I’m just going to be able to help them a little bit more learn about Airbnb. And then from there be able to mentor them to that next level. So, so cleaners, the must have a car, they must have a smartphone. They must be able use the technology because that’s the biggest, you know, the way that we’re communicating with that guest, but they must be friendly and they must be welcoming. So they must have a big smile on their face.

 

01:18:00

Now, Julie, I think that that is just so unique because it’s something that I’ve never heard of, that you’re actually turning people into from cleaners into, you know, building their own kind of like businesses, is that, you know, and, and being in the property management space, is that something that, that is common like to cause usually what happens is you’ll, you’ll get co-hosts and then those co-hosts usually will have cleaners that they’ll hire out, but you’re kind of going the opposite. Yeah,

 

01:18:25

Absolutely. So I figure if I can give ownership to the people that are working for me and give them something to work towards. So I can mentor them to, to grow a small business, undermine very similar to a franchise, but not all the legal mumbo jumbo that goes with it. That’s a business to business relationship that we would have, but if I can grow them and then of course they can employ people under them. So just like you said, so they may not be able to, to help, sorry. They may not be able to service all the properties just themselves. They may take on casual cleaning staff. That’s fine. But the beauty to me is I don’t have to worry. They can actually go off and do that themselves. And they’re responsible for those properties. So it’s, it’s just a business model. That’s actually worked beautifully for me. I can work Monday to Friday nine to five. I don’t have to do the midnight runs for somebody. Who’s like they lock themselves out of the property and I’ve got some really, really happy small business owners that work in conduction with my business.

 

01:19:30

So it started with Julie, managing a few properties, get kind of got a little bit too much. You hired Glen to take these, these properties from you. And he was a cleaner, you trained him on how to be hospitable the operations of an Airbnb business. And then at that point, once you’ve kind of stepped away from working in the business and now you’re working on the business, was that more building and networking and taking on more clients? Yes.

 

01:19:56

Yeah, exactly. Jolene. So we’ve actually our office space here. We employ full people in the office, so administration, but we really, we knew that once again, to scale to the level that we are now, we couldn’t, we had to really step back a little bit and, and let other people take that responsibility, give them the ownership. So, so each person that works for me has their portfolio of properties, essentially in the office here, our main names to market find new properties to list. We also do consultations in here. So if anybody wants to come to us, mum and dad who wants to do it themselves, we are happy to help them set up their own Airbnb, what we find and we, we will do it for free. So we’re happy to do this for free as a bit of a PR exercise, we find that often after maybe a month or two of people doing it themselves, the novelty wears off and they will come back to us.

 

02:20:54

So we do have a few little things here that we do that we put in place, but we’re doing a lot of the administration. We’re doing a lot of the accounts where you put together the statements for the owners each, each month, we handle all the, the maintenance issues. So anything that with a plumber or an electrician, any issues that we have, we were out there handling that every day. I have a young lady she’s only 20 years old. She works in the office and she has got her dream job. She takes my credit card shopping every week or every day. And she goes to buy a home where she goes to buy a new washing machines. She just is the envy of a lot of her friends because she gets to do all the shopping. But yeah, it’s a, it’s an interesting take on only three years ago, it was my myself out there doing all the cleaning, meaning creating during the 24 7. Now I can scale that I’m worked at so that I can work just weekdays nine to five, have a life and have a great team around me that can help support.

 

02:22:01

Now. I, I want to go back to that, the way that you’ve kind of structured your business, because it is so unique. What, what made you kind of divert take this approach from hiring cleaners and then training them rather than going co-hosts and then hiring contractors or like starting a cleaning company, which is what a lot of people do.

 

02:22:18

Yeah. So very good question. I guess I looked at risk risk was my main thing. What happens when Airbnb goes quiet or if we don’t have enough income coming in, I wasn’t prepared to hire a cleaner, be paying them a salary or a wage, and then had that risk of things not working out and me being responsible for that. So that was probably to be honest, the first reason the second reason was I’ve worked in businesses similar to what I’m doing now, where contractors are given the ownership, they’re encouraged to build their own businesses. And I tell you what the loyalty, the work ethic is just out of this world. When you do that, and you can actually give responsibility and trust somebody else to work alongside to it just comes back tenfold. So what I’ve got now is not people that are for grudgingly turning up on a Monday morning, hating their job.

 

02:23:18

They’re not getting paid enough. They, you know, they don’t want to be here. I’ve actually got people excited about getting an inquiry through an Airbnb. They jumping on it in the middle of the night, which my biggest issue is trying to make sure that they get enough sleep, that they have a holiday, that they take a break because the money is quite attractive. And I, I do a very high split. So I’ll actually pay these people extremely well. A lot of people actually will say to me, why are you paying your people, your contractors so much money, but I can tell you money talks. We’re not here because of the love of planning toilets. We are here because it makes them very good income for both myself and the contractors and in turn also the property owners. So it’s a real win-win situation.

 

02:24:06

Now w with the co-hosting model, if, if, if you were managing that, that that’d be around 15% and how does the split work when you are having someone that is basically taking on your product? So you’re basically like a, like an, like a professional networker you’re networking. You’re finding them, the clients you’re passing it to them. And what’s the split on that look like,

 

02:24:26

Absolutely. Who are you asking me? The hard questions. Now, he comes out all my secrets and I was always a bit reluctant to tell the people about what I’m doing and give you the, give people the split, but it’s a formula that works. So what we do is we charge 25% of the accommodation rate to our property owners. So the property owners know that they’re getting 75% of the Airbnb payout. Now that’s really important. It has to be the payout figure. We all know that Airbnb changes, their commissions changes their fees. And sometimes it’s 3% they’ll charge sometimes three and a half percent. It’s always a little bit fluctuating. So, so I will always word my documents and my, my fees that we will take 25% of the payout of Airbnb. I then, and sorry. And we also collect the cleaning fee. Now the cleaning fee is based on $30 an hour on how long it would take to clean that property plus do the laundry.

 

02:25:28

So that’s really important. So, and we can talk about that later if you like, but the laundry is included. So we collect the cleaning fee. We collect the Airbnb, sorry, we collect 25% of the Airbnb payout. So essentially it works out that we’re on, we collect about 33% of the money that comes in from Airbnb is what the average works out to be. Now what I pay out to my contractors, get your pens and paper ready people. This is, this is the secret. So I’m pay 6.6%. So we have a, a tax in Australia called DST. So otherwise it would just be 6%, but 6.6% goes to my contractors plus the whole cleaning fee. Okay. So they actually, so what it ends up being is that I will end up with 18.4% on every accommodation booking that comes through. Now with that 18.4% that our office collects, we pay for our staff in the office.

 

02:26:30

We pay for the office. We also pay for the consumables. So we put in everything we put in the toilet paper through to the tea, the coffee, the shampoos conditioners. We actually make it very simple for our owners. And we have a keep it simple strategy where they only, they are only looking at handing over the cleaning fee, which doesn’t come to them anyway, cleaning fee plus 25%. And they don’t have to worry about anything, but 25% coming in 6.6 per going to my contractors, cleaning fee, just swing straight through to the contractors as well. 18.4% of every accommodation payout comes into my, into the office.

 

02:27:13

Lots of, lots of ways that I kind of want to go with this first, first is first that comes to mind is what, why aren’t these contractors kind of like undercutting or like, you know, if they could collect that full, do it themselves. Why not?

 

02:27:26

It’s not as easy as it looks. And there is so much more behind the scenes than people realize. Now, look, I’ve written about a lot of that stuff in the book, and you can do it yourself in Australia, and it will be different to all your, all your listeners and your audience will be in different parts of the world. In Australia, we have a very stringent government law over real estate. So if we’re collecting money on behalf of anybody else, we need to run, what’s called a trust account and it’s highly regulated. It’s audited. Every, every few months we just had an audit two days ago. It felt like the school principal coming in. But it, what it means is that there’s a lot of behind the scenes administration and counting. There’s a lot of laws to, to uphold. And yeah, there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes. So as much as I’m making it sound very simple, there is a bit of hard work that goes on behind the scenes to get all the, all the policies, the procedures, everything set up.

 

02:28:30

So do you feel that it would actually be easier, like say like in the U S where they’re not as strict on that? Do you feel that you could have scaled a lot easier or

 

02:28:38

Yeah, well, I say absolutely. But then you do run the risk of your people that you’re training up, maybe going into competition with you. It’s yeah. I don’t know. Yeah. I guess it would be different in every area

 

02:28:53

Now, now what’s, what’s your, what’s your secret sauce truly because getting these clients is always kind of the, the challenging part for, for hosts co-hosts w how have you been able to grow this portfolio so rapidly?

 

02:29:09

I guess in the beginning, I had to put a bit of money into, into traditional advertising. Now we’re talking magazines, maybe social media or on Facebook, but really pushing the fact and getting that message out to the wider audience that we were offering these services. I, I guess my, I think I’ve got a background in marketing and emphasize things. So I knew that I had to get the message out there, but the other thing that I did and it’s, it’s worked very well is to establish myself as Airbnb expert in my region. Now that meant that whenever there is a story on Airbnb, the local media will come to me. They will do interviews. And that’s every week at the moment, we’ve just in the cans, posted the local newspaper. There’s a story today about what we’re doing and about how Airbnb is really kicking ass at the moment.

 

03:30:04

So establishing yourself as the Airbnb expert in your area, then getting a really good website. You really need to be found online. So if somebody is Googling and looking for Airbnb property management, you’ve got to be that you’ve got to be at the top now, where if you’ve got competitors in your region, that might mean that you need to buy advertising specific Google ad words, or being able to get to the top of that list, but you just need to be there. You need to have unique content on your page. You need to have really good information and you need to get those clicks on your website. So we, I combined all of those things, and now we actually don’t do any traditional advertising. It’s all through mediums like yourself. Julian being able to talk to the wider, wider audience, newspaper, being able to promote us. I know from the, just the local newspaper running this story today, we will have phone calls coming in today with people that are interested, you know, they all want to, there’s a lot of people out there that are interested in Airbnb, what it offers, but normally people know where to start. So they often looking for experts in the area to show them, how

 

03:31:12

Now is that? Why you, because with the co-hosting model, a lot of times, it’s you pay for the amenities you, you pay for all of that. And you just manage the messaging, you manage the cleaners you manage, you know, all the operations is, are you, what’s your reasoning behind the paying for literally everything inside the unit as well?

 

03:31:33

Yeah, so it’s, I guess we, we pay for when we give a list to the owners. So when the owners first come on board, we want to make sure that we’re on the same page. And that’s so, so important to be on that same level as the owners had the same expectations, but we will provide a list of all the amenities. So tea, coffee, shampoo, conditioners, that type thing. But we actually do have a list of things we won’t, we might supply. So things like coffee, pods, so many different coffee machines out there that we just can’t. We will actually just say to the owner, we’ll go and buy them, but then we will charge you from your income at the end of the month. We’re actually, my whole theory is to keep it really simple for the owners as well. So I don’t want owners thinking that they’re signing up and they’re going to have to pay 25% commission.

 

03:32:24

They’re going to have to pay this fee, that fee they’re going to have to pay for their amenities. They’re going to have to adjust. That is a fricking nightmare. And as a property owner, myself, if somebody starts bamboozling me with lots of fees and charges, I’m outta here. So I’ve kept it very simple. Everything’s included, but you’ve got to make sure that you’re challenging enough. If you’re gonna run with the model that I’m talking about. Now, I, I originally tried it at 22%. It just didn’t cut the mustard until I was able to get to a hundred properties. Then there was, then it sort of paid for itself. So I’ve got to, if I had started again, sorry if I could go back and give myself some advice, I wouldn’t actually say start at 25%. You get what you pay for and own as a happy to pay that. If they know what they’re going, that they don’t have to worry about anything.

 

03:33:16

And with the 25%, you’re able to afford that, those, those amenities inside the unit.

 

03:33:22

Yeah, absolutely. And we, I’ve got to say that. One of the other things that I’ve learned over the last couple of years is you don’t have to over provide. We were doing things like putting bottled water, individual bottle water in every property. We then one of my ladies that works for me actually said to me, one day, that’s not really very good for the environment. You, you really could put just a corrupt water in the fridge. You can save yourself some money. You can save the environment and do you know what she was right. We, we swapped over to just cross of water. We haven’t noticed any difference in our reviews. We haven’t noticed any difference in the customer satisfaction. I have noticed a massive difference in my hip pocket. So we’re saving, saving hundreds of dollars a week by not supplying that those bottle waters. So, so really when you’re thinking about what you are supplying to the, to the guests be reasonable. I mean, when I first started my one bedroom unit as well, I had a minivan, a full minibar of every soft drink. You can imagine chocolates crisps, a whole bunch of, oh, the guests would have loved it because, you know, they had $20 worth of goodies in the snacks, in the fridge. So you don’t need it. You really just need to provide a really good accommodation, comfortable bed, provide what you’re saying. You’re providing,

 

03:34:47

Going back. You brought up the reviews with the reviews. How, how, if you’re passing this on to someone that has never managed properties before never been in hospitality, they’ve just been cleaning. How do you make sure that they are able to keep your, your standards and keep that, that high rating?

 

03:35:06

We do a lot of training. So when somebody new comes on board as a co-host, we will train them up to our standards. So we will show them how we want the beds made, how we want the property presented, how the bathrooms should be playing. If the beauty of it is with this reviews, the reviews, we can very quickly find out if somebody is not doing the right thing. So if maybe two reviews in a row come through saying, oh, there was a, you know, there was, the fridge was dirty and there was leftover food in the Marco wave. Well, you know where the need to go back to the training, we need to fix the training, or we need to maybe remove that property from that current host. So the review system has actually provided them an extra set of eyes for myself, but also for the property owners, just to reassure us that things are being done right in the property.

 

03:36:01

And do you have like a, is it like a video training course? Are these all just like, as like operating procedures that you, that you kind of give them or do they have like a test pilot properties that they’re working with before you actually let them on their own to manage multiple properties, which is a lot, you know, managing multiple properties can be a lot for someone that has never done this before.

 

03:36:21

Yeah. So we start, we start off very slowly. So when somebody has to come on board with us, we will go out with them. I’ve got a couple of area managers now, so they will go out and they will actually do the, the standards training. So they might take four or five hours to go into an actual home that is being turned over for the next guest. And we will actually make the beds. We will do run through them, what needs to happen in the kitchen, but then we get them to shadow the more experienced co-hosts. So they, for maybe two or three days, we’ll go out side by side with another co with another host and be able to see what the more senior co-hosts are doing. How are they managing their time? How are they coping with multiple properties? Because you’re right. Looking after one property is very different to looking out for five.

 

03:37:06

And if you’ve got five back to back claims and turnovers far out, you know, suddenly it becomes quite a logistical nightmare. So we, we will, we will basically with a new person, maybe just give them three properties to start with, and then we will monitor them. And we will say to them, come in with your business plan on how you can cope with more properties. And then we will start saying to them what’s so it’s all done in in-person it’s all either done in the office here or out in the field, but we will say, okay, Julian, you want to now take on 10 properties. How are you going to go from three to 10? And how are you going to cope with the fact that they might also over on the same day? What will you do? And we will just sort of see if they’re ready for it.

 

03:37:50

If they’re not ready, of course, it’s very easy. We just take that off. So we were warning or we, I don’t want to say punishing, but we, we working with the levels of the co-host and just making sure that they are happy as well, because it’s not unusual for some of them to come back to me and say, oh, look, I actually can see Liz. She’s only got, she’s got five properties at the moment behind me here. So she’s a mum, she’s got some kids and she has just gone back to university. And she has said to me, she had ice. She said, can you take three off me? And I would like a smaller workload. No problem.

 

03:38:28

And do you have contractors that have built to, you know, utilizing cleaners and stuff like that, been able to build like their own like multiunit kind of like a property management business?

 

03:38:41

Yeah. So quite a few of them have done very well right behind me. You’ll be able to see there’s a, there’s a big list. And that belongs to a couple that worked for me and then ends Jackie and Ari and Jackie and Ari. Well, Jackie started off just on her own. She was a commercial cleaner at a university at a college. And she came across to me wanting something different. So I gave her, I think we started with three properties with her. Now she’s been on board about 15 months with me. Now, her husband liked what she was doing so much. So he has come on board. Her mother has joined them as part of the team as a cleaner and their son, a teenage son who probably hates this, but he gets to come along and do a lot of the claims as well.

 

03:39:27

But I can tell you that this couple have now, well, what they were earning before in their full-time jobs. They’re probably tripled that money, that income that I established, that they’ve got their own little management company. We call it Mason property management. So we’ve given them a name. We’ve got them a logo. We’ve made sure that they know exactly. They’ve really built up to learn about hosting. Now I know that I am probably running the risk of them maybe one day, deciding to go off and getting a real estate license and then coming into competition, I’ve put some pretty in the contract when they first sign up, we’ve got some non-compete clauses in there. So, so they are restricted to what they can do. But not only that, they, they know where their bread is buttered. They know that I’m constantly feeding them work. If they were to go off and do it themselves, it’d be a lot more work for them to do so they’re but essentially what they’ve done is they’ve built up a business. Now that is a saleable item. If they were to sell their business and I was to get along well enough with the new owners, boom, we just cross off the names off the top of there, pop the new people on and off they go.

 

04:40:40

This is crazy, Julie, you, you will, you are, you will have franchised short-term rental management. That is wild. Wow. I’m very, very surprised. Why, why do you think nobody else has done this, this type of model before? Like it’s just so, so different?

 

04:40:55

No, I don’t know. I think we’re still such a new industry, Julian, that people are still trying to get the hints around how to operate and how to run. We are doing it very differently to a lot of others. A lot of other property managers will run with claim, just employ lameness and run in the fact that they’re not going to do the personal meet and greet. You can let yourselves in, you can come and collect the keys. I don’t like that. I still think that is Airbnb guests and Airbnb travelers are wanting that personal experience. So yeah, we, we offer that it has been such a successful model that I’m sure it won’t well. And when people maybe watch your podcast today and you know, in your interview that they may replicate it and if anybody does and they need help come and talk to me because now that I’ve, I’ve actually sold my business in the last four weeks ago. So I’ve now sold the business. We grew it to such a level that I had people coming, knocking on the door. My next step is to go out there and help others set up something similar. So I’m helping people all around the world. I’ve got a lady in Canada at the moment. I’m talking to people in Puerto Rico and talking to people in New Zealand. So we we’re really, I’m happy to sort of give, you know, give my secrets and my knowledge to others do it is enough work for everybody we can all share.

 

04:42:18

Now I think, I think that is a pretty, pretty unique thing. Being in Australia that you said that only people with real estate license, like you have to have the certain types of background to be able to be a property manager for people’s Airbnbs, but people can start their own bub, their own Airbnbs themselves. They just can’t help other people manage the properties.

 

04:42:39

Well, okay. So here’s another little secret what you could do. And my brain is always thinking I’ve got a million ideas on how you can make money and how you could run this. If you didn’t become a real estate agent, the other option is so you only really need to be a real estate agent. If the, if the money is coming to you from Airbnb and you’re holding that money on behalf of others, if you didn’t, if Airbnb and I may be letting the cat out of the bag. So Airbnb and I have, we’ve been talking about maybe the whole idea of the, the split payments coming back in. So if that was coming back in, you could then pay your owners directly through Airbnb and you collect your portion from Airbnb. The other option is if that doesn’t happen is that you may be able to just invoice for your, so you set it up in your payouts, in Airbnb, that the owner of that property gets the money each month. And then you just invoice at the end of the month for your fees, your charges, and maybe any trades or any homewares that you’ve had to pay for. So there are different ways. I think what people are going to do is take the blinkers off, stop thinking. There is only one way to do, to run a management business, take the blinkers off, think outside the square and look at alternatives,

 

04:44:02

Julie. So I’m going to pick you up. I’m going to drop you over in the U S w if you were to restart and do this over in the us, what would be your first steps in being able to scale this scale, this business,

 

04:44:15

Just find one property. All you need to do is just start. So you just need to find one person to trust you, give you that property and get going. Okay. So do not overthink this. This is not rocket science. You just need a property to list on Airbnb that you can run the logistics for, and you can, you can help. Not only yourself, make money, help the property owner make money. Okay? We’re all property owners are wanting a good return on their investment. If you can help them do that word will spread very quickly, but you just need one.

 

04:44:50

Now, man, this is just so, so interesting. Julie, I’d love to maybe get you on another show, but I want to talk about transitioning and being able to sell off this business, because I know that that’s really exciting and I’m definitely curious being the first guest on the show to be, have built this up and then sell it. What, what is that process like with building up a management company and then selling it to somebody? How, how does that work?

 

04:45:15

Well? So I guess you’ve always got to go into a business or anything that you’re doing. You really should be thinking of your exit strategy. Now, a lot of people don’t, and when I’m talking about exit strategy can be for life as well. I mean, really we should all be, we should all be living our life as if, you know, making the most of it so that our exit, our funeral, people are going to say fantastic things about us. And we’re going to have something that we’ve achieved, putting it back into context with business. Yes, I started this business because I could find that there was a niche in the market. There was an opportunity to, to make some money, but at the same time I had to be realistic and go, what’s my exit strategy. Do I want to do this forever? Do I love Airbnb so much that I want to be making beds forever?

 

04:46:08

No, I’m sorry. I there’s, you know, that’s yeah. That’s the reality of it. Airbnb is wonderful and it served its purpose in building up a fantastic business for me. But what my whole goal was was to build up a, I guess, a traditional rent roll. So on my Airbnb profile, this is something that’s different too. On my Airbnb profile, it has 120 properties on it at the moment has 6,000 odd reviews. Last month we brought in $550,000 in income, which is just blows me away. I know that’s just like so 550,000. So that is the value. That’s the valuable item in my business. People want my Airbnb profile. Okay. So when I had this profile, that was so well-known Airbnb head office. And you know, we’re talking about what Julie George was doing in Australia. People around the world started getting, you know, finding out about the book and the story then caught the attention of a, of a larger company.

 

04:47:15

So this larger company, happy to tell you about it. It’s the name of the company is Hometime Hometime is an international company in Australia. They’ve got 10 locations in Australia and they’re also in New Zealand. They’re about to go into South Africa and Israel. So they’re looking worldwide. They are terrific. They like my business. They’re very similar models, my business, but they’re on steroids. So they’re huge. And they have over 120 employees. It’s a big, big organization. They found out about what I was doing. They wanted to come and buy some selves in far north Queensland. However, they knew if they were to do that independently, they would be coming up against what I’ve already established. So I’ve got a, quite a big, strong market. Hold on. The people know who I am, what I’m doing up in north Queensland. They didn’t necessarily want to come in and compete against that.

 

04:48:07

So they actually came and knocked on the door and asked if I’d be interested in selling. When I asked them to show me the right amount of money that came through. So they came through and they, they were able to, yeah, they were able to make me an offer that where I am now going to stay on as a shareholder of the company. So I still get to have a part in it. I still keep I’m able to help them grow their business and maybe promote their business like we are now. But it means that I can step away from, I guess, being the boss and being in charge of staff, being in charge and having that responsibility of 120 properties, because that’s pretty scary. That’s a bit daunting having that level of responsibility and stress. So I guess selling the business, the next step is of course, for me, being able to go out, promote the book, travel the world, help others set up their businesses. But it, it is like giving up your baby. You grow this business to a point where you’re handing over the baby, but I’ve actually found some great adoptive parents.

 

04:49:12

I just think that that’s wild, Julie, you, you, you have a baby that was spitting out like a half, a million dollars in a month. And what, what, what is the difference though, between what you’ve kind of built up and what this other company has built up? Like what, what would keep you from maybe a scaling to, you know, as large as, as they have, as they have grown?

 

04:49:35

Yeah, very good question. And that was definitely on the card. So we were looking at it, maybe replicating what we were doing in other areas, maybe Sydney, Melbourne, different areas of Australia. It’s I guess what they came through with, and which is really exciting for me is I feel like I’ve sort of built the business to one level and they have got a lot more, they’ve got a lot more to offer in terms of technology. So they’ve got some brilliant apps. They’ve got some developed this, this site where you can actually log in as an owner and be able to, as an owner, not see everything that we can see on Airbnb, because you just don’t want to own this. You don’t want owners to involve themselves in that. And I’ve got to say that in the possible way, because that’s probably one of the biggest headaches, I guess, if you’re ever doing the co-host model, you’ll know the interference from owners who won’t let you get on with the job is, is painful.

 

05:50:38

So what they’ve designed is this amazing technology. Yes, owners can login. They can basically see the, see what’s going on with the, with the property and the income and the expenses, but only what you want them to say. They also have an after hours call center and they have a virtual, they basically got some support networks in place. So that one of the problems I have with my model is that I have a lot of our co-hosts that does burnout. They don’t take the time off. They don’t get the sleep they need. They’re so hungry for the money and for the, for the, to build their own little businesses that they forget to take care of themselves. So what we can do with Hometime now they’ve set it up so that we can actually divert our phones. We can switch the messaging across to somebody who’s going to work after hours.

 

05:51:29

That person then takes control of all of the questions that come through. All the inquiries helps with any guest problems. And it means that my guys in there are going to be, be able to have a break. So I guess I, I don’t have a great understanding of the technology that these guys have gone. They also, yeah, they just, I really liked them. I think they’re a terrific company. I think that these guys are going to have a far wider reach, someone I have at the moment. And I tell you what, I couldn’t be happier to join any other company than I have with Hometime

 

05:52:05

Now, Julie, what, what, what about though? Cause you set up these systems and you, you put these people in place. Is there not a way to be able to kind of like completely remove yourself, just like manage, just like oversight and just add someone that could be another Julie that was doing what you were doing, like Y give up like a $500,000 baby machine. Yeah.

 

 05:52:30

Yeah. Good point. I guess everything’s got its price. So, so when I, yeah, when I did weigh that out because you know, the, the money is fantastic. I guess Airbnb property management is always a risk though, because who knows with world politics and what’s going on, you know, as much as I would love to think that we’re going to continue this rise nothing’s ever guaranteed. So I guess I had to really weigh up and go, okay, I could be earning this $550,000 income on Airbnb, you know, for the next six months or, you know, the sky could fall in and something bad could happen. So I guess I really had to come up with a number, but it wasn’t it was about stress and lifestyle as well. So I really had to go, okay, what sort of lifestyle do I want to leave? And can’t do it all.

 

05:53:23

I could, I have got some great people here that it’s funny. All four girls in the office all do answer to answer the phones as Julie, and they all pretend to be Julie. So there are a lot of single white female issues going on here. But I guess my passion too is to really promote the book, get out there and help people start up their own businesses. And yeah, I guess my, my goals have slightly changed. So, so the opportunity to sell the business still keep my hand in the business as a shareholder and as a consultant to be able to now have the freedom to come across to America, to help others set up, travel to Europe. You know, there’s so much exciting stuff out there that really floats my boat. So I’m, I’m excited to help.

 

05:54:11

Hi, Julie, I I’m sure that we could just keep on talking and talking, but I know that you’re very busy. You have another, another call coming up pretty shortly, but I just want to of kind of wrap this up and, and kind of see if, if for someone that is maybe just starting off with the property management and w what would you say to that? Someone that is fresh and trying to build up to something that they might be able to sell off in the future?

 

05:54:35

Yeah. So just do it is my first thing. I’ll say, don’t overthink it. You only need one property, so you just need to jump in don’t it does look daunting. It, you will make mistakes. I’ve made mistakes, I guess probably, maybe have you policies and procedures in place first. So you want to really set the same, the client expectations. When you’re dealing with a property owner you’re taking on their house, that’s a huge risk for them. And they’re putting a lot of trust into you. You need to be on the same page when it comes to things like cleaning, replacing items that are broken maintenance and repairs have a real think about what will happen with all of those things have to think also about what happens if you have bookings in the future. And then the property owner decides to take back that house for their own personal use.

 

05:55:26

What happens to those future guests who pays the cancellation fees, all that sort of stuff. So you’ve really got to keep that in mind. The one thing a lot of people are surprised to know is I’m not a super host. Okay. So I’ve got, I’m making super income, not a super host. It does not matter. Okay. It really doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, I would just say, jump in. If you need some mentoring, get in touch with me on Facebook, on LinkedIn, you know, look me up on, on Google, Julie, George, happy to help people, but just do it

 

05:56:00

Great. Yeah. And I’ll include everything in the show notes. I’ll include the book. I’m excited to definitely read that as well, but Julie, man, it is just such an honor to be able to speak with you. This has been a very exciting interview being the largest person to have scaled up to 120. I think you’re the first, first guest on the show to have such a large portfolio and then to actually sell it, which is also a very interesting thing. Cause I know a lot of people have kind of like in that, in the back of their mind, but for you to actually have those systems and set in place just very, very cool. I’d love to maybe get you on and maybe talk some more about some of the details when we get some more questions from the guests. But is there anything else that you’d like to share Julie, before we sign off?

 

05:56:41

I know I just really appreciate the opportunity Julian. Cause as you know, or as you can tell, there’s no secrets here on happy to share the information with people. If it means that it could change somebody else’s life fantastic. It’s changed. Airbnb certainly changed my life. It’s changed 18 other people’s lives. That work for me, it’s changed hundreds of property owners that have benefited out of, out of the income that we’ve had come in. And if I can hopefully teach anybody one of your listeners or audience or inspire them to do the same jobs done,

 

05:57:14

Oh, you’ve definitely inspired me, Julie. Well until next time, host nation, keep on hosting Hopi hosts benefit from the show. If you found value, please go on 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.